Yunus Qanuni

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Yunus Qanuni (يونس قانوني, also transliterated Qanooni and Qanouni) (born 1957) is an Afghan politician.

An ethnic Tajik from the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan, Qunani is the leader of the Afghanistan e Naween (New Afghanistan) political party.

As a member of the Afghan Northern Alliance, he strongly supported the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but opposed Pakistani involvement, as Pakistan favored a reformed Taliban government rather than a new government based upon the Afghan Northern Alliance. He is closely associated with the political faction of the late Ahmad Shah Masood, assassinated in 2001.

In 2001, Qanuni served as chief negotiator for the Afghan Northern Alliance delegation to the Bonn conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany.

In 2004, Qanuni ran for President of Afghanistan against Current President Hamid Karzai. Karzai won in a Landslide.

[edit] Recent activities

Immediately after the fall of the Taliban government, Qanuni was interior minister in an interim administration. He was eventually made the education minister in the Afghan Transitional Administration (established in June 2002), and served as a security advisor to interim President Hamid Karzai.

Elections for a permanent government were scheduled for 2004. When Qanuni's ally Mohammed Fahim was passed over as vice-presidential running mate of Karzai, Qanuni entered the race for the presidency himself. During a campaign rally in Kabul, Qanuni accused Karzai's supporters of jailing his campaign supporters in northern Baghlan and Konduz provinces. On October 5, 2004, Qanuni's campaign supporter, Abdul Aziz, was assassinated while in Shindand, Afghanistan.

In the election, held October 9, 2004, he placed second to Karzai. On December 23, 2004, the newly-inaugurated Karzai announced his administration, and both Qanuni and Fahim were dropped from their posts.

Qanuni was easily elected in the 2005 Afghan Parliamentary elections, placing second in the Kabul province. Since the Presidential election he has generally been seen as the spokesman of the formerly powerful Tajik ethnic group, which dominated the Northern Alliance and the Transitional Afghan Administration, but was largely sidelined after the 2004 Presidential Election. As well as his own party, Qanuni has formed an alliance of several parties called the Jabahai Tafahim Millie or National Understanding Front.

On December 21, Qanuni was chosen to lead the 249-seat lower house of parliament with 122 votes against 117 for his closest challenger, Rasool Sayyaf.

[edit] Quotes

"My candidacy is not to obtain positions, it is to save Afghanistan, to build a government of the future of Afghanistan. So no post and position can stop me from my determination." -August 2004