Afghan Biographies

Qalamuddin, Mohammad Mawlawi


Name Qalamuddin, Mohammad Mawlawi
Ethnic backgr. Pashtun
Date of birth 1950
Function/Grade Ex-Taliban Leader
History and Biodata

2. Previous Functions:
Vice and Virtue Ministry, Deputy Head,
Deputy minister of mosques and Hajj,
Head of the Afghan National Olympic Committee,
(above Functions during the former Taliban Regime in Afghanistan)
Member of the High Peace Council (2010)

3. Biodata:
Al Haj Mawlawi Maulavi Mohammad Qalamuddin Qalamudin Mohmand was born 1950 in Nangahar Province, Afghanistan. He was captured in 2003, two years after the Taliban regime collapsed, and freed in 2005. The 60-year-old cleric has since been rehabilitated. In 2005 he has been unsuccessfully running for a seat in Wolesi Jirga. Appointed to the High Peace Council, a 70-member body created 2010 to oversee the process of "reconciliation" with the insurgents in Afghanistan, Qalamuddin recently met General David Petraeus, the overall commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, to discuss the treatment of Taliban prisoners in US-run jails.

For more than a decade Qalamuddin, who personally issued an edict banning make-up and high heels in the Afghan capital and whose men routinely beat women who broke the Taliban's strict laws on dress in the 1990s, has been among about 140 former Taliban and al-Qaida figures under United Nations sanctions preventing them travelling or holding bank accounts. Now (20110603)  he is on a list of 18 candidates submitted to the UN in May 2011 whom the Afghan government want to be freed from the sanctions.

The British and US governments will back the move to "delist" the 18 at a key meeting of the UN sanctions committee in two weeks. Over coming months, sanctions on scores more figures who played prominent roles in the former regime could be lifted.

Britain and the US believe the move will send a public message to active insurgents that, if conditions are met, their reintegration into normal Afghan life is possible. Though Russia is thought likely to try to block the attempt to lift the sanctions at the coming meeting, intensive diplomatic lobbying is underway in New York. For Qalamuddin's journey from outlaw to interlocutor is one which American and British officials hope many others will make – particularly senior leaders of the insurgence.

Last Modified 2011-06-03
Established 2011-06-03