 Good morning, thank you for coming to the New America Foundation. I'm Peter Bergen, the Director of National Security Studies here. We're thrilled to announce the publication of our joint paper with the National Defense University on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship. We had a really interesting almost year process, putting it together with a top really experienced group of Pakistanis and Americans, well-versed in Pakistan. We're publishing it today and there are copies available. It's also on our website. We're waiting for one of our team, but we are going to proceed. Mohsin Khan is running late. Just to introduce everybody on the panel, Mike Mazar was the lead pan on the project. Mike was a wonderful colleague to work with. A brilliant guy with a very distinguished career. A professor at the National Security Strategy at the U.S. National War College. A young professor at Georgetown. A long-time worker at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He ran the Stimson Center for many years. A legislative assistant to Congressman Dave McCurdy, among many other things. We also have Ambassador Tukair Husan, who was a very valued part of our conversations. An adjunct professor at Georgetown. Also Pakistan's ambassador to Brazil, Spain and Japan. To his left, Colonel Tom Lynch. Colonel Lynch has had a 28-year career in the U.S. military, holding all sorts of distinguished positions, including special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, military special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. Now a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University. So the way that we're going to proceed is Mike Mazar is going to basically lay out over the course of about 10 minutes the main points in the report. I'll follow him, then Colonel Lynch, then Ambassador Hussein, eventually Mohsin Khan. Mike. Thank you very much. Can everybody hear me? Is the mic on? Not yet? There we go. Would you like the podium? Okay, I guess I'll just come up there. Well, good morning and thank you all for coming today. We're very grateful that you've shared some of your morning with us. I want to start with a couple of thanks. First of all, it's been an honor to work with the New America Foundation on this project, and Peter has been an absolutely ideal collaborator. It's been a great pleasure working with him. I want to thank Andrew Leibovich, who's moving around this morning. He's outside right now, but he has been a steadfast supporter of our work from the beginning. I want to thank Alexia Diarco, who's here today, who's provided critical research support for the project as we got underway. And, of course, I want to thank the study group members for their generous donations of time and expertise as we work through all these very challenging issues. I need to reinforce one disclaimer that appears at the bottom of the first page of the report, and that says basically that this report reflects the opinions of study group members. It is not in any way an official U.S., it doesn't have U.S. official government sanction. It's not an institutional position of the National War College. We co-sponsored the project, but the views expressed here are strictly those of the individuals involved. And Peter and I also need to say that our study group members do reserve the right to differ with a point or two in the report. Ambassador Bill Milam, for example, who couldn't be here today, wishes to emphasize the importance of short-term steps, those components of the report. Others may differ with a particular recommendation or emphasis, but they all concur on the thrust of the report and our set of major recommendations. Now, the report is based on the basic insight that Pakistan and Pakistani-American relations, as is well known to this group, face perhaps their most urgent crises of recent memory. In Pakistan, this is a result of an interlocking series of issues, economic, social, political, military, and in the case of the relationship, obviously, you're all familiar with the events of the last several months that have put it under possibly the greatest strain in its history. And so in this study, we came together to examine these issues and think about productive ways forward. We started with a primary focus on the challenges within Pakistan and Pakistan's future. And during the months as we worked, the crisis of U.S.-Pakistan relations became such that our emphasis on that issue grew even from when we began. Now, in the context of other recent studies, we thought there was room for another effort that had as its focus priorities. What issues we tried to assess were the most important, what policy steps would be most catalytic in bringing positive change both to the situation within Pakistan and to the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Our goal from the beginning, therefore, was obvious, was to develop an agenda to underwrite a strong economically advancing Pakistan and a healthy U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Now, the conventional wisdom today appears to hold little hope in either of those areas, and we recognize very well that we are coming forward with these recommendations at a very difficult time. Widespread opinion in the United States and Pakistan sees little hope for transcending some of the barriers within Pakistan to the kind of reforms that are needed and that we call for. And at the same time, many on both sides believe that diverging perspectives in the bilateral relationship make a productive tie almost impossible, at least in the near term. Both views would seem to suggest that this is not the time for new initiatives, bold initiatives, broad agendas. We have a different view. After six months of meetings, discussions, analysis, looking at the problems involved, we came to the conclusion that the articulation and pursuit of a fairly wide-ranging vision brought to life with a very focused, prioritized set of initiatives on each side is both desirable and necessary for Pakistan and the United States. And we agreed in particular on the need to find new ways of attacking long-standing problems. The idea that a lot of the existing patterns and habits are not having the effects that we want and in some cases are unsustainable as now in place. Now, we understand that even a prioritized set of recommendations can't be implemented all at once. We can't pursue the vision all at the same time, particularly in the current environment. So we have highlighted, even from our prioritized list, which I'll summarize in a moment, a subset of near-term actions that could represent the first step in the direction of this larger vision, this larger agenda. Now, that vision, to put it simply, is for a collaborative agenda for Pakistan to take its place as a major power in a modernizing South Asia. Now, in one sense, that's a very broad statement, but it has very specific implications in the way that we conceived of it and laid it out. It's designed to be a 21st-century agenda built on growth, trade, entrepreneurship, investment, popular involvement in democratic government. As we put it in the report, it's a vision of an advancing influential Pakistan, standing at a vibrant crossroads of trade, diplomacy, and geopolitics at a time when the human capacities, natural resources, and mineral wealth of South Asia are destined to become increasingly important. What we're partly arguing for is a changed perspective, from military and counter-terrorist to economic, social, and political, from trade to aid, from government to government, and even part of government to part of government, to society to society. The report makes the case for this approach as why it's important and necessary. I'll lay out three quick reasons at the beginning. First, we thought that it was time to move past a focus on the symptoms of problems to their causes, and some of the existing mindsets and habits have us focused more on the symptoms than the underlying causes. And we thought that an agenda built on economic and political progress was the best way to do that. Second, we are painfully aware of the barriers to reform within Pakistan and the kind of changes that we are proposing. And we thought one possible way of accelerating progress was to tie specific initiatives to a larger agenda, a larger vision for the state and nation of Pakistan. And third and finally, Pakistani-American relations have been characterized by wild swings and sometime U.S. disengagement, as we're all very familiar with. And we thought that an agenda like this would provide the opportunity for a persistent engagement, persistent partnership with the United States. Now, just as important as that broad agenda are the specific initiatives we propose, and they're basically in two categories. One set designed to address the issues within Pakistan and one set aimed at the relationship. In Pakistan's domestic efforts, we highlight three areas. First of all, undertake a limited number of priority economic reforms. Second, adopt a growth strategy to create environment conducive to trade investment innovation. And third, take steps to institutionalize civilian rule and effective governance. Now, in one sense, those are kind of statements of the obvious and they're not new, but our emphasis on prioritization is in evidence even there. In our appendix, for example, we talk about issues like education, militancy, transparency, and those are critical steps to get the progress that we need. But our argument was that these three areas were the places to start on the road to our long-term vision. In terms of initiatives for the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, we focused on four areas. First, shift from a relationship built around a few institutions on each side, leading the relationship to efforts to engage Pakistan at all levels. Second, move from aid to trade as the core of the economic relationship. Third, on security issues, develop a more transparent joint publicly defensible strategy to achieve our combined goals. And fourth, commit the United States to even more active efforts to facilitate bilateral progress between India and Pakistan, recognizing the limits of U.S. influence on an issue that is ultimately bilateral. Now, we outline a fairly compact set of 17 recommendations. Some other arguments that have come out have sort of dozens and dozens of ways of approaching the problem. We tried to boil it down as much as we could. And we have this list of 17 that are in the report, but I'll give you a few examples. Steps to enhance the investment climate in Pakistan based on specific recommendations from Pakistani and international business groups. Tax reform within Pakistan to achieve linked goals, particularly enhanced revenue for government activities. Strengthened mechanisms for policy coordination and implementation within the Pakistani government. Steps to promote expanded regional trade, particularly between India and Pakistan. Expanded support for the institutional capacities of key nodes of civilian governance in Pakistan, especially at the provincial level in the context of the devolution process. A five-year tariff holiday for Pakistani products entering the United States in efforts to develop a more joint-shared, open counterterrorism program. Now, as this audience is well aware, none of these ideas are new. Some of them have been in the policy debate for years. In some cases, one or both governments has tried to make some efforts on individual ones. In other cases, such as India-Pakistan trade, there are active discussions going on even now. But the fact that these initiatives are well known does not make them any less important. The fact that progress has been uneven in the past doesn't undermine the case for a new vision today at this crucial time. And that, in a way, is our most pressing message. That this is not a time to wait on events or to expect the natural momentum of events in Pakistan or the U.S.