Omar Samad

Who is Omar Samad?

Omar Samad is Senior Central Asia Fellow at New America Foundation in Washington D.C. He is also President of Silkroad Consulting LLC.

He was Afghanistan Senior Expert in residence at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. from January 2012 till January 2013.

He served as Afghanistan's Ambassador to France from June 2009 to July 2011. Prior, he served as Ambassador to Canada from October 2004 to June 2009. He was accredited as the first Afghan non-resident Ambassador to the Chile and Principality of Monaco. During his diplomatic career, he was a member of Afghan delegations to the UN, NAM, Islamic Conferences and specialized conferences on Afghanistan, including the Tokyo and Berlin reconstruction conferences. He represented the Foreign Ministry on the Tripartite Security Commission with Afghanistan-US-Pakistan.

He was the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul from December 2001 to September 2004 and Director General of the Information and Media Division, during which he also served as an advisor, speech-writer and member of the Ministry's reform committee.

Samad earned a Master's degree in International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 2006. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications and International Affairs at the American University in Washington D.C. in 1991. He also worked in the IT private sector field in the US between 1981 and 2001 with corporations such as Datacrown Inc, Electronic Data Systems and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.