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In April 1978, a Marxist Leninist party overthrew the government of Afghanistan. They then established a new country, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. And the news shocked the world over. History. Conquerors from Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan to Babur of the Mughal Empire to Nadir Shah of Iran have all carved their ways through Afghanistan, inflicting untold damage. But in the 1950s and 1960s, the country, led by several strongmen, seemed to be on a modernizing path. So how did the Communists pull off such a shocking takeover? In this video, we look at how the Communists took Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia. It is between the sizes of European France and the US state of Texas, and about 18 times the size of Taiwan. To the east borders what is now Pakistan. To the west is Iran, and to the north are Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The People's Republic of China also has a very small border in the northeast. So as you can see, Afghanistan is right in the mix of things, a cross point between Indian, Chinese, Turkish and Persian worlds. Nearly 80% of Afghanistan is covered by mountains, including the massive Hindu Kush range. These mountains divide the country into the north, south and central regions. To the north we have the plains with ample rainfall. Agriculture of cotton grains and fruits is relatively plentiful. There are also some mineral and natural gas deposits. The area is predominantly populated by Turkic peoples. Afghanistan's central region has about 160,000 square miles of valleys and mountains. The predominant people living there are the Hazaras, reflecting Afghanistan's Persian influences. Then in the south, there are 50,000 square miles of vast deserts interspersed with high plateaus. There is little rain here. The Pashtuns dominate here. They've long been the country's largest and most powerful ethnic group, though it is important to note that they make up just 40% of the population. The Afghan economy is dependent on low quality agricultural activities like nomadic grazing. Large irrigation networks supposedly once existed, but were razed by the mongols in the 1200s. Subsequent war and turmoil have prevented them from returning. Afghanistan's sordid history and extensive mountain landscape have encouraged a decentralized state structure. Tribes in the rural valleys have little trust in the central government, which they often correctly see as transitory and despotic. So instead they practice an egalitarian power structure that deals with its own issues through informal institutions like tribes or clans. They are basically self functional and difficult to tax. Even who we might call Afghanistan's king is less of a William the Conqueror type and more like an arrangement amongst the various Tribal heads. Lacking rich mineral resources, good infrastructure and the capacity to extract taxes from their domestic populations, Afghan central governments often struggle to build up capital. For instance, the Durrani Empire that founded the modern state of Afghanistan in the 1700s drew less than a quarter of its revenues from its heartland. The vast majority came from tributes extorted from richer outlying areas like Punjab and Kashmir. Starting in the 1700s, the Russian Empire began conquering Central Asia. This was tied to their general interest in accessing warmer water trade routes in the Indian Ocean and enhancing overall imperial prestige. This conquest would bring them to Afghanistan, and Afghanistan probably would have been absorbed too, were it not for the alarm of the British Empire, which saw Afghanistan as the key route of allowing a Russian invasion of British India. So the British sought to maintain Afghanistan as a neutral buffer state, leading to three wars throughout the years, with up and down results. After the second Anglo Afghan war in 1879, the British pay an annual subsidy to the Afghan ruler, Abdur Rahman Khan, in exchange for control over foreign affairs. Abdur Rahman used the money to modernize his army and impose a brutal military rule over the rest of the country. His success in defeating the dozens of rebellions against him eventually grant him the nickname the Iron Emir. Despite this glazing, Abdur recognizes that his own rule is tenuous. Having spent time in exile in Russian Central Asia, he maintains neutrality, keeping out both of his powerful neighbors in a constant search for money. He sets up new trade routes and tax monopolies over certain sectors of the economy. Even so, his regime struggles to fund new infrastructure, let alone industrialization. Abdurrahman Khan dies in 1901. His final words are reported to. Though my soul will go to God, my spirit will remain in Afghanistan. My last words to you, my sons and successors are never trust the Russians. Abdur Rahman's first son, Habibullah, takes the throne, but is assassinated in 1919. Rahman's second and third sons struggle for power before the third son, Amanullah Khan, ascends to the throne. Amanullah then launches the third Anglo Afghan War. The war doesn't last very long, but grants Afghanistan full independence. The British end their subsidy, leaving the door open for another source of funds. In 1921, the Russian Empire is replaced by the Soviet Union. The Soviets proclaim a kinship with the Afghans for their struggle against the British. And Manola reaches out to