Babrak Karmal was an Afghan communist revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Afghanistan, serving in the post of general secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1986.
Hafizullah Amin was an Afghan communist head of state, who served in that position for a little over three months, from September 1979 until his assassination. He organized the Saur Revolution of 1978 and co-founded the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), ruling Afghanistan as General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party.
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai, commonly known as Dr. Najib, was an Afghan politician who served as the General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the leader of the one-party ruling Republic of Afghanistan from 1986 to 1992 and as well as the President of Afghanistan from 1987 until his resignation in April 1992, shortly after which the mujahideen took over Kabul. After a failed attempt to flee to India, Najibullah remained in Kabul. He lived in the United Nations headquarters until his assassination during the Taliban's capture of Kabul.
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, later known as the Republic of Afghanistan, was the Afghan state between 1978 and 1992. It was bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, by Iran to the west, by the Soviet Union to the north, and by China to the northeast. Established by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) following the Saur Revolution in April 1978, it came to rely heavily on the Soviet Union for financial and military assistance and was therefore widely considered to be a Soviet satellite state. The PDPA's rise to power is seen as the beginning of the ongoing Afghan conflict, and the majority of the country's years in existence were marked by the Soviet–Afghan War. It collapsed by the end of the First Afghan Civil War in April 1992, having lasted only four months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet–Afghan War took place in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from December 1979 to February 1989. Marking the beginning of the protracted Afghan conflict, it saw the Soviet Union and the Afghan military fight against the rebelling Afghan mujahideen. While they were backed by various countries and organizations, the majority of the mujahideen's support came from Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Iran, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, in addition to a large influx of foreign fighters known as the Afghan Arabs. American and British involvement on the side of the mujahideen escalated the Cold War, ending a short period of relaxed Soviet Union–United States relations. Combat took place throughout the 1980s, mostly in the Afghan countryside, as most of the country's cities remained under Soviet control. The conflict resulted in the deaths of approximately 3,000,000 Afghans, while millions more fled from the country as refugees; most externally displaced Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan and in Iran. Approximately 7.4% to 22.2% of Afghanistan's erstwhile population of 13.5 million people is estimated to have been killed over the course of the Soviet–Afghan War. The decade-long confrontation between the mujahideen and the Soviet and Afghan militaries inflicted grave destruction throughout Afghanistan and has also been cited by scholars as a significant factor that contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991; it is for this reason that the conflict is sometimes referred to as "the Soviet Union's Vietnam" in retrospective analyses.
The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was a Marxist–Leninist political party in Afghanistan established on 1 January 1965. Four members of the party won seats in the 1965 Afghan parliamentary election, reduced to two seats in 1969, albeit both before the party was fully legal. For most of its existence, the party was split between the hardline Khalq and moderate Parcham factions, each of which claimed to represent the "true" PDPA.
Afghanistan Liberation Organization is a Maoist political group in Afghanistan. It was founded by Faiz Ahmad and some others in 1973. ALO, which was originally named Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan ; and was renamed to ALO in 1980, is one of several organizations that grew out of the Shola-e Javid movement.
Khalq was a faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Its historical de facto leaders were Nur Muhammad Taraki (1967–1979), Hafizullah Amin (1979) and Sayed Mohammad Gulabzoy (1979–1990). It was also the name of the leftist newspaper produced by the same movement. The Khalq wing was formed in 1967 after the split of the party due to bitter resentment with the rival Parcham faction which had a differing revolutionary strategy.
Sulaiman Layeq was an Afghan communist politician, ideologue and poet who held the positions of President of the Academy of Sciences, full member of the Afghan Politburo, and Minister of Nationalities and Tribal Affairs.
The 1989–1992 Afghan Civil War, also known as the FirstAfghan Civil War, took place between the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the Soviet–Afghan War on 15 February 1989 until 27 April 1992, ending the day after the proclamation of the Peshawar Accords proclaiming a new interim Afghan government which was supposed to start serving on 28 April 1992.
Faiz Ahmad was an Afghan politician who led the Afghanistan Liberation Organization (ALO), a Marxist–Leninist organization established in Kabul.
