Barnett R. Rubin is a Distinguished Fellow with the China Program at the Stimson Center. He is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Quincy Institute Responsible Statecraft and at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, where he was Senior Fellow and Director of the Afghanistan Regional Program from 2000 to 2020. From April 2009 until October 2013, Rubin was senior adviser to the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2001 he served as senior advisor to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan. He advised the United Nations on the Afghan constitution, the Afghanistan Compact and the Afghanistan National Development Strategy. From 1994 to 2000, Rubin was Director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
He has taught at Columbia and Yale Universities. Rubin is the author of Afghanistan from the Cold War through the War on Terror (2013), The Fragmentation of Afghanistan (1995, 2nd ed. 2002), and other books. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New Yorker, Survival, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New York Review of Books. Rubin also reintroduced the distillation of essential oils to Afghanistan by co-founding Gulestan Ariana Ltd. In 2004. The company continues to operate in Nangarhar province under the name Orzala Naturals. It employs several hundred families in rose and bitter orange cultivation, operates a store in Kabul, and exports its products to several countries. Some of its products are available on Sephora.com under the 7 Virtues brand. Â
