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Asia
Amin Farhang
Former Minister for Reconstruction in Afghanistan
Minister of Economics in Afghanistan
1977 DAAD Visiting Lecturer Ruhr University Bochum
"I've returned to Afghanistan forever"
Twenty years after escaping from his home country, Amin Farhang returned to Afghanistan at the end of 2001. He was shocked by the destruction in the country:
"I knew that it looked like this and worse everywhere else in the country. But I had to start somewhere".
At the end of December 2001, Farhang was appointed as Minister for Reconstruction at the Afghanistan Conference held on the Petersberg near Bonn and immediately
began his difficult task. He has returned to Afghanistan "forever" - not necessarily a decision to be expected of somebody who had lived in Germany
for 20 years.
Amin Farhang, who was born in 1940, came to Cologne as a DAAD scholarship holder in 1964, gained his Diplom degree there as an economist and ten years later his
doctorate. This was followed by years working as a lecturer and head of the Department of Economic Theory and Policy at the University of Kabul. 1977 saw him
return to Germany again, this time as a DAAD Visiting Professor.
After returning to his home country, he experienced the communist coup d'état, founded a regime-critical underground organisation, was discovered and arrested.
He spent two years in the infamous Pole-Charki Prison in Kabul in which prisoners were maltreated and tortured.
He managed to escape to Germany in 1981, his wife and his two daughters were already there.
Farhang taught at the University of Bochum and founded a consultancy office to assess projects for developing countries. However, the interest in his home country
remained: he took part in building up Europe's most comprehensive documentation centre on Afghanistan.
Farhang, who is meanwhile minister of economics in his home country, calls passionately for the many Afghans to return who live as emigrants in Europe and America,
and the same applies for women. "Women from abroad could act as role models for more emancipation."
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