A panel discussion before an advanced screening of The Kite Runner. Panelists include Masood Aziz, Political Counselor, Embassy of Afghanistan; Dr. Peter Bergen, journalist and terrorism analyst; and Frank Foer, editor of The New Republic.
Bio
Masood Aziz
Masood Aziz is a Counselor at the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington. He is the founder and acting Executive Director of the Afghanistan Policy Council, a think tank providing a distinct voice to challenging policy issues pertaining to Afghanistan.
Mr. Aziz has over 19 years of experience in executive management, international management consulting, banking and institutional investment management. He holds the French Baccalaureat, a Bachelor of Science degree and an MBA from the United States and is a frequent speaker and writer on economic and political matters related to Afghanistan and the greater Central Asia.
Peter Bergen
Peter Bergen is a print and television journalist, and the author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (Free Press, 2001), which has been translated into 18 languages. His new book is The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al Qaeda's Leader (Free Press, 2006). Both books were named among the best non-fiction books of the year by The Washington Post, and documentaries based on the books were nominated for Emmys in 2002 and 2007.
Mr. Bergen is CNN's terrorism analyst; an adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law & Security. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Rolling Stone, Washington Monthly, The Nation, The Times (UK), The Daily Telegraph (UK), The Guardian (UK), The Sunday Times (UK), and Prospect (UK).
He is a member of the editorial board of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and has testified on Capitol Hill. Mr. Bergen holds a M.A in modern history from New College, Oxford University.
Franklin Foer
Franklin Foer is an American political journalist and the editor of The New Republic.
Foer graduated from Columbia in 1996. Before joining The New Republic, Foer was a frequent contributor to the online magazine Slate.
His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Spin, U.S. News & World Report, Lingua Franca, The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, New York and Foreign Policy. In 2004 he published his first book, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization.
I just saw "The Kite Runner", and Peter Bergen makes a good note of pre-Taliban Afghanistan, and how the women weren't in bhurka's, and it was quite cosmopolitan.