Egypt's last Pharaoh turns prisoner

Now, that country must decide if it wants an Islamist or a military man as President

Bedridden, he had been wheeled into the Cairo courtroom cage on a hospital gurney replete with white sheets and white pillow covers. His eyes may have been hidden behind dark glasses but his arms remained crossed defiantly against his chest. On that fateful Saturday evening, as the judge sentenced him to a life in prison, Hosni Mubarak’s stern, almost stoic, face betrayed no emotion.

No, it was not until the former Egyptian strongman realised that he had been flown to the high-security Torah Prison in Cairo that he finally broke down. Like a belligerent child on its first day of school, the 83-year-old Mubarak refused to be taken off the helicopter. Instead, he demanded that he be taken to the military-run International Health Centre where he had been detained in a luxury suite for the most part of his nine-month-long trial. Even as his sons and aides intervened, the situation took a turn for the worse as a “surprise health crisis” (as it has been commonly described in the media) ensued.

It was not until after two hours that Mubarak finally relented. He was then taken to his cell located in the hospital wing of Torah Prison where he is currently lodged. In the days since then, the former President, who had ruled the country with an iron fist for three decade, has been given the prison’s regulation blue uniform (one that he initially refused to wear but now sports grudgingly) as well as assigned a prison number. He has also been allowed to be tended by doctors of his choice, and his sons, who are detained in the same prison on charges of insider trading, have been moved closer to his cell for company. Still, the former President, who liked to see himself as an Egyptian Pharaoh, has had a tough time accepting his new life as a prisoner. He has complained of maltreatment while prison officials report that his health has been deteriorating, that he suffers from depression and often refuses to take his medicines. On Tuesday, after he collapsed several times due to breathing trouble, he in fact had to be put on the ventilator.

But even as Mubarak struggles to adjust to a new routine that includes three meals a day and medical assistance but few other luxuries, outside the gates of Torah Prison a struggle of a very different kind has been unfolding.

The people of Egypt are deeply disappointed by the Mubarak verdict and have once again returned to the streets to reclaim their hard-fought revolution. On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square to demand a death sentence for the convicted. The overwhelming feeling is that the Mubarak trial has been a sham. This, of course, is not far from the truth.

That Mubarak was indeed responsible for many crimes of corruption and human rights violations committed over a period of three decades is beyond doubt. Yet, the charges that were brought against him were vague and lacked legal substance. Furthermore, they were poorly supported by the prosecution that failed to provide strong evidence of Mubarak’s alleged crimes. The verdict that was delivered on Saturday, unsurprisingly then, reflects the chaotic and haphazard manner in which the Mubarak trial was conducted.

It sentences Mubarak and his former Interior Minister to prison for killing protesters during the pro-democracy movement of 2011 that ousted the long-serving President from office but lets off the hook the six police officials who were directly responsible for carrying out the orders. Additionally, it also clears Mubarak and his sons of many of the corruption charges that were levelled against them. And don’t be surprised if the verdict on the killing of protesters is also turned on appeal. Egyptian lawmakers feel this is a definite possibility, at least from the legal point of view, because ultimately the case that has been put together against Mubarak is, by common consent, weak and can easily be ripped apart.

To anybody with an independent eye, it should be clear that the Mubarak trial was essentially a smokescreen put up by the military — which helped ease Mubarak out of office and currently runs the country through the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces — to soothe the frayed nerves of an increasingly polarised Egyptian public. The mob at Tahrir has long been baying for Mubarak’s blood; by offering him to the public as a grand sacrifice of sorts, the military which lost much public support since last year (when it was viewed as a hero for siding with the protesters) has not only tried to win over the people but also hopes that it would deflect attention from its own crimes. However, it seems to have achieved only limited results which have dangerous consequences.

Not only has the trial verdict unleashed popular anger on the streets, it has served as an easy political tool that is being manipulated by Egypt’s fractured political class to further vested interests at this crucial time of democratic transition. Earlier this year, Egypt held its first genuinely free and fair elections in decades to find itself a new President. Twelve candidates fought it out, including Islamists and secularists, Leftists and communists, and lawyers and activists. The two leaders who got the most votes — Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq — are scheduled to face each other again in a run-off election on June 16 and 17. The winner will then be declared Egypt’s new President.

