The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

submitted their analysis to the Central Committee. The eleven-page document was anattempt to understand current events and determine a program of action for the nearestfuture.According to the unwritten rule at the time, the document started with anideological preamble: “In the conditions of an intense class struggle, the People’sDemocratic Party of Afghanistan, which represents the interests of the working class, findsitself on one side. On the other side are the forces that represent the interests of feudallandlords, the bourgeoisie, and the most reactionary part of the clergy.” This introductionwas followed by a list of reasons that the situation had sharply deteriorated. Among themwere complex inter-ethnic and tribal controversies, religious fanaticism, extremenationalism, economic hardships, and the consolidation of all counter-revolutionary forces.The authors of the document admitted that a program of broad social and economictransformation was in the very beginning of its implementation, and that most of thepopulation had not yet sensed the advantages of the new order and therefore did notappreciate its progressive character.Because this document was classified as Top Secret, and was addressed to very fewpeople, the Politburo members who signed it did not hide the weakness of the new Afghanauthorities. Among those weaknesses were a lack of local support and unwillingness toconduct a dialogue with the clergy and opposition tribal leaders. However, havingremarked that the PDPA hadn’t yet transformed into a mass political organization, theauthors of the document noticed that “the avant-garde workers and poorest peasants arebeing admitted into its membership very slowly.” The party remained not only small, butalso seriously weakened as a result of a power struggle between the Khalq and Parcham413