Aslam Watanjaar on National TV from an underground command post after an Unsuccesful (Gulbudin/Shahnawas) koteta
As a tank major, the general sealed the success of the 1978 revolution with an attack on the Defense Ministry of the previous ruler, Mohammad Daud. Now, as Defense Minister, he is guardian of what remains of the revolutionaries' power.
It was the opening blow in another coup attempt, this time by Lieut. Gen. Shahnawaz Tanai, who was then Defense Minister and had made a bizarre compact with Gulbuddin Hakmatyar, one of the fundamentalist Muslim leaders who have been fighting a guerrilla war to topple the Kabul Government. As the bomb exploded less than 100 feet away, the ceiling of the conference room collapsed, along with a chandelier, and its windows shattered. But somehow the ruling elite remained alive.
At that moment, their continued survival depended heavily on General Watanjar. For one thing, his job as Interior Minister gave him control of the sarandoi, a paramilitary police force with tanks and other heavy weapons. For another, General Watanjar had long been considered a stalwart of the Khalqis, hard-liners in the ruling People's Democratic Party who have been increasingly restive under Mr. Najibullah.
On the face of it, General Watanjar seemed more likely to join General Tanai, another leading Khalqi, than to stand by Mr. Najibullah. But when the badly shaken leaders, led by Mr. Najibullah, reached an underground command post they found General Watanjar there, along with the secret police chief, Farouk Yaqubi, a Politburo member said.
Awarded a Fourth Star
Having failed to reach General Tanai by telephone, General Watanjar had ordered a sarandoi battalion, backed by secret police troops, to intercept the army's 15th Tank Brigade, dispatched by General Tanai to attack the palace from its base near the infamous Pul-i-Charki prison, 10 miles to the east.
General Watanjar's reward was a fourth star, and a radio speech by Mr. Najibullah within two hours naming him the new Defense Minister. General Watanjar followed with a radio address of his own ordering the army to seize General Tanai ''dead or alive.'' Now General Watanjar is installed in the Darulaman Palace, a floor below General Tanai's office, which was destroyed by tank fire in the coup attempt.
Although aides had prepared scripted answers for an interview, the general, who is 44 years old, needed no prompting on the issue that all visitors have pressed since his promotion - whether he has any inclination to challenge Mr. Najibullah.
''I would not even think of joining such diabolical plots,'' he said, his voice betraying an edge of anger. ''I joined the revolution to deliver my people from poverty and misery, not to throw in my lot with a handful of traitors. Tanai was an ambitious and selfish man, without any conscience, and his fate is that of traitors everywhere, the bitterness of exile and disgrace.''
Feuds Are Shunned
Since General Tanai's 24-hour coup attempt ended with his fleeing by helicopter to Pakistan, diplomats have made a fresh assessment of General Watanjar.
Although a Khalqi, the diplomats say, he is a professional military man who has survived - as armed forces Chief of Staff, Interior Minister twice, Communications Minister and as Defense Minister once before - because he has shunned involvement in the ethnic, personal and ideological feuds that have torn the ruling party.
Despite such stiff formulas, diplomats say the Kabul forces have, in fact, performed better since the coup attempt, making gains outside Jalalabad, the strategic city east of Kabul, and holding off a major rebel offensive at Khost, General Tanai's hometown. And the diplomats say that General Watanjar may be a more effective commander than General Tanai, a 36-year-old paratroop officer.
Educated at a military academy in Kabul, then trained by Soviet tank specialists, General Watanjar gave his hobby as ''reading history,'' not something usually thought of as a preoccupation of the Kabul elite.
Along with his other concerns, General Watanjar has had the distraction lately of working to the thump of hammers and the grinding of drills. The Darulaman Palace, built in 1923 to house the country's first Parliament, has been a ruined shell since the coup attempt, its roofs and walls punctured by shellfire, its corridors dank with rainwater. Artisans clamber atop wooden scaffolds, repairing friezes and architraves.
In what served as General Tanai's office, still decorated with an oil painting of a Soviet infantryman making a night attack through heavy snow, an old man was applying gold leaf to freshly plastered moldings in preparation for General Watanjar's moving in, perhaps silently wishful that the office's new occupant will not put his craftsman's skills at hazard by making a new grab for Mr. Najibullah's power