Ghazi Amanullah Khan (Pashto and Persian: غازی امان الله خان; 1 June 1892 – 26 April 1960) was the sovereign of Afghanistan from 1919, first as Emir and after 1926 as King, until his abdication in 1929.

[2] His rule was marked by dramatic political and social change, including attempts to modernise Afghanistan along Western lines.

On 14 January 1929, Amanullah abdicated and fled to neighbouring British India as the Afghan Civil War began to escalate.

Upon receiving the news of his father's death, Amanullah immediately seized control of the treasury at Kabul and staged a coup against his uncle.

[14] Amanullah conceptualized a modernist constitution that incorporated equal rights and individual freedoms, with the guidance of his father-in-law and Foreign Minister Mahmud Tarzi.

[15] To ensure national unity based on equal rights for all people before the law, and their participation in the political development of the country, he drafted the country's first constitution, the "Statute of the Supreme Government of Afghanistan", which was officially approved and ratified by 872 tribal elders and government officials gathered in a Loya Jirga in Jalalabad on 11 April 1922.

Amanullah created new more cosmopolitan schools for both boys and girls in the regions and overturned centuries-old traditions such as strict dress codes for women.

Amanullah met with many followers of the Baháʼí Faith in India and Europe, from where he brought back books that are still to be found in the Kabul Library.

[18] The failure of Amanullah Khan's reforms, like that of any other major political phenomena, was the result of a complex set of internal and external variables, some of which were objective in origin and others of which were linked to secret service organisations operating outside the country's borders.

On the one hand, objective reasons arose from existing tensions between the changes being implemented and the interests of society's ruling class.

[citation needed] At the time, Afghanistan's foreign policy was primarily concerned with the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, the so-called Great Game.

This effect was inconsistent, but generally favourable for Afghanistan; Amanullah established a limited Afghan Air Force consisting of donated Soviet planes.

The next day it pulled into Warsaw to be met by Polish ministers, the speaker of the Sejm and the country's president Ignacy Mościcki.

[22] During and after Amanullah's visit to Europe, opposition to his rule increased to the point where an uprising in Jalalabad culminated in a march to the capital, and much of the army deserted instead of resisting.

As a result, Islamic conservatives and opponents led by Habibullāh Kalakāni rose up against his rule and new western inspired modernisation policies.

On 14 December 1928 Kalakāni, a leader of the "Saqqawists" opposition movement accompanied by groups of Kohistanis, led an attack on Kabul, which was repelled after nine days of fighting and retreated to Paghman.

The Shinwari, Mohmand, Kakar, Mangal, Jaji, Ahmadzai, Safi, Ghilzai, along with other Pashtun tribes populate most of this area.

Around 22 March 1929, Amanullah returned to Afghanistan assembling forces in Kandahar to reach Kabul and to dispose of Kalakāni.

From British India, the ex-king travelled to Europe and settled in Italy, buying a villa in Rome's Prati neighbourhood.

Khan, while aware and keen to regain his throne, knew little more about the plan; Nazi officials never invited him to participate in discussions.

While Hitler cancelled the plan in the last days of December 1939, there was still hope in the German Foreign Office and the Abwehr that the Soviets would come forward with a proposal; it never happened.

[31] It was his brother-in-law, Ghulam Siddiq, to whom Khan had given full powers to negotiate on his behalf, that travelled between Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy and Switzerland to participate in talks surrounding the operation.

'[28] Neverthelesss, people in Rome's Prati neighbourhood, where Khan lived, claimed that he arrived with "crates of jewels" which he slowly sold.

[3][4] His body was brought to Afghanistan and buried in the eastern city of Jalalabad near the tomb of his father Haibullah Khan.

Another of his wives, Princess Aliah, was the daughter of his paternal uncle, Emir Nasrullah Khan, and his wife Gulshan, a Shighnani.