Hafizullah Amin in the context of "Khalq"

Operation Baikal-79 (Russian: Операция Байкал-79, Operatsiya Baykal-79) was the codename for the Soviet Union's military intervention in Afghanistan, initiated on December 25, 1979. The operation was aimed at taking control over approximately 20 key strongholds in and around Kabul, which included major military headquarters, communication centers and jails. It involved the deployment of approximately 30,000 Soviet troops into Afghanistan. A critical component of Operation Baikal-79 was Operation Storm-333, executed on 27 December 1979. This mission targeted the assassination of Afghan president Hafizullah Amin and the establishment of a Soviet-aligned government under Babrak Karmal. The assault on the Tajbeg Palace, Amin's residence, was carried out by a specialized force comprising KGB operatives and Soviet military personnel. The operation resulted in Amin's death and the installation of Karmal as the new leader.

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 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.

Tajbeg Palace (Pashto: د تاج بېګ ماڼۍ; Dari: قصر تاج بيگ; Palace of the Large Crown), also inaccurately called the Queen's Palace, is one of the palaces in the popular Darulaman area of Kabul, Afghanistan. The stately mansion is located about 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) south-west from the city's center. It sits on top of a knoll among foothills where the Afghan royal family of the day, known as the Barakzai dynasty, once hunted and picnicked.

Originally built in the 1920s to house the then royal family, Tajbeg Palace is one of the most impressive landmarks of Darulaman, a district created during the era of Amanullah Khan by a team of European architects in an attempt to modernize Afghanistan. The palace served as the residence of General Secretary Hafziullah Amin. The palace was damaged during the civil war in the 1990s but was renovated in 2021.

Nur Muhammad Taraki (Pashto: نور محمد ترکی‎; 14 July 1917 – 9 October 1979) was an Afghan communist politician, revolutionary, journalist and writer. He was a founding member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) who served as its General Secretary from 1965 to 1979 and Chairman of the Revolutionary Council from 1978 to 1979.

Taraki was born in Nawa, Ghazni Province, and he got his primary and secondary education from district Pishin in Balochistan and graduated from Kabul University, after which he started his political career as a journalist. From the 1940s onward Taraki also wrote novels and short stories in the socialist realism style. Forming the PDPA at his residence in Kabul along with Babrak Karmal, he was elected as the party's General Secretary at its first congress. He ran as a candidate in the 1965 Afghan parliamentary election but failed to win a seat. In 1966 he published the Khalq, a party newspaper advocating for class struggle, but the government closed it down shortly afterward. In 1978 he, Hafizullah Amin and Babrak Karmal initiated the Saur Revolution and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai (Pashto; Dari: محمد نجيب الله احمدزی, 6 August 1947 – 27 September 1996) was an Afghan military officer and politician who served as the fifth president of Afghanistan from 1987 until his resignation in April 1992, shortly after the Afghan mujahideen's takeover of Kabul. He was also the General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) from 1986 to 1992. After a failed attempt to flee to India, Najibullah remained in Kabul, and lived in the United Nations headquarters until his assassination during the Taliban's first capture of Kabul in 1996.

A graduate of Kabul University, Najibullah held different careers under the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Following the Saur Revolution and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Najibullah was a low-profile bureaucrat. He was sent into exile as Ambassador to Iran during Hafizullah Amin's rise to power. He returned to Afghanistan following the Soviet intervention which toppled Amin's rule and placed Babrak Karmal as head of the state, the party and the government. During Karmal's rule, Najibullah became head of the KHAD, the Afghan equivalent of the Soviet KGB. He was a member of the Parcham faction led by Karmal. During Najibullah's tenure as KHAD head, it became one of the most brutally efficient governmental organs. Because of this, he gained the attention of several leading Soviet officials, such as Yuri Andropov, Dmitriy Ustinov and Boris Ponomarev. In 1981, Najibullah was appointed to the PDPA Politburo. In 1985, Najibullah stepped down as the state security minister to focus on PDPA politics; he had been appointed to the PDPA Secretariat. Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, also the last Soviet leader, was able to get Karmal to step down as PDPA General Secretary in 1986, and replace him with Najibullah. For a number of months, Najibullah was locked in a power struggle against Karmal, who still retained his post of Chairman of the Revolutionary Council. Najibullah accused Karmal of trying to wreck his policy of National Reconciliation, a series of efforts by Najibullah to end the conflict.