As the world focuses its attention on the current political situation in Afghanistan, educators from across the globe convened in Madison this weekend to discuss issues they never realized would be so pertinent.
More than 400 scholars, professors and students gathered this weekend for the largest South Asia Conference in the world.
Sponsored by the UW-Madison Center for South Asia, the conference, in its 30th year at Madison, comprised numerous panel discussions focusing on issues specific to various South Asian nations, as well as more general political themes.
One of Friday's panels, entitled 'Pakistan and the Taliban,' attracted a wide range of conference participants to discuss Pakistan's role in shaping and influencing the Taliban and their control of Afghanistan.
Panel member Craig Baxter, a professor emeritus of politics at Juniata College who served as a diplomat in Afghanistan, said there seemed to be more interest in the panel discussion than he had expected when its topic was chosen in April.
'Before the events of Sept. 11, Osama bin Laden was a danger but not a clear and present danger,' he said.
Another panel member, Zalmay Gulzad, who was born in Afghanistan and is now a professor of social science at Harold Washington College in Chicago, said he was surprised with the mood of the discussion.
'The tone of people totally changed,' he said. 'They were much more pro-democratic Afghanistan than I have ever seen.'
Gulzad said that in the past he was always singled out for his 'radical' belief that there should be a coalition government with the Taliban.
'I keep saying if we have a coalition there will not be any vacuum of power in Afghanistan,' he said, adding that others are now beginning to understand and even support his views.
According to Gulzad, America's current conflict with the Taliban stems from its past support of the terrorists during the Soviets' occupation of Afghanistan during the Cold War.
'Ronald Reagan called them Afghan freedom fighters, but today we call them terrorists because these people were trained'we never expected them to turn against us,' he said.
Brian Spooner, a professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania who also took part in the discussion, said he was surprised many conference participants did not seem to know a great deal about Afghanistan.
'My concern mainly is that some people have so little idea what Afghanistan is really like and they have no idea what to do with the situation,' he said.
Spooner said in the past Afghanistan has not been included in typical studies of South Asia.
'Nothing interesting ever happened there,' he said.
Despite the lack of much concrete knowledge by the general public, the experts agreed there is a substantial amount of information on Afghanistan available for people to learn more.
A name that continually comes up in discussion, for example, is Ahmad Rasheed, a British-trained journalist from Pakistan who wrote 'The Taliban.' Still, according to Baxter, reading this book is only the beginning.
'There's an awful lot to learn by an awful lot of people,' he said.
