India’s Human Rights Challenge

In many parts of its rural hinterland, India’s democracy faces a major challenge. Over the past few decades, in many of the poorest and most isolated districts in the country an armed Maoist movement known as the Naxalites has battled the Indian government in the name of some of India’s poorest and most exploited citizens.

In parts of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh there are multiple threats to Indian democracy – extreme poverty, political disempowerment, unfair and exploitative economic relationships, lack of health care and education, sexual exploitation, lack of recognition of local rights to land and resources, and others.

In addition to these causes for Naxalite sympathy, support, and success in these areas, the actual violence of the conflict between Naxalites and the Indian state affects locals in many negative ways – killings, rapes, kidnappings, torture, hostage-takings, property stolen or destroyed, livelihoods ruined, villages displaced, families split in a state of near civil war. More recently, growing interest in these resource-rich lands by the Indian government and the private sector have led to an escalation in the conflict and to the further disempowerment of poor locals.

The Indian government’s response to these injustices and the resulting violence has been inadequate and unsuccessful. One tactic used, especially vigorously in the state of Chhattisgarh, has been to attack and silence non-violent human rights activists who speak out about the violence perpetrated by state governments and private militias against innocent citizens – overwhelmingly poor adivasis (indigenous people).

The highest profile case has been with Dr. Binayak Sen – a noted human rights activist and a pediatrician working with many of the states’ poorest families. Chhattisgarh’s High Court recently upheld his shocking life sentence for sedition and treason despite a lack of evidence that he conspired with Naxalites to commit violent acts. The state’s draconian and undemocratic laws put in place to fight the Naxalites, the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act of 2005 (CSPSA), and similar to laws in Kashmir and the Northeast used to fight separatists make this type of persecution possible.

Less well-known individuals also have been accused of aiding the Naxalites and thrown in jail, including activist Kartam Joga, cinematographer TG Ajay, and Kolkata businessman Piyush Guha. Other human rights defenders and organizations have been forced to flee Chhattisgarh due to threats and harassment by police and district authorities. The Indian Supreme Court has been the one official body that has dared to intervene, releasing Dr. Sen for lack of evidence once already, hearing a petition against the Chhattisgarh government submitted by Kartam Joga and two other activists, and reprimanding the Chhattisgarh government for its failure to rein in anti-Maoist militias who have been accused of extensive human rights abuses.

As these cases wind their way through the courts, attract international concern, and spark protest and outrage in India, one should be concerned for India’s future. Perhaps fueling the fire, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in 2007:

Left-wing extremism is probably (the) biggest security challenge to the Indian state. It continues to be so and we cannot rest in peace until we have eliminated this virus….We need to cripple the hold of Naxalite forces with all the means at our command.

In reality, the Naxalite threat to the Indian state, though widespread and growing as well as disruptive, remains far from toppling state governments, let alone the central government – its goal by 2050. At the risk of disagreeing with Dr. Singh, the bigger threat, as I see it, is how the Indian government responds to the Naxalites – not so different from the dilemma facing the United States in its war on terrorism.

Naxalites pose localized threats, and the murders, kidnappings, and other violent acts they commit must be condemned. However, they do not threaten Indian democracy as a whole. At least not yet. However, if the government – at the local, state and national level – responds clumsily, disproportionately, or unwisely to the threat, these blunders could do far more to harm the legitimacy of and faith in the government and the democratic system as a whole. Jailing non-violent activists attempting to improve the lives of people stuck in these conflict zones sends the wrong message and runs counter to the government’s own interests in these areas.

For now, the use of laws like the CSPSA is an exception to the rule (which is certainly not to say that India’s justice system is otherwise without problems). In much of India there is a healthy respect for human rights and the rule of law and an independent and respected judiciary. Or at least those ideas are given lip service.

And in other parts of the country,  the political system – for all its faults – is far more responsive to and representative of its citizens than those in the feudal backwaters where the Naxalites thrive. The silencing of human right defenders is fortunately rare, but Chhattisgarh foreshadows a darker and more authoritarian India struggling to overcome serious threats to its national integrity while promoting reliable security and economic development for its people.

My Trip to the City Formerly Known As Frunze

Now that the Parliament of the Kyrgyz Republic has approved a new coalition government, I figure it might be time to finally get something to print about my election observation there last October.  Of course, there may be no real cause for hurry – they formed a government in November and that lasted only a few weeks.  But what the heck – waiting for the final outcome to shake out has really had little to do with my delay in writing anyhow.

My real problem is that when I’ve written about past elections – in Bosnia and East Timor – I’d stayed in those countries long enough to feel that I really knew something about them, plus what was going on in those places was considered worldwide news at the time.  However, Kyrgyzstan, as the Kyrgyz Republic is more commonly known, remains obscure, its politics fairly impenetrable to the outsider.  What I can really describe with any authority is mostly limited to the experience of being an electoral observer.  Still, it seems somehow disrespectful not to at least first say something of the specifics of the election I observed.

Before being selected for the mission, I could not even have told you the name of Kyrgyzstan’s capital city – Bishkek.  My first glimmer of recognition, really, came when I saw the airport code letters on my baggage claim – FRU.  Ah, this was the city that used to be called Frunze!  Although I don’t know much about central Asia, I do know something about the history of the Soviet Union, so this meant something to me.

Mikhail Frunze was a military hero of the Russian Revolution who later succeeded Trotsky as leader of the entire Soviet military apparatus.  Some even considered him a possible successor to Lenin.  Frunze had a medical problem involving ulcers. He apparently did not consider the situation all that serious, but Comrade Stalin – always greatly concerned over the well being of possible successors to Lenin – did.  In 1925, he convinced Frunze to undergo an operation for his condition, an operation he did not survive.  Frunze was given a hero’s funeral in Moscow; people named their sons after him; the authorities named a military academy in his honor; the city of his birth also took his name.  And Stalin had one less rival.  (Strangely, the four doctors involved in the operation are said to have all died in 1934.)

THE SWITZERLAND OF CENTRAL ASIA

All of that, of course, is part of the history of another era.  Today, the former Soviet republic has a population of about 5.2 million – 69% Kyrgyz, a Turkic people; 15% Uzbeks, mostly living in the south; and 9% Russians, mostly in the north.  The country is sometimes called “the Switzerland of Central Asia.”  Its similarities with that wealthy European nation are entirely topographic – 80% of the country lies in the Tina Shan mountainous region, and not economic – it was the second poorest of Soviet republics and is now the second poorest country in Central Asia.  It is rich in mineral resources, but has negligible petroleum and natural gas reserves and must import these products.  Some believe as much as 40% of its GDP derives from the up to 800,000 Kyrgyz migrants currently working in Russia.

Kyrgyzstan enjoys the unusual distinction of hosting both Russian and American military airbases on its soil.  The Russian government is there because it aims to dominate the area that used to be the Soviet Union; the U.S. is there because it aims to dominate the world.  The American Manas Air Base opened in 2001 to support U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.  In February 2009, then-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced plans to close it, a decision supported by a 78–1 vote in Parliament.  The decision was reversed in June, however, and the base remains under a new contract with annual rent increased from $17.4 million to $60 million.

This past April, Bakiyev, the country’s second president since independence, was ousted  in an uprising that took about 85 lives. Two months later, 90% of voters approved a referendum creating a new 120-member parliament.  We – the 200 short term and 40 long term observers from 23 member nations of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – would be observing the first elections to that body.

