41 Facts About Mohammad Najibullah

Mohammad Najibullah lived in the United Nations headquarters until his assassination by the Taliban after their capture of the city.

Mohammad Najibullah was sent into exile as Ambassador to Iran during Hafizullah Amin's rise to power.

Mohammad Najibullah returned to Afghanistan following the Soviet intervention which toppled Amin's rule and placed Babrak Karmal as head of the state, the party and the government.

Mohammad Najibullah was a member of the Parcham faction led by Karmal.

In 1985, Mohammad Najibullah stepped down as the state security minister to focus on PDPA politics; he had been appointed to the PDPA Secretariat.

Mohammad Najibullah accused Karmal of trying to wreck his policy of National Reconciliation, a series of efforts by Mohammad Najibullah to end the conflict.

Mohammad Najibullah remained open to dialogue with the mujahideen and other groups, made Islam an official religion, and invited exiled businessmen back to re-take their properties.

Mohammad Najibullah was born on 6 August 1947 in the city of Gardez, Paktia Province, in the Kingdom of Afghanistan.

Mohammad Najibullah belonged to the Ahmadzai Ghilji tribe of Pashtuns.

Mohammad Najibullah was educated at Habibia High School in Kabul, at St Joseph's Higher Secondary School in Baramulla, Jammu and Kashmir, India, and at Kabul University where he began studying in 1964 and completed his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery in 1975.

In 1965, during his study in Kabul, Mohammad Najibullah joined the Parcham faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan and was twice imprisoned for political activities.

Mohammad Najibullah served as Babrak Karmal's close associate and bodyguard during the latter's tenure in the lower house of parliament.

In 1980, Mohammad Najibullah was appointed the head of KHAD, the Afghan equivalent to the Soviet KGB, and was promoted to the rank of Major General.

Mohammad Najibullah was appointed following lobbying from the Soviets, including Yuri Andropov, then KGB Chairman.

Mohammad Najibullah reported directly to the Soviet KGB, and a big part of KHAD's budget came from the Soviet Union itself.

Mohammad Najibullah was appointed to the PDPA Secretariat in November 1985.

Mohammad Najibullah succeeded Karmal as PDPA General Secretary on 4 May 1986 at the 18th PDPA meeting, but Karmal still retained his post as Chairman of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council.

When Mohammad Najibullah took the office of PDPA General Secretary, Karmal still had enough support in the party to disgrace Mohammad Najibullah.

Karmal went as far as to spread rumours that Mohammad Najibullah's rule was little more than an interregnum, and that he would soon be reappointed to the general secretaryship.

The Soviet leadership wanted to ease Karmal out of politics, but when Mohammad Najibullah began to complain that he was hampering his plans of National Reconciliation, the Soviet Politburo decided to remove Karmal; this motion was supported by Andrei Gromyko, Yuli Vorontsov, Eduard Shevardnadze, Anatoly Dobrynin and Viktor Chebrikov.

The reason for this move, according to Mohammad Najibullah, was the need for real-power sharing.

Mohammad Najibullah stated that only the extremist part of the opposition could not join the planned coalition government.

Several figures of the intelligentsia took Mohammad Najibullah's offer seriously, even if they sympathised or were against the regime.

Mohammad Najibullah reassured the inter-party opposition that he would not give up the gains of the Saur Revolution, but to the contrary, preserve them, not give up the PDPA's monopoly on power, or to collaborate with reactionary Mullahs.

In 1987, Mohammad Najibullah re-added Ullah to his name to appease the Muslim community.

Mohammad Najibullah encouraged the development of the private sector in industry.

The only means of survival seemed to Mohammad Najibullah was to retain the Soviet presence.

Mohammad Najibullah repeated his claims that his government could not survive if Ahmad Shah Massoud remained alive.

Gorbachev called an emergency session of the Politburo to discuss his proposal, but Mohammad Najibullah's request was rejected.

From 1989 to 1990, the Mohammad Najibullah government was partially successful in building up the Afghan defence forces.

On 18 March 1992, Mohammad Najibullah offered his government's immediate resignation, and followed the United Nations plan to be replaced by an interim government with all parties involved in the struggle.

Not long before Kabul's fall, Mohammad Najibullah appealed to the UN for protection after his guards fled, which was rejected.

India refused to let him take refuge at the Indian embassy as it risked creating "subcontinental rivalries" and reprisals against Kabul's Indian community, arguing that Mohammad Najibullah would be far safer at the UN compound.

In 1994, India sent senior diplomat M K Bhadrakumar to Kabul to hold talks with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the defence minister, to consolidate relations with the Afghan authorities, reopen the embassy, and allow Najibullah to fly to India, but Massoud refused.

Bhadrakumar wrote in 2016 that he believed Massoud did not want Mohammad Najibullah to leave as Massoud could strategically make use of him, and that Massoud "probably harboured hopes of a co-habitation with Najib somewhere in the womb of time because that extraordinary Afghan politician was a strategic asset to have by his side".

Mohammad Najibullah was at the UN compound when the Taliban soldiers came for him on the evening of 26 September 1996.

News of Mohammad Najibullah's murder was greeted with widespread international condemnation, particularly from the Muslim world.

The United Nations issued a statement which condemned the killing of Mohammad Najibullah, and claimed that it would further destabilise Afghanistan.

Mohammad Najibullah was married on 1 September 1974 to Fatana Najib, principal of the Peace School whom he met when she was an eighth-grade student and he was her science tutor.

Mohammad Najibullah's oldest daughter, Heela Mohammad Najibullah, was born in Kabul in 1977, studied in Switzerland and was living there as of 2017.

Mohammad Najibullah is currently an employee of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in Sweden, she maintains her Twitter account.