Alexandr Graschenkov et al. · CC BY-SA 3.0

Mohammad Najibullah

August 6, 1947 – September 27, 1996

Afghan communist leader, head of the KHAD secret police and President of Afghanistan from 1987 to 1992; the Taliban killed him in Kabul in 1996.

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Biography

Mohammad Najibullah was born in Gardez in 1947, a Ghilzai Pashtun of the Ahmadzai clan. He studied medicine at Kabul University from 1964 and qualified in 1975 but never practised. In 1965 he joined the Parcham faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, was twice jailed for political activity, acted as Babrak Karmal's close aide and bodyguard, and joined the central committee in 1977.

After the 1978 Saur Revolution the rival Khalq faction sidelined Parcham, and Najibullah was posted briefly as ambassador to Iran before being dismissed and going into exile in Europe. He returned after the Soviet intervention of December 1979 and from 1980 to 1985 headed KHAD, the secret police, which became notorious for its brutality.

With Soviet backing he replaced Karmal as party leader in May 1986 and became president in 1987. He promoted a policy of National Reconciliation, dropped references to communism, made Islam the state religion and reached out to the mujahideen, while his government signed the 1988 Geneva Accords under which Soviet troops left. He survived a coup attempt by his defence minister in March 1990.

The end of Soviet aid after 1991 and the defection of General Abdul Rashid Dostum led to his resignation in April 1992. Unable to leave the country, he lived in the United Nations compound in Kabul until the Taliban seized the city in September 1996 and tortured and killed him.