Madiha Afzal is a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She was previously the David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy program. Her work focuses on the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, Pakistan’s politics and policy, and extremism in South Asia and beyond. She previously worked as an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Afzal is the author of “Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State,” published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2018 (the book was also published in South Asia and Afghanistan by Penguin India). Afzal has also published several journal articles, book chapters, policy reports, and essays. In addition, she writes for publications including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, Dawn, and Newsweek. She is regularly interviewed by media outlets including BBC, NPR, and PBS. In addition, she has consulted for international organizations including the World Bank and UK’s Department for International Development. For her writing on education in Pakistan, she was named to Lo Spazio della Politica's list of “Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013.” Afzal received her doctorate in economics from Yale University in 2008, specializing in development economics and political economy.
Affiliations:
Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), fellow
Institute for Economic and Development Alternatives, Pakistan (IDEAS), fellow
Madiha Afzal is a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She was previously the David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy program. Her work focuses on the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, Pakistan’s politics and policy, and extremism in South Asia and beyond. She previously worked as an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Afzal is the author of “Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State,” published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2018 (the book was also published in South Asia and Afghanistan by Penguin India). Afzal has also published several journal articles, book chapters, policy reports, and essays. In addition, she writes for publications including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, Dawn, and Newsweek. She is regularly interviewed by media outlets including BBC, NPR, and PBS. In addition, she has consulted for international organizations including the World Bank and UK’s Department for International Development. For her writing on education in Pakistan, she was named to Lo Spazio della Politica’s list of “Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013.” Afzal received her doctorate in economics from Yale University in 2008, specializing in development economics and political economy.
Affiliations:
Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), fellow
Institute for Economic and Development Alternatives, Pakistan (IDEAS), fellow
Pakistan Under Siege
The book details the rise of religious extremism and explains how the state has been both complicit in extremist violence and victimized by it. . . . Afzal’s book offers a useful survey of the many pressures—cultural, religious, economic—that add to social and political instability in Pakistan.
—Mohammed Hanif, Foreign Affairs
Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State.. is a remarkably clear, concise, and accessible attempt to dismantle assumptions common among Westerners about public opinion in Pakistan. . . Afzal not only gives the lie to Western stereotypes about the prevalence of extremist beliefs in Muslim countries; she also looks closely and critically at the ways in which the Pakistani government has encouraged the country’s militarization and what she refers to as its "Islamization."
—Ahmed Rashid, The New York Review of Books
[Many countries view the world as increasingly multipolar and are seeking to diversify their diplomatic ties.] They don’t see this world now as being led by China or led by the U.S. only. It benefits them to have relationships on both sides. [Further, harsh U.S. criticism of other countries’ relationships with China could backfire. The U.S.-China competition for allegiance might also] grant undue leverage [to the more powerful countries that resist taking sides.]
[Even while it does not run the country directly, the army is understood to be Pakistan’s most powerful institution.] Since 2008, the military has been content to run things behind the scenes and that is continuing through the country’s current set of crises.
[In Pakistan, where the military remains supremely powerful and enjoys significant support, Musharraf is a divisive figure.] In the end he left Pakistanis with a deep distaste for direct military rule — so that even though the military wields much power behind the scenes now, it does not want to be in power directly again.
Imran Khan came to power touting that he was on the same page as the military. And he has ended on a stunning anti-establishment note in a way that no Pakistani politician has done before. [Still, it would be unfair to blame Mr. Musharraf for all of Pakistan’s problems, or even for the military’s continued hold on power. Those, are rooted in pathologies that go back to the country’s split with India in 1947.] It traces back to two pillars — reliance on Islam and opposition to India — that all of the country’s leaders have tried to follow. Musharraf wasn’t responsible for that — he was a product of it.
[Pakistan was used as transit for NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. And Musharraf tolerated attacks launched by U.S. forces against suspected militants in Pakistan's rugged border areas. That didn't stop him from playing what some in Washington called a double game,] cooperating with the U.S. on counter terrorism, while allowing the Taliban to have sanctuary in Pakistan. [Pakistan led by Musharraf essentially hedged its bets – looking to a future where the U.S. would depart the region. The Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan in August 2021 and that was partly a result of Musharraf's policies.] The fact that the Taliban had sanctuary in Pakistan... Musharraf was the one who began that policy.
[The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has] emboldened [the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban) and other terror groups.] The TTP has also been emboldened by a Pakistani state that has had a shaky, uncertain response to the group in the last couple of years. [A] sloppy policy toward terrorist groups has been more or less consistent across governments in Pakistan since the mid-2000s.
The TPP [Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan] threat to Pakistan is significant, and it is growing. The TTP have been emboldened by a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and the Pakistani state's shaky, uncertain approach to the group in recent years. Pakistan has tried negotiating with the group many times over the years; negotiations always fail because the group is existentially opposed to the Pakistani state and constitution. The only option the state has is to launch an extensive military operation against the group, as it did in 2014, but that is complicated this time around by the fact that the TTP can cross the border into Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan with a growing, and hard-to-control terrorism problem on its hands.
[The donor pledges Pakistan has received for post-flood recovery,] are specific and long-term and should go toward rebuilding the areas and lives devastated by the summer’s floods — not shoring up foreign reserves. Pakistan’s reserves have been at a precarious position since before the floods and are teetering at around one month’s imports again. [Inflationary pressures, the fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the floods have combined to create] perhaps the greatest economic challenge Pakistan has ever seen. I think Pakistan will ultimately avoid default for now, largely through help from the IMF and loans from friendly countries like Saudi Arabia and China, but those won’t address the clear underlying malaise of the economy.
[Airstrikes by Pakistani forces inside Afghanistan will carry] significant risks, particularly that of accidental civilian casualties, and there are the obvious sovereignty issues, which could lead to open conflict with the Afghan Taliban.