Hasn’t clerical rule, after all, been among the most baleful aspects of Iranian existence post the 1979 revolution?

Furthermore, isn’t Hassan Rowhani — who won more than 50pc of the popular vote last Friday, thereby obviating the need for a second-round run-off — very much an insider? Would his candidacy not have been thwarted had he been viewed as a serious threat to the Islamic establishment?

Well, many of the Iranians who poured out on to the streets of Tehran in a celebratory mood over the weekend would be inclined to take a somewhat more optimistic view.

The popular mood certainly offered a contrast to 2009, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election was widely considered to have been guaranteed via electoral fraud. Two of the more prominent would-be reformists who contested it, Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, are still under house arrest.

After the 2009 experience, it would not have been particularly surprising if large numbers of Iranians had stayed away from the polling booths last week. Instead, they came out in force: polling hours had to be extended as at least 72pc of the electorate decided to have its say.

For many, it seems what made the choice easier was Rowhani’s endorsement by ex-presidents Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. The former wanted to run himself, but was among those weeded out, alongside hundreds of other would-be candidates, by the Guardian Council, ostensibly on account of his age.

The latter chose not to stand, and is deemed to have persuaded his protégé Mohammad-Reza Aref to pull out from the race in order to avoid dividing the reformist vote.

There was no such pooling of resources at the other end of the arguably narrow political spectrum, which divided the conservative vote and facilitated Rowhani’s massive lead over his nearest rival.

It has even been suggested that Saeed Jalili, an inveterate hardliner who has lately served as Iran’s nuclear negotiator, was put up by the establishment as a means of encouraging a larger turnout, based on the expectation that a substantial proportion of the electorate would feel obliged to make an effort to keep him out of the presidency.

If that was indeed a thought-out tactic, it seems to have worked. At the same time, it is true that Rowhani’s success serves to legitimise a framework that is unquestionably deplorable on any number of counts. After all, power ultimately still resides in the unelected supreme leader. It is possible to challenge it, as Ahmadinejad has occasionally done. But the extent to which it can be undermined, even on the basis of an unequivocal popular mandate, remains indeterminate.

Which is not to suggest, of course, that Rowhani necessarily has any intention of attempting anything along those lines. Yet the Iranians who celebrated his success seem to harbour greater expectations. They may well be disappointed, just as so many of Barack Obama’s supporters have been. But then again, who knows?

Notwithstanding his insider status, Rowhani has been credited with utterances that, within the given context, offer cause for hope of changes not just in style but in substance. He has spoken of human rights and attacked the concept of prisoners of conscience; there have been none-too-veiled references to a more relaxed dress code for women and relatively unhindered internet access; the notion of transparency on the nuclear front has been revisited amid a critique of the sanctions that account for some of Iran’s most potent economic woes.

In his capacity as a nuclear negotiator under Khatami, he helped to stall uranium enrichment and made the West an offer it ought not to have refused. Caught up in its absurd “axis of evil” mindset, the Bush administration was disinclined to be reasonable, but Western interlocutors such as then British foreign secretary Jack Straw found Rowhani “warm and engaging” who was “tough but fair to deal with and always on top of his brief”.

Rowhani resigned as negotiator after Ahmadinejad took over, and this time around is making no promises on enrichment, but is evidently keen to improve relations with the West and to re-establish diplomatic ties with the United States.

An intensification of the proxy confrontation in Syria in the weeks before the president-elect takes over from the incumbent could make that much harder, whereas a place for Iran at the conference table, should international talks on Syria be convened, would be a sensible gesture.

The extent to which Rowhani can institute any changes without the concurrence of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is indeed dubious, but the clerical hierarchy isn’t totally immune to popular pressures and can ill afford to entirely ignore the new president’s mandate, should he indeed be inclined to push for reforms.

It is vital though that, if he extends any feelers after taking over in August, they ought not to be peremptorily spurned.

There are indeed grounds for scepticism about Iran’s prospects, but the “cautious optimism” that has greeted the election of a cleric who categorises his success as “the victory of wisdom, moderation and awareness over fanaticism and bad behaviour” is an infinitely better response than the “nothing has changed” cynicism emanating from Israel.

It would be ridiculously shortsighted to waste any opportunities for productive engagement that arise as a consequence.

Precisely what the key that symbolised Rowhani’s presidential candidacy might unlock is uncertain, but it’s unlikely to be a Pandora’s box.

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The informality was emphasised by the leaders of the two most powerful countries in the world, setting a sensible example by not bothering with the absurd, noose-like sartorial appendage known as a necktie. That gesture was plain to see, unlike the words that passed between them. It has been reported that on most issues they agreed, but on cyber-hacking they agreed to disagree.

That may well be because it was alleged Chinese cyber activities, including the violation of intellectual property rights, that were on the agenda, not variants of hacking authorised by the US government. It was revealed late last week, for instance, that back in October last year the US president issued a secret directive on “offensive cyber effects operations” that “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world”.

That particular revelation may have come too late to affect the summit, but Obama may anyhow have been somewhat beleaguered by emerging reports on the overreach of the National Security Agency (NSA), which has for years assiduously been mining the phone and electronic communication records of US citizens as well as foreigners.

The NSA was set up during the inception of the security state under Harry Truman in 1952 — the heyday of paranoia over Communist subversion and the McCarthyism that accompanied it — and even its existence was a state secret for more than two decades (which explains its nickname, No Such Agency). It was initially intended to monitor foreign communications only, but in the mid-1970s it emerged that the agency was also keeping tabs on selected US citizens, notably those active in the movement against the war in Vietnam.

