Azizullah Karzai | |
|---|---|
 Azizullah Karzai with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in October 2010 | |
| Afghanistan Ambassador to Russia | |
| In office 2010–2013 | |
| President | Hamid Karzai |
| Preceded by | Zalmai Aziz |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Kandahar |
| Nationality | Afghan |
| Profession | Diplomat |
Azizulah Karzai is a politician in Afghanistan. He served as Ambassador to Russia,a position he held from 28 August 2010 until 2013. [1]
Azizulah is originally from southern Afghanistan. He belongs to the Karzai-clan of Pashtuns. He is an uncle of former Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Before the Taliban government he was Afghan Ambassador to Poland. He is considered the family's expert on tribal maneuvering. [2] During the United States attack on Afghanistan in November 2001,he said:"Tribalism is more dangerous than the Islamic fundamentalism of the Taliban because it runs throughout Pashtun society." [3]
After the fall of the Taliban government Karzai was appointed Afghan Ambassador to the Czech Republic. He later became aid to the Afghan Foreign Minister and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. [4] [5] From 2010 until 2013 he served as Afghans Ambassador to Russia.
The Taliban,which also refers to itself by its state name,the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist and Pashtun nationalist militant political movement in Afghanistan. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 1996 to 2001,before being overthrown following the American invasion. It recaptured Kabul on 15 August 2021 following the departure of most coalition forces,after nearly 20 years of insurgency,and currently controls all of the country. However,its government is not recognized by any country. The Taliban government has been criticized for restricting human rights in Afghanistan,including the right of women and girls to work and to have an education.
Hamid Karzai is an Afghan politician who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from July 2002 to September 2014,including as the first elected president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan from December 2004 to September 2014. He previously served as Chairman of the Afghan Interim Administration from December 2001 to July 2002. He is the chief (khān) of the Popalzai Durrani tribe of Pashtuns in Kandahar Province.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan politician,former mujahideen leader and drug trafficker. He is the founder and current leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin political party,so called after Mohammad Yunus Khalis split from Hezbi Islami in 1979 to found Hezb-i Islami Khalis. He has twice served as Prime Minister during the 1990s.
Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad is an American diplomat and foreign policy expert. Khalilzad was U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation from September 2018 to October 2021. Khailzad was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations,serving in the role from 2007 to 2009. Khalilzad was the highest ranking Muslim-American in government at the time he left the position. Prior to this,Khalilzad served in the Bush administration as Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2004 to 2005 and Ambassador to Iraq from 2005 to 2007.
The Durand Line,forms the Afghanistan–Pakistanborder,a 2,670-kilometre (1,660 mi) international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in South Asia. The western end runs to the border with Iran and the eastern end to the border with China.
Gul Agha Sherzai,also known as Mohammad Shafiq,is a politician in Afghanistan. He is the former governor of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. He previously served as Governor of Kandahar province,in the early 1990s and from 2001 until 2003. In October 2013,Sherzai resigned from his post as governor and formally announced himself as a candidate for Afghanistan's 2014 Presidential Election,and served as the minister of border and tribal affairs until the Taliban victory in 2021.
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.
Kandahār is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan,located in the southern part of the country,sharing a border with Pakistan,to the south. It is surrounded by Helmand in the west,Uruzgan in the north and Zabul Province in the east. Its capital is the city of Kandahar,Afghanistan's second largest city,which is located on the Arghandab River. The greater region surrounding the province is called Loy Kandahar. The Emir of Afghanistan sends orders to Kabul from Kandahar making it the de facto capital of Afghanistan,although the main government body operates in Kabul. All meetings with the Emir take place in Kandahar,meetings excluding the Emir are in Kabul.
Uruzgan,also spelled as Urozgan or Oruzgan,is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. Uruzgan is located in the center of the country. The population is 436,079,and the province is mostly a tribal society. Tarinkot serves as the capital of the province.
A jirga is an assembly of leaders that makes decisions by consensus according to Pashtunwali,the Pashtun social code. It is conducted in order to settle disputes among the Pashtuns,but also by members of other ethnic groups who are influenced by them in present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Northern Alliance,officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan,was a military alliance of groups that operated between late 1996 to 2001 after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) took over Kabul. The United Front was originally assembled by key leaders of the Islamic State of Afghanistan,particularly president Burhanuddin Rabbani and former Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. Initially it included mostly Tajiks but by 2000,leaders of other ethnic groups had joined the Northern Alliance. This included Karim Khalili,Abdul Rashid Dostum,Abdullah Abdullah,Mohammad Mohaqiq,Abdul Qadir,Asif Mohseni,Amrullah Saleh and others.
