I Read Appropriations Bills So You Don’t Have To: Pakistan FY2013

From my notes: this is a summary of the major Pakistan-related provisions I’ve found in this year’s crop of authorization and appropriations bills (most of which are still midway through the committee process). I’ll do a separate Afghanistan-related provisions roundup at a later date, and may update this post as the legislative process advances.

Not yet included in here are various independent bills proposed on Pakistan aid (such as those introduced by Rep. Rohrabacher or Sen. Rand), which have a very limited chance of passing on their own (though they might come up in the form of an amendment during full debate on some of these bills).

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Senate Defense Authorization (Passed Committee on May 24) (Press Release Summary)

No full text available yet, but per the committee press release:

• “Authorizes $1.75 billion in Coalition Support Funds to reimburse cooperating nations supporting the effort in Afghanistan, but limits the availability of such funds to reimburse Pakistan until the Secretary of Defense certifies that Pakistan meets certain criteria, including not supporting or providing safe haven to insurgents attacking U.S., Afghan, and coalition forces in Afghanistan, and not imprisoning Dr. Shakil Afridi, the doctor who helped locate Osama Bin Laden. The Secretary of Defense may waive these certification requirements if in the U.S. national security interest. The provision also makes clear that no Coalition Support Fund payments may be made to reimburse Pakistan for claims relating to the period when the lines of supply through Pakistan to Afghanistan remain closed.”

House Defense Authorization (H.R. 4310) (Passed full House on May 18) (Full Bill Text)

Coalition Support Fund-Specific Provisions: Reduces overall funding authorization for Coalition Support Funds for FY2013 to $1.65B (down from $1.69B in FY2012), and specifically caps Pakistan’s share of CSF money at $650M.

Further restricts the release of any CSF money to Pakistan pending a report from the Department of Defense on Pakistani restrictions on supply routes and the cost difference to the U.S. before and after routes were closed. Also requires the Secretary of Defense to certify that Pakistan is:

• supporting “counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda, its associated movements, the Haqqani network, and other domestic and foreign terrorist organizations”;
• cooperating against the proliferation of improvised explosive device precursors and nuclear-related material;
• “issuing visas in a timely manner for U.S. visitors engaged in counterterrorism efforts and assistance programs in Pakistan”.

No waiver on this certification is provided. (Pg 528-531, Section 1211)

Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund-Specific Provisions: Does not alter authorization levels from FY12 levels, but updates and reaffirms a restriction against the release of any more than 10% (down from 40% in FY2012) of Pakistan Counterinsurgency Funds until the Secretaries of Defense and State submit a report previously mandated in the FY2012 Defense Authorization Act (PL 112-81, Section 1220) that outlines U.S. strategy for the use of the fund, gaps in capabilities in Pakistani forces that the fund will help address, and Pakistani cooperation against IEDs. (Pg 546, Section 1217)

 Contracting Restrictions: Modifies a previous provision in the FY2010 Defense Authorization Act (PL 111-84, Section 801) that allowed the Secretary of Defense to circumvent normal contracting competition regulations for the provision of goods or services to support logistics in support of operations in Afghanistan, by barring such contracts in Pakistan until ground supply routes are reopened. (Pg 304-306, Section 821d)

Senate Defense Appropriations

No bill released yet.

House Defense Appropriations (H.R. 5856) (Passed Committee on May 17) (Full Bill Text)

Coalition Support Fund-Specific Provisions:No Pakistan-specific funding levels are set (the money itself is derived from the overall operations and maintenance account), but prior to the release or reprogramming of any money for CSF payments to Pakistan, the Secretaries of Defense and State must certify:

• Pakistani cooperation against “the Haqqani network, Quetta Shura Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Al Qaeda, and other domestic and foreign terrorist organizations”;
• that Pakistan’s military is “not supporting terrorist activities against U.S. or coalition forces in Afghanistan”
• that the government is “implement policies to protect judicial independence and due process of law” and that the military “are not intervening extra-judicially into political and judicial processes in Pakistan”;
• Pakistan cooperation in halting the proliferation of improvised explosive device precursors and nuclear-related material;
• that Pakistan is “issuing visas in a timely manner for U.S. visitors engaged in counterterrorism efforts”;
• and that the government is “providing humanitarian organizations access to detainees, internally displaced persons, and other Pakistani civilians affected by the conflict”.

No waiver provision is offered on this certification. (Pg 151-152, Section 9015)

Senate / House Foreign Authorization

No bills released yet.

