Hafizullah Amin

Hafizullah Amin (حفيظ الله امين; 1 August 1929 – 27 December 1979) was an Afghan communist head of state, who served from September 1979 until his assassination.

Hafizullah Amin was born to a Ghilzai Pashtun family in the Qazi Khel village in Paghman on 1 August 1929.

His father, a civil servant, died in 1937 when he was 8.

Thanks to his brother Abdullah, a primary school teacher, Amin was able to attend both primary and secondary school, which in turn allowed him to attend Kabul University (KU).

After studying mathematics there, he also graduated from the Darul Mualimeen Teachers College in Kabul, and became a teacher.

Amin later became vice-principal of the Darul Mualimeen College, and then principal of the prestigious Avesina High School, and in 1957 left Afghanistan for Columbia University in New York City, where he earned MA in education.

It was at Columbia that Amin became attracted to Marxism, and in 1958 he became a member of the university's Socialist Progressive Club.

When he returned to Afghanistan, Amin became a teacher at Kabul University, and later, for the second time, the principal of Avesina High School.

During this period Amin became acquainted with Nur Muhammad Taraki, a communist.

Around this time, Amin quit his position as principal of Avesina High School to become principal of the Darul Mualimeen College.

When he returned to Afghanistan in the mid-1960s, the route flew to Afghanistan by way of Moscow.

There, Amin met the Afghan ambassador to the Soviet Union, his old friend Ali Ahmad Popel, a previous Afghan Minister of Education.

During his short stay, Amin became even more radicalised.

Some people, Nabi Misdaq for instance, do not believe he travelled through Moscow, but rather West Germany and Lebanon.

It is alleged that Amin became radicalised during his second stay in the United States in 1962, when he enrolled in a work-study group at the University of Wisconsin.

Amin studied in the doctoral programme at the Columbia University Teachers College, but started to neglect his studies in favour of politics; in 1963 he became head of the Afghan students' association at the college.

The association was funded by the Asia Foundation, known to be a CIA pass-through group, or front.

He ran as a candidate in the 1965 parliamentary election but failed to secure a seat, but in 1969 became the only Khalqist elected to parliament, increasing his standing within the party.

By the time he had returned to Afghanistan, the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) had already held its founding congress, which was in 1965.

Amin ran as a candidate for the PDPA in the 1965 parliamentary election, and lost by a margin of less than fifty votes.

In 1966, when the PDPA Central Committee was expanded, Amin was elected as a non-voting member, and in the spring of 1967 he gained full membership.

When the PDPA split along factional lines in 1967, between Khalqists led by Nur and Parchamites led by Babrak Karmal, Amin joined the Khalqists.

As a member of parliament, Amin tried to win over support from the Pashtun people in the armed forces.

According to a biography about Amin, he used his position as member of parliament to fight against imperialism, feudalism, and Reactionary tendencies, and fought against the "rotten" regime, the monarchy.

Amin himself said that he used his membership in parliament to pursue the class struggle against the bourgeoisie.

Amin's standing in the Khalq faction of the PDPA increased when he was the only Khalqist elected to parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election.

He organized the Saur Revolution of 1978 and co-founded the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), ruling Afghanistan as General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party.

Born in the town of Paghman in Kabul Province, Amin studied at Kabul University and started his career as a teacher before he twice went to the United States to study.

During this time, Amin became attracted to Marxism and became involved in radical student movements at the University of Wisconsin.

Upon his return to Afghanistan, he used his teaching position to spread socialist ideologies to students, and he later joined the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), a new far-left organization co-founded by Nur Muhammad Taraki and Babrak Karmal.

Amin was the main organizer of the April 1978 Saur Revolution, which overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud Khan and formed a pro-Soviet state based on socialist ideals.

Being second in chief of the Democratic Republic, Amin soon became the regime's strongman, the main architect of the state's programs including mass persecution of those deemed counter-revolutionary.

The Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev was dissatisfied with and mistrusted Amin; they intervened in Afghanistan, invoking the 1978 Twenty-Year Treaty of Friendship between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.

A growing personal struggle with General Secretary Taraki eventually led to Amin wrestling power away then successfully deposing him and later ordering his execution; on 16 September 1979, Amin named himself Chairman of the Council of Ministers (head of government), Chairman of the Revolutionary Council (head of state), and General Secretary of the PDPA Central Committee (supreme leader).

Amin's short-lived leadership featured controversies from beginning to end.

His government failed to solve the problem of the population revolting against the regime as the situation rapidly worsened and army desertions and defections continued.

He tried to change things with friendly overtures to the United States, however his reputation in Washington was tarnished by his role in the assassination of Adolph Dubs.

Some Afghans, especially those from minority ethnic groups such as the Hazaras, held Amin responsible for the regime's harshest measures, such as ordering thousands of executions, more than 7,000 of which were from the Hazara minority.

Thousands of people disappeared without trace during his time in office.

Soviet operatives assassinated Amin at the Tajbeg Palace on 27 December 1979 as part of Operation Storm-333, kickstarting the 10-year Soviet–Afghan War; he had ruled for a little more than three months.