Afghan Biographies

Wesa, Torialay Tooryalai Weesa


Name Wesa, Torialay Tooryalai Weesa
Ethnic backgr. Pashtun
Date of birth 1951
Function/Grade Ex Governor
History and Biodata

2. Previous Functions:
Provincial Governor Kandahar ((20081220-20141231, 20150212-20150426)
3. Biodata:
Wesa_Kandahar_GovernorDr. Tooryalai Wesa, born 1951 in Kohak, a village near Kandahar City. His father, Abdul Samad Wesa, was known for his modern outlook and ensured that his son was educated. He grew up in Kandahar City and served as Kandahar University's first president until he left the country in 1991 with his wife. He is an agriculture specialist at the University of British Columbia in westernmost Canada, where he lived in Coquitlam, B.C. from 1995 to 2008. Canadian media said Wesa spent the past three or four years traveling throughout Afghanistan, working as a consultant, and was also a regional director for a US-funded local governance initiative.

He studied agricultural science in Kabul, Beirut and Nebraska before obtaining a doctorate later in life at Canada's University of British Columbia. Wesa is a member of the Pashtun Mohammadzai tribe and retains incredibly close ties with the Karzai family, especially with Qayum Karzai, a brother of President Karzai. Wesa is also the cousin of the late Kandahar City mayor, Ghulam Hayder Hamidi. Wesa is the younger brother of Moscow educated General Zalmai Wesa, Commander 209th Corps in Mazar-i-Sharif.

In 1989, he was named minister for higher education in Kabul and served as founding president of Kandahar University two years later. He is a graduate and a former professor at the Faculty of Agriculture in Kabul University. He lived for a short while in Moscow (4 month), Hungary (2 month) and Switzerland after applying for political asylum in Canada. He and his wife as well as their 3 girls Mina, Hila and Wazhma are living in Vancouver and he seemed to have built a good repertoire with the Canadians, where he has received his Phd in his field of Agriculture. He and his family arrived in Canada in August 1995 and obtained citizenship three years later.

He is a childhood friend of Afghan President, Hamid Karzai. Toryalai Wesa is married to Rangina Jan, a graduate of Medicine Faculty of Kabul University. She is the daughter of Doctor Amir Jan, one of the most famous doctors in Kandahar, who himself was the first of his class and Amir Amanullah Khan had sent him to Turkey for higher education.
 

On 20120428 the ninth unsuccessful attack happened to target Governor Wesa in the past three years.

In Kandahar, the IECC disqualified Mukhtar Rashidi, a relative of governor Weesa, who had come in first in the preliminary results with 12,863 votes (almost 5 per cent of the total vote), surpassing even Hashmat Karzai, the influential brother of the previous president (who was still alive then). In a letter to the IEC, the IECC says it decided to disqualify Haji Mukhtar after the audit of over 600 polling stations in Kandahar, when they found that “all his votes had problems.” Such problems included ballots not being removed from their stubs, large numbers of ballots with similar tickmarks, tickmarks made with markers and led to the conclusion that there had been systematic fraud.(20141029)

Weesa Wesa is fluent in English, Persian, German, Arabic, and his native Pashto

 

Last Modified 2022-03-16
Established 2009-10-10