Biography of Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai

Personal life

Hamid Karzai, son of Abdul Ahad, grandson of Khair Mohammad Khan, was born on December 24, 1957, in the village of Karzi, Kandahar, Afghanistan. He was an Afghan politician and the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan (2004-14).

Karzai is the son of the head of the Popalzi, a Durrani branch of the Pashtun people, and both his father and grandfather served in the government of Mohammad Zuhair Shah. In the 1980s, under the Soviet-backed regime, the Karzai family left Afghanistan and settled in Pakistan.

Karzai with his family Karzai's wife and son

Hamid Karzai has six brothers and one sister. One of his half-brothers, Ahmad Wali Karzai, was assassinated by the Taliban on July 12, 2011. Hamid Karzai married Dr Zeinat Qureshi, a Pashtun from Kandahar, in 1999. He has a son, Mirwais, and three daughters, Malalai, Marwa bahar and Hossi.

Hamid Karzai and his family

Karzai's father Abdul Ahad Karzai (1922 – 14 July 1999) was an Afghan politician, who served as the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Afghanistan under King Zahir Shah in the 1960s. When Abdul Ahad Karzai became a member of parliament, he moved to Kabul with his family. Hamid Karzai was then enrolled in Mahmoud Hotaki Elementary School, Sayed Jamaluddin High School (for Secondary studies), and later Habibia High School (for High School studies). After graduating from Habibia High School in 1976, he went to India to continue his education and studied at Himachal Pradesh University in India, earning a Master's degree (1982) in International Relations and Political Science.

Hamid Karzai has received numerous awards from prestigious international organizations since he was appointed interim chair of the government. He received an honorary doctorate from Himachal Pradesh University in 2002, the Freedom Award in 2003, the World's Most Successful President Award in April 2004, the Philadelphia Freedom Award in July 2004, and the Andragandi Peace, Development, and Disarmament Award in November 2006.

Hamid Karzai is very interested in horse riding and hiking and speaks Dari, Pashto, English and Urdu fluently.

Political life

Early political career

In 1983 Hamid Karzai left India for Pakistan and joined the Mujahideen for jihad against the former Soviet Union. In 1985, he went to France for a training course in journalism, and after completing a three-month course in Lille, France, he returned to Peshawar and served as the head of the media department of the Mujahideen and later as the deputy head of the political office of The National Salvation Front of Afghanistan, led by Professor Sebghatullah Mujaddidi, took office.

With the formation of the interim government of the Mojahedin in 1989, Hamid Karzai was appointed as the head of the Foreign Relations Department of the Interim Government’s chair in Peshawar. After the establishment of the Mojahedin interim government headed by Mr Mujaddidi in Afghanistan in 1992, he was appointed as the political deputy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan in 1992.

Two years later, in 1994, when the civil war between the Mojahedin groups intensified, Hamid Karzai resigned from his governmental position and began his activity to convene the Loya Jirga. The growing conflict escalated until the Mujahideen turned on one other, and as a result of this turmoil, the Taliban, an extremely conservative political and religious faction, came to power.

Hamid Karzai President of Afghanistan 2002-2014

It is noteworthy that when the resolution of conflicts in Afghanistan reached a deadlock, Hamid Karzai considered convening the Loya Jirga as the only key to resolving the conflict. For this reason, from 1986 until the formation of the interim administration, he has continuously emphasized the convening of the traditional Loya Jirgas of Afghanistan and considered it vital to save Afghanistan.

Although Karzai initially supported the Taliban and the order they established in the country, he later opposed the regime and returned to Pakistan. In July 1999, his father was assassinated, an act Hamid Karzai blamed on the Taliban, and hence the leadership of the Popalzi’s was transferred to Hamid Karzai, the son.

Shortly after September 11 attacks in 2001, the United States led a military campaign to topple the Taliban and to capture the terrorists that were based in the country. Karzai entered Afghanistan after the September 2001 (9/11) attacks, to rally support for the US-led mission, and started an armed war against the Taliban from an area in the north of Uruzgan, and by mid-November, the Taliban regime had collapsed. At a time when Karzai was engaged in fighting in the region, the historical Bonn conference, aided by the international community, with the representative from Northern Alliance Leaders, representatives of Mohammad Zahir Shah, the former Afghan king in exile in Rome, took place.

According to the conference, although Sattar Sirat, a representative of Zahir Shah and candidate for the chair of the interim government of Afghanistan, won 11 votes and the candidate for the caretaker government of Afghanistan in the Bonn meeting, due to ethnic problems of Afghanistan, Karzai was appointed as the chair of the interim government with only 3 votes, and he took the oath of office In December 2001. Six months later, in June 2002, the Loya Jirga, a traditional Afghan assembly, elected him as the president of the transitional government.