Senate Foreign Appropriations (S.3241) (Passed Committee on May 24) (Full Bill Text)

Assistance Funding: $800.35M in total Pakistan-specific assistance is appropriated in the base budget: $375M for Economic Support Funds, $100M for International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement, $250M for Foreign Military Financing, and $50M for the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund. (Pg 203-204) An additional maximum of $100M in ESF is available for appropriation to Pakistan through the Overseas Contingency Operations account. (Pg 276) Country-specific appropriations levels are not specified for other major accounts (i.e. Health, Development Assistance, etc).

Operations and Maintenance Funding: State Department operations spending in Pakistan is capped at $29.97M. (Pg 5) USAID operations spending in Pakistan is capped at $37M. (Pg 23) The Secretary of State is granted a waiver power to circumvent these funding ceilings in the event of “extraordinary, unanticipated contingencies” provided s/he reports to the committee that doing so is “important to the national interest of the United States”. Through the Overseas Contingency Operations account, the State Department is granted an additional maximum of $154.49M in operations funding for Pakistan, and USAID $5M, any portion of which can in turn be reprogrammed to other accounts. (Pg 273, 275)

Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund-Specific Provisions: Prior to PCCF money release, certification by the Secretary of State is required that “the government of Pakistan has reopened overland cargo routes available to support US and NATO troops in Afghanistan” and that PCCF funds “can be used efficiently and effectively by the end of the fiscal year”. Unused PCCF money can be transferred to other accounts. (Pg 58-59)

Foreign Military Financing-Specific Provisions: $33M in FMF money is withheld pending a report from the Secretary of State that Dr. Shakil Afridi “has been released from prison and cleared of all charges relating to the assistance provided to the United States in locating Osama bin Laden”. (Pg 204)

Certification Requirements: Prior to the release of any money for ESF, PCCF, FMF, or INCLE accounts, the Secretary of State must certify:

• Pakistani cooperation against “the Haqqani network, Quetta Shura Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Al Qaeda, and other domestic and foreign terrorist organizations”;
• that Pakistan’s military is “not supporting terrorist activities against U.S. or coalition forces in Afghanistan”
• that the government is “implement policies to protect judicial independence and due process of law” and that the military “are not intervening extra-judicially into political and judicial processes in Pakistan”;
• Pakistan cooperation in halting the proliferation of improvised explosive device precursors and nuclear-related material;
• that Pakistan is “issuing visas in a timely manner for U.S. visitors engaged in counterterrorism efforts”;
• and that the government is “providing humanitarian organizations access to detainees, internally displaced persons, and other Pakistani civilians affected by the conflict”.

These certifications (effectively identical to those on Coalition Support Funds specified in the House Defense Appropriations bill noted above) can be waived by the Secretary of State “if it is important to the national security interests of the United States”. (Pg 200-202)

Reporting Requirements: Within 45 days of passage, State, USAID, and Treasury must submit “a detailed spend plan” for funds appropriated. (Pg 250-251) This should include “achievable and sustainable goals, benchmarks for measuring progress, and expected results”. Every six months after submission, the Secretary of State must submit a progress report.

House Foreign Appropriations (Passed Committee May 17) (Full Bill Text)

Funding Levels: Unlike the Senate version, the House bill does not set Pakistan-specific levels for any of the major funding accounts. On the major accounts noted in the Senate version, it appropriates less overall than the Senate’s base budget: $2.9B in Economic Support Funds (compared to $4.5B in Senate); $1.06B in International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement Funds (compared to $1.4B in Senate); and $5.2B in Foreign Military Financing (compared to $5.8B in Senate).  No money appears to be specifically appropriated for the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund.

Pakistan-specific funding would presumably be forced to shrink from the levels set by the Senate in the event that these account funding ceilings pass in the final legislation. But the House does appropriate more money through the Overseas Contingency Operation account for State and USAID: for operations spending, approximately $3B compared to $1.5B in Senate, and considerably more in the bilateral assistance fund accounts, $5.15B compared to only $600M in Senate.

Certification and Reporting Requirements: The House bill provides essentially identical certification and reporting requirements as the Senate version and the House Defense Appropriations bill, but does not include the specific PCCF and FMF conditions noted in the Senate Foreign Approps bill. (Pg 157-160)

On the Shortage of Pakistan ‘Experts’

I appreciate Michael Kugelman describing my daily news summaries as one of the “most popular (and best) information portals consulted by Washington Pakistan-watchers”. I’m not sure if that is actually true, but I think it is a reasonably good product and I hope it is useful to whoever’s reading.

