In Search of Peace for Afghanistan

In Search of Peace for Afghanistan is a collection of twenty-two essays on war and peace making in contemporary Afghanistan. The volume is inspired by the discovery in 2019 of three historical letters of President Najibullah and historian M. Hassan Kakar. In the correspondence, exchanged in 1990, Najibullah and Kakar speak candidly about the hopes and desires of the Afghan people for peace, about plans to bring peace to their country, and about the national and regional-global actors, factors, and obstacles concerning the states of war and peace then in post-Soviet Afghanistan. The contributors to this volume, all established and emerging Afghan and international scholars, public intellectuals, and former and current members of civil society, policy, and state institutions, offer critical analyses of the correspondence, and fresh perspectives on historical and political themes related to the past and current peacemaking processes and efforts. They also offer insights on modern Afghan state-society-relations, public and political spaces, post-conflict society and development, and the role of non-Afghan, wider regional state and non-state actors and geopolitics, and present comparative examples of successful peace negotiations and best practices in international conflict resolution.