Daoud's Republic, 1973-78

The welcome Daoud received upon returning to power on July 17, 1973, reflected the popular disappointment with the lackluster politics of the preceding decade. Daoud was a particularly appealing figure to military officers. It had been under his leadership in the 1950s and early 1960s that the military had been modernized and expanded. The more conservative upper echelons of the military-most from leading Pashtun families-were reassured by the fact that in addition to his assiduous attentions to the army when he was prime minister, Daoud was a prominent member of the royal family. The coup may have been accepted by some conservative elements both within and outside the army in the same way that their ancestors had allowed the throne to change hands among royal brothers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In addition, Daoud's strong position on the Pashtunistan issue had not been forgotten by conservative Pashtun officers.

Western journalists speculated that the Daoud coup was procommunist not only because of his good relationship with the Soviets during his decade as prime minister but also because of the evident support of the coup by elements of the PDPA. The important question of Daoud's relationship with the PDPA-especially with Karmal's Parcham faction-is viewed somewhat differently by the various scholars and journalists who have analyzed the 1973 coup. There is general agreement that Daoud had been meeting with various "friends" (in Daoud's own words) "for more than a year." journalist Anthony Hyman suggests that although these meetings included liberals as well as left-wing civilians and officers, the coup was carried out by junior officers trained in the Soviet Union. Dupree believes that some Parcham members were integrally involved in planning the coup with Daoud. Male suggests that Daoud had entered into a temporary alliance with the Parcham faction solely for convenience because it was Parcham (rather than Khalq) who had focused recruitment efforts on the military between 1969 and 1973. An Afghan specialist in international affairs, writing under the pseudonym Hannah Negaran, believes that Khalq and Pareham were the "backbone" of the 1973 coup and that Daoud, who was asked to lead the movement because he was well-known, later removed them from power. Journalist Henry S. Bradsher notes that some Afghans suspected that Daoud and Karmal had been in touch for many years and that Daoud had used Karmal as his major source of information on the leftist movement. No strong evidence can be cited to support this, other than the fact that Karmal's father, an army general, was close to Daoud. Bradsher believes that Parcham's role in Daoud's coup could not have been very significant because by 1973 Parcham had not, despite its efforts, built a strong network in the army. It is difficult to assess exactly which of the officers who took part in the coup were PDPA members and of which faction because, as Bradsher notes, there were changes in allegiance following the coup.

Although leftists had certainly played some role in the coup itself, and despite the appointment of two leftists as ministers (Faiz Mohammad as minister of interior and Pacha Gul Wafadar as minister for tribal affairs), the weight of the evidence suggests that the coup was Daoud's. The new president declared that his government had no "connection with any group" and refused to be linked with any faction, communist or other. Officers personally loyal to him were soon placed in key positions while young Parchamites were sent to the provinces, ostensibly to give them the opportunity to put their ideas into practice but probably to get them out of Kabul. They met with the sometimes violent resistance of rural Afghans. By 1974 Daoud felt he could begin to purge leftists and put relatives and other loyal figures in their place. By the end of 1975 Daoud had purged leftist officers, and the last Parchami left the cabinet when interior minister Faiz Mohammad was replaced by a former chief of police.

In 1975 Daoud established his own political party, the National Revolutionary Party, which was to be the focus of all political activity. In January 1977 a Loya jirgah approved Daoud's constitution, which established a presidential, oneparty system of government.

Resistance to the new regime from any quarter was repressed. A coup attempt by Maiwandwal, which may have been planned before Daoud took power, was put down shortly after Daoud's coup. In October 1973 the former prime minister-who was also a highly respected former diplomat-died in prison under circumstances that supported the widespread belief that he had been tortured to death. Bradsher reports that there were hundreds of arrests, five political executions (the first in more than 40 years), and failed coup attempts in 1974, 1975, and 1976.

