The Missing Link: State-building and the Rule of Law in Afghanistan
J. Alexander Thier is Senior Rule of Law Advisor at the United States Institute of Peace. Prior to joining USIP, Thier was Scholar-in-Residence at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2004, Thier was legal advisor to Afghanistan's Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions in Kabul, where he assisted in the development of a new constitution and judicial system. Thier has also worked as a UN and NGO official in Afghanistan from 1993-1996, as well as in Iraq, Pakistan, and Rwanda. He has written extensively about Afghanistan and is a contributing author of the newly released "Twenty-First Century Peace Operations," edited by William Durch, and was lead project advisor on the PBS documentary, "Afghanistan: Hell of a Nation."