Afghan Biographies

Spinzada, Mohammed Ibrahim Engineer


Name Spinzada, Mohammed Ibrahim Engineer
Ethnic backgr. Pashtun
Date of birth
Function/Grade Ex National Security Council Official
History and Biodata

1. Deputy Chairman Head of National Security Council NSC:
Engineer Mohammed Ibrahim Spinzada

2. Previous Functions:
Deputy Chairman NSC
Director NDS (June 2010-July 2010)

3. Biodata
Ing. Ibrahim Spin Zada is an influential person and is the deputy of NSC Chairman. Ibrahim is the brother in law to President Karzai. Karzai quietly named Ibrahim to the post of co-deputy intelligence chief of NDS. Unlike the intelligence agency's other deputy, Ibrahim works out of NSC in the presidential palace — not the agency's headquarters. Ibrahim travelled to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in October 2004 to speak with Taliban prisoners and helped organize the release of some, to meet the Taliban faction's key condition for talks, according to an Afghan intelligence source. He spoke on condition of anonymity because his superiors had not authorized to talk about that subject to outsiders. Ibrahim Spinzada was named as the acting Chief of the National Directorate of Security NDS 20100606 after his predecessor Amrullah Saleh resigned 20100606. Engineer Ibrahim Spinzada, has returned to the shadows and his day job as deputy head of the National Security Council (NSC), leaving one of his protégés, Engineer Rahmatullah Nabeel Nabil, in charge of Afghanistan's intelligence apparatus.
 

Among all Karzai advisers, there was one man who has been indispensable to Karzai over the last 12 years—and the extent of his influence is largely unknown except to a small circle in the government who dub him “the shadow Karzai.” After the president, Ibrahim Spinzada, or “Engineer Ibrahim” as he is known, was one of the most influential men in Afghanistan.

“Engineer Ibrahim’s word carried more weight in the government than anyone else’s—sometimes maybe even more than the president’s,” one former longtime aide to Karzai explained. Spinzada’s friendship with Karzai goes back decades, the aide said, and Spinzada was at Karzai’s side in the days following 9/11. “There is nobody closer to the president—not even his own brothers, his own family.”

On paper, Spinzada—a lanky, balding, and bespectacled former aid worker—is the deputy national security adviser, but in reality he is much more than that. His second-floor office in the library-like headquarters of the National Security Council handles Karzai’s most secretive projects. But even inside the NSC, he is more of a myth; he never attends departmental meetings, depending instead on a small staff of confidantes—mainly Mohammed Zia Salehi, the NSC’s financial chief and onetime Situation Room director—to carry out these tasks. For years, Spinzada served as Karzai’s deputy intelligence chief, operating out of the presidential palace rather than the intelligence agency. He remained the president’s liaison with foreign intelligence services and controled one of the two slush funds the president relies on for paying off lawmakers and local strongmen (the other was overseen by Karzai’s chief of staff). He led efforts to incorporate senior Taliban leaders into the government in the early days of Karzai’s administration, and he was seen as the man facilitating Karzai’s contacts with the Taliban. His office had managed the release of Guantánamo prisoners in the past, and he visited the U.S. detention center in 2012 to speak to the five Taliban commanders recently exchanged for U.S. Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.

 

Last Modified 2016-07-11
Established 2009-10-11