-Pakistani relations to take us where we want to go. They will not. As challenging as this moment is, as easy it is to write off the potential for progress on these issues because of past difficulties, we think that there is a definite need and potential for a new initiative to lay the groundwork for progress in both of these areas. And we think that there are specific initiatives available to each government under the rubric of a broader vision that could begin to turn around these situations both within Pakistan and in the relationship, and we think the time to begin is now. So with that short summary of the report, I will turn the podium over to Peter and then we'll hear from our panelists briefly and then we'll have questions. Thank you. And Mohsin Khan has joined us, one of Pakistan's most distinguished economists, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He was also the director of the Middle East and Central Asia Departments at the IMF and he was absolutely vital to our discussions, particularly as it relates to Pakistan's economic problems, which of course are very parlous. I wanted to talk, amplify a little bit about some of the, what we put in the report about actual practical steps, about a more transparent counterterrorism program, what that might look like in Pakistan. As everybody in the audience knows, the issue of drones and is one of the main irritants in the relationship, particularly General Qiyani, reacted very negatively, particularly to the drone strike that followed Raymond Davis. He made a very, Raymond Davis's release. He made a very rare public and a statement of anger about the drone strikes and New America Foundation maintains a fairly authoritative and we believe database of the drone strikes last year. There were 118 drone strikes. Now not every one of those was clearly absolutely necessary and by our calculations, the victims of the drone strikes are contrary to common impressions in Pakistan. Very few of them are actually civilians but we calculate 5% U.S. government, you know, at least in anonymous briefings says the actual number is sort of near 0%. Whether it's 5% or 0%, the point is the civilian casualty rate is very low but also the leadership, the number of leaders who are being killed in these drone strikes is also very low so we calculate about 2%. Most of the victims are lower level militants. One way for the drones to perhaps become more popular or less unpopular in Pakistan is for the Pakistani government to be seen to be taking more ownership of the drone strikes. We conducted the first independent opinion poll in the federal and minister of tribal regions asking sensitive political questions with a organization called CAMP and in North Waziristan where 90% of the drone strikes are happening, only 10% of the population has a favorable view of these strikes. But if the strikes were somehow seen to be that the Pakistani military was more involved, people would be evenly split on the question of these strikes. So the real issue in Pakistan about the drone strikes is the seeming infringement of their national sovereignty. This is what angers ordinary Pakistanis. So a more transparent program would be one in which the Pakistani government as a quid pro quo for more involvement in this program would be that they would have to take more public ownership for the program. I mean right now they've had their cake and eating it too. We know from WikiLeaks that of course privately they support these drone strikes and publicly have criticized them. But one of the points, one of the things we advocate in the report is that both governments should be able to defend in the public sphere the drone strikes, for instance the victims of the drone strikes, who they are, how they threaten both Pakistanis and Americans. I mean take Ateer Rakhman, the number two in Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is responsible for probably hundreds and hundreds of deaths in Pakistan over the last 10 years. And of course it threatens American security. The fact that he's killed on August 22nd is something that operates in both nations' interests. And so if there was more public defense of this program, I think it would be less unpopular in Pakistan. After all, this is the worst kept secret in history. The plausible deniability of this program is long gone when large hunks of metal fall out of the sky and people blow up. These are very public events. And so really secrecy is in service of policy. It shouldn't be the other way around. And at this point the secrecy around this program is actually counterproductive because in Pakistan most people believe that most of the victims are civilians. And if we could have a more transparent program that demonstrates in fact that that's not the case, that would also help with some of the unpopularity of the program in Pakistan. So now that Mohsin Khan is here, I'm not going to... Hello? Yeah, okay. I'm going to hand it over to Mohsin Navadis here. We can talk about some of the economic issues. We'll go Mohsin Khan, Ambassador to Care and Colonel Lynch. The report basically sort of focuses on what I think are probably the three most important economic issues in Pakistan. The Pakistan economy as probably all of you know is sort of limping along with sort of very mediocre growth rate even by... not just by standards of countries in the region but even by Pakistan's own standards. You've got a growth rate of between two and three percent. You've got an inflation rate which is in double digits and you've got a situation where manufacturing is really being hit hard. And this... to turn around the economy in my mind would require at least three important policy moves. And the report does cover all three. First of all, you have to get a control of the fiscal situation in Pakistan which is basically draining the resources in the economy. The fiscal situation is such that you've got large-scale government expenditures, large deficits, and then these deficits tend to be financed by borrowing from the central bank which is akin to printing money. And that's sort of pumping liquidity into the system and keeping inflation high. So the fiscal situation has to be brought under control and it's very easy and most people would say, well, get your fiscal house in order, raise tax revenues. Pakistan is one of the most under-taxed countries in the world. Raise taxes, cut expenditures, and get your fiscal house in order. Well, I mean that's easy to say and it's been extremely difficult to implement. And the Pakistani government has struggled with this for a long time. So the report does come out with some very specific measures, not just a general sort of statement that, you know, you should raise revenues. But how do you do it? What kind of taxes should you put in? What kind of spending should you be engaged in? So that's one area. The second area is, of course, energy shortages. Energy shortages are really hitting the country hard. You've got load shedding of now reaching at this point in the summer of 12 hours a day, which means, of course, the average Pakistani that has electricity suffers a lot, yes. But from an economic point of view, the hit on manufacturing is very hard. So you have a situation right now in Pakistan where a lot of the manufacturing industry is operating at 50% capacity simply because they don't have electricity. And that really is a major issue that has to be tackled in Pakistan. The third, I think this is a point that was mentioned by Mike and Peter. I think, to me, one of the key things from an economic standpoint, not just from a political and geopolitical standpoint, is for some kind of agreement between India and Pakistan has to happen and in the economic side through trade. And that is sort of an area that the report highlights. It's absolutely essential that, you know, trade between India and Pakistan is approximately $2 billion a year. Trade between India and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is about a quarter of the size of Pakistan. Between India and Sri Lanka is twice that. So trade can be a very important mechanism whereby you can get not only economic development in Pakistan, but you can also get wider sort of benefits between India and Pakistan from this. And I think that that is an area that I think is very important. One of the things that I think is crucial, and I myself right now am involved in a major project on India-Pakistan trade. One of the biggest constraints, there's a lot of constraints and the report points them out and says, you know, there are other sort of things that can be done in the short run. But one of the important constraints or major constraints has always been the view of the army in Pakistan. And it's sort of India-centric kind of view. And there's been this assumption that the army is opposed to any improvement in trade relations between India and Pakistan. And that sort of made politicians and others much more reticent. Hasn't made me reticent, but in pushing this idea, but has made a lot of politicians very reluctant, even though they see the benefits of it. They see very great benefits of Pakistan. Some benefits are India, but less, but greater benefits of Pakistan. The army has, in fact, very interesting. Things are moving, as Mike mentioned. Things are moving right now. Next week, for example, this is not a secret, but next week, prior to the meeting of the ministers of commerce, the trade ministers in Pakistan and India, they're meeting this month, later this month. But prior to that meeting, the general headquarters in Rawalpindi has asked for a briefing from economists and business sector people on this particular issue and sent out a message that they have an open mind. The generals have an open mind on this issue and want to be convinced or persuaded that this is a good idea. It's an opening. Whether it's going to pan out or not, we'll have to see. But it's an opening, and I think things are moving along that way. So from that point of view, the report is very timely in pushing this idea. And I think, if I can just add one thing to that, I think the United States is very interested in it. The policy makers are very interested in this idea, as are the UK government also. And they are pushing the idea along that maybe you can't solve all the big problems between India and Pakistan, Kashmir, Indus waters, et cetera, just like that. And maybe there are small steps that one can take in order to improve relations and trade between the two countries is one way of doing it. Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador Hussein. I will say just a few words about the US-Pakistan relations as both Peter and Mike have already underlined. The report has tried to be very balanced and, more importantly, highlighted the central fact that given the critical and long-term challenges that the two countries face, which neither can solve alone by themselves, they cannot afford to have an adversarial relationship. They must search for ways to build a strategic relationship and a strategic partnership. The report has pointed to some of the ways to do that. And in doing so, it has, in my view, been much more innovative and bold compared with similar reports that have come out of Washington from time to time. Is the task of lifting the relationship between the US and Pakistan going to be easy? No. And the report doesn't make any pretensions about that. First and foremost, you cannot treat the relationship in isolation from what has been going on within Pakistan, especially in the last 10 years since the US re-engaged. There is a correlation between the two. One is impacting on the other, but that's not the only issue. There are other linkages, and let me explain. Time was that the United States-Pakistan relationship used to exist largely, not exclusively, but largely at the government-to-government level, with only a peripheral interest by the media and public. The United States wanted something out of Pakistan. It got some, but did not get all. Pakistan wanted something out of the United States. It got some, did not get all. From time to time, there were tensions and differences, but they were handed in a normal give-and-take as in a traditional diplomacy. Of course, public did not always like the bargain, but so it showed its resentment. In Pakistan, this resentment led to the slow emergence of anti-Americanism, and in the United States, it manifested itself in periodic aid cut-offs by the Congress. Both sides have learned to be nice to each other and to be unfriendly to each other. And I'm afraid the tradition continues. But that's not all. The relationship is now, and that is where I want to make some very important points, and forgive me if I'm going to be politically incorrect in doing so. The relationship is now caught up in forces and trends some local, some global, whose magnitude is not susceptible to solution by traditional methods. That the report has acknowledged that. And the report has hinted at the desirability of finding new ways of dealing with these challenges. Challenges that are domestic as well as external in both countries. First of all, both countries are facing issues which are directly affecting public at large. That was not so in the past. On both sides, what are the issues? The threat of security, the threat of terrorism, wars, there were going on. Debt and deficit, religious sensitivities, nationalism. So the relationship has entered the public domain on both sides by media and the information revolution. There's something completely new in their present current phase of relationship. And if you look at the global forces that have been generated in the last few years, nationalism is affecting many, many developing countries. That's a very strong force. It's very strong in China also. So I think that is affecting their foreign policy outlook. So the relationship is no longer driven by the governments alone. And there are other complications. Given the nature of cooperation, the intelligence agencies on both sides have become big players. That's the nature of the current cooperation. And the intelligence agencies, as we all know, can be ruthless and self-centered. They have their own culture. And for the media, all that is going on in the relationship is stuff, dreams are made of. Pakistan has become an unending breaking story. That's complicating the relationship. And we have got to recognize these things that adds to the complications. So here is a central issue. Let me wind up. You have so many transactions going on in the relationship every day. It does not make up for a strategic relationship. And that's what we need. We need a strategic partnership, long-term commonality of interest and recognition of need for cooperation. But we are bogged down in daily transactions which are also unavoidable. So that is the central dilemma. So there is a war going on. In fact, two wars are going on. Afghanistan and the war against al-Qaeda. That brings your focus so much to what is immediate and urgent. And both are creating public anxieties here in the United States and also they are linked to the electoral calendar here. So politics is also impacting on them. So the United States' position on how to handle these wars has become very one-sided because there are very strong domestic pressures here and uncompromising, which is creating tension with Pakistan. Because Pakistan is also facing the rough end of these issues. Pakistan is facing crises too because of these issues. And Pakistan is in fact caught up in its own wars. Some, it is fighting for itself, partly because of its own past mistakes. And some, it is fighting on behalf of Washington. How to sort of have a coherent and strategic landscape of that. And then you have in Pakistan questions of relationship with India, civil-military relationships, you have drone attacks, you have nationalism, you have anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism has virtually entered the body politic of Pakistan. You have to understand that. It's not just we sometimes trivialize it and dismiss it as something which is being incited by the Pakistan army. It's not so. You go to Pakistan and talk to intelligent, well-read, educated people who want Pakistan to become democratic, liberal and progressive and economically prosperous but we also anti-Americanism. They have an argument to make. So you can't dismiss this anti-Americanism that's going on. So it's a very difficult context in which the relationship is being played out. And we sometimes trivialize it by just defining it in one or two single issues. I mean, Haqqani group, Haqqani group, Haqqani group. Issues are much larger. I'm not saying Haqqani group issue is not important but issues are much larger. Neither Afghanistan can be defined or Taliban can be defined only in terms of Haqqani group nor the relationship between US Pakistan can be defined only in terms of Haqqani group. So it's not that either side is being underhand or dishonest. We keep talking about trust deficit or all that. They are very important critical national interests involved on both sides and that is where the challenge is for the two governments. So how do we take the relationship to the strategic level from the transactional? These are the challenges hinted at in the report and I think in doing so what we have done especially Peter, Mike and their collaborators who worked very hard on this report. We were only bit players that they have produced essentially a very strategic report not a transactional report. Thank you. Thank you Ambassador Hussein. Thank you for your help on thinking through the issues. Next we'll hear from Colonel Tom Lynch who has thought about Pakistan very hard over the last decade and just recently returned from a trip to Pakistan and was also a really vital editor and helper on this creating this report. Thank you so much Peter and thank you all for being here today. Let me add my thanks to Mike and Peter for being tremendous facilitators of a process that as you'll see when you look at the back of the report involved a lot of shall we say not limited in opinion personalities but all with all due respect if I could that brought different perspectives different frames of the lens to bear both on the internal challenges within Pakistan and the challenges to the US-Pakistani relationship and I think the strength in this report in addition to having brought together that variety of opinions is also the essence of how it's focused on a limited agenda of outcomes that are not all about the short term but are rather about the mid to the long term and if I could here's where I'll focus my comments on a perspective in talking about time now and where to go time now and as this evolved over the last year as Mike indicated in his warm-ups as I convened late last fall and early winter the discussion was how to figure a way to be discussing things more strategically in terms of the US-Pakistani relationship at a moment where we were starting to perceive a fraying in the ability of the two sides to talk or discuss things mid to long term of course subsequent to that we've now gotten to a point that I would argue to you is really all about short term transactional activities indeed in my last trip to Pakistan I have to count on two hands the number of people who mentioned to me that they were distressed Pakistanis as well as US officials that it seemed that since May 2 the relationship between America and Pakistan had all devolved down to a very short one page list of asks in terms of you must do this or you must do that and indeed I would argue to you that here's we sit at September 1 we are at a precipitous moment at a point like this to get looked at seriously and soberly for I think one can make the argument successfully that we have since May 11 been in a moment where counter-terrorism and the continuation of a counter-terrorism strategy has come to dominate a relationship that has a multifaceted nature and has a nature that's all encompassing along the dimensions of what this report discusses economic, political and social dimensions maybe one could argue in the aftermath of Bin Laden raid and the tensions that were involved might have precipitated or allowed for a couple of months of a cooling off period but as we now come post Ramadan and indeed let