On November 10th, the Saltzman Institute proudly invites Lucy Morgan Edwards to discuss her recent book, The Afghan Solution: The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan.

Lucy Morgan Edwards is a former Political Advisor to the EU Ambassador in Kabul with responsibility for civil military affairs, narcotics and security sector reform.  During her seven years in the region she worked for the UN in Kandahar at the height of the Taliban regime (supervising community and urban water supply projects), was an election monitor at the 2002 Emergency Loya Jirga, a monitor on the currency exchange project with the Afghan Central Bank and a  correspondent for the Economist and Daily Telegraph.  She also spent many months in Jalalabad, Eastern Afghanistan, with a leading tribal family (that of Abdul Haq and Haji Abdul Qadir), whereby she developed an insight into the post 9/11 political situation in the dis-enfranchised Pashtun areas of the East.  Her final job was Country Expert to the EU Monitors of the 2005 Afghan Parliamentary Elections.  

She has written several academic papers on the post 9/11 Afghan intervention and state-building process and has spoken about what led to the situation – as well as prospects for peace –  on CNN, the BBC World Service and at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House, among others.   Her book is being distributed by Pluto Press worldwide (contact Marston for trade orders) and by Palgrave Macmillan in the USA.