Mohammad Najibullah

Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai was a Kabul University graduate who rose through the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan after the 1978 Saur Revolution, spending time as ambassador to Iran before returning when the Soviets installed Babrak Karmal. As head of KHAD, the Afghan equivalent of the KGB, he built one of the most brutally efficient security apparatuses in the country - work that caught Moscow's attention and earned him a seat in the PDPA Politburo by 1981. Mikhail Gorbachev installed him as General Secretary in 1986, and he became president the following year, inheriting a civil war and an imminent Soviet withdrawal. He tried to save his government through National Reconciliation - distancing from socialism, opening the door to non-communists, making Islam the state religion in the 1990 constitution - but none of it gained traction with the mujahideen or the public. After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 and his key general defected, Najibullah resigned in April 1992, failed to flee to India, and spent four years sheltering in the UN compound in Kabul. The Taliban found him there on 27 September 1996, tortured him, and executed him.