J Alexander Thier Senior Rule of Law Adviser, Rule of Law Center of
Innovation Governance | Political Systems and International
Relations | Peacekeeping | Post-Conflict Activities | Rule of Law | Middle East | South Asia
Phone: (202) 429-4702 E-mail: athier@usip.org Languages: Persian (Dari),
German
J Alexander Thier joined USIP as senior adviser in the Rule of Law Center of Innovation, in
2005. He is director of the project on Constitution Making, Peacebuilding, and National
Reconciliation, expert group lead for the Genocide Prevention Task Force and director of the Future
of Afghanistan Project. He is also responsible for several rule of law programs in Afghanistan,
including a project on establishing relations between Afghanistan's formal and informal justice
systems.
Before joining USIP in 2005, Thier was the director of the Project on Failed States at Stanford
University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. From 2002 to 2004, Thier was
legal adviser 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 senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, a legal and
constitutional expert to the British Department for International Development, and as an adviser to
the Constitutional Commission of Southern Sudan. Thier worked as a U.N. and NGO official in
Afghanistan during the civil war from 1993 to 1996, where he was the officer-in-charge of the U.N.
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan in Kabul. He also served as
coordination officer for the U.N. Iraq Program in New York. An attorney, Thier was a Skadden fellow
and a graduate fellow at the U.S. National Security Council’s Directorate for Near-East and South
Asia. He received the Richard S. Goldsmith award for outstanding work on dispute resolution from
Stanford University in 2000.
Thier has appeared as an expert commentator on NPR, CBS and the BBC and has written in the
New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, among others.
He has a B.A. from Brown University, a master’s in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at
Tufts University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
Publications:
- The Future of Afghanistan, (co-author and co-editor) (USIP Press, forthcoming).
- "The Next Chapter: The United States and Pakistan," (co-author) (Pakistan Policy Working
Group, October 2008).
- Killing Friends, Making Enemies: The Impact and Avoidance of Civilian Casualties in
Afghanistan
USIPeace Briefing, July 2008
- A Toxic Cocktail: Pakistan's Growing
Instability
USIPeace Briefing, February 2008
- Bridging Modernity and Tradition:
Rule of Law and Search for Justice in Afghanistan
USIPeace Briefing, October 2007
- Constitutional
Reform in Iraq: Improving Prospects, Political Decisions Needed
USIPeace Briefing,
September 2007
- Hearts and Minds: Afghan
Opinion on the Taliban, the Government and the International Forces
USIPeace Briefing,
August 2007
- "The Making of a Constitution in Afghanistan," New York Law School Law Review, Volume 51:3
(2007).
- "Path to Peace,
Justice in Afghanistan," with Scott Worden, Christian Science Monitor, (March 13,
2007).
- Troubles on the
Pakistan-Afghanistan Border
USIPeace Briefing, December 2006
- "Order in the Courts," The New York Times, (August
28, 2006).
- "The
Crescent and the Gavel," The New York Times, (March 26, 2006).
- "Afghanistan," in Twenty-First-Century Peace Operations, edited by William Durch and
Paul Stares (USIP Press, forthcoming).
- "If the Afghans Can?," Los Angeles Times, (August 14, 2005).
- "Rush to Failure in Iraq," The New York Times, (July 14, 2005).
- "Writing Iraq?s Constitution: A Chance to Change History," San Francisco Chronicle,
(February 25, 2005).
- "Great Debates," Hoover Digest,
(January 2005, Vol. 1).
- "
Reestablishing the Judicial System in Afghanistan," Lichtenstein Institute for
Self-Determination, (Princeton University Working Paper, July 2004).
- "The Road Ahead: Political and Institutional Reconstruction in Afghanistan" in
Reconstructing War-Torn Societies: Afghanistan, Sultan Barakat, ed. (Third World Quarterly
Series, Palgrave, 2004).
- "A Chance of Success Slips Away?," The New York Times, (September 23, 2004).
- "The Politics of Peacebuilding," Nation-Building Unraveled: Aid, Peace, and Justice in
Afghanistan, edited by Antonio Donini et al. (Kumarian, 2003).
Congressional Testimonies:
Available on usip.org:
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