Democratic Republic of Afghanistan is a former
featured article candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. For older candidates, please check the
archive.
This article was
copy edited by
Jack Greenmaven, a member of the Guild of Copy Editors, on May 14, 2012.Guild of Copy EditorsWikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy EditorsTemplate:WikiProject Guild of Copy EditorsGuild of Copy Editors articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Afghanistan, a project to maintain and expand
Afghanistan-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the
project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the
discussion.AfghanistanWikipedia:WikiProject AfghanistanTemplate:WikiProject AfghanistanAfghanistan articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Former countries, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of defunct states and territories (and their subdivisions). If you would like to participate, please
join the project.Former countriesWikipedia:WikiProject Former countriesTemplate:WikiProject Former countriesformer country articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Soviet Union, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Soviet UnionWikipedia:WikiProject Soviet UnionTemplate:WikiProject Soviet UnionSoviet Union articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Cold War, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the
Cold War on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Cold WarWikipedia:WikiProject Cold WarTemplate:WikiProject Cold WarCold War articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Socialism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
socialism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SocialismWikipedia:WikiProject SocialismTemplate:WikiProject Socialismsocialism articles
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a
list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the
full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles
This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
I noticed a conflict between this article and the Afghanistan article. The article - Afghanistan- claims, "Once in power, the PDPA moved to permit freedom of religion."
Yet in this article [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] sourced as:
http://www.vfw.org/resources/levelxmagazine/0203_Soviet-Afghan%20War.pdf The Soviet-Afghan War: Breaking the Hammer & Sickle, "the PDPA moved to promote state atheism. Men were obliged to cut beards, women to wear a burqa, and mosques were placed off limits." So which is it?
Ben5jaaan (
talk)
14:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)reply
I don't know anything about it, so I can't write it, but this article desperately needs an introduction. It leads off naming people whose positions within the government aren't very clear, or without saying "The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was a communist republic governing what is now the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan." or whatever the current formal name of Afghanistan is.
Jake08:04, 13 February 2006 (UTC)reply
Note on contents
Large numbers of the sections had hard carriage returns in them, which is somewhat suspect of being a copy and paste from possibly copyrighted sources.
This ver, if edited, will show the sections.
68.39.174.23817:26, 2 March 2006 (UTC)reply
Afghanistan was part of Greater iran
Afghanistan was part of Greater Iran so their is no vandalism in this. Afghanistan was created in late 19th century so before that it was part of Greater Iran.
do not vandalis this page and other pages that you have been doing or they will block you from edits. others will revert all your changes, and if you want to keep adding wrong info, you will be hooked on this, don't do it it's a waste of time. leave the articles alone, as there are million other sources which people read to know about afghanistan and its history. what i don't understand about your actions is, on one hand you don't like "afghanistan" and "afghans", then on the other hand, you want afghanistan to be part of greater iran? make up your mind.
Mirrori101:02, 16 July 2007 (UTC)reply
Afghanistan was a country that was created by the British in the 19th century, Before that it was part of Greater Iran and it shares a common history with Iranians. Its more logical to have the greater Iran side bar than only the other one. and giving truth isnt vandalism.
This article discusses the politics of the modern state of Afghanistan, not the chimaeric construction that it might -or might not- have been part of in a distant past. That template is completely inappropriate here, and if you continue to insert it, you will be reported for violation of
WP:3RR.
