Afghanistan – a graveyard of Empires

The event will take place in Jekteviksbakken 31.
It is also possible to join through Zoom. Breakfast will be served.

Afghanistan has been through 40 years of conflict. In a new book, Petter Bauck traces the long historical lines and points out that Afghanistan lacks a unifying identity to which all ethnic groups,

religious groups and genders can feel belonging. Tensions between the desire for modernisation and traditional and religious attitudes have, until today, prevented inclusive nation-building as the basis for a stable state.

In this conversation, Petter Bauck meets senior researcher Arne Strand at CMI. They will discuss what went wrong in Afghanistan. Bauck also has many years of experience from Ukraine.

Are there lessons to be learned from Afghanistan that can be applied to the conflict in Ukraine?

Panel:

Petter Bauck

has a 50-year long engagement with Afghanistan. His first visit to Afghanistan during the 1970s led him into the Norwegian solidarity movement and later on to a position in NORAD. He then worked at the Norwegian Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, from 2016 -2020. He has recently published the book «Afghanistan – landet midt imellom», Frekk Forlag.

Arne Strand


is Senior Researcher at CMI. He has worked in the NGO sector in Afghanistan from 1988 -1997 and later as researcher and evaluator of state and peace-building projects, on migration and lately corruption and Taliban governance structures.

Photo by
Mohammad Rahmani on
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