AGS Hosts a Talk on "The War against Terrorism and its Impact on the US-Pakistani Relationship"

On September 12, AGS hosted a talk and Q&A session on the relations between US and Pakistan. The speaker, Lubna Sunawar, is a Ph.D. candidate in Peace and Conflict Studies at the National Defence University in Islamabad. She is currently a visiting fellow at AGS, where she works with the guidance of Dr. Tatiana Coutto under the SPLIT program, a joint initiative of the French Embassy in Pakistan and the Pakistani Higher Education Commission aimed to help the development of cooperation between French and Pakistani scientific organizations.

In her presentation, Lubna Sunawar put a particular focus on the post-9/11 period and the impact of the War on Terror on the US-Pakistani Relations. She emphasized Pakistan’s role as an important diplomatic, military and logistic ally to the US, and the repercussions of that role on Pakistan and its position on the international stage.

“The decision to support the U.S.-led War on Terror and the intervention against the Taliban government in Afghanistan has brought serious political, economic and military repercussions for Pakistan. The Taliban resistance has now assumed the shape of an insurgency and they have pursued an armed struggle against the foreign forces which are stationed there as a retaliation. Unfortunately, today this on-going war is not only confined to Afghanistan alone but has now entered Pakistan’s tribal belt and FATA region (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) where large number of militants have taken asylum and have created serious security problems thus directly leading to military operations in these areas carried out by the Pakistan military itself.”  explains Sunawar. She adds: “This ongoing war on terror has not only created a serious socio-political gash within Pakistan’s population and state elements but has also dragged Pakistan into an endless severe economic crisis.”

This talk was attended by AGS students, faculty, alumni and external guests. One of the attendees, South-Asian scholar Chaminda Hettiarachchi, Associate Director of the Research Center for Strategic Studies in Sri Lanka, comments: “The talk covered not only US-Pakistani relations but also Pakistan's position in the South-Asian region and terrorism as a global issue.” A regular visitor to AGS since he participated in the 2007 AGS conference, Hettiarachchi adds: “AGS is not only an academic institution but a multicultural hub where we meet a lot of people from different nationalities and backgrounds. Today I had the experience of a Pakistani scholar talking about US-Pakistani relations in France to an audience of people from more than 15 countries!”