AfPak

That policy objective is to disrupt, dismantle, and prevent Al Qaeda and its affiliates from having a safe haven from which it can continue to operate and plot attacks against the U.S and its allies. This policy decision represents a shift from previous ways of thinking about Afghanistan as an independent problem that required a military solution. The current strategy is an attempt to win the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan people, so that they may come to a newfound understanding of the ways in which the Taliban and Al Qaeda are having a negative influence on the Afghan, and Pakistani people and culture.

Origin

First of all, we often call the problem AfPak, as in Afghanistan Pakistan. This is not just an effort to save eight syllables. It is an attempt to indicate and imprint in our DNA the fact that there is one theater of war, straddling an ill-defined border, the Durand Line, and that on the western side of that border, NATO and other forces are able to operate. On the eastern side, it’s the sovereign territory of Pakistan. But it is on the eastern side of this ill-defined border that the international terrorist movement is located. and The Af-Pak Channel, a joint project of the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy magazine launched in August 2009.

Reaction in Pakistan

The term has been widely criticized in Pakistan. Clifford May writes that it is disliked by Afghans as well.

Pakistani journalist Saeed Shah who is a contributor to The Guardian newspaper mentioned that the international community have always had Pakistan and India bracketed together, and Pakistan always had, and still compares itself with India; Pakistanis in general had never compared themselves with Afghans. He mentions that the United States has lumped Pakistan with Afghanistan under "Af-Pak", a diplomatic relegation, while India is lauded as a growing power. This is a key reason why Pakistan is seeking a nuclear deal with the US as parity with India.

In June 2009 former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf criticized the term in an interview with Der Spiegel:

I am totally against the term AfPak. I do not support the word itself for two reasons: First, the strategy puts Pakistan on the same level as Afghanistan. We are not. Afghanistan has no government and the country is completely destabilized. Pakistan is not. Second, and this is much more important, is that there is an Indian element in the whole game. We have the Kashmir struggle, without which extremist elements like Lashkar-e-Taiba would not exist.

Answering questions at a June 2009 press conference in Islamabad, Holbrooke "said the term 'Afpak' was not meant to demean Pakistan, but was 'bureaucratic shorthand' intended to convey that the situation in the border areas on both sides was linked and one side could not be resolved without the other." In January 2010 Holbrooke said that the administration had stopped using the term: "We can't use it anymore because it does not please people in Pakistan, for understandable reasons."

See also

Afghanistan–Pakistan relations

Afghanistan-Pakistan Center of Excellence - U.S. think tank

Afghanistan–Pakistan Skirmishes, fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan that began on May 13, 2007.

Civil War in Afghanistan

Pashtunistan

South Asian foreign policy of the Barack Obama administration

References

Category:War in Afghanistan (2001–present) Category:Terrorism in Pakistan Category:Words coined in the 2000s Category:Foreign relations of Pakistan Category:Foreign relations of Afghanistan Category:American political neologisms Category:Afghanistan–Pakistan relations