Raoulduke4711:26, 29 July 2007 (UTC)reply
Not by government politicans. Pluss you may call it
Taiwan but its offical name is still
Republic of China. The DRA and later RA was an offical state with a new government, they are different. Even if most of the world call the country Afghanistan. Many people called the Soviet Union, Russia it doesn't meen that we should redirect the whole Soviet Union article to the Russian article. Pluss we can'y squeeze all this information to the Afghanistan article!!! and Afghanistan has an article with the name
History of Afghanistan (1978-1992). So their is really no place to put most of this information. --
Im a Socialist! What Are You (
talk)
20:21, 23 March 2009 (UTC)reply
Then we go to the fact that a name change doesn't change it into a new country.... did the entity under the name DRoA have a drastically different style of function to the RoA? Is the difference so great to warrant two separate articles, since as you said; all they seemed to change was the flag (a minor detail) and it's name. Second; who says I refer to the ROC as Taiwan? Yes I do sometimes bit that's because most Americans are to stupid to realize the difference between the
black sea and
Turkey.--
Ssteiner209 (
talk)
15:24, 24 March 2009 (UTC)reply
We don't need two seperate articles, they have basically the same facts. See the
Byzantine Empire formely known as the
Eastern Roman Empire. If you see, the name of the article is the Byzantine Empire, whY? well thats because it was the countries last officially name. The change of names happened at the
National Reconciliation talks in 1987. Second, we don't need to different articles about the same topic. The information is going to be just the same. I don't mean to be rude, but read more about this topic before discussing again. And if you felt my last comment was rude, sorry wasn't my intention. --
Im a Socialist! What Are You (
talk)
18:35, 24 March 2009 (UTC)reply
Any more sources regarding the life of the Afghan people during the Communist era?
Other than that single article by the UK Guardian, are there any more articles/books written regarding the Communist era in Afghanistan? It's interesting and refreshing to finally read something remotely positive about communism in the Western media.
137.82.117.244 (
talk)
01:13, 29 October 2009 (UTC)reply
I strongly agree. There seems to be just like one paragraph in this entire article regarding the positive reforms: "The government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan moved to prohibit traditional practices which were deemed feudal in nature, including banning bride price and forced marriage. The minimum age for marriage was also raised. Education was stressed for both men and women and widespread literacy programmes were set up." Surely there are more materials. I have read more materials in leftists magazines. I wonder if those are reasonable sources, such as the Sparticist.
Children of the dragon (
talk)
19:28, 19 June 2010 (UTC)reply
I've seen positive stories about the Communist government in the (pre-Murdoch) Wall Street Journal, and in the New York Times. I'll see if I can find them. --
Nbauman (
talk)
14:37, 8 November 2010 (UTC)reply
According to a poll a few years ago, Najibullah was ãctually the most popular of the Afghan presidents, with an approval rating of 93%, as apposed for Karzai's 45% and Omar's 18%:
[1] This is very high, so it couldn't have been all-bad. And keep in mind that Afghanistan is a country with very limited freedom of speech as well (and Najibullah is obviously not very well-received among neither Karzai nor the Taliban).
Te og kaker (
talk)
13:36, 12 June 2015 (UTC)reply
@
Te og kaker: Hi, nice to see a fellow Wikipedian around here! .... Anyhow, if you're question is if it was bad, it was indeed very bad (because of the war). The war made it very bad, however, in certain areas, such as Kabul (which was turned into a impenetrable fortress) life looked normal (most of the urban centres which the DRA controlled experience great calm if compared to day)—which is probably the reason for why people look positively on Najibullah. I'm guessing there are other things too; he was not corrupt, he was killed by the Taliban (gained martyr status) and was the last leader, until Karzai came, who effectively ruled a proper government. Therefore the opinion poll was probably taken in urban areas (not surprising, since many non urban areas lack basic electricity and so on)... Of course, this does not make the poll any less real, but rather reflects what areas the DRA controlled and was able to govern... By the end of the day a warzone is a warzone—that's what the DRA was. --
TIAYN (
talk)
14:06, 12 June 2015 (UTC)reply
@
Trust Is All You need: I agree with you, TIAYN. If the poll had been taken in the Panjshir Valley, for instance, Najibullah would likely have got a much lower rating. This poll was done on a Kabul-based radio station, hence the station applies for only that province, and without knowing much about telecommunications in Afghanistan, I would guess that most Afghan households–particularly in rural areas–have neither a telephone nor a radio. But if many people in Kabul thinks that he was a good leader, something must at least have been good with his rule. As you say, it was a warzone. In rural areas, there was heavy fighting, anarchy and bombing, but many central areas were largely peaceful. However, I agree with the one over here that most sources only concentrate on the war, not on other aspects of the daily life in the DRA. Of course, the war greatly affected daily life in Afghanistan during the era, but it was not the whole thing. It would have been interesting to have known more about the politics of the PDPA, on other things than the war (if they ever made decisions not related to the war at least). The PDPA considered education to be one of its most important goals, and launched programs to increase literacy and give more people (particularly women) education. How successful were these programs? Or did the education system just falter during the DRA era because lots of schools were destroyed during the war? --
Te og kaker (
talk)
13:53, 13 June 2015 (UTC)reply
@
Te og kaker: I ment to say, a fellow Norwegian, but eh... Given women equal rights actually initiated the crisis, traditionalist elements reacted to that and the land reform program. I'd suggest learning Russian, Western writing on the Afghan communist era has stalled (and I dare to say that interest in Afghan communism won't be renewed unless something exceptional happens)... Anyhow, I get you're point. If you're just interested in more positive coverage I dare to say that you could find that in news archives.
