The relationship between illegal financial flows and state-level violence is present in conflicts around the world, and is especially pronounced in Afghanistan. In particular, the country’s thriving drug market based on the opium trade has proven to be a major economic factor that has been fueling the ongoing conflict. In this episode of Root of Conflict, Pearson Fellows Aishwarya Raje and Mwangi Thuita speak with Gretchen Peters, Executive Director of the Center on Illicit Networks and Transnational Organized Crime (CINTOC) about why the political economy of the war in Afghanistan is so poorly understood, and the connections between criminal networks, weakened institutions, and breakdown into disorder.

The war in Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion in 2001 is almost two decades old. In recent years there’s been a growing appetite for a non-military resolution to the conflict. In this episode, Pearson Fellows Aishwarya Raje and Mwangi Thuita speak with Laurel Miller, Asia Program Director at International Crisis Group and a former U.S. State Department official working on Afghanistan and Pakistan, about the ongoing negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government in Doha and how the U.S.’s goals in Afghanistan have evolved over the course of the war. 

Climate change will affect rich and poor countries — but poorer countries are predicted to pay the greatest human and economic cost. In this episode students interview Amir Jina, Assistant Professor at University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, to discuss how shocks to the water system could impact conflict patterns — and whether it’s even possible to identify a causal relationship between conflict and climate change.