Ann Wilkens

Ann Märta Wilkens (born 7 April 1944) is a retired Swedish journalist and diplomat who became the ambassador to Ethiopia from 1993 to 1995, Luxembourg from 2000 to 2003, Pakistan and Afghanistan from 2007 to 2003. She sits on the AAN Advisory Board. Her expertise is in media and diplomacy. She was the president of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011, and she now works as an independent political analyst.

Education
Wilkens graduated with Masters of Science (honours) from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York, United States.

Diplomatic career
Wilkens joined the Foreign Ministry in the 1970s and cooperated with the South African liberation movement. Nonetheless, she would witness the end of apartheid. The events in South Africa have given her hope that the world can change and that it was worth fighting for. She lived in Pakistan several years and traveled extensively throughout Afghanistan. She coauthored an analytical essay on Pakistan's choice not to intervene militarily in Yemen for AAN.

Wilkens was the president of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011, and the Swedish branch of Transparency International from 2011 to 2013. Among her many publications are studies on the Pakistan/Afghanistan region, such as "Suicide Bombers and Society" and "Missing the Target: A Report on the Swedish Commitment to Women, Peace, and Security in Afghanistan." She serves on the advisory board of the ANN.

Pakistan
Wilkens stated that while commercial links between Sweden and Pakistan were growing, there was still a lot of untapped potential in areas such as politics, commerce, culture, and development cooperation. In 2005, she addressed a seminar on "Export Market – Sweden" at the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), stating that the goal of the event was to present Sweden as an export market to the Sialkot business community and to pass on some information on how to access the Swedish market. Wilkens was convinced that hosting seminars to introduce Sweden as a market for Pakistani exporters in the country's key commercial hub of Sialkot would usher in a new chapter in Sweden-Pakistan business relations.

Afghanistan
Wilkens of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, who was more pessimistic about the prospects for peace than the other two debaters, believes that it is now just a matter of time before the troops leave the country, and that the debate must now focus on what comes next. The question of discussions with the Taliban sparked the most intense argument. Unofficial talks with the Karzai government are already beginning, but Wilkens refused to acknowledge that a peace agreement was even possible, let alone acceptable. "The fight is about values," she remarked, drawing parallels to World War II.

On 7 December 2012, policymakers, regional specialists, and media convened in Brussels, including Wilkens, to debate Afghanistan and Pakistan beyond 2014: The Role of Regional Powers. The first panelist, Wilkens, warned of major fault lines running through Pakistani society and projected that "either good or bad elections in Pakistan in 2014 could set an example for the region."

After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, Taliban commanders have taken an outwardly softer attitude on several subjects, such as permitting women to be educated. Wilkens adds that the Taliban movement was decentralised, and that local leaders have made decisions that contradict what the leadership has expressed, such as barring women from educational institutions in some areas.