Marx and Allah

The new regime takes shape

Soviet-built T-62 tanks of the Afghan army guarded the main streets and principal government buildings of Kabul last week, but on many of them the turrets were draped with garlands and the gun tubes incongruously sprouted flowers.

Classes resumed at Kabul University, and the rug merchants in the bazaars haggled over prices with all of their prerevolutionary aggressiveness. About the only gunfire that could be heard in the city came when the newspapers reappeared. Citizens were so curious about the Communist reformers who in a bloody, 36-hour battle had toppled the feckless, dynastic government led by President Mohammed Daoud that they literally scrambled for the first post-coup editions. On one truck, troops who had a few copies were so besieged that they fired in the air in self-defense.

By week's end the new regime was already operating--"in the name of Allah," as its communiques put it--out of temporary headquarters in the government radio station. Afghanistan's customary seat of power, the sprawling Royal Palace compound in the heart of Kabul, was unusable. During the coup, the elegant mansions that had been occupied by Daoud and his advisers since they themselves seized power in 1973 were battered by a ring of rebel tanks supported by rocketing planes. Daoud, his aides, their wives and children, and many members of the 2,000-man palace guard were either killed as the compound fell or executed afterward.

By title at least, it appeared that the top man in the new regime would be the Prime Minister, Noor Mohammed Taraki, 61. He is a soft-spoken novelist and journalist who was once (1952-53) an attache at the Afghan embassy in Washington. More recently, as leader of the 15,000-member Khalq (Masses) Party, Afghanistan's principal Communist faction, Taraki led a campaign against the domination of the long powerful Mohammed Zahir family, to which both Daoud and the cousin-King he had deposed belonged. Taraki was periodically imprisoned for his activities; indeed, he was in jail when the coup erupted two weeks ago, and one reason that the plotters hit the presidential palace so hard was to free him before Daoud could have him murdered.

The three military men who actually led the putsch got important portfolios in Taraki's 21-member Cabinet: Air Force Colonel Abdul Kadir became Defense Minister; Lieut. Colonel Mohammed Rafi, whose tanks spearheaded the palace assault, was named Public Works Minister; and Major Mohammed Aslam was designated Communications Minister and Second Deputy Prime Minister. The remaining appointees were civilians, among them Hafisullah Amin, a onetime Columbia University student, who was named Foreign Minister, and Amahita Pratebsad, who as Director of Social Welfare becomes Afghanistan's first woman minister. To broaden the new faction's base outside Kabul, a National Revolutionary Council was formed. Taraki will be chairman of the council; the deputy chairman will be Babrak Kamal, a general's son reputed to be the most hard-line Moscow Communist in the Khalq Party.

The regime appeared to have support among Afghanistan's gradually emerging middle class, and it pointedly included members drawn from the Uzbeks, Tadzhiks, Hazaras and other Afghan tribes who had been allowed little voice in the country's affairs by the Mohammed Zahirs. Reported TIME Correspondent Lawrence Malkin from Kabul: "The regime's first priority seems to be to root out the family's influence wherever it is found.

Anyone remotely related to the Mohammed Zahirs is in trouble at work. One example: a security man from the new government, accompanied by a soldier with a submachine gun, walked into the lobby of the Inter-Continental Hotel and went to the manager's office. Since his wife was a relative of Daoud's and he had obviously got his job through his connections, he was told he was fired. He cleared out of his office, following a tearful goodbye from his staff, that afternoon. The regime's chief aim seems to be domestic reform, including cheaper food and better housing and education. The leadership is plainly aware that it has raised the hopes of the desperately poor in Afghanistan and will have to deliver the goods."

All of the Cabinet officers belong to Taraki's Khalq Party and are leftists.

At a press conference at week's end, Taraki denied that his revolution meant a Communist takeover in Kabul. Stressing Afghan independence and neutrality, he said: "We will be good friends with any government that will support us economically and politically--including the U.S."

Though there is no evidence that Moscow either instigated or assisted the coup, it was the first capital to recognize Taraki's regime. The Soviets, who have a 1,281-mile common border with Afghanistan, were clearly pleased.

Officials in Iran and Pakistan, which also share borders with Afghanistan, felt different. All three countries are beset by dissident Baluchistan tribesmen who want to set up an independent state of their own. Daoud resisted this demand; Iran, which puts up $5 billion a year in development projects to keep its own Baluchis happy, returned Daoud's favor by agreeing to pay for, among other things, a $2 billion railroad that would link Afghanistan with Iran's railway system. Iran is concerned that the new government may change Kabul's Baluchi policy.

Like the Iranians, the Carter Administration wanted to let the Taraki regime come into clearer focus before moving to extend recognition. One State Department official described the Washington reaction as "worried, but not biting our nails with anxiety." That could change if the Khalq clique decided to broaden its purge too far in order to eradicate the feudalism that kept the Mohammed Zahirs in power for generations. If that happened, a civil war without flowers could break out, giving Moscow a chance to make mischief in an often turbulent part of the world that has recently been enjoying a period of rare stability.

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