Advisory Board

Afghanistan’s leading domestic source of strategic research and policy analysis

Text Box: Advisory Board

Text Box: Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, the former Interior Minister of Afghanistan (2003-2005), is a Distinguished Professor in the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Institute for National Strategic Studies in Washington, DC. As Interior Minister, Minister Jalili was responsible for disarming militias, and creating 50,000 Afghan National Police and 12,000 Border Police. The ministry was also tasked with developing strategies to counter narcotics trafficking, terrorism, and other criminal activities. He is published in three languages (English, Pashto, and Dari/Farsi), is regularly asked to comment in the international media, and has taught at the U.S. National Defense University, U.S. Army War College, U.S. Naval Postgraduate College and the British Army Staff College.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, former Foreign Minister of Afghanistan

Professor M. Nazir Shahrani, Anthropologist

Text Box: Professor M. Nazir Shahrani is a Professor of Anthropology and Central Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Indiana University. Professor Shahrani left Afghanistan while he was a student at Kabul University to complete his studies in the United States. Professor Shahrani is the author of two books on the Kirghis and Wakhi of Afghanistan (2002 and 1979); and a co-editor of a third, Revolutions and Rebellions in Afghanistan (1984). He also studies and has written about the human consequences of “low-intensity” wars; how Islam has impacted social planning in Afghanistan; the politicization of ethnic minorities; multi-ethnic state fragmentation; the impact of international assistance, the failure of the Afghan Mujahideen to build a functioning state after the Soviet withdrawal; Central Asian Muslims under the U.S.S.R. and in the post-Soviet phase too.

Text Box: Professor Hamidullah Farooqi is on the Economics Faculty of Kabul University and is the elected CEO of Afghanistan’s International Chamber of Commerce. He also serves on boards of Bank Millie Afghan and the Afghan Traders and Industrialists Center. He is the president and CEO of Hamed-Lias Construction Company LLC, a company based in Kabul. He regularly writes about scientific and economic issues. He received his Master’s Degree in Economics from Queens College, New York.

Text Box: Kabul Direct Afghanistan’s first English‐language publication produced and directed by Afghans and targeted to the specialist following events in Afghanistan closely.

Text Box: Kabul Center for Strategic Studies

Text Box: Minister Abdullah Abdullah was the former Foreign Minister of Afghanistan (2001-2006). During the Taliban era, he was the resistance leader in the Afghan United Front, the organization headed by Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was assassinated on September 9, 2001 by suicide bombers posing as journalists. The assassins were later linked to Al Qaeda. During the Soviet War in Afghanistan, Minister Abdullah, who is also a physician and opthamologist, practiced medicine in Afghanistan and in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.