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People's Democratic Party Of Afghanistan

People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan

The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (in Persian: حزب دموکراتيک خلق افغانستان, in Pashto: د افغانستان د خلق دموکراټیک ګوند, PDPA) was a Marxist-Leninist party. Founded in January 1, 1965, by 1978 it overthrew the regime of Mohammad Daoud. With the completion of the so-called Saur revolution, the PDPA declared the founding of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan,

Early Political Activity

Three men - Taraki, Amin, and Karmal - played a centralrole in the evolution of the Afghan left and the fortunes of the PDPA. the PDPA held its First Congress on January 1, 1965. Twenty-seven men gathered at Taraki’s house in Kabul, elected Taraki PDPA Secretary General and Karma1 Deputy Secretary General, and chose a five-member Central Committee (or Politburo). However, the PDPA influence was largely limited to an educated minority in the urban areas. Generally, this group's perceptions and values clashed with those of the vast majority of conservative, rural Afghans. They also approved a party program. This document, published in the newspaper Khalq (Masses) the following year, advocated a national front of democratic and patriotic forces and progressive reforms. The Marxist-Leninist component of PDPA ideology was a decidedly minor theme because the leaders feared alienating groups within the country and Afghanistan’s conservative neighbors outside the country. Four PDPA members were elected: Karmal, Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmad Nur, and Fezanul Haq Fezan. Taraki and Amin also ran but were defeated; the latter lost by only 50 votes in his hometown of Paghman.

Khalq and Parcham

The party was weakened by bitter, and sometimes violent, internal rivalries. On the ideological level, Karmal and Taraki differed in their perceptions of Afghanistan’s revolutionary potential:
- Taraki believed that revolution could be achieved in the classical Leninist fashion by building a tightly disciplined working-class party.
- Karmal felt that Afghanistan was too undeveloped for a Leninist strategy and that a national democratic front of patriotic and anti-imperialist forces had to be fostered in order to bring the country a step closer to socialist revolution. The banning of Khalq in 1966 prompted Karmal to criticize Taraki because of the newspaper’s open expression of class struggle themes. Karmal sought, unsuccessfully, to persuade the PDPA Central Committee to censure Taraki’s excessive radicalism. The vote, however, was close, and Taraki in turn tried to neutralize Karmal by appointing new members to the committee who were his own supporters. Karmal offered his resignation, and it was accepted by the Politburo of the Party. Although the split of the PDPA in 1967 into two groups was never publicly announced, Karmal brought with him about half the members of the Central Committee. In the spring of 1967 the PDPA formally divided into two factions. Subsequently, the two groups operated as separate political parties, each with its own Secretary General, Central Committee, and membership. Taraki’s faction was known as Khalq, after his defunct newspaper, and Karmal’s as Parcham, after a weekly magazine he published between March 1968 and July 1969. Parcham was shut down in June 1969 on the eve of parliamentary elections, but the group had succeeded in getting some very powerful friends.

Reconciliation

Moscow played a major role in the reconciliation of Taraki's and Karmal's factions. In March 1977 a formal agreement on unity was achieved, and in July the two factions held their first joint conclave in a decade. Both parties were consistently pro-Soviet. They accepted financial and other forms of aid from the Soviet embassy and intelligence organs. Taraki and Karmal maintained close contact with embassy personnel, and it appears that Soviet Military Intelligence (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye - GRU) assisted Khalq's recruitment of military officers.

The Saur Revolution

In 1978 a prominent leftist, Mir Akbar Khyber, was killed by the government and his associates. Although the government issued a statement deploring the assassination, PDPA leaders apparently feared that Daoud was planning to exterminate them all. Nur Mohammad Taraki, Babrak Karmal, and Hafizullah Amin, organized a coup d'etat, overthrowing the regime of Mohammad Daoud, and renaming the country the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. On the eve of the communist coup, The police did not sent Hafizulla Amin to immediate imprisonment, as it did with Politburo members of the PDPA on April 25, 1978. His imprisonment was postponed for five hours, during which Amin, without having the authority, instructed the Khalqi army officers to overthrow the government. The regime of President Mohammad Daoud Khan came to a violent end in the early morning hours of April 28, 1978, when military units stormed the Presidential Palace in the heart of Kabul. Overcoming the stubborn resistance of the Presidential Guard, the insurgent troops killed Daoud and most members of his family. The divided PDPA succeeded the Daoud regime with a new government under the leadership of Nur Muhammad Taraki of the Khalq faction. In Kabul, the initial cabinet appeared to be carefully constructed to alternate ranking positions between Khalqis and Parchamis: Taraki was prime minister, Karmal was senior deputy prime minister, and Hafizullah Amin of Khalq was foreign minister. The reform program of the party comprised
- abolition of feudal power in the countryside
- freedom of religion
- equal rights for women and various ethnic minorities
- the release of more than 13,000 political prisoners
- elimination of usury In the words of Australian journalist John Pilger, "Under tribalism and feudalism, life expectancy was thirty-five and almost one in three children died in infancy. Ninety per cent of the population was illiterate. The new government introduced free medical care in the poorest areas. Peonage was abolished; a mass literacy campaign was begun. For women, the gains were unheard of; by the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up 40 per cent of Afghanistan's doctors, 70 per cent of its teachers and 30 per cent of its civil servants." Unfortunately, the American Carter government was not delighted with the coup and, by August 1979, prompted by National Security Chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, had begun funding mujaheddin forces with the intention of destabilising the government and provoking the Soviet Union into military intervention, which occurred on December 24th 1979.

Soviet Invasion and Civil War

After the Soviet Union had leveled most of the villages south and east of Kabul, creating a massive humanitarian disaster, the demise of the PDPA continued with the rise of the mujaheddin terrorists, who were trained Pakistan camps supported by the US and Britain. Between 1982 and 1992, the number of people recruited by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to join the Afghan jihad topped 100,000. The training of the future Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives was mostly done in a Virginia CIA camp, under the so-called "Operation Cyclone". The Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, but continued to provide military assistance to the PDPA regime until the USSR's collapse in 1991. The U.S.S.R. did not support the coup. In fact, the Soviets were surprised by the development, but they feared Western interevention. In support of the new regime, they reluctantly intervened. Once Soviet troops were dispatched, U.S. support for the "counterrevolutionary" forces in the country convinced the Kremlin that their previous fears of Western involvement were well founded. As a rusult, the Soviets had little choice, in their view, but to continue to support the Karmal regime.

Collapse of the Party

President and PDPA leader Mohammad Najibullah agreed to step down in favor of a transitional government in 1992, three years after the Soviet troop withdrawal. The mujahideen established a new government in Kabul led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. But the mujahideen were soon torn by factional struggles, particularly between Massoud's coalition government and the Taliban. Taliban forces took Kabul in 1996, and Najibullah, who had been residing in a UN compound, was hanged from a traffic light post.

Political and Social Legacy

During the PDPA period, most Afghan cities from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz to Jalalabad were not prey to local commanders, warlords or bandits, and people lived securely with normal urban police. Most professionals, particularly those in the vigorous "middle generation" now in their 30s and 40s, were members of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Afghan cities enjoyed a huge surge in education and healthcare. Kabul had a one-party system but, with numerous functioning mosques and a thriving market economy, it was more liberal than anywhere in Soviet central Asia.

External links

- [http://www.psupress.org/Justataste/samplechapters/JustaTasteWeisburd.html The PDPA and the Soviet invasion]
- [http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/comment/story/0,11447,658185,00.html The future and legacy of PDPA members] Category:Ruling Communist parties Category:Political parties in Afghanistan Category:Single-party system parties Category:Communist parties in Asia

Persian language

Persian (فارسی = Fârsi ... پارسی = Pârsi), (local name in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan: ‘Fârsi’), ‘Pârsi’ (older local name, but still used by some speakers), Tajik (a Central Asian dialect) or Dari (another local name in Tajikistan and Afghanistan), is a language spoken in Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, and elsewhere. Prior to British colonization, Persian was also widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent; it took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts in the subcontinent throughout the Middle Ages and became the official court language under the Mughal emperors. Evidence of its former rank in the region can still be seen by the extent of its influence on Hindi or Urdu, as well as the popularity that Persian literature still enjoys in the region. Persian or its dialects have official-language status in the countries of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. There are 61-71 million native speakers [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90035]. It belongs to the Indo-European language family, and is of the Subject Object Verb type.

History

Persian is a member of the Indo-European family of languages, and within that family it belongs to the Indo-Iranian (Aryan) branch. Scholars believe the Iranian sub-branch consists of the following chronological linguistic path: Old Persian (Avestan and Achaemenid Persian) → Middle Persian (Pahlavi, Parthian, and Sassanids Persian) → Modern Persian (Dari, c. 900 to present Persian). Old Persian, the main language of the Achaemenid inscriptions, should not be confused with the non-Indo-European Elamite language (see Behistun inscription). Over this period, the morphology of the language was simplified from the complex conjugation and declension system of Old Persian to the almost completely regularized morphology and rigid syntax of Modern Persian, in a manner often described as paralleling the development of English. Additionally, many words were introduced from neighboring languages, including Aramaic and Greek in earlier times, and later Arabic and to a lesser extent Turkish. In more recent times, some Western European words have entered the language (notably from French and English). The language itself has greatly developed during the centuries. Due to technological developments, new words and idioms are created and enter into Persian like any other language. In Tehran the Academy of Persian Language and Literature is a center that evaluates the new words in order to initiate and advise their Persian equivalents. In Afghanistan, the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan does the same for Afghan Persian (among other languages).

Nomenclature

Persian, the more widely used name of the language in English, is an Anglicized form derived from Latin
- Persianus, < Latin Persia, < Greek Persis, a hellenized form of Old Persian Parsa. Farsi is the Arabicized form of Parsi, due to a lack of the /p/ phoneme in Standard Arabic. Its use in the English language is very recent (since the 1970s). Native Persian speakers typically call it "Fârsi" in modern usage. ISO, the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, and many other sources call the language Persian. The government of Afghanistan uses both "Dari" and "Persian" in English communications. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature as well as many lexicographers have announced that "Farsi" is not the appropriate term to use for the Persian language in English. In the ISO 639-1, the local names form the basis for the language codes and for this reason "fa" is the designation for the Persian language in that system.

Dialects and close languages

ISO 639-1 Communication is generally mutually intelligible between Iranians, Tajiks, and Persian-speaking Afghans; however, by popular definition:
- Dari is the local name for the eastern dialect of Persian, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, including Hazaragi — spoken by the Hazara people of central Afghanistan.
- Tajik could also be considered an eastern dialect of Persian, but, contrary to Iranian and Afghan Persian, it is written in the Cyrillic script. The following are some of the closely related languages of various Iranian peoples within modern Iran proper:
- Mazerooni, or Mazandarani, spoken in northern Iran mainly in the province of Mazandaran.
- Guilaki, or Gilaki — spoken in the province of Guilan.
- Talysh, or Talishi — spoken in northern Iran and southern parts of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
- Luri, or Lori — spoken mainly in the southwestern Iranian province of Lorestan.
- (a.k.a. Tati, or Eshtehardi) — spoken in parts of the Iranian provinces of East Azarbaijan, Zanjan and Qazvin.
- Dari or Gabri — spoken originally in Yazd and Kerman by the Zoroastrians of Iran. Also called Yazdi by some.
- Dzhidi or Judæo-Persian — a collection of languages or dialects spoken by the many varied and ancient Jewish communities throughout the former greatest extent of the Persian Empire, one of the many Jewish languages of Persian Jews.

Orthography

The vast majority of modern Persian text is written in a form of the Arabic alphabet. In recent years the Latin alphabet has been used by some for technological or internationalization reasons.

Arabic Alphabet

Modern Persian is normally written using a modified variant of the Arabic alphabet.

The adoption of the Arabic script

After the conversion of Persia to Islam (see Islamic conquest of Iran), it took approximately one hundred and fifty years before Persians adopted the Arabic alphabet as a replacement for the older alphabet. Previously, two different alphabets were used for the Persian language (Middle Persian, or Pahlavi, at that time): one was also called Pahlavi and was a modified version of the Aramaic alphabet, and the other was a native Iranian alphabet called Dîndapirak (literally: religion script).

Note: "independence" of Arabic and Persian languages

One should note that despite their shared standard alphabet, Persian and Arabic are entirely different languages: they are not closely genetically related (they belong to separate genetic language families, namely, Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic) and naturally have different phonology and grammar.

The features of the Persian variant

The Persian variant adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet for its use, due to the fact that four sounds that exist in Persian do not exist in Arabic. Additionally, it changes the shape of another two. Some people call this modified alphabet the Perso-Arabic alphabet. The additional four letters are: The letters different in shape are: The diacritical marks used in the Arabic script, a.k.a. harakat, are also used in Persian, although some of them have different pronunciations. For example, an Arabic Damma is pronounced as /u/, while in Persian it is pronounced as /o/. The Persian variant also adds the notion of a pseudo-space to the Arabic script, called a Zero-width non-joiner (ZWNJ) by the Unicode Standard. It acts like a space in disconnecting two otherwise-joining adjacent letters, but does not have a visual width.

Note: Spelling of Arabic words in Arabic and in Persian

It should also be noted that many Persian words with an Arabic root are spelled differently from the original Arabic word. Alef with hamza below ( إ ) always changes to alef ( ا ); teh marbuta ( ة ) usually, but not always, changes to teh ( ت ) or heh ( ه ); and words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that مسؤول becomes مسئول).

Further expansion of the Persian variant

The features of the Persian variant have been taken for other languages, such as Pashto or Urdu, and have sometimes been further extended with new letters or punctuation.

Latin Alphabet

The Universal Persian (UniPers / Pârsiye Jahâni) Alphabet is a Latin-based alphabet created over 50 years ago in Iran and popularized by Mohamed Keyvan, who had used it in a number of Persian textbooks for foreigners and travellers. It sidesteps the difficulties of the traditional Arabic-based alphabet, with its multiple letter shapes and ambiguous spellings, and fits particularly well in contemporary electronically written media. Fingilish is the name given to texts written in Persian using the Basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used in chat, emails and SMS applications.

Phonology

:Main article: Persian phonology The Persian language has six vowels and twenty-three consonants, including two affricates /ʧ/ (ch) and /ʤ/ (j). Historically, Persian distinguished length: the long vowels , , contrasting with the short vowels , , respectively. Modern spoken Persian, however, generally does not make this distinction anymore. Persian phonology

Consonants
	labial	alveolars	post-alveolars	velars	glottals
voiceless stops
voiced stops
voiceless fricatives
voiced fricatives
nasals
liquids		,
glides

Note that and are affricates, not stops.

Grammar

:Main article: Persian grammar Suffixes predominate Persian morphology, though there are a small number of prefixes. Verbs can express tense and aspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number. There is no grammatical gender for nouns, nor are pronouns marked for natural gender. Normal sentences are structured as "(S) (PP) (O) V". If the object is definite, then the order is "(S) (O + "rɑ:") (PP) V".

Vocabulary

There are many loanwords in the Persian language, mostly coming from Arabic, English, French, and the Turkic languages. Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially Indo-Iranian languages and Turkic languages. Many Persian words have also found their way into the English language. See List of English words of Persian origin.

References

- Mace, J. (2003). Persian Grammar: For reference and revision. Routledge-Curzon, London.
- Mahootian, S. (1997). Persian. Descriptive Grammars. Routledge, London.
- Windfuhr, G. L. (1987). Persian. In Comrie, B., editor, The World’s Major Languages, pages 523–546. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

External links

- [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=PRS Ethnologue report for Eastern Persian]
- [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=PES Ethnologue report for Western Persian]
- [http://www.easypersian.com/ Easypersian.com]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/translation/Farsi/ Dictionary] with Farsi - English Translations from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition
- [http://www.aryanpour.com/ Aryanpour Persian-English English-Persian Dictionary]
- [http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?LangID=63 UCLA Language Materials Project: Persian]
- [http://www.unipers.com/ UniPers.com A proposed Latin-based writing system designed specifically for the Persian language.]
- [http://www.persiandirect.com Persian Linguistics Association]
- [http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Emmk4/AATP.htm American Association of Teachers of Persian (AATP)]
- [http://www.apersian.org The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature]
- [http://www.voanews.com/persian VOA’s Persian Language Service]
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian BBC’s Persian Language Service]
- [http://www.dwelle.de/persian Deutche Welle’s Persian Service]
- [http://iran-heritage.org/interestgroups/language-articles.htm An Online Persian Language Forum] Category:Classical languages Category:Iranian culture Category:Iranian languages Category:Languages of Afghanistan Category:Languages of Iran Category:Languages of Tajikistan Category:Languages of Uzbekistan Category:Languages of Pakistan Category:Languages of Russia ko:페르시아어 ja:ペルシア語 th:ภาษาเปอร์เซีย

Pashto

Pashto (پښتو; also known as Afghan, Pathan, Pushto, Pashtoe, Pashtu, Pushtu, and Pukhto) is the language spoken by ethnic Afghans, otherwise known as the Pashtun people who inhabit Afghanistan and the western provinces of Pakistan.

History

The language is believed to have originated in the Kandahar/Helmand areas of Afghanistan. Dari often dominates over Afghan/Pashto in Afghanistan in everyday government use since the capital was moved to Kabul from Kandahar in the 18th century. It is, along with Persian, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan. Pashto is spoken by ca 45% of Afghanistan's population as a mother tongue, according to the CIA, but this figure requires corroboration from a census that has not taken place in Afghanistan in decades. Pashto speakers in Pakistan range from 16% to as much as 20% of the population (including Afghan refugees), but an accurate census remains elusive due to the tribal and migratory nature of Pashtuns and their habit of secluding women.

Classification

Pashto is classified within the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. Other notable related tongues include Ossetic, now spoken in the Caucasus.

Geographic distribution

Pashto is spoken by about 12 million people in the south, east and a few northern provinces of Afghanistan and over 28 million in the Northwest Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Baluchistan. Smaller, modern "transplant" communities are also found in Sindh (Karachi, Hyderabad). Other smaller communities peopled by Pashtun invaders in the past centuries, exist in Northern India (Pathankot, Rampur) and northeastern Iran. It is spoken by a large part of Afghanistan population who are of the Pashtun tribe, as well as by ethnic Pashtuns who live on the other side of the disputed Durand Line in present-day Pakistan.

Official status

Pashto became one of the official languages of Afghanistan as late as 1936. The other is Persian, known as Dari in Afghanistan.

Dialects

The northern dialect is spoken by about 24,000,000 people, and the southern dialect by about 16,000,000. One of the main features of the dialects are the differences in the pronunciation of these four phonemes:
- Southwest (Kandahar):
- 1. ts
- 2. dz
- 3.
- 4.
- Southeast (Quetta):
- 1. ts
- 2. dz
- 3.
- 4.
- Northwest (Ghilzai):
- 1. s
- 2. z
- 3. ç
- 4. j
- Northeast (Peshawar):
- 1. s
- 2. z
- 3. x
- 4. g The dialect of Kandahar is the most conservative which retains both the dental affricates and the retroflex fricatives (all sounds are in IPA). However this contention is under dispute, as modern day Kandahar was in fact an off-shoot, established by the Gandharians who fled the Huns in 4-5 C.E (See The Pathans, by Sir Olaf Caroe) and gave it their name. (Its old name in Greek was Arachosia). The fact that the Pashto(known as "Pakhto") spoken in the northerly Gandhara locale at present, is different with regard to these Kandahari dialect sounds and yet as ancient - reflects a major dispute among those Pashtun scholars who contend for proof of Pashtun "originality"; it proves that both these major dialects evolved concurrently and yet under separate influences.

Grammar

Pashto is a S-O-V language. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for gender (Masculine/Feminine), number (Singular/Plural) and case (Direct/Oblique). Direct case is used for subjects and direct objects in the present tense. Oblique case is used after most pre- and post-positions as well as in the past tense as the subject of transitive verbs. There is no definite article, but instead there is extensive use of the demonstratives this/that. The verb system is very intricate with the following: Simple Present, Subjunctive, Simple Past, Past Progressive, Present Perfect,and Past Perfect. In any of the past tenses (Simple Past, Past Progressive, Present Perfect and Past Perfect) Pashto is an ergative language, i.e. transitive verbs in any of the past tenses agree with the object of the sentence.

Vocabulary

Pashto, being an Indo-European language, shares many cognates with other related languages. Following the advent of Islam in Afghanistan, the Pashto language has received a significant influx of loan-words from Arabic, Persian and various Turkic languages.

Writing system

From the time of Islam's rise in Central Asia, Pashto has used a modified version of Perso-Arabic script. In recent years, however, because of the Internet, it has become increasingly popular to write Pashto in the Latin script. Pashto has several letters which do not appear in any other Perso-Arabic script which represent the retroflex versions of the consonants t,d,r,n. The letters are written like the standard Arabic ta', dal, ra', and nun with a "pandak" attached underneath which looks like a small circle. They also have the letters ge and xin (the initial sound of which is like the German ch found in the word "ich") which look like a ra' and sin respectively with a dot above and beneath. Pashto also has the extra letters that Persian has added to the Arabic alphabet. See http://www.khpalapashtu.com/sitee/pashtula/pasalph.htm to view the entire alphabet.

Examples

- Note - The following transliterations represent the Kabuli dialect. Examples of intransitive sentence forms using the verb "to go" "tlil": Command (you masculine-singular):
- Maktab ta dza! or Maktab ta laarr sha!
- School to go - Go to school! Command (you masculine-plural):
- Maktab ta dzey! or Maktab ta laarr shey!
- School to go -Go to school! Simple Present:
- zuh maktab ta dzum.
- I school to go - I go to school. Subjunctive:
- zuh ghwaarum che maktab ta laarr shum.
- I want that to school go (Masculine-I-verb form) - I want to go to school. Persent Perfect:
- zuh maktab ta tlilai yum.
- I school to gone (Masculine verb form) am - I have gone to school. Simple Past:
- zuh maktab ta wolaarrum.
- I school to went - I went to school. Past Perfect:
- zuh maktab ta tlilai wum.
- I school to gone (Masculine verb form) was - I had gone to school. Past Progressive:
- zuh maktab ta tlilum.
- I school to was going - I was going to school or I used to go to school Examples of transative sentence forms using the verb "to eat" "khwarril": Command (You singular):
- Paneer wokhuurra!
- cheese eat - Eat the cheese!
- Paneer muhkhuurra!
- cheese no-eat - Don't eat the cheese! Command (You plural):
- Paneer wokhuurrey!
- cheese eat - Eat the cheese!
- Paneer muhkhuurrey!
- cheese no-eat - Don't eat the cheese! Simple Present:
- zuh paneer khuurrum.
- I cheese eat - I eat cheese. Subjunctive:
- zuh ghwaarum che paneer wokhuurrum.
- I want that cheese eat (I-verb form) - I want to eat cheese. Present Perfect: ما پنېر خوړلی دی
- maa paneer khwarrilai dai.
- me (I-oblique) cheese eaten (masculine-singular verb form) is - I have eaten cheese. Simple Past:
- maa paneer wokhorro.
- me (I-oblique) cheese ate - I ate cheese Past Perfect:
- maa paneer khwarrilai wo.
- me (I-oblique) cheese eaten (masculine-singular verb form) was - I had eaten cheese. Past Progressive:
- maa paneer khwarruh.
- me (I oblique) cheese was eating (masculine-singular verb form) - I was eating cheese or I used to eat cheese.

External links

- [http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profp03.htm UCLA article]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=pst Ethnologue report] Category:Southeastern Iranian languages Category:Languages of Afghanistan Category:Languages of Pakistan th:ภาษาพาชตู

January 1

January 1 is the first day of the calendar year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Here a calendar year refers to the order in which the months are displayed, January to December. The first day of the medieval Julian year was usually a day other than January 1. This day was adopted as the first day of the Julian year by all Western European countries except England between about 1450 and 1600. The Gregorian calendar as promulgated in 1582 did not specify that January 1 was to be either New Year's Day or the first day of its numbered year. Although England began its numbered year on March 25 (Lady Day or Annunciation Day), between the 13th century and 1752, January 1 was called New Year's Day, and was, with Christmas and occasionally Twelfth Night, a holiday when gifts were exchanged. 364 days (365 in leap years) remain in the year after this day.

Events

- 45 BC - The Julian calendar first takes effect.
- 404 - Last known gladiator competition in Rome takes place.
- 630 - Prophet Muhammad sets out toward Mecca with the army that will capture it bloodlessly.
- 990 - Kievan Rus' adopts the Julian calendar.
- 1438 - Albert II of Habsburg is crowned King of Hungary.
- 1600 - Scotland begins using the Julian calendar.
- 1651 - Charles II crowned King of Scotland
- 1673 - Regular mail delivery begins between New York and Boston.
- 1700 - Russia begins using the Julian calendar.
- 1707 - John V is crowned King of Portugal
- 1738 - Bouvet Island is discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier.
- 1788 - First edition of The Times of London, previously The Daily Universal Register, is published.
- 1797 - Albany replaces New York City as the capital on New York.
- 1801 - Legislative union of Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland is completed to form United Kingdom.
- 1801 - The first known asteroid, 1 Ceres, is discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi.
- 1804 - French rule ends in Haiti.
- 1808 - Importation of slaves into the United States is banned.
- 1818 - Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is published.
- 1855 - London, Ontario is incorporated as a city.
- 1861 - Porfirio Diaz conquers Mexico City.
- 1863 - American Civil War: The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect.
- 1863 - The first claim under the Homestead Act is made by Daniel Freeman for a farm in Nebraska.
- 1880 - Ferdinand de Lesseps begins French construction of the Panama Canal.
- 1887 - Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India in Delhi.
- 1892 - Ellis Island opens to begin accepting immigrants to the United States.
- 1893 - Japan begins using the Gregorian calendar.
- 1894 - The Manchester Ship Canal, England, was officially opened to traffic.
- 1898 - New York City annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York. The four initial boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx, are joined on January 25th by Staten Island to create the modern city of five boroughs.
- 1899 - Spanish rule ends in Cuba.
- 1901 - Nigeria becomes a British protectorate.
- 1901 - The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia; Edmund Barton becomes first Prime Minister.
- 1901 - The first official Mummers Parade is held.
- 1902 - The first Rose Bowl game is played in Pasadena, California.
- 1908 - For the first time, a ball is dropped in New York City's Times Square to signify the start of the New Year.
- 1911 - Northern Territory is separated from South Australia and transferred to Commonwealth control.
- 1912 - The Republic of China is established.
- 1916 - German troops abandon Yaoundé and their Kamerun colony to British forces and begin the long march to Spanish Guinea.
- 1934 - Alcatraz Island becomes a U.S. federal prison.
- 1934 - Nazi Germany passes the "Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring".
- 1935 - Bucknell University wins the first Orange Bowl 26-0 over the University of Miami.
- 1937 - Anastasio Somoza becomes President of Nicaragua.
- 1937 - The first Cotton Bowl game is played in Dallas, Texas.
- 1939 - The Vienna New Year's Concert is first held.
- 1942 - The Declaration by the United Nations is signed by twenty-six nations.
- 1948 - British railways are nationalised to form British Rail.
- 1948 - After partition, India declines to pay the agreed share of Rs.550 million in cash balances to Pakistan.
- 1948 - Enrico De Nicola formally becomes President of the Italian Republic, but refuses to be a candidate for the first constitutional election the following May.
- 1949 - UN Cease-fire orders to operate in Kashmir from one minute before midnight. War between India and Pakistan stops accordingly.
- 1956 - The Republic of the Sudan achieves independence from the Egyptian Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
- 1958 - The European Community is established.
- 1959 - Fulgencio Batista, President of the Republic of Cuba, is overthrown by Fidel Castro's forces.
- 1960 - The Republic of Cameroon achieves independence from France and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
- 1962 - Western Samoa achieves independence from New Zealand; its name is changed to the Independent State of Western Samoa.
- 1964 - The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is divided into the independent republics of Zambia and Malawi, and the British-controlled Rhodesia.
- 1969 - Marien Ngouabi formally becomes the President of the Republic of Congo.
- 1970 - The Unix epoch begins at 00:00:00 UTC.
- 1971 - Cigarette advertisements are banned on American television.
- 1973 - The Kingdom of Denmark, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland are admitted into the European Community.
- 1976 - NBC introduces its new logo: an abstract N, similar to the Nebraska Educational Television Network logo.
- 1978 - Air India Flight 855 Boeing 747 explodes and crashes into the sea off the coast of Bombay, killing 213.
- 1979 - Formal diplomatic relations are established between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America.
- 1981 - The Republic of Greece is admitted into the European Community.
- 1981 - The Republic of Palau achieves self-government; it is not yet independent from the United States of America.
- 1983 - The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet.
- 1984 - AT&T is broken up into twenty-two independent units.
- 1984 - The Sultanate of Brunei becomes independent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
- 1985 - The Internet's Domain Name System is created.
- 1985 - The first British mobile phone call is made by Ernie Wise to Vodafone.
- 1986 - Aruba becomes independent of Curaçao, though it remains in free association with the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
- 1986 - Spain and Portugal are admitted into the European Community.
- 1988 - The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America comes into existence, creating the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States of America.
- 1993 - Velvet Divorce: Czechoslovakia is divided into the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic.
- 1993 - A single market within the European Community is introduced.
- 1993 - Pakistan is elected member of the 15-nation UN Security Council.
- 1994 - The Zapatista Army of National Liberation initiates twelve days of armed conflict in the Mexican State of Chiapas.
- 1994 - The North American Free Trade Agreement comes into effect.
- 1995 - The World Trade Organization comes into effect.
- 1995 - The Kingdom of Sweden and the republics of Austria and Finland are admitted into the European Union.
- 1995 - The Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe becomes the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
- 1996 - Curaçao gains limited self-government, though it remains within free association with the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
- 1997 - The Republic of Zaïre officially joins the World Trade Organization, as Zaïre.
- 1998 - Smoking is banned in all bars and restaurants in the State of California.
- 1999 - The Euro currency is introduced.
- 2002 - Euro banknotes and coins become legal tender in twelve of the European Union's member states.
- 2002 - The Republic of China officially joins the World Trade Organization, as Chinese Taipei.
- 2002 - The Open Skies mutual surveillance treaty, initially signed in 1992, officially enters into force.
- 2003 - Luís Inácio Lula da Silva becomes president of the Federative Republic of Brazil.
- 2004 - Pervez Musharraf receives a vote of confidence to continue as the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan from Parliament and the provincial assemblies.

