Haron Amin, former Afghan Diplomat and Ambassador, passed away on Sunday at a U.S. hospital after losing his battle to cancer.

The former Afghan Ambassador to Japan and non-resident envoy to Thailand, the Republic of the Philippines and Singapore from 2004 to 2009 was diagnosed with cancer in 2011.

Amin's diplomatic career launched when he returned to Afghanistan in 1988 from the U.S. to fight alongside the military and political leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud. At the tender age of his early twenties, Massoud assigned Amin in 1990 to represent the interests of Afghans before the U.S.

For more than a decade Amin pursued the task assigned by Massoud. In 1997, he was named as the Chief of Staff for the newly-appointed Prime Minister Abdul Rahim Ghafoorzai, later turning to a diplomat to the United Nations serving Afghanistan.

Accomplished in the arena of politics, in 2002 Amin was named among 77 others as "people of the future" by America's weekly news magazine, Newsweek.