Daoud Khan proclaimed himself the first President of Afghanistan and established the National Revolutionary Party as the country's sole political organization. A new flag was raised outside the Arg presidential palace in 1974. In January 1977, a loya jirga approved a constitution that formalized what everyone already knew: this was a presidential one-party state, and opposition would be suppressed -- sometimes violently. Yet Daoud was no simple autocrat. He launched a seven-year economic plan, opened schools across the country, and by the time of his overthrow, one million Afghan students were enrolled, many of them girls. He made the Islamic veil optional for women, a stance that earned him support from secularists and acid attacks on unveiled women from extremists.

Daoud inherited a military already steeped in Soviet influence, and he expanded it dramatically. By November 1974, Afghanistan was building up forces along the Durand Line with staggering Soviet support: 1,170 tanks including T-62s and T-55s, over 6,000 pieces of artillery, 500 SAM-7 and 500 SAM-2 missiles, 40 MiG-21s, 40 MiG-17s, and 50 combat helicopters. The Afghan Republican Army grew from 13 infantry divisions to 16, with each corps reinforced by a mechanized brigade and tank battalion. Along the Jalalabad-Khyber Pass front, a planned "Jalalabad Corps" took shape with mountain divisions and armored battalions. Kandahar Airfield became fully operational, hosting two squadrons of MiG-17 aircraft. Yet Daoud also cultivated military ties with India and Egypt, trying to avoid total dependence on Moscow.

The republic's foreign policy was a high-wire act. Daoud sought investment from the Soviet Union and the United States while simultaneously courting oil-rich Middle Eastern nations -- Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait -- for financial assistance. His strong stance on Pashtunistan, the dream of uniting Pashtun lands on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, led Pakistan to close its border in retaliation. Relations thawed after Daoud's 1976 visit to Pakistan, and he and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto came close to a landmark deal: recognition of the Durand Line in exchange for Pakistani autonomy for the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan. The agreement never materialized. Zia ul-Haq's military coup toppled Bhutto in July 1977, and Daoud himself had only months left.

A 1973 US State Department report captured the republic's fundamental vulnerability: Afghan soldiers showed respect "first and foremost to his own tribal chief or head of family" rather than the nation. By the late 1970s, the Afghan Air Force had over 180 aircraft -- MiG-17s, MiG-19s, MiG-21s, Sukhoi Su-7 strike fighters, and Ilyushin Il-28 bombers -- but the loyalty of the men flying them was uncertain. Two hundred seventy officers had been sent to train in the Soviet Union, another 250 to India. The army's institutional allegiances were as divided as the country's tribal ones. When the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan decided to move against Daoud, it found willing hands throughout the officer corps.

On April 27, 1978, troops from the military base at Kabul International Airport began moving toward the city center. Within twenty-four hours they had consolidated power, launching an air raid on the Arg presidential palace and seizing communication lines and critical institutions. Daoud and most of his family were executed the following day. Nur Muhammad Taraki, General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, became head of state of the newly declared Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The Saur Revolution had consumed the man who made it possible: Daoud's own military expansion, his reliance on Soviet-trained officers, and his suppression of political alternatives had created the conditions for a communist takeover. Afghanistan's first republic was dead. What followed -- Soviet invasion, civil war, Taliban rule -- would prove incomparably worse.