Afghanistan

Awtar Singh Khalsa is the President of the National Committee of Hindus and Sikhs of Afghanistan and the head of Kabul’s Committee for Hindu worship centres. Singh served as the Sikh representative to the Loya Jirga, and was appointed as a senator in 2004.

Hengama Anwari is a Commissioner on the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the founder of the Women and Children’s Legal Research Foundation.

Mujib Mehrdad is a Professor at Al-Biruni University, a writer, and a poet. He is the director of Porsesh [Question] magazine.

Horia Mosadiq is the Amnesty International researcher on Afghanistan. She was a child growing up in Herat province when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Soon after the fall of Dr Najibullah’s government, she was forced to leave Afghanistan.

Abdul Hafiz Mansoor has been a Member of Parliament for several years. He fought against the Soviets when he was 16 & later, against the Taliban. He obtained a MA in political science, writing his dissertation on the obstacles to development in Afghanistan.

Suraya Popal is a senior researcher and President of the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan.

Abdul Qayyum Sajjadi is a scholar and politician, serving as the Member of Parliament for Ghazni province since 2005. He migrated to Iran following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Sahraa Karimi is a young female Afghan filmmaker who grew up in Iran. In her early twenties, she migrated to Slovakia, and spent the next 12 years studying for Bachelor, Master, and Doctorate degrees in film and directing.

As the 2014 NATO drawdown from Afghanistan approaches, the international community increasingly looks towards the impact that a stable or unstable Afghanistan might have on the broader region, including Central Asia. Emphasis is often placed on the threat of radical Islamism and Afghan extremists that could destabilise Central Asia.

Dr Ramazan Bashardost is a specialist in the politics of Afghanistan, with a wealth of experience in Afghan politics and diplomacy. He fled Afghanistan following the 1978 coup d’état, migrating first to Iran, then to Pakistan, and to France.