Nawaz: Pakistan on the Brink, Again

South Asia Center Director Shuja Nawaz writes for Foreign Policy on the mass protests in Pakistan demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Shar

With thousands of young Pakistanis besieging their capital to demand the ouster of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan — a key element in the United States’ plan to withdraw from neighboring Afghanistan by the end of 2016 — is slipping into political anarchy. Only one year after the country’s first-ever democratic transfer of power, the elected government in Pakistan is at risk of another military takeover. Yet Washington is showing little sign that it is paying the situation the urgent attention it requires.

The youthful horde in Islamabad — led by former cricket player and current leader of the Tehreek-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice) party Imran Khan, and a religious teacher from Canada named Tahir ul Qadri –demands electoral reforms, and Sharif’s removal from office for corruption and alleged fraud in the May 2013 election, which gave him a huge plurality in the parliament. From its headquarters in Rawalpindi, adjacent to the capital, the powerful army waits, calculating its next moves.

Nawaz: Give Afghanistan a Little More Breathing Room

South Asia Center Director Shuja Nawaz is quoted by the Washington Examiner on President Obama’s Afghanistan withdrawal strategy: 

Shuja Nawaz, a native of Pakistan and the director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, said the biggest lesson the White House can take from the rapid disintegration of security in Iraq is that “the nature and speed of withdrawal from any country has repercussions.”

“The conditions have changed dramatically in the region” since Obama’s speech at West Point and “it may be time to rethink some marginal changes in that draw-down strategy that will allow Afghanistan a little more breathing room to get its political and military act together,” he told theWashington Examiner.

Nawaz on Presidential Elections in Afghanistan

ABC News quotes South Asia Center Director Shuja Nawaz on Secretary John Kerry’s visit to Afghanistan to discuss the country’s runoff presidential election:

Even if the candidates agree in principle to a power-sharing agreement, they won’t be able to put it into practice until the new president is inaugurated, meaning there could be continued uncertainty until that point, said Shuja Nawaz, the director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

“The candidates may agree in principle on the division of ministries, for instance, but the relationship between the two candidates is going to be left up in the air until the final result is announced and agreed upon,” he said.