Lenin, striking one of the Soviet Union's first international agreements. The 1921 Afghan Soviet Treaty established mutual recognition, some trade rights and a 1 million ruble subsidy. Though the Soviets then dealing with their own economic issues, were never really diligent in paying it out. There are good times. The Soviets gift the Afghanis 11 aircraft to help cede the first Afghan Air Force. The planes are used to fight rebels in a 1924 uprising against Amanullah's rule, the Khos rebellion. But there are bad times too. In the early 1920s, the Basmachi movement in the former Russian Turkestan rises up against imperial rule. The movement soon gathers the sympathy and support of Afghans and other Muslims. The Soviets send the Red army to crush this resistance, killing their leader Enver Pasha. The remnants flee to Afghanistan. In December 1925, the Soviets cross into what is now the Afghan district of Darkhad to clean them out, damaging Afghan relations. Throughout the 1920s, Amanullah's government tried to modernize the country economically. This meant creating a modern banking system and its first financial institution. Prior to the 1920s, almost all monetary transactions and import export trade were controlled by foreigners, mostly Indians. To bring business back into Afghani hands, Amanullah introduced joint stock companies or surecats, and granted them preferential treatment. The first Surecat was founded in 1924, an import export business for Soviet trade. But it is socially where the king seems to go too far. After a trip to Europe and Turkey, Amanullah announced sweeping changes to establish civil rights, end slavery and polygamy and integrate women. These were heavy changes for conservatives to swallow that in 1928, Civil War breaks out. One of Amanullah's Tajik military commanders, Habubullah Kalankani, seizes power, rolling back all of his predecessor's economic and social reforms. But less than a year later, a Pashtun from the south named Mohammad Nadir Khan raises a military force, mostly from the British side of the border and invades Kalaqani is deposed and executed. The Soviets acknowledge Nadir Khan as Nadir Shah, founding a new ruling dynasty. Nadir Shah carefully pledges political stability and continued economic reform, but at a slower pace to satisfy the conservatives. Nevertheless, he is assassinated early in his rule in 1933. He is succeeded by his 19 year old son, Zahir Shah. Zahir Shah reigns over Afghanistan for the next 40 years, bringing a bit of stability. Economic reforms are implemented to build up a base of domestic business and trade that the government can tax to provide finance. The government restarted the Bank Emily Afghan, or BMA and authorized a gold and silver reserve and 4x monopoly to shore up the Afghani currency. The old sherkats from the Amanullah era were all closed. So A new generation were founded. To help them compete, the government granted them monopolies over the import and export of items like sugar and petrol. This was naturally quite unpopular with the Indian and Jewish traders who once dominated the space and but native Afghans weren't so hot on it either. For example, one of Afghanistan's few big exports are the pelts of Karakul, a sheep breed. The Karakul breeders complained about the lower prices paid by Afghanis and threatened to take their flocks to Iran. Despite these modernization efforts, the economy struggles. In the 1930s, partly due to the Great Depression, falling silver prices hurt the Afghani currency, making imports of equipment more expensive. Indian buyers of exports curtailed their buying. But more seriously, the Zaheer government struggles to grow domestic agriculture. Irrigation projects can create more arable land, but farming methods are out of date. Nomads don't want to settle down and large estate holders are unwilling to adopt new techniques. There is one area of growth, trade with the Soviet Union. After resuming in 1925, both imports and exports grew at a good pace. Though excessive imports eventually led to import export controls in 1932. Yet it's critical to note that Afghanistan's long running inability to build up a strong agricultural economy, industrialize and build a domestic tax base would mean a continued dependence on resource extraction and foreign aid. Back when Stalin ruled the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 40s, the Soviets gave little aid to developing countries unless it seemed possible that one of their associated communist parties can take power. But after Khrushchev became leader in the 1950s, the Soviets saw a chance to engage with developing newly decolonized countries in Africa and Asia. They might not have communist parties in power, but there were plenty of anti western sentiments. Afghanistan was a textbook example. The partition of India created a new Muslim majority neighbor Pakistan. And relations between the two countries quickly deteriorated. The most prominent reason was the cause of Pashtunistan, A proposal to merge into a single nation. The Pashtuns of Afghanistan and British India, now divided by yet another British drawn border, the Durand line. For their part, the Pakistanis have always firmly rejected Pashtunistan, seeing it as a disguised attempt at annexation. Due to these tensions, in 1950 the Pakistanis shut their borders and cut off energy import into Afghanistan. And this forces a turn north to the Soviets. A four year trade agreement is signed in 1950 and