Hanif Atmar

Mohammad Hanif Atmar
Atmar in meeting with Ali Shamkhani in Tehran, August 2016
Minister of Interior
In office October 11, 2008 – June 6, 2010
President	Hamid Karzai
Preceded by	Ahmad Moqbel Zarar
Succeeded by	Bismillah Khan Mohammadi
Minister of Education
In office May 2, 2006 – October 1, 2008
President	Hamid Karzai
Preceded by	Noor Mohammad Qarqin
Succeeded by	Ghulam Farooq Wardak
Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development
In office 2002 – 2008
Succeeded by	Mohammad Ehsan Zia
Personal details
Born	1968 (age 48–49) Laghman Province, Afghanistan
Nationality	Afghan
Political party	Truth and Justice (since 2011)

Mohammad Hanif Atmar (Pashto:محمد حنیف اتمر; born 1968) was the Interior Minister of Afghanistan. He was removed from MOI by Hamid Karzai in the wake of attacks on the June 2010 Afghan Peace Jirga. Before that he worked with several international humanitarian organizations and served as Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development and Minister of Education. In 2011, he is part of the Right and Justice party. Atmar is currently serving as National Security Advisor to Ashraf Ghani the President of Afghanistan.

Atmar was born in 1968 as son of Mohammad Asef Atmar in Laghman Province of Afghanistan. He is an ethnic Pashtun. As a young adult, he worked for the KHAD, an Afghan security and intelligence agency with strong ties to the Soviet KGB, including with a special-operations unit. During the Soviet-Afghan War he fought against Mujahids, and lost a leg defending Jalalabad in 1987. Atmar left for the United Kingdom after the fall of Kabul.

In the UK he earned two degrees at the University of York: a diploma in Information Technology and Computers, and an M.A. in Public Policy, International Relations and Post-war Reconstruction studies, which he studied for from 1996 to 1997. He speaks fluent Pashto, Dari, English, and Urdu. In 1992 Atmar began advising on Afghanistan and Pakistan for humanitarian agencies, which he would continue for two years. Following that he went to the Norwegian Church Aid, where he served as Program Manager for six years until 2001. That same year he was hired as the Deputy Director General of the International Rescue Committee for Afghanistan, but after the September 11th attacks, the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the Bonn Agreement creating an Afghan Transitional Authority under Hamid Karzai, Atmar left to join the new government.