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
Babrak Karmal Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council, some time before Karmal received an official appointment. Karmal returned to Kabul on 28 December. He travelled alongside a Soviet military column. For the next few days Karmal lived in a villa on the outskirts of Kabul under the protection of the KGB. On 1 January 1980 Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers, congratulated Karmal on his "election" as leader. When he came to power, Karmal promised an end to