This was my eighth OSCE mission, but the first where I can recall the existence of an emergency evacuation plan being so prominently discussed in our briefings. Group visas for Kazakhstan were secured for those of us deployed in the north and for Tajikstan for the observers in the south.  The impetus for the heightened security concerns was less the April events than the June clashes between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz.  Centered in Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second largest city located in the southern part of the country, that conflict left more than 200 dead, perhaps 2,000 injured, 400,000 people internally displaced and about 110,000 seeking refuge in Uzbekistan (almost all since returned.)  The evacuation plans weren’t needed, though, as no serious incidents occurred on what turned out to be a quiet election day.  So, although I was far enough north to see Kazakhstan for a good part of that day, we never had the occasion to go there.

With 29 parties in the running, none received more than 16% of the vote; five parties exceeded the threshold required for representation in the new parliament.  In my own, obviously limited, election day experience, voting seemed rather normal.  And if the counting we observed at day’s end seemed somewhat raggedy, it did not appear to be with intent.  Recommendations were made for improvements, as is the norm, but as one mission coordinator said, “I have observed many elections in Central Asia over the years, but this is the first election where I could not predict the outcome.”

As was the case with the earlier short-lived one, the new government will be led by the Social Democratic Party which finished second overall.  Sometimes described as a party of entrepreneurs, it counts the country’s acting president Roza Otunbayeva among its members.  The coalition also includes the Ata Zhurt, or Fatherland Party, the largest party in parliament, which supports past president Bakiyev; and Respublika, a new party founded and led by Omurbek Babanov, said to be one of the richest people in Kyrgyzstan. Parties in Parliament but not in the coalition are Ar-Namys (Dignity), considered conservative and pro-Russian party, and Ata-Meken (Motherland) which is considered liberal and pro-Western. All of the above descriptions of the government parties should be taken with a grain of salt and I do not pretend to have any real sense of the dynamics involved in the creation of the coalition. From here on I will confine myself to describing what the observation mission was like.

Like most OSCE missions, this one began with a centralized training in the capital, after which most observers were deployed elsewhere in the country. Some will always stay put, however, and this time I was one of that group. Although I would not get to see any other part of the country, there was an upside to staying put – I would not be among the group flying on a domestic airplane.  Not that I have anything against such things generally, but Kyrgyzstan appears on a list of countries whose airlines may not operate services of any kind within the European Union, due to their inadequate safety standards, a distinction not generally considered reassuring by the group that did have to fly.

DID YOU HOUSE THEM IN A BROTHEL?

My Bishkek-area assignment also meant that I stayed put in the quite comfortable but more expensive businessman’s hotel where we had trained.  We had been advised to bring sleeping bags, but I wound up not having to deal with any iffy accommodations – and had wireless Internet in my room. My friend Nancy, whom I’ve known since Sarajevo in 1997 and was my housemate there the next summer, was not so fortunate.  She called about 9 PM the night before the election.  Said she needed to vent – she’d been put up in a brothel.

First she’d noted all the cars parked outside. And then there was the fact that her room had only neon lighting – she’d complained to the management that she couldn’t read by it. (She showed us a picture later and, yup, it’d have been pretty hard to study your election manual in her room, I think.) Finally the doors opening and closing through the night got her out of her room and downstairs where she came upon a group of customers mingling with the service providers – a bunch of young naked men eating meat with the prostitutes, as she described it.  Our LTOs (Long Term Observers) had somehow missed this aspect when they were sizing up potential accommodations. Nancy won “Best story of the 2010 Kyrgyzstan mission” hands down, I’d say. And  I couldn’t help but imagine mission review forms containing the question:

Did Long Term Observers house Short Term Observers in a brothel?   Yes __ No __

My encounters with the, uh, night life were much tamer. My only accomplishment of any note was getting to what I understood to be both of Bishkek’s brewery pubs. Our LTOs took care of one of them for me by organizing the local group get together at the Blonder Pub.  (The beer seemed pretty much entry-level brewery pub fare – distinct from the bottled Russian Sibirskoe Koronna back at the hotel, but in itself nothing special.)  The evening’s highlight – which I missed due to having an internal clock sufficiently grounded to deliver me to the event my customary a-little-bit-late, even though thirteen time zones ahead – was being wanded for weapons at the door. The word on this was that it probably was less the likelihood of people actually carrying weapons that accounted for this than the fact that wanding was all the rage in the major clubs in Moscow, so that any place in Bishkek with aspirations of being a serious destination needed to wand.

The Steinbrau brewpub was another matter. First off, they had a beer garden, built by the Volga Germans who settled here after World War II, having been removed from the Volga region during the war. I understand that they pretty much all cleared out of Kyrgyzstan during Perestroika when they were finally able to exercise their right to return to Germany, from their ancestors had come in the days of the Tsars.  But you could still see signs of them in towns with names written in Latin rather than Cyrillic letters, like Luxemburg (named not for the country, but after Rosa, the World War I era German/Polish socialist leader), and places like Steinbrau. No one on the premises looked remotely German the day I was there, but they had clearly left the recipes behind because the place served a very creditable line of German style beers.

There’s a certain summer camp atmosphere to these missions – a bunch of people thrown together for a short time grappling with sorting out the personalities and backgrounds (and accents) that present themselves – that can make them habit forming. You might meet Social Democrats from Berlin, Republicans from Colorado, Left Party members from Sweden, naturalized Russians living in Marin.  The most interesting part for me is trying to root out any potential foreign soul mates who might be there – say, Europeans who consider being socialist a matter of common sense.

When I met Jan from Germany and learned he was active in the Social Democratic Party (SDP), I immediately told him I was an admirer of Oscar Lafontaine and received a mock scowl in reply. Of course, if I had thought about it for a moment beforehand, I’d have no reason to be surprised – LaFontaine, after all,  represents the party’s most prominent defection in decades. Once the SDP chairman and lead candidate, in 1999 he resigned his position as Finance Minister in the SDP-led government and subsequently took up leadership of the upstart Left Party. Jan did concede, though, that Lafontaine does give the best speeches. (I’ll admit that although it hadn’t been my goal, I kind of enjoyed out-lefting a German leftist – I don’t think they expect that from an American, you know.)

In 2005, the parties of the (lower case) left actually won the German election, and yet the Social Democrats dropped from senior party in a coalition with the Green Party to junior partner in a “grand coalition” with the conservative Christian Democrats, their principal opponents.  The problem was that the SDP and Greens wouldn’t consider a coalition with the Left Party, even though it received more votes than the Greens.  They considered its democratic credentials tainted by its partial roots in the Socialist Unity Party that governed the former East German Democratic Republic. And, for its part, the Left Party professed antipathy to a coalition with the “reformist” parties.

Jan explained that, as a member of the left wing of the SDP, he would personally prefer to have the Left Party in a coalition because he thought that making them do what you have to do to actually be in government (as opposed to criticizing it from the outside) would diminish their appeal, along with their vote, as has already happened in Berlin.  But for now, he says, talk of an all-left coalition has subsided since current polls show that a simple red-green (SDP-Green) coalition could defeat Angela Merkel’s government. Well, this was a certainly a discussion not to be had back home.

WHY DO YOU SPEAK SUCH GOOD ENGLISH?

Observers on these missions have to work in English: all briefings are in English and local translators are hired for their ability to speak English. You will hear some interesting accents. A Scandinavian sitting next to me at our local Bishkek-group debriefing asked, “Do you understand the Frenchman?” referring to one of our two LTOs. In my experience, you can expect Scandinavians you meet on these occasions to speak pretty darn good English and this fellow was no exception, but I suppose he still wondered if somehow a native speaker might be able to hear through the accent better than he. But no, while our other LTO from Belarus spoke good international English, the French LTO’s accent was about as difficult as any I’ve run into on one of these missions – among anyone who was said to actually speak English, that is. I suspect he encountered a lot of nodding assent.

