Background
Wesa was born in a village near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
Wesa was born in a village near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
Due to the start of the Lebanese Civil War, he travelled to the United States where he studied at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
He is currently serving as Governor of Kandahar Province, a position he holds since December 2008 after replacing Rahmatullah Raufi. He belongs to the Pashtun group, possibly the Mohammadzai Branch of Barakzai tribe. After securing his Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics and Extension from the Faculty of Agriculture at Kabul University in 1973, he pursued his Mississippi at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at American University of Beirut in Lebanon.
He received his Mississippi in 1977 before returning to Afghanistan.
Wesa was named senior advisor to the Afghan Minister for Higher Education in 1989 and returned to his native city in 1991 as the founding president of Kandahar University. He and the family were forced to leave the country after Gul Agha Sherzai and other warlords fought for control over Kandahar.
From 1993 to 1994, he served as a guest lecturer in the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Before his appointment as Governor of Kandahar, he lived for 13 years in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada.
He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of British Columbia in Canada.
His thesis was "The Afghan Agricultural Extension System: Impact of the Soviet Occupation and Prospects for the Future". From 1995 to 1998, he worked for the Asian Studies Center and the Center for Policy Studies in Education at the University of British Columbia. As a student, lecturer and researcher, Doctor Wesa has been associated with 10 universities worldwide and has published 20 articles including text books
In addition to his career as an academic, Doctor Wesa has worked as a consultant for the Canadian Government (Statistics Canada), the United States Government (United States Agency for International Development), British Government (Department for International Development), the United Nations (Food and Agriculture Organization and United Nations Development Programme) and several Non-governmental organizations (including the SENLIS Council).
Wesa was chosen by President Hamid Karzai to serve as Governor of Kandahar. Prior to that he was Chancellor of Kandahar University.
Doctor Wesa is fluent in English, Persian, German, Arabic, and his native Pashto language. Wesa has survived a number of assassination attempts in Afghanistan.
He narrowly escaped an assassination attempt on 27 November 2009 when a roadside bomb damaged his vehicle.
On 28 April 2012, two Taliban suicide bombers again unsuccessfully tried to kill him.