Side note: In general, there has been very little Western writing on the PDPA as an institution. More focus has been given to the individuals leaders, the Soviet involvement and the war. --
TIAYN (
talk)
14:33, 13 June 2015 (UTC)reply
Discomfiting Article
The opening paragraph in the first section is:
"In 1978 a prominent member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), Mohammed Akbar Khaibar, was killed by the government of President Mohammed Daoud Khan.[2] The leaders of the PDPA apparently feared that Daoud was planning to exterminate them all, especially since most of them were arrested, including Nur Muhammad Taraki and Babrak Karmal, while Amin was put under house arrest where he gave instructions to his son to carry to his army which initiated the Saur Revolution, [3] Hafizullah Amin a number of military wing officers of the PDPA managed to remain at large and organized."
I changed the names to be the full names, but I'm not sure if I got them right. I find this paragraph to be very confusing and would like to edit it to make it more readable, but I know diddly about Afghanistan.
My first question is has to do with the following:
"while Amin was put under house arrest where he gave instructions to his son to carry to his army which initiated the Saur Revolution, [3] Hafizullah Amin a number of military wing officers of the PDPA managed to remain at large and organized."
Is Amin who was put under arrest and gave instructions to his son the same person as Hafizullah Amin? I looked at Hafizullah Amin's page, and it states that he was arrested, then released, after which the Saur Revolution was initiated. (I think - I'll go back and check, and like I said, I know diddly about this subject.) Hafizullah Amin's page does not mention his son. (Again, I think)
The following discussion is an archived discussion of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
Per
WP:COMMONNAME, the official name of communist Afghanistan was first the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, but in 1987, in the
National Reconciliation effort, the name of communis Afghanistan was changed to the Republic of Afghanistan. Since there were two official names for the period, the wikipedia community should move the article from Democratic Republic of Afghanistan to Communist Afghanistan or Communist-ruled Afghanistan.
Oppose. As far as the given rationale of
WP:COMMONNAME, this certainly does not work because a simple search of GoogleBooks readily tells us that "Democratic Republic of Afghanistan" is orders of magnitude more common than "Communist Afghanistan": even completely excluding hardcover Wikipedia mirrors that are occasionally thrown up, there are about 8,000 results for "Democratic Republic of Afghanistan"
[2] versus about 500 for "Communist Afghanistan"
[3]. Further, the name "Republic of Afghanistan" was only used for a brief period in 1987-1992: the name "People's Republic of Poland" was only officially adopted in 1952, but the article
People's Republic of Poland also encompasses the period when the communists called the Polish state the Republic of Poland. Communism - at least according to communists - is actually stateless, classless society preceded by a period called socialism, which is why every country under a communist government called itself a union of socialist republics, a socialist republic, a people's republic, or something of this sort (there has never been a "Communist Republic of X"). It is frequently used in works describing the political situation of a country, but it is not a proper name for a country. The second option, a move to
History of Afghanistan (1978-1992) seems inappropriate because this is an article about the country, rather than about its history. Again using the Poland analogy, we have one article for the
People's Republic of Poland, another for
History of Poland (1945-1989). For all these reasons, I am strongly opposed.
