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After many years as a foreign correspondent in South Asia, Lawrence
Lifschultz has recently turned his attention to the dangers of
conflict between India and Pakistan. The seemingly intractable
impasse over Kashmir has been the flash-point for several wars
since 1947. Both countries now possess nuclear weapons, says Lifschultz,
a former South Asia correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic
Review, who has also written for The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique
and The Nation. The possibility of a nuclear conflict in the region
is a source of ongoing anxiety throughout the subcontinent.
A Fulbright grant enabled Lifschultz, a research fellow at Yale's
Center for International and Area Studies, to spend a year in
the region in search of "a way out of the impasse" over
Kashmir. In Pakistan, he worked with two institutions that have
been trying to promote peace in South Asia-the Sustainable Development
Policy Institute in Islamabad and the Pakistan Institute of Labor
Education and Research in Karachi. He interviewed diplomats, political
leaders, active and retired military officers, scholars, journalists,
peace activists and religious figures in both countries. He also
conducted extensive interviews with leading Kashmiris in the disputed
region, on both sides of the "line of control."
Lifschultz returned to Yale in July 2001, convinced there is
a way to lower the risk of nuclear conflict between India and
Pakistan. "Whether one chooses wisdom or not is another issue,"
he adds. His findings will be incorporated in a book, Averting
Armageddon: Nuclear War in South Asia. He also is at work on a
critical history of American non-proliferation policy in South
Asia.
He remains in close contact with his Pakistani colleagues. They
are collaborating on organizing a conference on the Kashmir dispute,
to be held in Islamabad. During the grant period, Lifschultz was
accompanied by his wife, Rabia Ali, a Pakistani-born writer. She
worked with a Lahore-based women's rights group on an investigation
into the notorious and illegal practice of "honor killings."
Their year's "high point," quite literally, was a trip
from Islamabad to Hunza, on the Chinese border, that Lifschultz
had wanted to make for 25 years. It took 30,000 men 20 years to
build the
Karakorum Highway through these high mountains and gorges, following
the ancient silk road. The journey, he says, provided some of
the most breathtaking vistas to be found anywhere on Earth.
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