Mohammed Daoud Khan

Mohammed Daoud Khan
Daoud Khan in the 1960s
1st President of Afghanistan
In office 17 July 1973 – 28 April 1978
Vice President	Sayyid Abdullah[1]
Preceded by	King Zahir Shah
Succeeded by	Abdul Qadir (acting) Nur Muhammad Taraki
5th Prime Minister of Afghanistan
In office 7 September 1953 – 10 March 1963
Monarch	Zahir Shah
Preceded by	Shah Mahmud Khan
Succeeded by	Mohammad Yusuf
Personal details
Born	(1909-07-18)18 July 1909 Kabul, Afghanistan
Died	28 April 1978(1978-04-28) (aged 68) Kabul, Afghanistan
Political party	Afghan National Revolutionary
Spouse(s)	HRH Princess Zamina Begum, sister of King Zahir Shah
Children	7

Mohammed Daoud Khan or Daud Khan (July 18, 1909 – April 28, 1978) was the 5th Prime Minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and later the President of Afghanistan. Born into the royal family, he overthrew the Musahiban monarchy of his first cousin Mohammed Zahir Shah and declared himself as the first President of his republic in 1973 before his assassination in 1978 as a result of the Saur Revolution led by the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Daoud Khan was known for his progressive policies, his efforts for the improvement of women's rights, his Pashtun nationalism, and for initiating two five-year modernization plans which increased the labor force by about 50 percent.^[2] After his overthrow and assassination, Afghanistan plunged into a civil war that since then never ended.^[3][4]

Early life[edit]

Prince Daoud was born in Kabul, the eldest son of the diplomat HRH Prince Mohammed Aziz Khan (1877–1933) (an older half-brother of King Mohammed Nadir Shah) and his wife, Khurshid Begum. He lost his father to an assassination in Berlin in 1933, while his father was serving as the Afghan Ambassador to Germany. He and his brother Naim Khan (1911–1978) then came under the tutelage of their uncle HRH Prince Hashim Khan (1884–1953). Daoud proved to be an apt student of politics. Educated in France, he served as Governor of the Eastern Province in 1934-35 and in 1938–39, and was Governor of Kandahar Province from 1935 to 1938.

In 1939, Daoud Khan was promoted to Lieutenant-General and commander of the important Kabul Army Corps until 1946. From 1946 to 1948, he served as Defense Minister, then Interior Minister from 1949 to 1951. In 1948, he served as Afghan Ambassador to France. In 1951, he was promoted to General and served in that capacity as Commander of the Central Corps of the Afghan Armed Forces^[5] in Kabul from 1951 to 1953.^[6]

Royal Prime Minister[edit]

Daoud was appointed Prime Minister in September 1953 through an intra-family transfer of power that involved no violence. His ten-year tenure was noted for his foreign policy turn to the Soviet Union, the completion of the Helmand Valley project, which radically improved living conditions in southwestern Afghanistan, as well as tentative steps towards the emancipation of women.

With the creation of an independent Pakistan in August 1947, the Durand Line conflict with the British colonialists was inherited by that country and Afghanistan. Daoud supported a nationalistic reunification of the Pakistani Pashtun people with Afghanistan, but this would have involved taking a considerable amount of territory from the new nation of Pakistan and was in direct opposition to an older plan of the 1950s whereby a confederation between the two countries was proposed. The move further worried the non-Pashtun populations of Afghanistan such as the minority Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek, who suspected Daoud Khan's intention was to increase the Pashtuns' disproportionate hold on political power. Border skirmishes with Pakistan began in 1949.

In 1960, Daoud sent troops across the poorly-marked Durand Line into the Bajaur Agency of Pakistan in an attempt to manipulate events in that area and to press the Pashtunistan issue, but the Afghan forces were routed by Pakistani Tribals. During this period, the propaganda war from Afghanistan, carried on by radio, was relentless.^[7]

In 1961, as a result of Daoud's policies and support to militias in areas along the Durand Line, Pakistan closed its borders with Afghanistan and the latter severed ties, causing an economic crisis and greater dependence on the USSR. The USSR became Afghanistan's principal trading partner. Within a few months, the USSR sent jet airplanes, tanks, heavy and light artillery, for a heavily discounted price tag of $25 million, to Afghanistan.

