AFGHANISTAN: Steel Fist in Kabul

• Share

A Soviet coup overthrows Amin and sets a fearsome precedent

It was the most brutal blow from the Soviet Union's steel fist since the Red Army's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In a lightning series of events last week, Afghanistan's President Hafizullah Amin was overthrown, and subsequently executed, in a ruthless coup mounted by the Soviet Union and carried out with the firepower of Soviet combat troops. In Amin's place, Moscow installed Babrak Karmal, a former Deputy Prime Minister long considered to be a Soviet protégé, but not before Russian troops were forced to fight a sporadic series of gun battles in the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.

At week's end the Carter Administration charged that Moscow was launching an outright invasion of its neighbor, with two mechanized Soviet divisions crossing the border and heading for Kabul. U.S. intelligence estimates indicated that at least 20,000 troops were in Afghanistan. Said White House spokesman Jody Powell: "The magnitude of the Soviet invasion continues to grow."

The Soviets obviously hoped that their brazen, perhaps desperate, action could help their puppet regime bring a stubborn Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan under control and thus stabilize a dangerous flash point on their southern border. But the coup, in fact, added a new dimension of uncertainty to an area of the world already deeply disturbed by the crisis in Iran. Moreover, the deployment of Soviet troops on foreign soil in Central Asia set a fearsome precedent that cast new shadows over international detente and Moscow-Washington relations. The SALT II accord, already in difficulty in the U.S. Senate, seemed even further jeopardized by the Soviet action.

Outraged reaction came swiftly from the White House. In the strongest language he has ever directed against Moscow, President Carter, in a televised message, said: "Such gross interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan is in blatant violation of accepted international rules of behavior." He conveyed the same harsh message to Leonid Brezhnev personally on the rarely used White House-Kremlin hot line. At the same time, the President got in touch directly with Western European leaders and President Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq of Pakistan, among others, in an attempt to obtain a collective condemnation of Moscow. All shared his concern. As a result, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher was dispatched to London over the weekend to discuss the situation with U.S. allies.

Other countries obviously were just as concerned about the Soviet military intervention. Peking fumed that "Afghanistan's independence and sovereignty have become toys in Moscow's hands." Iran's Revolutionary Council declared that the intervention in a neighboring country was "a hostile action" against "Muslims throughout the world." Interestingly, however, there were no attacks on Russian embassies.