File photo: Ashraf Ghani and his wife Rula arrive for an interview in Kabul. (Agence France-Presse)
Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani is a proud father. Hours before he flies into India for his first official visit, Mr Ghani opens up about his family - particularly his son Tareq. "He's carving his own footsteps, not following in mine. He's just become a professor and has a post-doctoral thesis from Princeton," Mr Ghani tells NDTV in Kabul.
Tareq Ghani's fields of specialisation are development economics, organizational economics and political economy. His recent fieldwork includes research projects in Afghanistan, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Before Berkeley, Tareq managed a grant portfolio on conflict prevention and held consultancies with the World Bank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and the Centre for Global Development.
It's no wonder that he is compared to his illustrious father who is an anthropologist-academician. Ashraf Ghani has decades of research and teaching experience at Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities. Before he became President, he also worked in the World Bank. He was declared Asia's Best Finance Minister in 2003 by Emerging Markets. President Ghani was also voted the Second top thinker in the world by Prospect Magazine.
Talking about his daughter Mariam, the Afghanistan President says she is a philosopher-poet. A multiple-discipline artist, Mariam collaborated with her father for a book "Afghanistan: A Lexicon" which describes the cycle of repeated collapse and recovery that the country has undergone over the course of the twentieth century. "She had full control of the book. I was for the first time in my life a junior author," says Mr Ghani.
But the Afghanistan President saves the highest praise for the First Lady, Rula Ghani - sometimes compared to the modernising womens' rights activist Queen Sorayya, the wife of the last Shah of Iran. "I'm proud to acknowledge my lifetime partner. We have completed 40 years of marriage. It's been a relationship based on trust on values and commitment. She has never sought fame or fortune. She renounced an enormous fortune to marry me. And we've built together."
Rula Saade Ghani is a Lebanese born Christian and met Mr Ghani at the American University in Beirut in the 1970s. She was on Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People's List this year.