Afghanistan: Political System
According to EQUZHOU.NET, Afghanistan is a republic. There is a president and two vice presidents. The new constitution passed at the constituent assembly of the Grand Council in January 2004 provides for a parliament consisting of two chambers. General election took place in September 2005. See AbbreviationFinder for more information about Afghanistan politics, and acronyms as well.
The official name of the country is:
| Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Dowlat-e Eslâmi-ye Afghânestân |
National anthem
The national anthem of Afghanistan was written by Suleiman Laeq and set to music by Salim Sarmad. After the abolition of the monarchy, “Sououd-e-Melli” was the national anthem of the communist country from 1978 to 1989. The Taliban banned the anthem along with almost all of the country’s music. After the Taliban regime was driven out, the anthem was reinstated in 2002.
| In Afghan language | In the English translation |
| So Che Da Mezaka Asman WeeSo Che Da Jahan Wadan Wee
So Che Jowand Pa De Jahan Wee So Che Pati Yaw Afghan Wee Tel Ba Da Afghanistan Wee Tel De Wee Afghanistan Melat Tel De Wee Jumhouriat Tel De Wee Meli Wahdat Tel De Wee Afghan Meli Jumhouriat Tel De Wee Afghan Mellat Jumhouriat Meli Wahdat – Meli Wahdat |
As long as there is the earth and the heavens;As long as the world lasts;
As long as there is life in the world; As long as a single Afghan breathes; Will this Afghanistan exist? Long life of the Afghan nation. Long life of the republic. Our national unity is forever; The Afghan nation and republic will exist forever; The Afghan nation, the republic and national unity – national unity – exist forever. |
National flag
The national flag (country flag) of Afghanistan has been changed many times throughout history. The current flag was introduced on January 4, 2004. Based on flag descriptions by Countryaah.com, the most modern interpretation of the colors is the following:
– Black stands for the dark pre-Islamic period.
– Red stands for communism.
– Green stands for Islam.
In the middle of the flag – in the red stripe, the historical coat of arms of Afghanistan is depicted – a mosque, the prayer niche (mihrab) of which points to Mecca.
- Check top-mba-universities for public holidays, sports events, UNESCO world heritage sites and major places to visit in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan: Known People
Doctors, scientists
Ahmad Ali (-1994)
He worked at the Sorbonne in Paris and previously was Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Kabul for around 30 years.
He emigrated to the United States and died there in 1994.
Said Mohammed Hosseini (born 1929)
Said Mohammed Hosseini was born in Kabul in 1929.
He is a scientist of Afghan origin whose publication “Evaporation equilibria in the binary systems cyclohexane-benzene, benzene-aniline and cyclohexane-aniline” is particularly well known.
He researched and taught as a professor at the Georg-August University in Göttingen.
Daud Rafiqpoo (born 1949)
Daud Rafiqpoo was born on December 16, 1949 in Kabul. He later studied geography and geology in Kabul and Bonn (Germany). He did his doctorate with Wilhelm Kauer (1923-2007) in Bonn.
He lives and researches in Germany, particularly in the field of tropical high mountain ecology and biodiversity.
Musician
Abdul Ghafur Brechna (1907-1974)
Abdul Ghafur Brechna was born on April 10, 1907 in Kabul. In 1921 he went to Germany to study painting and lithography in Munich, Leipzig and Berlin.
Here he married and returned in 1931 with his wife and son to Kabul.
He was a musician, composer, painter and poet and even director of Radio Afghanistan. In
1968 he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services to the cultural relations between Germany and Afghanistan.
He died on January 4, 1974 in his native city of Kabul.
Assol (Katerina Igorivna Gumenyuk) (born 1994)
Assol was born on July 4, 1994 in Kabul, but grew up in Donetsk as the daughter of Igor Gumenyuk – an advisor to the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych.
She is a ukrainian singer and actress.
Mohammad Hashem Cheshti (-1994)
Kabul-born Mohammad Hashem Cheshti was a musician and composer who played tabla, sitar, guitar, harmonium and sarod.
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he fled to Germany, where he gave music lessons, among other things.
In 1994 he was murdered by one of his students.
Abdul Ahmad Hamahang (1936-2012)
Kabul-born Abdul Ahmad Hamahang was a popular Afghan singer.
His popularity was based on the post-April coup and the occupation by the Soviets among those who had not emigrated abroad. He sang songs in both Pashto and Farsi, which were popular for weddings and dancing.
It should be mentioned that he had toured the USA, Australia, Europe and a number of Asian countries.
Most of his songs were by Salim Sarmast.
He died on June 6, 2012 in his native city of Kabul.
Sultan Ahmad Hamahang (born 1967)
Sultan Ahmad Hamahang was born in Kabul in 1967. At the age of 12 he started playing the harmonium.
His uncle Hamahang promoted him and also stood by him professionally. His first song, broadcast by Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) in 1981, was called Arzu (Hope).
