 Okay. I think we'll go ahead and begin. My name is Andrew Wilder. I'm the Vice President for the South and Central Asia Program here at the United States Institute of Peace and it's a pleasure to welcome you all today. I'd also like to welcome those who are joining us via the webcast. And when we do get to the question-and-answer period, we'd ask you like to each identify yourselves so that those who are following my webcast will know who's speaking. Today's topic on insurgencies and counterinsurgencies in Pakistan and South Asia region is incredibly timely and important. I think South Asia quite unfortunately provides an all-too-rich ground for studying issues of insurgency and terrorism. In addition to the U.S. led coin operations, counter terrorism operations about which we're more familiar in Afghanistan. There's of course been insurgencies active in Pakistan, in India, in Sri Lanka, in Nepal. And those are the topic of a recent book that my colleague Mweed Yousuf has edited and is on for sale outside. I would like to highlight this is not a book launch but this is the book on insurgency and counterinsurgency in South Asia through a peace building lens which is available outside. I think a particular concern certainly for me is Pakistan, however, and Mweed also has an edited volume on Pakistan's counterterrorism challenge, which I'll also be talking about briefly in his presentation today. According to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, militant insurgent and violent sectarian groups carried out a total of 1,717 terrorist attacks across Pakistan in 2013, which claimed the lives of 2,451 people and caused injuries to another 5,438, just to get a sense of the scale of the problems in Pakistan. I just skimmed today's dawn newspaper headlines in Pakistan and the front cover article is on government inaction against militants criticized. There's also a very good op-ed by Zahid Hussein on a state of anarchy. There are then two of the three editorials, one on militant groups in Punjab and one on a surge in Karachi violence. In addition to commentary about the recent attack on the talk show host Hamid Mir. So the papers are full of this in Pakistan. It's being much discussed since the cause of great concern. But I think this raises many key issues in terms of the Pakistan context. Given the concern, given the scale of the problem, why does the government seem unwilling or unable to do much about that? And I'm hoping that's one of the issues that can come up in the discussion today. Is this a capacity issue? Is it a political will issue? Is it a combination of both? Also in the context Pakistan is the ongoing talks on again, off again with the TTP and lack of clarity regarding the objectives on those talks. And I'm hoping that's another topic which we can cover a bit today. Then again there's the on again, off again operation in north Waziristan. What can that achieve? Is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? Why is it not happening? Why should it happen? Another important topic which is being certainly discussed a lot in Pakistan but I'm hoping we can cover it today. This panel is also being held shortly after the launch of Pakistan's new national security policy. Is this a step in the right direction? And will it help provide any viable solutions to tackling militant violence? But again beyond Pakistan, there's the broader issues in South Asia. What will be the impact of the drawdown of most US and NATO forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014? What impact will that have on regional counterterrorism and counterinsurgency objectives and efforts? And last but not least, what role, if any, can the US and other players play in helping Pakistan, Afghanistan and other South Asia countries tackle their CT and coin challenges? So again, many important questions on a very important topic and we have fortunate to have an incredibly distinguished panel to discuss this with us today. We're going to start off by my colleague Muid Yusuf who is director of South Asia programs at the US Institute of Peace where he has been working since 2010. Muid is one of those colleagues that it's sort of a mixed blessing to have as a colleague because he makes you look extremely inadequate and a real slacker. So in addition to these two books which he has edited in the last year, he has two other edited volumes that was also published this year, within the last year, one on South Asia 2060, Envisioning Regional Futures, which he co-edited with Adil Najam, and then Getting It Right in Afghanistan, which was published by USIP and co-edited with Scott Smith and Colin Cookman. And then in addition to that, he of course manages our work in Pakistan, is a frequent commentator in the press, but last but not least, in addition to doing all this, he also completed his PhD dissertation a couple weeks ago. So I now have the honor of calling him Dr. Yusuf. Next on the panel is General John Allen, currently a distinguished fellow with the Brookings Center on 21st Century Security and Intelligence. Previously, General Allen had a very distinguished 38-year military career and command and staff positions culminating in his service as the commander of the US and NATO international security assistance forces in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013. General Allen played a pivotal role in guiding the military transition in Afghanistan by establishing the Afghan national security forces as the lead for combat operations, overseeing the drawdown of surge forces, moving NATO forces into an advisory command, and by launching the special operations joint task force. Prior to assuming command of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Allen served in a variety of key command and staff positions within the Marine Corps and the joint forces, including as the principal director of Asia Pacific Policy in the office of the Secretary of Defense for nearly three years. And I could go on and on, but you have more detailed biographies also present that are out front. Our next panelist will be Ambassador Cameron Munter, who is currently a professor of international relations at Pomona College in California. Prior to this Ambassador Munter served as America's Ambassador to Pakistan from October 2010 until July 2012, leading our 2,500 employee embassy there. And those of you who follow Pakistan closely will know that Ambassador Munter was the ambassador at an incredibly eventful and difficult time in terms of US-Pakistan relations, starting his tenure there shortly after the, or shortly before the Raymond Davis affair, then also having to manage the fallout from the Sahallah incident, and then the Abbottabad attack, which led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. So it was certainly the ambassador there at a very interesting time in terms of managing US-Pakistan relations. Previously, Ambassador Munter served as the ambassador to Serbia, Deputy Chief of Mission at the US embassies in the Czech Republic and Poland, and oversaw US civilian and military cooperation in Baghdad. Last but not least is Dr. Peter Lavoie, who's currently a partner at the consulting firm Monitor 360. Prior to this, Dr. Lavoie was most recently the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, who's also the principal advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and the Secretary and Department of Defense. He also served in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, where he was Director for Analysis from August 2010 through August 2011, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council from December 2008 through July 2009, and National Intelligence Officer for South Asia from October 2007 to November 2008. The most important qualification I think I should highlight is that he's a fellow alumnus of the Berkeley Urdu Language Program in Pakistan. So I will leave it at that, and I'll turn it over to Moid. He will first start off by talking a bit about some of the key conclusions from his two recent publications, and then we'll move down the list with General Allen, Ambassador Munter, and Peter Lavoie. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Andrew, and thanks for the very kind introduction. I promise not to make this an infomercial about the books. So what I would do is situate the two books in the current context of the discussion you're having on Pakistan in terms of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. Simplistically put, as should Pakistan go in for an operation in North Faziristan against the TTP and Akhani network, or should it continue the strategy of talks, which has got quite a bit of criticism from external observers and perhaps some internally as well. Before I begin though, let me recognize at least one of the authors who I see in the audience, Marvin Weinbaum, who contributed a chapter in the counterterrorism book, and also share the sad news with you that one of our authors, Ambassador Khalid Mahmood, who wrote a chapter on, gave an insight as account on Pakistan's peace process with India, passed away yesterday, just got an email yesterday night. He was the chief of staff running the Pakistani foreign office under Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Qasuri, when the peace process was ongoing. So I did want to recognize him fairly, fairly shocking for me personally, but otherwise too. So the Pakistan counterterrorism book came out of this constant debate on what Pakistan should do, what it can do, why it's doing what it's doing, why it isn't doing what we want it to do. And as I talked to people, one thing became very clear that everybody talked about either the military aspect of this or talked about, well, this is a much deeper problem. You need better education, better narratives, et cetera. And so we wanted to look at what specifically Pakistani state could do in terms of counterterrorism, defined as actions directly against terrorist elements, which may also be insurgents in the case of Northwest Pakistan. And what we came out with is a volume where we've looked at the military aspect of this, the political aspect, the political challenges of counterterrorism, the policing challenges, the legal challenges, the financial curbing, the financial flows for militants, the cyberspace challenges. And then there is a capping chapter by Anatole Levin looking at whether Pakistan can make it through this variety of challenges and come out at the other end in the positive. And the main conclusions that come out are are entirely pertinent to the conversation we're having about TTP and Hikani Network and so the Pakistani counterterrorism strategy right now, where first of all, I think the most important finding is that still it is unclear on who the enemy of the Pakistani state is. When you ask various, various factions of the Pakistani state, there is this underlying lack of clarity, which translates into a lack of clarity in strategy of whether the strategy is simultaneous targeting of all militant groups in Pakistan, whether it's a sequential strategy of going after some versus