Christine Fair speaks on… Afghanistan: Peace Caught in the Crosshairs

Christine Fair
Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University
Walsh School of Foreign Service

The U.S. has been at war in Afghanistan since October 7, 2001. It is America's longest war even though it rarely makes headlines. Despite the fact that the U.S. routed the Taliban in late 2001, the Taliban made a resurgence in 2005 and continues to gain ground. In recent years, ISIS, too, has moved into Afghanistan. 

American failures in Afghanistan, in large measure, are due to different objectives among our NATO allies, duplicity by our Pakistani partners, and pervasive corruption in the Afghan government. While the Obama administration pledged to remove all troops from Afghanistan by 2010, U.S. troops remain albeit in diminished numbers. In this talk, Dr. Fair will explain U.S. interests in Afghanistan but will argue that America’s continued presence there is unlikely to produce positive results without a robust policy to manage the twinned menaces of Pakistani duplicity and Afghan ineptitude.

Prior to joining the Security Studies Program (SSP) at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Dr. Fair served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer to the U.N. Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and as a senior research associate in USIP’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. She is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, Women in International Security, and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies.

Flier:  Fair_on_Afghanistan6-7-16.pdf