SOUTHASIA Online

Is it a virus transported from the United States that has struck India? The question is relevant because the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is as much in disarray as the Republican Party. Both are conflict-ridden, rudderless, groping for an identity. The National Republican Committee chief, Michael Steele critiques Obama for the Afghanistan war and Republican wolves including Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney ask him to resign. At the same time, firebrand Republican Ann Coulter supports Steele and demands Kristol's resignation from the editorship of the Weekly Standard.

In India, when a BJP old guard, Jaswant Singh praised Mohammad Ali Jinnah in his book, the party summarily expelled him, because Jinnah is anathema to the sangh parivar. It denied him even the common courtesy of a hearing. Yet, Singh stood his ground and, instead of betraying any contrition, he used every possible forum to vent his outrage at the mortification he had been subjected to.

For 33 years, the Left Front has been synonymous to West Bengal politics, with people having given it massive mandates for seven successive terms. However, on June 21st, when the Left Front entered into the 34th year of power in the state, the celebrations failed to hide the despair amongst the party members about a distinct possibility of the unthinkable - collapsing of the thus-far impregnable Leftist fort in the 2011 state assembly polls.

When a blog known as ATP - All Things Pakistan - ran an online survey in May, posing the question: ‘What is your reaction to Gen. Musharraf's announcement that he will return to Pakistan politics?', the results were a mixed bag, Great news, polled 26% respondents, good news, said 11% and irrelevant news, said 28%. Those who voted the news as ‘bad' were 9% and those who termed it as ‘terrible' accounted for 23%.

Shame and scandal has hit Pakistani parliamentarians, many of whom could lose their seats as part of an inquiry into fake university degrees that has gripped the political system and could even trigger a fresh election. The Supreme Court has ordered the Election Commission of Pakistan to verify the degrees of nearly all 1,100 federal and provincial parliamentarians after at least a dozen were found to have submitted degrees of doubtful origin. The authorities have already challenged 160 politicians over their degrees, which appear to be fake, and sent another 850 to universities in Pakistan and abroad for verification. The fake degree outbreak, not limited to any particular political party, has triggered tremors within the political class amid worries that the government could be forced to declare midterm elections.

All is quiet on the army front in Bangladesh these days, with the khaki remaining safely in the barracks. The democratic government of Sheikh Hasina has been in power for just over a year and a half and the uniforms have hardly been visible at all. Is this silence is a sign of stability or a lull before the storm?

Why should this question be raised at all? Despite intermittent spates of military rule, Bangladesh is not a military-oriented society. Its army is respectful towards democracy.

Their interventions have been for the sake of crisis management, not on political grounds.

The military takeovers by the late General Ziaur Rahman and General Ershad were instances of immediate and effective crisis management. The only military intervention with political motivation by a General Nasim turned out to be an aborted coup. The army backed caretaker government which took over on January 2007, came when political turmoil was at its zenith.

Nepal's journey to sustainable peace seems rocky and unpredictable due to ongoing political deadlock and power struggle. Increasing distrust and partisan politics with the election to Prime Minister has created further complexities about the future of peace process and has also contributed to widen the differences among key actors of peace negotiation. Despite political commitments of major political parties, the attempt to establish sustainable peace has become challenging through proper implementation of the November 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and political understandings. This unhealthy politics and political dilemma puts the peace process in jeopardy and creates additional threats to political stability in Nepal.

The bid to rescue the United States from being trapped in a Vietnam like situation and the entry of General David Petraeus as the top man on horseback to lead the reinforced multinational troops in Afghanistan, might not fulfill all the desired U.S. dreams as the messy situation in the war-torn country becomes even more complicated.

General Petraeus, who walks with the aura of a personality cult around him, replaced General Stanley McChrystal to take over the command of more than 140,000 U.S. and NATO troops on July 4. This large force is fighting faith-based insurgency in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban government there in 2001.

Two news items have made headlines in the Maldives recently. In May the country secured a seat in the UN Human Rights Council. Claimed to have been achieved through the highest number of votes in the Council's history, it strengthened Maldives' position and enabled it to lend its support for protecting human rights worldwide.

Quite interestingly, the U.S. State Department has placed the Maldives on its watch-list for human trafficking, following the country's failure to "investigate or prosecute trafficking-related offenses or take concrete actions to protect trafficking victims and prevent trafficking in the Maldives."