Hamid Karzai, GCMG (Pashto: حامد کرزی, Ḥāmid Karzay; born 24 December 1957) is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001. During the December 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Germany, Karzai was selected by prominent Afghan political figures to serve a six month term as Chairman of the Interim Administration.
He was then chosen for a two years term as Interim President during the 2002 loya jirga (grand assembly) that was held in Kabul, Afghanistan. After the2004 presidential election, Karzai was declared winner and became President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. He won a second five-year-term in the 2009 presidential election.
Early Years and Education
Karzai was born on 24 December 1957 in the village of Karz, located on the edge of Kandahar City in southern Afghanistan. He is an ethnic Pashtun of the Popalzai tribe. His father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, served as the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament during the 1960s. His grandfather, Khair Mohammad Khan, had served in the 1919 Afghanistan's war of independence and as the Deputy Speaker of the Senate. Karzai's family were strong supporters of Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan. His uncle, Habibullah Karzai, served as representative of Afghanistan at the United Nations and is said to have accompanied King Zahir Shah in the early 1960s to the United States for a special meeting with U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Hamid Karzai attended Mahmood Hotaki Elementary School in Kandahar and Sayed Jamaluddin Afghani School in Kabul. He graduated from Habibia High School in 1976. From 1979 to 1983, Karzai took a postgraduate course in political science at Himachal Pradesh University in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India. He is well versed in several languages, including his native tongue which is Pashto as well as Dari (Persian), Urdu, Hindi, English and French.
Early Careers
After obtaining his Master's degree in India he moved to neighboring Pakistan to work as a fundraiser for the anti-communist mujahideen during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan. The Mujahideens were backed by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Karzai was a secret contact for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time. While Karzai remained in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation his family emigrated to the United States. When Najibullah's Soviet-backed government collapsed in 1992, the Peshawar Accords agreed upon by the Afghan political parties established the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government to be followed by general elections. Karzai accompanied the first mujahideen leaders into Kabul in 1992 following the Soviet withdrawal. He served as Deputy Foreign Minister in the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Early Careers
After obtaining his Master's degree in India he moved to neighboring Pakistan to work as a fundraiser for the anti-communist mujahideen during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan. The Mujahideens were backed by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Karzai was a secret contact for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time. While Karzai remained in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation his family emigrated to the United States. When Najibullah's Soviet-backed government collapsed in 1992, the Peshawar Accords agreed upon by the Afghan political parties established the Islamic State of Afghanistan and appointed an interim government to be followed by general elections. Karzai accompanied the first mujahideen leaders into Kabul in 1992 following the Soviet withdrawal. He served as Deputy Foreign Minister in the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani.
When the Taliban emerged in the mid 1990s, Karzai initially recognized them as a legitimate government because he thought they would stop the violence and corruption in his country. Karzai stated in 2008 that "there were many wonderful people in the Taliban." Karzai was asked by the Taliban to serve as their ambassador but he refused, telling friends he felt that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was wrongly using them. In the late 1990s, Karzai lived in Pakistan as an Afghan refugee, where he worked to reinstate former Afghan King Zahir Shah. On the morning of 14 July 1999, Karzai's father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, was gunned down as he was coming home from a mosque in the city of Quetta. Reports suggest that the Taliban carried out the assassination. Karzai then started to work closely with the United Front(Northern Alliance), which was led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. In 2000 and 2001, he traveled to Europe and the United States to help gather support for the anti-Taliban movement. In a 2002 interview Karzai stated:
"I considered him (Ahmad Shah Massoud) to be a very patriotic Afghan. The Taliban came and I recognized the nature of the Taliban, and their designs, or their backer's designs, whatever, the combination of it. And I began to get a lot more in touch with Ahmad Shah Massoud. And I exchanged views with him and entirely supported his resistance to this creeping invasion of Afghanistan. One thing that was very similar between us was the exactness of opinions on what was going on in Afghanistan. I shared absoulutely his views on the nature of things in Afghanistan and as to who was behind the troubles in Afghanistan. ... His advice to me turned out to be very very right. He said, 'Well, don't you ever go to an urban area. As strong as you may be, you will find it difficult because there is lots of foreign hand with the Taliban, intelligence and all that. They will find you and they will make it difficult. They will make people suffer. Go to the mountains.' That's exactly what I did. But, sadly, when I did that he wasn't there. The last time I spoke with him was a week before his assassination... He was definitely assassinated by a suicide bomber that came from outside Afghanistan, that was foreign... And September 11 happened two days afterwards. So one can only draw that conclusion from the sequence of events that it was an intention... The enemies of Afghanistan organized the assassination. In my position, I will not be able to go beyond it – the enemies of Afghanistan."
According to a 55-page report by the United Nations, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. U.N. officials stated that there had been 15 massacres between 1996 and 2001. They also said, that "these have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the Taliban Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar himself." During the 1997–1998 battles of Mazar-i-Sharif, about 4,000 civilians were killed by the Taliban. The documents also reveal the role of Arab and Pakistani support troops in Taliban killings. Bin Laden's so-called 055 Brigade was responsible for mass-killings of Afghan civilians. The report by the United Nations quotes eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people.As the United States armed forces were preparing for a confrontation with the Taliban in September 2001, Karzai began urging NATO nations to purge his country of Al-Qaeda. "These Arabs, together with their foreign supporters and the Taliban, destroyed miles and miles of homes and orchards and vineyards," he told BBC, "They have killed Afghans. They have trained their guns on Afghan lives... We want them out."
According to a 55-page report by the United Nations, the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians. U.N. officials stated that there had been 15 massacres between 1996 and 2001. They also said, that "these have been highly systematic and they all lead back to the Taliban Ministry of Defense or to Mullah Omar himself." During the 1997–1998 battles of Mazar-i-Sharif, about 4,000 civilians were killed by the Taliban. The documents also reveal the role of Arab and Pakistani support troops in Taliban killings. Bin Laden's so-called 055 Brigade was responsible for mass-killings of Afghan civilians. The report by the United Nations quotes eyewitnesses in many villages describing Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people.
As the United States armed forces were preparing for a confrontation with the Taliban in September 2001, Karzai began urging NATO nations to purge his country of Al-Qaeda. "These Arabs, together with their foreign supporters and the Taliban, destroyed miles and miles of homes and orchards and vineyards," he told BBC, "They have killed Afghans. They have trained their guns on Afghan lives... We want them out."
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