Najam Abbas

Dr. Najam Abbas is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center focusing on Central and South Asia. He analyzes security issues in South Asia and human development in Central Asia.

From taking a Russian language course in 1993 to planning continuing education courses in 2002, nine years of constant stay in Central Asia (1993-2002) for education and work helped Najam learn about that region from within. In 1998, he completed his Ph.D. from Tajik National University, based on his post-graduate research on Kazakhstan’s Post-Independence Press at the Kazakh State University in Almaty (1994-97).

Between 1998 and 2002, Najam has been involved with international initiatives to bring increased human development capacity-building opportunities to mountainous Central Asian settings and in projects to improve teaching humanities in the region’s higher education institutions.

Najam was part of the Crisis and Conflict Analysis Team at the Institute for Strategic Studies, Islamabad, analyzing the early roots and later implications of the Afghan crisis (1986 to 1991).

He is fluent in Russian, and is conversant in Arabic and basic Tajik language. He appears regularly on BBC’s South and Central Asian services as well as on Aljazeera Arabic and English news channels.