Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of U.s. Internal Security Assistance

Faced with domestic security challenges including sectarian extremism, drug trafficking, illegal commodity smuggling, endemic corruption, and systemic problems with the provision of justice and law enforcement, Pakistan is a critical but vulnerable partner of the United States in the global war on terrorism. While much has been written about U.S. military assistance to Pakistan and the ever-evolving political relations between the two countries, basic questions of highest policy significance related to Pakistan's internal security have never been fully studied or considered.

In this volume, the authors offer a comprehensive examination of Pakistan's internal security environment and the effectiveness of its criminal justice structures and assess the impact and utility of the principal United States initiatives to help Pakistan strengthen its internal security. They raise some difficult questions about present U.S. government assistance to President Musharraf and the army; while instrumental in the short-term Global War on Terror (GWOT), will US assistance seriously impede the long-term prospects for peace and prosperity in Pakistan?

Supported by truly impressive fieldwork, this timely and detailed book offers a blunt but objective study that is sure to be widely read and hotly debated by analysts, intelligence personnel, and policymakers in both the United States and Pakistan.

C. Christine Fair is a senior research associate within the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the United States Institute of Peace.

Peter Chalk is a policy analyst with the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.