Hafizullah Amin: Khalq organiser and president of Afghanistan, 1979

At a glance

• Hafizullah Amin, a Kharoti Ghilzai from the Paghman district west of Kabul, was a schoolteacher who studied twice at Columbia University's Teachers College and became the organiser of the Khalq faction in the army. [5, 6]

• Bradsher gives his birth year as 1921, Kakar as 1929. [5, 6]

• The party's official history says he wrote the plan for the coup of 27 April 1978 under house arrest. Bradsher doubts it. [5]

• Under Nur Muhammad Taraki he was foreign minister, defence minister and the man behind the security police. He took power on 14 to 16 September 1979 and Taraki was killed in October. [5, 6]

• His rule lasted 104 days. Soviet special forces killed him at the Tajbeg palace on 27 December 1979, the first night of the Soviet occupation. [2, 6]

A teacher from Paghman

Bradsher writes that Amin was born in 1921 in the Paghman mountains just west of Kabul, where his father was a low-level civil servant. An elder brother, Abdullah Amin, taught at the Paghman primary school and saw him through it after their father died. [5] Kakar dates his life 1929 to 1979 and names the village, Qazi Khel in Paghman district, and says his father had served as a police officer. [6] Neither author explains the eight-year gap.

Kakar calls him a Kharotay Ghilzay Pashtun. [6] The Kharoti are among the western Ghilzai, and the Soviet war article notes that Taraki, Amin and Najibullah, who led the Marxist governments in turn, were all Ghilzai.

Amin rose through the state's schools. He boarded at Kabul's teacher-training high school, took a degree in the science faculty of Kabul University, taught, became vice principal and then principal of another Kabul high school. [5] Kakar notes that his schools drew pupils mostly from the countryside, which gave him a chance to influence future teachers and army officers. [6]

Columbia and the Afghan students

In 1957 the American aid programme sent him to Teachers College at Columbia, where he took a master's degree in educational administration. [5] His faculty adviser found him "smooth and personable". [5]

When and how he became a communist is, in Bradsher's words, unclear. The official biography issued under Amin says that on his return in 1958 he formed a close contact with Taraki, but Bradsher warns that this biography was dressed up later. [5] In an interview as president Amin said that his stay in the United States was not the reason for his beliefs. [5]

He went back to Columbia in 1962 on another American scholarship to study for a doctorate, and in 1963 became president of the Associated Students of Afghanistan in the United States. He ran it, an American colleague told Bradsher, "with a stern hand". [5] The government in Kabul disliked what he wrote in the 1964 yearbook, which called for "social justice, individual freedom and a democratic political system", and asked Washington not to renew his visa. He came home in 1965 without his doctorate. [5] Kakar says he returned "a bitter man". [6]

Khalq and the army

The People's Democratic Party had been founded in Kabul in January 1965. [5] Amin joined it as a junior member, lost the 1965 election in Paghman, and in mid-1966 Taraki enlarged the central committee and added him. [5] When the party split in July 1967, Taraki's side, Khalq ("the people"), kept him, and Taraki "had begun to depend upon the organizational efficiency of Amin". [5] The rival side was Babrak Karmal's Parcham. Bradsher describes Parcham as urban, Tajik-leaning and westernised, and Khalq as mostly Pashtun with a wider spread of backgrounds. [5] In 1969 Amin and Karmal were elected as the only communists in parliament. [5]

Amin's special work was the army. Kakar says he held that in a country like Afghanistan the workers were too few and the peasants too scattered to make a revolution, so the communists should organise officers. As the party's military liaison he recruited, trained and mobilised officers, and built his following "particularly among the Pashtun recruits". Kakar adds, quoting an account of the KGB's dealings, that Amin gave the KGB about 300 names of Khalq servicemen. [6] Bradsher draws a different picture of Khalq policy before 1973: it held that ideological purity forbade recruiting military men to a workers' party, while Parcham went looking for officers. [5]

26 to 28 April 1978

On 17 April 1978 a PDPA leader, Mir Akbar Khyber, was killed, and his funeral on 19 April became a show of strength. President Daoud ordered the party's leaders arrested. [5] Police took Taraki shortly after midnight on 26 April. Amin was only put under house arrest. [5]

