The AfPak Channel has become a premier clearinghouse of news and analysis from and about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and issues of transnational terrorism. Edited by Peter Bergen and Jennifer Rowland, dozens of contributing experts weigh in at the center of an important conversation about this most pressing foreign-policy challenge facing the United States, its allies, and the rest of the world.
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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang just made his first visit to Pakistan in his new role. What came of it?
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Last week, ten Afghans and six Americans were killed in one of this year's worst insurgent attacks. While the bombing in Kabul raised eyebrows around the world, it was not mainly because of its deadliness, but because of the group behind it -- Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami (HIG). Once one of the biggest players in the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, HIG took an active role in the civil war of the 1990s and has since emerged as the second largest insurgent group in Afghanistan. Paradoxically, HIG is also a legal political party, whose members make up the largest voting bloc in parliament and are (at the least) former loyalists to Hekmatyar. Some HIG members even serve as governors, ministers and presidential advisors to President Hamid Karzai. HIG -- the political party -- has publically disassociated itself from Hekmatyar, but many Afghans remain unconvinced, suspecting members of retaining strong attachments to and respect for their charismatic, fugitive warlord leader. Moreover, the militant and political branches of HIG retain a common strand of an Islamist ideology. Read More »
Two weeks from now, former two-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will take the oath of office for the third time, and this time it will be administered by President Asif Ali Zardari, the irony of which should not be lost on anyone. Read More »
Since the brutal attack in Boston a few weeks ago, the word terrorism, without being preceded by the word "cyber," unfortunately returned to our lexicon. For those who have spent the better part of the past decade obsessed by the al Qaeda terrorism threat, there was much in Boston that looked very familiar. Read More »
Pakistanis went to the polls on May 11th to participate in landmark national and provincial elections. Violent attacks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) insurgency disproportionately targeted vocal opponents of the TTP prior to the vote, and clashes between rival candidates continued on election day itself. But despite the threats and disputed results in some constituencies - particularly the country's largest city of Karachi - this appears to have been the freest and fairest election in Pakistan since the country's first democratic national election in 1970. Its legitimacy was enhanced by being one of the most widely contested elections in Pakistan's history, with all major national and regional political parties taking part in what appears to have been a genuinely competitive contest. Read More »
As of this year, Afghanistan has experienced ten years of stabilization intervention, but what is there to show for it? Marked by massive expenditure with little to no accountability, and often marred by waste, stabilization in Afghanistan started out with arguably honorable aims. However, as troops prepare to leave in 2014, what legacy will be left behind? Read More »
Afghanistan stands at a crossroads. The reputation of our political leadership is under suspicion. Tens of millions of dollars are said to have been received illegally from intelligence agencies of both friends and foes. People are losing faith in the state and the prospects of democracy. The year 2014 looms large in everyone's mind, as does the Taliban's possible reemergence as a real power. Read More »
Recent election violence in Pakistan has been called unprecedented. But Pakistan's 2008 elections were bloodier. The electoral death toll in this election has crossed 100, but in 2008, over 150 were killed and 400 injured. Read More »
Never in Pakistan's checkered electoral history has a parliamentary term been completed and a smooth transition taken place in the capital, as well as the four provinces. Read More »
With just hours left before voters begin casting their votes for Pakistan's next leaders, political posters are plastered across markets, convoys of motorcycles and cars flying party flags clog major thoroughfares, and raspy-voiced candidates make their final appeals to throngs of people. Read More »
Pakistan's upcoming elections on May 11 provoke both fear and hope. The last time Pakistan held a reasonably free and fair election, in 1970, the country ended up splitting into two, as Bangladesh emerged out of the ruins of a horrible civil war that led to Indian military intervention. This time, the election has been marked by a violent campaign by the Tehreek-e-Taliban of Pakistan against selected political parties, even while a raging insurgency in the border region with Afghanistan is keeping some 140,000 troops of the Pakistan army fully occupied in a holding pattern. A nationalist insurgency and sectarian and ethnic battles in Baluchistan have raised fears of another "Bangladesh" in the making, though these may be exaggerated. Absent a robust civilian administration, the prospects of the military's counter insurgency moving beyond the "hold" phase to "build and transfer" are dim. Meanwhile, the United States needs a stable Pakistan, among other things, to allow the Coalition to exit Afghanistan in an orderly manner and to prevent the economic and political implosion of nuclear-armed Pakistan: something that keeps leaders in the region and around the globe on edge. Behind these complex issues, there is much to discover: both positive and negative. Read More »
Pakistan's election hopefuls have expressed strong and vocal opposition to U.S. drone strikes within the country. Read More »
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A primer on the epicenter of global terrorism.
