| Mohammad Omar Daudzai | |
|---|---|
| Afghanistan chief of Staff | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 2007 |
|
| President | Hamid Karzai |
| Preceded by | Jawed Ludin |
| Afghanistan Ambassador to Iran | |
| In office 2005–2005 |
|
| Succeeded by | Yahya Maroofi |
| Afghanistan chief of Staff | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 2003 |
|
| Preceded by | Said Tayeb Jawad |
| Succeeded by | Jawed Ludin |
| Personal details | |
| Born | October 12, 1957 |
| Nationality | Afghan |
| Occupation | Diplomat, chief of staff |
Mohammad Umer Daudzai (Pashto: محمد عمر داودزی - born October 12, 1957), is the Chief of Staff of Afghan President Hamid Karzai from 2003 to 2005 and then from 2007 to present. He is a former member of the Hezbi Islami and was from 2005 until 2007 Afghan's Ambassador in Iran.
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Mohammad Omar Daudzai was born on October 12, 1957 in the Qarabagh District of the Kabul Province in Afghanistan. He grew up and completed his primary education in his home district of Qarabagh. In order to continue his higher education, Omar moved to the capital city Kabul.[1]
During the 1980s Daudzai became active in the resistance against the Sovjet-occupation and joined the Mujahideen group of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: Hezbi Islami.[2] Also during the Civil War he kept fighting with the Pakistan backed Hezbi Islami to take over the country.
During the Taliban era Daudzai decided to settle in Peshawar, Pakistan, and began working for the organization Save the Children. While working there through a scholarship program, he was able to go to the Oxford University in the United Kingdom for his Masters in Science. After completing his Masters he came back to work for the Swedish Committee in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. In 1996 he moved to Islamabad, Pakistan, where he started working for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). In 2001 he moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he assumed the role of "Area Development Specialist" in UNDP Geneva.
In November 2003 Daudzai was approached by the Afghan Transitional Administration to assume the office of the Chief of Staff of the President and took the position.
In 2004, just before the first presidential election, then interim-President Hamid Karzai accepted the support of powerful warlords. After dismay from Afghans who were hoping that the nation's first democratic elections would herald an end to the power of the warlords, Daudzai said: "'These are the two distinguished leaders of jihad [holy war against the Soviet occupation in the 1980's] whom we always respect, and the president of course was also a leader of jihad, and therefore there is no reason that the president would not accept their offer."
A month later, commenting only few militias have disarmed, he said: "Any force not part of the Afghan National Army is a challenge, but this is reality, so we ought to deal with it diplomatically and peacefully. I hope we will succeed."[3]
Daudzai served as Hamid Karzai's Chief of Staff until 2005[4] when he moved to Tehran as the Afghan Ambassador to Iran.[5]
While serving as Afghan Ambassador in Iran, Daudzai established close relations with the Government of Iran, by becoming acquainted with Iranian intelligence officials and got to the inncer circle of Mahmud Ahmadinejad.[6]
In 2007, he replaced Jawed Ludin and resumed the position of the Chief of Staff for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Together with Minister of Education Farooq Wardak and former Information and Culture Minister Abdul Karim Khoram he is named as one of the persons with 'maximum influence' over President Karzai's decisions.[1] The New York Times even called him Karzais most trusted confidant.[6] Some say he pushed Karzai to a more aggresvie tone towards the US and he has been accused of corruption and opium dealing. He also has been critical of president Karzai towards US diplomates, wikileaks cables showed.
