Mohammed Daud Daud

H.E. Mohammed Daud Daud (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.

Daud and the Battle of Kunduz
Daud was responsible for overseeing the November 2001 siege of Kunduz which was the last major battle in the assault to topple the Taliban During the siege of Kunduz all sides of the city were surrounded by Northern Alliance forces. Inside the city it was estimated 20,000-30,000 Taliban fighters were holed up. Many of these fighters had vowed to fight to the death, rather than surrender to Northern Alliance forces. Inside of Kunduz during the November 2001 siege were the so-called "Afghan Arabs", the foreign volunteers believed to be led by Osama bin Laden. According to General Mohammed Daud a pro-Taliban leader named "Omar al-Khatab"—was leading a force of 1,000 foreign fighters belonging to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Little was known about the foreign Taliban. According to Afghan Taliban soldiers taken prisoner by the Northern Alliance, the foreigners did not fight side by side with the Taliban, but in separate units, under their own commanders. As the siege wore on, the mayor of Kunduz eventually trekked through the surrounding mountains to meet General Mohammed Daud of the Northern Alliance. A meeting between the two men supposedly took place in a garden near Taloqan. Following the meeting with Daud the mayor was ready to surrender, but still needed time to negotiate with the foreign volunteers, who bitterly opposed the surrender. In an effort to end the siege, Daud promised the low ranking Taliban fighters fair treatment if they surrendered: "We will allow the low-ranking foreigners to appear before a court." On November 27, 2001 street-to-street fighting began at 7am in Kunduz, when Northern Alliance troops led by General Mohammed Daud advanced into town. The remaining Taliban were defeated and Kunduz fell into Northern Alliance control. After victory at the siege of Kunduz and the subsequent establishment of the Interim Government in Afghanistan, Daud was appointed as Military commander of Corps No 6 in Kunduz /Kunduz province.

Daud's political career
Daud was the former governor of the Takhar province in Afghanistan. Daud was appointed as governor at the request of the British government in order to oversee Takhar province. The former governor, whom Daud replaced, had been widely implicated in the drug trade. British officials regarded Mr Daud as the cleanest governor in Afghanistan and hoped that his extensive experience in development would help to win over the population and curb opium production.

Gen. Mohammad Daud was the top counter-narcotics official in the Afghan government. Counternarcotics enforcement activities have been directed from within the Ministry of Interior since 2002. General Mohammed Daud was named Deputy Ministry of Interior for Counternarcotics by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in October 2004. He was also the head of the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan (CNPA). Daud and his staff worked with U.S. and British officials in implementing the Afghan government's expanded counternarcotics enforcement plan. Soon following his appointment, Daud led an Afghan delegation that participated in a thirty night session of the sub-commission on illicit Drug Traffic and related matters in the Near and Middle East (HONLEA) in Beirut, Lebanon. Delegates from twenty-one countries participated in the meeting. General Mohammad Daud delivered a presentation on the counter narcotics activities of the government of Afghanistan, achievements and problems still being faced.

President Hamid Karzai has taken steps to establish landlocked Afghanistan as a trade hub connecting the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe. Daud was involved in President Hamid Karzai's plan to rehabilitate the war torn Afghan economy. In late December 2002 Daud led an economic trade delegation to neighboring Tajikistan. Kabul has been particularly interested in swiftly opening trading routes in Central Asia, where there is a vast market for Afghan goods.

Daud expressed optimism about Afghanistan's effort to halt the opium trade: "We witnessed a remarkable reduction in the level of poppy cultivation all over Afghanistan last year. We worked very hard in the provinces where poppy cultivation was higher last year. The poppy eradication campaign is extensively under way in 11 provinces. Some 45,000 jeribs [9,000 hectares] of poppy cultivated land have so far been cleared. The campaign will start in 11 other provinces soon."