He also sang the Kabul song “Let’s go to Kabul”. During the war in Afghanistan he emigrated to Pakistan. From here he went to Europe and America for concerts.
After 14 years in exile, he returned to Kabul with his four children, where he runs a music studio called “Sultan Hamahang”.
Hangama (born 1942)
Hangama was born in Kabul and was one of the most famous singers in the country in the early 1980s. Together with the singer Ahmad Wali she formed a successful duo. Wali now lives in the USA
After the Taliban came to power, she fled to Germany, where she married Ahmad Wali. After her divorce, she moved to Canada in 1995 and remarried there for a second time.
In 2005 she performed it again in Kabul.
Hafizullah Khyal (born 1931)
Hafizullah Khyal was born in Kabul in 1931. The Afghan singer and composer currently lives in New York, USA. Hakim Ludin (born 1955) Hakim Ludin was born on May 6, 1955 in Kabul. He is a drummer (percussionist) and went to Germany in 1975. In 1981 he began studying percussion and drums at the Karlsruhe University of Music, from which he graduated as a qualified orchestra musician. Then he played with the big band of the Hessischer Rundfunk.
He also performed with the American drummers Jeff Hamilton and Terry John Bozzio, the Argentinian drummer Daniel Messina, the Swedish bassist Jonas Hellborg and the Peruvian drummer Alex Acuña.
But he also performs as a studio musician and solo percussionist. He also published some textbooks on Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian rhythms.
Nasrat Parsa (1969-2005)
Parsa was born in Kabul in 1969. He was a well-known Afghan singer who had last lived in Germany with his parents and siblings.
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, his family left the country in 1981 and emigrated first to Pakistan and later to India. After a few years they went to Germany.He
was attacked by three men on May 8, 2005 in Vancouver (Canada) after his performance, in the course of which he fell on a staircase and was fatally injured.He found
his final resting place on the Forest cemetery in Mainz-Mombach. Mohamed Hussain Sarahang (1924-1983)
Mohamed Hussain Sarahang, born in Kabul in 1924, was a classical and ghazal singer.
At the age of 16 he went to India to the Patiala Gharana (music school), from where he returned to Kabul at the age of 25. In Kabul he gave his first concert in the Pamir cinema. Because of this performance, the then King Mohammed Sahir Shah gave him the title of “Sarahang” (peak of sound). He published around 500 pieces of music, including numerous pieces by the Persian poet Amir Khusro.
Ahmed Zahir (1946-1979)
Zahir is the one most famous musician of Afghanistan and is still revered today by many Afghans as representatives of Afghan music.
He died on June 14, 1979 on the Salang Pass near Kabul as a result of a car accident
Politicians and rulers
Abdullah Abdullah (born 1960)
Abdullah Abdullah was Foreign Minister of Afghanistan from 1999 to 2006.
He was defeated by Hamid Karzai in the 2009 presidential election and then by Ashraf Ghani Ahmadsai in the 2014 election.
Ashraf Ghani Ahmadsai (born 1949)
Ashraf Ghani Ahmadsai has been President of Afghanistan since 2014. He won 56% of the vote against Abdullah in the runoff election on June 14, 2014.
Since he had only received 32% of the vote in the first ballot on April 5, 2014, the result was not recognized by his competitor for a long time.
It was only through the mediation of the US Secretary of State John Kerry that he was able to take office on September 29, 2014
Rahim Bakhsh (1918-2001)
Rahim Bakhsh was born in Kabul in 1918. He was a well-known and popular musician and singer, especially from the Kabul artists’ quarter Kharabat.
He died in 2001 in the Afghan-Pakistani border town of Quetta, where he was buried until 2002.
But after the end of Taliban rule, his remains were buried in the Kabul cemetery.
Abdul Raschid Dostum (
born 1954) Abdul Raschid Dostum was born in 1954 in Khojha Dokuhin northern Afghanistan. He is an Afghan militia leader and politician. Dostum is regarded as a representative of the Uzbek minority and is attributed to it.
During the Soviet occupation he became a general in the Afghan government army.
After the withdrawal of the Soviets, he built up his own militia, with which he fought in changing alliances and gained control of several provinces in the north of the country.
After the Taliban conquered his northern strongholds in 1997 and 1998, he fled into exile in Turkey. In 2001 he returned to Afghanistan.
Since the fall of the Taliban, he had been a member of the government led by Hamid Karzai and was able to partially regain his old position of power in the north of the country.
He is considered one of the most controversial and colorful politicians in Afghanistan
Ashraf Ghani (born 1949)
The Pashtun Ashraf Ghani Ahmadsai was born on May 19, 1949 in Logar. He has been President of Afghanistan since 2014.
He studied at the University of Kabul and then at the American University in Beirut, before going to the United States on a scholarship in 1977. There he got his PhD from Columbia University in New York.
