New Afghan dictator not likely to last

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33381, 13 November 1973, Page 10

New Afghan dictator not likely to last

(By

RALPH JOSEPH)

TEHERAN. The big question being asked in Teheran (and Kabul) these days is: How long is Daud Khan (the new Afghan dictator) going to last? The most cynical give him six months.

Baud’s own vigorous assertion at his first press conference that the coup was not engineered by the Soviet , Union has been taken i with a large grain of salt by most observers. ■ A common piece of! speculation doing the rounds here is that Daud Khan may be another Naguib, and that the real powers that be in Kabul today are the still-little-known young officers who pulled off the coup with |the kind of classical daring and bluff that sprinkles the ipages of Afghan history. These young officers form the core of the Central Committee of the Republic in Afghanistan today, but are not included in Daud Khan’s Cabinet, presumably preferring to pull the strings from behind the scenes. All that is known about them is that they are barely one score in number, about 112 of them have been .educated in the Soviet Union ■and that most hold the ranks jof captains and lieutenants at the time of the coup (though they have lately been promoted to colonels and generals). The fact that they went'

through the coup manoeuvres with almost textbook precision is taken to mean that the scheme was in the hatching at least six months. Bid for power But one of the most significant reports coming out of Kabul is that for quite some time before the coup, rumours had been going around among the officers in Afghanistan that the then commander of the Kabul Garrison, General Abdul Wali Khan, was about to make a bid for power. Apparently these rumours were used in a very clever fashion by the young coup leaders. After they had rolled out of their garrisons with 14 tanks in the early hours (of July 17 to make their daring assault on King Zahir’s citadel of straw, some of them are reported to have won over a large number of other officers by telling them that it was General Wali Khan, the king’s son-in-law, who was leading the coup. This is the kind of witty nerve the British often encountered in their centurylong struggle with the Afghans. In fact about the time officers were being 'talked into joining the rebels,

General Wali Khan was being besieged in his villa in a Kabul suburb, and was putting up a stubborn resistance—until cannons were used against him. Three cannon blasts, the reports say, were enough to make him throw down his arms and surrender, around 5 in the morning. People in Kabul awakened by the commotion went back to sleep assuming it was all in preparation for the Independence Day celebrations (marking the August, 1919, withdrawal of the British from Afghan territory following the three bloody Afghan wars). So strong were the rumours about Prince Wali Khan preparing to stage a coup, that when two officers later came to arrest his father, the aging Sardar Shah Wali Khan, the Victor of Kabul, is reported to have muttered: "I knew this boy would do his mischief when the king was away. Never mind. You go back. I know how to handle my son.” Not surprised The two officers gently told him it was another prince, Sardar Daud Khan, who had taken power. The other prince was one for whom Sardar Abdul Wali Khan had a kind of gut

hatred, and the Victor of, Kabul was no longer! surprised to find himself being arrested. It is open to speculation! I whether General Wall’s ' 'resistance was prompted by a knowledge of who was (leading the coup. But alas, ithe only help of sorts he (received was the rather pathetic fight put up at the gates of the Dilgosha Palace by a handful of loyal guards. Five died for their pains, but not apparently before they had dispatched two of the rebel troops. Daud Khan, in his press conference, gave reporters the rather unlikely story that the two were killed accidentally by their own machine-guns. Surprise, always a jewel in tactics, played its own part in making the coup a success. Even as the tanks began trundling into action, about midnight of July 16-17, people returning from two parties at the American and Iraq embassies, suspected nothing. All they saw were a few taxis and other night vehicles making their way through Kabul’s dimly-lit streets. But it was an opportune moment for the rebels. General Khan Mohammad, the Defence Minister, had just returned from the American Embassy party besotted and senseless when the young officers went to arrest him. Most of the generals and senior officers were similarly rounded up from their beds about the same time. The telephone system having gone dead, each one was

i individually ignorant of what jwas going on. Became curious I The only member of the Government who suspected that all was not right in the kingdom was the Communications Minister, who became curious when the telephone stopped functioning. He went to the telephone exchange to find none of the operators at their seats, and all the wires and plugs pulled out of place. Shortly afterwards he was arrested, as were other members of the Cabinet. I including the Prime Minister. Mohammad Musa Shafiq. Kabul has never been known for the efficiency of its bureaucracy, and the laxity of the security system, even though coup rumours were circulating in the garrisons for several days before, tells its own tale. With the king out of the country, many of the senior intelligence officers were on leave. The Prime Minister was meanwhile preoccupied with winning Parliamentary support for his ambitious programme of development and reform: security was probably the last thing on his mind. Yet even after the coup, all over by five in the morning, had proved a success, the young officers were taking no chances. Kabul Airport was closed to commercial traffic because Air Force fighter planes were put on manoeuvres over the capital. After the airport was reopened to international flights, incoming commercial flights were still diverted to Kandahar and Herat for the duration of the manoeuvres, on the conclusion of which they were allowed on to Kabul. Foreign journalists flying in took the delays as prime examples of Afghan inefficiency, though in fact | it was something quite the opposite. Tribes won over The tribes in the mountains were won over when Daud sent emissaries to inform them that the new regime did not intend to continue King Zahir’s policy of disarming them. Those who had become uptight during the first few days after the coup, put down their arms and relaxed. In the cities the urban population was won over by a crackdown on profiteers and by forcing shopkeepers to lower their prices, particularly those of. foodstuffs. This immediately brought to mind for many observers similar measures taken by General Ayub Khan when he staged his coup in Karachi in 1958. Like General Ayub, Daud Khan has also swept public support over to his side, but the questions being already asked are: When is history going to repeat itself? When is the infighting going to begin among the coup leaders? It having been amply demonstrated how easy it is to stage a coup in Kabul, when are other ambitious officers going to make their strike for power? Prince Ahmed Shah, the heir apparent, is reported to have wept when he was brought under guard to

Kabul Airport to be flown out of the country, and saw the picture of his uncle, Daud Khan, in place of that of his father, the ex-king, adorning the main hall of the airport building. But perhaps the question also crossed his mind as to whether the new picture would stay for quite as many years as his father’s did.