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
Babrak Karmal his former associates supported Dostum. Those who spoke with Karmal during this period noted his lack of interest in politics. In June 1992 it was reported that he had died in a plane crash along with Dostum, although these reports later proved to be false. In early December 1996, Karmal died in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital from liver cancer. The date of his death was reported by some sources as 1 December and by others as 3 December. The Taliban summed up his rule as follows: [he] committed all kinds of crimes during his illegitimate rule ... God inflicted on