Name: Dr Abdullah Abdullah Age: Not of consequence Nationality: Afghan Claim to fame: Foreign minister in Hamid Karzai’s cabinet
IMAGES of visiting Afghan Foreign Minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah embraced in a warm handshake with President General Pervez Musharraf made it to the front pages of almost all sections of the national print media. Hailing from the Northern Alliance, which Pakistan once loved to hate, Dr Abdullah’s visit was, indeed, a sign of changing times.
A qualified doctor who hails from the Tajik heartland of the Panjshir Valley, Dr Abdullah is well-versed in several languages, including English and French. He is not only a symbol of the long-drawn Afghan struggle against the Taliban, but also as a representative of the social class that has become a minority during Afghanistan’s 23 years of hostilities.
Precious little is known of his early years, except that Abdullah Abdullah was mainly educated in Afghanistan and joined the assassinated Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Masood’s Jamaat-i-Islami group as a Mujahideen activist in the early 1980s.
At the time when the Mujahideen recaptured Kabul in 1996, he had become Masood’s most senior spokesman. In 1999, he became the Northern Alliance’s deputy minister of foreign affairs and afterwards, the foreign minister in Hamid Karzai’s cabinet.
The war against terrorism has seen him emerge as one of the main spokesmen for the Northern Alliance. As foreign minister, he plays an all-too-important role in diplomatic talks on the future of Afghanistan.
However, there are those who say that his stand on his country’s future is making him lose credibility among his countrymen. He is known to put greater emphasis on maintaining the Alliance’s grip on power rather than negotiating with other tribal groups.
His penchant for western dress has also gotten him negative points within the Afghans, as it is seen as a sign that he is not looking out for national interests. Dr Abdullah’s pro-India stance has also projected his image in Pakistan as the ‘Indian man’ in the Karzai cabinet.
During the visit to Pakistan, along with Dr Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s stand to maintain friendly relations with neighbouring countries was reinforced. Dr Abdullah also pledged to help Pakistan in its fight against terrorism and to continue such efforts in Afghanistan as well. Means to curb the growth of smuggling between the two countries also came up, as did the operation against Al Qaeda and the remnants of Taliban in both the neighbouring countries.
The goodwill visit also saw the revival of the Pak-Afghan Economic Joint Comm-ission, with its first meeting to be held in Kabul. All this and more has made Dr Abdullah, like him or not, the man to deal with in the present Afghan cabinet.
IMAGES of visiting Afghan Foreign Minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah embraced in a warm handshake with President General Pervez Musharraf made it to the front pages of almost all sections of the national print media. Hailing from the Northern Alliance, which Pakistan once loved to hate, Dr Abdullah’s visit was, indeed, a sign of changing times.
