The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

Preparations for the first state visit were underway in Afghanistan. The text of theTreaty of Friendship, Good-Neighborliness, and Cooperation was discussed with Afghanleaders. When preparing the document, both sides were led by Lenin’s principles of theTreaty of 1921, which was signed by Soviet Russia and Afghanistan, with the addedconsiderations of the new reality. Experts honed the wording and argued aboutpunctuation. Ambassador Puzanov was constantly in touch with the Afghan Ministry ofInternational Affairs to keep the minister of foreign affairs abreast of the evolution of thedocument. Hafizullah Amin, leafing through the document, admired the culture of Sovietdiplomacy and the perfection of the translation into Dari, but didn’t seem to be particularlyinterested in the substance of the treaty. If the Soviets wrote the document, it must havebeen correct.The state leaders of Afghanistan didn’t particularly concern themselves with thistreaty, much like the other treaties they had previously signed. Afghans did not attachparticular significance to such papers and documents. They kept to the spirit of agreementsonly so long as it was to their benefit.Not only politicians were preparing for the visit. Officers of the Ninth Directorate ofthe KGB were researching the gastronomic preferences of Comrade Taraki and themembers of his delegation in order to organize their meals in Moscow accordingly. Itturned out that the arriving Afghans were not particularly fussy about cuisine. They dranktea in the morning and ate flatbread with goat cheese. For lunch they preferred vegetablesoup with carrots, onions, and turnips. In the evening they ate kerai—fried eggs with lamband onion. On special occasions, they would eat pilaf and shish kebab.252