
More than a billion people will head to the polls across South Asia in 2024
CNN
An election boycotted by the main opposition as the world’s longest serving female prime minister looks set to extend her rule.
An election boycotted by the main opposition as the world’s longest serving female prime minister looks set to extend her rule. A cricket legend and former prime minister languishing in prison versus a one-time fugitive looking to make a comeback as a powerful military keeps watch. A populist leader hoping to enter his second decade in power as he pushes a popular but religiously divisive brand of politics. And an island nation recovering from its worst economic crisis in decades after protesters stormed the presidential palace. Four South Asian countries are expected to head to the polls next year, in a grand test for democracy that will see nearly 2 billion people across Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka cast their ballots from January through September. All former colonies who gained independence from Britain within the last century, each are at a different stage of growth and facing a variety of crises and opportunities.

More than two decades ago, on January 24, 2004, I landed in Baghdad as a legal adviser, assigned an office in what was then known as the Green Zone. It was raining and cold, and my duffle bag was thrown into a puddle off the C-130 aircraft that had just done a corkscrew dive to reach the runway without risk of ground fire. Young American soldiers greeted me as we piled into a vehicle, sped out of the airport complex and then along a road called the “Highway of Death” due to car bombs and snipers.












