I was a teenage Afghan refugee in Pakistan’s tribal areas when the Twin Towers fell. Almost nobody around us understood the politics of what had happened, but we knew that something had changed for good. Afghanistan, which until then had been our private tragedy and our first exile from Taliban rule, had suddenly become the world’s concern, with the United States leading the response.
United States Central Command (CENTCOM), one of the US Department of Defense’s (DoD) six geographical combatant commands, is responsible for countering threats, responding to crises, and strengthening regional stability in the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of South Asia.
A Strategic Conundrum: Pakistan’s Transit Corridor to Iran as Lifeline or Liability
The US-Iran standoff over the Strait of Hormuz — disruptive to global trade and energy flows, and devastating for debt-burdened economies — has handed Pakistan an unexpected geoeconomic opportunity, one that may persist even if the framework agreement announced on June 14 results in a lasting peace and permanent reopening of the strait. But seizing it will have interlocking consequences for Islamabad’s ties with Tehran, Washington, and the Gulf states.
Afghanistan 2002-2012: A Decade of Progress and Hope.
Recent media coverage of the Afghan war questions whether we’ve made meaningful progress towards security and an effective Government in that country. Or were the past ten years a lost decade for the Afghans and Coalition partners? This ten-year milestone is a good point in time to pause, check Afghanistan’s progress, and assess where it appears to be headed. With the assistance of over 40 nations, Afghanistan developed its infrastructure and has taken major steps towards self sufficiency.
We are regularly bombarded by news reports and political analysis that reflect certain underlying assumptions about Afghanistan. These assumptions range from claims that Afghanistan was always a backward state ruled by warlords, to assertions that the country was never really a nation at all, and proclamations that Afghanistan is unfit for Western-style democracy and that it is dangerously naïve to think otherwise.
Since the overthrow of King Mohammad Zahir Shah in 1973, Afghanistan has been plagued by war — either war waged among ideologues (Marxists v. nationalists) or war marked by foreign invasion and occupation. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which began in 1979, lasted a full decade.
This Opinion was first published in The National Interest on July 12, 2012
After an eighteen-month free fall, there is tangible improvement in the tumultuous U.S.-Pakistan relationship and an opportunity to leverage these gains for a durable peace in Afghanistan. Backtracking from a messy divorce, both Washington and Islamabad have forsaken their previous approaches of unrelenting maximalism, each making necessary compromises to make the partnership work.
Bruce Richardson raises an important issue regarding the protection, trafficking, and exploitation of cultural patrimony. Aspects of this issue range across research, polemics, and litigation in attempts to document loss, return treasures, or on the other hand prevent restitution or repatriation. Richardson properly decries cultural looting, but we must distinguish among causes to reach agreement on protective steps.
The Afghanistan Stabilisation Program (ASP): A National Program to Improve Security and Governance
Since the coup in April of 1978 by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), the social, cultural, political, economic, governance, and security fabric of Afghanistan’s institutions have been destroyed by the subsequent Mujahedin and Taleban regimes. It is impossible to have enduring peace, stability, and development in a country without a strong institutional foundation. After 33 years of war and instability, for the most part, the linkages between central, provincial, district, and village governance structures in Afghanistan are either very weak or non-existent.
Pakistan's Military Holds the Keys to a Thaw with the U.S.
This Opinion first appeared in the the National on June 15, 2012
Just when U.S.-Pakistan relations appear to have reached a new low, yet another event drives them lower still, further complicating chances of stabilising bilateral ties.
Over the last 18 months, the deterioration of relations has been punctuated by a series of incidents, most dramatically the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden and the U.S. air strike last November at Salala, in which 24 Pakistani solders died.
