The South Asia Politics, News, and Analysis Thread

What, no Maldives? Why mention China and not the Maldives, especially since all the other countries she mentioned were South Asian?

Edited by CookingCat on Feb 21st 2020 at 3:56:03 AM

The Atlantic, Time, and New Yorker summarise the anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi and what led up to it.

The US will apparently be signing a peace deal with the Taliban today.

Sri Lanka on Wednesday formally notified the UN Human Right Council that it was withdrawing from the UN resolution on post-war accountability and reconciliation.

The chronology of events of the delhi riots by Livemint and Economic times

Meghalaya Governor suggests ‘Tiananmen treatment’ for Delhi riots

India and US have signed the contract for six Apache helicopters for the Indian Army which follows a contract for 22 helicopters ordered by the Indian Air Force in 2015.

Crossposting from the Military Thread:

The deal has been signed and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan has begun.

There is also a visual chronicle of the conflict available on the NYT.

Two days ago, a battered Afghan police unit wondered what peace was.

The message in question:

“Remember Tiananmen Square, Beijing in 1988 (sic)? And how Deng Xiaoping handled it? Perhaps there is a lesson there on how to handle the engineered disturbances of NE Delhi! I’m sure all comrades will agree!”

A BJP goon looking to the CCP for inspiration, and calling people "comrades."

New developments in horseshoe theory.

No one should be looking to the CCP as inspiration in general. Especially concerning Tiananmen.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51658141

Asia Bibi is reported to be safe and settling okay in Canada.

The total number of people affected by the coronavirus in India rose sharply to 28 on Wednesday after 16 Italians in the country tested positive, India’s health minister said.

Almost 7 years after the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor was established, there’s little evidence of its ambitious and grand vision being realised.

Of course not. CPEC put Pakistan into severe debt.

I believe that the term "debt diplomacy" has been coined to describe the underlying purpose that China's infrastructure projects often appear to have.

Very curious what COVID's effect on CPEC and debt diplomacy in general.

As China replaces the US as the new imperialist hegemony, it practices a new form of dollar diplomacy, reflecting its preference to control other nations' public sectors and infrastructure rather than Western-style dominance of private ventures.

Pakistan is very pleased with the new peace deal in Afghanistan. Now it finally has a client state to influence.

Decades ago, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the respected mujahideen leader (and unusual for his pro-democratic views), admitted that he heard a certain dislike for Pakistan, believing that they were trying to turn the weakened and war-torn Afghanistan into their client state.

Has nobody told the Pakistani government that that's never really worked before? It's been tried. Dozens of times.

It always ends in rather pissed off warlords coming down from the mountains after years of holding up in them and then kicking things until somebody else gets too destabilized to mess with them anymore because the poor bastards who thought messing with the mountains was a good idea has been deposed.

It's almost like clockwork.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Mar 7th 2020 at 11:12:41 AM

One thing to keep in mind about Massoud. Everything you said is correct, but something that needs to be added is that as a Tajik, he was no friend to Pashtuns. And vice versa.

Yeahp. The Northern Alliance was very much a case of Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, and Massoud's Tajik militias had their own share of Kick the Dog moments.

Yes. He failed to discipline them at one point, and the resulting war crimes are a stain on his good record.

Rabbani, who actually led the party and managed the civilian end and was the quiet one but the one actually in charge of Massoud, was also Tajik.

And yes, Pakistan's man in Afghanistan was Hekmatyar; a Pashtun.

Abdullah Abdullah, rival of Afghanistan's president-elect Ashraf Ghani, issued invitations to a parallel swearing-in ceremony due next week, his spokesman said on Saturday.

NEW DELHI: The government on Friday constituted a Delimitation Commission, to be headed by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai, to redraw Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies of the Union Territory Jammu and Kashmir and the northeastern states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland, a Law Ministry notification said.

Lok Sabha clears Mines and Mineral Laws Bill, opens up coal sector for commercial mining

Edited by xyzt on Mar 8th 2020 at 5:44:51 PM

Thousands of women have marched across Pakistan's main urban centres to mark International Women's Day. It is the third successive year that the Aurat March, women's march, has been held in the country.

The alliance government in Madhya Pradesh (MP),India led by chief minister Kamal Nath plunged into another crisis on Monday when 17 Congress MLAs flew down to Bengaluru without informing the senior leadership, in a clear indication of revolt against the leadership of Nath.

Edited by xyzt on Mar 9th 2020 at 9:59:10 PM