Hamid Karzai

Biography

Hamid Karzai was born in 1957 in Karz, near Kandahar, into a prominent family of the Popalzai Pashtun tribe; his father later led the tribe and was deputy speaker of parliament. After school in Kandahar and Kabul he studied international relations and political science at Himachal Pradesh University in India, graduating in 1983. He then worked from Pakistan as a fundraiser for the mujahideen fighting the Soviet-backed government.

After the communist government fell in 1992, Karzai served briefly as deputy foreign minister in Burhanuddin Rabbani's government. He initially accepted the Taliban but turned against them, and after his father's assassination in 1999 he succeeded him as head of the Popalzai. Following the US invasion in 2001 he led Pashtun tribes around Kandahar against the Taliban.

At the Bonn conference in December 2001 Karzai was chosen to head the Afghan Interim Administration, and the 2002 loya jirga made him president of the transitional administration. He won the 2004 presidential election and a second term in 2009, serving until 2014. He built alliances across Afghanistan's ethnic groups, but his relations with the United States and NATO grew strained, and he faced criticism over corruption and his stance toward the Taliban. After the Taliban took Kabul in 2021 he remained in the country.