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Astri Suhrke has a PhD in international relations and is a senior researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway. She has written widely on the nature and consequences of social conflict, the politics of humanitarian policies and, most recently, peacebuilding. She has followed developments in Afghanistan since the early 1980s.
The move to hold a second round of elections in Afghanistan on November 7, 2009 has at least had one positive result: it has brought out the fundamental limitations of introducing Western democratic election processes in a deeply divided society that, moreover, is at war with itself and with external forces.