me offer Eid greetings, Eid Mubarak for those of you who are coming out of Ramadan and as we enter a five month period after the death of Bin Laden I think this report highlights the need for a sober reassessment of how to work on a more multifaceted process and indeed as Ambassador Hussain mentions the challenge is to think about the Pakistan-U.S. relationship in strategic terms and as one who worked for several years to try to set the structure in place for what became the strategic dialogue between the U.S. and Pakistan a dialogue that is now badly frayed let me offer and I think the group agreed to disagree on this a little bit that it may be very hard to actually put together a true strategic relationship but as the report calls for as a compromise in there it may instead be possible to put together those points of common interest that really do require engagement and do require a mid to long term view between a country of the U.S.'s global reach and stature and a country of 180 million people with at least 100 nuclear weapons poised on the edge of conflict with a neighbor of 1.2 billion people where the United States has increasing economic interests and activities and that is intensely involved in activities that will make or break us largely in terms of how we reset Afghanistan in a manner that's both affordable and that's also leading towards longer term stability. So it's in that context I would like to take a couple moments to highlight and point to some of the recommendations on page 6 to 8 about that relationship and I'll argue for you why I think they are important ones and ones that deserve a lot of attention right now in the context of government and policy makers in this town rethinking how to approach in a post Ramadan environment Pakistan because indeed most of the initiative requirements now are on our side in moving this relationship forward. First the notion of trying to set a wider frame of reference for the relationship and trying to anchor the relationship around common goals is I think a compelling requirement and here the aperture needs to be much wider than just our counterterrorism objectives and indeed one could reframe that I think and say right now that one looks at the menu of say hardcore al Qaeda core leaders that remain or we fear remain in Pakistan and balance that number maybe with the exception of Zawa Heery against the other significant issues that Pakistan is facing right now and they could lead to crisis moments perhaps even involving nuclear weapons between it and India or between it and other partners I think one has to ask whether the risk reward calculus has changed now and it's too risky to not engage in a broader number of processes and take a more magnanimous view towards Pakistan now that we've made our point about them not perhaps focusing hard enough on finding bin Laden for all these years and I think in that context the recommendation is important. Second the notion of shifting from international support being aid based to trade based I mean here the Pakistanis have been asking arguing for this for a long time it's been proper to highlight that the Pakistanis perhaps haven't been making good faith efforts to deal with their neighbors in that context and indeed we can all point I think to things that last couple of years haven't gone well there but as Mohsen has mentioned we do see Pakistan now taking steps especially with India small but concrete steps that indicate it in and of itself and indeed the army as well and I would agree with you on that prospect in terms of talking to some army representatives when I was in Pakistan. Pakistani leaders to include the army realize they are in dire economic straits for those of you that haven't seen the Pakistani balance sheet recently I have and it's stark. It's stark the amount of aid both bilateral and international the Pakistanis have drawn upon in the last six or seven years it has come with interest free contingencies that all begin to kick in again in 2013 and so if you think things are bad in Pakistan right now you need to put yourself in the shoes of the leadership over there that recognizes that come 2013 if it's not got major aid restructuring major additional assistance or other things it is going to be in the significantly dire straits and right now it's got no other partner to help it out significantly enough internationally without being involved with the U.S. so in that is opportunity but not necessarily leverage and so the sub points here about improving access for Pakistani goods to U.S. markets and to promote greater foreign direct investment I think all relate around this notion of trying to encourage Pakistan to do more in and of itself in its region and us being facilitators of that and there I think we can all get behind a program that would be modest in scope but very powerful impact next focusing on institutions that are a wider base than say just the national or some regional institutions and with a focus on all level of Pakistan I think here one can make the argument and many of us in the group had this discussion that the last couple years of highlighted for us that putting all one's eggs in the basket of direct dealing with the Pakistan military or in the basket of just dealing with the senior leadership at the governmental level is fools there are limitations and there are restrictions of some self imposed but some just historic in nature that that limit the amount of both transparency and effectiveness one can have at that level for engagement if there's this very rich vein of engagement at a more social level indeed at more local and regional levels and districts not just in terms of aid projects but also in terms of very humble things like facilitating educational projects or trying to have more public discussions about events activities and happenings and my sensing in Pakistan is there's a great thirst for this at the lower level and if one's going to deal in a longer term process of getting beyond what the ambassador correctly notes is a deep seated anti-U.S. policy resentment I think we have to open the aperture wider and say that that's only going to happen if we facilitate more people to people or more social types of interactions and contacts it's not going to happen just by doing better or throwing more money at the central government or at certain programs at that level so I think that is the appeal that you see here in this part of the report that I certainly endorse and I think most of the panelists do as well people to people programs and getting over some of these issues like congested visa processes that make it very difficult to do those programs next this notion of having an end to secret relationship agenda items and I think here is another broad premise that should start to permeate our relationship and can be a underpinning of everything we do going forward on a wider more multifaceted range and that is transparency and here I think Peter highlighted one of the most opaque and difficult areas which is you know the drone strike program which is a horribly kept secret not only worldwide but also in Pakistan and as Peter has noted and my on the ground you know time there recently really does highlight this and I stand in front of you or sit in front of you in a true confessional sense as one who is really believed the drone strikes have been an important component of our international terrorist feature and was a strong advocate of this while I was still in uniform and advising my old boss Admiral Mullen and all others in the interagency I come back from my July trip in believing that the risk-reward ratio there has changed dramatically okay the drone strikes have now become the face of American hubris, American overreach and American disdain policy disdain not personal disdain but policy disdain for all Muslims but particularly Pakistanis and therein I think the caution about trying to find some way whether it be you know declaring short-term victory now that we have killed off Rahman or something else and stepping back for a short period of time conditioning that perhaps on the Pakistanis finding Zawa Hiri and we can have this discussion in Q&A someone who I would argue is probably the last significant remaining figure in Pakistan for the global jihad aspiration and finding then some way as Peter talks about here and other reports he's put out in foreign affairs and others to reframe that program insisting on transparency in terms of what the people get because I truly believe that if most Pakistanis understood what many of us understand who have researched this about where they have gained from this type of a program that there could be a different approach to how to run and manage it that would err on the side of the Pakistanis appreciating it is something that they must do for their own benefit not something that must be done to them by some outside agency and indeed that whole framework and the reference here to transparency in a number of mechanisms I think is a powerful point and one that should underpin us moving forward in our relationship so with that in a nutshell of kind of you know where I see this report as being incredibly relevant right now as we enter what I think needs to be a transitional phase reframing phase of our relationship with Pakistan and one that we cannot afford to have to generate in the divorce I think the recommendations here the measured ones the 17 of them anchored around premises of transparency openness more societal engagement leading with things other than CT right now because we can in fact do so given some of the successes we've had this in a nutshell is what I would like to as a panelist who enjoyed participating in this process endorse as we move this report forward and hopefully look forward to it having some impact here in policy circles thank you. Thank you Colonel Lynch you know at Aspen recently there was sort of a public debate between Admiral Dennis Blair and Doug Lute who of course is the responsible individual for the AFPAC in the NSC and Dennis Blair was advocating for a unilateral cease of Admiral Dennis Blair the former director of national intelligence was advocating for a unilateral cease of drone strikes Doug Lute without addressing drones very directly but clearly talking about them said essentially there was a six month window to essentially end Al Qaeda Central and that was not the time to take kind of the pressure of the drone program clearly the Pakistanis want is not the end of the drone program they just want something that's a little more discriminatory isn't as frequent and is more directed at real high value targets so that's kind of the frame of the debate I wanted to before opening it up make some points that I think sometimes