Pakistan: Protests and Policy

A Conversation with Christine Fair, Amb. Husain Haqqani, and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross 
Moderated by Clifford D. May

Friday, September 19, 2014

12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

View photo gallery here 

Since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1947, the state has been dominated by its army. Locked in a rivalry with India, the army has initiated three wars over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Today nuclear-armed, the Pakistani army continues to prosecute dangerous policies though violent non-state actors. Meanwhile, Pakistan is mired in a domestic political crisis, with protestors calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Threats of violence are raising the chances of yet another military intervention to control the affairs of the state.

What are the prospects for Pakistan’s future? How can we expect the army to do? What will be the impact on the Pakistan-India relationship, on Afghanistan and Pakistan’s relations with the United States?

Dr. C. Christine Fair is an assistant professor in the Peace and Security Studies Program, within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Previously, she has served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and as a senior research associate in USIP’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. She is also a senior fellow with the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Her most recent book is titled Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (OUP, 2014) and is result of her in-depth research into decades of the army’s defense publications.

Dr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an adjunct assistant professor in Georgetown University’s security studies program, is the author or volume editor of fourteen books and monographs, including co-editing The Afghanistan-Pakistan Theater: Militant Islam, Security, and Stability (FDD Press, 2010). He has published widely in the popular and academic press, including writing a forthcoming monograph on Chinese foreign policy toward Afghanistan post-2014, and writing a chapter on violent non-state actors in the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship in a forthcoming volume from University of Pennsylvania Press co-edited by Dr. C. Christine Fair, as well as academic articles about Afghanistan and Pakistan in the in theYale Journal of International Affairs and Fletcher Security Review. Gartenstein-Ross frequently conducts relevant field research, and consults for clients who need to confront twenty-first century security challenges. He holds a Ph.D. in world politics from the Catholic University of America and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law.

Amb. Husain Haqqani is the former Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States (2008–2011) and Sri Lanka (1992–1993). He is currently Senior Fellow and Director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute and co-edits the journal Current Trends in Islamist Ideology published by Hudson Institute’s Center for Islam, Democracy and Future of the Muslim World. Ambassador Haqqani is also Director of the Center of International Relations, and Professor of the Practice of International Relations at Boston University.