The problem is that Egypt does not want either candidate as its President. While Mr Morsi is an unremarkable leader put up by the Muslim Brotherhood after its initial firebrand choice was disqualified, Mr Shafiq is a former Air Chief who briefly served as Mubarak’s Prime Minister in the days before the then President stepped down from office. Both claim to want to guide Egypt on a new path, but neither claim has cut ice with the public.

On his part, Mr Morsi has tried to portray himself as a man of the revolution but has failed to convince the people. It is widely accepted that the Muslim Brotherhood kept away from the protests last year but has since gate-crashed the Tahrir party. Mr Shafiq, on the other hand, has tried to distance himself from the old regime to which he belongs, highlighting instead his secular leadership credentials. But the people still see him as a Mubarak-era official and that does not augur well for his presidential campaign. Generally speaking, there is no saying who will win the upcoming election — no, not while Egypt is still caught in an identity crisis of its own.

Meanwhile, the military continues to keep a watch from the wings — waiting for the right moment (that will include just the right amount of chaos and anarchy) to take charge, for good. Already, the Council has set an absurd 48-hour deadline for political parties to finalise the formation of a 100-member panel to write a new Constitution. Or else, it has threatened to draw up its own blueprint signalling the beginning of an all new era in Egyptian politics. A great amount of uncertainty, then, awaits Egypt.

(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on June 7, 2012.)

Arming rebels won’t resolve Syrian crisis

President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the violence, but his rivals are no saints

Another Friday, another massacre, another round of international condemnation, and another hundred dead.

That essentially is the sum of much of what happened in Syria this past weekend, and indeed over many such weekends in the last 15 months. On Friday, more than a 100 people were killed as the central Syrian town of Houla and its surrounding villages in Homs Province came under fire. An attack on a regime checkpoint was followed by relentless shelling and firing until armed militants rode into the town early evening and summarily executed residents, most of whom were Sunni Muslims and defectors from the Syrian Army. The dead included a disturbingly high number of children and women.

In the aftermath of Friday’s horrific killing, several Western nations expelled Syrian diplomats from their capitals even as Mr Kofi Annan, the UN-appointed peace envoy, travelled back and forth from Damascus to assess the situation in Houla and may be, just may be, convince President Bashar al-Assad to give up his violent ways. Ultimately, Mr Annan ended his efforts in the case with the unremarkable observation that, after a year of conflict, Syria was at “tipping point”, and then appealed to Mr Assad for “bold steps, now — not tomorrow, but now”. This is hardly the kind of rhetoric that can be expected to bring about a change of heart in Mr Assad. Then, what can bring about that change of heart?

Peaceful negotiation with the stakeholders is perhaps the easiest answer available, but these recent months have shown that at the end of the talk is, well, just that — talk. One diplomatic initiative after the other has failed in Syria, including Mr Annan’s peace plan. The UN may continue to add more peaceniks to the Syrian Team but the fact remains that it will take more than one miracle to change anything at all.

If the manner in which Mr Assad first accepted Mr Annan’s six-point ceasefire plan and then systematically trampled upon its every term and condition is anything to go by, it is time we stop pretending that diplomacy is the way out. Sure, it was an effort worth making — diplomacy has succeeded in the past, most recently in 2008 when Mr Annan himself resolved through peaceful negotiations a violent electoral dispute between warring parties in Kenya — but the time for talking while Mr Assad continues killing is now perhaps over.

Or, is it? When is it ever the right time to invoke the Responsibility to Protect? How do you decide that now, and not three weeks or six months later, is the time to militarily intervene in the affairs of another nation even at the cost of endangering the other’s sovereignty? How do you ensure that your actions today will not be used to justify the illegitimate plans of tomorrow? Finally, then, when do you know that the time has come wherein the risk of inaction will be greater than the risk of action? The July 1995 massacre at Srebrenica was the catalyst that finally compelled Nato to take action and launch a bombing campaign. Will the horror of Houla provoke a similar international effort in Syria? It seems unlikely. So, will be powers-to-be wait till it is too late to make a difference like they did in Sudan or Rwanda?

