Council on Foreign Relations

Formerly Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs and president of the Asia Society, Ambassador Talbot was the South Asia correspondent for the Chicago Daily News from 1946-1950 and reported extensively on India's partition. He has a PhD from the University of Chicago.

In addition to his chairmanship of the Kashmir Study Group, Mr. Kathwari is chairman of Refugees International, a director of the International Rescue Committee, co-chair of the One Woman Initiative, and a trustee of Freedom House. A long-time observer of South Asia, he received his BA from the University of Kashmir and an MBA from New York University.

Timothy Hoyt has worked on Indian military and security issues for over twenty five years, both inside and outside the U.S. government. Formerly associated with Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies, Dr. Hoyt has a PhD from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

Prior to his reassignment as an FAO, LCDR Johnston deployed three times--in support of Operations Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom--piloting both the F/A-18C and the E-2C. In 2007, he earned a Master of Arts from the Naval Postgraduate School, where he wrote his thesis on China's oil insecurities in the Indian Ocean and was accorded the Louis D. Liskin Award for excellence in regional security studies.

Imtiaz Ali, a special correspondent for the Washington Post currently serving as a Yale World Fellow. Born and raised in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, Mr. Ali previously worked for the BBC’s Pashto service and for the United Kingdom’s Daily Telegraph. Since 9/11, he has reported extensively on rising militancy and military operations in Pakistan’s tribal belt. 

Adil Najam is professor of International Relations and director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University. Before assuming his current position at Boston University, Dr. Najam taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts, and Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. A one-time TV talk show host in Pakistan, Dr. Najam is also the founding editor of the blog Pakistaniat.com.

Steve Coll is president and CEO of New America Foundation and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously he spent twenty years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at the Washington Post, serving as the paper's managing editor from 1998 to 2004. He is the author of six books, including Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. 

Ambassador Ronald Neumann is president of the American Academy of Diplomacy. Formerly a deputy assistant secretary, Ronald E. Neumann served three times as ambassador; to Algeria, Bahrain, and finally to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, from July 2005 to April 2007. Before Afghanistan, Mr. Neumann, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, served in Baghdad from February 2004 with the Coalition Provisional Authority and then as Embassy Baghdad’s principal interlocutor with the Multinational Command.

M.J. Akbar is chairman of the Indian newsmagazine Covert, which he launched in May 2008. The founder and former editor-in-chief of the Asian Age and the Deccan Chronicle, Mr. Akbar began his journalism career at the Times of India in 1971. A member of Parliament from 1989 to 1991, Mr. Akbar is also the author of numerous books on subjects ranging from jihad to Jawaharlal Nehru. He served as a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in 2006.

Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao is the chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (Sherpao) and served as Federal Interior Minister of Pakistan from 2004 to 2007. A native of Charsadda in the Northwest Frontier Province, Mr. Sherpao served as Federal Minister for Water and Power from 2002 to 2004 and twice served as Chief Minister of NWFP. Mr. Sherpao was chairman of the Pak-Afghan Joint Peace Jirga that convened in Kabul in August 2007. He was targeted by suicide bombers twice in 2007.

Shuja Nawaz is the author of the recent, widely acclaimed book Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within (Oxford University Press, 2008). Mr. Nawaz has previously written for the New York Times, worked as a Division Chief at the International Monetary Fund and served as a Director at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

C. Uday Bhaskar is one of India's leading security analysts and formerly the Deputy Director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi. A veteran of 37 years in the Indian Navy, Cmde. Bhaskar is currently the Convener of the India International Centre Study Group and a Contributing Editor to South Asia Monitor. Prior to retirement, he was Member-Secretary of the Government of India Task Force on Global Strategic Developments.

Over the course of his military service, Lt. Gen. Barno served in a variety of command and staff positions in the continental United States and around the world. He deployed in October 2003 to Afghanistan, where for 19 months he commanded over 20,000 U.S. and Coalition Forces in Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan.

Minister Jalali served as Afghanistan's Interior Minister from January 2003 to September 2005. Prior to assuming his post as Minister, Mr. Jalali was the Director of Afghanistan National Radio Network Initiative and Chief of the Pashto Service at the Voice of America in Washington, DC.

