Abdul Hafiz Mansoor (also spelled Mansur, born in 1963 in the Panjsher Valley) is an Afghan politician.
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in South-Central Asia. Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east; Iran in the west; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north; and in the far northeast, China. Occupying 652,000 square kilometers (252,000 sq mi), it is a mountainous country with plains in the north and southwest. Kabul is the capital and largest city. The population is 32 million, mostly composed of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks.
While Mansoor was a university student, the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan, and Mansoor joined the Jamiat-e Islami, a mujahideen faction based in the Tajik region of Afghanistan. [1] He became the editor of the Jamiat-e Islami's newspaper, Voice of the Holy Warriors. [2]
The Soviet–Afghan War lasted over nine years, from December 1979 to February 1989. Insurgent groups known collectively as the mujahideen, as well as smaller Maoist groups, fought a guerrilla war against the Soviet Army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan government, mostly in the rural countryside. The mujahideen groups were backed primarily by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, making it a Cold War proxy war. Between 562,000 and 2,000,000 civilians were killed and millions of Afghans fled the country as refugees, mostly to Pakistan and Iran.
Jamayat-E-Islami, sometimes shortened to Jamiat, is a Muslim political party in Afghanistan. The oldest Muslim political party in Afghanistan, it was originally formed as a student political society at Kabul University. The majority of the party are ethnic Tajiks of northern and western Afghanistan. It has a communitarian ideology based on Islamic law. During the Soviet–Afghan War and the following Afghan Civil War against the communist government, Jamiat-e Islami was one of the most powerful of the mujahideen groups. Burhanuddin Rabbani led the party from 1968 to 2011, and served as President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan from 1992 to 2001.
Mujahideen is the plural form of mujahid, the term for one engaged in Jihad.
He became the head of Afghanistan's news agency when the Jamiat-led mujahideen captured Kabul in 1992. [1]
Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan, located in the eastern section of the country. It is also a municipality, forming part of the greater Kabul Province. According to estimates in 2019, the population of Kabul is 4.114 million, which includes all the major ethnic groups of Afghanistan. Rapid urbanization had made Kabul the world's 75th largest city.
After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Mansoor served as the first director of state radio and television in Afghanistan. As director, he was criticized for some of his conservative decisions, which included a ban on showing female singers on TV.[ citation needed ] He was a member of the 2002 and 2003 loya jirgas [1] and in 2003 ran for the loya jirga's chairmanship, but lost to Sibghatullah Mojaddedi. [2]
An emergency loya jirga was held in Kabul, Afghanistan between 11 and 19 June 2002 to elect a transitional administration. The loya jirga was called for by the Bonn Agreement and Bush administration. The agreement was drawn up in December 2001 in Germany. Conducted under United Nations auspices, the talks at Bonn sought a solution to the problem of government in Afghanistan after the US ousted the Taliban government.
A 502-delegate loya jirga convened in Kabul, Afghanistan, on December 14, 2003, to consider the proposed Afghan Constitution. Originally planned to last ten days, the assembly did not endorse the charter until January 4, 2004. As has been generally the case with these assemblies, the endorsement came by way of consensus rather than a vote. Afghanistan's last constitution was drafted for the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in November 1987.
Mansoor also ran for president in the election of October 2004, but only received 0.2% of the vote. Mansoor has been highly critical of President Karzai, and has accused him of trying to form a dictatorship. [3]
An election to the office of President of Afghanistan was held on October 9, 2004. Hamid Karzai won the election with 55.4% of the votes and three times more votes than any other candidate. Twelve candidates received less than 1% of the vote. It is estimated that more than three-quarters of Afghanistan's nearly 12 million registered voters cast ballots. The election was overseen by the Joint Electoral Management Body, chaired by Zakim Shah and vice-chaired by Ray Kennedy, an American working for the United Nations.