The party's official history says what happened next. Amin sent his teenage son Abdur Rahman to find out about Taraki, then to the air force officer Sayed Mohammed Gulabzoy with orders to attack at 9.00 a.m. the next day. By 10.30 he had written out a plan, with Aslam Watanjar to command the ground forces and Abdul Qadir the air force, before police came for him. [5] Bradsher offers two other readings: that the officers acted alone from fear of arrest, or that the police, through a Paghman friend of Amin's, let him alone to expose the party's network. He says neither can be proved. [5]

About 600 men, 60 tanks and 20 aircraft took part in roughly nineteen hours of fighting, and Daoud was killed. [5] Amin later said that when he reached Kabul Radio, "the officers automatically gave me the command of the revolution". Bradsher notes that there is no independent evidence that either Taraki or Amin commanded. [5] Kakar's account is simpler: Amin made the coup and stood "head and shoulders high among his rival peers". [6]

Purges and killings, 1978 and 1979

After the coup Amin was deputy premier and foreign minister. Through his hold over the army he also extended control over the defence and interior ministries and replaced their Parchami officers. [6] In mid-1978 the Parchami leaders, Karmal among them, were sent abroad as ambassadors. Amin took over the new security police, AGSA, and became Taraki's only deputy prime minister. [5] Known Parchamis were sacked or arrested, with about 800 expelled from the army alone. Many were tortured, Bradsher says, "in efforts by Amin and his acting police boss, Assadullah Sarwari, to discover the names of secret Parchamis". [5]

Kakar puts more of the blame on Sarwari, whose AGSA, he says, shed blood that was "the work more of Sarwari than of anyone else". [6]

The scale is disputed, and each source says who counted. After the rising in Herat on 15 March 1979 Kakar says about 25,000 people were killed. [6] A United States chargé d'affaires, J. Bruce Amstutz, reported after a friendly meeting with Amin in September 1979 that it was hard to realise he had been "directly responsible for the execution of probably 6,000 political opponents". [5] On 16 November 1979 the interior ministry began posting lists of people who had died in prison or were no longer in Afghan prisons between April 1978 and September 1979. The list was said to number 12,000, and a public reading ended in shouting and weeping. [5] The State Department said only that executions "numbered in the thousands". [5] Babrak Karmal, installed by the Soviets, said at different times that "tens of thousands" had died and that Amin had killed over a million. Bradsher discounts this "political language" but concludes that Amin was responsible for well over 6,000 executions. [5] Official estimates of PDPA members killed ranged from 1,000 to 4,500, and Soviet media never used a figure above 500. [5]

The Pul-e-Charkhi prison east of Kabul held many of them. Kakar, himself held there under a later government, records that the Parchami government released 2,700 inmates of the Khalqi period in January 1980. [6]

Taraki and the September coup

Relations with Taraki broke down through 1979. Kakar says Amin's bid to monopolise power alienated Taraki and four former friends, the "Gang of Four": Sarwari, Watanjar, Gulabzoy and Mazdooryar. In July 1979, he says, Amin blamed Taraki at a politburo meeting for the government's failures, and in August Taraki accused Amin of nepotism. [6]

The Soviets tried to manage it. A Politburo directive of 13 September told Ambassador Puzanov to urge both men to unite and added that Moscow could not take it on itself to arrest Amin "with our own battalion force", because that would be direct interference. [1] Kakar and Bradsher then agree on the outline of 14 September. Taraki summoned Amin. Puzanov telephoned a promise that it was safe. As Amin entered, guards fired down a staircase and killed Taraki's aide, Sayyed Daoud Taroon, who had come with him. Amin escaped, took the Defence Ministry and captured Taraki. [5, 6]

Two days later Kabul Radio announced that Taraki had asked to be relieved on grounds of ill health and that Amin was general secretary of the party. [5] A Soviet note of 15 September described the position as it then looked from Moscow: "all the levers of real power by now are essentially in Amin's hands". It advised that the Soviet Union "must not refuse to deal with Amin". [1]

