The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

Youth”) in the 1940s. Babrak also guessed that he was not the only one at the congress whohad been “confidentially” told by Taraki about his “special contacts with Soviet comrades.”It should be mentioned that Taraki, and later his closest allies, would successfullyexaggerate or fabricate their “special contacts with Soviet comrades” in order to boost theirauthority in the future. In that environment such contacts were of great value.The election began, completely free and open. Seven delegates were elected asmembers of the Central Committee and four became candidates to the Central Committee.The newly elected members of the Central Committee then elected Nur Mohammad Tarakito be the first secretary of the Central Committee of the People’s Democratic Party andBabrak Karmal to be his deputy.The Congress was adjourned at 2 a.m. and the delegates went to their homes on footor by bicycle.As he pondered the fate of the party in his prison cell, Babrak repeatedly recalledthat the first cracks in “monolithic party unity” had already begun to appear at that firstfounding congress. Jaji, the chairman of the congress, left the party the next day after hefailed to be elected to the Central Committee. Some suspected that three delegates (Taraki,Karmal, and Badakhshi) had engaged in double voting, for themselves as well as others.The cracks multiplied and deepened very quickly and resulted in an insurmountablefissure that eventually broke the party into two factions. Karmal remembered that from thevery beginning there had been disagreements regarding strategy and tactics. Taraki and hisallies openly labeled themselves “Communists.” They targeted the immediate and violentremoval of the existing regime as opposed to a sustained and systematic program of workwith the Afghan people. Karmal preferred a moderate approach that employed legal68