The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

eating around the bush, Victor asked his guest, “How are your relations with Comrade Karmaland his Parchami friends developing? We understand that there is some friction within the party.”“You know, brother, the situation within the party and the country’s leadership is verycomplicated,” replied Mahmoud thoughtfully. “To tell you the truth, I don’t like Karmal and hisfriends. It would be better without them in the party, and in Afghanistan.”“Why is that?”“They use too many words—they’re cunning intellectuals—too remote from the needs andaspirations of the Afghan people.”Hearing these words, Victor remembered an incident that had occurred in a crowded buswhen he lived in Leningrad. At that time, in the late sixties, Victor was a young officer with bordertroops, who arrived in Leningrad from Kirgizia. He had been sent to Leningrad to attend the KGBAcademy, where he studied Persian, and was preparing to be transferred to work in ForeignIntelligence. The bus had been crowded, and a man in a hat had stepped on somebody’s foot,inciting a spiteful reaction in which the man was accused of being a nasty intelligentsia wearing ahat.While working in Afghanistan, Victor thoroughly researched all of the embassy and KGBResidency’s briefings describing the split within the PDPA. He also read analytical reports from theInstitute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Those reports contained importantideas stemming from Marxist-Leninist theories regarding the role and place of the smallbourgeoisie in the proletariat revolution. However, the reports didn’t mention anything about thehostilities between some strata of the population and the “intelligentsia in hats.” Bubnov thought,“Perhaps the party split stems from those very hostilities.” He asked the agent to continue.“I think that Karmal will soon ask Comrade Taraki to send him somewhere as an175