In Hit the Ground Running, an op-ed published Monday in The International Herald Tribune, Karl Inderfurth, Former Assistant Secretary for South Asian Affairs (1997-2001) and a Trustee of The Asia Foundation, advised the incoming Obama Administration to forge an Afghanistan plan that takes into account current Afghan public opinion on their most pressing needs and priorities. The data can be found in The Asia Foundation’s Afghanistan in 2008: A Survey of the Afghan People. “These poll results are heartening in many respects,” Ambassador Inderfurth writes. “But the challenges Afghanistan faces today are already greater than at any time since the Taliban were ousted from power seven years ago. For that reason, it will be critical for Obama and his team to hit the ground running, with a comprehensive political, economic and military plan.”

On Tuesday, October 28th, the Asia Foundation released findings from its most recent public opinion poll in Afghanistan, which covers the largest population sample ever surveyed at one time in all 34 of Afghanistan’s provinces. “Afghanistan in 2008: A Survey of the Afghan People” is the fourth poll conducted by the Foundation, which released previous polls in 2004, 2006, and 2007. Collectively, the four surveys establish an accurate, long-term barometer of public opinion across Afghanistan to help assess the direction in which the country is moving in the post-Taliban era.

A copy of the 2008 survey is available in its entirety on The Asia Foundation website.
Read more »

By George Varughese with Ruth Rennie, Sudhindra Sharma, and Pawan Sen

George Varughese is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Afghanistan. He can be reached at gvarughese@asiafound.org. To access the poll in its entirety — and the 2007, 2006, and 2004 polls – please visit www.asiafoundation.org.

Afghanistan has been through increasingly difficult times in the 12 months since The Asia Foundation conducted its last survey of Afghan public opinion in the summer of 2007. Amidst slow but steady gains in vital basic amenities and services and some successes in reconstruction efforts across the country, the conflict resulted in significantly higher civilian and military casualties; food shortages in many regions became severe, with several million Afghans facing near-starvation this coming winter; and inflation and unemployment continued to rise. The country and the international community now confront presidential and other elections in 2009 and 2010.

In this context, The Asia Foundation conducted its fourth annual nationwide survey of Afghan public opinion in summer 2008.
Read more »

By Erik Jensen

Erik Jensen is The Asia Foundation’s Senior Legal Advisor, a lecturer at the Stanford Law School and co-director of the law school’s Rule of Law Program. He is also an advisor to Stanford’s Afghanistan Legal Education Project.

From 1985 to 1989 I was a Senior Fulbright Scholar and a law consultant to The Asia Foundation’s office in Colombo, Sri Lanka.  During that time, I also taught in Sri Lanka’s law schools. Last December, I was back in Sri Lanka and learned that a book I wrote during my days there, An Introduction to International Law from a Sri Lankan Perspective (Open University Press: 1989), was still the standard text.  I suppose that I should have been flattered, but I was disappointed and saddened that they weren’t using a newer, updated text.  There have been no updates to the book in nearly twenty years, two decades in which incredible developments in international law have taken place.

The Asia Foundation is deeply concerned about the quality of legal education across the developing world. 
Read more »

On October 20th, The Asia Foundation Ambassador Karl “Rick” Inderfurth, Asia Foundation trustee and former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, spoke at  Stanford University, along with other Asia Foundation trustees, Ted Eliot, Jr., former Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Teresita Schaffer, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, in a conversation called  “Awaiting the Next U.S. Administration: Seizing New Opportunities in India–Addressing Growing Challenges  With Pakistan and Afghanistan.” All three wrote chapters in the just-published volume, America’s Role in Asia. More about the discussion can be read in the article “India, U.S. on Track for More Accords: Inderfurth.”

For more information, please contact Amy Ovalle in San Francisco at aovalle@asiafound.org or 415.743.3340; or Katherine Brown in New York & Washington at kbrown@asiafound.org or 202.271.1751.