Births

- 766 - Ali ar-Rida, Shia Imam (d. 818)
- 1431 - Pope Alexander VI (d. 1503)
- 1449 - Lorenzo de Medici, Italian statesman (d. 1492)
- 1484 - Huldrych Zwingli, Swiss Protestant leader (d. 1531)
- 1516 - Margareta Leijonhufvud, queen of Gustav I of Sweden (d. 1551)
- 1557 - Stephen Bocskay, Prince of Transylvania (d. 1606)
- 1600 - Friedrich Spanheim, Dutch theologian (d. 1649)
- 1614 - John Wilkins, English Bishop of Chester (d. 1672)
- 1618 - Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Spanish painter (d. 1682)
- 1638 - Emperor Go-Sai of Japan (d. 1685)
- 1648 - Elkanah Settle, English writer (d. 1724)
- 1655 - Christian Thomasius, German jurist (d. 1728)
- 1684 - Arnold Drakenborch, Dutch classical scholar (d. 1748)
- 1704 - Soame Jenyns, English writer (d. 1787)
- 1711 - Franz Freiherr von der Trenck, Austrian soldier (d. 1749)
- 1714 - Kristijonas Donelaitis, Lithuanian poet (d. 1780)
- 1735 - Paul Revere, American silversmith and patriot (d. 1818)
- 1750 - Frederick Muhlenberg, first speaker of the United States House of Representatives (d. 1801)
- 1752 - Betsy Ross, American seamstress (d. 1836)
- 1774 - André Marie Constant Duméril, French zoologist (d. 1860)
- 1793 - Francesco Guardi, Italian artist (b. 1712)
- 1823 - Sándor Petőfi, Hungarian poet and revolutionary (d. 1849)
- 1833 - Robert Lawson, New Zealand architect (d. 1902)
- 1839 - Ouida, English writer (d. 1908)
- 1854 - Sir James George Frazer, Scottish anthropologist (d. 1941)
- 1860 - George Washington Carver, American educator, inventor, and botanist (d. 1943)
- 1863 - Pierre de Coubertin, French initiator of the modern Olympic Games (d. 1937)
- 1864 - Alfred Stieglitz, American photographer (d. 1946)
- 1873 - Mariano Azuela, Mexican novelist (d. 1952)
- 1874 - Gustave Whitehead, German-American inventor (d. 1927)
- 1876 - Harriet Brooks, Canadian physicist (d. 1933)
- 1879 - E. M. Forster, English novelist (d. 1970)
- 1887 - Wilhelm Canaris, German admiral (d. 1945)
- 1890 - Anton Melik, Slovenian geographer (d. 1966)
- 1892 - Artur Rodzinski, Croatian conductor (d. 1958)
- 1894 - Satyendra Nath Bose, Indian mathematician (d. 1974)
- 1895 - J. Edgar Hoover, American Federal Bureau of Investigation director (d. 1972)
- 1900 - Xavier Cugat, Catalan-Cuban musician, bandleader (d. 1990)
- 1902 - Buster Nupen, South African cricketer (d. 1977)
- 1904 - Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry, Pakistani politician (d. 1982)
- 1906 - Giovanni D'Anzi, Italian songwriter (d. 1974)
- 1909 - Dana Andrews, American actor (d. 1992)
- 1909 - Barry M. Goldwater, U.S. Senator from Arizona and Presidential candidate (d. 1998)
- 1911 - Hank Greenberg, baseball player (d. 1986)
- 1912 - Kim Philby, British spy (d. 1988)
- 1917 - Jule Gregory Charney, meteorologist (d. 1981)
- 1917 - Albert Mol, Dutch actor (d. 2004)
- 1919 - J. D. Salinger, American novelist
- 1920 - Virgilio Savona, Italian singer and songwriter (Quartetto Cetra)
- 1921 - Isma'il Raji' al-Faruqi, Palestinian-born philosopher and comparative religion scholar (d. 1986)
- 1922 - Rocky Graziano, American boxer (d. 1990)
- 1925 - Stymie Beard, American actor (d. 1981)
- 1927 - Vernon L. Smith, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1927 - Doak Walker, American football star (d 1998)
- 1928 - Ernest Tidyman, American writer (d. 1984)
- 1933 - Frederick Lowy, Canadian medical educator, ethicist, and university president
- 1933 - Joe Orton, English writer (d. 1967)
- 1940 - Frank Langella American actor
- 1942 - Martin Frost, American politician
- 1942 - Country Joe McDonald, American musician (Country Joe and the Fish)
- 1942 - Gennadi Sarafanov, cosmonaut
- 1943 - Don Novello, American actor, comedian, and writer
- 1945 - Jacky Ickx, Belgian race car driver
- 1946 - Rivelino, Brazilian football player
- 1953 - Greg Carmichael, British guitarist
- 1957 - Luis Guzmán, Puerto Rican actor
- 1958 - Grandmaster Flash, West Indian-born singer
- 1959 - Azali Assoumani, Comorese president
- 1961 - Mark Wingett, British actor
- 1964 - Dedee Pfeiffer, American actress
- 1966 - Embeth Davidtz, American actress
- 1968 - Davor Šuker, Croatian footballer
- 1969 - Verne Troyer - American actor
- 1970 - Gabriel Jarret, American actor
- 1972 - Neve McIntosh, Scottish actress
- 1975 - Joe Cannon, American soccer player
- 1977 - Hasan Salihamidžić, Bosnian footballer
- 1978 - Erica Durance, Canadian actress
- 1978 - Jared Fogle, American calibate
- 1978 - Paramahamsa Sri Nithyananda, Indian spiritual guru
- 1978 - Nina Bott, German actress
- 1979 - Brody Dalle, Australian singer (The Distillers)
- 1979 - Koichi Domoto, Japanese artist
- 1980 - Elin Nordegren, Swedish model
- 1981 - Zsolt Baumgartner, Hungarian race car driver
- 1981 - Abdulkadir Kocak, Turkish boxer
- 1982 - David Nalbandian, Argentinian tennis player
- 1985 - Steve Davis, Irish footballer

Deaths

- 379 - Saint Basil of Caesarea (b. 330)
- 404 - Saint Telemachus
- 874 - Hasan al-Askari, eleventh Shia Imam (b. 846)
- 898 - Odo, Count of Paris (b. 860)
- 1204 - King Haakon III of Norway
- 1384 - King Charles II of Navarre (b. 1332)
- 1515 - King Louis XII of France (b. 1462)
- 1554 - Pedro de Valdivia, Spanish conquistador
- 1559 - Christian III of Denmark and Norway (b. 1503)
- 1560 - Joachim Du Bellay, French poet
- 1617 - Hendrik Goltzius, Dutch painter (b. 1558)
- 1679 - Jan Steen, Dutch painter
- 1716 - William Wycherley, English dramatist
- 1730 - Samuel Sewall, English-born judge (b. 1652)
- 1742 - Peregrine Bertie, 2nd Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven, English statesman (b. 1686)
- 1748 - Johann Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician (b. 1667)
- 1766 - James Francis Edward Stuart, "The Old Pretender" (b. 1688)
- 1782 - Johann Christian Bach, German composer (b. 1735)
- 1789 - Fletcher Norton, 1st Baron Grantley, English politician (b. 1716)
- 1793 - Francesco Guardi, Venetian painter (b. 1712)
- 1800 - Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, French naturalist (b. 1716)
- 1817 - Martin Heinrich Klaproth, German chemist (b. 1743)
- 1892 - Roswell B. Mason, Mayor of Chicago (b. 1805)
- 1894 - Heinrich Hertz, German physicist (b. 1857)
- 1933 - Harriet Brooks, Canadian physicist (b. 1876)
- 1944 - Charles Turner, Australian cricketer (b. 1862)
- 1953 - Hank Williams, American singer (b. 1923)
- 1958 - Edward Weston, American photographer (b. 1886)
- 1960 - Margaret Sullavan, American actress (b. 1911)
- 1964 - Bechara El Khoury, President of Lebanon (b. 1890)
- 1972 - Maurice Chevalier, French actor and singer (b. 1888)
- 1981 - Beulah Bondi, American actress (b. 1888)
- 1986 - Alfredo Binda, Italian cyclist (b. 1902)
- 1992 - Grace Hopper, American computer pioneer (b. 1906)
- 1994 - Lord Arthur Espie Porritt, Governor-General of New Zealand (b. 1900)
- 1994 - Cesar Romero, American actor (b. 1907)
- 1995 - Fred West, British serial killer (suicide) (b. 1941)
- 1995 - Eugene Wigner, Hungarian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
- 1996 - Arleigh Burke, U.S. admiral (b. 1901)
- 1997 - Townes Van Zandt, American musician (b. 1944)
- 1998 - Helen Wills Moody, American tennis player (b. 1905)
- 2001 - Ray Walston, American actor (b. 1914)
- 2003 - Joe Foss, American politician and fighter pilot (b. 1915)
- 2005 - Shirley Chisholm, first black U.S. Congresswoman (b. 1924)
- 2005 - Hugh John Frederick Lawson, 6th Baron Burnham, British newspaperman and politician (b. 1931)
- 2005 - Bob Matsui, U.S. Congressman (b. 1941)

Holidays and observances

- The seventh day and eighth night of Christmas in Western Christianity.
- Many countries around the world using Gregorian Calendar - New Year's Day; often celebrated at 0:00 with fireworks.
- Catholicism - Holy Day of Obligation Octave of Christmas, Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God (New calendar).
- Catholicism - Feast of the Circumcision (Old calendar).
- Catholicism - National Migration Week begins (varying official support by the office of U.S. President, not strictly religious)
- Haiti Independence Day
- Taiwan Founding of Republic of China.
- Sudan Independence Day
- Cuba Liberation Day
- Slovakia: Establishment of Slovak Republic.
- Last day of Kwanzaa
- Vienna New Year's Concert
- Pasadena, California - The Tournament of Roses parade and, traditionally, the Rose Bowl football championship
- World Day for Prayer for Peace

External links

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/1 BBC: On This Day] ---- December 31 - January 2 - December 1 - February 1 — listing of all days ko:1월 1일 ms:1 Januari ja:1月1日 simple:January 1 th:1 มกราคม

1965

1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link goes to calendar).

Events

January-February

common year starting on Friday
- January 4 - United States President Lyndon Johnson proclaims his "Great Society" during his State of the Union address.
- January 12 - Bodies of two 15 year olds - Christine Sharrock and Marrine Schmidt - found at Wanda Beach, Sydney (Wanda Beach Murders)
- January 14 - Prime Ministers of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years
- January 24 - Winston Churchill dies at the age of 90.
- January 26 - Hindi becomes the official language of India.
- January 30 - Winston Churchill's funeral is held in London.
- February 6 - Sir Stanley Matthews plays his final First Division game, at the record age of 50 years and 5 days
- February 7 - US begins regular bombing of North Vietnamese towns and villages
- February 9 - Vietnam War: The first United States combat troops are sent to South Vietnam
- February 15 - A new red and white maple leaf design is adopted as the flag of Canada replacing the Union Flag and the Canadian Red Ensign.
- February 18 - The Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom
- February 20 - Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.
- February 21 - Malcolm X is assassinated on the first day of National Brotherhood Week at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City by Black Muslims

March

- March 7 - Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama
- March 8 - Vietnam War: 3,500 United States Marines arrive in South Vietnam becoming the first American combat troops in Vietnam
- March 8 - First US combat forces arrive in Vietnam
- March 9 - Second march from Selma to Montgomery under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. stops at the bridge that was the site of Bloody Sunday to hold a prayer service and return to Selma in obedience to a court restraining order. White supremacists beat up white Unitarian Universalist minister James J. Reeb later that day in Selma, Alabama.
- March 10 - Goldie, a London Zoo golden eagle is recaptured after 13 days of freedom
- March 11 - White Unitarian Universalist minister James J. Reeb, beaten by White Supremacists in Selma, Alabama on March 9 following the second march from Selma, dies in a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama.
- March 18 - Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space
- March 21 - Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9 which is the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes
- March 21 - Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. begin march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery
- March 23 - NASA launches Gemini III with the United States' first two-person crew into earth orbit (Gus Grissom and John Young).
- March 24- Mark "The Undertaker" Callaway, Professional Wrestler March 25 - Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully end march from Selma, arriving at the capitol in Montgomery

April

- April 6 - Launch of Early Bird communications satellite. It becomes operational May 2 and is placed in commercial service in June.
- April 9 - The West German parliament extends the statute of limitations on Nazi war crimes. Also, in Houston, Texas, the Harris County Domed Stadium (or commonly known as Astrodome) was opened.
- April 11 - The Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak: An estimated fifty-one tornadoes (forty-seven confirmed) hit in six Midwestern states killing anywhere from 256 to 271 people and injuring some 1,500 more.
- April 14 - In Cold Blood killers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, convicted of murdering four members of the Herbert Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, are executed by hanging at the Kansas State Penitentiary For Men in Lansing, Kansas.
- April 21 - NY World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, NY, reopens.
- April 23 - The Pennine Way officially opened.
- April 24 - Bodies of Portuguese opposition politician Humberto Delgado and his secretary Arajaris Campos are found in a forest near Villanueva del Fresno, Spain. They were killed February 12.
- April 24 - Fighting breaks out in the Dominican Republic as officers loyal to deposed President Juan Bosch lead a mutiny against the right wing junta running the country. US troops are later sent by President Lyndon B. Johnson "for the stated purpose of protecting US citizens and preventing an alleged Communist takeover of the country", thus thwarting the possibilty of "another Cuba".
- April 28 - Vietnam War: Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies announces that the country will substantially increase its number of troops in South Vietnam, supposedly at the request of the Saigon government, although it is later revealed that Menzies had asked the leadership in Saigon to send the request at the behest of the Americans.
- April 29 - Australia announces that it is sending an infantry battalion to support the South Vietnam government.

May-June

- May 1 - Bob (later Sir Robert) Askin replaces Jack Renshaw as Premier of New South Wales.
- May 2 - US president Johnson sends troops to the Dominican Republic.
- May 13 - West German court of appeals condemns behavior of ex-defense minister Franz Joseph Strauss during the Spiegel scandal.
- May 19 - Tui Malila, the oldest tortoise or living animal ever, dies of natural causes.
- May 29 - A mining accident in Dhambas, India kills 274.
- May 31 - Racing driver Jim Clark wins the Indianapolis 500, and later wins the Formula One world driving championship in the same year.
- June 2 - Vietnam War: The first contingent of Australian combat troops arrives in South Vietnam.
- June 3 - US astronaut Edward White makes first US space walk during Gemini IV.
- June 7 - A mining accident in Kakanji, Bosnia results in 128 deaths.
- June 10 - Vietnam War: Battle of Dong Xoai begins - About 1,500 Vietcong mount a mortar attack on Dong Xoai and then overrun its military headquarters and adjoining militia compound.
- June 19 - Houari Boumedienne's Revolutionary Council ousts Ahmed Ben Bella in a bloodless coup in Algeria.
- June 20 - Police in Algiers break up demonstrations by people who have taken to the streets chanting slogans in support of deposed President Ben Bella.
- June 22 - Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea.
- June 24 - Freddie Mills, former British boxing champion, is found shot in his car in Soho.

July

- July 14 - US spacecraft Mariner 4 flies by Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to return images from the red planet
- July 16 - The Mont Blanc Tunnel is used for the first time
- July 22 - Sir Alec Douglas-Home suddenly resigns as a head of the British Conservative Party
- July 24 - Vietnam War: Four F-4C Phantoms escorting a bombing raid at Kang Chi are the targets of antiaircraft missiles in the first such attack against American planes in the war. One is shot down and the other three sustain damage
- July 27 - Edward Heath becomes Leader of the British Conservative Party
- July 28 - Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson announces his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000
- July 29 - Vietnam War: The first 4,000 101st Airborne Division paratroopers arrive in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay
- July 30 - War on Poverty: US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid

August

- August 1 - Cigarette advertising banned in British television
- August 6 - US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into United States law
- August 7 - Singapore is expelled and separated from the Federation of Malaysia.
- August 9 - Singapore proclaims its independence from Malaysia
- August 9 - An explosion at a missile plant in Arkansas kills 53
- August 9 – Indonesian president Sukarno collapses in public
- August 11 - Watts Riots begin in Los Angeles, California
- August 13 - Jefferson Airplane debut at the Matrix in San Francisco, California and begin to appear there regularly.
- August 18 - Vietnam War: Operation Starlite begins as 5,500 United States Marines destroy a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in Quang Ngai Province, in the first major American ground battle of the war. The Marines were tipped-off by a Viet Cong deserter who said that there was an attack planned against the US base at Chu Lai
- August 19 - At the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, 66 ex-SS personnel receive life sentences, 15 others smaller ones

September

- September 2 - Pakistani troops enter the Indian sector of Kashmir
- September 6 - Indian troops march on Lahore
- September 7 - China announces that it will reinforce its troops in the Indian border
- September 7 - Vietnam War: In a follow-up to August's Operation Starlite, United States Marines and South Vietnamese forces initiate Operation Piranha on the Batangan Peninsula, 23 miles south of the Chu Lai Marine base
- September 8 - India opens two additional fronts against Pakistan
- September 9 - UN secretary general U Thant negotiates with Pakistani president Ayub Khan
- September 9 - U Thant recommends China for UN membership
- September 13 - Congress of Arab countries begins in Casablanca - Habib Bourgiba boycotts the meeting
- September 14 - Opening of fourth and final period of Second Vatican Council
- September 16 - China protests against Indian provocations in its border region
- September 16 - In Iraq, Prime Minister Razzak's attempted coup fails
- September 17 - Stefan Stafanopoulos forms a new government in Greece and ends a two-year old political crisis
- September 18 - China claims that US troops have used poison gas in South Vietnam
- September 18 - In Denmark, Palle Sörensen shoots four policemen in pursuit - apprehended the same day
- September 19 - Soviet prime minister Alexei Kosygin invites the leaders of India and Pakistan to meet in Soviet Union to negotiate
- September 20 - End of term for Tuanku Syed Putra ibni Almarhum Syed Hassan Jamalullail as the 3rd Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
- September 21 - Commander of US troops in Vietnam, general William Westmoreland, pleads Washington to cancel the ban to use mustard gas
- September 21 - Ismail Nasiruddin Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Zainal Abidin III, Sultan of Terengganu becomes the 4th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
- September 22 - Radio Peking announces that Indian troops have dismantled their equipment on the Chinese side of the border
- September 24 - Fighting between Indian and Pakistani troops erupts again
- September 24 - British governor of Aden cancels the Aden constitution and takes direct control of the protectorate because of the bad security situation
- September 27 - Largest tanker ship at the time, Tokyo Maru, launched in Yokohama
- September 28 - Fidel Castro announces that everybody who wants can immigrate to USA
- September 28 - Taal Volcano in Luzon, Philippines, erupts - hundreds dead
- September 30 – Attempted communist coup in Indonesia. Indonesian army crushes it with the lead of general Suharto

October

- October 3 - Fidel Castro announces that Che Guevara has resigned and left the country
- October 4 - Prime minister Ian Smith of Rhodesia and Arthur Bottomley of British Commonwealth begin negotiations in London - they end on October 8 without results
- October 5 - Pakistan sever diplomatic relations with Malaysia because of the disagreement in UN
- October 5 - The Beatles are set to release their song 'Love Me Do' on Parlophone
- October 6 - Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, the Moors Murderers, arrested.
- October 8 - Indonesian army arrests and executes communists
- October 8 - Olympic Committee admits East Germany as a member
- October 8 - The Post Office Tower opens in London
- October 9 - Yale University presents the "Vinland map"
- October 9 - Brigade of South Korean soldiers arrive in South Vietnam
- October 10 - First group of Cuban refugees travels to USA
- October 12 - Per Borten forms a government in Norway
- October 12 - UN general council recommends that United Kingdom try everything to stop a rebellion in Rhodesia
- October 13 - President of Congo, Joseph Kasavubu, fires Prime Minister Moise Tsombe and forms a provisional government with Evariste Kimba in a lead
- October 15 - Vietnam War: The anti-war student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam stages the first public burning of a draft card in the United States
- October 16 - Suharto takes power in Indonesia
- October 17 - NY World's Fair at Flushing Meadows, NY, closes. Due to financial losses, some of the projected improvements on the park on the site fail to materialize.
- October 18 - Indonesian government declares communist party illegal
- October 20 - Ludwig Erhard elected as Chancellor in West Germany
- October 21 - Ikeja-Seki comet
- October 21 - OAU meeting begins in Accra
- October 22 - French authors André Figueras and Jacques Laurent are fined for their comments against Charles De Gaulle
- October 22 - African countries demand that the United Kingdom use force to prevent Rhodesia from declaring unilateral independence
- October 24 - British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Arthur Bottomley travel to Rhodesia for negotiations
- October 25 - Soviet Union declares its support of African countries in case Rhodesia unilaterally declares independence
- October 26
- Anti-government demonstrations in the Dominican Republic
- The body of Sylvia Likens discovered by authorities in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.
- October 27 - Brazilian president Branco removes power of parliament, legal courts and opposition parties
- October 28 - French foreign minister Couve de Murville travels to Moscow
- October 28 - Pope Paul VI announces that ecumenical council has decided that Jews are not collectively responsible for the killing of Christ
- October 28 - In St. Louis, Missouri, the 630-foot-tall parabolic steel Gateway Arch is completed
- October 29 - Kidnapping of Mehdi Ben Barka
- October 30 - Vietnam War: Just miles from Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack by wave after wave of Viet Cong forces, killing 56 guerrillas. Among the dead, a sketch of Marine positions was found on the body of a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who sold drinks to the Marines the day before.
- October 31 - Indonesian army announces that it is fighting with communist guerillas in Java

November

- November 2 - Republican John V. Lindsay elected mayor of New York City
- November 3 - Charles De Gaulle announces that he will stand in next presidential election
- November 5 - Martial law announced in Rhodesia. UN General Assembly accepts British intent to use force against Rhodesia if necessary with a vote of 82-9.
- November 6 - Freedom Flights begin: Cuba and the United States formally agree to start an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States (by 1971 250,000 Cubans take advantage of this program).
- November 8 - The British Indian Ocean Territory is created, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands (on June 23, 1976 Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches were returned to Seychelles).
- November 9 - Northeast Blackout of 1965: Several U.S. states (VT, NH, MA, CT, RI, NY and portions of NJ) and parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 1/2 hours.
- November 9 - Vietnam War: In New York City, 22-year old Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in protest of the war in Vietnam (this was the second such incident in a week; on November 2 32-year-old Quaker member Norman Morrison did the same thing in front of The Pentagon)
- November 11 - In Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), the white minority regime of Ian Smith unilaterally declares independence
- November 12 - UN Security Council resolution (voted 10-0) recommends that other countries would not recognize independent Rhodesia
- November 13 - The SS Yarmouth Castle burns and sinks 60 miles off Nassau with the loss of 90 lives.
- November 14 - Vietnam War: Battle of the Ia Drang begins - In the Ia Drang Valley of the Central Highlands in Vietnam, the first major engagement of the war between regular American and North Vietnamese forces begins
- November 15 - US racer Craig Breedlove sets a new land speed record of 600.601 mph
- November 16 - Venera program: The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe from Baikonur, Kazakhstan toward Venus (on March 1, 1966 it became the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet)
- November 16 - Disney launches Epcot Center
- November 20 - UN Security Council recommends that all states stop trading with Rhodesia
- November 23 - Soviet general Mikhail Kazakov becomes commander of Warsaw Pact
- November 24 - Queen Elizabeth of Belgium dies
- November 24 - Congolese lieutenant general Mobutu ousts Joseph Kasavubu and declares himself president
- November 26 - At the Hammaguira launch facility in the Sahara Desert, France launches a Diamant-A rocket with its first satellite, Asterix-1 on board, becoming the third country to enter space.
- November 27 - Vietnam War: The Pentagon tells US President Lyndon B. Johnson that if planned major sweep operations needed to neutralize Viet Cong forces during the next year were to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam has to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000
- November 28 - Vietnam War: In response to US President Lyndon B. Johnson's call for "more flags" in Vietnam, Philippines President Elect Ferdinand Marcos announces he will send troops to help fight in South Vietnam.
- November 29 - Canadian satellite Alouette 2 is launched.

December

- December 1 - The Border Security Force is established in India as a special force to guard the borders.
- December 3 - First British aid flight arrive in Lusaka - Zambia has asked for British help against Rhodesia
- December 3 - Members of OAU decide to sever diplomatic relations with United Kingdom unless the British government ends rebellion of Rhodesia by mid-December
- December 5 – Charles De Gaulle re-elected as French president with 10,828,421 votes
- December 8 - Rhodesian prime minister warns that Rhodesia would resist trade embargo by neighboring countries with force
- December 8 - Closing of Second Vatican Council
- December 12 - In baseball, Roy Hofheinz fires manager Lum Harris (record of 65-97). Grady Hatton takes over the Astros.
- December 15 - Tanzania and Guinea sever diplomatic relations with United Kingdom
- December 15 - Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 perform the first controlled rendezvous in Earth orbit
- December 17 - British government begins oil embargo against Rhodesia - USA joins the effort
- December 21 - Soviet Unions announces that it has shipped rockets to North Vietnam
- December 21 - Soviet scientists condemn Trofim Lysenko
- December 21 - Konrad Adenauer resigns from the post of chairman of the Christian Democratic party
- December 22 - Military coup on Dahomey
- December 22 - 70 mph speed limit imposed on British roads
- December 27 - British oil platform Sea Gem collapses in the North Sea
- December 28 - Italian foreign minister Mintore Fanfani resigns
- December 30 - President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia announces that Zambia and United Kingdom have agreed to a deadline before which the Rhodesian white government should be ousted
- December 30 - Ferdinand Marcos becomes President of the Philippines

Unknown dates

- The Council for National Academic Awards is established in the UK
- TAT-4 cable goes into operation.
- Mont Blanc tunnel between France and Italy completed.
- Desteldonk becomes a part of Ghent (East Flanders, Flanders, Belgium)
- California City, California incorporated.

Births

January-February

- January 9 - Joely Richardson, British actress
- January 11 - Matthew Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy and nephew of U.S president John F Kennedy and Edward M Kennedy
- January 14 - Marc Delissen, Dutch field hockey player
- January 15 - Adam Jones, American musician (Tool)
- January 18 - Dave Attell, American comedian
- January 20 - Sophie, Countess of Wessex
- January 20 - John Michael Montgomery, American singer
- January 22 - DJ Jazzy Jeff, American rapper and actor
- January 22 - Diane Lane, American actress
- January 27 - Alan Cumming, Scottish actor
- January 29 - Dominik Hasek, Czech hockey player
- February 1 - Sherilyn Fenn, American actress
- February 1 - Brandon Lee, American actor (d. 1993)
- February 1 - Princess Stéphanie of Monaco
- February 11 - Stephen Gregory, American actor
- February 18 - Dr. Dre, American rapper and music producer
- February 22 - Scott Lowell, American actor
- February 23 - Michael Dell, American computer manufacturer

March-April

- March 1 - Stewart Elliott, Canadian jockey
- March 4 - Gary Helms, American kick-boxer
- March 7 - Jesper Parnevik, Swedish golfer
- March 9 - Benito Santiago, baseball player
- March 10 - Rod Woodson, American football player
- March 11 - Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen, British television presenter
- March 12 - Steve Finley, baseball player
- March 14 - Kevin Brown, baseball player
- March 24 - Mark Calaway, American professional wrestler
- March 25 - Sarah Jessica Parker, American actress
- March 25 - Stefka Kostadinova, Bulgarian high jumper and president of the Bulgarian olympic committee
- April 1 - Robert Steadman, English composer
- April 4 - Robert Downey Jr., American actor
- April 7 - Bill Bellamy, American actor and comedian
- April 15 - Linda Perry, American musician
- April 16 - Martin Lawrence, American actor, comedian, and producer
- April 21 - Ed Belfour, Canadian hockey player
- April 26 - Kevin James, American comedian and actor
- April 28 - Steven Blum, American voice actor

May-June

- May 7 - Owen Hart, Canadian professional wrestler (d. 1999)
- May 9 - Steve Yzerman, Canadian hockey player
- May 14 - Eoin Colfer, Irish writer
- May 16 - Krist Novoselic, American bassist (Nirvana)
- May 17 - Trent Reznor, American musician (Nine Inch Nails)
- May 28 - Chris Ballew, American musician
- May 31 - Brooke Shields, American actress
- June 1 - Nigel Short, English chess player
- June 4 - Mick Doohan, Australian motorcycle racer
- June 7 - Mick Foley, American professional wrestler and author
- June 10 - Elizabeth Hurley, English actress
- June 15 - Bernard Hopkins, American boxer
- June 16 - Charika Corea, Sri Lankan autism campaigner

July-August

- July 1 - Harald Zwart, Norwegian film director
- July 11 - Ernesto Hoost, Dutch kickboxer
- July 17 - Craig Morgan, American singer
- July 18 - Michael Sharrett, American actor
- July 19 - Stuart Scott, American sports reporter
- July 20 - Anthony Paul Kennedy Shriver nephew of John F Kennedy and son of Sargent Shriver and Eunice Mary Kennedy
- July 21 - Guðni Bergsson, Icelandic footballer
- July 22 - Shawn Michaels, American professional wrestler
- July 23 - Slash, American musician, guitar ledgend, Guns N' Roses
- July 26 - Sandra Bullock, American actress
- July 28 - Lori Loughlin, American actress
- July 31 - J. K. Rowling, English author
- August 10 - Mike Smith, American jockey
- August 10 - John Starks, American basketball player
- August 14 - Emmanuelle Béart, French actress
- August 18 - Koji Kikkawa, Japanese singer
- August 24 - Reggie Miller, American basketball player
- August 28 - Shania Twain, American singer and songwriter

September-December

The Communists take power, 1978

1978 On April 27, 1978 a coup was initiated, reportedly by Hafizullah Amin while he was under house arrest. Mohammed Daoud Khan was killed the next day. The communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) gained control and on May 1 Nur Mohammed Taraki became President. The country was then renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), which lasted until 1992. The PDPA had split into several factions in 1967, soon after its founding. Ten years later the efforts of the Soviet Union had brought back together the Khalq faction of Taraki and the Parcham faction of Babrak Karmal. The "Saur Revolution," as the new government labeled its coup d'etat, after the month in the Islamic calendar in which it occurred, was almost entirely the achievement of the Khalq faction of the PDPA. This success gave it effective control over the armed forces, a great advantage over its Parchami rival. Khalq's victory was partially due to Daoud's miscalculation that Parcham was the more serious threat. Parcham's leaders had enjoyed widespread connections within the senior bureaucracy and even the royal family and the most privileged elite. These linkages also tended to make their movements easy to trace. Khalq, on the other hand, had not been involved in Daoud's government, had little connection with Kabul's Persian speaking elite, and a rustic reputation based on recruitment of students from the provinces. Most of them were Pashtuns, especially the Ghilzais. They had few apparent connections in the senior bureaucracy, many had taken jobs as school teachers. Khalq's influence at Kabul University was also limited. These newcomers to Kabul had seemed poorly positioned to penetrate the government. Moreover, they were led by the erratic Mohammed Taraki, a poet, sometime minor official, and a publicly notorious radical. Confident that his military officers were reliable, Daoud must have discounted the diligence of Taraki's lieutenant, Hafizullah Amin, who had sought out dissident Pashtun officers. The bungling of Amin's arrest, which enabled him to trigger the coup ahead of its planned date, also suggests Khalq's penetration of Daoud's security police. The organisers of the coup had carried out a bold and sophisticated plan. It employed the shock effect of a combined armored and air assault on the Arg or palace, the seat of Daoud's highly centralized government. Seizure of the initiative demoralized the larger loyal or uncommitted forces nearby. Quick capture of telecommunications, the defense ministry and other strategic centers of authority isolated Daoud's stubbornly resisting palace guard. The coup was by far Khalq's most successful achievement. So much so, that a considerable literature has accumulated arguing that it must have been planned and executed by the KGB, or some special branch of the Soviet military. Given the friction that soon developed between Khalq and Soviet officials, especially over the purging of Parcham, Soviet control of the coup seems unlikely. Prior knowledge of it does appear to have been highly likely. Claims that Soviet pilots bombed the palace overlook the availability of seasoned Afghan pilots. Political leadership of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was asserted within three days of the military takeover. After thirteen years of conspiratorial activity, the two factions of the PDPA emerged in public, refusing at first, to admit their Marxist credentials. Khalq's dominance was quickly apparent. Taraki became president, prime minister and General Secretary of the PDPA. Parcham's leader, Babrak Karmal, and Amin were named deputy prime ministers. Cabinet membership was split eleven to ten, with Khalq in the majority. Khalq dominated the Revolutionary Council, which was to serve as the ruling body of the government. Within weeks purges of Parcham began and by summer Khalq's somewhat bewildered Soviet patrons became aware of how difficult it would be temper its radicalism. The destruction of Afghanistan's former ruling elite had begun immediately after the seizure of power. Execution (Parcham leaders later claimed at least 11,000 during the Taraki/Amin period), flight into exile, and later the devastation of Kabul itself would literally remove the great majority of the some 100,000 who had come to form Afghanistan's elite and middle class. Their loss almost completely broke the continuity of Afghanistan's leadership, political institutions and their social foundation. Karmal was dispatched to Czechoslovakia as ambassador, along with others shipped out of the country. Amin appeared to be the principal beneficiary of this strategy. Czechoslovakia The Khalq leadership proved incapable of filling this vacuum. Its brutal and clumsy attempts to introduce radical changes in control over agricultural land holding and credit, rural social relations, marriage and family arrangements, and education led to scattered protests and uprisings among all major communities in the Afghan countryside. Taraki and Amin left a legacy of turmoil and resentment which gravely compromised later Marxist attempts to win popular acceptance. Government was reconstructed in classical Leninist fashion. Until 1985 it was governed by a provisional constitution, "The Fundamental Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan." Supreme sovereignty was vested in a Revolutionary Council, originally a body of fifty-eight members whose number later varied. Its executive committee, the Presidium, exercised power when the council was not in formal session. The Revolutionary Council was presided over by the president of the Democratic Republic. Beneath the council the cabinet functioned under a Prime Minister, essentially in a format inherited from the pre-Marxist era. Two new ministries were added: Islamic Affairs and Tribes and Nationalities. Administrative arrangements for provincial and sub-provincial government were also retained. In Leninist style, the PDPA was closely juxtaposed with the formal instruments of government. Its authority was generated by its Central Committee, whose executive stand-in was its Politburo. Presiding over both was the party's secretary general. Policy generation was the primary function of the executive level of the party, which was to be carried out by its members serving throughout the government. On 5 December 1978 a friendship treaty was signed with the Soviet Union and was later used as a pretext for the Soviet invasion. Major uprisings occurred regularly against the government. On 15 February 1979, the United States ambassador in Kabul, Adolph Dubs, was taken hostage and later killed when Amin ordered the police to attack. The US did not appoint a new ambassador. In mid-March the 17th infantry division in Herat under the control of Ismail Khan mutinied in support of Shi'ite Muslims. A hundred Soviet advisors in the city, and their families, were killed. The city was bombed, causing massive destruction and thousands of deaths and later it was recaptured with Afghan army tanks and paratroopers. Taraki visited Moscow on March 20, 1979 with a formal request for Soviet ground troops. Alexei Kosygin told him "we believe it would be a fatal mistake to commit ground troops... if our troops went in, the situation in your country... would get worse." Despite this statement Taraki negotiated some armed support - helicopter gunships with Russian pilots and maintenance crews, 500 military advisors, 700 paratroopers disguised as technicians to defend Kabul airport, also significant food aid (300,000 tons of wheat). Brezhnev still warned Taraki that full Soviet intervention "would only play into the hands of our enemies - both yours and ours." During this period, many Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran and began organizing a resistance movement. Although the groups organizing in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan would later, after the Soviet invasion, be described by the western press as "freedom fighters"--as if their goal were to establish a representative democracy in Afghanistan--in reality these groups each had agendas of their own that were often far from democratic. The intense rivalry between Taraki and Amin within the Khalq faction heated up. Amin became prime minister on 28 March 1979 with Taraki remaining President. In September 1979, Taraki's followers had made several attempts on Amin's life. However, it was Taraki who was overthrown and assassinated by being smothered with a pillow in his bed, with Amin assuming power in Afghanistan. The Soviets had at first backed Amin, but they realized that he was too rigidly Marxist-Leninist to survive politically in a country as conservative and religious as Afghanistan. The KGB in Kabul speculated that Amin's rule would be marked by "harsh repression and... [result in] the activation and strengthening of the opposition... The situation can only be saved by the removal of Amin from power." Taraki's death was first noted in the Kabul Times on 10 October, which reported that the former leader only recently hailed as the "great teacher... great genius... great leader" had died quietly "of serious illness, which he had been suffering for some time." Less than three months later, after the Amin government had been overthrown, the newly installed followers of Babrak Karmal gave another account of Taraki's death. According to this account, Amin ordered the commander of the palace guard to have Taraki executed. Taraki reportedly was suffocated with a pillow over his head. Amin's emergence from the power struggle within the small divided communist party in Afghanistan alarmed the Soviets and would usher in the series of events which lead to the Soviet invasion. In Kabul, the ascension of Amin to the top position was quick. Amin began unfinished attempts to moderate what many Afghans viewed as an anti-Islam regime. Promising more religious freedom, repairing mosques, presenting copies of the Qur'an to religious groups, invoking the name of Allah in his speeches, and declaring that the Saur Revolution was "totally based on the principles of Islam." Yet many Afghans held Amin responsible for the regime's harshest measures. The Soviets established a special commission on Afghanistan, of KGB chairman Andropov, Ponomaryev from the Central Committee and Ustinov, the defence minister. In late October they reported that Amin was purging his opponents, including Soviet sympathisers; his loyalty to Moscow was false; and that he was seeking diplomatic links with Pakistan and possibly China.