others, which then quickly leads to allegations of picking and choosing, playing a double game, et cetera. So as as deep as that tension has been that that lack of clarity has been in Washington, you also find a mirror image in Pakistan itself. The second big conclusion that that the author's draw is that the policy space is disjointed. There's not a clear sense of who is in charge of what how the various pieces of the puzzle come together when it comes to Pakistani counterterrorism strategy. And if you've seen very recently Pakistan has come out with a document called the National Internal Security Policy, which actually talks to a lot of things that this book covers and does try and make a fairly good effort at trying to bring together these various disparate elements of strategy into a whole to define who's going to be responsible for what. But what the authors point out, interestingly, is that it's not that the state has not tried to do things which will fix the problems, but that the underlying binding constraint of the civil military disconnect and the and the disjointed policy space seems to hinder every single attempt at overcoming the problem. And so the challenges keep growing while the state struggles to put its house in order in terms of figuring out how to how to approach the problem. And and the other constraint that's pointed out is of public opinion, which which has swung in Pakistan from supporting operations back in 2008, nine to supporting talks and not continuous use of force against militants, which has also held back, especially political governments over the past five or six years. But the number one finding in this book, and that is entirely relevant to what we're talking about here is that whether will lack of will is a factor of or not. And the lack of will argument is not dismissed by by any, any stretch. The lack of capacity is now so overwhelming that even if all the other pieces were in place and Pakistan was going after all the militant groups that that exists on its territory, etc. You don't have the capacity at this point to target them simultaneously and and go after whether through a military operation or other broader broader policies. And if there is one aspect which was pointed out as perhaps the most important, I would argue that the authors converge without saying so explicitly on the idea of the police and the criminal justice system being the number one game changes, if you will, if Pakistan has to come out on top at the other end. And in fact, you you are left with a sense that only the military operations are going to do just as much as they've done so far, which is clear some areas in the Northwest. Beyond that, if you don't have the police and the criminal justice piece in place, you're not going to get to sustainable peace. The other aspect of the current debate on Pakistan is talks. Talks, good, bad, why are they talking, it's never worked, etc. And there this the book on insurgency and counterinsurgency actually provides a lot of lessons on South Asian experiences with insurgencies and how they've dealt with insurgencies, who they've talked to, when they've fought. And the logic of this book actually was to focus on nonviolent approaches to counterinsurgency. So we were trying to decipher whether and when nonviolent approaches, which include politics, economics, talks, etc. can deliver over and above the military option, which seems to be discussed much more often. And what you found in this book is that there is very little clear sense that states were able to come up with in terms of how to go about it. So all South Asian states went with a policy or strategy of counterinsurgency that lacked a holistic approach. They were military heavy, they were dominated by force, they went in, tried to clear up areas. Now, all our authors criticized that approach by saying that they seem this approach seemed to add to the popularity of the insurgents and their recruitment base rather than decrease it. At the same time, the there's a very clear paradox because virtually all authors also argue that use of force was necessary to get the situation to a point where nonviolent approaches could deliver. So nonviolent approaches either work at the front end before insurgencies have become violent or at the back end of an awful lot of violence that takes place in the counterinsurgency, the states going after the insurgents and vice versa. In terms of talks, there is not a single insurgency where talks did not take place multiple times, whether it's in India, whether it's in Nepal, whether it's in Sri Lanka, whether it's in Pakistan, which are the four countries this this book covers. Talks took place, talks took place when there was fighting, talks took place when there was ceasefire, but the record of talks seems to be fairly negative. The only places that seem to work is when the insurgents managed to break the state from within, i.e. Nepal, where the political parties side with the insurgents against the monarchy, or where India and Pakistan, which was one third party actor and one state, which was the counterinsurgent, managed to take a peace process to a point where they were close to resolving the Kashmir dispute ostensibly. But talks between the counterinsurgent and the insurgent don't seem to deliver unless you have a clear winner on the cards. And the prototype that TTP fit in Pakistan, I would argue, there is no evidence of success in talks in terms of finding a common ground between the state and groups like the TTP. So where does that leave the current Pakistani strategy? I think what you hear most often is that the state is timid, they're not going after these people, sooner or later this is going to backfire, etc. What I would end with is pointing out how these books fit the current Pakistani debate on whether to go after the TTP militarily or to talk to them, etc. So number one, the question of who is the enemy, which I say there is lack of clarity on. I think there is lack of clarity on that question still in Pakistan as the Pakistani government in military authorities try and decide who to target, how to target, when to target. Second, public opinion in the last two years has squarely been on the side of talks and not military operation. So that's another thing that the counterterrorism book points out is a very strong constraint for governments in power. Third, while the military seems to be wanting to go in and clean the area of North Waziristan up, from what I understand, every time this has been put on the table, there have been non-committal responses to the political leadership on what this operation is really going to do, how much of the problem it's going to tackle, and who's going to manage the backlash that comes in the cities. And there is the fourth point that I made about criminal justice and policing, where I think there's very little confidence in the civilian apparatus of counterterrorism in Pakistan right now, among the political leadership or the military leadership that they'll be able to manage that backlash. And finally, there's the political aspect that this is, after all, Punjab, the largest province, the largest voting bank, et cetera. So all of this, I think, is playing into the current decision-making, which seems to have decided to go for talks over the military operation. And some of the justification that I hear is one that the public opinion first has to switch to supporting the state's actions against the TTP. Over time, if you give this time, there will be better preparation on the part of the civilian agencies over the next few months. And the military requires the backing of the popular backing before they can go in. So what I hear is that this may not work, but this will lead to a better situation for the state to go after them. And what the books would inform me in this sense is that ultimately this is not going to be the last operation Pakistan does. This is not going to be the be-all and end-all of Pakistan terrorism problems, but that there are genuine reasons why the Pakistani state may want to hold back from going into this big operation that everybody is sort of trying to rally behind. And I'll end by saying something that I'd mentioned before we came here to General Allen that the rationale of the counterinsurgency book partly was that the whole debate on counterinsurgency was largely being informed by our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. And in South Asia there was this sense that that's entirely different. That's an external counterinsurgent coming in and playing the lead role. This is going to be fundamentally different when you're fighting internally against your own people. And so I think that may be a major factor playing on the mind of the Pakistani state and we can't dismiss that. Let me stop there. Thank you. Okay, well great. Can you all hear me alright? Good. First, Andrew, thanks very much. And we thank you for the invitation to participate and for the US Institute of Peace for putting this on today. This is a really important discussion. It's very important obviously to the United States. It's important to Afghanistan. It's important to obviously Pakistan but the region as well. And so in that regard it's great to be on the panel with two good friends Cameron Munter who was the ambassador in Islamabad when I was the commander in Afghanistan and Peter Lavoie who was our connecting file often from Kabul to Islamabad but also back into Washington. Two great friends and they did terrific work when they were in those duties. And also obviously to moide your efforts in these two books I think have made a great contribution to the conversation and your explanation this morning is really terrific. I'd like to make three broad points if I could and I make the points both as a as the former commander in Kabul so that was the center of the universe for me in many respects as I looked out in all directions I had to be I had to be able to apprise the operational environment but also as a military officer and someone who's been involved in counterinsurgency operations in a number of places. The first is that from my perspective the growth of extremism and terrorism and insurgency in Pakistan is perhaps one of the most alarming developments in the last 10 years in that particular region and it could even be one of the most alarming developments globally. For the United States which has a plate full of foreign policy challenges at this particular moment the foreign policy challenge in Pakistan should all of this go south in a deliberate or dramatic way could be one of the most challenging foreign policy dilemmas or developments that the United States could face given the many different that it has on its plate today. So from that perspective as both a consumer of terrorism I was on the receiving end of a good bit of it coming out of the federally administered tribal areas but also a practitioner of coin. I had the opportunity to be involved in a number of both operations but also the broad strategic appraisal and reaction to the challenges coming out of Pakistan and so a couple of general comments in that regard and that is that for us what we were encountering in Afghanistan and in particular along the frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan was an increasingly capable syndicate operation or a syndication of the terrorist capacities and the insurgent capacities along that border. Almost nothing occurred in the eastern five provinces of Afghanistan that the Hikhanis were not involved in some form or another and often the planning which would see an operation franchised out to one or the other of the terrorist groups were in surgeon groups was was conducted in Miram Shah and was then commanded and controlled out of Miram Shah and we were frequently able to listen to the active conversation occurring and so the concept of a nexus operation or a nexus relationship was something very much on our mind and it wasn't just about Al Qaeda it was about the Hikhani network it was about the TTP and the capacity for the TTP to be reinforced in its relationship with Pakistan and its attention given both to the Pakistani military but also to the developed areas in the Punjab was very much of a concern to us just as the TTP was coming across the border and operating out of Nuristan, Kunar and Nongahar. A major development for us and one I think that attracted our attention significantly was the the emergence along the border in the federally ministered tribal areas in the Kaibir Paktunkhwa in the north eastern portion of Afghanistan, the emergence of elements of other terrorist organizations and insurgent organizations that would not have normally had a presence in that area. The Lashkaritayba was was one of the most alarming developments for me when I was in Afghanistan and one that we would pursue with pretty significant action in the event that we were able to detect and fix a Lashkaritayba or an LET organization on the ground and whether they were in Afghanistan to continue to burnish their jihadi or their Kashmiri separatist credentials or whether they were there simply to expand their operations more broadly than with respect to Kashmir and India remains to be determined. But the LET I think in the minds of most people who observe them is a is a very violently dangerous terrorist organization and the their actions in Mumbai in the fall of 2008 brought us perilously close to really major regional difficulties between India and Pakistan. So as we begin to draw our forces down in Afghanistan, one of the key issues I think in the mind of the American and the NATO commander and certainly in the minds of the Afghan leadership is how will we posture the forces in the aftermath of our drawdown and in the period of time of one January 2015 on to be able to deal with the safe havens and the the organizations that will continue almost certainly to operate out of those safe havens. And we can talk about that in the Q&A, but that was certainly something that was on my mind constantly as well as as I know it is on the mind of the current commander. One of the things that became clear to us as we took these organizations apart in an intelligence manner was what we considered to be a triangular relationship between the ideological insurgency, criminal patronage networks and criminality and the drug enterprise. We first sought in Afghanistan in the north and in the west, but very clearly when we applied that kind of thinking to what we were seeing unfold along the frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, we could see the rough contours of the same kind of relationship. So just as Moeid said, as the Pakistani military, and I spent a great deal of time in Rawalpindi and in Islamabad with General Kayani and his leadership, hoping ultimately to plan bilateral operations along the frontier. As they were able to achieve some level of progress in their clear hold, build and transfer counterinsurgency campaigns, the reality for them was that they could clear an area. They might hold that area, but transitioning ultimately to the build and the transfer was really problematic because the institutions of government and governance and the resources just weren't there. And so larger larger elements of the Pakistani military were fixed in place in larger and more expansive areas as they had to hold on to ground that couldn't be transferred ultimately to bring to a conclusion what you would want to have happen in a counterinsurgency campaign, which is getting at the underlying causal factors associated with the reason the insurgents exist to begin with. And then finally the other aspect with respect to the insurgencies in general was our concern that in fact that region along the frontier and more broadly the emergence of this virulent witches brew of syndicated terrorist organizations in Pakistan was being aided in some respects accelerated by a foreign presence. I know the Chinese are very interested in the Uyghur presence in Chitral, in Bilget, in the Khyber Pakhtun Quad and the Federally Ministered Tribal areas. We frequently could hear the chatter in Chechen and in the IMU the Uzbek dialects as well as Arabic. And so where Syria has today become a place where jihadis can move to the sound of the guns and get their ticket punched for having been involved in some form of an active combat effort. We had a substantial number of foreign fighters that were assisting those insurgent groups on the eastern side of the frontier in Pakistan. And then finally to the point that Mouid made, and it's a really important point because we still haven't resolved the debate within the US government, much less the more broader international debate. And that is the one between and among the conversations on counter terrorism versus counter insurgency. And it's I think it's important to understand that if you're going to consider counter insurgency, it's almost always going to be about capacity building. It doesn't necessarily require a massive application of force. It is it's about taking those measures and those steps that are necessary ultimately to address the underlying generally social, governmental and economic conditions that created the insurgency to begin with. Some aspect of that counterinsurgency campaign will almost certainly require the application of military force. And within that context, the application of counter terrorist capabilities and forces. But we often get the debate in the United States as a binary debate where you're either going to do counter terrorism or you're going to do counter insurgency and the and the twain will not meet. The reality, of course, is that counter terrorism fits up within the larger and the broader context of counterinsurgency. And while we may be doing counter terrorism, because it is the only relevant tactic that can be brought to bear in some places around the world, the preferred way is to build capacity socially, economically, politically to address the underlying conditions that produce the insurgency and they're in support of that broader effort, the application of military force and within that counter terrorism to achieve those objectives. And I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador Muncher. Well, thank you. And I'll try to pick up, make a couple of points where General Allen left off. And thank you again, Andrew, thank you, Moide, and to the U.S. Institute of Peace for having this opportunity. I also think back to those days when across the border, the heroic efforts by General Allen not only to work in the tactical area of cross-border cooperation, but to try to pump some strategic thought both into the leadership of Royal Pindi, and I'm afraid maybe even into some of the leadership of the Afghan Army was a very tough, tough fight. And indeed, I think that the question of how strategic we can look ahead is key here. One of the things that has been alluded to is that we really have to know, we have to be honest with ourselves about what is possible. And one starting point to me is in Pakistan, when I think of the ability of the military of the civilian leadership to move ahead is to recognize not that the Pakistanis seem to be bad players or doing something wrong. There's plenty of evidence for Pakistani deeds that we weren't happy with, but to focus on the fact that it is an extraordinarily weak state. And to really make sure that we take a good look at that, because if we indeed are going to get down to capacity building, whether it's in counterterrorism, cooperation, or in the broader counterinsurgency area, we have to realize that we're dealing honestly with a country whose structures don't always, or in very rare cases, have the capacity to take on what we've tried to do. One of the reasons that, and that pains me to say this, that the Kerry Luger-Burman legislation has not been the success we had hoped for, was not just that we had goodwill, but that I think we didn't know how much pressure, how much we were asking of the people who we wanted to work with in the civilian area or in the developmental area, the energy and all those elements that are so important to the future stability of Pakistan, that we didn't know, we hadn't done our homework about the capacity of those people to make the kind of progress we needed to make. We also then have a political situation in Pakistan, and my first general with this theme of weakness, I very much agree with Mouid that what we have is a very unfortunate situation of an extraordinarily timid government, and extraordinarily, I have to say, timid military. I'm not trying to say that personalities make all the difference, but it seems that the way to me, that the way that the prime minister, it seems that the way that the new army chief of staff are proceeding is not, let's put it this way, it's not bold. It's a way of trying to figure out how not to make mistakes rather than to come up with overarching notions of where Pakistan might be five years, 10 years, 15 years down the road. So in the irony of the efforts we made during our time, I think, out in the field when Peter used to come out to Pakistan and we used to try to talk about what is, with our Pakistani friends, what is the end state in Afghanistan? Sadly, I think that kind of discussion of thinking of an end state as something more than what happens in 2014, but something that goes out much further. We don't see a civilian government that's taking on that task, nor do we see a military group that seems to be doing that. So our first task, I think, as outsiders and friends of Pakistan is to demystify that, to try to deal with the situation with the institutions that we have, the institutions which seem to be, I am sorry to say, at this particular juncture, thinking very short-sightedly, and try to figure out with whom we can work to try to come up with broader, longer-term ideas. One of the things I think we have to pay attention to is also the internal structures in Pakistan to do our homework as well. We have with us the author of an excellent book about the sociology in difficult parts of Pakistan, Haroon Ula, from the policy planning staff at state, who has gone and really looked at those areas where, if the insurgency is more than just a bunch of fighters on the border, if it is something that is a threat to the Pakistani state, that we understand better why it is that in northern Sindh, why it is that in southern Punjab, there is a threat. And indeed, why it is that this timidity of the current government could be explained, perhaps, not just in a question of balance of forces and what's possible, but an enormous fear about a political core, about the core of Punjab and what happens to that core of Punjab, the place where, of course, Nawaz Sharif is the strongest. What happens if there is resolute action taken in the FATA against the powers there? Would that then have a chain reaction in Punjab? Would it not? That's something we need to understand, and it's, of course, something I think the Pakistanis need to be open about, rather than saying, do we simply target groups because they threaten us? Or do we have a more sophisticated notion over time of what would be the results of this kind of action that we have been looking for so much? So the first point that I just wanted to emphasize that I think is absolutely, I hope, is absolutely consistent with the kinds of things that Moyd-Yosef and General Allen have said, is that we need to assess what is possible in the post-2014 period and to try to find with whom we can work so that we don't make, we on the outside, don't make the same mistakes of overburdening institutions, whether it's institutions to whom we give aid for the broader goal of counterinsurgency or our understanding of the military with whom we want to work on the counterterrorism issues, that we're very honest with ourselves about their weakness and try to help them rather than painting them as sometimes has happened as kind of the cause of all the questions as if someone in the ISI or someone in the military, a Pakistani military is a marionette here, pulling all the strings and organizing things. The problem, I think, is not Pakistani bad behavior the problem is Pakistani weakness. The second point I want to make is that I think there is a regional element to this that is the future in Pakistan. I don't have great confidence. You can tell from what I've said that the institutions, say the political parties or the political leadership has a great capacity for reform. Very difficult measures have to be very difficult tasks have to be taken on. And I'm not sure that can happen. But what can happen is that the setting within which Pakistan lives can incrementally change. That when we, from the outside, try to think of how we're going to have an effect, we've fallen into a trap of bilateralism, which people like TZ and Howard Schaefer have written about. This idea of kind of this yo-yo relationship where we always are trying through the institutions of bilateral government to government relations to solve problems when, as we really consider our relationship with China, as we really consider our relationship with Saudi Arabia, as we really consider our relationship with the two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, that we don't limit it simply to there, but also, of course, think about the role that India can play. And so that we look at the future as a broader thing than just what are the policies we can have to deal with Pakistan itself? What are the policies that Pakistan, independent in time and space, can come up with that might change things? And I think especially the ability for us bureaucratically to get past the link of just an AFPAC structure to reintegrate India into our thought. But again, not just doing this because it's contiguous to Pakistan, but because I think we also have to think about Saudi Arabia. If we are really serious about looking at where the money is coming from for a number of the projects that are going on in Pakistan that are changing Pakistan and that are seen by many people to be part of this growth of the alarming mindset that has led to terrorism, I think it's time for us not to have this split in our mind between what other neighbors are doing. And so that the US stands towards the country which should be, I think, a broader one and also looking for different kinds of allies, not necessarily the governmental people we've had in the past. So I think that those two general themes are very important for us. And again, I see them as footnotes to basically what General Allen I'm going to have said, that we have to be honest about Pakistan's weakness and the causes of Pakistan weakness if we and our Pakistani friends are to make any kind of progress to be able to assess where we are so we can have a strategy which seems to be sorely missing for the region. And then secondly, that we're looking at this in the context of a region rather than the only the old tried and not true effort to deal with things government to government country to country. And I'll leave it at that. Thanks, Cameron. Pick up on your themes, I think, hopefully, hopefully nicely. And I want to focus a little bit on the two books that Moid edited having left government just a couple of months ago. Not only have I been able to reclaim myself with my family and sleep but also with literature a little bit and had the opportunity to read these. Now, when you're in the government, when you say you read the book, you do the Washington read. You know what that is, right? You immediately buy a book, you look to the index, see how you're sighted what they say about you. And that's that's having read it or your friends or enemies. That's that's kind of the Washington read. Not that Peter has any enemies. That's right. Well, wait till this talk. But when you're out of the government, you get to read it a little bit more fully. And these are really two great books. And I really want to highlight the Pakistan's counterterrorism challenge that that book, which I think is really a remarkable piece of scholarship and an area and an issue area that needs more scholarship. If you haven't picked it up, I recommend that you do because it's really a very scholarly approach to the CT and militancy problems in Pakistan from a number of very important dimensions. And I think Moid's done a fantastic job of really identifying the right authors for the right chapters and pulling this together as really a coherent volume. And I'd like to compliment Moid for his introductory chapter, which is it's really first rate. Another thing he has I would just add in his introductory chapter is an excellent discussion of the relationship between terrorism and insurgency and counterterrorist policies and counterinsurgency policies. And it's a very intricate set of relationships and I think he captures it pretty masterfully. I wonder if John would agree because John has been basically in the United States is one of our principal architects and engineers and operators of counterterrorism, counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think the other book is treading just to be a little sort of maybe a little critical about this, treading more familiar ground but does a nice job of identifying a pattern of insurgency throughout Southeast Asia. Most of the states in Southeast Asia are remained conflicted with internal insurgencies or Sri Lanka it's largely ended but others are still dealing with the aftermath of insurgency or ongoing insurgencies. And I think that book could have used maybe a few more words about what is it about South Asia that hosts so many internals insurgencies today. And another issue that the book didn't really explore in much detail what is it about the interrelationships between interstate hostilities in South Asia and internal insurgencies because they are interdependent. And so at the end of my remarks I'm gonna speak to those points but let me just go to the CT and coin issues that Moide identified. One thing he didn't go, the authors touch on and Moide's pulled some generalizations in the introduction is what are the causes of terrorism in Pakistan itself. I think this is still an issue that is a bit shrouded in mystery and maybe more importantly controversy and it speaks to one of the biggest findings of the book and something highlighted in this by the other speakers the lack of national consensus in Pakistan as to who poses the threat to the state and society and what state and society should do about that threat. And I think that lack of understanding or that sort of controversy on those issues is rooted in a lack of understanding of the history and the causes and the drivers of terrorism in the country. Personally I think there are three, I would say three parents of terrorism in Pakistan. I don't know if you can have three parents but I guess in this day and age you can have anything. In my view first, terrorism is rooted in militancy and militancy in turn is rooted in separatist and extremist movements which in turn are rooted in reactions to and responses to poor governance and inattention by the state which has persisted over decades. That's a personal view. I think another feature of this not touched on in the book and you rarely see a lot of literature on this. When I was in the government I saw more internal literature on this but extremism, militancy and terrorism often do serve elite interests in many countries. Certainly that's the case in Pakistan and I think that's something that's important to understand. How do elite interests benefit from the perpetuation of the extremist infrastructure or militancy? There is a little bit of writing on this. I would point to Aisha Sidika, an independent Pakistani scholar who has written about the infrastructure of extremism in Punjab and there's some other literature on that. That's very, very interesting. But if you accept that proposition of causation that ultimately this is rooted in governance I think the proposition that Moeid identified correctly that Pakistan believes today that first it needs more sort of military policies to root out extremist organizations or to weaken them or excuse me terrorist organizations and then that will create space for governance. And I would say largely our policies in Afghanistan have exhibited that same kind of logic. We wanted to do in our counterinsurgency strategy that John was working on, and General McChrystal had articulated, I think very impressively, very coherently, recommended a multi-front campaign where you had civilian economic development and military activities as well as regional activities. But in practice it was very hard to implement and I think Pakistan has found that. And unless you can do this together in a coordinated fashion I don't think you're gonna make much progress. It's still gonna be largely a whack-a-mole environment. I think the second driver of the cause of terrorism in Pakistan has been, I don't wanna say it's not been Islam, but it's been the contested role Islam has played in Pakistani society and the changing role of Islam within Pakistan. And I would refer you to Steve Cohen's fine book on the idea of Pakistan, which really documents this historical sort of tension about the role of Islam in the country over many years. And I would also identify that different state, again, different state interests have had incentive to support a more hard-edge militant view of Islam for their own parochial purposes. And I would refer you to the works of Hussain Haqqani, Vali Nasser, who's really done a lot of great work. And as Cameron already mentioned, Haroon Ula who's got a new book, Vine for Allah's Vote, which I think is really an excellent path-breaking book. And by the way, he does have a book launch at Heritage next week, I think on Thursday, so. If I can add that plug for that. The third cause I would see is that terrorism in Pakistan has been, remains, and probably for the foreseeable future, will be rooted in the region's interstate conflicts, particularly with Pakistan's two neighbors, Afghanistan and India. And you have a situation where the Pakistan establishment, and I think we know the organizations that that really constitutes, have cultivated a variety of militant groups for their own offensive, and increasingly, because of lack of capacity, defensive purposes. But we need to acknowledge the United States was in this game in the 1980s. We were aiding and creating the Mujahideen. Pakistan continued this policy through the 1990s against India in Kashmir, but not exclusively in Kashmir. And this has been continued subsequently, although in a much more calibrated fashion. But I think what the feature and Cameron highlighted this with emphasizing the lack of capacity or the weakness of the state, as Pakistan has tried to climb down that ladder of supporting militant groups. It's found itself under a lot of threat by those very militant groups. And that slowed the climbing down the ladder. There was an explicit agreement after 9-11 by the Pakistan establishment with the United States that it would climb down this ladder, but it would take time. But somewhere around the third or fourth rung, basically, I think Pakistan's foot got stuck in the ladder and it's been hard to climb down from there. And there are a number of reasons, this is not the time to go into them, but I would just highlight one, that it's hard for government to change policies in such an about-face manner, even if it comes under considerable external pressure, as Pakistan did after 9-11 by the United States and many other countries. And you have elements of the state infrastructure that had been supporting these groups that continue their support, in many cases, even an outright defiance of their authorities in the army and other organizations. And I would refer you to another deceased Pakistani author, Salim Shazad, who wrote a book, a fine book in 2011 inside Al Qaeda in the Taliban, really documents this pattern. There were five observations that Moid and the other authors make in the book, five generalizations, and I wanna just focus on them and wrap up my talk. And the first was really the most important point, that, and this is how you deal with the situation. First, Pakistan lacks a shared national vision as to who threatens the state and society and what the state and society should do about this. And this creates problems, and we've seen this in government to government interactions. The functionaries, officials in the Pakistan state are often very puzzled as to what they should be do, what they should do to deal with these threats. They don't know often if the state leadership fully supports a more vigorous activity against extremism, militancy and terrorism or not. So there's not clarity inside because there's not a clear articulated vision that's championed by a national leader. And we haven't seen this really at all in Pakistan at least for decades. I think this issue is brought into sharp relief by the killing in 2011 of Salman Tassir and the states vary and the whole society's muted reaction to this terrible murder of this government official. And then even more recently with the attempted murder of Hamid Mir, the geo television personality. And even more recently than that, the steps taken announced just yesterday by the defense minister of Pakistan to close the geo television station for anti-state activities. So I think the government has lost focus of who the enemy is and the population therefore has a very, it's very confused as to what to do about this and who it should support, who it should oppose. And that makes it even harder for government bureaucracies and organizations to take clear stands and effective stands. I think we saw briefly with the SWAT campaign and the efforts of the Taliban to penetrate SWAT that the public responded to that. That was the clearest rallying around. But the government never really got in front of that and championed it and the public consensus sort of fragmented relatively quickly thereafter. And we can see this even today, the still the national debate in Pakistan over the storming of the Red Mosque in 2007, which was a really a threshold event in the state's counter-terrorism activities. And Musharraf is being one of the charges against him is his role in authorizing or authoring that attack. So it's still a very traumatic issue inside Pakistan. Related to this, if you have no shared consensus, it's very difficult for you to have a coherent, coordinated strategy to deal with the problem of terrorism in the country. And we see this here. Each of the state institutions has really differentiated and poorly coordinated guidance and laws and regulations that enable it to act. Perhaps more importantly than that, civil military tensions still confound a coordinated effort to develop a strategy. And you even have within the national security organizations tensions between the police and the military, there is not a clear coordinated sort of harmonious activity against militancy and terrorism. When the military or the army finds militants that it wants to apprehend, it deals with us them separately and does not allow them to go into a state criminal process. And the legal underpinnings of the state criminal process, the whole legal infrastructure is still very weak. And there's an excellent chapter in Moide's book on this. I would even highlight a more sort of more perverse attention that I've observed is that there have been occasions in the past and perhaps continuing even today where one arm of the inter-service intelligence director at ISI, one arm which is sort of involved in keeping contact with militant groups is actually opposing, its actions are actually opposed by another arm of ISI, the counter-terrorism arm, which's job is to basically promote security and contain these groups. And you often have two elements of ISI working at cross purposes involving the same group. So it's very difficult to have a clear impact if you're so conflicted in terms of vision, strategy and even operations. And I would say what you lack in Pakistan is a clear coordinating body to bring this together. In Washington, we're fortunate to have the National Security Council which plays a very active, activist role in coordinating government actions across the board and Pakistan you don't have that even though there are now efforts to kind of create such an institution which are long overdue. And I think here the failure of the National Counter-Terrorism Authority in Pakistan is testimony to this lack of coordination. As was mentioned by Moid, the National Internal Security Policy promulgated in February 2014 offers a hope that this will come together. And I'd highlight Shuja Nawaz and the Atlantic Council are doing some interesting work examining that. And I think their recommendations have listened to by authorities in Pakistan I think could go a long way to helping clarify the authority and implementation of the measures identified in this book. That said, I think we can't neglect the fact that Pakistan has made a lot of progress in recent years. And I'd point to two or three areas where the progress has been most notable. The military has fought the insurgency in western Pakistan to, I would say to a stalemate, but a stalemate where the military has a slight advantage. And it's done this with really dedicated effort. Basically, if a soldier was inducted into the Pakistan Army after 9-11, he's now served three or four or five tours in western Pakistan. The extent to which the Army and the Air Force have refocused their attention to the internal fight against these militants really can't be overemphasized. Also, the ability of Pakistan to integrate new military technology and use this for much more effective, decisive operations against the militants is really very, very impressive. The use of F-16s, including you flying F-16s for counter-militant operations at night, which is a very new feature, they're much more effective. I did say among my colleagues in the Defense Department that Pakistan has gained a surgical strike capability and they all scoffed at me, because the US Air Force has some vision of surgical strike. I would say Pakistan's surgical strike capability, but they do have it, it's kind of like civil war surgery, American civil war surgery. It's better than it was before, it's maybe not up to the standards of the US, but they're moving very quickly in that direction and there's a very dedicated effort, particularly by the Pakistan Air Force and integration with the Pakistan Army that we didn't see two or three years ago. This is a very new phenomenon and it's having a powerful effect. Improvements in the police performance, improvements in the legal framework and infrastructure, these are all very, very important. Let me just wrap up with the final feature that I think it derives the militancy, extremism and insurgency and also makes it very difficult to unravel this, not only in Pakistan, but especially across the border in Afghanistan and even in India and elsewhere. I've already mentioned before the international roots of this with the anti-Soviet Jihad, but I think the other feature to highlight is that in South Asia you still have very sort of, you have incomplete nation-building processes in each of the nations in South Asia, even in India, although that's certainly the most advanced among the other countries in the region. You have still in all the countries in the region relatively weak states and weak state institutions, again, stronger in India, but still pretty weak international standards. You have very fragile or incomplete democracies and pluralistic institutions. And you have in most of these states a primacy of interstate competition over an emphasis on prosperity and peace. It's really the opposite of Southeast Asia, which face similar challenges, maybe even more daunting challenges than South Asia back in the 1960s and the Southeast Asian states agreed to form ASEAN. And the primary reason they agreed to form ASEAN is because they recognized that if interstate competition were allowed to fester and continue, that would attract international powers. It would attract the Cold War competitors in that time to come in and intervene in the region. This is exactly what's happened in South Asia and this will continue happening in South Asia unless the states in the region can prioritize making money and making peace over making tension and making war. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have now about, we started a little bit late, we're gonna go till about 11.45, so about a half an hour, 35 minutes for question and answer. I'm gonna ask the first question, but then we'll open it up to the audience and there's microphones on either side, so just raise your hand and we can get you a microphone. But I guess my first question is to the point that many of you raised was there isn't just a military solution. And I think the importance of the civilian response, the governance issues I think now is well recognized, but what to do about it isn't. I think in the Afghan context, it did become quite clear that governance was a big part of the problem driving the insurgency. And there's lots of effort to do something about it, but ironically, the more money we pumped into the civilian sector to try to fix the governance issues, it created perverse incentives to perhaps keep the governance sector weak because weak and ineffective state institutions often serve the interests of the political elites much more effectively than well run efficient institutions. In Afghanistan, I see some potential hope in the context of new elections and a new government, but also in the context where the political economy is going to be changing radically over the next year, where actually good governance might be or better governance might be the only way to keep international attention and resources engaged. So it could be that that will serve the interests of a new government as it forms in Afghanistan after the elections. But I guess my question is in Pakistan, what would it take to create the incentive structures to try to fix the broken governance institutions? To that one level, they're broken in terms of delivering services to the citizens of Pakistan, but they're not broken in terms of serving the interests of the political elite. They actually work remarkably efficiently and effectively and have for many years in that regard. So I guess what do you think it might take to change that given the recognition that there isn't just a military solution to the problem? Let me just sort of stick to the books as I answer this. One of the things that may not come out as clearly in the books but was a constant debate among the authors, virtually all the policy solutions that you and I and many others have put out, states know of and have tried to implement them. But there is something structural about these states being excessively violent or amidst excessive violence that does not allow those governance sort of improvement measures to go through. So the counterinsurgency book would tell you that once violence reaches a sustained level between the insurgent and the counterinsurgent, even efforts at good governance are actively undermined by the insurgent and most often successfully so. And so where you end up is with this uneasy kind of answer which says, yes, maybe you need violence to come down to a certain level before these can be sort of channeled in. The problem, of course, is what Peter pointed out, that that's the vision. When you go and implement that process, it's much easier said than done. So I don't think we have a clear answer coming out of either of these books except to say that Pakistan has actually gone in and done a number of things that one would want the state of Pakistan to do. The results are not there to see because of this underlying structural problem of can you actually do normal governance when you're amidst such high levels of violence? And the answer I would come to from the books is probably not. If I could just comment briefly on that, I think that one of the things that could happen to not so much cause reform from within, but again, to foster reform from without would be efforts by the international community to liberalize the economic structure of Pakistan. Not so much that we're looking to Pakistani elected officials or bureaucrats to put reforms at play, but it may sound a little bolder, but to actually perhaps challenge the cozy and somewhat rickety and exclusive economic structure that actually helps the so-called feudals stay in power, that if there is to be an opening to India, if there is to be an opening to Western structures and ways of doing things that in the long run and this is a long-term prospect, a constituency could be built that would call for different kinds of rules of governance that would in the long run be able to address some of these questions, rather than looking to the existing institutions to do it, that we build for the future a constituency of people who build different structures. Good, lots of hands. We'll take three questions, first starting here in the front row, and then one in the back row, and then one over here on the left. Thank you. I'm Akbar Khwaja, former senator from Pakistan. First, a note of thanks to USIP for this session and also to me for his two recent books. One comment and one question. There's a general perception in Pakistan the root cause of insurgency, particularly on the Western border, is when Pakistan allied with US in defeating communism and then post 9-1-1 era. I do not agree with Dr. Lewai that Islam also has a role as per the insurgency's concern. You do or you don't agree? I do not. You do not agree? My question to Dr. Allen, General Allen. How do you see the impact on post-Karate or withdrawal of US forces impact on insurgency in Pakistan, and second to Ambassador Monther? Why carry Luger Bill, carry Luger Berman? Bill was not so effective. Thank you. Thank you. In the back, if I could ask, because we're short on time, just please ask one question and keep it relatively brief. Thank you. I served as a tactical instructor and senior advisor to the Marine Corps on counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Being a cross-border Pashtun and having returned very recently, I remember we addressed a question years ago that is still not resolved, and that is the border issue. As long as that border issue is not resolved, we're going to have problems and we're deferring it for generation upon generation. The next very quick comment is something to what the last gentleman who spoke said, in my dealings with the Pakistani army, I've noticed a rift much like the German military during the Second World War. The regular army is a lot like the German Wehrmacht in its relationship to the Gestapo. They're intimidated and afraid of the ISI. They'll never admit it in public, but that is an issue we're going to have to grapple with as well. Thank you. Okay, then we had one over here. Thank you. I would like to thank Ambassador Monther for his kind shout out to me and Howie. I'm Tessie Schaefer from Brookings for our book on Pakistan. But I'd like to somewhat push back against some of what he said about the weakness of the Pakistani state. I agree with the generalization, but think the weakness is actually very uneven. It's a weak state with one strong institution, and that's the military. The military, however, is also weak when it comes to doing what one normally thinks of as civilian governance, so that nobody's actually terribly good at that, although there are pockets of talent in that sphere as well. And as for whom we can work with, the answer for the United States has always wound up being somewhat reluctantly the military, because the can-do attitude and spit and polish and lots of other things have a kind of magnetic attraction for a people that likes to be decisive and active. Let me offer a thought and ask for others' reactions. The question of what you do, I think that there are two ideas that might have promise, and I agree with Ambassador Munter that you need to take a long time perspective here. One is to focus on shoring up governance in the areas where it's not too bad. Most of that happens to be in Punjab, which is not in crisis in the ways that the other provinces are, but maybe that's worth preserving. The other is the conclusion that Moid Yusuf drew, that you need to focus on the police and on the criminal justice system, and maybe that needs to be more of a priority. It's tricky for outsiders to support, but maybe one needs to find ways of making it easier for the Pakistan government to make those long-term and excruciatingly difficult areas a reform priority. Okay, why don't we start with Pete? Peter, do you want to respond to any of those? Sure, I mean, I'm just gonna respond to this question about Islam. Obviously, there's no fault in Islam per se that that goes without saying. It's a very peaceful, beautiful religion. It's the interpretation of action and the recommendation for action in the name of Islam, and that has changed in Pakistani society over the years with a growth or sort of rising influence of a Salafi tradition that hadn't been there in any prominence in the 1940s, and a very noticeable change to a more hard-edge nature of the Dioban tradition, which has been very prominent, and a decline of the Sufi tradition in Pakistan. And you've seen metrics of this change with attacks on more moderate or Sufi clerics, not only in Western Pakistan, but in the whole country. And these have largely been accepted by society, I think largely out of a sense of powerlessness and concern about the own security of society for doing much about this. So this is a change that's taken place over time, and there's been a relatively violent change that's occurred over time. Now, you also have the traditional, you call that militant groups, tribal-based militant groups, or organized criminal groups who have used the name of Islam to motivate and legitimize their quest. You have, who's this, the guy, just to give an example, Munglebog, who is in the Khyber area, one of the leading, you could call him, thugs or militants in the region. This guy was a petty collector of tickets on buses. If you know the bus system in Pakistan, a collector of tickets, he worked his way up to basically take over the bus system and the transport system, and then worked his way to take over the region, and in the name of Islam, as forge alliances to justify his power. So it's the use of Islam to do this, and you've had some arising number of clerics that have partnered with these organizations and accommodated this, and the society has a very difficult time, and the state has an impossible time dealing with this. Of course, this culminated in Red Mosque, and it's still a debate today. Cameron, do you want to respond to Tessie's comments? Just to respond to two questions I heard. One was, why was Kerry Lugar-Burman not effective? And one of the things that we have is that when our government tries to, with very good intentions in a bipartisan manner, to commit itself to what is a very necessary step, it has very limited tools it could use, and USAID, sadly, its bureaucratic focus on short-term results, its over-reliance, in my opinion, on the kind of worrying about burn rate and things of this sort. That is to say, creating a generation of people who are budget experts rather than what