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Hanif Baktash PhD (Pashto: ډاکټر حنیف بکتا ش ) is considered as one of the Pashto language's leading contemporary poets and writers.
Life and education
Mohamad Hanif Baktash, an ethnic Pashtun of the Amarkhel tribe, was born on 9 May 1961 in Maidan Shar (30 km far from Kabul). He was married with Meena Baktash (British Broadcasting Corporation BBC). They had two sons.
He started his studies in Mazar-i-Sharif and then continued in Maidan Shar, Kandahar, Helmand and finished Habibia High School of Kabul in 1978. He holds a graduate degree in social science from the Kabul Institute of Pedagogy. He received a PhD diploma in History from the Supreme Attestation Commission of the USSR in 1993 for his thesis titled"War in Afghanistan: Social – Political Reasons and Consequences”. In thesummer of 1993 he moved to London and as of 2002 he is a British Citizen. During his time in the UK he cooperated as a journalist with the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC in 1998 and 1999. Since 2009 he worked as a consultant for Afghanistan at a consultancy in Hamburg (Germany). Baktash was well versed in several languages (Pashto, Dari, English and Russian). Hanif Baktash died in 2012.
Literary and research works
In 1976 Baktash won a Pashto poetry prize in Afghanistan which opened his way into Afghan media. His main books include:
- یادداشت هاونوشته ها: My Note Book (analytical research in Dari) 1984 Kabul Afghanistan
- دځنګله سترګوکې : In the Eyes of Forest (collection of poems in Pashto) 1987 Kabul Afghanistan
- کله چې لمردخدای ایتونه لولي When the Sun Reads the Verses of God (collection of poems in Pashto) 2009 Kabul Afghanistan
- شعرې که خنجر است : The Poem Which is Sword (collection of poems of young poets including his own poems in Pashto and Dari ) 1983 Kabul Afghanistan
- صدا The Voice (collection of poems of young poets including his own poems in Pashto and Dari) 1984 Kabul Afghanistan
