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Remembering the Saur Revolution

"The Saur Revolution had been based on a coup led by young officers. But Afghanistan had a conscript army, with men from every corner of the country, mostly from the families of small peasants and sharecroppers. Those soldiers followed orders, but they had not been politically convinced. There had been no urban uprisings and no peasant war for land. In that sense, the Saur Revolution was a top-down coup with little rural support.

The idea that Communism or socialism required a dictatorship by a minority was widely accepted among radicals in the 1960s and 1970s. Karmal had learned his politics in prison in Kabul, Taraki had learned his in Bombay, and Amin had spent years in New York. The Afghan Communists were simply doing what the Left globally knew had to be done if they really wanted to change the world. Their tragedy is, in an acute and terrible form, the same one replicated elsewhere."

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