I’m not an expert, but I am certainly guilty of falling into the “AfPak” rather than purely Pakistan-focused category of analysts. I came to the region late in my undergraduate academic career (I started off most interested in Japan and China), so most of my experience has been on the job, although I hope at four and a half years I can claim some level of depth. (I am particularly hopeful that, the next time I visit Pakistan, we can skip the first twenty minutes of conversations devoted to the ritual recounting of the history of the relationship dating from 1979, and get to the current point).

That said, U.S. bilateral relations with Pakistan over the past decade have been a function of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and it’s true that most of our work on the region during my time here at the Center (as in other policy shops around Washington) has been focused on Afghanistan. We can lament this, but it’s the reality; there a hundred thousand American men and women and hundreds of billions of dollars actively at risk in Afghanistan. U.S.-Pakistan bilateral trade and economic engagement is big from Pakistan’s perspective, but small from the United States’. Bilateral aid is considerable, but again has been conceived largely through the lens of the Afghan war.

In terms of the news briefs, I actually think my coverage of Afghanistan is far weaker than of Pakistan. Being based in Washington and without native language fluency, I’m entirely reliant on English-language online media, and Afghanistan has nothing approaching the level of Pakistan’s domestic media landscape for coverage of the ins and outs of the country’s internal politics and economy. (If you think anybody claiming to be an analyst of the region should have native language fluency, I agree, and welcome your forthcoming financial contributions towards my upcoming Hindi-Urdu language classes.) That’s not to say Pakistan’s media, or my understanding of what does and doesn’t get covered of the country’s deeper dynamics, is anywhere near perfect, but there is a lot more to work with than Afghanistan, where huge swathes of the country go unreported on. The ability to actually get something of a handle of what’s going on is part of what’s made Pakistani politics fascinating for me, and driven me to deepen my professional focus on it.

I’m about to reenter the academy with grad school starting up this fall; I’m not in a position to fully assess the state of South Asia studies programs nationwide, but my impressions during the application process aligns with Michael’s description that the higher education industry generally overlooks Pakistan. I am looking forward to coursework at SAIS, but my impression is that the strength of the program – as with South Asia studies programs throughout the country – does lie with India, moreso than Pakistan. Again, this should not really be surprising: U.S. commercial links are stronger, research is easier (safer) to conduct, and the U.S. Indian diaspora is larger and more active here. And SAIS was a rare opportunity to find a South Asia studies program that actually focuses on the region’s politics, economics, and foreign policy; maybe I was looking in the wrong places, but most other programs I found were more classic humanities programs focused primarily on language, culture and history. Again, I do not have a perfect perspective on the full academic field, but as an applicant, what little financial aid there is available (programs like the FLAS scholarship) appears to be mostly concentrated in these more established humanities programs.

I do think U.S.-Pakistan relations for their own sake, and Pakistan’s own internal political and economic developments, are important and worth greater attention than they currently receive in American academia and policy circles. I hope Michael’s right that the transition in Afghanistan will give way to a broader focus on Pakistan, and I’ve love to see more people involved in the policy formulation process, because it is hard as hell and the U.S. can use all the help it can get. But there is a lot of uncertainty about U.S. relations with this part of the world in the coming years, and a paucity of institutional and career options to support those interested in it. People who do choose to pursue this track are taking a risk; don’t be too surprised that there’s not a lot of them.

No Document Dump This Evening

Crashing on a few side projects, sorry blog! I’ll try to make it up later.

No Document Dump This Week

I’m still playing vacation catch-up, so no blogging beyond the normal news briefs is likely. I should be back at it next week, though.

On Vacation

Happy Winter Solstice, readers. I’ll be back in January.

No Document Dump This Week

Sorry to introduce a weekly feature and then drop it the next week, but I’ve been battling a head cold all week and am going to focus on bringing my sinuses under control this evening instead of diving into another document. Back in action next week, hopefully.

Productivity

I got a request from a reader of my previous post offering tips for junior analysts that I talk a little more about time management. The basic gist of the question was, how can an aspiring DC think tanker or staffer or analyst or whoever balance keeping up on the flood of information, while also putting themselves out there in a blog or other publication format, and also having a day job. And maybe a personal life somewhere in there too?

