epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Thursday, April 25, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
No longer a US priority, is Afghanistan a Central Asia problem now? (VOA)
VOA [4/24/2024 3:16 PM, Navbahor Imamova, 761K, Neutral]
Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors are holding out hope that America, based on its pledges at September’s C5+1 summit, will expand its role in this neighborhood. The wish list includes delivering more humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people, facilitating the expansion of trade, and combating the threats of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan.

Officials speaking with VOA suggest that more aid could be channeled into Afghanistan via Uzbekistan. Additionally, Washington could offer more military assistance to Central Asian states and tangibly support their regional connectivity initiatives.

While no country has formally announced diplomatic recognition of the Taliban government, Central Asian nations have been engaging with the Taliban based on mutual interests, such as security, trade, and water sharing. Uzbekistan, which has extensive political and economic ties with Kabul, has been urging the West and the larger international community not to isolate Afghanistan.

Nearly three years since the withdrawal of American forces, U.S. officials insist that they have not abandoned Afghanistan, pointing to ongoing efforts and consultations with Central Asian counterparts. However, they admit Washington’s priorities have shifted to other issues, such as Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“It will take the U.S. a decade or two to recover from the fact that we lost the war,” said David Sedney, a veteran diplomat and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia. “It took us 20 years before we were able to engage in Vietnam in a productive way,” he told VOA.

Scott Worden, who heads the Afghanistan and Central Asia programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace, thinks that Central Asian governments overestimate Washington’s leverage.

“There are a lot of issues in the world that have to be addressed simultaneously,” he noted in an interview with VOA. “They [the U.S.] are balancing the leverage that they have against issues that are manageable and maybe achievable versus ones like women’s rights, which I think the administration cares strongly about.”

“It’s just a really tough situation,” Worden added. “In my view, you should not condition humanitarian assistance. Any economic sanctions wind up hurting the Afghans that we want to support. It’s a difficult balance, and so I don’t think there is any obvious additional tool or leverage that could be deployed that they’re withholding.”

Some Western nations including the United States, however, have filtered humanitarian aid programs through partner organizations that circumvent Taliban officials and deliver aid directly to Afghan civilians.

According to USAID, the U.S. supplied nearly $81 million in Afghan humanitarian aid in fiscal year 2024, and has supplied total funding for Afghanistan of "more than $2 billion since August 2021 ... including more than $1.5 billion in [USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance] funding and nearly $550 million in [the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration] funding."

“Provided through international partners on the ground,” says USAID, this assistance helps “meet the needs of the most vulnerable through food and cash support, nutrition, health care, protection for women and children, and agricultural inputs to support Afghans in meeting their immediate food needs.”

Like Sedney, Worden suggests being realistic. “There is ample opportunity for the U.S. and other international partners to talk to the Taliban when they want to.”

“This is all part of a very difficult global conversation,” he said.

But for Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, known for advocating closer ties with the region, Afghanistan is “utterly ignored right now.”

Starr emphasizes that this country is critical for regional integration and stability, two goals the U.S. has long vowed to support.

Sedney observes that "not many people want to talk about Afghanistan," not just in Washington but in other Western capitals as well.

Speaking last week at the American Foreign Policy Council, these experts stressed that America’s two decades of involvement in Afghanistan left it with an obligation to go beyond the status quo.

Starr approves of the steps Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have taken with Afghanistan, particularly regarding commerce, energy supply and water resources.

Other observers, however, warn about tensions between the Taliban and Tajikistan, which officially supports the National Resistance Front, an armed alliance of anti-Taliban forces that is loyal to the previous regime and carries out guerrilla attacks in Afghanistan. Dushanbe continues to host the previous government’s ambassador.

Worden identifies several key interests and objectives for Washington, most of which align with those of the region. The first and most important objective is counterterrorism, ensuring that Afghan territory is never again used to launch attacks on the U.S. or its allies.

Others include negotiations on American hostages; the evacuation of Afghans that the U.S. promised to help following its withdrawal; women’s rights and other human rights; humanitarian assistance; and economic development.

Perhaps the most abstract interest, according to Worden, “is trying to maintain an international diplomatic consensus on the broad conditions and expectations that we have for the Taliban, which include in the endgame a more inclusive society that is not a threat to itself and for its neighbors as well as these U.S. interests.”

“It’s remarkable that no country in the world has recognized the Taliban,” he said, adding, however, that he sees a divergence between Western-allied emphasis on human rights and women’s rights and the neighboring countries’ economic and security concerns.

In Worden’s view, the U.S. is pursuing a policy of “quiet engagement” on humanitarian assistance and counterterrorism. At the same time, there is a firm position of non-recognition and not wanting to legitimize the Taliban.

“Can this dualism sustain over time?” asked Worden, who also sees a cleavage developing, where countries in the region will over time increase engagement with those in power in Afghanistan to achieve their economic and security interests. “Not that they like the Taliban, but they feel like talking to them is better than not.”

Regardless of who inhabits the White House next January, Worden doubts that U.S. attention toward Afghanistan will increase unless there is an “acute crisis.”

Republicans tend to “prefer coercion to engagement when you’re talking about regimes that we don’t have much in common with,” he said. “So yes, there is the wild card of potentially making a great deal, but I think the odds of support for armed opposition would increase.”

U.S.-based Afghan journalist Samy Mahdi, who runs Amu Television out of Virginia, points out that the Taliban enjoy close relations with America’s adversaries, such as Iran, Russia and China. He argues that U.S. assistance has brought about minimum results, and that the Taliban is as radical and dangerous as it was in the 1990s.

Mahdi recommends a full review of U.S. policy.

“More communication and transparency are needed on Afghanistan,” he said at the American Foreign Policy Council forum. “We don’t hear much from the U.S. administration about Afghanistan.”
Pakistan
Pakistan and Iran vow to enhance efforts at a ‘united front’ against Afghanistan-based militants (AP)
AP [4/24/2024 12:47 PM, Munir Ahmed, 2565K, Negative]
Neighbors Pakistan and Iran on Wednesday pledged to enhance efforts at a “united front” against Afghanistan-based militants, saying their presence poses a serious threat to regional and global security.

The countries, which share a long and porous border, made the commitment in a joint statement issued after a three-day visit by Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to Islamabad.

The visit was aimed at mending ties that were strained in January when each carried out strikes in the other’s territory, targeting militants accused of attacking security forces.

The Iranian president met with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other officials, including powerful army chief Gen. Asim Munir.

The joint statement said the two sides “reaffirmed their willingness to enhance cooperation on counter-terrorism and security and to develop a united front against terrorism.”

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant violence in recent months, mostly blamed on Afghanistan-based Pakistani Taliban and insurgents who also target security forces in Iran.

Pakistan often says Pakistani Taliban have stepped up attacks since 2021 when the Afghan Taliban came to power. The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, is a separate group but allied with the Afghan Taliban.

However, Afghanistan’s Taliban government insists it does not allow the Pakistani Taliban — or any other militant group — to use Afghanistan’s soil to launch attacks against any other country. In March, the Pakistan Air Force targeted multiple suspected hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban inside Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban said the attacks killed eight people and prompted return fire from their forces.

Tehran has also blamed an Afghanistan-based Islamic State affiliate for recent attacks in Iran. The affiliate is also active in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan bordering Iran.

In recent years, Pakistan has urged Tehran to take stern action against Pakistani insurgents living inside Iran near the border. They often target security forces in Baluchistan, the scene of low-level insurgency by separatists for more than two decades.

Pakistan and Iran also agreed that their common border should be the “border of peace and friendship,” and reiterated the importance of regular cooperation between political, military and security officials to combat other threats such as narcotics smuggling, human trafficking, hostage-taking and money-laundering.

The countries also agreed to expand trade and economic cooperation, pledging to set up new border markets, new border crossings and economic free trade zones.

The two sides also condemned the suspected Israeli strike on April 1 targeting a consular building next to the Iranian Embassy in Syria which killed two Guard generals and others. Iran responded with unprecedented direct strikes on Israel.

Authorities also said Pakistan and Iran also discussed how to go ahead with their gas pipeline project, which has been on hold mainly because of fears of U.S. sanctions. The project — opposed by Washington as a violation of sanctions imposed on Tehran over its nuclear program — launched in 2013 to supply Iranian natural gas to energy-starved Pakistan.
Pakistan, Iran see Afghanistan-based terror groups as ‘serious threat’ to global security (VOA)
VOA [4/24/2024 10:17 AM, Ayaz Gul, 761K, Negative]
Pakistan and Iran pledged Wednesday they would increase joint efforts against Afghanistan’s terrorism threat and urged Afghanistan’s hardline Taliban government to involve all Afghans in “basic decision-making.”

The two neighboring countries, which share long, porous borders with Afghanistan, made the promise in a joint statement released at the culmination of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s three-day visit to Pakistan.

Both Tehran and Islamabad complain that transnational militant groups have increased cross-border terrorist attacks from Afghan sanctuaries since the Taliban reclaimed power in Kabul in 2021.

“Noting that the existence of terrorist organizations in Afghanistan poses a serious threat to regional and global security, the two sides reaffirmed their willingness to enhance cooperation on counterterrorism and security and to develop a united front against terrorism,” the statement reads.

Islamabad alleges militants tied to the globally designated terrorist outfit Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, are being sheltered on Afghan soil and even facilitated by the Taliban administration to conduct deadly cross-border attacks on Pakistani security forces and civilians.

Iranian authorities have blamed an Afghan-based regional Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State-Khorasan for recent high-profile terrorist attacks inside Iran.

In their joint statement, Pakistan and Iran again emphasized the need for the Taliban to rule their crisis-hit nation through a politically inclusive government.

“While respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Afghanistan, the two sides recognized that increasing participation of all strata of Afghans in basic decision-making will lead to the strengthening of peace and stability in this country,” the joint announcement noted Wednesday.

The Taliban deny allegations they shelter or allow foreign militants to operate and threaten neighboring countries from Afghan soil. The fundamentalist de facto rulers defend their leadership as an inclusive setup, and they reject calls for any reforms in it as interference in the domestic affairs of Afghanistan.

Pak-Iran pipeline

In meetings, Raisi and his delegation held with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other top officials, the two sides agreed to expand bilateral trade and economic ties and boost bilateral trade to $10 billion over the next five years.

The joint statement reiterated the importance of cooperation in the energy sector, including trade in electricity, power transmission lines, and the import of Iranian natural gas through a long-delayed pipeline project linking Pakistan and Iran, without sharing further details.

The United States has repeatedly warned Islamabad against joining the pipeline project with Tehran, citing sweeping sanctions on Iran’s energy sector over its nuclear program.

“We advise anyone considering business deals with Iran to be aware of the potential risk of sanctions,” said Vedant Patel, the U.S. State Department principal deputy spokesperson, on Tuesday. He was asked for comments on the deals Pakistan and Iran signed during Raisi’s trip.

Tehran claims it has completed constructing 1,100 kilometers of the pipeline on its side of the border and is waiting for Islamabad to build its part of the project. Pakistan has not started the work despite repeated public pledges, fearing it would trigger U.S. sanctions for importing Iranian gas.

Iranian officials have repeatedly threatened to sue Islamabad in international arbitration and impose a penalty of around $18 billion for breach of contract.

“Pakistan must take a long-term view of this problem. While ties with the U.S. are important, should Pakistan seek American approval for all key economic and strategic decisions?” asked the prestigious English-language DAWN newspaper in a Wednesday editorial.

“Today, the U.S. does not want the Iran pipeline to proceed. Tomorrow, if ties between Washington and Beijing nosedive, and the U.S. asks Pakistan to reconsider CPEC or our defense cooperation with China, will we comply?” the editorial read.

The newspaper referred to the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, which has built Pakistani road networks, power plants, and other infrastructure with Chinese investment. The mega project is an extension of Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure development program.

Middle East crisis

Raisi’s meetings with Pakistani leaders also focused on Iran’s military stand-off with Israel.

Tehran and Islamabad demanded through their Wednesday statement an “immediate and unconditional” cease-fire in Gaza and unimpeded humanitarian access to its besieged residents.

“Both sides expressed their strong and unequivocal condemnation of the ongoing Israeli regime’s aggression and atrocities against the Palestinian people, along with the inhumane blockade of Gaza that has resulted in widespread death and destruction, as well as displacement of millions of Palestinians,” the statement said.

Israel declared war on Gaza-based Hamas after the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and leading to the capture of about 250 hostages.

Hamas has been designated as a terror organization by the United States.

Inside Gaza, Israel’s counteroffensive has killed nearly 34,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children, Gaza health officials say Israel says the death toll includes thousands of Hamas fighters.

Pakistan does not recognize Israel and has no direct channels of communication with the Jewish state over the issue of Palestinian statehood.

On Wednesday, Pakistan and Iran also condemned Israel’s alleged April 1 attack on the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, calling it an “unacceptable violation of the sovereignty of Syria” and of international laws.

The two countries, in their joint statement, declared the attack as an “irresponsible act of the Israeli regime forces” and blamed it for “a major escalation in an already volatile region.” The suspected Israeli strike killed seven members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, including two generals.

Tehran responded to the suspected Israeli strike by firing more than 300 drones and missiles directly at Israel more than a week ago, fueling concerns about a wider conflict in the Middle East.
Cost of doing business with Iran? US warns Pakistan of sanctions risk (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [4/24/2024 8:11 AM, Abid Hussain, 2060K, Neutral]
The United States has warned Pakistan of the risk of sanctions after it promised greater security and economic cooperation with Iran during a visit by President Ebrahim Raisi.

The first Iranian president to visit the South Asian country in eight years, Raisi concluded his three-day trip on Wednesday as the neighbouring countries said they would increase bilateral trade to $10bn a year over the next five years, from the current $2bn.

Pakistan’s foreign office said the two sides additionally agreed to cooperate in the energy sector including trade in electricity, power transmission lines and the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project.

The gas pipeline project has languished for more than a decade because of political turmoil and international sanctions.

The US Department of State on Tuesday cautioned the Pakistani government of engaging in business deals with Iran.

“We advise anyone considering business deals with Iran to be aware of the potential risk of sanctions. But ultimately, the government of Pakistan can speak to their own foreign policy pursuits,” spokesperson Vedant Patel said during a news briefing.

Foreign policy expert Muhammad Faisal said the United States threats of sanctions are merely meant to dissuade Pakistan and “increase the cost of doing business with Iran”.

“Any expansion of formal trade and banking activity between the two nations will be slow, as Pakistani banks are reluctant to do direct business with Iranian banks,” he told Al Jazeera.

A wide-ranging list of business-related activities with Iran can trigger US sanctions, and the regulations also bar business dealings with Iranian financial institutions.