There are no easy yes-or-no answers here, not with the failure of a similar mission in Libya still looming large. Nato’s carpet bombing campaign of Libya in the summer of 2011, in a supposed bid to assist that country’s rebel groups against Col Muammar Gaddafi, may have helped end the Libyan leader’s tyrannical regime but it has not brought either peace or democracy to the North African nation which now teeters on the brink of anarchy.

As of now, it seems like there are no best — no, not even good — options on the table. Diplomacy has failed and military intervention with a UN mandate is not possible. But then, so is allowing the carnage to continue, and arming the rebels should never have been on the table in the first place. The world must decide which option, of the few that exists, will lead to the least possible damage. Worryingly though, it seems like a covert decision has been made in favour of one of the most damaging options ever — arming the rebels.

Last week, the Associated Press reported that US officials have confirmed that they are seriously looking into the possibility of “vetting” members of the Free Syrian Army, the umbrella group of Syrian rebel fighters that include some military defectors, to decide if they may be “suitable recipients of munitions to fight the Assad Government”. The US already provides non-lethal aid, such as communication devices and medicines, to the Syrian rebels — a move that already makes Washington, DC vulnerable to the same charges of forcing a regime change that it faced during the Libyan campaign. Now, it seems like it is only a step away from actively arming the rebels.

This is hugely problematic but only made worse by reports that some other countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and a few Gulf nations may have already begun the process of arming the rebels.

Indeed, there has been a slew of credible reports that private businessmen in Turkey are smuggling weapons into Syria. Weapons are also being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border, the Washington Post reported. Syrian rebels have been quoted in the international media as saying that the shortage in weapons is no longer as acute as before, possibly because of the millions of dollars in funding from Arabia. They also claim to have contacted weapons dealers in Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia and Azerbaijan, although it remains unclear if they have received any positive responses.

If anything, these reports give credence to the Assad Government’s claims that foreign hands are behind the uprising and that there is a concerted effort by the West to bring about a regime change. It also lays the ground for a wide-ranging ethical debate on the issue. However, what is of far greater concern at the moment is the eventual fall out of the arming of the Syrian rebels.

Kalashshinov and AK-47s in the homes of average Syrians, children playing with automatic pistols, bullet marks on every wall of every building… the world has seen it before. Do we really need another Afghanistan in Syria?

(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on May 31, 2012.)

Troubled peace in Gilgit-Baltistan

To control the Northern Areas that it has illegally occupied, Islamabad has crippled it with sectarianism

Khan Muhammed was gathering firewood in the forest overlooking a deserted stretch of the Karakoram Highway when, on that cold February morning, he witnessed something that would forever be etched in his memory. About a dozen men, dressed in military fatigues and armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, intercepted a passenger bus that we now know was ferrying passengers between Rawalpindi and Gilgit city. As the vehicle screeched to a halt, the men boarded the bus. They demanded that the passengers show their identity cards, and eventually hauled out 16 men from the bus. These men were then lined up by the roadside and shot dead in cold blood. All of the murdered passengers were Shia Muslims.


The incident happened near a small town in the remote Kohistan district of the northern Pakistani Province of Khyber-Pakhtunwa that borders the Gilgit-Baltistan area in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, and sparked the worst kind of sectarian violence the region has seen in decades. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Section 144 was imposed in the area while the police maintained a close watch. An uneasy calm prevailed, but not for long.


After the February incident, transporters introduced a new Shia-only service which, of course, led the Sunnis also to create their own community-specific bus route. On Sunday, April 1, however, police announced the annulment of the new route permits. In response, the Shias went on strike the next day, blocking roads and setting up barricades. Tensions were running high and soon the uneasy peace of the previous weeks was shattered as clashes erupted between  Shias and Sunnis.


