Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai is an Afghan former politician,academic,and economist who served as the president of Afghanistan from September 2014 until August 2021,when his government was overthrown by the Taliban.
General Abdul Rahim Wardak is an Afghan politician and former Defense Minister of Afghanistan. He was appointed on December 23,2004,by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Before this appointment,Wardak was the deputy Defense Minister to the former minister,Mohammed Fahim. During the 1980s Soviet–Afghan War,Wardak had been a national Mujahideen resistance leader who fought the Soviet forces. He is an ethnic Pashtun from the Wardak province. His diplomacy has been instrumental in promoting ethnic reconciliation due to his lineage from tribal chieftains with strong Pashtun relationships with all ethnic groups of the country. He is fluent in Pashto,Dari (Persian),and English.
Bismillah Khan Mohammadi,or Bismillah Khan,is an Afghan politician who served as the defense minister of Afghanistan from 2012 to 2015 and for two months in 2021. From 2002 to 2010,he served as Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army,and from 2010 to 2012 he held the post of Interior Minister of Afghanistan. He has an anti-Taliban background and once served as a senior commander under Ahmad Shah Massoud. Despite the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021,Mohammadi claims to remain the minister of defense as part of the government of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan.
Asadullah Khalid is a politician in Afghanistan. He served as head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS),which is the domestic intelligence agency of Afghanistan. Before his appointment as the head of the NDS in September 2012,Khalid served as the Minister of Tribal and Border Affairs. Between 2005 and 2008,he was the Governor of Kandahar Province and prior to that as Governor of Ghazni Province (2002-2005). From 2018 until 2021 he was the Minister of Defense. Khalid is said to be affiliated with the Islamic Dawah Organisation of Afghanistan and has been noted as one of many loyalists of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
New Kabul Bank is a bank in Afghanistan that has its main branch in the capital city of Kabul. It was established in 2004 as the Kabul Bank,the first private bank in Afghanistan. After corruption and scandals it was re-established in 2011 as the New Kabul Bank.
Mohammad Haneef Atmar is an Afghan politician and former KhAD agent. He served as the Minister of interior until he was removed from the Ministry by Hamid Karzai in the wake of attacks on the June 2010 Afghan Peace Jirga. Before that he worked with several international humanitarian organisations and served as Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development and Minister of Education. In 2011,he was part of the Right and Justice party. During his time in office,he has visited several countries to get funding to stabilise Afghanistan.
The War in Afghanistan was an armed conflict from 2001 to 2021. It was the direct response to the September 11 attacks. It began when an international military coalition led by the United States launched an invasion of Afghanistan,declaring Operation Enduring Freedom as part of the earlier-declared war on terror;toppling the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate and establishing the Islamic Republic three years later. The Taliban and its allies were expelled from major population centers by the US-led forces,supporting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance;however Bin Laden relocated to neighboring Pakistan. The conflict officially ended with the 2021 Taliban offensive,which overthrew the Islamic Republic,and re-established the Islamic Emirate. It was the longest war in the military history of the United States,surpassing the length of the Vietnam War (1955–1975) by approximately six months.
Abdullah Abdullah is a Pashtun Afghan politician who led the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) from May 2020 until August 2021,when the Afghan government was overthrown by the Taliban. The council had been established to facilitate peace talks between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban insurgents. Abdullah served as the Chief Executive of Afghanistan from September 2014 to March 2020,and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from December 2001 to April 2005. Prior to that,he was a senior member of the Northern Alliance,working as an adviser to Ahmad Shah Massoud. He worked as an ophthalmologist and medical doctor in the 1980s.
Amrullah Saleh is an Afghan politician who served as the first vice president of Afghanistan from February 2020 to August 2021,and acting interior minister from 2018 to 2019. He was the head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) from 2004 to 2010.