At 12a.m. Eastern Standard Time (8:30am Kabul Time) on Tuesday, October 28th, The Asia Foundation will release findings from its most recent public opinion poll in Afghanistan, which covers the largest population sample ever surveyed at one time in all 34 of Afghanistan’s provinces. “Afghanistan in 2008: A Survey of the Afghan People” is the fourth poll conducted by the Foundation, which released previous polls in 2004, 2006, and 2007. Collectively, the four surveys establish an accurate, long-term barometer of public opinion across Afghanistan to help assess the direction in which the country is moving in the post-Taliban era.

A copy of the 2008 survey will be available in its entirety at www.asiafoundation.org.
Read more »

By Gordon Hein

Gordon Hein is The Asia Foundation’s Vice President for Programs. Below are his welcoming remarks at the 2008 U.S.-Islamic World Regional Forum on Monday in Kuala Lumpur, co-sponsored by The Asia Foundation, the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, and ISIS. He can be reached at ghein@asiafound.org.

Since the U.S.-Islamic World Forum’s launch by the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution in 2004, it has made important contributions to dialogue and understanding, and has served as a catalyst for action among organizations from many countries. It is our belief – and our hope – that by holding this conference in Southeast Asia, we can add an additional, vital element to the dialogue that can make it even richer, deeper, and more successful that it has been to date. For this opportunity, I would like to express our gratitude to Ambassador Martin Indyk and his staff at the Saban Center. We are also pleased to be co-sponsoring this event with ISIS, the Institute of Strategic and International Studies here in Kuala Lumpur – led by Tan Sri Mohamed Jawhar Hassan. ISIS is an organization that has contributed so much over the years not only to Malaysia, but to the Asia-Pacific region as a whole, and it’s an organization with which The Asia Foundation has had a long and fruitful history of cooperation.
Read more »

On June 20th, Barnett Baron, The Asia Foundation’s Executive Vice President, moderated the World Affairs Council panel, Afghanistan – Progress or Decline, in honor of World Refugee Day. The panel included Khaled Hosseini, UNHCR Goodwill Envoy and Author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns; Ewen MacLeod, Deputy Representative, UNHCR Afghanistan; and Fariba Nawa, Afghan-American Journalist. For Bay Area residents, KQED’s It’s Your World will air the program in its entirety on Monday, July 7 at 8pm. For more information, click here.

Read more »

By John Brandon

John Brandon is Director of The Asia Foundation’s International Relations program and head of America’s Role in Asia.

With our election cycle, every four years American foreign policy has a fresh opportunity to be re-examined and re-strategized. Come 2009, U.S. policy towards Asia will continue to directly affect 60% of the world’s population. Many Asians tell me they’re concerned that decisions affecting them, and their countries’ security, are being made unilaterally in Washington. Many say they believe the Global War on Terror tops the U.S. foreign policy agenda, trumping all else. Asian policymakers I’ve spoken to say repeatedly they have little input in decisions made in the U.S. and that their domestic interests are rarely if ever taken into account. Given the political, economic, and security interests of the U.S. in the region, it is essential that both Americans and Asians contribute to solving problems of mutual concern.
Read more »

By Doug Bereuter

Doug Bereuter is President of The Asia Foundation. This is an excerpt of a recent presentation he made in Berlin to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Economics and Security Committee. To read the complete text, click here.

Six years after emerging from 25 years of conflict, Afghanistan continues to face tremendous challenges to stability and growth. The increasing strength of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, based across the border in relatively safe havens in Pakistan, threatens security and reconstruction, and robust economic growth is threatened by the effects of a burgeoning drug economy and near-total dependence on foreign aid.

Despite daunting challenges, the government has made important achievements in recent years. Unfortunately, as underscored in several recent studies, these achievements may prove short-lived if significant progress is not achieved on a range of tough challenges over the next few years. Over 75 percent of adult Afghans remain illiterate and about 80 percent of women and children can neither write nor read and 70 percent survive on less than two dollars per day. Afghanistan’s poppy and opium production still represents over a third of the country’s GDP and supplies over 80 percent of the world’s heroin.
Read more »