Ghulam Mohammad Farhad

Who was Ghulam Mohammad Farhad?

Ghulam Mohammad Farhad was an Afghan engineer and Pashtun nationalist. He lived in Germany on a royal scholarship from 1921 to 1928, training as an electrician at the Technical University of Munich. During his studies in Germany, he came in contact with Nazi policy and became fascinated by some aspects of it. After he returned to Afghanistan, Farhad was appointed to several electricity-related posts in the government, finally serving as president of the Kabul Electric Company from 1939 to 1966. He traveled to Germany in 1947 to acquire equipment; he was often accused of favoring German-manufactured products. From 1948 to 1954, he was mayor of Kabul. He notably installed the city's first traffic lights and declared a switch to right-hand driving. In 1966, Farhad created the Afghan Social Democratic Party on the bases of Pashtun nationalism, social democracy, and anticommunism. He was elected to Parliament, representing the sixth district of Kabul, in 1968, but resigned his seat in 1970. He was later a political prisoner of the PDPA/Khalq government from 1979 to 1980, when he was freed in a general amnesty.