Hanif Baktash

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 to Meena Baktash (British Broadcasting Corporation BBC). Together, 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 Ph.D. 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 the  summer 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 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 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