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Institutional
Affiliations
Project for the New American Century (PNAC): Signed PNAC's 1997 founding statement of principles as well as several PNAC sign-on letters (3)
Friends of Afghanistan (Mujahedin Support Group): Former Executive Director (4)
RAND Corp.: Former Senior Political Scientist (1)
Transition 2001 Panel (RAND): Member (7)
Government
Posts/Panels/Commissions
Ambassador to Afghanistan: Nominated by President George W. Bush in September 2003 (1)
Special Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan: Current
Special Presidential Envoy to the Free Iraqis: Administration of George W. Bush (1)
National Security Council: Senior Director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other Regional Issues, 2001-2003 (1)
Department of Defense: Assistant Deputy Undersecretary for Policy Planning in the former Bush Sr. Administration (1)
Department of State: Associate, Policy Planning Council in the former Reagan administration (1)
Corporate
Connections/Business Interests
Unocal: Risk analyst for the oil giant when he was at Cambridge Energy Research Associates in the mid-1990s (2)
Education
University of Chicago: Ph.D. (1)
The American University of Beirut, Lebanon: B.A. and M.A. (1)
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Highlights
& Quotes
Khalilzad is a Washington insider with tight connections to several Bush administration figures and high profile neocons. Before being nominated in late 2003 to be the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Khalilzad served as President Bush's envoy to Iraq and Afghanistan and oversaw the Bush-Cheney Defense Department transition team. He worked closely with Paul Wolfowitz in the Bush Sr. and Reagan administrations, and has collaborated with the Project for the New American Century on its lobbying efforts.
Khalilzad's close connections to Islamic extremists in South Asia and to the oil giant Unocal have been the subject of sharp criticism. As Truthout opined in a 2001 piece, "Simply put, Khalilzad's appointment means oil. Oil for the United States. Oil for Unocal, a U.S. company long criticized for doing business in countries with repressive governments and rumored to have close ties to the Department of State and the intelligence community. Zalmay Khalilzad was an adviser for Unocal. In the mid-1990s, while working for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Khalilzad conducted risk analyses for Unocal at the time it had signed letters of approval from the Taliban. The analyses were for a proposed 890-mile, $2-billion, 1.9-billion-cubic-feet-per-day natural gas pipeline project which would have extended from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. In December 1997, Khalilzad joined Unocal officials at a reception for an invited Taliban delegation to Texas." (4)
Despite his connections to the Taliban, which were developed when he aided the Reagan administration's anti-Soviet activities in Afghanistan, Khalilzad -- an Afghan native -- quickly changed his tune when Osama bin Laden's connections to the group surfaced. Reported Truthout, "Khalilzad's critics point out that Zalmay, who gave a speech upon his arrival in Kabul condemning the Taliban, had at one time, as a paid adviser to oil multinational Unocal, courted and defended them. Indeed, Khalilzad has changed his tune so often that one analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, Anatol Lieven, said, 'If he was in private business rather than government, he would have been sacked long ago.'" (4)
Several Afghans told the Washington Post that they disagreed with the Bush administration's decision to nominate Khalilzad ambassador to Afghanistan. According to the newspaper, although many Afghans see Khalilzad as a potentially stabilizing force in the region, "other Afghans, including opponents in the [Karzai] government, view Khalilzad's past association with controversial U.S. policies. … with suspicion. Some noted that in the 1980s he was an official hand-holder of anti-Soviet Islamic militias that later destroyed Kabul in a viscous civil war, and that in the 1990s, he endorsed U.S. accommodation of leaders of the extremist Islamic Taliban." (5)
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