How Taraki died is told differently. The Kabul Times of 10 October said he died on the morning of 9 October after a long illness. [5] After Amin's fall the Karmal government published an account in which Amin ordered the palace guard to have Taraki killed on 8 October, and a guard lieutenant pressed a cushion over his mouth while another held his feet. [5] Kakar writes simply that Taraki was suffocated on 9 October. [6] Westad dates it to October. [7]

The hundred days

Amin held office for 104 days. [6] Soviet sources show that he looked to Moscow for troops long before it moved against him. On 11 August 1979 the Soviet military adviser, Lieutenant General Gorelov, reported Amin asking him to tell Moscow to send Soviet sub-units to Kabul quickly: "the arrival of Soviet troops will significantly raise our moral spirit". [1] Deputy Defence Minister Pavlovsky refused on 25 August. [1] In early December a KGB and Defence Ministry note said Amin was "insistently" asking for a motorised rifle battalion to guard his residence, and on 6 December the Politburo approved sending a detachment of about 500 men in uniforms that would not show their Soviet origin. [1]

Kakar reads the evidence differently. He concludes that neither Amin nor the Revolutionary Council ever asked the Soviet Union, orally or in writing, to send its army into the country, and that the Soviet Union never produced such a document. [6]

Kakar also describes a man who wanted a Soviet alliance without Soviet control. In October 1979, he says, Amin told the American chargé that he would not hesitate "to sacrifice his life" if Brezhnev asked him to act against Afghan independence. [6] He sought a meeting with Pakistan's General Zia, and a visit by Foreign Minister Agha Shahi, planned for 22 December, was put off by snow. By Bradsher's count the visit slid to 30 December, when Amin's deputy Shah Wali was a Soviet prisoner. [5]

He freed some prisoners and began reworking the draft constitution, which a Soviet report of 29 October called "superficial gestures" while repression widened. [1] In a conversation with Honecker on 4 October Brezhnev said "we are not pleased by all of Amin's methods and actions. He is very power-driven." [1]

Amin gave his own account of the repression in the two speeches he made after Taraki's death. On 17 September 1979 he renamed AGSA the Workers' Intelligence Office (KAM), said it "will never perform any unjust act and will not put anyone in jail without any reason", and announced a team to release anyone imprisoned without cause. [3] The next day he told the service's staff that their work against "the conspiracies of the enemies of our country" had been patriotic. The fault, he said, lay in the method: "there have been some errors in the method used so far, not in you", and the authorities of the organisation had "brought about certain errors and mistakes" that left "unfavourable memories" among the people. [3] These are the government's pamphlet texts, in English and abridged for the second speech.

Why Moscow decided to remove him

The decision is documented from the Soviet side. According to Westad, who summarised the Russian evidence for the Cold War International History Project, Taraki's death set the Soviets on the road to intervention. General Liakhovskii told a conference that Brezhnev, who had promised Taraki help, could not forgive it, and the KGB suspected Amin of planning what its officer Shebarshin called "doing a Sadat on us", a switch to the American side. [7] Westad adds that the KGB had made several bids since the summer to remove Amin, two of them assassination attempts, and that in late November, after Amin demanded Puzanov's recall, Andropov and Ustinov decided on an intervention and "the physical elimination of Hafizullah Amin". [7]

Andropov's handwritten letter to Brezhnev in early December listed the charges: "contacts with an American agent about issues which are kept secret from us", promises to tribal leaders of a "policy of neutrality", closed meetings attacking Soviet policy, and mass arrests, in which "300 people have been shot". It also said Babrak Karmal and Sarwari, in exile, had asked for help "including military". [1] The Politburo met on 12 December under Gromyko, with Kosygin absent. Chernenko wrote out the short decision, headed "Concerning the Situation in 'A'", and the members signed it. [7]

The charge that Amin was an American agent has a separate history. The Soviet 31 December report did not say it. It said he held "confidential meetings" with the American chargé and had ended the secret police's operations against the American embassy. [2] The agent charge came later. Bradsher records that after the Soviets killed him, Amin was accused of having been recruited by the CIA while a student, and that the Karmal government demanded Washington hand over "all the documents" on his cooperation. "No evidence was ever offered", Bradsher writes. [5] Kakar adds that rivals inside the PDPA made the accusation before the coup, and that Marshal Sokolov repeated it to officers at Ghazni on the fourth day of the invasion, promising proof "at an appropriate time". [6]

