The socio-economic cost of conflict to the people of Pakistan
Besides losing thousands of civilian and army lives, Pakistan has also suffered socio-economically in a volatile security environment. Investments have dropped, governance worsened, business badly affected, precipitated also by a grueling energy crisis. Lack or absence of planning by the federal government. Most recently the unprecedented flooding has created new
problems and increased the impact of these other issues. This talk will present an overview of the current situation in Pakistan.
Imtiaz Gul, is currently the Executive Director of the Islamabad-based independent Centre for Research and Security Studies that he founded in December 2007, with the support of Germany’s Heinrich Boell Stiftung. The Centre is a research and advocacy outfit, focused primarily on security and governance. His first book ” The Unholy Nexus; Pak-Afghan relations under the Taliban,” was published in July 2002, and he also edited a book on “Islam and Liberalism”, soon after the U.S-led coalition unleashed the
controversial War Against Terrorism. Penguin-Viking India published Gul’s second book “The Al-Qaeda Connection – Taliban and Terror in Tribal Areas” on August 20, 2009, which profiles the evolution and nature of militancy in the Pak-Afghan border regions and how it fell under the influence of AlQaeda. Penguin US/UK is publishing the revised edition of this book with the new title “Most Dangerous Place – Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier” in June. Besides reporting for the Urdu, English and Hindi language services of Deutsche Welle, Germany’s foreign languages’ broadcaster since 1989, Imtiaz Gul has also been broadcasting with the CNN TV between 1998-2000, and with the Hong Kong-based Star World TV, Japanese National Broadcasting Corporation NHK, the National Public Radio in the United States, and also regularly files for FOREIGN POLICY, USA, THE FRIDAY TIMES (weekly) Lahore, PULSE (weekly), Islamabad, and Daily DAWN (KARACHI) on issues such as militancy, border regions, Afghanistan, and Indo-Pak relations. He regularly appears as an analyst/expert on the Doha-based Al-Jazeera English/Arabic satellite tv channel for his expertise on the areas such as Afghanistan/Tribal Areas/and the Kashmir militancy, which has been extensively covering since 1988. His Afghanistan travels brought him in contact with a number of Pakistani and Afghan officials and people at large. This helped him trace and analyze Pakistan’s involvement with different Afghan factions, and eventually the Taliban and Kashmiri separatists in the Indian-controlled Kashmir.
This lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies.