Born:
Dec. 24, 1957
Died:
--
Place of Birth:
Kandahar, Afghanistan
Military University:
none
Wars Fought:
--Soviet-Afghan War
--Civil War Vs. Taliban
War vs. Taliban:
Hamid Karzai is a commander from the Taliban heartland of Kandahar, where he has been leading troops in his homeland against the Islamic militia. He was aligned to the Rome group at the Bonn talks, which represented the former king Zahir Shah.
Mr Karzai initially supported the creation of the Taliban in 1994 as an alternative to the lawlessness of the warlords who ruled Kandahar but soon grew disillusioned by the religious movement because he said it had been hijacked by neighbouring Pakistan.
After the airstrikes started, Mr Karzai and another prominent Pashtun, Abdul Haq, slipped separately and secretly into Afghanistan to organise Pashtun resistance against the Taliban. Haq was captured and hanged. Mr Karzai was nearly caught but was rescued by US helicopters and special forces. As the Taliban fled the capital Kabul on November 13, driven southward by Northern Alliance soldiers, Mr Karzai was cutting deals with Pashtuns in Uruzgan to abandon the Taliban. He then began moving southward toward Kandahar with an armed force of several thousand tribesmen. After the Taliban collapse, Mr. Karzai was elected as the interim leader of all Afghanistan.
