Atlantic Council

Biography

Shuja Nawaz

Shuja Nawaz, a native of Pakistan, was made the first director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC in January 2009.

He is a political and strategic analyst and writes for leading newspapers and websites, and speaks on current topics before civic groups, at think tanks, and on radio and television worldwide. He has worked with RAND, the United States Institute of Peace, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, and other leading think tanks on projects dealing with Pakistan and the Middle East. He has also advised or briefed senior government and military officials and parliamentarians in the US, Europe, and Pakistan.

Mr. Nawaz was educated at Gordon College, Rawalpindi, where he obtained a BA in economics and English literature and the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University in New York. He was a newscaster and news and current affairs producer for Pakistan Television 1967-1972 and covered the 1971 war with India on the western front.  He has worked for the New York Times, the World Health Organization, and has headed three separate divisions at the International Monetary Fund.  He was also a director at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna 1999-2001, while on leave from the IMF.  Mr. Nawaz was the managing editor and then editor of Finance & Development, the multilingual quarterly of the IMF and the World Bank and on the editorial advisory board of the World Bank Research Observer.

He is the author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within (Oxford University Press 2008 and paperback 2009). He is also the principal author of FATA: A Most Dangerous Place (CSIS, Washington DC January 2009), Pakistan in the Danger Zone: A Tenuous US-Pakistan Relationship (Atlantic Council 2010), and Learning by Doing: The Pakistan Army’s experience with Counterinsurgency (Atlantic Council 2011).