In the next 24 hours, all hell broke loose. Early Tuesday morning, a group of Shias on motorcycles threw a hand-grenade at a Sunni rally that killed five and injured many more. Gun shots were fired and street-fighting continued through the day killing six more people. The police were largely overwhelmed and more often concerned with protecting members of their own sect rather than bringing the situation under control. Any semblance of a Government was entirely absent. Fear and panic spread like wildfire even as areas around Gilgit city came under attack.


As news of the grenade attack reached the Sunni-majority town of Chilas, vengeful residents there ran amok. They burnt buses, fired at Shias and took over 250 members of the rival community hostage. They were released later but on that day, another 10 people died in Chilas. Close by, in Nagar town, there were unverified reports of at least 20 more hostages being taken.

At some point during the day, curfew was announced but it was only after the sun had set and the Army had been called in that it was actually imposed. As the people retreated into their homes, unsure of what the next day had in store for them, Gilgit, once a picturesque city known for its breath-taking scenic beauty, now wore the look of a garrison town. Over the next few weeks, men in all sorts of uniforms patrolled the city; markets, schools and offices remained shut; cell phone services were jammed and suspected miscreants were taken into custody. Gilgit remained on the edge.


It wasn’t until another 25 days later that the curfew was removed on April 29. Almost three weeks later, today, the Army has returned to its barracks, the cell phones are working again and the people are going about their business — on the face of it, a sense of normalcy has been restored. But scratch the surface and the unhealed wounds stare right back at you. Look closely and you will see the decades-old scars of sectarian violence that mark the psyche of every man, woman and child in Gilgit-Baltistan.


And yet, it was not always like this. For centuries, different religious communities lived in peacefully in this region. Inter-faith marriages were common and members from one community often took part in the events and rituals of other communities.

The situation changed after Partition in 1947 when the region’s exact status came under a cloud. A political vacuum settled in. Consequently, where politicians feared to tread, mullahs quickly filled in their shoes. In the absence of any significant institution of authority, it was the mullahs, defined by their religious identity and driven by the sole aim of promoting their sect, who took charge. This was particularly convenient for Islamabad.


Having illegally occupied the Gilgit-Baltistan area, Islamabad would forever be anxious of its legitimacy in that region. To make matters worse, Gilgit-Baltistan was almost entirely Shia-dominated, in contrary to the rest of Sunni-majority Pakistan. Hence, in the minds of lawmakers in Islamabad, there was always the fear of a nationalist insurrection in Gilgit-Baltistan or of losing the strategically located region to India in the larger battle for Kashmir.


Still, the Pakistani state maintained a more or less secular position in Gilgit-Baltistan up until the 1970s, which is when Islamabad launched an active campaign to establish authoritarian control over the region as well as tilt its problematic Shia-majority demography towards a more ‘favourable’ Sunni-majority. The first step in that direction was taken by then Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who abrogated the State Subject Rule — the law that protected the original demography of a region — and then, encouraged Sunnis from the rest of Pakistan to settle in the area. He also abolished the independent princely kingdoms of the region and set up one large administrative unit called the Northern Areas.


Then, the Army and the intelligence agencies were sent in to play mischief. In the years after that, mullahs were reportedly paid by agents of the state to introduce the poison of sectarianism — and they sure did inject it deep into the region’s bloodstream.


Over the next few years, the seeds of sectarian polarisation were sown across the region but it was only under General Zia ul-Haq who took over from Bhutto in a bloodless coup in 1977 that the situation progressively worsened on a path of no return. Not only did Gen Zia introduce religious schools with the sole mandate of raising a generation of extremist Sunni Muslims, he also encouraged cadres of the radical Sunni Sipaha-e-Sahaba to take their nefarious activities to the Northern Areas.

Consequently, in 1988, the first instance of an armed conflict was reported from the region. The immediate incident that sparked the riots was really a non-issue: The Shias had sighted their moon after Id-ul-Fitr and were already celebrating, but the Sunnis, who were yet to receive the green signal from their leaders, were still fasting. Clashes broke out and before long, there was a large-scale riot of the kind that would lead to years of mistrust and animosity between the two communities. As a result, even as the 80s drew to close, the venom of sectarianism spilled into the 90s that was marked by more violence and more bloodshed, and even more name-calling by the mullahs.