Parcham's collaboration with Daoud had not provided them with any more power in the long run than Khalq's more cautious attitude. Despite Daoud's purge of leftists by late 1975, Parcham and Kbalq were as bitter as ever toward one another, perhaps more so in the wake of a reported plan by Parchamites to assassinate the Khalq leadership. Taraki, in his later writings, reports that in 1976 Amin, organizer of the PDPA's military arm, declared that the party was in a position to take power. Taraki refused to move, however. As Male points out, this decision had unfortunate repercussions for the Khalqis because the Parchami faction, which organizationally (if not wholeheartedly) rejoined the PDPA in July 1977, was in a position to share power when the PDPA took over the government in 1978.

Daoud still favored a state-centered economy, and three years after coming to power he drew up an ambitious seven yeareconomic plan (1976-1983) that included major schemes and would have required a major influx of foreign aid (see Growth and Structure of the Economy, ch. 3). Daoud's turn away from the left in domestic politics was matched by a move as early as 1974 to move away from the steadily increasing reliance on the Soviet Union for military and economic support. As early as 1974 Daoud had begun a military training program with India, and in the same year he began talks with Iran on economic development aid. The shah of Iran, under the impression that the recent quadrupling of his nation's oil revenues would make vast amounts of money available to influence regional politics, agreed in October 1974 to give Afghanistan a US$10 million grant to study the feasibility of several development projects, and some observers reported that the shah might provide as much as US$2 billion in aid over the next decade. Daoud turned not only to the conservative Iranian regime for aid but also to other oil-rich Muslim nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait. The overheated Iranian economy showed signs of strain by 1975, however, and by 1977 it was clear that Iran could not provide the amount of aid envisaged earlier.

Pashtunistan zealots confidently expected that the new president would push this issue with Pakistan, and in the first months of the new regime bilateral relations were in fact poor. Efforts by Iran and the United States to cool a tense situation succeeded after a while, and by 1977 relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan improved notably. Visits between the heads of state of the two nations were exchanged, and during Daoud's March 1978 visit to Islamabad an agreement was reached, providing that President Mohammad Zia ul Haq of Pakistan would release from prison Pashtun and Baluch militants and that Daoud would reduce support for these groups and expel Pashtun and Baluch militants who had taken refuge in Afghanistan. Bradsher suggests that Daoud backed away from his previous stance on the Pashtunistan issue not only because of Iranian and other foreign pressure but also because the Soviets would not support as tough a line as Daoud had once taken.

Daoud's ties with the Soviet Union, like his relations with Afghan communists, deteriorated during the five years of his presidency. Although, as Bradsher notes, Soviet aid during the five-year period amounted to more than Iranian, Saudi, and Western aid combined, the Soviets continually urged Daoud to include the PDPA in his government. Daoud's initial visit to the Soviet Union in 1974 was friendly, despite disagreement on the Pashtunistan issue, and the Soviets promised more aid and granted a moratorium on part of Afghanistan's bilateral debt. President Nikolay Podgorny of the Soviet Union visited Kabul in late 1975, but the official communiques were somewhat less warm than those of the previous year.

By the time Daoud visited the Soviet Union again in April 1977, the Soviets were aware of his purge of the left that began in 1975, his removal of Soviet advisers from some Afghan military units, and his diversification of Afghan military training (especially to nations like India and Egypt, where they could be trained with Soviet weapons but not by Soviets). Despite the official goodwill, there were unofficial reports of sharp Soviet criticism of anticommunists in Daoud's new cabinet, of his failure to cooperate with the PDPA, and of Daoud's criticism of Cuba's role in the nonaligned movement. Bradsher cites reports by Afghans that Daoud responded to Leonid Brezhnev's bullying tactics either by slamming his fist on the conference table or by walking out of a meeting.

The Soviets could not have been happy with Daoud's more diversified foreign policy. He was friendly with Iran and Saudi Arabia; he had also scheduled a visit to Washington in the spring of 1978, and the administration of President Jimmy Carter was expected to increase the diminishing level of United States aid to Afghanistan.