get lost that we try and make in the paper that there are a lot of positives in Pakistan we hear about the negatives and I think just focusing on those positives for a second I think there are five or six that you know are reasons that we can build Pakistan itself can build and we can the United States can build on these positives and let me just just numb I think there are about six of them that that lead to mine one is Pakistan has a very independent press now and this is I mean as somebody who's been visiting Pakistan since 1983 you know ten years ago you went to Pakistan you turn on the television it was PTV essentially it was government propaganda Pakistan television it was basically whoever was running the country shaking hands with people now you have dozens and dozens of independent channels a lot of them are anti-American a lot of them are very anti-Taliban I mean the Taliban one of the reasons that and this is a second positive we should focus on one of the reasons that the Pakistani government went in and did a very serious military operation in SWAT and a very serious military operation in SWAT by Pakistani standards and not necessarily you know up to American counterinsurgency standards but quite successful was because they had the public behind them why did they have the public behind them because a lot of the media would you know basically would report on the Taliban atrocities the Taliban attacked GHQ the Pakistani military headquarters and over the course of 20 hours it was quite carried live on Pakistani television Pakistanis the Taliban have killed as you know hundreds of Pakistani policemen all of this is covered by Pakistani media so the fact that you have an independent media yes it's anti-American in part but it's also very anti-Taliban and it's pro-democracy which brings me to the third point you know there was an hour of spring in Pakistan before we'd even thought of the idea of an hour of spring essentially a military dictator was removed by a civil society movement that had nothing to do with established political parties and it brings me to the fourth point which is a pretty independent judiciary which is part of this process in Pakistan it was of course Musharraf's you know basically trying to get rid of that led to his removal in the end and finally well two more quick points when there's been free and independent elections in Pakistan the pro-Taliban religious parties have suffered very poorly so in 2002 they got 11% of the vote that was at a time that Musharraf had fixed it so the secular political parties would be disadvantaged in 2008 free and fair election they got 2% of the vote so Pakistanis are not clamoring for the Taliban in any shape or form to come and rule them and one final point and this goes to most in sort of area of expertise is you know on paper the Pakistani economy should simply be dematerializing but the reason it is not dematerializing is a very substantial grey economy and there's a very substantial remitted economy that is kind of allowing it to kind of you know to paper over the real problems that it has so these are some of the strengths we talk about many of the problems in Pakistan I just wanted to mention these we do mention the report and their strengths and I'm going to go to Bill Tom with that I'd like to turn it over to Shamila Choudhury who's just joining New America as a new fellow who is instrumental in helping us think through some of these issues and she's going to make some observations thank you first I'd like to commend Mike and Peter for putting this report out right now it's very ambitious given that the momentum in the relationship on both sides has is minimized but we've got such a large audience here is testament to the fact that the relationship is still important two things I want to comment on first the U.S.-Pakistan relationship I think this report when I read it the first thing it reminded me of is the relationship really still lacks a firm foundation for its basis it as much as we tried to focus on a strategic dialogue, comprehensive issues at the end of the day the security issues overwhelmed everything so in effect the relationship has become the problem under normal circumstances when you have a bilateral relationship between two countries you use the relationship as a mechanism to work out your problems but in fact now it's the opposite and so U.S. and Pakistan are constantly at loggerheads on some challenges that are mutual challenges they need to deal with the security situation these aren't things that Pakistan is happy about so I think that the fact that the relationship has become the problem is one of our key obstacles so on the actual relationship I think that we need to remember that we can focus on economic issues we can focus on trade and aid development but I think there are some key issues that we still have some policy dissonance on one Afghanistan and second the counter-terrorism footprint of the United States in Pakistan until we resolve these issues I don't think that we're going to be able to move forward to all of these wonderful suggestions that these gentlemen have put forward they'll still be out there and I think it's good to reiterate ideas that we've been talking about for the past few years but there are very urgent issues at stake right now which I think are compelling Pakistan to act more like a spoiler than a partner finally on the US-Pakistan relationship I think there's a tendency and I know this from my own experience for US policymakers to view it in sort of this hyper-normalized lens that it's the relationship can have a beginning and an end if this doesn't happen or if that does happen so we see it in this vacuum now we need to get out of that mindset it doesn't help us to be cut off it's not going to be renewed we're just going to kind of move forward so I think this is a psychological issue that has constantly prevented us from moving forward secondly on I wanted to acknowledge Mohsen's comments on India-Pakistan collaboration I think this is probably one of the most important issues at stake for Pakistan's future and right now it's very much linked to US efforts in Afghanistan so the more we can get India and Pakistan to cooperate on Kashmir on trade, I think the better and I do believe that the US administration is firmly behind this but we can talk about it all we want if the administration doesn't de-conflict the policies I think we're going to constantly face challenges as well so you can't have a US-India relationship that talks about Pakistan as if it's another it needs to acknowledge that India is an active participant in the region Pakistan has valid concerns about India we can't substantiate all of them but we have to acknowledge these concerns and we have to have a dialogue with India about these issues so that I don't think has happened yet and that will be a big push I think before we can focus on moving forward in Afghanistan and India and Pakistan I think will continue to have this dialogue and they'll do their best and I think with the US departure from Afghanistan or a smaller presence there the United States actually loses leverage in its relationship with India to kind of encourage rapprochement so that's kind of another bad thing to look forward to or to not look forward to but I just want to commend the report in focusing on Kashmir and on normalization of relations because it's very hard to do ignore it because it is hard thank you and I should have mentioned that Shamila Choudhury has just stepped down as a director of the National Security Council responsible for Pakistan so thank you very much just for the panel all those specific areas on Afghanistan that Pakistan can be helpful with that are plausible and doable perhaps Kendall Lynch if you have yeah thanks Peter there's a kind of industry growing up right now in terms of trying to figure out how best to engage Pakistan to help facilitate transition in Afghanistan I think transition in Afghanistan is something that Pakistan has thought about a lot but my distinct sense from talking to a lot of the military delegations that come through and seeing a lot of the paperwork that comes from on high is they don't yet have in their mind what they want to see as the in-state either they are willing and able to accuse us of not knowing what we want for an in-state but they too don't have a concrete in-state let me be fair in this I've been involved in some interactions with Indian government officials and Indian think tanks on this topic and I think the same is true there they really don't know what they're looking for either they'll know it when they see it right like that favorite Supreme Court commentary and there and I think is the plausible options here Peter as Shamila indicates there really does need to be as part of the process of moving forward in Afghanistan reconciliation a very discreet and perhaps very quiet and facilitated process whereby India and Pakistan are brought together at a very low level to talk about that which can be seen as acceptable in a mid to long-term Afghanistan transition and personally although there are many other players involved that have interest in Afghanistan external players like the Iranians and the Russians and the Chinese and the Saudis unless one first has the framework of what a modus vivenda looks like between India and Pakistan to inhibit the very thing that I think Pakistan fears first on its three-tiered list of problems in Afghanistan going forward and that is a more acute proxy war between itself and Afghanistan which I would argue to this group and we can talk about it more if you want what is the real extant security issue in Afghanistan right now much less risk of a renewed al-Qaeda central presence and much more risk of this acute India-Pakistan proxy war going to a more significant and detailed level so I think that is the area and then how you involve Pakistan in that I think we're taking some steps right now and we have been quietly over the last several months the separation at the UN level very quietly Taliban list from the al-Qaeda list I think was an important step forward to finding Pakistan a niche or a way to play it's seen as getting the Taliban involved but it also allows Pakistan to breathe a little easier about those that are on the Taliban list as not being part and parcel of the al-Qaeda list which really raises critical fears in Pakistan about them being branded as a state sponsor of international terrorism and the Taliban list brings things a little closer to home which isn't any easier for Afghans but it may be easier for sitting down and finding what the minimal conditions are that Pakistan would want to see in Kabul and the minimal arrangements for the conservative and I call them