Gul Agha Sherzai

Gul Agha Sherzai ګل آغا شيرزی
Sherzai speaking at the Rule of Law Conference for Eastern Afghanistan in October 2009
Governor of Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan
In office 12 July 2005 – October 2013
Succeeded by	Maulvi Attaullah Ludin
Personal details
Born	1954 (age 62–63) Kandahar, Afghanistan
Political party	Independent
Religion	Islam

Gul Agha Sherzai (Pashto: ګل آغا شيرزی‎), also known as Mohammad Shafiq, is a politician in Afghanistan. He is the former governor of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. He previously served as Governor of Kandahar province, in the early 1990s and from 2001 until 2003. As of October 2013, Sherzai resigned from his post as governor and formally announced himself as a candidate for Afghanistan's 2014 Presidential Election.

Sherzai was born in 1954 as Mohammad Shafiq in the Barakzai area of Kandahar province. His father was Haji Abdul Latif, proprietor at a small tea shop in Kandahar who rose to become a famous Mujahideen commander. Sherzai took the name Gul Agha when he joined his father in the Mujahideen, who were fighting in the southern Afghanistan area against the Soviet invasion.

His father was later murdered and he added Sherzai (Pashto for "son of lion") as his last name. He is an ethnic Pashtun from the Barakzai tribe. His father was locally known as Haji Latif Sagwan, ("Sagwan" is a term used for a "dog fighter"), who was a well known dog fighter in southern Afghanistan. After the collapse of the PDPA government in 1992, Sherzai served as Governor of Kandahar. He was known outside of Afghanistan as one of the major warlords until around September 1994 when the Taliban began their conquest in Kandahar. Sherzai resigned from his post as governor and remained hidden until late 2001.

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