Still, he probably went home thinking that at least I understood him better than my Swiss German observing partner Cristoph did, anyhow. At one point on election day Cristoph’s phone rang just as he had started asking a local poll worker the standard list of questions on how the election was going, so he handed it off to me.  It was the French LTO. Well, he and I were having a very difficult time of it, things not made easier by there being some type of music broadcasting out front of the polling station. I told him to hold on while I looked for a better place.  He hung up and called back but it was no better, so he hung up again. Five minutes later my own phone rang and it was he. He explained that he had called my partner but couldn’t understand him so he thought he’d try me. And, in fact, now that we’d practiced a little (and I suppressed my laughter), he and I managed to communicate significantly better than when he had called Cristoph!

That conversation certainly gave me my biggest laugh of the day (second best was observing the drunken wedding guest reduced to crawling across the floor of a restaurant we stopped in), but Cristoph and I generally amused each other through the long observing day and night.  In fact, our foursome – including Ashkat, our ethnic-Kyrgyz translator, and Evgeniy, our ethnic-Russian driver – got on quite well, I thought, through our entire assignment that included pre-election reconnoitering of the assigned area, election day visits to maybe eleven polling places, observing closing and counting at one of them, and then several hours at a regional tallying center. We did not, however, have any kind of post election lunch where people promise to name their children after each other and that sort of thing, which will sometimes occur at these affairs.  No women in our group, you know.

Of course, so far as language goes, not everyone might say that all of us Americans necessarily spoke the best English, either.  After a few evenings’ conversations, Jan (from Germany, as you may recall)  asked, “As an American why do you speak such good English?”  I laughed.  He said, “No, I’m serious,” and motioning toward a woman from Seattle said, “I can’t understand her at all.”

I’ll have you know this was not the first time I have been complimented on my English. I explained that what he heard from me was a conscious effort to speak slowly, clearly, loud and without unnecessarily complicated construction. I suppose I had the advantage over a lot of the Americans in that the first mission I went on was long – nine weeks registering voters in Sarajevo following the Bosnian civil war – so I’d had time to absorb the fact that an effort to speak like that would go a long way. On these short, week or so missions it may just never occur to some of the Americans that they’re frequently being understood only with difficulty – and that there’s something they might do about it.

On one occasion, also in Bosnia, the overall observation group was so large that the U.S. delegation alone filled an entire charter flight (on an airline, by the way, that no one had heard of before, with on-flight films subtitled in Hebrew and Arabic, which prompted much speculation as to the company’s “normal” business.)  With numbers like this, the usual effort to mix the nationalities was dispensed with and observers simply deployed en masse as they arrived. This resulted in a hotel in the town of Bugojno chock full of American observers most of whom had not done this sort of thing before.  This meant there was even less awareness than usual that someone might have difficulty understanding you if you spoke as if you were in a supermarket in New York or Kansas. Our trainer from the Netherlands who, by any reasonable measure, spoke excellent English, found himself periodically flummoxed by a rapid fire paragraph delivered in American. Jan probably would have encountered an entire hotel bar full of people he didn’t understand.

Since I knew the entire country of Kyrgyzstan has only five million people or so, and the capital was, to my reckoning, way out there in the middle of nowhere – 6750 miles from either San Francisco or New York City, 2150 miles from Beijing and 1850 miles from Moscow – I figured it for a population of maybe 50-100,000.  So I was quite surprised when our LTOs said that it was upwards of a million.  Elsewhere I see the figure put at 800,000 and it’s always hard to know whether people are speaking of a city proper or its metropolitan area, but you get the idea.  The place was no doubt quite a bit more sophisticated than I’d figured.

I had the good fortune of seeing the national history museum in the company of an American colleague who was a Russian native.  Naturally she could read all the material about the Russian Revolution and seemed a bit taken aback by my knowledge of and interest in the subject. Someone once said that you could define the entire American left by the point at which they thought the Russian Revolution went bad, but that’s some time ago and I don’t really think I was ever able to satisfactorily explain my interest to her. The museum had a couple of shops with Kyrgyz artifacts, including a large piece of locally made tapestry that greatly interested the very conservative Republican Colorado state legislator in our group (whose his presence at a foreign election not a month before his own apparently stemmed from his representing the fifth most Republican district in the state and perceiving little real challenge.) Unfortunately the tapestry turned out to have the image of V.I. Lenin sewn into it. I suggested he might just have it replaced with Ronald Reagan when he got back home, but he decided against.

I made two unsuccessful tries at the art museum – the second time it was closed for a party, but I did make it to the most unusual of the city’s museums: the Frunze Museum opened in 1974 and built over the actual house in which Frunze grew up, with upper floors devoted to photos and clippings of his life and the Revolution. It was as spare a museum as I’ve ever visited. There was not a brochure, postcard, or memento of any kind in sight. Even the admission tickets seemed to be the sort of generic item you’d buy at a discount store to use for a raffle.  I suppose they weren’t beating down the doors to reminisce about Frunze these days.

TAXI TO THE SNOW LEOPARDS?

Of course, you wouldn’t generally travel to Bishkek for the museums.  On the other hand, it did have a feature that I haven’t seen the like of in any other large city: You could get a taxi at your hotel that would take you to a national park that purported to have snow leopards.  Try that in Manhattan.  And, no, the Central Park Zoo doesn’t count – there were no cages here, or anything. Of course we didn’t actually see any snow leopards, but that was probably just as well, and we were definitely farther out there than at Far Rockaway, or even Walden Pond.  I’d probably have seen a lot more national parks if you could take cabs to them – or if they were on subway stops or something.  And, as a bonus, on the way back, we happened onto what I’d call a monument park, for lack of knowing any better way to describe it, dedicated to Manas, the hero of the Kyrgyz national epic poem, done in the most wonderful colors.  The significance of the place was simply beyond the comprehension of us westerners not familiar with the poem – which is said to run 500,000 lines.

You learn a pretty random collection of things about a city or a country in eight days. You’ll probably pick up something about their bars and their money changing: I discovered that they made quite good cognac in the country and that their currency exchange offices refuse to take any currency (or at least any American currency, anyhow) with any kind of stray ink or other mark on it.  I later hear that they will accept it at a discount, though – they’ll offer you, say, $40 for a $50 dollar bill.  And Evgeniy tells us that they’ll then sell it back to you if you trade for dollars – at full value, of course.

Perhaps my favorite part of any mission is that last night in the hotel lobby when the observers are all there drinking away their remaining local currency.  This one was particularly leisurely because most flights to and from Bishkek happen at three or four in the morning in order to fit into flight schedules of the more mainstream parts of the world. The last night is a time when you can turn to chat with the person sitting next to you whom you haven’t previously met, find that he’s a member of the Left Party (another “reformed Communist party,” but in this case one free of the stigma of having run a dictatorship), and have one final conversation like you won’t be able to have back home.

And you might even get one final shot at tourism. My college friend Joe (who’s also been on a number of these missions but never before with me) and I made use of about three and a half available hours in Istanbul to grab visas, take the subway down to the Blue Mosque, look at several famous places that there wasn’t time to enter due to prohibitive lines – even on a drizzly midweek morning – and drink Turkish coffee overlooking the walls of the Topkapi Palace.

The next morning I will be trying to explain to American fifth graders where these places are.

No Paradise: Rajapaksa’s Post-War Sri Lanka

Since the announcement last Tuesday that Sri Lankan President Mahindra Rajapaksa had defeated former army chief General Sarath Fonseka in the country’s first national election since the defeat of the separatist LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) last May, we in the United States have heard little about the election’s aftermath. In the run up to the election, bits of valuable information reached our shores through The New York Times, The Phildelphia Inquirer, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor and others, but since the election’s conclusion, Sri Lanka has faded into the background behind more dramatic stories in Haiti, Afghanistan, and China.

