The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

with a degree of skepticism. The agent then appealed to Karmal to put aside his personalanimosity towards his political opponent for the sake of party unity. Karmal understoodfrom Petrov’s tone that it was not his personal suggestion, but rather the opinion ofMoscow.Taraki received a similar lecture. The intelligence officer relayed to him, verbatim, adirective from the CPSU Central Committee: “Your internal struggle has, unfortunately,lasted too long and has sown discord among the progressive forces, which has led to theweakening of both sides. Such a situation benefits only the internal and external enemies ofthe Republic of Afghanistan, those who organize anti-government plots, engage in sabotage,and carry out other acts hostile to the new political order in an attempt to restore the oldregime. In such a complicated situation, all progressive forces should cast aside theirdisagreements and unite their efforts to create a popular social support base for therepublican regime and galvanize resistance to foreign and domestic threats.”Moscow not only supported the unification of the party unequivocally, it alsoopposed any action that would threaten Daoud’s regime. Daoud visited the Soviet capitalfor the first time as head of state in 1974. During a conversation with Brezhnev, heexpressed concern that according to the security services, leftists were plotting a coupagainst his regime, which would be undertaken if he did not agree to expedite a socioeconomicprogram to steer the country towards non-capitalist and then socialistdevelopment. Leonid Ilyich listened attentively to Daoud’s concerns, raised his famouseyebrows, and gave a reproachful look to the secretary of the Central Committee in chargeof international affairs, Boris Ponomaryov, before looking back at Daoud. “We will correctthat,” Brezhnev promised.71