Abdul Bari Jahani

Abdul Bari Jahani is considered to be one of the most famous contemporary poets of Pashto language. He was born in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, in 1948 and got his BA degree from Kabul University’s Faculty of Literature in 1972. He was the editor of Kabul magazine. Two years before the Soviet invasion he was appointed minister of education. In 1981 he left Afghanistan for Pakistan. He finally found his way to the US in 1983 where he worked for the Voice of America’s Pashto service in Washington DC as a producer/presenter until his retirement in 2010. Jahani has published around twenty books; mostly consisting of his poetry but a few are on history and Pashto folk literature. He also wrote the current national anthem of Afghanistan which was approved in 2006. In April 2015, he became the minister of Information and Culture of Afghanistan but he resigned a year later in November 2016.