The situation did not change much until after 2005 when the two communities signed a peace agreement promising to stop issuing fatwas against each other, to protect minorities in their areas and to promote peace and harmony. That, along with the 2009 Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self Governance Order which allowed the people much needed political representation, helped bring down temperatures by a few degrees.


But decades of mistrust and suspicion cannot be undone in a few years, as the the recent riots prove. However, that should not be an excuse to give up on peace. The Masjid Board that has been set up in the aftermath of the April riots to bring both communities on board, for instance, is a step in the right direction. The Gilgit-Baltistan Government’s decision to set up a judicial commission to investigate the events should also help the healing process. But much of this will come to naught if Islamabad does not end its radicalisation campaign in the region to gain political points.


(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on May 17, 2012.)

Nasheed pins hope on democracy

President of Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, ousted in a coup, says an early election is the only solution

On the intervening night of February 6 and 7, the first democratically-elected President of Maldives, Mr Mohamed Nasheed, was ousted from power in a military coup engineered by those loyal to his Islamist predecessor, Mr Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the autocrat who ruled the archipelago for three decades. In the months since, Mr Gayoom has returned to the Maldives, his children and loyaltists have taken up high positions in the new Government while Mr Nasheed continues to campaign extensively for a fresh election to restore democracy.

Recently, he was in India to build greater support for his movement and convince New Delhi that wisdom lies in supporting him. He spoke to The Pioneer about the coup that cost him his presidency, how he plans to return to power, the relationship he hopes to build with India and the extent of the much talked about Chinese ‘influence’ on Maldives. The following are excerpts from the interview:

Q: The exact order of events leading up to the coup in February still remains hazy. Please take us through that night and the previous day as it happened.

A: On February 6, top battalions of riot police, without command and without control, left the barracks and went to the MDP Assembly home, attacked our party workers and ransacked the place. Then they went into the military headquarters and sat in front of it. There were about 70 of them. The Chief of Police told me to see if the military could restrain them. So I rang the military around 11.30 pm and they said ‘yes’. But by 5 am the next day, nothing had been done.

So I went to see what was going on. When I went there I saw that the place was deserted except for the Generals who were all in plainclothes and about 200 soldiers. Everybody else was on leave, I was told. The ones who were there were clearly in league with the riotous police, and by evening their numbers had swelled to about 500. These 500 people wanted to storm the military headquarters while I was in there.

I was just inches away from being mobbed, so I told them to take me to the President’s office and that I would resign there. In fact, I was planning to see if I could escape from that place. So they escorted me to the President’s office and the situation there was no different. The military and the police were everywhere. I was given a piece of paper and I wrote my resignation note. They told me to go out on TV. Then, afterwards, they took me to the President’s residence and told me to stay there for three days.

I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone but still around seven that evening I was able to call upon the more loyal elements in the military and slip out of there. Then, I went to my family residence where I almost collapsed from exhaustion. The next day I called my party together and we went public with my side of the story. If this wasn’t a coup, then I am yet to understand what is a coup.

Q: Were you expecting this coup?

A: Two weeks prior to this, the intelligence chief was removed from his post and he had written to me a seven-page letter saying that this was in the brewing. So, yes, I was aware of this and many such schemings by the old regime trying to get a hold on us.

Q: How difficult do you think it will now be to remove the new Government, given that it is packed with members who are deeply entrenched in the system?

A: Well, the more time we give them without an election, the more entrenched they become. But I think if we have an election, we will win. The people of Maldives have seen what has happened to us, they know the truth.

You know, I was first elected as secretary of a municipal ward in Male and the Government arrested me soon after. Then, the people elected me as their MP from Male and again the Government arrested me. Now that the the people have elected me as their President, this has happened. The people understand what is going on. Also, we may think that these Generals have a lot of power and support, but ordinary people detest that kind of authoritarian power.

Q: Do you think if elections are held too soon there will be violence?

