Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center, joins BBC News to talk about recent comments from Pakistani Taliban leadership about opening negotiations with the government:

In an historic moment this weekend, Pakistan’s two-term army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani announced that he would retire at the end of November after six years at the helm. An official later stated that Kayani would not seek any other job after retirement, putting an end to speculation in Pakistan that Kayani may stay on in another perhaps more powerful role. This marks a necessary transition in the slow return to the supremacy of the elected civilian government over the military that has dominated decision making in Pakistan for the past thirteen plus years, when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s first government was overthrown by a coup on behalf of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. But the road ahead for Pakistan’s political evolution remains difficult, as stunted civilian institutions struggle to assert themselves in the face not only of lingering military power, but also a massive internal militancy and potentially hot borders on both Pakistan’s East (with India) and West (with Afghanistan). While this is a start, a number of other transitions are needed for Pakistan to regain its stability. Kayani may be gone, but military influence in the country remains powerful. His successor as army chief would do well to keep it on a downward trajectory.

Kayani, a graduate of the command and staff college at Fort Leavenworth, was the first head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate to become army chief. He is also the last army chief to have fought in a full-fledged war, with perennial rival India in 1971. His U.S. training often led U.S. leaders to mistakenly assume that he was “pro-American,” most notably former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who made 26 visits to Pakistan to with meet Kayani during his tenure as chairman. Mullen also penned an over-the-top paen to Kayani forTIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” issue in 2009, calling Kayani “a man with a plan.” However, Mullen ended that relationship in 2011 on Capitol Hill with a scathing attack that described the anti-U.S. and pro-Taliban Haqqani Network as a “veritable arm of the ISI.” Mullen, like others, had made the mistake of assuming that Kayani would bury his strong nationalism in favor of meeting U.S. goals in the region, even after Kayani had made it clear that he did not think the United States had a clearly defined strategy for Afghanistan or the region and hedged his bets accordingly.

At home, Kayani tried to act as a political umpire between often-warring political parties, resisting the temptation to intercede or take over when they got into seemingly intractable feuds. In 2009, for instance, he prevented a major crisis during the Pakistan Peoples Party government of then-President Asif Ali Zardari when then-opposition leader Sharif led a “long march” into Islamabad to restore the ousted chief justice, admitting to a visitor: “I could have taken over then but did not.” Kayani stayed his hand for six years, but some powerful negatives have also marked his two-term stint.

Within the army itself, Kayani fostered unhappiness, especially among the younger officers, when he accepted a second three-year term from Zardari in 2010. The gap between him and his senior officers also widened. His newestcorps commanders are some 17 courses junior to him at the Pakistan Military Academy, a veritable lifetime in military circles. And the disastrous 2011 killing of two Pakistani civilians by Raymond Davis in Lahore, followed by the U.S. raid on Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden, the attack on the Pakistani border post at Salala, and the subsequent closing of the ground line of communications for the coalition in Afghanistan tarnished Kayani’s tenure. He had to face angry young officers at the National Defence University after the Abbottabad raid, and some senior officers were critical of his management style, saying that he reflected a paradoxical desire to be close but to retain a cool aloofness. As a result, Kayani kept his cards very close to his chest and relied on a handful of key colleagues to keep him informed of developments inside the army.

During this time, the ISI also came under severe criticism with accusations that it had overstepped legal boundaries in its pursuit of critics, including journalist Saleem Shahzad who was killed after publishing critical articles of the military’s dealings with militants. Separately, Kayani announced an inquiry, but did not share the results of the investigation, into the videotaped killings of unarmed, bound, and blindfolded captives during the counter militancy campaign in Swat.

But for all of the criticism, the ISI appeared to gain greater strength during Kayani’s term as army chief. Instead of becoming a policy-neutral intelligence agency, it came to be more of a policymaking body. If the post-Kayani transition is to take hold, the role of the ISI will need to be re-examined and reduced, and its relationship as a multi-service institution (rather than as a fief of the army alone) should be reshaped with civilian authorities. Sharif must take the lead in selecting the head of the ISI and also demand regular intelligence briefings, while resisting the urge to ask for policy advice or implementation. He must also regain control of a Defence Ministry that is heavily dominated by retired military officers. The challenge for Sharif will be to find capable civilians, starting with a full-time Defence Minister, who can make defense-related decisions, rather than trying to manage the ministry himself.

