Afghanistan

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Afghanistan Image File history File links Afghanistan_COA.png Sumario This image shows a flag, a coat of arms, a seal or some other official insignia. ... In recent years the politics of Afghanistan has been dominated by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion and the subsequent efforts to stablise and democratise the country. ...

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The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (in Persian: حزب دموکراتيک خلق افغانستان, in Pashto: د افغانستان د خلق دموکراټیک ګوند, PDPA) was a Soviet-aligned Revisionist party that ruled Afghanistan from 1978 to 1991 with the help of 12000 Russian troops. The President of Afghanistan is Afghanistans head of state, head of government, and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. ... Hamid Karzai (Pushtu: حامد کرزي, Persian: حامد کرزی) (born December 24, 1957) is the current and first democratically elected President of Afghanistan (since December 7, 2004). ... The Cabinet of Ministers of Afghanistan is made of the heads of all the government ministries. ... The National Assembly is Afghanistans national legislature. ... The House of Elders, also natively known as the Meshrano Jirga is the upper house of the bicameral National Assembly of Afghanistan, alongside the Wolesi Jirga (peoples assembly or lower house, the main legislature). ... The House of the People, also known natively as the Wolesi Jirga (from Pashto ulus = tribe and jirga = tent) is the lower house of the bicameral National Assembly of Afghanistan, alongside the House of Elders. ... This article gives information on election and election results in Afghanistan. ... This article lists political parties in Afghanistan. ... Afghanistan consists of 34 provinces, or velayat: Badakhshan Badghis Baghlan Balkh Bamiyan Daikondi - established March 28, 2004 Farah Faryab Ghazni Ghowr Helmand Herat Jowzjan Kabul Kandahar Kapisa Khost Konar Kondoz Laghman Lowgar Nangarhar Nimruz Nurestan Oruzgan Paktia Paktika Panjshir - established April 13, 2004 Parvan Samangan Sar-e Pol Takhar Vardak... This is a table of the current governors of Afghanistan. ... The Afghan Supreme Court (Stera Mahkama) is the court of last resort in Afghanistan. ... Chief Justice of Afghanistan is the head of the Afghan Supreme Court. ... Human Rights in Afghanistan The Bonn Agreement of 2001 established the Independent Afghan Human Rights Commission to investigate human rights abuses and war crimes. ... This article or section needs to be wikified. ... Information on politics by country is available for every country, including both de jure and de facto independent states, inhabited dependent territories, as well as areas of special sovereignty. ... Persian is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Southern Russia, neighboring countries, and elsewhere. ... Pashto (پښتو; also known as Afghan, Pushto, Pashto, Pashtoe, Pashtu, and Pukhto) is the language spoken by the ethnic Afghan otherwise known as the Pashtun people who inhabit Afghanistan and the Western provinces of Pakistan. ... State motto (Russian): Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! (Transliterated: Proletarii vsekh stran, soedinyaytes!) (Translated: Workers of the world, unite!) Capital Moscow Official language None; Russian (de facto) Government Federation of Soviet republics Area  - Total  - % water 1st before collapse 22,402,200 km² Approx. ...

Founded in January 1, 1965, by 1978 under the direction of the Russian masters, it successfully overthrew the regime of Mohammed Daoud Khan. With the completion of the so-called Saur revolution, the PDPA declared the founding of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, they killed tens of thousands of Afghanis during their rule. January 1 is the first day of the calendar year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. ... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan[1] (July 18, 1909 – April 28, 1978), son of Sardar Mohammed Aziz Khan and grandson of Sardar Mohammed Yusuf Khan was an Afghan statesman and President of the Republic of Afghanistan from 1973 until his assassination in 1978 as a result of a revolution led... This article is about Communist rule in Afghanistan (1978-1992), which is separate, although slightly so, from the Soviet war in Afghanistan in support of this country. ...

Early Political Activity

Main article: Politburo of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan

Three men - Nur Mohammad Taraki, Hafizullah Amin, and Babrak Karmal - played a central role in the evolution of the Afghan Left and the fortunes of the PDPA. At the time of its foundation, the Central Committee consisted of: Permanent members Nur Mohammed Taraki Babrak Karmal Sultan Ali Keshtmand Saleh Mohamed Zéri Gholam Destaguir Panjsheri Mohamed Taher Badakhshi Charoullah Chapour Non-permanent members Nur Mohamed Nur Dr. Akbar Chah-Wali Abdoul Karil Missaq Suleiman Laeq Mohamed Hassan... Nur Muhammad Taraki (1913? - 1979) was an Afghan political figure amateur poet, and publicly-notorious revolutionary. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Babrak Karmal (January 6, 1929 - December 3, 1996) was the third President of Afghanistan (1980 - 1986) during the period of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. ...

The PDPA held its First Congress on January 1, 1965. Twenty-seven men gathered at Taraki’s house in Kabul, elected Taraki PDPA Secretary General and Karma1 Deputy Secretary General, and chose a five-member Central Committee (or Politburo). January 1 is the first day of the calendar year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. ... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... A view of the old city Kabul Kabul (, Kâbl, in Persian کابل) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan with a population variously estimated at 2 to 4 million. ... Politburo is short for Political Bureau. ...

