His Excellency Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Afghanistan

H. E. Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta was born on December 15, 1953, in the province of Herat, Afghanistan, where he completed his primary and secondary education. He subsequently enrolled at the Kabul University and in the mid-1970s studied for a bachelor's of science in international relations in Turkey. Dr. Spanta settled in Germany in 1982 following the Soviet invasion, where he earned a master’s degree in political sciences, sociology, and international relations and a Ph.D. from Aachen University in political sciences. He taught as a professor at Aachen University from 1992 to 2005, where he was also in charge of the university's Third World Studies Institute. He is fluent in Dari, Pashto, Turkish, German, and English.

In January 2005, Dr. Spanta returned to teach at Kabul University, and later became the advisor on foreign affairs to President Hamid Karzai. His nomination as foreign minister was approved by the Afghan Parliament on April 20, and he was sworn in on May 2, 2006.