The Afghan conflict refers to the series of events that have kept Afghanistan in a near-continuous state of armed conflict since the 1970s. Early instability followed the collapse of the Kingdom of Afghanistan in the largely non-violent 1973 coup d'état,which deposed Afghan monarch Mohammad Zahir Shah in absentia,ending his 40-year-long reign. With the concurrent establishment of the Republic of Afghanistan,headed by Mohammad Daoud Khan,the country's relatively peaceful and stable period in modern history came to an end. However,all-out fighting did not erupt until after 1978,when the Saur Revolution violently overthrew Khan's government and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Subsequent unrest over the radical reforms that were being pushed by the then-ruling People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) led to unprecedented violence,prompting a large-scale pro-PDPA military intervention by the Soviet Union in 1979. In the ensuing Soviet–Afghan War,the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen received extensive support from Pakistan,the United States,and Saudi Arabia in a joint covert effort that was dubbed Operation Cyclone.
Hamdullah Mohib is a Pashtun Afghan politician and former diplomat.
Peace processes have taken place during several phases of the Afghanistan conflict,which has lasted since the 1978 Saur Revolution.
The Ghazni offensive began on 10 August 2018,when Taliban fighters launched an assault on the city of Ghazni,Afghanistan's sixth largest city and one which has been culturally and strategically important for much of the country's history. The attack resulted in the deaths of hundreds of insurgents,soldiers,police,and civilians. The city also sustained large-scale property damage. The battle,occurring only weeks before Afghanistan's 2018 parliamentary election,was the largest since a three-day truce in June had raised hopes of peace talks.
General Mohammad Yasin Zia,is an Afghan military officer and politician. He is a former Chief of General Staff,former Deputy Defense Minister,and former governor of Takhar Province,Afghanistan. Zia has also served as head of Afghanistan's counter terrorism unit (2011) and as the deputy director of the National Directorate of Security (2011–2015). In 2022,he was reported to be one of the leaders of the anti-Taliban Afghanistan Freedom Front resistance movement.
Ajmal Ahmady is an Afghan-American economist and politician who formerly served as the Acting Governor of the Central Bank of Afghanistan,Da Afghanistan Bank,the Acting Minister of Commerce and Industry of Afghanistan,the Senior Economic Advisor to the President of Afghanistan,and represented Afghanistan on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline.
The 2021 Taliban offensive was a military offensive by the Taliban insurgent group and allied militants that led to the fall of the Kabul-based Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the end of the nearly 20-year War in Afghanistan that had begun following the United States invasion of the country. The Taliban victory had widespread domestic and international ramifications regarding human rights and proliferation of terrorism. The offensive included a continuation of the bottom-up succession of negotiated or paid surrenders to the Taliban from the village level upwards that started following the February 2020 US–Taliban deal.
On 15 August 2021,Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul was captured by the Taliban after a major insurgent offensive that began in May 2021. It was the final action of the War in Afghanistan,and marked a total victory for the Taliban. This led to the overthrowing of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan under President Ashraf Ghani and the reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban.
The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was a presidential republic that ruled Afghanistan from 2004 to 2021. The state was established to replace the Afghan interim (2001–2002) and transitional (2002–2004) administrations,which were formed after the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan that had toppled the partially recognized Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. However,on 15 August 2021,the country was recaptured by the Taliban,which marked the end of the 2001–2021 war,the longest war in US history. This led to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic,led by President Ashraf Ghani,and the reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate under the control of the Taliban. While the United Nations still recognizes the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of Afghanistan,this toppled regime controls no portion of the country today,nor does it operate in exile;it effectively no longer exists. The Islamic Emirate is the de facto ruling government. The US–Taliban deal,signed on 29 February 2020 in Qatar,was one of the critical events that caused the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Following the deal,the US dramatically reduced the number of air attacks and deprived the ANSF of a critical edge in fighting the Taliban insurgency,leading to the Taliban takeover of Kabul.
The politics of Afghanistan are based on a totalitarian emirate within the Islamic theocracy in which the Taliban Movement holds a monopoly on power. Dissent is not permitted,and politics are mostly limited to internal Taliban policy debates and power struggles. As the government is provisional,there is no constitution or other basis for the rule of law. The structure is autocratic,with all power concentrated in the hands of the supreme leader and his clerical advisors. According to the V-Dem Democracy indices Afghanistan was as of 2023 the 4th least electoral democratic country in the world.