However, the PDPA influence was largely limited to an educated minority in the urban areas. Generally, this group's perceptions and values clashed with those of the vast majority of religiously conservative, rural Afghans. Conservatism or political conservatism is any of several historically related political philosophies or political ideologies. ... Rural area in Dalarna, Sweden Qichun, a rural town in Hubei province, China Rural areas are sparsely settled places away from the influence of large cities and towns. ...

Khalq and Parcham

The party was weakened by bitter, and sometimes violent, internal rivalries. On the ideological level, Karmal and Taraki differed in their perceptions of Afghanistan’s revolutionary potential: This article needs to be wikified. ... A communist group in Afghanistan formed in 1967 by USSRs help. ...

• Taraki (leader of the Khalq faction - "Khalqis") believed that revolution could be achieved in the classical Marxist-Leninist fashion by building a tightly disciplined working-class party with a highly educated and revolutionary party leadership. The Kalqis pushed for immediate and violent revolutionary change, as prescribed in Marx's Communist Manifesto.
• Karmal (leader of the Parcham faction - "Parchamis") felt that Afghanistan was too undeveloped for a Marxist/Leninist strategy and that a national democratic front of patriotic and anti-imperialist forces had to be fostered in order to bring the country a step closer to socialist revolution. He advocated gradual socialist development and added a more nationalist flavor to the PDPA.

The banning of Khalq in 1966 prompted Karmal to criticize Taraki because of the newspaper’s open expression of class struggle themes. Vladimir Lenin in 1920 Leninism is a political and economic theory which builds upon Marxism; it is a branch of Marxism (and it has been the dominant branch of Marxism in the world since the 1920s). ... In physics, work is the energy transferred in applying force over a distance. ... Malayalam editon of the Manifesto The Communist Manifesto, also known as The Manifesto of the Communist Party, first published on February 21, 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is one of the worlds most historically influential political tracts. ... Patriotism is a feeling of love and devotion to ones own homeland (patria, the land of ones fathers). ... Anti-imperialism, strictly speaking, is a term that may be applied to any idea or movement opposed to some form of imperialism. ... Socialism is a social and economic system (or the political philosophy advocating such a system) in which the economic means of production are owned and controlled collectively by the people. ... Nationalism is an ideology that creates and sustains a nation as a concept of a common identity for groups of humans. ...

Karmal sought, unsuccessfully, to persuade the PDPA Central Committee to censure Taraki’s excessive radicalism. The vote, however, was close, and Taraki in turn tried to neutralize Karmal by appointing new members to the committee who were his own supporters.

Karmal offered his resignation, and it was accepted by the Politburo of the Party. Although the split of the PDPA in 1967 into two groups was never publicly announced, Karmal brought with him about half the members of the Central Committee. 16th Central Committee meeting of the Communist Party of China Central Committee most commonly refers to the central executive unit of a communist party, whether ruling or non-ruling. ...

In the spring of 1967 the PDPA formally divided into two factions. Subsequently, the two groups operated as separate political parties, each with its own Secretary General, Central Committee, and membership.

Taraki’s faction was known as Khalq, after his defunct newspaper, and Karmal’s as Parcham, after a weekly magazine he published between March 1968 and July 1969. Parcham was shut down in June 1969 on the eve of parliamentary elections, but the group had succeeded in getting some very powerful friends. A communist group in Afghanistan formed in 1967 by USSRs help. ...

Reconciliation

Moscow played a major role in the reconciliation of Taraki's and Karmal's factions. In March 1977 a formal agreement on unity was achieved, and in July the two factions held their first joint conclave in a decade. For other uses, see Moscow (disambiguation). ...

Both parties were consistently pro-Soviet. They accepted financial and other forms of aid from the Soviet embassy and intelligence organs. Taraki and Karmal maintained close contact with embassy personnel, and it appears that Soviet Military Intelligence (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye - GRU) assisted Khalq's recruitment of military officers. Emblem of GRU spetsnaz GRU is the English transliteration of the Russian acronym ГРУ, which stands for Гла́вное Разве́дывательное Управле́ние (Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie), meaning Main Intelligence Directorate. ...

The Saur Revolution

In 1978 a prominent leftist, Mir Akbar Khyber (or "Kaibar"), was killed by the government and his associates. Although the government issued a statement deploring the assassination, PDPA leaders apparently feared that Daoud was planning to exterminate them all. Nur Mohammad Taraki, Babrak Karmal, and Hafizullah Amin, organized a coup d'etat, overthrowing the regime of Mohammad Daoud, and renaming the country the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). Nur Muhammad Taraki (1913? - 1979) was an Afghan political figure amateur poet, and publicly-notorious revolutionary. ... Babrak Karmal (January 6, 1929 - December 3, 1996) was the third President of Afghanistan (1980 - 1986) during the period of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... This article is about Communist rule in Afghanistan (1978-1992), which is separate, although slightly so, from the Soviet war in Afghanistan in support of this country. ...

