Khan, Ismail

Born: 1947, south of Heart

Role: minister of energy; member of the National Front

Ismail Khan, the self-titled "Amir of Herat", came to prominence during the anti-communist mutiny in March 1979 when, as a captain in the PDPA army, he refused to fire on a mob in the Herat bazaar.

Instead, he turned his guns on the city's Soviet advisors, massacring 350 of them.

Russian retaliation was fierce: Herat was carpet bombed, killing between 5,000 to 25,000 people, and destroying mosques and mausoleums.

Heratis rebelled against their Soviet leaders and Ismail Khan left to join Rabbani's party, Jamiat-e-Islami, becoming one the party's key commanders.

His allegiance to Rabbani was rewarded when the president made him governor of Herat in 1992, a position that handed him control of five provinces in the south-west.

He failed to fend off the Taliban's advance on his fiefdom and fled to Iran, only to return two year's later to fight the hardline Islamic group with Iranian support.

Captured by Uzbek commander Abdul Malik in 1997, he was flown to Kandahar and imprisoned for three years by the Taliban before escaping once more to Iran.

When the Americans entered Afghanistan in 2001, Ismail Khan returned to Herat where he re-appointed himself as the city's governor.

Although his administration of Herat is generally viewed as a success, Ismail Khan ran the province in isolation, making leaders in Kabul twitchy.

Khan's private militia - at one time thought to be 30,000 strong - clashed with the Afghan National Army in 2004 after the government tried to assert its control over Herat.

His removal from the post of governor triggered riots in Herat before Karzai appointed him minister of energy and power.