Babrak Karmal

Babrak Karmal ( Pashto and Persian ببرک کارمل, actually Sultan Haschem , born January 6, 1929 in Kamari, a village east of Kabul ; † December 1, 1996 in Moscow ) was an Afghan politician who was appointed head of state by the Soviet occupying power after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and was the third president of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan between 1979 and 1986 .

Life

After graduating from the German Nejat-Gymnasium in Kabul, Karmal began to study law at the University of Kabul in 1947 . It was there that he first came into contact with the political activities of communists . Karmal quickly rose to become the leader of the democratic student movement “Awakened Youth”.

Karmal was arrested in the mid-1950s for activities hostile to the regime, but was released in 1956 and received a position in the Afghan Ministry of Planning. In 1957, Karmal formed a communist platform under the code name "Marid". From it he founded the Democratic People's Party of Afghanistan (DVPA) together with the writer Nur Muhammad Taraki and 29 other comrades on January 1, 1965 . In 1965 and 1969, Karmal was elected to parliament for four years each.

In 1967 the DVPA broke up into two factions, the Chalq faction and the Parcham faction. Karmal became chairman of the moderate Parcham faction. Against Karmal's resistance, the party was reunited in 1977. After a coup d'état on April 27, 1978 , the DVPA rose to become a ruling party under the leadership of Taraki. Karmal was appointed Deputy Prime Minister. When the Chalq faction was able to win power struggles within the party, all Parcham members were dismissed from the country's government in July 1978, and Karmal was sent to Prague as ambassador . In August 1978 he and five other Parcham members were expelled from the DVPA for high treason and ordered back to Afghanistan. He defied this instruction. In September 1978, for security reasons, Karmal was housed by the Czechoslovak State Security StB in the village of Šindelová .

The DVPA tried to modernize Afghanistan according to socialist ideas, but was unable to stabilize the country. During the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union brought Karmal back and installed him as its new president on December 27, 1979 after the assassination of Hafizullah Amin . Karmal's reign was marked by fighting with the rebellious mujahideen .

After Mikhail Gorbachev took office as General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee , the Soviet Union changed its Afghanistan policy. Because of the heavy losses caused by the occupation, the Soviet Union began preparing for the withdrawal of its troops. The politically burdened Karmal was seen as an obstacle to the desired understanding with the leaders of the Mujahideen.

On May 4, 1986, Karmal was replaced as Secretary General of the DVPA by Mohammed Nadschibullāh . Six months later, on November 21, 1986, Hajji Mohammed Tschamkani became the new president.

Karmal went to Moscow. In mid-1991 he returned to Afghanistan. His involvement in the fall of Najibullah on April 15, 1992 is not clear. Under the protection of General Dostum , Karmal stayed for a while in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif , but then went to Dushanbe . Karmal was an alcoholic and died of liver cancer on December 1, 1996 in Moscow . His body was buried in Hairatan.

Web links

• Interview by the magazine “Der Spiegel” with Babrak Karmal about the Soviet invasion. Der Spiegel , No. 14/1980
• Interview by the magazine “Der Spiegel” with Babrak Karmal about his country and the Russians. Der Spiegel , No. 27/1980
• Greetings from the Democratic People's Party of Afghanistan at the 10th Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany . (In: Minutes of the negotiations of the 10th Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. Volume II. Dietz Verlag, Berlin [GDR] 1981)
• Interview by the magazine “Der Spiegel” with Babrak Karmal about the situation in his country and relations with Bonn. Der Spiegel , No. 45/1985
• Interview by the magazine “Der Spiegel” with Babrak Karmal. Der Spiegel , No. 38/1991
• ZEIT article on Karmal of February 1, 1980 about Karmal's political difficulties Die Zeit , No. 6/1980

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Deutsches Orient-Institut (Ed.) Middle East Yearbook 1996, Politics, Economy and Society in North Africa and the Near and Middle East. Leske + Budrich. Oplaten 1997, ISBN 978-3-322-95824-2 , p. 54 .
2. ↑ FRUD Bezhan: The Afghan President (To Be) Who Lived A Secret Life In A Czechoslovak Forest. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, November 4, 2019, accessed April 9, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Michael Dobbs: Down with Big Brother. The Fall of the Soviet Empire. Vintage Books, New York 1998, ISBN 978-0-307-77316-6 , pp. 23 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
4. ↑ Died: Babrak Karmal. In: Der Spiegel. December 9, 1996, accessed April 9, 2020 .