Hamid Karzai

President of Afghanistan, 2001–2014

• Born: December 24, 1957
• Place of Birth: Kars, Kandahar, Afghanistan

Born into Leadership

Hamid Karzai is a study in contradictions. Born into a royal family in Afghanistan, he became the country's first elected president in December 2004, following the US-led invasion and occupation of his country. Beginning in 1996, the country had been ruled by the fundamentalist Sunni Islamist group known as the Taliban. Although Karzai once supported the Taliban's opposition to foreign intervention in Afghanistan, after their overthrow in 2001 he led a transitional government that relied on American troops for security and spent much of his time courting Western nations for aid to rebuild his country's war-ravaged infrastructure and cities. Karzai is fluent in six languages. Repeatedly thrown into the midst of violent conflicts in Afghanistan, his stated idol is the master of nonviolent protest, Mahatma Gandhi of India.

Hamid Karzai was born December 24, 1957, in Kars, Kandahar, in Afghanistan. He was born into a Khan, or leadership family, of the Popalzai tribe of the Pashtun ethnic group. The Pashtuns make up the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, accounting for anywhere from a third to half of the population. They are most often farmers and herdsman. They have also traditionally provided the leadership for the country, and numerous Afghan kings came from the Popalzai tribe, including the eighteenth-century conqueror Ahmed Shah Durrani, the country’s first monarch.

Karzai was the fifth of eight children, seven boys and a girl. His father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, served as a senator in the Afghan Parliament in the late 1960s and early 1970s under King Mohammad Zahir Shah. After his father's election, the family moved to Kabul, the capital.

After graduating from Habibia High School in Kabul, Karzai studied political science and international relations at Shimla University in Himachal Pradesh, India, from 1979 to 1983, earning both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He also received an honorary doctorate in literature from his alma mater in 2003.

Just as he was beginning his university studies in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Many wealthy Afghans fled the country, including most of Karzai’s family. However, after graduating from college, Karzai moved to Peshawar, Pakistan, to join the Afghan Jihad wing of the Afghan National Liberation Front (ANLF) in support of the resistance movement against the Soviets. He was sent to Lille, France, in 1985 by the ANLF to take journalism courses. He was able to help publicize the struggle of the ANLF, raise funds for operations and arms, and provide a safe house in Pakistan for the mujahideen resistance fighters. In 1987, he was appointed director of the political department of the ANLF.

As the Soviet Union began to crumble in 1989 and Soviet troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan, Karzai was appointed deputy foreign minister in the sovereign Afghan interim government in Kabul under Burhanuddin Rabbani, who would serve as president from 1992 until 1996.

The Taliban Takes Control of Afghanistan

The interim government was beset by warring factions. Karzai would later note that he believed at that time that the two greatest threats to Afghanistan were outside intervention and tribal conflicts within the country. Karzai left Kabul in 1994 to work in Kandahar. At that time a group called the Taliban, led by former mujahideen fighter Mullah Mohammad Omar, was beginning to succeed in uniting areas of the country under its own version of strict Islamic rule. This included various provisions designed to thwart Western influence in Afghanistan.

The Taliban gained many supporters for its efforts to unite the country following the ravages of the Soviet invasion. Karzai supported such efforts by the Taliban in Kandahar, but by 1995 he had separated himself from the group. He cited the extremist policies under Omar and his followers and the encroaching foreign influence of Pakistan and Arab radicals as the reasons for his departure. The Taliban advance continued, however, and in 1996 it deposed Rabbani and took control of the government. The Taliban called on Karzai to act as the new Afghan ambassador to the United Nations (UN), but he refused to work for the regime, moving instead to work for the traditional grand council of the Afghan peoples, the Loya Jirga. Led by former king Mohammed Zahir Shah, the group sought to install a more moderate government in Kabul. After working in Turkey in 1997 and Germany in 1998, the Loya Jirga set up headquarters in Italy in 1999 and became known as the "Rome group."

Karzai lived in the Pakistani border town of Quetta, where his father had moved after the 1979 Soviet invasion. Married in 1998, his wife Zinat is an Afghan doctor. When his father was killed by a suspected Taliban sniper in July 1999, Karzai was elected as Khan of the Popalzai by a jirga (group) of tribal leaders.

Meanwhile, the Taliban became patrons of the wealthy Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, who orchestrated the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States from his Afghan hideout. After the September 11 attacks, Karzai stepped up his campaign to convince the Afghan people to renounce the extremist government. As the United States invaded the country in the wake of the attacks, Karzai also entered from Pakistan, traveling on foot to drum up resistance to the Taliban. On two occasions, he narrowly missed being killed in US bombing raids. At one point he was rescued by US forces while being chased by Taliban forces.

US senator Paul Sarbanes, who knew Karzai's family, suggested that then-US secretary of state Richard Armitage contact Karzai to explore the possibility of his assuming leadership over a new Afghan interim government. Karzai accepted, and in Germany on December 5, 2001, under the UN-sponsored Bonn Agreement, he officially assumed power from the prior recognized government of Burhanuddin Rabbani.

