Historical Figure
Hamid Karzai
b. 1957
President of Afghanistan from 2002 to 2014
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Biography
Hamid Karzai is an Afghan politician who served as the seventh president of Afghanistan from 2002 to 2014, including as the first president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan from 2004 to 2014. He also served as chairman of the Afghan Interim Administration from 2001 to 2002.
Timeline
The story of Hamid Karzai, told in moments.
His father was assassinated outside a mosque in Quetta, Pakistan. The Taliban were suspected. Karzai took over as tribal chief and began organizing resistance from exile.
Selected as chairman of the Afghan Interim Administration after the fall of the Taliban. The Americans backed him. He wore a distinctive green chapan and karakul hat that became his signature.
Elected president of Afghanistan in the country's first democratic election. Voter turnout was high despite Taliban threats. The honeymoon didn't last.
Left office after 13 years. His government had been plagued by corruption charges and warlord alliances. He refused to sign a bilateral security agreement with the United States.
In Their Own Words (8)
On the security front the entire Nato exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life, and no gains because the country is not secure.
Quoted on BBC News, "Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai says Nato caused 'great suffering'", (October 7, 2013)., 2013
On my graduation there was a party by the junior students, and I was given a hair brush as a gift — if I take off my hat, you know what I mean.(laughter)
2005
When you see on the news or read in the newspaper that so many people were killed in places far away, do not let these numbers become mere abstractions to you. These are real people, like you and I. They are families, friends; they have pain, they have grief.
2005
We must not turn away when we hear the cries of the hungry. We must not stand by when we see the killing and terrorizing of the innocent. We should not wait until hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of our fellow human beings have died as occurred in Afghanistan, before we act.
2005
Every time we ignore the suffering of others or stand by and watch, we do not only act against our own interests but we violate a part of our humanity.
2005
Artifacts (5)
at odds with all that is clear and distinct in Descartes
as a literary parody, for Beckett had in fact invented the poet and his movement that claimed to be "at odds with all that is clear and distinct in Descartes". Beckett later insisted that he had not...
has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that y...
play to represent, contributed greatly to its success. In a much-quoted article, the critic Vivian Mercier wrote that Beckett "has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens,...
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