April 12th, 2013 by Afghan Mission
On Tuesday the 9th of April, Ambassador Zahir Tanin gave a lecture at PrincetonUniversity, at an event arranged by the Princeton Chapter of the United Nations Associations president John Vincent and cosponsored by the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Woodrow Wilson School. The lecture was entitled”Left Behind: The United Nations in Post-Transition Afghanistan”.
The event titles inclusion of “left behindâ€, as explained by Ambassador Tanin, was to evoke  thoughts the third movie of Left Behind series in which a UN representative is left to deal with the situation of a post-rapture earth. However, as he outlined, this kind of negative scenario, with the UN left to “pick up the pieces†is not one he envisions for post 2014 Afghanistan. He instead described that “transition is a positive time for Afghanistan; it is a time to work with the international community towards normalization, through achieving national ownership and leadership and ending the conflictâ€
Through Ambassador Tanin’s rem
Ambassador Tanin also highlighted the importance of strategic bi-lateral agreements and regional cooperation as Afghanistan moves into the transformation decade from 2015 to 2024.
However, the primary focus of his thoughts was the way in which Afghanistan’s relationsÂ
Following the Ambassadors talk he engaged in a lively Q&A session with students on a multitude of issues. The video of his entire presentation can be viewed on the Woodrow Wilson School website at http://wws.princeton.edu/