Steel Fist in Kabul

A Soviet coup overthrows Amin and sets a fearsome precedent

It was the 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 protege, but not before Russian troops were forced to fight a sporadic series of gun battles in the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.

At week's end the Carter Administration charged that Moscow was launching an outright invasion of its neighbor, with two mechanized Soviet divisions crossing the border and heading for Kabul. U.S. intelligence estimates indicated that at least 20,000 troops were in Afghanistan. Said White House spokesman Jody Powell: "The magnitude of the Soviet invasion continues to grow."

The Soviets obviously hoped that their brazen, perhaps desperate, action could help their puppet regime bring a stubborn Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan under control and thus stabilize a dangerous flash point on their southern border. But the coup, in fact, added a new dimension of uncertainty to an area of the world already deeply disturbed by the crisis in Iran. Moreover, the deployment of Soviet troops on foreign soil in Central Asia set a fearsome precedent that cast new shadows over international detente and Moscow-Washington relations. The SALT II accord, already in difficulty in the U.S. Senate, seemed even further jeopardized by the Soviet action.

Outraged reaction came swiftly from the White House. In the strongest language he has ever directed against Moscow, President Carter, in a televised message, said: "Such gross interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan is in blatant violation of accepted international rules of behavior." He conveyed the same harsh message to Leonid Brezhnev personally on the rarely used White House-Kremlin hot line. At the same time, the President got in touch directly with Western European leaders and President Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq of Pakistan, among others, in an attempt to obtain a collective condemnation of Moscow. All shared his concern. As a result, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher was dispatched to London over the weekend to discuss the situation with U.S. allies.

Other countries obviously were just as concerned about the Soviet military intervention. Peking fumed that "Afghanistan's independence and sovereignty have become toys in Moscow's hands." Iran's Revolutionary Council declared that the intervention in a neighboring country was "a hostile action" against "Muslims throughout the world." Interestingly, however, there were no attacks on Russian embassies.

The first dramatic signs of the Soviet action appeared on Christmas morning. Moscow suddenly began a massive airlift of combat soldiers to Afghanistan. The suspected motive at the time: to help the Afghan regime put down the rebellion of conservative Muslim tribesmen. In full sight of arriving and departing passengers, wave after wave of Soviet An-12 and An-22 transports landed at Kabul's international airport and unloaded not only combat troops but equipment ranging from field kitchens to armored vehicles.

By Thursday the real motive of the intervention was clear: Radio Kabul suddenly announced that President Amin, a tough, repressive Communist who had seized power only last September from former President Noor Mohammed Taraki, had been deposed. The new President, the broadcast said, was former Deputy Prime Minister Karmal. A later announcement specified that Amin had been convicted of "crimes against the people" and executed, along with members of his family. Radio Kabul failed to mention that in the upheaval, Soviet military units had entered combat for the first time since their border clashes against China in 1969.

The fighting began at 7:30 in the evening, according to the U.S. State Department, with Soviet troops and weapons deployed in key locations of Kabul. In a 3 1/2-hour battle for the radio station, Soviet troops using armored personnel carriers knocked out two Afghan tanks and took a number of prisoners. At one point a U.S. official reported with some relish, "The Soviets are getting shot up pretty well." Soviet-built MiG-21 jets flew overhead in repeated passes. By midnight the city was reported quiet.

The next day, however, diehard supporters of Amin resumed the fighting in Kabul. The coup, scoffed the rebel command, represented nothing more than "a change in pawns." The Japanese embassy said that gunfire could still be heard along the road leading from the Soviet embassy to the old royal palace. Nonetheless, as soon as word reached Moscow that the coup was successful, the Soviets quickly broadcast Karmal's denunciation of the Amin dictatorship as an agent of "American imperialism."

The move against Afghanistan was the first time since World War II that Moscow had used significant numbers of its own armed forces in a state outside the Warsaw Pact. It seemed an ominous extension into Asia of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserts that Moscow has the right to assist any socialist state in trouble. Moscow, of course, claimed that it intervened only at the request of the Karmal government under the terms of a 20-year friendship treaty signed in December 1978. The Russians made no attempt to disguise the fact that the airlift began two days before the coup that brought Karmal to power, thus making a mockery of their rationale.

