1925 - 1978
Afghan Marxist leader.
Mir Akbar Khyber was an Afghan poet and a co-founder of the Marxist movement in Afghanistan. He was born in Logar Province in 1925 and graduated from military high school in 1947. He was imprisoned for his political activities in 1950 and spent the next five years in jail, where he met other leftist inmates including Babrak Karmal, later president of Afghanistan. Although he became a career police officer, he also was a leading member of the Parcham faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan and the editor of its newspaper, Parcham.
By the late 1970s he found himself at odds with other Marxist leaders, in part because he believed that the Marxist movement could not rule Afghanistan even if it took power. In addition, he had strong nationalist beliefs that were unpopular with his Marxist comrades. Khyber was killed by an unknown assassin who shot from a passing Jeep on 17 April 1978. Ironically, it was his assassination that sparked a major demonstration that led to the Saur Revolution and the Marxist takeover of Afghanistan.
Bibliography
Arnold, Anthony. Afghanistan's Two-Party Communism: Parcham and Khalq. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1983.
— GRANT FARR
