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But the President's new, democratic guise is blatantly at odds with his previous words and deeds. He is generally regarded as the architect of the Taraki government's most repressive measures, including the execution of at least 2,000 political prisoners, the imprisonment of 30,000 others, and countless "gross violations of human rights" that were cited last week in a report issued by Amnesty International. Says one longtime Kabul resident: "Amin is the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin."
In an interview with TIME Correspondent David DeVoss shortly before the coup, Amin came on like the ruthless strongman he is reputed to be, declaring that "change must be brought quickly while the counterrevolutionaries and imperialists are too weak to prevent it." Asked how the Kabul government could claim to have the loyalty of 98% of the population when the countryside was controlled by rebels, he responded with dialectic doubletalk: "Since the leader of our party is automatically the leader of the working class, our government is supported by all the working people."
Both President Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Aleksei Kosygin signed Moscow's telegram of congratulation to Amin, who is most unlikely to steer Afghanistan from its Marxist, pro-Moscow course. The Soviet leaders may be less happy with the erratic Amin than they profess. DeVoss has learned that on two occasions the Soviets advised Taraki to distance himself from Amin and reduce his power. Taraki responded by replacing Amin as Defense Minister last March. But he was unable to reduce Amin's influence with the top Khalq military officers; their support enabled him to repossess the defense portfolio in June and, presumably, to carry out his coup.
In Washington some Administration officials believe that Afghanistan may become a Viet Nam-like quagmire for the Soviets. They must soon face the critical choice of disengaging or going in with thousands more troops to prop up a tottering regime that has been unable to communize an ancient feudal society with profound religious, geographic and ethnic divisions. Even with Soviet advisers on hand, the war against the rebels is not going well. The effectiveness of Kabul's largely conscripted 80,000-man army has been diminished by a string of mutinies and defections: since the beginning of the war, 8,000 government troops are estimated to have gone over to the rebel side. With Muslim snipers and guerrillas terrorizing the countryside, Khalq governors rarely leave their provincial capitals. More than 80 of the hated Soviets have been killed so far.
The bitterness of the civil war was illustrated last March by violent riots in Herat, where Muslim peasants and 2,000 defecting Kabul troops went on a bloody rampage, killing hundreds of Khalq officials, army soldiers and foreigners, including at least 20 Soviet advisers and their families. Kabul responded with an all-out attack by helicopter gunships and jets, leaving some 20,000 Afghans dead in the streets. Though it crushed the riot, the massive retaliation reinforced the tribesmen's conviction that the Khalq regime is an atheistic puppet of the Soviet Union. Said one unrepentant factory business manager in Herat last week: "I don't just want the Soviets to leave. I want to see them all die."