Opposition forces

Outside observers usually identify the two warring groups as "fundamentalists" and "traditionalists." Rivalries between these groups continued during the Afghan civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal. The rivalries of these groups brought the plight of the Afghans to the attention of the West, and it was they who received military assistance from the United States and a number of other nations. United States The fundamentalists based their organizing principle around mass politics and included several divisions of the Jamiat-i-Islami. The leader of the parent branch, Burhanuddin Rabbani, began organizing in Kabul before repression of religious conservatives, which began in 1974, forced him to flee to Pakistan during Daoud's regime. Perhaps best known among the leaders was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who broke with Rabbani to form another resistance group, the Hizb-e-Islami, which became Pakistan's favored arms recipient. Another split, engineered by Yunus Khales, resulted in a second group using the name Hizb-e-Islami--a group that was somewhat more moderate than Hikmatyar's. A fourth fundamentalist group was the Ittehad-i-Islami led by Abdul Rabb Rasuul al-Sayyaf, who would later invite Osama bin Laden to come to Afghanistan. Rabbani's group received its greatest support from northern Afghanistan where the best known resistance commander in Afghanistan--Ahmad Shah Massoud--a Tajik, like Rabbani, operated against the Soviets with considerable success. The organizing principles of traditionalist groups differed from those of the fundamentalists. Formed from loose ties among ulama in Afghanistan, the traditionalist leaders were not concerned, unlike fundamentalists, with redefining Islam in Afghan society but instead focused on the use of the sharia as the source of law (interpreting the sharia is a principal role of the ulama). Among the three groups in Peshawar, the most important was the Jebh-e-Nejat-e-Milli led by Sibghatullah Mojadeddi. Some of the traditionalists were willing to accept restoration of the monarchy and looked to former King Mohammed Zahir Shah, exiled in Italy, as the ruler. Other ties also were important in holding together some resistance groups. Among these were links within sufi orders, such as the Mahaz-e-Milli Islami, one of the traditionalist groups associated with the Gilani sufi order led by Pir Sayyid Gilani. Another group, the Shia Muslims of Hazarajat, organized the refugees in Iran.

The Soviet invasion, December 1979

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan began as midnight approached on December 24, 1979. They organised a massive military airlift into Kabul, involving an estimated 280 transport aircraft and 3 divisions of almost 8,500 men each. Within two days, they had secured Kabul, deploying a special Soviet assault unit against Darulaman Palace, where elements of the Afghan army loyal to Hafizullah Amin put up a fierce, but brief resistance. With Amin's death at the palace, Babrak Karmal, exiled leader of the Parcham faction of the PDPA was installed by the Soviets as Afghanistan's new head of government. A number of theories have been advanced for the Soviet action. These interpretations of Soviet motives do not always agree -- what is known for certain is that the decision was influenced by many factors -- that in Leonid Brezhnev's words the decision to invade Afghanistan was truly "no simple decision." Two factors were certain to have figured heavily in Soviet calculations. The Soviet Union, always interested in establishing a "cordon sanitaire" of subservient or neutral states on its frontiers, was increasingly alarmed at the unstable, unpredictable situation on its southern border. Perhaps as important, the Brezhnev doctrine declared that the Soviet Union had a "right" to come to the assistance of an endangered fellow socialist country. Presumably Afghanistan was a friendly regime that could not survive against growing pressure from the resistance without direct assistance from the Soviet Union. The government of Babrak Karmal faced crippling disabilities. Installation by a foreign power prevented popular acceptance of the legitimacy of his government. Even though the Parchamis, themselves, had been among the groups most viciously persecuted by the Khalqis, their identification with Marxism and Soviet repression was not forgiven. Indeed, the decimation of their members forced the Soviets to insist on reconciliation between the two factions. The purging of Parchamis had left the military forces so dominated by Khalqis that the Soviets had no choice but to rely upon Khalqi officers to rebuild the army. Soviet miscalculation of what was required to crush Afghan resistance further aggravated the government's situation. The Afghan army was expected to carry the burden of suppressing opposition, which was to be done quickly with Soviet support. As the war of pacification dragged on for years, the Babrak Karmal government was further weakened by the poor performance of its army. Whatever the Soviet goals may have been, the international response was sharp and swift. United States President Jimmy Carter, reassessing the strategic situation in his State of the Union address in January, 1980, identified Pakistan as a "front-line state" in the global struggle against communism. He reversed his stand of a year earlier that aid to Pakistan be terminated as a result of its nuclear program and offered Pakistan a military and economic assistance package if it would act as a conduit for United States and other assistance to the mujahedin. Pakistani president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq refused Carter's package but later a larger aid offer from the Reagan administration was accepted. Questions about Pakistan's nuclear program were, for the time being, set aside. Assistance also came from the People's Republic of China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Also forth coming was international aid to help Pakistan deal with more than 3 million fleeing Afghan refugees. The foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference deplored the invasion and demanded Soviet withdrawal at a meeting in Islamabad in January 1980. Action by the United Nations Security Council was impossible because the Soviets had veto power, but the United Nations General Assembly regularly passed resolutions opposing the Soviet occupation. In mid-January 1980 the Soviets relocated their command post from Termez, on Soviet territory to the north of Afghanistan, to Kabul. For ten years the Soviets and their Afghan allies battled the mujahedin for control of the country. The Soviets used helicopters (including Mil Mi-24 Hind gunships) as their primary air attack force, supported with fighter-bombers and bombers, ground troops and special forces. In some areas they conducted a scorched-earth campaign destroying villages, houses, crops, livestock etc.

The search for popular support

In attempts to broaden support, the PDPA created organizations and launched political initiatives intended to induce popular participation. The most ambitious was the National Fatherland Front (NFF), founded in June 1981. This umbrella organization created local units in cities, towns and tribal areas which were to recruit supporters of the regime. Village and tribal notables were offered inducements to participate in well publicized rallies and programs. The party also gave affiliated organizations that enrolled women, youth and city workers high profile exposure in national radio, television, and government publications. From its beginnings in the mid-1960s, the membership of the PDPA had taken keen interest in the impact of information and propaganda. Some years after their own publications had been terminated by government, they gained control of all official media. These were energetically harnessed to their propaganda goals. Anis, the mainline government newspaper (published in Pashto and Dari), the Kabul New Times (previously the Kabul Times), published in English, and such new publications as Haqiqat-i-Inqelab-i-Saur exhibited the regime's flair for propaganda. With Kabul as its primary constituency, it also made innovative use of television. The early efforts at mobilizing popular support were later followed up by national meetings and assemblies, eventually using a variation of the model of the traditional loya jirga to entice the cooperation of rural secular leaders and religious authorities. A large scale loya jirga was held in 1985 to ratify the DRA's new constitution. These attempts to win collaboration were closely coordinated with efforts to manipulate Pashtun tribal politics. Such efforts included trying to split or disrupt tribes who affiliated with the resistance, or by compromising notables into commitments to raise militia forces in service to the government. A concerted effort was made to win over the principal minorities: Uzbeq, Turkoman, and Tajik, in northern Afghanistan. For the first time their languages and literatures were prominently broadcast and published by government media. Minority writers and poets were championed, and attention was given to their folk art, music, dance and lore.

Internal refugees: flight to the cities

As the Afghan-Soviet war became more destructive, internal refugees flocked to Kabul and the largest of the provincial cities. Varying estimates (no authentic census was taken) put Kabul's population at more than 2 million by the late 1980s. In many instances villagers fled to Kabul and other towns to join family or lineage groups already established there. At least 3, perhaps 4, million Afghans were thus subject to government authority and hence exposed to PDPA recruitment or affiliation. Its largest membership claim was 160,000, starting from a base of between 5,000 and 10,000 immediately after the Soviet invasion. How many members were active and committed was unclear, but the lure of perquisites, for example, food and fuel at protected prices, compromised the meaning of membership. Claims of membership in the NFF ran into the millions, but its core activists were mostly party members. When it was terminated in 1987, the NFF disappeared without impact.

Factionalism: Khalq and Parcham

Parcham The PDPA was also never able to rid itself of internal rivalries. Burdened by obvious evidence that the Soviets oversaw its policies, actively dominated the crucial sectors of its government, and literally ran the war, the PDPA could not assert itself as a political force until after the Soviets left. In the civil war period that followed, it gained significant respect, but its internal disputes worsened. Born divided, the PDPA suffered virtually continuous conflict between its two major factions. The Soviets imposed a public truce upon Parcham and Khalq, but the rivalry continued with hostility and disagreement frequently rising to the surface. Generally, Parcham enjoyed political dominance, while Khalq could not be denied the leverage over the army held by its senior officers. Social, linguistic, and regional origins and differing degrees of Marxist radicalism had spurred factionalism from the beginning. When Soviet forces invaded, there was a fifteen-year history of disagreement, dislike, rivalry, violence and murder. Each new episode added further alienation. Events also tended to sub-divide the protagonists. Hafizullah Amin murder of Taraki divided the Khalqis. Rival military cliques divided the Khalqis further.

Mohammad Najibullah, 1986-1992

Parchami suffered a series of splits when the Soviets insisted on replacing Babrak Karmal with Mohammad Najibullah as head of the PDPA on May 4, 1986. The PDPA was riven by divisions which prevented implementation of policies and compromised its internal security. These fundamental weaknesses were later partially masked by the urgency of rallying for common survival in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal. Yet, after military successes rifts again began to surface. Karmal retained the presidency for a while, but power had shifted to Najibullah, who had previously headed the State Information Service (Khadamate Ettelaate Dowlati--KHAD), the Afghan secret service agency. Najibullah tried to diminish differences with the resistance and appeared prepared to allow Islam a greater role as well as legalize opposition groups, but any moves he made toward concessions were rejected out of hand by the mujahedin. Factionalism had a critical impact on the leadership of the PDPA. Najibullah's achievements as a mediator between factions, an effective diplomat, a clever foe, a resourceful administrator and a brilliant spokesman who coped with constant and changing turmoil throughout his six years as head of government, qualified him as a leader among Afghans. His leadership qualities might be summarized as conciliatory authoritarianism: a sure sense of power, how to get it, how to use it, but mediated by willingness to give options to rivals. This combination was glaringly lacking in most of his colleagues and rivals. Najibullah suffered, to a lesser degree, the same disadvantage that Karmal had when he was installed as General Secretary of the PDPA by the Soviets. Despite Soviet interference and his own frustration and discouragement over the failure to generate substantial popular support, Karmal still had retained enough loyalty within the party to remain in office. This fact was shown by the fierceness of the resistance to Najibullah's appointment within the Parcham faction. This split persisted, forcing Najibullah to straddle his politics between whatever Parchami support he could maintain and alliances he could win from the Khalqis. Najibullah's reputation was that of a secret police apparatchik with especially effective skills in disengaging Ghilzai and eastern Pashtuns from the resistance. Najibullah was himself a Ghilzai from the large Ahmedzai tribe. His selection by the Soviets was clearly related to his success in running KHAD, the secret police, more effectively than the rest of the DRA had been governed. His appointment thus, was not principally the result of intra-party politics. It was related to crucial changes in the Soviet-Afghan war that would lead to the Soviet military withdrawal.

The Soviet decision to withdraw, 1986-1988

The Soviets grossly underestimated the huge cost of the Afghan venture--described, in time, as the Soviet Union's Vietnam--to their state. The peak of the fighting came in 1985-86. The Soviet forces launched their largest and most effective assaults on the mujahedin supply lines adjacent to Pakistan. Major campaigns had also forced the mujahedin into the defensive near Herat and Kandahar. At the same time a sharp increase in military support for the mujahedin from the United States and Saudi Arabia allowed it to regain the guerilla war initiative. By late August 1986, the first FIM-92 Stinger ground-to-air missiles were used successfully. For nearly a year they would deny the Soviets and the Kabul government effective use of air power. These shifts in momentum reinforced the inclination of the new Mikhail Gorbachev government to view further escalation of the war as a misuse of Soviet political and military capital. Such doubts had developed prior to the decision to install Mohammad Najibullah. In April 1985, one month after Gorbachev assumed the Soviet leadership, its May Day greeting to the Kabul government failed to refer to its "revolutionary solidarity" with the PDPA, a signal in Marxist-Leninist rhetoric that their relationship had been downgraded. Several months later, Babrak Karmal suggested the inclusion of non-party members in the Revolutionary Council and the promotion of a "mixed economy." These tentative concessions toward non-Marxists won Soviet praise, but divergence in policy became obvious at the Twenty-Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1986. Gorbachev's "bleeding wound" speech hinted at a decision to withdraw "in the nearest future." In his own speech Karmal made no reference to withdrawal. In early May he was replaced by Najibullah. Najibullah was obliged to move toward the evolving Soviet position with great caution. Karmal's followers could use any concessions to non-Marxists or acceptance of a Soviet withdrawal against him. Accordingly, he moved in conflicting directions, insisting there was no room for non-Marxists in government, only offering the possibility of clemency to "bandits" who had been duped by mujahedin leaders into resisting the government. In addition to air strikes and shelling across the border, KHAD terrorist activity in Pakistan reached its peak under Najibullah. Late in 1986 Najibullah had stabilized his political position enough to begin matching Moscow's moves toward withdrawal. In September he set up the National Compromise Commission to contact counterrevolutionaries "in order to complete the Saur Revolution in its new phase." Allegedly some 40,000 rebels were contacted. In November Karmal was replaced as now-ceremonial president by a non-party member, Haji Muhammad Samkanai, signaling the PDPA's willingness to open government to non-Marxists. At the end of 1986 Najibullah unveiled a program of "National Reconciliation." It offered a six-month cease-fire and discussions leading to a possible coalition government in which the PDPA would give up its government monopoly. Contact was to be made with "anti-state armed groups." Affiliation was suggested, allowing resistance forces to retain areas under their control. In fact much of the substance of the program was happening on the ground in the form of negotiations with disillusioned mujahedin commanders who agreed to cooperate as government militia. The mujahedin leadership rhetorically claimed that the program had no chance for success. For his part Najibullah assured his followers that there would be no compromise over "the accomplishments" of the Saur Revolution. It remained a standoff. While a strenuous propaganda effort was directed at the both the Afghan refugees and Pakistanis in North-West Frontier, the program was essentially a sop to Moscow's hope to tie a favorable political settlement to its desire to pull its forces out. Najibullah's concrete achievements were the consolidation of his armed forces, the expansion of co-opted militia forces and the acceptance of his government by an increasing proportion of urban population under his control. As a propaganda ploy "National Reconciliation" was a means of gaining time to prepare for civil war after the Soviet departure.

The Geneva accords, 1987-1989

By the beginning of 1987, the controlling fact in the Afghan war was the Soviet Union's determination to withdraw. It would not renege on its commitment to the Kabul government's survival--Mikhail Gorbachev's options were restricted by Soviet military insistence that Kabul not be abandoned. Nevertheless, the Soviet leadership was convinced that resolution of Cold War issues with the West and internal reform were far more urgent than the fate of the Kabul government. Other events outside Afghanistan, especially in the Soviet Union, contributed to the eventual agreement. The toll in casualties, economic resources, and loss of support at home increasingly felt in the Soviet Union was causing criticism of the occupation policy. Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, and after two short-lived successors, Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership in March 1985. As Gorbachev opened up the country's system, it became more clear that the Soviet Union wished to find a face-saving way to withdraw from Afghanistan. The civil war in Afghanistan was guerrilla warfare and a war of attrition between government and the mujahedin; it cost both sides a great deal. Many Afghans, perhaps as many as five million, or one-quarter of the country's population, fled to Pakistan and Iran where they organized into guerrilla groups to strike Soviet and government forces inside Afghanistan. Others remained in Afghanistan and also formed fighting groups; perhaps most notable was one led by Ahmed Shah Massoud in the northeastern part of Afghanistan. These various groups were supplied with funds to purchase arms, principally from the United States, Saudi Arabia, People's Republic of China, and Egypt. Despite high casualties on both sides, pressure continued to mount on the Soviet Union, especially after the United States brought in FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles which severely reduced the effectiveness of Soviet air cover. Conveniently, a formula was readily available for minimizing the humiliation of reversing a policy in which enormous political, material, and human capital had been invested. In 1982 under the auspices of the office of its secretary general, the UN had initiated negotiations facilitating a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Its format had essentially been agreed upon by 1985. Ostensibly it was the product of indirect negotiations between the DRA and Pakistan (Pakistan did not recognize the DRA) with the mediation of the secretary general's special representative, Diego Cordovez. The United States and the Soviet Union had committed themselves to guaranteeing the implementation of an agreement leading to a withdrawal. Both the format and the substance of the agreement were designed to be acceptable to the Soviet Union and the DRA. Its clauses included affirmation of the sovereignty of Afghanistan and its right to self-determination, its right to be free from foreign intervention or interference, and the right of its refugees to a secure and honorable return. But at its core was an agreement reached in May 1988 that authorized the withdrawal of "foreign troops" according to a timetable that would remove all Soviet forces by February 15, 1989. The accords emerged from initiatives by Moscow and Kabul in 1981. They had claimed that Soviet forces had entered Afghanistan in order to protect it from foreign forces intervening on the side of rebels attempting to overthrow the DRA. The logic of the Geneva Accords was based on this accusation, that is, that once the foreign threat to Afghanistan was removed, the forces of its friend, the Soviet Union, would leave. For that reason a bilateral agreement between Pakistan, which was actively supporting the resistance, and the DRA prohibiting intervention and interference between them was essential. In meticulous detail each party agreed to terminate any act that could remotely effect the sovereignty or security of the other. This agreement included preventing an expatriate or a refugee from publishing a statement which his/her government could construe as a contribution to unrest within its territory. The bilateral agreement between the Afghanistan and Pakistan on the principles of non-interference and non-intervention was signed on April 14, 1988. The accords thus facilitated a withdrawal by an erstwhile superpower, in a manner which justified an invasion. They exemplify the delicacy of UN diplomacy when the interests of a great power are engaged. In essence, the accords were a political bailout for a government struggling with the consequences of a costly error. The UN could not insist that accusations of national culpability were relevant to the negotiations. In the case of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union insisted on its own diplomatic terms as did the United States in a different manner concerning Vietnam. The agreement on withdrawal held, and on February 15, 1989, the last Soviet troops departed on schedule from Afghanistan. Their exit, however, did not bring either lasting peace or resettlement.

The failure to bring peace

The accords did not bring peace to Afghanistan. There was little expectation among its enemies or the Soviet Union that the Kabul government would survive. Its refusal to collapse introduced a three-year period of civil war. The Geneva process failed to prevent the further carnage which a political solution among Afghans might have prevented or lessened. It failed partially because the Geneva process prevented participation by the Afghan resistance. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) occupied Afghanistan's seat at the United Nations General Assembly. Denied recognition, the resistance leadership resented the central role that DRA was permitted to play at Geneva. When the United Nations representative Diego Cordovez approached the mujahedin parties to discuss a possible political settlement in February 1988--more than five years after negotiations began--they were not interested. Their bitterness would hover over subsequent efforts to find a political solution. Considerable diplomatic energy was expended throughout 1987 to find a political compromise that would end the fighting before the Soviets left. While Pakistan, the Soviet Union and the DRA haggled over a timetable for the Soviet withdrawal, Cordovez worked on a formula for an Afghan government that would reconcile the combatants. The formula involved Mohammed Zahir Shah, and by extension, the leading members of his former government, most of whom had gone into exile. This approach also called for a meeting in the loya jirga tradition representing all Afghan protagonists and communities. It was to reach a consensus on the features of a future government. The jirgah also was to select a small group of respected leaders to act as a transitional government in place of the Kabul government and the mujahedin. During the transition a new constitution was to be promulgated and elections conducted leading to the installation of a popularly accepted government. This package kept re-emerging in modified forms throughout the civil war that followed. Suggested roles for the king and his followers slipped into and out of these formulas, despite the implacable opposition of most of the mujahedin leaders. The peace prospect faltered because no credible consensus was attainable. By mid-1987 the resistance forces sensed a military victory. They had stymied what proved to be the last set of major Soviet offensives, the Stinger missiles were still having a devastating effect, and they were receiving an unprecedented surge of outside assistance. Defeat of the Kabul government was their solution for peace. This confidence, sharpened by their distrust of the UN virtually guaranteed their refusal of a political compromise.

Pakistan's attempt at a political solution, 1987-1988

Pakistan was the only protagonist in a position to convince the mujahedin otherwise. Its intimate relationship with the parties it hosted had shaped their war and their politics. Their dependence on Pakistan for armaments, training, funding and sanctuary had been nearly total. But by 1987, the politics of Pakistan's foreign policy had fragmented. The Foreign Ministry was working with Diego Cordovez to devise a formula for a "neutral" government. President Zia-ul-Haq was adamantly convinced that a political solution favoring the mujahedin was essential and worked strenuously to convince the United States and the Soviet Union. Riaz Muhammad Khan argues that disagreement within the military and with Zia's increasingly independent prime minister, Muhammad Khan Junejo, deflected Zia's efforts. When Mikhail Gorbachev announced a Soviet withdrawal without a peace settlement at his Washington, D.C. meeting with President Reagan on December 10, 1987, the chance for a political agreement was lost. All the protagonists were then caught up in the rush to complete the Geneva process. In the end the Soviets were content to leave the possibilities of reconciliation to Najibullah and to shore him up with massive material support. He had made an expanded reconciliation offer to the resistance in July, 1987 including twenty seats in State (formerly Revolutionary) Council, twelve ministries and a possible prime minister-ship and Afghanistan's status as an Islamic non-aligned state. Military, police, and security powers were not mentioned. The offer still fell far short of what even the moderate mujahedin parties would accept. Najibullah then reorganized his government to face the mujahedin alone. A new constitution took effect in November, 1987. The name of the country was reverted to the Republic of Afghanistan, the State Council was replaced by a National Assembly for which "progressive parties" could freely compete. Mir Hussein Sharq, a non-party politician, was named prime minister. Najibullah's presidency was given Gaullist powers and longevity. He was promptly elected to a seven-year term. On paper, Afghan government appeared far more democratic than Mohammed Daoud Khan had left it, but its popular support remained questionable.

Stalemate: The Civil War, 1989-1992

The Soviet Union left Afghanistan deep in winter with intimations of panic among Kabul officials. Hard experience had convinced Soviet officials that the government was too faction riven to survive. Pakistani and United States officials expected a quick mujahedin victory. The resistance was poised to attack provincial towns and cities and eventually Kabul, if necessary. The first one to fall might produce a ripple effect that would unravel the government. mujahedin Within three months, these expectations were dashed at Jalalabad. An initial assault penetrated the city's defenses and reached its airport. A counterattack, supported by effective artillery and air power, drove the mujahedin back. Uncoordinated attacks on the city from other directions failed. The crucial supply road to the garrison from Kabul was reopened. By May 1989 it was clear that the Kabul forces in Jalalabad had held. The Mujahedin were traumatized by this failure. It exposed their inability to coordinate tactical movements or logistics or to maintain political cohesion. During the next three years, they were unable to overcome these limitations. Only one significant provincial capital, Taloqan, was captured and held. Mujahedin positions were expanded in the northeast and around Herat, but their inability to mass forces capable of overcoming a modern army with the will to fight from entrenched positions was clear. A deadly exchange of medium-range rockets became the principal form of combat, embittering the urban population, and adding to the obstacles that prevented millions of refugees from returning. Victory at Jalalabad dramatically revived the morale of the Kabul government. Its army proved able to fight effectively alongside the already hardened troops of the Soviet-trained special security forces. Defections decreased dramatically when it became apparent that the resistance was in disarray, with no capability for a quick victory. The change in atmosphere made recruitment of militia forces much easier. As many as 30,000 troops were assigned to the defense of Herat alone. Immediately after the Soviet departure, Najibullah pulled down the façade of shared government. He declared an emergency, removed Sharq and the other non-party ministers from the cabinet. The Soviet Union responded with a flood of military and economic supplies. Sufficient food and fuel were made available for the next two difficult winters. Much of the military equipment belonging to Soviet units evacuating Eastern Europe was shipped to Afghanistan. Assured adequate supplies, Kabul's air force, which had developed tactics minimizing the threat from Stinger missiles, now deterred mass attacks against the cities. Medium-range missiles, particularly the Scud, were successfully launched from Kabul in the defense of Jalalabad, 145 kilometres miles away. One reached the suburbs of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, more than 400 kilometres away. Soviet support reached a value of $3 billion a year in 1990. Kabul had achieved a stalemate which exposed the mujahedin's weaknesses, political and military.

The demise of the Soviet Union, 1991

With the failure of the communist hardliners to take over the Soviet government in August 1991, Mohammad Najibullah's supporters in the Soviet Army lost their power to dictate Afghan policy. The effect was immediate. On September 13, the Soviet government, now dominated by Boris Yeltsin, agreed with the United States on a mutual cut off of military aid to both sides in the Afghan civil war. It was to begin January 1, 1992. The post-coup Soviet government then attempted to develop political relations with the Afghan resistance. In mid-November it invited a delegation of the resistance's Afghanistan Interim Government (AIG) to Moscow where the Soviets agreed that a transitional government should prepare Afghanistan for national elections. The Soviets did not insist that Najibullah or his colleagues participate in the transitional process. Having been cut adrift both materially and politically, Najibullah's faction torn government began to fall apart. During the nearly three years that the Kabul government had successfully defended itself against mujahedin attacks, factions within the government had also developed quasi-conspiratorial connections with its opponents. Even during the Soviet war Kabul's officials had arranged cease-fires, neutral zones, highway passage and even passes allowing unarmed mujahedin to enter towns and cities. As the civil war developed into a stalemate in 1989, such arrangements proliferated into political understandings. Combat generally ceased around Kandahar because most of the mujahedin commanders had an understanding with its provincial governor. Ahmed Shah Massoud developed an agreement with Kabul to keep the vital north-south highway open after the Soviet withdrawal. The greatest mujahedin victory during the civil war, the capture of Khost, was achieved through the collaboration of its garrison. In March 1990 Gulbuddin Hekmatyar cooperated with an attempted coup by the Khalqi Defense minister Shah Nawaz Tanai: Hekmatyar's forces were to attack Kabul simultaneously. The plot misfired because of faulty communications. Tanai escaped by helicopter to Pakistan where he was greeted and publicly accepted as an ally by Hekmatyar. Interaction with opponents became a major facet of Najibullah's defensive strategy, Many mujahedin groups were literally bought off with arms, supplies and money to become militias defending towns, roads and installations. Such arrangements carried the danger of backfiring. When Najibullah's political support ended and the money dried up, such allegiances crumbled.

The fall of Kabul, April 1992

Kabul ultimately fell to the mujahedin because the factions in its government had finally pulled it apart. Until demoralized by the defections of its senior officers, the army had achieved a level of performance it had never reached under direct Soviet tutelage. It was a classic case of loss of morale. The regime collapsed while it still possessed material superiority. Its stockpiles of munitions and planes would provide the victorious mujahedin with the means of waging years of highly destructive war. Kabul was short of fuel and food at the end of winter in 1992, but its military units were supplied well enough to fight indefinitely. They did not fight because their leaders were reduced to scrambling for survival. Their aid had not only been cut off, the Marxist-Leninist ideology that had provided the government its rationale for existence been repudiated at its source. mujahedin A few days after it was clear that Najibullah had lost control, his army commanders and governors arranged to turn over authority to resistance commanders and local notables throughout the country. Joint councils or shuras were immediately established for local government in which civil and military officials of the former government were usually included. Reports indicate the process was generally amicable. In many cases prior arrangements for transferring regional and local authority had been made between foes. These local arrangements generally remained in place in most of Afghanistan until at least 1995 . Disruptions occurred where local political arrangements were linked to the struggle that developed between the mujahedin parties. At the national level a political vacuum was created and into it fell the expatriate parties in their rush to take control. The enmities, ambitions, conceits and dogmas which had paralysed their shadow government proved to be even more disastrous in their struggle for power. The traits they brought with them had been accentuated in the struggle for preferment in Peshawar. Collusions between military leaders quickly brought down the Kabul government. In mid-January 1992, within three weeks of demise of the Soviet Union, Ahmed Shah Massoud was aware of conflict within the government's northern command. General Abdul Momim, in charge of the Hairatan border crossing at the northern end of Kabul's supply highway, and other non-Pashtun generals based in Mazar-e Sharif feared removal by Najibullah and replacement by Pashtun officers. The generals rebelled and the situation was taken over by Abdul Rashid Dostam, who held general rank as head of the Jozjani militia, also based in Mazar-e Sharif. He and Massoud reached a political agreement, together with another major militia leader, Sayyid Mansor, of the Ismaili community based in Baghlan province. These northern allies consolidated their position in Mazar-e Sharif on March 21. Their coalition covered nine provinces in the north and northeast. As turmoil developed within the government in Kabul, there was no government force standing between the northern allies and the major air force base at Bagram, some seventy kilometres north of Kabul. By mid-April the air force command at Begram had capitulated to Massoud. Kabul was defenseless, its army was no longer reliable. Najibullah had lost internal control immediately after he announced his willingness on March 18 to resign in order to make way for a neutral interim government. As the government broke into several factions the issue had become how to carry out a transfer of power. Najibullah attempted to fly out of Kabul on April 17, but was stopped by Dostam's troops who controlled Kabul Airport under the command of Babrak Karmal's brother, Mahmud Baryalai. Vengeance between Parchami factions was reaped. Najibullah took sanctuary at the UN mission where he remained until his hanging by the Taliban in 1996. A group of Parchami generals and officials declared themselves an interim government for the purpose of handing over power to the mujahedin. For more than a week Massoud remained poised to move his forces into the capital. He was awaiting the arrival of political leadership from Peshawar. The parties suddenly had sovereign power in their grasp, but no plan for executing it. With his principal commander prepared to occupy Kabul, Burhanuddin Rabbani was positioned to prevail by default. Meanwhile UN mediators tried to find a political solution that would assure a transfer of power acceptable to all sides.

The United Nations plan for political accommodation

Benan Sevan, Diego Cordovez's successor as special representative of the UN secretary general, attempted to apply a political formula that had been announced by UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar on May 21, 1991. Referred to as a five-point plan, it included: recognition of Afghanistan's sovereign status as a politically non-aligned Islamic state; acceptance of the right of Afghans to self-determination in choosing their form of government and social and economic systems; need for a transitional period permitting a dialogue between Afghans leading to establishment of a government with widely based support; the termination of all foreign arms deliveries into Afghanistan; funding from the international community adequate to support the return of Afghanistan's refugees and its reconstruction from the devastation of war. These principles were endorsed by the Soviet Union and the United States and Afghanistan's neighboring governments, but there was no military means of enforcing it. The three moderate Peshawar parties accepted it, but it was opposed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Rasool Sayyaf and Mawlawi Yunis Khalis who held out for a total victory over the Kabul government. Nevertheless, these four "fundamentalists" found it politic to participate in the effort to implement the UN initiative. Pressure from their foreign supporters and the opportunities that participation offered to modify or obstruct the plan encouraged them to be reluctant players. Pakistan and Iran worked jointly to win mujahedin acceptance at a conference in July, 1991. Indicating its formal acceptance of the plan, Pakistan officially announced the termination of its own military assistance to the resistance in late January 1992. Najibullah also declared his acceptance, but until March 18, 1992, he hedged the question of whether or when he would resign in the course of negotiations. Sevan made a strenuous effort to create the mechanism for the dialogue that would lead to installation of the transitional process envisaged in point three of the plan. The contemplated arrangement was a refinement and a simplification of earlier plans which had been built around the possible participation of Mohammed Zahir Shah and the convoking of a meeting in the loya jirga tradition. By March 1992 the plan had evolved to the holding of a meeting in Europe of some 150 respected Afghans representing all communities in the late spring. Most of Sevan's effort was directed at winning the cooperation of all the Afghan protagonists, including the Shia parties in control of the Hazarajat. In early February, he appeared to have won the active support of commanders among the

1965

1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link goes to calendar).

Events

January-February

March

April

May-June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Unknown dates

Births

January-February

March-April

May-June

July-August

September-December

- September 2 - Lennox Lewis, British boxer
- September 11 - Moby, American musician
- September 21 - Cheryl Hines, American actress
- September 20 - Robert Rusler, American actor
- September 25 - Scottie Pippen, American basketball player
- October 1 - Andreas Keller, German field hockey player
- October 5 - Mario Lemieux, Canadian hockey player
- October 5 - Patrick Roy, Canadian hockey player
- Kabul (, Kâb'l, in Persian کابل) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan with a population variously estimated at 2 to 4 million. It is an economic and cultural center strategically situated in a narrow valley along the Kabul River, high in the mountains before the Khyber Pass. Kabul is linked with the Tajikistan border via a tunnel under the Hindu Kush Mountains. It is about 1,800 metres (5,900 feet) above sealevel. Kabul's main products include ordnance, cloth, furniture, and beet sugar, though continual war since 1979 has limited the economic productivity of the city. Kabul remains one of the most mined cities in the world. Kabul's population is multicultural and multi-ethnic, reflecting the diversity of Afghanistan, with Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Hazaras all comprising the bulk of the city's population. Kabul is still in the process of being rebuilt following decades of war and devastation, so accurate census counts remain difficult and only rough estimates are available.