From 1983 to 1991 he was a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley and at Johns Hopkins University. Later he switched to the World Bank.
In December 2001 he returned to Kabul as a UN special envoy. From June 2002 to December 2004 he was finance minister and in the office towards the end of 2002 he was responsible for the currency reform to introduce the new Afghani.
From December 2004 to December 2008 he was Chancellor of the University of Kabul.
In the 2014 presidential election to succeed Karzai, he won around 32% of the vote in the first ballot on April 5, 2014.
In the runoff election on June 14, 2014 between himself and Abdullah Abdullah, he received 56% of the vote. Due to protests over election fraud, he was not officially declared the winner of the election until September 21st.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (born 1947) Hekmatyar held the post of Prime Minister in Afghanistan twice in the 1990s. Starting from Iran, where he has lived since 1996, he continued to lead the Hezbi Islami party. He is considered a supporter of Osama bin Laden.
Amir Habibullah Kalakâni (1890-1929)
Amir Habibullah Kalakâni was born in Afghanistan around 1890 as the son of a poor water carrier. He was King of Afghanistan from January to October 1929.
The efforts of King Amanullah Khan () to open up economically to the West led to numerous uprisings by the local tribes. During the king’s trip abroad in 1927, Kalakani, as the leader of one of the rebels in Kalakan, with the support of the British, marched into Kabul on January 17, 1929 and overthrew the reformer and King Amanullah Khan and his successor Inayatullah Khan.
Among other things, he introduced Sharia law during his reactionary reign.
But already in October 1929 Habibullah was overthrown with British help by the later King Mohammed Nadir Shah and had to flee.
However, he was lured to Kabul by means of a ruse, captured and shortly afterwards publicly executed on November 1, 1929.
Babrak Karmal (1929-1996)
Babrak Karmal was born on January 6, 1929 in Kamari, a village near Kabul. He had studied law in Kabul and came to communism here.
Together with Nur Muhammad Taraki and 29 other like-minded people, he founded the Communist Democratic People’s Party of Afghanistan (DVPA) on January 1, 1965, which split into two factions in 1967:
the Khalq faction and the Parcham faction. Karmal became chairman of the more moderate Parcham faction.
After a coup on April 27, 1978, the DVPA, led by Taraki, took over the government in which Karmal became Deputy Prime Minister. But the Khalq faction won intra-party power struggles and then dismissed all members of the Parchim faction from the government in July 1978 – and Karmal became ambassador to Czechoslovakia. But already in August 1978 he was expelled from the DVPA on charges of high treason and ordered back to Afghanistan.
But he did not follow the request. During the Soviet occupation, Karmal was then called back to Kabul and installed as the new president on December 27, 1979 after the assassination of Hafizullah Amin.
On May 4, 1986, Karmal was replaced as Secretary General of the DVPA by Mohammed Nadschibullāh. and on November 21, 1986, Najibullah also became president of the country.
He then emigrated to the Soviet Union, where he died on December 3, 1996 of cancer.
Hamid Karzai (born 1957)
Hamid Karzai was born on December 24, 1957 near Kandahar. He belongs to the Pashtun Popalzai clan.
From 2001 to 2014 he was President of Afghanistan. In the West – and especially in Germany – he became known through the Afghanistan Conference on the Petersberg near Bonn on December 4, 2001. Here he was appointed president of the transitional government.
Karzai studied political science at Himachal Pradesh University in Shimla (India) from 1978 to 1983.
He had supported the mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet invaders with private money. In the late 1980s, Karzai returned to Afghanistan. After the Soviet armed forces withdrew from Afghanistan, he was Deputy Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Burhānuddin Rabbāni for two years from 1992.
When the Taliban began to take power in the country or parts of it in the mid-1990s, Karzai initially supported them but later opposed them. That is why he fled to the UN embassy in 1996. In 1997, he, his father and his brother founded a resistance movement against the Taliban in Quetta, Pakistan. In 1999, his father was killed in an assassination attempt, while Hamid Karzai and his brother Ahmad Wali Karzai narrowly escaped it.
After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, Karzai began working with the US to overthrow the Taliban regime.
By the time US troops arrived in Kandahar on November 25, 2001, Karzai had signed an agreement with the Taliban that guaranteed them a general amnesty and their leader, Mullah Omar, a free exit from the city.
But the US had announced that they would not adhere to this agreement. From December 14, 2003 to January 4, 2004, under the direction of Karzai, the Grand Council meeting (Loja Jirga), which lasted several weeks and approved the draft constitution for Afghanistan as an Islamic republic with a majority, took place.
On October 9, 2004, Karzai was officially elected president of the country.
On November 19, 2009, Karzai was sworn in for a second term.
In July 2011, Karzai’s half-brother Ahmad Wali Karzai was murdered in Kandahar.
