14 Nov 2022

Welcome to Afghanistan Week 2022

The Afghanistan Week is a bi-annual event where politicians, journalists, academics, and activists from Afghanistan, Norway, and beyond come together to address key issues facing the country, as well as to stimulate debate and understanding about Afghanistan in Norway.

Possibilities in a Sea of Trouble: Afghanistan’s Past, Present and Future

Well over a year after the Taliban took power in Kabul, Afghans face a grim future. Although civilian losses have been reduced, international sanctions have worsened the economic and humanitarian crises, with 90 percent of households unable to secure enough food for themselves.

In addition to their massively repressive practices towards women in particular, the Taliban struggle on multiple fronts; in getting their government into gear, in fighting internal armed threats, and in gaining international acceptance.

After two decades of the US-led intervention, giant international investments and efforts to build a democratic state, secure basic human rights, and reduce poverty, the need to understand the sources and potential ways out of the country’s predicaments is more urgent than ever.

International recognition of the Taliban regime is a distant prospect, even though Western states and neighbouring ones differ in how they engage with them. However, the prospect of outside influence on the regime’s policies could very well be shrinking.

For Afghanistan’s growing diaspora, as well as for civil society actors in the country, the question of how to engage, and at what risk, is existential. The contestation over girls’ access to education, also playing out within the Taliban, is illustrative of what is at stake.

In all of this, a solid understanding of the Taliban’s social and political roots, its ideological foundations, its conception of the ideal Islamic state, and relations with neighbours and the international community is a necessity to identify avenues for dialogue and leverage and whether positive change remain a possibility.

We are delighted to invite you to a week of informative debates and seminar on some of the key issues facing Afghanistan:

What space is there for dialogue on women’s rights, political inclusion, justice?
How can the country’s humanitarian, environmental and protection crises be mitigated?

How does the Taliban’s governance structure work?
How does Afghanistan’s neighbours relate to the shifts in Afghan power?
How did the international intervention in Afghanistan impact global terror networks?

The Afghanistan Week is organized by the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee (NAC), the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the Nansen Centre for Peace and Dialogue (NCPD), with support from Norad, Fritt Ord and NCHS.

Programme:

Taliban Land: Film screening and discussion with film maker Nagieb Khaja

November 14, 18:00-20:00 CET

Trouble in Afghanistan, trouble in the neighbourhood?

November 15, 09:00-10:00 CET

Religious actors in Afghanistan: What is their role under Taliban rule?

November 15, 10:30-11:30 CET

A public dialogue on women rights in Afghanistan: How to engage, and at what risk?

November 15, 17:00-19:00 CET

The 2001 intervention in Afghanistan and the current state of terror in the world

November 16, 09:00-10:00 CET