The scope of the selection has grown exponentially since Sept 11, 2001, explicitly in the wake of that year’s Patriot Act. The upshot of last week’s leaks, first reported in The Guardian newspaper, is that as far as telephone conversations, emails, SMS messages and social media communications are concerned, there is effectively no scope for privacy.

Chances are the Obama-Xi summit would have been attended by even more confusion had it become clear before or during the talks that the whistleblower in this context was holed up in Hong Kong, an autonomous Chinese territory that cannot completely stave off pressure from Beijing.

Edward Snowden, who revealed his identity last weekend and seems fully cognisant of the possible consequences, has been quoted as saying: “The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting … I don’t want to live in a society that does these sorts of things.”

Daniel Ellsberg, who 40 years ago brought to light secret documents, dubbed the Pentagon Papers, that made clear the extent to which US officials were aware of the disaster in Vietnam, has designated what Snowden has revealed as the most important leak in US history, expressing the hope that it will make it possible “to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an executive coup against the US constitution”.

Is his optimism well-founded? Ellsberg also says that while the US is not a police state, “we do have the full electronic and legislative infrastructure of such a state”. What are the chances it will be rolled back? Obama has decried the leaks while welcoming the opportunity they offer for a debate on surveillance. But these are weasel words.

As a presidential candidate in 2008, he suggested he supported whistleblowing: “Acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled, as they have been during the Bush administration.” Yet his government has gone far beyond Bush by seeking criminal proceedings under the Espionage Act against more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined, which is quite an achievement.

What action may be taken against Snowden was unclear at the time of writing, but the trial of Bradley Manning, which got under way last week three years after the young soldier was taken into custody (and scandalously mistreated while in detention), does not bode well. Manning has pleaded guilty to revealing secrets — which helped to lay bare some of the worst aspects of the aggression against Iraq as well as Afghanistan — but one of the key charges against him is that of aiding the enemy. In terms of intent as well as repercussions, that is an utter travesty.

If enemies of the US can draw sustenance from evidence of American crimes against humanity, surely the ideal antidote would be to ensure such crimes are not committed in the first place, rather than seeking to indefinitely shroud them in secrecy.

A few US legislators have expressed degrees of consternation over the content of the NSA leaks, rather than joining the usual chorus of condemnation. It doesn’t necessarily follow, though, that meaningful steps to roll back the totalitarian impulses of the security state are likely to be initiated in the foreseeable future. Quite apart from the now stale ‘war against terror’ narrative, there are too many vested interests involved in maintaining the shadowy post-9/11 structures, perhaps not so much for ideological reasons as for the simple incentive of profiteering.

Snowden, in his latest job, was contracted to work for the NSA by Booz Allen Hamilton, a firm majority-owned by the Carlyle Group — which, intriguingly, was linked a dozen years ago to two prominent families, the Bushes and the bin Ladens. A tangled web, if ever there was one.

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IT was very much in “Crisis? What crisis?” mode that Turkey’s prime minister embarked this week on a scheduled trip to North Africa.

Cancellation or postponement might have been perceived as a sign of weakness and Recep Tayyip Erdogan is clearly in no mood to properly acknowledge the unexpected challenges that have sprung up at home.

He has dismissed a week of burgeoning protests, mainly in Istanbul and Ankara but with echoes in dozens of smaller towns, as the activism of malcontents spearheaded by “extremists”. He has hinted darkly at external influences without naming any country, possibly to pre-empt accusations of implausibility, while decrying modern methods of communication.

“There is now a menace called Twitter,” he declared without any hint of irony. “The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.”

It is unlikely Erdogan would have endorsed such a sentiment had it been expressed by, say, Hosni Mubarak in early 2011, given that social media was deemed to have played a significant role in mob-ilising the popular upsurge that supposedly blossomed into the Arab Spring. Erdogan posited Turkey as an ideal model for the unfolding Middle Eastern transformation.

It could no doubt be argued that, for a variety of reasons, Taksim Square does not fall into exactly the same category as Tahrir Square. Yet there are resemblances, too.

Turkey certainly isn’t the kind of autocracy Egypt had morphed into under 30 years of Mubarak’s rule: Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won three consecutive — and ostensibly fair — elections. Yet the prime minister’s authoritarian streak has increasingly been in evidence, and his efforts towards introducing a new constitution that would usher in a presidential system, enabling him to make the transition from head of government to executive head of state via a direct election next year, account in part for the growing popular consternation towards him after a decade in office.

It is also worth noting that one of the reasons Twitter has lately served as a primary source of news in Turkey is that the mainstream media is considered unreliable.
Television channels reportedly continued to broadcast cookery shows while the police were brutally tackling protesters on the streets of Istanbul, and newspapers are broadly divided between those owned by AKP allies or cronies, and others that habitually resort to self-censorship amid regular intimidation by the authorities.

Last year, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists noted that 61 Turkish journalists were in prison — a higher number than in Iran or China — and cited Turkish press freedom groups as saying that up to “5,000 criminal cases were pending against journalists at the end of 2011”.

Last week’s protests began with a relatively small and peaceful demonstration against a plan to bulldoze 606 trees in Gezi Park, reportedly one of the few remaining green
spots in Istanbul, in order to construct a shopping mall modelled on Ottoman-era barracks as well as a mosque. It spiralled into something much bigger largely as a spontaneous response to police action, eventually bringing out in force various segments of society resentful of Erdogan’s rule — and sparking mobilisations elsewhere across the country. Although the police were withdrawn from Taksim Square for a day or so, the use of teargas and water cannon accounted for innumerable injuries. As of yesterday morning, two deaths had been reported.

