46 Notable alumni of Kabul University

Horia Mosadiq is an Afghan human rights activist, political analyst and journalist. She has faced personal threats for her work as an activist and journalist. Mosadiq currently works for Amnesty International.

Nanguyalai Tarzi – is a former senior Afghan diplomat who was the Afghan Ambassador to Switzerland and Permanent Representative to the United Nations office and other international organisations in Geneva. Tarzi has been the Ambassador of Afghanistan to India, and before that he was Permanent Representative to United Nations at Geneva and Afghan Ambassador to Switzerland, Ambassador of Afghanistan to...

Mohammad Akram Khpalwāk is a politician in Afghanistan who was Governor of Farah province from 3 April 2012 to 1 December 2014. Between March 2006 and April 2010, he served as Governor of Paktika province.

Sharif Ghalib is the executive director of the Ottawa Consultative Process based in Ottawa, Canada. He has previously served as Chief Policy Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan. He formerly served as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) and Chargé d'affaires of the Embassy of Afghanistan in Ottawa, Canada. Prior to the posting, he served as Deputy Permanent...

Mohammad Moeen Marastial is an Afghan politician who served as a Member of Parliament in Wolesi Jirga, the lower house, representing the people of Afghanistan from 2003 to 2009. During his incumbency, he advocated for education for all, a receptive and accountable government, focusing on the best interests of the nation and a strong rule of law.

Farida Momand is an Afghan doctor and politician who serves as Minister of Higher Education.

Amena Safi Afzali is a politician in Afghanistan, who became Minister of Work, Social Affairs, Martyred, and Disabled in January 2010 after receiving the confidence vote of the Afghan National Assembly. She had previously served as commissioner with the Independent Human Rights Commission until 2004. and as the Minister of the Ministry of Youth Affairs until it integrated with the...

Suraya Dalil, (born 1970) is an Afghan physician and politician who served as Minister of Public Health from 2010 to 2014 and has been the country's Permanent Representative to the United Nations since November 2015.

Zarar Ahmad Moqbel Osmani is a politician in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan who was Minister of Foreign Affairs (2013 to 2015) and Minister of Interior (2005 to 2008). Previously, he was Minister of Counter Narcotics and Governor of Parwan Province. Prior to this, he was Chief of Police of Parwan province and First Secretary to Afghan Embassy in Tehran....

Tooryalai Wesa is a politician in Afghanistan. He was Governor of Kandahar Province from December 2008 to 2014.

Khalida Furugh is an Afghan poet and academic. She is considered one of the country's leading female poets.

Shafiqa Habibi is a journalist, television anchor, activist, and politician from Afghanistan. She is known for her work to support women journalists, and for her 2004 candidacy for Vice President of Afghanistan as the running mate of Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Asadullah Sa'adati is an ethnic Hazara politician in Afghanistan. He is the former representative of this province during the 16th term of the Afghanistan Parliament.

Mohammad Asif Rahimi is an Afghan politician serving as ambassador to the Netherlands. He was previously the governor of Herat Province and Minister of Agriculture. An ethnic Tajik, he was raised in Kabul, and obtained a bachelor's degree from Kabul University in 1981 before completing post-graduate studies in Management of Development Programs in 1989 at Omaha University in Nebraska, United...

Fazal Haq Mujahid was an Afghan military leader and politician. An active military and political involvement against the Soviet Union earned him a respected role in the country diverse political spectrum, but was very soon assassinated by unknown gunmen in late 1990s. He was considered to be one of the very few undisputed political leaders who fought the USSR invasion...

Maria Bashir is a prosecutor based in Afghanistan and the only woman to ever hold such a position in the country as of 2009. With more than fifteen years of experience with Afghan civil service - the Taliban, corrupt policemen, death threats, failed assassination attempts - she has seen them all. She was banned from working during the Taliban period,...

Delbar Nazari was an Afghan politician who was the last Minister for Women's Affairs.

Ghulam Haider Hamidi was the Mayor of Kandahar in Afghanistan. During Taliban rule, his family fled to Pakistan, then to the United States.

Farid Zarif was United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative and head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). In August 2015, he was promoted to the level of United Nations Under-Secretary-General and appointed as Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General to Liberia and Coordinator of the United Nations Operations in Liberia (UNMIL).

Mortaza Behboudi is a French war reporter, writer, and documentary filmmaker. In 2019, he was featured in Forbes 30 under 30 in the category of Media and Marketing for his work on Guiti News. Mortaza Behboudi is Bayeux Calvados-Normandy War Correspondents Prize and Prix Varenne winner in the year 2022. On January the 7th, 2023, Behboudi was detained and imprisoned...

Manizha Bakhtari is an Afghan diplomat, author and journalist renowned for her contributions to the country's literary and political landscape. She is currently the Afghan ambassador to Austria, leading one of Afghanistan's most significant diplomatic representations. Bakhtari previously served as the country's ambassador to the Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland), as well as the chief of staff...

Massouda Jalāl is the first woman in the history of Afghanistan who ran for the Office of the President of Afghanistan in 2002, 2004, and again in 2019. Dr. Jalāl emerged as a leading voice of Afghan women after her election as the Representative to the 2002 Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) as she became one of the frontrunners for the...

