Abdul Ghafar Lakanwal is an Afghan-American politician and activist. He served as cabinet minister in Afghan governments in the 1980s.
Lakanwal hails from rural Afghanistan. [1] He studied agricultural science at Kabul University, and obtained a doctorate from the University of Hohenheim. [1] [2] During the 1970s he worked for the West German international development agency. [1]
Following the 1978 Saur Revolution, Lakanwal became the chairman of the Peasants Cooperative Union. [2] [3] As of 1980-1981 he was an alternate member of the Central Committee of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. [4] He was a member of the Revolutionary Council of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and a Central Committee member of the National Fatherland Front. [3] [5] Lakanwal was named Minister of Agriculture and Land Reform by Babrak Karmal in 1982. [5] [6] [7] On March 12, 1987, following Mohammad Najibullah's ascent to power, Lakanwal was removed from this post. [6]
He was then named Deputy Foreign Minister in Najibullah's cabinet. Whilst visiting the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in November 1988 along with Prime Minister Mohammad Hasan Sharq, Lakanwal defected. [8] [9] At the time, he was the highest-ranking defector of the PDPA governments so far. [8] [9] Lakanwal sought political asylum in the United States. He eventually became a U.S. citizen. Lakanwal founded the MultiCultural Development Center (MCDC), an anti-racist NGO working in the Twin Cities, in 1991. He served as its executive director. [1] MCDC was closed down in late 2009. [10]
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 (DRA), renamed the Republic of Afghanistan in 1987, was the Afghan state during the one-party rule of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) from 1978 to 1992. It relied heavily on assistance from the Soviet Union for most of its existence, especially during the Soviet–Afghan War.
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.
The following lists events that happened during 1986 in Afghanistan.
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Colonel General Abdul Kadir Dagarwal was an Afghan politician, diplomat, and a military officer in the Afghan Air Force who participated in the coup d'état that created the Republic of Afghanistan under the President Dawood Khan, and later directed the Afghan Air Force and Army Air Corps squadrons that attacked the Radio-TV station during the Saur Revolution.
Mohammad Aslam Watanjar was an Afghan military officer and politician. He played a significant role in the coup in 1978 that killed the Afghan President Mohammad Daoud Khan, starting the Saur Revolution. Watanjar later became a member of the politburo in the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
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.
The following lists events that happened during 1987 in Afghanistan.
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