The AKP government has been credited with presiding over reasonably steady growth and ambitious infrastructure projects, but there is a dark side to the latter aspect with reports of corruption amid disrespect for Turkey’s architectural heritage. “Again and again, people have protested the destruction of some historical building or the construction of some shopping centre,” Elif Batuman writes in The New Yorker. “Again and again, the historical building has been destroyed and the shopping centre constructed.”

The AKP and Erdogan have also accumulated kudos for blunting the Turkish army’s capacity for political intervention, which once periodically thwarted progress towards democracy. The military also saw itself as a protector of Turkey’s secular traditions, and many of the liberals who appreciated its return to the barracks have also been alarmed by what they see as the creeping Islamisation of society. “We don’t want to become Iran,” has been among the opinions heard during the past week.

The BBC’s Paul Mason commented on the weekend that “the breadth of popular support” he witnessed “within the urban enclave of Istanbul” was broader than what he had seen at the Syntagma protests in Greece and “closer to Egypt”, and suggested it could be “the Turkish Tahrir” if “the workers join in”.

On Monday, the Kesk trade union confederation, which represents 11 unions, announced a two-day strike as a protest against “state terror”.

It does not necessarily follow, of course, that this is the beginning of the end for Erdogan, who is acknowledged to be the most powerful politician Turkey has seen since Kemal Ataturk. But his future could depend to a considerable extent on whether he can moderate the arrogance that has lately led him to make threats instead of contemplating judicious compromises.

The ongoing unrest is a warning, loud and clear, against his tendency to ignore the opinions of those who do not support him. Based on the last election results, that means roughly half the population. Some analysts suggest his Putin-esque presidential ambitions have already become unrealisable. That may well be so, but the popular momentum for change demands other concessions. A relentlessly confrontationist approach on the part of the authorities will only clog up the avenues for peaceful progress.

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Among them have been the first Saudi woman (Raha Moharrak) and the first Pakistani woman (Samina Baig of Hunza) to accomplish this feat, as well as the first female amputee (Arunima Sinha of India) and the first pair of twins.

Despite all the innovations that make it a somewhat easier endeavour than six decades ago, it’s no child’s play. It may qualify, however, as a competitive playground for old men. Last week, when Japan’s 80-year-old Yuichiro Miura became the oldest person to reach the top, his record was already at risk of being broken by Nepal’s 81-year-old Min Bahadur Sherchan, renewing a rivalry that dates back to 2008.

This summer’s climbing season began last month on a dour note, however, with a high-altitude altercation between three European climbers and a team of Sherpas engaged in securing ropes to the mountainside. The Sherpas claim the climbers interfered with their work, dangerously dislodging a block of ice, and that one of them turned abusive when challenged.

The Europeans claim they were later assaulted in their camp by a large crowd of Sherpas and could have been stoned to death had other climbers not intervened.

This was apparently the first incident of its kind in decades of climbing expeditions, in which Sherpas indigenous to the surrounds of Sagarmatha have traditionally played a crucial role.

The surfacing of tensions between relatively privileged climbers and the locals who facilitate their endeavours with little expectation of being treated as equals is not particularly surprising. In fact, even the first successful Everest expedition wasn’t entirely trouble-free in this respect.

Tenzing Norgay, who had been striving for better working conditions for fellow Sherpas, was reportedly incensed when his team was offered the floor of the British embassy’s garage in Kathmandu as a place to sleep on the eve of the 1953 climb.

“Next morning,” Ed Douglas writes in The Guardian, “lacking access to any facilities, the Sherpas relieved themselves in front of the embassy, prompting fury from embassy staff, but offering an eloquent reminder that the Sherpas weren’t servants who could be arrogantly dismissed.”

Within a few days, Tenzing and Edmund Hillary became the first men to take in the view from the very top of Everest. The Sherpa was evidently more excited than the New Zealander, although it may have been just a cultural difference. Hillary stretched out his hand. Tenzing threw his arms around his companion and slapped him on the back.

Their ascent — perhaps inevitably hailed by the media as a ‘conquest’ — was treated as a British triumph. Although the achievement was recorded on May 29, news of it conveniently took a couple of days to filter through to London, coinciding with the day of Elizabeth II’s coronation.

The down-to-earth, 33-year-old New Zealander was not particularly impressed when, walking down to Kathmandu a few days after the ascent, he received a letter addressed to “Sir Edmund Hillary KBE”.

He later wrote of the consequences of his elevation: “I met the well-connected, the powerful and the rich; it was tremendously entertaining although I saw little to envy or, indeed, much to admire. We were being lionised by a class of society with which we had little in common.”

Hillary subsequently channelled his fame into spearheading projects for Nepalese uplift, taking a direct role in setting up schools, hospitals and other infrastructure. He remained an adventurer, though, counting among his accomplishments a trip across Antarctica to the South Pole and another tracing the trajectory of the Ganges.

In 1985, he travelled with Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, to the North Pole in a ski-plane, which made him the first person to have stood on both poles as well as the summit of Everest.

The same year he was appointed New Zealand’s envoy in New Delhi, serving concurrently as ambassador to Nepal and high commissioner to Bangladesh. A decade and a half later, interviewed on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs, he chose Joan Baez’s poignant ‘Song of Bangladesh’ among a bunch of other protest songs.

Hillary, who died in 2008, was guest of honour in Kathmandu at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the first ascent of Sagarmatha. Tenzing wasn’t there, having died in 1986, and the Nepalese government resisted pressure to declare him a national hero because he had accepted Indian citizenship. Having spent some of his youth in Darjeeling, the Sherpa eventually ran a successful mountaineering school there. Hillary was present at his cremation.

