Publications on Pakistan

President Barack Obama’s most difficult and challenging national security issue is to reverse the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The war in Afghanistan will likely define Obama’s foreign policy and consume large amounts of Presidential time and political energy. The stakes are enormous for Obama: the future of NATO, the risk of another 9/11, the danger of nuclear war in south Asia and the cost of sustaining and succeeding in an increasingly unpopular war.

Over the past weeks, the US has accelerated efforts to confront the danger to world peace and its own security arising from the security situation in Pakistan. In a statement to Congress, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was quoted as saying that the ongoing deterioration in the internal security situation of the nuclear Islamic country and the possibility that its government would fall into the hands of extreme Islamic elements constituted a danger to the US and world peace. Secretary Clinton’s remarks implied criticism of...

During the past year, al-Qaeda and the Taliban have apparently decided to shift the focus of their suicide actions to the Pakistan-Afghanistan theater. That does not mean that al-Qaeda and its affiliates have abandoned the use of suicide terror in other places, and they continue to carry out suicide attacks elsewhere, especially in Iraq and recently even in Algeria

Since July 11, when the Pakistani Army took over the Red Mosque in Islamabad and released the hostages being held there, the violent confrontation between the regime and radical Islamists has only escalated. That confrontation, which claimed many lives in the 1980s, revived after September 11 due to enhanced cooperation between the Pakistani government and the United States. It now undermines the foundations of the political system in the country, at a moment when the regime seems particularly vulnerable. For several months, Pakistan...

The emotional responses to the meeting in Istanbul last Thursday between Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Kasuri were hardly surprising. After all, this was the first time a senior Pakistani leader held a formal, public meeting with an Israeli official. The meeting, in the context of Pakistani President Parvez Musharraf’s forthcoming address to the American Jewish Committee, naturally instills hope in some and fear in others of full normalization between the two countries.

This study describes and analyzes the relationship between Israel and Pakistan. It focuses on common interests between the two states, Pakistan’s position on the Arab-Israeli conflict and contacts with Israel since independence; the nuclear dimension and the states’ respective security concerns; and normalization of relations, particularly the constraints impeding the normalization of relations. The study considers the prospects for diplomatic relations and examines the options confronting Pakistan.