In-Depth Coverage

Original Commentaries

11/20/08: Pakistan: Learning the Right Lessons from Iraq —Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA), Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Original Commentary for Middle East Bulletin.
11/13/08: The View from Gaza —Taghreed El-Khodary, New York Times journalist in Gaza and Harvard University Nieman Fellow (2005-2006). Interviewed by Middle East Bulletin.
11/04/08: Getting on the Right Track —Dalia Rabin, chairperson, Rabin Center, and daughter of the late Yitzhak Rabin. Interview with Middle East Bulletin.

Setting the Record Straight

Keeping Focus on Long-Term Objectives

“[W]hile we do need to have a cooperative approach that involves many of our friends and allies in meeting with the Pakistanis, … as we work out with them a rough division of labor, the U.S., I believe, ought to be taking the lead in addressing the issues in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. And given the difficulty of doing so, I suspect that we will not have a great deal of difficulty in convincing them to allow us to take the lead there. But as we all know, there is a real tension between our short-term tactical aims in trying to capture or kill terrorists across the border and militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and our longer- term counterinsurgency pacification goals. We very much need to be focusing on the end state. What is it that we want this area to look like? ... In that context we need to have a common agenda with the Pakistani government and very much to include the military on counterinsurgency in that area. There needs to be, therefore, a focus on combining military efforts with economic, development and political development in those areas.”
—Robert L. Grenier, managing director and chairman for Global Security Consulting, Kroll, event, “Partnership for Progress: Advancing a New Strategy for Prosperity and Stability in Pakistan and the Region,” Center for American Progress, November 17, 2008

Middle East Analysis

Partnership for Progress —Caroline Wadhams, Brian Katulis, Lawrence J. Korb & Colin Cookman, Center for American Progress
Dealing With Pakistan Is Risky Business —Lee H. Hamilton, president, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, former chairman, House Foreign Affairs Committee
How Not to Lose Afghanistan (and Pakistan) —Peter Bergen, senior fellow, New America Foundation

Focus on People Not Person

January 28, 2008

Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm’s College, November 8, 2007:

“Beyond the current crisis lurks a far deeper problem. The relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan is largely transactional — and this transaction isn’t working for either party. From America’s perspective, we’ve spent billions of dollars on a bet that Pakistan’s government would take the fight to the Taliban and Al Qaeda while putting the country back on the path to democracy. It has done neither.

"From Pakistan’s perspective, America is an unreliable ally that will abandon Pakistan the moment it’s convenient to do so, and whose support has done little more than bolster unrepresentative rulers.

"It is time for a new approach. We’ve got to move from a transactional relationship — the exchange of aid for services — to the normal, functional relationship we enjoy with all of our other military allies and friendly nations. We’ve got to move from a policy concentrated on one man – President Musharraf – to a policy centered on an entire people… the people of Pakistan. Like any major policy shift, to gain long-term benefits we’ll have to shoulder short term costs. But given the stakes, those costs are worth it.”