Pakistan: A Hard Country was optimistic about the country's future - have you since changed/qualified your opinion?It's not exactly that I'm optimistic about Pakistan. Rather, I am not as pessimistic as some authors about its survival in the short to medium term. When it comes to internal security threats, terrorism will undoubtedly continue. However, the insurgency on the ground in Swat and the Tribal Areas has to a great extent been defeated by successive military offensives over the past six years. Following the Peshawar massacre, there is a sign of greater will on the part of the civilian government and political parties to support the campaign against the Pakistani Taliban. But if Pakistan does not manage to carry out economic and social reforms, then in the longer run, its survival cannot be guaranteed because of the combination of water scarcity and population growth. Sadly, a succession of civilian and military governments have failed to implement such reforms.There are indications that factions of the Pakistan Taliban are aligning with the ISIS. Do you think ISIS is a credible threat to modern Pakistan?It's impossible to imagine any significant number of Pakistanis submitting to the rule of an Arab-dominated Islamist regime. The Afghan Taliban is also entirely focused on Afghanistan. That doesn't of course mean that they won't accept help from elsewhere if it is useful to them.How do you think the American withdrawal from Afghanistan will impact Pakistan and India, especially Kashmir?I do not think that there is any chance of the Taliban capturing Kabul, or even southern Pashtun cities like Kandahar. If they concentrate their forces to do so, they will be shot to pieces by US firepower. Equally importantly, the Afghan state is dependent on outside aid for 90 per cent of its general budget and 100 per cent of its security budget. If that aid is greatly reduced, then the Afghan state will fall, just as it did in 1992 after Soviet aid ended with the fall of the USSR.Do you think President Obama's backing out of Afghanistan and earlier Iraq signal a tempering of America's earlier muscular nationalism?Under Obama, the US has certainly pulled back considerably from the megalomaniac policies of the Bush administration. This reflects a profound war-weariness in the US, and a deep unwillingness to engage in further military adventures. On the other hand, US nationalist ideology and a bipartisan desire to maintain US global hegemony have not changed.What impact do you think the assertive foreign policy of the right-wing BJP will have on power-equations in this part of the world?In my view, the assertiveness of the BJP government risks losing India some very important opportunities. The Islamist insurgency has produced a significant change of attitudes in the Pakistani military which could lay the basis for productive talks with India. Concerning India's greater assertiveness with regard to China, and especially a heightened Indian security role in east and southeast Asia, I am not sure that the potential gains from this for India outweigh the risks.What are you working on now?I am now engaged in writing a history of the Pashtun people. It is a huge and complicated subject though, and will not be finished for a number of years.

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