National
`Karzai has Shimla connections'
By Our Staff Correspondent
SHIMLA, DEC. 7. The 44-year-old nominated head of new Afghan interim administration, Mr. Hamid Karzai, who is also called the most westernised Afghan tribal leader educated in the U.S. had spent a good number of years in India also. He had lived in early eighties in Shimla and did his post-graduation in political science from the Himachal Pradesh University.
Some teachers of the H.P. University like Dr. Gopal Singh, Prof. A.R. Khan, Dr. Suneera Kapoor and others still remember him as a young lad who had come to take lessons in political philosophy and theory. Dr. Gopal Singh says, ``He had a keen interest in international politics and often use to discuss politics and economy of Iran and Afghanistan with him, though he was not at all interested in the local student politics of Indian Universities.''
Mr. Karzai was even interested in palmistry, said Mr. Gopal Singh who also claim to have received letters from him until 1985 before the ethnic Pashtun leader permanently settled in America. The teachers of the Himachal University recalled that he had a spark of a leader and that was why just after few years of his study in Shimla and later in the U.S. he became the Deputy Foreign Minister in the first Muhahideen Government of Mr. Burhanuddin Rabbani, after the Soviet withdrawal.
According to some students of political science of early eighties Mr. Karzai was almost insignificant a student, living in the YMCA like many Iranians and Afghans, had hardly made any mark in his studies. The University records still show that he got just 43 per cent in the four semesters of M.A. Political Science.
Mr. Karzai who was remembered as a moderate Muslim by his teachers, on his elevation to head the interim Government of Afghanistan, made the whole faculty and staff very excited and inspired here.
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