Afghanistan: another Amin
Roger Cooper
If you had prophesied to the average Afghan any time in the last year that Presi dent Nur Mohammad Tarakki would be deposed in September, he would have given an optimistic smile and murmured 'Inshall ah' ('God willing!). But if you had added that he would be replaced by Prime Minister Hafezollah Amin he would have shud dered and said 'Astaghferollah' (`God forbid!'), for after 17 months at the top Amin has become the most feared and hated man in Afghanistan.
Exactly how and why Amin reached the pinnacle of power remains something of a mystery. He has personally denied that Tarakki is dead, as widely believed in Afghanistan, and says that he is receiving medical treatment for an unspecified ill ness; Tarakki was known to have suffered from diabetes, but his health, at both the Non-Aligned Summit in Havana earlier this month and at his meeting with Soviet President Brezhnev on the way home, seemed good. What is certain is that during the president's absence Amin sacked the last two members of the cabinet without consulting Tarakki, thus setting the stage for a personal confrontation.
Tarakki's response was to summon Amin to a meeting of the Revolutionary Council in the presidential palace. Soon after Amin's arrival an explosion was heard, followed by a prolonged gun-battle. Official sources admit that four persons were killed, including Major Sayyed Daoud Tarun, a former police chief who was responsible for Tarakki's personal security, though known to have been a close associate of Amin's. Tarun, now a 'martyr of the revolution', was given a state funeral and the large town of Jalalabad has been renamed Tarunabad, a name unlikely to stick, but the other casualties have not been named.
Within to days Tarakki had lost all his party and government posts, and even the modest title 'comrade'. Public photographs of yesterday's 'Great Leader' were replaced by those of Amin, previously known as 'The Heroic Student', an allusion to his studies in America some 25 years ago. Officially Tarakki resigned because of ill health, but bullet-wounds are a more likely diagnosis than diabetes. Whether he died or was deposed unharmed is now politically irrelevant.
The most likely explanation for these events, curiously reminiscent of Abdul Fatta h Ismail's takeover in South Yemen last year, is that both Amin and Tarakki feared that the other was about to get rid of him. The Russians are known to have recommended a more conciliatory approach in dealing with the widespread rebellions that have paralysed the country, an approach in direct conflict with Amin's hard-line attempts to railroad Marxist reforms through a traditional society and crush any opposition, real or imaginary. Diplomatic observers feel that the Russians cannot be happy at the worsening mess and may have considered bringing in a military man such as Colonel Watanjar, who as a tank major helped bring Tarakki and Amin to power, to head a more widely-based government, perhaps with Tarakki continuing as a figurehead. Amin had already eliminated, months ago, a more obvious military rival, the popular airforce commander Abdul Qadir, and the removal of Watanjar, who had been interior minister and briefly defence minister, and Major Mazduryar, who held the important frontier affairs portfolio, completed the sweep of potential threats. So Amin came to the palace prepared for a show-down, perhaps even for a pre-emptive strike against the president and his supporters. Whoever tried to kill whom, Amin's faction won the day, and some reports say that as many as 60 persons lost their lives.
Soviet support for the Tarakki regime, through massive military and economic aid, needs little emphasising. The estimated 4,000 Soviet advisers in key positions in the civil service and armed forces, many of them fluent in Dan and Pushto and groomed for years for such jobs, are clearly able to monitor and influence events. But this does not mean that everything that happens in Kabul is stage-managed from the Kremlin. Tarakki's warm welcome from Brezhnev indicates that the Russians had no prior knowledge of the coup, unless an extremely Machiavellian interpretation is placed on Soviet statecraft. But once Tarakki and the military men were out of the way (Mazduryar reportedly dead, Watanjar off to join the rebels) Amin was pragmatic enough to adopt, at least superfi cially, a conciliatory posture of the kind the Russians have been advocating. He promised to release all 'unnecessarily held' polit ical prisoners (estimated by Amnesty Inter national in tens of thousands), and added that 'atrocities by members of government will not be tolerated any more', conve niently overlooking the fact that as prime minister and head of the security apparatus he has been personally responsible for the regime's abysmal human rights record.
