Author Description

"This book analyses the nature of the current strategic changes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan (Af/Pak) region. The region encompassing Afghanistan and Pakistan is undergoing a fundamental strategic change. As the international Afghanistan conferences have demonstrated, the international community - which is a US-led coalition of the willing - will withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. This withdrawal of troops, as well as the offer of economic aid and negotiations to the Taliban, aims to transfer the responsibility of the future of Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves and to their regional neighbours. This edited volume analyses the nature of this strategic change in order to seek possible future scenarios and to examine policy options. Bringing together contributions from leading academics in the field, the book is centred around three key questions: what has gone wrong in the past with regard to Afghanistan and what strategic adjustments are needed? Is Pakistan a strategic ally of the West, or has Pakistan become a strategic problem? What are the possible future scenarios and policy options and what does strategic readjustment really mean? This book will be of much interest to students of Central and South Asian politics, strategic studies, foreign policy and security studies generally"--