ABSTRACT
For several years, international forces' efforts to battle Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan have been hampered by the flow of fighters across the border from Pakistan. Pakistan's chronic political turmoil was not ended by the election in February 2008 of a coalition government headed by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which had been led by Benazir Bhutto until her assassination in December 2007. The incoming administration of US President Barack Obama took the view that the problems of Afghanistan and Pakistan needed to be addressed by a single strategy. The candidate and party list showed that politics in Afghanistan remained ethnically and religiously polarised, with few signs of a partypolitical system emerging. Nepal had two coalition governments in the year to mid 2009 as political arguments obstructed efforts to implement the peace process that had ended a ten-year civil war, removed the monarchy and established a democratic republic.
