Afghanistan, 1979 — dissident coup conspiracy
Event Summary
This entry is coded 15 October 1979, in the immediate aftermath of Hafizullah Amin's seizure of power in Afghanistan and the killing of his predecessor Nur Muhammad Taraki. Amin had ousted and arrested Taraki on 14 September 1979 after a shootout at the Presidential Palace, following Taraki's failed Soviet-encouraged attempt to remove him; Taraki was murdered on 8 October 1979, his death announced the next day as the result of a prolonged illness. On taking power, Amin accelerated internal purges within the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, targeting Taraki loyalists, members of the rival Parcham faction, and military officers suspected of disloyalty, through the AGSA intelligence apparatus, amid constant fear of counter-coups.
Relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated sharply as Moscow came to view Amin as unreliable. The October 1979 coding sits in this period of intense purging and counter-coup fears in the weeks after Taraki's death, before the Soviet invasion of late December 1979 that killed Amin and installed Babrak Karmal.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
70010151979
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Amin held power through the autumn purges but was killed in the Soviet invasion of December 1979.
Baseline coding: Plot discovered and disrupted before execution. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
Los Angeles Times
New York Times
South China Morning Post
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →