 I'm Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation. We're here to discuss the recent historic elections in Pakistan. I couldn't imagine I'd find a panel. To the far right is Shamala Chowdhury, who was NSE director for Pakistan, worked for Richard Holbrook, a fellow here at New America, works at the Eurasia Group. Next to her is Andrew Wilder, who runs the Afghanistan-Pakistan program at USIP, has spent many years living in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, wrote a brilliant piece for us. Shamala, by the way, has also written brilliant pieces for the AFPAK channel every week on the election as it was both the run-up and the sort of post-game analysis. Andrew also wrote a very good piece for us on the AFPAK channel. Next to Andrew is Malik Siraj Akbar, who is the Washington DC editor of the Balook Howl, might correct? The first online English newspaper in Balochistan. And next to me is Symbol Khan, who's the Pakistan Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for the past year. He's also the director of the Afghanistan Central Asia for the Institute for Strategic Studies in Islamabad. And she's working on a book, US-Pakistan Security Relations 2001 to 2011. That ends right at the worst moment. I cover the worst moment. So do you want to start, Symbol? And we'll just move along this way. Well, basically, I think just before the election, there were a lot of discussion in DC, and many of those forums I participated on. And basically, most of the discussion revolved around this idea as to why are these elections considered, being considered landmark elections? What is the change that they're supposed to be ushering in? And there was a lot of split opinion coming out. Analysts were split about it. Most of the analysis revolved around the differences revolved around how the situation on the ground, the conditions on the ground, were being read. Those who were skeptical of these elections being a huge change, of course, for Pakistan, cited some of the continuities that talked about, say, it's the same two big parties that we've seen. We've seen Nawaz Sharif and we've seen PPP. They're the same people who had a play in the 90s. Nothing happened. The military very much still kind of running the security policy, no change there. And basically, the parliamentarians or the policymakers had enough vested interest not to bring around the economic change. They were basically pointing out that even if you do have a new parliament, it is going to be the same faces and they have too much of the vested interest supporting them. There's not going to be any drastic change on the economic front, which is what Pakistan needs for a real landmark course correction. And of course, the people who were a little more hopeful cited discontinuities. They were saying that, look, there are structural changes on the ground. There is a new vibrant media, which was never there. Judicial activism was being cited, how the ECP this time got structured in the institutional building that was going on in Pakistan. This is new. And also, the Pakistani internal environment has changed drastically. The militancy, the internal challenges, this is the first time. So they were citing these discontinuities for the past. Post-election, how does the situation look? For me, I think when I look at it, I don't think elections are a process. Elections are basically an event. So to think that just an event, even if it has these new elements, I understand the skeptics point of view. I mean, even if you have these new elements, it's just an event. For these processes to go forward and fall forward, we would really have to see a lot more happen for Pakistan to go on to the course correction that we are all seeking for Pakistan. But looking at the other side of the picture, for me, the people with hope and the one who were talking about this new kind of a hope on the scene. There has been this huge element of surprise in these elections. And surprise, although doesn't really mean or signify radical change, but it also signifies some unpredictability, and which is telling you that there are elements on the ground which are moving through certain changes or certain kind of restructuring is happening on the ground, which can only mean two things. Either the situation is going to go towards change or chaos. We hope that it is going to be change and not chaos. What are the surprises that I'm talking about? I think the first big surprise that a lot of analysts were prediction that was being made that it's going to be a split parliament. Almost invariably, everyone, including myself, believe that this time the elections are going to bring about a split parliament. Why was this view? The view was basically based on the older ideas about politics in Pakistan, where we did not see the voting patterns reflecting the anti-incumbency, where voters were not really sensitive to the bad performance of the government. This is showing us that this has changed. People are not voting, block votes are not happening. There is huge anti-incumbency against the PPP that has happened. So that definitely was another surprise. The other surprise which a lot of people have talked about and is that a lot of people predicted, including Imran Khan and the PTI, that they are going to win 60 seats in Punjab. And that is going to create the split parliament, the split vote. That hasn't happened. And why is that significant and why that is important? A lot of people didn't predict how colossal the loss of PPP is going to be in Punjab, which was nobody really predicted how big their loss is going to be in Punjab. Which again points out to the political change environment, voting pattern changes happening on the ground. The third surprise for me is some people who, like me, predicted that Imran Khan PTI is going to win 15 votes or less. Yeah, that was my prediction. I didn't really think that things have changed enough. I felt older party structures like PMLN, like PPP, still being able to get the vote out and get that translated into seats and votes. But then again, it tells you that the situation has changed so much that Imran's message of change, Imran's outreach to the youth outreach, mobilizing the urban youth, was a huge change. So that happened. And then, of course, finally, I'd also say is the militants, the challenge of the militants. There was so much blood shed before the elections. People predicted that the militant challenge was going to have a huge impact. We saw that it really didn't have such a huge impact on the elections. Although it was there, it affected PPPs and ANPs ability to go out and campaign. But it didn't really change the outcome of the elections. But going forward, then keeping these surprises, going forward, we've seen this new structure that is thrown up by the elections. PMLN has won this massive, big, solid majority in the center. But it faces then, as I said earlier, election is an event. They have gotten that. This government going forward faces about two, three huge challenges. First is they came on the platform of economy, basically trying to change around restructure of a very stagnant economy. And I think they're going to face the fundamental two, three very quick challenges. First is the fiscal balance. I think that is a challenge that they're going to face immediately. I don't know how it's going to work out. The NFC award, which is the new structure that is linked to the 18th Amendment, where the revenues are being divided. Now, more revenues are being given to the provinces. Also restricts the fiscal space that the center government will have. And Navashree was going to come into the center with that kind of a limited space as compared to what they had in the 90s. So how they maneuvered that, that's going to be very difficult to find that fiscal space. And then another thing is that having a heavy mandate in the center for Navashree is going to be different than having a heavy mandate in Punjab. They've won this election on the relatively better performance in Punjab. And Punjab, when people look at all of Pakistan, usually everybody says Punjab definitely generally functions better. Its indicators are better than the rest of the country. But this time for Navashree to translate these five years into success in the next elections, they will have to show a more kind of a broader push, basically taking most of the provinces along as they move forward. Just having a successful Punjab government will not be enough. So that would also mean that he will have to work far more closely with the other three provinces. And especially now, PTI coming into the KPK province and PPP and MQM in Karachi also are going to challenge PML and how to take these provinces along, how to work these provinces along. And then on basically security, security, internal security, it's a huge issue. We saw just it's framed the internal security challenge of the militants to the elections around the election time. Frames this existential threat that Pakistan, internal threat that Pakistan is facing. And Navashree has talked about it. The party has talked about it. But the promises have been very vague. It's not just anti-militancy policy that he has to be far more clearly enunciating, which they haven't enunciated. Just reaching out and saying we want to talk to the militants is not really a strategy. And which PPP government did also and ANP did in KP we saw last five years also. And we know it never really went anywhere. So I don't know what they're bringing on the table, which is going to be new. Other than that, also just law enforcement. Basic law enforcement inside the country, it's abysmal. And I think yesterday or today, the organization for journalists has come out with this global organization for journalists has come out with this huge report really basically saying how insecure journalists are in Pakistan. And that basically Pakistan is one country where the journalists are at the greatest threat. They've taken a few cases and made case studies of that. So that for me is linked to basic law enforcement issues and how governance and law enforcement they attack and how they respond to that. That's going to be a big challenge and foreign policy. Finally, he made the first statement in Navashreeva's made is about reaching out to India and basically moving towards this reprochma with India that we've seen past two, three years taking it forward. But taking it forward would also mean finally granting India the MFN status, the most favored nation status, which has been hanging by a thread for some time. And so basically making an enunciation is something else, but actually actualizing those policies because even within his own party structures, within his supporters in Punjab, there are some who talk about the NTBs or the non-tariff barriers issue which is linked to this MFN with India and which this non-tariff barriers is used as an excuse to delay that movement in that front. So really actually actualizing all these issues will be important. Yeah, I think it's very ironic whenever Pakistan goes for elections, the slogan is different. In 2002, for example, when elections were held, Jala Musharraf signed the National Reconciliation Ordinance with Binazir Bhutto, which dropped a lot of corruption charges, like corruption that was committed in the 1990s, billions of rupees, which were embezzled by the politicians. All those corruption charges were dropped and elections were held. This year, now we are having elections that we had elections in Pakistan. The slogan is of talking to Taliban, which has surprised a lot of people in Pakistan, particularly the liberals in Pakistan, what it means to talk to the Taliban and what democracy means for Pakistan, whether the Pakistani democratic government is going to talk to human rights abusers, people who attacked hundreds of schools which were bombed, people who attacked polio workers. So there's a lot of insecurity among the Pakistani people. But Pakistanis generally have an ability to forgive and forget. We don't have to be surprised considering the past history of Pakistani politics. I'll just go a little back during the election campaign. I called it one of the most unfair elections in Pakistan's history, considering the fact that for the first time in our history, there were massive attacks on election rallies of three political parties, three liberal political parties, the Pakistan People's Party, the Mutahedakomi movement in Karachi, and the MQM Karachi and NPN Khayber Pakhtunkhwa. These were the political parties which were actively a part of the war on terror, which actively supported the Americans in hunting down the Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda and Taliban. So it was very selective. In Pakistan's history, we have had a lot of time when opponents were defeated or outvoted. But for the first time, it was criminalized. Candidates were attacked, and it was clear that elections were being engineered. It was the way it was being paved for certain political parties, such as the Muslim League and the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, which were anti-U.S., anti-Trons, and which made a commitment to the people of Pakistan that they would end the war on terror. So this was basically one of the problems in Pakistan's history. And when you talk to a lot of people, they just say, well, the People's Party did not do well. The MQM did not do well. The ANP did not do well. So this is what they deserved. But when you look at Pakistan's history, throughout our election history, no ruling party has ever stretched a comeback. So it was expected that the People's Party would lose the ANP or the MQM would lose. It's not an excuse. I think the worst thing is they say, everything is funny as long as it happens to you. So what we are sitting right now, it's a trend. A lot of people are laughing at the MQM or at the ANP that, well, they deserved it. But I think you don't know what happens five years down the line. This trend of attacking election campaigns, attacking political rallies, will go down in Pakistan's history. And next year, maybe next time we hold elections, maybe the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz would be equally unpopular. And people would believe that the solution to this problem is attacking their candidates, bombing their rallies. So this is not a very positive omen for Pakistani politics. Secondly, when we look at the results of the elections, you see Pakistan, the federation of Pakistan is so Punjab dominated that if you combine all of the national assembly seats from the rest of the three provinces and the federal capital, Punjab still dominates the most of the seats. So it's very hard to understand what is going to happen to the future of the government. Because Pakistan right now faces multiple crises, multiple challenges. And the epicenter of none of these challenges is the Punjab province. The Punjab did not experience all of these attacks. For example, not a single election campaign was bombed in Punjab. No candidate was attacked in the Punjab. Similarly, when you look at the issues like the drones, talking to the Taliban, MQM, the insurgency in Balochistan, these are all outside the Punjab. Now, Pakistan is left with a leader who has limited exposure, who has shrunk into Punjab's leader, who does not have popularity in the sense to talk to the MQM, to resolve the conflict or ethnic violence in Karachi. He has no popularity in the province of Balochistan, where there is a separatist insurgency. Similarly, he has no control over the militant groups back in Waziristan or in Khabar Pakhtunkhwa. And when we look at the history, I think the way Pakistani government has pledged to negotiate with Taliban, it is not as if the People's Party government did not try. In 2004, in 2005, and in 2006, they had separate deals with Naik Mohammad, with Baitullah Masood, and with Afiz Gul Bahadur. What happens, I think, this period is going to be taken by the Pakistani Taliban to refuel, to reorganize themselves, and launch an offensive, and cause problems for the central government. And overall, when we look at the results, I think this has regionalized Pakistani politics. In the past, we had political parties which had a broader reach outside the province, like the People's Party is generally considered to be the home for the Sindhi voters. But it also did well in other provinces. But for the first time, we see that politicians have gotten votes on ethnic lines. Like, People's Party has been confined to the Sindh, and the Muslim League has been confined to the Punjab. And Balochistan ethnic nationalist groups have also won. So this is a new trend in Pakistani politics, and I think there are going to be more challenges. And when Pakistan talks of talking to the Taliban, resolving, sitting with Taliban, calling them our brothers, I think that in itself negates the Pakistani claim of Malala Yusufzai being the Pakistani sister, or Pakistani daughter. So overall, that simply shows that the Pakistani government has no commitment in fighting the war on terror, which eventually will be affecting Pakistan's relations with India. Because if you want to resolve disputes with India, you also have to take the issue of Lashkar-e-Taiba very seriously. Lashkar-e-Taiba's chief, Hafiz Saeed, operates freely in Pakistan. The Americans even announced a bounty on him. He appears on television. Talk shows he's public. He's not hidden. So what is the Pakistan Muslim League government going to do about Hafiz Saeed? Because Nawaz Sharif takes relationships with India very simplistically. He last year said at a conference that, well, we eat the same food. The Indians eat the same food. So we are the same. But I think there is a larger security aspect attached to improving mental relations with Pakistan. There have been times Nawaz Sharif himself acknowledged that he was stabbed in the back by Musharaf when he was talking to Prime Minister Wajpayee and Musharaf endorsed the Kargil operation. So if Nawaz Sharif is taking an initiative improving diplomatic relations with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or the upcoming Prime Minister in India, but if there is one more attack like Mumbai, if there is one more attack on the Indian parliament, that has the capability of derailing the entire negotiation process with India. Similarly, the new government as well as the PTI has been talking about bringing the drones down, ending cooperation with the United States. That also will be causing a lot of problems for the Pakistanis because the Pakistani government in itself does not have the capability of fighting the militants in Waziristan, does not have the will. And if there is a detachment against the drones, I think the war on terror will experience a setback. And the Pakistani Taliban will eventually turn their guns against Pakistani politicians. And as we saw some months back, the Pakistani Taliban even threatened to attack Imran Khan. They said Imran Khan was a liberal, pro-Western. So one doesn't know what time the Taliban would reconfigure their enemies and how they would turn their guns against the Pakistani politicians. So my concern is I think the new government intends to give in too much to the Pakistani Taliban. And overall, then there are other issues. The way I said, Pakistanis tend to forgive a lot of things and they forgive a lot of things. But Nawaz Sharif is a politician who in 1997 inducted the 13th Amendment in Pakistani parliament where he wanted to bring Islamic Sharia in the country. He wanted to be named as the Amir al-Mumini in Pakistan. He was the Chief Minister of General Ziaulak during whose time Pakistani society was drastically radicalized. So it's a man who has been known for his corruption charges but has never faced corruption charges, who has passionately support radical Islam. So whether Pakistan, what is Nawaz Sharif's or Imran Khan's policy towards blasphemy law is going to be how are they going to protect the religious minorities in Pakistan? How are they going to resolve the ethnic question, particularly in the province of Balochistan? So these are all the challenges. I think Nawaz Sharif will have to, a lot of people say, even I don't believe that Nawaz Sharif has become a more mature politician now. But I think Pakistani polity as a whole has to detach itself from ultra-Islamic mindset, whether it is in terms of reviving people's rights, giving equal rights to Pakistan citizens, whether it is to, in terms of improving relations with the United States, with India. Pakistan has to take away the religious element from its domestic and internal policies in order to open up. I think it was Imran Khan's slogan actually, Naya of Pakistan and New Pakistan. But it's also a chance for Nawaz Sharif to decide Pakistan should not become another North Korea. Pakistan should not become an Iran. But rather Pakistan has to open up, liberalize, improve relations. So it's a chance for Nawaz Sharif to build a new Pakistan too. Thanks, Peter, and thanks for the invitation for joining today. Several of the points I wanted to make have already been made. But I thought I'd just sort of talk a little bit about what I think were some of the positives from the elections, some of the negatives, and then I think some of the future challenges. But certainly amongst the positives, I would say it was echoing what Simbol said, which is I was certainly also amongst those pundits who thought we'd have a hung parliament. And we don't. And I think that's a very positive development, because at least gives an opportunity now for a government that has a pretty strong mandate to actually take some decisive action on many of the critical challenges facing Pakistan. And now it's sort of the balls in Nawaz Sharif's court to see if he delivers. But he now has an incredible opportunity that I think none of us thought he would have before the election. I think the second positive, I think, is the voter turnout issue, especially in a campaign that was very violent and especially the militant violent and the calls on people to boycott the elections and threats from attacks on election day for the turnout rate to go from 44% in 2008 to what was originally projected around 60%, but the final figure show is probably closer to 55%. But that's still very good, especially because in the 1990s we were seeing election after election turnout rates going down further and further until they were in the mid to low 30s. Which is similar to the United States. Yes, exactly. 55 is good and I think a very positive result. And I think there, I think Imran Khan and the PTI deserves credit for mobilizing a lot of new voters into the system. And of course, the question goes, if he mobilized so many voters, why didn't he do better? But I think what happened is he did mobilize and it really forced some of the other parties to up their game and also get their own student wings more activated and their women's wings and also just the media campaign. And this was sort of the whole era of TV advertising sort of came of age in Pakistan for this election. And the role of the media I think also played a very significant role. I would also say from my perspective these were relatively free and fair elections in terms of the state's responsibility for the elections. I think what was different in this election was the militants, anti-state actors trying to create a playing field that was not level. In past elections, it was the state trying to do it and playing that role. And I think that was a different factor. But from my perspective, we had compared to previous elections, an independent election commission that was perceived to be much more independent than previously. We also had the military very explicitly playing much more of a hands-off role than they have in past elections. And also again, the role of the media I think in terms of increasing increased accountability and transparency in the elections also contributed to their, from my perspective, from being relatively free and fair. And then a fourth one I'd just point is I think a positive development is I think we'll actually be returning to a genuine parliamentary democracy again. I think we've had the fact that President Sardari as the de facto head of the PPP was the president, that real power, civilian power I should clarify was more in the presidency than in the parliament in the past government as well. And I think now with Nawaz Sharif returning as prime minister, civilian power will actually be in the parliament. A couple of the negatives, the electoral violence one is of course the obvious one to point to. Peter in the AFPAC channel printed an article recently from one of my colleagues and another expert on electoral violence pointing out that these aren't actually necessarily the most violent elections. 2008 was also a very violent election and you can quibble, which was more, the end result was both were very violent. But I think what was different again was the nature of the violence. In 2008 it was much more traditional party-based, candidate-based violence. This one, the role of the militant groups actively targeting, as Malik pointed out, specific parties was a very disturbing feature in terms of the nature of violence in the selection. And then the other one is also, as you touched on, the fact that we really no longer have a truly national party left in Pakistan. I mean the Pakistan People's Party since 1970 has historically played that role where it's actually one's, respectable numbers of votes in most provinces, if not all provinces. But certainly in the big provinces of Punjab and Sindh, always a very competitive race. And now you have the PPP really reduced to a party of interior Sindh and you have the PM Elan of Nawaz, as Altaf Hussein said, called a Punjabi party. And so, and I think that's disturbing. I think that would be one of the challenges for the parties now is how do they actually, how does the PM Elan reach out and become more of a national party? What is the PPP gonna do to try to, to me this is a period of existential crisis for the PPP, whether it can recover, I think is a very open question. And it comes to leadership and I think that's right, I lack some confidence. There has been a tendency often in the PPP leadership to try to surround themselves by weak people and not wanting to see challenges. And this is in the future of, I think, electoral politics in Pakistan, you can't just run it as a family affair, you actually have to rebuild a party structure. And I think that's one of the things PTI taught some of the parties in this election is that you do need to start organizing. And so, well, I think we're gonna see what happens to the PPP in that regard. Well, I'm at it, I think another interesting development I think is MQM, I think for the first time in nearly 20 years, Altaf Hussain has actually had a little pushback in the Mojhajir areas of Karachi. And he's scrambling this party reorganization going on, but I think that there's a little bit of a wake-up call for them as well as the PTI, didn't do fabulously well in Karachi, but definitely put a dent into some of the MQM boat bank there. In terms of what next, I think the big issue is of what I already alluded to. Now, what is MQM gonna do with this mandate? We've talked about the perils of incumbency. That's not unique to Pakistan, but certainly in South Asia in general. And a patronage-based political system, incumbency is usually a disadvantage. Governments don't win back-to-back governments' elections. I would say the exception, however, is Punjab, where we had a PML government in Punjab and they one came back with a much stronger victory at the provincial assembly elections and the selection. So I think that's gonna be the challenge. Can he now deliver? And I think it's gonna be difficult because campaigns, when you make lots of promises and you raise expectations, I think you really ran on a campaign of promising a lot to turn around the economy in general, and I think the energy crisis in particular. But these are not problems that have quick solutions and not problems that necessarily have solutions in a five-year time frame. Even if you take a lot of the right decisions on the energy sector now, maybe 15 years from now, we'll see some of that paying off. But obviously it needs to be done, but not necessarily big-boat winners. So I think that's gonna be one of the challenges. Of course, one of the other challenges is the tax-to-GDP ratio. And one of the big crises in Pakistan is that all those who should be paying taxes don't pay taxes. And I think I have a hard time seeing how you're gonna turn around the economic crisis unless you can raise tax revenues. And so I think that will be, again, something important to do, but not necessarily something that's terribly political, gonna be politically popular, certainly with political elites. So I think there could be a short honeymoon period. I think that will be one of the challenges and delivering on these high expectations. That said, I think it's possible that the bar is quite low. Maybe they just have to do better than the PPP. And so I think a few quick wins and in why Shreve's past showed that he's pretty good in his short 10 years in the past of motorway schemes and yellow cab schemes and this scheme and that scheme. And so I think there could be some of that game played again, but the big issues I think of the economy, as I mentioned, security as the second one, how do you tackle the extremist violence without greatly increasing the levels of violence in Pakistan where the system is not potentially robust enough to defend itself? So I think that would be an issue. I think the whole issue of civil military relations and a lot of speculation of how that's gonna go. We've had, you know, and why Shreve has had his run-ins in the past. He's come back in a much stronger position than he's ever been before though now with this electoral mandate and what's he gonna do with that in terms of, you know, I think strengthening civil military relations in a constructive way. My own guess is that, you know, I think in this in terms of as it relates to the foreign policy and I can see in making some headway on the Indo PAC front, which I think is the critical one in terms of potentially positive economic benefits, which is again, I think what he really needs to try to deliver on. I suspect he'll be probably doing a bit less on the Western front or the AFPAC arena where I think the military will probably continue to be playing the lead role on that issue. And then finally, I think U.S. PAC relations, I think we'll see what happens there. I mean, I think some of the initial noises have been positive, you know, I think the drone issue, which we'll hear more about later today, you know, could have a bearing on that. The whole drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, I think, you know, maybe not in the short term, that could also cause some tensions in the relationship but in the longer term, having that issue being less controversial, I think, could provide some space for improved U.S.