Still Here : Understanding and Engaging with Afghanistan after August 2021

Abstract

Afghanistan is still here. After the “Fall of Kabul” there has been a call for strategic introspection in the US and its Allies, producing numerous 'War Commissions, 'Afghan War Evaluations,' and other forms of "lessons learned" inquiries. While these lessons are vital for future Western or NATO engagements in fragile states, they treat Afghanistan as a concluded chapter. This anthology does not dwell on the past but explore the contemporary dilemmas confronting Afghanistan and the international community's role post-August 2021, with the perspective that this carries global implications. To mend what this anthology calls an ‘information vacuum’ shrouding Afghanistan, hindering the global, and especially Western, understanding of the country, this anthology focuses on issues of security, economics, humanitarian situation, the human rights situation of women and girls, intelligence, international law and diplomacy towards Afghanistan, internal peace building processes, Taliban governance and state-building, as well as the regional dynamics. The topics have deliberately been chosen based on our aim of providing knowledge on different aspects of the society in combination with experts wanting to contribute, and we have engaged the leading international experts on Afghanistan to write about them.