Pakistan election diary: 1997, 2008 and now

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Elections in the subcontinent are always a riot of colours, but perhaps no election has quite the mix of tragedy and power that Pakistani elections do. Here are a few memories from previous elections in Pakistan. The Lion's Tale I am afraid of heights. So when PML-N activists handed me into a forklift headed five floors above, I was naturally frantic. This was election season 1997 in Pakistan, at a time when Pakistanis didn't worry about terrorism in their country, and people had no fear going to election rallies. As a result Nawaz Sharif's supporters would turn up in lakhs, and sometimes as we would look down from his helicopter, you couldn't see the helipad for the crowds below (this was also pre-Pakistani private news channels, so foreign journalists had a better chance of being taken along). As we landed outside a stadium in Okara, the stage....

Sarabjit Singh's Manto Moment

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It's impossible not to think of Manto. In the part of Punjab that Bhikhiwind (Sarabjit Singh's hometown) lies, words from Saadat Hassan Manto's most famous story, 'Toba Tek Singh', keep streaming in. So much of the present has been defined by Partition, that Manto so tragically and comically describes, and the hatred that it produced thereafter. Two or three years after the 1947 Partition, it occurred to the governments of India and Pakistan to exchange their lunatics in the same manner as they had exchanged their criminals. The Muslim lunatics in India were to be sent over to Pakistan and the Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistani asylums were to be handed over to India. Border districts like Tarn Taran, which includes Bhikhiwind, bore the brunt of the massacres of 1947. They became homes for people who came over during Partition, and sent many young men to....

Right over the precipice

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Why the real game changer in Pakistan's elections could be the radical right, and why India should worry. It was a speech made with a stilted accent, but clearly aimed at extremists in Pakistani politics. "If you want to live then you have to fight against this mindset," said Bilawal Bhutto, heir apparent of the PPP in his first campaign speech. "We have to defeat those who tortured women in Swat, who bombed our mosques, who wanted to keep our innocent girls like Malala (Yusufzai) away from schools, and now style themselves as political leaders," he further said. Yet the most telling part about the speech was that it wasn't made from a dais to cheering political supporters, but online, in a video shared by his party. The militant threat, he explained, was keeping him away from public appearances. The young Bhutto isn't the only political leader....

Keeping an inconvenient spotlight on Sarabjit

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She is an inconvenient figure who shadows every big India-Pakistan bilateral meeting, keeping a small spotlight on Sarabjit Singh, even as leaders and officials discuss the convoluted composite dialogue and vacillating peace process. Despite heavy security and the media crush, Dalbir Kaur stands her ground, waiting to speak to whichever Pakistani dignitary is visiting and makes her request. Often, as she did when Pakistan's former Interior Minister Rehman Malik came to Delhi, she bursts into tears, an indicator of the trauma she still feels 23 years after her brother first went missing. It is easy to dismiss Dalbir Kaur's pleas. After all, at the same time that India refuses to normalise relations with Pakistan until it acts on terror and curbs the ISI's covert activities, it seems incongruous, even hypocritical to bring up the case of Sarabjit Singh, a man who has been convicted for planting bombs that killed....

Election Commission, Supreme Court, Army: The wildcards in Pakistan's election

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In politics, it is prudent never to write anyone off. Yet as Pakistan's former President General Pervez Musharraf began his judicial custody in Islamabad, the 'writing off', is on the wall. Besides the judiciary, he has won little support from other political parties, the public at large, and remains a target of the right wing and the Taliban. In India, (where many Pakistanis smirk that he is more celebrated than he is in Pakistan), he has also burnt his bridges, strangely choosing to claim the Kargil defeat as a success, while negating his own achievements on a peaceful resolution in Kashmir. There is, however, one sphere where Musharraf deserves sympathy, and that is for the rejection of his nomination papers in all four constituencies he filed them, three immediately, one on appeal, by the election commission. While Musharraf, former dictator and 'coup-commander' is likely to be prosecuted for a number....

