AFPAK

AfPak is now the usual shorthand way in Washington and within NATO to refer to Afghanistan and Pakistan jointly. The reasons were spelled out by the US diplomat Richard Holbrooke in early 2008:

First of all, we often call the problem AfPak, as in Afghanistan Pakistan. This is not just an effort to save eight syllables. It is an attempt to indicate and imprint in our DNA the fact that there is one theater of war, straddling an ill-defined border, the Durand Line, and that on the western side of that border, NATO and other forces are able to operate. On the eastern side, it’s the sovereign territory of Pakistan. But it is on the eastern side of this ill-defined border that the international terrorist movement is located.

Hampton Roads International Security Quarterly, 22 Mar. 2008.

The abbreviation began to appear in newspapers in February 2009, following the appointment of Holbrooke as President Obama’s special envoy for the region and the introduction of policies designed to encourage Pakistan to become more active in countering terrorists within its borders. It quickly became common.

The resulting document offers a four-pronged strategy, including the adoption of the so-called AfPak approach in which Afghanistan and Pakistan will be handled jointly under the leadership of the special US envoy Richard Holbrooke.

Independent, 27 Mar. 2009.

The Obama administration has stated that it wants a regional solution to what acronym-loving Washington insiders are now referring to as the AFPAK problem, but they are playing catch-up to the militants who have always viewed this struggle in regional terms.

Washington Post, 25 Feb. 2009.

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