How will the year 2023 be recalled by historians and scholars in the times ahead? Every year has its distinctive characteristics, those which place it in a position all its own. There are years which have the ordinary about them, with little of the dramatic happening in them. And then there are those years which leave a deep imprint on the human conscience.
The year 2023 is that period in time people will recall for the brutality to which the people of Palestine have been subjected by the state of Israel. Not even on Christmas Day were the Palestinians safe from the bombardment which has taken the lives of more than 20,000 of their compatriots, a figure that includes more than 8,000 children. Also to be remembered is the reckless assault Hamas made on 7 October, leaving 1,400 Israelis dead. That Hamas seized more than 200 hostages --- and still has more than a hundred of them in its captivity --- is violence which will go into the history books.
There are the other images that will place 2023 in the centre of thought. The wrangling over an end to the crisis in Gaza, the wording of a resolution at the Security Council of the United Nations that would satisfy the Americans, the veto which Washington was not unhappy to exercise on Gaza, all of these will be seared in the mind when the conversation turns to the year 2023. That the world watched, in dismay and sheer helplessness, as Gaza was bombed into a terrain of destruction is a nightmare history will remember.
It has not been a happy year, for trouble has been brewing nearly everywhere. Politicians have fallen or have given rise to reasons for people to be upset in different regions of the globe. Pakistan's omnipotent military silenced Imran Khan through putting him away in prison, making sure that his name is not taken anywhere and his pictures are not seen anywhere. The very vocal MahuaMoitro of the Trinamool Congress in India was voted out of the Lok Sabha on charges related to cash for questions on the floor of Parliament. Rahul Gandhi lost his seat in Parliament but got it back through judicial intervention.
Politics in the West veered to the far right, as GiorgiaMeloni demonstrated in Italy and Geert Wilders showed in the Netherlands. In the United States, presidential politics remained in the grip of a gerontocracy, with Joe Biden and Donald Trump making it known, in so many words, that they will have a rematch in 2024. There are all the legal complications for Trump and yet he expects to be his party's nominee for the White House in the year ahead. In 2023, American politics was headed for a nosedive, on a number of fronts. In Britain, Keir Starmer's Labour is confident of returning to power next year, which makes the Tories understandably nervous.
Jimmy Carter's wife Rosalynn died as the year moved toward a close. An ailing Carter remained in hospice care, his time running out. Henry Kissinger died at a hundred, with not many coming forth in warmth in tribute to him. Controversy dogged him till the very end. Russia and Ukraine continued sniping at each other and the European Union and Nato did not endear themselves to the world by making it known that Kyiv will be part of them.
In America and in Europe, fatigue and growing disinterest in Ukraine's problems began to surface in western capitals. Zelensky's disappointment was conspicuous. On the Russian domestic front, Vladimir Putin had Alexei Navalny removed from Moscow to distant, cold Siberia, the better to have the latter remain beyond the political radar. Memories of Stalin came alive.
In 2023, Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerged as both a blessing and a nightmare for people around the world. Fears of what AI might do to human civilisation outweighed the good it could symbolise. And as the debate went on, the James Webb Space Telescope flew into increasingly deeper regions of the universe, sending back to Earth images of stars and galaxies which only raised new inquiries in the human mind on what lies out there.
Meanwhile, Frank Borman, commander of the 1968 Apollo-8 mission around the moon, died. Here on Earth, the human propensity for violence went on unabated. In America, lone gunmen repeatedly mowed down people as young as schoolchildren, acts which however did not convince lawmakers that gun control needed to be in place. Such inexplicable violence was repeated in, of all places, the Czech capital Prague.
Nature demonstrated its fury all across the planet in the shape of forest fires, tornadoes, rains and volcanic eruptions. Homes were reduced to ashes or buried in landslides. Climate change, that euphemism for the disasters brought on by mankind's ceaseless exploitation of resources, was the issue exercising minds in 2023 and yet COP-28 offered not much hope of a path to a retrieval of all that the planet has lost.
In Brazil, in large parts of Africa, efforts went on to reclaim nature. And then there was the matter of people, faced with starvation or political unrest, fleeing their countries and making their way in rickety boats to European shores in search of refuge. Hundreds of them perished in the sea; and those who survived were not looked upon kindly by governments in Europe. The British government, through its Rwanda policy, remained determined to ensure that illegal immigrants coming to its shores were flown to Rwanda.
People in Afghanistan went hungry and the Taliban proved unable to convince the world that they could govern in line with modern principles of politics. Hunger and violence defined places in Africa. In Palestine, it was feared that half the population ran the risk of starvation as a consequence of Israeli military action in Gaza. In Pakistan, the economic crisis deepened, prompting the authorities into taking such measures, or gimmicks, as expelling all undocumented Afghan refugees and forcing them to return to their native country.
As the year draws to a close, elections loom in a number of countries. In Bangladesh, the government as well as the Election Commission have gone out on a limb to assure people and overseas powers that the January 2024 elections will be free, fair and so credible. Pakistan expects elections in February of the year ahead, while Indians will be trooping to the polling stations in May. Britons will choose their new government at some point, while America's Democrats and Republicans will attempt to outdo one another in November.
Meanwhile, Xi Jinping has had the law amended to stay on as China's leader. In Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva tried to roll back the damage caused to the country by Jair Bolsonaro. In Indonesia, outgoing President Joko Widodo remained busy building a new capital. In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi remained incarcerated and the million-plus Rohingyas carried on as refugees in Bangladesh.
And so will the year 2023 pass into time and space.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