Reconstruction

Public transportation in the city is overcrowded, with only 108 public buses for a population of 2-4 million. A US$ 23 million project to restore and expand the public electric buses system aims at some 50 US of track and 50 vehicles. The goal was to have buses running along one line by the end of 2004, but there is no sign of this project getting underway. Expertise and training will come from the Czech Republic, particularly Ostrov-Skoda. In addition, India, Iran and Japan have agreed to provide more regular buses for the city. Private mini-buses and taxis crowd the streets, often seriously overladen with passengers. In October 2005, there were thirteen licensed banks in Kabul: including Afghanistan International Bank (managed by the Dutch ING Bank), Standard Chartered Bank, Kabul Bank, Punjab National Bank and the Habib Bank of Pakistan. The Kabul Hotel (in the center of Kabul) is being revamped by the AKDN at the cost of US$25 million. The reconstruction was nearly completed in October 2005. It is unclear whether plans for a 200-room Hyatt Regency hotel will come to fruition. The landmark InterContinental Hotel has been partially refurbished, but is still dated by Western standards.

History

The first records of Kabul are a mention of the Kubha River around 1200 BCE and a reference to the settlement Kabura by the Persian Achaemenids around 300 BCE. Kabul was known as Chabolo in antiquity. The Bactrians founded the town of Parapamisidae near Kabul, but it was later ceded to the Mauryans in the 1st century BCE, Kushans in the 1st century CE and then Hindus until its capture by the Arabs in 664. Over the next 600 years, the city was successively controlled by the Samanids of Bokhara, the Ghaznavid Empire, and the Ghorids of Bamiyan. In the 13th century the Mongol horde passed through. In the 14th century, Kabul rose again as a trading center under the kingdom of Timur, who married the sister of Kabul's ruler. But as Timurid power waned, the city was captured in 1504 and made into a capital by Babur and subsequent Mughal rulers. Haidar, an Indian poet who visited at the time wrote "Dine and drink in Kabul: it is mountain, desert, city, river and all else." Nadir Shah of Persia captured it in 1738. During the mid 18th century Ahmad Shah Durrani rose to power in Afghanistan, re-asserting Afghan rule. In 1772, his son Timur Shah inherited power and made Kabul the capital, even as their empire began to crumble. In 1826 the throne was claimed by Dost Mohammed, but it was taken by the British army in 1839 (see Afghan Wars), who installed the unpopular puppet Shah Shuja. A 1841 local uprising massacred both the British mission and the British army on their subsequent retreat to Jalalabad. In 1842 the British returned, plundering Bala Hissar in revenge before retreating to India. Dost Mohammed returned to the throne. The British returned in 1878 as the city was under Sher Ali Khan's rule, but its residents were massacred again. The British army came again in 1879 under General Roberts, partially destroying Bala Hissar before retreating to India. Amir Abdur Rahman was left in control of the country. In the early 20th century King Amanullah reigned. His reforms included electricity and schooling for girls. He drove a Rolls Royce, and lived in Darul Aman Palace in south-west Kabul. In 1919 he announced Afghanistan's independence from Id Gah Mosque, after the Third Anglo-Afghan War. In 1928, Amir Habibullah Khan Khadim-e-Dine-Rasoolullah, a Tajik rebel, deposed Amanullah and took control of Kabul City and much of northern Afghanistan before being ousted by Nadir Khan, Amanullah's half-brother. In 1932 Kabul University opened, and the 1950s saw the streets of the city paved with Soviet assistance. After 1940, the city began to grow as an industrial center. In the 1960s, Kabul developed a cosmopolitan mood. The first Marks and Spencer store in Central Asia was built there, and Kabul Zoo was inaugurated in 1967. The Zoo was maintained with the help of visiting German Zoologists, and focused on Afghan fauna. In 1975 an east-west electric trolley-bus system provided public transportation across the city. The system was built with assistance from Czechoslovakia. 1975 After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union occupied the city on December 23, 1979, turning it into their command center during the 10-year conflict between the Soviet-allied government and the mujahedeen rebels. The American embassy in Kabul closed on January 30, 1989. Kabul fell into guerrilla hands after the 1992 collapse of the Mohammad Najibullah government. As these forces divided into warring factions, the city increasingly suffered. In December the last of the 86 trolley buses in the city came to a halt due to the conflict. A system of 800 public buses continued to provide transportation to the population of about one million. At this time, Burhannudin Rabbani's Jamiat-e Islami (Islamic Council of Afghanistan) held power but the nominal prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami began a five-year shelling of the city from its south, which lasted until 1996. Kabul was factionalised, and fighting continued between Jamiat-e Islami, Dostum and the Hazara Hezb-e Wahdat. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed and more fled as refugees. Kabul was captured by the Taliban in September, 1996, publicly lynching ex-president Najibullah, repressing the city's dangerously literate populace and effectively moving the capital to Kandahar. The Taliban abandoned the city on November 12, 2001 due to extensive American bombing and Kabul came under the control of the Afghan Northern Alliance. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, it became the capital of the Afghan Transitional Administration. The city is served by Kabul International Airport.

Attractions

The old part of Kabul is filled with bazaars nestled along its narrow, crooked streets. Kabul University was established in 1931, and there are a number of colleges. Cultural sites include the very good Kabul Museum. Afghan National Museum, notably displaying an impressive statue of Surya excavated at Khair Khana, Babur's tomb and gardens, the mausoleum of Mohammad Nadir Shah, the Minar-i-Istiklal (column of independence) built in 1919 after the Third Afghan War, the tomb of Timur Shah, and some important mosques. Bala Hissar is a fort destroyed by the British in 1879, in retaliation for the death of their envoy, now restored as a military college. Darul Aman Palace is the destroyed former Defence Ministry building. The Minaret of Chakari has Buddhist swastika and both Mahayana and Theravada qualities. Other places of interest include West Kabul, Kabul Zoo, Babur Gardens, Bala Hisar, Shah Do Shamshera Mosque, the Afghan National Gallery, the Afghan National Archive, the Afghan Royal Family Mausoleum, the OMAR Mine Museum, Bibi Mahroo Hill, the Kabul Christian Cemetery, and Paghman Gardens. Tappe-i-Maranjan is a nearby hill where Buddhist statues and Graceo-Bactrian coins from the 2nd century BC have been found. The mausoleum of the first Mughal Emperor Babur is also on the outskirts of Kabul. Outside the city proper is a citadel and the royal palace. Paghman and Jalalabad are interesting valleys north and east of the city. The Kabul Zoo was once home to a lion named Marjan who was maimed in a grenade attack. The story goes that a soldier climbed into her cage in order to show off and was killed by the lion. Later, an angry friend of the dead soldier threw a grenade at Marjan and cost the lion an eye.

External links

- [http://www.kabulcaravan.com/kabul.html Kabul Caravan: Kabul]
- [http://www.serenahotels.com/afghanistan/kabul/home.htm The Kabul Serena Hotel]
- [http://en.darul-aman.net/ Darul-Aman Palace]
- [http://www.poyaa.com/local/Kabul/ Local news from Kabul] Category:Capitals in Asia Category:Cities along the Silk Road Category:Cities in Afghanistan ja:カブール

Urban

Urban may refer to:
- Urban area, a geographical area (including cities and towns) distinct from rural areas
- Urbanization, the development and expansion of urban areas
- Urban culture, associated with cities, especially hip hop culture which originated in New York City
- Urban contemporary and Mainstream Urban, music synonymous with the contemporary musical genres of black origin.

List of urban topics

- Urban Adult Contemporary
- Urban areas of New Zealand
- Urban Car
- Urban design
- Urban development
- Urban Dictionary
- Urban economics
- Urban exploration
- Urban geography
- Urban heat island
- Urban legend
- Urban planning
- Urban sociology
- Urban structure
- Urban township (Ohio)
- Urban tribe
- Urbanization
- Urban Pop

Conservative

:For related and other uses, see Conservatism (disambiguation) Conservatism is any of a number of political philosophies supporting traditional values or an established social order. As the word implies, conservatives seek to conserve the existing social order or to reinstate a social order from the past. Most conservative parties are on the political right, but there are countries where a conservative party falls on the left. Conservatism as a philosophy is much older than the left-right division, and it can include adherents from both. In the Netherlands, for example, defenders of ‘Dutch tolerance’ as a traditional national value and Islamist supporters of Sharia law both call themselves conservatives. In English-speaking countries, conservatism often refers to a political philosophy presented by Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke. Burkean conservatives wish to conserve heritage; they advocate the current social climate. To a Burkean, any existing value or institution has undergone the correcting influence of past experience and ought to be respected. Burkeans do not reject change, as Burke wrote "a state without the means of change is without the means of its conservation," but they insist that further change be organic, rather than revolutionary.
Tradition in conservatism
All conservatives value tradition. Tradition does not mean simply custom, habit or nostalgia for the past, though custom does inform tradition and sustain it. For a conservative, tradition is composed of standards and institutions that have been shown to promote the good, and therefore they find authority in tradition and apply it in politics. This authority, be it a person, a literature or a way of life, is rooted in the past, and thus cannot easily change . To keep tradition alive, conservatives pass it down from generation to generation, embodied in the eternal verities or the sophia perennis. Conservatives accept traditional values as authoritative, and judge the world around them by the standards they have come to trust. Many conservatives believe in God, and believe that He is not only the creator of the universe, but also the Author of those conservative values they espouse. Since conservatives believe tradition supercedes the political process, the laws and constitutions of liberal democracies that permit behavior that conflict with traditional values cause friction in their eyes. Conservatives in a democracy choose to participate, separate, or resist. They often participate in liberal republican politics, using government policy to encourage or preserve their values. Good examples of this are the Christian Democratic parties in Europe. Another method of conservative reform, imposing their values on the public, is common among nationalist or religious conservatives. This can take a relatively benign form, such as Conservative Christians trying to order public school students to pray, or a more violent form, such as Islamists putting to death anyone who blasphemes. Armed conservatives who consider their tradition to be absolute for all may become revolutionary conservatives. In Europe the Catholic-nationalist-conservative regimes of Salazar and Franco were examples. Though relatively rare, a modern example of conservatives who withdraw from society and attempt to live their lives in traditional ways is the Amish.
Some traditional values
Different forms of conservatism emphasise different values, many of them overlapping. For example:
- Order over chaos
- Orientation toward the past rather than the future
- The rural over the urban
- Unity and homogeneity, over discord and fragmentation
- The natural over the artificial and technological
- Existence over possibility
- Slow and incremental change over utopian projects
- Hierarchy over egalitarianism
- Acceptance of inequality over redistribution
- Sovereignty over union, in matters regarding the European Union Order Conservatives typically limit innovation out of risk aversion. Change is by nature risky; it can potentially disrupt or even ruin the social order, which is the only existing guarantee that conservative values will survive. Maintaining the status quo at least preserves these values, so conservatives favour heritage over innovation, incremental change over utopian projects, and unity over discord. This attitude is well summed up by the Shakespearean phrase, "Discretion is the better part of valor." Class Some conservatives consider loyalty to their social class to be paramount. These conservatives are almost always themselves of the privileged class, and consider the lower classes to be so intrinsically inferior that the subject does not merit discussion. In ancient Rome, the patrician class had this attitude toward the plebeian class, and much of the history of the Roman republic is a history of the class struggle. Class is not the same as wealth. It is strictly hereditary, and class conservatives look down on the "nouveau riche" as much as on the working poor. This attitude arises from the conservative distrust of socially disruptive behavior; those who have suddenly acquired wealth, like those who never managed to attain it in the first place, have not shown an ability to sustainably manage assets, and so they represent a threat to the traditional system of financial stewardship that drives conservative culture. Nature Conservatives tend to favour what they call the natural. Nature here is meant in contrast to the artificial or created (rather than invoking the natural world, though this is often included). They see evidence of a design or emergent order that is wiser than any human mind, especially one working outside of the rich traditional depository of values. Conservatives who adhere to the natural often appeal to organic metaphors, such as the notion of society as a living organism. The metaphor illustrates values such as 'rootedness', in which society is seen as a tree with its roots in the past and a crown in the present. Cutting contact with the roots would kill the tree. Through this metaphor, conservatives look askance at the potential for progress. Some may even regard the "natural" order as already for the best, so any deviation by definition would worsen the situation. Conservatives who believe in nature prefer hierarchy to egalitarianism, national sovereignty to created unions and acceptance of inequality to redistribution. Western conservatives derive some of their devotion to the free market from this notion. Virtue and Religion Many conservatives wish to enforce what they see as right living. They do not do this out of prudishness or a desire to make other people unhappy, but for two main reasons: first, they believe right living will do their neighbor good (whether he realizes it or not); second, because social mores tend to decay if they are not practiced by the community (which conservatives often find needs a little prodding). So they emphasize morality over a tacit (if not official) relativism, community over the individual and church involvement in government over laïcité.
Classification of conservatism

Cultural conservatism
Cultural conservatism hopes to enshrine the received heritage of a successful nation or culture. The culture in question may be as large as Western culture or Chinese civilization or as small as that of Tibet. Cultural conservatism does not always support its own culture: Kemal Ataturk attempted to transplant some Western institutions into Turkey, creating a republic. Cultural conservatives try to adapt norms handed down through a culture. The norms may be romantic: The anti-metric movement, demanding the retention of avoirdupois weights and measures in Britain, and opposing their replacement with the metric system is a classic example. They may be institutional: In the West this has included chivalry and feudal social structure, as well as capitalism, laicite and the rule of law. In the East it signifies the state examination system in China or widespread cultural tolerance in India. The norms may also be moral, according to social conservatives. For example, in some cultures such practices as homosexuality, abortion, or women who expose their faces or limbs in public are considered immoral, and conservatives in those cultures often support laws to prohibit such practices. Other conservatives take a more positive approach, supporting good samaritan laws, or laws requiring public charity, if their culture considers these acts moral. Cultural conservatives often argue that old institutions have adapted to a particular place or culture and therefore ought to persevere. Depending on how universalizing (or skeptical) they are, cultural conservatives may or may not accept cultures that differ from their own. Many conservatives believe in a universal morality, but others will allow that moral codes may differ from nation to nation, and only try to support their moral code within their own culture. That is, a cultural conservative may doubt whether the broad ideals of French communities would be equally appropriate in Germany. Other conservatives radicalize, instigating a conservative revolution such as the overthrow of the pro-western Pahlavi regime in Iran. Radical conservatism represents a radical and utopian goal. It asserts that conservatives should ultimately seek a radically different form of society from the one currently in place, a society designed to suppress innovation and freeze the culture as it was in some ideal age in the past. Those who go further, and attempt a radical new model of society, are not conservatives but rather utopians. The idea of a radical transformation of society, for contra-innovative purposes, is part of some theories of fascism.
Religious conservatism
Religious conservatives look to the receipt of special knowledge from a traditional source. Note that these values arrive external to their surrounding social order; religion opposes "the world," though it may be informed by the world. So religious conservatism, rather than considering local sources of tradition, prefers the holy organization of church, mosque or temple, which delivers special knowledge received so long ago. This means religious conservatism does not use the word tradition quite like other conservatives. Tradition in the religious context does not invoke an historically informed evolution. Church tradition by definition cannot evolve because it derives tradition from an unchanging divine act. This does not mean that church tradition never adapts, but that any "changes" enacted after revelation are refinements rather than discontinuities. St. Paul illustrates this use of tradition in First Corinthians: "I have received from the Lord that which also I delivered unto you." The Latin word for delivered here is traditio. While some conservatives may be wary of government intervention into the private lives of citizens, even when that intervention is in support of traditional values, religious conservative movements in general tend to support such causes. The almost universal support by secular, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim conservatives for pro-life movements is the most prominent example. Conservative governments influenced by religious conservatives may promote broad campaigns for a return to traditional values, such as the Back to Basics campaign of British premier John Major. In the European Union, a conservative campaign sought to constitutionally specify certain conservative values in the proposed European Constitution. Most prominently, Pope John Paul II lobbied for inclusion of a reference to God, which was narrowly defeated. Radical movements in Islam illustrate the method by which religious conservatism, rather than trying to preserve an existing social order, seeks to overthrow the existing order and enforce an adoption of its own traditions, values, worldview, and lifestyle. This differs from utopian revolutions, which seek to replace the existing order with a more progressive society. The Salafist movement is often politically radical, and violently repressed for that reason. Salafism seeks to re-create the Islamic society which existed at the time of Muhammad's death and for a short time thereafter, rejects the later development of Islamic societies, and can therefore be classified as a radical religious conservatism. The Salafi give great prominence to a disputed hadith (reported statement of the Prophet), which is classically conservative:

Every innovation is misguidance...[http://www.islamicacademy.org/html/Articles/English/BID'AH%20-%20Innovation%20in%20Islam.htm]

Burkean conservatism
The classical conservative tradition in English-speaking countries, which usually regards Edmund Burke as its intellectual source, often insists that conservatism has no ideology in the sense of a utopian programme, with some form of master plan. Edmund Burke developed his ideas in reaction to the Enlightenment idea of a society guided by abstract "Reason." Although he did not use the term, he anticipated the critique of modernism, a term first used at the end of the 19th century by the Dutch religious conservative Abraham Kuyper. Burke was troubled by the Enlightenment and argued, instead, for the value of tradition. Some men, argued Burke, have more reason than others, and thus some men will make worse governments if they rely upon reason than others. To Burke, the proper formulation of government came not from abstractions such as "Reason," but from time-honoured development of the state and of other important societal institutions such as the family and the Church.

"We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence."

Burke argued that tradition is a much sounder foundation than "reason". The conservative paradigm he established emphasises the futility of attempting to ground human society based on pure abstractions (such as "reason," "equality," or, more recently, "diversity"), and the necessity of humility in the face of the unknowable. Tradition draws on the wisdom of many generations and the tests of time, while "reason" may be a mask for the preferences of one man, and at best represents only the untested wisdom of one generation. In the Burkean view, an attempt to modify the complex web of human interactions that form human society for the sake of some doctrine or theory runs the risk of running afoul of the iron law of unintended consequences. Burke advocates vigilance against the possibility of moral hazards. For Burkean conservatives, human society is something rooted and organic; to try to prune and shape it according to the plans of an ideologue is to invite unforeseen disaster.
Conservatism's effect on history
Conservative attitudes can be found in all historical cultures which left a written record of their politics. In the western world, conservative ideas and conservative thinkers are identifiable elements of Classical Antiquity. The best-known modern conservatisms developed in the early-modern and modern periods in Europe. Events such as the English Civil War and the French Revolution helped shape the modern ideologies. The early-modern conservatives tended to support monarchy, but Edmund Burke, who argued so forcefully against the French Revolution, favoured the American Revolution. Since justifications for the American revolution included appeals to long-standing rights of subjects of the British Crown, which had been violated by the King, it could be described as a conservative revolution, opposed to these perceived changes in political forms. At the end of the Napoleonic period, the Congress of Vienna marked the beginning of a conservative reaction in Europe, to contain the liberal and nationalist forces unleashed by the French revolution. Joseph de Maistre was the most influential spokesperson for counter-revolutionary and authoritarian conservatism, with the emphasis on monarchy as a guarantee of order in society.
Impact on other ideologies
Many forms of conservatism incorporate elements of other ideologies and philosophies. In turn, conservatism has influence upon them. Most conservatives strongly support the nation-state (although that was not so in the 19th century), and patriotically identify with their own nation. Nationalism, which sees the nation as a long-term, centuries-old, community, has many conservative aspects. Nationalist separatist movements are by definition radical but also conservative. They appeal to tradition and often emphasise rural life and folkways. The most controversial ideological impact is the conservative element in fascism. European fascism drew on existing anti-modernist conservatism, and on the conservative reaction to communism and 19th-century socialism. Conservative thinkers such as historian Oswald Spengler provided much of the world view (Weltanschauung) of the Nazi movement. However, traditionalist, monarchist, and Catholic conservatives often despised the fascist mass movements, and the personality cult around the leader. In Britain, the conservative Daily Mail enthusiastically backed Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, and part of the Conservative Party supported closer ties with Nazi Germany. When defeat in the Second World War ideologically and historically discredited fascism, almost all western conservatives tried to distance themselves from it. The theory of totalitarianism, which treats Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as equivalent systems, provided the intellectual foundation. Nevertheless, many post-war western conservatives continued to admire the Franco regime in Spain, clearly conservative but also fascist in origin. With the end of the Franco and Salazar regimes in the 1970’s, the relationship between conservatism and classical European fascism became an issue for historians. The relationship with right-wing ideologies (including some that are described as neo-fascist) is still an issue for conservatives and their opponents. Especially in Germany, there is a constant exchange of ideology and persons, between the influential national-conservative movement, and self-identified national-socialist groups. In Italy too, there is no clear line between conservatives, and movements inspired by the Italian Fascism of the 1920’s to 1940’s, including the Alleanza Nazionale which is member of the governing coalition under premier Silvio Berlusconi. Conservative attitudes to the 20th-century fascist regimes are still an issue.
Conservatism and nationalism
Nationalism has an inherent conservative tendency, since the nation itself is usually defined as a centuries-old community. Conversely, any centuries-old community is by definition attractive to traditionalist and Burkean conservatives. Conservatives may describe their preferred values as the national values, implying that they are in some way compulsory for any resident of the nation. In recent responses to terrorism, both premier Tony Blair and opposition leader Michael Howard have suggested that British values and the British way of life must be enforced in Britain. They refer to a kind of 'Britishness' or 'Englishness' which has a literary rather than a political origin - George Orwell, for instance, defended English values and even the monarchy. Value conservatives in Europe appeal to 'national values'. Burkean conservatives value them for their own sake, because they are the result of long experience, but religious conservatives may use 'community values' as a euphemism for their own Christian values, or even for theonomy. All nationalists appeal to national symbolism - the national flag, national historical icons, founders and emblems, the work of national poets and authors, or the representation of the nation by its artists - and this is often adopted by conservatives. Military institutions in particular defend the nation and also provide tradition and ritual, so conservatives often admire military values: duty, sacrifice and obedience. But good intentions do not always bear out, and this nationalism has often and easily degenerated into militarism and jingoism. Where the nation is not independent, open patriotism is impossible anyway. Consider a Kurdish nationalist in Turkey, for instance, with no official institutions to admire. Saluting the Kurdish flag in public means risking arrest by the Turkish police - one man's patriotism is another man's treason. Nationalism, and more generally patriotism, are therefore typical features of modern conservatism, in established nation-states. This was not the case in the 19th century, when the movements inspired by romantic nationalism were necessarily radical opponents of the then existing states, and separatist movements still are. Nor is present-day nationalism confined to self-identified conservatives, or to the right. The perception persists that nationalism is a remote or provincial ideology, but it is by definition the basis of every nation-state. Nevertheless, even nationalist conservatives sometimes prefers the less pejorative term patriotism, and Burkean conservatives would distance themselves from many nationalist groups and ideologies, on the grounds of their radicalism. Nevertheless radical nationalist conservatism has been a major force in European history, no matter how distasteful that may be to many mainstream conservatives. Anti-immigrant and nationalist populist parties, such as France's Front National, continue to include a strong conservative element, and the conservative-nationalist tradition is very strong in Germany.
Liberal, conservative?
In the USA conservatism and liberalism are sometimes seen as polar opposites, yet in actuality the situation is more complex. A major area of difference in US politics is that between social liberalism and social conservatism. Social liberals advocate policies promoting equality and tolerance while social conservatives support established traditions of American society, or norms of their previous generations. The media widely covers the differnces in opinion in issues such as same-sex marriage, sex education, the separation of church and state among others. Fiscally, US liberals are regarded as advocates for limited social spending, consumer protection regulations, and other policies which run contrary to a more fiscal conservative, (or neoliberal) ideal. The overall (US) terms liberal and conservative are generalizations and do not point to any concrete set of ideals or values. The terms Economic conservatism or Fiscal conservatism are general terms, encompass modern neoliberalism, as well as classical liberalism in the tradition of Adam Smith. Popularily used outside of North America, the traditional usage of liberal refers only to these free-market policies. For example, in Europe 'liberal-conservative' is an accepted term. Differences in meaning and usage of the term 'liberal' have contributed to some confusion, see Liberalism. Theorists of liberalism often assert a moral justification for the free market, grounded in principles of individual liberty and individual choice. Their support is not moral or ideological, but driven by the Burkean notion of prescription: what works best is what is right. Conservatives might also emphasise the importance of civil society in this context: government intervention in the economy will make people feel less responsible for the society. Historically, many arguments have been advanced for the free market, and liberal principles in general. Present western classical-liberalism and political conservatism may have reached their pro-market position by different routes, but by now the lines have blurred. Rarely will a politician claim that free markets are "simply more productive" or "simply the right thing to do" but a combination of both. This merging of the classical liberal and conservative positions is found in most western conservative movements. In any case the free market itself is not an issue, for western conservative movements. They operate in long-established market economies: it is the degree of government intervention that is at issue. One archetypal free-market conservative government of the late 20th century - the Margaret Thatcher government in the UK saw deregulation as the cornerstone of contemporary economic conservatism. Thatcher added privatisation to this policy, and privatised British Airways, with remarkable success, and British Rail, with rather more mixed results. She cut taxes (especially on the upper income brackets) and slowed governmental growth. Proponents of Thatcherism attribute the unparalleled economic boom of the early 1980s to the late 1990s to these policies. Capitalism, and the outcome of the free market, may conflict with value conservatism. At times, as the Communist Manifesto emphasised, capitalism and free markets have been profoundly subversive of the existing social order:
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production...
That economic system continues to conflict with traditional attitudes, for instance in its massive distribution of pornography in many western countries. So it is possible to be a value conservative without supporting market liberalism - at present, this is a common political stance in, for example, Ireland. And not all supporters of the free market are social conservatives. Fiscal conservatism is not a political philosophy, and more a tradition of prudence in government spending and debt. Edmund Burke, in his 'Reflections on the Revolution in France', articulated its principles:
...[I]t is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition or by descent or in virtue of a participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the creditor's security, expressed or implied...[T]he public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate except in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large.
In other words, a government doesn't have the right to run up large debts and then throw the burden on the taxpayer; the taxpayers' right not to be taxed oppressively takes precedence even over paying back debts a government may have imprudently undertaken.
Nature and environment
In early liberal philosophy 'Nature' and the environment were treated as a resource to be exploited: value derived from their human use, in accordance with the labor theory of value. Most early conservatives, however, saw the value of Nature as inherent. Both strands have influenced conservative politics in many countries, since the 19th century. The etymology emphasises the close correlation between the early conservation movement and conservative ideals. In recent decades, deep ecology has emerged as parallel, non-anthropocentric conservative philosophy, with remarkable similarities in value preferences. Free-market liberals with environmental concerns are uncomfortable with such strong environmentalist positions. They tend to view free markets as an appropriate instrument, in this context. Given that pollution is an inefficiency, and given that consumers like "green" or "organic" products, the market should protect the environment. Others, conservative and non-conservative, radically dispute this, and see the market and commercialisation as one of the chief threats, if not the sole cause, of damage to the natural world. That may elicit no more than anti-commercial populism among value conservatives, and a shift in consumer preferences. More fundamentally, some conservatives see ecological conservation as necessary to preserve traditional values. European conservatives often identify rural life as the source, or sole remnant, of traditional society, and have often promoted a comprehensive ruralist ideology, usually in specific national versions. Ruralist conservatism inspires several political parties, such as the French Chasse-Pêche-Nature et Tradition (Hunting-Fishing-Nature and Tradition). Conservatives are a prominent element within most European Green Parties. In Britain, the electoral system leaves little room for third parties, and a Blue-Green Alliance with the Conservative Party would be necessary for electoral success. Technological conservatism is often part of environmentalist philosophy, rejecting especially the destructive effects on nature and ecosystems. There is also a long tradition of technological scepticism in western culture, usually directed against socially disruptive effects, and potentially dangerous consequences. The term 'conservatism' is also used in the history of technology to describe the reluctance - on grounds of cost, effort and disruption - to replace a functioning technology by another.
Biological theories on racial differences
Because some conservatives value what they consider 'natural' (also in the sense of pre-existing and given), conservatives often appeal to biological theories and biological analogies. They may form an integral part of a conservative position, or they may be used to justify it. The most common use of biology in conservatism is to use claimed inherent differences to justify inequality and social stratification. They correspond to the belief in inherent differences in talent in liberal social philosophy. The belief that the poor deserve their status is historically widespread, and not specific to one culture. In the late 19th century, however, European biological theories on race, culminating in the idea of Social Darwinism, became the main theoretical reference for conservative justifications of inequality. Later, several waves of IQ theories assumed this function in conservative social philosophy. Under influence of genetic research, both of these sources have merged, producing a range of vehemently disputed theories, on the genetic basis and the inevitability of inequality. Influential examples include The Bell Curve and similar work, explaining socio-economic inequality in multi-ethnic societies by hereditary differences in IQ among racial groups, and IQ and the Wealth of Nations which attributes global inequalities to national differences in average IQ. There is also a long tradition of non-biological theories of cultural superiority, which influenced 19th-century western colonialism. Partly due to the influence of the Clash of Civilizations theory, belief in the superiority of western culture has now become a standard of western conservative thought. Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi's comment on the September 11 attacks is exemplary:

We must be aware of the superiority of our civilisation, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and - in contrast with Islamic countries - respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its value understanding of diversity and tolerance... The West will continue to conquer peoples, even if it means a confrontation with another civilisation, Islam, firmly entrenched where it was 1,400 years ago.[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3041288.stm]

Conservatism and the Right
In western democracies, 'conservative' and 'right-wing' are often used interchangeably, as near-synonyms. That is not always accurate, but it has more than incidental validity. Certainly the enemy is in both cases the same: the political left. (Although left-wing groups and individuals may have conservative social and cultural attitudes, they are not generally accepted, by self-identified conservatives, as part of the same movement). On economic policy and the economic system, conservatives and the right generally support the free market, although less so in Europe than in other places. Attitudes on some ethical and bio-ethical issues - such as opposition to abortion - are accurately described as either 'right-wing' or 'conservative'. Burkean conservatives favour incremental over radical change, even from the right. Some conservatives distrust the xenophobic and even racist sentiments prominent on the political right. Protectionism and anti-immigration policies may conflict with free-market conservatives' support for deregulation and free trade. Some conservatives oppose military interventionism, inspired by early British conservative thinkers, such as David Hume and Edmund Burke. Burke saw imperialism as interfering with the traditions and organic make-up of the colonised societies. However it is equally true, that there are numerous examples of theocratic religious conservatives, conservative nationalists, jingoist conservative imperialists, and conservative racists - and of ‘respectable’ conservatives allied with them. The Conservative Party in Britain was a staunch defender of the British Empire, and was responsible for initial brutal repression of African decolonisation. The revered Conservative Winston Churchill wrote in the 1920's that he was "strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.", and did in fact authorise use of poison gas in Iraq. It is the degree of political taboo, rather than inherent ideological incompatibility, that determines the overlap between 'respectable' conservatives and the right. In European parliamentary systems, conservatives currently ally with centrist groups, or even some on the left, rather than with the xenophobic-populist right. All mainstream parties in Belgium cooperate to exclude the Flemish-separatist and xenophobic Vlaams Belang, altough some politicians wish to break this 'cordon sanitaire', and the mainstream parties in France sometime support each others candidates in run-off elections, where that is necessary to exclude the far-right Front National (FN) party (in March 1977, and then in March 1983, FN is present on RPR-UDF lists at municipal elections; in 1988, RPR and UDF right-wing conservative parties allies with the FN in the Bouches-du-Rhône and Var regions. In March 1989, they have common lists in at least 28 cities of more than 9 000 inhabitants. Those alliances are condemned in 1991, but a dozen right-wing deputies gain FN's support in 1997.
Conservatives in various countries
For information on American Conservatism.
Europe
In the United Kingdom, Burkean conservatism is the dominant tradition. However, there is no organisational continuity since the time of Edmund Burke, and he is certainly not the 'founder of the Conservative Party'. Contemporary British conservatives may trace their roots to both the Tories of Canning and the early Whigs (who opposed the monarchy). The Tories, who continued to represent the interests of the aristocracy, in contrast to the Whiggish mercantile class, dominated British politics from the 1770s and the 1830s. Burke, the so-called "Father of Modern Conservatism," articulated a 'progressive' conservative position through the Whig party. Nominally, the modern British Conservative Party was founded out of the Tory party by Sir Robert Peel in the 1840s, splitting almost immediately, over the issue of protectionism. The anti-protectionist faction joined with some Whigs and radicals to form the Liberal coalition, which was to dominate politics for much of the rest of the nineteenth century. A Liberal-Conservative coalition during the first World War, and the rise of the Labour Party, hastened the collapse of the Liberals in the 1920s. After the second World War, the Conservative party made concessions to the socialist policies of the left. This was partly in order to regain power, but also the result of the early successes of central planning and state-ownership forming a cross-party consensus. Under Margaret Thatcher the party returned to classical liberalism. For more detail, see History of the Conservative Party. In other parts of Europe, mainstream conservatism is often represented by the Christian-democratic parties. They form the bulk of the European Peoples Party fraction in the European Parliament. The origin of these parties is usually in Catholic parties of the late 19th and early 20th century, and Catholic social doctrine was their original inspiration. Over the years, conservatism gradually became their main ideological inspiration, and they generally became less Catholic. The German CDU, its Bavarian sister party CSU, and the Dutch CDA are Protestant-Catholic parties. Germany and German-speaking Europe have many non-mainstream conservative movements and an active and influential conservative intellectual tradition. They influence the right wings of the CDU and CSU, and many other right-wing parties and organisations, including neo-nazi groups. However much of the German right is also radical, and officially categorised as 'anti-constitutional' by the German internal security service.
China
China is unique in experiencing roughly two millennia of "feudalism," from around the second century BC until the 20th century, during which Confucian or neo-Confucian thought was endorsed by the state. This long continuity in institution and thought produced a set of values and social standards for Chinese conservatives to defend, especially: reverence for elders, authority figures and the state examination system. These traditional Chinese values are derived from Confucianism, which has an importance in East Asia comparable to Christianity in the West, with particular emphasis on sacrifice, hierarchy, virtue and merit. Ironically, today the Chinese Communist Party exerts the most powerful force in mainstream Chinese conservatism, as it has transitioned from strict communism into important norms of previous Chinese regimes. It is seen by some as the recipient of the Mandate of Heaven, a traditional Chinese idea, and its rulers do not protest at the designation. Just as before, the ruler is revered and generally seen as worthy of praise, with most criticism repressed not simply by law but also by taboo. The party itself has moved to a burgeoning Chinese nationalism as a basis for its legitimacy, and it does not really advocate revolutionary theory, adhering instead to a certain ideological flexibility consistent with Deng Xiaoping's dictum, seek truth from facts. During the first twenty or so years after 1949, the Communist Party did posess a conscious revolutionary spirit. Its leader, Mao Zedong, excoriated Chinese tradition as a vestige of feudalism; the government eliminated opposing views during the Anti-Rightist Movement; the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards tried to manufacture new Chinese "worker" values, notably by frowning on Confucian morality, issuing the Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong instead and "reforming" traditional art to mirror the new standards. The party only transitioned after Mao's death, which opened a power vacuum that would determine the party's future orientation. Three factions wrestled to succeed Mao after his death in 1976: leftist Maoists, who wanted to continue the revolutionary mobilization; rightist restorationists, who advocated a return to the Soviet model of communism; and rightist reformers, led by Deng Xiaoping, who hoped to reduce the role of ideology in government and overhaul the economy. Deng eventually won the seat of the party. While stressing his continuity with Mao, he soon initiated a series of economic reforms and promulgated his Four Cardinal Principles, which clearly outlined (and slightly liberalized) government control over ideology. The party today stems from Deng Xiaoping, and like him it asserts the primacy of pragmatism over communism while maintaining the iron dominion of the Communist Party. His ostensibly communist descendents, notably Jiang Zemin, continued to stray from communist theory on an ad hoc basis while incorporating any convenient parts when useful. The result combined heavy preference for economic growth, hostility to efforts to decentralize power and support for a burgeoning Chinese nationalism, a fusion Deng called Socialism with Chinese characteristics. Traditional Chinese values have since surged, rather assertively, under the Communist regime. Chinese nationalism tends to speak highly of a centralized, powerful Chinese state, so the government is attempting to win and maintain the loyalty of both its own citizens and that of recently departed overseas Chinese. Recent bestseller China Can Say No expresses a sentiment in favor of a uniquely Chinese path that, tellingly, does not have to involve American norms, such as individualism and Western liberalism. Moreover, the tide may still be coming in for Chinese nationalism, as the next generation of Chinese leaders will have grown up in an environment of nationalism. Since the 1990s, there has been a neoconservative movement in China (not connected with the US neoconservative movement).
See also

- Bioconservatism
- Conservative extension (Mathematical logic)
- Conservative Party (UK)
- Constitutional Conservatism
- Christian Democratic Union of Germany
- Conservative Revolutionary movement
- Libertarianism
- New Right
- Old Right
- Paleoconservatism
- Reactionary
- Religious right
- Republitarianism
- Traditional Catholic
- Fundamentalism
Further reading

- Russell Kirk. The Conservative Mind. Regnery Publishing; 7th edition (October 1, 2001): ISBN 0895261715 (hardcover).
- Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. October 1997: ISBN 0872200205 (paper).
External links and references

World Wide Web links

- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-60 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] Conservatism.
Freenet links

- [http://localhost:8888/SSK@a~F76Clr4Cj9FNtr14W2u7p2mEgPAgM,RqmBC5XFYJ0ZxuMt7Zwscg/ConservativeAlert/4// Conservative Alerts]
- ja:保守 simple:Conservatism

Khalq

Khalq ("Masses") was a faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Its historical leaders were Presidents Nur Mohammed Taraki and Hafizullah Amin. It was supported by the USSR and was formed in 1965 when the PDPA was born. The Khalqist wing of the party was made up primarily of Pashtuns from non-elite classes. However, their Marxism was often a vehicle for tribal resentments. Bitter resenment between Khalq and Parcham factions eventually led to the failure of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Saur Revolution. It was also responsable for the radical reforms that encourage the resistance of the people of Afghanistan, and eventually, to the creation of the Mujahideen. Their radicalism was also responsable for the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan on December 1979.

