Murder in the Mountains

A bloody coup rattles a shaky, strife-torn Soviet satellite

Gunshots echoed through the granite halls of Kabul's People' House, punctuating a fresh installment in Afghanistan's long history of violence and political intrigue. When the Shootout was over, some 60 people lay dead, including, apparently, President Noor Mohammed Taraki. The new leader of the strife-torn country was Hafizullah Amin, 50, most recently President Taraki's Prime Minister. Within hours, workers in the mile-high capital had stripped hundreds of outsize portraits of Taraki from the facades of state office buildings. Many of the red-bordered images of Afghanistan's "Great Leader" had been put up only two weeks ago, to mark his triumphal return from the nonaligned conference in Havana.

Amin's accession is unlikely to bring much peace to the ancient mountain kingdom. Afghanistan has been in continuous turmoil since Taraki came to power, in April 1978, following a coup in which former President Mohammed Daoud was gunned down in Arg Palace. Taraki's Marxist Khalq (masses) Party promptly launched a radical program of social reform and land redistribution. The policy met with violent resistance from the country's Islamic tribesmen, who make up some 85% of Afghanistan's 17 million people. Loyal to their old feudal leaders and enraged by the new, "godless" regime in Kabul, Muslim guerrillas launched a civil war that has kept the Soviet-backed Khalq government tottering on the brink of collapse ever since. Western diplomats in Kabul estimate that the rebels control 22 of the country's 28 provinces.

Taraki's end came suddenly, in the best Afghan tradition. On Sept. 14 he was warned by four loyal government officials that Amin was plotting his overthrow. Taraki heeded the warning but ignored the first rule of Afghan politics: kill the adversary immediately. Instead, he invited his rival to a Friday afternoon conference at People's House, possibly intending to arrest him. But Amin came to the rendezvous armed with a pistol and the knowledge that Taraki's personal bodyguard, Major Sayed Daoud Taron, had changed masters. It is not known how the Shootout started, but when the smoke cleared an hour later, Amin was in control of the palace and the traitor Taron and dozens of others were dead. On Sunday the Revolutionary Council announced that Taraki had resigned on "health grounds" and reassigned his posts to Amin. At week's end, the Kabul government still had not confirmed Taraki's death, but, considering Afghanistan's tradition of violent political change, it was hard to imagine that he was still alive.

A former education student at Columbia University, Amin tried to project a statesmanlike image in his first national radio and television address. In an apparent reference to Taraki, Amin rejected "one-person rule" and announced that certain enemies of the people had been "eliminated." He promised to introduce the principle of habeas corpus, to guarantee complete religious freedom, and to reduce frictions with neighboring Iran and Pakistan, which harbors some 185,000 antigovernment Afghan refugees.

But the President's new, democratic guise is blatantly at odds with his previous words and deeds. He is generally regarded as the architect of the Taraki government's most repressive measures, including the execution of at least 2,000 political prisoners, the imprisonment of 30,000 others, and countless "gross violations of human rights" that were cited last week in a report issued by Amnesty International. Says one longtime Kabul resident: "Amin is the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin."

In an interview with TIME Correspondent David DeVoss shortly before the coup, Amin came on like the ruthless strongman he is reputed to be, declaring that "change must be brought quickly while the counterrevolutionaries and imperialists are too weak to prevent it." Asked how the Kabul government could claim to have the loyalty of 98% of the population when the countryside was controlled by rebels, he responded with dialectic doubletalk: "Since the leader of our party is automatically the leader of the working class, our government is supported by all the working people."

Both President Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Aleksei Kosygin signed Moscow's telegram of congratulation to Amin, who is most unlikely to steer Afghanistan from its Marxist, pro-Moscow course. The Soviet leaders may be less happy with the erratic Amin than they profess. DeVoss has learned that on two occasions the Soviets advised Taraki to distance himself from Amin and reduce his power. Taraki responded by replacing Amin as Defense Minister last March. But he was unable to reduce Amin's influence with the top Khalq military officers; their support enabled him to repossess the defense portfolio in June and, presumably, to carry out his coup.

In Washington some Administration officials believe that Afghanistan may become a Viet Nam-like quagmire for the Soviets. They must soon face the critical choice of disengaging or going in with thousands more troops to prop up a tottering regime that has been unable to communize an ancient feudal society with profound religious, geographic and ethnic divisions. Even with Soviet advisers on hand, the war against the rebels is not going well. The effectiveness of Kabul's largely conscripted 80,000-man army has been diminished by a string of mutinies and defections: since the beginning of the war, 8,000 government troops are estimated to have gone over to the rebel side. With Muslim snipers and guerrillas terrorizing the countryside, Khalq governors rarely leave their provincial capitals. More than 80 of the hated Soviets have been killed so far.

The bitterness of the civil war was illustrated last March by violent riots in Herat, where Muslim peasants and 2,000 defecting Kabul troops went on a bloody rampage, killing hundreds of Khalq officials, army soldiers and foreigners, including at least 20 Soviet advisers and their families. Kabul responded with an all-out attack by helicopter gunships and jets, leaving some 20,000 Afghans dead in the streets. Though it crushed the riot, the massive retaliation reinforced the tribesmen's conviction that the Khalq regime is an atheistic puppet of the Soviet Union. Said one unrepentant factory business manager in Herat last week: "I don't just want the Soviets to leave. I want to see them all die."

On the evidence of what he saw and heard in Afghanistan, Correspondent DeVoss concludes that the prospects for the new regime are dim at best: "If Amin's government is to survive, it must seek an accommodation with at least a few of the rebel groups. Though Kabul itself remains impervious to direct military assault, the Khalq civil government remains tissue thin. If the Khalq regime does soon come to an end, its demise will probably be attributed to the instinctive viciousness and insularity of its leaders. Another major cause will be the sheer incompetence of the Khalqs. After nearly 18 months of brutal fighting, Afghanistan is still waiting for a genuine political leader. Few people in Kabul express any confidence in the new President's ability to restore peace to their embattled country. Says one state trading company executive: "Amin's much worse than Taraki. If he is not killed within two months, I'm afraid we'll see fighting for another ten years." Other Kabul residents are less outspoken, but many assess Amin's future in the words of an old Afghan folk expression, "Barre Duroz Shah ": king for two days.

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