Steve Brooking
Steve Brooking O.B.E., is a former UK diplomatic service officer; he was previously posted in Hong Kong, Beijing, Sarajevo and Bangkok. He made the mistake of volunteering to be the first UK official into Afghanistan post-9/11 and didn’t manage to leave for 20 years. He served as Political Counselor and Charge d’ Affaires at the UK Embassy and then from 2007 worked as Special Advisor to two Afghan Interior Ministers before joining the United Nations mission in 2010, ending up as Special Advisor and Chief of Staff. From 2015 until late 2021, he was the UN’s main interlocutor with the Taliban. After resigning from the UN in late 2021 he authored some pieces for Chatham House and the United States Institute of Peace, before joining the Institute in early 2023 as a Senior Advisor on the Afghanistan programme.