Kayani made history by averting a coup and supporting the return of civilian rule. Sharif could make history by regaining control of the country’s polity. He must begin by exercising his constitutional prerogative to select the next Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff and the head of Pakistan’s army. He has a choice among capable three-stars, one of whom will have to provide strong and inspiring leadership for an army that has suffered the ravages of continuous insurgency and militancy for over a decade.

Shuja Nawaz is the Director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., and is the author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within

South Asia Center Director Shuja Nawaz writes in Foreign Policy‘s AfPak Channel on the retirement of Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani:

In an historic moment this weekend, Pakistan’s two-term army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani announced that he would retire at the end of November after six years at the helm. An official later stated that Kayani would not seek any other job after retirement, putting an end to speculation in Pakistan that Kayani may stay on in another perhaps more powerful role. This marks a necessary transition in the slow return to the supremacy of the elected civilian government over the military that has dominated decision making in Pakistan for the past 13 plus years, when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s first government was overthrown by a coup on behalf of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. But the road ahead for Pakistan’s political evolution remains difficult, as stunted civilian institutions struggle to assert themselves in the face not only of lingering military power, but also a massive internal militancy and potentially hot borders on both Pakistan’s East (with India) and West (with Afghanistan). While this is a start, a number of other transitions are needed for Pakistan to regain its stability. Kayani may be gone, but military influence in the country remains powerful. His successor as army chief would do well to keep it on a downward trajectory.

Kayani, a graduate of the command and staff college at Fort Leavenworth, was the first head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate to become army chief. He is also the last army chief to have fought in a full-fledged war, with perennial rival India in 1971. His U.S. training often led U.S. leaders to mistakenly assume that he was “pro-American,” most notably former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who made 26 visits to Pakistan to with meet Kayani during his tenure as chairman. Mullen also penned an over-the-top paen to Kayani for TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” issue in 2009, calling Kayani “a man with a plan.” However, Mullen ended that relationship in 2011 on Capitol Hill with a scathing attack that described the anti-U.S. and pro-Taliban Haqqani Network as a “veritable arm of the ISI.” Mullen, like others, had made the mistake of assuming that Kayani would bury his strong nationalism in favor of meeting U.S. goals in the region, even after Kayani had made it clear that he did not think the United States had a clearly defined strategy for Afghanistan or the region and hedged his bets accordingly.

The chairman of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Task Force, Stuart Eizenstat, met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on October 2, 2013. Eizenstat, accompanied by Atlantic Council South Asia Center Director Shuja Nawaz and Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin, held a wide-ranging conversation with Zarif that touched on issues of concern between the United States and Iran and on the Task Force’s efforts over the past two and a half years to find pragmatic solutions to these issues.

The meeting, which lasted one hour, took place at the Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations in New York, where Zarif has been attending the annual summit of the UN General Assembly. Mohammad Khazaee, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Iran to the United Nations, also participated in the discussions.

Deutsche Welle quotes South Asia Center Director Shuja Nawaz on Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the United States:

“Despite setbacks related to the 2008 nuclear agreement – which was designed to facilitate nuclear cooperation between the United States and India – New Delhi’s relations with Washington remain on an upward trajectory. Trade and services especially tie the two countries together,” says Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the US-based Atlantic Council.

Indo-US trade relations have strengthened in recent years, increasing from 9 billion USD in 1995 to 86 billion USD in 2011, according to US government data. There are, however, considerable economic challenges.

Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center, is quoted in a New York Times piece on a new program to help rehabilitate militants by reuniting them with their families in Kashmir:

More than 350 former militants have returned here to India-controlled Kashmir recently in a quiet new effort to deal with the growing problem of rehabilitating some of the thousands who left home in recent decades to fight for Pakistan in its long-running separatist feud with India over the disputed territory.

