The 25th annual Norris and Margery Bendetson Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) symposium came to an end yesterday after five days of panels discussing pressing issues in South Asia.
This year's symposium, entitled "South Asia: Conflict, Culture, Complexity and Change," featured an array of speakers from both the academic and political world.
Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) Director Sherman Teichman called the programming a success.
"The content of the panels was sterling," he told the Daily. "It's been a very eclectic, very, very powerful five days."
The symposium began on Wednesday with the South Asian Cultural Evening at the Remis Sculpture Court. The event included a non-governmental organization (NGO) fair, student performances and South Asian food.
A key lecture on Friday evening, "Buzkashi: Afghanistan's Recurring Great Game," featuring Said Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, focused on the current situation in Afghanistan.
Jawad hailed the timeliness of the panel, which took place on the seventh day of the aggressive Operation Moshtarak, a joint Afghan-NATO offensive.
"The operation ... will put gradually Afghanistan and the Afghan government into a dominant military position," Jawad said.
He continued to speak about the progress Afghanistan has made and the role of international support in this process.
"What we've accomplished in Afghanistan is incredible," Jawad said. "The Afghan people are determined to build their country, but we do need your support and partnership."
Jawad also spoke about the impediment corruption in Afghanistan poses to development and the need to establish institutions to fight corruption.
Noor ul-Haq Olomi, leader of the United National Party of Afghanistan and chair of the Armed Services Committee in the Lower House of the Afghan National Assembly, echoed Jawad's views on corruption.
"The prime enemy of the Afghan people is corruption, not the Taliban," he said.
Olomi added that corruption comes in multiple forms, including Pakistan's role as a safe haven for religious extremists associated with the Taliban. He questioned the lack of results from the United States' continuing provision of money for Pakistani efforts to fight the Taliban.
"The [United States] pays billions of dollars to Pakistan to fight the Taliban. Unfortunately, Pakistan still remains the most important haven for religious extremists," Olomi said.
Dipali Mukhopadhyay, a doctoral candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a Jennings Randolph Dissertation Scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace, discussed the conflict between state building and counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.
"The basis for intervention was not to rebuild the Afghan state, it was described as a campaign to eliminate a safe haven for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan," he said.
As a result, Mukhopadhyay said, in the state building process there is a confusing relationship between informal power entities, such warlords and the government.
Eight students from the EPIIC class also gave presentations during the Afghanistan presentation.
Another panel on Saturday morning "Violent Discontent: Addressing Regional Insurgencies," tackled the issue of the use of violence to fulfill political demands.
In his presentation on the transition to peace after the decade-long Nepalese Civil War, Ian Martin, former special representative of the United Nations secretary-general in Nepal, discussed how the country "owed its success to the determination the people of Nepal showed in the people's movement for peace and for change."
Martin posited that the country must commit to negotiation rather than force or terrorism to quell insurgencies and must successfully integrate opposing parties to achieve a lasting peace.
"It is important to address the needs of victims not just as a moral imperative, but also because failure to address their needs can undermine the peace process," he said.
Hassan Abbas, senior advisor at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and a former Pakistani government official, shared his insights on the insurgency in Pakistan.
Abbas believes that successful reconciliation will require the involvement of both regional and global agents because the success of the militaristic regimes depends on the global response to their actions.
In order for effective de-radicalization to occur, there must be "justice, democracy, and reconciliation," he said.
Zachariah Mampilly (LA '99), assistant professor of political science at Vassar College, and Keith Fitzgerald (LA '91), senior conflict advisor for the Asian Development Bank both focused on the transition to peace in a post-war Sri Lanka.
Mampilly explored the question of the political impact of violence, discussing the effects on the country of the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
He proposed that because Sri Lanka defeated the LTTE through sheer force, the country has become militarized and corrupt, with a huge power concentration that leaves little room for variation in political viewpoints.
Fitzgerald delved into the causes of the conflict, questioning the traditional belief that the basis for the Sri Lankan Civil War was ethnicity.
"Sri Lanka's civil war was never actually an ethnic conflict," he said. "The war between the LTTE and the government was a secondary conflict."
Fitzgerald asserted that the true disagreement in the country is one between differing political groups, an issue that has not been resolved.
"That conflict which has driven all the other conflicts in Sri Lanka is still very much alive," he said.
The "Emerging India: The Use of Hard and Soft Power" panel on Sunday looked at India's ability to use attractive versus coercive power to develop as a global player.
Jalal Alamgir, assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, discussed India's inability to wield soft power successfully as a result of a lack of consistency and legitimacy in the country's strategy.
"Soft power derives from a sense of moral authority," Alamgir said. He explained that until India's core political values of democracy, non-violence and non-colonial nationalism are reflected in the nation's policy, India cannot use soft power in its foreign relations.
Ananya Vajpeyi, assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, explored India's relation to China in the competition for leverage using soft power. Vajpeyi believes India will not be able to contend with China until it reforms its higher education system.
With an overhaul of the system and a focus on India's past that gives the country cultural and political identity, Vajpeyi believes India can advance with soft power.
"Reform of the higher education center and establishing clearer lines of values that ground India in our past and heritage are the way forward," she said.
Teichman cited not only the content of the panels but also the interaction fostered among students from different countries and backgrounds as well as between EPIIC students and leading intellectuals as keys to the success of this year's program.
"On one level, behind the scenes of all of this is as important as the content of our symposium," he said. "I am tremendously satisfied intellectually, emotionally, humanly."
