Jorrit Kamminga

Jorrit Kamminga (born 8 November 1976) is the Director of Policy Research at The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS). ICOS is an international security and development think tank founded in 2002 with offices in Kabul, London, Ottawa, Rio de Janeiro, Brussels and Paris, and field offices in the Afghan cities of Lashkar Gah and Kandahar City.

He recently was one of the Afghanistan experts that testified before the Public Hearing on the Dutch Police Training Mission in Afghanistan at the Dutch Parliament (24 January 2011).[1]

He is currently a visiting scholar within the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics (LSE). His stay at LSE is part of his enrollment in the PhD programme "La Europa de las Libertades" in the Faculty of Constitutional Law, Political Science and Administration at the University of Valencia.

In 2002, Mr Kamminga received a master's degree in international relations from the University of Groningen,[2] Netherlands, after the completion of a final thesis on the linkages between international terrorism and the global drug problem.[3] See the website of the State University of Groningen for an overview in Dutch of Mr. Kamminga's past activities. During this period, Mr. Kamminga worked at the Supply Reduction and Law Enforcement Section (SRLES) of the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP, now UNODC) at its headquarters in Vienna.

Following his studies, he worked for more than two years at the political section of the Dutch Embassy in Madrid. Part of his portfolio were Spain's bilateral relations with Morocco, Algeria and Cuba, and the policy issues Gibraltar, Western Sahara, ETA and international terrorism and Spain's regional politics.

Mr. Kamminga has been working with ICOS since 2003. He has been working extensively in Kabul and southern Afghanistan (Kandahar and Helmand provinces), organizing events, conducting field research and delivering food aid and medical supplies. In March 2007, Mr. Kamminga briefed both military and civilian staff at NATO’s Headquarters about the security and development situation in southern Afghanistan.

As spokesperson and expert, Mr. Kamminga contributes regularly to various current affairs and political programmes including Al Jazeera, Channel One (Russia), BBC Radio 5 Live, The World Today, BBC Mundo,[4] CBC, CTV Television Network,[5] France 24, Islam Channel, Voice of America, Press TV, and Deutsche Welle. He has been interviewed on several occasions by Reuters, Associated Press,[6] EFE, El Mundo,[7] El País,[8] Bloomberg, The Guardian,[9] Independent,[10] Berliner Zeitung, Politiken, Klassekampen, and Rzeczpospolita.

Mr. Kamminga has written opinion pieces for El País, the International Herald Tribune,[11] The Washington Quarterly[12] and all major Dutch newspapers such as NRC Handelsblad,[13] de Volkskrant[14] and Trouw.[15] Mr. Kamminga has been living in Spain since 2002, first in Cordoba then in Madrid, and now in Valencia.

Mr Kamminga is Member of the Advisory Board of Chronoscoop Film, a company specialised in film and photography based in Groningen in the Netherlands.[16]

In 2008, Mr Kamminga appeared on The Islam Channel[17] to discuss the significance of France’s largest military loss in Afghanistan to date. In July 2008, he spoke to Al Jazeera about,[18] in response to an article written by the former US counter narcotics official Thomas Schweich. In August he spoke to Radio Netherlands about the Taliban’s.[19]

He also wrote an op-ed[20] for the Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos detailing the current need for Spanish troops to be re-deployed to the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, 15 July 2009 Kamminga appeared on France 24 to discuss the relationship between aid agencies and governments and militaries involved in Afghanistan.[21]