Mir Akbar Khyber

Mir Akbar Khyber (January 11, 1925 Later he was employed by the Ministry of Education, until he was expelled from Paktia for taking part in an anti-government riot in 1965. After returning to Kabul, he became editor of the Parcham newspaper, Parcham, and oversaw a clandestine effort to recruit soldiers of Afghan Army into the Parcham faction, additionally targeting the Afghan Commando Forces. He was a close confidant of the Parcham leader Babrak Karmal.

Assassination Nur Muhammad Taraki and Babrak Karmal standing at the location Khyber was assassinated in Kabul. He was assassinated outside his home on 17 April 1978. The Daoud regime attempted to blame Khyber's death on Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezbi Islami, but Nur Mohammad Taraki of the PDPA held the government responsible, a belief that was shared by much of the Kabul intelligentsia. Louis Dupree, an American historian and specialist of Afghanistan, concluded that interior minister Abdul Qadir Nuristani, a virulent anti-communist, had ordered the killing. At the time, there was also a theory that the CIA was involved in Khyber's death. Communist PDPA members at the funeral of Khyber in Kabul, front row left to right: Anahita Ratebzad, Dr. Shah Wali, Sulaiman Layeq, Babrak Karmal, Nur Muhammad Taraki and Mohammad Najibullah. At Khyber's funeral on April 19, some 15,000 PDPA sympathizers gathered in Kabul, and paraded through the streets chanting slogans against the CIA and the SAVAK, the Shah of Iran's secret police. Alarmed by this demonstration of communist strength, Daoud ordered a crackdown on the PDPA leadership, which in turn prompted the PDPA to launch a military coup that became known as the Saur Revolution, during which Daoud was killed, and the PDPA took power.