AfPak

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AfPak (also spelled Af-Pak) was a neologism used within United States foreign policy circles to designate Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single theater of operations. Introduced in 2008, the neologism reflected the policy approach that was introduced by the Obama administration, which regarded the region comprising the Asian countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan as having a singular dominant political and military situation that required a joint policy in their Global War on Terrorism.^[1]

Following sharp criticism from Pakistan, which condemned the hyphenation of the country's geopolitics with Afghanistan, the U.S. government stopped using the term in 2010.^[2] In 2017, the Trump administration expanded its Afghanistan policy to a regional South Asia strategy, which sought continued counter-terrorism cooperation with Pakistan, but envisaged a greater economic role for India in Afghanistan;^[3] the new approach was dubbed "AfPakIndia".^[4]