In the wake of the failed political reforms of the 1949-52 period came a major shakeup within the royal family. FraserTytler notes that since the advent of Nadir Shah to the throne in 1929, Afghanistan had been ruled by the royal family as a united group. By mid-1953, however, the younger members of the royal family (including perhaps the king himself) had challenged the dominance of the king’s uncles, and in September 1953 the rift became public when the king’s first cousin and brother-in-law, Daoud (son of the third Musahiban brother, Muhammad Aziz, who had been assassinated in Berlin in 1933), became prime minister. The king’s uncle, Shah Mahmud, left his post, but he continued to proffer his support and advice to the new leaders. The change occurred peacefully, entirely within-and apparently with the consent of-the royal family.

Prime Minister Daoud was the first of the young, Westerneducated generation of the royal family to wield power in Kabul. If the proponents of the liberal experiment hoped that he would move toward a more open political system, they were disappointed. Daoud was, as Fraser-Tytler puts it, “by temperament and training …of an authoritarian habit of mind.” By all accounts, however, he was a dynamic leader whose accession to power marked major changes in Afghanistan’s policies, both domestic and foreign.

Although Daoud was concerned to correct what he perceived as the pro-Western bias of previous governments, his keen interest in modernization manifested itself in continued support of the Helmand Valley project, which was designed to transform life in southwestern Afghanistan. Another area of domestic policy initiative by Daoud included his cautious steps toward emancipation of women. At the fortieth celebration of national independence in 1959, Daoud had the wives of his ministers appear in public unveiled. When religious leaders protested, he challenged them to cite a single verse of the Quran that specifically mandated veiling. When they continued to resist, he jailed them for a week. Daoud also increased control over the tribes, starting with the repression of a tribal war in the contentious Khost area adjacent to Pakistan in September 1959 and the forcible collection of land taxes in Qandahar in December 1959 in the face of antigovernment demonstrations promoted by local religious leaders.

Daoud’s social and economic policies within Afghanistan, reformist but cautious, were relatively successful; his foreign policy-which was carried out by his brother, Mohammad Naim-although fruitful in some respects, resulted in severe economic dislocation and, ultimately, his own political eclipse. Two principles guided Daoud’s foreign policy: to balance what he regarded as the excessively pro-Western orientation of previous governments by improving relations with the Soviet Union but without sacrificing economic aid from the United States, and to pursue the Pashtunistan issue by every possible means. The two goals were to some extent mutually reinforcing because hostilities with Pakistan caused the Kabul government to fall back on the Soviet Union as its trade and transit link with the rest of the world. Daoud believed that the rivalry between the two superpowers for regional clients or allies created the conditions in which he could play one off against the other in his search for aid and development assistance.

Relations between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union in the 1953-63 period began on a high note with a Soviet development loan equivalent to US$3.5 million in January 1954. Daoud’s desire for improved bilateral relations became a necessity when the Pakistani-Afghan border was closed for five months in 1955. When the Iranian and American governments declared that they were unable to create an alternate Afghan trade access route of nearly 5,800 kilometers to the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Sea, the Afghans had no choice but to request a renewal of the 1950 transit agreement. The renewal was ratified in June 1955 and followed by a new bilateral barter agreement: Soviet petroleum, building materials, and metals in exchange for Afghan raw materials. After a December 1955 visit to Kabul by Soviet leaders Nikolay Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union announced a US$100 million development loan for projects to be mutually agreed upon. Before the end of the year the Afghans also announced a 10-year extension of the Soviet-Afghan Treaty of Neutrality and Non-Aggression, originally signed in 1931 by Nadir Shah. Afghan-Soviet ties grew throughout this period, as did Afghan links with the Soviet Union’s East European allies, especially Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Despite these strengthened ties to the Soviet Union, the Daoud regime sought to maintain good relations with the United States, which began to be more interested in Afghanistan as a result of the efforts by Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration to solidify an alliance in the “Northern Tier” (Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan). Adhering to its nonaligned stance, the Afghan government refused to join the American-sponsored Baghdad Pact, although Eisenhower’s personal representative was courteously welcomed when he came to discuss regional issues in 1957. These rebuffs did not deter the United States from continuing its relatively low-level aid program in Afghanistan. Its other projects in the 1953-63 period included the Qandahar International Airport (which became obsolete with the advent of jet aircraft), assistance to Ariana Afghan Airlines, and continuation of the Helmand Valley Project.

The United States was reluctant to provide Afghanistan with military aid, and the Daoud government successfully sought it from the Soviet Union and its allies. These nations agreed to provide Afghanistan with the equivalent of US$25 million worth of military materiel in 1955 and also undertook the construction of military airfields in Mazar-a Sharif, Shindand, and Bagrami. Although the United States did provide military training for Afghan officers, it made no attempt to match Soviet arms transfers. Dupree points out that eventually the United States and Soviet aid programs were bound to overlap, and when they did there developed a quiet, de facto cooperation between the two powers.