On foreign policy, he said he would try to improve relations with Iran and Pakistan, which have been regularly (and unjustly) blamed for the country's internal unrest. (China, Afghanistan's other neighbour and a frequent target , was not promised detente, however.) Finally, to counter growing criticism of his personal lust for power, he promised that in future collective leadership would replace one-man rule, with the central committee of the ruling Khalq (People's') Party, the Revolutionary Council and the Council of Ministers jointly providing presidential rule. But as he has taken over from Tarakki as party secretary-general and chairman of the Revolutionary Council while remaining prime minister and minister of defence, power seems even more concentrated in his hands than before, when he effectively ran the day-to-day business of government and left Tarakki as the theoretician and symbolic leader. If a collective leadership is formed, it will be purely cosmetic. The removal of Tarakki is a convenient opportunity to review the record of the regime to which he gave his name, even if it is now clear that Amin was the real strongman. The April 1978 coup was a curious event, more the result of blunders by President Daoud, who in 1973 had ousted his cousin and brother-in-law, Kin Mohammad Zahir, to usher in the republican era, than of strategic brilliance by the Khalq Party. After a series of mishaps reminiscent of the Keystone Cops, including the defence minister's staff car crashing into a taxi, loyalist jet fighters misunderstanding their orders, the palace ground-to-air missile malfunctioning, and rebel tanks shooting at each other, the rebels won and Daoud, his family and close associates, about 30 in all, were shot without parley.
As usual with successful coups, the birth of the new Democratic Republic was greeted with enthusiasm by many Afghans, disillusioned with the outgoing republic they had welcomed with equal optimism. five years earlier. The new regime promised to base its policies on the principles of nationalism, respect for Islam, socioeconomic justice and non-alignment, but instead concentrated on eliminating potential opposition. The first targets were nonradical politicans and all associated with the royal family and Daoud's regime. Then came members of a rival communist group, the Parcham (`Banner') Party, which had split with the Khalq over policy differences. Tarakki's first cabinet included Parcham leaders, but these were soon sent abroad as ambassadors, then declared traitors. Next came Colonel Abdul Qadir, who had helped Daoud to power in 1973, and was rewarded by demotion to 'head of military slaughter-houses'. Qadir is now in jail or dead. Within six months almost all the middle-class administrators who failed to support the regime were sidelined or arrested, though many succeeded in escaping across the mountain passes into Pakistan, often with the connivance of border guards. Not surprisingly, business confidence collapsed and economic activity plummeted to the subsistence level. While proclaiming non-alignment the regime rapidly strengthened its links with the Soviet Union, and loosened those with the United States. Mismanagement of the Dkidubnsaplepdintgo his US tUh hAdmAbina Ambassador pAudhol l icf Opinion was snubbed by the absence of any apology. A defence agreement with the USSR, euphemistically called a 'treaty of friendship and cooperation', was signed at the end of last year, within a month of similar Soviet agreements with Vietnam and Ethiopia. Article 4 of the treaty justifies military intervention at the invitation of the Afghan government, and many feel that Amin could issue such an invitation if the rebels began to pose a serious military threat. Soon after Amin's take-over the State Department confirmed that Soviet troop near the Afghan border were on 'Modified alert', and repeated US 'opposition' to any intervention in Afghanistan's internal affairs, although it is doubtful if such opposition would or could be translated into action if military intervention under the treaty occurred. Already some 400 Soviet combat troops have taken control Of the strategic Begram air base, 35 miles north of Kabul, which was threatened by rebel action nearby. This close dependence on the Russians, essential to the regime's survival, is unpopular with the Afghans as a whole. Like neighbouring Iran, Afghanistan lost territory to Russian expansionism in the 19th century, Which was checked by British pressure from the south, leading to the three Afghan wars and ultimately Afghanistan's full independence. The present regime's reliance on Nikolai' (the north Afghan's word for a Russian going back to the two 19th-century Tsars of that name) amounts virtually to treason in a nation where folk-memories live long. • The final