Ahmad Zia Massoud
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Ahmad Zia Massoud (Born May 1, 1956) is the current vice-president of Afghanistan in the administration of President Hamid Karzai. He is the younger brother of national hero Ahmed Shah Massoud.
He was born in Moqor, in the province of Ghazni. He attended Esteqlal College, the French college in Kabul, for his primary and secondary studies, and then entered the Polytechnical School in Kabul. However, he left school in his third year, in 1978, caught up in the tumultuous events in the country, and joined the mujahadeen with his brother Ahmad Shah, in the Panjsher Valley north of Kabul.
From 1978 to 1981, Ahmad Zia directed Qarargah of Paryan in Haut-Panjsher, and directed resistance in the entire valley. Between 1981 and April 1992, his commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, named him special representative of his party, Djamiat-e-Islami, to Peshawar, Pakistan, where the seven principal parties of the Afghan resistance met. Also during this period he maintained and increased contacts with political leaders of all the Afghan resistance movement, including diplomatic circles and international organizations; in addition, he traveled abroad to plead the case of the mujahadeen.
After the fall of the Soviet-backed communist regime, President Rabbani, his father-in-law, chose him to be the advisor and special representative of the Islamic State of Afghanistan. In December 2001, President Kharzai named him ambassador to the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin; in February 2004 his functions were extended to include the Republic of Armenia, and then in July of that year, Georgia, Belarus, and Moldavia as well.
On July 26, 2004, Kharzai announced that he had chosen Ahmad Zia as his running mate in the October 9, 2004 presidential elections.
Ahmad Zia Massoud is married and has four children: three girls and a boy.
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