President

Karzai was able to garner significant support from Western nations, including food, transportation, and other infrastructure assistance from the United States. His fluency in the Pashto, Dari, Urdu, English, French, and Hindi languages aided his ability to build relationships among interests in Afghanistan. In January 2002, he was able to garner promises of more than $4 billion in aid from various representatives of Western nations assembled in Tokyo, Japan.

The Loya Jirga officially elected Karzai president in June 2002. However, he and the fledgling transitional government remained at risk from warring tribal factions. An assassination attempt against Karzai in Kandahar failed in September 2002, although one of his bodyguards was killed.

In 2003, the Loya Jirga approved a new constitution for Afghanistan, effective January 2004, which called for a parliamentary system of government. The Bonn Agreement had already called for open elections in June 2004. Karzai indicated he would run for president, but the prospect of the country’s first-ever open elections caused additional fighting among the country’s tribal and ethnic factions.

Karzai's reliance on US troops to quell violent uprisings led to opposition charges that he was a "puppet" of US interests in the region. In addition, Karzai’s transitional government found it difficult to register voters in a country still ravaged by war, as communications, roads, and other infrastructure had all sustained heavy damage. These difficulties led Karzai to postpone the June elections until September 2004.

In April 2004, at a second international donor conference, this time in Berlin, Germany, Karzai was able to win pledges of an additional $8.2 billion in aid over the next three years from at least fifty countries. Karzai’s government estimated that a total of nearly $30 billion would be needed to rebuild Afghanistan.

Part of the challenge for Karzai lay in the fact that Afghanistan has never been a developed country. For example, many of its farmers grow poppies for opium, rather than food crops, because it generates far more income. This sustains a drug trade that funds Taliban warlords who are opposed to an elected government.

Karzai continued to work toward uniting his country, despite numerous assassination attempts and major internal challenges. He continued to navigate a fine line between the desires of foreign interests and those of the various peoples of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's presidential election was finally held in October 2004, with Karzai winning nearly 56 percent of the vote. He was inaugurated as the country's first democratically elected president on December 7, 2004.

After Karzai's election to the presidency, Afghanistan saw a marked increase in the number of suicide bomb attacks occurring within its borders, particularly in Kabul. Analysts attributed the increase in attacks to a resurgence of the Taliban in the tribal areas bordering Pakistan. In addition, efforts to minimize the farming of poppies by US and international forces had mixed results. Critics of the United States argued that American leaders chose to invest more resources into the war in Iraq, while allowing Afghanistan to unravel both politically and economically.

In the second presidential election in the country's history, held in 2009, Karzai succeeded in achieving reelection amid international suspicion of fraud plaguing the voting process. Although the UN had verified that the election had essentially been corrupted and a runoff was being planned, Karzai was officially declared the winner when his opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew from the second round of voting.

During his second term, Karzai controversially went against the advice of a national assembly and refused to sign a bilateral security agreement with the United States in late 2013. This agreement would have allowed US troops to remain in the country past the end of the combat mission and would have secured funds for Afghan forces. Following yet another tumultuous election in 2014, Ashraf Ghani was chosen as the new president; he subsequently agreed to share power with his opponent, Abdullah, who would take on the newly created role of chief executive officer. Shortly after Karzai stepped down in September and Ghani was sworn into office, the new president signed the bilateral agreement, allowing thousands of international troops to stay in Afghanistan mainly for the purpose of training its forces. The US combat mission in Afghanistan finally concluded at the end of 2014. The successes and failures of Karzai's difficult role as the first elected president of such a fragile country would continue to be debated.

When the United States began its withdrawal of the last of the troops left in the country in 2021, the Taliban swiftly recaptured wide swaths of the country including provincial capitals. Ghani announced on social media that he had fled Afghanistan as the Taliban once again took over Kabul in August. Karzai, who had still been active in the political arena nationally and internationally, remained, and in the following days he and Abdullah became part of what were considered, at the time, more informal negotiations with Taliban leaders about the formation of a new government. However, Karzai was not included in leading the country, nor did he have any influence. He also did not have permission to leave for more than a year. Both men said they were committed to remaining in the country.

Multiple times in 2024, Karzai called for the Taliban to allow girls and women to receive more than an elementary-level education. According to the United Nations, at least 1.4 million girls were being denied secondary education. In August, as he observed the 105th anniversary of Afghanistan's independence, he repeated this call. He referred to the Taliban as the caretaker government in his statement. He also periodically carefully worded posts on social media calling on authorities to allow women to work.

Bibliography

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Partlow, Joshua. "Hamid Karzai Is Back in the Thick of Afghan Politics but a Long Way from Power." The Washington Post, 3 Sept. 2021, www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/02/afghanistan-karzai-taliban-government-power/. Accessed 9 Sept. 2021.

Rai, Arpan. "Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai Calls on Taliban to Provide Education to Girls and Women." The Independent, 19 Aug. 2024, www.independent.co.uk/asia/south-asia/hamid-karzai-afghanistan-independence-taliban-education-girls-b2598265.html. Accessed 3 Oct. 2024.