WASHINGTON, DC — ”If the U.S. and Pakistan cannot work together then the war in Afghanistan may well be lost inside Pakistan,” warns the Atlantic Council’s new report,june 2010Pakistan in the Danger Zone: a Tenuous U.S.-Pakistan Relationship by Shuja Nawaz, Director of the Council’s South Asia Center. Nawaz adds that the “situation in Pakistan remains on edge.”
The report will be released at 2:30 PM on June 28 at an event at the Council’s downtown office. Former Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammed Khan and Washington Post foreign correspondent Pamela Constable will comment on the report and the US-Pakistan relationship.
Atlantic Council President and CEO, Frederick Kempe, stresses the importance of this issue, declaring that “no bilateral relationship in the world matches that of the United States and Pakistan when it comes to its combustible combination of strategic importance and perilous instability.”
In the report, Nawaz traces developments in the first eighteen months of the Obama Administration and the attempts to shore up the US-Pakistan partnership. But he comes to the conclusion that relations between the United States and Pakistan “remain in trouble and require change in how both sides are managing the relationship.” A weak civil government has been unable to muster the momentum to change the underlying conditions that foster insurgency and militancy. A military solution is not possible, since it addresses the symptoms not the causes of the problems besetting Pakistan today. Neither is external aid enough. Pakistan needs to find its own solutions and will need help in that regard.
Pakistan in the Danger Zone is a follow up to the February 2009 Council report, co-chaired by Senators Chuck Hagel and John Kerry, that outlined specific steps that the US needed to take to help Pakistan. It presents a report card on the steps suggested last year and offers new ideas to allow Pakistan to stabilize its economy and polity. The somber conclusion is that, because the center of gravity of the war in Afghanistan is Pakistan, if the U.S. and Pakistan cannot work together, then the war in Afghanistan may well be lost inside Pakistan.
The production and dissemination of this report was funded by ML Resources, LLC, Washington DC. Copies of the report will be available at the event on June 28. Advance electronic copies are available for members of the media. For further details contact Shikha Bhatnagar at 202 778 4997 sbhatnagar@acus.org or Shuja Nawaz at 202 778 4983 or at snawaz@acus.org.
###
Please contact Mary Micevych, Assistant Director of Public Affairs, at press@acus.org or (202) 778-4993 for more information.
Share 