The crisis was finally resolved with the forced resignation of Daoud Khan in March 1963 and the re-opening of the border in May. Pakistan continued to remain suspicious of Afghan intentions and Daoud's policy left a negative impression in the eyes of many Tajiks who felt they were being disenfranchised for the sake of Pashtun Nationalism.

In 1964, King Zahir Shah introduced a new constitution, for the first time excluding all members of the Royal Family from the Council of Ministers. Daoud had already stepped down. In addition to having been Prime Minister, Daoud had also held the portfolios of Minister of Defense and Minister of Planning until 1963.^{[citation needed]}

President of the Republic[edit]

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Daoud Khan with Mohammed Asif Safi and other senior officers of the military of Afghanistan.

Daoud Khan visiting National Iranian Radio and Television in Iran, c. 1974

On July 17, 1973, Daoud seized power from his cousin (and brother-in-law) King Zahir in a bloodless coup. Departing from tradition, and for the first time in Afghan history, Daoud did not proclaim himself Shah, establishing instead a republic with himself as President.

In 1974, Daoud signed one of two economic packages that would enable Afghanistan to have a far more capable military because of increasing fears of lacking an up-to-date modern army when compared to the militaries of Iran and Pakistan. Daoud hosted General Secretary of the National Awami Party led by Khan Abdul Wali Khan, Ajmal Khattak, and others like Juma Khan Sufi, in addition to Baluch guerrillas, and the like. Daoud's government and forces also commenced training Pakhtun Zalmay and young Baluchs and was sending them to Pakistan for sabotage and militancy. So much so that one of Bhutto's senior colleagues, minister of interior and head of the provincial branch of Bhutto's party of/in the then-North-West Frontier Province (renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2010), Hayat Sherpao, was killed, ostensibly on the orders of the later-acquitted Awami Party, Afghanistan's variable relations with Pakistan further dipped. In response, Pakistan also started similar kinds of cross-border interference.

By 1975, Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had begun to engage in promoting a proxy war in Afghanistan. Some of those trained and supported by Pakistan were the later-famous or -infamous, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.^[8]

King Zahir Shah's democratic constitution with elected members and the separation of powers was replaced by a now largely nominated loya jirga (meaning "grand assembly"). A new constitution backed by a loya jirga was promulgated in February 1977, but failed to satisfy all political factions.

In 1976, under pressure from the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and to increase domestic Pashtun support, he took a stronger line on the Pashtunistan issue and promoted a proxy war in Pakistan. Trade and transit agreements with Pakistan were subsequently severely affected. Soon after Daoud's army and police faced a growing Islamic fundamentalist movement, the Islamic fundamentalist movement's leaders fled to Pakistan. There, they were supported by Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and encouraged to continue the fight against Daoud. Daoud was successful in suppressing the movement, however. Later in 1978, when Daoud was promoting his new foreign policy doctrine, he came to a tentative agreement on a solution to the Pashtunistan problem with Ali Bhutto.

In 1977, Daoud Khan presented a new constitution to the National Assembly, which wrote in several new articles and amended others. He also began to moderate his socialist policies. In 1978, there was a rift with the PDPA. Internally, Daoud attempted to distance himself from the communist elements within the coup. He was concerned about the tenor of many communists in his government and Afghanistan's growing dependency on the Soviet Union. These moves were highly criticized by Moscow, which feared that Afghanistan would soon become closer to the West, especially the United States; the Soviets had always feared that the United States could find a way to influence the government in Kabul.

A coup against Daoud, which may have been planned before he took power, was repressed shortly after his seizure of power. In October 1973, Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal, a former Prime Minister and a highly respected former diplomat, was arrested in a coup plot and died in prison. This was at a time when Parchamis controlled the Ministry of Interior under circumstances corroborating the widespread belief that he had been tortured to death. One of the army generals arrested under suspicion of this plot with Maiwandwal was Mohammed Asif Safi, who was later released. Daoud personally apologized to him for the arrest.

Daoud wanted to lessen the country's dependence on the Soviet Union and attempted to promote a new foreign policy. He went to Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia, and Iran for aid. Surprisingly, he did not renew the Pashtunistan agitation; relations with Pakistan improved thanks to interventions from the US and the Shah of Iran. These moves alerted the Soviets.

The following year, he established his own political party, the National Revolutionary Party, which became the focus of all political activity. In January 1977, a loya jirga approved the constitution establishing a presidential one-party system of government.

Diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union[edit]

President Daoud met Leonid Brezhnev on a state visit to Moscow from April 12 to 15, 1977. Daoud had asked for a private meeting with the Soviet leader to discuss with him the increased pattern of Soviet actions in Afghanistan. In particular, he discussed the intensified Soviet attempt to unite the two factions of the Afghan communist parties, Parcham and Khalq.^[9] Brezhnev described Afghanistan's non-alignment as important to the USSR and essential to the promotion of peace in Asia, but warned him about the presence of experts from NATO countries stationed in the northern parts of Afghanistan. Daoud bluntly replied that Afghanistan would remain free, and that the Soviet Union would never be allowed to dictate how the country should be governed.^[10]

After returning to Afghanistan, Daoud made plans that his government would diminish its relationships with the Soviet Union, and instead forge closer contacts with the West as well as the oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Iran. Afghanistan signed a co-operative military treaty with Egypt and by 1977, the Afghan military and police force were being trained by Egyptian Armed forces. This angered the Soviet Union because Egypt took the same route in 1974 and distanced itself from the Soviets.

Communist coup and assassination[edit]

Outside the presidential palace gate (Arg) in Kabul, the day after the Saur Revolution (April 28, 1978)

The April 19, 1978 funeral of Mir Akbar Khyber, the prominent Parchami ideologue who had been murdered, served as a rallying point for the Afghan communists. An estimated 1,000 to 3,000 people gathered to hear speeches by PDPA leaders such as Nur Muhammad Taraki, Hafizullah Amin and Babrak Karmal.^{[citation needed][11]}

Shocked by this demonstration of communist unity, Daoud ordered the arrest of the PDPA leaders, but he reacted too slowly. It took him a week to arrest Taraki, Karmal managed to escape to the USSR, and Amin was merely placed under house arrest. According to PDPA documents, Amin sent complete orders for the coup from his home while it was under armed guard using his family as messengers.

The army had been put on alert on April 26 because of a presumed coup. On April 27, 1978, a coup d'état beginning with troop movements at the military base at Kabul International Airport, gained ground slowly over the next twenty-four hours as rebels battled units loyal to Daoud Khan in and around the capital. Some believe that Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto paved the way for the Saur Revolution in Kabul by making Daoud spread the Afghan Armed Forces to the countryside.^[8] Bhutto himself was hanged in April 1979.

Daoud and most of his family were assassinated during a coup by members of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The coup happened in the Arg, the former royal palace, on April 28, 1978.^[12] His death was not publicly announced after the coup. Instead, the new government declared that President Daoud had "resigned for health reasons." (In 1979, Taraki was killed by Amin, who, in turn, was killed by the KGB; Karmal died in 1996 of cancer in Moscow).

On June 28, 2008, the body of President Daoud and those of his family were found in two separate mass graves in the Pul-e-Charkhi area, District 12 of Kabul city. Initial reports indicate that sixteen corpses were in one grave and twelve others were in the second.^[13] On December 4, 2008, the Afghan Health Ministry announced that the body of Daoud had been identified on the basis of teeth molds and a small golden Quran found near the body. The Quran was a present he had received from the king of Saudi Arabia.^[14] On March 17, 2009 Daoud was given a state funeral.^[13] Many Afghans fondly consider him to be the best leader their country has had in modern times.^[15]

Personal life[edit]

Daoud Khan with his wife Zamina Begum at Kabul National Theatre (Kabul Nandari), c. 1974

In 1934, Daoud married HRH Princess Zamina Begum (1917 — 26 April 1978), sister of King Zahir Shah. The couple had four sons and four daughters:

• 1. Zarlasht Daoud Khan
• 2. Khalid Daoud Khan (1947–1978). Had a son:
  • Tariq Daoud Khan
• 3. Wais Daoud Khan (1947–1978). Had four children
  • Turan Daoud Khan (1972-)
  • Ares Daoud Khan (1973 – k. 1978)
  • Waygal Daoud Khan (1975 – k. 1978)
  • Zahra Khanum (1970-).
• 4. Muhammad 'Umar Daoud Khan (k. 1978). Had two daughters:
  • Hila Khanum (1961 – k. 1978)
  • Ghazala Khanum (1964 – k. 1978)
• 5. Dorkhanai Begum
• 6. Zarlasht Khanum (k. 1978)
• 7. Shinkay Begum (k. 1978)
• 8. Torpekay Begum

References[edit]

External links[edit]

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