Khalq strongman who engineered the Saur Revolution and fell to Soviet guns three months after seizing power
Amin ordered his adjutant to warn the Soviet advisers of the attack. The adjutant replied, 'It is the Soviets who are shooting.' Amin snatched an ashtray and hurled it at him, shouting, 'You're lying! That cannot be!'
Amin was the de facto number two of the PDPA's Khalq faction and the military architect of the April 1978 Saur Revolution. Drawn to Marxism while studying in the United States, he returned to Afghanistan and built a network of officers that made the coup possible, then climbed from deputy premier through foreign and defense ministries to become the regime's true strongman. In September 1979 he deposed and executed his mentor Nur Muhammad Taraki and seized the party leadership and all top state posts, but his brutal purges and the spreading insurgency convinced the Kremlin he was uncontrollable. On 27 December 1979 KGB special forces stormed the Tajbeg Palace and killed him, opening the Soviet-Afghan War.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1957–1965Studies at Columbia and Wisconsin, drawn to Marxism
- 1966Joins PDPA, sides with Khalq faction
- 1969Elected sole Khalq MP
- 1973–1978Party military organizer, builds officer network
- 1978.04Directs the Saur Revolution
- 1978–1979DPM → FM → PM → concurrent Defense Minister
- 1979.09Deposes Taraki, becomes General Secretary and head of state
- 1979.12.27Killed by Soviet special forces in Operation Storm-333
Related historical events
Rural reforms and the Herat uprising
From December 1978 into early 1979, the Amin-Taraki government pressed ahead with rural reforms. Decree No. 6 cancelled peasants’ debts to richer farmers and landlords; Decree No. 8 set a ceiling on landholding of six to sixty hectares, depending on land quality. The government reported that during its first year in power it had distributed 822,500 acres to 132,000 families, and claimed that the number of recipient families had risen to 300,000 by August 1979. Fred Halliday cautioned that these were official figures and that the measures’ immediate effects should not be overstated.
The reforms sought to alter rural landholding and debt relations, but were implemented by party members and soldiers issuing instructions in villages without adequate inquiry into local land customs and tribal relations. Land redistribution also disrupted existing ties between peasants and landlords, who had supplied seed, water and tools, while the government could not provide a practical alternative. As a result, even peasants who received land often could not benefit from it immediately; landlords and tribal chiefs could rally broader opposition to the central government. Contrary to the aim of winning rural poor to the revolutionary government, the way the policy was carried out helped widen resistance in the countryside.
On 15 March 1979 an uprising began in Herat. Various anti-government groups and residents took control of the city, and parts of the military joined the revolt. According to the Afghanistan Analysts Network’s reconstruction, government forces sent tanks from Kandahar and suppressed the uprising with bombing by Il-28 aircraft flown by Afghan pilots from Shindand air base. Claims that more than 24,000 people died in the suppression and subsequent intelligence-service arrests are attributed in that account to Ismail Khan and others; the article notes disagreement over the figure and related details. The Herat uprising marked an escalation in which conflicts over Amin’s rural reforms and their coercive implementation fed into armed resistance and the government’s military response.