Farid Mamundzay

Farid Mamundzay is a former Afghan diplomat, political analyst, and doctoral researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His PhD project, “From Emirs to Insurgents and Back Again: Taliban Identity and Cycles of Governance Failure (1979–2025),” examines why the Taliban repeatedly succeed as insurgents but fail as rulers, introducing the concept of cyclical governance failure to explain the movement’s recurring collapses between insurgency and statehood.  

With almost two decades of experience in diplomacy, security policy, and governance, Farid served as Afghanistan’s Ambassador to India (2021–2023) and Non-Resident Envoy to Nepal, the Maldives, and Bhutan. 

He previously held senior advisory roles within the Office of the National Security Council and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance, providing strategic counsel on peace, security, and institutional reform. Alongside his academic work, he operates as an independent consultant on political and security affairs, focusing on South Asian geopolitics, peacebuilding, and state resilience.  Farid’s writings have appeared in The Journal of Development Studies, The Diplomat, and The Print. He holds an MSc from the University of Birmingham and a BA (Hons) from Coventry University. 

He has completed executive training at Harvard Kennedy School, the Marshall European Centre for Security Studies, and École Nationale d’Administration. Fluent in English, Pashto, Dari, and Urdu, his research and practice advance understanding of how insurgent movements pursue and lose political legitimacy in post-conflict settings.

• Rebel Governance and Insurgency: How non-state armed groups, particularly the Taliban, govern populations, construct legitimacy, and transition between insurgency and statehood.
• State-Building and Political Legitimacy: Fragile states' institutional and ideological foundations and the recurring failure of post-conflict governments to sustain durable political orders.
• Peace Processes and Conflict Transformation: The dynamics of negotiation, power-sharing, and elite fragmentation in protracted civil wars.
• Ideology, Identity, and Political Islam: The influence of religious and cultural identity on governance, legitimacy, and resistance in Muslim-majority societies.