RFE/RLive: Can China Help Rebuild Afghanistan?
with
Andrew Small and Barnett Rubin
Join us live on YouTube and Google+
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Washington, D.C.--11:00 a.m. / Prague--5:00 p.m.
We invite you to post questions in advance and
follow updates for live links to the Google+ Hangout
on Facebook and Twitter using #RFERLive.
China has emerged as a major international actor in stabilizing Afghanistan, as the U.S. continues to withdraw from the country following one of the longest wars in its history. Beijing is brokering a resolution of the historically tense relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and is a driving force behind upcoming peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban.
China is also moving fast to develop relations with its neighbors through a series of strategic energy and infrastructure investments. Can this global economic giant help rebuild the economies and societies of these two struggling nations?
Discussing this issue will be:
Andrew Small -- Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Asia program and author of "The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics," Small's research focuses on U.S.-China relations, EU-China relations, Chinese policy in South and South-West Asia, and China's role in "problem" and fragile states. Small was based in GMF’s Brussels office for five years, where he established the Asia program and the Stockholm China Forum, GMF's biannual China policy conference. He previously worked as the director of the Foreign Policy Centre's Beijing office, as a visiting fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and was an ESU scholar in the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
Dr. Barnett R. Rubin -- Senior Fellow and Associate Director at NYU’s Center on International Cooperation’s Afghanistan Pakistan Program. Prior to this, he was Director of the Center for Preventive Action, and Director, Peace and Conflict Studies, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Rubin was Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Central Asia at Columbia University from 1990 to 1996. Previously, he was a Jennings Randolph Peace Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Rubin has served as a Senior Adviser to the Special Representative of the President for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the U.S. Department of State. In 2001 Rubin served as special advisor to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan, during the negotiations that produced the Bonn Agreement. He advised the United Nations on the drafting of the constitution of Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Compact, and the Afghanistan National Development Strategy.
Abubakar Siddique (moderator) -- The author of "The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan," Siddique covers Afghanistan and Pakistan for RFE/RL, and is the chief editor of the Gandhara website. He has spent the past 15 years researching and writing about security, political, humanitarian, and cultural issues in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Siddique is also a regular speaker at think tanks in London and Washington, D.C., and has contributed articles and research to numerous publications.