By 1978 Daoud had achieved little of what he had set out to accomplish. Although there had been good harvests in 1973 and subsequent years, no real progress had been made, and the average Afghan's standard of living-which by UN standards was very low-had not improved. Most key political groups had been alienated by the spring of 1978. If intellectuals and liberals had hoped that Daoud's coup would break the power of the conservatives who controlled parliament and usher in a period of political progress, they were sorely disappointed. Daoud had simply gathered power into his own hands; dissent was not tolerated. Muslim fundamentalists had been the object of repression as early as 1974, but their numbers increased nonetheless. Diehard Pashtunistan supporters (who were still numerous in the upper levels of the military) were disillusioned by Daoud's rapprochement with Pakistan, especially by what they regarded as his commitment in the 1977 agreement not to aid Pashtun militants in Pakistan.

Most ominous for Daoud were developments among Afghan communists. Whether under Soviet pressure or through the efforts of some other communist party, in March 1977 Khalq and Parcham had reached a fragile agreement on reunification. The two groups remained mutually suspicious, and the military arms of each faction remained uncoordinated because, by this time, Khalqi military officers vastly outnumbered Parchamis and feared that the latter might betray them to Daoud. Plans for a coup had long been discussed, but according to a statement by Amin afterward, the April 1978 coup was carried out about two years ahead of time. As Male suggests, Daoud's own actions in 1978 made the PDPA act sooner than planned.

On April 17, 1978, Mir Akbar Khyber, a key ideologue of the Parcham faction, was murdered in Kabul. This was the third political assassination in nine months and, like the killing of a strike leader in August and of the minister of planning in November 1977, has remained unsolved. There were unconvincing reports that Khyber had been killed by Iran's Savak or by the Soviet KGB. He could also have been murdered by Khalqis or by someone in Daoud's government. Rumors of government involvement were current within hours of his death. His funeral on April 19 served as a major rally for Afghan communists. Estimates of the crowd ranged from 10,000 to 30,000. Taraki and Karmal both made stirring speeches, and Daoud, worried about this demonstration of communist strength, ordered the arrest of PDPA leaders.

Bradsher suggests that Daoud's policy toward the PDPA-which he knew was operating clandestinely-had been based on the notion that it was a small, ineffective organization like the Parcham faction that he had so easily purged in 1975. According to this analysis, communist strength manifested at Khyber's funeral shocked Daoud into taking the communists more seriously. Unfortunately for Daoud, his reaction was strangely sluggish. It took him a week to arrest Taraki, and Amin was only placed under house arrest. According to subsequent PDPA writings, Amin, from his home under armed guard and using his family as messengers, sent complete orders for the coup. Bradsher also suggests that other factors might have precipitated the coup. The army had been put on alert on April 26 because of a presumed "anti-Islamic" coup. Given Daoud's repressive and suspicious mood, officers known to have differed with Daoud, although without PDPA ties or with only tenuous connections to the communists, might have moved hastily to prevent their own downfall. On April 27, 1978, the coup began with troop movements at the military base at Kabul International Airport. It developed slowly over the next 24 hours as the rebels battled units loyal to Daoud in and around the capital. Daoud and most of his family were shot in the Presidential Palace on April 28.

Two hundred and thirty-one years of rule by Ahmad Shah and his descendants had ended, but it was less clear what kind of regime had succeeded them. It was several days before it was known to outsiders whether the coup of April 27-28, 1978, was a move by the military, the PDPA, or some combination of the two.

The indispensable book for exploration of Afghan history is Louis Dupree's monumental work, Afghanistan, which includes a wealth of information from the point of view of a scholar (historian, anthropologist, and archaeologist) who has spent many years in the country. The foremost British historian of Afghanistan, W. Kerr Fraser-Tytler, has also written from the perspective of years spent in the region, and his book, Afghanistan: A Study of Political Developments in Central and Southern Asia, has valuable insights into all periods of Afghan history but especially into the nineteenth century. Arnold Charles Fletcher's Afghanistan: Highway of Conquest provides useful insights as well and is written in a pleasant, narrative style but without the scholarly references of Dupree. In the twentieth century there are more detailed studies of specific subperiods. Leon B. Poullada's Reform and Rebellion in Afghanistan, 1919-1929 is a fascinating and well-written scholarly study of the reign of King Amanullah. It includes insights applicable to other periods of Afghan history as well. (For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.)

This page maintained by Luke Griffin and last updated on 01/14/2002 .