Zalmay Khalilzad Quotes

Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad is a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and president of Khalilzad Associates, an international business consulting firm based in Washington, DC. He was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush. He has been involved with U.S. policy makers at the White House, State Department and Pentagon since the mid-1980s, and was the highest-ranking Muslim American in the Administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. Khalilzad's previous assignments in the Administration include U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
Born in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan to a Sunni Pashtun father and his wife, Zahra. Khalilzad's parents originated from Laghman Province of Afghanistan, and the family moved to Mazar-i-Sharif when his father was a government official under the monarchy of Mohammed Zahir Shah. Khalilzad describes himself as an ethnic Pashtun, and is fluent in English, Pashto, Dari (Persian) and Arabic languages. Khalilzad began his education at the public Ghazi Lycée school in Kabul. He first spent time in the United States as a Ceres, California high school exchange student with AFS Intercultural Programs. Later, he attained his bachelor's and master's degrees from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. Khalilzad received his Ph.D at the University of Chicago in The United States, where he studied closely with strategic thinker Albert Wohlstetter, a prominent nuclear deterrence thinker and strategist, who provided Zalmay with contacts in the government and with RAND.