To some, Rajapaksa’s win signaled the triumph of democracy after decades of civil war, but it doesn’t take much looking to find that Rajapaksa resorted to some decidedly undemocratic methods to secure victory. Reporters Without Borders condemned the Sri Lankan government for blocking websites, intimidating critics, and possibly being responsible for the disappearance of opposition supporters. The Sri Lankan government had been preventing foreign journalists from entering the country to cover the elections, and the situation on the ground in Sri Lanka, especially in Tamil areas, had hardly been conducive to ensuring that the citizens’ right to vote would be protected. The election day bombshell that Fonseka was allegedly not registered to vote prompted Rajapaksa’s UPFA to loudly threatened to challenge his election if he were to win. This threat came despite the fact that the election commission had declared that Fonseka’s papers were in order and that not being registered to vote had no bearing on whether he could hold office.

Since the election, Rajapaksa has made drastic moves to consolidate his power and clamp down on journalists, the political opposition, and protesters in the streets. Earlier fears of post-election violence between supporters of Rajapaksa and Fonseka seem to have given way to fears of a coup, at least according to Rajapaksa, orchestrated by military supporters of General Fonseka. In response, Rajapaksa has ordered the biggest shake up of the Sri Lankan military in decades, purging the forces of high-ranking supporters of Fonseka. Many justifiably fear that Rajapaksa’s election will worsen the state of media freedom in Sri Lanka.

During the election, Rajapaksa was strongly supported by the ethnic Sinhalese majority in the south. Rajapaksa won over 65%, while Fonseka – also Sinhalese – carried less than 35% of the vote. The largest Tamil political party – faced with the option of  supporting the president who led a brutal war against them or supporting the general who carried out the president’s orders – chose to back Fonseka, hopeful that he would do more than Rajapaksa has to bring about a Sinhalese-Tamil reconciliation. In the Jaffna district, the Tamil heartland, 64% supported Fonseka and just 25% backed Rajapaksa. Since the end of the long and devastating civil war in May, Rajapaksa has aggravated ethnic tensions and has failed to demonstrate a desire or ability to reimagine Sri Lanka as an inclusive democratic society willing to accommodate the still-legitimate Tamil demands on the Sri Lankan government that originally led the country into war. His behavior since his election victory once again appears to reflect an insecure and greedy desire to remain in power rather than a strategy for rebuilding an island destroyed and torn apart by violence and social inequality.

This shortsightedness could backfire on Rajapaksa. The International Crisis Group still sees a need for international community involvement in reconstructing Sri Lanka and making sure Tamil grievances are responded to. Rajapaksa should also keep in mind that while the LTTE has been soundly defeated militarily in Sri Lanka, its organization still exists overseas, holding up to one billion dollars in assets. Despite its wealth, this network is, for now, beset by infighting and a lack of central leadership and fighters. Yet, Tamil concerns cannot be expected to go unaddressed forever, and a continued denial of rights, opportunities, and dignity to the Tamil people by the Sri Lankan government just might provide the motivation to unify and organize that today’s overseas Tigers are lacking.

President Rajapaksa believes that “Sri Lanka’s struggle is a victory for global democracy and demonstrates that a workable model exists for eradicating terrorism.” Optimists see this peacetime election as an opportunity for Rajapaksa and Sri Lankans to put the war behind them and to get on with creating an economically prosperous, politically inclusive, and socially harmonious nation. Yet, such a project will take time and will require rebuilding a constructive Tamil political voice, not merely a relatively free electoral win by a seemingly divisive and ethnically chauvinist politician. Based on Rajapaksa’s record since the defeat of the LTTE, I doubt that he is a leader capable of forging a new peaceful political future for Sri Lanka.

And I fear for the toll that fighting terrorism takes on democracy. While Sri Lanka may provide a “workable model” for defeating terrorism, it hardly provides us with a desirable model. As a country engaged in (perhaps indefinitely) fighting terrorism, we in the United States should see Sri Lanka as a warning. We must decide if we are willing to sacrifice our democratic ideals to possibly attain an all-out victory over terrorism.

Future of Afghanistan Complicated by Election Outcome

The Afghan presidential elections have ended. And I’m sure I’m not the only one to who finds the outcome thoroughly unsatisfying. After vehemently denying that his campaign had engaged in massive voting fraud, President Hamid Karzai essentially admitted to fraud, accepting the election commission’s revised vote tally. This revision dropped Karzai’s support from 54% to under 50%, triggering a runoff under the Afghan constitution. Karzai’s opponent in the runoff, Abdullah Abdullah, not in a position to actually win and fearing more fraud and violence with a second round of voting, dropped out of the contest, leaving Karzai the winner.

American officials act reasonably satisfied with these elections, though it’s hard to see why. They are now left with an Afghan partner in the escalating war against the Taliban that has run a shockingly corrupt and ineffective government, has garnered less than half the majority of votes cast in the election, and has committed large-scale fraud in a failed effort to win these elections. To sum up, Karzai has proven to be bad at governing Afghanistan, does not have the support of most of the Afghan people, and was caught trying to steal the election. While Karzai seems to have legitimately won a commanding plurality of the vote, his behavior indicates a blatant disregard for the electoral process and the rule of law that would be condemned by the US government had it occurred in a place such as Iran or Venezuela.

Though President Obama gave Karzai a scolding about improving his governance when he called to congratulate him on his victory, close US-Afghan cooperation is bound to continue. Indeed, if Obama has his way, it will increase (though he appears to be feeling less hawkish about Afghanistan than he was as candidate – perhaps because of this tainted election). And it should. The return of the Taliban poses a threat to Afghans, the region, and perhaps the world. After a decade of supporting violent religious fanatics (both Afghan and foreign) against the Soviets, and then walking away to let these extremists, drug kingpins, and warlords plunge the country into civil war, the US owes the Afghan people a serious commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan by providing security, promoting development, and nurturing a democratic government.

This means US military involvement is needed, but more importantly, it means overcoming the challenges of bringing things like water, electricity, roads, health care, education, and jobs to Afghans. Yet, hopes have been dashed that these elections would give Afghanistan a clear and legitimate democratic leader who was ready to work with the US and battle the Taliban with the support of the Afghan public. The muddied results will certainly make the work of the Afghan government, the US, NATO, and other foreign players more difficult. And the Taliban are already claiming victory, believing that their attacks stopped the second round of voting.

In the end, these elections give little hope for the immediate future of Afghanistan and the US mission there. By his own actions, Karzai has weakened his position vis-à-vis the Taliban, and the US will be hard-pressed to win Afghan hearts and minds while backing a largely discredited Afghan government and failing to follow through on efforts to improve the lives of Afghan people. US involvement is also becoming increasingly unpopular at home, and the longer US soldiers and aid workers are in Afghanistan, the more chances there are for casualties that may not be palatable to Americans who increasingly believe that there are unclear reasons to stay in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration is hopeful that Karzai will clean up his act and the UK is making threats that it can’t support a government that is so unapologetically corrupt. However, it is hard to imagine that the US or the UK – as heavily invested in Afghanistan as they are – will simply quit Afghanistan if Karzai continues running his government as is. The US certainly has some leverage over Karzai, but for now it has little choice but to put most of its eggs in one basket, hoping that he is the man best suited to improve life in Afghanistan and to fight the Taliban. Unrest seems sure to continue to plague Afghanistan, and US ability to win a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan has been seriously compromised by this election’s outcome. How adeptly Obama’s strategy can adapt to today’s complex political situation in Afghanistan and how well US forces can work with other regional players (Pakistan, India, Russia, Iran, China) will be key to preventing Afghanistan and the entire region from becoming more dangerous and unstable than they are today.