Early Political History

The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan held its First Congress on January 1, 1965. Twenty-seven men gathered at Nur Mohammed Taraki's house in Kabul, elected Taraki PDPA Secretary General, Babrak Karmal as Deputy Secretary General, and chose a five-member Central Committee(or Politburo). Finally, Hafizullah Amin was the only Khalqi member of the PDPA to be elected to Parliament in 1969.

Khalq - Parcham division of the PDPA

The party was weakened by bitter, and sometimes violent, internal rivalries. Especially on the ideological level, Karmal and Taraki differed in their perceptions of Afghanistan’s revolutionary potential:
- Taraki believed that revolution could be achieved in the classical Leninist fashion by building a tightly disciplined working-class party.
- Karmal felt that Afghanistan was too undeveloped for a Leninist strategy and that a national democratic front of patriotic and anti-imperialist forces had to be fostered in order to bring the country a step closer to socialist revolution. The newspaper was highly successful, especially among students. Its first edition sold 20,000 copies, and later editions numbered around 10,000 (there were only six editions altogether). On May 23, 1966, the authorities closed Khalq on the grounds that it was anti-Islamic, anticonstitutional, and antimonarchical. Karmal’s faction founded Parcham, a weekly magazine that he published between March 1968 and July 1969. Parcham was shut down in June 1969 on the eve of parliamentary elections.

Khalq during the Republican Revolution

Khalq was excluded from the government because of its lack of good political connections and its go-it-alone policy on noncooperation. Taraki did sing a song of united fronts briefly after Daoud's takeover in an attempt to gain places in the government for his followers, but this effort was unsuccessful. The Khalqis liked to pose as more leftist and more independent of the Soviet Union, but their road to socialism depended not on the exploited masses but on the Armed Forces. Because of this, Khalq abandoned his party's traditional emphasis on working-class recruitment and sought to build his own power base within the Officer Corps. Khalq's influence at Kabul University was also limited. In 1973 the Khalq faction energetically began to encourage military personnel to join them. Taraki had been in charge of Khalq activity in the military. In 1973 he passed his recruitment duties to Amin. This move was highly successful: by the time of the communist coup, in April 1978, Khalq outnumbered Parcham by a factor of two or three to one. The Moscow-sponsored union of Parcham and Khalq may have been in preparation for his peaceful passage from the scene in the near future. The merger of Parcham and Khalq rapidly became unglued. However, Mir Akbar Khyber, a prominent leftist, was killed by the government and his associates. Although the government issued a statement deploring the assassination, the PDPA leaders feared that Daoud was planning to exterminate them all. In this way, both Khalq and Parcham forgot their internal rivalries and worked to overthrow the government. On the eve of the communist coup, Hafizullah Amin was the only member of the Central Committee that was not arrested. The police did not sent him to immediate imprisonment, as it did with Politburo members of the PDPA on April 25, 1978. He was the last person to be arrested, his imprisonment was postponed for five hours, during which time Amin, without having the authority and while the Politburo members were in prison, instructed the Khalqi army officers to overthrow the government. The Khalqist Army cells prepared for a massive uprising. On April 27 the Khalqist military leaders began the revolution by proclaiming to the cells in the armed forces that the time for revolution had arrived. Khalqist Colonel Mohammad Aslam Watanjar was the Army commander on the ground during the Coup, and his troops gained control of Kabul. Colonel Abdul Qadir, the leader of the Air Force squadrons, also launched a major attack on the Royal Palace, in the course of which President Mohammad Daoud was killed.
PDPA-Khalq and The Saur Revolution (April 1979 - April 1992)
The 'Saur Revolution, as the new government labeled its coup d'etat (after the month in the Islamic calendar in which it occurred), was almost entirely the achievement of the Khalq faction of the PDPA. Khalq's victory was partially due to Daud's miscalculation that Parcham was the more serious threat. This success gave it effective control over the armed forces, a great advantage over its Parchami rival. During the first months of the revolution, Cabinet membership was split eleven to ten, with Khalq in the majority.
Khalq as Government (April 1979 - December 1979)
However, the initial, moderate, approach to Islam taken by the PDPA was quickly abandoned as the Khalqists sought to consolidate their hold on power. Khalq dominated the Revolutionary Council, which was to serve as the ruling body of the government. They Khalq leadership ran the country by issuing a series of eight edicts. They suspended all laws except those on civil matters. Another exception was the criminal law of the Daoud period, retained as a repressive instrument. They also embarked on a campaign of radical land reform accompanied by mass repression in the countryside that resulted in the arrest and summary execution of tens of thousands. The Khalqi policy of encouraging the education of girls, for example, aroused deep resentment in the villages. By putting Afghanistan on the revolutionary road the Khalq wing of the PDPA stirred the countryside into revolt. President Nur Mohammad Taraki refused to tolerate any Parchamis in the military and insisted that all officers affiliate with Khalq. By June 1978 an estimated 800 Parchami military personnel were forced to quit the armed forces. Shortly after, the Khalqist wing in the Army, initiated a purge of Parchamis. They accomplished this performing the elimination of the opposition and removal of any restraints posed by the Parchamis Hafizullah Amin took over as prime minister in March 1979, retaining the position of field marshal and becoming vice-president of the Supreme Defence Council. Taraki remained President and in control of the Army, though now he reportedly devoted a lot of his time at the Royal Palace, which had been renamed the People's Palace. Events also tended to sub-divide the protagonists. The intense rivalry between Taraki and Amin within the Khalq faction heated up. In September 1979, Taraki's followers, with Soviet complicity, had made several attempts on Amin's life. The final attempt backfired. Amin murder of Taraki divided the Khalqis. Rival military cliques divided the Khalqis further. In late October, Amin made a military sweep against the insurgents, victoriously driving 40,000 people - mostly non-combatants - across the border into Pakistan. At the end of 1979 there were 400,000 refugees, mostly in Pakistan. The USSR attempted to tamper the Khalqis' radicalism, urging attendance at mosques, inclusion of Parchamis and non-communists in the government, and a halt to the unpopular land reform movement. Most of this advice was ignored. The last Khalq President, Hafizullah Amin, was assassinated after Soviet intelligence forces took control of the government and installed Babrak Karmal, a Parchami, in his place.
Khalq during the Parcham Government and Soviet invasion (December 1979 - April 1992)
Khalqi-Parchami differences began to rend the military as Khalqi leaders, fearful that the Parchamis retained their cellular organization within the military, mounted massive purges of Parchamis. Thanks to Amin's efforts in the 1970s, the officer corps consisted largely of Khalqis The Army was also not immune to antigovernment sentiment. Soldiers began to desert and mutiny. Herat was the site of an uprising in March 1979 in which a portion of the town's military garrison joined. The rebels butchered Soviet citizens as well as Khalqis. The purging of Parchamis had left the military forces so dominated by Khalqis that the Soviets had no choice but to rely upon Khalqi officers to rebuild the army. Khalq officers and men expressed bitterness over the preferential treatment given their Parcham rivals by the Parchamdominated regime. Disaffected Khalqis often assisted the mujahidiin. Khalqis in the armed forces often accused their Parchami officers of using them as cannon fodder and complained that young Parchami men were exempted from compulsory military service. A show of this was that, in 1980, at the April military parade celebrating the Saur Revolution, many Tank Corps continued to display the Red Flad of Khalq, instead of the new national flag adopted by Babrak Karmal.
PDPA - Khalq from 1989 to our days

President Najibullah's Administration ( 1986 - 1992 )
Afther the 40th Soviet Army left the country, President Najibullah suffered, to a lesser degree, the same disadvantage that Karmal had when he was installed as General Secretary of the PDPA by the Soviets. This fact was shown by the fierceness of the resistance to Najibullah's appointment within the Parcham faction. This split persisted, forcing President Najibullah to straddle his politics between whatever Parchami support he could maintain and alliances he could win from the Khalqist. In December 1989, 127 Khalqist military officers were arrested for an attempted coup. Twenty-seven officers escaped and later showed up at a press conference with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Peshawar. Former Minister of Tribal Affairs, Bacha Gul Wafadar and Minister of Civil Aviation Hasan Sharq were among the conspirators. In March 1990, once again the Mujahidin leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar cooperated in a coup attempt, this time lead by the Khalqist Defense minister Shahnawaz Tanai. Tanai was apparently also supported by those important Khalqist who remained in the Politburo, Assadullah Sarwary and Mohammad Gulabzoi, respectively their country’s envoys to Aden and Moscow. They were said to have been intimately connected with the coup and with Gral Tanai. However, Tanai had no direct control of troops inside Kabul. The plot misfired and failed because of faulty communications.
Afghan Civil War ( 1992 - 2001 )
At the end, however, the former Khalqists either joined or allied themselves with the Taliban or other Mujahidin warlords after the collapse of President Mohammad Najibullah's Government in April, 1992. A perfect example of this was that, once Kabul was captured, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar gained the support of some Khalqi (and mostly Pashto) hardliners, including the Minister of Internal Affairs Raz Mohammad Paktin and then Defence Minister Mohammad Aslam Watanjar. Another example of this is the fact that Gral Tanai has (according to western diplomatic sources) acted as an agent for ISI by providing the Taliban a skilled cadre of military officers. In this way, the Khalqi faction were once again involved in the war, using his pilots to fly the Mig-23 and Sukhoi fighters of what was left of the Afghan Air Force, driving Soviet Tanks and using Soviet Artillery. With no central government and fighting for different groups, Khalq was merely a pawn in the Afghan Civil War between the Afghan Northern Alliance and the Taliban.
President Karzai's Administration ( 2002 - To our days )
Other Khalqists have developed fairly close relations with the current regime, after the defeat of the Taliban and the ascendance of Hamid Karzai in 2002.
- General Babrak Shinwari, former head of the youth affairs section of the PDPA under Taraki and Amin, who migrated to Peshawar in Pakistan in the winter of 1992. He later helped found the Afghanistan-Pakistan People Friendship Society and was elected member of the Loya Jirga by a council of elders from Nazyan Shinwari area of Nangarhar province.
- Another former Khalqist general who has enjoyed the protection of powerful politicians in the current Afghan government is the former PDPA governor of Kandahar, Nur al-Haq Olumi, who enjoys the patronage of Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
- The National Unity Party (Motahed-e Melli Hezb) was stablished on 2003. In this way, the Khalqi faction of the Homeland Party is once again attempting to participate in Afghan politics. It is now lead by former Khalqist General Noorul Haq Uloomi.
Prominent members of the Khalq faction

- Nur Mohammad Taraki
- Hafizullah Amin
- Shahnawaz Tanai
- Mohammad Qasim Fahim
- Mohammad Aslam Watanjar
External links

- [http://www.photius.com/countries/afghanistan/government/afghanistan_government_the_april_1978_coup_~6413.html A brief description of the Khalqist successfull Coup of 1978]
- [http://www.ariaye.com/english/constitutions/communc.html Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan - Khalqist Administration]
- [http://www.marxist.com/afghanistan-loya-jirga150702.htm About the future of the Afghan Khalqi faction]

Khalq

Early Political History

Khalq - Parcham division of the PDPA

Khalq during the Republican Revolution

Leninist

Leninism is a political and economic theory which builds upon Marxism (the forerunner of Communism) and is a branch in its own right (it has been the dominant branch of Marxism in the world since the 1920s). Leninism was developed mainly by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, and it was also put into practice by him after the Russian Revolution. Lenin's theories have been a source of controversy ever since their inception, having numerous critics across the political spectrum, from the Left and radical Left (for example, social democrats, anarchists, and even other Marxists, like the luxembourgists), to the center and center-left (for example, political moderates and liberals), and on the Right (for example, libertarians and conservatives) as well as the far Right (fascists and Nazis). Lenin argued that the proletariat can only achieve a successful revolution consciousness through the efforts of a Communist party that assumes the role of "revolutionary vanguard." Lenin further believed that such a party could only achieve its aims through a form of disciplined organization known as "democratic centralism," where Communist Party officials discuss proposals but agree to not question decisions after they have been made. Lenin expanded on Marx's initial theories, taking into account the fact that increasing class polarization and Communist revolution had failed to occur in the developed world. Lenin liked Marx's basic definition of communism and believed it would lead to the spread of Marxism. He attempted to explain this by stating that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, and that developed countries had created a labor aristocracy content with capitalism by exploiting the developing world. He maintained that capitalism could only be overthrown by revolutionary means, but added that due to imperialism such a revolution would have to occur in a lesser-developed country first, such as Russia. Lenin also supported the Marxist concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" following revolution, in which the working class is presumably represented through local Marxist-Leninist councils known as soviets. This is referred to as soviet democracy. Knowing that according to Marx's theories, a socialist system would be unable to develop independently in an underdeveloped country such as Russia, Lenin proposed two possible solutions: #The revolution in the underdeveloped country sparks off a revolution in a developed capitalist country (for example, Lenin hoped the Russian Revolution would spark a revolution in Germany.) The developed country establishes socialism and helps the underdeveloped country do the same. #The revolution happens in a large number of underdeveloped countries at the same time or in quick succession; the underdeveloped countries then join together into a federal state capable of overcoming the opposition of capitalist countries and establishing socialism. This was the original idea behind the foundation of Lenin's Russia later renamed the Soviet Union to demonstrate to the rest of the world the validity of his control. Either way, according to Marxism, socialism cannot survive in one poor underdeveloped country alone. Thus, Leninism calls for world revolution in one form or another. Lenin's contributions to Marxist theory are controversial; some have criticized them as revisionist. Still, Lenin's theories had a dramatic impact on Communist movements worldwide. The influence of Leninist ideology has waned since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but there are still Leninists today who have focused their criticism on globalization, claiming it is a modern-day form of imperialism. Near the end of the 1920s in the Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism was proclaimed as the official ideology of the Communist Party. The concept of Marxism-Leninism is somewhat different to, although by no means contrary to, the concept of Leninism. Both terms have since been used by communist parties, although with different functions. Marxism-Leninism is used to describe the basic ideology of the communist party, whereas Leninism is often used when discussing the organizational model of the party. Dissident groups within the communist tradition, such as Trotskyists and Luxembourgists, often discard the term Marxism-Leninism as "Stalinism".

External links

Works by Vladimir Lenin:
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ What is to be Done?]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1 The State and Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/index.htm The Lenin Archive at Marxists.org]
- [http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/FCCI19.html First Conference of the Communist International] Other links:
- [http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/other/intellectuals-state.html An excerpt on Leninism and State Capitalism from the work of Noam Chomsky]
- [http://www.leninism.org/ Cyber Leninism] Category:Communism Category:Marxism Category:Modernism ko:레닌주의 simple:Leninism

Patriotic

Patriotism denotes positive attitudes by a individuals to their own nation, to its national homeland, its culture, its members, and to its interests. The word is derived from the Latin patria, fatherland, which has a much broader meaning than a geographical territory.

Usage and application

The word patriotism is used to describe emotions and attitudes, political views, symbolism, and specific acts, with respect to a nation, and to everything that is associated with a nation in the ideology of nationalism - its territory, history, culture, values, and symbols. Positive attitudes and actions towards other nations, or to non-national groups, are not generally described as 'patriotic', and they may be referred to by a specific name, such as pro-Greek philhellenism. Patriotism has connotations of self-sacrifice, implying that the individual should place the interests of the nation above personal interest, and in extreme cases their own survival. In wartime, patriotism is assumed to be the main driving force for participation in military operations, certainly if it is voluntary. In this context patriotism is seen as an explanation for the apparent suspension of the instinct for self-preservation, which implies that all humans would avoid a battlefield. Patriotism has ethical connotations: it implies that the nation is in some way a moral standard or moral value in itself. The expression my country right or wrong - a misquotation of the American naval officer Stephen Decatur (but actually attributal to Karl Shurtz, a nineteenth century German revolutionary who later immigrated to the United States)- is the extreme form of this belief. The primary implication of patriotism in ethics is, that a person has more moral duties to fellow members of the nation, than to non-members. There is no specific name for this doctrine, but there is for its opposite: ethical cosmopolitanism is the doctrine that no distinction should be made among humans, in the degree of moral obligation. The term patriotism is generally used in the context of an already existing nation-state. It can be voluntary and emotional empathy, and it can be officially promoted by the government - usually both. Positive attitudes towards a national movement on behalf of a non-sovereign entity, would generally be described as 'nationalism'. However, some well-developed nationalist movements, such as Irish Republicanism and Basque separatism have a patriotic symbolic culture, similar to that of established nation-states. Since the existence and boundaries of nation-states are often disputed, their patriotism is often disputed too. In Northern Ireland two parallel patriotic cultures co-exist, one Irish-Republican and one pro-British unionist. In the disputed nation-state of Belgium, pro-Belgian patriotism is weak, and exists at an official level only. Patriotism is often associated with ethnocentrism - the belief that the national or ethnic group is superior to others, and should be used as a standard to judge them. Patriotism often implies a relatively less positive attitude to other nations, and to internal minorities which are not considered part of the nation. The opposite of patriotism would be, strictly speaking, negative attitudes toward a nation-state. In practice, many patriots would see treason as the 'opposite of patriotism'. Modern examples of treason are usually related to conflicting national loyalties: people may see no reason to be loyal to the state that demands their allegiance. 'Patriotism' is widely used as a synonym for nationalism, and nationalist as a near-synonym for patriot. Strictly speaking, nationalism is an ideology advocating the formation of a separate nation-state for each nation. Where 'nationalist' is pejoratively intended, 'patriotism' is used as a defensive euphemism. It is also widely used as a euphemism for chauvinism, jingoism, xenophobia, hostility to immigration, and racism.

Forms of patriotism

Death in battle for the fatherland is the archetype of extreme patriotism. Less dramatic forms of patriotism include a wide range of attitudes, expressions, and acts. In wartime they can be directly correlated to military necessity: the home front supports the army, and individual effort contributes to military success. Three forms of patriotism can be distinguished. The first is personal patriotism, which is emotional and voluntary. The patriot in this sense adheres to certain patriotic values, such as respect for the flag. However, the patriots often insist, that the entire population of the nation shares adherence to these values, creating a values-based ideological patriotism. It is structurally similar to other values ideologies and movements, such as the family values movement. The political expression, in both cases, consists of campaigns to legally enforce the values in question. Two proposed amendments to the United States Constitution illustrate the similarity: one enforces Christian values and would effectively prohibit same-sex marriage, one enforces patriotic values and would forbid flag-burning. In any case, governments of nation-states always promote an official patriotism which has a high symbolic and ceremonial content. It is a logical consequence of the nation-state itself, which derives legitimacy from being the expression of the nation. National monuments, and veterans days and commemoration ceremonies are typical examples. For various reasons, the government may also launch a ‘patriotism campaign’, to promote identification with the nation and its symbols. commemoration ceremonies became a popular way to display patriotism in the United States around the time of the 2004 presidential election.]] Patriotism relies heavily on symbolic acts, such as displaying the national flag, singing the national anthem, participating in a mass rally, placing a patriotic bumper sticker on one's vehicle, or any other way of publicly proclaiming allegiance to the nation-state. Symbolic patriotism in wartime is intended to raise morale, in turn contributing to the war effort. Peacetime patriotism can not be so easily linked, to a measurable gain for the nation, but the patriot does not see it as inferior. Saluting the flag is considered equally patriotic, if it is done every morning at a government office, or under enemy fire on the battlefield. Levels of patriotism vary across time, and among nations. Typically, patriotic intensity is higher, when the nation is under external threat. In the United States, personal patriotic expression is ubiquitous. Although many forms of symbolic patriotic expression originated in older western European nations, they are now less pervasive there. Patriotism in western Europe often has specific anti-immigration connotations, and the historical perspective on nationalism and war is shaped by the destruction in World War II. However, in the zone of the most recent wars, in the states of former Yugoslavia, patriotic emotions are still intense. In much of eastern Europe, for instance in the Baltic States, patriotism is indistinguishable from politicised nationalism.

The ethics of patriotism

Patriotism is an essentially emotional support for the nation, the fatherland. It is not intended to have a rational foundation: soldiers do not fight for a country because it produces more cement than the enemy, but because it is their country. Their patriotism pre-supposes its existence — but not everyone agrees with that. Some Islamists, for instance, reject the legitimacy of the nation-state as such, and despise patriotism as un-Islamic. The loyalty of the Muslim, they say, can only be to the Ummah, the community of all Muslims. In the European Union, patriotism usually coincides with Euroscepticism, and may therefore be rejected on pro-European grounds. Obviously, if you oppose the very existence of nation-states and nations, then there is no reason to value a positive attitude to the nation. For the nationalist, patriotism is a virtue, but that judgment is made within the ethical framework of nationalist beliefs about the value of nations themselves. Among those who support the nation-state, there are often disagreements about specific patriotisms. In some countries patriotism, and especially national pride, is disputed, because a minority feels there is no reason to be proud. The Australian political conflict about the Black arm band theory of history is a classic example. It concentrates on the suffering of Indigenous Australians during the British colonisation of Australia. Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, who would undoubtedly describe himself as an Australian patriot, said of it in 1996:

The 'black armband' view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination.

In the United States, explicitly patriotic history has been consistently criticised for its de-emphasising the post-Colombian depopulation, the Atlantic slave trade, the population expulsions and the wars of conquest against Native Americans. Native Americans One of the main problems with treating patriotism as a virtue, is that specific patriotisms conflict. The near-hopeless defence of the Netherlands against the May 1940 invasion by Nazi Germany provided an example of military patriotism - Dutch soldiers giving their lives to defend their country. Yet many of the invading Nazi soldiers doubtless felt, too, that they were engaged in a patriotic act, in this case on behalf of the German nation. Many of them had been indoctrinated in a form of unquestioning patriotism during their teenage years, while they were members of the Hitler Youth. It is now generally accepted, even in Germany, that the invasion had no justification, and to the extent that patriotism facilitated it, then patriotism could not be considered a virtue. Throughout history, governments have invoked patriotic feelings to support military aggression, arbitrary imprisonment of aliens, and even murder, acts considered evil by most individuals. Even if battlefield self-sacrifice is considered virtuous, it can be difficult to determine whether a particular act is admirable for its ‘’patriotism’’. Self-sacrifice is inevitable on the battlefield, the question is how much it is inspired by patriotic emotions. We can ask whether any particular self-sacrificing Dutch soldier acted out of devotion to the Dutch national state in 1940. Some certainly fought because they hated Fascism, and many soldiers fight because they do not want to appear to be cowards. In other words, there is a distinction between a non-egoistic act which benefits the nation, and one that is specifically motivated by patriotic feelings. We can imagine two soldiers, equally brave and self-sacrificing. The first soldier is motivated by a patriotic preference for his country's independence. The second cares nothing for the Dutch nation as such, but has carefully studied Fascism and has a deep commitment to save the world from its perceived evils. Some people, according to their prejudices, might well admire the second soldier more than the first, even though he could be considered the less patriotic of the two.

Patriotism vs. universal brotherhood

The wartime example of patriots fighting each other, illustrates the point that even self-sacrificing patriotism is selective in its altruism. Patriotism implies that nationals - members of a nation - owe a greater allegiance to fellow nationals than to foreigners. This selectivity is the most ethically controversial aspect of patriotism. Many people have promoted the alternative concept of a universal human community, as expressed for instance in the idealistic phrase "Alle Menschen werden Brüder" ("all people become brothers") of the Ode to Joy, part of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The 'Ode to Joy' is the official anthem of the European Union and the phrase is regarded with deep distrust by many nationalists in Europe. All nation-states favour their own nationals above non-nationals. Immigration law is based on that principle: merely by accident of birth in a country, some people have an automatic entitlement to live in it, but foreigners do not. Patriotism seems to ethically condone these distinctions. For this reason it has often been compared to racism, most notably in a 2002 paper by Paul Gompert, Patriotism is like racism. In his influential article "Is patriotism a virtue?" (1984), the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre notes that most contemporary conceptions of morality insist on a kind of impartial blindness to accidental traits like national origin in the just treatment of our fellow humans - and therefore, that patriotism is inevitably not moral under these conceptions. MacIntyre goes on, however, to construct a sophisticated alternative conception of morality that would be compatible with patriotism.

Patriotism for other countries?

History includes many cases of individuals who acted with impassioned selflessness on behalf of countries not their own. For example, the Marquis de Lafayette was a Frenchman who fought for the independence of the thirteen British colonies in America. The "Philhellenes," western Europeans who fought in the Greek War of Independence, are another example; as are the Americans who fought on the Allied side before the entry of their country into the First World War. Such cases call into question what we mean by "patriotism": for instance, was Lafayette an American patriot, or the Philhellenes Greek patriots? Alasdair MacIntyre would claim that they were not; that these and similar cases are instances of idealism, but not of patriotism. Under this view, Lafayette was only devoted to the ideals of political liberty that underlay the American Revolution, but was not specifically patriotic for America. For MacIntyre, patriotism by definition can only be a preference for one's own country, not a preference for the ideals that a country is believed to stand for. The opposite view is also widely held: for instance, many Americans who profess to be patriots would claim that their patriotism is not an arbitrary preference for America, but is rather is based on special virtues (for instance, "freedom"), that are specially, perhaps uniquely, possessed by America. Presumably, for such individuals, it would be quite coherent to claim that Lafayette was an American patriot, since he fought on behalf of (what are held to be) American virtues.

Patriotism and democracy

Politicians often appeal to patriotic emotions in attacking their opponents, implicitly or explicitly accusing them of betraying the nation. In the view of many, the nature of these comments harm political discussion and provide less opportunity for deliberative democracy to flourish, because it appeals only to a visceral negative emotion (mistrust and angry patriotism), rather than to voters’ reasoned views on policy. In some democracies, the claimed treason of the political elite became a central issue, notably in Germany itself. Adolf Hitler condemned the democratic politicians who approved the November 1918 armistice (which ended the First World War) as the ‘November criminals’. On the other hand, some people suggest that democratic government is a cause of patriotism. For instance, it could be imagined that the military forces of Ancient Greece succeeded in fending off much larger numbers of attacking Persians because ancient Persia was a despotism, whereas many of the Greeks lived in democracies, which gave them a sense of solidarity and hence of patriotism. Similarly, it is often thought that the French Revolution, by freeing the French of the yoke of monarchy, set off a great surge of patriotism that led to the great success of the French armies in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Nevertheless, some states combined tyrannical systems of government with high levels of patriotism, including later Napoleonic France, after Napoleon had made himself emperor. Patriotism can also be seen as one of the greatest psychological barriers to civil war because a feeling of nationhood common to all citizens can give democratic politics a legitimacy among the nation, a legitimacy lacking in some states that contain a heterogeneous community.

An evolutionary origin of patriotism?

Why do so many people experience intense patriotic feelings? An evolutionary biology explanation is that patriotism is a form of kin altruism, which is both posited and explained by the theory of kin selection. This explanation is speculative and disputed, and no explicit genetic basis for patriotism has been evidenced. Kin altruism, in its simplest form, implies that one animal would sacrifice itself to ensure survival of more than one other genetically related individuals, for instance siblings. To explain patriotism, it would have to apply to a group. Our ancestors certainly lived in small groups of genetically related individuals. Since genes tended to be shared by the entire group, and cooperation likely was critical to group survival, a propensity to experience feelings of loyalty to the group was probably favoured by natural selection. This idea was expressed by Charles Darwin in 1871 as follows: :A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection. Loyalty to the group might have led individuals to take actions that were poorly justified on grounds of self-interest, but helped the group as a whole: this is the analogy with kin altruism. Since Darwin's time, evidence for kin selection has been observed among many species that live in small groups. Frequently, animals in such species have been observed taking actions that risk their own lives but benefit the safety of the group as a whole (an example is the issuance of a warning call against predators, an act which directs the predator's attention to the individual who gave it). Disputed gene-centered theories imply that members of such groups have an evolutionary interest in the long-term success of each other's genetic endowment. Today, of course, the feelings of intense patriotism that grip (for example) many Americans cannot possibly be supported in the evolutionary sense by kin selection, since Americans form a huge and genetically very diverse population. Yet the forces believed to have created human nature, and hence these feelings, were in effect over a period of many millennia, during which time all human societies were very small. Speculatively, there was nothing to stop the feeling of group loyalty from carrying over, without biological purpose, from small groups to large. The political rhetoric associated with patriotism often compares the nation to a family, as in, for instance, the terms Fatherland and ‘Mother Russia’ or the Shakespearian expression ‘band of brothers’, from the play Henry V. In the kin-selection account of patriotism, this kind of metaphor might be viewed as seeking to focus the natural feelings people have towards kin, onto the nation as a whole. Both kin selection theory, and its use to explain patriotism, are disputed. Some evolutionary biologists believe that the quantitative conditions needed to make kin selection effective in small human societies were simply not met. The controversy hinges on what numerical values are to be plugged into the (generally accepted) equations of W. D. Hamilton that govern kin selection. Some people accept the theory of evolution in general but reject efforts to invoke it in the explanation of human behaviour. They would emphasise the great malleability of the human character, including the apparent possibility of creating patriotism through the instruction of youth, as in the Hitler Youth example above. Others would reject the kin selection theory of patriotism, simply because they reject the theory of evolution on religious grounds. For them, their religious beliefs explain why the human character is the way it is. Depending on whether they see patriotism as good or bad, they would attribute it to a free will choice for good or evil.

Patriotism and religion

Throughout history, patriotic feeling has often been linked to religion. At various points in history, particularly in time of war, various relations of religion and patriotism have prevailed. In one variant, patriotic participants in a war acknowledge that the enemy worships the same god, but judge that this god is on their own side, thus providing the external justification for patriotism noted just above. This is perhaps a fair characterization of the attitude of many of the participants in the American Civil War or most of the fronts of the First World War. Another variant is for each side to worship different gods, acknowledge that the other side’s god exists, and believe that their own god is superior. This may have characterized the conflicts between the ancient Israelites and their Canaanite opponents, as narrated in the Old Testament. Yet another version of religious patriotism is the belief that a god or set of gods is on one’s side, and that the god or gods of the other side simply do not exist. This view often characterized the beliefs of the European powers during the colonialist period, when their armies often fought against pagan opponents. Under any of these circumstances, religion can provide a satisfactory account to its believers for what otherwise would be a paradox, namely, that both sides in a conflict can feel patriotic at the same time. The idea would be that the other side is in fact fighting against God’s will, and thus can be considered to be engaged in a false kind of patriotism. While patriotism often appeals to religion, not all religions countenance patriotism. For example, some Restorationist Christian denominations, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Mennonites, refuse to participate in patriotic acts and ceremonies and refuse to wear patriotic attire.

Sources and further reading

General
- Bar-Tal, Daniel, and Ervin Staub. Patriotism. Wadsworth Publishing: 1999. ISBN 083041410X.
- Blattberg, Charles. From Pluralist to Patriotic Politics: Putting Practice First Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0198296886.
- Cohen, Joshua, and Martha C. Nussbaum. For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism. Beacon Press: 1996. ISBN 0807043133.
- Primoratz, Igor (ed). Patriotism. Humanity Books: 2002. ISBN 1573929557.
- Paul Gomberg, Patriotism is Like Racism, in Igor Primoratz, ed., Patriotism (Humanity Books, 2002), pp 105-112. ISBN 1573929557.
- Viroli, Maurizio. For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism. Oxford University Press: 1997. ISBN 0198293585.
- Alasdair MacIntyre's essay on patriotism was published as a pamphlet by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Kansas and is available in many university libraries.
- Craig Calhoun Is it Time to Be Postnational?. In Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Minority Rights. Ed. Stephen May, Tariq Modood and Judith Squires. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. pp 231-256. Online at [http://www.ssrc.org/programs/calhoun/publications/TimetoBePostnational.pdf www.ssrc.org]. History:
- The Second World War by John Keegan (various editions; e.g. Penguin USA 1990, ISBN 014011341X) addresses the intensification of patriotic feeling in Europe during the 19th century, and how it ultimately helped facilitate the First and the Second World Wars. Keegan also vividly describes how Adolf Hitler used accusations of treason to help attain power. Biology:
- The quote from Darwin above is from Chapter 5 of his book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871). The book is available in a number of modern editions (for an inexpensive one: ISBN 1573921769); and also on line at http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/index.shtml.
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (various editions, e.g. Oxford Press, 1990, ISBN 0192860925) provides extensive discussion, with examples, of kin selection.
- The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond (various editions, e.g. Perennial, 1990, ISBN 0060984031) discusses the role of biological factors in human behavior, including behaviors characterizable as patriotic.
- http://www.pitt.edu/~inb1/homeopathy.pdf is a skeptical look by a historian at the kin-selection theory of patriotism.

External links

- [http://www.psqonline.org/cgi-bin/99_article.cgi?byear=2003&bmonth=winter&a=02free&format=view Political Science Quarterly journal article: Misperceptions, Media and the Iraq War.]
- [http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0330-05.htm Quotes from Tom Davis and Trent Lott on the patriotism of dissenters]
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4698027.stm Russia launches patriotism drive], including "correct reproductive behaviour". Category:Nationalism ja:愛国心

Parcham

Parcham (Banner) was the name of one of the factions of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The Parcham faction seized power in the country, after toppling Hafizullah Amin. In 1992 the Parcham-led PDPA converted itself into Watan Party.

GRU

---- GRU is the English transliteration of the Russian acronym ГРУ, which stands for "Гла́вное Разве́дывательное Управле́ние" (Glavnoe Razvedyvatel'noe Upravlenie), meaning Main Intelligence Directorate. The full name is GRU GSh (GRU GenShtaba, i.e. "GRU of the General Staff". )The GRU was created in 1918 by Lenin, and given the task of handling all military intelligence. It operated residencies all over the world, along with the SIGINT (signal intelligence) station, in Lourdes, Cuba, and throughout the former Soviet bloc countries, especially in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The GRU was totally independent of most other power centers in the Soviet Union, most famously the CPSU and KGB. At the time of the GRU's creation, Lenin ordered the Cheka (predecessor of the KGB) not to interfere with the GRU's operations. The rivalry between the GRU and KGB was even more intense than the rivalry between the FBI and CIA. The existence of the GRU was not publicized during the Soviet era. It became widely known in Russia, and the West outside the narrow confines of the intelligence community, during perestroika, in part thanks to the writings of "Viktor Suvorov" (Vladimir Rezun), a GRU agent who defected to Britain in 1978, and wrote about his experiences in the Soviet military and intelligence services. According to Suvorov, even the Communist Party general secretary couldn't enter GRU headquarters without going through a security screening. The GRU still remains to this day a very important part of the Russian Federation's intelligence services, especially since it was never split up like the KGB was. The KGB was actually drastically down-sized, becoming today the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service]] in Russia. According to the Federation of American Scientists: "...Though sometimes compared to the US Defense Intelligence Agency, (the GRU's) activities encompass those performed by nearly all joint US military intelligence agencies as well as other national US organizations. The GRU gathers HUMINT through military attaches and foreign agents. It also maintains significant signals intelligence (SIGINT) and imagery reconnaissance and satellite imagery (IMINT) capabilities." [http://www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/gru/ops.htm] In 2002, Bill Powell wrote Treason, an account of the experiences of former GRU colonel Vyacheslav Baranov. Baranov had been recruited by the CIA, but was betrayed by a mole in either the FBI or CIA and spent five years in prison before being released. The identity of the mole remains unknown to this day, though some speculation mounted that it could have been Robert Hanssen.

External links

- [http://www.agentura.ru/english/dosie/gru/story/ History of military intelligence] GRU website (in English)
- [http://www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/gru/index.html GRU Info] from FAS.org
- [http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov8/25.html GRU High Command and Leading GRU Officers] Category:Espionage Category:Soviet and Russian intelligence agencies ja:ロシア連邦軍参謀本部情報総局

Nur Mohammad Taraki

Nur Muhammad Taraki (July 15, 1913 - September 14, 1979) was an Afghan political figure, amateur poet, and publicly-notorious revolutionary. He served as the President of Afghanistan from 1978 until he was overthrown in 1979 In the months following the coup, he and other party leaders initiated radical policies that challenged both traditional Afghan values and well-established power structures in the rural areas. He ruled over a nation with a deep Islamic religious culture and a long history of resistance to any type of strong centralized governmental control.

Early Political Career

Born into a rural Pashtun family, Taraki attended night school while working as a clerk in Bombay, India, where he learned English. In the late 1940s he worked in the press department of the Afghan government and in 1953 was appointed attaché at the Afghan embassy in Washington D.C. On returning to Kabul he opened a business that translated materials for foreign organizations, and his clientele included the US Embassy. On January 1, 1965, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was founded. The PDPA, a communist party in fact if not in name, was established for the primary purpose of gaining parliamentary seats. The PDPA was comprised of a small group of men, followers of Nur Mohammad Taraki and Babrak Karmal, both avowed Marxist-Leninists with a pro-Moscow orientation. Most observers described the 1965 elections as remarkably fair. Taraki was elected to Parliament in 1965, and started one of the first major leftist newspaper, Khalq (Masses), which lasted little more than a month before being silenced by a government ban. In 1967 the PDPA split into two groups: Khalq (Masses) and Parcham (Banner) headed by Nur Muhammad Taraki and Babrak Karmal, respectively. The split reflected deep ethnic, class, and ideological differences. The Khalq faction was more militantly Marxist and somewhat more independent of the Soviet Union than the Parcham faction.

President of the Republic ( April 1978 -- October 1979 )

On April 19, 1978 a prominent leftist, Mir Akbar Khyber, was killed by the government of Mohammed Daoud Khan. His death served as a rallying point for the Afghan communists. Fearing a communist coup d'etat, Daud ordered the arrest of certain PDPA leaders, including Taraki and Babrak Karmal, while placing others such as Hafizullah Amin under house arrest. Hafizullah Amin On April 27, 1978 the coup was initiated, reportedly by Hafizullah Amin while still under house arrest. Mohammed Daoud Khan was killed the next day along with most of his family. The PDPA rapidly gained control and on May 1, Nur Mohammed Taraki became President. The country was then renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), installing a regime that would last, in some form or another, until April 1992. Taraki became president, prime minister and General Secretary of the PDPA. However, the rivalry between the Khalq and Parcham factions continued. The Government was divided between President Nur Muhammad Taraki and Deputy Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin of the Khalq faction against Parcham leaders such as Babrak Karmal and Mohammad Najibullah. After three months, President Taraki sent the Parcham leaders to India, Iran and Turkey as ambassadors. Babrak Karmal became the Ambassador to Czechoslovakia and his mistress, Anahita Ratebzad, Ambassador to Yugoslavia, while Mohammad Najibullah became Ambassador to Iran. Taraki then began to purge Parcham members from his government with many being arrested and executed. Barbrak Karmal was recalled but went into hiding with Anahita Ratebzad in the Soviet Union fearing execution if he returned; Muhammad Najibullah followed them. Taraki then stripped them of all official positions. Amin became prime minister on 28 March, 1979 with Taraki remaining President. On December 5, 1978, he sponsored a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union (later used as a pretext for the Soviet invasion). Major uprisings occurred regularly against his government. During its first 18 months of rule, the PDPA brutally imposed a Marxist-style "reform" program, which ran counter to deeply rooted Afghan traditions. Decrees forcing changes in marriage customs and pushing through an ill-conceived land reform were particularly misunderstood by virtually all Afghans. In addition, thousands of members of the traditional elite, the religious establishment, and the intelligentsia were imprisoned, tortured, or murdered. Taraki was also responsable to introduce women to the political life. A prominent example was Anahita Ratebzad, who was a major Marxist leader and a member of the Revolutionary Council. Ratebzad wrote the famous New Kabul Times editorial (May 28 1978) which declared that Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country....Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention. Taraki as president of Afghanistan attended a conference of the Non-Aligned nations in Havana, Cuba. On his way back stopped in Moscow to meet with Leonid Brezhnev.Taraki reached Moscow on March 20, 1979 with a formal request for Soviet ground troops. Alexei Kosygin, then Premier of the USSR, told him that We believe it would be a fatal mistake to commit ground troops... if our troops went in, the situation in your country... would get worse. Despite this statement Taraki negotiated some armed support - helicopter gunships with Russian pilots and maintenance crews, 500 military advisors, 700 paratroopers disguised as technicians to defend Kabul airport, also significant food aid (300,000 tons of wheat). Brezhnev further warned Taraki that full Soviet intervention "would only play into the hands of our enemies - both yours and ours." Brezhnev also advised Taraki to ease up on the drastic social reforms and to seek broader support for his regime. Finally, he advised Taraki to remove Prime Minister Amin. The intense rivalry between Taraki and Amin within the Khalq faction heated up. In September 1979, Taraki's followers had made several attempts on Amin's life. Taraki's death was first noted in the New Kabul Times on October 10, which reported that the former leader only recently hailed as the "great teacher... great genius... great leader" had died quietly "of serious illness, which he had been suffering for some time."

Assassination

Less than three months later, after the Amin government had been overthrown, the newly installed followers of Babrak Karmal gave another account of Taraki's death. According to this account, Amin ordered the commander of the palace guard to have Taraki executed. Taraki reportedly was suffocated with a pillow over his head. Amin's emergence from the power struggle within the small divided communist party in Afghanistan alarmed the Soviets and would usher in the series of events which lead to the Soviet invasion.

Hafizullah Amin

Hafizullah Amin (August 1, 1929 - December 27, 1979) was the second President of Afghanistan during the period of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Amin tried to broaden his internal base of support and to bring the interest of Pakistan and the United States in Afghan security. During the 104 days of his own rule, except for one failed military rebellion, no major uprising took place. On December 27, 1979, Soviet Army troops killed him and instaled Babrak Karmal as President.

Early Years

Amin was born in 1921 in Paghman, a town near Kabul. His father was a minor civil servant. Amin studied mathematics and physics at Kabul University and became a high school teacher and principal. In 1957 he won a scholarship to study at teachers’ College at Columbia University in New York, and on completion of his course he returned home to administer teacher-training courses. Returning to Columbia to complete his doctorate in 1962, Amin became involved in the politics of the Associated Students of Afghanistan, an overseas student group in the United States. It was apparently during his sojourn in the student world of Morningside Heights on Manhattan’s upper west side near Columbia’s campus that he became interested in Marxism, although Columbia had not yet encountered the radical tumult of the late 1960s. In 1965 he returned to Afghanistan without his doctorate and accepted a teaching post at a girls’ high school. He quickly joined the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), becoming a prominent member of the marxist Khalq (People) faction. President Daoud was still in the besieged palace when Amin took command of the coup after he and his comrades were released from the prison. After the death of Mohammed Daoud Khan in 1978 the PDPA gained power with Nur Mohammad Taraki becoming President of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and secretary general of the PDPA while Amin and Babrak Karmal became deputy prime ministers. An attempt to institute Marxist-Leninist reforms provoked widespread resistance and a number of violent revolts. In February 1979 the U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs was killed. The Khalq faction was gaining political power over the Parcham faction, with Karmal exiled to Europe. Amin had gained considerable control by March 1979 and was named Prime Minister although Taraki retained his other posts. The unrest continued however and the regime was forced to seek more Soviet aid. It was in that meeting between Taraki and Leonid Breznev that the decision of removing Amid took place. Afer Taraki returned to Kabul he requested that Amin meet with him. Amin agreed to the meeting only if his safety was guaranteed by the Soviet ambassador. Such assurances were provided, but not in good faith. Amin knew however what Taraki's intentions were and the demand for his safety being guaranteed by the Soviet ambassador was probably a shrewd ploy on the part of Amin to mislead Taraki. Being forewarned, Amin used the Palace Guard to take Taraki prisoner. On September 14, 1979 Amin then took control of the government. A few days later Amin's government announced that Taraki died of an "undisclosed illness".

President of the Republic ( September 1979 – December 1979 )

1979 His rule was notable for its brutality. The Soviets admitted that perhaps 500 PDPA members had forfeited their lives. Amin now assumed leadership and carried out his own purges of the PDPA. Attempting to pacify the population, he released a list of some 18,000 people who had been executed and blamed the executions on Taraki. The official Afghan figures are much higher-15,000 to 45,000. Aditional to that, Amin was not a popular person. He was rapidly accumulating as enemies a large group of very angry relatives of victims, and PDPA members must have lived in fear of their lives. During this period, many Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran and began organizing a resistance movement to the "atheistic" and "infidel" communist regime backed by the Soviets. Although the groups organizing in the Pakistani city of Peshawar would later, after the Soviet invasion, be described by the western press as "freedom fighters". In mid-November 1979 Amin launched a large military operation against the resistance at Sayd Karam in Paktia Province. The offensive was successful, eliminating as many as 1,000 or more resistance fighters, relatives, and supporters, driving most of the remainder into Pakistan, and obliterating sympathetic villages. Amin also began unfinished attempts to moderate what many Afghans viewed as an Anti-Islam regime. Promising more religious freedom, repairing mosques, presenting copies of the Koran to religious groups, invoking the name of Allah in his speeches, and declaring that the Saur Revolution was "totally based on the principles of Islam." Yet many Afghans held Amin responsible for the regime's harshest measures and the Soviets, worried about their huge investment in Afghanistan might be jeopardized, increased the number of advisers in Afghanistan. Amin worked to broaden his base of support and purged the PDPA of his perceived enemies. His regime was still under pressure from the insurgency in the country and he tried to gain Pakistani or American support and refused to take Soviet advice. Because of or in spite of this, Amin attempted to solidify his hold on the country militarily. This display of independent nationalism was not tolerated by Moscow, and on December 1979, the Soviets began their invasion of Afghanistan.

Soviet Invasion

1979 Islamic guerrillas in the mountainous countryside harassed the Afghan army to the point where the government of President Hafizullah Amin turned to the Soviet Union for increasingly large amounts of aid. The Soviet Union decided to increase its military aid to Afghanistan in order to maintain the Communist government, but was dissatisfied with Amin as the Afghan leader capable of accomplishing this goal. Soviet leaders, based on the information from KGB, thought that Amin destabilized the situation in Afghanistan. The last arguments to overthrow Amin were obtained by the KGB from its agents in Kabul, that two of Amin's guards killed the former president Nur Muhammad Taraki and that Amin was supposedly a CIA agent. There were, however, some sceptics among the Soviet military advisors of Afghan army, principaly General Vasily Zaplatin, a political advisor at that time, who claimed that four of the young Taraki's ministers were responsible for the destabilization. Amin feared the Soviet troops would be used to depose him. Fearing for his survival and uncertain of whom he could trust, he started putting his relatives into positions of power. Amin put one of his nephews in charge of the secret police, but that nephew was assassinated. Amin moved his headquarters out of Kabul in concern for his own safety.

Assassination

On December 22, the Soviet advisors to the Afghani Armed Forces advise them to undergo maintenance cycles for tanks and other crucial equipment. Meanwhile, Telecommunications links to areas outside of Kabul are severed, isolating the capital. Viewing this, Amin moves the offices of the president to the Tajbeg Palace, believing this location to be more defensible during invasion. Five days later, on December 27, elements of the KGB Spetsnaz (Alpha Group), in Afghan uniforms storm the Presidential Palace in Kabul, taking relatively few casualties, killing President Hafizullah Amin and his 200 elite guards in the process. The Soviet Spetsnaz blew up Kabul's communications hub, paralyzing the Afghani military command, at 7:00 P.M. By 7:15 seized the Ministry of Interior. The Soviet military command at Termez did not wait until Amin's capture to announce on Radio Kabul (in a broadcast prerecorded by Babrak Karmal) that Afghanistan had been liberated from Amin's rule. According to the Soviet Politburo they were only complying with the 1978 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborliness that former President Taraki signed. The execution of Hafizullah Amin was, according to the Soviets, the action of the Afghan Revolutionary Central Committee. That committee then elected as head of government Babrak Karmal, who was in exile in Moscow.

Accusations of being a CIA Agent

The Soviet government and press repeatedly referred to Amin as a "CIA agent", a charge which was greeted with great skepticism in the United States and elsewhere. One strong argument against that belief, was that he always and everywhere showed official friendliness to the Soviet Union. And even after the assassination of Amin and two his sons, his wife claimed that she and her remaining sons only wanted to go to the Soviet Union, because her husband was loyal to them until the end. She did eventually go to the Soviet Union to live. However Zaplatin failed to emphasize this enough [http://zavtra.ru/cgi/veil/data/zavtra/99/316/61.html]. However, enough circumstantial evidence supporting the charge exists so that it perhaps should not be dismissed entirely out of hand.

Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

This article is about Communist rule in Afghanistan (1978-1992).

The Communists take power, 1978

Opposition forces

The Soviet invasion, December 1979

The search for popular support

Internal refugees: flight to the cities

Factionalism: Khalq and Parcham

Mohammad Najibullah, 1986-1992

The Soviet decision to withdraw, 1986-1988

The Geneva accords, 1987-1989

The failure to bring peace

Pakistan's attempt at a political solution, 1987-1988

Stalemate: The Civil War, 1989-1992

The demise of the Soviet Union, 1991

The fall of Kabul, April 1992

The United Nations plan for political accommodation

Kabul

Kabul (, Kâb'l, in Persian کابل) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan with a population variously estimated at 2 to 4 million. It is an economic and cultural center strategically situated in a narrow valley along the Kabul River, high in the mountains before the Khyber Pass. Kabul is linked with the Tajikistan border via a tunnel under the Hindu Kush Mountains. It is about 1,800 metres (5,900 feet) above sealevel. Kabul's main products include ordnance, cloth, furniture, and beet sugar, though continual war since 1979 has limited the economic productivity of the city. Kabul remains one of the most mined cities in the world. Kabul's population is multicultural and multi-ethnic, reflecting the diversity of Afghanistan, with Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Hazaras all comprising the bulk of the city's population. Kabul is still in the process of being rebuilt following decades of war and devastation, so accurate census counts remain difficult and only rough estimates are available.

Reconstruction

History

Attractions

External links

Khalq

Early Political History

Khalq - Parcham division of the PDPA

Khalq during the Republican Revolution

Australian

The Commonwealth of Australia is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the world's smallest continent and a number of islands in the Southern, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Australia's neighbouring countries are Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the northeast, and New Zealand to the southeast. The continent of Australia has been inhabited for over 40,000 years by Indigenous Australians. After sporadic visits by fishermen from the north and by European explorers and merchants starting in the 17th century, the eastern half of the continent was claimed by the British in 1770 and officially settled as the penal colony of New South Wales on 26 January 1788. As the population grew and new areas were explored, another five largely self-governing Crown Colonies were successively established over the course of the 19th century. On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated and the Commonwealth of Australia was formed. Since federation, Australia has maintained a stable liberal democratic political system and remains a Commonwealth Realm. The current population of around 20.4 million is concentrated mainly in the large coastal cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.

Origin and history of the name

The name Australia is derived from the Latin australis, meaning southern. Legends of an "unknown southern land" (terra australis incognita) date back to the Roman times and were commonplace in mediæval geography, but they were not based on any actual knowledge of the continent. The Dutch adjectival form Australische ("Australian," in the sense of "southern") was used by Dutch officials in Batavia to refer to the newly discovered land to the south as early as 1638. The first English language writer to use the word "Australia" was Alexander Dalrymple in An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean, published in 1771. He used the term to refer to the entire South Pacific region, not specifically to the Australian continent. In 1793, George Shaw and Sir James Smith published Zoology and Botany of New Holland, in which they wrote of "the vast island, or rather continent, of Australia, Australasia or New Holland." New Holland was established on this site.]] The name "Australia" was popularised by the 1814 work A Voyage to Terra Australis by the navigator Matthew Flinders. Despite its title, which reflected the view of the Admiralty, Flinders used the word "Australia" in the book, which was widely read and gave the term general currency. Governor Lachlan Macquarie of New South Wales subsequently used the word in his dispatches to England. In 1817 he recommended that it be officially adopted. In 1824, the British Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia.

History

England, claiming the land for Britain in 1770. This replica was built in Fremantle in 1988 for Australia's bicentenary.]] The first human habitation of Australia is estimated to have occurred between 42,000 and 48,000 years ago. The first Australians were the ancestors of the current Indigenous Australians; they arrived via land bridges and short sea-crossings from present-day India or Southeast Asia. Most of these people were hunter-gatherers, with a complex oral culture and spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, inhabited the Torres Strait Islands and parts of far-north Queensland; they possess distinct cultural practices and practised subsistence agriculture. The first undisputed recorded European sighting of the Australian continent was made by the Dutch navigator Willem Jansz, who sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in 1606. During the 17th century, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines of what they called New Holland, but made no attempt at settlement. In 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast of Australia, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Britain. The expedition's discoveries provided impetus for the establishment of a penal colony there following the loss of the American colonies that had previously filled that role. penal colony was Australia's largest penal colony.]] The British Crown Colony of New South Wales started with the establishment of a settlement at Port Jackson by Captain Arthur Phillip on 26 January 1788. This date was later to become Australia's national day, Australia Day. Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, was settled in 1803 and became a separate colony in 1825. Britain formally claimed the western part of Australia in 1829. Separate colonies were created from parts of New South Wales: South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. The Northern Territory (NT) was founded in 1863 as part of the Province of South Australia. Victoria and South Australia were founded as "free colonies"—that is, they were never penal colonies, although the former did receive some convicts from Tasmania. Western Australia was also founded "free", but later accepted transported convicts due to an acute labour shortage. The transportation of convicts to Australia was phased out between 1840 and 1868. The Indigenous Australian population, estimated at about 350,000 at the time of European settlement, declined steeply for 150 years following settlement, mainly because of infectious disease, and forced migration, the removal of children and other colonial government policies, that some historians and Indigenous Australians have argued could be considered to constitute genocide by today's understanding. Such interpretations of Aboriginal history are disputed by some as being exaggerated or fabricated for political or ideological reasons. Following the 1967 referendum, the Federal government gained the power to implement policies and make laws with respect to Aborigines. Traditional ownership of land—native title—was not recognised until the High Court case Mabo v Queensland (No 2) overturned the notion of Australia as terra nullius at the time of European occupation. terra nullius ceremony in Port Melbourne, Victoria, 25 April 2005. Ceremonies such as this are held in virtually every suburb and town in Australia.]] A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, and the Eureka Stockade rebellion in 1854 was an early expression of nationalist sentiment. Between 1855 and 1890, the six colonies individually gained responsible government, managing most of their own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire. The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs, defence and international shipping. On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies was achieved after a decade of planning, consultation and voting, and the Commonwealth of Australia was born, as a Dominion of the British Empire. The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) was formed from New South Wales in 1911 to provide a location for the proposed new federal capital of Canberra (Melbourne was the capital from 1901 to 1927). The Northern Territory was transferred from the control of the South Australian government to the Commonwealth in 1911. Australia willingly participated in World War I; many Australians regard the defeat of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) at Gallipoli as the birth of the nation—its first major military action. Much like Gallipoli the Kokoda Track Campaign is regarded by many as a nation defining battle from World War II. The Statute of Westminster 1931 formally ended most of the constitutional links between Australia and Britain, but Australia did not adopt the Statute until 1942. The shock of Britain's defeat in Asia in 1942 and the threat of Japanese invasion caused Australia to turn to the United States as a new ally and protector. Since 1951, Australia has been a formal military ally of the US under the auspices of the ANZUS treaty. After World War II, Australia encouraged mass immigration from Europe; since the 1970s and the abolition of the White Australia policy, immigration from Asia and other parts of the world was also encouraged. As a result, Australia's demography, culture and image of itself were radically transformed. The final constitutional ties between Australia and Britain ended in 1986 with the passing of the Australia Act 1986, ending any British role in the Australian States, and ending judicial appeals to the UK Privy Council. Although Australian voters rejected a move to become a republic in 1999 by a 55% majority, Australia's links to its British past are increasingly tenuous. Since the election of the Whitlam Government in 1972, there has been an increasing focus on the nation's future as a part of the Asia-Pacific region.

Politics

Whitlam Government was opened in 1988 replacing the provisional Parliament House building opened in 1927.]] The Commonwealth of Australia is a constitutional monarchy and has a parliamentary system of government. Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen of Australia, a role that is distinct from her position as Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. The Queen is nominally represented by the Governor-General; although the Constitution gives extensive executive powers to the Governor-General, these are normally exercised only on the advice of the Prime Minister. The most notable exercise of the Governor-General's reserve powers outside the Prime Minister's direction was the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in the constitutional crisis of 1975. There are three branches of government.
- The legislature: the Commonwealth Parliament, comprising the Queen, the Senate (the Red house), and the House of Representatives (the Green house); the Queen is represented by the Governor-General, who in practice exercises little or no power over the Parliament.
- The executive: the Federal Executive Council (the Governor-General as advised by the executive councillors); in practice, the councillors are the prime minister and ministers of state, whose advice the Governor-General accepts, with rare exceptions.
- The judiciary: the High Court of Australia and other federal courts. The State courts became formally independent from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council when the Australia Act was passed in 1986. The bicameral Commonwealth Parliament consists of the Queen, the Senate (the upper house) of 76 senators, and a House of Representatives (the lower house) of 150 members. Members of the lower house are elected from single-member constituencies, commonly known as 'electorates' or 'seats'. Seats in the House of Representatives are allocated to states on the basis of population. In the Senate, each state, regardless of population, is represented by 12 senators, with the ACT and the NT each electing two. Elections for both chambers are held every three years; typically only half of the Senate seats are put to each election, because senators have overlapping six-year terms. The party with majority support in the House of Representatives forms Government, with its leader becoming Prime Minister. There are three major political parties: the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the National Party. Independent members and several minor parties—including the Greens, Family First and the Australian Democrats—have achieved representation in Australian parliaments, mostly in upper houses, although their influence has been marginal. Since the 1996 election, the Liberal/National Coalition led by the Prime Minister, John Howard, has been in power in Canberra. In the 2004 election, the Coalition won control of the Senate, the first time that a party (or coalition of governing parties) has done so while in government in more than 20 years. The Labor Party is in power in every state and territory. Voting is compulsory in each state and territory and at the federal level.

States and territories

Voting is compulsory Australia consists of six states, two major mainland territories, and other minor territories. The states are New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia. The two major mainland territories are the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. In most respects, the territories function similarly to the states, but the Commonwealth Parliament can override any legislation of their parliaments. By contrast, federal legislation overrides state legislation only with respect to certain areas as set out in Section 51 of the Constitution; all residual legislative powers are retained by the state parliaments, including powers over hospitals, education, police, the judiciary, roads, public transport and local government. Each state and territory has its own legislature (unicameral in the case of the Northern Territory, the ACT and Queensland, and bicameral in the remaining states). The lower house is known as the Legislative Assembly (House of Assembly in South Australia and Tasmania) and the upper house the Legislative Council. The heads of the governments in each state and territory are called premiers and chief ministers, respectively. The Queen is represented in each state by a governor; an administrator in the Northern Territory, and the Governor-General in the ACT, have analogous roles. Australia also has several minor territories; the federal government administers a separate area within New South Wales, the Jervis Bay Territory, as a naval base and sea port for the national capital. In addition Australia has the following, inhabited, external territories: Norfolk Island, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and several largely uninhabited external territories: Ashmore and Cartier Islands, Coral Sea Islands, Heard Island and McDonald Islands and the Australian Antarctic Territory.

Foreign relations and military

Over recent decades, Australia's foreign relations have been driven by a close association with the United States, through the ANZUS pact and by a desire to develop relationships with Asia and the Pacific, particularly through ASEAN and the Pacific Islands Forum. In 2005 Australia secured an inaugural seat at the East Asia Summit following its accession to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. Australia is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, in which the Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings provide the main forum for co-operation. Much of Australia's diplomatic energy is focused on international trade liberalisation. Australia led the formation of the Cairns Group and APEC, and is a member of the OECD and the WTO. Australia has pursued several major bilateral free trade agreements, most recently the US–Australia Free Trade Agreement. Australia is a founding member of the United Nations, and maintains an international aid program under which some 60 countries receive assistance. The 2005–06 budget provides A$2.5bn for development assistance; as a percentage of GDP, this contribution is less than that of the UN Millennium Development Goals. Australia's armed forces—the Australian Defence Force (ADF)—comprise the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), the Australian Army, and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). All branches of the ADF have been involved in UN and regional peacekeeping (most recently in East Timor, the Solomon Islands and Sudan), disaster relief, and armed conflict, including the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The government appoints the chief of the Defence Force from one of the armed services; the current chief is Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston. In 2005–06, the defence budget is A$17.5bn.

Geography and climate

Angus Houston Australia's 7,686,850 km² (2,967,909 mi²) landmass is on the Indo-Australian Plate. Surrounded by the Indian, Southern and Pacific oceans, Australia is separated from Asia by the Arafura and Timor seas. Australia has a total 25,760 km (16,007 mi) of coastline and claims an extensive Exclusive Economic Zone of 8,148,250 km² or 3,146,057 mi² (excluding the Australian Antarctic Territory). Climate is highly influenced by ocean currents, including the El Niño southern oscillation, which is correlated with periodic drought, and the seasonal tropical low pressure system that produces cyclones in northern Australia. By far the largest part of Australia is desert or semi-arid. Australia is the driest inhabited continent, the flattest, and has the oldest and least fertile soils. Only the south-east and south-west corners of the continent have a temperate climate. The northern part of the country, with a tropical climate, has a vegetation consisting of rainforest, woodland, grassland and desert. The Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef, lies a short distance off the north-east coast and extends for over 2,000 km (1,250 mi). The world's two largest monoliths are located in Australia, Mount Augustus in Western Australia is the largest and Uluru in central Australia is the second largest. At 2,228 m (7,310 ft), Mount Kosciuszko on the Great Dividing Range is the highest mountain on the Australian mainland, although Mawson Peak on the remote Australian territory of Heard Island is taller at 2,745 m (9,006 ft).

Flora and fauna

Heard Island of the wallaby is currently being sequenced; when the sequencing is completed, it will be a major contribution to marsupial biology.]] Although most of Australia is semi-arid or desert, it covers a diverse range of habitats, from alpine heaths to tropical rainforests. Because of the great age and consequent low levels of fertility of the continent, its extremely variable weather patterns, and its long-term geographic isolation, much of Australia's biota is unique and diverse. About 85% of flowering plants, 84% of mammals, more than 45% of birds, and 89% of in-shore, temperate-zone fish are endemic. Many of Australia's ecoregions, and the species within those regions, are threatened by human activities and introduced plant and animal species. The federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 is a legal framework used for the protection of threatened species. Numerous protected areas have been created to protect and preserve Australia's unique ecosystems, 64 wetlands are registered under the Ramsar Convention, and 16 World Heritage Sites have been established. Australia was ranked 13th in the World on the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index. Environmental Sustainability Index.]] Most Australian plant species are evergreen and many are adapted to fire and drought, including the eucalypts and acacias. Australia has a rich variety of endemic legume species that thrive in nutrient-poor soils because of their symbiosis with Rhizobia bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi. Well-known Australian fauna include monotremes (the platypus and echidna), and a host of marsupials, including the koala, kangaroo, wombat, and birds such as the emu, cockatoo, and kookaburra. The dingo was introduced by Austronesian people that traded with Indigenous Australians around 4000 BCE. Many plant and animal species became extinct soon after human settlement, including the Australian megafauna; many more have become extinct since European settlement, among them the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger).