The pipeline was to stretch more than 1,900km (1,180 miles) from Iran’s South Pars gas field to Pakistan to meet Pakistan’s rising energy needs.

Iran said it has already invested $2bn to construct the pipeline on its side of the border, making it ready to export. However, the project is yet to take off from the Pakistani side due to fears of US sanctions.

Pakistan indicated last month that it will try and seek a waiver from the US to construct the pipeline on its territory.

Washington’s efforts to restrict Iran’s income from oil and petroleum products go back decades. It has additionally sanctioned hundreds of entities and people in Iran – from the central bank to government officials – accused of materially supporting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and armed groups such as Palestine’s Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.

The US and the United Kingdom this month imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran after its unprecedented attack on Israel, but the punitive measures were limited in scope and there have been questions over how effective the sanctions regime has been overall.

“Islamabad is cognisant of these constraints and both sides have been exploring ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions for expanding bilateral trade through barter system and border markets with the involvement of local chambers of commerce,” Faisal said.

Pakistan has little leverage

During his visit, Raisi met the country’s top leadership, including Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and army chief General Asim Munir.

The visit came as the two countries try to repair their frayed relationship following heightened tensions in January when Iran launched attacks on Pakistani territory on what it said were bases of armed group Jaish al-Adl.

In less than 48 hours, the Pakistani military carried out strikes in Iran on what it said were “hideouts used by terrorist organisations”.

Yet, the implied threat of sanctions comes at a challenging time for Pakistan, which is mired in economic woes and is seeking financial help from its allies, including key partners such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the US, three countries that are considered rivals of Iran.

Sharif was in Saudi Arabia this month to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and is expected to travel to the kingdom again next week.

Kamran Bokhari, a senior director at the Washington, DC-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, said Pakistan cannot afford to get caught in the middle of a conflict between the US and Iran.

“Those two countries are engaged in their own rivalry and Iran sees itself in ascendancy at the moment due to situation in the Middle East,” Bokhari told Al Jazeera, referring to Israel’s war on Gaza.

“The US wants to contain Iran and the tools it has are sanctions. Now Pakistan needs the US and Western goodwill to help it deal with its economic crisis,” he said, adding that it should “steer clear of any move that risks it”.

Pakistan must identify what’s best for its national interest if it is to successfully juggle its relationships with Iran and the US and “maintain engagement with both”, Faisal said, but it should focus on expanding trade and energy cooperation with Iran.

The future of the Pakistan-Iran relationship depends on Pakistan’s ability to use its limited leverage, said Bokhari.

“If the US tells Pakistan ‘You cannot do business with Iran’, then they should ask Washington ‘Could you instead help us in what we need?’” Bokhari said.
IMF executive board to meet April 29 on $1.1 bln Pakistan disbursement (Reuters)
Reuters [4/24/2024 11:06 AM, Ariba Shahid and Asif Shahzad, 5239K, Positive]
The executive board of the International Monetary Fund will meet on April 29 to discuss the approval of $1.1 billion funding for Pakistan, the fund said on Wednesday.

The funding is the second and last tranche of a $3 billion standby arrangement with the IMF, which it secured last summer to avert a sovereign default and which runs out this month.

The South Asian nation is seeking a new long-term, larger IMF loan. Pakistan’s Finance Minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb, has said Islamabad could secure a staff-level agreement on the new program by early July.

Islamabad says it is seeking a loan over at least three years to help macroeconomic stability and execute a long-due and painful structural reforms, though Aurangzeb has declined to detail what seize of programme the country seeks.

Islamabad is yet to make a formal request, but the Fund and the government are already in discussions.
If secured, it would be the 24th IMF bailout for Pakistan.

The $350 billion economy faces a chronic balance of payment crisis, with nearly $24 billion to repay in debt and interest over the next fiscal year - three-time more than its central bank’s foreign currency reserves.

Pakistan’s finance ministry expect the economy to grow by 2.6% in the current fiscal year ending June, while average inflation is projected to stand at 24%, down from 29.2% in fiscal year 2023/2024. Inflation soared to a record high of 38% last May.
India
Australian Journalist Says She Was Pushed Out of India (New York Times)
New York Times [4/24/2024 4:14 PM, Sameer Yasir and Yan Zhuang, 740K, Negative]
A senior journalist with Australia’s national broadcaster says she was effectively pushed out of India after her reporting on Sikh separatism angered the Indian government, accusing the authorities of hindering her from going to events, seeking to have her reporting taken down and refusing for weeks to renew her visa.

Avani Dias, the South Asia correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, said on social media that Indian officials told her last month that her application for a resident journalist visa extension would not be approved because a television segment she had produced on accusations that India was responsible for the killing of a Sikh activist in Canada had “crossed the line.”

She was eventually granted a temporary visa extension at the last minute after lobbying by the Australian government, less than a day before she was scheduled to leave the country, Ms. Dias said in her podcast, “Looking for Modi.” But she said that she ultimately decided to leave because “it felt too difficult to do my job in India.”

“I was struggling to get into public events run by Modi’s party,” Ms. Dias said on the podcast, which was about Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Indian government has disputed Ms. Dias’ account and said she was assured by high ranking officials that her visa would be renewed.

Her departure came amid a broader crackdown on free speech in the country and raids on journalists reporting on sensitive topics. During his 10 years leading the nation, Mr. Modi has consolidated power in India and across its institutions, challenging the founding principles of modern India, like secularism and freedom of the press. He is seeking a third term in parliamentary elections that begun this month.

In March, Ms. Dias produced a television segment about the accusations made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada last year that agents acting on behalf of the Indian government were behind the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist, on Canadian soil. The half-hour documentary examined the movement, which advocates for a separate Sikh state called Khalistan to be carved out of the Indian state of Punjab.

During the half-hour documentary, which was broadcast in Australia and uploaded on social media, she detailed how permission for her and her crew to film at the border between Punjab and Pakistan had suddenly been revoked by Indian officials without explanation, and how she had been quizzed by Indian officials about her crew and the places she had visited to report on the story.

“It’s clear that we’re being really monitored and that there’s concern about the story that we’re doing,” she said.

On March 26, less than a week after the documentary was broadcast, the Indian government successfully sought to have YouTube block the video from showing in India.

The next day, Ms. Dias was told by a representative of the Ministry of External Affairs that her application for a visa extension would not be renewed, according to a person directly familiar with the situation but who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue. Ms. Dias notified the Australian government, and Australian diplomats began to lobby for her visa, the person said.

After weeks of bureaucratic back and forth, Ms. Dias received her visa extension on the evening of Apr. 18, the person said. But with her flight back to Australia departing the next day, and having already packed up her life in India, she made the decision to leave, Ms. Dias said in her podcast. She left on the first day of voting in India’s national election.

A senior Indian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, refuted her account, saying Ms. Dias had been told well in advance that her visa would be extended.

The official said that Ms. Dias had violated terms of her previous visa by attempting to film at the India-Pakistan border, which requires permission. Ms. Dias previously said she had sought and been granted that permission before it was revoked at the last minute.

Ms. Dias had not been prevented from covering India’s election, but had her accreditation delayed because she had not yet received her visa extension, the Indian official said, adding that her colleagues at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had been given accreditation to cover the elections.

Ms. Dias’ departure adds to mounting concerns about press freedom in India, where Indian journalists have come under heavy pressure from the Modi administration.