“It turns out that it’s not as dangerous as it might seem,” said Shuja Nawaz, the director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, a research group in Washington. “It’s probably better to have them under scrutiny in India than out of reach in Pakistan.”

Former Pakistani Army Chief and President Pervez Musharraf is facing murder charges for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and will be brought to court again later this August. Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, talks to CCTV America’s Mike Walter about the charges:

Shuja Nawaz, director of the Atlantic Council South Asia Center, offers his take on tensions between India and Pakistan for an article in the Global Post:

Admitting that Pakistani generals “may have” helped jihadis cross into India in the past, for instance, Pakistan-born Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, said that policy was ended under former president General Pervez Musharraf, and it would be “surprising if it is being activated again.”

Nawaz also questioned why India first called the alleged ambush an attack by “persons dressed in Pakistani uniforms”—only later referring to it as an army assault—and why top military officials allowed tempers to flare for two days before activating a hotline intended to defuse these situations.

Time is running out” to help nuclear-armed Pakistan’s civilian government survive. That is what then-Senator John Kerry (D-MA) said in support of the recommendations of an Atlantic Council report that was released in February 2009. The report, which provided a comprehensive look at Western relations with Pakistan, estimated that, at that point, then-President Asif Ali Zardari’s government had between 6 and 12 months to enact successful security and economic policies or face the prospect of collapse. “There is still time for us to be able to help the new civilian government, turn around its economy, stabilize the political system, and address the insurgency” festering in the eastern tribal lands on the Afghan border, said Kerry.

Kerry and his co-sponsor of the report, former senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), stressed that efforts to defeat extremist Islamist militants in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan required help for the people of both strife-torn countries. Speaking from his and Kerry’s own experiences in the Vietnam War, Hagel warned that “if you lose the people, you lose everything. We cannot lose the people of Afghanistan, the people of Pakistan.”

Today, as Kerry emerges from his first and much delayed visit to Pakistan as the current U.S. Secretary of State, he must have been struck by a sense of déjà vu. The mission that he and Hagel, now the U.S. Secretary of Defense, defined in 2009 remains largely unfinished. Pakistan has another civilian government facing an uphill task after the depradations of the previous one. Complicating the situation is the continuation of U.S. drone attacks on Pakistani soil that anger the Pakistani public and undermine the government’s ability to work with the United States, and Pakistan’s uncertain behavior regarding the Afghan Taliban that leads it to hedge in bringing them to the reconciliation table. Mistrust still pervades the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.

Despite the change in names and positions, it is clear that with the anticipated clash of expectations regarding the hard economic and political realities of Afghanistan and South Asia, Pakistan today faces a tough task ahead, just as it did in 2009. Righting the U.S.-Pakistan relationship will take a longer-term plan of action, similar to one the Atlantic Council outlined four years ago. No Band-Aid approach of financial flows or even arms and equipment will work. The detailed recommendations provided in the 2009 report, and validated by discussions with Pakistan’s leaders, including then-opposition leader Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s current Prime Minister, remain unimplemented. Secretaries Kerry and Hagel might do well to dust off the report they co-sponsored and see if they can persuade the Obama administration and the American public to appreciate the gravity of the situation in South Asia, while emphasizing the need for Pakistan to take ownership of its problems at a faster pace than the new government appears to be doing for now.

Re-starting the dormant Strategic Dialogue, as Kerry did last week, is just one component of this bilateral relationship. Pakistan should rapidly select and appoint a person of intellectual and political heft to be its ambassador in Washington, as leaving that slot vacant has sent a negative signal. The much delayed invitation from the White House to Sharif is welcome as a signal of the rebuilding of a relationship that was badly cracked by the successive events of 2011, truly the annus horribilis of this fraught “friendship.” It is critical that the United States uses this reengagement to shore up the civilian government in Pakistan, even while it depends on the Pakistani military to help it exit Afghanistan in an orderly fashion.

It will be even more critical for Pakistan’s civilian government to exhibit a strong desire and ability to take charge of key ministries. Energy appears to be front and center, and rightly so, though Sharif may want to rethink taking over the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence. Being prime minister is a large enough challenge; he should let other professionals run these key ministries. If civilian supremacy is to be established with confidence in Pakistan, Sharif needs capable persons running those ministries fulltime and should let them rationalize their operations and produce doctrines that are practicable and far-reaching.

