Afghanistan in transition: institution and security nexus

After more than a decade of NATO-led intervention, Afghanistan is now transitioning into a fully functioning state. Two main challenges lie ahead as NATO plans to withdraw its forces and turn security over to the Afghan government. The short-term challenge relates to guaranteeing an effective and efficient turnover of power to Afghan authorities. In the longer term, NATO wants to ensure a healthy consolidation of Afghan state institutions. The way in which NATO manages this turnover as well as its role in the transition’s aftermath will have immense implications on the evolution of the Afghan state. As such, the transatlantic alliance, as well as civil and military policy makers, are at a critical juncture in its Afghanistan endeavor. The transition from a stage of acute conflict to that of institutional consolidation will bring about new challenges for Afghanistan across a spectrum of policy issues. In this transition stage, Afghanistan needs not reinvent the wheel in many of the challenges it will face. Istanbul Policy Center in cooperation with USAK and the financial support of NATO Public Diplomacy Division convened a series of panels to further the debate on specific policy challenges facing NATO and the Afghan government during this transition. More specifically, these panels hosted experts in specific fields that we deemed may be critical to a healthy consolidation of the Afghan state. We chose the panel topics to address concrete policy challenges that stand at the security-economics-society nexus and that can lend themselves to specific policy proposals