People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan in the context of "Republic of Afghanistan (1973–1978)"

The 1973 Afghan coup d'état, also called by Afghans as the Coup of 26 Saratan (Dari: کودتای ۲۶ سرطان) and self-proclaimed as the Revolution of 26 Saratan 1352, was led by Army General and prince Mohammad Daoud Khan against his cousin, King Mohammad Zahir Shah, on 17 July 1973, which resulted in the establishment of the Republic of Afghanistan under a one-party system led by Daoud Khan.

For the coup, Daoud Khan led forces in Kabul along with then-chief of staff General Abdul Karim Mustaghni, to overthrow the monarchy while the King was convalescing abroad in Ischia, Italy. Daoud Khan was assisted by army officers and civil servants from the Parcham faction of the PDPA, including Air Force colonel Abdul Qadir. Daoud also had the support of air force personnel stationed in Kabul International Airport and Bagram Air Base, led by Lieutenant Abdul Hamed Muhtaat and Lieutenant Pachagul Wadafar, although the flying of military aircraft over the city was not called upon. Seven loyalist police officers and one tank commander, as well as three members of his tank crew, were killed in what was described at the time by staff from the United States National Security Council as a "well planned and swiftly executed coup".

The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, later known as the Republic of Afghanistan, was the Afghan state from 1978 to 1992. It was bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, by Iran to the west, by the Soviet Union to the north, and by China to the northeast. Established by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) following the Saur Revolution in April 1978, it came to rely heavily on the Soviet Union for financial and military assistance and was therefore widely considered to be a Soviet satellite state. The PDPA's rise to power is seen as the beginning of the ongoing Afghan conflict, and the majority of the country's years in existence were marked by the Soviet–Afghan War. It collapsed by the end of the First Afghan Civil War in April 1992, having lasted only four months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The PDPA began ruling Afghanistan after ousting the unelected autocrat Mohammad Daoud Khan, who had become president by leading the 1973 Afghan coup d'état; he was succeeded by Nur Muhammad Taraki as the head of state and government on 30 April 1978. Both Taraki and his successor Hafizullah Amin, who had organized the Saur Revolution as the General Secretary of the PDPA, introduced several contentious reforms during their time in office, such as land and marriage reforms and an enforced policy of de-Islamization vis-à-vis the promotion of socialism. Amin, in particular, built upon Khan's reforms with even more radical legislation for Afghanistan's conservative Muslim society, such as universal education and equal rights for women. Soon afterwards, a power struggle began between two PDPA factions: the hardline Khalq, led by Taraki and Amin; and the moderate Parcham, led by Babrak Karmal. The Khalqists eventually emerged victorious and subsequently purged the bulk of the Parchamite ranks, while also exiling most of the prominent Parcham leaders to the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.

The Afghan conflict (Pashto: دافغانستان جنګونه; Dari: درگیری افغانستان) is the series of events that have kept Afghanistan in a near-continuous state of armed conflict since the 1970s. Early instability followed the collapse of the Kingdom of Afghanistan in the largely non-violent 1973 coup d'état, which deposed Afghan monarch Mohammad Zahir Shah in absentia, ending his 40-year-long reign. With the concurrent establishment of the Republic of Afghanistan, headed by Mohammad Daoud Khan, the country's relatively peaceful and stable period in modern history came to an end. However, all-out fighting did not erupt until after 1978, when the Saur Revolution violently overthrew Khan's government and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Subsequent unrest over the radical reforms that were being pushed by the then-ruling People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) led to unprecedented violence, prompting a large-scale pro-PDPA military intervention by the Soviet Union in 1979. In the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War, the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen received extensive support from Pakistan, the United States, and Saudi Arabia in a joint covert effort that was dubbed Operation Cyclone.

Although the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the various mujahideen factions continued to fight against the PDPA government, which collapsed in the face of the Peshawar Accord in 1992. However, the Peshawar Accord failed to remain intact in light of the mujahideen's representatives' inability to reach an agreement on a power-sharing coalition for the new government, triggering a multi-sided civil war between them. By 1996, the Taliban, supported by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, had seized the capital city of Kabul in addition to approximately 90% of the country, while northern Afghanistan remained under the authority of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. During this time, the Northern Alliance's Islamic State of Afghanistan enjoyed widespread international recognition and was represented at the United Nations, as opposed to the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which only received diplomatic recognition from three nations. Despite the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, the Northern Alliance continued to resist in another civil war for the next five years.

Afghan Arabs (Arabic: أفغان عرب; Pashto: افغان عربان; Dari: عرب‌های افغان) were the Arab Muslims who immigrated to Afghanistan and joined the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. The term does not refer to the Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan who are an ethnic Arab minority group living in the north western parts of the country. Despite being referred to as Afghans, they originated from the Arab world and did not hold Afghan citizenship.

