Nur Muhammad Taraki - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Taraki was born to a rural Ghilzai Pashtun peasant family in Naawa district, Ghazni Provence on 15 July 1917. He was the oldest of three children and attended a village school in Nawa before leaving in 1932, at the age of 15, to work in the port city of Bombay, India. There he met a Kandahari merchant family who employed him as a clerk for the Pashtun Trading Company. Taraki's first encounter with communism was during his night courses, where he met several Communist Party of India members who impressed him with their discussions on social justice and communist values. Another important event was his encounter with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a Pashtun nationalist and leader of the Red Shirt Movement in neighboring India, who was an admirer of the works of Vladimir Lenin.

In 1937 he started working for Abdul Majid Zabuli, the Minister of Economics, who introduced Taraki to several Russians. Later Taraki became Deputy Head of the Bakhtrar News Agency and became known throughout the country as an author and poet. His best known book, the De Bang Mosaferi, highlights the socio-economic difficulties facing Afghan workers and peasants. His works were translated into Russian; in the Soviet Union, where his work was viewed as embodying scientific socialist themes, Taraki was hailed by the government as "Afghanistan's Maxim Gorky". During a visit to the Soviet Union Taraki was greeted by Boris Ponomarev, the Head of the International Department of the Central Committee, and other Communist Party of the Soviet Union members.

Under Mohammad Daoud Khan's prime ministership, suppression of radicals was common. However, because of his language skills, Taraki was sent to the Afghan embassy in the United States in 1952. Within several months Taraki began denouncing the Afghan regime and accused it of being autocratic and dictatorial. His denunciation of the Afghan Government earned him much publicity in the United States. It also attracted unfavorable attention from authorities back home, who relieved him of his post and ordered him repatriated but stopped short of placing him under arrest. After a short period of unemployment Taraki started working for the United States Overseas Mission in Kabul as a translator. He quit his job in 1958 and established his own translation company, the Noor Translation Bureau. Four years later. Taraki started working for the American Embassy in Kabul, but quit in 1963 to focus on the establishment of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), a communist political party.

At the founding congress of the PDPA, held in Taraki's own home, Taraki won a competitive election against Babrak Karmal to the post of general secretary on 1 January 1965. Karmal became second secretary. Taraki ran as a candidate for the PDPA during the September 1965 parliamentary election but did not win a seat. Shortly after the election, Taraki launched Khalq, the first major left-wing newspaper in Afghanistan. The paper was banned within one month of its first printing. In 1967, less than two years after its founding, the PDPA split into several factions. The largest of these included Khalq (English: Masses) led by Taraki, and Parcham (English: Banner) led by Karmal. The main differences between the factions were ideological, with Taraki supporting the creation of a Leninist-like state, while Karmal wanted to establish a "broad democratic front".

On 19 April 1978 a prominent leftist named Mir Akbar Khyber was assassinated and the murder was blamed on Mohammed Daoud Khan's Government. His death served as a rallying point for the Afghan communists. Fearing a communist coup d'etat, Daoud ordered the arrest of certain PDPA leaders, including Taraki and Karmal, while placing others such as Hafizullah Amin under house arrest. On 27 April 1978 the Saur Revolution was initiated, reportedly by Amin while still under house arrest. Khan was killed the next day along with most of his family. The PDPA rapidly gained control and on 1 May Taraki became Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, a role which subsumed the responsibilities of both president and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (literally prime minister in Western parlance). The country was then renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), installing a regime that would last until April 1992.