Report: ANP General Daud Daud’s grave destroyed by militants

Unknown militants attacked the gravesite of slain Afghan National Police General Daud Daud in the northern province of Takhar, according to a local report recently published in Benawa. A security officer from the northern zone told reporters that a number of militants attacked the security post established next to the gravesite in the Farkhar district– killing two officers and injuring a third –before storming the ancestral gravesite of General Daud Daud and destroying the tomb. The security officer could neither confirm nor deny if the gunmen exhumed the body of Daud and took it away as they fled. When contacted by The Long War Journal, residents from Kunduz familiar with the northern zone security command could not independently confirm the report from Benawa.

General Daud Daud, a Tajik from Takhar province, joined the anti-Soviet jihad under the command of Ahmad Shah Massoud and his Shura-e Nurzar faction. After the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989, Daud continued his military duties for Massoud by helping to secure Takhar province. Daud maintained the front lines for Massoud and the greater United Islamic Front against the Taliban following the Islamic movement’s takeover of Kabul and much of the country between 1996 and 2001. In October and November of 2001, Daud and his forces were instrumental in defeating the entrenched Taliban forces along the Kunduz-Baghlan front.

Daud became the governor of Takhar province following the Taliban regime’s ouster and was appointed the Deputy Interior Minister for Counter Narcotics in 2004. In November 2010, Daud was appointed as the Afghan National Police (ANP) corps commander for the 303 Pamir Zone, a regional ANP command that covered eight northern provinces in Afghanistan.

Western media sources occasionally accused Daud of engaging in drug trafficking activities that included providing political protection to narcotics networks linked to the former Shura-e Nurzar networks in northern Afghanistan, a claim Daud vehemently denied. In early 2011, Daud and his forces, bolstered by an elite commando unit known as Pamir 303 Commandos, launched a series of anti-Taliban offensives across the north, including Baghlan and Kunduz provinces.

On May 28, a clandestinely-placed IED killed General Daud and other security commanders for northern Afghanistan during a high-level security meeting in Takhar province. Initial reports indicated that a suicide bomber had caused the blast, but an investigation launched by Afghanistan’s National Directorate for Security (NDS) determined that the blast was caused by a remote-controlled bomb. Daud’s former Shura-e-Nazar deputy, Shah Jahan Noori, who was serving as the Takhar provincial police chief, was also killed in the attack. Two German soldiers were killed, and Major General Markus Kneip, Regional Commander North for the International Security Assistance Force, was wounded in the attack, as was the governor of Takhar province. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Two days before he was assassinated, General Daud had publicly demanded the capture of Taliban leader Maulvi Nasrullah, dead or alive, for ordering the deaths of two village elders by burning them alive in Sar-i-Pul province. Only a week earlier, General Daud had told the BBC: “The Haqqanis and Taliban groups have tried to offer money to some of the police. Some of my guards…I am very vigilant. I have made a lot of changes in my movements and who guards the front and rear of my headquarters. But I have to travel all over northern Afghanistan, to different provinces. I can’t stop doing this.”

On June 1, ISAF released a statement indicating that a combined Afghan and Coalition operation in Balkh province had arrested several individuals linked to the May 28 bomb attack that killed General Daud and Shah Jahan Noori. Among those captured was a suspected Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) commander. The IMU is deeply ingrained in the insurgent infrastructure throughout northern Afghanistan, and IMU members are known to hold several shadow government positions for the Taliban’s northern military zone. These include positions in Takhar, Kunduz, Badakhshan, Balkh, Jawzjan, and Sar-e-Pul provinces.

General Abdul Waheed “Baba Jan,” a former PDPA military commander turned Jamiat-e-Islami commander, has assumed command of the 303 Pamir Zone following Daud’s death. Baba Jan is an ethnic Tajik from Parwan who maintains influential political and business networks in both Parwan and Kabul provinces. He also participated in the October 2001 campaign against the Taliban and was among the first of the United Islamic Front commanders to help capture Bagram airfield in Parwan province from fleeing Taliban forces.

Special guest co-author Rona Kabiri received her MA in International Policy Studies with a concentration in Security and Development from Monterey Institute of International Studies. She was born in Afghanistan and lived there during the reign of the Taliban and moved to the US for her graduate studies in 2009.