Legacy Matters

Opening a Secret Grave under a Martyr's Flag

KHOJA GHAR, Afghanistan — Ordered to bury 16 bodies in the dead of night in 1978, a wary young army officer did his best to remember the location, quietly counting the paces from the unmarked mass grave to the roadside.

He gathered from his fellow soldiers that they had just buried Afghanistan’s first president, Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan, and his family. His assassination, during a Communist coup in those tumultuous days, precipitated three decades of war in Afghanistan, a succession of conflicts that are still not spent and that have since touched every Afghan family.
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It took 30 years and the relative stability and freedom under President Hamid Karzai for the former officer, Pacha Mir, to reveal his secret. With his help and that of another witness, the government has at long last identified the remains of the former president and his family and announced preparations to reinter the bodies with a state funeral in coming weeks.
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“If you ask any Afghan when did it all start, they will say it is because of that, the assassination of Mr. Daoud, this was the turning point,” said Nadir Naeem, 43, a member of Afghanistan’s royal family and a grandson of Mr. Daoud. “The last day that Afghanistan was independent was 27th April, 1978.”

Opening a Secret Grave Lets Afghans Close a Chapter of a Brutal Era

“We have not come back for revenge,” said Mr. Ghazi, whose father, Mohammed Nizam, a son-in-law of the president and a Foreign Ministry official, was killed along with his grandfather. “The truth has to be discovered and put at the disposal of the Afghan people.”

For the family, the discovery has come as a relief.

“As Muslims,” Mr. Ghazi said, “we have to have a grave and somewhere to pray. If we can have that then we can rest.”