Hafizullah Amin

Hafizullah Amin, an Afghan revolutionary and communist, led the country as head of state for just over three months, from September 1979 until he was killed. He was a key figure in the 1978 Saur Revolution and helped establish the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, serving as General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party. Amin was born on 1 August 1929 in Paghman, a town in Kabul Province. After attending Kabul University, he worked as a teacher. He traveled to the United States twice for further study, and it was there that he grew interested in Marxism, getting involved with radical student groups at the University of Wisconsin.

His early life and career began in the village of Qazi Khel in Paghman, where he was born into a Kharoti Ghilzai Pashtun family. His father, a civil servant, died when Amin was eight years old. With help from his brother Abdullah, a primary school teacher, Amin completed primary and secondary school, then entered Kabul University. He studied mathematics and also graduated from the Darul Mualimeen Teachers College in Kabul, becoming a teacher. He later served as vice-principal of that college and then as principal of the prestigious Avesina High School.

In 1957, Amin went to Columbia University in New York City, earning a master’s degree in education. At Columbia, he was drawn to Marxism and joined the university’s Socialist Progressive Club in 1958. After returning to Afghanistan, he taught at Kabul University and again became principal of Avesina High School. During this time, he met the communist Nur Muhammad Taraki. Amin left his post at Avesina to become principal of the Darul Mualimeen College.

Amin is said to have become more radical during a second stay in the United States in 1962, when he joined a work-study group at the University of Wisconsin. He enrolled in a doctoral program at Columbia’s Teachers College but began neglecting his studies for politics. In 1963, he became head of the Afghan students’ association at the college, a group funded by the Asia Foundation, which was known as a CIA pass-through organization. When he returned to Afghanistan in the mid-1960s, some accounts say he first flew to Moscow, meeting his old friend Ali Ahmad Popel, the Afghan ambassador to the Soviet Union and a former education minister. Others, like Nabi Misdaq, claim he returned via West Germany and Lebanon, not Moscow.

By the time Amin got back, the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) had already held its founding congress in 1965. He ran as a PDPA candidate in that year’s parliamentary election but lost by fewer than fifty votes. In 1966, when the PDPA Central Committee expanded, Amin was elected as a non-voting member, and by spring 1967 he had gained full membership. His standing within the party’s Khalq faction rose when he became the only Khalqist elected to parliament in the 1969 election.

When the PDPA split along factional lines in 1967—into Khalqists led by Taraki and Parchamites led by Babrak Karmal—Amin joined the Khalqists. As a member of parliament, he worked to gain support from Pashtun people in the armed forces.

Amin was the main organizer of the April 1978 Saur Revolution, which toppled Mohammad Daoud Khan’s government and created a pro-Soviet socialist state. As second-in-command in the Democratic Republic, he quickly became the regime’s strongman, driving its programs, including mass persecution of those labeled counter-revolutionary. A growing power struggle with General Secretary Taraki led Amin to seize control, depose him, and later order 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 brief rule was marked by controversy from start to finish. His government could not stop the population from revolting, as the situation worsened and army desertions and defections continued. He tried to improve relations with the United States, but his reputation in Washington was badly damaged by his role in the assassination of U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs. Many Afghans, especially in rural areas, blamed Amin for the regime’s harshest actions, such as ordering thousands of executions. Thousands of people vanished without a trace during his time in office. The Soviet Union, under Leonid Brezhnev, grew dissatisfied and mistrustful of Amin after he purged the Parcham faction. Invoking the 1978 Twenty-Year Treaty of Friendship between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, Soviet operatives assassinated Amin at the Tajbeg Palace on 27 December 1979 as part of Operation Storm-333, triggering the decade-long Soviet–Afghan War.