Word: overthrown
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most brutal blow from the Soviet Union's steel fist since the Red Army's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In a lightning series of events last week, Afghanistan's President Hafizullah Amin was overthrown, and subsequently executed, in a ruthless coup mounted by the Soviet Union and carried out with the firepower of Soviet combat troops. In Amin's place, Moscow installed Babrak Karmal, a former Deputy Prime Minister long considered to be a Soviet protégé, but not before Russian troops were forced to fight a sporadic series of gun battles...
Instead, Karmal, a 50-year-old bachelor, went into hiding with other members of the Parcham group. Among them was his longtime mistress, Anahita Ratebzad, who had been packed off as Ambassador to Yugoslavia. When Taraki was overthrown-and killed-by Hafizullah Amin last September, Karmal was still underground. Diplomats speculated that the Soviets stashed him away in an Eastern European capital as a sort of strongman-in-reserve. As one expert puts it, "The Russians were keeping [him] on ice until [he was] needed...