The Afghanistan Project

The 2025 Annual ALPA Conference will take place on October 3 to 4, at the University of Pittsburgh in partnership with the Afghanistan Law & Political Science Association (ALPA).

This virtual talk with Ambassador Ali Ahmad Jalali will examine Afghanistan four years into Taliban rule, assessing the regime’s internal power struggles, international isolation, and prospects for survival without reform.

The 2024 Annual ALPA Conference, “Law, Society, and Politics in Afghanistan: Prospects for Dialogue, Inclusion, and Representation,” will take place October 11–12 in Washington, D.C. This hybrid event will bring together Afghan and international experts to examine legal and socio-political challenges under the Taliban and beyond, fostering dialogue and collaborative research on Afghanistan’s evolving landscape.

The CESS 2023 annual conference keynote speaker is Dr. Ayse-Zarakol, author of After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West Before the West: the Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders.

The aim of this presentation is first to examine the key determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy (TFP) during the Justice and Development Party Era, and second to explore TFP towards Afghanistan. This talk particularly focuses on what NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan means for Turkey, and how Turkey responds to Taliban takeover.

This conference of scholars and practitioners from Afghanistan explores how society in that country can begin to overcome differences and build on past and present forms of social cohesion—and whether this can be done under authoritarian Taliban rule.

CGM, the American Institute for Afghanistan Studies, and the U.S. Institute of Peace will convene a 2-day conference of Afghan scholars and practitioners to consider how Afghan society can begin to overcome these differences and build on past and present forms of social cohesion.

Sarajuddin Isar examines the relationship between state-building and taxation with a particular focus on the Karzai (2001–2014) and Ghani (2014–2019) administrations, whilst also placing this analysis within a longer-term historical framework.

This project, which should be viewed as a guide to the Taliban’s favored legal order, presents translations of a wide variety of Taliban-era laws that provide the context for and insight into the Taliban’s latest ascent to power.

In this lecture, Mirwais Balkhi discusses why, despite numerous collective and individual efforts, Afghanistan has failed to eradicate terrorism produced by Islamic extremism.

This panel discusses the economics of Afghanistan one year after the fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021.

A panel with Khalid Ramizy, Hasina Jalal, and Omar Sadr.

The Center for Governance and markets hosted “Dysfunctional Centralization and Growing Fragility under Taliban Rule” on October 12 as part of the center’s ongoing “Voices from Afghanistan” seminar series.

Academia in Afghanistan is facing a crisis. The Taliban have targeted and prosecuted scholars. There is no freedom of expression.

Join us Friday, April 29 at 10 am ET for a virtual seminar: Unpacking the Genocide of Hazaras in Afghanistan. Event co-hosted by CGM and the Porsesh Research and Studies Organization.

This book talk with Dr. Kambaiz Rafi explores Afghanistan’s manufacturing sector and the broader implications of market-led development policies during 2001–2021.

Haroun Rahimi, Assistant Professor of Law, American University of Afghanistan, will present his research on the hawala, the informal finance system in Afghanistan.