Daud was also involved in Afghanistan's Disbandment of Illegal Armed (DIAG). DIAG is a program within the Afghan Ministry of Interior. DAIG supports the Afghan government's objectives to bring stability to Afghanistan through the continuing process of demilitarization. The program also focuses on removing from office those government officials with proven links to illegal armed groups. Daud said that DIAG is not a program to take only weapons from individuals but that it is a program to disband the armed groups in order to ensure a sustainable safe and secure country.

Acid attack on Afghan schoolgirls
On November 12, 2008 attackers in Afghanistan sprayed acid in the faces of at least 15 girls near a school in Kandahar. One of the girls who was attacked was quoted as saying, "We were going to school on foot when two unknown people on a motorcycle came close to us and threw acid in our faces", 16-year-old Atifa told the BBC." At least two of the girls were blinded by the attack. General Mohammad Daud was tasked to deal with the incident.  The attack on the girls, who had been wearing all-covering burqas, drew wide condemnation including from President Hamid Karzai and U.S. First Lady Laura Bush who described it as "cowardly and shameful".

Daud said authorities had arrested 10 men in connection to the attack a few days after the occurrence. In discussing the acid attack, Daud stated at a press conference: "The attack was the work of the Taliban and we have not finalised our investigation". As the investigation into the acid attack continued General Mohammad Daud, told the BBC that "the attack was the work of the Taliban" and that the attackers "were taking orders from the other side of the border [with Pakistan] from those who are leading terrorist attacks in Kandahar." The ten Afghans that were arrested were each been promised 100,000 Pakistani rupees (US$1,300) by Taliban rebels in Pakistan to carry out the attack, deputy interior minister General Mohammad Daud told reporters. Many of the ten men who had been arrested had confessed to the attacks. Daud said his ministry had opened a bank account to collect money for the girls' medical treatment and education.

Military operations
In March 2011 a BBC crew was embedded with Daud's forces during a battle against the Taliban in Baghlan. The journalist described:

""The man in charge of the offensive was a soft-spoken and charismatic general named Mohammed Daoud Daoud. ... Everywhere he went, Daoud stressed the need to respect the local population. He was saying all the right things from the international community's point of view. It made me wonder whether he had political ambitions. But this was also the right way to fight an insurgency. It made military sense. In one meeting of his commanders, he said: "If the arbakis [local militias] do anything wrong, disarm them, handcuff them, and bring them to me. No exceptions." He went on: "Some of these guys are mad; some of them are on drugs. They are an embarrassment. But this time, they are part of the operation." So why let them join the assault at all? He explained that they knew the terrain and the people. He needed them "only as guides." A few days before the offensive was due to start, he called about 20 arbaki commanders into his office. They sat on rows of folding chairs as he delivered a speech about the need to respect human rights. As they stood up to leave, he added, "If any of your men rape the local women, I will hang them." ""

- Paul Wood (BBC)

Opium in Afghanistan
Opium from Afghanistan provides more than 90 percent of the world's total supply, funding international drug syndicates with billions of dollars in profits every year. General Mohammad Daud said that more than 110,000 people are actively involved in drug business across the country. This number had been estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC). In June 2007 Daud estimated there were over 1,000 smugglers, including some government officials arrested over the previous three years. Daud stated in an interview: "Our job as a law enforcement agency is to make sure eradication is done and farmers are not cultivating opium poppy.We want to put some 4–5 traffickers in jail from each poppy producing province to make an example ... The other side is the poverty of the farmers. We, the Afghan state, will do our part; there will be no more poppy cultivation. But it is the responsibility of the big donors to provide alternative livelihoods, alternative crops and development to the farmers, both short term and long term." The head of the UN's drugs agency said recently the Taliban made $100 million last year by levying a 10% tax on opium-growing farmers. In response to the illicit opium trade, General Mohammad Daud reported that counter-narcotics activities had been "boosted considerably" since 2007. During the first eight months of 2007, over 300 tonnes of cannabis, over 25 tonnes of opium and over 10 tonnes of heroin, as well as several tonnes of heroin-producing chemicals, were impounded. Twenty-five heroin-producing laboratories were also destroyed, according to the Interior Ministry.

