Mirwais Azizi founded the group that carries his name in 1989, a year after leaving Afghanistan. Almost four decades on it operates across two markets that rarely sit inside the same holding: banking in Kabul and property development in Dubai.

He was born in 1962 in Laghman province and graduated in law from Kabul University before leaving the country in 1988. The banking business came much later. Azizi Bank was established in Kabul in 2006 with $7.5 million in initial capital and grew into one of Afghanistan’s largest private banks; the group went on to acquire Bakhtar Bank, now the Islamic Bank of Afghanistan.

Azizi Developments followed in 2007 and has become one of Dubai’s more active private developers, with a pipeline spanning residential, commercial and mixed-use projects, run from API World Tower on Sheikh Zayed Road. The scale of that pipeline shows up in its hiring: in July 2026 the company said it was seeking 6,500 specialist construction workers — a thousand each of gypsum installers, tile installers, blockwork tradesmen, plasterers and painters, plus 1,500 helpers, according to remarks reported by Khaleej Times.

The combination is what makes the trajectory unusual. Most developers of comparable scale in Dubai are either state-linked or backed by long-established local family holdings. Fewer still run a regulated bank in a second market, and one where the financial sector has faced considerably harder conditions than the Gulf’s.

That dual footprint is what makes the record worth documenting. Pashtun enterprise is most often discussed in terms of trade and family firms, and far less often in terms of regulated banking and large-scale construction — sectors that demand capital, licensing and a tolerance for scrutiny that smaller operations never face. Azizi has operated in both for close to two decades.

For a diaspora whose business story is usually told through trading houses, this is a different kind of case: an Afghan founder operating at scale, under regulation, in one of the world’s most competitive property markets.

Disclosure: INUBIZ Marketing, the agency owned by Pashtun Global’s founder, has provided marketing support for Azizi Developments’ Florence community in Sharjah. The relationship had no bearing on this reporting.