Dr Moeed Yusuf assumes charge as SPPC chairman

ISLAMABAD: Renowned author and expert in international affairs Dr Moeed Yusuf has assumed the charge as Strategic Policy Planning Cell (SPPC) chairman under the National Security Division (NSD).

On September 26, Dr Moeed Yusuf was appointed as SPPC chairman. Being SPPC chairman, Dr Moeed would also be the member of national security committee. The purpose of the cell was to assist government through research on national issues and draft policy recommendations to meet challenges being faced by the country. Holder of Masters in International Relations and PhD in Political Science from Boston University, Dr Moeed Yusuf has served as the Associate Vice-Presidentat the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

Author of many books, Dr Moeed has been engaged with USIP since 2010. Before joining USIP, he was a research fellow at the Frederick S Padree Centre for the study of the longer range future at the Padree School of Global Studies at Boston University’s Political Science Department.

Dr Moeed has taught in Boston University’s Political Science Department as a senior teaching fellow in 2009. He has delivered lectures regularly at the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute and Nato’s Centre of Excellence Defence against terrorism in Ankara, Turkey. He has also delivered lectures at the Pakistan Military Staff College.

Dr Moeed has previously taught courses on political economy and defence economics at the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University. He regularly writes columns for a weekly. He has served as a member of number of advisory groups in Pakistan including the working group on poverty for Pakistan’s Medium Term Development Framework.

Dr Moeed co-founded Strategic and Economic Policy Research, a private sector consultancy firm in Pakistan, in 2007. He has also consulted for a number of Pakistani and the Stockholm Policy Research Institute, among others. He was a full-time consultant with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Pakistan’s premier development-sector think tank, from 2004 to 2007. He is also a Research Fellow at Strategic and Economic Policy Research, Pakistan and a visiting Associate at the SDPI Pakistan. Most recently, he was based at the Brookings Institution as a special guest researcher.

Dr Moeed’s research focuses on strategic concerns related to South Asia, especially those falling within the ambit of Pakistan and India’s security policy, the political economy of democratic transitions in Pakistan, as well as developmental issues related to South Asian trade and poverty. He has published widely in national and international journals, professional publications and magazines. He writes regularly for an English daily. He also frequently appears as an expert on US and Pakistani media. His books South Asia 2060: Envisioning Regional Futures (Adil Najam and Moeed Yusuf, eds.) and ‘Getting it Right in Afghanistan’ (Scott Smith, Moeed Yusuf, and Colin Cookman, eds.) were published by Anthem Press, UK and US Institute of Peace Press respectively in 2013.

He is also the editor of Pakistan’s Counter-terrorism Challenge (Georgetown University Press, 2014) and Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in South Asia: From a Peacebuilding Lens (US Institute of Peace Press, 2014).

Dr Moeed has served on a number of important task forces, advisory councils, working groups, and governing boards, both in the U.S. and Pakistan. In 2013, he was selected to Nobel laureate, Pugwash International’s ‘Council’ (governing body) and subsequently became the youngest member ever to be included in its global executive committee to serve a six-year term.