Abdul Zahir

Who was Abdul Zahir?

Abdul Zahir was Prime Minister of Afghanistan in the early 1970s, during the reign of King Zahir Shah. An ethnic Pashtun, he was born in the Laghman Province of Afghanistan. He attended secondary school in Kabul and university in the United States, earning an MD from Columbia University and a Master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University. Zahir became a medical doctor and returned to Afghanistan to practice medicine, but eventually entered politics. His political positions included terms as Minister of Health, President of the Parliament, and Ambassador to Italy and Pakistan. Most prominently, he served as Prime Minister of Afghanistan from June 1971 to December 1972. A few months after he resigned from that post, King Zahir Shah was overthrown and Abdul Zahir had to retire from politics.

Zahir was married to Quraisha and had four children. His son Ahmad Zahir was a popular musician who died in a car accident in 1979. His daughter Zahira Zahir is a hairdresser in Washington, DC. His eldest so, Asif Zahir was also politically active during his lifetime as Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development in 1980s and he remained ambassador in Kuwait and Italy. He resigned from his post and lived in Peshawar, Pakistan, where he started a campaign for peace in Afghanistan by setting up a political group called the Afghan National Movement.