Registan’s Pakistan News & Analysis Archive


A large, diverse, strategically important country, Pakistan has a complicated relationship with its neighbors, the international community, and even itself. Pakistan’s religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and political identities are far from monolithic, and this makes it challenging to predict emerging social, political, and economic trends and a difficult environment to navigate. And even though Pakistan’s relations with major stakeholders in Afghanistan’s stability and security have dramatically deteriorated over the past several years, the country will remain an absolutely critical component of securing peace and stability in South and Central Asia.

Registan has covered Pakistan’s challenges on Registan.net since 2006 and several of our analysts have significant professional experience tracking Pakistan and contextualizing developments there for government, business, and development organization clients. Registan puts that experience to work to offer research, analysis, and training services tailored to your individual needs. For more information on how we can help you and your organization better understand Afghanistan and the other countries of South Asia, visit our services page.

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How Eurasian Supply Routes Won’t Save Afghanistan (or Pakistan)

by Joshua Foust
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The U.S. has withdrawn its supply route negotiators from Pakistan. The U.S. is pulling its negotiating team from Pakistan, the Pentagon said Monday, in a sign that talks have faltered over reopening U.S. and allied supply lines to Afghanistan. The development represents an abrupt turnabout in the course of the talks, which seemed last week [...]

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The Shameful Treatment of Dr. Shakil Afridi & Pakistan’s Dim Future

by Joshua Foust
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This is Dr. Shakil Afridi. You might know him as the doctor who helped the CIA locate and then kill Osama bin Laden. Put simply, he is a hero. He is also a traitor. Dr. Afridi betrayed his country by working with the CIA to kill Osama bin Laden. That should not detract from the [...]

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Assessing al Qaeda

by Joshua Foust

Celebrating the year anniversary of bin Laden’s demise, I wrote for the Atlantic about the weird inflated hyperbole that’s arisen about al Qaeda. This week marks one year since Osama bin Laden’s death. We’re hearing a lot about what the anniversary means for the larger struggle against Islamist violence around the world. Most assessments of [...]

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Making Sense of Jund al-Khilafah’s Claims

by yaqubjan
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Jund al-Khilafah (JaK), a Kazakh-led terrorist group based in Pakistan, issued its second statement on the Ansar al-Mujahideen online forum on April 1 claiming affiliation to Mohammed Merah. JaK’s first statement was released on March 22. On the day after Mohammed Merah was killed in Toulouse on March 22 JaK issued the following the statement [...]

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Why Did the Taliban Kill a Chinese Student in Peshawar?

by yaqubjan
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On February 28, a 40-year old Chinese female was shot dead in Peshawar, Pakistan along with her male interpreter. According to various news sources, she was a “tourist,” which is surprising considering that the Chinese are famous for group tours and that even the boldest of female travelers is unlikely to engage in tourism in [...]

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Correlation

by Joshua Foust
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2011 saw a substantial decrease in drone strikes in Pakistan. According to numbers assembled by the New America Foundation, strikes fell from a high of 118 in 2010 to 70 in 2011 — a 40% decrease (there were no drone strikes in December because of an errant U.S. artillery strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers). [...]

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The Danger of Over-Generalizing

by Joshua Foust
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Frank Jacobs has a really interesting piece in the Opinionator about border areas and government control. But there exists another type of border, one that doesn’t reflect back our image. In vampiric asymmetry, it offers only the void. There are no barriers, no officials, no capitals on the other side. The world as we know [...]

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Framing Politics and the NDN

by Joshua Foust

The AP report: Pakistan’s defense minister said Tuesday that the country should reopen its Afghan border crossings to NATO troop supplies after negotiating a better deal with the coalition. Pakistan closed the crossings over two months ago in response to American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two Afghan border posts. The closure [...]

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Boycotting Bonn: Why It Will Fail

by Joshua Foust

I wrote a piece for The Atlantic about why Pakistan’s boycott has turned an already iffy conference at Bonn into a complete farce: But the Bonn II conference has met with significant hurdles. Besides Pakistan, Afghanistan’s largest neighbor, no one seems to know if Afghanistan’s other major neighbor, Iran, will participate (I spoke with officials [...]

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Pakistani Nuclear Policy in Context

by Joshua Foust

This is a guest post by Eric Auner, a Policy Analyst at the American Security Project. He tweets at @eauner. *** Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder’s latest article properly focuses on nuclear dangers emanating from Pakistan. Their critiques of Pakistani behavior are powerful and convincing. The article does not, however, acknowledge the ways in which [...]

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