Zafar Hashemi is a 2018 Millennium fellow at the Atlantic Council and special advisor for the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Previously, he was the political counselor at the embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, DC, where he managed the embassy’s relations with the US Congress. Prior to that, he was deputy (and acting) spokesman for the president of Afghanistan, managing and coordinating communication between the presidential palace and government with local and international media. Hashemi also has worked for the Voice of America, reporting on Afghan, US, and world affairs for radio, television, and the web—in both Farsi and English. He managed public affairs and communications at the Afghanistan Stabilization Program under the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs, and a United Nations Development Programme-funded project on democracy, rule of law, elections, and civic participation in post-9/11 Afghanistan.

Hashemi holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and journalism from the University of Maryland University College and a master’s degree in public management from Johns Hopkins University. He is a fellow at the Rumsfeld Foundation and the Asia Society and is a TEDx speaker.