In the autumn of his years, the New Zealander could be quite scathing about the commercialisation of the Everest climb, and one can only imagine what his thoughts would have been on discovering that the most arduous segment of the ascent — a near-vertical rock face of about 40 feet near the summit — is now likely to be embellished with a permanent ladder.

Back in 1953, after descending to base camp, Hillary made an offhand comment that has gone down in mountaineering history, even though it wasn’t intended for public consumption. “Well, George,” he remarked to a fellow climber from New Zealand, “we’ve knocked the b—— off.”

That remains an arguably unrepeatable sentiment. Three decades earlier, when asked by an American reporter why he wanted to scale Everest, George Mallory — who perished on his way to the summit the following year, in 1924 — had declared: “Because it’s there.” Many of today’s climbers will no doubt recognise that as a valid reason.

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This suggests, on the one hand, that he is not exactly complacent about such needs being met by his primary sponsor. On the other, as he must be aware, the request is bound to fuel some angst at the military headquarters in Pakistan.

The rout of the feuding mujahideen by the Taliban in the mid-1990s was considered a success story by the Pakistani army. It came a cropper in the wake of 9/11, but the prospect of pushing the reset button once the international forces withdraw next year has remained in doubt, partly on account of India’s relatively small role in Afghan reconstruction.

The role of subcontinental geopolitics in determining the future of Afghanistan is bound to be crucial in the years ahead, and the Karzai regime can hardly be faulted for its inclination towards increasing cooperation with India, given that sections of Pakistan’s security apparatus are still considered to be complicit with at least some elements among the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban.

It should not have been too hard, were the Pakistani military so inclined, to demolish that impression over the past dozen years. Its signal failure, however, to successfully combat the Taliban on home ground speaks volumes.

An embittered Asfandyar Wali Khan, whose Awami National Party was decimated in this month’s polls, has jibed that Pakistan’s election commission was headed by Hakeemullah Mehsud rather than Fakhruddin Ebrahim; parties routinely described as secular mostly fared abysmally partly because of the Pakistani Taliban intimidation. But the very fact that the Taliban were in a position to influence the outcome of the election serves as an indictment of those tasked with minimising their influence.

The distinction between Pakistani and Afghan Taliban can be nebulous. Kabul routinely complains that insurgents cross the border to escape retribution. The allegation is frequently reciprocated by Islamabad. At other times, lines are drawn between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban. But these tags can mean different things to different people. The Taliban believed to be closest to the intelligence agencies are invariably the ones least likely to appeal to the Karzai regime. And vice versa.

Based on opinion polls of dubious veracity, it has been reported that about 30pc of Afghans back the Taliban; the extent to which they do so because of the Taliban’s obscurantist agenda or their resistance to foreign occupation is rarely clarified.

That occupation is scheduled to end next year, although Karzai earlier this month endorsed the idea of US troops remaining indefinitely in situ at nine bases. The suggestion from Washington is that those troops will be dedicated to training Afghan soldiers and combating Al Qaeda, rather than confronting the Taliban.

The Taliban mission in Qatar, meanwhile, is said to have come under pressure from its hosts to formally dissociate itself from Al Qaeda. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem; sections of the Taliban were always uncomfortable with the hospitality Mullah Omar showed towards Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. But there have been other impediments to meaningful negotiations, notably the unfulfilled demand that a bunch of Taliban be freed from Guantanamo Bay.

Following an embarrassing hunger strike among prisoners at Guantanamo, US president Barack Obama has revived his vow to shut down the incarceration facility there, and is expected to address that issue in a speech tomorrow. His rhetoric, though, usually does not match reality.

Afghanistan is bound to be a crucial component of Pakistan’s foreign policy in the years ahead, and it must be hoped the incoming Nawaz Sharif administration will approach it with equanimity. It is not difficult to understand why Karzai would seek military assistance from India rather than Pakistan. He must realise, though, that a stable future for his country will depend on cooperation between all its neighbours.

There’s little question that Pakistan has been a destabilising influence since the 1980s, and that has got to change. Whether Sharif, if he is so inclined, will be able to prevail over the military establishment is one of the primary questions. Failing that, his express wish for improved ties with New Delhi could also be thwarted.

Afghanistan’s multiple woes, however, do not emanate exclusively from the Pakistani side of the border. If the US-led military occupation has served to reinforce armed resistance, the level of corruption Washington has helped to foster is another crucial factor.

On his way to New Delhi this week, Karzai stopped over in Jallandhar to pick up a doctorate proffered by Lovely Professional University. One can only hope that the Mittal family-funded institution’s decision to confer it had been made before Karzai confessed at a press conference in Helsinki last month to receiving regular cash payments from the CIA, describing it as “an easy source of petty cash”.

According to The New York Times, “some of it was used to pay off members of the political elite, a group dominated by warlords”, and the Taliban, too, have ended up with a proportion of the bounty.

The CIA station chief in Kabul assured Karzai last Saturday that the dollars would keep on flowing — just as they once did to the mujahideen. Everyone knows where that led, but Karzai must find it conflicting for his administration to be accused of corruption by the same country that has been facilitating it.

He was reportedly at the receiving end of similar generosity from Iran until 2010, when Tehran was miffed by a strategic deal with the US. Notwithstanding the nature of the Iranian regime, at least it abides by some principles.

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Only her tragic assassination forestalled the former’s third stint as prime minister, after Musharraf had been pressured into conceding the possibility of cohabitation, and her widower was able to manoeuvre him out of the presidency and into exile within months of the PPP’s success in the 2008 elections.