A: I think if you don’t have elections soon, then there will be violence. I always believe that asking the people is the proper way of consolidating democracy. I remember there being elections in Serbia while it was bombed; in Sri Lanka through 25 years of conflict — that’s why the Government there has survived. Now, take the example of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvadore, where they didn’t have elections, and it has been much more difficult for those countries to come out of the cycle of violence.

Q: How do you think Maldives can shake off its dictatorial past?

A: It is easy to remove a dictator but it is much more difficult to flush out the remnants of dictatorship. Still, one of the ways to do it is through elections. So we have parliamentary elections, local council elections, school elections, board elections — the more the participation of the people, the more entrenched the democracy.

Q: If you return to power, what are the steps you will take to avoid such a situation from happening again?

A: We need to reform the judiciary, the military and the police. For instance, within the police we should have more community policing and less of such riot police with heavy gear and weapons. The Maldives is a small country, we don’t need this. We need to put in place proper checks and balances to avoid slips from democratic gains.

Q: How do you think India has responded to the crisis?

A: I think India dropped a catch initially, but in hindsight I understand its limitations in the region. It cannot come across as the ‘Big Brother’. If it did, in the Maldives for instance, Mr Gayoom would say that India is a bully. So it has to be mindful of that. Of course, in my frustration I wanted India to be more robust in action, but as someone who has been in Government I understand the Prime Minister’s difficulties.

Also, India has been working hard since then, much of it behind the scene. We hope that the establishment as a whole will work on the issue; that the Indian Government’s agencies, not necessarily the politicians, will take this forward. Still, I must say that often I find it is the politicians who have the answers and not the bureaucrats.

Q: Did you reach out to India?

A: Yes, my National Security Adviser got in touch with New Delhi, but I don’t think there was anything that could have been done at that time. I think India was hasty in recognising the new Government, but that’s about it.

Q: What about your Government’s dealings with the Chinese? What kind of influence does Beijing wield in Male?

A: We have never had any dealings with the Chinese Government. When we came into power we had a defence agreement with the Chinese Government that needed renewal. It had been sitting on my desk for many months and I had not signed that document.

I don’t know how receptive the Chinese are towards us but we are very clear about whom we want to be friends with. I am very clear about how we should be running our foreign policy. It’s to get hold of a friend and be nice to that friend. We have chosen India as our friend and that choice is not dependent on our own personal fortunes, but on the principles that we, as a country, want to nurture.

(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on April 26, 2012.)

Arab Spring comes to Burma first

With its structured, top-down reform process, Burma has a far better chance at democracy than West Asia

If, on April 23 as scheduled, Burma’s best known dissident Aung San Suu Kyi is indeed sworn in as a newly-elected Member of Parliament, it will undoubtedly be a watershed moment in that country’s history. Ms Suu Kyi has been a glorious icon of democracy. For her to finally occupy a seat in her country’s Parliament is by far the most potent symbol of democratic reform that could have possibly come from Burma which, after five decades of military rule, has now launched a process of top-down political transition.


Burma’s move towards democracy began last year when the country’s long serving Commander-in-Chief Senior General Than Shwe resigned from his position as head of state and handed over the reins to General U Thein Sein. By all accounts, it was a carefully guided and tightly controlled change-of-guard that went so far as to manipulate the general election of November 2010 as well as handpick the successor. No wonder then, when Mr Thein Sein was sworn as President in March 2011, Burma and the rest of the world were suspicious, if not outright dismissive, of his bold assurances of political and economic reform. The mild mannered President was after all a career soldier who had only recently shed his military uniform to take up position in the country’s new semi-civilian Government. Democracy in Burma was still a long way off, critics had argued.


That was March 2011. Around the same time, large-scale popular protests by disgruntled masses had brought down deeply entrenched regimes in Arabia and were threatening to dismantle more in the region. Tunisia’s Ben Ali had already fled to Saudi Arabia, while Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak had left office after his presidency was besieged by an 18-day long protest movement beginning at Tahrir Square. In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was facing the biggest challenge ever to his 40-year-long leadership stint; in Yemen, then President Abdullah Saleh’s presidency was tottering, while in Syria the supposedly reformist President Bashar al-Assad was coming under increasing pressure to allow for a more open and inclusive society. The popular narrative of 2011 was that democracy was finally coming to Arabia. Once the Libyan despot was deposed, the Yemeni President forced in the footsteps of his Egyptian counterpart and the Syrian leader persuaded to accelerate his reform process, large parts of West Asia which had for so long resisted political change, would finally embark on the path to democracy.


