The Remnants of an Army, by Elizabeth Butler (1879 ). This photograph depicts the lone survivor of the massacre (and capture/desertion) of 16.000 British Empire troops and civilians as they fled from Kabul in the winter of 1842. What have we learnt since then?

I am posting the pdfs of my visual presentations for the course ‘Lessons (Not) Learnt in Afghanistan’, given at the Paris School of International Affairs in Feb-March 2015, here. My presentations serve as visual aid and to recap the main points about a given subject; so these documents do not contain all the course material and may be, at times, even confusing out of the class context. So handle with care!

Course Description (as published on the PSIA website):

In this course we dissect the international intervention in Afghanistan, from its beginning in 2001 to today. As the first episode in the War on Terror, and the largest state-building and reconstruction exercise sanctioned by the international community in recent human history, ‘Afghanistan’ has helped shape the geopolitics of the 21^st century. The way the West reacted to subsequent crises in the Arab World has been, and will be, largely determined by the experience gained in Afghanistan.

The perspective used in this analysis is that from the ground, through Afghan eyes, taking into account socio-cultural evolution and its interplay with the international intervention. Factors examined include globalization, contemporary Islamism and tribal politics. Towards the end of the course we will extrapolate the lessons learnt to another theatre of international intervention in the Middle East.

Seminar 1: Ideology of the Intervention 1 / Bonn

Seminar 2: Ideology of the Intervention 2 / Obama’s Surge

Seminars 3-4: Political Culture in Afghanistan

Seminar 5: Al Qaeda and radical Islam in Afghanistan and Beyond

Seminar 6: The Taliban, Then and Now

Seminar 7: Counterinsurgency: Fighting the Phantom Enemy

Seminar 8: How to Build a Failed State

Seminar 9: What Went Well

Seminars 10-11: Mistakes of the Intervention, Lessons to be Learnt and Western Delusions

Seminar 12: Apply the Lessons Learnt: Yemen 2016 Roleplaying Exercise