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Profile of President

Omar Zakhilwal, Ph.D. Economics, Carleton University Ottawa, M.A. Economics Queen’s University Kingston Ontario, B.A. (Honors) Economics University of Winnipeg Manitoba. Prior to becoming the President of AISA, Dr. Zakhilwal served as the Chief Policy Advisor at the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation & Development (MRRD) of Afghanistan. In addition, Dr. Zakhilwal has been a member of the Supreme Council of da Afghanistan Bank (Afghanistan Central Bank) and teaches Economics at Kabul University.

Over the course of his stay in Afghanistan, Dr. Zakhilwal has been part of the two Loya Jirgas that elected the president for the Afghanistan Transitional Government (June 2002) and ratified Afghanistan’s Constitution (Dec 2003). served as an author of Afghanistan’s First National Human Development Report (released by UNDP in Feb 2005); and has been part of many other initiatives with respect to rural Development. He also worked as an Afghan counter-part to the North-South Institute-led “What Kind of Peace is Possible?” research project, examining the role of community led development in sustainable peace building, as well as working on a strategy for Counter-Narcotics Alternative Livelihood in Afghanistan. Moreover, he has done consulting work for the World Bank, UNDP, CIDA and other organizations.

Dr. Zakhilwal has published many articles, op-ed articles and research papers on political, economic and social issues in such newspapers and Journals as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Forum of Federation Quarterly, Human Rights Tribune, Al-Ehram, Mujahid Wolus, Dawat, Heela, Efforts, Afghan Mosaic, Afghan Mirror, ECONOMICREFORM of the Center for International Private Enterprise of Washington DC and many other publications. Many of his articles are on the internet and can be accessed through any search engine.

Prior to his return to Afghanistan, Dr. Zakhilwal served as a Senior Research Economist with the Government of Canada and taught economics at Carleton University in Ottawa.