Raised in the Afghan capital of Kabul, Khalilzad came to the United States as a high school exchange student, and later received his doctorate at the University of Chicago.

[5] Khalilzad was appointed by Trump to serve as special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation on September 5, 2018, remaining in the position under President Joe Biden until October 18, 2021.

[citation needed] Khalilzad first spent time in the United States as a high school exchange student with AFS Intercultural Programs in Ceres, California.

Khalilzad received his doctorate at the University of Chicago where he studied closely with Albert Wohlstetter, a prominent nuclear deterrence thinker and strategist.

[15] During that time, he worked closely with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Carter administration's architect of Operation Cyclone to support the Afghan mujahideen, who resisted the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.

[13] In 1984, Khalilzad accepted a one-year Council on Foreign Relations fellowship to join the US State Department, where he was an adviser to the Near East and South Asia Bureau, headed by Richard W. Murphy.

At RAND, he also had a brief stint in consulting for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which was conducting a risk analysis for Unocal, now part of Chevron, for a proposed 1400 km (890 mi), $2-billion, 622 m³/s (22,000 ft³/s) Trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline project, which would have extended from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan and then proceeded to Pakistan.

It called for Clinton's help in "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power" by using "a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts.

"[20] At times, Khalilzad has embraced the label, authoring an article titled "The Neoconservative Case for Negotiating With Iran" in Politico magazine in 2006.

The United States should also acquire increased capabilities for occasional intervention in lesser regional conflicts, such as humanitarian relief operations, and for countering weapons of mass destruction and ballistic and cruise missiles.

"[23] In a letter, Khalilzad endorsed the following policies to weaken the Taliban's control over Afghanistan:[18] In June 2009, Khalilzad stated the following at a UC Berkeley event:[24] I believe and I've told president Karzai few month ago, because he is talking a lot about reconciliation, which is conceptually an absolute necessity, every war must end, but circumstance must be created for that wish to be successful.

In December 2002, Bush appointed Khalilzad to the position of ambassador at large for free Iraqis with the task of coordinating "preparations for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

Khalilzad was involved in the early stages of planning to overthrow the Taliban and on December 31, 2001, he was selected as Bush's special presidential envoy for Afghanistan.

Khalilzad also worked to ensure that the December 2005 elections ran smoothly and played a substantial role in forming the first post-Saddam government.

[33] In comparison to his predecessors, Paul Bremer and John Negroponte, in Baghdad, Khalilzad was considered a success as an ambassador and credited with bringing a cultural sophistication and human touch to the job that helped connect with Iraqis.

[34] Khalilzad was one of the first high-level administration officials to warn that sectarian violence was overtaking the insurgency as the top threat to Iraq's stability.

After the Al Askari Mosque bombing, in February 2006, he warned that spreading sectarian violence might lead to civil war and possibly to even a broader conflict, involving neighboring countries.

[36] That marked a strong contrast to Khalilzad's predecessor, John R. Bolton, whose often-controversial rhetoric caused him to fail to be confirmed by the Senate but obtained a recess appointment.

He also told the media, soon after the International Atomic Energy Agency's release of its report on Iran, that the Iranian government was clearly going ahead with its nuclear program.

[38] In August 2008, he urged the Security Council to "take urgent action" and to "condemn Russia's military assault on the sovereign state of Georgia".

[42] On September 9, 2014, a news items appeared in the Austrian media, stating that Khalilzad was being investigated by authorities in Austria for suspected money laundering, and that his wife's accounts had been frozen.

[45] Khalilzad's political autobiography, The Envoy: From Kabul to the White House, My Journey Through a Turbulent World, was published by St. Martin's Press in 2016.

[48] Massoud argued that the Taliban did not have the military capacity to retake Kabul without great assistance and also cast suspicion on growing U.S. efforts to use the Taliban to fight the terrorist group ISIS-K.[48] In 2022, Politico reported that Khalilzad attended a dinner with Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.