India must back Shahbag and the quest for war crime justice

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"No Tahrir, no Tahrir", shouted the young protestor at Shahbag square. Sporting a flag of Bangladesh painted on his cheek, he explained why the protests swelling in Dhaka since February 5 are not like the Arab Spring as many have written. The point was better explained by blogger MM Parvez, one of the founders of the Bangladesh Online Network for National Interest, that gave the original call for Shahbag. "The Arab spring in general, and Tahrir Square protests in particular, fought dictatorial regimes but ended up benefitting religious extremists and bringing them to power. In Shahbag, we are fighting religious extremists of the Jamaat e Islaami (JI), we want them out of politics once and for all," said Parvez. The size and tenacity of the 5,00,000 angry, yet peaceful, protestors - students, poets, actors and ordinary Bangladeshis - have taken everyone by surprise. In contrast, JI and its student....

India-Pakistan tensions: What caused the frenzy?

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Ironically, it was the words of the Indian Army Chief that made many journalists covering the tensions at LoC take the first pause in the barrage of bellicose reporting that had followed the announcement that two Indian Army soldiers had been killed, one beheaded in the Mendhar Sector in Jammu and Kashmir. At the Army day press conference, where General Bikram Singh had called Pakistan's action "unforgivable", adding that his frontline commanders had been ordered to be "offensive and aggressive", General Singh made a startling admission. Asked if two soldiers of the Kumaon regiment had been beheaded by Pakistani soldiers in July 2011, he said indeed "such an incident had taken place". The answer made many Indian reporters rush to their archives, and to Google the event, as the puzzling question whirled in their minds, "Why wasn't this reported earlier?" In fact, as a few newspapers found, the....

Analysing 2012: How to lose friends and influence in India's 'shadow zones'

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If India is to counter China and the US seeking twin "strings of pearls" of influence in the region, then that can be achieved not from muscle or money power, but from moral consistency in its actions Within 48 hours of taking back control of Male airport from the Indian consortium GMR, Maldivian Defence Minister Mohammed Nazim touched down in Beijing. The timing of the trip was probably coincidental, but the signal to India was unambiguous. As Col. Nazim and Chinese Defence Minister Gen Liang Guanglie signed a military agreement, with China offering $3 million and more in free defence aid, the message that Maldives is looking far beyond India for its defence needs rang out. The year 2012 also saw the Maldives reach out to the U.S., who has been keen to set up a US military base (to occupy the one vacated by the UK in 1976)....

Rehman Malik in India: Expect the unexpected

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As Pakistani politicians go, Rehman Malik certainly stands out. A policeman who has made it up the ranks of a feudal political system, he was the chief of Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (the equivalent of India's CBI) during Benazir Bhutto's second Prime Ministerial tenure (1993-1996). He endeared himself to Bhutto further when he produced a 200-page report detailing corruption allegations against Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif, which led to his sacking by Sharif in 1998, who was then Prime Minister. Malik was then made security adviser to Benazir Bhutto, and despite many questions over why he sped off to Islamabad just after her assassination in Rawalpindi (he said he thought the convoy was following him to safety), Malik has remained close to President Zardari. He is the only minister to have retained his portfolio since the PPP government won in 2007, and despite his gaffe-a-minute, garrulous appearance, he is one of....

Facing an inconvenient truth

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Sometimes, turning full circle takes no time. Eighteen months after NATO forces bombed Qadhafi's Libya citing their responsibility to protect the citizens of Benghazi, U.S. drones hovered over the city looking at possible strike options in the wake of the tragic killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three Americans at the consulate on September 11. The drones and warships that U.S. officials said were headed to the Libyan coast to give the U.S. Navy 'flexibility" prompted former Libyan rebel commander Abdel Hakim Belhadj to warn in an online comment on the Guardian that U.S. "intervention will only inflame the situation". "Drones are not only provocative and illegal in international law," he wrote, "but have also led to the killing of many innocent civilians in other countries... [and] had a serious impact on how the U.S. is perceived in the region. Libya's sovereignty must be respected, in spite of what....