Five years later, it is Nawaz Sharif’s turn. Musharraf, meanwhile, remains under house arrest, having returned from exile under the absurd assumption of a homecoming worthy of a would-be national saviour.

He overthrew Sharif in 1999, after the latter sought to oust him as military chief — and tried to prevent a commercial flight conveying Musharraf home from a visit to Sri Lanka from landing.

The coup was a travesty, but it’s easy to forget that back then Sharif’s ouster occasioned considerable relief and even rejoicing. The BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones remembers, though. In a recent comment, noting that Sharif “has established himself as the most successful politician in Pakistan’s history”, he recalls: “The last time he lived in Prime Minister’s House … his main objective was to see off anyone who challenged his authority.

“Frustrated by opposition in the parliament, he tried to pass a constitutional amendment that would have enabled him to enforce Sharia law…

“When Nawaz Sharif was removed from power in 1999, many Pakistanis expressed great relief, describing him as corrupt, incompetent and power-hungry. By overlooking that history and giving him such a strong mandate in this weekend’s elections, Pakistanis have expressed their confidence that Mr Sharif is now an older and wiser politician.”

Older, yes. Wiser? One would certainly hope so, but that remains to be seen. It may seem unkind to see the new mandate as a consequence of short memories. It’s worth noting, besides, that whereas the PML-N’s thumping majority in 1997 was based on an abysmally low turnout, this time about 60pc of registered voters are believed to have cast their ballots.

In many countries that wouldn’t be considered a particularly enthusiastic level of popular participation, but in Pakistan’s context it is a historic high.

Imran Khan’s campaign on behalf of his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) is generally credited with having driven a substantial proportion of the excitement, notably among urban youth, but desperation for change was not restricted to his supporters.

The inefficacy of the PPP-led government — notably on the economic front, and specifically in terms of its proven inability to tackle the energy crisis — inevitably propelled a momentum for change.

Many PTI enthusiasts, including some who ought to have known better, appear to have assumed their party would be the primary beneficiary of popular discontent. That appears to have occurred in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the PTI is expected to be a contender for power, albeit as part of a provincial coalition. It did not, however, transpire in Punjab.

There have been allegations of voter suppression and ballot stuffing — including apparent turnouts of well over 100pc in areas served by more than four dozen polling booths — and one certainly hopes they will be thoroughly investigated, with re-polling ordered in constituencies where such behaviour is suspected of having affected the result.

However, the anecdotal evidence available thus far does not exactly suggest that the PML-N’s landslide in Punjab somehow held back a PTI tsunami.

At the same time, the fact that Sharif’s mandate — a near-absolute majority in the National Assembly, judging by unofficial results — is based overwhelmingly on Punjab complicates his task in terms of national integration.

Hopefully he will be keeping this in mind as he negotiates with independents to set up a stable government. Punjab has historically, and with good cause, been accused of political and economic hegemony. A successful federal government should strive to ensure that impression is not reinforced.

The PPP, embarrassingly decimated elsewhere, is likely to lead the Sindh government.

The political contours in perennially beleaguered Balochistan are more uncertain. Sharif may be relatively well-placed to resolve the issues benighting that province, although it will depend greatly on his relations with the military — which served as his benefactor before it became his nemesis.

Both the PML-N and the PTI have campaigned against the American drone strikes, with plenty of justification. They have also signalled a desire to dissociate Pakistan from the so-called war on terror. It is unclear what this means in practical terms.

The drones, counterproductive as they may be, are after all not the only problem, and both Sharif and Imran Khan have been reticent in criticising brazen acts of violence by the Pakistani Taliban while holding out the possibility of negotiations.

They could be treading a minefield here. A negotiated end to frequent bouts of mindless slaughter would indeed be welcome, but can it be achieved without conceding any of the Taliban’s obscurantist demands — not least their declared aversion to democracy per se? Progress on that front is vital for Pakistan, but the viability of achieving it peaceably remains indeterminate.

Sharif’s conciliatory tone towards India, meanwhile, is a welcome signal and Manmohan Singh’s presence at his inauguration would be symbolically useful. Even on this front, though, ostensibly good intentions have in the past been thwarted by precipitate actions by the military or its proxies.

On these and various other fronts, Sharif has his task cut out. Notwithstanding his record in power, he deserves the benefit of the doubt. But he shouldn’t be counting on the likelihood of an extended honeymoon the third time around.

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It was an unfortunate choice of words. The conflict in Syria is certainly no game, at least not for the wretched nation’s citizens.

However, a pair of Israeli air strikes, ostensibly on Syrian military targets, could indeed fit that metaphor.

Israel has semi-officially indicated that the attacks were directed against Hezbollah, rather than intended to destabilise the Assad regime. Western media accounts suggest the aim was to deplete stockpiles of Iranian-supplied Fateh-110 missiles that the Lebanese militia could have used to strike targets deep inside Israel.

The veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk pertinently wonders “why, when the Syrian regime is fighting for its life, would it send advanced missiles out of Syria”. He also notes that Israel’s military action clearly benefits the rebels fighting to overthrow Bashar Al Assad, “and since Israel regards itself as a Western nation — best friend and best US ally in the Middle East, etc, etc — this means ‘we’ are now involved in the war, directly and from the air”.

Of course, Israel is not the only regional US ally aiding the rebels. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan may be in a somewhat different boat, but at least their goal is more obvious: the overthrow of the status quo. Israel is more ambivalent, given that Assad and his father kept the Golan border region relatively trouble-free for nearly 40 years.

