FORA.tv Speaker - Abdullah Abdullah

Dr. Abdullah was the foreign minister of the Afghan United Front government from 1998 onwards. Following the assassination of Massoud in 2001, he became one of the three dominant figures in the Northern Alliance and later the Transitional Afghan Government along with Mohammed Fahim and Yunus Qanuni. In 2001 he was selected as Foreign Minister for the Interim Administration of Afghanistan; a post which he lost in a cabinet reshuffle on March 22, 2006. He is generally considered to be, along with former Ministers Mohammed Fahim and Yunus Qanuni, a leader of the Tajik faction, although his mother is actually an ethnic Pashtun. Unlike many other former Northern Alliance officials, he was not removed from his ministerial post immediately after the 2004 Presidential Election.