A Means to What End? Why PRTS are Peripheral to the Bigger Political Challenges in Afghanistan

Barbara Stapleton studied Middle East history and politics at the School of Oriental & African Studies at London university and completed her LLM in the international law of human rights at the University of Essex in 1991. She spent the 1980s working in Eritrea, Iranian Kurdistan, Pakistan, Burma and the Thai Cambodian border. From 1992-1997 she was a consultant to the BBC series ‘Human Rights, Human Wrongs.’ She moved to Afghanistan in October 2002, joining ACBAR, the main NGO coordination body based in Kabul, as Advocacy and Policy Coordinator. In May 2006 she joined the Office of the Special Representative of the EU for Afghanistan in Kabul as a senior political adviser.