All other foreign policy issues faded in importance, given Daoud’s virtual obsession with the Pashtunistan issue. His policy disrupted Kabul’s important relationship with Pakistan and-because Pakistan was landlocked Afghanistan’s main trade route-the dispute virtually cut off development aid, except from the Soviet Union, and sharply diminished Afghanistan’s external trade for several years.

In 1953 and 1954 Daoud simply applied more of the same techniques used in the past to press the Pashtunistan issue, i.e., hostile propaganda and payments to tribesmen (on both sides of the border) to subvert the Pakistani government. In 1955, however, the situation became more critical from Daoud’s point of view. Pakistan, for reasons of internal politics, abolished the four provincial governments of West Pakistan and formed one provincial unit (like East Pakistan). The Afghan government protested the abolition of the NWFP (excluding the Tribal Agencies), and in March 1955 a mob in Kabul attacked the Pakistani embassy and consulate and tore down their flags. Retaliatory mobs attacked the Afghan consulate in Peshawar, and soon both nations recalled their officials from the neighboring state. Despite the failure of mediation by a group of Islamic states, tempers eventually cooled, and flags were rehoisted above the diplomatic establishments in both countries. This incident left great bitterness in Afghanistan, however, where interest in the Pashtunistan issue remained high, and the closure of the border during the spring and fall of 1955 again underlined to the Kabul government the need for good relations with the Soviets to provide assured transit routes for Afghan trade.

Although the Afghan side was not resigned to accepting the status quo on the Pashtunistan issue, the conflict remained dormant for several years, during which relations improved slightly between the two nations. Nor did the 1958 coup that brought General Mohammad Ayub Khan to power in Pakistan bring on any immediate change in the situation. In 1960, however, Daoud sent Afghan troops across the border into Bajaur in an unsuccessful and foolhardy attempt to manipulate events in that area and to press the Pashtunistan issue. The Afghan forces were routed by the Pakistan military, but military skirmishes along the border continued at a low level in 1961, often between Pakistani Pashtun (armed by the Afghans) and Pakistani regular and paramilitary forces. The propaganda war, carried out by radio, was more vicious than ever during this period.

Finally, in August 1961 Pakistan used another weapon on Afghanistan: It informed the Afghan government that its subversion made normal diplomatic relations impossible and that Pakistan was closing its consulates in Afghanistan, requesting that Afghanistan follow suit. The Afghan government, its pride severely stung, responded that the Pakistanis had one week to rescind this policy, or Afghanistan would cut diplomatic relations. When the Pakistanis failed to respond to this, Afghanistan severed relations on September 6, 1961. Traffic between the two countries came to a halt, just as two of Afghanistan’s major export crops were ready to be shipped to India. The grape and pomegranate crops, grown in traditionally rebellious areas, were bought by the government to avoid trouble. The Soviet Union stepped in, offering to buy the crops and airlift them from Afghanistan. What the Soviets did not ship, Ariana Afghan Airlines airlifted to India, so that in both 1961 and 1962 the fruit crop was exported successfully. Dupree notes that although the loss of this crop would not have been as disastrous to the average Afghan as observers generally suggest, the situation did provide the opportunity for a fine public relations gesture by the Soviets. At the same time, although the United States attempted to mediate the dispute, it was clearly linked closely to Pakistan.

More than the fruit crop was jeopardized by the closure of Afghanistan’s main trade route. Much of the equipment and material provided by foreign aid programs and needed for development projects was held up in Pakistan. Another outgrowth of the dispute was Pakistan’s decision to close the border to nomads (members of the Ghilzai, variously known as Powindahs or Suleiman Khel), who had been spending winters in Pakistan and India and summers in Afghanistan as long as anyone could remember. Although the Pakistani government denied that the decision was owing to the impasse with Afghanistan, this claim appeared disingenuous, and the issue added weight to the growing conflict between the two countries. Afghanistan’s economic situation continued to deteriorate. The nation was heavily dependent upon customs revenues, which fell dramatically; trade suffered, and foreign exchange reserves were seriously depleted.

It became clear by 1963 that the two stubborn leaders, Daoud of Afghanistan and Ayub Khan of Pakistan, would not yield and that one of them would have to be removed from power to resolve the issue. Despite growing criticism of Ayub among some Pakistanis, his position was strong internally, and it was Afghanistan’s economy that was suffering most. In March 1963 King Zahir Shah, with the backing of the royal family, asked Daoud for his resignation on the basis that the country’s economy was deteriorating because of Daoud’s Pashtunistan policy. During the decade that Daoud was prime minister, the king, who was his peer in age, had become better known by the public and more influential in the royal family and the political elite. Because he controlled the armed forces, Daoud almost certainly had the power to resist the king’s request for his resignation, but he did not do so. Daoud bowed out, as did his brother Naim, and Zahir Shah named as the new prime minister Muhammad Yousuf, a non-Pashtun, Germaneducated technocrat who had been serving as the minister of mines and industries.