Economy

Thylacine Australia has a prosperous, Western-style mixed economy, with a per capita GDP slightly higher than those of the UK, Germany and France. The country was ranked third in the United Nations' 2005 Human Development Index and sixth in The Economist worldwide quality-of-life index 2005. In recent years, the Australian economy has been resilient in the face of global economic downturn. Rising output in the domestic economy has been offsetting the global slump, and business and consumer confidence remains robust. Australia's emphasis on reform is another key factor behind the economy's strength. In the 1980s, the Labor Party, led by Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating, started the process of modernising the Australian economy by floating the Australian dollar in 1983, and deregulating the financial system. Since 1996, the Howard government has continued the process of micro-economic reform, including the partial deregulation of the labour market and the privatisation of state-owned businesses, most notably in the telecommunications industry. Substantial reform of the indirect tax system was achieved in July 2000 with the introduction of a 10% Goods and Services Tax, which has slightly reduced the heavy reliance on personal and company income tax that still characterises Australia's tax system. The Australian economy has not suffered a recession since the early 1990s. As of July 2005, unemployment was 5.0% with 10,030,300 persons employed. The service sector of the economy, including tourism, education, and financial services, comprises 69% of GDP. Agriculture and natural-resources represent only 3% and 5% of GDP, respectively, but contribute substantially to Australia's export performance. Australia's largest export markets include Japan, China, the United States, South Korea and New Zealand. Areas of concern to some economists include the chronically high current account deficit and also high levels of net foreign debt.

Demographics

current account deficit Most of the estimated 20.4 million Australians are descended from 19th- and 20th-century immigrants, the majority from Britain and Ireland. Australia's population has quadrupled since the end of World War I , spurred by an ambitious immigration program. In 2001, the five largest groups of the 27.4% of Australians who were born overseas were from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Italy, Vietnam and China. Following the abolition of the White Australia policy, numerous government initiatives have been established to encourage and promote racial harmony based on a policy of multiculturalism. Australia’s population has increased by about 60 times since European settlement. The self-declared indigenous population—including Torres Strait Islanders, who are of Melanesian descent—was 410,003 (2.2% of the total population) in 2001, a significant increase from the 1977 census, which showed an indigenous population of 115,953. Indigenous Australians have higher rates of imprisonment and unemployment, lower levels of education and life expectancies for males and females that are 17 years lower than those of other Australians. Perceived racial inequality is an ongoing political and human rights issue for Australians. human rights.]] In common with many other developed countries, Australia is experiencing a demographic shift towards an older population, with more retirees and fewer people of working age. A large number of Australians (759,849 for the period 2002–03) live outside their home country. Australia has maintained one of the most active immigration programs in the world to boost population growth. Most immigrants are skilled; the quota includes categories for family members and refugees. English is the official language, and is spoken and written in a distinct variety known as Australian English. According to the 2001 census, English is the only language spoken in the home for around 80% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home are Chinese (2.1%), Italian (1.9%) and Greek (1.4%). A considerable proportion of first- and second-generation migrants are bilingual. It is believed that there were between 200 and 300 Australian Aboriginal languages at the time of first European contact. Only about 70 of these languages have survived, and all but 20 of these are now endangered. An indigenous language remains the main language for about 50,000 (0.02%) people. Australia has a sign language known as Auslan, which is the main language of about 6,500 deaf people. The Australian Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state; there is no state religion. The 2001 census identified that 68% of Australians call themselves Christian: 27% identifying themselves as Roman Catholic and 21% as Anglican. Five per cent of Australians identify themselves as followers of non-Christian religions, and 26% as non-religious. Like many Western countries, the level of active participation in church worship is much lower than this; weekly attendance at church services is about 1.5 million, about 7.5% of the population. School attendance is compulsory throughout Australia between the ages of 6–15 years (16 years in South Australia and Tasmania), contributing to an adult literacy rate that is assumed to be 99%. Government grants have supported the establishment of Australia's 38 universities, and although several private universities have been established, the majority receive government funding. There is a state-based system of vocational training colleges, known as TAFE Institutes, and many trades conduct apprenticeships for training new tradespeople. Approximately 58% of Australians between the ages of 25 and 64 have vocational or tertiary qualifications.

Culture

apprenticeship.]] The primary basis of Australian culture up until the mid-20th century was Anglo-Celtic, although distinctive Australian features had been evolving from the environment and indigenous culture. Over the past 50 years, Australian culture has been strongly influenced by American popular culture (particularly television and cinema), large-scale immigration from non-English-speaking countries, and Australia's Asian neighbours. Australia has a long history of visual arts, starting with the cave and bark paintings of its indigenous peoples. From the time of European settlement, a common theme in Australian art has been the Australian landscape, seen in the works of Arthur Streeton, Arthur Boyd and Albert Namatjira, among others. The traditions of indigenous Australians are largely transmitted orally and are closely tied to ceremony and the telling of the stories of the Dreamtime. Australian Aboriginal music, dance and art have a palpable influence on contemporary Australian visual and performing arts. Australia has an active tradition of music, ballet and theatre; many of its performing arts companies receive public funding through the federal government's Australia Council. There is a symphony orchestra in each capital city, and a national opera company, Opera Australia, first made prominent by the renowned diva Dame Joan Sutherland; Australian music includes classical, jazz, and many popular music genres. Australian literature has also been influenced by the landscape; the works of writers such as Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson captured the experience of the Australian bush. The character of colonial Australia, as embodied in early literature, resonates with modern Australia and its perceived emphasis on egalitarianism, mateship, and anti-authoritarianism. In 1973, Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the only Australian to have achieved this; he is recognised as one of the great English-language writers of the 20th century. Australian English is a major variety of the language; its grammar and spelling are largely based on those of British English, overlaid with a rich vernacular of unique lexical items and phrases, some of which have found their way into standard English. Australia has two public broadcasters (the ABC and SBS), three commercial television networks, three pay TV services, and numerous public, non-profit television and radio stations. Australia's film industry has achieved critical and commercial successes. Each major city has daily newspapers, and there are two national daily newspapers, The Australian and The Australian Financial Review. According to Reporters Without Borders in 2005, Australia is in 31st position on a list of countries ranked by press freedom, behind New Zealand (9th) and the United Kingdom (28th) but ahead of the United States. This ranking is primarily due to the limited diversity of commercial media ownership in Australia. Most Australian print media in particular is under the control of either News Corporation or John Fairfax Holdings. John Fairfax Holdings Sport is an important part of Australian culture, assisted by a climate that favours outdoor activities; 23.5% Australians over the age of 15 regularly participate in organised sporting activities. At an international level, Australia has particularly strong teams in cricket, field hockey, netball, rugby league, rugby union, and performs well in cycling and swimming. Australia has participated in every summer Olympic Games of the modern era, and every Commonwealth Games. Australia has hosted the 1956 and 2000 Summer Olympics, and has ranked among the top five medal-takers since 2000. It has also hosted the 1938, 1962 and 1982 Commonwealth Games, and will host the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. Australian rules football is one of the most popular national sports, albeit it, one that is only played in Australia; players gain some international prominence through International Rules which is an annual meeting between the Australian code and Irish Gaelic Football. Corporate and government sponsorship of many sports and élite athletes is common in Australia. Televised sport is popular; some of the highest rating television programs include the summer Olympic Games and the grand finals of local and international football competitions.

References

Gillespie, R. (2002). Dating the first Australians. Radiocarbon 44:455-472
Smith, L. (1980), The Aboriginal Population of Australia, Australian National University Press, Canberra
Tatz, C. (1999). [http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/rsrch/rsrch_dp/genocide.htm Genocide in Australia], AIATSIS Research Discussion Papers No 8, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra
Windschuttle, K. (2001). [http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/sept01/keith.htm# The Fabrication of Aboriginal History], The New Criterion Vol. 20, No. 1, September 20.
Bean, C. Ed. (1941). [http://www.awm.gov.au/histories/ww1/1/index.asp Volume I - The Story of Anzac: the first phase], First World War Official Histories 11th Edition.
Australian Electoral Commission (2000). [http://www.aec.gov.au/_content/when/referendums/1999_report/index.htm 1999 Referendum Reports and Statistics]
Parliamentary Library (1997). [http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/1997-98/98rn25.htm The Reserve Powers of the Governor-General]
Australian Government. (2005). [http://www.budget.gov.au/ Budget 2005-2006]
Department of the Environment and Heritage. [http://www.deh.gov.au/biodiversity/about-biodiversity.html About Biodiversity]
Macfarlane, I. J. (1998). [http://www.rba.gov.au/PublicationsAndResearch/Bulletin/bu_oct98/bu_1098_2.pdf Australian Monetary Policy in the Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century]. Reserve Bank of Australia Bulletin, October
Parham, D. (2002). [http://www.pc.gov.au/research/confproc/mrrag/mrrag.pdf Microeconomic reforms and the revival in Australia’s growth in productivity and living standards]. Conference of Economists, Adelaide, 1 October
Australian Bureau of Statistics. Labour Force Australia. Cat#6202
Australian Bureau of Statistics. [http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/1a79e7ae231704f8ca256f720082feb9!OpenDocument Year Book Australia 2005]
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2003). Advancing the National Interest, [http://www.dfat.gov.au/ani/appendix_one.pdf Appenidix 1]
Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2001 Census, [http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@census.nsf/ddc9b4f92657325cca256c3e000bdbaf/7dd97c937216e32fca256bbe008371f0!OpenDocument A Snapshot of Australia]
Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affiars. (2005). [http://www.immi.gov.au/facts/06evolution.htm The Evolution of Australia's Multicultural Policy]
Parliament of Australia, Senate (2005). [http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/legcon_ctte/expats03/ Inquiry into Australian Expatriates]
[http://www.ncls.org.au/default.aspx?docid=2250&track=82083 NCLS releases latest estimates of church attendance], National Church Life Survey, Media release, 28 February 2004
Australian Film Commission. What are Australians Watching?, [http://www.afc.gov.au/gtp/freetv.html Free-to-Air, 1999-2004 TV]
Australian Bureau of Statistics, [http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/68180154bf128d91ca2569d000164365?OpenDocument Population Growth - Australia’s Population Growth]

External links

- [http://wikitravel.org/en/Australia Wikitravel guide to Australia]
- [http://www.gov.au/ Australian Government Entry Portal]
- [http://www.australia.gov.au/ Commonwealth Government Online]
- [http://www.immi.gov.au/ Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA)]
- [http://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/australia/index.html DFAT: Country Information]
- [http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=-27.000000,133.000000&spn=38.871300,61.703613&t=h&hl=en Satellite images of Australia] (Google Maps)
- [http://www.nla.gov.au/ National Library of Australia]
- [http://www.nma.gov.au/ National Museum of Australia]
- [http://www.australia.com/ Official Australia Tourism Website]
- [http://www.bom.gov.au/ Bureau of Meteorology]
- [http://www.m2006.com.au/ Official website of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games] A Category:Continents Category:Island nations Category:Members of the Commonwealth of Nations Category:Monarchies Category:Oceanic countries zh-min-nan:Ò-tāi-lī-a ko:오스트레일리아 ms:Australia ja:オーストラリア simple:Australia th:ประเทศออสเตรเลีย

John Pilger

John Pilger (born October 9, 1939) is an Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker from Sydney.

Life and Career

Pilger's career in journalism began in 1958, and he has developed his reputation through both his reporting and the various books and documentary films that he has written or produced. He is best known in Britain for his investigative documentaries, particularly those on Cambodia and East Timor. He has acted as a war correspondent during conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Biafra. In all of his work, Pilger has been a prominent and fervent critic of Western foreign policy. He has been subjected to ridicule and scorn from the right, with the late Auberon Waugh in Britain coining the verb 'to pilger'. The verb was also added to the 1991 edition of Oxford English Dictionary of New Words ([http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=653]), but revoked in 1994 following complaints by Pilger. He is particularly scornful of the centre-left, and has vehemently condemned Johann Hari, Ken Livingstone, David Aaronovitch and William Shawcross.
- 1958 - 62 Reporter, freelance writer, sports writer and sub-editor - Daily & Sunday Telegraph, Sydney
- 1962 Freelance correspondent - Italy 1962
- 1962 - 63 Middle East desk, Reuters, London
- 1963 - 86 Reporter, sub-editor, feature writer and Chief Foreign Correspondent - Daily Mirror
- 1986 - 88 Editor-in-Chief and a founder, News on Sunday, London
- 1969 - 71 Reporter, World in Action, Granada Television
- 1974 - 81 Reporter/Producer, Associated Television
- 1981 - Documentary film-maker, Central and Carlton Television Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, Pilger wrote articles condemning the bombings but arguing that their ultimate cause was the British Government's actions in invading Iraq in 2003. ([http://pilger.carlton.com/print/133472] and New Statesman 25 July 2005 issue) The articles attracted opprobrium in the United Kingdom media, which accused Pilger of "blaming the victims". Pilger has a son Sam (born in 1973) and a daughter Zoe (born in 1984).

Works

Publications

Pilger has written for the following publications:
- Daily Mirror (UK)
- The Guardian (UK)
- The Independent (UK)
- New Statesman (UK)
- The New York Times (US)
- The Los Angeles Times (US)
- The Nation: New York (US)
- The Age: Melbourne (Australia)
- The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
- The Bulletin: Sydney (Australia)
- Green Left Weekly (Australia) He has also written for various French, Italian, Scandinavian, Canadian and Japanese newspapers and periodicals, among others, and has contributed to the BBC's news service.

Selected documentaries

- Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia 1979
- Japan Behind the Mask 1987
- Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy 1994
- Vietnam: the Last Battle 1995
- Inside Burma: Land of Fear 1996
- Apartheid Did Not Die 1998
- Welcome To Australia 1999
- Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq 2000
- Palestine Is Still the Issue 2002
- Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror 2003
- Stealing a Nation 2004

Books

- The Last Day (1975)
- Aftermath: The Struggles of Cambodia and Vietnam (1981)
- The Outsiders (1984)
- Heroes (1986)
- A Secret Country (1989)
- Distant Voices (1992 and 1994)
- Hidden Agendas (1998)
- The New Rulers of the World (2002)
- Tell Me No Lies (2004)

Play

- The Last Day (1983)

Awards

Awards include:
- Descriptive Writer of the Year (1966)
- Reporter of the Year (1967)
- Journalist of the Year (1967)
- International Reporter of the Year (1970)
- News Reporter of the Year (1974)
- Campaigning Journalist of the Year (1977)
- Journalist of the Year (1979)
- UN Media Peace Prize, Australia 1979 - 80
- UN Media Peace Prize, Gold Medal, Australia 1980 - 81
- TV Times Readers' Award (1979)
- The George Foster Peabody Award, USA (1990)
- American Television Academy Award ('Emmy') (1991)
- British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) - The Richard Dimbleby Award (1991)
- Reporters Sans Frontiers Award, France (1990)
- International de Television Geneve Award (1995)
- The Monismanien Prize (Sweden) 2001
- The Sophie Prize for Human Rights (Norway) 2003
- EMMA Media Personality of the Year 2003
- Royal Television Society: Britain's best documentary (2004-5)

Quotes

- "I know when Bush is lying. His lips move."[http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5276.htm]

External link

- [http://www.johnpilger.com JohnPilger.com], also the source for much of this article Pilger, John Pilger, John

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (born March 28, 1928) is a Polish-American political scientist, geostrategist, statesman. He served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. He was known for his hawkish foreign policy at a time when the Democratic Party was increasingly dovish. He is a foreign policy realist, and considered to be the Democrats' response to Henry Kissinger. Major foreign policy events during his office included: the normalization of relations with China; the signing of the SALT II arms control treaty; the brokering of the Camp David Accords; the "loss" of Iran; encouraging reform in Eastern Europe; emphasizing human rights in U.S. foreign policy; and arming Afghan mujaheddin to prompt, and then to counter, a Soviet invasion. He is currently a professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins SAIS, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. In Polish his name is written Brzeziński and pronounced ['zbigɲɛv bʒɛ'ʑiɲski] (ZBEEG-nyev bzheh-ZHEEN-ski).

Biography

Early years

For historical background on these periods of history, see:
- History of Poland (1918-1939), and
- Second Polish Republic;
- Weimar Republic, and
- Nazi Germany;
- History of the Soviet Union (1927-1953), and
- Great Purge.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1928. This was a brief period of independence for Poland, after having been erased from the map by neighboring powers: Austria, Prussia, and Russia. He was the son of a Polish diplomat, Tadeusz Brzeziński, who had fought in the Polish Army against the Red Army in the 1920 Polish-Soviet War. Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to Germany from 1931 to 1935, and Zbigniew Brzezinski thus spent some of his earliest years witnessing the rise of the Nazis. From 1936 to 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Purge. In 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to Canada. In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was agreed to by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and subsequently the two powers invaded Poland, once again erasing Brzezinski's homeland from the map. The Yalta Conference further sealed the fate of Poland, and Brzezinski's family could not safely return to their country.

Rising influence

Brzezinski entered McGill University in 1945 to obtain both his BA and MA degrees (received 1949 and 1950 respectively). His Master's thesis focused on the various nationalities within the Soviet Union. Brzezinski went on to attend Harvard University to work on a PhD. He focused on the Soviet Union, and the relationship between the October Revolution, Lenin's state, and the actions of Stalin. He received his doctorate in 1953, and the same year he traveled to Munich and met Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, the head of the Polish desk of Radio Free Europe. He would collaborate with Carl Friedrich to develop the concept of "totalitarianism" and apply it to the Soviets, in 1956.

For historical background on major events during this period, see:
- History of Poland: The failure of reform Communism (1956-70), and
- 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

As a Harvard professor he argued against Eisenhower and Dulles's policy of rollback, saying that antagonism would push Eastern Europe further toward the Soviets. The Polish strike and Hungarian Revolution in 1956 lent some support to Brzezinski's idea that the fundamentally non-communist Eastern Europeans could gradually counter Soviet domination. In 1957, he visited Poland for the first time since he left as a child, and it reaffirmed his judgment that splits within the Eastern bloc were profound. In 1958, he became a United States citizen. In 1959 Brzezinski was not granted tenure at Harvard, and instead moved to New York City to teach at Columbia. Here he wrote Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict focusing on Eastern Europe since the beginning of the Cold War. He also became closely associated with the Council on Foreign Relations. For the 1960 presidential elections, Brzezinski was an advisor to the John F. Kennedy campaign, urging a non-antagonistic policy toward Eastern Europe (following from his earlier experiences in the mid-1950s). Seeing the Soviet Union as having entered a period of stagnation, both economic and political, Brzezinski predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union along lines of nationality (expanding on his master's thesis). Brzezinski continued to argue for and support détente for the next few years, publishing Peaceful Engagement in Eastern Europe in Foreign Affairs, and supporting non-antagonistic policies after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such policies might disabuse Eastern European nations of their fear of an aggressive Germany, and pacify Western Europeans fearful of a superpower condominium along the lines of Yalta. In 1964, Brzezinski supported LBJ's presidential campaign and the Great Society and Civil rights policies, while on the other hand he saw Soviet leadership as having been purged of any creativity following the ousting of Khrushchev. Through Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, Brzezinski met with Adam Michnik, the future Polish Solidarity activist. Brzezinski continued to support engagement with Eastern Europe, while warning against De Gaulle's vision of a "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals." He also supported intervention in Vietnam to counter China's impression of the United States as a paper tiger. From 1966 to 1968, Brzezinski served as a member of the Policy Planning Council of the Department of State (President Johnson's 7 October 1966 "Bridge Building" speech was a product of Brzezinski's influence).

For historical background on events during this period, see:
- Six-Day War;
- Prague Spring, and
- Socialism with a human face;
- Tet offensive.

Events in Czechoslovakia further reinforced Brzezinski's criticisms of the right's aggressive stance toward Eastern Europe. His service to the Johnson administration, and his fact-finding trip to Vietnam make him an enemy of the New Left, despite his advocacy of de-escalation. For the 1968 presidential campaign, Brzezinski was chairman of the Hubert H. Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force. He advised Humphrey to break with several of President Johnson's policies, especially concerning Vietnam, the Middle East, and condominium with the USSR. Brzezinski called for a pan-European conference, an idea that would eventually find fruition in 1973 as the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Meanwhile he became a leading critic of both the Nixon-Kissinger détente condominium, as well as McGovern's pacifism. In his 1970 piece Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski argued that a coordinated policy amongst developed nations was necessary in order to counter global instability erupting from increasing economic inequality. Out of this thesis, Brzezinski co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, serving as Director from 1973 to 1976. The Trilateral Commission is a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics primarily from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its purpose is to strengthen relations among the three most industrially advanced regions of the free world. Brzezinski selected Georgia governor Jimmy Carter as a member.

Government

Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for the 1976 presidential campaign to a skeptical media, and proclaimed himself an "eager student" of Brzezinski's. Brzezinski became Carter's principal foreign policy advisor by late 1975. He became an outspoken critic of the Nixon-Kissinger over-reliance on détente, a situation preferred by the USSR, favoring the Helsinki process instead, which focused on human rights and peaceful engagement in Eastern Europe. Carter beat Ford in foreign policy debates by contrasting the trilateral vision with Ford's détente to the detriment of Eastern Europe. After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzezinski National Security Adviser. Earlier that year, major labor riots broke out in Poland, laying the foundations for Solidarity. Brzezinski begins by emphasizing the "Basket III" human rights in the Helsinki Final Act, which inspires Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia shortly thereafter. Brzezinski had a hand in writing parts of Carter's inaugual address, and this served his purpose of sending a positive message to Soviet dissidents. The Soviet Union complained that this kind of rhetoric ran against the "code of détente" that Nixon and Kissinger had established. Brzezinski ran up against members of his own Democratic Party who agreed with this interpretation of détente, including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Vance argued for less emphasis on human rights in order to gain Soviet agreement to SALT, whereas Brzezinski favored doing both at the same time. Brzezinski then ordered Radio Free Europe transmitters to increase the power and area of their broadcasts, a provocative reversal of Nixon-Kissinger policies. West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt bitterly objected to Brzezinski's agenda, even calling for the removal of RFE from German soil. The State Department was alarmed by Brzezinski's support for East German dissidents, and strongly objected to his suggestion that Carter's first overseas visit be to Poland. He visited Warsaw, met with Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (against the strong objection of the U.S. Ambassador to Poland), recognizing the Roman Catholic Church as the legitimate opposition to Communist rule in Poland. By 1978, Brzezinski and Vance were more and more at odds over the direction of Carter's foreign policy. Vance sought to continue the style of détente engineered by Nixon-Kissinger, with a focus on arms control. Brzezinski believed that detente emboldened the Soviets in Angola and the Middle East, and so he argued for increased military strength and an emphasis on human rights. Vance, the State Department, and the media criticized Brzezinski publicly as seeking to revive the Cold War. Brzezinski advised Carter in 1978 to engage China, and traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for the normalization of relations between the U.S. and China. Also in 1978, Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II—an event which the Soviets believed Brzezinski orchestrated.

For historical background on this period of history, see:
- Iranian Revolution;
- Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; and
- Solidarity.

1979 saw two major strategically important events: the overthrow of the U.S. ally, the Shah of Iran, and the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR. The Iranian Revolution precipitated the Iran hostage crisis, which would last for the rest of Carter's presidency. Brzezinski anticipated the Soviet invasion; and, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China, created a strategy to counter the Soviet advance. Using this atmosphere of insecurity, Brzezinski lead the U.S. toward a new arms buildup, and the development of the Rapid Deployment Forces—policies that are both more generally associated with Reagan now. In 1980, Brzezinski planned Operation Rice Bowl, which was meant to free the hostages in Iran using the newly created Delta Force and other Special Forces units. The mission was a failure, and lead to Secretary Vance's resignation. Brzezinski was criticized widely in the press and became the least popular member of Carter's administration. Edward Kennedy challenged President Carter for the Democratic nomination, and at the 1980 Democratic convention his convention delegates loudly booed at Brzezinski. Hurt by internal divisions within his party, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide. Brzezinski, acting under a lame duck Carter presidency but encouraged that Solidarity in Poland has vindicated his preference for engagement and evolution in Eastern Europe, took a hard-line stance against what seemed like an imminent Soviet invasion of Poland. He even made a midnight phone call to Pope John Paul II—whose visit to Poland in 1979 had foreshadowed the emergence of Solidarity—warning him in advance. The U.S. stance was a dramatic change from previous reactions to Soviet repression in 1956 (Hungary) and 1968 (Czechoslovakia).

After power

Brzezinski left office concerned about the internal division within the Democratic party, arguing that the dovish McGovernite wing would send the Democrats into permanent minority. He had mixed relations with the Reagan administration. On the one hand, he supported it as seemingly the only alternative to the Democrat's pacifism, but he also strongly criticized it as seeing foreign policy in overly "Black & White" terms. He remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of Martial Law in Poland in 1981, and more so of Western European acquiescence to the imposition in the name of stability. Brzezinski briefed Vice President George Bush before his 1987 trip to Poland, which aided in the revival of the Solidarity movement. In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Brzezinski served as a member of the President’s Chemical Warfare Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. From 1987 to 1989 he also served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force, and endorsed Bush for president, breaking with the Democratic party (coincidentally hurting the career of his former student Madeline Albright, who was Dukakis's foreign policy advisor). Brzezinski published The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Gorbachev's reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1989 the Communists failed to mobilize support, and Solidarity swept the general elections. Later the same year, Brzezinski toured Russia and visited a memorial to the Katyn Massacre. This served as an opportunity for him to ask the Soviet government to acknowledge the truth about the event, for which he received a standing ovation in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Ten days later, the Berlin Wall fell and Soviet-supported governments Eastern Europe were losing power. Strobe Talbott, one of Brzezinski's long-time critics, conducted an interview with him for TIME magazine entitled "Vindication of a Hardliner." In 1990 Brzezinski warned against post-Cold War euphoria. He publicly opposed the Gulf War, arguing that the U.S. would squander the international goodwill it had accumulated by defeating the Soviet Union, and that it could trigger wide resentment throughout the Arab world. He expanded upon these views in his 1992 work Out of Control. However, in 1993 Brzezinski was prominently critical of the Clinton administration's hesitation to intervene against Serbia in the Yugoslavian civil war. He also began to speak out against Russian oppression in Chechnya. Wary of a move toward the reinvigoration of Russian power, Brzezinski negatively viewed the succession of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin to Boris Yeltsin. In this vein, he became one of the foremost advocates of NATO expansion. After 9/11 Brzezinski was criticized for his role in the formation of the mujaheddin network, which would later become Al Qaeda. He asserted that rightful blame ought to lay at the feet of the Soviet Union, whose invasion he claimed radicalized the relatively stable Muslim society. Brzezinski also became a leading critic of the Bush administration's "war on terror." Some painted him as connected with the neoconservative movement, because of his links to Paul Wolfowitz, and his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, which frankly discussed U.S. empire. He wrote The Choice in 2004 which expanded upon The Grand Chessboard and sharply criticized the Bush administration's foreign policy. Brzezinski currently lives in the Washington D.C. area. He is married to an internationally recognized sculptress, and has three children: one is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO; another is a partner, in McGuire Woods LLP, Washington, DC, and was foreign policy advisor to the Kerry campaign; his daughter Mika is a reporter and occasional anchor for CBS-TV “Evening News.”

As National Security Advisor

:Main article: History of the United States National Security Council 1977-1981 History of the United States National Security Council 1977-1981 President Carter chose Zbigniew Brzezinski for the position of National Security Adviser because he wanted an assertive intellectual at his side to provide him with day-to-day advice and guidance on foreign policy decisions. Brzezinski would preside over a reorganized NSC structure, fashioned to ensure that the NSC Adviser would be only one of many players in the foreign policy process. Aiming to replace Kissinger's "acrobatics" in foreign policy-making with a foreign policy "architecture," Brzezinski was as eager for power as his rival. However, his task was complicated by his focus on East-West relations, and in a hawkish way – in an administration where many cared a great deal about North-South relations and human rights. On the whole, Brzezinski was a team player. Initially, Carter reduced the NSC staff by one-half and decreased the number of standing NSC committees from eight to two. All issues referred to the NSC were reviewed by one of the two new committees, either the Policy Review Committee (PRC) or the Special Coordinating Committee (SCC). The PRC focused on specific issues and its chairmanship rotated. The SCC was always chaired by Brzezinski, a circumstance he had to negotiate with Carter to achieve. Carter believed that by making the NSC Adviser chairman of only one of the two committees, he would prevent the NSC from being the overwhelming influence on foreign policy decisions (a situation he felt occurred under Kissinger's chairmanship during the Nixon administration). The SCC was charged with considering issues that cut across several departments, including oversight of intelligence activities, arms control evaluation, and crisis management. Much of the SCC's time during the Carter years was spent on SALT issues. The Council held few formal meetings, convening only 10 times, compared with 125 meetings during the 8 years of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Instead, Carter used frequent, informal meetings as a decision-making device, typically his Friday breakfasts, usually attended by the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, Brzezinski, and the chief domestic adviser. No agendas were prepared and no formal records were kept of these meetings, sometimes resulting in differing interpretations of the decisions actually agreed upon. Brzezinski was careful, in managing his own weekly luncheons with Secretaries Vance and Brown in preparation for NSC discussions, to maintain a complete set of careful notes. Brzezinski also sent weekly reports to the President on major foreign policy undertakings and problems, with recommendations for courses of action. President Carter enjoyed these reports and frequently annotated them with his own views. Brzezinski and the NSC used these Presidential notes (159 of them) as the basis for NSC actions. From the beginning, Brzezinski made sure that the new NSC institutional relationships would assure him a major voice in the shaping of foreign policy. While he knew that Carter would not want him to be another Kissinger, Brzezenski also felt confident that the President did not want Secretary of State Vance to become another Dulles and would want his own input on key foreign policy decisions. Brzezinski's power gradually expanded into the operational area during the Carter Presidency. He increasingly assumed the role of a Presidential emissary. In 1978, for example, Brzezinski traveled to Beijing to normalize U.S.-China relations. Like Kissinger before him, Brzezinski maintained his own personal relationship with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin. Brzezinski had NSC staffers monitor State Department cable traffic through the Situation Room and call back to the Department if the President preferred to revise or take issue with outgoing Department instructions. He also appointed his own press spokesman, and his frequent press briefings and appearances on television interview shows made him a prominent public figure although perhaps not nearly as much as Kissinger had been under Nixon. History of the United States National Security Council 1977-1981 The Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 significantly damaged the already tenuous relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. Vance felt that Brzezinski's linkage of SALT to other Soviet activities and the MX, together with the growing domestic criticisms in the United States of the SALT II Accord, convinced Brezhnev to decide on military intervention in Afghanistan. Brzezinski, however, later recounted that he advanced proposals to maintain Afghanistan's "independence" but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition. An NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Only then did he decide to abandon SALT II ratification and pursue the anti-Soviet policies that Brzezinski proposed. The Iranian revolution was the last straw for disintegrating relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. As the upheaval developed, the two advanced fundamentally different positions. Brzezinski wanted to control the revolution and increasingly suggested military action to prevent Khomeini from coming to power, while Vance wanted to come to terms with the new Khomeini regime. As a consequence Carter failed to develop a coherent approach to the Iranian situation. In the growing crisis atmosphere of 1979 and 1980 due to the Iranian hostage situation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a deepening economic crisis, Brzezinski's anti-Soviet views gained influence but could not end the Carter administration's malaise. Vance's resignation following the unsuccessful mission undertaken over his objections to rescue the American hostages in March 1980 was the final result of the deep disagreement between Brzezinski and Vance.

Major policies

During the 1960's Brzezinski articulated the strategy of peaceful engagement for undermining the Soviet bloc and persuaded President Johnson, while serving on the State Department Policy Planning Council, to adopt in October 1966 peaceful engagement as U.S. strategy, placing détente ahead of German reunification and thus reversing prior U.S. priorities. During the 1970’s and 1980’s, at the height of his political involvement, Brzezinski participated in the formation of the Trilateral Commission in order to more closely cement U.S.-Japanese-European relations. As the three most economically advanced sectors of the world, the people of the three regions could be brought together in cooperation that would give them a more cohesive stance against the communist threat. While serving in The White House, he emphasized the centrality of human rights as a means of placing the Soviet Union on the ideological defensive. With Jimmy Carter in Camp David I, he assisted in the attainment of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. He actively supported Polish Solidarity and the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion, and provided covert support for national independence movements in the Soviet Union. He played a leading role in normalization of U.S.-Chinese relations and in the development of joint strategic cooperation, cultivating a relationship with Deng Xiaoping, for which he is thought very highly of in China to this day. In the 1990’s he formulated the strategic case for buttressing the independent statehood of Ukraine, partially as a means to ending a resurgence of the Russian Empire, and to drive Russia toward integration with the West, promoting instead “geopolitical pluralism” in the space of the former Soviet Union. He developed “a plan for Europe” urging the expansion of NATO, making the case for the expansion of NATO to the Baltic Republics. He also served as U.S. Presidential emissary to Azerbaijan in order to promote the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline. Further, he led, together with Lane Kirkland, the effort to increase the endowment for the U.S.-sponsored Polish-American Freedom Foundation [http://www.pafw.pl/strony/english/main.htm (info)] from the proposed $112 million to an eventual total of well over $200 million. He has consistently urged a U.S. leadership role in the world, based on established alliances, and warned against unilateralist policies that could destroy U.S. global credibility and precipitate U.S. global isolation.

