The Legatum Institute hosted a live webcast and panel discussion with Dr Ashraf Ghani, former finance minister of Afghanistan and Clare Lockhart, who worked with him on the 2001 Bonn Agreement and later on the Afghan transition.
The panel discussed their new paper on Syria, which sought lessons from the global experience of transitions in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The discussion was moderated by the Legatum Institute's Director of Political Studies,
Anne Applebaum.
In their public remarks, Ghani and Lockhart discussed the patterns emerging in Syria, and compared them to those seen in past conflicts. emerging patterns in Syria, looking closely at the relationships and They focused in particular on relationships between people on the ground and external actors, considering not just the intended consequences, but the unintended consequences of these interactions. They also described possible scenarios based on their own reading of the situation.
In recent years, Ghani and Lockhart have studied a wide range of peace agreements, transitions and efforts at state building. They noted that more than half of all peace agreements revert to conflict, and described ways in which this might be avoided in Syria. They also outlined the issues that anyone working on a future Syrian transition should address.
Although the conditions for a peace agreement may not arrive immediately, preparation for postwar Syria can help build national consensus in advance.
Webcast
Podcast
Preparing for a Syrian Transition is the first in a series of
'Transitions Forum' papers dedicated to the economics and politics of radical political change.