This is the second article covering the Afghan election and the fourth in a series on major elections in Asia this year.

Prospects for Change in Burma: Too Many Wild Cards in the Deck?

From the US, Burma (more recently known as Myanmar) has appeared for the past two decades to be a global pariah, ruled by an isolated, paranoid, and  power-hungry military notorious for its suppression of human rights, government critics, and ethnic minorities. In the last few years it has made the news for all the wrong reasons – the continued imprisonment of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the bloody crackdown on huge crowds of protesting Buddhist monks in 2007, the refusal to allow international aid agencies into the country after Cyclone Nargis killed at least 140,000 people in 2008, and holding a clearly illegitimate constitutional referendum in which 92% of Burmese supposedly supported the new constitution drafted by the ruling military junta.

US policy towards Burma under George W. Bush was to shun the military government and to stick to the strict international sanctions regime imposed on the junta. This did nothing to noticeably change Burma’s internal political situation. So now the Obama administration is trying a new tack of unconditional diplomatic engagement while continuing sanctions until the junta makes some significant concessions. The US and many Burmese would like to see three things – the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, constitutional reforms, and assurances that 2010’s election will be free and fair. While committed to dialogue with General Than Shwe’s government, the US does not appear optimistic that change will happen quickly in Burma.

While this strategy alone may not bring quick or significant change to Burma, other factors are also shaking up the country’s political status quo. Aung San Suu Kyi – the incredibly popular and politically shrewd leader of the opposition National League for Democracy who has been under house arrest for most of the past 20 years after winning the 1990 elections, only to have the results ignored — has recently met with members of the junta, agreeing to help negotiate an end to sanctions on Burma by Western nations. While Suu Kyi likely believes that the sanctions have been ineffective and detrimental to the Burmese people (the standard argument for ending them), she is also making a political move.  This is based on the assumption that her favor to the junta will not go unrewarded, perhaps reminding the junta of the substantial power she still wields. Should the junta decide to release Suu Kyi, next year’s elections have a chance of being legitimate, with Suu Kyi’s NLD possibly coming to power.

In recent days, there have been hints that Suu Kyi may indeed be released by the government. This could be thanks to Suu Kyi’s recent cordial relations with the government, because of the change in US Burma policy or due to mounting international pressure. The US is leaning on other nations to put pressure on the Burmese government, and China, India, and Russia recently have joined the US and Europe in calling for Suu Kyi’s release. The calls of the three emerging powers are particularly significant given their relatively close ties and positions of influence with Burma. These new calls for Suu Kyi’s release accompany strained relations between Burma and its closest ally, China, because of border disputes and Chinese anxiety over the possibility of improved US-Burma ties.

Within Burma, politically active Buddhist monks continue to challenge the junta, pressing it to apologize for killings during 2007’s massive protests and threatening further protests if their demands go unmet. Monks inside and outside Burma have also demanded a timeline and clear benchmarks for US engagement with Than Shwe’s government.

The most likely change in the foreseeable future is the release of some political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, which could open a Pandora’s box for the junta. The more parties involved in 2010’s elections, the greater likelihood that they may, from the junta’s perspective, get out of control. Should the elections actually be held freely and fairly, countless other complicated political and constitutional issues will be raised. After this, a redrafting of the constitution could take place, which would likely deny the junta the constitutional protections that they now enjoy against prosecution for their actions while in power.

Of course, there are a host of other possible futures for Burma – the most likely being that not much will change. The junta may allow cosmetic political changes while retaining power and continuing to suppress its domestic critics, defying the international community. However, there seem to be enough wild cards in the deck now that a political shakeup in the next year is more likely than it has been for some time. Whatever happens, one hopes that life will improve for the Burmese people.

Why Another Karzai Government May be Bad for Afghanistan

If you read the news (in the US anyway) it is common knowledge that what is most important in the current Afghan elections is not necessarily who wins, but that the elections be seen as legitimate and transparent by the Afghan public as well as the international community. Now, almost three weeks after election day, it is highly questionable whether the election process this time around will be, in the end, seen as legitimate by Afghans or the international community. There have been widespread allegations of voter fraud, including among supporters of sitting President Hamid Karzai. The sheer volume of complaints has pushed back the announcement of the election’s official results by at least two weeks.

With 90% of the vote counted, Karzai appears to have won 54% of the vote, with runner-up Dr. Abdullah Abdullah with 28%, and the remainder of the vote being split among 36 other presidential candidates. However, these results are not official, hundreds of thousands of votes have been thrown out, and there have been persistent allegations of massive voter fraud. It appears that there is substance to many of the allegations, raising the possibility that enough votes could be disqualified to drop Karzai’s tally to under the 50% that he needs to avoid a runoff with Abdullah. Investigations into voter fraud could last months, delaying any eventual runoff and threatening to plunge Afghanistan into more violence and perhaps a constitutional crisis as competing groups and candidates jockey for a position in whatever government eventually comes to power (or alternatively, strive to discredit and destabilize the government elect).

The reason for the strong opposition against Karzai has been his government’s extreme corruption and his political amorality in being willing to team up with unsavory former warlords like Abdul Rashid Dostum, accused of human right atrocities against Taliban captives under his control. The Afghan people also have seen Karzai largely as the candidate of the US and the international community which has generated distrust concerning the outcome of the vote, believing that his victory has been preordained without concern for Afghan opinion. If Karzai wins a majority in a flawed election process, his adminstration is sure to be dogged by accusations that it came to power illegitimately. Should he fail to win over 50%, his position would be confirmed as relatively weak while he would be subject to repeated opposition attacks (during and between election campaign) highlighting his corruption and poor administration. If Karzai were to win the runoff election, he would be returning to office with a poor record, a weak administration, and no mandate from Afghans. If on the other hand, Abdullah were to win the run off, there may be a public sense of hope for a new direction in Afghan politics, and a belief in the legitimacy of the electoral system. Nor would Abdullah have the amount of negative baggage that is holding Karzai back. While Abdullah’s backers are also likely to have engaged in vote fraud, the most serious allegations appear to be against the Karzai campaign. An Abdullah win would more likely be perceived as representative of a fair and legitimate electoral process.

The biggest difference between Karzai and Abdullah is that Karzai supports a government with power concentrated in the office of president, while Abdullah sees a parliamentary system as a more appropriate system for representing the diversity of Afghan beliefs and communities. An Abdullah win would mean a fundamental restructuring of the Afghan government with unpredictable results. In governing, Abdullah would probably need to rely on supporters as shady as Karzai’s, and his government would face the same difficult challenges to improving life in Afghanistan that Karzai’s would.

But it may just be time for a change. Karzai may have been the man for the job when the Taliban fell. He had an admirable history of brave opposition to the Taliban and al Qaeda. He challenged Presidents Bush and Musharraf on many aspects of his country’s rebuilding and advocated strongly for the Afghan people. He may have been the best chance to hold Afghanistan together after 2001, but now, his rule has become a liability for the Afghan state. A new leader is needed to bring legitimacy to the election process and to restore faith in the Afghan government itself. Bringing progress in Afghanistan will be a difficult task for anyone, but should Karzai win, it will be harder than need be.

This article is the third in a series about major elections taking place in Asia this year.  Part one and two covered the recent elections in India.

Reactions to China’s Tiananmen Blackout: Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Live Without Them

This June fourth marked the twentieth anniversary of pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. These protests were violently put down by China’s government, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of (usually nonviolent) protesters and iconic photos and videos showcasing the inhumanity and intolerance of Chinese communism in the midst of the Cold War. The so-called Free World howled with outrage about China’s brutal violation of its citizens’ human rights.