On the eve of the communist coup, The police did not send Hafizullah Amin to immediate imprisonment, as it did with Politburo members of the PDPA on April 25, 1978. His imprisonment was postponed for five hours, during which Amin, without having the authority, instructed the Khalqi army officers to overthrow the government.

The regime of President Mohammad Daoud Khan came to a violent end in the early morning hours of April 28, 1978, when military units loyal to the Kalqi faction of the PDPA stormed the Presidential Palace in the heart of Kabul. The coup was also strategically planned for this date because it was the day before Friday, the Muslim day of worship, and most military commanders and government workers were off duty. With the help of Afghanistan's airforce of Soviet Migs and SU-25's, the insurgent troops overcame the stubborn resistance of the Presidential Guard and killed Daoud and most members of his family. Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan (July 18, 1909 - April 28, 1978) was an Afghani statesman and President of the Republic of Afghanistan from 1973 until his assassination in 1978 as a result of a revolution led by the quasi-Marxist Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). ... A view of the old city Kabul Kabul (, Kâbl, in Persian کابل) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan with a population variously estimated at 2 to 4 million. ... A Muslim (Arabic: مسلم, Turkish: Müslüman, Persian and Urdu: مسلمان) is an adherent of Islam. ... The MiG logo Mikoyan, formerly Mikoyan-Gurevich (Russian: ), is a Russian military aircraft design bureau, primarily of fighter aircraft. ... Su-25 of the Russian Air Force The Su-25 (NATO reporting name Frogfoot) is a battlefield attack, close air support, and anti-tank aircraft designed by the Soviet Union. ...

The divided PDPA succeeded the Daoud regime with a new government under the leadership of Nur Muhammad Taraki of the Khalq faction. In Kabul, the initial cabinet appeared to be carefully constructed to alternate ranking positions between Khalqis and Parchamis: Taraki was prime minister, Karmal was senior deputy prime minister, and Hafizullah Amin of Khalq was foreign minister. Nur Muhammad Taraki (July 15, 1913 - September 14, 1979) was an Afghan political figure, amateur poet, and publicly-notorious revolutionary. ... This article needs to be wikified. ...

Once in power, the party moved to permit freedom of religion and place agricultural resources under state control. The secular nature of the government made it unpopular with religiously conservative Afghans in the countryside, who favored traditional Islamic restrictions on women's rights and in daily life. Their opposition became particularly pronounced after the Soviet Union occupied the country in 1979, fearing it was in danger of being toppled by mujahideen forces. Mujahideen (Arabic: , also transliterated as mujāhidīn, mujahideen, mujahedin, mujahidin, mujaheddin, etc. ...

The U.S. saw the situation as a prime opportunity to weaken the Soviet Union, and the move essentially signaled the end of the detente era initiated by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Funding for anti-Soviet mujahideen forces began prior to the Soviet invasion, under the Carter administration, with the intention of provoking Soviet intervention (according to Zbigniew Brzezinski) and was significantly boosted under the Reagan administration, which was committed to actively rolling back Soviet influence in the Third World. The mujahideen belonged to various different factions, but all shared a similarly conservative Islamic ideology, to varying degrees. For the Spanish amulet, see: Detente bala. ... Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. ... Henry Alfred Kissinger (born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on May 27, 1923) is a German-born Jewish American diplomat, Nobel laureate and statesman. ... James Earl Jimmy Carter, Jr. ... Zbigniew Brzezinski Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (born March 28, 1928, Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish-American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman. ... President Reagan, with his Cabinet and staff, in the Oval Office (February 4, 1981) Headed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1989, the Reagan Administration was conservative, steadfastly anti-Communist and in favor of tax cuts and smaller government. ... For the Jamaican reggae band, see Third World (band). ...

Soviet Invasion and Civil War

After the Soviet Union had leveled most of the villages south and east of Kabul, creating a massive humanitarian disaster, the demise of the PDPA continued with the rise of the mujahedeen guerrillas, who were trained in Pakistani camps with U.S. support. Between 1982 and 1992, the number of people recruited by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to join the insurgency topped 100,000. 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ...

The Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, but continued to provide military assistance to the PDPA regime until the USSR's collapse in 1991.

Collapse of the Party

President and PDPA leader Mohammad Najibullah agreed to step down in favor of a transitional government in 1992, three years after the Soviet troop withdrawal. The mujahideen established a new government in Kabul led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. But the mujahideen were soon torn by factional struggles, particularly between Massoud's coalition government and the Taliban. Taliban forces took Kabul in 1996, and Najibullah, who had been residing in a UN compound, was hanged from a traffic light post. Dr. Mohammad Najibullah (1947–September 27, 1996) was the fourth and last President of Afghanistan during the period of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. ... A view of the old city Kabul Kabul (, Kâbl, in Persian کابل) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan with a population variously estimated at 2 to 4 million. ... Ahmed Shah Massoud (احمد شاه مسعود) (c. ... Flag flown by the Taliban. ... 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...

See also

Democratic Republic of Afghanistan This article is about Communist rule in Afghanistan (1978-1992), which is separate, although slightly so, from the Soviet war in Afghanistan in support of this country. ...

External links

• The PDPA and the Soviet invasion
• The future and legacy of PDPA members