But that has lately been changing, with Syrian troops redeployed to defend Alawite strongholds and rebels establishing their writ in the abandoned areas. Just last month, Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, said, “We are seeing terror organisations gaining footholds increasingly in the territory. For now they are fighting Assad. Guess what: we’re next in line.”

If that’s the case, does it make sense for Israel to weaken Assad? The regime in Damascus may have no solid basis for its allegation that the Israeli attacks were coordinated with the rebels, yet Syria’s failure to retaliate has provided rhetorical ammunition to the opposition, while at the same time enabling the hawks in Washington to contend that the apparent absence or ineffectiveness of Syrian air defences demolishes one of the main arguments against establishing no-fly zones.

President Obama has lately come under considerable pressure from Republicans and Democrats alike to intervene, amid contentions that the “game changer” he referred to has come to pass and the “red line” he mentioned last year has been crossed.

In fact, that is not actually the case. US and other Western intelligence agencies indeed claim to have circumstantial evidence of the use of chemical weapons — notably the nerve agent sarin — but, as Obama has indicated, the proof isn’t entirely convincing. Some critics have argued that the bar has been set too high. Others are insisting that the US must get over the Iraq syndrome.

Ten years ago, the intelligence community was essentially bulldozed into concocting evidence of weapons of mass destruction. One would like to think there is greater ambivalence this time around because there is relatively less pressure from the White House to produce a predetermined result.

United Nations investigator Carla del Ponte’s pronouncement this week that in fact sarin might have been used by Syrian rebels rather than the Assad regime adds another dimension to the controversy. She spoke of “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof”.

When the UN commission of inquiry on Syria, of which Del Ponte is a member, subsequently noted it had not reached any “conclusive findings”, Western media outlets contended it was distancing itself from what she had declared — whereas it was essentially saying the same thing.

The fog of war inevitably makes facts harder to ascertain. It clouds judgement, too. In lieu of direct military intervention, the US administration is reportedly considering lethal supplies to the rebels — never mind that it has already been engaged in this endeavour through proxies. Intermittent American press reports meanwhile point out that jihadist elements such as Jabhat Al Nusra have the upper hand among the Syrian opposition.

This, it has been argued, is a consequence of American prevarication. Had the US intervened at the outset, the Islamists could have been sidelined. The Libyan experience, however, should militate against that presumption.

Of course, Syria isn’t Libya, nor is it Iraq. Chances are, though, that its resemblance to both may steadily increase. Post-Assad scenarios already include the assumption of an eventual confrontation between rival rebel factions. Could Syria perchance turn into another Afghanistan?

The only sensible response to the conflict entails striving to end it. This cannot be achieved by taking sides or by arming one side or the other, let alone by violating Syria’s sovereignty in the Israeli manner.

It is all very well to berate Iran and Russia for aiding Assad, but they are not the only guilty parties. US Secretary of State John Kerry is in Moscow, but his talks in the Kremlin would have carried that much more weight had it been possible to view Washington as something approaching a disinterested arbitrator.

It is nothing of the kind. Nor can much be expected from the UN, given its chronic structural paralysis. Sure, chemical weapons are an abomination, but both sides in the Syrian conflict have demonstrated their ability to perpetrate unspeakable atrocities and indulge in mass destruction even without the aid of nerve agents.

Even at this stage, a concerted effort to cut off arms supplies and push the less unreasonable elements on both sides towards a negotiated solution may just pay dividends. But miracles don’t happen, do they?

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Not a bad result, particularly amid an economic downturn. In the same period, Primark opened 15 new stores across Western Europe. Fantabulous. How does it do it?

One of the answers obviously lies in its expertise in sourcing cheap raw materials and manufacturing facilities. Then, notwithstanding a substantial profit margin, the finished product can still be retailed with a competitively low price tag.

The consumer is pleased to bag a bargain, the company is delighted by the bounce in its bottom line. Everyone’s thrilled by the efficiency of free-market operations, right? Well, not quite. The low-cost, high-profit-margin phenomenon all too often entails that at the other end of the capitalist food chain, life, too, is cheap.

Primark was a leading customer at one of the garment factories housed in the Rana Plaza, whose collapse last week has killed hundreds of workers. The official death toll stood at nearly 400 at the time of writing, and was expected to rise because dozens of employees remained missing after rescue efforts — which saved scores of lives — formally ended earlier this week.

Ominous-looking cracks had reportedly appeared in the building a day earlier, and local authorities in the Savar industrial area claim they warned the business owners in Rana Plaza to temporarily shut down their facilities. A bank and a few shops complied with the advice, but the garment factories ignored it.

“I wouldn’t call it an accident,” Bangladesh’s information minister Hasanul Haq Inu declared after the event. “I would say it’s murder.”

Mass murder would be more accurate, and it’s an act in which the minister’s government is at least partially complicit. Bangladesh relies on garments for more than 80pc of its export earnings.

Tighter regulation of that industry could bite into those earnings, which possibly helps to explain why — beyond customary inefficiency and endemic corruption — the laws that exist are often not enforced.

Rana Plaza’s owner, Mohammed Sohel Rana — a minor luminary of the ruling Awami League’s youth organisation who, according to reports in the Bangladeshi press, initially made his fortune from drug dealing and was closely associated with the local MP — was captured on Sunday, apparently while trying to escape into India. Some of the factory owners are also in custody. All of them will presumably face trial.

Rana Plaza is said to have been built without proper planning permission on swampy terrain. But even if the government were to make a greater effort to ensure that building safety standards are adhered to — something it did not seriously bother to do after 112 workers died in a garment factory last November — the bigger issue would remain unresolved.

