The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

eally need to act a year ago, because then the party, divided into two hostile factions, wasbusy devouring itself. A year later he wouldn’t be strong enough to act. Then, just aboutnine months ago, both factions decided to reconcile, and the unification process begangaining momentum.”He shook his head in dismay, remembering the details of the break-up of the partyand the hostility between the Khalqis and Parchamis. Even now, thinking about the angryexchanges between the members of the two factions left a sour taste in his mouth. Taraki’ssupporters called the Parchamis “whoring servants to the aristocracy.” Karmal and hissupporters in turn labeled the Khalqis as “semi-literate peddlers” and “Pashtunchauvinists.”The personal accusations of the PDPA leaders were the most dishonest aspects ofthe intra-party clashes. Karmal knew from Taraki’s people that Taraki had attempted todiscredit him in the eyes of his Soviet comrades. In messages to the InternationalDepartment of the CPSU Central Committee, Taraki had tried to convince his friends inMoscow that Karmal had ties with Afghan counterintelligence and the intelligence servicesof the Federal Republic of Germany.Babrak himself, though not a practicing Muslim, reciprocated in kind according tothe Islamic principle of Qisas (“equal retaliation”)—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.When an opportunity arose during a meeting with a Soviet comrade in Kabul, in spite of hisbetter instincts, he began to accuse the Khalq leader of having suspicious ties withAmericans and the British, and insinuated that he had been involved in the embezzlementof funds sent by the CPSU Central Committee to support the PDPA. His Soviet comrade, KGBoperative Alexey Petrov, listened to the “horrible” accusations regarding Taraki quietly and70