He was succeeded as Afghan President in 2014 by Ashraf Ghani
Khalilullah Khalili (1907-1987)
Khalilullah Khalili was born in Kabul in 1907. He was a Persian-speaking poet, university professor and diplomat. Until 1918 he had lived in Kabul.
He had later studied classical literature and had returned to Kabul in the early 1940s as his uncle had been elected deputy prime minister.
But due to a rebellion by the Safis from Kohistan, he had to leave Kabul again in 1945 and moved to Kandahar, where he had started to write poetry.
But he had already returned to Kabul in the 1950s and was even appointed Minister of Culture and Iraq. From 1951 to 1953 he was Minister for Press and Information.
In the 1970s he was then ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
After the coup in April 1978, he fled to Germany and then to the USA. He had left the United States in the late 1980s and moved to Islamabad in Pakistan.
Khalili had published 35 volumes of poetry during his life. His most famous works were “Aškḥā Wa Ḫūnhā” (tears and blood) and “Ayyār-e az Ḫorāsān” (The hero from Khorasan “) – a biography of Habibullah Kalakânis, in which he is celebrated as a hero.
Khalili died in 1987 in Islamabad and found his final resting place in Peshawar, Pakistan, next to the grave of the Pashtun poet Rahman Baba (1651-1709).
Amanullah Khan (1892-1960)
Khan was born on June 1, 1892 in Paghman. From 1919 to 1926 he was Emir and from 1926 to 1929 King (Padschah) of Afghanistan.
In January 1929 he was overthrown by Habibullah Kalakâni. He then fled via India to Rome and in 1953 to Zurich in Switzerland.
He died there on April 25, 1960. Mohammed Daoud Khan (1909-1978) Mohammed Daoud Khan was born on July 18, 1909 in Kabul. On July 17, 1973, he overthrew the monarchy under Mohammed Sahir Shah and made Afghanistan a republic. He ruled as President of the Republic of Afghanistan until his assassination on April 23, 1978. It should be noted that from December 25, 1979 to February 15, 1989, the Soviets occupied the country.
Nasrullah Khan (1857-1920)
Nasrullah Khan was born in Kabul on April 7, 1857. He was the 16th emir of Afghanistan.
After resigning from office, he was murdered on May 31, 1920 on the orders of his nephew Amanullah Khan.
Ahmad Massoud (1953-2001)
Ahmad Shah Massoud (Masud) was born on September 1, 1953 in Pandschir (Pandjschir) in Afghanistan. He was an Afghan mujahideen fighter and national hero.
Among other things, he was the leader of the Afghan resistance against the Taliban. Massoud belonged to the Tajik ethnic group and was a devout Sunni Muslim. But he was also a staunch opponent of the extremist interpretations of Islam by the Taliban, al-Qaeda or the Saudi royal family.
His followers saw in him not only a military leader, but also a spiritual teacher and a religious role model.
Massoud played a major role in the fight against Soviet troops and the subsequent withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, which gave him the name “Lion of Pandjschir”.
On September 9, 2001, two al-Qaeda suicide bombers – posing as Belgian journalists – seriously injured him with a bomb hidden in a video camera in the village of Tachar.
He died a little later from his injuries.
At the end of 2001 he was named “National Hero of the Afghan Nation”.
Mohammed Najibullāh (1947-1996)
Mohammed Najibullāh was born on August 6, 1947 in Kabul.
From May 1986 to 1992 he was President of the country during the Soviet occupation and some time afterwards.
In 1975 he had successfully completed his medical studies at the University of Kabul and then worked for a while as a gynecologist.
He had already joined the Communist Democratic People’s Party of Afghanistan in 1965. After
serving as ambassador to Tehran, Najibullah was dismissed from the government and went into exile in Moscow.But after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, he returned to Kabul, where he became head of the secret police in 1980.
In 1986 he replaced Babrak Karmal as President and became President of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in his place. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, he successfully weathered a coup d’état by his defense minister in 1990.
After his fall in April 1992, he tried unsuccessfully to leave Kabul, whereupon he found refuge at the UN headquarters in Kabul. He stayed there until the Taliban conquered Kabul, who arrested, tortured and murdered him on September 27, 1996.
They had publicly hung his body in front of the presidential palace
Mullah Mohammed Omar (born 1959)
Omar was the emir of Afghanistan and leader of the Taliban from 1996 until his overthrow in 2001.
In 1994 he and 33 like-minded people founded a fundamentalist Islamic movement that had taken over Afghanistan in September 1996 with the capture of Kabul.
Before that, after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, he had fought against the government of Mohammed Najibullah in the Hizb-i Islāmī movement between 1989 and 1992.
He was wounded several times and lost his right eye.
He is now one of the most wanted men in Afghanistan.