It is, after all, an insidiously vicious circle. It is clearly in the interests of the western retailers to pay as little as possible for the products they obtain from countries such as Bangladesh. It is equally clearly in the interests of their subcontractors to squeeze expenses — be it in terms of salaries or maintenance of premises — in order to maximise their own profits.

The workers, in turn, are willing to toil long hours for a pittance, because it beats going hungry, or trying to earn a living via subsistence agriculture.

In recent decades it has commonly been argued that globalisation has lifted millions out of poverty in nations such as China and India. That’s technically true, going by the international marker of absolute poverty, supposedly an income of about $1 a day.

That hasn’t kept pace with inflation, but even if it had done so, it would surely be arbitrary to argue that an increase in daily intake from $0.95 to $1.05 — or even $1.50 — represents a substantial difference in either absolute or relative terms.

The minimum wage in Bangladesh may have risen in recent years, but enforcement remains an issue. As does child labour. Practices that are against the law are not necessarily against the norm.

It has been noted that if the global labels that exploit Bangladeshi labour were to pay an extra 10 cents for each of the more than six billion pieces of clothing they procure each year, the additional $600m could pay for marked improvements in factory conditions.

It would not be terribly easy to ensure, however, that the extra revenue goes where it is directed. Primark has announced that it will compensate the families of last week’s victims, and has urged other retailers to follow suit. Let’s hope they do, but what are the chances this post hoc generosity will alter the kind of mentality that precipitated last week’s “structural adjustment” in Dhaka?

The original May Day was marked 123 years ago as part of the struggle for an eight-hour day. Winning rights for workers that transformed them into human beings with some kind of life outside the workplace was an uphill struggle in the West. The victory wasn’t quite complete when the dominant capitalist powers discovered that the conclusion of direct colonialism did not necessarily entail the end of exploitation from a distance, via proxy bloodsuckers.

Were the international proletariat to unite today, it would be a largely Third World coalition, stretching from Africa, across much of Asia, to Latin America. It could be a neoliberalism-threatening phenomenon, but the forces arrayed against it should never be underestimated.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

The first part of that statement is incontrovertible — and it is in fact somewhat surprising that so many foreign leaders, in expressing their condolences, thought it necessary to signpost the unjustifiable nature of that act of violence.

Perhaps, in such circumstances, stating the obvious serves as a cover for not having much to say beyond pledging allegiance to the United States of America as it experiences a painful pinprick relative to the nations where terrorism consumes lives on a more or less daily basis.

It’s still a bit odd, though — implicitly suggesting that there could be a coherent alternative narrative. There can’t, at least not by any rational measure.

There has got, on the other hand, to be an explanation, and to not seek it would be tantamount to criminal negligence. Fortunately, most Americans are keen to know why the brothers Tsarnaev behaved the way they did. Unfortunately, a complete answer may never be forthcoming.

The Chechen connection is a bit of a curve ball — not just for the average American, who is unlikely ever to have heard of Chechnya, but also for most terrorism experts, who are finding it hard to draw a connection between the historic restiveness in that Russian territory and the desire to wreak havoc on American soil.

Chechen anguish in the modern era stretches back to Josef Stalin’s deportation of that ethnic group from its homeland towards the end of the Second World War. An estimated 30 per cent of Chechens are believed to have perished as a consequence. They were permitted to return under Nikita Khrushchev, but the desire for independence lingered on, evidently, for the next four decades or so, when the break-up of the Soviet Union offered another opportunity.

Two wars followed, wiping out another 20pc of Chechnya’s population. An abortive bid for independence under the secular leadership of Gen Dzhokhar Dudayev — assassinated in 1996 — eventually made way for an Islamist insurgency. That, too, was crushed, but not exactly eliminated. It seeped through into neighbouring regions, notably Dagestan.

Hitherto, however, Chechnya-related terrorism has tended to target Russians — invariably innocents in Moscow. Salafism in Chechnya and its surrounds was bolstered by recruits from abroad, but a Chechnyan role in foreign violence was not really on anyone’s radar until last week — although Ramzan Kadyrov, the region’s pro-Putin leader has been suspected of sending his thugs to murder exiled foes.

Last year, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspected Boston perpetrators, spent seven months with his family in Dagestan. Acquaintances and family members have been quoted as saying that he had veered towards fundamentalist Islam well before then.

It appears that Russia requested the FBI to investigate him in 2011. The FBI did, and found no obvious cause for alarm — although the fact that he was interviewed may have been crucial in persuading the US authorities to delay processing his application for citizenship.

The FBI has lately been criticised for its failure to recognise him as a threat, but it is perfectly conceivable that two years ago Tamerlan had no violent intent beyond the time he spent in the boxing ring. It would certainly be interesting to know, however, what exactly alerted the Russian authorities to him. It may have been nothing more than his internet profile, which reveals an interest, via YouTube, in jihadist diatribes.

Then again, no evidence has emerged that he was under surveillance during his sojourn in Dagestan. It is also far from clear why his father sought, and was granted, political asylum in the US in 2002, having previously lived in Kyrgyzstan and, briefly, in Dagestan. Yet he was able to settle in Dagestan last year, with no apparent repercussions. He was joined there earlier this year by his wife — who has lately commented that her sons couldn’t possibly have been involved in the dastardly crime committed in Boston.

Intriguingly, though, she appears to have believed that the atrocities of September 2001 were an inside job intended to defame Muslims — an opinion evidently shared by her sons.

