Latest Issue
November 2025
Much of the work at the Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development revolves around creating dialogue among relevant actors. This work requires mapping stakeholders, key issues, and the spaces where meaningful conversations can happen despite deep divides. This Kroc Institute Peace Policy issue grows out of that effort, and it brings together three reflections on core issues that drive the Afghanistan conflict.
Ambassador Mohammad Moheq explores the long-standing tension between tradition and modernity that continues to shape Afghanistan’s political and cultural life. Another piece by Omar Sadr offers a new conceptualization of the Taliban rule as a hybrid system of religious ghettoization and argues for new language to capture its distinct form of oppression. The last essay, authored by Bashir Mobasher, examines the potential of a more pluralist framework for governance, comparing it to the ongoing federalism-unitarism debate and its zero-sum ethnic politics.
The reflective pieces in this issue invite readers to see Afghanistan as an evolving context where power and survival continue to collide, and where dialogue still matters.
–Aref Dostyar
Director, Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development
Tradition and Modernity in Afghanistan: Building a Bridge from Conflict to Reconciliation
At the heart of Afghanistan’s conflict lies a deep-seated tension between traditionalist and modernist forces, which has often escalated into violence and armed confrontation between these two groups. A sustainable solution to the crisis in Afghanistan requires...
The Need for a New Lexicon to Describe the Oppression of the Taliban System
The Taliban rule is characterized by scholars and policy analysts in different terms, ranging from systematic discrimination and oppression, to ethnic cleansing, gender apartheid, and Islamic totalitarianism. While all of these characterizations are valid, none alone...
How to Design A Governance System for All in Afghanistan
The federalism-unitarism debate In today’s Afghanistan, few debates cut as sharply across ethnic lines as the one over whether the state should be federal or unitary. Many Pashtun elites have long favored a unitary state, arguing that federalism could lead to the...
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Research-based insights, commentary, and solutions to the global challenge of conflict and systemic violence
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Each issue features the writing of scholars and practitioners who work to understand the causes of violent conflict and systemic violence and who seek to contribute solutions in service of building more just and peaceful societies.
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