The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

Parcham officers were passive on the day of the uprising. Some of them didn’t understand whatwas going on, and this is why they were fighting on the side of Daoud, to simply fulfill theirmilitary duty. But this is only because they knew nothing about the uprising. I can understandAmin to some degree. In order to start the uprising, he had to lean against only his most trustedofficers. He needed those who would not dither. If Amin would have expanded the number ofthose who were aware of his plans, a discussion might have started. And then you, Sovietcomrades, would have learned about it, and would certainly have tried to prevent the coup.However, it is unfair to say that Parchamis didn’t participate in carrying out the revolution at all.There were real heroes among our comrades who were fighting beside the Khalqis.”After a meeting that lasted almost forty minutes, Valery whispered to Khost, lookingstraight into his eyes, “Did you invite me to this meeting yourself, or were you asked to do so byComrade Karmal?”Khost calmly and sincerely, it seemed to Valery, responded: “I myself wanted to meet withyou and tell you these things. I didn’t discuss in detail my message with Karmal. However, I toldhim that I must tell our Soviet comrades what is currently happening within our party.”“And how did Comrade Karmal respond?”“He said that we have no secrets from our Soviet friends.”The next day, Starostin waited for Ershov’s arrival at the parking lot in front of the Sovietembassy. When Ershov parked the car, Valery greeted him and said that he needed to talk.As soon as Ivan Ivanovich heard about the preceding day’s meeting with Agent Khost andthe internal disagreements in the PDPA, he became furious. He started to scold Starostin in aparticularly vicious manner, accusing him of lack of awareness of the political and operationalsituation and of being ignorant in regards to the political processes that were under way in148