In May 2010, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was made member of the board of directors of UAE-based Ras Al Khaimah Petroleum (RAK), and on 16 June was nominated to the board of the Norwegian oil company Det Norske Oljeselskap (DNO).

Born in Afghanistan, where his father was adviser to King Mohammed Zahir Shah, Mr. Khalilzad studied at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon where he befriended another Afghan student, Hamid Kharzai (whose father was Parliament Deputy Speaker under King Zahir). During this period both men were approached by the CIA, which they later joined. It was also at the American University in Beirut that Khalilzad met Cheryl Benand, his future wife.

He received his Ph.D at the University of Chicago, where he studied closely with Albert Wohlstetter (a prominent nuclear deterrent thinker); Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle were among his fellow-students.

He soon started teaching at Columbia University, where he worked closely with Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski who invited him to participate in "Operation Cyclone" aiming to destabilise Afghanistan, compel the Soviets to intervene and embroil them. His role was important enough for President Reagan to have given him the responsibility of supervising the mujahideen insurrection against the Soviets.

In 1992, he worked at the Pentagon for Paul Wolfowitz. In that capacity, he drafted the famous Defense Planning Guidance (The "Wolfowitz doctrine"), that recommends the establishment of a new world order by hindering the development of U.S. competitors, starting with the European Union.

After a stint at the Rand Corporation, he joined the private sector. Like his friend Hamid Kharzai, he became consultant at UNOCAL, acting as a special liaison with the Taliban regime (that is to say, the former mujahideens involved in Operation Cyclone) for the construction of a Trans-Afghan pipeline.

As member of the American Enterprise Institute, Khalilzad assisted in crafting the international policy programme for presidential candidate Bush Jr., the "Project for the New American Century", and campaigned for the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Once elected, Bush Jr. named him Senior Director for Near East affairs at the National Security Council, and later Ambassador at Large for Iraqi exilees (in preparation for the attack against Iraq). He set up an Iraqi parliament in exile centered on Ahmed Chalabi (another of Albert Wohlstetter’s former students) and Hussain al-Shahristani (a nuclear scientist who served as the principal false witness to give credence to the existence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction).

After the rift between UNOCAL and the Talibans, followed by the war against them, he was successively designated Special Envoy and Ambassador to Afghanistan. He deposed King Zahir Shah (who had a majority in Parliament) and imposed Hamid Kharzai as president. He also entrusted his wife, feminist author Cheryl Benard, with education and propaganda programmes.

In mid 2005, Khalilzad began his job as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. He composed the new government, imposing Hussain al-Shahristani as Minister of Oil. He organised the dismemberment of Iraq into three federated provinces and determined the amount of power allotted to regional and central governments over oil matters.

In 2007, Zalmay Khalilkzad was named Ambassador to the United Nations. He arranged for the Security Council to adopt the first set of sanctions against Iran and attempted to have Russia condemned for its intervention in Georgia or for bombarding Israeli aerial bases.

When in 2009 his friend Hamid Karzai was in trouble, he contemplated succeeding him as president. However, the idea of his possible candidature having been rebuffed by the population, he stepped down and organised, with the full knowledge of the United Nations, the rigging of the elections for Karzai’s second term.

RAK, where he is board member, acquired 30% of DNO, where he is also a board member. In addition, DNO is the major oil exploiting company in Kurdistan, thanks to the constitution he imposed on the country and to his indebted oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani. Zalmay Khalilzad will thus be able to reap for his personal profit the fruits of his political action.