SPEAKERS

Barak Mendelsohn is Professor of Political Science, Haverford College, USA. His research interests focus especially on the al-Qaeda Movement, and he is the author of Jihadism Constrained: The Limits of Transnational Jihadism and What it Means for Counterterrorism (2019).

Dr Ashley Jackson is Co-Founder & Co-Director of the Centre on Armed Groups, Research Associate at ODI Global, London & at the Conflict, Security & Development Research Group, King's College London. She has worked on Afghanistan for more than a decade, and has published extensively on the Taliban, including Negotiating Survival: Civilian-Insurgent Relations in Afghanistan (2022).

Ali Mohammad Ali is an independent consultant and researcher. From 2018 to 2021, he was Director General of Strategic Intelligence for the National Security Council of Afghanistan. He has expertise on radical Islamist groups like the Taliban, al-Qaeda in South Asia, ISIS-Khorasan, drug-trafficking and money-laundering networks, Afghanistan’s politics, economy and state, as well as Iran’s and Pakistan’s use of non-state actors in foreign policy.

DISCUSSANT

Dr Antonio Giustozzi is Visiting Fellow at the LSE South Asia Centre, and an independent researcher & analyst with a special interest in conflicts, war, security & strategic issues in Afghanistan, and the region. He has published extensively on the subject, including most recently, The Taliban at War: 2001-2021 (2022).

CHAIR

Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre.

Banner image: Zabihullah Habibi, 'Buddha of Bamiyan, the Beautiful City', 2021, Unsplash.