| In September, 1979, almost exactly one year later, there was a shoot out. The forces of Tureki tried to kill Hafizullah Amin, the Prime Minister. Taroon jumped in the way and took the first bullet, a bullet which was meant for Amin. The Amin group fired back, killing Tureki. Tureki and Taroon were both dead. Amin, a former graduate student at Columbia University in New York City majoring in Education, became president of Afghanistan.
Amin invited Herbert Penzl, a professor of Linguistics and German at the University of California at Berkeley who had written the definitive book on the Pashtu language, to come Afghanistan. Penzl went to Afghanistan and found Amin to be "supremely confident".
This confidence was misplaced. In December 1979, the Soviets finally agreed to the persistent requests of Amin to send troops to Afghanistan. The first troop air transports arrived. The troops went straight to the Arg Royal Palace at Daruleman, where Amin was residing. The Soviet general in charge told the troops to guard the front door and to shoot anybody who came out of the palace.
The general went inside. He found Hafizullah Amin sitting at the bar with a beautiful Afghan girl. The general pulled out his gun and immediately shot dead both Amin and the girl. Wanting no witnesses, the general killed everyone else inside. He then went out the front door.
His troops had their orders. Kill anyone who comes out the front door. The Soviet general came out the front door. His own troops shot him dead.
With that moment, the history books say that the War in Afghanistan started. However, in reality, the war had already been going on for more than one year.
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