Images from this week’s coup in Fiji are pretty much what you’d expect from a generally bloodless military takeover: soldiers patrolling empty streets, makeshift roadblocks, dismissed politicians vacating offices, tentative encounters with civilians, and so forth. (Photo: AP via Yahoo!)

What’s missing from the imagery of the coup is desi faces, which is interesting considering that at least one-third of the population of Fiji is of Indian origin: principally the descendents of sugar plantation workers, plus Gujarati trading families that came to Fiji after its independence in 1970. A couple of decades ago, Indo-Fijians made up close to half the population; sources differ as to how fast the proportion has diminished since then, but it’s still a sizeable population.

Many previous troubles in Fiji have highlighted the competition for power and resources between the Indo-Fijian and indigenous Fijian communities. The first elected Indo-Fijian prime minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, was deposed in a coup in 2000 that led to a nasty hostage situation. The coup’s leader, George Speight, was eventually imprisoned, but Chaudhry did not return to office.

Now Commodore Frank Bainimarama, the head of Fiji’s military, has overthrown the elected government of prime minister Laisania Qarase, and has done so in part out of self-professed concern for the well-being of Indo-Fijians. The Qarase government had attempted to pass property laws that would have increased control of the nation’s land by ethnic Fijians. (I’ll leave it to someone more versed in the issue to explain exactly what this was all about, and how much it was a motivating factor, rather than an excuse, for the coup.)

In May’s elections, Qarase’s indigenous-dominated government was narrowly returned to power by securing the votes of the vast majority of Fijian voters while Mahendra Chaudhry’s Labour Party won the almost total support of Indo-Fijian voters.

Bainimarama said on Tuesday when he announced his grab for power that one of his main aims was to “mend the ever-widening racial divide that currently besets our multicultural nation”.

He has slammed government plans to offer amnesties to plotters of the 2000 coup and other legislation he says discriminates against the Indian minority.

Caretaker Prime Minister Jona Senilagakali, today said — a day after being sworn in by Bainimarama — that race relations was top of his agenda.

“There is too much hatred, that’s what really worries me in Fiji. There’s too much emphasis on the indigenous Fijian`s interests,” he told local radio.

“We have achieved our state of development mostly through the efforts of the Indian community and I respect that very much.” [Link]

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Since the big changes occurred in Nepal this past summer (see SM posts here, here, and here), the longstanding conflict there between Maoist insurgents and the government has ceased, as a “Comprehensive Peace Agreement” (CPA) has been signed. The Maoists have agreed to lay down arms and stay in camps where they will be monitored by international observers. The system they’ve come up to ensure both parties abide by the agreement seems a little far-fetched, but perhaps workable:

Under a novel agreement with the government and the United Nations, they are to deposit their weapons in padlocked containers at each of the cantonments like this one. They will hold the keys, but their gun closets will be closely watched. Floodlights will shine each night. Surveillance cameras and burglar alarms will be installed.

For the sake of at least symbolic reciprocity, the Nepalese Army has promised to keep an equal number of its soldiers in their barracks.

An initial team of 35 United Nations monitors is expected to trickle in by the end of the year to oversee the Maoist and the army barracks alike, followed by an assessment team to determine the final size of the United Nations mission. (link)

This seems like an awfully fragile system. Though Nepal’s 10 year old conflict is a little different from civil conflicts in other parts of the world — as I understand it, it’s not rooted in ethnic differences, so it may be easier to heal — it seems hard to imagine this method working for very long. Will the symbolic deposition of the King and the advent of a permanent democratic government be enough of a change to bring the country back together after 10 years of civil war?

In the short run, ironically, the Maoists have lots of new recruits hanging around at the new camps. But it’s unclear whether the new kids are there because they support the ideology, or because they hope the newly legitimized Maoists might have work for them:

Up the road in the village, among the old men sitting and soaking in the last of the dayÂ’s sun, the question of new recruits inspired churlish laughter. Of course these are new recruits, they said, and you can easily tell them from the old-timers. The new ones know nothing, one old man said. The new ones cannot tell the difference between where to defecate and where to bathe, another said. That inspired howls of laughter.

The troops who have gathered here for now rely on the hospitality of the local people. The old man, Ananda Gyawali, introduced one 19-year-old, Krishna Acharya, as a distant relative. The young man is illiterate and came a couple of weeks ago from a village far away to throw his lot in with the Maoists. He claimed to have joined the rebels a year ago.

The boy came only because he thought the Maoists would give him a job, he said, adding, “Poverty is to blame for this.” (link)

Meanwhile, many Royalists loyal to King Gyanendra have begun buying property in places like India and Singapore. A major garment factory in Kathmandu has shut down for reasons that seem linked to the changes. And there have even been some protests against the Maoists in the Kathmandu Valley, who seem more powerful than ever at this point. Continue reading →

The amount of havoc wreaked in Karachi by the weather over the last few days has been insane.

With 51mm of rainfall in the last 24 hours (whatever that technically means, all I know is that my mother spent most of her day scurrying about in the rain with a trowel in order to re-plant her seedlings in parts of the garden that were elevated enough to rise above it all), things have been kind of nuts. While I haven’t really been out of the house much, since everyone in Karachi magically loses the ability to drive successfully if it’s pouring, my short stints have seen a fair amount of damage done to parts of the city.

While the actual numbers are listed in the linked articles, so far people have died from the cold, from being electrocuted as live power cables snapped and fell into the water through which they were wading, and a number of shops and businesses have shut down because the streets are (were) flooded and there’s no access to them. Karachi’s most notorious underpass, which was designed to keep traffic flowing smoothly was temporarily the city’s most expensive wading pool, and all the while, power outages continue to make their presence felt–I’ve spent most of today trying to make sure that all the power outlets in the house are turned off so that the electronics in the kitchen and assorted rooms don’t blow up from sudden current surges. While it’s somewhat understandable that a desert city may not necessarily be well-equipped for rainfall, one would think that annual monsoons would have indicated to the municipal authorities that SOME sort of drainage system is in order. Continue reading →