Pakistan

CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen says an unstable Pakistan is more dangerous than an unstable Afghanistan. The militants said they took control of the Buner district to ensure that Islamic law, or sharia, is properly imposed. ...

It has been obvious some time that the Pakistani Army has lost control over more than just the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the Swat Valley. The army has now been stripped of the main pillar of its credibility: It is no longer the only institution capable of holding the country together, despite that view being a longstanding axiom in Pakistani politics. Indeed, while some Pakistanis fret about a C.I.A., MI-6 and Afghan and Indian conspiracy to dismember Pakistan, the… more

We will need to remind ourselves often in the next few years that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not the Obama administration's fault. It inherited from George W. Bush a crisis so deep and so horribly complex that dealing with it would tax the powers of St Peter, let alone a US government with many other things on its mind and on its grossly overstrained budget. Improving the situation is the best that we can hope for. Finding a "solution" to the Afghan war… more

Steven Clemons, New America Foundation, American Strategy Program Director discusses President Obama's policies on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Link to video

Let me begin by thanking Chairman Smith and the members of the Subcommittee for providing me with the opportunity to testify on this critical issue.

My main focus today will be on resources. As we were reminded by President Obama's presentation last week regarding his administration's new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism can be expensive propositions.

In the first part of a TNRtv series on Pakistan, Nicholas Schmidle, fellow at the New America Foundation and author of To Live Or To Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years In Pakistan, argues that the attack outside of Lahore on Monday has revealed the uncontainable nature of this insurgency, and that putting a bounty on the head of Baitullah Mehsud will only immortalize him. Link to video

He will not take well to being lied to by either Afghanistan or Pakistan, and will be very vigilant in monitoring their agreements and compliance," said Parag Khanna, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, who has coached the Obama campaign on ...

The Obama plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan announced Friday has a great deal to recommend it, with its emphasis on protecting the Afghan population and delivering more aid directly to the Pakistani people instead of to the Pakistan army.

These are just two among a raft of other sensible and long-overdue shifts in South Asia policy.

... is to succeed in the complex, mostly political operations that will be necessary to contain and roll back the insurgency, it is going to require a capable, motivated civilian government to do that,” author and journalist Steve Coll said.

Last fall, during Asif Ali Zardari's first foreign trip as head of state, the Pakistani president met with Sarah Palin in New York City. The meeting occurred amid Palin's other campaign cameos with U.S.-friendly world leaders, most of whom could manage little more than an awkward grimace amid the onslaught of flashbulbs. (Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo reportedly flat-out refused to meet her.) But Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto and oft-described playboy, looked delighted as he greeted--and then charmed--the vice-presidential