Abubakar Siddique is a senior correspondent covering Afghanistan and Pakistan for RFE/RL's Central Newsroom. Siddique has spent the past decade researching and writing about security, political, humanitarian and cultural issues in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Pashtun heartland along the border region where he was born.
In 2006, Siddique co-wrote a report with Barnett Rubin for the U.S. Institute of Peace that was the first analytical work to address the importance of Pakistan's tribal areas in "Resolving the Pakistan-Afghanistan Stalemate" (Special Report No. 176).
Over the years, his scholarly and journalistic writings have been frequently cited in academic research and news coverage of South Central Asia. He has participated in media debates, lectures and seminars in Europe and North America.
He has also served as Ahmed Rashid's "researcher, travel companion, interpreter, interviewer, and guide in some of the most difficult terrain imaginable" while Rashid was writing his best-selling "Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation-Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia"(2008, Viking).
Siddique is writing a book on the future of extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan (Hurst & Company London, 2012).
He speaks English, Pashto, Urdu and several other languages of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Siddique holds master's degrees in journalism and anthropology. He was a Fulbright Scholar at New York University from 2005-2006, and while at NYU also worked at the Center on International Cooperation, a think tank that seeks to enhance coordination of international responses to humanitarian crises and global security threats.
Siddique has contributed to eurasianet.org, Pakistan's "The Friday Times" and "Newsline" magazines, as well as the Central European Journal of International and Security Studies, the National Defense University's "Global Strategic Assessment" 2009, and the Barcelona Center for International Affairs. He has also contributed to edited volumes on stabilization and regional studies.