About this Channel

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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The Shelf

The ever-evolving al-Qaeda threat

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 »

Pakistan Elections 2013

Pakistan's momentous elections: Winners, losers, and what it all means

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 »

state-building 101

What have we learned about stabilization in Afghanistan? Not much.

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 post-2014

Turn here for progress

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 »

Pakistan Elections 2013

Election violence, a good sign for Pakistan's democracy?

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 »

Pakistan Elections 2013

Pakistan's myth-busting election

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 »

Pakistan Elections 2013

Your faith or your vote?

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 Elections 2013

The treacherous road to Pakistan's historic elections

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 »

Drones in Pakistan

Can Pakistan legally shoot down U.S. drones?

Pakistan's election hopefuls have expressed strong and vocal opposition to U.S. drone strikes within the country. Read More »

Pakistan Elections 2013

The mosque and the state

There seems to be some disagreement between Pakistan's extremists over participation in the May 11 elections. Pakistani Taliban spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan recently told Pakistanis to boycott the elections because democracy is un-Islamic, while Maulana Sami ul-Haq, a conservative cleric who runs a religious seminary that trained many Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, said in a follow-up statement that voting is a religious obligation.    Read More »

diplomacy in Afghanistan

Wading into the quagmire

When Amb. James Dobbins arrives at the ground-floor offices of the State Department's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan he will find a depleted staff, a moribund peace process and a mandate riddled with colossal diplomatic challenges. Secretary of State John Kerry called today's state of affairs a "pivotal moment" for the two nations. But it is also a critical moment for U.S. involvement in ending the conflict President Barack Obama once called the war "that we have to win" and now wants only to "responsibly" wind down. Read More »