Lawrence Stephen Lifschultz
Research Fellow, Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Lecturing/Research: Averting Armageddon: Confronting Proliferation in South Asia "The View from Pakistan"
Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan
September 2000 - June 2001

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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