Zloyvolsheb (
talk)
07:49, 3 February 2012 (UTC)reply
Only 1987-1992? Thats nearly half its existence. Right now I don't care about what people actually search (I know, thats a breach of Wiki policy) I care about factual accuracy, Its inaccurate to title the article Democratic Republic of Afghanistan... This article should be more than a history article, it should be an article about the state (currently, its not even close to this). I've been working my ass of lately on the
Nur Muhammad Taraki,
Hafizullah Amin,
Babrak Karmal and the
Mohammad Najibullah articles - when i'm finished with these (and the article on
Haji Mohammad Chamkani) i'll begin my work on this one. But first, its needs a proper name, this name is not proper, its factually inaccurate... I'll support a merger to Communist Afghanistan (see for instance
Communist Romania) considering the fact that their already exist an article about the
Republic of Afghanistan (1973-1978) - the official name of Afghanistan before the
Saur Revolution. --
TIAYN (
talk)
22:57, 3 February 2012 (UTC)reply
"This article should be more than a history article, it should be an article about the state." Maybe. But, in the spirit of
WP:CRYSTALBALL, the title should reflect the current article which is 90+% history. A separate rump article can be created at the name of the state with the infobox to allow expansion of info on the state. —
AjaxSmack00:19, 4 February 2012 (UTC)reply
I agree that the article is about a constitutionally different state but it is a history of that state, not an article about the state as a whole. Look at the current TOC:
Contents
Saur Revolution
Reforms and repression, 1978–1979
Opposition forces
The Soviet war in Afghanistan, December 1979
The search for popular support
Internal refugees: flight to the cities
Factionalism: Khalq and Parcham
Mohammad Najibullah, 1986–1992
The Soviet decision to withdraw, 1986–1988
The Geneva accords, 1987–1989
The failure to bring peace
Pakistan's attempt at a political solution, 1987–1988
Stalemate: Civil War, 1989–1992
The collapse of the Soviet Union, 1991
The fall of Kabul, April 1992
The United Nations plan for political accommodation
Except for incongruous sections about Md. Najibullah and refugees, it's a straight chronology. Outside of the infobox, there are no sections dealing with the economy, geography, political structure, administrative structure, demographics, culture, military and foreign affairs, sports, transport, &c. Without any of these, it's a history article and should be treated as such. If, in the future, someone wants to write about these subjects, perhaps an article on the state can be created (cf.History of East Germany/
East Germany) or this article can be revised and balanced and then returned to the title of the state. —
AjaxSmack19:53, 4 February 2012 (UTC)reply
Well sort of.
Eleven blank sections do not change the nature or content of the article at all. Although
some argue that empty sections are warranted, generally the idea is that they need to be either quickly filled or removed (see discussions
here,
here, and
here: "Adding structure without actually adding content is not generally looked upon favorably. It's like adding a bunch of section headers without writing any prose."). And, ideally, they should be composed before a move request, not during or after. —
AjaxSmack01:55, 5 February 2012 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a
requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
Afghanistan by J. Bruce Amstutz
A lot of this article is based on the two books by J. Bruce Amstutz, US charge daffaires in Kabul from 1977 to 1980, written in 1994. Considering that the U.S. government was hostile to this government and by the summer of of 1979 was organizing an armed putsch to overthrow it Amstutz is not a neutral source for this subject. It's disingenuous to the reader that at least Amstutz's occupation is not mentioned considering his prominence here. There's been much english language scholarship done on Afghanistan in recent years, not by diplomats, which should be included here. (
talk •
Rarwaw (
talk)
09:01, 12 January 2013 (UTC)reply
I check pages listed in
Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for
orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not.