While the Cold War has ended and China has become a capitalist powerhouse, China’s government has retained its iron grip. Strikingly, any acknowledgment of this week’s historic anniversary was blotted out in China (with, for legal reasons, the exception of Hong Kong where over 100,000 people gathered to mark the occasion). Any news of the event – via television, internet, radio, press, even Twitter! – was blacked out and any demonstrations commemorating the event and its victims were forbidden. And this has not been the beginning of Tiananmen Square’s erasure from public memory. Many of China’s under-20 generation know nothing about what happened there in 1989, and students do not learn anything about the incident in their classes.

Many in China and the outside world remember, however. And although world leaders and citizens spoke out this week to condemn the 1989 crackdown as well as China’s silencing recognition of the event, these words were uttered in a different context, in a different world. China and the world are so different from 1989 that these words, coming from the mouths leaders who have become increasingly friendly with China, ring somewhat hollow. For example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that China “should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal.” To which Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang responded, “We urge the U.S. to put aside its political prejudice and correct its wrongdoing and refrain from disrupting or undermining bilateral relations.” It is hard to see Clinton’s statement as anything besides political rhetoric. This is the same Secretary of State who visited China just this spring and refused to discuss “marginal issues” like human rights in favor of issues like the economic crisis and environmental concerns.

I’m sure that Clinton, Obama, and other outspoken world leaders and heads of state are uncomfortable with China’s lackluster human rights record. Who isn’t? But now China doesn’t fit quite so easily into the box that it used to. It was easy to condemn its human rights shortcomings and to demonize China as a godless commie dictatorship when it didn’t supply most of the cheap consumer products that we are so addicted to in the US. Or when it didn’t finance much of our ballooning national debt. It is still easy to condemn Burma’s similar 1988 and 2007 pro-democracy crackdowns because Burma still remains politically and economically insignificant on the global stage. China now occupies center stage.

These days, words condemning China are generally just that – words. Discomfort with China’s disregard for democratic values and basic human rights will not stop our businesses – or US consumers – from buying cheap goods from China. It will not stop businesses from moving factories there. Nor will it stop the US government from stepping up diplomatic and economic engagement with China, an important rising global superpower. Barring a shockingly egregious misstep on the part of China’s political leadership, relatively small issues like the Tiananmen Square blackout and even bigger concerns such as Chinese policies regarding Tibet, the rest of the world will be eager to be a part of China’s stunning rise.

Really, China is a new manifestation of an old dilemma for US foreign policy. We (and here I use “we” to stand in for the US government) claim to stand for democracy, freedom, liberty, human rights, the right to free speech, freedom of religion, etc., etc. And sometimes we do, but often we don’t. We support a Saudi monarchy/dictatorship because they ensure our access to oil. We supported the mujahaddin in Soviet-era Afghanistan because it was anti-Soviet. Then we supported a military dictatorship in Pakistan because it was anti-mujahaddin (kind of). We supported South Africa’s apartheid government for years. We armed, trained, and funded death squads and dictatorships throughout Central and South America during the 1980s and beyond (and before too). This list goes on.

China is just the latest challenge to applying lofty American ideals to the nitty-gritty of national foreign policy and bilateral relations. Perhaps one day, China’s government will give in (willingly or unwillingly) to global and domestic concerns about human rights and political freedom in China. It doesn’t look likely to happen soon however. And neither the US nor other countries have the political will to really stand up to China on such issues. In fact, conflicts with China over such issues could very well undermine the material benefits we enjoy thanks to our growing relationship with China. And, in all honesty, the compromises that the US and China are compelled to make to maintain a working, if imperfect, relationship are certainly better than another Cold War. Diplomacy and relationship building are always more complex, muddled, and morally ambiguous than outright hostility.

Pakistan: Caught in the Crossfire, Part 2

This is the second of my two part series dealing with Pakistan through the eyes of  Naveed, a lecturer at an Islamabad University. Please see Part 1 for more context.

After being enlightened about Pakistan’s history and foreign interference, I was desperate to find out his views about the insurgency in his native tribal areas. We were out in the open air, and Naveed was in a calm mood.

“So you asked me about the insurgency in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan?,” he uttered after taking a deep breath. As I nodded, he said: “To understand the present insurgency, you have to go back to the British Empire era when Pashtun tribal areas had their own tribal administrators called ‘Walis’.”

ISOLATION AND INDIFFERENCE

“The British did little to interfere in our lives and gave us the freedom to have our own code which we call the ‘jirga’ (assembly of tribal elders) that defines laws, regulations, and policies. Soon after the independence, we joined Pakistan on certain preconditions. One of them was to have our own jirga system,” Naveed said, adding that Pakistani courts and law enforcement have no jurisdiction over the tribal areas known as Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

FATA is an interesting region of Pakistan. It covers an area of 27,220 sq. km and has an estimated population of 3.5 million. Pashtuns comprise the overwhelming majority of the population with a few ethnic Hazaras, Sikhs, and Punjabis living alongside. The literacy rate is hardly 10%, well below the national average of 40%. It is an underdeveloped area with few metalled roads and limited gas and electricity supply. The locals do not pay tax to the state. With only seven percent of the land area cultivatable, people make a livelihood by smuggling custom-free goods from Afghanistan, operating car theft rackets, drug trafficking, and selling locally produced illegal small and heavy arms.

The Pakistani government seldom intervenes in the tribal affairs. A government appointed political agent called “Malik” represents the federation with few executive powers. FATA is however represented in the National Assembly in Islamabad. Unelected tribal elders represented the region until the system was changed in 1997 to introduce mandatory elections. However, little has changed as the elections are contested on tribal rather than on political lines. Therefore, although there are now elections, most individuals vote solely along tribal lines. This is in contrast to the rest of the country where political parties cut across tribal identities.

“This whole region is in a limbo. It is part of Pakistan, but at the same time it is not. Confused aren’t you?” a sarcastic Naveed remarked at my puzzled face. “Thanks to our tribal elders’ wishes, the government never incorporated us into mainstream Pakistan. There always remained a divide between the settled and tribal areas that local leaders as well as Islamabad exploited for their own gains. We are the Pakistani version of America’s Wild West,” he joked in his patent ironic tone.

The dynamics of this tribal society are now unraveling. Due to the fact that this region never became part of the mainstream Pakistani society, the allegiance of the people is toward their tribes or clans rather than to their country. The idea of a shared cultural identity has remained confined to the boundaries of the tribal regions spread across Pakistan and Afghanistan. Therefore, although they are counted as part of the Pakistani population and their areas are shown on the map as part of federal Pakistan, the state has failed to win the Pashtun hearts and minds in order to fully include them in the wider Pakistani cultural society.

“The people in the province, especially in the tribal areas, felt the isolation. Politicians, time and again, made promises to bring them into the mainstream and grant a comprehensive political and judicial system. From Bhutto to his daughter Benazir and from General Zia-ul-Haq to his stalwart Nawaz Sharif, everyone made promises. Empty promises. Things hardly changed on the ground,” Naveed remarked. “Does a promise remain a promise if unfulfilled?,” he argued while referring to an Urdu proverb with a similar connotation.

RETURNS OF THE HOLY ALLIANCE

The outbreak of a guerrilla war in Afghanistan is a turning point in the history of Pakistan. In 1980, Pakistani military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq setup an alliance with the United States to send fighters across the border to aid the Afghan resistance against the Soviet-backed government in Kabul. The joint Pakistani-US investment of arms and fighters radically altered the course of war in Afghanistan, drawing Soviet troops into a long, bloody conflict that ultimately left them defeated and contributed to the disintegration of the USSR.

