Madiha Afzal
David M. Rubenstein Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology
Madiha Afzal is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy program. Her research lies at the intersection of political economy, development, and security, with a focus on Pakistan. 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 David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy program. Her research lies at the intersection of political economy, development, and security, with a focus on Pakistan. 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
I think this is in many ways the worst possible outcome that would have been visualized during those peace talks leading up to Doha — that the US is withdrawing, but without an end to the war that is continuing in Afghanistan between the two sides there.
[President Biden's meeting with Afghan leaders is] more sort of a public way of perhaps tying that bow on Afghanistan while assuring the world, look; we tried to do right by Afghans. We still stand on the side of this government, but this is all that we could do. Our time has ended in Afghanistan.
A power-sharing deal [between the Afghan government and the Taliban] is “very unlikely” and the Taliban’s recent territorial gains all point to a “forceful takeover.”
The key dynamic, at least initially, will not be one of the external players jockeying for influence and control — but the Taliban and Kabul fighting it out. Each of these external players [China, Russia, Iran, India and Turkey] has some skin in the game and some moves up its sleeve. We've seen Turkey assert its role in recent days, and India change its tack and reportedly initiate discussions with the Taliban. Pakistan is perhaps in the strongest position, given its location and the history with the Taliban. Yet any role it plays will certainly be contested — by Kabul, by the Taliban, and by other players.
On April 22, Madiha Afzal joined the United States Institute of Peace for a discussion on relations between India and Pakistan.
The Taliban leadership have learned how to evade some of these questions of rights to gain international legitimacy, but the group’s ideology remains the same.