Harinder Sekhon is senior fellow in India-U.S. relations at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi. Before joining ORF, Dr. Sekhon was with India's National Security Council Secretariat.

Saad Mohseni is chairman and co-founder of Moby Media Group, Afghanistan's largest independent media company, whose holdings include Afghanistan's most popular television station, Tolo TV. Moby Capital's media outlets reach some 8 million Afghans daily, representing over 60% of the total media audience in the country.

In just five years, Jahid Mohseni has led the operations of Moby Media Group, which now produces world class news, current affairs and entertainment - across two TV stations, a radio station, and Afghanistan's largest production company.

Dr. Harsh Pant is assistant professor of defense studies and associate with the Center for Science and Security at King's College London.

Dr. Clad has studied security and economic trends in Asia for over two decades. Immediately prior to joining OSD, he was a professor of near east and south Asian studies at the National Defense University. Prior to that, Dr. Clad was a professor of south and southeast Asian studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and, concurrently, director/Asia Pacific for Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Dr. Clad has held fellowships from St. Antony's College/Oxford, the Carnegie Endowment, and Harvard University.

Indrani Bagchi is diplomatic editor at The Times of India, India's largest English-language daily newspaper. Ms. Bagchi has previously written for The Economic Times and India Today.

Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry is deputy chairman of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium. He was previously commander of the Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan. He has served in various strategy, policy, and political-military positions, including director for strategic planning and policy for U.S. Pacific Command; U.S. security coordinator and chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; assistant Army and later defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; and deputy director for strategy, plans, and policy on the Army staff.

Ambassador Santosh Kumar has been a senior consultant for ICRIER since his retirement from the Indian Foreign Service in 2005. Over the course of his career in the Foreign Service, he served as India's ambassador to South Africa, South Korea, and Yemen and as the DCM to the European Union. From 2002 to 2004, Ambassador Kumar was the Dean of India's Foreign Service Institute.

Rory Stewart is the bestselling author of "The Places in Between," an account of his journey on foot from Herat to Kabul in 2002. He now serves as CEO of Turquoise Mountain Foundation, an NGO devoted to restoring the historic cultural and commercial center of Kabul. His day-to-day dealings with tribal elders, Afghan and western government officials and foreign aid workers offer insights into the broader challenges and opportunities encountered in Afghanistan today.

Rhoderick Chalmers is based in Kathmandu, Nepal and is primarily responsible for the International Crisis Group's reporting on Nepal's Maoist insurgency. In addition to examining the roots of the conflict and means of containing and resolving it, he coordinates research on specific areas including political parties and constitutional reform, cross-border security issues, ethnic movements, and Maoist politics.

Riaz Mohammad Khan is foreign secretary of Pakistan. Before becoming foreign secretary in 2005, Mr. Khan served as Pakistan's ambassador to China, the European Union, Belgium, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. He has also acted as the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and additional foreign secretary responsible for multilateral affairs, disarmaments control issues and economic coordination.

Ayesha Siddiqa is currently an independent security consultant and writes a regular column for the prominent Pakistani newspaper, Daily Times. Previously a correspondent for Jane's Defence Weekly, Dr. Siddiqa has also served as a Ford Fellow, a visiting fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, and the first Pakistan Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

A lifelong journalist who served as chief editor of the Pakistan Times, I.A. Rehman is also a leading figure in Pakistani civil society and the South Asia human rights community. In addition to his longstanding role with HRCP, Mr. Rehman has served on the board of the South Asian Forum for Human Rights and South Asia Partnership (SAP) Pakistan.

Khalid Aziz serves as chairman of the Regional Institute of Policy Research and Training and runs a development and security consulting firm in Peshawar. Over the course of his more than 30 years of civil service in Pakistan, he headed the NWFP Planning, Environment and Development Department and formulated and executed poppy-substitution projects in NWFP and tribal areas. He has published in numerous journals and newspapers and participated in the Afghan-Pak jirga in Kabul earlier this month.

Mr. Abbas has studied and worked in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, where he served as the Sub-Divisional Police Chief from 1996-1998. He later acted as the Deputy Director of Investigations in Pakistan's National Accountability Bureau from 1999-2000. Mr. Abbas is also the author of Pakistan's Drift Into Extremism: Allah, The Army, And America's War On Terror.