South Asia Archive

With the two-year anniversary of Afghanistan’s national unity government approaching in September, long-simmering tensions between President Ashraf Ghani and the country’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, have broken out into the open. In mid-August remarks to his supporters, Abdullah made his most public and direct complaints to date, calling Ghani unfit for the presidency. He said that his counsel was being ignored by Ghani, his position within the government was being marginalized, and his demands for reforms were going unmet. Although the two leaders have since met one-on-one and attended Afghanistan’s Independence Day celebrations together on Aug. 17, the complicated power-sharing […]

Pushpa Kamal Dahal is the prime minister of Nepal again, after its parliament voted earlier this month to elect the former Maoist guerrilla leader, better known by his nom de guerre, Prachanda—“the fierce one.” He first held the country’s top job in 2008, but quit nine months later after a rocky tenure. Dahal is Nepal’s ninth prime minister in eight years, and 25th since 1990, when a pro-democracy movement ended the country’s absolute monarchy and established a parliamentary government. He succeeds K.P. Oli, who, faced with a no-confidence motion, resigned in late July from the office he’d occupied for nine […]

Sometimes a game is just a game, but when it comes to the Olympics, many countries view sports as a metaphor for their standing in the world. The medal rankings constitute a black-and-white yardstick for national pride and, in some cases, much more. Even though the medals are won through the sweat, skill and power of individual athletes, a geopolitical subtext lurks beneath the medal counts. This year, the United States leads those standings by a mile; China is trying to keep up; and Russia, caught playing dirty, barely made it into the competition. But what about India? Despite being […]

On Wednesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, called on Pakistan and India to give his office access to Kashmir given “grave concerns” over alleged human rights violations there. The move comes as Jammu and Kashmir, which is administered by India but claimed by Pakistan, has seen some of its worst violence in years. On Tuesday, Indian troops shot and killed five civilians and injured at least 15 more during clashes with anti-India protesters, a day after suspected Kashmiri separatist rebels killed one Indian soldier and wounded 10 others in two separate gun battles. In […]

It is no secret that Saudi Arabia is experiencing a sharp economic slowdown and has decided to respond by implementing far-reaching economic reforms. But in recent days, a less well-known aspect of this transformation has become visible, highlighting the repercussions and potential risks of the kingdom’s crisis. Less than 60 days after the Saudi government announced its five-year National Transformation Program, part of the larger Vision 2030 reforms, the government of India announced it had launched an emergency operation to rescue thousands of desperate Indian nationals caught in Saudi Arabia’s economic crosscurrents. The plight of large numbers of South Asian […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the status of women’s rights and gender equality in various countries around the globe. Last month, Pakistani social media star Fauzia Azeem, who went by the name Qandeel Baloch, was murdered by her brother in an alleged honor killing that was condemned by women’s groups, but praised by some people on social media. In an email interview, Anita Weiss, a professor at the University of Oregon, discusses women’s rights in Pakistan. WPR: What is the current status of women’s rights and gender equality in Pakistan? Anita Weiss: Many […]

Last month, as an attempted military putsch was put down in Turkey, posters lining streets across Pakistan beckoned the country’s popular army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, to take over in a coup. The posters have since been taken down, and the man responsible for them arrested. But the question still remains: Is the Pakistani military poised to take over? The last time Pakistan experienced a coup, in October 1999, the context was markedly different from today. At the time, Pakistan was reeling economically, in part due to U.S. sanctions over the country’s May 1998 nuclear tests. Civil-military relations had gone […]