Burhānuddin Rabbāni (1940-2011)
Burhānuddin Rabbāni was born in Faizabad in 1940. He was a politician, warlord and president. He belonged to the Tajik ethnic group and was the political leader of the Northern Alliance against the Taliban during the rule of the Taliban.
He had studied Islamic law and theology at the Shariat Faculty of Kabul University, where he became professor of philosophy in 1963. In 1966 he went to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, where he obtained a master’s degree in Islamic philosophy.
Two years later he returned to Afghanistan. In 1974 Rabbāni was supposed to be arrested because of his Islamic attitudes, but was able to flee to Pakistan.
After 1978 he and his followers were among the most successful resistance fighters against the communist government in Kabul and against the Soviet occupiers.
After the overthrow of Mohammed Najibullah in April 1992, he returned to Kabul and was elected president for two years by an electoral assembly in December 1992.
In September 1996, he had to flee the Taliban to the north of the country, where he had made the city of Faizabad the center of resistance against the Taliban. In June 1997 he co-founded the National Islamic United Front for the Rescue of Afghanistan (Northern Alliance), which the UN continued to recognize as the country’s legitimate government, with the result that he remained the internationally recognized President of Afghanistan.
After the American invasion and the overthrow of the Taliban regime, he returned to Kabul in November 2001, where he handed over the presidency to Hamid Karzai on December 22, 2001.
Most recently he was chairman of the High Peace Council, which was supposed to negotiate with the Taliban on behalf of the Afghan government.
On September 20, 2011, Rabbāni was killed by a suicide bomber in his apartment in the diplomatic quarter of Kabul.
Zalmay Rassoul (born 1944)
Zalmay Rassou was born in Kabul in 1944. After graduating from high school in Kabul, he studied medicine in Paris, which he successfully completed in 1973.
Over the years he has published numerous articles in American and European medical journals and is a member of the American Society of Nephrology.
From January 2010 to 2014 he was Foreign Minister in the cabinet of President Hamid Karzai. He also ran in the 2014 presidential election, finishing in third place.
Shah Ruch (1377-1447)
He was a Persian and Central Asian Timurid ruler based in Herat (Khorassan, now Afghanistan). He died in the winter camp in Rayy on the occasion of a campaign against one of his grandchildren.
His successor was his only living son, Ulug Beg (1394-1449).
Beg was a famous astronomer and had put science above religion. After his defeat at Samarkand – in what is now Uzbekistan – he had to make a pilgrimage on which he was arrested and executed on October 27, 1449.
Nur Mohammed Taraki (1917-1979)
Nur Muhammad Taraki was born on July 15, 1917 in Mukur.
He was an Afghan journalist and politician and one of the founding members of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, after which he was split up and belonged to the Khalq branch of the party from 1967.
After Mohammed Daoud Khan was deposed in a coup on April 27, 1978, Taraki became chairman of the Revolutionary Council on April 30, 1978, and also prime minister.
However, his communist campaigner during the revolution, Hafizullah Amin, forced his resignation from all offices in September 1979 and then took them over himself.
Amin was murdered shortly afterwards on December 27, 1979 by Soviet secret agents. It should be noted that Afghanistan was occupied by the Soviets from December 25, 1979 to February 1989.
Mohammed Zahir Schah (1914-2007)
Zahir Schah was the Afghan king from 1933 to 1973 and was overthrown by his cousin Mohammed Daud because he did not like the king’s reforms.
After spending 30 years in exile in Rome, he returned to Afghanistan in 2001 after the fall of the Taliban to help build the current government.
He died in July 2007 at the age of 92 in his homeland. Burhanuddin Rabbai (born 1940)
He is the leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance and fought against the Taliban. He supported the President Hamid Karzai.
– Source: http://geboren.am/orte/Asien/Afghanistan
Writers, actors and directors
Ghulam Muhyiddin Afghan (1862-1922)
The poet and writer Ghulam Muhyiddin Afghan was born in Kabul in 1862, where he died in 1922
Assem Akram (born 1965)
Assem Akram was born in Kabul on September 29th. He did his doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris. He is a writer, historian and also served as a diplomat during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
He currently lives in Springfield, Virginia, disillusioned by developments in his home country.
Muhammad Hasan Bariq-Shafi’i (Bareq-Shafi’i) (
born 1932) Bareq-Shafi’i was born in Kabul in 1932, attended Ghazi High School and studied theology in Kabul after graduating from school.
He is a writer and publicist , but was also Minister of Culture and Minister of Transport until 1979. In 1982 he became governor of the Afghan province of Herat and in 1985 second secretary at the embassy in Libya.
And in 1989, as one of the country’s modern writers, he became chairman of the Journalists’ Association in Afghanistan.
Siddiq Barmak (born 1962)
Siddiq Barmak was born on September 7, 1962 in Panjshir, Afghanistan. He received his training as a filmmaker in 1987 with a master’s degree from the Moscow Film Institute (VGIK).