-Pakistan relations. Sorry, Pakistan, yeah, U.S.-Pakistan relations in terms of the Afghanistan issue. And I think I'll leave it at that for now and leave you to some of the left. Wow. I found myself during the course of the elections wishing that, you know, I had contracted out my analysis to Nate Silver because it was so complicated. I suspect that he probably would have said this at least 10, but I think the story of the elections is both actually quite simple and very complicated. It was easy enough to predict that Nawaz Sharif would have won, you know, as we've all said, over, you know, 50% of the seats are in his job for the National Assembly, but no one could have guessed that he would have won by so many. I mean, I had initially said that he could win up to 120, but I calibrated my call when Iran Khan fell off the stage. And it's a bizarre thing to kind of change your mind about but I was listening to people in Pakistan and what they were saying about this and they themselves didn't really know what this meant and how it would translate into votes. But that was, I think, because we didn't know how Iran Khan in general would translate into votes and PTIs organization and what it meant for the election. So, you know, a very kind of predominant unknown turned into several, you know, smaller unknowns which made it very hard to predict what was going to happen. And, you know, so while we all got our major call right, I think that many of the presumptions that we had to form that call didn't materialize. But I thought that PTI would be able to steal from PMLN base. I thought that high voter turnout would actually, you know, could actually hurt PMLN because, you know, if Iran could get these voters out then of course they would vote for him. And then of course, you know, I thought that this would result in a messy coalition politics in a parliament that, you know, wouldn't be able to really govern and wouldn't be able to pass laws or reforms. And none of those things happened. And, you know, to me what that means is that we're in this unknown territory where, you know, it's not just the personalities that have changed. So, new people have been introduced. We know them from before. But the institutions are changing. Citizens' voting behavior is changing. The nature of political parties and how they're organized in Pakistan is changing how they're reaching out to folks. And social media is a perfect example of that. I mean, I was reading, you know, Twitter to see how people were responding to Imran Khan and that helped shape my analysis. So, we're in this very unknown territory. And I think, as Simbel mentioned, what, you know, what more unknowns are there out there that we can anticipate? We clearly don't have a good idea of, you know, what's to come. And also I think the new three-party dynamic between PTI, PMLN, PPP introduced a lot of confusion. There really isn't another third party like PTI in terms of its popularity. MQM has gotten significant number of seats in the past and they've been able to serve as a spoiler in the parliament, come in and out of the coalition in the past government. But again, they don't have the popular appeal that someone like Imran Khan had. So, I think some of the discomfort in analyzing the elections was related to this new three-party dynamic, which I suspect will continue. And I'm interested in seeing what this, you know, Imran's alleged base in Punjab and what his party does in KP, how that actually creates, you know, a third base of constituents for these parties in Pakistan. The result of the election, I felt very good about it because of the relative stability that it would engender in the government. But I found myself having to caution my own views about being too optimistic and having to inject some realism in what I expect of the government because at the end of the day, as my colleagues have mentioned, the problems are still there and they're consistent and many governments in Pakistan have dealt with these problems. No one personality is going to be able to fix them. And I see several flash points that could develop into bigger challenges for the government over the next six months, if not sooner. One is obviously the relationship that Sharif has with the military. We can analyze it as much as we want. I mean, there is clearly some bad blood there, some personal issues, and those things don't go away easily. So, how is Sharif going to approach that? What trade-offs is he going to make? Will it feel better for him to maybe go after Musharraf, for example? Will that be a better kind of win for him personally, or is it better to let that go, not interfere and pursue a deepening of ties with the military leadership right now? That's a trade-off for him. He has to make that decision. He also has to make a similar personal, kind of versus professional decision when it comes to KP where Imran Khan is going to be leading the government there. They ran a very vicious campaign against PMLN, very personalized. Yet, Sharif is not going to be able to pursue any of his security policies, whatever they may be, without working closely with a PTI-led government in KP. I also see relations with the United States at the potential flashpoint. For the past year, I'd say both sides have calmed down in terms of how they engage with each other publicly. The rhetoric has not escalated as much. There haven't been as many drone strikes, but there is still an unarticulated policy between the United States and Pakistan for the future. We know that this is a very heavily CT security-based relationship, but we don't know what are the ties that bind these two countries together after 2014. It can't possibly be fighting al-Qaeda in Fatah until they're gone. So I think that's a broader kind of flashpoint, but the more short-term one is, how does Nawash Sharif approach this? There are billions of dollars of U.S. coalition support funds going into Pakistan. They will continue to go at least until 2014. Levels will go down after that. All of that money is contingent upon cooperation in the war in Afghanistan. So when there's no war, the relationship will obviously change, but for the next year and a half, that's a constant. So does Sharif actually go up against Imran Khan's commentary about drones and cooperation with the United States? Or does he make a choice to privately side with the United States and continue this cooperation, continue to let NATO trucks go through Pakistani routes? These are tough decisions that he's gonna have to make, and I don't think that they're gonna be easily done. And then finally, the relationship with the militants. Pakistan has a long history of patronizing certain militant groups, some indirectly, some directly. We know all of that is changing. That's another major transition that's going on in the country that many of us who analyze these developments don't really know which direction it's gonna go. And Sharif plays a very important role in that, primarily because when going after the TTP and dealing with security in FATA, for Sharif is probably going to mean, please stop telling these groups to stop attacking Pakistanis. It might end there, right? And so is the United States, for example, gonna be happy with that? How does that affect the relationship with Afghanistan? I think those are potential flash points as well. And then also, if Sharif pushes hard against militants in FATA or KP, could there be backlash in his home base of Punjab? And how does he deal with that, where all of his constituents are, and over 50% of the National Assembly seats are? So this is a pretty complex picture, and it's starting to make me think, stability is not guaranteed 100%. So I hope that in today's discussion, we can unpack some of these potential flash points that we see down the road. Those were all brilliant observations. A factual question. When was the last time a Pakistani government had this kind of mandate? 77? 97? Yeah. 97. 97. 97, yeah. 97, yeah. Yeah, Boutou had, like, managed, which led to a martial law then. Yeah, but that was a very contested election. Boutou's 97, Sharif's was a big, big, you know, they had a big mandate even at that time. And what was the government able to do with a mandate then? I think the first was they got sanctions because of the nuclear tests happened, and so quite immediately after coming into power with the heavy mandate, they were faced with the economy which started sputtering because of the sanctions happened and it slowed down. But in the same time, I think that is why we have the reputation of S. Haqdar, which we keep on reverberating, which now, again, Sharif is nominating as his finance minister. Their claim to fame is that, his claim to fame and his team was that they tried to start fixing the economy while being sanctioned, and by the end of the term, when before General Musharraf ran over and did that coup against Sharif, that they had fixed or stabilized the economy enough with less resources. So this is something that kind of stays in the memory in Pakistan also. I need an economist to really do a firm analysis and see whether it was true, but that was the vision and that was the view that they were able to kind of fix and get the economy still moving along while being sanctioned. So that's basically... I also think that many were looking at the experience of the previous government, PPP, and how they had to spend most of their time giving concessions to the smaller parties in the coalition to convince them to stay in the coalition, and that prevented them from getting a consensus on other important issues like tax reform, or do we want an IMF program, or building political consensus, basically. So there was this overwhelming amount of attention devoted to just coalition politics and not real reforms. Another big... One point I would think is a big difference, though, from 97 is the 18th Amendment, where actually a lot more power... Explain what that is. A lot... The 18th Amendment. Basically, one returned Afghanistan to its original constitutional structure of having more of a parliamentary form of government, but more Pakistan, sorry. More importantly, it also then devolved a lot more substantive authorities to the provinces. And so now ruling from the center is very different