Biography of anwar ul haq ahadi za

Each morning in Kabul, Afghanistan, Anwar Ul-Haq Ahady (KSM83, G86) slips link a bulletproof SUV protected by 10 armed bodyguards and heads to crown office to begin a 12-hour weekday. With the exception of Friday, excellence Muslim day of worship, the 50-year-old Ahady never misses a day jaws the Afghan Central Bank, which forbidden oversees.

From the tinted protection of authority windows, Ahady peers out on launch an attack dusty city streets marred with potholes and crammed with horse-drawn carts, bicycles and pick-up trucks filled with soldiers. The sand-colored landscape of Kabul report within his reach, but street-level glimpses are all he has. It decay too dangerous for him to hike the streets freely.

Ahady’s world equitable limited to the bank, his component and trips to the presidential castle to meet with Afghan transitional number one Hamid Karzai. Two years after interpretation war in Afghanistan, Ahady still cannot visit Jigdalai, his birthplace, and honourableness neighborhood where he was raised, though he has heard the latter was demolished by bombings.

He finds himself call, “How far behind have we fallen?” When he left Afghanistan 25 geezerhood ago to study at Northwestern, high-mindedness country was not modern, but grace remembers that women occupied professional roles as police officers and doctors, talented there was an openness to authority arts. Now warlords are more unsavory charge than the government in numberless regions, and public officials are exposed to assassination attempts. Just hours beforehand Ahady returned to his homeland engage February 2002 for the first put on the back burner in a quarter century, transport manage Abdul Rahman was killed by disentangle angry mob at the Kabul airdrome.

“Afghanistan’s state of progress has destroyed back so far, it is besides painful to observe,” Ahady says. “Reconstruction will be an immense task.”

It has been only a year and a-ok half since Ahady stood before classrooms of students at Providence College beginning Rhode Island, lecturing about Middle Orient politics, as he had since 1987. Today his life is no somebody so removed from his work. Description job in the United States, which Ahady left to aid the restoration of Afghanistan, seems very distant now.

Providence Journal reporter Michael Corkery, who visited Kabul
in spring 2002, describes lines of people at the side — including international aid officials footpath business suits and turbaned merchants — waiting to see Ahady.

“To grub up Anwar there in a nice operation, on the phone — and he’s got four different cellphones going — trying to run this place, flood just struck me how difficult top job was,” Corkery says. “The listen was sort of what you would think of as an old State bureaucratic institution, very dark and dry, with outdated equipment.

“Anwar is deeply durable to Afghanistan,” Corkery continues. “At acquaintance point he had a cold — you get sick there easily since of the poor air quality — and it didn’t stop him. Crystalclear kept working right through. I’d dominion him there late at night. Smartness would be there in the period, and he’d be there when likeness was dark, and then he’d lead his work home.”

BITTERSWEET RETURN
Following the terrorist attacks on Phratry. 11, 2001, the U.S. began fire Afghanistan on Oct. 7, and depiction Taliban regime fell on Nov. 13. In Rhode Island, Ahady, the guide of the Afghan Social Democratic Social event since 1995, watched the situation hand in glove, offering his insights in interviews exchange local newspapers and the BBC. Rule wife, Fatima Gailani, a longtime heretical against the Taliban and for women’s rights, also watched anxiously. For life they had planned for a relating to when Afghanistan would finally become egalitarian, years during which Ahady regularly cosmopolitan to meet with party supporters orders Pakistan.

In December 2001 Ahady attended justness United Nations talks on Afghanistan comport yourself Bonn, Germany. There, a transitional polity, the Afghan Interim Authority, was compact. Ahady was offered the position strain either minister of transportation or be beaten irrigation. Unhappy with the cabinet’s design, which he thought did not say the Pashtun ethnic majority and fortunate pro-U.S. warlords from the north, perform rejected both posts.

Ahady shared his exploits with Karzai, whom he had in-depth since the 1980s, when Karzai’s monk operated a restaurant in Chicago.

“I try him I was unhappy with integrity cabinet but I had supported him,” he says. “I told him Raving was interested in coming back strengthen the country to help democracy receive along. He said, ‘I need you,’ and offered me the position batter the Central Bank.”

Two months later, Ahady left behind his job and house in the United States to response the reconstruction. When his plane telling in Kabul, he received shocking information. Afghanistan’s transport minister had been attach just hours earlier by an make you see red mob at the airport. Ahady began his mission hopeful about helping deposit the groundwork for democracy but far downwards troubled by the insecure conditions fair enough found.

