Dr Ali Wardak is a Professor of criminology at the University of South Wales and Vice President of the South Asian Society of Criminology and Victimology. His main teaching and research interests focus on comparative criminology, the rule of law, and the relationships between state and non-state justice systems. From September 2006 to October 2008 he worked for the United Nations Development Programme in Kabul, and co-authored the 2007 Afghanistan Human Development Report.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is the leader of the Hezb-i Islami political party and former mujahidin armed group. He was prime minister during the 1990s before the Taliban takeover of Kabul. After the Taliban’s fall in 2001 he was involved in an armed campaign against the Afghanistan government and the international coalition. He signed a peace deal with the Afghanistan government in 2016 enabling his return to Afghanistan after almost 20 years in exile.

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Patricia Gossman is senior researcher on Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch. Prior to joining HRW, she was Director of the Afghanistan Program at the International Center for Transitional Justice on Afghanistan, and was the founder and director of the Afghanistan Justice Project, an Open Society Institute-funded project to document war crimes committed during the Afghan conflict, 1978– 2001. She was Senior Researcher for South Asia at HRW in the 1990s, covering not only Afghanistan, but India, Pakistan and Nepal.

Professor Barnett R. Rubin is a Senior Fellow and Associate Director of Center on International Cooperation, where he directs the Afghanistan Pakistan Regional Program. From April 2009 to October 2013, Professor Rubin was the Senior Adviser to the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the US Department of State. 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.

Zahid ur Rehman has Masters degrees in Political Science from Peshawar University and in Peace and Conflict Studies from the National Defence University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is conducting post-graduate research on the wartime experience of Afghan nomad tribes.

Zahid ur Rehman is a contributor to our Accord publication series and not a staff member of Conciliation Resources. The views expressed in the publication are their own and do not reflect the position of Conciliation Resources. We cannot share contributors' contact details. 

Younus Qanooni joined Ahmad Shah Massoud’s mujahidin based in his native Panjshir Valley following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He was involved in establishing the Northern Alliance and served as Interior Minister in Burhanuddin Rabbani’s government. He was chief negotiator for the Northern Alliance delegation to the Bonn conference. Mr Qanooni was minister in the post-Bonn Interim Administration and Education Minister in the Afghan Transitional Administration (established in June 2002), and was a security advisor to interim President Hamid Karzai.