A Postmortem on Pakistan's 2013 Elections

Описание: In the wake of Pakistan's recently concluded elections, this panel will offer insight and analysis into what the results are likely to mean for the future of the country and region. The speakers will reflect on the possible composition of a new government and the implications of the election for the future of Pakistan's democratic system. In addition to the election's domestic ramifications, the panelists will also address the possible effects of the elections for the United States and American foreign policy.

Biographies:

Shamila Chaudhary is a Pakistan expert specializing in U.S.-Pakistan relations, Pakistan internal politics, and regional issues in South Asia. She is an analyst with the Eurasia Group's Asia Practice and is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. She has twelve years of experience working in the U.S. government, most recently at the White House as Director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the National Security Council from 2010-2011. Prior to her work at the NSC, she worked on the Department of State's Policy Planning Staff, where she advised Secretary Clinton and the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Chaudhary served on the State Department's Pakistan Desk from 2007-2009. In 2010, she and her husband founded the Chaudhary-Steinitz Honors Program Research Grant at the University of Toledo to promote greater interest and research in Pakistan and South Asian affairs.

Simbal Khan is a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and director for Afghanistan and Central Asia at the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad, a position she has held since 2008. Much of her recent work has focused on U.S./NATO military strategy in Afghanistan and its impact on Pakistan's security. Her articles have appeared in China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly (U.S.), Eurasia Critic (Turkey), Strategic Studies (Pakistan), and elsewhere. She is also a regular radio and television commentator on Afghanistan and other foreign policy/national security issues. She holds a Ph.D. in international relations from Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

Daniel Markey is a senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where he specializes in security and governance issues in South Asia. He is completing a book on the future of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship entitled No Exit from Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). From 2003 to 2007, Dr. Markey held the South Asia portfolio on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. Prior to government service, he taught in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, where he served as executive director of Princeton's Research Program in International Security. Earlier, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. Dr. Markey recently served as project director of the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S. strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which was co-chaired by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and former National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger

Arif Rafiq is an adjunct scholar with the Middle East Institute. He conducts research on the reform of national security policymaking in Pakistan. Rafiq is also a weekly columnist with Pakistan's Express Tribune, a leading Pakistani English-language daily, and president of Vizier Consulting, LLC, which provides political risk analysis on the Middle East and South Asia. He is a regular Pakistan analyst on the John Batchelor Show, which has been the top-rated program on New York's number one news talk radio station, WABC (770AM). A frequent contributor to print and web publications, Rafiq has written for outlets such as the Christian Science Monitor, CTC Sentinel, Daily Beast, and Foreign Policy. He has also been quoted by newspapers such as the Globe & Mail and the New York Times. In 2011, Rafiq was listed by Foreign Policy magazine as among the top 100 foreign policy Twitter users. Previously, Rafiq worked for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and public relations firms Burson-Marsteller and Ruder Finn.

Marvin G. Weinbaum is a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. He is also professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and served as analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1999 to 2003. At Illinois, Dr. Weinbaum served for fifteen years as the director of the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. His research, teaching, and consultancies have focused on the issues of national security, state building, democratization, and political economy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is the author or editor of six books and has written more than 100 journal articles and book chapters.