conservative and disaffected Pashtuns in Afghanistan not the Taliban necessarily the Taliban may be a banner and a figurehead for those disaffected but not all those that are disaffected with the current government in Afghanistan are Taliban and so therein is the trade space and Pakistan is going to have to be even though I would clearly agree that they don't control the Taliban they're going to have to be an enforcer of whatever arrangement gets established in Afghanistan that they can live with and so they're in this notion of finding a modus vivendi of what can be an acceptable transition state for Pakistanis and Indians in Afghanistan I think is the critical way in which Pakistan can help play going forward but I don't minimize the degree of diplomatic challenge involved in that process Great, well we'll throw it open to questions can you identify yourself questions or encourage not statements and you need to wait for the mic so let's start at the back and then we'll move forward Thank you My name is Naomi Falkenberg and with the British American Security Information Council and I was wondering if the panel could perhaps say a few words about the nuclear situation in South Asia and how the US's differential treatment of India and Pakistan as nuclear powers might affect the prospects for a solid strategic relationship between the US and Pakistan Thank you Is there kind of a double standard, Mike that we give the civilian nuclear program to India and Well I think the answer to the question is that there is a double standard and in the report we do not make any specific recommendations about that double standard at the present time I think in our discussions we don't necessarily see that particular issue changing in the short run part of our goal is we made no statement about the advisability of the Indian nuclear deal relationship There have been proposals for a similar agreement with Pakistan in the current environment we did not think that that was had potential to be a near term initiative I think part of the goal of our overall vision and agenda would be ultimately to work toward a relationship that would possibly be the groundwork for some progress in that area and some more open discussions but in the short run as one of the priority initiatives we felt that that was not something that should make the list in a lot of these other areas our recommendations are trying to find a way for the United States to indicate for both sides to indicate flexibility a political commitment to reform and a desire and willingness to work together on a new level and if that were achieved we think it would have very substantial implications for the relationship and the view of the United States and Pakistan even before you ever got to that nuclear issue Lady here Leslie Johnson Leslie Johnson I'm a professor at Foreman Christian College in Lahore also a resident of this area short term I'm wondering what there was nothing said about the militancy that's seen in terms of fighting between the political parties in Pakistan and I'm wondering if you have some comment on that I noticed that that was not a direction in which the report went I mean we may we felt that there was a lot of work had been done in that space and in fact that so much of the attention is really about the militancy problem in Pakistan which of course is a very real problem but for us it's a redress something that is the subject of hundreds of books monographs and reports we didn't feel like it was value-added Mike yeah we want to add to we got 25 minutes so we got a lot of questions so let's in front here sir Rob Warren from Dakor I'd like to ask this of Mr. Mazar and Ambassador Hussein was it a mistake of the U.S. administration not to collaborate and the taking of Osama bin Laden of his demise was it a mistake not to bring them in early on in this endeavor Ambassador it was a mistake but unavoidable I mean I don't think President Obama could have taken that risk even if perhaps it would have worked out well it was too important an issue to take any risk so it has had its fallout that's true but that's what happened in foreign policy you are caught between conflicting choices so this is one of those issues I have nothing to add to that I think that's exactly right yeah could I jump in on this because I've done some limited writing on this I think that there certainly has been a fallout from this event but I think if one looks soberly and carefully at the way this relationship was going starting in November 2010 that the growing discomfort that Pakistanis military senior leadership and their ISI was having with the manner in which America was helping to bulk up its presence in the country that then exploded in the sudden departure of an agency station chief who had been announced in the press the Raymond Davis affair and other asks that were there the conditions that are associated with the kind of precipitous crisis in relations that came after Osama bin Laden were all in place and arguably at the 80-85% level even before then and I think even if the president would have wanted to find a way to consult I think the ambassador is exactly right at that point and given the manner in which there was already discomfort there I think you had all signals pointing to the fact that this had to go unilateral and that was the case that we won't be aware of because of how secretly it's kept I think the theatrics in the background was that to risk at that moment that kind of insight and information given what was going on in the relationship would have been an extraordinarily difficult thing for the president to do I'd like to add to that if you look at what the president said when he spoke to the nation to the world after the death of bin Laden he said some very nice things about Pakistan he said you know we appreciate Pakistan's help and the fighting war against the war against terrorism other people in his administration within about 12 hours said publicly we can't trust the Pakistanis and so there was a a real messaging problem part of it was precisely so few people in the White House were actually told about the mission forget about people in Pakistan there wasn't much thought given I think to catastrophic success and what you say the right things to say and I think the president said the right things to say I think other people stepped on the message and the fact is the Pakistanis have done a lot over time we wouldn't have arrested KSM Hala Sheikh Mohammed we wouldn't have found bin Laden essentially and he was arrested in Mardan with Pakistani help I think the Pakistanis themselves haven't had a very good public messaging about the help that they've given because they're sort of stuck in this dilemma where the more ownership they take of something which appears to be an infringement of their sovereignty the more problematic it is but at the end of the day this all boils down to this feelings about their national sovereignty being basically infringed whether it's Raymond Davis killing two Pakistanis in broad daylight, the drone program the unilateral raid on bin Laden and clearly there are a lot of very damaged feelings in the front here Hi, Barbara Slavin from the Atlantic Council just to add to what you said President Obama didn't even tell his wives so to tell Pakistan I think would have been asking a little bit too much Can you believe that by the way? Yeah, I do No inside knowledge there are two Pakistani representatives if you could talk a little bit about the aid trade conundrum because how much aid are we actually giving Pakistan now is Kerry Luger at operative at all in terms of the current environment in the Congress to slash foreign aid what's the most foreign aid we can probably wind up giving and where should it go to have the maximum impact on average Pakistanis and then if you could also talk a little bit about breaking or establishing a virtuous circle how do you get Americans willing to go to Pakistan again I had some friend in Lahore ask if I would go, frankly I would be terrified to go to Pakistan now the image is that any American there is going to be kidnapped off the streets I believe a U.S. official is still missing who was kidnapped and that you'll either be held for ransom or you'll have your head cut off Thank you He isn't a U.S. official he basically works for J. Austin, a consulting company Yes, but it's true on this issue of aid and trade I think that there is a perception here in Washington and certainly prevalent in there that the United States aid program is actually enormous and therefore when it's cut off if it's cut off the Pakistanis the Pakistani economy will completely collapse and therefore the Pakistanis should do the right thing it's the threat of cut off of aid the fact of the matter is aid isn't such a big deal in terms of dollars and cents I'll give you an example even if in fact, Kerry Luger Burnham is not reaching its original level of 1.5 billion dollars a year it's less than 500 million so but the fact of the matter is you have to understand that 1.5 billion dollars sounds like a big amount Pakistan in fact gets and Peter talked about that in terms of the gray economy and the bright spots this year will get 11 billion dollars in remittances in inflows this is roughly all together roughly a tenth the United States aid represents roughly a tenth of flows non-export related flows so it's not that big a deal it's very in terms of dollars and cents in terms of symbolism it's a very big deal because the idea that if there's a cut off of aid by the United States it'll lead to problems with other international financial institutions which of course lend much more to Pakistan and perhaps other donors so it's symbolic and in that regard I think that there's a rethink going on I think the sensible people are saying well we can't really cut off aid that's sort of cutting off our nose in some way as well you lose leverage with Pakistan but I think there's a rethink going on what should you be doing with this aid where should this aid be going I think that that's the big issue right now under consideration here in Washington and a lot of people are talking about it what exactly should be done the bottom line is the Pakistanis want the aid yes but they don't want the conditions the question is for the United States to decide does it want to give aid with conditions and if so what are these conditions in the past quite honestly some of these conditions have been totally out of proportion with the amount of money that you're providing and I think that the United States is much better off in providing unconditional aid unconditional in the sort of economic reform standpoint which is the area I know and in fact utilizing the international monetary fund and the World