Dr. Habiba Sarābi is a hematologist, politician, and reformer of the reconstruction of Afghanistan after the Taliban first took power. In 2005, she was appointed Governor of Bamyan Province - the first Afghan woman to become a provincial governor. She had served as Afghanistan's Minister of Women's Affairs and as Minister of Culture and Education. Sarabi was instrumental in promoting...

Khatool Mohammadzai is an Afghan brigadier general who served in the Afghan National Army. She was first commissioned in the military of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan during the 1980s, trained as one of the few female paratroopers; she has since logged over 600 jumps in her career. She continued to serve in the Afghan military as an instructor until...

Mohammad Gulab Mangal is an Afghan politician. From October 2016, he served as the senior adviser minister of borders and tribal affairs for the president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. He was also actively involved in the tribal conflict resolutions.

Nur ul-Haq Ulumi is an Afghan politician, who served as Minister of Interior from 2015 to 2016, and as a Member of the House of the People from 2005 to 2010 representing Kandahar. He founded and previously led the National United Party of Afghanistan, a small left-wing and secular party in Afghanistan that is a member of the National Coalition...

Wasef Bakhtari was an Afghan poet and literary figure.

Zeenat Quraishi Karzai is the wife of former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai and was the First Lady of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. Originally from the city of Kandahar, she moved to Kabul, where she lived at the Arg (the Presidential palace) with her husband and their four children.

Shamsia Hassani is an Afghan street artist, a fine arts lecturer, and the associate professor of Drawing and Anatomy Drawing at the Kabul University. She has popularized "street art" in the streets of Kabul and has exhibited her art in several countries including India, Iran, Germany, United States of America, Switzerland, Vietnam, Norway, Denmark, Turkey, Italy, Canada, and in diplomatic...

Muhammad Suhail Shaheen is a Taliban member who is currently the head of the Afghan embassy in Qatar and the head of the Political Office in Doha. He edited the English-language, state-owned Afghan newspaper The Kabul Times during the first Taliban regime, before being appointed to Afghanistan's Embassy in Pakistan as a deputy ambassador.

Meena Keshwar Kamal, commonly known as Meena, was an Afghan revolutionary political activist, women's rights activist, and founder of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). She was assassinated in 1987.

Pir Sayyid Ahmed Gailani, was the leader (Pir) of the Qadiriyyah Sufi order in Afghanistan, and the founder of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (Mahaz-i-Milli Islami ye Afghanistan), a party that was associated with the Mujahideen who led the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Asadullah Khalid is a politician in Afghanistan. He served as head of the National Directorate of Security, which is the domestic intelligence agency of Afghanistan. Before his appointment as the head of the NDS in September 2012, Khalid served as the Minister of Tribal and Border Affairs. Between 2005 and 2008, he was the Governor of Kandahar Province and prior...

Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta is a politician in Afghanistan who last served as National Security Advisor of President Hamid Karzai. Prior to that he served as Foreign Minister from April 2006 to January 2010.

Anwar ul-Haq Ahady is an Afghan politician and former Minister of Commerce and Industry. He had served as the nation's Finance Minister from December 2004 to February 5, 2009. From 2002 to 2004, he was the head of Da Afghanistan Bank, the central bank of Afghanistan. He is also an academic and writer.

Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai is an Afghan former politician and economist who served as the 8th and last president of Afghanistan from 2014 until his government was overthrown by the Taliban in 2021.

Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai was an Afghan military officer and politician who served as the fifth president of Afghanistan from 1987 until his resignation in April 1992, shortly after the Afghan mujahideen's takeover of Kabul. He was also the General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) from 1986 to 1992. After a failed attempt to flee to India,...

Ahmad Shah Massoud was an Afghan military leader and politician. Known as the "Lion of Panjshir", he was the foremost commander of the Afghan mujahideen against Soviet occupation during the Soviet–Afghan War from 1979 to 1989. Later, in the 1990s, he led the government's military wing against rival militias, and actively fought against the Taliban and their allies, from the...

Dr. Faramarz Tamanna is a postdoctoral fellow and visiting professor at the University of Ottawa. He is also a writer, an Afghan politician and the chancellor of the University of Afghanistan in Kabul. He was director general of the Center for Strategic Studies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Afghanistan). He holds a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi,...

Abdullah Abdullah is an Afghan politician who led the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) from May 2020 until August 2021, when the Afghan government was overthrown by the Taliban. The council had been established to facilitate peace talks between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban insurgents. Abdullah served as the Chief Executive of Afghanistan from September 2014...

Abdul Zahir Tanin is an Afghan diplomat who served as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Kosovo, and thus head of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), from October 2015 to November 2021.

Shakardokht Jafari (Dari: شکردخت جعفری) is a British-Afghan medical physicist and an award-winning innovator based at the Surrey Technology Centre. She developed an efficient and low-cost method of measuring a medical dose of radiation.

Rahnaward Zaryab born to a Hazara family of Sunni sect of Islam, was novelist, short story writer, and journalist from Afghanistan literary critic.

Nouria Sultana Salehi AM is an Afghan-Australian nuclear physicist, biophysicist and humanitarian. She is the founder of the Afghan Australian Development Organisation.

Abdulrab Rasul Sayyaf is an Afghan politician and former military commander. He took part in the war against the Marxist–Leninist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government in the 1980s, leading the Afghan mujahideen faction Ittehad-al-Islami (Islamic Union).