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On February 14, 1979, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Spike Dubs, was kidnapped and murdered by an anti-government organization in Kabul, Afghanistan, touching off a series of events that not only altered the nature of U.S.-Soviet-Afghan relations but also changed President Jimmy Carter's foreign-policy agenda for the rest of his term. In chronicling the events leading up to the Soviet ... read moreinvasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, historians have largely focused on the Saur Revolution in April 1978 -- a communist coup led by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan -- as a turning point in U.S.-Soviet-Afghan relations, ignoring the impact of the Dubs affair or, at most, mentioning it in passing. Dubs' murder has been taken at face value as merely a tragic event in the history of a diplomatic relationship marred by similar incidents. Its impact deserves further scrutiny, as a close investigation of the events of Feb. 14, the days that immediately followed and the shift in the policies of all three countries in the months leading up to December reveals that the assassination of Dubs irrevocably altered the nature of the triangle that was U.S.-Afghan-Soviet relations.read less
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