First Elected president of Afghanistan
Born: 1957
Birthplace: Kandahar, Afghanistan

Mr Karzai was born on 24 December 1957 in Kandahar. After being educated in Kabul, the fluent English speaker went to university in Simla, India. In 1982, he joined the struggle against the Soviets and became director of operations of the Afghan National Liberation Front (ANLF). When the Taleban erupted on to Afghanistan's political scene in the early 1990s, Mr Karzai initially supported them. However, by late 1994 he had become suspicious of the movement, fearing it had been infiltrated and was controlled by foreigners, including Pakistanis and Arabs.

Hamid Karzai has become the first person to be popularly elected as president of Aghanistan, nearly three years after being appointed the country's interim leader.

The 46-year-old leader will now be hoping that his popular mandate will give him the extra authority needed to confront the country's problems. His critics say he has had little control of events much beyond the capital, Kabul, where the country's ethnic warlords still hold sway. He has had to deal with an increase in violence by militants opposed to the US-backed administration he runs - although the relatively smooth running of the election has given him some respite.

After assuming the interim presidency, Mr Karzai, a powerful Pashtun leader from the Taleban's former stronghold of Kandahar, wasted no time in carving out a high profile at home and abroad. He swept on to the international stage in January 2002 at an international donor's conference in Tokyo, where he managed to persuade donors to pledge more than $4bn to help rebuild Afghanistan. He then embarked on a tour of world capitals. Well educated, Westernised and stylish, Mr Karzai was feted by foreign governments. He quickly managed to build up considerable support at home, partly a tribute to his diplomatic skills, but also because many ordinary Afghans were disillusioned with the warlords who had returned to rule them.

Correspondents say that as a royalist Pashtun from the south, he was accepted in a way few Northern Alliance ethnic minority leaders would be. And, they say, his record as an anti-Soviet combatant served him well with former mujahideen followers. Mr Karzai has long supported plans to build a broad-based government. He first began lobbying for this after slipping into Afghanistan from Pakistan - where his family had lived in exile for some years - in October 2001.

By the time a United Nations-sponsored conference met to set up an interim government for Afghanistan, Mr Karzai had strong American backing and was clearly being groomed for leadership. Mr Karzai's critics have accused him of being an American stooge - particularly after the way in which the US intervened ahead of a second loya jirga in June 2002 to announce that the former king would not oppose Mr Karzai as a candidate for head of state. The political horse-trading may have tarnished his image with some Afghans. He has always faced great pressure to appear not to favour one faction over the other - nor to appear too beholden to the Americans.

That task was not eased by the clear need to upgrade security around the president following the assassination attempt on him by suspected Taleban members in Kandahar in September 2002. Nevertheless, Mr Karzai pressed on with proposals for Afghans to take a greater role in security. Efforts are under way to build a 70,000-strong national army - a force Mr Karzai says will be loyal solely to his government and the only legal army Afghanistan will recognise. Rebuilding the army and disarming warlords are among his top priorities.

He has also sought to tighten the screw on the regions by forging an agreement with powerful governors to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars in taxation to the central government. Last year, Mr Karzai threatened to resign if he did not get his way. He then had to use his diplomatic powers to soothe a rift with Pakistan after the Pakistani embassy in Kabul was ransacked by Afghans. They were angry at alleged Pakistani border incursions. Mr Karzai cooled the tension by telling Pakistan the attackers were enemies of peace and stability in the country and promised to give compensation.

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See Also:

Ghaznavi | Ahmad Shah and the Durrani Empire | Amanullah Khan | Zahir Shah