A critical evaluation in honor of Amb. Francesc Vendrell

On March 17-18, 2023, Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, Founding Director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination (LISD), will host a hybrid meeting of the Afghanistan Reflection Team (ART), part of LISD’s project on Afghanistan and the Region, with invited experts and representatives.  The meeting takes place ten days after the latest United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) discussion at the UN Security Council, and will address key issues of the “Afghanistan Puzzle”: the geopolitical and regional situation; finance and economics; infrastructure; society, law, and order; and personal security. The forthcoming ART meeting builds on analysis conducted by members of the Afghanistan Reflection Team from 2002-2014, and from 2020 onwards. 

The recent UNAMA discussions on March 8 highlighted that “Afghanistan is currently the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis”, according to Danspeckgruber. The country is the most retrograde in the world for women – ‘gender apartheid’ is a dominant fact of life for all age groups. Of a population of 33 million people – all seriously impoverished – more than 25 million need urgent help, and 6 million are close to starvation. The takeover by the Taliban following the chaotic withdrawal of American forces and Western allies in the summer of 2021 has been characterized by chaos, infighting, profound intransigence, distortion, and unreliability concerning the implementation of the Doha agreements.

The seminar will use as a discussion base the latest analysis by Danspeckgruber and his team – addressing the Taliban, its branches and governance in today’s Afghanistan: the individual security and social situation; the plight of women, children, and minorities; health and education; foreign aid; as well as radical groups and regional terror organizations. Also in focus is the financial situation of the impoverished country, the value of the Afghani, national income, domestic industry and business, agriculture and narcotics, natural resources, mining, and exploration.

A summary of this analysis can be found here.