In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he helped uncover Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds. From 1993 to 1998, he served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, where he was co-mediator of the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the Croatian War of Independence. He served in East Timor's first transitional government, successfully negotiating the Timor Sea Treaty. As an author and commentator, Galbraith, a longtime advocate of the Kurdish people, has argued for Iraq to be "partitioned" into three parts, allowing for Kurdistan independence. Beginning in 2003, Galbraith acted as an informal advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, helping to influence the drafting process of the Iraqi Constitution in 2005. In 2009, Galbraith was appointed United Nations' Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, where he contributed to exposing the fraud that took place in the 2009 presidential election in Afghanistan before being fired in a dispute over how to handle that fraud.