The Role of the ISI in Counterterrorism and Pakistan's Political Landscape
Moderated by Karin von Hippel
Dr. Hassan Abbas is a Research Fellow at the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program. He also received his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. His research interests are Pakistan's nuclear program and the Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan controversy; religious extremism in South and Central Asia, and “Islam and the West."
He has an LL.M. in International Law from Nottingham University, UK, where he was a Britannia Chevening Scholar (1999). He also remained a visiting fellow at the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School (2002–2003) and later continued at the Program on Negotiation at HLS as a visiting scholar (2003–2004).
He is a former Pakistani government official who served in the administrations of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (1995–1996) and President Pervez Musharraf (1999–2000). His latest book, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America's War on Terror (M.E. Sharpe) has been on bestseller lists in India and Pakistan and widely reviewed internationally including the New York Times,Boston Globe, Far Eastern Economic Review, The Hindu, Dawn, etc. He has also appeared as an analyst on CNN, MSNBC, and PBS, and as a political commentator on VOA and BBC. His forthcoming book is titled: "Sovereignty Belongs to Allah": Constitutionalism and Human Rights in the Islamic States.
He runs Watandost, which is a blog on Pakistan-related affairs.
Brigadier Shaukat Qadir. Starting as a pilot in the Pakistan Air Force, PAF; where his superiors soon discovered his propensity for trouble and decided to palm him off elsewhere. So he joined the army in an infantry unit. Served in erstwhile East Pakistan in 1971, but was fortunate enough to return weeks before the surrender to rejoin his unit at Sulemanki. He also saw action during the Balochistan insurgency in the 70s and in Kashmir.
He commanded three brigades, served on the staff of a brigade, division, and corps; and has been on the faculty of the infantry school, Command and Staff College, and the War Wing at the National Defence University.
Having fooled the army for long enough to reach the rank of a brigadier, when the army finally discovered after almost thirty years what the PAF had done in three, he sought an early retirement in 1998 and, in 1999 became the founder Vice President and, for a while, President of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, IPRI; from which he again sought early retirement in 2001, before he could be sacked; but his stint there nurtured his pretensions to being able to think occasionally.
