Babrak Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the
Human rights in Afghanistan Revolution in 1978 was brutal, vigorously suppressing opposition. The government abducted and executed thousands of prisoners, rural civilian dissidents, and committed crimes against civilians such as the infamous Kerala massacre. New leader Babrak Karmal promised to end the Khalq's brutality, which it partly did, but human rights abuses still continued. The government along with the Soviets (during the Soviet–Afghan War) intentionally targeted civilian settlements in rural areas. Under President Mohammad Najibullah's reforms, freedom of expression was further improved but human rights overall remained restricted. In the 1990s, many atrocities were committed by various militias against civilians. Indiscriminate rocket attacks during