Foreign journalists in India are reporting more pressure, as well. In February, Vanessa Dougnac, a French freelance correspondent, said she had been forced to leave India, where she had lived for 25 years, after the authorities told her that they intended to withdraw her permanent residency permit.

The authorities accused her of producing reporting that was “malicious and critical in manner,” and creating a “biased negative perception about India.” They said that she had worked as a journalist without holding a valid permit, after revoking her work permit in September 2022 without a clear reason.
India Extends Central Bank Deputy Governor Sankar’s Tenure (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [4/24/2024 7:55 AM, Anup Roy, 5543K, Positive]
India has extended the tenure of T Rabi Sankar, a deputy governor at the country’s central bank, by another year, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News.

His new term begins from May 3 and was approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, according to a notification issued by the Department of Financial Services Tuesday.

The RBI didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking further information.

A career central banker, Rabi Sankar, 61, was first appointed deputy governor in May 2021, and is currently in charge of payments and settlements systems at the RBI. He’s one of four deputies to Governor Shaktikanta Das, alongside Michael Patra, M. Rajeshwar Rao and J Swaminathan.

Rabi Sankar helped to develop and launch the RBI’s pilot digital currency and also took India’s instant mobile payments system — known as Unified Payments Interface — international by tying up with several countries such as Singapore and United Arab Emirates.
India central bank bars Kotak Mahindra Bank from taking on new clients digitally (Reuters)
Reuters [4/24/2024 11:27 AM, Siddhi Nayak and Jaspreet Kalra, 5239K, Neutral]
India’s central bank said on Wednesday it had barred Kotak Mahindra Bank (KTKM.NS) from taking on new customers via its online and mobile banking channels, and from issuing new credit cards, due to information technology-related deficiencies.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it had taken the action after its examination of the country’s fourth largest private lender’s IT systems in 2022 and 2023 raised concerns and Kotak failed to address them adequately.

"For two consecutive years, the bank was assessed to be deficient in its IT Risk and Information Security Governance," the RBI said in a statement.

Confirming receipt of the order, Kotak said it has "taken measures to adopt new technology to strengthen its IT systems" and believes the direction will not materially impact its overall business.

Its existing customers will receive uninterrupted services, including credit cards, mobile and net banking, it said in a statement.

"Our branches continue to welcome and onboard new customers, providing them with all the Bank’s services, apart from issuance of new credit cards."

The Mumbai-based bank was also found to be materially deficient in building the necessary operational resilience due to its failure to build IT systems and controls commensurate with its growth, the central bank added.

The RBI has taken measures against non-compliant entities in recent years, including fines and business restrictions.

In December 2020, the RBI took similar action against HDFC Bank (HDBK.NS), barring India’s largest private lender from recruiting new credit card customers or launching new digital products after its digital payment services were hit by a power failure. That ban was lifted in August 2021.

"This is a drastic move by the regulator on Kotak and comes at a time when the bank was looking to go aggressive on digital banking and add new customers and take on deposits," said Amit Khurana, head of equities at Dolat Capital.

"It seems that this was a well-thought out action by the central bank and could take some time to get resolved."

In the quarter ended December, 95% of Kotak’s new personal loans sold by volume were disbursed digitally, while it sold 99% of new credit cards through digital channels.

The RBI said it was placing the restrictions on Kotak in the interest of customers and to avoid a possible prolonged outage that might affect customer service and broader digital banking and payment systems.

"The RBI’s action is obviously going to impact the bank’s ambition to get to a 15% share of unsecured loans but the bigger impact is going to be on the savings accounts," said Pranav Gundlapalle, senior research analyst at AllianceBernstein.

Kotak had a 5.8% share of outstanding credit card balances as of end-March, with its book having increased 52% year-on-year in the December quarter.

The bank was relying on digital means given its sub-par branch network, Gundlapalle said.

The RBI will review the restrictions after a comprehensive external audit which must be commissioned by Kotak with the RBI’s prior approval and once all the deficiencies are fixed to its satisfaction.

"The bank shall, however, continue to provide services to its existing customers, including its credit card customers," the RBI said.
India plans curbs on suspect bank accounts to fight cyber fraud, sources say (Reuters)
Reuters [4/25/2024 3:53 AM, Sarita Chaganti Singh, Nikunj Ohri and Jaspreet Kalra, 5.2M, Neutral]
India’s central bank plans to soon change guidelines to permit banks to temporarily freeze accounts suspected of being used to commit cyber crimes, as it battles a rising wave of online crime, three sources told Reuters.

The plans come as internal government data shows individuals have lost funds of nearly $1.26 billion in financial institutions to cyber fraud since 2021, with one of the sources saying about 4,000 fraudulent accounts are opened every day.

Tens of thousands of Indians receive daily telephone calls seeking to defraud them by accessing their bank accounts and wallets to siphon off money that then accumulates in the scammers’ accounts.

To fight back, the regulator, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), is likely to let banks suspend such accounts, freeing victims from first having to file police complaints, said two government sources and a third aware of the central bank’s thinking.

India’s finance ministry, home ministry and central bank did not immediately respond to Reuters’ emails seeking comment.

While perpetrators can empty accounts within minutes, banks now freeze accounts only after police register a crime report, a procedure that sometimes takes days, given the number of crimes law enforcers must tackle, the sources said.

The suspensions would target accounts frequently misused to transfer funds gained from cyber crime, both government sources said.

The banking regulator will amend its guidelines for banks based on information from the home ministry’s cyber fraud fighting agency, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre, one of the government sources said.

Agency data shows that in the last three months the government has suspended 250,000 accounts used to siphon off funds, one of the government sources added.

The agency compiles data on misused bank accounts, electronic devices, mobile connections and criminals on a portal accessible to banks, police, and telecom operators.

Yet thousands of such fraud accounts operate with impunity since the hands of regulators and banks are tied in the absence of police complaints having been registered, one of the government sources said.

Names and details of miscreant account holders will be used to uncover more accounts held in other banks, and suspend those too, one of the government sources said.

However, a new centralised body is needed to investigate cyber frauds, said the source aware of the central bank’s thinking, without elaborating.
Modi accused of hate speech by opposition as India’s phased elections roll on (VOA)
VOA [4/24/2024 11:32 AM, Anjana Pasricha, 761K, Neutral]
India’s main opposition Congress Party has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “hate speech” following remarks at recent election rallies in which he said the rival party would favor the minority Muslim community if voted to power.

Modi’s controversial comments came amid hectic campaigning by political parties as India holds phased elections that began this month and continue until June 1.

Political analysts said the remarks by Modi, who is leading his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s bid to win a third term in power, are an effort to shore up support among his Hindu voter base.

The prime minister told a rally held in the northwestern state of Rajasthan on Sunday that if the opposition Congress Party is voted into power, it will gather “all your wealth and distribute it to those who have more children” and to “infiltrators.” The remarks were widely seen as a reference to Muslims.

Modi cited a two-decade old comment by former prime minister Manmohan Singh, from when the Congress Party led a coalition government, in which Singh had said that India’s lower castes, tribes, women and “in particular the Muslim community” deserved a share in the country’s development. Singh’s government had clarified that he was referring to all disadvantaged groups.

The remarks prompted an outcry from the Congress Party, which denied making any promise of taking away and redistributing wealth and said that the party’s manifesto only talks about equality and justice for all.

The party said the prime minister’s remarks were a "blatant and direct violation” of electoral laws, which ban canvassing on “caste” and “communal feelings.”

