WASHINGTON — President Trump has appointed Mary Kabir-Seraj Bischoping as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Afghanistan, marking his first political appointment on Afghanistan.
In her new role, she will oversee US policy toward Afghanistan under the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
Previously, Afghanistan affairs were overseen by Thomas West, the former US special envoy for Afghanistan, while Rina Amiri served as the US special envoy for Afghan women, girls, and human rights.
Bischoping, 33, descends from the Barakzai dynasty, which ruled Afghanistan from 1823 until 1978. Her last name comes from her German-American husband. She is born and raised in California. Her great-grandmother, Queen Soraya Tarzi, was an early advocate for women’s rights, and her grandmother, Latifa Kabir Seraj, was among Afghanistan’s first female journalists.
According to a biography published by the University of Virginia, Bischoping’s family fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979, targeted because of their political prominence. Her parents eventually resettled in Southern California after completing their education in Europe.
Bischoping has graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2016 with a degree in political science, and later earned her law degree from the University of Virginia. She holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is fluent in Farsi and German.
After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Bischoping joined the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser. In 2023, she became senior counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where she led the Republican-led oversight investigation into the Afghanistan withdrawal. In that role, she advised the committee leadership on regional issues and oversaw the panel’s investigation into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
Prior to her tenure on Capitol Hill, Bischoping worked as an Attorney-Adviser in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser. She also served as a law clerk to Judge Kent A. Jordan on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and practiced law at the New York offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP.
