Seminar 29. Anatol Lieven: “An Afghan Tragedy and the Roots of Taliban Success”

On Monday, 15 November 2021, The Department of International Relations and International Laboratory on World Order Studies and the New Regionalism of National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University) held the 29th session of Eurasian Online Seminar. Our guest was a British author, Orwell-Prize-winning journalist, and policy analyst Anatol Lieven. The topic of his talk is “An Afghan Tragedy and the Roots of Taliban Success.”

Anatol Lieven is senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He was formerly a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and in the War Studies Department of King’s College London. He is a member of the academic board of the Valdai discussion club in Russia, and a member of the advisory committee of the South Asia Department of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He holds a BA and PhD from Cambridge University in England.

From 1985 to 1998, Anatol Lieven worked as a British journalist in South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and covered the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya and the southern Caucasus. As a journalist, he reported from both sides of the Afghan war in the 1980s, and have visited the country frequently since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. From 2000 to 2007 he worked at think tanks in Washington DC.

Dr Lieven is author of several books on Russia and its neighbours including “The Baltic Revolutions: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence” and “Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry.” His book “Pakistan: A Hard Country” is on the official reading lists for U.S. and British diplomats serving in that country. His latest book, “Climate Change and the Nation State,” was published in March 2020.