Babrak Karmal Rashid Dostum and possibly helped remove the Najibullah government from power in 1992. He eventually left Afghanistan again for Moscow. Not long after, in 1996, Karmal died from liver cancer. Karmal was born Sultan Hussein on 6 January 1929, was the son of Muhammad Hussein Hashem, a Major General in the Afghan Army and former governor of the province of Paktia, and was the second of five siblings. His family was one of the wealthier families in Kabul. His ethnic background is disputed, some claim that he was Tajik who represented himself as a Ghilzai Pashtun but others claim that
Babrak Karmal the Khalqists wanted to give PDPA Central Committee membership to military officers who had participated in the Saur Revolution; Karmal opposed such a move but was overruled. A PDPA Politburo meeting voted in favour of giving Central Committee membership to the officers. On 27 June, three months after the Saur Revolution, Amin outmaneuvered the Parchamites at a Central Committee meeting, giving the Khalqists exclusive right over formulating and deciding policy. A purge against the Parchamites was initiated by Amin and supported by Taraki on 1 July 1979. Karmal, fearing for his safety, went into hiding in one of his Soviet