Habits formed during the long years of the cold war alone can account for the view that the coup in Afghanistan represents a Soviet riposte to the US-backed military build-up in Iran and China’s efforts to consolidate its influence in Pakistan. In reality it is nothing of the kind and its impact on the power balance in the region is likely to be small unless the Shah of Iran and President Bhutto make a wrong-headed militaristic response to it. Their decision to recognise the new regime in Kabul does not quite eliminate this possibility.
Since Soviet advisers are attached to the Afghan army up to the division level, it is more than likely that they were aware of the move to overthrow King Zahir Shah and set up a republican form of government in Kabul. But not to speak of the Kremlin sponsoring the coup, there is not the slightest evidence to show that it encouraged the organisers in any way. Western intelligence agencies, which must be fairly well represented in Afghanistan, would almost certainly have discovered a Soviet involvement if there was any and proclaimed it from the housetops.
The Soviet leadership undoubtedly took a certain amount of risk in adopting an attitude of benevolent neutrality towards the attempted coup. King Zahir Shah and his entourage would in all probability have suspected Russia of being involved in it if the move had either been prematurely discovered or failed and they could have retaliated by strengthening their ties with the West, China, Iran and Pakistan as an insurance against a similar attempt in future. But Moscow did not have much of a choice. It could either keep quiet or betray a body of men headed by so loyal a friend of the Soviet Union as General Daud Khan. At an early stage of the game it could have tried to dissuade them from going ahead. But it is not inconceivable that it either tried and failed or that it discovered the facts when it was too late for it to try to stop the coup.
Three Factors
It can, of course, be legitimately argued that the absence of evidence regarding Soviet involvement in the coup cannot by itself settle the issue. But there are at least three factors which suggest that left to its own devices the Kremlin would have preferred to preserve the status quo in Afghanistan.
First, even if Moscow was not as determined as it is to extend the area of co-operation with the West and Japan, it could not have wished to bring its credibility as a reliable power into question so soon after Mr. Brezhnev’s highly advertised and reasonably successful visit to Washington. A leadership which regards the Watergate affair as a plot by diehard elements to undermine President Nixon and his policy of detente with the Soviet Union is not likely to want to create problems for him in an area of supreme importance to the United States and its West European and Japanese allies.
Secondly, the Kremlin has been keen to reassure the Shah of Iran and President Bhutto that it means them no harm. As such it could not have deliberately worked for the overthrow of the monarchy in Afghanistan and the return to power of General Daud Khan. The Shah is sensitive to the rise of a radical regime anywhere in his neighbourhood and President Bhutto cannot be too fond of Sardar Daud Khan in view of his stand on the Pakhtoonistan issue.
Finally, Moscow’s relations with King Zahir Shah have been sufficiently friendly to make it unnecessary for it to try to get rid of him, and they have been of a kind which have enabled it to seek friendly ties with Iran and Pakistan. It is a fact of history that the Soviet Union’s relations with these two countries improved considerably after General Daud Khan ceased to be Prime Minister in 1963. Such problems as it has had with them have nothing to do with Afghanistan’s policy.
Quick Move
But whatever its predisposition, the Soviet leadership had to move quickly once the coup had taken place. It could not afford to sit on the fence waiting for the dust to settle, its stakes and its investment in terms of both money and effort obliged it to be the first to extend recognition to the new regime.
In view of all this, it is a pity that some over-enthusiastic supporters of the coup in India have begun to describe it as a revolution and to attach undue importance to General Daud Khan’s reference to the question of Pakhtoonistan. Lest this creates misunderstanding, the facts should be stated.
Broadly, the coup is the result of a combination of three factors – a major split in the royal family dating back at least to 1963 when King Zahir Shah retired General Daud Khan from the office of Prime Minister, the paralysis of the government as a result of the concentration of all powers in the hands of an ailing monarch, frequent changes of Prime Ministers and their cabinets, the inability of ministers to provide reasonably effective administration for want of authority and rapport with what passed for a parliament, and simmering discontent among the military officer corps on account of irregular and unjustified promotions for palace favourites. Surely this is too slender a base for a genuine social, economic and political revolution.
This is not to suggest that the country has been wholly static in recent decades or that social tensions have not risen there as the inevitable byproduct of the spread of western-style education and a modicum of economic development. Instead, like many other developing countries, Afghanistan has been trying to emerge into the twentieth century. This process has engendered social tensions as reflected in the student unrest on the one hand and the attacks by highly orthodox mullahs on the life-style of the small modernised elite, specially the change from the burqua to the mini-skirt among educated women, and the rise of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood on the other. But these social changes and tensions have at best provided a backdrop for the coup. They do not account for it.
Like many other developing countries, Afghanistan too may get a one-party dictatorship. That may well turn out to be the implication of President Daud Khan’s promise of genuine democracy in place of the “pseudo democracy” that prevailed under the monarchy. In any case a multiparty system is not a practical proposition for Afghanistan because its elite is not politically mature enough to be able to operate such a system and the country is so thoroughly divided along ethnic and tribal lines that the freedom to form parties is likely to threaten to tear it apart.
Be that as it may, one-party dictatorship cannot be equated with revolution, specially in a country like Afghanistan where religious orthodoxy is too well-entrenched to be effectively challenged by a modernising elite and where mass illiteracy and political apathy are likely to confine political movements more or less to urban areas. In fact, even in the cities, including Kabul, the pull of revivalism is stronger than that of modernism.
It is possible that the world is witnessing the beginning of a shift from an imperial system presided over by a Persian-speaking monarch and landed gentry to Pakhtoon nationalism in Afghanistan. On this reckoning, it can be said that the clash between Afghanistan and Pakistan would become intractable because by its very nature a Pushtu-based nationalism in Afghanistan cannot reconcile itself to the absorption of about 50 per cent of the Pushtu-speaking community into Pakistan.
Two Points
Two additional points should be borne in mind in this connection. As a landlocked country with access to the sea only through Pakistan and Iran, Afghanistan cannot afford to push the dispute over Pakhtoonistan too far. The Soviet Union can come to its rescue in an emergency as it did in 1962. But that cannot be a substitute for regular access to the sea and to India through Pakistan. Afghanistan is also militarily too weak to be in a position to confront the much stronger Pakistan, specially in the new context when Islamabad is assured of unqualified support by Iran. Whatever he may say for the record, General Daud Khan is not likely to ignore the experience of 1961.
Mr Bhutto can doubtless create serious problems not only for himself and his country but also for the region as a whole if he continues to ignore the legitimate demand for a larger measure of autonomy by the people of the NWFP, Baluchistan and Sind and to try to concentrate all powers in the predominantly Punjabi military-bureaucratic elite over which he now presides. In that case disaffection is bound to grow and may even assume a violent, secessionist character.
The Times of India, 25 July 1973