Restoring the quality and strength of the federal and provincial bureaucracies is another key element in institutionalizing policy making. Pakistan’s problems are too big to be left to the highly personalized “kitchen cabinet” or Punjabi loyalists. Signals matter too. Last week’s selection of the new president did not reflect the need to honor a person of national or international standing with that post. Sharif chose a loyalist whom few in Pakistan knew before his nomination. Being a decent person, though necessary, is not enough for the job of Head of State. Sharif had much better candidates at hand but missed an opportunity to restore the grandeur and dignity of the office of President.

On regional relations, Sharif has the right instincts of a good businessman and he needs to stick with them. Open borders with India and Afghanistan can only bring longer-term stability and peace. But then why the inordinate delay in granting India Most Favored Nation status? There will be short-term costs for some trade sectors, for example the Punjabi agriculturalists, but those can be mitigated by persuading India to roll back some of its internal subsidies, allowing both sides to gain from the increase in trade. A regional approach to energy, involving central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India may be far more effective than the pipe dream of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline that has floundered on the shoals of global politics and threats of U.S. sanctions. Joint Indo-Pakistan private sector investments may be the key to rapid results, starting with export-oriented operations that will not threaten domestic producers or markets; provided the bureaucrats can be persuaded to loosen their grip on the rules and regulations that weigh things down.

But what can the United States do regarding its relations with Pakistan? First, the administration can create a center of gravity for decision making on Pakistan, ensuring that there is a cohesive and comprehensive approach rather than departmental policies that may run at cross purposes. Then, it needs to ensure buy-in from the Pakistanis for its aid programs, including the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill for $7.5 billion that will end in 2014. Adding transparency in financial flows from the United States to the central Pakistan government and down to the provincial level will allow the Pakistan people to trust the U.S. assistance and show that promises are measured against ground realities. It should also change the pattern of expenditures so the aid monies flow into Pakistan and stay there, rather than flowing back to Washington consultancies.

Pakistan has the technological and managerial skills to implement, monitor, and evaluate aid projects to international standards. What it lacks is institutional capacity at the policy making level to make sound economic and financial decisions. This will require investing in centers of excellence across the country, where Pakistanis can learn the tools of decision making, and a new breed of managers and entrepreneurs is fostered. Pakistan needs help with its infrastructure, to connect itself internally and with neighbors, but the economy will only stabilize and grow if policy making keeps pace with its growing needs. A stable polity and growing economy will provide a platform for educating and developing productive jobs for the nearly 100 million Pakistani youth that are currently below Pakistan’s median age of 22 years.

But this window of opportunity is narrowing for the governments of Pakistan and the United States. Sharif’s honeymoon with the Pakistani population will likely be shorter than expected, as high hopes clash with the inability of the government to deliver results rapidly. As such, he will need to approach these issues in parallel rather than seriatim. To best help Sharif in these efforts, the United States would do well to review, update, and implement the recommendations that then-Senators Kerry and Hagel supported in 2009. If it does not, it will likely repeat the bilateral relationship rollercoaster ride of the past decade and suffer the consequences.

Shuja Nawaz is the director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. This essay was originally published by Foreign Policy.

South Asia Center Director Shuja Nawaz writes in Foreign Policy‘s AfPak Channel on the state of US-Pakistan relations following US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Pakistan:

Today, as Kerry emerges from his first and much delayed visit to Pakistan as the current U.S. Secretary of State, he must have been struck by a sense of déjà vu. The mission that he and Hagel, now the U.S. Secretary of Defense, defined in 2009 remains largely unfinished. Pakistan has another civilian government facing an uphill task after the depradations of the previous one. Complicating the situation is the continuation of U.S. drone attacks on Pakistani soil that anger the Pakistani public and undermine the government’s ability to work with the United States, and Pakistan’s uncertain behavior regarding the Afghan Taliban that leads it to hedge in bringing them to the reconciliation table. Mistrust still pervades the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.