Prof. Adil Najam in Times of India on Kashmir Issue

With conflict and violence escalating again in the Kashmir region, Prof. Adil Najam, Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and Boston University Professor of International Relations and of Geography and Environment was quoted in a feature story in the Times of India on that subject (September 12, 2010).

The article, titled “Road to Nowhere?” cited Prof. Najam’s recent research paper (written with Moeed Yusuf) on the subject of the Kashmir dispute, highlighting that the paper had “argued that Kashmir is ripe for resolution today, more than ever before.” The Times of India report went on to say:

“I do still think that despite recent setbacks, India and Pakistan are better placed to deal with the Kashmir issue than they have been in a long. Pakistan, because it has so many internal problems to deal with that it is both distracted from Kashmir and will welcome the opportunity to have one less problem to worry about on its plate. India, because this is India’s global moment and as a rising power it wants to get past this lingering issue to taking on a bigger role on the global stage”.

But this does not mean resolution is easy, he admits. “As long as either side thinks that they can “win” the Kashmir game, they will both keep losing and the biggest losses will be of the people of Kashmir. In many ways, I think the real key to the solution lies not with either India or Pakistan anymore, but with the people of Kashmir. We need to make them full and real partners in the negotiations—something that both India and Pakistan have resisted. But I really think that the solution lies there more than anywhere else,” he argues.

In a lighter vein, he uses an Indo-Pak partnership to show the forward: “Maybe the governments of India and Pakistan should learn from their tennis stars — Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-ul-Haq — about how you really play as a team together.”