launched a crackdown against PDPA elements, which in turn led
directly to the 27 April coup. The coup leaders dubbed their
seizure of power the ‘Saur Revolution’ (Inqilab-e Saur), taking its
name from the month Saur (‘Taurus’ in Afghanistan’s traditional
zodiac calendar) in which the coup had occurred. Since the seizure
of power was not in any sense a product of mass revolution, this
rhetoric was in some ways as hollow as that which Daoud had
deployed to justify his own takeover. The difference was that while
Daoud was in no sense a revolutionary, those who overthrew him
stood ready to launch a revolution from above, of a type which
Afghanistan had never experienced, and for which – as it turned
out – they were strikingly ill prepared both intellectually and
organisationally.
The coup was launched around 10–11 a.m. on Thursday 27 April
1978 by communist officers who doubtless feared exposure by
civilian associates who had been arrested about 34 hours earlier.
The four key figures were Abdul Qadir, Aslam Watanjar, Sayid
Muhammad Gulabzoi, and Muhammad Rafi. Qadir and Rafi were
from the Parchamfaction; Watanjar and Gulabzoi were Khalqis.
Tanks under Watanjar’s command moved against the Presidential
Palace (Arg), and were supported by MiG-21 (‘Fishbed’) fighters
and Su-7 fighter-bombers flown from the Bagram air base north of
the capital. Daoud and his immediate associates were overrun at
around 4–5 a.m. on 28 April, and massacred (Dupree, 1979:
14–15). For the coup leaders, there was to be no turning back. A
widespread wave of arrests followed, which shattered the worlds of
many middle-class Kabul families: decades on, the anguish of
these days continues to haunt those who were caught up in them
(see Gauhari, 1996). Former Prime Ministers Nur Ahmad Etemadi
and Muhammad Musa Shafiq were subsequently murdered;
activists of Shula-i Javidand the nationalist Afghan Millatparty
were also targeted.
In Afghan circles, the conviction that the USSR orchestrated the
coup remains widely held (Haqshenas, 1999: Vol. I: 5). Yet while a
range of circumstantial factors – for example the accuracy with
which targets in Kabul were bombed – prompted speculation
26 The Afghanistan Wars