Professor Thomas Barfield is a social anthropologist who conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among pastoral nomads in pre- war northern Afghanistan during the mid-1970s. He later taught at Wellesley, Harvard and Boston universities and is the author of several books on Afghanistan, Central Asia, China and anthropology. Since 2001 his research has focused on economic and political development in Afghanistan, particularly on law, government organisation and development issues.

Dr Anna Larson is the Accord 27 Issue Editor and a Senior Teaching Fellow in Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has worked as a researcher in Afghanistan, writing on politics, democratisation and peace in Afghanistan since 2005. Anna is co-author with Noah Coburn of Derailing Democracy in Afghanistan: Elections in an Unstable Political Landscape(Columbia, 2014), and holds a PhD in post-war recovery from the University of York.

His Excellency Mohammad Kareem Khalili is Chairman of the High Peace Council of Afghanistan. HE Khalili served as Vice-President of Afghanistan from 2002–14 during both the Interim Administration and then under elected President Hamid Karzai.

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Accord Issue 27: Afghanistan