"The Consequences of American Foreign Policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan"

(Ezio Cappadocia Memorial Lecture on Politics and History)

8:00 PM Tuesday, September 18, 2012
University Center Ballroom

"Pakistan on the Brink: An Update"

3:40 PM Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Gallagher Business Building 123

You are cordially invited to attend a seminar with Ahmed Rashid. Born in Pakistan in 1948 and educated at Cambridge University, he has been covering the politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia for thirty years. He has written articles for the Financial Times, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and “BBC Online.” He regularly appears on NPR, CNN, the BBC World Service, and “The News Hour.” His first book came out in 1994, A Resurgence of Central Asia. The first book on Central Asia to appear after the breakup of the Soviet Union, it established his reputation as a leading authority on the region. Taliban: Islam, Oil, and the New Great Game (2000) was a New York Times bestseller. More than 1.5 million copies of this book have been sold in twenty-two languages. In Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (2002), he examined the reasons why the Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan pose especially dangerous threats to global security. Chief among these reasons are religious repression, political corruption, and extreme poverty with unemployment rates surpassing eighty percent in many areas. In Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation-Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2008), he explained why the American-dominated status quo in that part of the world has been helpless in stemming the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.  His latest book, Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, appeared earlier this year. He writes that after eleven years of war and nation-building in Afghanistan, “the bare bones of a functioning country are missing.” Meanwhile, relations between Pakistan and the United States are at their lowest point ever. That country, too, is on the edge of a precipice. The Bush and Obama war policies manifestly have failed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for reasons that Ahmed Rashid is uniquely prepared to explain.