Acid Revolution

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Military presence at the Presidential Palace in Kabul on April 28, 1978, one day after the coup

The Sour Revolution ( Persian انقلاب ثور, also Sawr Revolution ) on April 27, 1978 was a coup in the Republic of Afghanistan carried out by members of the Communist Democratic People's Party of Afghanistan , which led to the proclamation of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan .

The communist seizure of power and the ensuing uprising against the new government ended almost fifty years of peace and marked the beginning of the conflict that continues to this day in Afghanistan . The Afghan People's Party coined the term acid revolution for the coup . Saur (bull) is the name used by Persian speakers in Afghanistan for the second month of the Iranian calendar when the coup took place.

One day after the Saur revolution : a destroyed BMP-1 armored personnel carrier in front of the presidential palace in Kabul .

The rival factions of the Afghan communists, the Pashtun-dominated Chalqis led by Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin on the one hand and the Tajik-dominated Partschamis led by Babrak Karmal on the other, faced Soviet pressure in 1977 reunited. After 1973, Amin began deliberately recruiting army officers for Chalq. About a third of the officer corps was trained in the Soviet Union, and many officers were dissatisfied after President Mohammed Daoud Khan's purge in the army.

Daoud has pursued a non -aligned foreign policy since 1975 . A scandal broke out during Daoud's visit to Moscow in April 1977: when Leonid Brezhnev asked him to expel advisers from NATO countries, an obviously disgruntled Daoud forbade any interference in Afghanistan's internal affairs. Daoud then intensified relations with the USA, which increased loans and aid. Relations with the USSR then cooled noticeably, but it is debatable whether this was the reason for Moscow to overthrow Daoud.

The coup was triggered by the murder of Mir Akbar Khyber , a communist ideologist from the Partscham wing, on April 17, 1978 by assassins who have not yet been identified. The government blamed Hizb-i Islāmī, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyār, for the death of Khyber. Khyber's funeral on April 19 turned into a demonstration against the government and the United States . As of April 24, the government arrested leaders of the protest movement. However, Amin was only picked up by security forces on the morning of April 26th. He had enough time to give his co-conspirators in the army , Abdul Qadir, Aslam Watanjar , Sayed Mohammad Gulabzoy and Mohammad Rafi, the signal for the coup. While the cabinet was discussing the fate of the arrested left in an emergency meeting on April 27, tanks attacked the presidential palace in Arg . The Air Force bombed the palace with MiG-21 and Su-7 fighter planes launched from Bagram Air Force Base . On April 28, the defense lawyers were overwhelmed and Dauod and his family members were shot dead. The winners proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan . Taraki was named president and prime minister and Amin was named foreign minister.

There has been speculation that the Soviet Union would be behind the coup, but there is no convincing evidence. Soviet military advisers on site had knowledge of the coup several hours before the start of the coup, but as far as we know today (as of 2017), they were not involved in the planning and the Soviet leadership was ultimately surprised by the events. According to Deputy Foreign Minister Kornienko, the Soviet leadership learned of the coup through a message from the Reuters news agency. The Soviet Union was ultimately forced to recognize the new government.

Soon after the coup, conflicts within the People's Party reappeared. The Chalqis won the inner-party power struggle and cleared the party of members of the Part Cham wing. The regime, under the sole control of the Chalqis, now led by Amin, tried brutally to bring about a revolutionary transformation of the country, especially agriculture. The radical modernization program, accompanied by state terror , provoked uprisings in large parts of the Afghan population, which accelerated the disintegration of the already ailing state apparatus and ultimately led to military intervention by the Soviet Union .

Taraki accused the Daoud regime of being responsible for the murder of Khyber after the DVPA came to power. After Karmal became president after Amin's death , he stated that Amin had tasked the brothers Siddiq and Arif Alamyar with the murder of Khyber. Karmal had the brothers executed in June 1980.

Daoud's remains were discovered in a mass grave in 2008. He was solemnly buried on March 17, 2009 with a state funeral.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Maley: The Afghanistan Wars. Second edition. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-230-21314-2 , p. 1 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  2. ↑ Barnett R. Rubin: The Fragmentation of Afghanistan. State Formation and Collapse in the International System. Second edition. Yale University Press, New Haven 2002, ISBN 978-0-300-09519-7 , p. 105 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  3. ^ Raja Anwar: The Tragedy of Afghanistan. A first-hand account. Verso, London 1988, ISBN 0-86091-979-X , pp. 89-91 (English).
  4. ^ William Maley: The Afghanistan Wars. New York 2009, pp. 19–21 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  5. ↑ Rodric Braithwaite : Afgantsy. The Russians in Afghanistan 1979–1989 . Oxford University Press, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-983265-1 , pp. 41 (English, limited preview in Google Book search). Odd Arne Westad: The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times . Cambridge University Press, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-70314-7 , pp.
     301 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search). Susanne Koelbl, Olaf Ihlau: War in the Hindu Kush. People and powers in Afghanistan. Pantheon, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-570-55075-5 , p.
     212 .
  6. ^ Raja Anwar: The Tragedy of Afghanistan. A first-hand account. London 1988, p. 92 (English).
  7. ↑ Louis Dupree: Inside Afghanistan. Yesterday and Today: A Strategic Appraisal . In: Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (Ed.): Strategic Studies . tape 2 , no. 3 , 1979, pp. 74-76 , JSTOR : 45181852 . William Maley: The Afghanistan Wars. New York 2009, pp. 23–24 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  8. ↑ Martin Deuerlein: The Soviet Union in Afghanistan: Interpretations and Debates 1978-2016. In: Tanja Penter, Esther Meier (Ed.): Sovietnam. The USSR in Afghanistan 1979-1989 . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-77885-7 , p. 298 , doi : 10.30965 / 9783657778850_015 .
  9. ↑ Michael Dobbs: Down with Big Brother. The Fall of the Soviet Empire. Vintage Books, New York 1998, ISBN 978-0-307-77316-6 , pp. 11 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  10. ↑ Rodric Braithwaite: "This time it will be different." Lessons from the war of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In: Tanja Penter, Esther Meier (Ed.): Sovietnam. The USSR in Afghanistan 1979-1989 . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-77885-7 , p. 321 , doi : 10.30965 / 9783657778850_016 .
  11. ↑ Barnett R. Rubin: The Fragmentation of Afghanistan. State Formation and Collapse in the International System. New Haven 2002, p. 111 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  12. ^ Henry S. Bradsher: Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Duke University Press, Durham 1985, ISBN 0-8223-0690-5 , pp. 73 (English).
  13. ^ Raja Anwar: The Tragedy of Afghanistan. A first-hand account. London 1988, p. 92-93 (English).
  14. ↑ Carlotta Gall: An Afghan Secret Revealed Brings End of an Era. In: The New York Times. January 31, 2009, accessed May 16, 2020 . Abdul Waheed Wafa, Carlotta Gall: State Funeral for Afghan Leader Slain in '78 Coup. In: The New York Times. March 17, 2009, accessed on May 16, 2020 .