The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

through Reuters? Do we not have our own correspondents in Kabul?” In the April 29 issue, onpage five, in the International News section, he found a slightly more detailed article. Zaplatin tooka pen and copied it all into his notepad.“Islamabad, April 28 (TASS). According to messages arriving from Afghanistan, a state coupd’etat occurred there yesterday. The declaration of the Revolutionary Council, announced onKabul radio by the head of the Air Force Headquarters, Colonel Abdul Qadir, states that: ‘Armedforces have taken responsibility for defending society, national independence, freedom, and thehonor of the Afghan people.’ The Revolutionary Council added that it would conduct its domesticpolitics based ‘on defending the principles of Islam and democracy, freedom and protection ofindividual rights, and would work to achieve progress in all spheres of Afghan society.’”Here, he thought, they do not call it a military coup, but a state coup, and the article makesit sound like the plotters have noble goals. But why is this information coming from the capital ofPakistan rather than from Kabul?On April 30, again from Islamabad, a TASS correspondent reported that the situation in theAfghan capital had stabilized, the shops were open, and the Revolutionary Council had assumedfull control of the situation in the country. The next day, a TASS correspondent from Kabulreported that, “The Revolutionary Council of the Democratic Party of Afghanistan had elected theoutstanding revolutionary leader Nur Muhammad Taraki as the chairman of the Council and headof state and prime minister.”Vasily Petrovich flipped through the pages of the newspaper with disappointment. Youcouldn’t really get an idea of the situation from those articles. “The situation is being stabilized”;“All power has been transferred into the hands of the people”; “The new authorities represent theinterests of suppressed groups of the population”; “Optimism is wide-spread”; “The reasons for140