Wikileaks cables showed that Daudzai had told Deputy US Ambassador to Afghanistan Frank Ricciardone that he was 'ashamed' that president Karzai interfered in two cases where suspects of drug trafficking were released pre-trial after interference of the president.[7]
In the summer of 2010, Karzai sat down with a man believed to be former Taliban Cabinet minister Akhtar Muhammad Mansour to discuss peace between the Taliban and the Afghan Government. According to Daudzai, it later turned out the man wasn't Mansour at all, but a imposter who was just a shopkeeper in Quetta. Daudzai blamed the British for this debacle, because he said that they brought the man in front of Karzai. "International partners should not get excited so quickly with those kinds of things," Daudzai said, adding that the incident shows that the Afghan peace talks should be "Afghan-led and fully Afghanized."[8] According to Wikileaks Cables Daudzai also believed that the Norwegians might have been fooled into meeting self-proclaimed members of the Taliban who may in fact not have been Taliban members at all. Daudzai claimed that he had never heard anything about contact between the Taliban and Norwegian authorities.[9]
On August 28, 2010 Daudzai had a big interview with The Washington Post criticizing the strategy of the United States in Afghanistan. Daudzai called on the international forces to stop invasive night raids on residents' homes and to distance their soldiers from "the daily life of the people." Traffic checks and road blocks, "that's not their job...that's the Afghan police job," said Daudzai.[10]
In the same interview he said that the coalition policies have undermined Karzai's authority and Afghan sovereignty, Daudzai said. In the interview Daudzai rebuffed recent media reports that many of Karzai's aides have long been secretly paid by the CIA: "The whole government is paid, one way or the other, by the United States. That's different. I'm saying none of the 500 are paid by CIA. None." Such allegations directly imperil U.S. and Afghan forces in the field, Daudzai added, because the Taliban use the media reports to suggest that the Karzai is a puppet of the United States, and everybody around him is paid by the CIA. 'So there is no government; it's an occupied country, and let's go and fight them' Taliban is preaching, according to Daudzai.[10] That's why it is "important for the Afghan people to believe that Afghanistan is a sovereign state, where final decisions are made by President Hamid Karzai," Daudzai said.[11]
Daudzai has been receiving plastic bags filled with cash from Iranian officials. These cash bags for a secret, steady stream of Iranian cash intended to buy the loyalty of Daudzai and promote Iran’s interests in the presidential palace, according to sources in the New York Times.[6] Iran uses its influence to help drive a wedge between the Afghans and their American and NATO benefactors, these sources say. “It’s basically a presidential slush fund,” a Western official in Kabul said of the Iranian-supplied money. The mission of the former ambassador to Iran as chief of staff is to advance Iranian interests and helping to poison relations between Karzai and the United States, the New York Times wrote. A Afghan official was quoted saying: "Daudzai is the source of all the problems with the U.S. He is systematically feeding Karzai misinformation, disinformation and wrong information." The number of money Daudzai has received of Iran is estimated around the $6 million. The New York Times article mentioned that Daudzai also has helped to set up Iranian businesses in Kabul which are suspected being fronts for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.[6]
Daudzai and Karzai both refused to respond to written questions about their relationship with Iran, and Daudzai's aide dismissed the allegations as "rubbish." Iranian ambassador in Kabul, Feda Hussein Maliki, also refused to answer questions, and his spokesman called the allegation "devilish gossip by the West and foreign media." The next day, Karzai acknowledged and accepted the fact that the Government of Iran has been providing millions of dollars directly to his office. Karzai told reporters Monday that he had instructed Daudzai to accept the money from Tehran. "It is official and by my order," Karzai said.[12] Iranians also stated that the report was indeed true. Two weeks after the controversy about the Iranian money Daudzai came out to the Afghan Media for an open interview. In the interview Daudzai showed piles of files that proved that every cent of the money coming from Iran were spent on government expenses only and that he had record for all the money that came from Iran. He also claimed that Iranian money had been coming to Afghanistan since 2002 but the issue was brought out only now in order to pressure the Karzai government for political reasons[13][14][15] and that since 2002 also the US, the UK and Japan had provided the presidential office with cash assistance.[16] According to Newsweek, nearly every encounter between Afghan and Iranian officials ends up with the Iranians proffering a sack of cash.[17]
According to wikileaks cables Daudzai told deputy US ambassador Francis Ricciardone alreadt in February 2010 that almost all Afghan officials were on Tehran's payroll, including some people nominated for cabinet positions. Daudzai claimed that some of these officials had been relieved of their duties because 'you can't be an honest Afghan if you receive a package from Iran.'[18] That Daudzai himself received hundreds of thousands of euro's from Iran, was told the Americans in 2009. The money was to support Karzai's office, Daudzai had told Ricciardone, and he said that his government preferred the US' sustained cash support to the 'occasional and unpredictable' payments from Iran, adding that Afghans were trained to fight with the Taliban inside Iran and Iran was also paying Afghan thousands of Afghan religious scholars.[18] Daudzai said that on occasion, Afghan men are crossing into Iran where they are recruited and trained to return and fight.[19]
The wikileaks cables showed also that Daudzai and Minister of Interior Mohamad Hanif Atmar shared 'serious concerns' about Karzai's actions" regarding the holding of upcoming parliamentary elections.[20]
Apart from colluding with the Iranian government, Daudzai is also accused of being involved in massive corruption and opium dealing and consistently advocating an anti-Western line.[21]
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