Najam in TRTWorld on India-Pakistan Escalation
As tensions between nuclear neighbors, India and Pakistan, escalated further today after Pakistan retaliated to India’s airstrikes in its territory yesterday by sending its own fighter jets into Indian controlled Kashmir and later downed at least one Indian airplane, capturing its pilot, Dean Adil Najam of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University was interviewed by Turkish news agency TRT World on February 27, 2019 on the centrality of the Kashmir issue to India-Pakistan tensions.
The news feature titled “Kashmir Lies at the Heart of India-Pakistan Escalation“ argued that “in the heightened tensions between the two nuclear-armed arch rivals what is being forgotten is the growing discontent in the disputed region of Kashmir.” Quoting Najam on the escalating tit-for-tat retaliation between India and Pakistan, the article says:
“The casualty in all of this are Kashmiris,” Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, told TRT World.
“It’s amazing that every time something like this happens it’s because of the immense tension in Kashmir, and as soon as it happens it becomes something between India and Pakistan.”
The United Nations and major world power react to the situation not because of what’s happening in Kashmir but because both the countries are nuclear powers, he says.
It goes on to further quote Najam on the disinterest the major world powers and the United Nations have shown towards Kashmir, and now even for India-Pakistan escalations.
“Everyone knew for at least multiple weeks of what was about to happen. For world leaders to just sit and hope that it will go away was, I think, an amazing act of hubris,” says Najam.
Despite the heightened fear of conflict Pakistan and India have so far avoided reaching out to the UN Security Council, he said.
“That indicates they have lost trust in the UN.”
The international community could play its role in investigating the allegations that both sides have made against each other, he says.
Read the full article here.
Adil Najam is the inaugural dean of the Pardee School and a commentator on foreign policy and diplomacy in South Asia. Learn more about him here.