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 Khalilzad
became the American ambassador to Afghanistan in November 2003. He is an
Afghan-American who served as the Program Director for Strategy, Doctrine, and
Force Structure at the RAND Corporation’s Project Air Force. He co-authored the
Afghanistan Foundation's White Paper which presented various political ideas and
information to U.S. Policy makers regarding Afghanistan. Dubbed the "viceroy" by
various observers (the term used for India's British colonial leaders), Khalilzad was seen as the power behind President Hamid Karzai and won praise for
keeping Afghanistan atop Washington's agenda. In April 2005, US President George
W. Bush nominated Khalilzad to be the American ambassador to Iraq. This prompted
Afghanistan's chief justice Fazel Hadi Shinwari to write an open letter to US
President George W. Bush pleading with him not to transfer Khalilzad to Iraq
until after Afghanistan's parliamentary elections.
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