In December 2008, Daud was a keynote speaker at a U.N. conference in Kabul, Afghanistan. Daud stated that Afghan law enforcement agencies needed international assistance in training and equipment. He talked about lack of security and linkage between drug-trafficking and terrorism as well as profound corruption in the police and the army. His presentation highlighted the Ministry of the Interior's strategy in the field of counternarcotics. These included dismantling drug-trafficking networks/organizations, poppy eradication and crop substitution. Daud informed the participants that the "poppy eradication force" would complete its training soon and would be deployed to the southern provinces of Afghanistan. He noted that the force would be responsible for manually eradicating poppy plantations. He called for international support to continue with the poppy eradication programme and to expand the crop substitution programme to other provinces. The General suggested posting liaison officers to Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan in order to foster international cooperation. Afghanistan had signed agreements with a number of countries and was in the process of signing memorandums of understanding with neighboring countries aimed at improving cooperation, information-sharing, and controlled delivery operations, according to the General. His ministry's activities in strengthening security at the borders and airports and establishing border control liaison officers were also emphasized.

In February 2009 Daud stated that he was hopeful that the poppy crop production in Afghanistan would likely to drop by 50 percent this year. Daud stated in a press conference Taliban and smugglers have joined hands to pose a bigger threat to the Afghan government. Special counter narcotics police have come under enemy attack during the counter-narcotics drive in several occasions that inflicted casualties on the law-enforcers, he said. The campaign against poppy was successful in Logar, Ghazni, Wardag, Paktia, Paktika and Panjshir provinces.

Taliban and opium
The opium trade has been a continuing source of financing for the Taliban. Taliban insurgents force farmers to grow opium poppies to fund their operations. Daud was recently quoted as saying, ""The Taliban have forged an alliance with drug smugglers, providing protection for drug convoys and mounting attacks to keep the government away and the poppy flourishing."  General Mohammad Daud was further quoted in The New Yorker about this alliance, saying, "There has been a coalition between the Taliban and the opium smugglers. This year, they have set up a commission to tax the harvest." In return, he said, the Taliban had offered opium farmers protection from the government's eradication efforts. The switch in strategy has an obvious logic: it provides opium money for the Taliban to sustain itself and helps it to win over the farming communities. In a continued effort to curb the opium trade in Afghanistan Mohammed Duad reported in June 2008 that police in Kabul set fire to 7.5 tonnes of narcotics.  In April 2009, the Afghan anti-drug officers burned more than six-and-a-half tons of seized heroin, opium, hashish and drug-manufacturing chemicals worth up to £70 million on the UK market.  "If we do not burn the drugs, thousands of others will become drug addicts", said Daud, deputy minister for counter narcotics at the Interior Ministry.  By burning this amount of opium and narcotics we show the people we are committed to the fight against drugs."

Mobile opium processing labs
Reports seem to suggest Afghan drug traffickers are turning to new concealment methods. Mobile processing labs started to be seen at the end of 2003 and beginning of 2004. These processing labs can be difficult to locate. According to Daud "reports and tip-offs" have to be relied on in order to find them. Daud added: "Previously, they were using wood in their big laboratories. They could not move [them] and we started to find their laboratories, so they decided to make all their laboratories into mobile labs so they can carry them to different places. They started using gas and diesel [as fuel]." Afghan counter-narcotics police point to key smugglers having strong links with processing laboratories and say that laboratories are sometimes heavily guarded. "They have a lot of weapons, and in some areas they are supported by government officials," said Daud, although he would not reveal in which areas guarded laboratories had been a particular problem. A Kandahar resident who has had close contact with the drugs trade said that laboratories, often just comprising metal drums and a large press, are mainly located in the border areas. The location of laboratories in these areas points to the involvement of Pakistani chemists.

Death
Daud was assassinated in a Taliban bomb attack in Taloqan, Afghanistan, after a meeting held in the headquarters of the provincial governor of Takhar Province. The attack caused six fatalities, among them two German soldiers. The commander of ISAF troops in North Afghanistan, General Markus Kneip, was wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.