exchanging Soviet oil for Afghan wool and cotton. The Pashtunistan issue continues to corrode relations with Pakistan and by extension the United States. In 1954 the Americans strike a defensive military alliance with the Pakistanis, but declined one with the Afghans. Concerned that American weapons might be used eventually against the Pakistanis. The door is open for the Soviets in 1955, another clash between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In December 1955, Khrushchev visits Afghanistan for the first time. There the two countries reaffirmed their relationship. The Soviets voice their support for Pashtunistan and offers a $100 million loan for equipment to be paid back with export goods over 30 years. In 1956, loans are granted to Afghanistan to buy cheap Soviet made weapons. By 1960, over $100 million of Soviet weapons were sold via loan to the Afghans. Soviet military advisors joined soon afterwards, cementing strong influence within Afghanistan's military. Afghanistan would eventually receive more Soviet aid than any non communist country. $1.2 billion. It spanned from irrigation systems to 1,500 miles of paved roads, to industrial equipment, to the establishment of educational institutions like the Kabul Polytechnic Institute. This aid lifted the economy. By the mid-1960s, Afghanistan's GDP per head grew to as high as it ever had in relation to the world average. Unfortunately, most of those benefits accrued to the political and economic elite living in the capital of Kabul and the rural areas. Things were not as nice and people there remained profoundly poor. The Soviets soon realized that Afghanistan's economy was not moving towards financial independence. Most government revenues still came from foreign aid or taxes on foreign trade. And they were still turning a deficit. So in the mid-1960s the Soviets shifted to encouraging export growth and developed Afghanistan's natural resources to export back to the Soviet Union. It was the Soviets who discovered and developed Afghanistan's natural gas field, Sheburgan in the north, as well as iron and copper deposits. To be clear, Afghanistan did not fully shut out the United States and the west before 1978. The US provided $532 million of aid, including a critical irrigation project in what is now the Kandahar airport. That American aid rapidly declined after 1966. But the west remained a significant destination for Afghanistan's export goods until the eve of the revolution. These societal and economic changes in the 1950s and 60s were overseen by Zaheer's prime minister, cousin and brother in law, Mohammad Daud Khan. Daoud was a Pashtun nationalist, powerful but impatient. He he pushed for faster social and economic reform to unify Afghanistan's multi ethnic society. On the other hand, Zahir, undoubtedly thinking about his predecessor Amanullah, advocated for slower reform. The two clashed, eventually leading to the Latter's resignation in 1960. 3. A year later, Zaheer passed a new constitution to modernize governance and experiment in democracy. This new constitution has two major impacts. First, its ban on political activities by Zaheer's family members shuts the door on the ambitious Daoud's return to power, at least for a time. And second, political parties can now contest for seats in an elected legislature. This allowed for the emergence of a Marxist Leninist party, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, or or pdpa. Unlike with many other countries, communism reached Afghanistan rather late. Founded by Nur Mohammad Taraki and Babrak Karmal, the PDPA began in January 1965 with a meeting of 27 to 30 people in Kabul. Most of its membership were urban middle class people doctors, teachers, students, civil servants and military officers. Taraki and Carmel themselves were from wealthy or royal families. The PDPA soon split into factions along ideological and ethnic lines. On one side, Taraki's hard line Khalk faction. Khalk means masses, and they wanted a party made up of just the working classes, promote class struggle and also push the Pashtunistan issue. Babrak's Parcham, on the other hand, was more moderate, wanting a broader ethnic and class coalition as well as a slower transition to socialism. Parchan means banner. To be honest, the factions have more. They agree than disagree, but their disagreements seem serious enough to fight for. And two years after the party's founding, the Parcham faction is thrown out. Meanwhile, Zaheer's experiment with democracy fails to solve the country's problems. Corruption remains endemic. Its various factions remain divided. The imposition of secular norms onto the traditional rural areas creates backlash. Then, in 1970, a major drought hits Afghanistan's central and northwest rural regions. Lasting for at least two years, the drought leaves half of the country's livestock dead. Maybe 100,000 to 500,000 people die from hunger. Though estimates remain sketchy, people flood into the cities, exacerbating inequality and crowdedness. Kabul in the mid-1970s had a population of about 750,000 people. The bottom 56% of those people earned just 15% of total income, while the top 6% earned over 40%. The former prime Minister Daud Khan said seeks a way back to power. With the backing of the PDPA's Parcham faction and 1,000 Soviet trained officers in the Afghan army, he plans to depose his cousin. Or the alternative take on what happened was that the PDPA and its army officers planned