Babrak Karmal

Babrak Karmal (Pashto: ببرک کارمل‎, born Sultan Hussein; 6 January 1929 – 1 or 3 December 1996) was an Afghan politician and statesman during the Cold War. Karmal was born in Kamari and educated at Kabul University, after which he started his career as a bureaucrat. Before, during and after his career as a bureaucrat Karmal was a leading member of the Afghan movement. He was introduced to Marxism by Mir Akbar Khyber during his imprisonment for activities deemed too radical by the government. When the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was formed, Karmal became one of its leading members, and eventually became the leader of the Parcham faction. When the PDPA split in 1967, the Parcham-faction established a Parcham PDPA, while their ideological nemesis, the Khalqs, established a Khalqist PDPA. Under Karmal's leadership, the Parchamite PDPA participated in Mohammad Daoud Khan's rise to power, and his subsequent regime. While relations were good at the beginning, Daoud began a major purge of leftist influence in the mid-1970s. This in turn led to the refoundation of the PDPA in 1977. The PDPA took power in the 1978 Saur Revolution.

Karmal was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, synonymous with vice head of state, in the communist government. The Parchamite faction found itself squeezed by the Khalqists soon after taking power and shortly after, in June, a PDPA Central Committee meeting voted in favour of giving the Khalqist faction exclusive right to formulate and decide PDPA policy. This decision was followed by a failed Parchamite coup, which in turn led Hafizullah Amin, a Khalqist, to initiate a purge against the Parchamites. Karmal survived this purge, probably due to his contacts with the Soviets, and was sent to exile in Prague. Karmal would remain in exile until December 1979, when the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan (with the consent of the Afghan government) to stabilise the situation in the country, they killed Amin, the leader of the PDPA and the Afghan government.

Karmal was made Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers on 27 December 1979. He would retain his Council of Ministers chairmanship until 1981, when he was succeeded in office by Sultan Ali Keshtmand. Throughout his term in office Kamral tried to establish a support base for the PDPA by introducing several changes. Among these were the writing of the Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, introducing a general amnesty for those people imprisoned during Nur Mohammad Taraki's and Amin's rule, and replacing the Khalqist flag with a more traditional one. These policies did not increase the PDPA's legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people.

These policy failures, and the stalemate that ensued after the Soviet intervention, led the Soviet leadership to become highly critical of Karmal's leadership. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union was able to depose Karmal and replace him with Mohammad Najibullah. Following his loss of power, he was exiled to Moscow. He was allowed to return to Afghanistan in 1991 by the Najibullah government for unknown reasons. Back in Afghanistan he helped topple the Najibullah government, and he became an associate of Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of the men who brought down the communist government. Not long after, in 1996, Karmal died from liver cancer.