Hectic weeks

Quite some time has passed since my last blog-post. The last few weeks have been extraordinarily hectic (at least in my book), including quite a bit of travelling. It has been so hectic, in fact, that my shoulder started protesting, limiting the enjoyment of writing long blogs. Here are some of my highlights since the last posting – ‘India revisited’:

• I spent four days in Kabul, 16-19 April. Main impression: full confusion over US signals of a pull out; fragmentation and emergent power struggles within the government. Slightly depressing. Very much in line with what some of you heard in yesterday’s seminar with Aziz Hakimi and Torunn Wimpelmann Chaudhary here at PRIO.
  

• I moved on to Ashgabat, 20-24 April, where I attended a seminar on regional security. Mindboggling place, gas fortune and big spending (mainly on infrastructure); Soviet legacy with the past president as a gold-plated statue on every corner. Interesting to learn about Central Asian perspectives on its southern neighbor. The fact that I had to fly around the Middle East to get from one neighboring country to the next is illustrative of regional cooperation (or lack thereof).

• The new LOGO was launched last Friday, alongside the Annual Report and other goodies (the ‘Peace – Do Not Disturb’ sign is already a hit in the black market). I am very pleased with the end result, which I think lives up to my initial ambition of signaling both sharpness and seriousness. The new logo – and the individual projects – do stand out from the usual crowd, this is true art work. Today, we had new T-shirts arriving (in time for tomorrow’s adventure), also displaying true artfulness.
  

• Inger and I have met with NTNU and UiO on the idea for a collaborative research school in peace and conflict studies, and had positive feedback in both quarters. We are now moving on to work on a more concrete program for the school. This is one of our strategic goals, and I am now very optimistic that we will be successful. This week, PRIO (with NTNU) hosted Jeff Checkel’s PhD course on Qualitative Methods and the Study of Civil War, where Scott and I also contributed. The students I met outside yesterday afternoon more than indicated that we have a contribution to make in the area of researcher training.

• The rector of the University of Oslo, Ole Petter Ottersen and myself opened the seminar on Security versus Justice, hosted by The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (at UiO) and PRIO last Friday at the old University quarters in the city centre. With Lidia Yusupova as the main speaker and a very competent panel (including Nobuo), this was an interesting reflection on various aspects of a central dilemma for peacemakers. The collaboration with UiO worked very well, and we intend to make this a regular, annual, occurrence.

• And tomorrow is the big day for PRIO’s running team, spearheaded by Damian. Wrapped in PRIO’s new T-shirts, with our new logo on them, they will do their best to prove that peace research – despite what many think – can move fast when it is required. I wish the team best of luck (sad that I shall have to abstain), and look very much forward to seeing the results – and the pictures. Break a leg!
  
  

I am off to Beijing this afternoon, where I – and Ola – shall attend the so-called China-Nordic Think Tank Roundtable at the China Institute of International Studies. I have never been that far east before (in case you thought I was widely travelled, that is true only for Afghanistan, my main destination). After Beijing, I fly on to Washington, where CMI and PRIO host a roundtable on Transatlantic relations and Policy Development in Afghanistan, to be held at the German Marshall Foundation. My sense when I visited Kabul recently was that Afghanistan’s fate, for once, would be better understood in Washington than in the Afghan capital. When I return to PRIO headquarters on 20 May I can tell you whether my sense proved valid.