Joanna
Nathan was the Senior Analyst for the International Crisis Group
in Afghanistan from May 2005-July 2009. Based in Kabul with fieldwork around
the country she focused on elections and the new representative institutions,
the growing insurgency -- in particular the root causes of the violence and
insurgent propaganda -- and security sector reform. The latter also forms a chapter "Reading the
Taliban" in the newly edited volume, Decoding
the New Taliban: Insights from the Field. Her opinion pieces have appeared in
the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe
and International Herald Tribune and
interviews for the BBC, NPR, CNN, TIME magazine,
The New York Times and Al Jazeera amongst others.
Coming from a background in
journalism, she previously worked for nine months in 2003/2004 on a media
development project largely focused on the Constitutional Loya Jirga, with a
daily news service run by local journalists throughout the historic gathering.
This later evolved into Afghanistan's first independent news agency. Joanna is currently undertaking a
Master of Public Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.