than it was when Noashif was last in power with a strong majority. So it's going to require a lot more compromising and dealing with the provincial government, and also, as pointed out earlier, with a lot fewer resources at the center because this NFC award, National Finance Committee Award, gives a lot more of the resources to the provinces to spend because they're now responsible for delivery of health and education, and all these kind of services. So that would be a difference, yeah. Another sort of factual question is, what is the situation with the IMF? I mean, when is the next negotiation round due? And what are they... IMF negotiates with the Pakistani government have always involved sort of the same thing, which is we're going to do certain things, we're going to get people to pay taxes, we're going to cut subsidies, they never happen. What's your assessment of the IMF this time, saying, hey, this is for real, you really... And in a way, the mandate that Noashif has makes it easier to kind of accept some of these things, particularly if you can portray it as, we're being forced to do this as no other option if that's really the case. I think there'd be some tough discussions on that, but I think, because the IMF has been putting off a lot of this because of its election year, and realistically, nothing was going to happen, and I think there was no effort to really make too much happen, but now I think there are some real serious issues that need to be addressed. So I think that there's going to be some tough, tough discussions in the next IMF mission Yeah, but I think just today or yesterday, there was a news that Navashreev government is already thinking of delaying their approach to the IMF, buying more time, and because I think what they're talking about is that we have to do a far more deeper analysis of what we want to take to the IMF. So this is the news, they're not immediately going to the IMF, already you get an indication that they don't want to take the painful conditionalities that would come, would mean going to the IMF. But is there more taxes? But is there a deadline? I mean, it's not just the Pakistani government's decision right here. I don't think there's a deadline, except for the whatever deadline, I mean, it will be something organic, like we ran out of money. Right, right, okay, right. Right, and I think for, herein lies the problem. Symbol said they'll push it down the road, yeah, until they can't push it down the road anymore, and this is a chronic issue with Pakistan's economic policy making, is that it's very short term, it's sometimes month to month. This month we're probably gonna get this much in remittances, we have these coalition support fund payments coming in, and oh, you know, so we're okay right now. But there's a lot of, Pakistan owes a lot of money to the IMF, there's some big payments coming up, even if Sharif maybe is able to get a big loan from the Saudis, for example, which is within the realm of possibility. Whatever that amount is, I think historically, the largest they've given is something like 1 billion, 1.2 billion. That is still gonna only take Pakistan for another few months, and the type of program that the IMF would introduce now, or six months down the road, is gonna have the same conditions that it had last year, same conditions that it had in previous programs, they're all heavily focused on tax reform and generating revenue, like Andrew said. I can just add to this, we are already, just to clarify, we are already within an IMF program. Pakistan has already taken that loan, and now this whole talk about going to the IMF is actually because the government is facing a fiscal deficit, and so they need to go back to the IMF if they really want those funds to get a little more fiscal space. What they're saying is that we want to kind of look within and see if we can manage this fiscal space to know very clearly what, how much they want to seek from the IMF, are there any other means or ways they can manage this fiscal deficit before they go to the IMF, and as far as those payments are coming up, the view right now within Pakistan is that those payments are, they are on schedule, and they have enough to make those payments. What size are we talking, what are the size of these loans? I think we're seven and a half billion, the last loan that we are on, which we are kind of ongoing. And Pakistan needs about that every year, to keep afloat right now, I'm just doing sort of fuzzy math. But I mean, you're talking about the billion from the Saudis is not gonna cut it. That's not a regular billion to the Saudis. Yeah, right. It's one off. It's one off. Right, yeah. That was the one off. We're going to announce the next budget every year in the month of June, so we have to come up with a budget. I mean, as a whole, Pakistan has had like, a budget based on ad hocism, as Shamail was saying, so, yeah. Sounds familiar. Yeah, well, I mean, this is not peculiar to Pakistan. We have the same set of issues, except, what about, you know, in a, I guess in a non-parliamentary system, Imran would have done much better. Is that, I mean, in a sense, you know, if, I mean, he was second everywhere, or not everywhere, but he was second in a lot of places. No, it was not, so in a system that looked a little different, he might have got a much larger sort of share of the political pie. Was that correct? Well, I think it's also, if you had a proportional representation system, voting system, he would have done much better. Pakistan has the first past the post voting system, which basically militates against third parties emerging, which has its advantages and disadvantages, but, you know, so I think that's what really hurt him, but could, you know, help him the next time round, but I think this is where it's interesting, we were talking even beforehand, his decision to form the government in KPK, I think is a pretty high-risk strategy, because solving the problems in KPK is not going to be easy. And, you know, again, we talked earlier that the liability of incumbency in Pakistani politics, if he's perceived not to perform in KPK the next time round, that could really hurt his chances. And if he had actually chosen to sit in opposition, or it's easier to shout and, you know, make your speeches and not be tasked with delivery, the next round I think he could have done better. But I think if he can deliver in KPK, then I think he, you know, really could put the PTI up into the top two parties in Pakistan. If raising taxes, raising revenue is difficult everywhere, and it's going to be difficult in Pakistan, and then cutting subsidies is difficult everywhere too. So those, if you don't want to touch those for one reason or another, then trade with India does look like a pretty attractive, doesn't have the political cost domestically in a sense. So, simple, I was interested in your, and what you said about the MFN, because technically Pakistan has granted most favored nation to India. You know, why isn't that happening? And wouldn't, I mean, and maybe if you, Andrew, or anybody else, you know, at the end of the day, Nawaz is a business guy. He comes out of that sort of Punjabi business, you know, and that's where the, it seems to be, well, that's the area where the most momentum is for reaching out to India and understanding that without attaching themselves to India, the Pakistan economy is just not gonna, you know, there's no magic solution except perhaps that. So could we see, you know, some sort of a, what, you mentioned the non-tariff barriers. I mean, what are the impediments right now to greater trade with India, and how quickly do you think Nawaz will deal with it? I think we need to kind of give a little bit more credit to the PPP, basically, this whole move towards opening with India, making it again a central discourse in Pakistan. This happened about two years ago during the PPP time. I think it was, oh, 11, about after the famous incident in Aptabad, Osama bin Laden. After that, there was this feeding in Pakistan that, you know, the whole neighborhood is becoming a little bit too constrained for Pakistan, and there was a need to kind of find a space of opening up with India and moving that ways, and it was easier to push that agenda somehow within Pakistan, and PPP government has to be given credit for pushing it forward. During that time, there was this huge move of delegations and trade delegations between India, Pakistan teams. There is a big issue over the NTBs, which they call them the non-tariff barriers, whatever, what it actually means that India has a very high tariff regime, which just doesn't apply to Pakistan, but applies to its trade with most of its neighbors and with other countries also. So there is this huge lobby inside Pakistan, which is basically traders. It's less to do with politics. There are some trading houses. There are certain trading lobbies which feel that India should also make certain moves of reducing those trade barriers. And India is actually within the Sark also. India is actually in discussions with some of its other neighbors. Bangladesh, for example, and Sri Lanka example, they all have these issues with some of these NTBs with India. But hasn't really... Give me just an example. Is it protecting Indian agriculture, or what is it? It protects Indian cotton, you know, that sector, the cotton sector. It protects its agricultural sector. It's some kind of other subsidies to certain other sectors. And Pakistan, especially as you said Punjab and Nawashari party comes from Punjab. And it's basically big traders who are interested, industrialists like Mansha who have cotton export, not just a raw material, but finished product export in cloth finished material, cloth export to India. And actually the trade barriers prevent that kind of trade going through from Pakistani side. It opens up for some other products, but we feel that Pakistanis feel that they have an advantage over within this sector of textile sector, which kind of closes it off. It's an uneven playing field for them. So there is a discussion on this going on, but I personally feel that this is one sector as compared to say raising taxes or trying to work on the energy sector. As Andrew said, it's very difficult to deliver on that sector. This is one sector where if he moves, takes these strong political decisions and tries to work with those lobbies which are anti, which focus on this NTBs a little more. This is one sector where he can get the space and deliver something tangible on the ground, which might help because it can also bring quick revenues to certain other constituencies, especially through trans-border trade in Punjabs. So I think this is something that they should look into and move forward because this is far more easier than the other issues. I think it's built on that. I think the point that PPP deserves credit, but more importantly, I think all the mainstream political parties, there's complete consensus on this issue that India was sort of a non-issue in the 2008 elections as well as this election except for a few of the Islamic parties. So there's a real opportunity of a political consensus to move this agenda forward. There are complicating things. Like in all these things, there'll be winners and losers. And Pakistan military is a pretty important corporate entity in Pakistan and some of their sectors might be threatened by competition, but overall it's clear that there'll be more winners and losers. But to me, the interesting issue is I think that consensus is there now in Pakistan to move forward. In some ways, the bigger question is that consensus in India and especially as we're entering an election year in India. So I actually think for the next year, it might be difficult to move forward this agenda more because of the Indian electoral calendar. Shamala, on drones, president's gonna make a speech today and it's basically gonna say that it's gonna be a kind of more constrained drone program. We've seen a sharp reduction in the number of drone strikes in Pakistan. You know, when Nawaz was interviewed after the election, he said, he didn't say, I'm against drones. If you look at what he said, he said, we take this issue seriously. It's an issue of national sovereignty. We're gonna look at it. So I mean, just building on what you were just saying, it's possible that he kind of may, you know, how do you anticipate what he might do? I hope that he actually continues some of the good work that the PPP government did on this. And I'm not joking actually. I think that the PPP did try very hard to normalize the security relationship with the United States before, you know, when Musharraf was president, I mean, there was, there's no agreement. There was nothing on paper that identifies the terms post 9-11 for the U.S. and Pakistan security relationship, right? And there's a lot of money going in there. There are these drone strikes. And the PPP acknowledged that. And, you know, as a democratic government had to kind of justify or sell certain moves with the U.S. to the parliament and to other political stakeholders. And they weren't able to because there is nothing on paper. This was a cloak and dagger relationship. And I think the democratization of Pakistani politics really pushed for something more. And they took that on, you know. They, you know, parliament got involved in the post-Solado review that never had happened before, really, that level of oversight on U.S.-Pakistan relations. It was, I think, a no-go zone for a while. I hope that the parliament will continue to, even if it's just in spirit, if there's nothing coming out of it, I hope that they would continue to have a voice on security issues. It probably won't be at the benefit of the United States though. I think that that's really the concern I think for the United States is that more democracy on security issues and more collaboration between civil and military institutions in Pakistan won't necessarily advance their interests. It's going to be critical the next one-and-a-half years. My sense is that the United States will want to pursue, to continue to pursue an aggressive and kind of open approach to the security situation in Pakistan simply because the posture in Afghanistan is going to be smaller, the resources will be less. So the ability to do things, if you want to do something, you got to do it in the next year and a half. Otherwise it's going to become a different type of relationship in a different scenario and a lot of the funding to Pakistan will decrease as well. So I think it's critical for Sharif to do a lot of this as privately as he can because I think politically it will be hard for him to sell it. And, you know, Pakistanis are getting killed in this. So it's not like he can just ignore the United States. I mean, these groups are attacking the military, the state and Pakistani citizens. So there's some level of coordination with the United States is necessary. And I hope that the parliament won't take, you know, just a non-aligned approach. I mean, that wouldn't be good for any of them. Let's open it up to questions. If you have a question, raise your hand. Identify yourself, wait for the mic. And here is the mic coming. We'll start in the back with Samir Lawani, who's a research fellow here, PhD candidate at MIT. So I've identified you. Great. So I just wanted to jump into the question that's been discussed about taxation. So there seems to be a consensus that Pakistan needs to raise. It's taxation in some capacity to raise revenue. And then there's always sort of the story that there's entrenchment that will always block it. So I'm wondering, even though this is a low probability event, what the possible pathway might be for raising of taxes? Is it more likely that industrialists will sort of bandwagon together to try to raise taxes on large landlords? Is it more likely that you just sort of have to like rely on a vat and increase the vat in some way because it's more dispersed? Plausible scenarios for this to happen. Yeah, the real estate tax might be the easiest and most, I mean, theoretically, because it's the hardest to hide. In the past, it was sort of viewed that Nawaz Shree's main constituency was urban, Punjab, small traders, industrialists, and that the PPP was more of the party of the feudals. And so therefore, agricultural tax would be more likely under a PMLN-led government. I think that's overly simplistic because there's feudals and industrialists now all the parties. But I think that that would be a pretty logical place to start. If it's gonna happen, I don't know. But I do think that the wiggle room to kick this one down the road too much further, I think, I'm skeptical that they can, I think now there's gonna be little choice but to address it, how well it's addressed, how far they go, I don't know. But I think we will see some progress on this issue under this government. I don't think, again, back to the IMF issue, I don't think that they can carry on kicking the can down the road on this issue. Gentlemen here and from. Call me an optimist. No, thank you. Symbol, this question is directed. You identify yourself, sorry. I'm Tarek Shafi, civilian. Symbol, this is directed to you, you mentioned very briefly in the passing judicial activism. And from my perspective, judicial activism is to be lauded, I guess, when they go against the dictates of dictators and so on. But now that we have a popularly elected government, a civilian government with a mandate, let's say, do you think now the high court and the lower courts will start ruling from the bench rather than interfering in the civilian governments? I think it's a valid criticism and there's a lot of discussion going on on this particular issue within Pakistan, within the media and the public space. But I think why, for me, it's still a problem. Of course, we all lauded the judicial activism. Judiciary became a judiciary for the first time during Musharraf's time and how it actively kind of supported the overthrow of Musharraf government and the re-institution of the civilian process in Pakistan. And then now, past five years, we've seen the judiciary kind of intervening in various civil matters of the government and PPP government against Zardari, against the sitting prime ministers. Why I think it still finds some resonance in Pakistan? Overall, when you talk to the Pakistanis within Pakistan, it is viewed quite positively. It's not viewed negatively. Why? Because due to this systemic cleavage that we've had in Pakistan, where you had civil and military governments kind of shifting away, which not just affects the running of the government at the center, it actually shuns and shifts the system quickly. It has weakened civil institutions. It has weakened political party structures themselves. So every time you have a new civilian system step in into power or you have that process unfold, there are anomalies in that system. There are predatory, some of these political parties and political actors, even the parliament at some point, is viewed generally as predatory by the people. The levels of corruption in the PPP government at that point was so predatory, was so obvious that unless there is a check and balance, and you know, we know that and you know that, in the past, in the 90s, for example, because there was no judicial check and balance there, it was usually the militaries which took that role in when Musharraf stepped in, it was saying, oh, because these civilian guys are corrupt and you know, Saifur Rahman in Nawaz Sharif's government is looting the ex-checker. So that's why we brought this military government and it would find support, popular support for a while at least because people were fed up of the predatory political actors. So I feel in a way, at least for a time being, maybe not as a permanent feature of this activism, this creates the bit of a safety valve in the system where what the judiciary ends up doing is pressuring the executive or the civilian parliament and prevents the military from doing that. So in a way, I know it's not the perfect situation and so many times they have overstepped their kind of mandate and they've created problems for the civilian government. But looking at Pakistan's history, I don't think it's altogether an unwanted element for this time. One comment on top of that, but it has politicized the judiciary and it's increased a perception on the outside. For example, with foreign investors of an added risk factor in the domestic politics, which is already very complicated. And so when you have the Chief Justice making decisions on privatization cases, cases that involve foreign companies in Balochistan, I mean, this is, yeah, all kinds