Mr. Nusrat is a US citizen and is chairman of two Washington DC-based non-profit organizations: The Voice of Karachi (www.voiceofkarachi.org) and South Asia Minorities Alliance Foundation (www.SAMAF.org) since January 2018. He also served from 2013 to December 2017 as the head of MQM, Pakistan’s third largest political party.
Mr. Nusrat holds a master’s degree in politics and modern history from Birkbeck College of London University. He also spent three years, 2004-07, as a doctoral candidate at London University’s School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS), though his political commitments did not allow him to conclude his studies.
Both the VOK and SAMAF have held a series of successful events in the US capital since their inception. Dozens of Congressmen, members of think tanks and representatives from South Asia’s persecuted minorities have attended these events, which have also received extensive coverage in the regional and international media. The influential Washington Times has published multiple special supplements highlighting the issues advocated by both VOK and SAMAF.
Mr. Nusrat is an avid reader and writer and has written extensively about issues faced by ethnic and religious minorities in South Asia, particularly in Pakistan. He helped draft a number of MQM’s publications besides regularly preparing the party’s press statements and other communications. He also heavily contributed in putting together the party’s election manifestos and provided valuable input for Its counter-terrorism policy aimed at curbing the menace of religious extremism and terrorism that Pakistan has been facing for the last many years.
Political positions held by Mr. Nusrat since February 2013:
2013 – 2017
Convenor
MQM – 54-58 Elizabeth House, Edgware, United Kingdom HA8 7EJ
2018
Chairman
Voice of Karachi and South Asia Minorities Alliance Foundation
Puneet Ahluwalia, Executive Director
For over 29 years, Puneet Ahluwalia has worked in business management, government relations, and real estate finance. He is the managing partner at New World Strategies (NWS.). Puneet has led a large number of business and civic development projects both domestically and internationally — helping companies, NGO’s and U.S. interests bridge the gap between U.S. and South Asian culture and society. In 2016, Puneet was appointed by then-candidate Donald Trump to serve on his campaign’s Asia Pacific Advisory Committee. Puneet is a former member of the State Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia.
Tom Garrett, Senior Advisor
Garrett has served as an Assistant Attorney General under Virginia AG Bob McDonnell, a Commonwealth’s Attorney for Louisa County, a member of the Virginia State Senate, and a Member of Congress form Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. Today, Garrett owns a private law practice.
Robert J. Silverman, Senior Advisor
Robert is a lecturer in the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Department at Shalem College. As a senior US diplomat, he served as the elected president of the American Foreign Service Association, the professional organization of US diplomats with 17,000 members. Among his leadership positions in a 27-year career in the Foreign Service were political counselor of the US embassy in Israel, economic counselor of the US embassies in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan, Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge d’Affaires of the US Embassy in Sweden, and director of the offices of Regional Affairs and Iraq Economic and Reconstruction Affairs at the State Department in Washington.
Robert serves as Senior Advisor to the South Asian Minority Alliance Foundation and as the President of IJMA – Inter Jewish Muslim Alliance. The latter is a US non-profit organization that brings together Jewish and Muslim civil society leaders to address intercommunal bigotry and advocate for common public policy goals.
Selected Publications
Translation from Arabic: Ali Salem, A Drive to Israel: An Egyptian Meets His Neighbors (Dayan Center Papers No. 128) (Tel Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Center, 2003)
Selected Articles:
“Obama Also Got It Wrong in the Middle East,” The National Interest, (January 29, 2020)
“What We Can Learn from the Jews of the NAACP about Intersectional Organizing,” The Forward, (September 12, 2019)
“Yazidi Genocide Should Be More than a Label,” USA Today (August 16, 2016)
“The Departed,” The Foreign Service Journal (December 2014)
“An Arab Study of Jews,” Foreign Policy (October 6, 2009)