Pakistan

Ask CFR Experts

Will China extend its influence in the Indian Ocean by building a naval base in Gwadar, Pakistan?

Asked by Hassan, from National University Of Sciences and Technology

To date, Chinese officials have asserted that their interest in Gwadar is strictly a commercial effort to provide another energy corridor for Middle East oil, and Pakistani government officials stridently affirm this position. New Delhi, on the other hand, has expressed "concern" about the true motivations in developing Gwadar, suspecting that it is a Sino-Pak effort at encirclement.

Read full answer

See more in China, India, Pakistan, Geoeconomics, Infrastructure, Trade

Op-Ed

Well, This Is Awkward

Author: Daniel Markey
Foreign Policy

According to Daniel Markey, "the Musharraf affair will be an early test of which direction Pakistan's civilian politicians and judiciary intend to take their country and its relations with America."

See more in Pakistan

Must Read

NYT: How a Single Spy Helped Turn Pakistan Against the United States

For many senior Pakistani spies, the man sitting in the jail cell represented solid proof of their suspicions that the C.I.A. had sent a vast secret army to Pakistan, men who sowed chaos and violence as part of the covert American war in the country. For the C.I.A., the eventual disclosure of [Raymond] Davis's role with the agency shed an unflattering light on a post–Sept. 11 reality: that the C.I.A. had farmed out some of its most sensitive jobs to outside contractors — many of them with neither the experience nor the temperament to work in the war zones of the Islamic world.

See more in Pakistan, Intelligence

Must Read

NYT: Rise of the Predators

Author: Mark Mazzetti

"While it was not the first country where the United States used drones, [Pakistan] became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war."

See more in Pakistan, Counterterrorism

Must Read

USIP: Pakistan and the Narratives of Extremism

Author: Amil Khan

This report looks at why extremist strategic communications in Pakistan have been so successful and what it would take for the government and its allies to reverse the gains of what is sometimes called "the al-Qaeda worldview." Like all good communications campaigns, extremist messaging is grounded in a reality. In this case, that reality is the views and emotions—and the narratives that articulate them—that were born out of the establishment and subsequent conduct of the state of Pakistan.

See more in Pakistan, Counterterrorism, Terrorist Organizations