of things. Is it better to have an intrusive military or an intrusive judiciary? Right. It is, that's a choice. Oh, and I'm trying to say. I mean, that shouldn't be the choice. Yeah, I'm trying to say. There's a lot to do with Chief Justice if the heart shows that his celebrity status, the way he was... When is he retiring, by the way? This year. So, what, and do we know who will replace him? I hope Musharraf will... Musharraf will replace him. Sherif will not try to interfere the way he did in 1997. He tried to replace the army chief. He wanted to replace the Chief Justice. So... Sorry, just a point of clarification. We know who the new Chief Justice is. The senior most. Senior most. And there's a good cast. I'm presuming that's a he. It's a he. So, will he be as intrusive as Chaudhary has been? I don't think so. I think the expectations were very high from the Chief Justice. It was a two year long campaign across the country by the civil society to induct him. So, when he just ran his campaign, just like a politician, he said, okay, if I'm re-inducted, I will pick up the issue of enforced disappearances. I would pick up the human rights issues. So, he became a celebrity. When he became the Chief Justice, he just began to like intrude into every government affairs. And there was a time when people realized that as you talked about it, besides the military, there was a new power center. You know, the Chief Justice began to meddle into the affairs of the parliament and to the affairs of the government. And people say that, okay, Pakistan had interrupted democracy, but the prime minister was kicked out by the Chief Justice. I think it was the job for the parliament to decide whether the prime minister was qualified or disqualified. But the Chief Justice was too intrusive and it gave rise to speculations whether after the military, the judiciary has become a power center. But I think it will eventually fade away because Chief Justice Chaudhary was a celebrity and the next Chief Justice would be in different circumstances. I agree with Siraj that his personality and his personal trajectory of how he came into being, the figure that he became eventually, he struggled with Musharraf, all that is definitely a factor and that might fade away with, but I think the activism of the judiciary is a wider process. I don't think we should have, we should look at it completely in a personalized kind of a capacity just linked with him. He of course became a figurehead on top and that kind of segwayed into, but I think now the judicial activism, the way the ECP and the election commission we saw structure and how the judiciary was acting, it has become something institutionalized and we will see a far more aggressive, far more active judiciary for some time to come. I don't think it's going to just- How good was the media coverage of the election? I think the social media was the biggest change in Pakistani media. For the first time, the PTI inducted a trend of using social media and the rest of the political parties were- The TV, the newspapers, the radio. It was huge. It was big. It was professionally covered. It was overwhelming, yeah. Yeah, it was wonderful. Okay. Peter, I'm a bit of a ladaite, I have to admit. Even I signed up for a Twitter account to follow the elections, the day before the elections. This gentleman here. Tom Green at Redarred Foreign Service Officer. I was in Pakistan for four years. A couple of his, you mentioned Baluchistan and I wonder if you could say something about the insurgency there, what the government is doing and how, and where the funding comes. We have one of the world's leading experts right here, so go ahead. The election result outcome in Baluchistan was 10%, barely 10%. A candidate who won like 543 votes to become a member of the parliament. The separatist movement is trickled down to the middle class in Baluchistan. People are extremely annoyed. They don't have faith in the parliamentary system in Pakistan. So the separatist political party is called for a massive by-court. I was talking to my dad and he's like, I've never seen such a massive by-court or it's just like a curfew-like situation in 60 years of his life. So the Pakistani government doesn't open up, doesn't talk about the situation in Baluchistan. Even the Pakistan People's Party did promise to address the issue of the Baluch insurgency and Baluch grievances. But a lot of human rights abuses were committed by the Pakistani government. Thousands of people have disappeared and they all disappeared during Musharraf's time. But for the first time during the People's Party government, hundreds of those missing persons, their bullet-related dead bodies were found. So there was a lot of anger. And in 2000 at the Baluch nationalist parties that by-cotted, this time they went back, they ended their by-court. But the separatist forces were so popular that there was no sympathy vote for the Baluch nationalist parties. So there was no vote. And then another unfortunate part of it is, you see, the central parties, whether that's the Muslim League or the People's Party or the military, have no respect for the local mandate of Baluchistan. In 2008, for example, the People's Party was not in the majority, but the People's Party bought off wards of independent candidates to form its own government. This time, again, the Pashtun nationalist party, Pahhtun Khwa Mili Awam party won the majority. But Nawaz Sharif is trying to meddle into the government formation process. They're trying to have their own chief minister. So there's a sense of betrayal again in Baluchistan that the elections did not help them all. And after the elections, just two days back, at least five more young political activists, dead bodies were found. So for the Baluch, there's no difference. You know, whether it's the military government is the People's Party or the PML in power. You see, the military controls Baluchistan. There is a core commander of the military and the Inspector General of the Frontier Corps. They are more powerful than the chief minister and the governor. So there is no civilian authority in Baluchistan. And I think Nawaz Sharif has to look into it. It's a very serious problem. Okay. Gentleman here. Hi, Patrick Schneider from a trade consulting firm in DC. I'm wondering a little bit about the US-Pakistan relation. I understand the issues, but does Sharif selection really concretely change any aspect of the relationship or what's kind of the US perspective on Sharif selection as opposed to, you know, one of the other candidates? I'll stop with Shamila and then we'll assemble. So she's writing a book about it. Yeah. You're the NSE director for Pakistan. Great research. Former. Former. I think it's actually more, it's simple, not complicated. It doesn't change much because US interests in Pakistan are fairly consistent, especially over the next year and a half. What are those interests? Well, domestically, I think political stability and economic stability in Pakistan is important to the United States because if an unstable government in Pakistan could potentially make the US effort in Afghanistan and dealing with security issue in Fatah Harter, the government will be distracted by very real challenges and the problems with the US and they are problems are kind of lower, become lower and lower on the list and we saw that happen in the leadup to the elections and well before that, I think for a year now, but once the campaigning's informally started, no one was talking about the US relationship in Pakistan. It was a non-issue. Because it's so bad? Well, because it had gotten so bad and then it became kind of flat lined and no one wanted to talk about it publicly because it was too controversial and it would cause problems and I think in Pakistan there are more important issues, the election and energy and domestic issues became what people talked about. In other US interests, there is senior al-Qaeda leadership living in Fatah. There are fewer of them now than there were before but there are still operations and attacks being potentially planned against American targets so I think that's an enduring interest actually for the United States beyond 2014 because those groups have stronger relationships with say criminal networks based in Karachi, Southern Punjab sectarian groups. It's not clear to us how the ideologies and agendas of those secondary actors are changing and they could become more anti-American so I actually, I think that the US will have some kind of sustained approach to your relationship with Pakistan based on security but it's- Don't forget the nukes. And then the nukes and that was going to be my final point now I'll turn to Symbol. Let's not forget the nukes. I mean, this focus on al-Qaeda post 9-11, it's temporary because al-Qaeda has already started to move, there's places for them to go in the Middle East, other places to go in the region and it hasn't been entirely comfortable for them as we all know in Pakistan in recent times so after that you're left with Pakistan's nukes and the US interest there is, I think sometimes this is an irrational fear, it's not likely but if you're a government you have to be considerate of these things happening. A loose nukes scenario where you, I don't think anyone thinks the Pakistani government is going to give their nukes to terrorists, no one ever thinks that but because there are several risk factors in the security environment, there are militant groups that sometimes talk to the government, sometimes don't, they have bad relations with the government, those nuclear weapons could be threatened, potentially, right? I've always thought that it is completely implausible that a terrorist group for any reason at all could acquire a Pakistani weapon. But what is much more plausible is that a terrorist group could provoke a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. That seems like a much more reasonable. That's the fear and no one wants this region to go up into flames like that and that interest for the United States is enduring for sure. Considering the image Pakistan military has within Pakistan that it's the most organized institution, it is there to guard the national frontiers, three attacks took place during the people's party government even for which we were not prepared, you see? For example, Bin Laden was