Afgantsy

September that a senior official in the Afghan Foreign Ministry had expressed interest in improving relations with the US government.²¹

Amin’s people were also beginning to criticise the Soviet Union directly. On 6 October, at a meeting of socialist ambassadors to which the Soviet Ambassador was not invited, Shah Wali openly accused the Soviet Union, and Ambassador Puzanov in particular, of involvement in the attempted assassination of Amin on 14 September. Wali claimed that Puzanov had assured Amin on the telephone that he could come to Taraki’s office safely, and pointed out that Puzanov had been there throughout the shooting.

Moscow was infuriated by the accusation. Three days later Puzanov and his colleagues conveyed the Soviet government’s protest to Amin. His reaction, they later reported, was ‘brash and provocative. He sometimes contained his fury with difficulty.’ For most of the meeting he barely allowed the Russians to get a word in edgeways. Wali, he shouted, had merely repeated what Amin had told him to say. The interpreter who had translated Puzanov’s remarks could confirm his version of events. So could the Afghan officials who had been in his office at the time.

The Russians insisted that they had not telephoned until after the shooting, when they had asked Amin if they might call on him. He calmed down and spoke in a more conciliatory manner: he evidently did not want to ruin his relationship with the Russians entirely. But he absolutely refused to put out a public retraction of his story, or to accept that his memory might have been confused by the shock of events. A retraction, he said, would be interpreted in the party and in the country as a sign that he had succumbed to Soviet pressure.

As the Russians left he made a partial apology: ‘Maybe I have been speaking too loudly and too quickly during our conversation but, you know, I was brought up in the mountains and that is how we speak in the mountains.’

In private Amin was unreconciled. In his own entourage, in the most colourful language, he repeatedly accused Puzanov of lying to him directly: ‘I do not wish to meet him or talk to him. It is difficult to understand how such a liar and tactless person has been ambassador here for so long.’ All this was reported back to the Russians.²²

The Death of Taraki

By the time the Soviet representatives had that meeting with Amin on 9 October, Taraki was already dead, though Amin did not see fit to tell them as much. He had been murdered, in an intrigue worthy of Shakespeare’s Richard III. A key role was played by the commander of the Presidential Guard, Major Jandad, who had studied in the Soviet Union and spoke reasonable Russian. Although his task was to protect the President, he was by now closely associated with Amin.

On the evening of 8 October Jandad summoned three of his people to his office: Lieutenant Ekbal, the head of counter-intelligence in the Presidential Guard, Captain Vadud, its communications officer and Lieutenant Ruzi, the head of its political department.

Jandad said, ‘There’s trouble brewing.’ Ekbal thought that he was talking about some imperialist plot. Instead, Jandad went on, ‘The Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council have decided that Nur Mohamed Taraki is to be executed. You have been entrusted with the task of carrying out this order.’ Ekbal replied, ‘As far as I know, the orders of the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council are given in writing. I think that we need the appropriate document before we carry out this order.’ Jandad said, ‘Don’t be stupid. What do you mean, you need a document? The Central Committee Plenum expelled him from the Revolutionary Council and the Central Committee. He’s as good as dead already. There’s nothing secret about the decision.’ Ekbal and Vadud mentioned a rumour that Taraki was to be sent to the Soviet Union. Jandad said the Russians had refused to receive him. The two men objected that if Taraki had committed a crime, then the facts should have been broadcast over the radio. Jandad assured them that there would be a broadcast in due course. ‘But the party has its secrets which are none of your business. Do what you’ve been ordered to do.’ He then sent Ekbal out to buy nine yards of white cotton cloth for a shroud.

Yakub ordered that Taraki was to be buried next to his brother. Ekbal and Ruzi found the grave with some difficulty, made the necessary preparations, and then joined Vadud in the palace.

Taraki was in his dressing gown when the three men came for him. Ruzi said, ‘We’ve come to take you to another place.’ Taraki gave him some money and jewellery to pass on to his wife. Ruzi told him to leave his belongings behind—they would be returned to him in due course.

The party went downstairs to another small room, in which there was a dilapidated bed. Taraki handed over his party card and his watch, which he asked should be given to Amin. Ruzi told Ekbal to bind Taraki’s hands with a sheet and ordered Taraki to lie down on the bed. Taraki did so without protest. Ruzi put his hand over Taraki’s mouth and told Vadud to bind his legs while Ekbal sat on them. Ruzi then covered Taraki’s head with a pillow and when he removed it Taraki was dead. The whole business lasted fifteen minutes. Not bothering with the cotton shroud, they rolled Taraki’s body in a blanket and took him in their Land Rover to the cemetery, where they buried him. They were in tears when they reported back to Jandad.²³

Later that evening it was officially announced that Taraki had died of ‘a brief and serious illness’.²⁴

The Mood Shifts in Moscow

The murder of Taraki was the crucial turning point in the Soviet decision-making process. Brezhnev took the news particularly badly. He had promised to protect Taraki. ‘What a bastard, Amin, to murder the man with whom he made the revolution… Who will now believe my promises, if my promises of protection are shown to be no more than empty words?’²⁵ Andropov, mortified by his department’s failure to keep control of events, was now determined to get rid of Amin and install a more malleable Afghan leader.

But the debacle was not merely a personal matter. Though much is confused about these events, one thing is not. Despite the numerous Soviet advisers attached to Afghan military and civilian organisations, despite all the economic, military, and political assistance they had given, the Soviet government in Moscow and its representatives in Kabul had been powerless to influence events in Kabul, and had been left looking impotent. Their man Taraki had been outmanoeuvred and had paid with his life. Soviet influence in Kabul was now practically non- existent. Amin, the victor in the power struggle, was mishandling the domestic situation in Afghanistan with disastrous brutality. It was a challenge that the Soviets could hardly leave unanswered. One of the driving forces in Soviet policymaking over the next three months was a determination to recover from humiliation and reassert control over events.

The mood in Moscow now shifted towards the possibility of replacing Amin, if necessary through armed intervention. The contingency arrangements that had been made earlier in the year began to be looked at more urgently. The Chief Soviet Military Adviser in Kabul, General Gorelov, was called back to Moscow for discussions in September and again in October to meet his military superiors, Ogarkov and Ustinov, and also to meet Andropov, Gromyko, and Ponomarev. On the second visit Gorelov was accompanied by General Vasili Zaplatin, who since 1978 had been adviser to the head of the Political Department of the Afghan army. Asked about Amin, Gorelov described him as a man of strong will, a very hard worker, an exceptional organiser, and a self-proclaimed friend of the Soviet Union. He was, it was true, cunning, deceitful, and ruthlessly repressive. But both he and Zaplatin believed that Amin was nevertheless someone whom the Russians ought to be able to work with. Asked about the Afghan army, Gorelov said that it could deal with the rebels, even though it was not up to modern standards. Asked whether the Afghan army would fight the Soviet army he replied, ‘Never’—correctly as it turned out. But it was only later that he realised the purpose of the question.

Inevitably Moscow now looked for scapegoats to blame for the collapse of its policies. The obvious candidates were the Soviet representatives in Kabul. In the course of November, Gorelov was replaced by Lieutenant General Magometov and the Chief Interior Ministry Adviser, General Veselkov, was replaced by General Kosogovski. Ambassador Puzanov’s usefulness was in any case at an end, given the hostility that Amin now bore