The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, or the Politics of Reconstruction in Afghanistan

Public Lecture by Alessandro Monsutti, 6 pm at HU Berlin


The lecture scrutinizes the activities of international and nongovernmental organizations in post-Taliban Afghanistan. It will focus on the impact of the massive reconstruction effort on Afghan society, an example being the National Solidarity Programme (NSP) which is the main project of rural rehabilitation under way in the country. Launched in 2003, its objective is to bring development funds directly to rural people and to establish democratically elected local councils that will identify needs and then plan and manage the reconstruction. The NSP’s political significance may seem to have faded in the context of the presidential elections of 2009, but still the program illustrates how sponsored reconstruction has become an integral part of Afghanistan’s social and political landscape.

Alessandro Monsutti (Associate Professor for Anthropology and Sociology of Development) is Director of the Research Programme for the Study of Global Migration at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. PhD in social anthropology (Neuchâtel, 2002). Scholarly work at several distinguished European institutions; consultant for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. Alessandro Monsutti has since the mid-1990ies conducted multi-sited migration research in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and more recently in European countries.


Wednesday, June 20th, 2012, 6 pm


Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Invalidenstraße 118, R 507