Hafizullah Amin

Hafizullah Amin (1 August 1929 – 27 December 1979) was an Afghan communist politician. A leading figure of the PDPA's Khalq faction, he organised the Saur Revolution of 1978, served as foreign minister and then prime minister under Nur Muhammad Taraki, overthrew and murdered Taraki in September 1979, and headed the state for about a hundred days until Soviet special forces killed him in the assault on the Tajbeg Palace that opened the Soviet intervention. ¹

He was born at Paghman, near Kabul, and educated at Kabul University, after which he worked as a teacher and school principal. In 1957 he went to Columbia University in New York for a master's degree, where he was drawn to Marxist ideas, and he later returned to the United States for further study before entering radical politics in Afghanistan. ^{1 2}

He joined the PDPA at its founding, failed to win a seat in the 1965 parliamentary election, and in 1969 was the only Khalq member elected to parliament, which increased his influence in the party. ¹

From house arrest, he reportedly directed the Saur Revolution of 27 April 1978. In the new regime he was foreign minister from May 1978, then prime minister from March 1979, accumulating control of the party and security apparatus. His rise was followed by a policy of moderation toward religion: his government invested in repairing mosques, distributed copies of the Quran to religious groups, and announced, after the ulama council's endorsement, that Amin was a pious Muslim; he claimed the Saur Revolution was "totally based on the principles of Islam". The English article records that the campaign failed to persuade most Afghans. In September 1979 he overthrew Taraki, who was murdered on his orders the following month. ¹

Distrusted by Moscow and facing rebellion, he was killed on 27 December 1979 when Soviet special forces stormed the Tajbeg Palace in Kabul in Operation Storm-333, the opening move of the Soviet intervention; his resting place is the palace grounds. ¹

No source read for this record names a school for him, and the only religion value anywhere is Wikidata's generic Islam. The English article's account of his pro-Islam campaign is a record of regime positioning, and the Arabic article's religion field is blank. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown, with the generic attestation preserved in the data file. ^{1 3 4}

He was married to Patmanah and had seven children. ¹

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