Professor Abdul Ghafoor Ravan Farhâdi is an Afghan academic and diplomat who served as Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 2006.
Jan Mohammad Khan was a politician in Afghanistan,who served as Governor of Oruzgan Province from January 2002 to March 2006,member of the National Assembly,and a special adviser to President Hamid Karzai. He was an elder of the Popolzai Pashtun tribe in Oruzgan and a close ally of Hamid Karzai.
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.
Afghanistan–Pakistan relations refer to the bilateral ties between Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. In August 1947,the partition of British India led to the emergence of Pakistan along Afghanistan's eastern frontier,and the two countries have since had a strained relationship;Afghanistan was the sole country to vote against Pakistan's admission into the United Nations following the latter's independence. Various Afghan government officials and Afghan nationalists have made irredentist claims to large swathes of Pakistan's territory in modern-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Pakistani Balochistan,which complete the traditional homeland of "Pashtunistan" for the Pashtun people. The Taliban has received substantial financial and logistical backing from Pakistan,which remains a significant source of support. Since the Taliban's inception,the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has been providing them with funding,training,and weaponry. However,Pakistan's support for the Taliban is not without risks,as it involves playing a precarious and delicate game. Afghan territorial claims over Pashtun-majority areas that are in Pakistan were coupled with discontent over the permanency of the Durand Line,for which Afghanistan demanded a renegotiation,with the aim of having it shifted eastward to the Indus River. Territorial disputes and conflicting claims prevented the normalization of bilateral ties between the two countries throughout the mid-20th century. Further Afghanistan–Pakistan tensions have arisen concerning a variety of issues,including the Afghanistan conflict and Afghan refugees in Pakistan,water-sharing rights,and a continuously warming relationship between Afghanistan and India. Nonetheless,the Durand Line witnesses frequent occurrences of suicide bombings,airstrikes,or street battles on an almost daily basis.
Mohammad Umer Daudzai is a politician in Afghanistan,most recently having served as President Ashraf Ghani's Special Envoy for Regional Consensus Building on Peace and as Head of the High Peace Council (HPC) Secretariat for a few months,until he was appointed as President Ghani's Campaign Manager for the 2019 Presidential elections. After a career with international non-governmental organizations including the United Nations Development Program in Geneva,Daudzai started work as two term Chief of Staff of Afghan President Hamid Karzai from 2003 to 2005 and then from 2007 to around 2010. From 2005 until 2007,President Karzai appointed him as Afghan Ambassador in Iran. He then served as the Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan,tasked with advancing efforts to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan. In September 2013,Daudzai was asked to serve as Afghan Minister of Interior in Kabul and ensure security for the challenging 2014 presidential elections.
Mohammad Yousef Pashtun is an Afghan technocrat and politician. He served as Minister of Urban Development and Housing for two terms and as Governor of Kandahar province in 2003,replacing Gul Agha Sherzai under President Hamid Karzai's administration. In 2010,he was appointed as Senior Adviser to President Karzai on Construction,Mines,Water &Energy. In 2014,minister Pashtun continued to serve as Senior Adviser to President Ashraf Ghani. Yِousef Pashtun is also chairing the Kabul New City Development Authority Board.
Abdullah Abdullah is an 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.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) intelligence agency of Pakistan has been accused of being heavily involved in covertly running military intelligence programs in Afghanistan since before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The first ISI operation in Afghanistan took place in 1975. It was in "retaliation to Republic of Afghanistan's proxy war and support to the militants against Pakistan". Before 1975,ISI did not conduct any operation in Afghanistan and it was only after decade of Republic of Afghanistan's proxy war against Pakistan,support to militants and armed incursion in 1960 and 1961 in Bajaur that Pakistan was forced to retaliate. Later on,in the 1980s,the ISI in Operation Cyclone systematically coordinated the distribution of arms and financial means provided by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to factions of the Afghan mujahideen such as the Hezb-e Islami (HeI) of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud whose forces would later be known as the Northern Alliance. After the Soviet retreat,the different Mujahideen factions turned on each other and were unable to come to a power sharing deal which resulted in a civil war. The United States,along with the ISI and the Pakistani government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto became the primary source of support for Hekmatyar in his 1992–1994 bombardment campaign against the Islamic State of Afghanistan and the capital Kabul.
| ||||||||||
