The Arab Spring faces its winter

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At a small gathering of top Indian executives and management professionals in Bangalore this December, Egyptian blogger and spokesman for the "April 6 movement" Waleed Rashed was explaining how the Tahrir Square crowds were inspired and organised by their youth movement, founded in the spring of 2008. "Few of you would be able to tell me why we picked April 6, even though the date was chosen for its significance to India," he challenged. "It was the day Mahatma Gandhi reached the sea and first harvested salt in the Dandi march." As he ended his dramatic speech, he pulled off his shirt - and underneath, he was wearing an "I am Anna" t-shirt. He said he was glad that the Indian anti-corruption campaigners had taken their cues on using social networks and simple messages to gather crowds from their Egyptian counterparts - the transfer back and forth of the....

The more things stay the same...

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The year 2011 was when Pakistan confirmed the world's worst fears about it - as the safe haven that housed Osama bin Laden, as a country where those who stood up for the rights of women and minorities were gunned down and their killers feted at massive public rallies, where dead journalists floated in the Jhelum with torture marks, and where concerns over infiltration of radical Islamists inside its forces were fuelled after the Mehran naval base attack. In the past few months, had army tanks rolled out of Rawalpindi and gone up the Aiwan-e-Sadr presidential avenue, it would have also been confirmed as a basket-case democracy. Yet, the fact that the coup never came, and the tough stand Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has taken since, seem to suggest Pakistan may have changed on one front. In fact, in two of the most significant ways that....

Averting the next Afghanistan

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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's flight path from Tripoli to Kabul this week should have given the US administration some reason to reflect on how to ensure that the US' mistakes in Afghanistan are not repeated in Libya. Those missteps began, as US officials now concede, not in October 2001 after the 9/11 attacks but in 1980, when America with Pakistan's help raised the Mujahideen to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. The motivation for that operation, as the one in Libya, may have had its roots in the world's 'best interests.' Even so, as in Afghanistan, the West's recent intervention in WANA (West Asia-North Africa) has the potential for disaster in the longer term. Brushing aside the means To begin with, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) actions in Libya completely contravened any mandate given by the United Nations Security Council, or request made by the....

Damascus Diary: The Road to Hama

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Madam, "Action toh idhar hai, aap kahaan jaa rahe ho? (the action is here, where are you off to?" The security officer at the Delhi airport is very disapproving as he sees our small group of journalists heading to Damascus. After all, there is little chance of any story rivaling the Anna-phenomenon on air. But as we land in Syria, it's clear that the protests that have dominated India are not on anyone's mind. Libya is the big worry. As Tripoli falls to the TNC rebels, aided by NATO missiles, the Bash'ar Assad regime in Syria is concerned it will be the next to go in the 'Arab Spring' after Tunisia's Ben Ali, Egypt's Mubarak and Libya's Gaddafi. We are part of a group of about 100 journalists from Russia, China, India and a few Arab and Scandinavian countries, all invited to come and see the....

Why the West is losing its step in the Arab Spring

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Foreign policy has very few tongue-in-cheek moments. Yet, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad called on the British government to show restraint while quelling its rioters, and suggested a full report on human rights violations in the United Kingdom, many Arab leaders found it hard to conceal a grin. Western (read American, British, French) interventions in West Asia this year have met with few success stories, and as the international community steps up the pressure on Syria after weeks of a brutal military crackdown on protests in Hama, Daraa and other towns, a drum roll is under way. If anyone feels that no action is likely at present, remember that the US went from calling for strikes on Libyan 'adventurism' to joining NATO in raining Tomahawks on Tripoli in a matter of days. In Syria too, the language has toughened. After weeks of demurring, US Ambassador to the UN Susan....

Kashmir step by step: the next round of talks

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India needs to understand that the absence of violence in the Kashmir Valley is not peace, and that development and dignity for all Kashmiris go hand in hand. Pakistan must recognise that violence will never bring peace for Kashmiris, and will imperil all Pakistanis. On the face of it, this summer in India-Pakistan engagement has been defined by the discovery of Osama bin Laden, the revelations of David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, and the intense turmoil inside Pakistan that has unleashed another round of deadly attacks there. Even so, as the Foreign Secretaries prepare for their next engagement in Islamabad, it isn't these events but three significant processes that will define their immediate agenda, particularly on Kashmir. The first is the successful conduct of panchayat elections in Jammu and Kashmir that were completed on June 18. Despite some violence in the initial phases, even the killing of....

The story that killed journalist Saleem Shahzad

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"Journalist sabka dost hota hai (Journalists are everybody's friends)," was Saleem Shahzad's response when I asked him about the Taliban connections of a common acquaintance, "What matters is if he gets the story or not." In his career, Shahzad had certainly been accused of "playing all sides of the fence - the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), but his brutal death showed that he had made some very powerful enemies as well. Many are shocked with the boldness of his abductors - that a prominent journalist could be taken from the heart of Islamabad's high security zone, somewhere between the capital's F-8 and F-6 sectors. When his body surfaced in a river canal, bearing marks of torture - broken ribs, the use of rods - it showed that those who meant to kill him, also wanted to send a message to others like....

In the line of fire: Pakistan's Army, post-Osama

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Not only is the Pakistani public angry, but this is the first time in the country's 63 years that the Army chief and the head of the ISI have had to appear before the legislature to offer an explanation. Dear Friends," read the SMS, "Please don't fwd any jokes that ridicule our army." The message, among several sent out in Islamabad a week after Osama bin Laden's killing, struck a plaintive note. Another read, "We were there for you in 1948, 1965 and 1971. We were there on Indian Tiger Hills (sic) in Kargil...Be with us when we have been stabbed in the back."All were ostensibly trying to counter the flood of messages in the week before, from "Please don't honk, the army is sleeping," to "Second-hand Pakistani radar for sale - can't detect US helicopters, but gets Star Plus just fine," all pointedly targeting the army over Operation....

Covering Kashmir: An outsider's view from the inside - IV

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As the years have passed, what amazes me is the perseverance of journalists who continue to cover the story. There's even an irrational hope that every twist, every turn in the Kashmir story will be a gamechanger. So every election - 1996, 2002, 2008 has been heralded with huge hopes, every time India and Pakistan announce a fresh round of talks or confidence-building measures like the Agra summit or the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus, there's a huge buzz, and even when there is some terrible terrorist strike: the IC 814 hijack, the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, there is a sense that something might just change in the valley. My 27-year-old colleague Raheel Khursheed who headed back to Srinagar from Delhi last year describes the excitement he felt when he saw billboards of President Musharraf and PM Manmohan Singh outside his home in 2005, and compares it to the dark days of the....

Covering Kashmir: An outsider's view from the inside - III

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Perhaps the darkest period in this regard came in the late 90s and 2000, when militancy driven by the Lashkar-e-Toiba was at a peak. The number of security checks went up, ID cards were a must, everyone, including journalists were suspects. My colleagues would prefer to stay indoors and report with inputs over the telephone, because who wanted to take on the humiliation of being strip searched in the freezing cold by some rude security guard? I remember being held up at one checkpost outside Srinagar for hours in January 2000. The chill went right to my bones, but then I watched a bus load of travelers being screened. Each of them was being checked, and then made to sit in the snow on the roadside. Since many kept warm with coal-fed Kangris inside their phirans, the snow around them melted rapidly, making it even more uncomfortable to sit in....