Copenhagen seminar on Talking with the Pakistani Taliban

Venue: Faculty of Humanities, Room 10-4-05, Karen Blixens Vej 4, Copenhagen.
The question of whether governments should engage with talks with terrorist groups is at the center of international controversy due to attempts to negotiate with the Taliban movement in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In spite of heavy criticism, both the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been reaching out to elements of the Taliban movements in Pakistan or Afghanistan, albeit with distinct agendas. This talk will focus on the case of Pakistan and draw out the counterinsurgency rationale behind talks with insurgent groups as well as the potential conflict de-escalating effects of meeting with the militants. Sheikh will also draw on her own experiences from meeting militants in Pakistan, and what she has learned from her interviews with Taliban activists and leaders.
Mona Kanwal Sheikh has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen, and has later been a visiting scholar at the Orfalea Center for Global and International studies at University of California Santa Barbara and the Center for South Asia Studies at UC Berkeley. She has recently published a book on the Pakistani Taliban movement (Guardians of God – Inside the Religious Mind of the Pakistani Taliban, Oxford University Press, 2016). More information.