Asif Faiz retired from the World Bank in 2008 after a 33 year career in international development covering some 40 countries. His operational experience includes all SAARC countries, as well as Turkey and Iran. He served as World Bank's country manager in Sudan following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and witnessed the birth pangs of a new nation, South Sudan. He has seen the ravages and human toll of insurgencies in Nigeria, Chad, Peru, Nepal , Sudan (Darfur) and Timor Leste Born in Kashmir, he grew up and studied in Peshawar and fondly remembers the city's still intact circular wall, its gates and labyrinthine alleys and streets, its shrines and Mughal gardens, and its specialized markets –- a veritable Central Asian city at the crossroads of history. He has travelled in the FATA region, including a summer job as a surveyor in Mohmand Agency and the Bara FR. An avid philatelist, he remembers the Pashtunistan stamps in his collection of boyhood days, and recalls the rising Pashtun nationalism of his college days. He has a Ph.D in transportation engineering and writes occasionally on topics that interest him.
by Asif Faiz There has been a flurry of doomsday scenarios in US political circles predicting the collapse of the Afghan regime following the US/NATO withdrawal and grim consequences for Pakistan if it continues to pursue its Great Game policies of the last three decades. However, few of these dire predictions take cognizance of Afghanistan’s…