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Ambassadors Rabbani and Warlick will offer their distinct perspectives on how the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan by 2014 will affect the country and the region.
In a conversation moderated by Future of Diplomacy Project/India & South Asia Program Faculty Director, R. Nicholas Burns, Ambassadors Rabbani and Warlick will offer their distinct perspectives on how the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan by 2014 will affect the country and the region. This event precedes the "Future of Afghanistan" Conference hosted jointly by the India & South Asia Program and Future of Diplomacy Project (HKS) and the South Asia Institute at Harvard University on April 5, 2013.
Salahuddin Rabbani currently serves as the Chair of the Afghan High Peace Council having been officially appointed in 2012, following the martyrdom of his father in September 2011. He is also the acting head of the Jamiat-e-Islami political party. From 2010 to 2011, Rabbani was Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Turkey.
He served as Deputy Head of Political Affairs for Jamiat-e-Islami from 2008 to 2010. Prior to this, he was a political counselor at the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations in New York. He has also worked in the private sector and in Northern Afghanistan as an adviser to the President’s Office.
James Warlick, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, has served as Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the office of the Secretary of State since September 2012. Prior to his current assignment, Ambassador Warlick was confirmed on December 24, 2009, by the United States Senate and sworn in on January 19, 2010, as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Bulgaria.
Ambassador Warlick served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs (IO) from 2006 to 2009, with responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy at the United Nations and a number of other multilateral organizations.
Immediately before that assignment, Ambassador Warlick was Director of the Office of European Security and Political Affairs, responsible for political-military and security issues for Europe and the former Soviet Union, including NATO, OSCE, and related arms control and nonproliferation policy issues (2005-2006). While Director of the United Nations Political Affairs in IO during 2003-2005, Ambassador Warlick also served as Principal Advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer during January 2004 to July 2004 in Baghdad, Iraq. Other assignments have included: Consul General, U.S. Embassy, Moscow; Director, for Germany, Austria and Switzerland in the European Affairs Bureau; Acting Minister-Counselor/ Deputy Counselor for Political Affairs, U.S. Embassy, Germany; Special Assistant to the Secretary of State; Operations Center Watch Officer; Consular Officer, Philippines; and Political Officer, Bangladesh.