Accidental Blogger

I am happy to announce another new author on Accidental Blogger. I encountered Omar Ali at 3 Quarks Daily where his well thought out comments caught my attention. I am pleased that he accepted my invitation to write on our blog. I will let Omar introduce himself:

I am an academic physician from Pakistani Punjab and have always felt that the partition drove a stake through the heart of Punjab and the ongoing India-Pakistan hostility makes the damage worse instead of permitting time and 5000 years of common history to exert their healing effect.

Since 2001, I have been moderating the Asiapeace discussion group on the internet. We have about 550 members (mostly journalists, activists and others interested in peace in South Asia) and we post articles and comments on a daily basis to try and remove misconceptions and encourage positive trends. It has been a very rewarding experience and it has also been a great learning experience. After nearly ten years of doing this, I am more convinced than ever that the irrational zero-sum game between Pakistan and India is at the root of many (but not all) of our current maladies. When I get the time, I also write opinion pieces for the press, but these are rare (most have been published in Outlook India and on the Punjabi web portal "Wichaar.com").