The Indian Bolshevik

The beginning: In 1978, a leading Parcham official fell to an assassin's bullet. Massive demonstrations erupted against Daoud and the CIA, which Parcham blamed for the killing. Daoud responded by arresting the PDPA leadership, spurring military officers sympathetic to the PDPA to move against his government. On April 27, 1978, they seized power in a bloody coup. On April 30, a Revolutionary Council declared Afghanistan to be the Democratic Republic. Initially, the CIA refused to provide American arms to the resistance, seeking to maintain plausible deniability. The State Department, too, also opposed providing American-made weapons for fear of antagonizing the Soviet Union. To keep the covert assistance program small and inconspicuous, the millions were appropriated by the CIA to purchase Chinese, Warsaw Pact, and Israeli weaponry. Operation Cyclone Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert program to arm and finance the Jih...