Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai

Became Interim President:	December 22, 2001
Date of Birth:	December 24, 1957
Place of Birth:	Karz village, Qandahar

Hamid Karzai (born December 24, 1957) is the interim president of the Afghan Transitional Administration. He was named Chairman of the Afghan Transitional Administration during the Bonn Agreement, December 5, 2001, and his inauguration took place on December 22, 2001. He was named President at the Loya Jirga session on June 19, 2002. Official elections are scheduled to take place in Afghanistan on October 9, 2004.

With the Loya Jirga of December 2003 approving the Constitution of Afghanistan, which will create a presidential system of government, Karzai said he would run for the position of President of Afghanistan.

Karzai was born in Kandahar. An ethnic Pashtun and a member of the powerful Populzai clan (from which many Afghan Kings have come), he came from a family that were among the strongest supporters of King Zahir Shah. Thus, he was involved in politics in Afghanistan early on. He took a postgraduate course in political science at Himachal University in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India from 1979 to 1983, then returned to work as a fund-raiser supporting anti-Soviet uprisings in Afghanistan during the rest of the 1980s. After the expulsion of Soviet forces, he served as a minister in the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Karzai speaks six languages; Pushtu, Dari, Urdu, English, French and Hindi. He is married to Zinat Karzai, a doctor by profession. They were married in 1998 and have no children.

When the Taliban emerged onto the political scene in the 1990s, Karzai was initially among their supporters. However, he later broke with the Taliban, citing distrust of their links to Pakistan. After the Taliban overthrew Rabbani in 1996, Karzai refused to serve as their U.N. ambassador. In 1997, Karzai joined many of his family members in Quetta, from where he worked to reinstate Zahir Shah. His father was assassinated, presumably by Taliban agents, July 14, 1999, and Karzai swore revenge against the Taliban by working to help overthrow it.

In 2001, following the September 11 terrorist attack, Karzai worked with agents of the United States to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan and muster support for a new government. On December 5, 2001 exile Afghan political leaders--many with no followers inside Afghanistan--gathered in Bonn, Germany, and named Karzai chairman of a 29-member governing committee and leader of an interim government. The ceremony for the transfer of power took place December 22.

On September 5, 2002, an assassination attempt was made on Hamid Karzai in Kandahar. A gunman wearing the uniform of the new Afghan National Army opened fire, wounding the Governor of Kandahar and an American Special Operations officer. The gunman and one of the President's bodyguards were killed.

He received an honorary doctorate in literature from Himachal University on March 7, 2003.

His brother Ahmed Wali Karzai helps coordinate humanitarian assistance in the southern province of Kandahar.

Several sources, most notably the documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11, have reported that Karzai once worked as a consultant for the oil company Unocal. Spokesmen for both Unocal and Karzai have denied any such relationship, although they could not speak for all companies involved in the consortium. The claim appears to have originated in the December 9, 2001 issue of the French newspaper Le Monde. It was also stated by the Christian Science Monitor . Some have suggested that Karzai was confused with U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad.

His actual authority outside the capital city of Kabul is said to be so limited that he is often derided as the "Mayor of Kabul." Although he has little or no popular support outside Kabul, the incumbent Karzai appears likely to defeat his 22 opponents in the country's presidential election on October 9th, 2004. Endorsement by the United States administration under George W. Bush, incumbency, the brief one month campaign season, and the paucity of news coverage in the country about his opponents make him the probable winner in an election expected to be flawed by violence and vote fraud.