Unarguably, the big story of democratic transition — made almost irresistible by its fable-like moral framework of how the good guys triumphed over the bad — was supposed to be playing out in Arabian desert, not in the distance hinterland of Burma.


In reality, however, that has far from been the case. Today, a little more than a year after the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ came to West Asia, democracy is still elusive in the region. Autocrats there have been replaced by Islamists or entire countries have been pushed the brink of civil war and anarchy. Talk of a long and bitter Arab Winter now dominates all narative.


In Burma, however, a definite whiff of optimism is in the air. The new President had promised to overhaul the country’s dilapidated political structure, its decrepit economy and its decaying social fabric and has actually managed to walk the talk. Mr Thein Sein’s nominally civilian Government has indeed put in place a wide-ranging reform process, as the International Crisis Group detailed in a recent report.

For instance, in his March 2011 speech, the President had promised to reach out to political dissidents. Weeks later, he made good on that promise by offering the olive branch to Ms Suu Kyi, his establishment’s biggest critic. Indeed, Ms Suu Kyi’s agreeing to return to mainstream Burmese politics that she had long since boycotted, not only signalled a huge step towards political reconciliation but was also the strongest affirmation of Mr Thein Sein’s commitment to democracy.


Between March 2011 and 2012, the Burmese Government released almost all its political prisoners. In fact, some 300 of them were freed in January this year to allow them to participate in the April by-election. Also, unlike in the past, when released political prisoners continued to be under strict Government scrutiny, this time they have been able to easily resume their political activities freely and even travel abroad.


Under Mr Thein Sein’s watch, the Burmese legislatures have also emerged as key drivers of reform, taking tremendous initiatives to legislate on democratic rights and economic reforms. Most heartening perhaps is the fact that the country’s Parliament has shown a remarkably bipartisan spirit. The Opposition still has only a small share of seats there, but its motions have received overwhelming support from the military-backed ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, and vice-versa.


Furthermore, the new Government has also expanded several basic freedoms. Blocks on the internet have been removed and media censorship has been largely done away with. Business, entertainment and sports related news can now be published without being pre-screened; political articles still have to be sent to the censor board although there is talk that the board will abolished by the end of the year and replaced by a self-regulatory Press Council.


That apart, a largely successful attempt has also been made to reconcile with nearly all ethnic armed groups with at least 11 ceasefire agreements having been put in place. The Kanchin Independence Organ-isation is the only major group with which an agreement is yet to be reached, but community leaders agree that they have had fruitful talks with the Government. On the economic front too, there have been changes in the right direction such as a series of tax reforms and other measures to strengthen the Burmese currency, the kyat. Indeed, a managed float of the kyat at the start of this fiscal year was perhaps the most important step taken towards restructuring the Burmese economy.


Finally, the much talked-about threat from hardliners within the party has also proved to be a false alarm. Of course, there are individuals from the old guard whose interests will be hurt as the reforms get underway, and they may even succeed in scuttling some of these measures. But these people do not form a well-defined group. Overall, it is highly unlikely that these elements will ever coalesce in a manner that could possibly threaten Burma’s transition to democracy. After all, the process was internally initiated, not externally imposed upon the country.


Make no mistake: If Burma is walking the path of reform today, it is because the country’s ruling elite — not just one or two reform-minded leaders — collectively believe that it is time to restructure and rebuild. It is precisely because such a broad-based buy-in into the reform process exists that its reversal is highly improbable.


This does not mean that Burma will face no challenges in the years ahead. It most definitely will, but for now, that country has a far better chance at democracy than any other nation which has been hit by the ‘Arab Spring’ wave.


(This article was published in the Op-ed section of The Pioneer on April 19, 2012.)