Pakistan

The CIA drone program began quietly under President George W. Bush with one strike in Yemen in 2002, and then a smattering of strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and 2007 before a more sustained campaign in 2008. During his two terms in office, Bush authorized a total of 48 strikes in Pakistan.

This past Saturday, March 16, 2013 marked an extraordinary moment in Pakistan’s history, as this is the first time that a civilian government has served its entire five-year term (from 2008 to 2013). And, for the first time in its history, the Pakistani military appears both unwilling and unable to mount a coup against any civilian government. The military has mounted four coups since Pakistan’s independence in 1947.

One of the more significant recent economic developments in South Asia was the revival of trade talks between India and Pakistan in 2011. A question frequently raised is why India and Pakistan trade so little with each other despite the existence of common history, language, culture, and long borders. Economic theory and evidence from around the world would predict that trade between the two largest economies in South Asia would be far greater than its current level of around $2.5 billion.

The trade normalization process between India and Pakistan will undoubtedly open new trade opportunities. This study assesses trade possibilities between the two countries, examines the physical and regulatory impediments to realizing the trade potential, and suggests how the trade potential can be realized. The main findings and recommendations are summarized below.

Since 2001, U.S. dealings with Pakistan have been guided primarily by security concerns -- and with Hina Rabbani Khar traveling to Washington for the first time as Pakistan's foreign minister this week, the buzz about Afghanistan, terrorism, and security is unlikely to abate. Indeed, the last time a Pakistani foreign minister visited Washington, Richard Holbrooke, then the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, felt compelled to remind Americans that "We don't work with Pakistan because of Afghanistan.

Barak Barfi reports on the real state of the Syrian Civil War after returning from a recent trip to the country, and Charles Kenny explains why mixing public health campaigns with covert operations is disastrous. Elizabeth Weingarten hosts.

The greatest loss of human life and economic damage suffered by South Asia since 2001 has not been due to terrorism and its ensuing conflicts, but rather due to natural disasters ranging from the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the Indus floods of 2010 to seasonal water shortages and drought.  Although such calamities themselves might not be preventable, their human impact can certainly be mitigated. This report argues that such mitigation of environmental stresses is possible only through regional approaches to ecological cooperation.

EVENT NOTICE: The New America Foundation is pleased to announce that it is now accepting applications for participants in our "South Asia 2020" conference to be held in Dubai from Friday, January 18 to Sunday, January 20, 2013, hosted by Steve Coll and Peter Bergen.

It has been a rough couple of weeks for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. The Obama administration's reconciliation and transition efforts and parallel attempts to repair U.S.-Pakistan relations faced fresh challenges as the Pakistan-based Haqqani network was implicated in major attacks against the United States, NATO, and Afghanistan.  

I first met Husain Haqqani in 2007 when I served on the Pakistan Desk at the Department of State.