There are, inevitably, a host of questions at this stage, and there’s a fair chance many of them will remain unanswered, given that Tamerlan died last Friday and there are doubts whether his younger brother, Dzhokhar, who was charged on Monday with using weapons of mass destruction to cause death and damage to property, will be able to respond coherently in any interrogation.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the 19-year-old Dzhokhar wasn’t quite as alienated from his environs as the 26-year-old Tamerlan: friends have described him as laid-back and inclined to relish doses of marijuana.

The extent to which he was misled into last week’s gory misadventure by his elder brother cannot clearly be delineated at this stage, but some such stupidity is broadly deemed to be a part of the scenario.

It is somewhat gratifying that Dzhokhar, contrary to advice from some Republican legislators, ultimately was not designated as an enemy combatant. He has spent most of his life in the US, and perhaps deserves to be seen in the same light as other Americans who perpetrate acts of random violence.

A few commentators have pointed to the irony that the US Senate rejected even the mildest gun controls in the same week as the Boston bombings, even though gun violence has consistently accounted for far more deaths than acts formally designated as terrorism, and despite up to 90pc popular support for background checks on weapons purchasers.

It is perfectly reasonable for jihadist fantasies to be a cause for concern in the Boston aftermath, but surely the same goes for the culture of violence that permeates American society.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Asked for his opinion about the younger Kim, Cumings recalls saying: “Well, he doesn’t have his father’s charisma. He’s diminutive, pear-shaped, homely.”

“Oh, you Americans, always thinking about personality,” responded the Soviet counsellor. “Don’t you know they have a bureaucratic bloc behind him? They all rise or fall with him — these people really know how to do this. You should come back in 2020 and see his son take power.”

He was off the mark by a decade, but the anecdote could be seen as an illustration of North Korea’s predictability. One reason why Kim Jong-un’s bellicose pronouncements in recent weeks have generally been taken with a pinch or two of salt is that they broadly conform to a pattern of behaviour. Threats of raining hellfire on Seoul and teaching American imperialists a lesson are inherited rhetorical devices.

They are widely viewed as a means of wringing concessions or aid, be it from the United States, South Korea or China. This time around, they followed the ramping up of United Nations sanctions last month after a rocket launch, and the extent to which the third-generation Kim has gone further than his progenitors in his choice of invective has been seen as a possible effort to impress the dominant North Korean military.

Recent publicity snaps, showing the corpulent Kim pointing towards possible targets as medalled army officers from a decisively older generation look on, tend to reinforce this impression. The North Korean leader is only about 30, with no military experience, hence it’s plausible to assume that he may feel obliged to prove his worthiness as a leader.

Kim Jong-il served as an apprentice for more than a dozen years before assuming power. Kim Jong-un, his youngest son, faced a considerably steeper learning curve: he had less than two years in which to hone his credentials — during which, it has been reported, he was fed a carbohyd-rate-rich diet intended to increase his resemblance to his grandfather.

There is another dimension to his inexperience, however: could it lead him to go too far? More than one observer has noted that the older Kims always left themselves room to step back, whereas the new kid on the block appears to have thrown caution to the winds.

Yet, notwithstanding a warning just days earlier that diplomats should withdraw from Pyongyang because their safety could no longer be guaranteed, the North Korean capital offered no evidence of defensive preparations as it celebrated Kim Il-sung’s 101st birth anniversary on Monday. Recent visitors have also returned with tales of relative normality, with only TV footage providing indications of a nation on a war footing.

South Koreans, too, are reported to be more complacent about the prospects of a military confrontation than they were less than three years ago, when the North sank a submarine and directed an artillery barrage at a South Korean island.

It does not necessarily follow that Kim Jong-un will feel comfortable stepping back without some kind of a militaristic gesture. But it may be no more than a missile test.
There is no good reason to suppose that he would risk suicide by carrying out his threat to nuke the US mainland, even if North Korea has the requisite military capability — which is dubious. He couldn’t possibly be unaware that an attack on the South or on Japan would also entail dire consequences.

US intelligence agencies appear to have little idea about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, particularly the likelihood of a miniaturised warhead that could be attached to a medium- or long-range missile.

The nation’s internal dynamics are also open to conjecture. Power plays and ructions among the largely uniformed elite are far from inconceivable, but it’s fairly possible that the prospect of an army takeover has often been overstated, not least because the military is already effectively in power and there is no obvious threat to the preferential treatment it receives.

The degree of nationalism in North Korea is not hard to explain, given 35 years of Japanese colonialism, followed in short order by a US-led war that destroyed most of the country and caused millions of civilian deaths. The armistice reached 60 years ago was never consolidated with a full-fledged peace treaty. Kim Jong-un has lately rescinded the armistice, but that probably does not mean much, and the need for lasting peace remains paramount.

North Korea is in many ways a grotesque state, and there can be little doubt that its citizens have suffered tremendously in the past couple of decades, with a devastating famine in the 1990s eventually giving way to mass malnutrition. The US has lately been seeking once again to pressure Pyongyang via Beijing, and suggesting denuclearisation as a precondition for negotiations.

This is a grievously mistaken approach. One thing North Korea has long aspired to is direct bilateral talks with the US.

Former American president Jimmy Carter brought back this impression from a visit to Pyongyang in 2010, and basketball star Dennis Rodman, after spending time with Kim Jong-un earlier this year, brought home the message that the Beloved Successor was hankering for a simple gesture: a phone call from Barack Obama.

“I don’t want to do war,” he told his American guest.

Whether it might lead to a new beginning for the Korean Peninsula is unknowable, but what harm could it possibly do to give it a try? Mr President, pick up that phone.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com