[10.06.10] Political Legitimacy in Afghanistan
The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs [NUPI] and the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre [Noref] have the great pleasure of inviting you to a seminar with Thomas Barfield:
Political Legitimacy in Afghanistan
Lecture by Thomas Barfield based on his book Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History on the diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. Barfield describes how Afghanistan's armed factions plunged the country into a civil war, giving rise to clerical rule by the Taliban and Afghanistan's isolation from the world. He examines why the American invasion in the wake of September 11 toppled the Taliban so quickly, and how this easy victory lulled the United States into falsely believing that a viable state could be built just as easily.
Lecture time: 10.30 - 11.30.
Thomas Barfield is professor of anthropology at Boston University. His books include The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757 ; The Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan ; and Afghanistan: An Atlas of Indigenous Domestic Architecture . Dr. Thomas Barfield’s research focuses on problems of reconstruction and political development in contemporary Afghanistan, particularly on questions of customary law and its role in conflict resolution.