Fifty years ago, I was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Ghazni, Afghanistan (1971-1973). I taught English at Lycée Sana’i. My first year Afghanistan was a kingdom. My second year, the king’s cousin, Muhammad Daoud Khan staged a coup d’état against the king, Muhammad Zahir Shah.

Daoud Khan’s coup declared Afghanistan a republic (1973-1978). It lasted half as long as the constitutional monarchy (1964-1973). Afghan communists staged the Saur Revolution on April 27, 1978, while I was living in Iran. Iran itself was in the middle of its own revolution.

From Abu Dhabi, in the UAE (1979-86), I watched things unfold in Afghanistan. In 1987, I moved to Peshawar, Pakistan and soon began working with Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Peshawar was Afghanistan’s winter capital in the early 19^th century. For four and a half years during the Soviet invasion I ran programs for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in camps all along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border along with cross border programs.

Most of my 1990s were spent in the Balkans and the Middle East, but in 2002, the UN called me to become one of 24 international monitors for the Emergency Loya Jirga. I traveled with twenty-something Afghans who had only known war. We conducted local elections at the district level in Zabul, Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan. Later in 2010, I worked and traveled in Afghanistan with the Army’s Special Operations Forces until I retired in 2020. That was a totally different experience.

Now Afghanistan and Afghans are suffering from 40 years of war and disunity. Tens of thousands of Afghans have sought asylum and sanctuary outside of the country. Thousands more inside the country are suffering persecution and millions more are threatened with malnutrition, starvation and economic collapse. Peace presents hope, but only when Afghanistan forms a government considered legitimate by Afghans and the world can the country survive.