Andrew Watkins
Andrew Watkins is a conflict analyst and policy advisor with fifteen years of experience on Afghanistan, Syria, and across the MENA region. He has served in multiple roles with the United Nations: as an expert advisor to an independent assessment of international engagement with Afghanistan, an analyst of non-state armed groups with the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), and supporting security sector reforms in Iraq with UNDP. He has also extensively advised U.S., NATO, the EU and European governments on strategic policy toward armed groups as an expert with the U.S. Institute of Peace and the International Crisis Group. Andrew has also spent years advising humanitarian organisations on access and negotiations with armed groups in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.
Andrew is widely cited as an expert on conflict and politics in Afghanistan and its surrounding region, and has published analysis on the political dynamics, organizational culture and policymaking of the Taliban. He is currently co-authoring a book with Centre fellow Timor Sharan on the United States’ 20-year intervention in Afghanistan. He holds a master’s degree from Harvard University and a bachelor’s from Columbia University in New York.