As you may have guessed from the weeklong gap between substantive posts on this blog and the fact that I’ve worked at the same institution for going on four years now, I am probably not the best person to seek advice on this! I can share my general practices, though, and maybe people in comments (I know you’re out there somewhere) can chime in with more.

My questioner specifically noted the problem of balancing regular practices with things that come up on the fly and disrupt those routines; as you advance in your career you may have a little more control over your schedule but this is definitely an ongoing challenge. The only thing I’ve been able to come up with is committing to carving out certain blocks of time for yourself and sticking to them.

What to fill those blocks with? Generally I think you could categorize most of the competing demands on your time as matters of professional development (getting good at what you want to do), professional advancement (getting recognized for being good at what you want to do), professional responsibilities (fulfilling whatever the requirements of your current position might be), and personal development (the rest of your life). These are all interrelated to an extent – it’s great to get recognition for improving yourself, after all – but thinking about how a particular task contributes to one area or another may help when figuring out what your current balance of commitments are and how to use the blocks of time you are able to set aside for one thing or the other.

These areas won’t always be equally balanced nor do they necessarily need to be, depending on what your current interests for yourself are. Professional responsibilities are obviously going to be the primary demand on your time if you have a job; professional advancement if you don’t or are looking to change jobs in the near term. But most of the focus of my previous post and this one are going to be on professional development, which I think is usually under-valued in D.C., where people often hope to rely on connections and references to advance their career at a rapid pace. (I’m not hating on D.C. here; it’s not like everywhere else in the world operates as a pure meritocracy either.) Making the time for professional development is going to improve your performance in your existing responsibilities, and that’s going to improve your chances of advancement. And with a few exceptions, it’s also going to be something that if you don’t particularly care about, no one else will either. Your bosses and mentors may be able to get you a job but it’s ultimately your responsibility to learn how to succeed in it.

So, my own professional development centers a lot around news and information analysis. It lets me know what’s happening and helps me figure out what to say when it comes time to say or write something (which I also try to practice, but which before this blog has been primarily filled through my existing professional responsibilities). For other people the professional skills you need are going to be networking, or learning to conduct an interview, or writing extremely fast copy, or whatever. You should be getting these skills in the course of your professional responsibilities, but if you’re not, or if you’re not getting enough compared to where you want to be, that’s what you need to prioritize with the time you set aside for yourself.

I discussed reasons for using Twitter and Google Reader in my previous post but I’ll elaborate a bit further here. In keeping with the read-every-day / write-about-what-you-read-every-day mantra, my work day begins with reading the previous day’s news and summarizing it for the news briefs on Afghanistan and Pakistan that I produce as part of my day job and rehost here. Throughout the day as I’m working I star or note important items that pop up in my Google Reader, which I may read in full when I come across them, if I have the time, or may just skim and keep for the next morning (since there are generally speaking relatively few news developments that require an immediate response in my position).

(Since the Reader redesign launched this week, I’ve been forced to start using Instapaper to keep track of pages I come across through random browsing, which does not sync perfectly with my other RSS feeds in Reader but does so better than the +1 function. Google, I am disappoint.)

At the start of each morning I load up all those items I took note of the previous day in tabs in my browser, bookmark them all, close it all out and then spend 10-15 minutes grouping them by topics before reloading to read. This process helps me get a sense of what the news stories of the day are and how they relate to each other; it takes some time to do at the start but once things are sorted it makes reading go much faster than just stumbling from story to story in the order they may have been published across a hundred different sites. I write out my summaries as I read; all told the process takes about an hour and a half each morning, depending on the volume of news. Echoing a point from the previous post again, this is a skill (reading and processing large volumes of information) that just gets better and faster with practice.

This news brief is a professional requirement, but it’s also something I’ve committed additional time and effort to for my own personal development; for the organization as a whole it is a relatively minor side project. So I choose to come in early to work to make sure I have this time for myself to process the day’s news uninterrupted before everything else around the office starts up and I start getting pulled into meetings or report drafting or whatever the day requires. If there is something scheduled first thing in the morning, I’ll usually come in even earlier.

During the rest of the day I’m generally going to be tied up working on other things, but I keep my Google Reader tab open and Twitter running in the background and try to keep at least one eye on both a couple of times an hour. Whenever possible, I spend my lunch hour reading long-form pieces that I don’t have time to get into during my morning read, or (lately, since I’m trying to make an effort to keep from totally stove-piping myself) reading things that I don’t normally focus on professionally – technology news, U.S. politics, U.S. relations with other parts of the world than Afghanistan and Pakistan, etc. None of this is directly related to work (although it’s possible they’ll make me a Senior Fellow when I hit 2,000 Twitter followers, right?) and I don’t always have the choice to do it as much as I might like. But it’s all useful to my professional development as a whole and has definitely improved my work performance as well.