The military buildup had, in fact, begun several weeks before the airlift. The best analysis of U.S. intelligence at that time was that the Soviets were matching Washington's naval and air buildup in the Middle East. It later seemed, however, that apart from any U.S. buildup, Moscow acted primarily to meet a situation in Afghanistan it could no longer effectively control. The Russians apparently decided to make their show of force in the shadow of the Iranian problem, much as they had intervened in Hungary in 1956 while the West was preoccupied with the Suez crisis. Moscow made a Realpolitik decision: Amin would have to go.

The Soviet choice to replace him was a Marxist intellectual little known in the West (see box). Karmal thus became the third Afghan leader to seize control of the government in the 20 months since the Communists first came to power in April 1978. As the new strongman, following the April coup, Taraki at first denied there had been a Communist takeover. But in the months that followed, internal struggles dangerously narrowed the government's base. As he attempted to keep the revolution on course, Taraki turned increasingly to Russian advisers to fill a shortage of trained manpower. The number of Soviets soon grew to more than 3,000.

Ominously for Taraki and the Soviets, however, there were already rumblings of revolt among conservative Muslim tribesmen unhappy at the prospect of radical social and economic reforms. As the Marxists in Kabul pressed their case, the opposition gradually developed into a full-scale religious insurgency. In March, thousands of Afghans in Herat (pop. 150,000), a provincial capital 400 miles west of Kabul, rose in a revolt that lasted for several days. An estimated 20,000 civilians lost their lives; so did at least 20 Soviet advisers and their families in a series of brutal rebel attacks.

By last fall, some 22 of the country's 28 provinces were said to be in rebel hands. Amin, by now Taraki's Prime Minister, cracked down with repressive measures, including the execution of some 2,000 political detainees and the imprisonment of some 30,000 others. By the time Amin toppled Taraki and took over completely, the Afghan armed forces themselves were demoralized by purges and defections to the rebels, and clearly were hard put to contain the rebellion.

After General Ivan Pavlovsky, head of Soviet ground forces, toured Afghanistan last fall and assessed the Afghan government's predicament as close to hopeless, the Soviets became convinced of the need for drastic steps. According to former Ambassador to Kabul Robert Neumann, the Russians had three choices: 1) "To let Afghanistan go, in which case the government would have fallen within a week." That would have cost the Russians credibility in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. 2) A "massive Russian military infusion," in which the Soviets would try to squelch the rebellion. Commented Neumann: "This option opens up the real possibility of a Soviet Viet Nam." 3) A coup to install a puppet at the head of the government in the hope that he could bring things under control.

According to Neumann, the Soviets decided on a combination of the last two options. In the event of a failure by Karmal, Neumann has no doubt that the Soviets will be prepared to deploy their own forces. Indeed, the large Soviet buildup of perhaps 50,000 troops on Afghanistan's borders was a clear indication of the Soviets' own uncertainty about Karmal's chances.

U.S. officials are concerned that the Soviet move will further destabilize the region. The most direct impact will probably fall on Pakistan, whose territory has provided refuge for an estimated 350,000 Afghan rebels. There was the prospect that in the wake of the coup, another 150,000 might cross the border. State Department analysts fear that the Soviets might even go so far as to make military forays into Pakistan. Says one expert: "The border between these two countries has never really been agreed upon, and the potential for increased conflict has dramatically heightened since the Soviet actions." U.S. officials hesitate to speculate about the effect on Iran, though there is some hope that the Soviets' intervention will lessen the Ayatullah Khomeini's strident anti-Americanism. Saudi Arabia and Iraq, meanwhile, both see the coup as an indirect threat to themselves.

Operating from within their own borders and with no domestic public opinion to consider, the Soviets seem almost impervious to criticism. Moscow, after all, knows there is not much the U.S. can actually do. Says Richard Helms, a former Ambassador to Iran and former director of the CIA: "It's no gamble at all. What are we going to do about it? We have no forces there, no bases. What can we do for the time being but remonstrate?"

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