the coup first. Then they bring in Daoud at the very end as a unifying figurehead. Well, that is what Zaheer later says happened. Your interpretation may vary. In any case, the coup is successful. In 1973, Zahir Shah is bloodlessly removed while he is traveling abroad for medical treatment and is sent into exile. Dawud declares a republic of Afghanistan with himself as president. The Soviets immediately recognize it. People had high expectations for Daoud's republic. The small commercial sector hoped Daoud can revitalize the weak economy and continue modernization. The Communists, including those in the military, hoped that he would deepen relations with the Soviets. The PDPA quickly moves to sideline him, trying to place more members of Parcham into positions of power. But Daoud goes off script and instead purges them from government. In 1975, he creates his own party and bans all other parties. At the same time, he kicks out his Soviet military advisors. There is also a larger purge of the military, though it notably did not include younger officers, many of whom were trained in the Soviet Union or were PDPA members. New opponents arise out of the woodwork. Islamic fundamentalist parties emerge in the mid-1970s, charging that Afghan society had become too decadent. Daoud cracks down on them too, and they flee to either Pakistan or the countryside, where they rapidly gain followers. By now, Daoud is in his mid-60s and growing senile. He was also getting increasingly paranoid, for good reason too, as his regime faced seven separate overthrow attempts, a major one being the 1975 Panjshir Valley uprising sparked by Pakistan aligned guerrilla groups. This particular uprising, combined with an increasing desire to diversify away from the Soviet Union, led Dawud to make overtures to Iran, Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states. Iran rapidly becomes a major source of foreign aid. With a $2 billion aid package, the Iranians then help mediate a step down in tensions with Pakistan over the Pashtunistan issue. In 1977, the PDPA's two warring factions set aside their differences and make a united front against Daoud. But the alliance remains fragile. On April 17, 1978, someone likely the government, sponsors the assassination of a respected leftist leader named Mir Akbar Khaiber. His funeral two days later spirals into major protests against the Daoud regime and the United states. With over 15,000 people attending, Daoud is slow to respond. They decide to arrest the PDPA leaders, but did it slowly, one by one, rather than all at once. One of Taraki's top deputies, Hafezullah Amin, is arrested, yet is somehow first allowed to send written messages to the rest of the party. On April 27, 1978, at around 8am, military officers loyal to the PDPA cut the phone lines and attack the presidential palace. The PDPA also launches smaller attacks in Kabul to distract loyalist forces. Daoud and his family refuse to surrender and he is not captured until the following day. At 4pm Daoud and 30 of his family members are executed. More people are killed in fighting in the rest of the city. How many? Estimates range from 400 to 10,000. Radio Kabul is seized and a broadcast goes out in the Dari and Pushtu languages saying Dawud has been eliminated forever by the will of the people of Afghanistan. From now on, the national sovereignty belongs to you, the noble people of Afghanistan. The Great Saar Revolution, as they called it, marks the beginning of the dra. The pdpa, a Communist party that scarcely anybody had heard of, took power with Taraki as its first president. Most people agree the Soviets had expected something like this to happen, but they didn't outright plan or start it. Brezhnev told Jimmy Carter that he first heard about it on the radio. A KGB defector later said that the Afghan Communists had had a plan for a while, but upon realizing that they were all about to be executed, they quickly consulted the Soviet embassy in Kabul to see if they had their support. And that was all the involvement the Soviets had in the matter. Fighting continued over the next few weeks as a DRA consolidated its position over Afghanistan and outside observers waited to see what might emerge from the dust. Many questions remained. Would the country remain unaligned and neutral? Would it remain Muslim? Will this mark the start of another Cuba, a new Soviet satellite state in what was called the Cockpit of Asia? In those early days, nobody knew. Because of his paranoia and difficult nature, Daoud had become isolated with with no significant power base other than his clan. So the people of Afghanistan did not cry too many tears when he left. But that did not mean that the PDPA had a sweeping mandate. And yet they believed they came to power because of a social revolution instead of a simple military coup. The reality? The PDPA was a small party of 4,000, all of whom are urban, well educated intellectuals and Soviet trained army officers. They had little in common with those in the rural areas. And had elections been held as Daoud in 1978 vaguely said they would eventually be, then the communists would have likely had a very poor showing. But the PDPA moved forward like as if they had all the power and credibility in the world. But they didn't. And what happened next would be a fiasco. Alright everyone, that's it for tonight. Thanks for watching. Subscribe to the channel. Sign up for the Patreon and I'll see you guys next time.