POLICY AND PRACTICE - Rory Stewart and Weeda Mehran on Nation Building in Iraq and Afghanistan

Rory Stewart has been a diplomat, soldier, explorer, politician, and is now an academic at Yale. In 2003 he became deputy governor in two remote provinces of Iraq, recorded in his book Prince of the Marshes. In 2005 he moved to Kabul to establish an NGO, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. From 2010 to 2019 he was an MP, becoming chair of the Defence Select Committee, and Secretary of State for International Development. In this seminar he is joined by Dr Weeda Mehran, an expert on warlords, conflict and peacebuilding in Afghanistan, adviser to national and international organisations, and to the House of Lords inquiry on Afghanistan. Together they will discuss the challenges of nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq: should the West intervene in such countries, and what can western intervention realistically achieve?