My balance of time devoted to professional advancement time has been comparatively limited. (I’m lucky to work at a job that has rewarded my professional development with responsibility and recognition and I recognize at other organizations, half the challenge is getting your ideas heard.) Since I’ve started looking at grad schools this fall, I have set aside one weekday night a week where I don’t do anything but applications – in the future this may become my dedicated writing time, since I’m not running a high-volume blog here (though I promise I will try to keep the 3000-word plus posts down to a minimum in the future). Blogging and publication outside of the course of my daily work offers the potential for both personal advancement and development (since it maybe attracts an audience and also forces me to organize my thoughts on issues) but it comes at the expense of other things; I tend to go through peaks and valleys on my book reading, reading multiple in one month and then getting stuck on another for several months at a time, and blogging has cut into that time lately. If I were really unhappy at my job or desperate to find new avenues of employment, I would probably look to cut back in other areas further and set up bigger blocks of time to pursue the job hunt.

I’d like to close by emphasizing the importance of personal time unrelated to any of this professional stuff. Most of my professional skills, such as they may be, come down to cumulative experience and continued focus on a particular area, not sacrificing myself on the altar of my internet connection every waking minute. I have cut down on most of my internet reading after weekday work hours (again, things like Google Reader help me manage this by bringing the news I’m interested in to me when I’m ready to read it) and I don’t read any news, check my work e-mail, or do anything related to my professional pursuits at all on Saturdays (I build homes for a change of pace instead). Go out, watch a movie, go to a happy hour, read some fiction, bake something; make yourself a more well-rounded person than just what you work on or blog about. D.C. is a city full of workaholics and you have got to keep some time for yourself or you risk losing all perspective and burning out. Save that for when you’re in a government job and one missed phone call leads to us nuking Cyprus by mistake.

That’s all I’ve got. Helpful? Unhelpful? Do you have better systems for time management than I? I would welcome any suggestions since this is definitely a question I’m grappling with as well.

Notes on Afghanistan-Related Legislation for FY2012

As a post-script to the budget analysis series, here are some brief highlights from current legislation for the 2012 Fiscal year related to Afghanistan.

House Foreign Appropriations (passed subcommittee): No money may be obligated to the government of Afghanistan (I would assume this means contractors are still ok) until the State Department certifies that the government is

• making “significant progress” on the IMF’s conditions for the resumption of a program;
•  “demonstrating a commitment” to reducing corruption and improving governance, including prosecutions and transparency measures;
• taking “significant steps” to facilitate public participation;

… and that it (State) has a “unified U.S. government anticorruption strategy” and that funds will be programmed to support Afghan institutions in support of this; that local Afghan representatives will be consulted on program design, implementation, and oversight; and that more money will be used to hire oversight and monitoring officers.

There is also some women’s participation on reconciliation language. SIGAR and the Inspectors General of State and DOD are also supposed to submit a joint audit plan of U.S. civilian assistance within 45 days of passage.

Senate Foreign Appropriations (passed committee): Has most of the general conditions on direct aid to the Afghan government as above, but is less specific than the House on the IMF point; Senate just requires a report by 90 days from enactment on whether an agreement has been reached and if not what steps have been demanded by the IMF for that to happen. (It looks like this will be moot by the time this passes anyhow.)

• It also specifies that Secretary of State must certify to the committee that an Afghan agency receiving U.S. funds has been assessed and is considered qualified to receive funds and that there is a written commitment to benchmarks, oversight, etc, for the funds received. USAID and State are supposed to coordinate on this and the bill does not specify what those benchmarks should be.
• It specifies at least $75M for rule of law programs, $250k of which goes to the State inspector general for oversight.
• It specifies that no money appropriated may be used “to enter into a permanent basing rights agreement between the United States and Afghanistan.”

House Foreign Authorization (passed committee): Requires a report to Congressional committees from State and DOD on the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations in Afghanistan’s activities.

It also says that it is “the sense of Congress” that “as the very large US diplomatic presence diminishes in Afghanistan and Iraq”, State should reassign five Foreign Service officer billets to the Caribbean.