AnomieBOT⚡02:14, 4 March 2013 (UTC)reply
Problematic edits
{{u|GreekSocialist100]]:
These edits were originally accompanied by edit summaries stating that you were making only minor edits, correcting misspellings and "updating" information. Your edits were not minor. You were not correcting misspellings. There is nothing to "update" about a topic that essentially ceased to exist 23 years ago. Your edit summaries are completely unrelated to the edits you are making. Rather than calling me a troll (which I am not), please address the problem. -
SummerPhD (
talk)
21:47, 12 January 2015 (UTC)reply
State ideology
The DR Afghanistan was never a socialist state, nor was the PDPA a communist party. From William Blum's Killing Hope:
After the April revolution, the new government under President Noor Mohammed Taraki declared a commitment to Islam within a secular state, and to non-alignment in foreign affairs. It maintained that the coup had not been foreign inspired, that it was not a “Communist takeover”, and that they were not “Communists” but rather nationalists and revolutionaries. (No official or traditional Communist Party had ever existed in Afghanistan.) But because of its radical reform program, its class-struggle and anti-imperialist-type rhetoric, its support of all the usual suspects (Cuba, North Korea, etc.), its signing of a friendship treaty and other cooperative agreements with the Soviet Union, and an increased presence in the country of Soviet civilian and military advisers (though probably less than the US had in Iran at the time), it was labeled “communist” by the world’s media and by its domestic opponents.[1]
Furthermore, the 1980 Fundamental Principles of the DR Afghanistan only declared the state to be a democratic republic that recognized the importance of Islam and the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So this was not a socialist republic.
2601:187:4301:61B0:4979:4E6A:301:61E7 (
talk)
18:33, 22 August 2015 (UTC)reply
@
2601:187:4301:61B0:4979:4E6A:301:61E7: William Blum is wrong... Taraki, Amin and Karmal were all communists. But they deemed that their country had not developed socialism (according to Marxist theory).. But according to the general denominator of what constitutes a socialist state the PDPA was one. --
TIAYN (
talk)
19:54, 22 August 2015 (UTC)reply
Of course they weren't "communist" as communism involves a stateless, classless, moneyless society with the means of production held in common by all of society, a lack of commodity production, and a lack of wage labour. Also, what are you trying to imply, that socialist nations can't have religion or consider religion important, sure secularism and atheism are a part of Marxist theory as religion is considered to be the opiate of the masses, a sigh of the oppressed peoples as Marx had worded it, but there is a such thing as religious socialism, also about the human rights thing, socialist nations did have human rights, are you trying to imply that socialist nations, didn't, couldn't, or wouldn't, as I have stated socialist nations did, and socialist nations can have human rights, and they will have and maintain, socialism is the system that has greatly IMPROVED human rights, look at the Soviet Union, Cuba, and China where they were improved greatly in contrast to what came before, before the socialist revolution in Cuba, the us-backed Fascist Batista had his brutal regime, then the people led by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro overthrow the oppressors and declared a Marxist-Leninist socialist state and managed to greatly improve healthcare, education, literacy, human rights, rights for women and minorities in particular, etc. In Russia, there was the Tsar who was a brutal monarch who denied women rights and treated them as servants, most women and people in Russia during this time period were illiterate, the workers led by Lenin had achieved a revolution which had greatly improved literacy, lifespan, women's rights, rights for minorities, healthcare, and education for example, it was also for more democratic than the monarchy that came before, under socialism, there was Democratic Centralism and the Communist Party served as a vanguard to represent the masses and the interests and will of the working people and intelligentsia. In China, rights for women had also improved as well as literacy and lifespan quite exponentially, in contrast to what came before it.
Proletarian Banner (
talk)
00:30, 15 February 2022 (UTC)reply
I have just modified one external link on
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit
this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).
If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with
this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with
this tool.
I have just modified 2 external links on
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Please take a moment to review
my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit
this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).
If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with
this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with
this tool.
@
Illegitimate Barrister: Most of an English translation of it can be read in this book which is available on Google Books:
[4] Unfortunately, a couple of pages are missing from this chapter, so some 15 articles are not available, but at least you'll get the rest of the 68 articles. I guess it can be found somewhere else in full though, but you probably have to look quite a bit for it, as the constitutional framework and formal policies of the DRA never received much attention from Western European or North American scholars. --
Te og kaker (
talk)
00:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)reply
A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion: