After The Fall
Moderator: Virginia Haussegger • Ahmad Shuja Jumal, William Maley and Wahidullah Waissi
Two years on from the fall of Kabul, we remember the promises that were made – and broken – in Afghanistan. The Ambassador of Afghanistan to Australia, H.E. Mr Wahid Waissi joins this necessary conversation.
Artist
AHMAD SHUJA JAMAL is a Special Advisor to the Refugee Council of Australia. A former Afghan civil servant now in exile, Shuja served as the director-general for international relations and regional cooperation at the Afghan National Security Council, where he helped manage Afghanistan’s security partnerships. He also served as director for peace and civilian protection and handled Afghanistan’s policy portfolio on international sanctions, including those of the UN Security Council and the US against Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS.
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WILLIAM MALEY is Emeritus Professor of Diplomacy at The Australian National University, and a Member of the Order of Australia, a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. His books include Rescuing Afghanistan (2006), What is a Refugee? (2016), Transition in Afghanistan: Hope, Despair and the Limits of Statebuilding (2018), The Afghanistan Wars (2021), and Diplomacy, Communication, and Peace: Selected Essays (2021).
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WAHIDULLAH WAISSI is a career diplomat who represented the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as Ambassador to the Commonwealth of Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji since March 2017. Despite the political upheaval in Afghanistan since August 2021, Ambassador Waissi persists in fulfilling his diplomatic responsibilities, operating outside the realm of Taliban influence.
Moderator
VIRGINIA HAUSSEGGER AM is an award-winning journalist and gender equity advocate. Her extensive media career spans 30 years, in which Virginia has reported from around the globe, for primetime current affair programs on Channel 7, the 9 Network and ABC TV. She anchored the ABC’s flagship TV News in Canberra for 15 years. Virginia is Deputy Chair of the news media think tank, PIJI, the Public Interest Journalism Initiative; and member of the Yindyamarra Institute for Democracy Advisory Group, Charles Sturt University. In 2019 Virginia was named ACT Australian of the Year. Virginia is currently working on a book examining feminist movements as witnessed through a media lens, to be published in 2025.