Nur Muhammad Taraki (15 July 1917 – 8 October 1979) was an Afghan communist statesman during the Cold War who served as President of Afghanistan from 1978 to 1979. Taraki was born in Nawa, Ghazni Province and graduated from Kabul University, after which he started his political career as a journalist. He later became one of the founding members of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and was elected as the party's general secretary at its first congress. He ran as a candidate in the 1965 Afghan parliamentary election but failed to win a seat. In 1966 he published the first issue of Khalq, a party newspaper, but the government closed it down shortly afterward. Taraki led the Khalq wing of the PDPA. In 1978 he, Hafizullah Amin and Babrak Karmal initiated the Saur Revolution and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
Born |
15 July 1917 Ghazni, Afghanistan
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Died |
14 September 1979 (aged 62) Kabul, Afghanistan
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Zodiac | Cancer |
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