The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

of four” continued for over a month and a half. Amin insisted on sending the head of AGSAand other ministers abroad as ambassadors. Taraki, unwilling to betray the personalloyalty of those officers to him, was determined to protect the status quo, or at least toreach the appearance of peace with Amin. However, Watanjar and Sarwari, who knew therules of the game all too well, would never accept that approach. Finally, Taraki made whatseemed to him to be a slight compromise with Amin. On July 27, according to a specialdecree of the Revolutionary Council of the DRA, Taraki became the commander in chiefwhile entrusting the position of the minister of defense to his “outstanding and belovedpupil, Comrade Amin.” Watanjar was transferred to the position of the minister of theinterior. Mazdouryar was removed from the Ministry of the Interior and became thefrontier affairs minister.These changes in the government were introduced to the members of theRevolutionary Council and the Central Committee of the PDPA by Taraki and Amin as adecision coordinated with the Soviet leaders. They referred to secret consultations withB.N. Ponomaryov, who had recently paid another unofficial visit to Kabul. In reality therehad been no discussions of changes within the Afghan government during the meetings ofPonomaryov, Taraki, and Amin. There had also been no discussions of the rupture in theupper echelons of Khalq.It is quite possible that the analyses that had been provided by the KGB Residency inKabul to Moscow did not appear sufficiently alarming to the Center. It is also possible thatthese analyses were not conveyed to the very top in the way they should have beenreported. Or it may be that nobody in Moscow at the time was prepared to deeply andseriously process the information from Kabul in order to appreciate the possible443