Word: taraki
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...Soviet seizure had apparently been taking shape for several months. Moscow had disliked the truculent Amin ever since he had replaced a Soviet favorite, Noor Mohammed Taraki, in the coup of Sept. 15. As the Muslim insurgency kept gaining strength in the countryside, Moscow proposed to Amin that Soviet combat forces be brought in to put down the rebellion. Amin refused...
...next day, Dec. 28, the capital was entirely in Soviet hands. Amin, whom the Soviet press had treated with respect until only a few days earlier, was now being described as "a man who was in the service of the CIA" and a "usurper" who condemned former President Taraki to death...
...People's Democratic Party, he helped to plot the overthrow of King Mohammed Zahir Shah by Mohammed Daoud. Five years later, he blithely joined in the subsequent plot that ousted Daoud's regime. For that purpose, Karmal had aligned himself with his bitter political rival, Noor Mohammed Taraki, leader of the more radical Khalq faction of the P.D.P., who set himself up as President. But the alliance between the two Marxists soon broke down. After only two months as Deputy Prime Minister under Taraki, Karmal was sent into virtual exile as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia. When Taraki stripped...
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...
...well-born son of a general, Karmal has been a Marxist ever since his days as a student at Kabul University; his graduation was delayed by a stint in prison for left-wing agitation. His Parcham Party always leaned more dependably toward Moscow than Taraki's more broadly based faction, which sometimes espoused a Maoist-flavored brand of Marxism. Says former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Neumann: "Karmal is the original Communist, a dyed-in-the-wool article...