Afghanistan

U.S. global isolation] Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which were run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the CIA and Britain's MI6. This policy had the explicit aim of promoting radical Islamist and anti-Communist forces to overthrow the secular communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan government in Afghanistan, which had been destabilized by coup attempts against Hafizullah Amin, the power struggle within the Soviet-supported parcham faction of the PDPA and a subsequent Soviet military intervention. June 13, 1997, in a CNN/National Security Archive interview, Brzezinski detailed the strategy taken by the Carter administration against the Soviets: :We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again - for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt. [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-17/brzezinski1.html Full Text of Interview] January 18, 1998, Brzezinski was interviewed by the French newspaper, Nouvel Observateur on the topic of Afghanistan. He revealed that CIA support for the mujaheddin started before the Soviet invasion, and was indeed designed to prompt a Soviet invasion, leading them into a bloody conflict on par with America's experience in Vietnam. This was referred to as the "Afghan Trap." Brzezinski viewed the end of the Soviet empire as worth the cost of strengthening militant islamic groups. [http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html Full Text of Interview] In his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski says that assistance to the Afghan resistance was a tactic designed to bog down the Soviet army, while the United States built up a deterrent military force in the Persian Gulf to prevent Soviet political or military penetration further south (see: the Carter Doctrine). In a footnote in his 2000 book, The Geostrategic Triad, Brzezinski notes: :The full story of the productive U.S.-China cooperation directed against the Soviet Union (especially in regard to Afghanistan), initiated by the Carter Administration and continued under Reagan, still remains to be told. [http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/20/documents/brez.carter/ Memo from Zbigniew Brzezinski to President Carter], on December 26, 1979. Discusses implications of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on U.S. foreign policy, especially regarding Iran.

Iran

Iran Facing a revolution, the Shah of Iran sought help from the United States. Iran occupied a strategic place in U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, acting as an island of stability, and a buffer against Soviet penetration into the region. He was pro-American, but domestically oppressive. The U.S. ambassador to Iran, William H. Sullivan, recalls that Brzezinski “repeatedly assured Pahlavi that the U.S. backed him fully," however these reassurances would not amount to substantive action on the part of the United States. On November 4th, 1978, Brzezinski called the Shah to tell him that the United States would "back him to the hilt." At the same time, certain high-level officials in the State Department decided that the Shah had to go, regardless of who replaced him. Brzezinski, and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger (former Secretary of Defense under Ford), continued to advocate that the U.S. support the Shah militarily. Even in the final days of the revolution, when the Shah was considered doomed no matter what the outcome of the revolution came to be, Brzezinski still advocated a U.S. invasion to stabilize Iran. President Carter could not decide how to appropriately use force, opposed a U.S. coup, ordered the Constellation aircraft carrier to the Indian Ocean, but soon countermanded his order. A deal was worked out with the Iranian generals to shift support to a moderate government, but this plan fell apart when Khomeini and his followers swept the country, taking power 12 February 1979. In July 1980, Brzezinski would meet Jordan's King Hussein in Amman to discuss detailed plans for Saddam Hussein to sponsor a coup in Iran against Khomeini. King Hussein was Saddam's closest confidant in the Arab world, and served as an intermediary during the planning. The Iraqi invasion of Iran would be launched under the pretext of a call for aid from Iranian loyalist officers plotting their own uprising. The Iranian officers were organized by Shapour Bakhtiar, who had fled to France when Khomeini seized power, but was operating from Baghdad and Sulimaniyah at the time of Brzezinski's meeting with Hussein. However, Khomeini learned of the coup plan from Soviet agents in France and Latin America. Shortly after Brzezinski's meeting with Hussein, the President of Iran, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr quietly rounded up six hundred of the loyalist plotters within Iran, putting an effective end to the coup. Saddam would decide to invade without the Iranian officer's assistance, beginning the Iran-Iraq war on 22 September 1980.

China

1980 :See also: Sino-American relations and Sino-Soviet Split Shortly after taking office in 1977, President Carter again reaffirmed the United States' position of upholding the Shanghai Communiqué;. The United States and People's Republic of China announced on 15 December 1978, that the two governments would establish diplomatic relations on 1 January 1979. Consolidating U.S. gains in opening China was a major priority stressed by Brzezinski during his time as National Security Advisor. The most important strategic aspect of the invigorated U.S.-Chinese relationship was in its effect on the Cold War. China was no longer considered part of a larger Sino-Soviet bloc, but instead a third pole of power, helping the United States to balance against Russia. A notable example, discussed above, is Chinese assistance in Brzezinski's efforts to draw Russia into a Vietnam-style conflict in Afghanistan. This strategy, initiated under Nixon and Kissinger, and consolidated under Carter and Brzezinski, is really the first instance of statesmen altering the world's polarity by design. In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations dated January 1, 1979, the United States transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The U.S. reiterated the Shanghai Communiqué's acknowledgment of the Chinese position that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China; Beijing acknowledged that the American people would continue to carry on commercial, cultural, and other unofficial contacts with the people of Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act made the necessary changes in U.S. domestic law to permit such unofficial relations with Taiwan to flourish. Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping's January 1979 visit to Washington, DC initiated a series of important, high-level exchanges, which continued until the spring of 1989. This resulted in many bilateral agreements - especially in the fields of scientific, technological, and cultural interchange and trade relations. Since early 1979, the United States and China have initiated hundreds of joint research projects and cooperative programs under the Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology, the largest bilateral program. On March 1, 1979, the United States and People's Republic of China formally established embassies in Beijing and Washington, DC. During 1979, outstanding private claims were resolved, and a bilateral trade agreement was concluded. Vice President Walter Mondale reciprocated Vice Premier Deng's visit with an August 1979 trip to China. This visit led to agreements in September 1980 on maritime affairs, civil aviation links, and textile matters, as well as a bilateral consular convention. As a consequence of high-level and working-level contacts initiated in 1980, U.S. dialogue with the PRC broadened to cover a wide range of issues, including global and regional strategic problems, political-military questions, including arms control, UN and other multilateral organization affairs, and international narcotics matters.

Arms control

:See also: Arms Control Arms Control

Arab-Israeli peace

:See also: Camp David Accords (1978) Camp David Accords (1978) Camp David Accords (1978) [http://www.npr.org/programs/totn/transcripts/2003/sep/030916.conan.html NPR interview with Brzezinski on Camp David]

Poland, the Pope, and Solidarity

Academia

Brzezinski was on the faculty of Harvard University from 1953 to 1960, and of Columbia University from 1960 to 1989, where he headed up the Institute on Communist Affairs. He is currently a professor of foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C.. As a scholar he has developed his thoughts over the years, fashioning fundamental theories on international relations and geostrategy. During the 1950’s he worked on the theory of totalitarianism. His thought in the 1960’s focused on wider Western understanding of disunity in the Soviet Bloc, as well as developing the thesis of intensified degeneration of the Soviet Union. During the 1970’s he propounded the proposition that the Soviet system was incapable of evolving beyond the industrial phase into the “technetronic” age. By the 1980’s, Brzezinski argued that the general crisis of the Soviet Union foreshadowed communism’s end. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he spent the 1990’s warning that global discord may get out of control, and formulated a geostrategy for U.S. global preponderance.

Geostrategy

Brzezinski laid out his most significant contribution to post-Cold War geostrategy in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. He defined four regions of Eurasia, and in which ways the United States ought to design its policy toward each region in order to maintain its global primacy. The four regions are:
- Europe, the Democratic Bridgehead
- Russia, the Black Hole
- The Middle East, the Eurasian Balkans
- Asia, the Far Eastern Anchor In his subsequent book, The Choice, Brzezinski updates his geostrategy in light of globalization, 9/11 and the intervening six years between the two books.

Public life

Brzezinski is a past member of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International, Council on Foreign Relations, Atlantic Council, and the National Endowment for Democracy. He was formerly a director of the Trilateral Commission [http://www.trilateral.org/about.htm (info)] (now serving only on the executive committee) and formerly boardmember of Freedom House. He is currently a trustee and counselor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a board member for the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya [http://www.peaceinchechnya.org/index.htm (info)], on the advisory board of America Abroad Media [http://www.americaabroadmedia.org/about.php (info)], and on the advisory board of Partnership for a Secure America [http://www.psaonline.org/ (info)].

Quotations

- "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war."—On precipitating the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
- "It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization." —from The Grand Chessboard
- "In brief, for the United States, Eurasian geostrategy involves the purposeful management of geostrategically dynamic states and the careful handling of geopolitically catalytic states, in keeping with the twin interests of America in the short-term: preservation of its unique global power and in the long-run transformation of it into increasingly institutionalized global cooperation. To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." —from The Grand Chessboard
- "The president himself has to make, in a speech addressed to the nation, a careful, reasoned case, without sloganeering, on the specifics of the threat. Detailed evidence needs to be presented that the threat is both grave and imminent. An explanation is also needed as to why one member of ‘the axis of evil’ is seen as more menacing than the others."
- "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help the Khmer Rouge. The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him. But China could." —1979
- "This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our non-proliferation policy." —1979, memo to President Carter following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- "...foreign policy of a pluralistic democracy like the United States should be based on bipartisanship because bipartisanship is the means and the framework for formulating policies based on moderation and on the recognition of the complexity of the human condition. That has been the tradition since the days of Truman and Vandenberg all the way until recent times." —Address to the New American Strategies Conference, October 28, 2003
- "In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities effectively exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason." —1979, Between Two Ages : America's Role in the Technetronic Era
- "It was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." —Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

Bibliography

Works by Brzezinski

Major works:
- The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956)
- Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, New York: Praeger (1961), ISBN 0674825454
- Between Two Ages : America's Role in the Technetronic Era, New York: Viking Press (1970), ISBN 0313234981
- Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981, New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux (March 1983), ISBN 0374236631
- Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest, Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press (June 1986), ISBN 087113084X
- Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (1989), ISBN 0020307306
- Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century, New York: Collier (1993), ISBN 0684826364
- The Grand Chessboa

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, abbreviated USSR ( (СССР) ; tr.: Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik [SSSR])), more commonly known as the Soviet Union (; tr.: Sovetsky Soyuz) was an officially socialist state founded in 1922, centered on Russia, and dissolved in 1991. From 1945 until its dissolution it was historically notable as one of the world's two superpowers. The formation of the Soviet Union was the culmination of the Russian Revolution of 1917, which overthrew short-lived Provisional Government (established after Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on March 15, 1917), and later the Red Army victory in the violent Russian Civil War from 1918-1920. The geographic boundaries of the Soviet Union varied with time, but by 1945 it approximately corresponded to that of historic Imperial Russia, with the notable exclusions of Poland and Finland. The geographic size of the Soviet Union remained from 1945 until its dissolution. The Soviet Union, founded three decades before the Cold War, became a primary model for future Communist states; the socialist government and the political organization of the country were defined by the only permitted political party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

History

The Soviet Union is traditionally considered to be the successor of the Russian Empire. The last Russian monarch, Tsar Nicholas II, ruled until March 1917 and was eventually executed. The Soviet Union was established in December 1922 as the union of the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics ruled by Bolshevik parties. By Soviet historiography, revolutionary activity in Russia began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, and although serfdom was abolished in 1861, its abolition was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament, the State Duma, was established in 1906, after the 1905 Revolution but political and social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages. A spontaneous popular uprising in Petrograd, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's physical well-being and morale, culminated in the toppling of the imperial government in March 1917 (see February Revolution). The autocracy was replaced by the Provisional Government, whose leaders intended to establish democracy in Russia and to continue participating on the side of the Allies in World War I. At the same time, to ensure the rights of the working class, workers' councils, known as soviets, sprang up across the country. The radical Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, agitated for socialist revolution in the soviets and on the streets. They seized power from the Provisional Government in November 1917 (see October Revolution). Only after the long and bloody Russian Civil War of (1918-1921), which included combat between government forces and foreign troops in several parts of Russia, was the new communist regime secure. In a related conflict, the "Peace of Riga" in early 1921 split disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and Soviet powers. From its first years, government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party, as the Bolsheviks called themselves beginning in March 1918. After the extraordinary economic policy of war communism during the Civil War the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist with nationalized industry in the 1920s and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax (see New Economic Policy). Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for Soviet leaders to contend for power in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating his rivals within the party, notably Lenin's more obvious heir Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin became the sole leader of the Soviet Union by the end of the 1920s. In 1928 Stalin introduced the First Five-Year Plan for building a socialist economy. In industry the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization; in agriculture collective farms were established all over the country (see Collectivisation in the USSR). The Soviet Union became a major industrial power; but the plan's implementation produced widespread misery for some segments of the population. Collectivization met widespread resistance from peasants, resulting in a bitter struggle against the authorities in many areas, famine, and estimated millions of casualties. Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s, when Stalin began a purge of the party (see Great Purges). Yet despite this turmoil, the Soviet Union developed a powerful industrial economy in the years before World War II. Although Stalin tried to avert war with Germany by concluding the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which involved the invasion of Poland, in 1939, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. It has been debated that the Soviet Union had the intention of invading Germany once it was strong enough. The Red Army stopped the Nazi offensive, with the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 being the major turning point, and drove through Eastern Europe to Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945 (see Great Patriotic War). Although ravaged by the war, the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict as an acknowledged superpower. superpower after the fall of Nazi Germany]] During the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union first rebuilt and then expanded its economy, while maintaining its strictly centralized control. The Soviet Union aided postwar reconstruction in Eastern Europe, set up the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, supplied aid to the eventually victorious communists in the People's Republic of China, and saw its influence grow elsewhere in the world. Meanwhile, the Cold War, turned the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, into foes. Joseph Stalin died on March 5 1953. In the absence of an acceptable successor, the highest Communist Party officials opted to rule the Soviet Union jointly, although a struggle for power took place behind the facade of collective leadership. Nikita Khrushchev, who won the power struggle by the mid-1950s, denounced Stalin's use of repression and eased repressive controls over party and society (see de-Stalinization). During this period the Soviet Union launched the first satellite Sputnik 1 and man Yuri Gagarin into orbit. Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive, and foreign policy toward China and the United States suffered reverses. Khrushchev's colleagues in the leadership removed him from power in 1964. Following the ouster of Khrushchev, another period of rule by collective leadership ensued, lasting until Leonid Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent figure in Soviet political life. Brezhnev presided over a period of Détente with the West while at the same time building up Soviet military strength; the arms buildup contributed to the demise of Détente in the late 1970s. Another contributing factor was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. After some experimentation with economic reforms in the mid-1960s, the Soviet leadership reverted to established means of economic management. Industry showed slow but steady gains during the 1970s, while agricultural development continued to lag. Throughout the period the Soviet Union maintained parity with the United States in the areas of military technology but this expansion ultimately crippled the economy. In contrast to the revolutionary spirit that accompanied the birth of the Soviet Union, the prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change. Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. After the rapid succession of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, transitional figures with deep roots in Brezhnevite tradition, the energetic Mikhail Gorbachev made significant changes in the economy (see Perestroika) and the party leadership. His policy of glasnost freed public access to information after decades of government regulations. In late 1980s constituent republics of the Soviet Union started declaring sovereignty over their territories or even independence citing Article 72 of USSR Constitution, which stated that any constituent republic was free to secede. Many republics proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as "The War of Laws." In 1989 Russian SFSR, which was then the largest constituent republic (with about 2/3 of population and territory) convened a Congress of Deputies. Boris Yeltsin was elected the chairman of the Congress. On June 12, 1989 the Congress declared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the USSR's laws. The period of legal uncertainty continued for the next three years as constituent republics slowly growing de-facto independent. A referendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on March 17, 1991, with the population voting for preservation of the Union in most republics. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost, and in the summer of 1991 an new Union Treaty was designed and agreed upon by most republics which would have turned the Soviet Union into a much looser federation. The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup - an attempted coup d'état against Mikhail Gorbachev by conservative members of the Communist Party, referred to as "Hardliners" by the Western media. After the coup was defeated, Yeltsin came out as a hero while Gorbachev's power was greatly reduced. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania were immediately granted independence, while the other 12 republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Union. On December 8 1991 Presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed Belavezha Accords which declared the Union dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place. While doubts remained over their authority to dissolve the Union, on 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned as the president of the USSR and turned the powers of his office over to Boris Yeltsin. The following day, the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, dissolved itself. This is generally recognized as the official, final dissolution of the Soviet Union as a functioning nation. Many organizations such as the Red Army and Police forces continued to remain in place in the early months of 1992, but were slowly phased out or absorbed by the newly independent nations.

Politics

Supreme Soviet] The government of the Soviet Union administered the country's economy and society. It implemented decisions made by the leading political institution in the country, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). In the late 1980s, the government appeared to have many characteristics in common with democratic political systems. For instance, a constitution established all organs of government and granted to citizens a series of political and civic rights. A legislative body, the Congress of People's Deputies, and its standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet, represented the principle of popular sovereignty. The Supreme Soviet, which had an elected chairman who functioned as head of state, oversaw the Council of Ministers, which acted as the executive branch of the government. The chairman of the Council of Ministers, whose selection was approved by the legislative branch, functioned as head of government. A constitutionally based judicial branch of government included a court system, headed by the Supreme Court, that was responsible for overseeing the observance of Soviet law by government bodies. According to the 1977 Soviet Constitution, the government had a federal structure, permitting the republics some authority over policy implementation and offering the national minorities the appearance of participation in the management of their own affairs. In practice, however, the government differed markedly from Western systems. In the late 1980s, the CPSU performed many functions that governments of other countries usually perform. For example, the party decided on the policy alternatives that the government ultimately implemented. The government merely ratified the party's decisions to lend them an aura of legitimacy. The CPSU used a variety of mechanisms to ensure that the government adhered to its policies. The party, using its nomenklatura authority, placed its loyalists in leadership positions throughout the government, where they were subject to the norms of democratic centralism. Party bodies closely monitored the actions of government ministries, agencies, and legislative organs. The content of the Soviet Constitution differed in many ways from typical Western constitutions. It generally described existing political relationships, as determined by the CPSU, rather than prescribing an ideal set of political relationships. The Constitution was long and detailed, giving technical specifications for individual organs of government. The Constitution included political statements, such as foreign policy goals, and provided a theoretical definition of the state within the ideological framework of Marxism-Leninism. The CPSU leadership could radically change the constitution or remake it completely, as it did several times throughout its history. The Council of Ministers acted as the executive body of the government. Its most important duties lay in the administration of the economy. The council was thoroughly under the control of the CPSU, and its chairman - the Soviet prime minister - was always a member of the Politburo. The council, which in 1989 included more than 100 members, was too large and unwieldy to act as a unified executive body. The council's Presidium, made up of the leading economic administrators and led by the chairman, exercised dominant power within the Council of Ministers. According to the Constitution, as amended in 1988, the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union was the Congress of People's Deputies, which convened for the first time in May 1989. The main tasks of the congress were the election of the standing legislature, the Supreme Soviet, and the election of the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, who acted as head of state. Theoretically, the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet wielded enormous legislative power. In practice, however, the Congress of People's Deputies met infrequently and only to approve decisions made by the party, the Council of Ministers, and its own Supreme Soviet. The Supreme Soviet, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers had substantial authority to enact laws, decrees, resolutions, and orders binding on the population. The Congress of People's Deputies had the authority to ratify these decisions. The judiciary was not independent. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts and applied the law, as established by the Constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union lacked an adversarial court procedure known to common law jurisdictions. Rather, Soviet law utilised the system derived from Roman law, where judge, procurator and defense attorney worked collaboratively to establish the truth. The Soviet Union was a federal state made up of fifteen republics joined together in a theoretically voluntary union. In turn, a series of territorial units made up the republics. The republics also contained jurisdictions intended to protect the interests of national minorities. The republics had their own constitutions, which, along with the all-union Constitution, provide the theoretical division of power in the Soviet Union. In 1989, however, the CPSU and the central government retained all significant authority, setting policies that were executed by republic, provincial, oblast, and district governments.

Leaders of the Soviet Union

The official leader of the Soviet Union was the First/General Secretary of the CPSU. The head of government was considered the Premier, and the head of state was considered the President. The Soviet leader could also have one (or both) of these positions, along with the position of General-Secretary of the party. :List of Soviet Premiers :(Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (1923-1946); Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (1946-1990); Prime Minister of the USSR (1991)) :List of Soviet Presidents :(Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets (1917-1922); Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (1922-1938); Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1938-1989); Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1989-1990); President of the Soviet Union (1990-1991))

Foreign relations

:Main article: Foreign relations of the Soviet Union Foreign relations of the Soviet Union] Once denied diplomatic recognition by the capitalist world, the Soviet Union had official relations with the majority of the nations of the world by the late 1980s. The Soviet Union also had progressed from being an outsider in international organizations and negotiations to being one of the arbiters of Europe's fate after World War II. A member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945, the Soviet Union became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions (see Soviet Union and the United Nations). The Soviet Union emerged from World War II as one of the two major world powers, a position maintained for four decades through its hegemony in Eastern Europe (see Eastern Bloc), military strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially into space technology and weaponry. The Soviet Union's growing influence abroad in the postwar years helped lead to a socialist system of states in Eastern Europe united by military and economic agreements. Established in 1949 as an economic bloc of communist countries led by Moscow, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) served as a framework for cooperation among the planned economies of the Soviet Union, and, later, for trade and economic cooperation with the Third World. The military counterpart to the Comecon was the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet economy was also of major importance to Eastern Europe because of imports of vital natural resources from Russia, such as natural gas. Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders and ensured its control of the region by transforming the East European countries into stable allies. Soviet troops intervened in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and cited the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Soviet counterpart to the U.S. Johnson Doctrine and later Nixon Doctrine, and helped oust the Czechoslovak government in 1968, sometimes referred to as the Prague Spring. In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China led to the Sino-Soviet split and a tense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The KGB (Committee for State Security), served in a fashion as the Soviet counterpart to both the FBI and the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) in the U.S. It ran a massive network of informants throughout the Soviet Union, which was used to monitor violations in law. The foreign wing of the KGB was used to gather intelligence in countries around the globe. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was replaced in Russia by the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service). The KGB was not without substantial oversight. The GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate), not publicized by Russia until the end of the Soviet era during perestroika, was created by Lenin in 1918 and served both as a centralized handler of military intelligence and as an institutional check-and-balance for the otherwise relatively unrestricted power of the KGB. Effectively, it served to spy on the spies, and, not surprisingly, the KGB served a similar function with the GRU. As with the KGB, the GRU operated in nations around the world, particularly in Soviet bloc and client states. The GRU continues to operate in Russia today, with resources estimated by some to exceed those of the SVR [http://www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/gru/] [http://www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/svr/c103-gb.htm]. military intelligence]] In the 1970s, the Soviet Union achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States. It perceived its own involvement as essential to the solution of any major international problem. Meanwhile, the Cold War gave way to Détente and a more complicated pattern of international relations in which the world was no longer clearly split into two clearly opposed blocs. Less powerful countries had more room to assert their independence, and the two superpowers were partially able to recognize their common interest in trying to check the further spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons (see SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty). By this time, the Soviet Union had concluded friendship and cooperation treaties with a number of states in the non-communist world, especially among Third World and Non-Aligned Movement states like India and Egypt. Notwithstanding some ideological obstacles, Moscow advanced state interests by gaining military footholds in strategically important areas throughout the Third World. Furthermore, the Soviet Union continued to provide military aid for revolutionary movements in the Third World. For all these reasons, Soviet foreign policy was of major importance to the non-communist world and helped determine the tenor of international relations. Although myriad bureaucracies were involved in the formation and execution of Soviet foreign policy, the major policy guidelines were determined by the Politburo of the Communist Party. The foremost objectives of Soviet foreign policy had been the maintenance and enhancement of national security and the maintenance of hegemony over Eastern Europe. Relations with the United States and Western Europe were also of major concern to Soviet foreign policy makers, and relations with individual Third World states were at least partly determined by the proximity of each state to the Soviet border and to Soviet estimates of its strategic significance. When Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the CPSU in 1985, it signalled a dramatic change in Soviet foreign policy. Gorbachev pursued conciliatory policies toward the West instead of maintaining the Cold War status quo. The Soviet Union ended its occupation of Afghanistan, signed strategic arms reduction treaties with the United States, and allowed its allies in Eastern Europe to determine their own affairs. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 25 December, 1991, the Russian Federation claimed to be the legal successor to the Soviet state on the international stage despite its loss of superpower status. Russian foreign policy repudiated Marxism-Leninism as a guide to action, soliciting Western support for capitalist reforms in post-Soviet Russia.

Republics

Russian Federation)]] The Soviet Union was a federation of Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR). The first Republics were established shortly after the October Revolution of 1917. At that time, republics were technically independent from one another but their governments acted in closely coordinated confederation, as directed by the CPSU leadership. In 1922, four Republics (Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belarusian SSR, and Transcaucasian SFSR) joined into the Soviet Union. Between 1922 and 1940, the number of Republics grew to sixteen. Some of the new Republics were formed from territories acquired, or reacquired by the Soviet Union, others by splitting existing Republics into several parts. The criteria for establishing new republics were as follows: # to be located on the periphery of the Soviet Union so as to be able to exercise their alleged right to secession; # be economically strong enough to survive on their own upon secession; and # be named after the dominant ethnic group which should consist of at least one million people. The system remained almost unchanged after 1940. No new Republics were established. One republic, Karelo-Finnish SSR, was disbanded in 1956. The remaining 15 republics lasted until 1991. Secession remained theoretical, and very unlikely, given Soviet centralism, until the 1991 collapse of the Union. At that time, the republics became independent countries, with some still loosely organized under the heading Commonwealth of Independent States. Some republics had common history and geographical regions, and were referred by group names. These were Baltic Republics, Transcaucasian Republics, and Central Asian Republics. In its final state, the Soviet Union consisted of the following republics. (See Republics of the Soviet Union for the list and timeline of other Union republics that existed over time.)

Economy

Republics of the Soviet Union power stations in the Soviet Union]] Prior to its collapse, the Soviet Union had the largest centrally directed economy in the world. The government established its economic priorities through central planning, a system under which administrative decisions rather than the market determined resource allocation and prices. Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the country grew from a largely underdeveloped peasant society with minimal industry to become the second largest industrial power in the world. According to Soviet statistics, the country's share in world industrial production grew from 4 percent to 20 percent between 1913 and 1980. Although many Western analysts considered these claims to be inflated, the Soviet achievement remained remarkable. Recovering from the calamitous events of World War II, the country's economy had maintained a continuous though uneven rate of growth. Living standards, although still modest for most inhabitants by Western standards, had improved. Although these past achievements were impressive, in the mid-1980s Soviet leaders faced many problems. Production in the consumer and agricultural sectors was often inadequate (see Agriculture of the Soviet Union and shortage economy). Crises in the agricultural sector reaped catastrophic consequences in the 1930s, when collectivization met widespread resistance from the kulaks, resulting in a bitter struggle of many peasants against the authorities, famine, particularly in Ukraine, but also in the Volga River area and Kazakhstan. In the consumer and service sectors, a lack of investment resulted in black markets in some areas. black market] In addition, since the 1970s, the growth rate had slowed substantially. Extensive economic development, based on vast inputs of materials and labor, was no longer possible; yet the productivity of Soviet assets remained low compared with other major industrialized countries. Product quality needed improvement. Soviet leaders faced a fundamental dilemma: the strong central controls that had traditionally guided economic development had failed to promote the creativity and productivity urgently needed in a highly developed, modern economy. Conceding the weaknesses of their past approaches in solving new problems, the leaders of the late 1980s were seeking to mold a program of economic reform to galvanize the economy. The leadership, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, was experimenting with solutions to economic problems with an openness (glasnost) never before seen in the history of the economy. One method for improving productivity appeared to be a strengthening of the role of market forces. Yet reforms in which market forces assumed a greater role would signify a lessening of authority and control by the planning hierarchy. Assessing developments in the economy was difficult for Western observers. The country contained enormous economic and regional disparities. Yet analyzing statistical data broken down by region was a cumbersome process. Furthermore, Soviet statistics themselves might have been of limited use to Western analysts because they are not directly comparable with those used in Western countries. The differing statistical concepts, valuations, and procedures used by communist and noncommunist economists made even the most basic data, such as the relative productivity of various sectors, difficult to assess.

Geography

The Soviet Union occupied the eastern portion of the European continent and the northern portion of the Asian continent. Most of the country was north of 50° north latitude and covered a total area of approximately 22,402,200 square kilometres. Due to the sheer size of the state, the climate varied greatly from subtropical and continental to subarctic and polar. 11 percent of the land was arable, 16 percent was meadows and pasture, 41 percent was forest and woodland, and 32 percent was declared "other" (including tundra). The Soviet Union measured some 10,000 kilometers from Kaliningrad on the Gulf of Gdańsk in the west to Ratmanova Island (Big Diomede Island) in the Bering Strait, or roughly equivalent to the distance from Edinburgh, Scotland, east to Nome, Alaska. From the tip of the Taymyr Peninsula on the Arctic Ocean to the Central Asian town of Kushka near the Afghan border extended almost 5,000 kilometers of mostly rugged, inhospitable terrain. The east-west expanse of the continental United States would easily fit between the northern and southern borders of the Soviet Union at their extremities.

Demographics and society

The Soviet Union was one of the world's most ethnically diverse countries, with more than 150 distinct ethnic groups within its borders. The total population was estimated at 293 million in 1991. The majority of the population were Russians (50.78%), followed by Ukrainians (15.45%) and Uzbeks (5.84%). After all Soviet republics gained independence, Russia remained the largest country in the world by area, and still remains one of the most ethnically diverse.

Nationalities

The extensive multinational empire that the Bolsheviks inherited after their revolution was created by Tsarist expansion over some four centuries. Some nationality groups came into the empire voluntarily, others were brought in by force. Generally, the Russians and most of the non-Russian subjects of the empire shared little in common—culturally, religiously, or linguistically. More often than not, two or more diverse nationalities were collocated on the same territory. Therefore, national antagonisms built up over the years not only against the Russians but often between some of the subject nations as well. For seventy years, Soviet leaders had maintained that frictions between the many nationalities of the Soviet Union had been eliminated and that the Soviet Union consisted of a family of nations living harmoniously together. However, the national ferment that shook almost every corner of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s proved that seventy years of communist rule had failed to obliterate national and ethnic differences and that traditional cultures and religions would reemerge given the slightest opportunity. This reality facing Gorbachev and his colleagues meant that, short of relying on the traditional use of force, they had to find alternative solutions in order to prevent the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The concessions granted national cultures and the limited autonomy tolerated in the union republics in the 1920s led to the development of national elites and a heightened sense of national identity. Subsequent repression and Russianization fostered resentment against domination by Moscow and promoted further growth of national consciousness. National feelings were also exacerbated in the Soviet multinational state by increased competition for resources, services, and jobs.

Religious groups

linguistically]] The state was separated from church by the Decree of Council of People's Comissars 1918 January 23. Official figures on the number of religious believers in the Soviet Union were not available in 1989. But according to various Soviet and Western sources, over one-third of the people in the Soviet Union, an officially atheistic state, professed religious belief. Christianity and Islam had the most believers. Christians belonged to various churches: Orthodox, which had the largest number of followers; Catholic; and Baptist and various other Protestant sects. There were many churches in the country (7500 Russian Orthodox churches in 1974). The majority of the Islamic faithful were Sunni. Although there were many ethnic Jews in the Soviet Union, actual practice of Judaism was rare in Communist times. Jews were the victims of state-sponsored anti-semitism and were one of the few Soviet citizens allowed to emigrate from the country. Other religions, which were practiced by a relatively small number of believers, included Buddhism, Lamaism, and shamanism, a religion based on spiritualism. The role of religion in the daily lives of Soviet citizens varied greatly. Because Islamic religious tenets and social values of Muslims are closely interrelated, religion appeared to have a greater influence on Muslims than on either Christians or other believers. Two-thirds of the Soviet population, however, had no religious beliefs. About half the people, including members of the CPSU and high-level government officials, professed atheism. For the majority of Soviet citizens, therefore, religion seemed irrelevant.

Culture

shamanism] All media in the Soviet Union were controlled by the state including television and radio broadcasting, newspaper, magazine and book publishing. This extended to the fine arts including the theatre, opera and ballet. Art and Music was controlled by ownership of distribution and performance venues. Censorship was made in cases where performances did not meet with the favour of the Soviet leadership with newspaper campaigns against offending material and sanctions applied though party controlled professional organizations.
- Soviet education
- Soviet cinema
- Soviet television
- USSR at the Summer Olympics
- USSR at the Winter Olympics
- USSR Chess Championship
- Palace of Culture
- Research in the Soviet Union
- Soviet Ballroom dances
- Soviet Student Olympiads
- Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Holidays

- Post-Soviet states
- Prometheism
- List of Soviet Leaders
- List of premiers of the Soviet Union
- List of the presidents of the Soviet Union

External links

- [http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/art/photography/index.htm Images of the Soviet Union] - a collection of photos showing everyday life in the Soviet Union
- [http://geocities.com/deweytextsonline/isr.htm Impressions of Soviet Russia, by John Dewey]
- [http://www.n-wisdom.com/map_volume/world_map/Western_Soviet_Union_map.jpg Map of Western USSR]
- [http://www.angelfire.com/de/Cerskus/english/saitai.html Leonas Cerskus (the highest judge, a God):Crimes against Humanity committed by the Soviet Union]
- [http://koeln.tucker.in/music/gimn_sowjetskowo_sojusa.mp3 Melody of the Soviet National Anthem]
- Vladimir Lenin: What Is Soviet Power? (Text of the speech, )

References

- - [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/sutoc.html Soviet Union] Category:Communism Category:Former countries Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia Category:Former countries in Europe ko:소비에트 연방 ja:ソビエト連邦 simple:Soviet Union th:สหภาพโซเวียต

Metalls

S'anomena metall als elements químics que poden formar cations i enllaços iònics. Els metalls constitueixen un dels grups principals d'elements, junt amb els no metalls, semimetalls i gasos nobles. En la taula periòdica, els elements que van en diagonal del bor al poloni es consideren semimetalls, els que se situen a l'esquerra són els metalls, i els que apareixen a la dreta són els no metalls. Els metalls generalment són brillants, tenen densitat i punt de fusió alts, són dúctils, durs i bons conductors de l'escalfor i de l'electricitat. Aquestes propietats es deuen al fet que tenen pocs electrons de valència. Els metalls formen la major part de la taula periòdica, i es poden classificar en diverses sèries químiques:
- Metalls alcalins
- Metalls alcalinoterris
- Lantànids
- Actínids
- Metalls de transició
- Metalls del bloc p, o altres metalls Categoria:Grups d'elements químics ja:金属 ko:금속 simple:Metal th:โลหะ

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