The New Afghanistan and Life in Seattle

Marcie Sillman
02/20/2008 at 10:00 a.m.

A conversation on the week's news in Canada from our Canadian correspondent, Vaughn Palmer, political correspondent for the Vancouver Sun.

A group of Afghani officials just arrived in Seattle to take classes at the UW's Evans School of Public Affairs. What do they hope to learn? What problems do they hope to solve in post–Taliban Afghanistan? Also, how are they adjusting to Seattle? How does it compare to life in Kabul? We also to talk Afghani–American Professor, Nazif Shahrani.

Guests:
Vaughn Palmer, political correspondent for the Vancouver Sun.
Ahmad Jamshid Arefi is Project Director, and Head of Capacity Building Unit for the The Independent Administrative Reform and Civil Service Commission in Afghanistan.
Noorullah Zaheer is with the The Independent Administrative Reform and Civil Service Commission in Afghanistan.
Mir Zarif is Project Management Specialist with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Nazif Shahrani is an Afghan–American and professor of anthropology, as well as chairman of Near Eastern languages and cultures at Indiana University. He received his Ph.D from the University of Washington in 1976. He is also a trustee of the new American University of Afghanistan and was in Kabul in 2007. He is currently writing a book on post–Taliban Afghanistan.