But the Pakistan-US alliance also brought a host of problems to the region, especially Pakistan. The tribal areas, acting as a launching pad for anti-Soviet fighters known as the “mujahideen,” became a den of illegal arms, drugs, and smuggling. Millions of people from Afghanistan sought refuge in Pakistan, straining the already limited resources of their hosts. The impoverished refugees from Afghanistan, at times, clashed with more modern and well-off Pakistanis due to cultural, religious, and lifestyle differences. People still resent the military government of General Zia over his handling of the Afghan crisis.

The area that was touched most by the conflict was the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. Naveed described the post-war situation. “The mujahideen returned to their homes. The government had no rehabilitation plan for them. Frustration rose tremendously and their warfare experience gave them the confidence to lift their arms and fight for their rights.” He added that veterans of the Afghan war returned to Pakistan along with their comrades from the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa.

“Most of the non-Afghan fighters were exiles from their home countries who could no longer return to their states. Many of their home governments feared a rebellion from their ranks and labeled them as unwanted elements. The only people who welcomed them were the Pashtuns as we have an ancient code of hospitality and generosity for someone who asks for protection and refuge,” Naveed explained, pride for his culture and traditions evident in his tone.

While the USSR left Afghanistan humiliated and defeated, the US reveled with joy. Afghanistan was abandoned, as the US interest was limited to the defeat of its nuclear rival rather than rebuilding of the nation. Former mujahideen turned their guns on each other and a full-scale civil war ensued. Thousands of people died during the conflict from 1992-1996. The only forces that stopped the civil war were the Taliban, who drove the warring former mujahideen factions from power and seized control of 90% of the country.

HOSTILITIES AT HOME

“The former mujahideen who returned from Afghanistan demanded a judicial system based on Islamic law and Pashtun culture and traditions. This was their own version of Shariah. It was a simple demand that was raised to deal with the complex law and order situation in their region,” the young academic described, adding that the local people were very enthusiastic about such demands. “Everybody including the former mujahideen wanted it. The government, instead of principally agreeing to their demand and holding a referendum to decide the issue, sent troops and tanks to the region. People did not get what they really wanted,” he remarked with bitterness replacing his usually soft tone.

In 1994, a bloody conflict erupted in the Malakand division of NWFP province. Veterans of the Afghan war formed a militia called “Tehrik Nifaz Shariat Muhammadi” (Movement for the Imposition of Muhammad’s Shariah law) and started an armed uprising in the region. Government buildings in the region were attacked and occupied in November 1994. The Islamabad government led by the late Benazir Bhutto, initially signing a peace agreement with the militants, backed off under international pressure and waged a military operation. The TNSM militants were flushed out to the hills, and calm was restored. However, the situation on the ground remained the same, and no general judicial system reforms were introduced to speed up the delivery of justice. The demand for a time saving and cost-effective judicial system in the national courts remained unheard, further infuriating the masses.

Hundreds of people lost their lives in the bloody conflict between the TNSM militants and Pakistani armed forces from November 1994 until early 1996. Thousands of people also left their homes in the region due to the conflict.

“The government’s short-sighted and half-baked measures exacerbated the situation. It waged an armed operation against the group but forged an alliance with the leadership. The head of TNSM, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, was captured by the army, but was released without any charges. I do not understand the logic of a military operation that ends up with the signing of a peace deal and distribution of sweets,” the 26 year-old said while mentioning the local practice of distributing sweets on the eve of a festive ceremony. “They sit side-by-side adorning each other with garlands while people mourn over their losses and bury their dead. Is this justice?”

According to a statement issued on May 3, 2001 by the then-NWFP provincial governor Owais Ghani, criminals and assorted illegal arms, timber, and drugs mafias provided financial support to the TNSM and flourished under their rule. TNSM strictly denies the allegations. The Shariah movement returned to the political scene in the region with a vengeance soon after the 9/11 attacks in the USA. While the then-US President George W. Bush was envisioning plans to invade Afghanistan and topple the Taliban government in Kabul, the former mujahideen in Pakistan were renewing their vows for a jihad and promising a new war against the USA along the same lines of struggle against the USSR.

Soon after the US forces invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, TNSM was the first pro-Taliban group to send its forces to fight alongside the Taliban. Thousands of fighters crossed into Afghanistan along with their leader Maulana Sufi Muhammad. The TNSM fighters returned to their bases after Taliban retreated from urban Afghanistan to their rural strongholds to initiate a guerrilla war against the occupying US and NATO forces. Leaders of TNSM were arrested by Islamabad after their return in 2002 and imprisoned on charges of incitement of violence and violation of state laws. President General Pervez Musharraf outlawed the organization in 2002.

Naveed stopped all of a sudden in the middle of the conversation. Something was clearly bugging him as his face turned red. “The cat and mouse game between TNSM and Pakistani military continued. The Pakistani government enjoyed the support of Washington while TNSM were bolstered by the inclusion of al-Qaeda elements in its ranks. The government signed a peace deal on one day and initiated an armed operation against the opposite side the very next day,” Naveed uttered angrily.

His outburst continued: “Nothing changed on the ground except that the situation got out of control and the militants got bolder with their tactics. Pakistani military attacked militant positions on the ground. They also hit their hideouts from the air with the help of Cobra gunship helicopters given by the US.”

“As if this was not enough to wreak havoc, the US drones unleashed hell from the skies, allegedly killing hundreds of innocent civilians. Thousands of people have been caught in the crossfire with no place to run and nowhere to hide. I’ve seen the carnage myself. Was this all for peace?”

Stocky-built Naveed came to an abrupt halt. His voice was shaky, and he didn’t want to continue anymore. Having lived for more than a year with him I never saw Naveed so silent before. He silenced himself. The aggression was in his hands, but he unclenched his fists and stood still. What else can he do?

As we were having this chat on a rainy spring evening, thousands of internally displaced refugees in Swat valley in northwest Pakistan were lying in the open without any shelter. There is an acute shortage of food in the refugee camps, I’m told. But one thing is very certain. There is no shortage of ammunition on either side.

The radical Islamists impose their style of governance in the name of religion and carry out their harsh sentences against poor and powerless people. In the opinion of many in Pakistan, the Islamabad government with the aid of the US government bombs and maims its own people by using tanks and fighter planes. The poor and powerless people, suppressed by the militants and oppressed by the government, run to save their lives. Where is the democratic promise of liberty, fraternity, and equality? Why don’t I see the Islamic spirit of forgiveness, compassion, and justice? Perhaps, both the sides are interested in furthering their agenda and exploiting their subjects in the name of their ideologies.

Indian Elections: Good News for India’s Future

It’s over. India’s marathon national assembly elections, after five phases of voting spread out over the past month, have finally been completed. And, as usual, the Indian electorate has surprised the experts, pundits, and commentators once again. The common knowledge was that this was anyone’s election – the Congress-led UPA coalition, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s NDA coalition, and even the Third Front, a motley collection of communist and regional parties, all had a chance to win. There was a feeling that the UPA held the edge, but no one expected a clear winner.

After the votes were tallied on March 16, the UPA did emerge victorious. And by much more than anyone had thought. To form a government in India, a party or coalition must win 272 seats to claim a majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. The Congress won 206 seats on its own, and its five pre-poll allies won an additional 52 seats, putting the UPA within reach of 272, needing to pick up only a few more independent and smaller party representatives. To American ears, this may sound like less than a mandate. However, in most national elections, only about half of Indian voters vote for the two parties with a national presence – the Congress and the BJP. The last time any single Indian party won over 200 seats was in 1991. And the most optimistic Congress members predicted 180 seats at the most. The BJP finished a distant second, claiming 116 seats, and no other party gained more than 23 seats. The last UPA government didn’t even have 272 members and had to rely on support “from the outside” from India’s communist parties – known as the Left. When the Left withdrew its support over the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Congress was forced to enlist the support of an on-again off-again ally, the Samajwadi Party, who also supported the UPA from the outside. So the fact that the Congress was able to nearly cross 272 with its rather small pre-poll alliance was definitely a surprise. It also means that it will not need to coddle temperamental allies while governing.

