"Afghanistan: Beginning of the Endgame?" was the topic of a panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson School at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, March 29, 2010 in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall, on the Princeton University campus. A public reception followed the discussion in Shultz dining room. The panel was co-sponsored by LISD and the Woodrow Wilson School.

Panelists included Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, Director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination (LISD); Ambassador Robert Finn, LISD Senior Research Associate; Lt. Col. Christopher Ireland, U.S. Air Force, currently assigned to Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell of the Joint Staff; and Daoud Yaqub, Visiting Research Scholar at LISD/WWS.

Panelists

Wolfgang Danspeckgruber is the Founding Director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University and has been teaching on issues of state, security, self-determination, diplomacy, and crisis diplomacy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Politics since 1988. He is also founder and chair of the Liechtenstein Colloquium on European and International Affairs, a private diplomacy forum in Liechtenstein. In 2006, during Austria’s Presidency of the European Union he served as academic advisor to the Permanent Mission of Austria to the United Nations. Since 2001 he has visited Afghanistan, China, India (Kashmir), Israel, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and has been involved in related private diplomacy. He recently dited the “Petersberg Papers on Afghanistan and the Region” an LCM Report available from LISD.

Robert Finn currently has a dual appointment in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. From 2003-2005 he was the Ertegun Visiting Professor in the Near East Studies Department of Princeton University. He served as the United States Ambassador to Afghanistan from March 2002 until August 2003. Previously, he had also been the Ertegun Professor at Princeton, following service as the U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan from 1998 until July of 2001. His other diplomatic postings include Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir in Turkey, Lahore in Pakistan and Zagreb, Croatia. He opened the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1992.

Lt. Col. Christopher J. Ireland is an 18-year US Air Force officer currently assigned to the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell of the Joint Staff, and is stationed at the Pentagon. A career aviator with multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he most recently returned from Afghanistan in early March following a brief tour at the Headquarters, International Security Assistance Force in Kabul. While there, he conducted planning to support the Afghan government in reintegration activities.

Daoud Yaqub is a Visiting Student Collaborator at LISD/WWS, Princeton University. He holds the degree of Juris Doctor, and previously served as Executive Director of the Afghanistan Foundation in Washington DC. After participating in the 2001 Bonn Conference, he returned to his native Afghanistan and worked for the Afghan Government in a number of capacities, including as a senior director in Afghanistan’s National Security Council.