Joint AIAS – U.S. Embassy Program: U.S. Elections, Consequences and Effects on Afghanistan

On November 5 (as votes were still being counted in the United States), the U.S. Embassy and the American Institute of Afghanistan studies held an informal discussion on how the outcome of the American elections could impact Afghanistan. Young Afghan scholars and Americans expatriates primarily attended the discussion.

AIAS Lecture: Election and Politics, Mary Nell Bryant

On October 11, Mary Nell Bryant hosted a lecture at the AIAS center in Kabul that focused on the mechanisms for political mobilization in the United States. The talk was given to members of the Afghan parliament, civil society and the media.

Mary Nell Bryant is a native of Miami, Florida. She worked as a research specialist with the Congressional Research Service from 1978 to 1991, and then on the staff of the House Special Task Force on Eastern European Parliamentary Development. In that position, she managed Parliamentary library develop programs in Eastern Europe and the Baltic from 1991-1994. In 1994 she joined the Foreign Service as an Information Resources Officer and has served in Central America, Brazil, the Caribbean, and East Asia. In 2001-2002 she was Assistant Public Affairs Officer in Belgrade, Serbia. She was the State Department's Coordinator for the worldwide American Corners program in 2005-2006. Her current assignment is Information Resource Officer for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.

AIAS Lecture: On Migration with the Nomads of Qataghan, Dr. Thomas Barfield

On August 16, President of AIAS, Dr. Thomas Barfield, hosted a talk in Kabul on the nomads of the Qataghan: a group of Persian speaking nomads who specialize in raising fat tailed and karakul sheep in northeastern Afghanistan. In 1976 Professor Barfield took part in their annual migration from their winter pastures on the banks of the Mau Daryl in Imam Sahib to their summer pastures in central Badakhshan. This presentation documented that migration and presented a unique picture of their way of life, one in which about ten thousand families and shepherds move more than a million sheep over age old paths to their historic grazing grounds.

Thomas Barfield is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University and President of AIAS. He has conducted research on Afghanistan since the 1970s and is the author of The Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan (1981), The Nomadic Alternative (1983), and (with Albert Szabo) Afghanistan: An Atlas of Indigenous Domestic Architecture (1991). Since 2001 his research has focused on political development in contemporary Afghanistan, particularly questions of customary law and its role in conflict resolution. Barfield received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006 to complete his new book, Changing Concepts of Political Legitimacy in Afghanistan and their Consequences (forthcoming).

AIAS Lecture: Afghanistan's Alternatives for Peace and Development, Dr. M. Nazif Shahrani

Dr. M. Nazif Shahrani hosted a talk at the AIAS on July 17 where he discussed and answered questions on current U.S. policies towards Afghanistan. The US and international coalition policies of the last seven years of reconstruction and war on terror are proving to be ineffective in delivering peace, stability and democracy in Afghanistan. His talk further addressed the fundamental assumptions behind the current policies and possible alternative approaches.

Dr. Shahrani was born, raised and partly educated in Afghanistan after which he went on to receive his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Washington. Currently, he is Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University where he has also served as Director of the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Program. He frequently visits Afghanistan.