Afghanistan Beyond the War with Adela Raz
Air Dates: December 23-29, 2019
Afghanistan is known to most Americans as the site of America’s longest war. Since 2001, the United States has sent hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters to fight extremists and hunt-down the perpetrators of 9/11. But Afghanistan is more than the war. Ambassador Adela Raz has a unique perspective on her country’s rich history and insights about its future.
Ambassador Raz is the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations. She began her career with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in 2002 before arriving in the United States in 2004 to pursue higher education. In 2013, Ambassador Raz was appointed as the first female Deputy Spokesperson and Director of Communication for President Karzai in 2013 just after working with an international development organization in the United States. She then became the Chief of Staff at the President’s Administrative Office in November 2014, and was appointed as Deputy Minister for Economic Cooperation at Ministry of Foreign Affairs in March 2016.
On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” co-host Jim Ludes asks Raz if there was one thing about Afghanistan she would want the American public to know. She describes how hopeful she is about Afghanistan’s future and she would “humbly ask [Americans] to not doubt [their] investment,” as American involvement in Afghanistan has brought a lot of good to the country.
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