In a complaint to the Election Commission, the Congress Party called the comments "divisive and malicious" and said they were targeted at "a particular religious community." It has petitioned the body that oversees India’s mammoth election, to act against Modi.

“What Modiji said was hate speech and also a well-thought-out ploy to divert attention,” Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge said in a post on X.

Several other opposition parties, which accuse Modi’s BJP of polarizing voters for electoral gains, have also joined the chorus of protest against the prime minister’s remarks.

Modi continued his attack on the Congress Party at election rallies this week, saying they wanted to implement reservations based on religion. That remark was a reference to a decades-long affirmative action program under which India sets aside quotas in government jobs and educational institutes for lower castes.

The BJP has defended the prime minister’s remarks. Party spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia told reporters on Monday that he only “echoed the sentiment of every citizen of the country who believes in equality.”

On the campaign trail, Modi has sought votes largely on his pledge of making India a developed nation, expanding the economy and increasing welfare programs for the poor.

However, analysts say the prime minister’s comments represent a change in tactics as the party seeks to energize its cadres and voters from the Hindu majority community.

“It is communal politics and a concerted attempt to otherize minorities and Muslims in particular and instill a sense of insecurity among the majority Hindu community by pushing the opposition into the bracket of those who work for welfare of the minorities,” said political analyst Rasheed Kidwai. “And because the relationship between the majority Hindus and minority Muslims has a lot of historical baggage and there is a trust deficit, it is very easy to reap electoral dividends.”

In an editorial, the Indian Express newspaper called the prime minister’s speech “divisive that does grave disservice to his high office,” and said that Modi had framed “politics as a zero-sum game and communities as adversaries.”

The BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda has won huge support for Modi and the party in the Hindu majority nation and opinion polls have predicted an easy victory for him.

During his 10 years in power. Modi has fulfilled some of the party’s Hindu-right agenda such as revoking Muslim majority Kashmir’s special status and enacting a citizenship law that grants nationality to Hindus and people of some other faiths fleeing neighboring countries but excludes Muslims.

Critics and opposition parties accuse Modi of undermining the country’s secular ethos and rights groups say that Muslims have been targeted during his decade-long rule. The BJP strongly denies the allegations. It points out that welfare programs such as free rations and aid to build houses and toilets include all communities and says that the government’s policies benefit all Indians equally.
Why Indian Voters See Job Creation as the Election’s Biggest Issue (Time)
Time [4/24/2024 7:00 AM, Astha Rajvanshi, 1386K, Neutral]
As India’s marathon election kicked off its first voting phase last Friday, April 19, unemployment was looming large in the minds of millions of voters—despite the country’s rapid economic growth. Since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, economists have been quick to serve India on a silver platter as a powerful rival to China, particularly for its global manufacturing, investment, and growth capabilities. Investors have reason to feel bullish: between 2014 and 2023, India’s GDP grew by 55%, overtaking countries like the U.K., France, Italy, and Brazil to become the world’s fifth-largest economy. The IMF projects it will likely expand by 6.3% this year—no small feat for a trillion-dollar economy.

According to Indian economist Ajit Ranade, the economy has gained momentum from longer-term factors: “Number one is, of course, the demography,” he says. With an average age of 29 years, India has one of the youngest populations globally, which means that “there’s a large, youthful labor force that’s expanding and a virtuous cycle of people who are going to be looking for jobs, earning, spending, consuming, investing, saving, paying taxes, and so on,” says Ranade.

Yet, a pre-poll survey by CSDS-Lokniti, a Delhi-based research institute, found that nearly half the electorate sees unemployment and rising prices as the two biggest concerns this election, an indication that India has not yet reaped the economic benefits of this group. As a result, economists say Modi’s government—if it comes back to power for a third term—will now need to find new ways to take advantage of its demographic dividend.

What the numbers show

India has struggled with low job creation over the past decade, with the worker-to-population ratio declining from 38.6% in 2011-12 to 37.3% in 2022-23, according to the government’s labor force surveys. The government has also struggled to create jobs for unskilled and poor workers, with only 20% of Indians currently working in manufacturing or IT services, while over 40% remaining in agriculture, according to the UN University World Institute for Development. What’s more, Indian economist Jayati Ghosh notes that any benefits accrued from India’s economic growth have been unequally distributed among the top 10-20% of income earners.

But nowhere is the unemployment crisis felt more acutely than by the 8 million young and educated Indians who enter the workforce every year—undercutting the long-held belief among Indians that having an education would guarantee them a job. According to a recent report from the International Labor Organization (ILO), 83% of India’s unemployed population is young, while 66% are young and educated. What’s more, the ILO found that those without university degrees or even full schooling had a higher employment rate. The result is what the ILO calls “paradoxical improvements” to India’s labor participation rate, workforce participation rate, and unemployment rate.

Yet the numbers—which are still difficult to measure accurately since the government hasn’t released any consumption figures from consumer expenditure surveys typically conducted every five years—don’t fully reflect the unique situation of India’s labor workforce.

“In the Indian case, a very large percentage of the workforce is in the informal sector, meaning that many of them are working without a contract, don’t have social security or insurance, or are self-employed,” says Ranade.

Why investment in India sees sluggish growth

When East Asian economies like Korea, Malaysia, and China reached a similar stage to India’s development in the past, it was mostly due to export-led growth in textiles, garments, or electronic assembly. But even an expanding labor force doesn’t lead most Indian workers to find productive, higher-paying, and higher-quality jobs. “We have not seen the same kind of phenomenon because India did not aggressively embrace labor intensive exports as a big driver of growth,” says Ranade.

There’s a history behind why: After the country gained independence from British rule, it began implementing more protectionist economic policies out of suspicion of international trade and colonial exploitation. That included self-reliance in the capital goods sector and heavy investment in Indian railways, steel companies, and nuclear power. It was, says Ranade, “an import substitution-led model.” Much later, India recognized how international trade could be beneficial. Between 1988 and 1991, it began embracing economic liberalization policies to deregulate industry, pushing industrial growth to a hefty 9.2%.

Since then, however, too much regulation around the large-scale industry and relatively cheaper capital compared to labor has slowed down progress. According to Barclays research, investment exceeded 40% in 2008 but currently stands at 34%. “The ironic thing is that the share of manufacturing in India’s GDP has barely moved an inch since 1991,” says Ranade.

Under the Modi administration, “three man-made economic disasters”—demonetization, a “somewhat haphazard” implementation of GST, and pandemic-related lockdowns—have contributed to this, according to Reetika Khera, a professor of economics at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. “Each of these has had a devastating impact on different sections of the economy, especially the vulnerable,” she says.

Voters are worried about the bigger picture

The government’s inability to create more jobs has been surprising, given that Modi has touted an ambitious “Make in India” program to help ease the burden of doing business in India for over a decade. Another production-linked incentive scheme launched by the government in November 2023 aimed to kickstart manufacturing by offering industrial incentives to boost domestic production. In this year’s federal budget, the government set aside another $134 billion for capital spending to build roads, ports, airports, and railways—mirroring what China did more than three decades ago for economic expansion,

But when the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party unveiled its election manifesto four days before the country’s 960 million voters began casting their ballots, it made little mention of what kind of economic policies Modi would pursue in a third term in power. But economists say that’s worrying, since India’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) hasn’t raised the quality of life for most Indians. According to the World Bank, India currently ranks 147 for its living standards, despite economic growth which projects its economy to become the third-largest in the world by 2027. “The mere growth in the aggregate income of the whole economy is not good enough because it is not diffused to all sections of society,” says Ranade. Instead, the gains have disproportionately gone to India’s elite, or the top 10%.