Bank etc to put in the conditions on economic reform interesting view in Pakistan it's not really substantiated very much that the conditions that the IMF and the World Bank apply in Pakistan has something to do with the United States the United States wants the IMF and the World Bank to I don't think that's true at all I worked on Pakistan quite a bit while I was at the IMF and I don't remember at any point in time getting any sort of signals from the United States Government or the Treasury etc saying we are to have this condition put in so in some I think that aid by itself the civilian aid is not a big deal in terms of dollars but it is a big deal in terms of symbolism well I think that this this is something that's security related one of the things that I think that I liked and that is in the report and I think that it's true when we talk when people talk about let's have foreign direct investment let's have technical assistance and all this these kind of things and then there's this immediately the security personal security issue is well if you got foreign why would you have foreign direct investment when Americans can't actually go there and so on and so forth but you know I mean that sort of assumes that there are no Americans who wish to go to Pakistan where there's one over there from FC College but no apart from that I think the report is pitched at the Pakistani diaspora who are not only doing very well in the United States doing very well in our American citizens but of Pakistani origin and they do travel back and forth the foreign direct investment that's coming into Pakistan by the way until last year United States was the largest foreign investor foreign direct doing foreign direct investment in Pakistan and a large proportion of that was from Pakistani Americans of Pakistani origin and you know you may fear going back to Pakistan they by and large have less concerns because they do blend into the population I'm going this weekend to Pakistan and a lot of people say don't you think it's risky to go back to Pakistan yeah but I mean the thing is that it's home I mean you know the place that's the difference Hi Brian with the USA the office of Afghanistan and Pakistan affairs I actually rather than talk about aid I want to talk about Kashmir and the line here in the report is regional confidence building measures progress towards resolution of disputes I agree that makes sense I wanted to push the panel on what those might be and also whether it would make sense clearly we can't US can't be out in front on this India has made clear they don't want the US to play a mediating role is there a possibility to play a more back channel sort of facilitation role in this I just set up the ambassador perhaps but I think that's exactly what's being discussed here and we did have significant debate on wording but the acknowledgement amongst you know several of us was that Pakistan Pakistan's approach to Kashmir sees it as very critical and very important so one has to advance it but on the other side and I had the privilege of hosting a panel at the Atlantic Council at the end of July with both an Indian and Pakistani perspective I think the Indian point in this as you highlight is hey over American involvement in this raises any number of ugly negatives that we then have to deal with with third parties to the problem in Kashmir which are not insignificant and with other outside agents that would like to exploit and piggyback that so there is firm resistance what there can be right now especially since that we've seen the return of the composite dialogue discussions at ministerial level and this is why we chose the language that was here was us taking a very behind the scenes positive and encouraging role with both India and Pakistan and finding ways getting back to how you use your aid wisely finding ways to help perhaps support diplomatically economically and other ways Pakistan and in some cases India with things that we can provide that are very quiet but that help them take harder steps they have to take to find better rapprochement there so that was intentional language and you hit the reason for why it was chosen that way as opposed to a very overt let's push ourselves forward into the process recognizing that that could be more harmful perhaps that helpful it's true United States should not be upfront but that doesn't mean United States should be absent so United States has been absent from this equation and it has to work a little more aggressively with India after all United States is not the only party which benefits from the US-India relationship India is benefiting a lot also this is leverage and United States should learn to use that leverage it has never learned I mean it has happened with Pakistan it gives Senators this leverage it happens with India Senators as leverage and when things don't work then United States gets upset and starts dominating the relationship which is also bad and you cannot dominate India but you can dominate Pakistan so that's the problem in the relationship with Pakistan and India now for the first time United States has equally not equally but important relationship with both the countries Pakistan and India time was it could have relationship with only one but not the other now it interests a two critical challenges a two major in both countries some for different reasons some for similar reasons and Afghanistan is also part of the equation so United States need to sit down with India and say look we feel that our relationship with you sort of is linked to your good relationship with Pakistan and help us with that treat Pakistan a little differently and same way it can argue with Pakistan that look our relationship with you will be helped by your good relationship with India and talk to Pakistan have some kind of dialogue as to what security paradigm it should have what should position should be on Kashmir so I think since the relationship is too interlinked now United States, India and Pakistan that United States cannot sit on the sidelines it has to be a little more involved a little more engaged and sort of say that look there are certain aspects of our relationship with both Pakistan and India which depend on good relations between Pakistan and India by the way Colonel Lynch what is the Indian not to buy US fighters and go elsewhere say about our leverage on India I think that's a powerful point and a colleague of mine who writes pretty prolifically on this I'd encourage you to look at if you're interested in this some of his writing out on the CSIS website his name is Amir Latif and I think Amir's commentary was pretty sharp and acute on that and Amir used to be the desk officer for South Asia in the defense department before he went to CSIS so he's pretty knowledgeable on this and his commentary was hey you know India retains despite all of its increased engagement worldwide and with defense industries it retains a deep-seated advocate and adherent to the policy of strategic autonomy and it's not going to allow itself to be enmeshed in any one you know type of piece of equipment or other things in the defense side it's going to look for the best deal out there especially where it can get technology transfer and here I think our challenge remained technology transfer wasn't going to be as promising as now the Russian fighter that's been chosen but it does highlight your point Peter which is you know one has to be careful when acknowledging the difference between US India improved dialogue engagement and mutually beneficial exchanges with those that would have us asking Indian diplomats who are famously independent in their approach to life to do things more aggressively or actively certainly in public and then perhaps even behind the scenes in ways that would seem discomforting but let me add a caveat to that and again with a somewhat of a plug here you can look at the transcript of the event on July 26 it was the Atlantic Council where a couple of our participants went back and forth from an Indian perspective and saying it's important to recognize though that India's perspective on cash mere resolution has matured diplomatically in the last decade a decade ago their approach was no interference whatsoever in the cashmere dispute now that's moderated to being willing to accept quiet outside facilitation to resolve but still drawing a firm line against interference as defined in the more elastic sense so I just leave it with that okay we're going to have five minutes left we've got a lot of questions we're going to have to be pretty efficient the gentleman in the blue shot I'm George Johnson my wife mentioned that we just returned from nine months living in Lahore teaching at FC College we would be happy to discuss American living in Pakistan with anyone who wants to but I do have a question the Pakistanis are a very religious country they take their religion seriously they listen to their religious leaders they're informed by them and they act based on recommendations of them I'm very interested that this was not even mentioned in your report or any recommendation do you have any thoughts about how the Islamic community can be engaged to help educate people educating the imams so they have better facts to tell their parishioners and how this could be used to say in our position here improve the situation I mean quick comment on that Michael also because we didn't really focus on the militancy issue which is one of the areas where of course clerics can help the most we couldn't cover everything at the back of the report we do say some things about education but let me just make an observation which is if you're a cleric in Pakistan as you know well having lived there and you make some anti-Taliban statement I mean there was a prominent cleric who was living in Lahore a very well known cleric who paid with his life for making those sorts of statements and prominent ulama have come together in a group to condemn the Taliban and their tactics and it's a very dangerous position to be in as a cleric we've had people coming to this foundation who are clerics in Pakistan and they wouldn't allow their names to be publicly attached to their visit because they were so concerned about the likely blowback when they come back so I think getting clerics to speak out against militancy it's happened but it comes at a tremendous cost and it's not something that we really dealt with in our report I guess I just say very briefly that we focused on recommendations and policies for the two governments and I'm not sure that American engagement in particular with religious communities is something that can be handled very easily or with very clear results I think the crucial issue that we were trying to get to