Mohammed Daud Daud

Mohammed Daud Daud

H.E. Mohammed Daud Daud (Persian: محمد داود داود‎) (January 1969 – 28 May 2011), also known as General Daud Daud, an ethnic Tajik, was the police chief in northern Afghanistan and the commander of the elite 303 Pamir Corps. He was considered one of the most effective and important opponents of the Afghan Taliban.

Daud studied engineering in college. After graduating college in the 1980s he joined the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After the retreat of Soviet troops and the defeat of the Afghan communist regime, Daud remained in Takhar province of Afghanistan. Ahmad Shah Massoud had ordered him to guard northern areas and to keep his forces out of the capital Kabul. When the Taliban took power in Kabul, Daud served as a leading military commander of the anti-Taliban United Front under the command of Ahmad Shah Massoud, which later spearheaded the defeat of the Taliban. In October 2001, Daud was directly responsible for retaking the city of Kunduz from an Al Qaeda-Taliban alliance.

After the fall of the Taliban regime, he was appointed a Deputy Interior Minister for Counter Narcotics in Afghanistan. His campaign against poppy cultivation was successful in several provinces such as Logar, Ghazni, Wardak, Paktia, Paktika and Panjshir.

In 2010, he was appointed police chief of Afghanistan's northern provinces overseeing Interior Ministry forces and directly commanding his own police elite force called Pamir 303. Considered one of the most effective opponents of the Taliban he was a high-profile target. Daud was assassinated on May 28, 2011 after a Taliban bomb attack in Taloqan, Afghanistan, in which six other people also lost their lives.