Confirmation of Candidature - Candidate : Nasir Haidarzai

Attempts to implement Transitional Justice (TJ) mechanisms in the context of Afghanistan has received little scholarly attention. However, the use of general amnesty has been recurrent in the country’s social and political history. The country has gone through multiple temporalities of violent political conflicts over the past nearly fifty years, from the 1978 Saur Revolution (Coup d'état), through to the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989), followed by the intra Afghan civil war (1992-2001) and the subsequent post-9/11 United States-led international military intervention and withdrawal (2001-2021). All these historical phases involved serious human-rights violations and crimes. This research explores the historical conditions under which general amnesties were enacted between 1978 and 2021, the goals and long-term implications of these amnesties1, and the role these amnesties have played in fostering peacebuilding, human rights’ accountability, and national reconciliation in Afghanistan. This research will significantly contribute to the studies on TJ, particularly in relation to amnesty, in the context of a fragmented Islamic south-central Asian country. 
 
Keywords: Transitional Justice, Amnesty, Peace, Accountability, Reconciliation, Islam, and Afghanistan.  

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