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

Smart Implementation

February 27, 2008

"The most obvious and, from the Palestinian standpoint, effective area where Israel can act is in reducing the number of roadblocks and checkpoints and the damage they do to the fabric of Palestinian economic, social and family life throughout the West Bank."

Under the circumstances … the current Palestinian Authority government … is making reasonable progress toward fulfilling its roadmap phase I security obligations. Of course there is still a lot to be desired … [I]t is vital to the current peace process as well as to prospects for coexistence in general that these and additional security moves by the PA be seen by the Palestinian public to have been reciprocated. But can Israel do so without endangering Israelis? …

The key to dealing with both settlements and security is to deal with them together. Israel should integrate its treatment of roadmap phase I security with the demands of roadmap phase III final status territorial negotiations by proposing the removal of settlements, outposts and checkpoints, and where needed completing the security fence with its monitored passages, in a specific geographic region of the West Bank, with corresponding Palestinian security efforts to be concentrated there. If the approach works in one area, it can then be applied in an adjacent area. Access the full article>>