Amin's defenders answered the agent charge by asking for the proof. The Turkish Marxist writer Emine Engin, who held that Amin was the true leader of the April revolution, wrote in 1982 that Babrak Karmal's government said it had "indisputable documented evidence" but never published it. She noted that Marx and Lenin had been called Jewish and German agents in their day, and concluded that "such inconsistency and lack of seriousness are the strongest proof that Amin was not an agent". [4]

The night of 27 December

On 17 December a shooting in the palace reportedly wounded Amin in the leg and badly wounded his nephew Asadullah Amin, head of the intelligence service, who was flown to the Soviet Union. [5] On 19 December Amin moved with his guards to the Darulaman complex south-west of Kabul, to the Tajbeg palace on its hill. Bradsher finds it likelier that Amin chose this himself. Kakar says he went at the urging of his Soviet advisers. [5, 6]

Soviet airborne units had been landing at Kabul since 24 December. By the morning of 27 December about 5,000 Soviet soldiers were in the city. [5] According to RFE/RL, a KGB agent working as a cook poisoned Amin and his ministers at lunch. Soviet doctors who did not know of the plot treated him. [8] Kakar also says the lunch was poisoned and adds that he is certain of it, having spoken to a man who ate it. [6] At about 7.00 p.m. explosions cut the telephone exchange. [5] At 7.20 rockets hit Tajbeg. Kakar says the assault force was the KGB's Alpha squad in Afghan uniforms under Colonel Boyarinov. Amin's guard commander, Jahandad, reported that the attackers were Soviet troops, and Kakar says Amin answered, "It is the work of Paktiawal", meaning Gulabzoy, Sarwari and Watanjar, who were with the Soviets. [6]

Accounts of the death diverge. Sarwari and Gulabzoy said that Amin was already dead when they entered. A member of the Alpha group, Nikolai Berlev, said Amin ran out with a gun in his hand and was shot. Kakar doubts Berlev's description of the clothing and says Amin was poisoned and could not have done so. He also reports sources that have Amin taken alive to the Soviet embassy. [6] RFE/RL says only that Amin is believed to have died of gunshot wounds. [8]

At 8.45 p.m. a transmitter at Termez in Soviet Uzbekistan broadcast on the frequency of Kabul Radio a statement attributed to Karmal, which spoke of Amin's "torture machine". [5] At 3.15 a.m. on 28 December a "revolutionary tribunal" announced that Amin had been sentenced to death and the sentence carried out. [5] Soviet commentators said Afghans had overthrown him themselves, and Bradsher notes that no evidence was ever offered. [5] The Soviet report of 31 December told the Central Committee that "the forces opposing H. Amin organized an armed operation". [2]

RFE/RL writes that over 200 Afghans were killed and over 1,000 surrendered, and that declassified KGB files put Soviet dead at over 100. [8] Bradsher notes that Western diplomats' guesses of Soviet casualties began at 25 killed and 225 wounded and went higher. [5] Kakar says that of the 1,800 presidential guards none survived but Jahandad. [6]

His family

Kakar says Amin lost "only a few" of his family, himself and his two eldest sons. His wife, his youngest son, two daughters and a grandson survived. [6] RFE/RL says all his male relatives at Tajbeg were killed or executed and that his wife, daughter and grandchildren were sent to prison. [8]

Soviet forces wrapped Amin and his family dead in carpets and buried them in unmarked graves, RFE/RL reports, and the bodies have never been found. [8]

How the accounts judge him

The sources agree that Amin built a following in the army, that his government killed on a large scale, and that Moscow decided to remove him. They disagree about why. The 31 December Soviet report described a personal dictatorship that had hollowed out the party. [2] Kakar writes that Amin "had the wisdom and the courage to seek solutions through negotiation" and that the Politburo's real aim was to rule through Karmal. [6] Bradsher says the Soviets failed for months to control or remove him, and that each failed attempt strengthened his hand. [5]

On 23 December 1989 the Soviet Supreme Soviet declared that the decision to send troops had been taken by "a small circle of people" in violation of the constitution, Kakar quotes. [6]