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    ISAS Briefs

    Quick analytical responses to occurrences in South Asia

    182 : AfPak: President Obama’s Two Wars

    Shahid Javed Burki, Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the ISAS

    27 December 2010

    The nature of the American effort in the region it once called AfPak has gone full circle. The administration headed by President Barack Obama started with the notion that it was fighting one war being waged in the areas on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Inhabited mostly by the Pushtuns, Washington called it the AfPak region and appointed one person, the late Richard Holbrooke, to handle the framing and execution of the American policy.