Taj Mohammad Wardak

Taj Mohammad Wardak is an Afghan politician, from the Pashtun ethnic group. He spent some of the period of the Taliban's administration in the United States of America, and became an American citizen.

In the mid-1960s Wardak held the position of Deputy Governor of Badakhshan Province In the 1970s he served as Governor of Badakhshan Province and Governor of Laghman Province.

Wardak was appointed Governor of Paktia province in Afghanistan in the winter of 2002. He served for only a few months due to opposition from local warlord Pacha Khan Zadran Zadran was one of the principal actors in a violent struggle for control for the province after the fall of the Taliban, and Wardak was appointed as a compromise solution between the competing warlords. Wardak was an Afghan exile living in California as an afghan-american.

According to Guantanamo captive Hafizullah Shabaz Khail, in testimony before his Combatant Status Review Tribunal Taj Mohammed [sic] Wardak was the first governor Hamid Karzai appointed for the Province of Paktia. Khail said he was appointed the District Chief of Zormat because the new governor, Taj Mohammed, trusted him. He said Taj Mohammed Wardak was replaced, as governor, by Raz Mohammed Dalili when Hamid Karzai asked him to assume a position in Kabul.

According to the BBC the "relatively unknown" Wardak was appointed Interior Minister on Wednesday, June 19, 2002.

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