S06E02: Sha­harzad Akbar on Afghanistan after Democracy 

This episode explores the polit­i­cal mis­takes which pre­vent­ed human rights and the rule of law from tak­ing root in Afghan soci­ety. What under­stand­ings of democ­ra­cy pre­vailed fol­low­ing the U.S. inva­sion and what were the foun­da­tions on which the lead­ers of Afghanistan tried to build a mod­ern repub­lic? Lis­ten to what made Tal­iban resur­gence pos­si­ble, as well as the prospects for a suc­cess­ful pop­u­lar resis­tance to their rule of terror.

Guests fea­tured in this episode:

Sha­harzad Akbar, one of the most promi­nent among the Afghan demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion voic­es in exile. She was born in Afghanistan, lived with her fam­i­ly as a refugee in Pak­istan dur­ing the first Tal­iban regime for some years and she’s the first Afghan woman to earn a post­grad­u­ate degree at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty in 2011.

She was lat­er Coun­try Direc­tor for the Open Soci­ety Afghanistan, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion sup­port­ing civ­il soci­ety and media, focus­ing on human rights and peace build­ing. Sha­harzad also worked as Senior Advi­sor to the Afghan Pres­i­dent on high devel­op­ment coun­cils and was Chair of the coun­try’s Inde­pen­dent Human Rights Com­mis­sion, a posi­tion that she held until ear­ly 2022.

In 2021, she was award­ed the Fran­co-Ger­man Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law. Most recent­ly, she was an Open Soci­ety Net­work Aca­d­e­m­ic Fel­low in Human Rights at Chatham House and is cur­rent­ly at Wolf­son Col­lege, Oxford build­ing a new inter­na­tion­al NGO to sup­port human rights in Afghanistan.