found somewhere in the Pakistani version of the West Point in Ebertabad. That was something no one was prepared for. Then there was an attack the Pakistani generals headquarters which was our version of the Pentagon. And the attackers were there for 23 hours. You see, there was an attack on Pakistani naval headquarters. There was an attack on Pakistani air force headquarters. These are smaller attacks, but again, Pakistani citizens, their trust was shattered, they were taken aback. How weak their military could be in terms of guarding its own interests. So considering all that, because the reason is all these attacks do take place time and again, because within the Pakistani military there are elements supportive of Islamic extremist groups. And one would not rule out the possibility of the Islamic groups trying to control Pakistan and getting into the Pakistani nuclear installations which may not be like something that will happen in the next five years. But I think Pakistani military has to strictly check the elements within the military that have been so supportive of the Islamic elements, including the Ebertabad Red. If I could just, first of all, start with what Saraj has talked about, this issue about, you have also referred, this danger to the Pakistani nukes falling into the hands of the Taliban or falling the hands of the Al-Qaeda. I think, I agree with you, Peter, that the real danger is what, you know, George Perkovich, I think, who has said it the best is about this whole issue about sub-conventional threat in South Asia where non-state actors can strike or start a nuclear war between India and Pakistan like we saw, you know, both the countries coming to the brink during the Mumbai crisis. But what Saraj is talking about, I think, as far as these nukes, and of course, a lot of Pakistani military installations have been under threat. They have been attacked in Karachi, in Rawalpindi, in Kamra, all those bases have been attacked. And that danger remains, I mean, that shows you that the internal military threat is so big that even the most well-secured areas are kind of open to these attacks. But when you're talking about nukes and the way nuclear materials are stored and kept and the command and control, that's a totally different regime altogether. I couldn't agree with you. Yeah, totally different regime. It's probably in the movies where I get to go in. You know, kind of conflating those years. They can go in and hit their 16s and blow a few planes there and damage the equipment which they have done. They damage very expensive planes that Pakistan had bought. But this whole, you know, kind of conflating it as if that the nuclear materials are just put there in a container and the militants are going to run in for 23 hours and run out with them. It's a little bit ludicrous. Answer to that question there in the back about the US-Pakistan relations. I agree with Shamila. For the last 10 years, they've been to Afghan-centric and also counter-terror-centric. I think that's centricities have gone on for the last 10 years. But as this whole engagement, US-owned engagement in Afghanistan is changing and also on counter-terrorism, there is this whole process that we see unfolding within the US, but what it means, what is the counter-terror strategy is related to drones or related to others, special forces and what is going to be the residual presence in Afghanistan is going to be like, whether it's going to be an active presence, whether it's going to be just supportive training mission, all these issues, as that changes, I think the view here also and this relationship between US and Pakistan is also changing and shifting. And also agree with Shamila that of course, this view, this centrality of the nuclear issue of Pakistan, not just Pakistan, Indian Pakistan, two countries which have got a horrible history of relations the last 60 years. They are nuclear countries which are side by side and where there is no geographic kind of insularity between them. It is an area that is going to be critical to global security, not just to the US, to the world which always is going to be an area which the US needs to engage and will engage. And I think this view now in my own, as Peter discussed a little bit about my project that I've been doing, working on. And then what part of my project has been how I've structured it. I've done series of interviews with people, policy makers starting from Bush era to now at the State Department level, Pentagon, DOD, almost every level. And the view that's coming out from most of the people that I've interviewed is that, yes, Pakistan's centrality, there is no way that the US can take its eyes off the ball there. The view is going to change, the relationship is changing and shifting. And I think how you will see a clarity is when the US starts enunciating a larger policy on South Central Asia region, which is, I think, not really very clearly enunciated. But this realization is definitely there. That Pakistan is a country of 200 million people in a very critical geopolitically, a very critical part of the world. And that interest is going to continue. Can I say that one additional comment is, I absolutely agree, Symbol, that the experts who are looking at Pakistan, I think there's a lot of consensus on the importance of Pakistan, we can't take our eyes off the ball. However, that's a very, very, very small group. And Congress has completely dealt with that. What strikes me here is someone who's got much of my life working in and on in Pakistan, how little interest there is in Pakistan, this country. And of course, Pakistan's not done itself a lot of favors in this regard, in terms of the perceived relationship of the last few years in particular. But that said, it is important, and yet there is very little expertise in the US on Pakistan. There is not a new generation of scholars studying Pakistan in America. Someone gave me a statistic recently. There's like 40 or 50 students in all of America studying Urdu, compared to tens of thousands in Arabic and probably hundreds of thousands in Chinese. But again, given its importance for US national security, it's quite striking and frightening how little interest there is amongst the public and at large in Pakistan. We have about three minutes left. So does anybody else have any questions? This gentleman here at the back. Oh, it's Salim from Dunia News. In the post-election analysis that I've attended and read, most people are calling a Nawaz Sharif government more a right-wing government or Tarik Insaaf being a right-wing government in KPK. But don't you think these lines between left and right have sort of blurred in the last 10 years in Pakistan? Because if you look at the People's Party government or the A&P government during the last five years, People's Party didn't do anything on the blasphemy law. In fact, when Governor Taasir was killed or when Ambassador Rahman introduced an amendment in the parliament, the party disowned them. Bashir Bilor, rather, his elder brother who was federal minister, he announced a bounty on the maker of the film that caused Benghazi. Whereas Nawaz Sharif on the other hand is talking about opening up to India and not sort of falling for the anti-drone rhetoric. So what are your opinions on that? I agree with you, the fact that these sharp lines with what we say is left of center and right of center are kind of blurring. Not just in Pakistan, I think they're kind of blurring all over the world since the fall of the Soviet empire and the fall of communism, those lines are blurring. But when we talk in Pakistan's context and when you say Nawaz Sharif is slightly right of center party, PMLN is more of a right of center party and PPP, for example, is more of a left of center party. I think what is meant and what people refer to and I myself refer to is basically the social programs that they have put forward. If you look at the social program, if you look at, for example, PPP's social agenda that they've had, the social welfare, the BISP program, the Benazir Income Support Program that became a very big part of PPP's kind of social agenda and they followed it through whether we agreed it or not. It has been thoroughly criticized within Pakistan and outside Pakistan. It has also had its proponents also, but it's basically the idea about providing a social kind of a basic social network to the poorest people. It is a kind of a leftist, more left-leaning agenda, social agenda. I don't think PMLN has anything of that sort. Then as a woman, I have no qualms in saying, I find PPP's social agenda, more women's centric, more forward-looking as far as women are concerned, creating more space for women, creating more visibility for women, than say PMLN's agenda. So in some of these very small examples, I would say that there are these blurring lines which you still can see them on their social agenda. In similar agendas exist, but of course PPP didn't have the courage to push their agenda. I mean, that's a total different issue. You know how parties get that courage to push the agenda which they themselves are putting forward in their party manifestos. But on the books, that's how it looks for me, looks to me. Very quickly, anybody else? I think maybe you're talking more about the foreign policy issues. And I think because of all of these, the military, the parties, the politicians, they're all facing the same threats, the same challenges in resolving these foreign policy challenges. So there's clearly more centrist approach to dealing with the external problems, I think. I think all of these issues need long-term engagement, Pakistan, and it is underwent drastic changes in the textbooks which were filled with a lot of helpful material. There was Islamization of the textbooks. So overall, the Pakistani politics is whether the People's Party or the Muslim League have used political Islam to enhance their power. So you can't have overnight solutions to these problems in terms of empowering women, in terms of reducing hatred towards India or having a more open policy towards the United States. You have to revamp the textbooks. You have to open up Pakistan. You have to liberalize the education system. So it requires at least a decade or two decades' engagement. Okay, well, Shamila, Andrew, Siraj, Symbol. Thank you, that was brilliant. Thank you. Thank you.