Dr. Lutfi Rahimi is a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Afghanistan Research Initiative. He holds a PhD and master's in economics from the University of Exeter, UK. Currently, head of research at the Biruni Institute, served as a senior policy advisor to the Ministry of Economy, a World Bank consultant and was an assistant professor of economics at the American University of Afghanistan. He is co-author of Surviving the Crisis: A Socioeconomic Assessment of the Middle Class in Kabul, released in 2023 (https://biruni.af/). His current project focuses on re-imagining Afghanistan's economic development policies from 2001 to 2021, examining why the country did not move toward industrialization during this period. The research explores ‘managed economic interventionism' as a potentially more effective alternative to the neoliberal approach that dominated.