Episode 152 – What does the Taliban rule in Afghanistan mean for the world?
It has been a little more than a year since the Taliban took over – wait, took over again! – Afghanistan and things are not good. The Islamist extremists are still extreme, terrorist attacks – this time against the Taliban – are ongoing, and the country is on the verge of famine. What should we (collectively) do? Borealis has a fascinating conversation with Naomi Kikoler, deputy director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
About my guest
Naomi Kikoler is the deputy director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. For six years she developed and implemented the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect’s work on populations at risk and efforts to advance R2P globally and led the Centre’s advocacy, including targeting the UN Security Council. An adjunct professor at the New School University, she is the author of numerous publications, including the 2013 Nexus Fund series on the emerging powers and mass atrocity prevention and the 2011 report Risk Factors and Legal Norms Associated with Genocide Prevention for the United Nations Office on the Prevention of Genocide and the Jacob Blaustein Institute. Prior to joining the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect in 2008, she worked on national security and refugee law and policy for Amnesty International Canada. She has also worked in the Office of the Prosecutor at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement at the Brookings Institution, and she worked as an election monitor in Kenya with the Carter Center. She holds common law and civil law degrees from McGill University, an MSc in forced migration from Oxford University, where her thesis was on the Rwandan genocide, and a BA from the University of Toronto in international relations and peace and conflict studies. She is a board member of the Canadian Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, a senior fellow at the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, and was called to the Bar of Upper Canada.
Canadian Intelligence Eh
In a world of multiple voices and opinions it can be very hard to know where to turn. One choice is to look to those who actually worked in counter-terrorism in the national security world. In these half-hour podcasts, 30-year Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski is joined by a fascinating array of individuals with something meaningful to say about these issues as they provide insight into what they mean and what we need to do about them.
About Phil Gurski
Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd. and Distinguished Fellow in National Security at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute (PDI). He worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specialising in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. He is the author of six books on terrorism, including the most recent The Peaceable Kingdom: A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present.
