Hamid Karzai (born 24 December 1957) is the current President of Afghanistan, since December 7, 2004. He became a prominent political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001. From December 2001, Hamid Karzai had been the Chairman of the Transitional Administration followed by the Interim President from 2002 until he won the 2004 Presidential election of Afghanistan. Karzai is known for his trademark Karakul hat.

Early years and personal life

Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun of the Popalzai clan of the Durrani tribe, was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He comes from a family that were strong supporters of the former king, Zahir Shah. He has six brothers and one sister. Karzai is well-versed in several languages, including his mother-tongue Pashto, as well as Persian, Urdu, Hindi, English and French.

From 1979 to 1983, Karzai took a postgraduate course in political science at Himachal Pradesh University in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India. He then returned to work as a fund-raiser by supporting anti-Soviet Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Soviet intervention for the rest of the 1980s. After the fall of Najibullah’s Soviet-backed government in 1992, he served as Deputy Foreign Minister in the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani.

In 1999, Hamid Karzai married Zeenat Karzai, an obstetrician by profession who was working as a doctor with Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. They have a son born in 2007 named Mirwais.

Former Taliban supporter

When the Taliban emerged in the 1990s, Karzai was at first one of their supporters but later he broke with them and refused to serve as their U.N. ambassador. However on August 20, 1998, after an attempt by the United States to kill Osama bin Laden with a cruise missile, Karzai said,

He lived in exile in Quetta, in Pakistan where he worked to reinstate the Afghan king, Zahir Shah. His father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, was assassinated, presumably by Taliban agents, on July 14, 1999, and Karzai swore revenge against the Taliban by working to help overthrow them. In 2001, Hamid Karzai worked closely with the Ahmad Shah Massoud to help gather support for the anti-Taliban movement.

On February 11, 2005, in an interview with the Oxford International Review, Karzai criticizes the role the U.S. played in empowering the Taliban to take control in Afghanistan. He claims he spent many years before the 9/11 attacks warning embassies about the threat, but the West failed to respond, an act of “neglect, selfishness and short-sightedness.”

President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

After winning a democratic mandate in the 2004 election and removing many of the former Northern Alliance warlords from his cabinet, it was thought that Karzai would pursue a more aggressively reformist path in 2005. However, Karzai has proved to be more cautious than was expected.

Ever since Karzai’s new administration took over in 2004, the economy of Afghanistan has been growing rapidly for the first time in many years. Government revenue is increasing every year, although it is still heavily dependent on foreign aid.

On September 20, 2006 Karzai told the United Nations General Assembly that Afghanistan has become the “worst victim” of terrorism. Karzai said terrorism is “rebounding” in his country, with militants infiltrating the borders to wage attacks on civilians. He stated, “This does not have its seeds alone in Afghanistan. Military action in the country will, therefore, not deliver the shared goal of eliminating terrorism.” He demanded assistance from the international community to destroy terrorist sanctuaries inside and outside Afghanistan. “You have to look beyond Afghanistan to the sources of terrorism,” he told the UN General Assembly, and “destroy terrorist sanctuaries beyond” the country, dismantle the elaborate networks in the region that recruit, indoctrinate, train, finance, arm, and deploy terrorists. These activities are also robbing thousands of Afghan children of their right to education, and prevent health workers from doing their jobs in Afghanistan. In addition he promised to eliminate opium-poppy cultivation in the country, which helps fuel the ongoing insurgency. He has repeatedly demanded that NATO and U.S.-led coalition forces take more care when conducting military operations in residential areas to avoid civilian casualties, which undermine his government’s already weak standing in parts of the country.

In a video broadcast on September 24, 2006, Karzai stated that if the money wasted on the Iraq War was actually spent on rebuilding Afghanistan, his country would “be in heaven in less than one year”. In May of 2007, after as many as 51 Afghan civilians were killed in a bombing, Karzai asserted that his government “can no longer accept” casualties caused by the US and NATO operations.

Links

• Official Site: Office of the President | Hamid Karzai Speeches
• Wikipedia: Hamid Karzai Overview
• Election Updates : Hamid Karzai