Participants

Thomas Ruttig is co-director and co-founder of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent think tank based in Kabul and Berlin. He has a diploma in Afghanistics from Humboldt University, Berlin (Germany). Thomas has worked for the GDR Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1985-90, for the UN as respectively UNSMA head of office in Kabul, adviser to the Afghan Independent Emergency Loya Jirga Commission, and UNAMA head of office in Islamabad and Gardez 2000-03, as the Deputy to the EU Special Representative for Afghanistan 2003-04 and as Political Adviser to the German Embassy in Kabul 2004-06. He speaks Pashto and Dari and has been working on Afghanistan for some 30 years, almost ten of them living in the country and in Pakistan - as a journalist, diplomat and analyst.