The Saur Revolution or Sowr Revolution, also known as the April Revolution or the April Coup, was staged on 27–28 April 1978 by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and overthrew Afghan president Mohammad Daoud Khan, who had himself taken power in the 1973 Afghan coup d'état and established an autocratic one-party system in the country. Daoud and most of his family were executed at the Arg in the capital city of Kabul by Khalqi military officers, after which his supporters were also purged and killed. The successful PDPA uprising resulted in the creation of a socialist Afghan government that was closely aligned with the Soviet Union, with Nur Muhammad Taraki serving as the PDPA's General Secretary of the Revolutionary Council. Saur or Sowr is the Dari-language name for the second month of the Solar Hijri calendar, during which the events took place.
The Afghan mujahideen were Islamist militant groups that fought against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War and the subsequent First Afghan Civil War.
The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was the government of Afghanistan between 1978 and 1992. It was recognised diplomatically by only eight countries which were allies of the Soviet Union. It was ideologically close to and economically and militarily dependent on the Soviet Union, and was a major belligerent of the Afghan Civil War.
The Afghan conflict is a term that refers to the series of events that have kept Afghanistan in a near-continuous state of armed conflict since the 1970s. Early instability followed the collapse of the Kingdom of Afghanistan in the largely non-violent 1973 coup d'état, which deposed Afghan monarch Mohammad Zahir Shah in absentia, ending his 40-year-long reign. With the concurrent establishment of the Republic of Afghanistan, headed by Mohammad Daoud Khan, the country's relatively peaceful and stable period in modern history came to an end. However, all-out fighting did not erupt until after 1978, when the Saur Revolution violently overthrew Khan's government and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Subsequent unrest over the radical reforms that were being pushed by the then-ruling People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) led to unprecedented violence, prompting a large-scale pro-PDPA military intervention by the Soviet Union in 1979. In the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War, the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen received extensive support from Pakistan, the United States, and Saudi Arabia in a joint covert effort that was dubbed Operation Cyclone.
The Herat uprising, locally known as the Uprising of 24th Hūt was an insurrection that took place in and around the city of Herat in western Afghanistan, across several days in March 1979. It included both a popular uprising and a mutiny of ethnic Tajik Afghan Army troops against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). The communist regime at first appealed to its Soviet allies for help, but the Soviet leadership declined to intervene. After the insurgents seized and held the city for about a week, the regime was able to retake it with its own forces, and the subsequent aerial bombardment and recapture of Herat left 3,000 to 25,000 of its inhabitants dead. It was the worst outbreak of armed violence in the country in 50 years, and was the deadliest incident in the 1978-1979 period following the Saur Revolution and before the start of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
As a geographically fragmented state, Afghanistan is separated into as many as 14 ethnic groups that have historically faced divisions that devolved into political violence. This conflict reached its culminating point in the 1990s with the rise of the Taliban.
The Bala Hissar uprising was an insurrection that took place on August 5, 1979, at the historical fortress Bala Hissar in the southern edge of Kabul, Afghanistan. Insurgents, as well as rebellious Afghan Army officers infiltrated and occupied the fortress. They were met by ruthless air bombardment by the Khalq government's MiG aircraft and artillery tank attacks.
The 3 Hoot uprising refers to a week of major civil unrest in Kabul, Afghanistan that started on 22 February 1980, occurring two months after the Soviet intervention. It is named after the date and month it started in the Solar Hijri calendar. Protests, rioting and a popular uprising against the Babrak Karmal-led Democratic Republic of Afghanistan government was triggered, by one account due to a series of mass arrests by the regime. Alternatively it has been said that the murder of Lieutenant Alexander Vovk, an instructor of the Soviet Komsomol, by an unknown gunman in the city, which led to the killing of civilians by a group of Soviet officers, led to the uprising.
Large-scale organized protests by students in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, paralyzed the education system and led to heavy clashes. The uprisings by students took place from late April to early June 1980, demonstrating against the communist government of Babrak Karmal and the invading Soviet Union forces, calling for freedom and the withdrawal of Soviet forces. The protests were quelled and led to a large number of students being arrested, estimated between 400 and as many as 2,000. Between 72 and 200 students lost their lives in the demonstrations.
