Remembering Christmas Day in Afghanistan, 1979 Financial Times 26/12/2014 On the morning of December 25, 1979, I was shopping in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Late the previous night there had been garbled news on the BBC and on Pakistani radio that a coup had taken place in Kabul — that Soviet troops had landed, and that the Afghan communist President Hafizullah Amin was dead (in fact, he would be assassinated three days later, on December 27). By the morning, Radio Kabul was down and the BBC appeared to have no correspondent in the city to report what was happening. It was a bright, sunny Christmas Day, and Kandahar was laden with the winter cold from the mountains. The shop keepers sat cross-legged in the doorways of their shops, sipping their green tea and ignoring the news. After all, Kabul had been a mess ever since the communists had taken over a year earlier, and one former president (Nur Mohammad Taraki) had already been killed in his bed a few months before. Then, at about eleven in the morning..[..].. To read the complete article, please follow the link below pakistan - interviews | Ahmed Rashid ahmedrashid/publications/pakistan/articles/ Ahmed Rashid ahmedrashid
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 13:14:44 +0000
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