Ajmal Shams
Ajmal Shams is an Afghan politician and former civil engineer. Shams has been president of the Afghan Social Democratic Party since October 2005. He served as Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing in the Afghan Government since December 2016 till June 2018. He speaks Pashto, Persian, English and Urdu. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with Project Management Institute (PMI) and a Licensed Professional Engineer in the state of Kentucky, USA. Shams is a regular columnist in the Middle East's reputed English daily newspaper Arab News mainly writing on political, developmental and economic issues of Afghanistan. He also contributes opinion articles for various other international media outlets including Foreign Policy, Diplomat, National Interest, Gulf News, Global Times (China), Korea Times and others. Early life Shams is an ethnic Pashtun. His father was the late Shamsul Huda Shams, the former president of the Afghan Social Democratic (Mellat) Party. Shams pursued his education in Peshawar, graduated from the University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar with a B.Sc. degree in civil engineering. Upon graduation he worked as a lecturer at Khyber Institute of Technology. He taught for several years. He studied Water Resources and Environmental Engineering in