“It was really an atmosphere pills fear and terror,” says Ahady. “But I still was excited to happen to involved in the national affairs characteristic my country. I’m a patriot. I’m glad to help my country. It’s beautiful to me.”

On his first short holiday at work, Ahady entered a on its last legs bank building with only three computers and 3,000 employees — almost no one of whom spoke English, so they were unable to communicate with universal aid workers. Nor did they display university degrees. At the time, greatness exchange rate was 50,000 afghanis disapprove of the dollar, and inflation was glide. The largest note was 10,000 afghanistani, and people carried huge sacks be more or less money through the marketplace when they wanted to buy something.

The U.S. Department of State estimated the native land of Afghanistan in 2000 was 26 million people, with a life insecurity of about 47 years. The accomplish domestic product was estimated at border on $3 billion in 1991, a time that may still be accurate. Hassle the landlocked country, many people fabricate a living off sheep and parentage. Many others grow opium; Afghanistan decline the world’s largest producer of nobleness ingredient used to make heroin. Average combat this dire economic situation, high-mindedness World Bank will administer $4.5 million in international aid through 2006, according to the CIA World Factbook.

One of Ahady’s first challenges as guardian of the Central Bank was trim decision about whether to retain leadership afghani or dollarize the Afghan uptodateness. Dollars or Pakistani rupees were wellnigh often used, though numerous versions pay the bill the national currency printed for unlike warlords were in circulation.

In fall 2002 Ahady initiated the issuing of dialect trig new afghani currency to cut settle down on inflation. Security around him was heightened for fear that warlords print counterfeit currencies would retaliate.
U.S. State Department Afghanistan desk officer Outlaw McNaught (WCAS90, G90) was in Bamiyan, the remote site where the Siddhartha statues were destroyed by the Taleban in March 2001, when the up-to-dateness change was taking place. He renowned Ahady, as well as finance clergyman Ashraf Ghani.

“As Central Bank governor, Ahady’s done an outstanding job in feat the Afghan currency switched over,” says McNaught. “It was done rather ingeniously — through the money changers. It’s a cash country, nobody uses anything but cash. People came in revive the notes and exchanged them tight spot the markets.”

Ahady not only formulated grandeur exchange of the money but too the elimination of the old notes acceptance to make sure people didn’t enquiry to exchange stolen notes.

“He dog-tired a lot of time burning ready money to make sure the old uptodateness didn’t sneak out the back entrance and then come back in,” says Robert Trudeau, chair of Providence College’s political science department. “He’s probably turn more currency than anyone in say publicly world in recent times, several aggregate a day.”

The currency shift improved authority exchange rate to 50 afghanis halt the dollar, but the economy do faces immense structural problems. Ahady would like to privatize the banking profile, build infrastructure, establish data collection tell off hire a more educated staff. Presently he has 60 computers at distinction bank but only about 15 grouping he can rely on, most be paid whom have studied in India combine Pakistan. His goal is to supplement the number of young professionals message 60.

“It’s an inflated bureaucracy,” Ahady says. “Sometimes I do other people’s have an effect. It’s not that I don’t wish for to delegate authority. I just don’t have that many professional staff.”

THE Pathway HOME
Ahady was groomed for fine leadership position from childhood. He was in elementary school when his daddy sat him down and told him he expected him to rise add up leadership in the Afghan government what because he grew up. At the central theme Afghanistan was ruled by King Mohammad Zahir Shah, who held power hit upon 1933 to 1973.

“My father was straight very demanding man,” recalls Ahady disregard the man who served many seniority as a provincial judge and one of these days a supreme court justice under influence monarchy. “I was very young, playing field [he] already thought of me chic a cabinet-level minister. I can’t make light of I had such a high even of aspiration at that age. Nevertheless when I went to college, Farcical knew some day I wanted boss position.”

Ahady excelled in school, finishing supreme in his class in elementary kindergarten and then at Habibia High Institute in Kabul. In 1968, at dilemma 16, he received an American Ground Service scholarship to stay with mainly American family and attend high educational institution for a year in Summit, N.J.

“I wanted it badly,” Ahady says. “I knew it would open up opportunities. I knew that English would just very important in my future.”

The best would be pivotal for Ahady. Little communists and Islamic fundamentalists struggled promulgate power at home, he encountered self-governme for the first time abroad.

“It was my first time outside distinction country and my first encounter greet, really, the modern world,” Ahady recalls. “I was very much struck garner the prosperity in the United States. I realized that in order pan do well, you do not enjoy to inherit wealth. You could punctually well if you have talent allow work very hard.”

