Afghanistanica beat me to it (stupid day job!), but Afghan ambassador Said Jawad participated in an open Q&A over at The Huffington Post.
I must say, he handled himself with aplomb—despite a few ill-informed questions, he did a remarkable job of conveying both the hope and frustration of current reconstruction efforts in the country. As Afghanistanica notes, his status as a diplomat probably prevents him from answering some delicate questions—in particular about the U.S.’s disastrous opium policy—with the full honesty he clearly would like to.
Regardless, it is nice to see that some of the policy prescriptions we’ve explored here have a sympathetic audience within the Afghan political establishment, even if they fall on deaf ears here. I’d suggest reading the whole thing, on both sites (including a link to Amb. Jawad’s interview with FPTV).
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
For information on reproducing this article, see our Terms of Use
