Why India needs a new script for modern Myanmar

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Just across the National League for Democracy (NLD)'s office in Yangon is a small restaurant. It is in this place one can witness the difference between Myanmar's past and present - through a small square-shaped hole in the wall. Until a few months ago, visiting journalists had to peer through it to see NLD's office, as any suspicion of political reporting could have led to arrest or deportation. As hundreds of journalists thronged the office after Aung San Suu Kyi's by-election victory earlier this week, that past couldn't have seemed more distant. The NLD's win is set to change the country's future: both because of the democratic freedoms this election has brought, and the opening of the country's economic future. One young supporter put it beautifully: "We aren't just celebrating our love for the lady. We are celebrating the change in our country." That change could not have come....

Desperately seeking Suu Kyi

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On some days in a reporter's life, nothing works out. And as we headed to Myanmar last Friday, I had a feeling it was going to be one of those days. It began with an overnight 'red-eye' flight from Delhi to Bangkok - and as I looked hazily at my BlackBerry, I groaned. We had hoped our flight would get in to Yangon with just enough time to race over to the most important event - a rare press conference by Aung San Suu Kyi. But now it looked impossible. For the past few months, as we tried to negotiate our visas into Myanmar for the elections, Suu Kyi's NLD party office had regularly turned down all requests for interviews, saying she wanted to focus on her campaign. This press conference would be the single opportunity to come face to face with the woman that had made the Myanmar's....

False step: India's turnaround on Syria

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Exactly one year after the drumroll began for international intervention in Gaddafi's Libya, the stage is being set for the same in Syria. Armed with reports from human rights groups, the US, the UK and France, assisted by the Saudi-led Arab League, are bringing in UN resolutions that call for President Bashar al-Assad to go. Amidst the clamour for action, India has chosen to give up its pro-Syria stand of the past year, and vote instead with the West and the Arab League at the UN, also attending their "Friends of Syria" conference in Tunisia that discussed options to the Assad regime. While India's UN mission explained the votes as principled support for the political process in Syria, the fact is, India's actions have been based on neither principle nor pragmatism. To begin with, if democratic principles were in order, why did India choose non-intervention during....

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....