Dipali Mukhopadhyay and Barnett R. Rubin will discuss Mukhopadhyay’s new book, “Warlords, Strongman Governors, and the State of Afghanistan.” They will also reflect on the future of Afghan politics, including the implications of the April 5th presidential election and the evolving role of the international community.

Dipali Mukhopadhyay is an assistant professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a member of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. She has been conducting research in Afghanistan since 2007 and made her first trip to the country in 2004. She teaches courses on state formation, intervention, and non-state armed actors.

Barnett R. Rubin is Director of the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University.  From 2009 to 2013 he served as senior advisor to the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan of the US Department of State.  Previously he was Director of the Center for Preventive Action, and Director, Peace and Conflict Studies, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Central Asia at Columbia University, and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University.  In November-December 2001 he served as special advisor to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan during the negotiations that produced the Bonn Agreement. Dr. Rubin is the author of Blood on the Doorstep: the Politics of Preventing Violent Conflict (2002), The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System (2002; first edition 1995), and many other books and articles.