Mohammed Daoud Khan

Khan was born in Kabul, Emirate of Afghanistan, into a Pashtun family and was the eldest son of the diplomat Prince Mohammad Aziz Khan (1877–1933; an older half-brother of King Mohammad Nadir Shah) and his wife, Khurshid Begum.

Mohammad Daoud Khan, also romanized as Daud Khan or DaWood Khan (18July 1909 – 28April 1978), was an Afghan politician who served as prime minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and, as leader of the 1973 Afghan coup d'état which overthrew the monarchy, served as the first president of Afghanistan from 1973 until his assassination in the Saur Revolution.

Born into the Afghan royal family and addressed by the prefix "Sardar", Khan started as a provincial governor and later a military commander before being appointed as Prime Minister by his cousin, King Mohammad Zahir Shah, serving for a decade.

Having failed to persuade the King to implement a one-party system, Khan bloodlessly overthrew the monarchy with the backing of Afghan Army officers, and proclaimed himself the first President of the Republic of Afghanistan, establishing an autocratic one-party system under his National Revolutionary Party.

Khan was known for his autocratic rule, and for his educational and progressive social reforms.

Under his regime, he headed a purge of communists in the government, and many of his policies also displeased religious conservatives and liberals who were in favor of restoring the multiparty system that existed under the monarchy.

Social and economic reforms implemented under his ruling were successful, but his foreign policy led to tense relations with neighboring countries.

He and his brother Prince Naim Khan (1911–1978) then came under the tutelage of their uncle Mohammad Hashim Khan (1884–1953).

Daoud proved to be an apt student of politics.

He lost his father to an assassination in Berlin in 1933, while his father was serving as the Afghan Ambassador to Germany.

Educated in France, he served as a senior administrator in the Kingdom of Afghanistan, serving 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, Khan was promoted to Commander of the Central Forces.

Khan 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 1940s 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 his intention was to increase the Pashtuns' disproportionate hold on political power.

Abdul Ghaffar Khan (founder of Khudai Khidmatgar movement), stated "that Daoud Khan only exploited the idea of reunification of Pashtun people to meet his own political ends. The idea of reunification of Pashtun people never helped Pashtuns and it only caused trouble for Pakistan. In fact it was never a reality".

Moreover, Daoud Khan's project for the reunification of the Pashtun people failed to gain support from the majority of Pashtuns in Pakistan.

As commander, he led Afghan forces against the Safi during the Afghan tribal revolts of 1944–1947.

From 1946 to 1948, he served as Defense Minister, then Interior Minister from 1949 to 1951.

With the creation of an independent Pakistan in August 1947, Prime Minister Daoud Khan had rejected the Durand Line, which had been accepted as international border by successive Afghan governments for over a half a century.

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 in Kabul from 1951 to 1953.

Khan was appointed prime minister in September 1953 through an intra-family transfer of power, replacing Shah Mahmud Khan.

His ten-year tenure was noted for his foreign policy turn to the Soviet Union, the completion of the Helmand Valley project, which dramatically improved living conditions in southwestern Afghanistan, as well as tentative steps towards the emancipation of women, giving women a higher public presence, which led to significant amounts of freedom and educational opportunities for them.

In 1960, Khan 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 defeated by the Pashtun Tribal militias.

During this period, the propaganda war from Afghanistan, carried on by radio, was relentless.

In 1961, Daoud Khan made another attempt to invade Bajaur with larger Afghan army this time.

However, Pakistan employed F-86 Sabres jets which inflicted heavy casualties against the Afghan army unit and the tribesmen from Kunar province who were supporting the Afghan army.

Several Afghan soldiers were also captured and were paraded in front of international media, which in turn caused embarrassment for Daoud Khan.

In 1961, as a result of his 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.

That same year he attended the 1st Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade making Afghanistan one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement.

As a result of continued resentment against Daoud's autocratic rule, close ties with the USSR and economic downturn because of the blockade imposed by Pakistan, Daoud Khan was asked to resign.

Instead of resigning, Daoud Khan requested King Zahir Shah to approve new 'one-party constitution' proposed by him which would in turn increase Daoud Khan's already considerable power.

Upon rejection, Daoud Khan angrily resigned.

The crisis was finally resolved with his forced resignation 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 1978, he was deposed and assassinated during the 1978 Afghan coup d'état, led by the Afghan military and the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA).

His body was discovered 30 years later and was identified by a small golden Quran gifted by King Khalid of Saudi Arabia he always carried.

He received a state funeral.