a house divided, 1933–73imprisonment, Maulana Habib al-Rahman, Dr Muhammad ‘Omar and
Khwaja Mahfuz Mansur were condemned to death and hanged in the
Deh Mazang prison. All three were respected Islamic scholars and their
executions stunned and outraged many Afghans.
The assassination of Mir Akbar Khyber and the death
of President Da’udTwo months later, on 17 April, Mir Akbar Khyber, head of Parcham, was
shot dead outside his house by an unknown gunman. The Kabul rumour
mill claimed President Da’ud or anti-Communist members of his govern-
ment were behind the assassination but Parchamis claimed Khalq’s Hafiz
Allah ’Amin and Nur Muhammad Taraki had ordered the shooting, while
in Peshawar Hikmatyar said it was his operatives who were responsible.
Whoever was behind the assassination, the pdpa used Khyber’s violent
death as an opportunity to demonstrate publicly their disenchantment
with Da’ud’s Republican experiment. As Khyber’s cortège wound its way
from his home in the Soviet-built Mikroyan apartment block to the Pul-i
Kheshti mosque, around 15,000 people lined the streets, threw garlands
of red tulips, symbolic of martyrdom, in the path of the procession, and
chanted anti-American and anti-Iranian slogans.
The size of the crowds frightened Da’ud, who had grossly under-
estimated both the unpopularity of his administration and the depth of
support for the pdpa. Fearing the protests were the harbinger of a coup,
Da’ud ordered the arrest of all the pdpa leadership. Nur Muhammad
Taraki, Babrak Karmal and many others were rounded up, but Hafiz Allah
’Amin fortuitously avoided arrest. Realizing that Da’ud would probably
execute all of the pdpa leadership, ’Amin sent an urgent message to Khalqi
sympathizers at the Rishkhor army base and the Bagram air base, urging
them to act immediately and depose Da’ud. On 27 April, the 7 of Saur
in the Afghan shamsi calendar, the cabinet held an emergency meeting
in the Presidential Palace to discuss the crisis, only for their discussions
to be interrupted by gunfire, exploding shells and low-flying jet planes.
For much of the day street-to-street fighting raged in the capital but by
evening pdpa forces controlled most of central Kabul and had cut power
and telephone links to the palace. A representative of the Revolutionary
Military Council was then sent into the palace to demand the surrender
of Da’ud, Na‘im and his ministers, only for the ultimatum to be rejected.
A battle ensued and by the morning all of Da’ud and Na‘im’s wives and
children were either dead or mortally wounded. When Da’ud rejected a