December 21, 2012
For South Asia, 2012 looked bleak in prospect – a year of political strife, with the sun rising only on Burma on its far-eastern flank.
Pakistan began the year with a continuing clash between its elected government and its powerful military, the Congress-led government in India was threatened with the collapse of its coalition over new economic reforms, and the progressive government of Mohamed Nasheed in the Maldives was heading for a fall.
December 21, 2012
For South Asia, 2012 looked bleak in prospect – a year of political strife, with the sun rising only on Burma on its far-eastern flank.
Pakistan began the year with a continuing clash between its elected government and its powerful military, the Congress-led government in India was threatened with the collapse of its coalition over new economic reforms, and the progressive government of Mohamed Nasheed in the Maldives was heading for a fall.
In Islamabad, Pakistan’s erstwhile ambassador to Washington saw the new year in at the home of then prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani where he had taken refuge after being forced to resign over claims he had sent a memo to the US government seeking its support to oust the country’s military chiefs. In the interview Mr Haqqani said he feared he would be shot dead if he left the premises .
Afghanistan began the year with NATO forces looking over their shoulders at their Afghan ‘comrades’ following a series of ‘Green on Blue’ killings of international troops.
Gloom shrouded New Delhi too, where the government’s coalition allies had recently forced it to back down on plans to allow Western supermarkets like Walmart and Tesco to revolutionise food distribution and set up new stores. Fears that its economic reforms had come to a standstill were compounded by fears that freedom of expression was under threat too in the ‘world’s largest democracy: Brooker prize-winning author Salman Rushdie was forced to withdraw from the Jaipur Literature Festival amid Muslim protests and ‘fake’ government warnings that assassins were planning to kill him. The author claimed India’s government was pandering to extremists to win votes in the Uttar Pradesh state elections .
If that had been its intention, the gambit failed with the Congress Party humiliated in the elections. The controversial Dalit or ‘untouchable’ leader Mayawati was ousted as chief minister, but the defeat was worse for Congress which had hoped the campaign would be a launchpad for Rahul Gandhi, Nehru’s great-grandson, to establish his leadership and eventually become prime minister.
In the Maldives, President Nasheed, the tropical paradise’s first democratically elected leader claimed he was ousted in a coup financed, he told The Telegraph, by local resort owners who resented free competition rules inspired by Britain’s Conservative Party.
Pakistan’s government also teetered in the face of pressure from both the courts and its military. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was ordered by the country’s chief justice Mohammed Chaudhry to decide whether he would comply with an order to ask Switzerland to reopen a corruption inquiry into his president, Asif Ali Zardari or face contempt charges which would force his resignation .
The political stand off between Pakistan’s judiciary and executive came to head in June when a court banned the prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani from office over his refusal to reopen a corruption inquiry into President Zardari .
President Barack Obama apologised to Afghans after protests erupted throughout the country over the burning of 70 copies of the Koran at the Bagram Air Base. In one protest at a NATO base in Nangahar an Afghan soldier shot dead two American soldiers.
The President was forced to apologise again weeks later in March when an American soldier ‘went rogue’ and shot dead 16 Afghans, including a farmer who lost eleven members of his family near Kandahar.
Despite the increase in ‘Green on Blue’ killings, there occasional signs that some kind of dialogue was progressing between the United States, Afghanistan and the country’s insurgency, including the release of Taliban prisoners from Bagram.
In Pakistan the lines of allegiance in the ‘war on terror’ remained blurred over deployment of US Predator drones and the treatment of the Shakeel Afridi, the Pakistani doctor whose fake hepatitis vaccination programme in Abbottabad provided vital intelligence for the raid which killed Osama bin Laden. He was sentenced to more than 30 years imprisonment for treason.
Beyond the war on terror, Nepal suffered its worst death toll on Everest when four climbers died as they waited for hours to make their ascent. Survivors blamed ‘overcrowding’ on the summit .
In Sri Lanka, General Fonseka, the military chief who won the country’s long civil war with the Tamil Tigers but was later jailed after standing and losing an election to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, denounced the government and called for an ‘Arab Spring’ uprising to oust its ‘dictatorial’ government .
India’s economic and political troubles continued throughout the summer with the country suffering what was termed the world’s largest ever power cut and a mass exodus of Assamese migrants from its largest cities amid fears of communal attacks. The panic was linked to reports of clashes between Assamese tribals and Muslim immigrants in India’s north-east and ethnic violence in nearby Burma between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhist Rakhines. The government blamed false reports on the internet for the exodus and blocked news sites and Twitter accounts in response.
The limits on religious freedom for minorities in the region were highlighted by the jailing on blasphemy charges of an 11 year old Pakistani Christian girl who suffers from Downs Syndrome. She was accused by a neighbor of burning pages from the Koran . The limits of political tolerance in Pakistan was highlighted the following month when a Taliban assassin shot 15 year old Malala Yousufzai because she refused to end her campaign for girls’ education. She is now recovering in Britain, but will need armed guards for the rest of her life if she returns, the country’s interior minister said.
The Indian government faced a battle for its survival over economic reforms, including plans for Western supermarkets to be allowed to open stores and overhaul the country’s backward food distribution system. The Trinamool Congress, a key coalition ally resigned from the government and protests swept the country, but the government’s decision to press ahead with reforms proved a key turning point. It later survived a no confidence vote over the issue .
Despite the execution of Ajmal Kasab, the last surviving Pakistani gunman from the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, in which 166 were killed, relations between New Delhi and Islamabad continued to improve. Pakistan agreed to confer Most-Favoured Nation status on India, while India agreed to allow more trade from Pakistan. India to allow direct foreign investment from Pakistan. To smooth the way to better relations, India announced it would host Pakistan for its first Test cricket tour since the Mumbai attacks and that it would grant 3000 visas for fans to deepen ‘people to people contacts.
Some signs of reconciliation emerged in Afghanistan and Pakistan where Islamabad agreed to release Taliban prisoners to further the peace process and the prospect of the Taliban governing parts of Afghanistan was mooted as talks on a future settlement continued.
Despite the year drawing to a hopeful close, there was a note of sadness in India as Ravi Shankar, the world’s most celebrated sitar maestro and the inspiration behind the psychedelic sound the 1960s, passed away in the United States.
Courtesy: Daily Telegraph
