ABSTRACT
Pakistan has some reason to feel like an underappreciated actor of the post-9/11 world. It is often seen as playing a “double game”, and the US has repeatedly asked Islamabad to “do more” in its fight against terrorism. Some Western analysts put all the blame related to the Afghan issue, or at least a decisive part of it, on Pakistani shoulders. But whatever the recriminations or critics the US and its allies can have, facts are stubborn things: because of geography, History, and the Pashtun human link between the two countries, Pakistan is indispensable to obtain some sort of peace in Afghanistan. Hence to understand this country’s position and experience of the “War on Terror” is primordial for anybody interested in achieving, over time, a relative stabilization in Kabul. This presentation will endeavor to show the security and foreign policy issues for Islamabad from a Pakistani perspective, and give a prospective analysis of the diplomatic and security-related orientations of this pivot state after 2014.
About the Speaker(s)
Didier Chaudet is a specialist of Pakistan and Central Asia, focusing on security-related and diplomatic issues. From 2007 to 2011, he taught at the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris) on South and Central Asia. In addition, he worked as a Researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (IFR) in 2008. He was a Fox Fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University from 2006 -2007. He received two M.A.s, including one in International Relations, from the Institute of Political Studies. He will defend a PhD thesis on the American foreign policy towards “Greater Central Asia” (post-Soviet Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan) after 9/11.
