Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad (Pashto: زلمی خلیلزاد – Zalmay Khalīlzād) (born: March 22, 1951) is a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and president of Khalilzad Associates, an international business consulting firm based in Washington, DC. He was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush. He has been involved with U.S. policy makers at the White House, State Department and Pentagon since the mid-1980s, and was the highest-ranking Muslim American in the Administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. Khalilzad's previous assignments in the Administration include U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

Khalilzad was born in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan to a Sunni Pashtun father. His parents originated from Laghman Province of Afghanistan, and the family moved to Mazar-i-Sharif when his father was a government official under the monarchy of Mohammed Zahir Shah. Khalilzad is fluent in English, Pashto, Dari (Persian) and Arabic languages.

Tariq Ali (Punjabi, Urdu: طارق علی), (born 21 October 1943), is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books.

He is the author of several books, including Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power (1970), Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991), Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), A Banker for All Seasons (2007), The Duel (2008) and The Obama Syndrome (2010).

Ali was born and raised in Lahore. The city was part of British India at the time of his birth in 1943, but became part of the newly independent nation of Pakistan four years later. He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter of Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan who led the Unionist Muslim League and was later Prime Minister of the Punjab from 1937–1942).

Cheryl Benard (born in 1953 in New Orleans, United States) is an adjunct researcher with the RAND Corporation and President of Metis Analytics, an Alexandria, Virginia-based research company. In 2010, she founded The Bamiyan Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to the rebuilding of the Bamiyan Buddhas and to the support of cultural activism in all situations of post-conflict. Previously she was the research director of a European think tank, the Boltzmann Institute of Politics and prior to that, she taught Political Science at the University of Vienna.

She is a novelist and a widely published author on topics including popular sociology, refugees, women in nation-building, youth radicalization in the European Diaspora, and humanitarian aid. Her books have been translated into many other languages and some were best-sellers in Europe. Benard received her Ph.D. from the University of Vienna and a B.A. from the American University of Beirut.

She is married to Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Afghanistan and Iraq. She and Khalilzad have two sons, Alexander and Maximilian.