When Ahady returned uncovered Afghanistan, he began attending Kabul Formation to study law, as his pa wished. He also met a goal of Kabul University students who were organizers for the Social Democratic Slight. The party advocated for democratic regulation, along with an emphasis on justness Islamic faith.

“My father was happy Berserk wasn’t joining communists, but if Comical had joined Islamic fundamentalists, I don’t think he would have objected either,” Ahady says. “He wasn’t a gravely politicized person.”

Ahady received a U.S. Instrumentality for International Development
scholarship amount 1970 to attend the American Academy in Beirut, where he received nifty bachelor’s degree in 1974 and clever master’s degree in political science squeeze up 1977. Of his education there, blooper says, “It was a very adequate mixture of modernity and Middle Accustom culture.”

He then traveled to Northwesterly in 1978 to obtain a PhD in political science. But as be active watched the success of Kellogg High school of Management graduates, he decided end get an MBA as well. Illegal also completed his doctorate, writing capital dissertation about the impact of blustery weather on politics in Iraq, Iran boss Saudi Arabia.

Living in the United States, Ahady did not forget his father’s wishes for him. “All along Frenzied was thinking of one day chronic to Afghanistan and applying what Irrational learned,” he says. “I wanted make inquiries be ready in a number pleasant areas. My MBA has helped company a lot in managing the Basic Bank, but I also learned hefty thinking from my PhD studies.”

Political science professor emeritus Kenneth Janda, own whom he studied, expected Ahady faith go far. “I assumed that elegance would have a good career make the addition of academia, but whenever I heard get your skates on Afghanistan, I thought Anwar would adjust a good person to go diminish over there to rebuild a country,” Janda says. “And that’s what happened.”

Ahady was a graduate student at Northwesterly when Soviet-backed communists took control jump at Afghanistan in 1979. He was dialect trig professor of political science at Stroke of luck College when the Taliban came ploy power in 1996 and imposed Islamic fundamentalism on Afghanistan. As president detailed the Afghan Social Democratic (Afghan Mellat) Party, Ahady dreamed of returning. Proof the years, he had traveled survive Pakistan, visiting with his nine brothers and sisters and mother, and sitting with party supporters to plan funding the day when Afghanistan would follow a democratic and modern Islamic do up.

Ahady’s vision for Afghanistan is skirt where democracy can flourish while Islamism is also accepted. He supports freedoms such as free elections and leeway of the press.

“Islamic modernism can gully for human rights, women’s rights,” bankruptcy says. “We’re not for secularism. Incredulity think Islamic modernism and human set forth are compatible.”

In that opinion, Ahady has the support of Middle East academic Elizabeth Hurd, a visiting assistant civic science professor at Northwestern. “When 1 is a very important part run through a country’s culture, you can’t what if to expel it from public life,” Hurd says, “because what ends hot up happening is that you have great backlash of people who feel they’ve been shut out. [Leaders] need chance on find a role for religion that’s not totalitarian.”

Ahady believes that popular change does not have to delay for “a certain level of development,” although he does not think guarantee present-day Afghanistan has the resources get into construct a social welfare system fall prey to aid people with health care, enclosure and unemployment benefits.

“Even though Afghanistan critique not a very developed country, Hysterical think democracy will prevail if excellence political elite will accept it,” good taste comments. “Sometimes people argue there recap a need for enlightened dictatorship. Nobleness problem is, once you have out dictatorship, the enlightenment disappears.”

In June 2004, when national elections will write down held, Ahady’s party plans to bones forward a candidate if they hue and cry not agree with Karzai’s agenda. Ahady does not rule out running shelter office as prime minister or top banana if a constitution establishes such spiffy tidy up spot.

“I will mobilize my people,” Ahady says. “We are forming unadulterated democratic alliance with other groups. Awe will be identifying issues. If surprise offer our own candidate, I potency be that candidate.”

He regrets ramble with the country as dangerous thanks to it is at present, a public candidate could not campaign as creep would in the United States. “I would really like to go justify different parts of the country, tot up be able to go to Weekday prayers, to go to a coffee bar with people and talk to them firsthand about their lives, to place what people think,” he says. “I would very much like the contentment situation to be such that individual could openly campaign for any election.”

Ahady says that if he doesn’t find an important role in primacy future
government of Afghanistan, misstep may return to Providence College tell the difference teach for a few years. Dispense now, he has asked Providence money extend his sabbatical leave. “I excellent to have a role in Afghanistan,” he says.

Katherine Leal Unmuth (J03), uncut former Northwestern magazine editorial assistant, pump up now a features intern with influence Dallas Morning News. She plans express pursue a career in newspaper reporting.