Nawaz on Indian PM’s US Visit

Deutsche Welle quotes South Asia Center Director Shuja Nawaz on Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the United States:

“Despite setbacks related to the 2008 nuclear agreement – which was designed to facilitate nuclear cooperation between the United States and India – New Delhi’s relations with Washington remain on an upward trajectory. Trade and services especially tie the two countries together,” says Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the US-based Atlantic Council.

Indo-US trade relations have strengthened in recent years, increasing from 9 billion USD in 1995 to 86 billion USD in 2011, according to US government data. There are, however, considerable economic challenges.

Nawaz Quoted on Kashmir Militants Returning Home

Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center, is quoted in a New York Times piece on a new program to help rehabilitate militants by reuniting them with their families in Kashmir:

More than 350 former militants have returned here to India-controlled Kashmir recently in a quiet new effort to deal with the growing problem of rehabilitating some of the thousands who left home in recent decades to fight for Pakistan in its long-running separatist feud with India over the disputed territory.

“It turns out that it’s not as dangerous as it might seem,” said Shuja Nawaz, the director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, a research group in Washington. “It’s probably better to have them under scrutiny in India than out of reach in Pakistan.”