and Steve Cole of the New America Foundation put this question to us early on looking at initiatives both within Pakistan and in the relationship one of the overarching questions was what kind of country does Pakistan want to be and the initiatives that we have in mind are things that if pursued we think would set a context so that events in Pakistan would be more likely to develop along a certain path as opposed to others and that I think would indirectly get to the question you're asking Okay we've got a few minutes left so we've got just two or three questions Andrew and we'll wrap it up Thank you very much My name is Mitath Kareem I'm an academic with George Mason School of Public Policy originally from Pakistan a couple of things of course I agree with Dr. Mohsin Khan that there are a lot of Pakistani diaspora here about just looking at 2010 census about half a million people consider themselves Pakistani origin and very well to do have you and so I don't think there's any problem for them going to Pakistan at least I can recall about ten of my colleagues say from the Kedmia they asked me that they want to go to and visit Pakistan for good conferences and all that and they have been going sorry sir we're going to have to make a discussion but I want to come to your seven points seven or eight points you made about the pluses about Pakistan but I think you missed the strategic location of Pakistan which is very important and secondly I don't know if it is sometimes it's plus and sometimes it's minus the population of Pakistan which is about 188 almost 190 million which is more than the combined population of all the Middle Eastern countries more than the combined population of all the North African countries more than the combined population of Iran and Turkey so Pakistan has a very important place in the terrific world and there is also the dividend what I'm saying is that that has to be mentioned in security issues in all economic issues and what have you and perhaps you should look into it thank you these are questions now and I'll state them we've got two minutes hi I'm Maiarowski from J Street across the street I just wanted to ask about the society to society relationship as the gentleman just said Pakistan is in a very strategic location and I wanted to ask more about the future of Pakistan's resources it's mentioned very briefly in this water resource debate but that's also a very important issue especially with what's going on all around Pakistan okay I have one more question this gentleman here has been very patient the hot guy with the Pakistani American Leadership Center whether I think it's Dr. Khan's comments on economic assistance or Colonel Lynch your comments on removing the focus from CTE I think if we with the House Foreign Affairs Committed and even more importantly with the House Subcommittee on Foreign Opstead with regards to tying economic assistance to US security demands on Pakistan I feel like it's moving in the opposite direction so to what extent do you think this report or your individual personalities will be persuasive in moving the conversation in the direction that you wanted to move my second question is do you think as the Secretary of Defense and Petraeus as CIA head is that going to affect the US Pakistan relationship particularly I think as Bergen noted you know there is a sense that we might want to capitalize on the gains of the bin Laden killing and also maybe the pressure of having the US transition out of Afghanistan in 2014 thanks a lot okay so we'll just wrap up thoughts from starting with Mohsin and then Ambassador and then Colonel Lynch and then Mike well just I mean the thing is that the report on the economic side sort of paints a bleak picture but I think it has some very in my mind at least some very sensible suggestions on the way forward and in particular on how the US can influence the Pakistan economy through indirect measures I just want to make one comment which relates to what the US can do with respect to facilitating the dialogue between India and Pakistan. I'll tell you one back channel thing that's playing out right now is that there are a series of meetings planned between businessmen from both sides of the border in Lahore and in Delhi and that's being facilitated by USAID among others and so I think those are the ways in small steps you can play I mean it's clear that you're not going to solve the Kashmir problem right and that's the whole point of pushing the trade agenda between the two countries that these are small steps that can lead to a warming of relations and more importantly in my view can lead to vested interests and constituencies for opening up on other issues too. Nothing much to add I've been basically to highlight once again the complexities of the issues that we have been discussing and my own sort of understanding is at the government to government level the relationship is not as bad as it looks and believe me it's not bad government has been pushed into taking a negative position under pressure from media and politics and the wars are going on and I think what we need all of us in our own capacity whether we belong to academic institutions or think tanks and all that look at issues and interests of both sides empathetically and start to look at both sides and these are complex issues we are not dealing with some banana republic it's a big country Pakistan it has good population, good potential it has survived so far many crises more than six decades that means there is some strength and resilience in the country and you need to tap that strength and resilience rather than be hectoring Pakistan all the time and make its problems much worse than they actually are let me just add in terms of the kind of combined questions about the size of Pakistan and the challenges in our house foreign affairs committee I was in Pakistan when the house foreign relations committee came out and every single newspaper lead was about the precipitous American action in the house but I was quick to remind everybody that we have a process that involves many other steps right we have the senate and we have the presidents who agree to any legislation and here I think the good news is and I've written on this elsewhere is we have in the senate a critical mass of leaders that right now see the importance of continuing a relationship and moving beyond and I think a super majority of our current cabinet officials feel the same way that's not to minimize the feelings in the house but I think we all owe both our Pakistani friends journalists and others kind of this wider context to how this debate is going to play out and I for one thing to say that it's all going to turn out beautifully see these other nodes and these other people that are sober to look at the future and I think it's that future in the region that this report appeals to that we look beyond the short to the mid and the long term and in that context I'd offer you the following little summation point here that I think the report gets too elegantly in trying to ask us to think beyond where we are now and that is when you look at the region I think only a strategic framework that acknowledges that Afghanistan is a short term crisis Pakistan is a midterm challenge but India and the wider region for many of the geopolitical things discussed here as well as an enormous number of economic statistics I could show you over the last 25 years or so is a long term opportunity and if we take an approach like that to the challenge of Pakistan which is what this report is advocating I think we get much further away from the precipitous crisis that could happen otherwise if we take a more self interested and narrow minded approach I'll just have two quick points that get to answering these last questions and underline and continuing on Tom's theme one of our fundamental themes that I mentioned at the beginning and that is finding new ways to address old problems and getting past existing habits and you've heard I think the panelists talk today about a number of ways that the report advocates that Ambassador Hussein put it very eloquently when he said moving beyond transactional to strategic thinking putting together the notions of strategic location population and resources we took all of that very seriously and that very much accounts for another change that we're advocating of mindset which is what Tom's talking about which is rather than focusing on the short term problem look at medium and long term opportunities and see if your initiatives in those areas can get at the causes of the short term problems and then in terms of the recent votes on aid some of that sentiment is exactly why we think in the long run a more sustainable relationship while not eliminating all aid certainly but a more sustainable relationship is based on trade investment economic ties that are mutually beneficial rather than this constant series of here's what we want to give here's what we want in exchange and in those and other ways we're recommending a variety of new ways of looking at this problem and as folks have reminded us that's not going to take place immediately but our hope with this report was to get that general perspective out there and begin to build it into people's minds so that as we move out of as Tom has mentioned this phase of waiting after recent events we might have in mind a strategic way forward that's what we're trying to achieve and to build on the aid point and also what Mohsin said our aid comes free to so many caveats and we've given so little of it the carry luger of the percentage is very minor of what we've promised they don't want aid, they want access to our markets politically it's difficult because of people in congress but if there was a way to say reduce the amount of aid and have greater access to our markets that's maybe a way to sell it in congress certainly what Pakistanis want and one final sort of to leave it on an optimistic note to the laundry list of kind of positive indicators in Pakistan I think this is going to be the first civilian government in Pakistani history which has a good chance of actually filling out his term without a coup and you know if you think about the cards that if you think about the cards that were dealt to India in Pakistan in 1947 Pakistan's cards were much better and why is it that India is prospered I think surely the fact the former military coups in Pakistan have been a you know have really stunted the body politic in a way that has damaged Pakistan in the long term so the fact there is a civilian government with all its problems that will fulfill its term is really a major step in Pakistani history so first of all I want to thank our panel and secondly I want to thank you for coming