Journalist Ahmed Rashid examines the complicated relationship between the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan as America prepares for its withdraw from Afghanistan. In Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, he investigates the future of international terrorism, the Taliban, and strategies to bring stability to a fractured region saddled with a legacy of violence and corruption.

How has Al Qaeda changed in the past few years, and what does this blow mean to the organization? Ahmed Rashid, journalist and author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia and other books, speaks with us about the future of Al Qaeda.

You might call the nation of Pakistan the buried headline in President Obama’s big Afghanistan speech Tuesday. Like Afghanistan, Pakistan faces its own instability and its own Taliban problem. Its president, Asif Ali Zardari, has looked in recent days significantly weakened. Last Friday Zardari handed over control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal to the prime minister, and he’s facing pressure from the Obama government to crack down on the same insurgent groups whom Pakistan's army and intelligence services have themselves cultivated as a kind of secret weapon.

So what does a U.S. strategy in Pakistan look like, and is Pakistan a strong enough partner for that strategy to succeed? We're joined by Ahmed Rashid, longtime Pakistani journalist and author of “Descent Into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.” We're also talking with Adil Najam: He's professor of International Relations at Boston University, and he worries that even if President Obama is succesful in Afghanistan, we may lose Pakistan as the Taliban is forced over the Afghan border.

Ahmed Rashid looks into what US involvement in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia has done to region and encourages a radical change of strategy to avoid disaster in his book Descent into Chaos.

The Pakistani government agreed early this morning to reinstate the former chief justice of the Supreme Court. Many see it as a major concession to opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who was threatening to stage a mass protest after he broke free from alleged house arrest at his residence. Joining The Takeaway with analysis on what's next for Pakistan is Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and author of Decent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.

Our partner, the New York Times, has an exclusive story today on a secret American unit training the Pakistani military to fight al Qaida and the Taliban. To discuss the story and its implications, we are joined by Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and author of Decent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia and Eric Schmitt, the New York Times reporter who wrote the article.

For more, read Eric Schmitt's article, U.S. Unit Secretly in Pakistan Lends Ally Support , in today's New York Times.

Here is Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke's interview on Charlie Rose clarifying the Obama administration's position on Pakistan and Afghanistan: