The Post-Mortem on Tokyo: What did it mean for Afghanistan?

July 12, 2012

The last time I was in Tokyo was in January 2008 to attend a meeting of the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board—a group of Afghan and international representatives set up in 2006 to monitor progress in meeting the benchmarks of the Afghanistan Compact.

It was my first visit to Tokyo and my impressions of the city were skewed by Sofia Coppola's highly acclaimed film from five years before, "Lost in Translation." The movie is about a celebrity of diminishing popularity who comes to Tokyo to pick up what might be one of his last big paychecks for making a commercial that milks his earlier fame.

This is not a digression. It is an introduction.

Unlike my 2008 visit, last weekend I was not part of any official delegation. I had been invited to speak on a panel about political reconciliation in Afghanistan that coincided with the international conference. While not having credentials to participate in the conference, I bumped into enough former colleagues to parse the official documents and the press reports. | Read more

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