There is no Senate Foreign Authorization bill yet.

House Defense Appropriations (passed House): appropriates $475M Afghan Infrastructure Fund, which is supposed to be run by State but whose money appears to be owned by DOD and can be used by them (more likely) if State agrees that’s ok. This money is supposed to be in support of “the counterinsurgency strategy”, and it appears there is a pretty wide leeway on its transfer to State for use in economic activities. No reporting requirements or conditions on this that I see, other than a notification to Congress when funds are transferred.

It also appropriates $12.8B for the Afghan security forces fund. CERP gets $400M, projects of which are capped at $20M. Senate Defense Appropriations is an essentially identical bill and has passed committee but not the full Senate.

House Defense Authorization (passed House):

• Bars the Secretary of Defense from awarding any contract in Iraq or Afghanistan to an “adverse entity” directly engaged in hostilities against the U.S. or its coalition partners, although he is also the one to determine who qualifies as such.
• It renews the authorization for the use of funds in support of reintegration, and bumps authorization for the Afghan Infrastructure Fund up to $475M (from $400M last year) as the appropriations bill did, although specifies that DOD can’t use more than 85% of that until it submits a report on how it will be used during this fiscal year.
• Renews the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations for another year and gives it $75M.
• It authorizes as much as $425M in CERP and requires quarterly reports to Congress on how that money is being spent. Specifies that CERP programs over $5M must be reported to Congress with an accompanying “sustainment plan”.

Senate Defense Authorization (passed committee):

• Essentially echoes House’s language on “adverse entity” contracting, reintegration fund authorization, infrastructure funds, TFBSO, and CERP.
• Requires an unclassified report on US military strategy in Afghanistan, “including the extent to which the strategy has changed or is expected to change in light of the death of the death of Osama bin Laden.”
• Bars the use of any funds “to establish any military installation or base for providing for the permanent stationing of US armed forces in Afghanistan.”
• Bars State and DOD from using any more than 75% of the Afghan Infrastructure Fund until they certify that “women in Afghanistan are an integral part of the reconciliation process between the Afghan government and the Taliban.”
• Requires a report on the “long-term costs” (including veterans casualties and benefits, force maintenance, etc) of the war, as well as projected future costs.

Upcoming Site Features

First, I’d like to thank the many people on Twitter and elsewhere who commented on or shared my recent piece on the exciting life of the research analyst. I’m glad to see it proved to be a popular topic, and hope it proves useful! It’s again just a product of my own experience (which so far has been at a single organization), so I’ll be happy to still hear from others about the analytical or technical tools they use.

Continuing on this vein, I am going to spend some time in the near future writing up a piece on how to analyze a budget document. Exciting stuff! But I really do think that this is one of the most valuable skills you can have (and one that’s also still comparatively rare). I’m not a professional on this but I have done it enough within the context of my issue areas that I think I may be able to come up with some general guidelines. Check back in this space in the next few days (or, if you’ve applied the lessons of the previous post, watch your Reader). If that works out well, I’m considering doing a “document of the week” feature, since I read a lot of those during the course of my day job.

The big new feature coming immediately to the site is a daily summary of the news on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which I have been doing for the past three and a half years as part of my job at CAP. It’s open to the public — you can sign up to receive it by e-mail here! — but doesn’t quite fit with the existing structure of CAP’s general public-facing websites, so I will be giving it a home on the web here. The updates come out Monday through Friday, with extra-long editions after weekends or holidays. I think it is a useful product and hope people following the issue will agree; I have a backlog of these going back to 2008, but will hold off on uploading any of those here unless I can figure out how to do it without blowing up the RSS feed. The first edition will appear tomorrow; if you come across articles or items I’ve missed, please don’t hesitate to share.

Beyond that I’m still experimenting with site content. Thanks for reading!

Once More Into the Blog

Fair warning to any potential readers: I’ve started blogs before; they tend to languish. I am happily employed at the Center for American Progress, where I have a busy day job writing about U.S. policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Just to reiterate: nothing I write here represents CAP’s view on anything, and it’s all done on my own time.)

Twitter has been my primary outlet for the past two years for quick thoughts and public discussions on a range of issues; assuming you didn’t find me through it in the first place, this site will probably work best as an annex to my stream of thoughts there. But on the occasion that I have thoughts that don’t fit best my professional outlets or within the confines of 140 characters — book reviews, travelogues, other stray observations outside my usual policy lane — I will try to find time to express them here.