He works as a director who produced the 2003 film “Osama”. He is also director of the Afghan Child Education Movement (ACEM), an association that promotes reading and writing as well as art and culture.
Abdul Hadi Dawi (1894-1982)
Abdul Hadi Dawi was born in Kabul in 1894. He was an Afghan poet, man of letters, diplomat and politician. He was Ambassador to London from 1922 to 1925 and Minister of Commerce from 1925 to 1928.
In 1950 he became speaker of parliament and at the same time secretary to King Mohammed Sahir Shah and tutor of his son the crown prince. From 1952 to 1954 he was then ambassador to Cairo and from 1954 to 1958 to Djakarta in Indonesia.
And on October 12, 1965, he became President of the Mesherano Jirga (House of Elders).
Abdul Hadi Dawi died in Kabul in 1982.
Razeq Fani (1943-2007)
Razeq Fani was born in Kabul in 1943. He was an Afghan poet and writer with Tajik roots and was one of the most important representatives of contemporary Afghan poetry.
He went to the University of Sofia in Bulgaria to study political economy. But in 1977 he returned to Afghanistan, where he devoted himself entirely to poetry and writing.
His first volume of poetry was published in 1966 under the title Armaghan-e Jawani. A novel about life in Afghanistan followed in 1983 and a collection of short stories and satires in 1987.
For political reasons he emigrated with his family to San Diego in the US state of California in 1988, where he died on April 25, 2007.
Asadullah Habib (born 1941 )
Asadullah Habib was born on October 10, 1941 in Kabul. He is a writer and poet. After graduating from school, he studied in Kabul, the USA and the Soviet Union. After that he was from 1980 to 1982 he was President of the Writers’ Association of Afghanistan. From 1982 to 1988 he was rector of the University of Kabul under the Soviets.
Khaled Hosseini (born 1965)
He was born on March 4, 1965 in Kabul, the son of an official at the Foreign Ministry. The family lived in Tehran from 1970 to 1973, but moved to Paris in 1976, where the father got a job in the Afghan embassy.
Because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, they did not return there, but applied for political asylum in the USA, which they received in 1980.
In 1984 he graduated from high school and then began studying biology at Santa Clara University, which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1988.
He later went on to study medicine at the University of California at San Diego, where he became a Doctor of Medicine in 1993. He completed the subsequent specialist training as an internist in 1996 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He has been working as an internist since 1996.
But later he interrupted his work as a doctor until the end of 2005 to write on his book “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. The German edition appeared in August 2007 under the title “Thousand beaming suns”. Another novel was published in May 2013 under the title “And the Mountains Echoed”, which was published in German in September 2013 under the title “Traumsammler”.
His novel “The Kite Runner” from 2003 was made into a film in 2007.
Attik Kargar (born 1969) Attik Kargar, born
on March 31, 1969 in Kabul, emigrated to Germany and is now a German author, actor and cartoonist.
Khalilullah Khalili (1907-1987)
Khalilullah Khalili was born in Kabul in 1907. He was an Afghan poet who had published around 35 volumes of poetry. He had studied classical literature in the 1940s.
In 1945 he went for political reasonsi went into exile in Kandahar, where he began to write poetry. In the 1950s he returned to Kabul, where he became Minister of Culture and Minister of Press and Information from 1951 to 1953. He also started teaching as a professor at the University of Kabul. After learning Arabic in the 1960s to 1970s, he was appointed Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Iraq. After the coup in April 1978, he fled to Germany and later to the United States. In the late 1980s he went to Islamabad in Pakistan.
He found his final resting place in Peshawa in Pakistan, next to the grave of the Pashtun poet Rahman Baba. Atiq Rahimi (born 1968)
Atiq Rahimi was born on February 26, 1962 in Kabul, where he studied literature and worked as a film critic.
After the invasion of the Soviets in December 1979, he fled to Pakistan and went to France in 1984, where he made a name for himself as a writer and documentary filmmaker.
He also did his PhD in audio-visual communication here at the Sorbonne. He has both Afghan and French citizenship and has recently returned to cultural activities in Afghanistan.
Ahmad Shah Massoud
Habibullah Kalakani
Burhanulldin rabani
Sayed Qassem Rishtya (1913-1998)
Sayed Qassem Rishtya was born in Kabul in 1913. He was an Afghan writer, but also active as a politician and diplomat.
He graduated from high school at the French Isteqlal Lycée in Kabul and then studied at the local financial institution.
After completing his studies, he worked for various magazines in Kabul and became director of Radio Afghanistan.
From 1950 to the early 1960s he held the post of Minister of Finance.
From 1960 to 1962 he was ambassador to Czechoslovakia and from 1962 to 1963 to Egypt.
He then became Minister for Information and Culture from 1964 to 1965.
After the end of the monarchy, he was appointed ambassador to Japan in 1973.