I would call the great tradition of American engineers or teachers or others who are actually taking part in that. That A, that AID was, despite the heroic efforts of many members of AID, AID was not the institution that was able to attack or to get results in such areas as energy, education, and health. The other end of the cycle was on the Pakistani side, if you insist, as we did, on trying to empower, that is to build capacity in, say, the educational system, when education under a recent amendment to the Constitution has been devolved to the provincial level, and you're dealing with the education ministry of Balochistan, you're dealing with people, many of whom may be well-meaning, but very few of whom have the competency that that amount of money and that amount of ambition can deal with. And it's not that there is a sense of betrayal or a sense of subterfuge, it's just that I think we did overload institutions both on the American side and on the Pakistani side in the areas where we felt we had the greatest need and where the Pakistanis themselves will tell you today what happened all that money, what happened to these projects. We were unable to get the credit for the things that we actually did do well. On the question of weakness and on the question of the army, you're right, I mean, it's amazing how much cultural affinity one feels when one deals with the senior levels of the army. I remember in the, for example, the flood relief effort that we made, how working with a dedicated people like Nadim, General Nadim who was the head of that effort and the colonels under him. I mean, these are very, very competent people. So I don't, when I say weak, I don't mean to say incompetent or stupid or anything like that. There's huge talent in Pakistan, but poorly organized in most areas. And even in the army, I think that the problem that I see is that the army camp has, even though it has tried in various times to run the country, it's my sense that the army realizes it can't. It's not the institution that can do everything. So I take your point that the army is not incompetent, but the thing is that it doesn't mean that you don't end up with the same weakness, the inability to actually solve the fundamental governance problems despite the enormous talent in Pakistan. Let me just briefly address the issue of the post-2014 relationship and effect on Pakistan. I think we're gonna see more difficulties along the border and in the federally-administered tribal areas than before. And I very strongly associate myself with a comment that was made about the borders being one of the principal difficulties of the future. It's difficult to overstate how much of a setback it was, I think strategically, that the decision that was made in Pakistan after the Salala killing of the 24 Pakistani troops basically cut the relationship with ISAF and in many respects with the Afghan government in many ways. We lost nine months of an opportunity to strengthen border regimes, to train each other's forces, to build on common interests associated with controlling the border, controlling the movement of extremists and terrorists and insurgent elements back and forth across the border. We lost a lot of ground while ISAF still had tens of thousands of forces that I was prepared to put against that. The absence of any dialogue on the eastern side of the frontier really set us back in ways I think historians will find was a bad decision, ultimately. Although I understood why it was made when Pakistan cut the ground line of communications, I think in an effort to starve out the campaign. It just didn't work. In the meantime, we lost all of that ground and we lost all of that opportunity. So I think we are going to see in the post-2014 period, we will see increased communications back and forth across the border by terrorists and insurgents elements, which I think will serve to strengthen the insurgent elements inside Pakistan more so than before. And we dedicated quite a bit of my counterterrorism capabilities to going after the TTP, frankly, that had come to light inside Afghanistan. And we targeted them directly to support the Pakistani military counterinsurgency campaign on the other side of the border to be of assistance to them. And we frequently committed air and surface fires and reconnaissance elements along the border to support the Pakistani military as they sought to deal with the TTP. That's all gonna go. And so the opportunity that we had to get it right has now gone by us. And now the number one objective I would say of the new president that will be inaugurated in Afghanistan is to do all he can to restore both the political sense of trust between the two civilian governments, but to restore as much as possible the military to military relationship, which received basically a one year setback when we could have made some real headway doing other things. Okay, time for three more quick questions. I have them on this. First of all, Dr. D'Sar Chaudhry and then Shujan Nawaz. And then we'll take one in the back, in the very back. I am Dr. D'Sar Chaudhry with Pakistan American League. These especially and exceptionally enlightened panelists have educated us greatly. But one thing was common thread was the present picture looks dismal. And about the future, nobody can draw a picture of the future. And neither anybody is optimistic. I think without the involvement of USA and the international community, we don't see anything better after the drawdown from Afghanistan. And as General Allen mentioned, that he forces even more complicated problems inside Pakistan. So my question is, there's a good possibility that the Taliban on both sides can get united and throw a challenge for both countries. And without the American help, you can't really address this issue. And I think everybody said that Pakistan's problem, a lack of law and order, weak state, midget institutions, lack of political will, intellectual capacities is missing. There's no cushion of intellectual capacity in the political leadership, disconnect between army and the civilian government. Looking at this, one would be worried about the fate and future of the Federation. How and what steps you would specifically advise or recommend to the Pakistani government to really avoid that kind of scenario which look disastrous after the withdrawal of U.S. and Europe's. Thank you. Thank you, Shuja Nawaz. Thank you. Excellent panel and thoroughly enjoyed the comments. Just wanted to pick up on something that Peter raised on Islam and see if we can broaden that and get some reactions from him and more in particular. It's not just a question of the militants using an extreme form of Islam or their interpretation of Islam. Would you agree that there's also a greater resonance of the same ideology in civil society and in political groups as well as in the military which is creating this problem and which may likely exacerbate the situation as it develops, not just referring to some of the work done by Haroon but also Salim Shahzad's book, he talks about the Pirbhai network within the military. These are very dangerous tendencies and the fact that religion has become an integral part of the political structure. Even the ruling party is conflicted about what to do about Islamic groups in south and central Punjab. So it's a much wider ideological resonance that's occurring across Pakistani societies that needs to be understood and tackled. Otherwise it'll be like the frog in the pot of boiling water. Thank you. And the gentleman on the far right in the back. Hi, my name is Nafiz Takkar, from the Vice of America. I'm from Pukhtunhwa province and working here for the last seven, eight years but have always my eyes back on the region. I have one comment on Ambassador Manter's remarks when he says that we have to find to whom we shall work. I personally don't agree with it. It will set the Pakistani institutions in confrontation and on the rest of competition and everybody will be coming out that he or she wants to deal with US. So in that case military will win because the other institutions are weakest compared to the military. And second, General Allen said that he sees more difficulties on the border. Would you please explain it that who will be the destabilizing factors and forces that will bring more difficulties to the bar regions? Thanks. Okay, I think we'll take one last question and then end with our panel. But down here in the front row. Yes, Ben Lehmann, Department of State. Sorry, we were just getting a microphone to you in it. I'm making Emily run. Ben Lehmann, Department of State. We've talked a lot about the events and circumstances leading up to today and the actions that various governments should take in the future. But my question is with respect to actions by the US government. We've got a lot of experts here who have just come out of government. But could you discuss potentially these steps the United States should take in the near term and immediate future to assist the Pakistani government, the Afghan government in tamping down and eventually resolving these insurgencies? Thank you. Ambassador Muncher, why don't you start with you? Just to deal with these two questions quite quickly. The question of with whom should we work? I think it's the key to the answer to yours as well. If we find that a tradition of bilateral focus on government-to-government relations has not been the success that we'd like, I think there are areas without a doggie dog competition for America, for the American government and for other elements of American society to engage with Pakistan. We have a very large philanthropic sector. Pakistan is a very large philanthropic sector, which is not only a religious sector. There are elements in which we can lead with a face that is a positive face of America and have interlocutors who are actually quite competent. Actually, the reason when we talk about that weak state and strong society, these are the part of the strong society. Similarly, institutions of higher learning, something that Pakistan is very much respect and that we have to offer and that those institutions there in Pakistan are stronger than we might think. Another option would be trying to foster business relations, and this is a little trickier, dealing with some of the institutions that represent the traditional economic interests. The traditional business interests in Pakistan can be only reinforcing some of the closed business practices that we want to get past. But if there are ways for the US government to continue to foster the kind of leadership in such things as corporate social responsibility and other elements of what American business means, these are just three elements of what I'd like to say is this is where we can engage. This is where the government can encourage others who show a very strong face from the United States to perhaps engage in the years after 2014 when perhaps we, as TZ Schaefer mentioned, when we might be able to look for something that will take longer, but will have a strategic payoff. Yeah, if I can make two points. One, on Shooja's comment or question on the role of Islam in the region, I think we'll get into the details of Islam in Pakistan and the impact on Pakistan politics. Next week, Haroon can handle that one, he's the expert. But I think there's a more general trend. There's an increase in religiosity throughout the world. It's not unique to Pakistan. And it's clearly rising in India too. And Hinduism is more salient in people's lives in India than it had been in the past. And we'll see how this manifests in the Indian elections that are ongoing. But I think there is a risk going forward if this is not managed. These two sort of growing religiosity could be taken in a competitive way, which really hasn't been that prominent in South Asia in the past. And I think that would totally change the dynamic in the region. And that gets to my other point. The comment that Nisar Chowdhury had made that the problems in Pakistan are daunting. And as you said, Pakistan can address this alone. It requires US help. I would just say that having just left the government, the sense in Washington, and you probably understand this too very clearly, is of a growing kind of desire to disengage from the region. Partly because of our own economic troubles and our budgetary challenges. Partly because there's a feeling of over commitment in the world and a need to kind of retrench and focus on our own issues. And what I've been really impressed by is the sense of the cost of continued engagement in South Asia, in Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere. That's been a prominent theme in government and in Congress in the last couple of years. I think there's not a clear enough attention given inside the government and even outside to the cost of disengagement by the United States from South Asia. And we saw this, if you recall the last chapter of Charlie Wilson's war, where he's saying, okay, we solved that problem, now let's get into democratization and helping people's lives in the region. And they said, Charlie, don't you get it? We won, we're moving on. And I think if we make that the same mistake again, we're probably gonna suffer even worse consequences than we faced after Charlie Wilson's war, 9-11 and so forth. But to, I don't think this is a US problem to solve. You know, with all that said, this is a regional problem that needs to be solved. Unless Afghanistan, as John Allen said, put it so clearly, unless Afghanistan and Pakistan can work together, and unless Pakistan and India can work together and the three of them to work together to deal with the common scourge of terrorism in the region, I don't think we're gonna see much progress. I'll just make a couple of quick points. You know, the absence of a US announcement of what our post-2014 force is gonna look like, I think has caused a lot of problems in the region. Everyone in the absence of the certainty, everyone has started to hedge. And whether it's the farmer in Kandahar, or hedging strategies within the Afghan National Security Forces or in the palace, or in Islamabad or Rawalpindi, in the absence of clarity about what the United States ultimately is going to do in the post-2014 period, and in the absence of a US, a clear US, and by a US and international commitment to Afghanistan's long-term stability, everyone is going to have to plan for that zero option, which is periodically deployed inside this city, and I think it is practically as destabilizing as the Taliban narrative. So we've got to give people clarity with respect to our long-term commitment to Afghanistan and through Afghanistan to the region. Peter's point was a very good one, and we used it as one of the bases for our recommendations ultimately for how our commitment should look, was that we learned three things from the post-Soviet period, the immediate post-Soviet period in the context of helping us to understand where we needed to be in the post-2014 period. And that was that the post-Soviet Afghan military was actually a pretty good military. It was well supported with advisors, it was well resourced, and for some period of time, it was relatively successful against the Mujahideen after the Soviet withdrawal. As the Soviet Union began to come apart, the first thing we saw depart was the advisors, and they still continued relatively well so long as they were resourced. And then when the resources dried up, what happened was the military fragmented along ethnic and tribal lines and ultimately collapsed. And then the third problem was what Peter talked about, and that was we left the region. So our presence, the absence of our US and Western presence in the region, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Afghan military created ultimately the civil war, and from that I think a whole sequence of events that has us still in Afghanistan today. So the first thing is the absence of clarity, I think, by the United States and the West has created some hedging strategies which are going to be difficult to walk back from. With respect to the military, to military there was an organization that still exists called the Trilateral Commission, and I would sit down at the table in General Kayani's office or in one of my areas, and General Kayani and I and Karimi, the cha chief of defense of the Afghan military would sit at the table. In the very first meeting we had, I said I want to talk myself out of business. I want to create over the next couple of years a relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan that is so strong at a military to military level, at a security level, where we can solve many of the problems by creating habits and tendencies and willingness to cooperate along the border and ultimately both sides getting after the insurgency and terrorist problem that with the ISAF forces drawing down to some unknown number in the future, you're going to be able to do it yourselves. And again, then we had the salala problem and we lost a better part of a year and we haven't regained the traction that has come ultimately from that. And then of course, Afghanistan created one of the very first bilateral security agreements it had was with India. And that I think created not a small amount of alarm in Rawalapindi and the Pakistani desire and offer frankly to train and educate Afghan officers, and senior non-commissioned officers in Pakistani schools was largely and roundly rejected because of in favor potentially of an Indian influence in that regard. And that has just further exacerbated the tensions associated with bringing the two armies together. So they can cooperate along that border and ultimately get after the freely communicating insurgency organizations that are moving back and forth across the border. And my concern, the question was what's along the border that's a problem? I think what's along the border that will become a growing problem for both countries is going to be the TTP. The TTP has already put down roots in Neurostand and in Kunar and in many respects was contained in that regard but I think as the West continues it's drawdown of forces. I think the TTP is going to become a broader problem than simply a Pakistani problem. I think it's going to be a broader problem. So I'll stop there. Thanks. If we're going to end on this I'll just make four quick points based on the discussion. First, before that just to answer the question I completely agree with you. I think that is really the problem. The problem is not only the manifest violence but that this is now a prevalent kind of tendency to look at these things with a lot of ambivalence rather than clarity. So I think that's true. The points I'll make is one, I think if the two volumes combine really the tension that they deal with is use of violence versus non-violence in terms of tackling insurgencies and this constant tension that South Asian states have gone through on how to sequence them, how to use them simultaneously against which group when. I can say there is one answer that fits here but what I can say is that there's a troubling lesson that most or all of the South Asian states we've looked at have drawn which is that non-violence only works after you've used a very large amount of violence against the insurgent. The only problem is that most often even that doesn't deliver but they still want to keep trying their hand on that. And I think Sri Lanka has been a very unfortunate case in that sense because the lesson drawn there is look, it worked and we deal with this in the book to argue and Peter I would slightly disagree that the game is over in Sri Lanka. I'm not entirely sure. The second point you want to take away and I think that goes to the discussion we've had here. If outsiders are looking at these countries beset with insurgencies with a short-term tactical lens the game is lost. Virtually every single short-term move that was made by outsiders or by the states themselves against insurgents actually made the insurgents stronger. And there's no real evidence that I see where civilian development assistance helps lower levels of violence. It helps develop countries. There's no real correlation that I see here which many people try to draw between things like Kerri Lugel and otherwise. I think that the goal is wrong. If that's the goal then that assistance may not deliver. Finally on this sort of post 2014 and US Pakistan, I completely agree with the panelists. I think the cost of disengagement far outweigh the cost of, I've said it the opposite way. Anyways, we shouldn't disengage unless otherwise the costs are much higher. What I would point out though that I think for Pakistan and the US the number one challenge is to make countries they have made look terrible. Look not as bad anymore. Because if you gotta keep supporting Pakistan it's gonna be a very difficult sell for no matter who's running the show. To say this is the country that's the reason why we didn't do what we were supposed to do or as well in the region. But now it's essential to keep supporting this because actually they're not that bad. You've got to start changing the narrative. In Pakistan, the narrative about the US is paradoxical. It's counterproductive. This is the Satan of the world. And yet, well we actually need them very much. And I would argue both Islamabad and Washington have been fairly unfair in projecting the view of the other side over the last 10 years. And I think the biggest challenge is gonna be starting to reverse that as we go forward if this relationship is to continue because the levels of anti-Americanism in Pakistan I think are unsustainable for a positive relationship. And here too there are not many friends you find for Pakistan, especially in the places that matter most. Thank you very much. To everyone thank you for coming. I'd really like to thank our panelists for taking time out of their busy schedules to join us today on this very important topic. I think it was a rich discussion. We could have gone on much longer but thanks for coming again. And a final word of thanks to Mouid and our USIP team who took the lead in organizing today's events. So thanks and come again.