One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution;

one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

george orwell, 1984

If Fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many

years. Afghanistan will turn into a centre of world smuggling for narcotic

drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a centre for terrorism.

president najib allah khan 1

D

espite the inevitable rhetoric, Da’ud’s Revolution was the

antithesis of the populist uprisings that were the hallmark of the

French, American and Russian Revolutions. Da’ud and Na‘im

made a few token changes, including renouncing their royal title of sardar,

but this failed to disguise the fact that the putsch was a military coup by

disgruntled and ambitious members of the ruling dynasty. For ordinary

Afghans, Da’ud was king in all but name. Da’ud’s subsequent declaration

that one of his chief aims was ‘to rid our nation of ideological penury’ is

thus profoundly ironic, since he represented a monarchy that was primarily

responsible for this very penury. 2

President Da’ud’s chalk-and-cheese coalition

Da’ud’s Republican government was even more bizarre as it was a

coalition of two irreconcilable political ideologies, Monarchism and

Communism. 3 As Marxist–Leninists, the People’s Democratic Party of

Afghanistan (pdpa) opposed the monarchy per se and blamed the ‘back-

wardness’ of Afghanistan on its feudal system, at the apex of which stood

th e Muhammadzai dynasty. The ideological gulf within the coalition was

exacerbated by a generation gap. Da’ud and his supporters were all in their

late 50s or 60s and their vision of the state, government and national iden-

tity was rooted in Mahmud Tarzi’s Afghaniyya and the Pushtun-Aryanism,

thirteen

1973–94 13 Republicanism, Revolution and Resistance,

Resistance, 1973–94