It is estimated that between 8,000 and 35,000 Arabs immigrated to Afghanistan to partake in what much of the Muslim world was calling an Islamic holy war against the Soviet Union, which had militarily intervened in Afghanistan to support the ruling People's Democratic Party against the rebelling jihadists. The Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was the first Arab journalist from a major Arabic-language media organization to cover the Soviet–Afghan War, approximated that there were 10,000 Arab volunteer fighters in Afghanistan during the conflict. Among many Muslims, the Afghan Arabs achieved near hero-status for their association with the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1989, and it was with this prestige that they were later able to exert considerable influence in mounting jihadist struggles in other countries, including their own. Their name notwithstanding, none of them were Afghans, and some who were grouped with the community were not even Arabs. A number of the foreign jihadists in Afghanistan were Turkic or Malay, among other ethnicities, or non-Arabs from Arab countries, such as Kurds.

Parcham (Pashto/Dari: پرچم, lit. 'banner' or 'flag') was the more moderate socialist faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) led by Afghan communist politician Babrak Karmal. It was later turned into the Watan (Homeland) Party of Afghanistan with a more Islamic outlook under Mohammed Najibullah. The faction was formed directly after the founding of the Party in 1965 following ideological splits in the PDPA. While the Parchamites stressed the need for swift social-economic reforms to achieve revolution, this was in direct contrast with their PDPA rivals, the Khalqists, who sought an immediate and violent overthrow of the government. Karmal believed that Afghanistan was not developed enough for a Leninist revolutionary approach and instead sought a patriotic and anti-imperialist united front to take the next steps toward revolution.

Colonel General Abdul Qadir Dagarwal (Pashto: عبدالقادر ډگروال Dari: عبد القادر دگروال, 1944 – April 22 2014), commonly known as Abdul Qadir, was an Afghan military officer and politician. He was a participant of the 1973 Afghan coup d'état that created the Republic of Afghanistan under President Mohammad Daoud Khan, and later directed the Afghan Air Force and Army Air Corps squadrons that attacked the Radio-TV station during the Saur Revolution.

He served as the acting head of state for three days when the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) took power and declared the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, before handing over power to PDPA leader Noor Mohammad Taraki. He later served two terms as Minister of Defense, the first as part of the Taraki government from April to August 1978, and the latter as part of the Babrak Karmal government from 1982 to 1986.

The Saur Revolution, also known as the April Revolution or the April Coup, was a violent coup d'état and uprising staged on 27 and 28 April 1978 by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which overthrew Afghan president Mohammad Daoud Khan, who had himself taken power in the 1973 Afghan coup d'état and established an autocratic one-party system in the country. Daoud and most of his family were executed at the Arg presidential palace in the capital city of Kabul by Khalqist (a PDPA faction) military officers, after which his supporters were also purged and killed. The successful PDPA uprising resulted in the creation of a socialist Afghan government that was closely aligned with the Soviet Union, with Nur Muhammad Taraki serving as the PDPA's General Secretary of the Revolutionary Council. Saur (also rendered Sowr) is the Dari-language name for the second month of the Solar Hijri calendar, during which the events took place.

The uprising was ordered by PDPA member Hafizullah Amin, who would become a significant figure in the revolutionary Afghan government. At a press conference in New York City in June 1978, Amin claimed that the event was not a coup d'état, but rather a "popular revolution" carried out by the "will of the people" against Daoud's government. The Saur Revolution involved heavy fighting throughout Afghanistan and resulted in the deaths of as many as 2,000 military personnel and civilians combined. It remains a significant event in Afghanistan's history as it marked the beginning of decades of continuous conflict in the country.

Operation Storm-333 (Russian: Шторм-333, Shtorm-333) was a military raid executed by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan on 27 December 1979. Special forces and airborne troops stormed the heavily fortified Tajbeg Palace in Kabul and assassinated Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin, a Khalqist of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) who had taken power in the Saur Revolution of April 1978. It was the start of the Soviet–Afghan War.

The assassination of Amin was part of a larger Soviet plan to secure and take control of Afghanistan with support from the PDPA's Parcham faction, which opposed the hardline ideology espoused by the rival Khalq faction; a number of Soviet troops crossed the Amu Darya and entered Afghanistan by land while others flew to airbases around the country with exiled Parchamis in preparation for the assassination. The Tajbeg Palace, located on a high and steep hill in Kabul, was surrounded by landmines and guarded by extraordinarily large contingents of the Afghan Army. Nonetheless, Afghan forces suffered major losses during the Soviet operation; 30 Afghan palace guards and over 300 army guards were killed while another 150 were captured. Two of Amin's sons, an 11-year-old and a 9-year-old, died from shrapnel wounds sustained during the clashes. In the aftermath of the operation, a total of 1,700 Afghan soldiers who surrendered to Soviet forces were taken prisoner, and the Soviets installed Babrak Karmal, the leader of the PDPA's Parcham faction, as Amin's successor.