Andrew Wilder, vice president of the United States Institute for Peace's Asia program, said Afghanistan's young were the greatest benefactor of a post-Taliban "bubble economy" generated by international aid as well as opium trafficking.

The United States has vital national interests in Afghanistan. Since 9/11, preventing another terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland has remained our key objective. While the cost in lives and treasure has been too high, this objective has largely been achieved. But it has required a sustained U.S. troop presence, the active participation of our NATO allies and a close partnership with the Afghan government.

Maria Stephan: Nonviolent movements are, on any given day, happening all around the world. Some are smaller scale, some are larger mass-movements, but you need look no further than the United States to see nonviolent resistance in action. For example, the Women’s March, on the day after the inauguration, was the single largest demonstration in U.S. history. About 1.7% of the U.S. population participated in that mass demonstration, and since that time there have been follow-on marches demonstrations, strikes, and the like. There is a lot happening domestically to challenge certain policies and advance democracy...

Here & Now's Meghna Chakrabarti speaks with Moeed Yusuf, associate vice president of the Asia Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and considers the partition's legacy in Pakistan.

Nancy Lindborg spoke to SiriusXM POTUS Ch. 124 about fragility in terms of lessons learned in Iraq with regard to the importance of an inclusive government and the state of affairs in Afghanistan. Lindborg explained that economics and security are as important as the military focus in Afghanistan to restore the social contract between the government and the people.

Virginia M. Bouvier, the chief of operations in Colombia for the U.S. Institute of Peace who played a vital role in reaching a 2016 peace treaty between rebel guerrillas and the government, died July 29 at a hospital in Washington. She was 58 and lived in Silver Spring, Md.

What happens at a U.S. Embassy? What does it take to become a diplomat? And how do you celebrate the 4th of July in Africa? In this episode, we get a taste of how ambassadors represent U.S. interests in foreign countries. Our guest is Johnnie Carson, a former U.S. Ambassador to Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Kenya.

The shocking murder of Christopher Msando, which came to light this week, casts a pall over Kenya’s 8 August elections. As the acting director of information and communications technology at the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), Msando had a key role in two critical aspects of the electoral process: the biometric identification of voters at polling stations; and the results management system, which aggregates votes once they’ve been counted at the polling station level.