Gayle Tzemach Lemmon examines women's rights in Afghanistan.

CFR Senior Fellow Daniel Markey, and former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter discuss the elections in Pakistan and the future of U.S.-Pakistan relations.

Daniel Markey outlines three priorities for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan as he comes in to his third non-consecutive term.

As former prime minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif looks poised to win nationwide elections, CFR's Daniel Markey highlights the vote's significance for Pakistan's democracy and foreign relations.

Daniel Markey argues that the newly elected Pakistani prime minister's core agenda, "economic reform and improved ties with India—is one the United States should cheer."

Husain Haqqani, former Pakistan ambassador to the United States, discusses the historic elections in Pakistan and their impact on U.S. foreign policy with Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose.

"Going forward, the United States has no choice but to embrace the sound underpinnings of leading from behind," writes Leslie H. Gelb.

Charles Landow and Courtney Lobel trace the evolving similarities between Pittsburg and Bangalore's economic development.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon outlines the biggest challenges facing recently appointed State Department Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador James Dobbins.

Nawaz Sharif appears poised to return as Pakistan's prime minister, which would create new challenges for the country's already fractious politics and add strains to the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, writes CFR's Daniel Markey.

In the run-up to Pakistan's elections, Daniel Markey debates Ambassador Neelam Deo on the relationship between civilian and military power in Pakistan.

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.

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Afghan forces are performing well so far amid the pullback of U.S. troops, but this summer's fighting season will offer proof of their capabilities, says CFR's Stephen Biddle.

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."

The world may expect great things from India, but as extensive reporting reveals, Indians themselves turn out to be deeply skeptical about their country's potential. That attitude, plus New Delhi's dysfunctional foreign-policy bureaucracy, prevent long-term planning of the sort China has mastered -- and are holding India back.

Thomas Bollyky writes about how national patent laws are affecting pharmaceutical cost differentials around the world.

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.

The recent announcement of a BRICS development bank raised many questions. Isobel Coleman writes about the potential structure and purpose of the BRICS development bank and its implications for international development and the global economy.

After former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's speech on April 5, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon observes, "the Clinton megaphone no longer requires a Washington translator."

"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."