Nur Mohammad Taraki was a Shabikhel Taraki Ghilzay Pashtun from the Sur Kelay village in the Nawa Valley in the Muqur District of Ghazni Province. In 1965, Taraki was elected general secretary of the PDPA in its founding congress. Thirteen years later, in 1978, he became the president and prime minister of Afghanistan after a coup that toppled the centuries-old Durrani rule. It is therefore necessary to describe his biography in detail, particularly because of incorrect but widely reported information about him.

Taraki had no formal education except for a few classes he attended in a school in Quetta in British India, where he learned English.

Taraki and Hafizullah Amin worked together to greatly weaken the Parcham faction of the PDPA. Eventually, on September 14, 1979, Taraki himself was killed by Amin.