Faizullah Jalal

Faizullah Jalal (Persian: فيض الله جلال‎‎, born 22 May 1963) is a politician and a professor of Law and Political Science in Kabul University one of the major and oldest institutions of higher education in Afghanistan. He previously served as the Vice Chancellor of the Kabul University and the Deputy Minister for Academic Affairs in the Ministry of Higher Education of Afghanistan.[1]

Faizullah Jalal

Jalal has a BA in Law and Political Science from Kabul University and a MA and PhD in Political Science from the Tajik National University. He is the author of several articles and books published by top publishers.[2] After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, he was an active part of the political resistant against the regime, which lead to his imprisonment for 18 months.[3] Throughout the civil wars and Taleban regime, Jalal never left Afghanistan or joined a political party.[4] In 2001, after the collapse of the Taliban regime, Jalal was elected from his Kabul neighborhood to the 2002 Emergency Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) of Afghanistan. In 2003, Jalal was again elected from Kabul to the Constitutional Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) of Afghanistan where, with his knowledge and background in law, he actively collaborated in drafting the current Constitution of Afghanistan.[5]

Massouda Jalal, who is Jalal's wife, was the first and only woman to run for the Office of the President of Afghansitan in 2002 and again in 2004. During her run for presidency, Faizullah, was very supportive. In an interview he said at first, he was not supportive of his wife's efforts: "I was telling her, 'You do not have any political party. You don't have any money. You don't have any military forces. And in the end your candidacy will have no result.' At the beginning I did not agree. She had a lot of reasons and she was arguing and explaining. And she told me, 'I am going to take my candidacy seriously.'"[6]