Corruption and Governance in Afghanistan: US and Afghan Perspectives

Chair: Dr Christine Cheng, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, War Studies

Speakers:

• Mr Abdullah Khenjani, Former Deputy Minister of Coordination, Strategy & Policy in Afghanistan's State Ministry for Peace
• Mr David Young, Advisor for Democracy, Governance, and Stabilization, U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)

 

After two decades of intervention, 240,000 Afghan deaths in the region, and $145 billion spent by the US and the international community, the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan has raised the issue of how the Afghan government fell so quickly. What happened to all the money that was spent? Why couldn't the Afghan government create peace and stability? And how are these two problems linked?

This conversation between a former Deputy Minister from the Ministry of Peace in the Afghan government and a senior official in the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) will discuss problems of corruption and governance from both the Afghan and US perspective, and what lessons can be learned. Could the effort to build a democratic government and nation in Afghanistan have ended differently? This online event will bring together key voices from the US and former Afghan government on the successes, failures, and lessons learned from the war and the decades-long nation building effort in Afghanistan.

Register via Zoom

 

Bio

Mr Abdullah Khenjani was the Deputy Minister of Coordination, Strategy & Policy in Afghanistan's State Ministry for Peace. In this role, he coordinated the peace process with the Taliban on behalf of the Afghan government. Prior to joining the Afghan government, he was editor in chief at 1TV and a prominent broadcast journalist with his own television show. Mr Khenjani holds an MA in Conflict, Security, and Development from King's College London where he was the recipient of the Alexandros Petersen Scholarship.

David H Young is a supervisory research analyst in SIGAR’s lessons learned program and was the team lead for the agency’s comprehensive reports on “Stabilization,” “Elections,” and its 20th anniversary report, “What We Need to Learn.” He served as a civilian advisor to US forces in Laghman and Nuristan provinces during the surge and as a governance advisor in Afghanistan with the World Bank, the U.S. Institute of Peace, Adam Smith International, and Afghanistan’s Independent Directorate of Local Governance. In addition to Afghanistan, he has extensive field experience in Israel/Palestine, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Northern Ireland. 

Dr Christine Cheng is Senior Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London. She is the author of Extralegal Groups in Post-Conflict Liberia- How Trade Makes the State (OUP), winner of the 2019 Conflict Research Society’s Annual Book Prize. Working with the UK government’s Stabilisation Unit, she co-authored Securing and Sustaining Elite Bargains that Reduce Violent Conflict, the final report of the influential Elite Bargains and Political Deals project. At King’s, Dr Cheng teaches on the MA in Conflict, Security, and Development. She holds a DPhil from Oxford and an MPA from Princeton. She is co-editor of Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Selling the Peace?. Dr Cheng sits on the Advisory Board for Women in Foreign Policy, the Board of Trustees at Conciliation Resources, and the Scientific Advisory Board for swisspeace. She tweets @cheng_christine.