The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

Valery Samunin:First, I would never make a categorical statement that the “CIA never abandons itsagents.” Second, I wouldn’t use such definitions in regards to Amin as the “loyal friend ofthe Soviet Union” and a “professional revolutionary.” In order to consider oneself a friend,one needs to at least know who his friend is. Amin knew very little about the Soviet Union.He mainly knew it from sensational publications in the American media and from reprintsof those publications in Afghanistan. This is why he thought that the Soviet leadership—this was in the late seventies—was using Stalinist principles and methods. That is why heattempted to portray himself as a “Stalinist.”He certainly does not deserve the definition of a “professional revolutionary.” In thelate 1960s I lived and worked in Afghanistan, and communicated closely and intensely withhighly respected Afghan intellectuals. I cannot remember a single person who even oncementioned Amin’s name among the Afghan revolutionaries. Taraki, Layeq, Bareq Shafi’i,Khyber, Karmal, Pandzhsheri, Mahmoudi, Gubar, Tahir Badakhshi, were all noted. Butnobody knew one thing about Amin then. That person somehow unnoticeably snuck intothe party, helped by his strange, if not mysterious, relationship with Taraki. Once Amingained strength, he immediately directed his crushing “revolutionary” outrage not againstthe “forces of reaction and imperialism,” but against Parchamis.Now, as to his endless requests to bring Soviet troops into Afghanistan. It is knownthat the Americans, as early as May 1978, were considering the possibility of full“entrapment” of the USSR in Afghanistan as an opportunity to deliver a blow to theinternational prestige of the Soviet Union and to force it to suffer catastrophic losses.727