SRINAGAR, India -- Parveena Ahangar hasn't known peace for years.
"I can't describe how each day passes. I keep taking medicines every single day to control my tension. At night, I'm awake. I just can't sleep," Ahangar says.
She's felt this way, she says, ever since the day 21 years ago when she lost her son.
With US forces having completed their pullout, Iraqis are hopeful their country will regain its lofty status in the Arab world, but one group expects little to change for the better: women.
On Friday, I was at a dinner event at which prominent businessman Marc Lasry said he used to dance with and have “a secret crush on” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “She was quite a dancer,” he added, while calling Mrs. Clinton on stage to speak on women's rights.
India's Indira Gandhi, Sri Lanka's Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, Bangladesh's Shaikh Hasina, Philippines' Corazon Aquino and Indonesia's Megawati Sukarnoputri — these women leaders dominated South and South East Asia for much of the past four decades.
ISLAMABAD: Malala Yousafzai stood up against all odds. In defiance of the Taliban in Swat, she decided to acquire education and helped her peers to do the same. The thirteen-year-old's dauntless struggle is to now be officially recognised.
Predictions for a new year can be risky at the best of times. They can be disastrous when the crystal ball shows South Asia and clairvoyance deals with India-Pakistan diplomacy, or for that matter, with anything to do with South Asia's foreign policies.
