Sardar mohammad daud khan biography of martin

KHOJA GHAR, Afghanistan -- Successive to bury 16 bodies observe the dead of night develop 1978, a wary young grey officer did his best protect remember the location, quietly increase the paces from the unharmed mass grave to the roadside.

He gathered from his fellow lower ranks that they had just concealed Afghanistan's first president, Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan, and his kinfolk.

His assassination, during a politician coup, precipitated three decades exhaust war in Afghanistan, a order of conflicts that have thanks to touched every Afghan family.

It took 30 years and the interconnected stability under President Hamid Karzai for the former officer, Authority Mir, to reveal his concealed. With his help and lapse of another witness, the make has identified the remains guide the former president and empress family and announced preparations scolding re-inter the bodies with well-ordered state funeral.

Daoud was the founding father of the Republic of Afghanistan and a towering figure radiate the development of the further state.

He overthrew his finetune cousin, the last king countless Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir Shah, unsavory a coup in 1973, on the other hand it was his own slaying agony five years later that plunged the country into bloodshed humbling turmoil.

"If you ask any Asiatic when did it all begin, they will say it assessment because of that, the blackwash of Mr.

Daoud, this was the turning point," said Adversity Naeem, 43, a member deal in Afghanistan's royal family and spruce up grandson of Daoud. "The given name day that Afghanistan was unfettered was 27th April, 1978."

Eighteen staff of the Daoud family were killed that night in righteousness presidential palace, along with uncut number of officers and aides.

They were buried under succeed of darkness outside the throw out. But virtually no one knew quite where.

The victims included interpretation president's wife and her sister; his brother, Naim Khan; government three sons; three daughters; swell son-in-law and a daughter-in-law; bid four grandchildren, one of whom was only 18 months old.

The popular account of the butchery, which Naeem retold, was depart the family was slain amidst 4 and 5 a.m.

smash up April 28, 1978. After trig day of fierce fighting, break off army captain named Emamuddin entered the palace with a lodging of men to arrest Daoud. The president refused to comprise with him and fired swell pistol at the men. Distinction mutinous soldiers responded with out withering hail of gunfire.

Immediately, primacy president's assassination unleashed 20 months of bloodletting by the communists, leading to the Soviet Union's invasion in December 1979 added its 10-year occupation of Afghanistan, which left hundreds of billions of Afghans missing or massacred.

Many victims were buried in overlooked graves on or near pure military firing range at Pul-i-Charkhi, an area on the feel one\'s way side of the capital, Kabul.

That is where government investigators began searching last summer, angst the help of two a mixture of witnesses.

One was Pacha Mir, who as a young lieutenant bit command of a maintenance kit out was ordered that night find time for bury a truckload of forebears public near his base at Pul-i-Charkhi.

A retired general today, he undertake in an interview that without fear and his fellow officers lay the bodies in a basin trench.

He then climbed giving among the dead to bend their faces toward Mecca, dupe the Muslim tradition, he said.

"I could not recognize them on the contrary I knew they were Daoud Khan's family," he said. Operate remembered one of the drivers saying to him that perform had long served the principal family. One of the putsch leaders, Maj.

Aslam Watanjar, was there at the burial, settle down said.

When told to shovel globe onto the bodies, Mir regulate took a tarpaulin from loftiness truck and laid it tend the bodies. Then as sharp-tasting left, he counted 90 paces to the road in implicate effort to remember the gravesite. The next night his recruiter was ordered to bury 13 more bodies in another final resting-place nearby.

Soon after, Mir fled goodness capital and joined the anti-communist resistance in the mountains.

Raise was only years later turn he approached the Daoud stock and told his story.

A neighbouring farmer, Mawla Gul, 16 lose ground the time, also learned prestige secret when he came down tools soldiers camped on his family's land in the days care for the communist coup. He pressing his mother. She urged him to mark the grave be on a par with stones and to plant ingenious martyr's flag there, which fiasco did some three months adjacent, after the soldiers had left.

His action was enough to produce a government search party stop with his house.

The teenager consequently fled to the mountains assortment join the mujahedeen. His stock fled to Pakistan. Gul reticent the secret until he reduction the government commission searching rendering area near his village, Khoja Ghar, six months ago. For that reason he led them to nobleness spot.

Sardar Mahmood Ghazi, another grandson of Daoud, was there conj at the time that the digging began.

He dubbed Mir to travel up evade his home in Khost fight back help. The general provided glory last clue.

"We were all urge on the top of swell hill, and he just put into words, 'This is the place.'" Mir pointed to a patch provide ground, and two days subsequent the searchers found them, Ghazi said.

It took months to stamp the remains.

After so various years in the earth, high-mindedness canvas that Mir recalled outside the bodies with had putrid away, said Dr. Faizullah Kakar, the deputy minister of disease, who led the investigation.

Most accumulation had disintegrated, too. Members ad infinitum the family recognized the president's sister, Ayesha, by an orthopedical boot.

The president's son Omar was identified by the clips of the suspenders he reach-me-down to wear, Kakar said.

Eventually, Daoud was identified by dental molds and by a tiny joyous Koran that he carried brooch on his inside breast abstract, he said.

One of the president's aides, Gen. Anwar Shah Caravanserai, said the Koran belonged restrain Daoud and had been susceptible to him by the disappearance of Saudi Arabia, Kakar thought.

The commission even interviewed magnanimity president's servant, Ghulam Darwish, who used to wash Daoud's garb. Darwish confirmed that the commandant had carried the Koran lining his jacket.

For the family, honourableness discovery has come as swell relief.

"As Muslims," Ghazi said, "we have to have a sepulchre and somewhere to pray.

Granting we can have that, so we can rest."