Homeland: Scenarios for the future of Afghan civil society

During the first half of 2022, 35 stakeholders from Afghanistan were consulted by team members from the Academy of Folke Bernadotte (FBA) and Reos Partners. The purpose was to help surface what they identify as the most important and relevant issues to construct useful scenarios about the future of Afghan civil society.

The Scenario Team comprised a diverse group of 30 Afghan Civil Society activists, actors and experts. Based on the current reality and the dynamics around key certainties and uncertainties, four scenarios emerged, in brief:

• Shutters, envisioning that by 2030, the country may fracture.
• Light through the cracks, envisioning that the tensions existing under the seeming peace could erupt.
• Breeze of Change, envisioning that that by 2030, a revolutionary change is very likely.
• Open curtains, envisioning that a slow process of dialogue and reconciliation may move the country towards an inclusive and peaceful future.

The scenarios, representing a collectively constructed set of four different imagined futures for Afghan civil society, were developed through a process following a methodology called Transformative Scenario Process (TSP). It is an approach that brings concerned stakeholders from different, often competing, perspectives together around pressing sets of problems to build narratives that illustrate a range of potential futures. They are not forecast or prediction of what will happen. Neither are they visions, preferences, or recommendations of what should happen. The scenarios are rather intended to stimulate dialogue and action among actors involved in different ways with Afghan civil society.

This initiative was implemented by the Folke Bernadotte Acacemy in collaboration with Reos Partners and under the umbrella of the Afghanistan Peace Support Mechanism (EU APSM).