But after his return to Afghanistan he stopped all political and diplomatic activities and instead devoted himself to historical research as well as the writing of his memoirs and the publication of the work “Afghanistan in the 19th century”.
After the Soviet invasion in December 1979, he emigrated to Geneva, where he died in 1998.
Athlete
Sadullah Ahmadzai (born 1948)
Sadullah Ahmadzai was born in Kabul in 1948 and was a successful Afghan soccer player. He played fifteen times for the country’s national team between 1975 and 1984.
After his last international match in 1984, he fled Afghanistan and has lived in the United States since then, where he is President of the Afghan Football Support Organization.
Massoud Azizi (born 1985)
Azizi is an Afghan track and field athlete. He was a member of the five-man team with which Afghanistan participated in the 2004 Summer Games for the first time since the 1996 Olympic Games.
Mansur Faqiryar (born 1986)
Mansur Faqiryar was born on January 3, 19686 in Kabul and came to Germany with his parents in 1987. He has both German and Afghan citizenship.
In Germany he played as a soccer goalkeeper for various clubs and from 2011 a total of 17 times for the Afghan national soccer team.
Mustafa Hadid (born 1988)
Mustafa Hadid is an Afghan football player
Bashir Ahmad Rahmati (born 1985)
Rahmati was an Afghan wrestler. He was a member of the five-man team from Afghanistan that participated in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens for the first time since the fall of the Taliban government.
Basharmal Sultani (born 1985)
Basharmal Sultani was an Afghan boxer. He was a member of the five-man team from Afghanistan that participated in Athens in 2004 for the first time since the fall of the Taliban government in the Olympic Games.
Ata Yamrali (born 1982)
Ata Yamra was an Afghan football player
Theologians and philosophers
Khoschal Khan Khattak (1613-1689)
Khoschal Khan Khattak was born near Peshawar in 1613. His father was a prince of the Moghol dynasty.
He advocated the education of women and attached great importance to character formation, especially of young people.
He is also considered a pioneer for freedom and independence from Afghanistan.
He wrote his poems in Dari or Farsi and especially in Pashto. The subjects of his poetry deal with the motifs as well as the everyday worries of human existence.
His poetry was shaped by the humanistic tradition of the renaissance of the Orient, but also testified that the poet should not only be socially critical but also seek political authority.
In addition, he was a master of the “Landai”, those Pashtun love poems, which can be compared to German minnesang, in which heroism, steadfastness, resistance and bravery and love are sung about.
Ghulam Muhammad Niazi (1932-1978)
Ghulam Muhammad Niazi was born in Ghazni in 1932. He later graduated from the famous Al-Azhar University in Cairo with a degree in theological knowledge.
He then returned to Afghanistan and taught and researched at the University of Kabul as a professor of Islamic theology. He is the founder of the Jamiat-e-Islami Afghanistan.
He was arrested at the behest of Mohammad Daoud Khan in 1974 and killed on May 28, 1979 under the initiative of Khalqi.
Khalqi was a faction of the Communist Democratic People’s Party of Afghanistan, founded in 1961, which then took power in the country.
Ahmad Milad Karimi (born 1979)
Ahmad Milad Karimi was born on February 10, 1979 in Kabul. In 1982 he fled with his family and came to Darmstadt after a long odyssey.
He is a German-Afghan philosopher, Islamic scholar, translator and poet.
His most important work is the complete new translation of the Koran from October 2009, which was published by Herder-Verlag in Freiburg.
Others
Abdul Haq (1958-2001)
Abdul Haq was a commander of the Pashtun mujahideen who fought against both the Soviets and the Afghan Communists.
After he had turned against the Taliban – especially as a result of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 in the USA – he was murdered by them in October 2001.
Mina Kishwar Kamal (1957-1987)
As a student she founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) in 1977 and later the bilingual magazine Payam-i-Zan (“Message of the Women”).
She died on February 4, 1987 in an assassination attempt.
Walid Nakschbandi (born 1968)
Walid Nakschbandi was born on 14. Born August 1968 in Kabul.
He is a German-Afghan journalist, television producer and manager.
He left the country with his parents in 1975 but returned there in 1979. But already in 1980 he went to Paris six months later to Germany. After graduating from high school in Solingen, he began studying politics and law at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn. He completed his law studies with the first state examination, the political studies at the Free University in Berlin.
He then worked as a volunteer for the TV station Sat.1 and later as a political editor. He then switched to the Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group, became editor of the Talk im Turm program with Erich Böhme and was the producer of the ZDF program Hidden Camera.
In 1999 he became managing director and editor-in-chief of AVE Gesellschaft für Fernsehproduktion mbH.
He is also a lecturer at the Berlin University of the Arts – the former Hochschule der Künste (HdK).
Mehr-Ali Newid (born 1950)
Mehr-Ali Newid was born on December 15, 1950 in Kabu. In 1970 he began to study oriental studies and literature in Kabul. After passing the final exams, he went to Germany and received his doctorate here in Munich in 1986.
