Former Taliban Foreign Envoy now a member of Yale freshman class

The Yale Bulletin and Calendar for March 23, 2001, announced a debate between a young Afghan man, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi and Yale law professor Harold Hongju Koh.

According to the Bulletin:

Hashemi has represented Afghanistan in several European conferences and countries over the last two years. He has spoken on such topics as his country's three-year drought, the continuing 22-year civil war in Afghanistan and U.N. sanctions against the region, emanating from human rights grievances, drug trafficking and the decision of the Taliban government to offer asylum to suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. Hashemi has spoken at the University of California (UC) at Los Angeles and UC-Berkeley, Pomona College and Diablo Valley College, and will meet with U.S. State Department officials.

Now, five years later, the former foreign envoy for the Taliban, is once again at Yale University.

According to the Yale Herald, Hashemi is now a freshman at Yale, a member of the class of 2009, majoring in Political Science.

According to the Herald:

Hashemi is but one of many older, non-traditional Yalies enrolled in Yale’s Nondegree Students Program, one of two Yale academic programs designed to accommodate students who cannot study full-timedue to other commitments.

Hashemi lives in of-campus housing, half a world away from Quetta, Pakistan, where his wife, Asyah, lives with their five year old daughter, Suraya, and their four year old son, Suleman.

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine included an in-depth interview with Hashemi. It’s very interesting reading, and I’d highly recommend it.

But it doesn’t answer my question: how does a former official of the Taliban end up a student at Yale University?