Foreign affairs: ‘Pakistan, US have same Afghan goals’

Prof Weinbaum says Taliban-led Afghanistan not good for US or Pakistan

LAHORE: Pakistan and the US have both divergent and convergent interests, and have the same long-term interests in Afghanistan as well, said Prof Marvin Weinbaum on Monday.

The professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois was speaking on “Emerging US Policy Towards Pakistan and the Region” at the Centre of Governance and Policy
of IT University of the Punjab.

Prof Weinbaum, who has worked on the region for over three decades, emphasised that a Taliban-led Afghanistan would only strengthen extremism in Pakistan and stoke the Pakhtunistan issue. “Pakistan must work with the US and others to stem their rise,” he added.

“A Taliban-led Afghanistan is not in the interests of Pakistan either, especially since these are not the Taliban of the 1990s,” he claimed.

On the issue of Kashmir, he acknowledged the US did not have a position on Kashmir. But he said “the only way to solve Kashmir is to transcend it” that is possible by increasing cooperation through trade, cultural ties, etc, between Pakistan and India.

Speaking on Pakistan’s domestic issues, he said the religious narrative had become a mainstream in the past couple of decades. “They do not need to win elections if others are doing their bidding,” he said. The primary threat today, however, he emphasised was a return to the 1990s way of government, where outside forces thwarted the democratic progress.

“Removal by accusation rather than election is very dangerous for Pakistan,” he pointed out.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 8^th, 2016.