The government has supplemented the lack of jobs and per capita income by becoming more welfarist. Over the years, it has spent money on a range of ventures for nutrition, employment, security, health, and even subsidized cooking gas for poorer households.

Still, India’s large domestic economy has proven fairly resilient in the past, and its young population is bound to work to its advantage. “There’s also dynamism, entrepreneurship, and the fact that you have a large proportion of self-employed workers in the gig economy,” says Ranade.
Indian Corruption: Forgotten but Not Gone? (Wall Street Journal – opinion)
Wall Street Journal [4/24/2024 5:49 PM, Sadanand Dhume, 646K, Neutral]
Is corruption no longer an issue in Indian politics? Ten years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi rose to power in part thanks to widespread disgust at the excesses of the Congress Party-led coalition that ruled from 2004 to 2014. Today, voters seem a lot less animated about the issue.

BJP supporters tend to credit Mr. Modi for making good on his promise to clean up the government. Reality is more complicated. Corruption may have disappeared from the headlines, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it has disappeared from public life.

Tales of government sleaze no longer dominate TV debates. Ironically, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of the opposition Aam Aadmi Party, who rose to prominence as an anticorruption crusader, is himself in jail facing corruption charges. Mr. Kejriwal denies them. As an electoral issue, graft has fallen from third among voters’ concerns in 2014 to a distant fourth this year, according to surveys by Delhi’s Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Before Mr. Modi, things were different. Barely a month went by in the second term of the Manmohan Singh government, which ran from 2009 to 2014, without news of a scandal. Allegations of obscenely padded contracts—including $80 toilet-paper rolls and $19,500 treadmills—marred the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. In the 2G telecom scam, the government allegedly squandered $40 billion of taxpayer money by handing out telecom spectrum licenses to the well-connected at throwaway prices.

From coal mines and pilot licenses, and even apartments allotted to war widows, it seemed as if nothing in India was immune from accusations of bribery or plunder. Many of the cases resulting from these allegations are ongoing, and the defendants have denied charges. In 2013 Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index ranked India 94th of 177 countries surveyed.

What changed? As with most anything to do with Indian politics, it depends on who you ask. The BJP equates the absence of public outrage with the absence of corruption, but Modi critics tell a different tale. They say the Indian media is too scared to report on alleged malfeasance, and that the government uses law enforcement to persecute opponents like Mr. Kejriwal rather than clean up graft. The BJP denies that the prosecution is politically motivated.

The idea that corruption has vanished from India is far-fetched. Last year India still ranked 93rd of 180 countries in Transparency International’s corruption index. Legislators’ taking bribes to switch party loyalties is seen as a common fact of political life. New Delhi’s Centre for Media Studies estimated that campaigning in India’s 2019 general election cost $8.7 billion, making it the most expensive in world history.

Candidates for state and federal legislatures frequently blow through the legal spending limit. In February the Supreme Court scrapped a controversial electoral bonds scheme introduced by the Modi government in 2017 as a campaign-finance reform, which allowed donors to conceal party donations from the public. The bonds gave corporate donors a formal way to make campaign donations, but their opacity raised questions about the potential for government quid pro quos. In a phone interview Milan Vaishnav, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, calls it “legalized corruption.”

Authorities’ use of law enforcement to harry political opponents seems to have become increasingly blatant on Mr. Modi’s watch. The Indian Express found that 95% of prominent politicians whom the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate pursued from 2014 through 2022 belonged to the opposition. (A CBI official denied that opposition leaders were targeted in comments to the paper.) Since 2014, 23 of 25 prominent opposition politicians who switched allegiance to the BJP saw corruption cases against them either closed or stalled, according to the Indian Express. A CBI official told the outlet that all of the agency’s probes are “based on evidence.”

Nonetheless, according to Mr. Vaishnav, the BJP has sharply reduced the petty corruption that long marked Indian life. Mr. Modi has successfully used direct benefit transfers to bank accounts to cut out middlemen from welfare programs, which cover much of the electorate. “We’ve moved from blue-collar corruption to white-collar corruption,” says Mr. Vaishnav. “Instead of a bribe to get your rice ration, we now talk about who will control ports or build infrastructure.”

Still, Indians haven’t entirely forgotten the issue. The term “washing machine” has entered popular parlance to describe the miraculous process by which joining the BJP launders politicians of their alleged crimes. A video by YouTuber Dhruv Rathee that called the electoral bonds scheme “probably the biggest scam in the history of independent India” has clocked more than 17 million views in a month. According to CSDS, though corruption has slipped in voters’ priorities, more than half of respondents in 2024 believed that it has risen over the past five years.

As Mr. Modi prepares for likely re-election, he’ll hope voters still see him as Mr. Clean and his opponents as deserving their punishment. The opposition will hope that though the BJP’s narrative dominates the headlines, it doesn’t reflect how voters actually feel.
Modi wants to turn the election into a Hindu-Muslim war (Al Jazeera – opinion)
Al Jazeera [4/24/2024 9:19 AM, Apoorvanand, 2060K, Negative]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have decided that they will contest this seven-phase national election as champions of Hindu interests. They have also made it clear that protecting Hindu interests means protecting them from Muslims.

According to them, the Hindu majority face danger as the opposition Congress party is conspiring with the Muslim community to rob them of their wealth and entitlements and hand them over to Muslims.

On Sunday, the prime minister told a rally in Rajasthan that if the opposition comes to power, it will take Hindus’ wealth and give it to those “who have more children”, clearly referring to Muslims. He then went on to call the Muslim community “infiltrators”.

Modi’s comments caused outrage in some quarters. Citizens and organisations from across the country have asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) to take action against him for his hate speech.

The rights group People’s Union of Civil Liberties has even demanded that Modi be disqualified from contesting elections for that overt communal incitement.

These reactions did not result in any change of rhetoric; in fact, the prime minister doubled down two days later.

On Tuesday, in his address at another election rally in Rajasthan, Modi once again claimed that the Congress was conspiring to take the wealth of Hindus and distribute it among “select” people.

To ensure that there was no ambiguity, Modi went on to suggest that the Congress was going to take away the share of reservations – or quotas in education, employment, government schemes etc – for backward classes, scheduled castes, and tribal people and give it to Muslims. This was a clear attempt to scare the backward and Dalit sections of the Hindu electorate into voting for the BJP.

Also on Tuesday, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh state Yogi Adityanath said the Congress wanted to implement Islamic law. This was a clear attempt to raise the scare of Islamisation of India.

Modi is considered an expert in dog-whistling. He has mastered the art of insulting, mocking, and attacking Muslims without uttering the word Muslim.

For example, during his time as chief minister of Gujarat state in 2002, riots took place that evicted thousands of Muslims from their homes and forced them into relief camps. When the state government started demolishing these camps and faced criticism over it, Modi said he could not allow “children-producing factories” to operate.

Without uttering the word Muslim, he said these were people whose motto was “We are five, ours are 25”. That referred to Muslim men supposedly marrying four times and having 25 children.

In his subsequent speeches, he continued pitting Hindus against Muslims with the help of innuendos, such as “pink revolution” (non-vegetarianism) and “white revolution” (vegetarianism) or graveyards (referring to the Muslim burial practices) and crematoriums (referring to the Hindu practice of burning remains).