accusation against the regime is its disrespect for Islam. Although Tarakki and Amin have avoided Marxist terminology, they have made little secret of their Plans to end the influence of the religious leaders, many of whom have fled the country to escape p persecution. Amin's recent Pledge of 'moral and financial support' for Islam provided its leaders confine their teaching to religion shows a failure to understand that to a devout Muslim religious and secular matters cannot be thus separated, as is well illustrated by recent events in Iran. In a backward but devout nation government measures such as land reform, improved rights for women, including education, however well intentioned, Can easily be depicted as contrary to the tenets of Islam. So to most rural Afghans Tarakki and Amin are simply atheists, and to call someone a Khalqi is the gravest Certainly Islam is the central theme of the rganised opposition, which has been steadily growing over the past year. Almost all the rebel groups have the word in their title, and all the religious leaders have now declared the struggle to be a jihad, which promises instant paradise for a participant killed in battle. Yet despite several attempts unity still eludes the rebels, chiefly because of personal rivalries and deeply differing attitudes towards the kind of Afghan society, each group would like to see. The Majority must be considered fundamental ists, and some make the Ayatollah Khomeini look enlightened and progressive, Seyyed Ahmad Gailani, the descendant of a Sufi saint with a wide following among the Pathan hill-tribes, is almost alone in believing that Islam is compatible with modernisation.
Although four of the six main rebel groups have now formed an alliance, so far leaderless, Gailani's group and another influential one have refused to join. Gailani certainly emerges as the most sensible of the opposition leaders, and the only one to appreciate that Afghanistan, an impoverished country in a strategic position, must maintain what he calls 'our traditional friendship' with the Soviet Union. But in the light of the Iranian experience one wonders whether such statesmanlike qualities are a match for fanaticism or despotism.
What really matters in Afghanistan is not the political or religious debates in Peshawar, where the rebel organisationg are headquartered under the stern surveillance of Pakistani security, but the fighting, rebellions and defections inside the country. A number of serious military uprisings have occurred, notably in Herat in March, where several Russian advisers were butchered, and in one of the main garrisons in Kabul last month. Both were ruthlessly put down. The government is also constantly harassed by the thousands of tribesmen who have taken up the call to jihad, often for questionable motives. Armed with antiquated rifles and Kalashnikov automatics provided by deserters, they are most active in the mountainous provinces of Paktia and Kunar, between the capital and Pakistan, where the terrain favours their hit-and-run tactics, Their nuisance value is high, hut despite their own grandiose claims they do not pose a serious military threat to the regime. My impression, based on ten days in Paktia this summer with such a group, is that they are too uneducated (concepts such as north, south, left and right were alien to them), individualistic and unmotivated to mount a major assault. They were badly beaten while preparing to attack Jalalabad in June, and their siege of Gardez has been dragging on for months. Even if they were to capture it (which would not be difficult with a determined attack) it is doubtful whether they could hold it against airstrikes by the Afghan airforce, equipped with MIG 21 and 23 fighter bombers and helicopter gunships. I saw these planes in action almost daily, bombing villages as a warning to the tribesmen, and the effect was literally devastating. If the rebels were to obtain modern weapons in sufficient quantities it is doubtful whether they could deploy them effectively unless wholesale defections from the armed forces occurred, andeven then resupply would be a problem.
With the weather turning cold and food in short supply in the hills, many of the rebel fighters are already heading for the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where they can survive through the winter in makeshift camps that already hold some 200,000 refugees. Till then, unless a military putsch occurs, or the Russians encourage another palace coup, or a nationwide uprising of Iranian proportions takes place and none of these possibilities looks likely just now President Amin looks safe enough in office. And the more time he can buy, the more he can entrench himself and his tiny and unpopular Khalq Party.
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