The German-Afghan scientist orientalist has been Deputy Chairman of the Society of Friends of Islamic Art and Culture since 2008.
Rahraw Omarzad (born 1964)
Rahraw Omarzad was born in Kabul in 1964.
He is a writer, artist, and an expert in modern Persian art.
He founded the “Center for Contemporary Art Afghanistan (CCAA)”, which he also directs.
The center is committed to sustainable cultural renewal in Afghanistan. The art magazine Gahnama-e Hunar is currently the only one of its kind in the country and sees itself as a window to the world.
Because of his activities, he has made strong enemies with the fundamentalists.
Amanullah Parsa(born 1933)
Amanullah Parsa was born on December 27, 1933 in Kabul. He is an important representative of the modern neo-impressionist art movement.
He taught for a long time as a professor of art in Kabul, especially devoted to physically disabled students. His works of art are among the most famous in Afghanistan.
After receiving a scholarship from the Italian government, he went to Rome to continue his activities at the Accademia di Belle Arti.
Afghanistan: animals and plants
Mammals, birds
Afghanistan is characterized by high mountain regions and steppe landscapes, which of course has a significant influence on the local flora and fauna.
The 7,492 m high Noshak 7,492 on the border with Pakistan is the second highest peak in the Hindu Kush Mountains after the Tirich Mir.
The
– Kohe Shakhawr (7,116 m)
– Shah Dhar (7,038 m)
– Kohe Urgunt (7,016 m) are over 7,000 m high.
Other mountains over 6,000 m high are the Lunkho e Dosare (6,901 m), the Lunkho e Dosare (6,901 m), the Kohe Hevad (6,849 m), the Languta-e-Barfi (6,827 m), the Kuh-e Bandaka (6,843 m), the Gumbaz-e-Safed (6,800 m), the Koh-e Keshni Khan (6,743 m) m), the Sakar Sar (6,272 m) and the Kohe Mondi (6,234 m).
The 5,809 m high Mīr Samīr is also worth mentioning
The animal populations in Afghanistan have in some cases significantly decreased due to the wars.
Nevertheless, wolves, foxes and occasionally snow leopards still live in the mountains. Even bears can still be found in the higher elevations of Afghanistan.
Marmots and ibex still live in the high mountains. Wildcats can also be found here. In the steppe landscapes there are gazelles as well as hyenas and jackals. Other animals are wild sheep and wild goats. There are also various species of birds such as eagles and vultures, but also pheasants.
Snakes, other poisonous animals
Asian sand
rattle otter There are five subspecies of the Asian sand rattle otter (Echis carinatus). The subspecies Echis carinatus sochureki is found in Afghanistan. A detailed description of this venomous snake can be found here >>>
Spectacle snake
The spectacle snake (well, well) is a real cobra and occurs in the east of Afghanistan.
A detailed description of this venomous snake can be found here >>>
Indian krait
The Indian krait (Bungarus caeruleus) is a very poisonous snake whose bite is almost always fatal if left untreated. A detailed description of this venomous snake can be found here >>>
Levantotter
The Levantotter (Macroocketa lebetina) comes from its name in Afghanistan. You can find a detailed description of this venomous snake here >>
MacMahon viper
The MacMahon viper Eristicophis macmahonii) is a very rare venomous snake. The snake reaches a length of 70 to 80 cm. Your head is strikingly broad and clearly set off from the rest of the body. The basic color of the top is light reddish-brown to sand-colored. On the side it has 20 to 25 smaller dark brown spots that are bordered by white dots at the top. The base of the tail is cross-banded in brown, while the tail is yellowish in color. The snake is nocturnal and lives exclusively on the ground. During the day it is well camouflaged and buried in the sand.
The consequences of a bite can be pain, swelling, edema, blisters and necrosis in the area around the bite site. General symptoms such as headache, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, dizziness, shock and cramps can also occur. Neurological failures can also occur, although life-threatening symptoms of paralysis are rather unlikely. The animals are only found in some regions of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran
Central Asian Cobra
The Central Asian Cobra (Naja oxiana) is a real cobra.
Plants
Juniper bushes, Himalayan cedars, as well as spruce, fir and birch trees grow at a higher altitude, while pistachio trees can be found in the lowlands. In the steppe landscapes you can find the steppe shrubs typical of this landscape. Denser tree populations can only be found in a few regions, as many forests have been cut down over the past 30 years. Willows and poplars can be found on the banks of the river and dates, figs and bamboo grow in the subtropical regions of the country.
Opium poppy
The opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), which is now grown on an area of 330,000 ha = 3,300 km², plays a special role. The milk of the opium poppy forms the basis for opium. The cultivation of the opium poppy is largely controlled by the Taliban and serves them as a lucrative source of money – including buying weapons.
