Babrak Karmal he descended from Hindu ancestors of Kashmir. In 1986, Karmal announced that he, and his brother Mahmud Baryalay, were Pashtun because their mother came from the Mullakhel branch of the Pashtuns. However, this was controversial, considering that lineage in Afghanistan is supposed to be traced through the father, not the mother. The accusation that he was of Indian Muslim ancestry comes from the fact that his birthname, Sultan Hussein, is a common Indian Muslim name. In addition, Karmal's own father denied his own ethnicity; Karmal's father was a Tajik. To further confuse the matter, Karmal spoke Dari (Persian) and not
Saad Akbar Babrak not widely known. It is stated in the official file on Liaquat Ali Khan that Akbar was an "Afghan national and a professional assassin." Saad Akbar Babrak Said Akbar Khan Babrakzai (died 16 October 1951) was possibly an Afghan Pashtun, according to the government sources, and an ultra-Pashtun nationalist, an assassin who assassinated the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan, in Rawalpindi Punjab Province, on October 16, 1951. On October 16, 1951, during a public meeting, Sayed Akbar Khan shot Liaqat twice in a park in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The assassin was fatally shot by police officers seconds later.