The Kabul Tribune — Abdul Ghafoor Rawan Farhadi, a former Afghan ambassador and the country’s longtime permanent representative to the United Nations, has died at the age of 96 in San Francisco, his family said Monday.
His son, Tariq Farhadi, said his father died of natural causes related to old age.
Acting head of Afghanistan’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, Nasir Ahmad Faiq, and former Afghan President Hamid Karzai paid tribute to Farhadi in separate statements, describing him as one of Afghanistan’s most distinguished diplomats and intellectuals.
Born in Kabul in 1929, Farhadi completed his early education in Afghanistan before graduating in 1952 with a degree in international relations from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). He later studied linguistics and ancient languages at the Sorbonne University and earned a doctorate in 1955 with a dissertation on the works and thought of the Persian Sufi scholar Khwaja Abdullah Ansari.
Farhadi began his diplomatic career at Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and later held a number of senior government positions. In 1972, he was appointed Afghanistan’s ambassador to France.
He is best known for serving as Afghanistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations for 13 years. Appointed by the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani in 1993, Farhadi remained in the post after the Taliban seized power in 1996 and continued to represent Afghanistan following the establishment of the Western-backed republic, serving until 2006.
Farhadi was among the few Afghan diplomats to represent the country at the United Nations under three different political systems: the Mujahideen government, the first Taliban administration and the Islamic Republic.
Fluent in Persian, Pashto, French, English and Arabic, Farhadi also authored numerous scholarly works on Afghanistan’s history, culture and literature.
