The Afghan identity card or Afghan Tazkira () is a
national identity
National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or to one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language". National identity ...
document that is issued upon request to every
Afghan citizen or national, whether such individual resides inside or outside of
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
.
It serves as proof of
identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
and
residency
Residency may refer to:
* Domicile (law), the act of establishing or maintaining a residence in a given place
** Permanent residency, indefinite residence within a country despite not having citizenship
* Residency (medicine), a stage of postgra ...
but more importantly
Afghan nationality. The document is issued by the National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA), which has offices in all
provinces of Afghanistan
Afghanistan is divided into 34 provinces (, '' wilåyat''). The provinces of Afghanistan are the primary administrative divisions. Each province encompasses a number of districts or usually over 1,000 villages.
Provincial governors played a c ...
.
The Afghan Tazkira, which is older than 100 years, has been modernized in recent years. The
electronic identification
An electronic identification ("eID") is a digital solution for proof of identity of citizens or organizations. They can be used to view to access benefits or services provided by government authorities, banks or other companies, for mobile payment ...
(e-ID) card campaign was officially launched in
Kabul
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...
in May of 2018 when then-
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
Ashraf Ghani
Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai (born 19 May 1949) is an Afghan politician, academic, and economist who served as the president of Afghanistan from September 2014 until August 2021, when his government was overthrown by the Taliban.
Born in ...
and
First Lady Rula Ghani
Rula F. Saadah Ghani (Afghan name: Bibi Gul; born 1948) is a former first lady of Afghanistan and wife of former president of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani.
In 2015, Rula Ghani was named to the Time 100, a list of the world's most influential people, ...
received their cards. Distribution of the e-ID cards or e-Tazkiras later began in other parts of Afghanistan. The e-Tazkira complies with international standards for identity documents. As of November 2022, over 8 million Afghan nationals have obtained their e-Tazkiras.
This includes the Afghans that are temporarily residing in
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
and in the
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia ( The Middle East). It is located at t ...
(UAE).
Procedure
In order to obtain an Afghan e-Tazkira, an application must be submitted inside the office of Afghanistan's
Ministry of Interior Affairs or electronically using the
internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
.
The processing fee is 300
Afghanis (Afs) inside Afghanistan,
but €10
euro
The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...
s in Europe and $10 in America. The e-Tazkia cards are issued by the NSIA. Evidence that the applicant is in fact a national and citizen of Afghanistan is required.
This can be proven by providing older Afghan paper identification. If the applicant does not have such a document, then he or she must bring family members, relatives or witnesses willing to testify. Applicants below 18 years old must be accompanied by their parents or legal guardians before the application can be processed.
Characteristics
The Afghan e-Tazkira is a polycarbonate card and rectangular in shape, about 86 × 54 millimeters in size. On one side is a gold-plated contact chip, and on the right-hand side is the small photograph of the bearer, personal information is available in English on the same side. On the top of the card on both sides, the name Afghanistan is written in three languages,
Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...
,
Dari
Dari (, , ), also known as Dari Persian (, ), is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the term officially recognised and promoted since 1964 by the Afghan government for the Persian language,Lazard, G.Darī ...
and English. On the back side is personal information about the bearer in two languages Pashto and Dari. It can be used as a
smart card. In May 2022, the
Afghan government
The government of Afghanistan, officially called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is the central government of Afghanistan, a unitary state. Under the leadership of the Taliban, the government is a theocracy and an emirate with political powe ...
announced plans to issue e-Tazkira cards with a new design bearing the
emblem of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
The National Emblem of Afghanistan has appeared in some form on the flag of Afghanistan since 1901.
Historical emblems
File:Emblem of Afghanistan (1901-1919).svg, Emirate of Afghanistan (1901–1919)
File:Emblem of Afghanistan (1919-1926).sv ...
.
Printed data
The descriptions of the fields are printed in Pashto, Dari and English.
* Given name
* Surname
* Personal Id. No.
* Holder's signature
* Place of birth
* Date of birth
* Authority
* Date of issue
* Date of expiry
A
machine readable zone
A machine-readable passport (MRP) is a machine-readable travel document (MRTD) with the data on the identity page encoded in optical character recognition format. Many countries began to issue machine-readable travel documents in the 1980s.
Mos ...
is printed on the bottom of the back-side of the card.
See also
*
Afghan passport
The Afghan passport is issued by the Central Passport Office of the Ministry of Interior in Kabul, Afghanistan. Every national of Afghanistan with a valid Afghan identity card (Tazkira) can apply for and receive it. It is renewable every 5-10 ye ...
*
Afghan nationality law
References
External links
National Statistic and Information Authority (NSIA){{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210911010444/https://nsia.gov.af/home , date=2021-09-11
Sample of the new Afghan computerized identity card*https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1135641/download
*http://www.asan.gov.af/Eng/AsaanDetails.aspx?ID=16197
Government of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...