Karzai faced several challenges, including controlling traditional powerful leaders and preventing the Taliban from regaining power. He also sought to rebuild the war-torn country. Violence continued to plague Afghanistan, and Karzai was the target of several assassinations. In January 2004, a new constitution was adopted that directly elected the president. Later that year, Karzai won the presidential election and took the oath of office.

Presidency

As Karzai entered office, he enjoyed strong support from Western allies, but he faced enormous challenges. Continued violence and instability and Karzai’s inability, to effectively build up Afghan institutions and provide basic services, took its toll on his popularity at home and abroad, as did allegations of government corruption. The country was also plagued by an increase in drug trafficking, the countries opium poppy harvest reached record levels in 2007 as well as by the resurgence of the Taliban, which mounted attacks with increasing frequency. As a result, pointed criticism, even from the United States, began to emerge.

Many experts believe that despite a decade-long effort by the Karzai government to establish order, security and unity among all opposition groups to the Afghan government, it has failed miserably due to its weak government structure.

Hamid Karzai and his deputy presidents taking oath of the office

After Karzai took office at the helm of the Afghan government, views on the horizon ahead were positive. It felt like something big was happening. It was thought that the only person who could unite all the groups and parties in this country was Hamid Karzai, who also happened to be welcomed by the people of this country.

After a six-month transition period, the issue of presidential elections arose, in which he won the election and began a five-year presidential term.

Despite the international community's assistance to Afghanistan, we have seen that corruption has become widespread in the Afghan government, and that the non-friendly members of the Afghan people who have been appointed to the government have become notorious for corruption, and conditions have arisen for the Karzai government. The financial aid of the friends of the people of Afghanistan went to the pockets of those who were mostly dual nationals and held government positions in the guise of lawyers and ministers.

Unfortunately, Hamid Karzai failed to deal with the current crisis, but we know that the main problem that was a lever of pressure on the government was the Taliban.

The group that was chased by the Americans until yesterday and crawled into the holes, today came out little by little and took action from foreign armed countries against the government and the people of Afghanistan. The hands of these terrorists were not spared.

All in all, this great challenge to Karzai led him to seek ties with the Taliban, as he called them brothers and sought closer ties with them, but we saw that the major problem posed by the United States was itself They defended their puppets, and before Karzai established direct contact with the Taliban through the Afghan High Peace Council, they were bypassed by the Americans, and the United States entered into direct negotiations with the Taliban, leaving them in charge of some parts. Even a few years ago, we saw the British offer to transfer several posts as mayor and governor in Helmand province and southern Afghanistan.

Excessive budgets were misused, corruption reached its peak, no problems of the Afghan people were solved, despite all these problems, we saw that Hamid Karzai ran again for the presidency and was opposed by the popular The United States was supported and strangely won the second round against Dr. Abdullah Abdullah ... who withdrew from the competition. On the other hand, if the changes that the people wanted were to take place, it could have made the people optimistic about the government.

Discontent with Karzai’s leadership produced a number of challengers when he stood for reelection in 2009. Because of security reasons, the presidential election was postponed from May to August of that year. According to Afghanistan’s constitution, Karzai’s first term was to end on May 22, but the Supreme Court ruled that he could remain in office until the presidential election was held on August 20.

The election provoked thousands of complaints of ballot fraud. Vote counting continued for two months. The first count gave Karzai enough votes to avoid a runoff. However, several hundred thousand ballots in his favor were eliminated when convincing evidence of mass fraud was brought to light. A runoff between Karzai and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah was ruled necessary. Abdullah demanded that officials overseeing the election be replaced to prevent further fraud, but he was ignored. In November Abdullah withdrew from the race. The runoff election was canceled, and Karzai was inaugurated as president for a second term.

From 2010 Karzai amid a U.S. troop surge in 2010 that saw the number of foreign troops swell to nearly 150,000, Karzai took to criticizing the United States in increasingly bitter terms. He accused U.S. troops of causing unnecessary Afghan civilian casualties during their operations. He also faulted U.S. diplomats for failing to pressure Pakistan to stop the flow of Taliban militants into Afghanistan. The deterioration in his relations with the United States culminated in a standoff in 2013–14. Karzai refused to sign an agreement authorizing U.S. troops to remain in the country beyond their scheduled withdrawal at the end of 2014. The agreement, however, was signed by Karzai’s successor, Ashraf Ghani, just days after he took office in September 2014. Karzai, who was constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term, did not participate in the presidential election that year.

Post-presidency

In the years following his presidency, Karzai remained critical of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and of the Afghan central government for its cooperation with U.S. forces. Meanwhile, he supported the pursuit of a peaceful arrangement to end conflict with the Taliban, albeit from outside the government as a private citizen. When the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2021 enabled the Taliban to retake control of the country, Ghani fled the country, and Karzai (along with Abdullah, who had served as the central government’s chief negotiator under Ghani) took a leading role in negotiations with the Taliban on the future of Afghanistan.