Najam Talks to Fox News on Back Channel Talks with Pakistan
Getting Dr. Shakil Afridi, who had been used by US intelligence to pose as a fake polio worked in a ruse to uncover the Abbottabad hideout of Osama Bin Laden in 2011, out of Pakistan and into the United States has proved very difficult. Dean Adil Najam, of Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, talked to FoxNews (November 13, 2015) to explain why.
In a story titled “Secret talks to free hero Pakistani doctor break down despite CIA priority,” Najam explains how the issue of Dr. Afridi has become a matter of high politics and national pride in Pakistan. Moreover, his use by the CIA as a fake polio worked has now placed the lives of thousands of real polio eradication workers in peril and this has further angered the Pakistan public. He points out that, as a result, “US pressure – which Pakistan and most Pakistanis see as interference – has actually helped prolong Afridi’s incarceration as it ‘made the issue an even bigger issue.’”
“It has politicized the situation and made it symbolic,” Najam said. “If a solution is to be found, it would be found within the Pakistan legal system, not in defiance of it.”
Prior to being appointed the Dean of the Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies, Adil Najam served as the Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Lahore, Pakistan. Read more on him here.