Ustad Atta Mohammad Noor

Ata Mohammad Noor عطا محمد نور
Ata Mohammad Noor in August 2011
Governor of Balkh, Afghanistan
Incumbent
Assumed office 2004
Preceded by	Habibullah Habib
Personal details
Born	1964 Mazar-e Sharif, Balkh Province, Afghanistan
Political party	Jamiat-e Islami
Relations	Belal Raufi (son)
Children	7 (5 sons, 2 daughters)
Profession	Governor

Atta Muhammad Nur (also spelled Ata Mohammed Noor, Persian: عطا محمد نور) (born 1964) is a politician in Afghanistan, serving as the Governor of Balkh Province in the north of the country. He was appointed in 2004 by President Hamid Karzai. An ethnic Tajik, he worked to educate the Mujahideen after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, gaining the nickname "The Teacher." He then became an anti-Soviet mujahideen resistance commander for the Jamiat-e Islami. When the Taliban took power in late 1996, Atta Noor served as a commander in the anti-Taliban United Front (Northern Alliance) under Ahmad Shah Massoud. He led operations in the Balkh area. He has been described by The Economist as being "immensely wealthy."

Born in Balkh province, Atta Mohammed joined the mujahideen fighting the Soviet presence in Afghanistan in the 1980s and became affiliated with the Jamiat-e Islami party. By 1992, he had become one of the most powerful Mujahideen commanders in Northern Afghanistan.

Following the fall of Mohammed Najibullah's Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, while remaining a Jamiat commander, he also joined Abdul Rashid Dostum's National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, becoming a deputy leader of that movement during its first congress on June 1, 1992. However, ideological differences with Dostum soon emerged, and in 1993, he split from Dostum. In January 1994, Atta Noor fought to consolidate the Islamic State of Afghanistan's control over the capital of Balkh, Mazar-i-Sharif, against Dostum's Junbish milita. But Dostum struck first, mobilizing 10,000 men and defeating Atta's forces.