Kai Eide was appointed the United Nations Special Representative to Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan on 7 March 2008, a position he held until March 2010 when Staffan de Mistura took over.
13 Facts About Kai Eide
2.
Kai Eide has been a member of the Norwegian Foreign Service since 1975.
3.
Kai Eide was the Norwegian ambassador to North Atlantic Treaty Organization from 2002 to 2006, and to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from 1998 to 2002.
4.
Kai Eide has been posted as Special Adviser on the Balkans at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as Norway's ambassador at the International Conference for the former Yugoslavia.
5.
UN deputy special representative in Afghanistan Peter Galbraith, Kai Eide's subordinate, was fired by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon after he urged UNAMA to take actions to prevent fraud in the 2009 Afghan presidential elections and to take action, consistent with its mandate to support "free, fair and transparent" elections once the fraud took place.
6.
On 11 December 2009 Kai Eide, announced that he would step down from his post in March.
7.
Kai Eide said he was not resigning but simply fulfilling a commitment he made to his family in March 2008 to spend only two years in Kabul.
8.
Kai Eide proposed the appointment of a senior civilian representative to coordinate relief efforts by the US-led forces in Afghanistan.
9.
Kai Eide urged the UN leadership to allow his successor to hire more staff from the United States and other Western countries, saying it would increase their confidence that their money is being properly spent.
10.
Kai Eide was so discredited by the way he handed the election and the fallout from engineering my ouster.
11.
Shortly after this comment by Galbraith, Kai Eide accused Galbraith of proposing to enlist the White House in a plan to force the Afghan president Hamid Karzai to resign, and ultimately install a more Western-friendly figure as president, like former finance minister Ashraf Ghani or former interior minister Ali Ahmad Jalali.
12.
Kai Eide did not address the issue of Karzai's effort to unconstitutionally extend his term.
13.
In early 2010, Kai Eide put out the word that he had secret exploratory talks with Taliban commanders to discuss peace terms, as emerged end of that month during the International Conference on Afghanistan in London.