JOHN YANG: In South Asia this year, more than a billion people are going to the polls to choose leaders in five countries, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan.

It's a test of democratic values and human rights in the region.

Pakistan will hold its first general election since 2018 later this week.

The country's had to deal with disastrous floods, food insecurity and a crumbling economy.

And now its democratic system is being challenged.

Pakistan's former prime minister, Imran Khan, was thought to have a good chance of returning to power, but he's been convicted in a series of criminal cases that his supporters say is politically motivated.

One of his sentences includes a ban on holding public office.

Michael Kugelman is the director of the Wilson Center South Asia Institute.

Michael, let's start in Pakistan.

This prosecution of Imran Khan, which his supporters say is political, supporters -- members of his party have been arrested.

A candidate affiliated with his party was assassinated.

What does this say about the health of democracy in Pakistan right now?

MICHAEL KUGELMAN, South Asia Institute Director, Wilson Center: Well, the state of democracy is not good in Pakistan, and we have to look at what's been playing out in Pakistan over the last few months in a very broad context.

Indeed.

Khan has been sentenced to all these jail terms.

Leaders of the party have been arrested.

Other leaders of the party have been arrested.

The media has been pressured not to cover campaign rallies of Khan's party.

So this is not good for democracy.

But it goes further than that because this is not unusual.

This is not an outlier in the sense that in the past, in other elections in Pakistan, the same thing has happened where particular parties have faced crackdowns.

So the fact that this is not a one time thing, the fact that it's not a one off, the fact that this has happened so many times before, that is what I think is so troubling about this for democracy in Pakistan.

JOHN YANG: Well, on that point, I mean, Bangladesh had an elections in early January.

The prime minister won her fourth straight term.

The United States State Department said it was not free and fair, but they also said in the same statement they look forward to working with her.

How important is it, this is a very key region just because of where it is, how important is it that the United States have a good working relationship with these countries?

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: I think you have to look at this in the context of great power competition.

The U.S. increasingly looks at South Asia through the lens of its competition with China and with Russia.

China has been increasingly present in South Asia through infrastructure projects and also through naval power projection in the Indian Ocean region.

This is concerning for the US.

Also quietly Russia has been a key player in South Asia.

It has a close relationship with India, it has a growing relationship with Pakistan, and it also has energy cooperations set up with Bangladesh.

So I think that the U.S. feels a need to strengthen engagement with the countries of South Asia in order to push back against this growing influence of China and Russia.

JOHN YANG: And to do that, are they willing to sort of overlook the lack of democracy?

They talk about wanting to spread democracy around the world, encourage democracies.

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: I think that strategic imperatives end up carrying the day in the sense that the administration, the current administration has used this values based foreign policy where it sought to push for better, more rights, more democracy in the region.

But it's applied that very selectively.

It had been applying it quite vociferously and robustly in Bangladesh, much less so India, which is another country struggling with democratic backsliding.

It's been fairly quiet in Pakistan as well.

These are all different countries, different policies.

The U.S. has different interests.

The interesting thing is that even in Bangladesh, this just happened today we've learned that President Biden conveyed a letter to the Bangladesh prime minister in which he said that he looks forward to working with her.

JOHN YANG: And talk a little bit about -- you have been touching on it, but sort of the nature or the state of democracy in this whole region?

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: Well, I mean, the worst case is Afghanistan, where, of course, the Taliban has been back in power for a few years.

They don't do democracy.

But if you look at some other countries, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, all countries with elections this year, repression, oppression, crackdowns on dissent, on the opposition has intensified.

Space for dissent has really shrunk and people will say, okay, well, you're talking about democratic backsliding in South Asia.

Five countries in the region have elections this year.

That's true.

But several of these elections, there's big concerns about them not being free and fair, including the ones in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The silver lining here, Bhutan, a relatively recent democratic transition, and it had an election in January that was viewed as free and fair.

So there's the good news story.

JOHN YANG: Pakistan, of course, had a series of military leaders for about three decades.

What has that done to the democratic institutions there?

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: This has been one of the biggest challenges to Pakistan's democratic development and consolidation.

The military is.

There's a legacy of direct military rule.

It has been more than 15 years since the military was in direct control, but it's remained very active, influential, behind the scenes and especially right now.

In fact, I'd say it's more active now in policy and politics during a period of civilian rule than it has been for quite some time, to the point that you have senior military leaders, including the army chief, directly involved in economic policy, not foreign policy or security policy, which is the typical realms where the Pakistani military is during periods of civilian rule.

JOHN YANG: You talked about how the United States, for its other purposes, overlooked these shortcomings.

What could the United States or what could the world do to strengthen these democracies?

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: I think that it all comes down to trying to identify key democratic institutions and how to bring more support to them, and there are a number of ways of going about that.

But it's a very delicate issue because many of these countries are very sensitive to this idea of the U.S. or other western countries saying, well, look, you've got issues with democracy.

We can help you strengthen it.

You know, given that these countries feel that the U.S. has its own struggles with democracy and other countries in the west do as well.

So I think that there's a need to be very careful and very cautious about it.

There are things that can be done.

In many cases, they have not been done.

I mean, The U.S. theoretically has some leverage in some of these countries.

If you look at Bangladesh, for example, Bangladesh is heavily dependent on the U.S. as a trade partner.

The U.S. is the top export destination for Bangladesh.

So if the U.S. really wanted to try to pressure the government there to show more respect for human rights, it could impose trade sanctions on Bangladesh.

But it's not going to do that for the very strategic, interest based reasons that we discussed before.

JOHN YANG: Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center's South Asia Institute, thank you very much.

MICHAEL KUGELMAN: Thank you.