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 hopes and desires of the Afghan people for peace, about plans to bring peace to Afghanistan, and about actors, factors, and obstacles vis-à-vis the states of war and peace, then in post-Soviet Afghanistan. The contributors, all established and emerging Afghan and international scholars, public intellectuals, and former and current members of the civil society, policy, and state institutions, offer analyses of the correspondence in the contexts of the past and present peace making processes, and insights on modern Afghan state-society relations, public and political spaces, and development. They also offer renewed perspectives on the role of wider global and regional geopolitics and non-state actors in the current war in Afghanistan, as well as provide comparative examples of successful peace negotiations and best practices from international conflict resolution and history.