National Dialogue Forum

My colleague @khansheharyar and I were delighted to reconnect with one of Washington's foremost South Asia experts and inimtable scholar-practitioner @MarkeyDaniel of @StimsonCenter on our podcast. Dr Markey talked about U.S.–Pakistan ties, U.S.–China rivalry, and the risks of another India-Pakistan conflict. Is Washington’s renewed interest in Pakistan here to stay? Watch our podcast episode (in English) to find out. @NDF_Pak @StimsonCenter ▶️ Watch: youtu.be/ZnlVqa_YDbw

How is America’s global strategy changing and where does Pakistan fit? On the latest Geopolitical GupShup, Dr. Kamran Bokhari (@KamranBokhari) joins us to unpack shifting US priorities, a changing West Asia, great-power competition and the choices Pakistan faces in navigating this new geopolitical landscape. Watch: youtu.be/ySVZvYE5RlY @MidEastPolicy @NewlinesInst @OtherImranKhan @khansheharyar @jumainasiddiqui @KaleemImam @NDF_Pak

Very insightful discussion supported by data about AJK's socio-economic indicators and political economy. Thanks to Professor @khandahnish for joining us and for shedding light on the structural factors driving unrest and grievances among the population of AJK.

Distinguished expert and leader, Additional IGP AJK Dr Khalid Chauhan brings a wealth of exeprience in rule of law and peacebuilding to @NDF_Pak We are very honored and excited to have him on board as a Distinguished Fellow. Welcome Dr Chauhan.

Reflections: My Homecoming to Islamabad - Part I I had been away from Pakistan for more than a year when I arrived in Islamabad on February 28, just less than a day before US-Iran-Israel War started. The purpose of my trip to Pakistan was primarily to reconnect with my professional community in Islamabad, go to my favorite trails and eat at my usual restaurants. While I was in the US, I missed Pakistan everyday. My homesickness was so severe that it was debilitating me from thinking about future. I was stuck, thinking about my eventful life in Pakistan. I thought a low-key trip to Pakistan would indulge my nostalgia, enable me to relive some of my best memories, give me the emotional closure and help me move on with life back in the US. However, the US-Iran-Israel changed the purpose of my trip immediately. From a purely personal pilgrimage to the friends and community I had until one year ago, it became a purely business trip in the sense that I started having more professional meetings and events than I had expected. Most of my friends who work on foreign policy and defense and security matters were closely following the war, and I also got sucked back into my erstwhile think tank role I had in Islamabad for years with US Institute of Peace, though this time I was doing it for myself without being encumbered by an elaborate institiontal structure. @NDF_Pak provided me very nimble support without the constraints. Even during the early days of the war when Pakistan was not actively positioning itself as the key mediator, it was clear that Islamabad foreign policy scene had changed while I was away. I had come back to a country that was already making big strides in foreign policy, shrewdly walking the tightrope of balancing its relations with different countries in West Asia, including Iran, while further winning respect and affection from both China and the US. However, after it became evident around two weeks ago that Pakistan is playing the role of the leading mediator in the war, the excitement in Islamabad foreign policy community, both Pakistanis and foreign diplomats, has been uncontrollable and unprecedented. Even foreign diplomats haven't seen a Middle Power such as Pakistan diplomatically so buoyant and playing such a key role in war mediation. A lot of diplomats who were until recently looking at Pakistan from the same old and outdated paradigm of a struggling state must be incredulous, even shocked. As a Pakistani who has worked in international organizations for a better part of two decades now, my country's new role on the global stage felt like a personal validation. Pakistan has been an underdog on the global stage for most of my career. A country that was always in the news for the wrong reasons. Pakistan has been dubbed "fragile state", "failing state", "hard country" and so on for a while now, not only in academic literature written by Western journalists but also by practitioners of foreign policy and international organizations. Here was Pakistan rising up to the occassion and saving the world from World War III. As someone who has always believed in the value propostion Pakistan has to offer to the world, even I was a little surprised. Had Pakistan finally gotten its act together? Was Pakistan being proactive this time, exercising its agency as a confident nuclear power state of 250 million people? The excitement about Pakistan's new role has kept me mostly awake all these weeks. It is hard to sleep when you are witnessing history from a ringside seat. In that excitement, after a long time, I am trying to engage with the world and put myself out there. Lately, I had totally withdrawn to myself due to pessimism stemming out of the war and suffering in the world, primarily of the Palestinian people. The best part of my trip has been a podcast called Geopolitical GupShup that my colleague @khansheharyar and I started under the institutional support of @NDF_Pak You can check out our YouTube channel Geopolitical GupShup. In our podcast, which is still in its early and nascent days, Sheharyar and I present our analysis on geopolitical issues in a casual and conversational manner. The other thing I have really enjoyed is to engage with the amazing foreign policy and defense strategy community of Pakistan who primarily work in think tanks and academia. Earlier this week, I had the honor of spekaing at a conference called Pakistan and the World Disorder organized by @sanoberInsti It was so well-curated by think tank's Executive Director @Qamarcheema and Chairman Ambassador Aizaz Chaudhary who is also Pakistan's former foreign secretary. Sanober Institute organized the conference in collaboration with @FES_PAK a German political foundaiton, in Pakistan led by @FKolbitz their very thoughtful country director. FES has gone some amazing work in Pakistan with civil society organizations, academics and students. I have followed their work for decades and it still amazes me how dedicated and thoughtful team they have. FES and their wider community are true friends of Pakistan and Pakistanis. Coming back to the conference, General (R) Zubair Mahmood Hayat, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee gave the inaugural address at the conference, which was followed by the panel I was spekaing in. Ambassador Jalil Abbas Jilani, the former Foreign Minister of Pakistan chaired my panel which had the most eminent experts from Pakistani academia and think tanks. I spoke about "How the World Views Pakistan's Role in Global Geopolitics", sharing my perspective from the vantage point of someone who has worked on US-Pakistan relations for a while. I gave a bit of an insider account of working on this relationship when it was fraught between August 2021 and until early 2025. I will share the gist of my talk and insights from General Zubair's riveting inaugural keynote later. Will also try to present the summary of other speakers' arguments. For now, I just wanted to share my reflections on my time in Islamabad while the city has been at the centre of global peacemaking. Check out some pictures here.

Geopolitical GupShup Podcast: we unpack latest developments in Pakistan–Afghanistan conflict. From military conflict to regional implications and possible pathways to de-escalation, we offers our analysis @NDF_Pak @khansheharyar youtube.com/watch?v=ezo1OH0L…