In Sunday’s speech, Modi directly referred to Muslims as “those who produce more children” and “infiltrators”, evoking a sinister conspiracy theory that the Muslims are outsiders and aim to outnumber the Hindu majority.

The prime minister is clearly playing a dangerous game, turning the election into a war between Hindus and Muslims, and the BJP is openly calling itself the party of Hindus. It is not wrong to conclude from his speech that he has accepted that his voters are only Hindus. Other leaders of his party have made that clear as well. Last year, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma declared that he did not want the votes of Miya (Bengali-speaking Muslims).

Some analysts feel that the BJP has become desperate as it has not received the expected support in the first phase of the elections. This desperation has driven it to try its old formula of Hindu polarisation by generating the fear of a Muslim takeover of India.

But if we look at Modi’s speeches since the beginning of this election campaign, we can see that right from the start, he has been giving statements that portray the opposition parties as anti-Hindu. For example, he said the Congress manifesto bore the “imprint of the Muslim League”, referring to the political party founded under British colonialism to secure Muslim rights.

He also claimed that the opposition leaders had the mindset of Mughals, India’s 16-18th century Muslim rulers, and that they insulted Hindus by eating fish during sacred Hindu occasions and eating meat during the Hindu holy month of Sawan. He said they do so to please their “own” voters. Who can these voters be but Muslims?

That the opposition leaders are indulging in anti-Hindu practices to appease Muslims is a completely absurd assertion given that the opposition also needs Hindu votes and cannot afford to do anything to alienate them. But lack of logic has not stopped Modi and the BJP from repeating these claims in an attempt to provoke Hindus against Muslims.

This is a clear violation of the ECI’s Model Code of Conduct, according to which, no one is allowed to solicit votes or campaign on religious or communal grounds.

It is also a violation of the People’s Representative Act, which treats communal propaganda as a crime. The law says, “Appeals by a candidate, or any other person with the consent of a candidate, to vote or refrain from voting on the ground of his religion, race, caste, community or language is a corrupt electoral practice.” If found guilty under this provision, an individual can face up to six years in jail.

It was this provision of the Act that led to a six-year election ban in 1999 on Bal Thackeray, the founder of the Shiv Sena party, over his attempts at communal incitement.

Despite calls for action to stem the BJP’s use of inciting speech in the ongoing elections, the ECI has been completely silent on the issue. That is because it is a compromised body.

In December, the BJP managed to push legislation through parliament that changed the composition of the selection committee tasked with appointing election commissioners. Earlier the chief justice of India (CJI) was part of it, along with the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. Now the CJI has been replaced with a minister to be selected by the prime minister.

That is how the ECI lost its independence. It has been behaving like a government body ever since, issuing notices to the opposition leaders for small lapses and taking no action on grave violations by the leaders of the BJP. This effectively means that elections in India are also compromised.

As BJP’s inciting campaign continues, Muslims are being advised by their well-wishers not to react as it will make Hindus gravitate towards the BJP. Muslims are keeping quiet, but so are the ECI and the courts. In this deafening silence, we are mourning the death of democracy in India.
India looks beyond Russia for defense imports (Politico – opinion)
Politico [4/24/2024 10:35 PM, Anchal Vohra, 375K, Neutral]
The war in Ukraine has exposed the fabled prowess of Russian weaponry as a myth and scared off its leading overseas client.

India — the world’s biggest arms importer — is drastically reducing dependence on Russian weapons, and is unlikely to make any new purchases from Russia. Earmarking $100 billion for future procurement, this now leaves a potential opening for Western arms manufacturers.

Over the last two decades, India spent $60 billion on weapons from Russia, but according to the latest report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the imports have been steadily declining, going from 76 percent in 2009–2013 to just 36 percent in the last five years — the first five-year period since the 1960s in which Russian defense exports “made up less than half of India’s arms imports.”

And according to Indian defense experts, the Ukraine war is set to accelerate the drop.

Leading Indian defense insiders POLITICO spoke to noted that while spares for in-service equipment will continue to be purchased from Moscow, Russia is no longer being considered for any large future buys. Nandan Unnikrishnan of the Observer Research Foundation think tank ruled out any “big ticket purchases’’ from Russia, while Amit Cowshish, a former adviser to India’s defense ministry, said Moscow was no longer “in a position’’ to meet India’s requirements.

This means Western countries and companies that show the willingness to agree to some technology transfers and to co-produce with Indian outfits stand to benefit.

Russia’s preoccupation with Ukraine, Western sanctions, India’s concern over the quality of Russia’s equipment, as well as wanting to develop an indigenous defense industry have all played a role in this shift. Another big motivation has been India’s desire to stay in America’s good books.

“India doesn’t wish to cross any redlines the West may have — particularly the U.S.,’’ Unnikrishnan remarked.

“Russia doesn’t have any illusions’’ regarding its capacity to export to India either, Cowshish said, since its domestic defense needs have now multiplied. For example, the Indo-Russian Rifles Private Limited — a factory established in 2019 to co-produce more than 600,000 assault rifles for the Indian armed forces — is reportedly still waiting for the delivery of tranches of Russian Kalashnikovs.

And according to Rahul Bedi, a senior defense journalist in New Delhi, this is just one of the many items Russia has failed to ship. “No one publicly speaks about this because it’s so sensitive,’’ he said.

“Russia was supposed to deliver five S-400 air defense systems — two are still remaining and no progress has been made. Then, we wanted to lease a Russian nuclear submarine and that was slated to be here by 2025. Now, I’m given to understand that the lease could have been scrapped. In addition, [there were] four frigates — two Russian and the other two were to be jointly produced in Goa — nothing has happened on that front either,’’ Bedi said. “It’s a huge mess.’’

Of course, some of that equipment hasn’t arrived because Russia’s busy manufacturing arms for its own troops and doesn’t have the bandwidth to export. Still, some other items are stuck because India doesn’t want to breach Western sanctions on Russia.

Moreover, even before the war, India had found the quality of some Russian imports — such as MiG-29K fighter jets — to be substandard, and the performance of Russian equipment on the Ukrainian battlefield has also come as a shock.

According to Swasti Rao of the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, India has been looking on with surprise at the performance of some of the Russian kit.

“How come the Patriots took down the Kinzhal missiles that were touted as invincible? How come Russian ships are becoming such easy targets from a country that doesn’t have a navy? Its spy planes such as A-50s, and fighter jets such as Sukhois have been downed so effectively,” Rao told POLITICO.

India’s air force has been long dominated by Russian jets, but as the country now plans to revamp and procure over a 100 new multirole fighter aircraft, it isn’t even considering a Russian bid. Meanwhile, defense ties with the U.S. are strengthening — even if both sides are still grappling with deep-rooted mistrust.

For example, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the White House last year, U.S. President Joe Biden signed off on an agreement allowing General Electric to transfer engine technology to India to power its new stream of fighter jets.

And yet, given the long-standing mistrust between Washington and New Delhi, due to the U.S.’s defense sales in the past to Pakistan and its reluctance to share defense technology with India, France is emerging as India’s new favorite. New Delhi is still doubtful the U.S. will even share the engine technology it promised. Meanwhile, the U.S. still worries about the risk of critical technology ending up in Russia’s hands via India.

France, on the other hand, is seen as keener to co-produce and easier to work with, and isn’t plagued by a cumbersome legislative process to sell weapons and transfer technology either. And with India’s recent purchase of 26 Rafale fighter jets, France has already become the second biggest exporter in the country.