So, why the outpouring of support for the UPA? There are a number of early theories. Many commentators have asserted that voters chose the harmony and stability of another five years of UPA rule. Electing the NDA or the Third Front would certainly have brought policy changes and more unpredictable relations with other countries. Yet a mere desire for stability does not convincingly explain the results in my mind. Indian voters are notorious for kicking incumbents out of office. Indeed, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is the first PM to be reelected since India’s first PM, Jawaharlal Nehru, nearly 50 years ago.

Other commentators give more positive reasons for the UPA’s success. Many credit Dr. Singh’s honest, able, deliberate, and understated style of governing as an asset that appealed to voters in a time of regional instability and rapid economic change within India. This seems plausible, especially since the NDA decided to attack Singh as a weak PM beholden to the Nehru-Gandhi family dynasty, while projecting their PM candidate, LK Advani as stronger and better able to respond to the threats India faces. This macho saber-rattling may have worried voters who perhaps appreciated Dr. Singh’s thoughtfulness and restraint in response to events like the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November.

Others give credit to the political blossoming of handsome, young Nehru-Gandhi heir Rahul Gandhi, who was a tireless campaigner and who spearheaded Congress’ campaign strategy in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh (UP), where the Congress recorded its best showing in two decades. Rahul worked hard for the Congress campaign and began to show some political savvy while presenting a fresh, young face to voters – in contrast to the elderly leadership in other political parties. Given the Indian media’s obsession with glamour, celebrity, and the Nehru-Gandhi family, Rahul’s influence may be overblown, but it does seem to have made a positive difference in the way voters – especially young ones – view the Congress. And his bold political strategy in UP was indeed a success.

The last major reason for the UPA’s success was voter support for its unprecedented and substantial welfare policies that poured billions of rupees into programs to improve rural development, agriculture, health, and education. The NDA’s 2004 campaign slogan – “India Shining” – backfired on them spectacularly when voters reminded them that most Indians had not joined the hallowed ranks of the middle class. It appears the UPA learned from the NDA’s mistake. India is changing fast, but not everyone has gained from the country’s new found prosperity. The UPA’s programs targeted the country’s poorest and most disadvantaged, aiming to improve lives, the country, and their election chances. And it worked.

In my previous article about the Indian elections, I stressed the importance of coalitions. With the Congress’ spectacular showing, coalition politics will be less significant than in the past. This hardly marks the end of coalition politics, however. The Congress was fortunate that its coalition partners did very well, particularly in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. It also seems significant that most of the UPA’s support came in states that were also fielding Third Front parties. Perhaps the voters’ rejection of this anarchic hodge-podge brought voters to the UPA in greater numbers. In others, it is entirely possible that Congress benefited from voters’ rejection of a new, untested coalition.

Confused? Well, that’s how it goes with Indian elections. The question is: What will happen now? With the Congress’ strong showing, there are now high expectations for significant improvements in India’s governance and policies, some of them wildly unrealistic. Will the UPA be able to deliver? Does their win herald a new direction for Indian politics? Don’t expect dramatic changes, though the UPA may now act more boldly in pursuing certain favored policies. For example, there is frequent speculation that without needing to rely on support from the Left, the UPA will accelerate India’s economic liberalization (even though some are making the argument that India’s protected markets and regulated banks have saved it from the worst of global economic implosion). The neighborhood is also changing quickly. Worries about Pakistan’s stability have risen dramatically. The Obama administration is scaling up the war in Afghanistan. Rebuilding society after a long civil war in Sri Lanka presents a new challenge. These changes may compel the UPA to make some new foreign policy choices.

However, barring a political catastrophe, the UPA’s reelection will provide 10 years of relative political stability at the national level. At this point in time, when India is being touted as an emerging global superpower, this stability should only help legitimize its global ambitions, particularly in the able hands of Manmohan Singh. Despite the UPA’s shortcomings, their reelection gives India the political opportunity to take the next steps toward being a global leader.

This is the second of two articles about this year’s Indian national elections and the second in a series of pieces about major elections in Asia this year.

Sri Lanka: Winning the War, But What About the Peace?

A dozen years ago, while in India, I became intrigued by the civil war raging in Sri Lanka. Encouraged by my Sri Lankan meditation teacher and an Australian Buddhist monk who had resided for years in Sri Lanka, I planned a research trip to the small tropical island nation. With a book full of good contacts and a head full of warnings about being careful what I ask, how I ask it, and who I ask it of, I eagerly prepared for my trip. But just two weeks before my departure, Tamil rebels detonated a series of bombs in the Sri Lankan capital, and I was advised to cancel my trip. I wavered, but the monk’s argument won me over. Who wanted to be worried about being killed every time they got on a bus or went to the market or left their hotel room? Reluctantly, I canceled the trip, but over the years continued to follow developments there.

This week, the Sri Lankan military has finally defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after over 30 years of armed conflict, killing the LTTE’s leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran and wiping out most of the LTTE leadership. In the early 1980s the LTTE emerged as the strongest and most ruthless of the Tamil separatist groups, upset with the discrimination and violence directed against the island’s Tamil-speaking Hindu minority by the Sinhala-speaking Buddhist majority. Sri Lanka’s Buddhist clergy rabidly supported the war despite its high cost, heavy civilian casualties, and questionable effectiveness. The LTTE (and other armed and unarmed Tamil groups), fighting for a Tamil homeland in the north and east of Sri Lanka, was supported from abroad and from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu despite being labeled a terrorist organization by the US and other nations. For decades the conflict dragged on without an end in sight, and was presumed to be unwinnable by either side. Up to 100,000 people died. But in the last few years, Sri Lanka’s government launched an all-out assault on the LTTE, and the LTTE was split by infighting. The Sri Lankan military’s final push in the last few weeks precipitated a humanitarian crisis in which hundreds of thousands of terrified Tamil civilians were caught in the crossfire between the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE, and 7,000 were killed. But Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa won his war.

Now that the Sri Lankan military has emerged victorious, it remains to be seen how well the government secures the peace. The struggle for a Tamil homeland has perhaps been dealt a final blow and Sri Lankans are undoubtedly weary of war. But if, in the wake of the war, the Sri Lankan government treats Tamils as conquered subjects and fails to address the conflict’s root causes, resistance may again grow. This week’s national holiday celebrating the government’s victory over the LTTE must have seemed like insensitive gloating to many of the country’s Tamils, and it makes one wonder if the Sri Lankan government truly grasps what needs to happen next.

The challenge facing the Sri Lankan government is complex and substantial – to heal the wounds inflicted over the past three decades of war, to substantively address Tamil grievances against the Sri Lankan government, and to build a new inclusive Sri Lankan state and society. Can a government that has been on a war footing for so long accomplish these delicate tasks? Can a government that has for so long demonized, distrusted, and assaulted nearly three million of its own people move towards a just and peaceful future? I fear that it will not. Without doing this, the island’s Tamils will continue to flee Sri Lanka and those left will become increasingly marginalized. This may or may not result in renewed violence on the part of Tamils against the Sri Lankan state. Either way, the future for the country’s Tamil population looks bleak unless the Sri Lankan government is pushed to rebuild their war-torn country in a manner that includes those who once rejected its legitimacy.

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