Global eye | Light in the dark
The end of apartheid in South Africa and fall of the Soviet Union were bright spots even as China crushed a rebellion and wars raged in Sri Lanka and the Gulf
ISSUE DATE: Jan 12, 2026 | UPDATED: Jan 3, 2026 19:17 IST
In the intervening decade of 1985-1995, South Asia’s immediate neighbourhood was among the most volatile. Pakistan and Sri Lanka were in flux, one under a dictatorship, the other ravaged by an internecine war over a Tamil homeland. In Lanka, an India-brokered peace between the government and the V. Prabhakaran-led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) collapsed and we were dragged into the conflict, eventually paying a heavy price for the interference, both with the lives of our soldiers and of a former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi.
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