“France is the new Russia, and much more than that,’’ Rao said. Additionally, according to defense experts, India also plans to grow defense trade with Israel and South Korea, and is considering German and Spanish companies for a new submarine.

Despite all this, India will still nurture its relations with Russia, even amid the decline in defense imports. China and Russia’s ever-warming relations worry India, and it will want to keep Moscow as a friend. And with nearly 65 percent of Indian hardware — helicopters, tanks and fighter jets included — originally sourced from Russia, the country can’t wean itself off all imports overnight.

Still, from nearly single-handedly arming India’s defense forces in the 1960s, Russia has now been demoted to being just one of many defense partners — an unexpected loss for Russia’s military-industrial complex, primarily due to President Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion.
The ‘Modi-fication’ of India Is Still Thrilling Markets (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [4/24/2024 4:00 PM, Andy Mukherjee, 5543K, Positive]
In late 2013, when Goldman Sachs Group Inc. turned optimistic on India after a sharp slowdown in growth, the bank titled its report as, “Modi-fying Our View.” The reference was to Narendra Modi, by then the market’s favorite to become prime minister. As if to prove that investors were right to back him as an agent of change, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party peppered its 2014 poll manifesto with 22 references to “reform.”

Ten years later, very little remains of that zeal. The BJP’s 2024 manifesto still promises to “reform, perform, transform.” But the few specifics it offers on the economy are modest — such as automatic approvals for standard housing designs. Gone are the days when Modi pledged to change everything from inefficient markets in labor and farm produce to entire sectors like banking.

And yet, the appetite for a third term for the Indian leader is very high in the global financial industry. “Modi has done an unbelievable job in India,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said Tuesday at the Economic Club of New York. Both Goldman and JPMorgan are predicting a deluge of overseas capital after general elections are over on June 4. (The BJP is favorite to win the contest.)

Still, this is the start of a new compact between markets and Modi, one in which investors are betting on what he won’t do, rather than what he will.

The first belief is that while Modi 3.0 may take a more authoritarian turn, the Indian leader won’t follow the lead of China’s President Xi Jinping. The stock market will still have to read the tea leaves to figure out which business group is likely to be blessed with juicy contracts and favorable policy, but there is little risk of New Delhi turning the screws on the private sector. In other words, no nasty surprises like Beijing’s crackdown on its technology industry.

And that should be good enough for investors. After all, China hasn’t made them money in three years. India — and Modi — have.

The second understanding is that the Indian strongman will not be like the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been forced to give up his push for ultra-low interest rates, but not before his unorthodox policies sparked an inflation crisis. Even during the pandemic, New Delhi stuck to a fairly conservative fiscal stance whose only pro-poor flourish was free food rations. And it did that in the face of an anemic job market that’s still plagued by low-quality work. Young graduates are nine times more likely to to be unemployed than those who can’t read or write.

Yet, Modi is not inclined to take the opposition parties’ bait on expanding the welfare state beyond free food. He would rather face the country’s disillusioned youth than annoy bond vigilantes. Speaking in an election rally this week, Modi said that the Congress Party would “calculate the gold with mothers and sisters,” and redistribute it among Muslims and “infiltrators.” It doesn’t matter that the opposition group has said nothing of that sort. What markets heard is this: The Indian prime minister is so successful at polarizing the majority Hindu vote by playing on its fears, he doesn’t have to pursue profligate — or even populist — fiscal policies to remain popular in the country’s poor, overpopulated north.

It’s reassuring to fixed-income investors who will be raising their paltry exposure to India’s $1.2 trillion public debt as it enters JPMorgan’s global indexes from June. The emergence of a new set of buyers will allow local banks, currently the largest holders of government securities, to offload some of their exposure and put the liquidity at work where there’s greater risk and higher returns.

And that brings us to what Modi will actually do if he does emerge victorious with a sizable majority: a lot of investment, with the help of discretionary incentives and protective trade barriers.

There’s no dearth of balance sheets to execute the prime minister’s vision of Indian growth with Chinese characteristics. Gautam Adani, the tycoon close to Modi, is ready to do everything: ports, airports, electricity, gas, roads, slum redevelopment, metals, drones, ammunition and missiles. And he isn’t alone. The Tata Group wants to be big in everything from aviation to semiconductors, while Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. wants to own 1.4 billion Indians’ digital lives and retail spending. JSW Steel Ltd.’s Sajjan Jindal sees opportunity in electric cars, even as the government lays out the red carpet for Tesla Inc. They are the Big Four in the national team to watch.

There is a good reason why the agenda is no longer about reform. After all, Modi tried in his first term to make it easier for investment projects to acquire land. That effort failed. Then the prime minister attempted to rewire the agricultural markets. He was beaten again, not by political opposition, but by grain farmers in the north. The bankruptcy reforms of 2016 have been hijacked by vested interests.

The BJP government passed new labor laws in 2020, codifying 29 separate legislations into four. Four years later, they’re still being promised as an impending reform when they have little to offer, especially on social security. Healthcare, too, remains underfunded, despite an estimated death toll of nearly 5 million during Covid-19. In a country where 90% of the population doesn’t even earn the average income of $2,800 a year, people can’t afford steep out-of-pocket medical expenses. They would rather the government collected taxes and provided universal healthcare free of cost.

India is struggling to afford even the soap and detergent that Unilever Plc has been selling them since 1888. Mass consumption is stressed, especially in rural areas; shrinkflation is back. Purchasing power is limited to a tiny affluent class. But markets have nothing to worry because despite extreme inequality, the society is broadly peaceful, and the economy is getting “Modi-fied.”
NSB
Searing heat shuts schools for 33 million children (BBC)
BBC [4/25/2024 1:31 AM, Kelly Ng, 14.2M, Negative]
Searing heat has forced 33 million children out of schools in Bangladesh, as temperatures in parts of the country soared to above 42°C (108 F).

Schools and colleges will be shut for at least until 27 April. This is the second year in a row that authorities had to take such a move due to extreme weather.

It follows school closures in the Philippines and India as a persistent heatwave sweeps across Asia.

“Children in Bangladesh are among the poorest in the world, and heat-related school closures should ring alarm bells for us all," said Shumon Sengupta, Save the Children’s Bangladesh director.

Low-lying Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 30- to 45-cm rise in sea level could displace more than 35 million people from coastal districts - about a quarter of the country’s total population.

On Wednesday, thousands of Muslims in the country gathered in mosques and rural fields to pray for rain.

"Life has become unbearable due to lack of rains... Poor people are suffering immensely," Islamic cleric Muhammad Abu Yusuf told AFP news agency.

Mr Yusuf led a morning prayer service for 1,000 in the central portion of the capital Dhaka on Wednesday.

Bangladesh’s weather authorities expect the extreme heat to continue for at least another week.

Hospitals and clinics have been asked to prepare for a higher patient load due to heat-related illnesses such as fever and headache.

Patients suffering from heatstroke will be admitted in air-conditioned wards, Health Minister Samanta Lal Sen said earlier this week.

"Leaders need to act now to urgently reduce warming temperatures, as well as factoring children – particularly those affected by poverty, inequality and discrimination - into decision making and climate finance,” Mr Sengupta said.

Unicef has also warned of the "grave risks" that such high temperatures pose to young children, particularly newborns and infants.
‘Absolute power’: After pro-China Maldives leader’s big win, what’s next? (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [4/24/2024 4:14 PM, Zaheena Rasheed, 2.1M, Neutral]
Very few expected Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s party to win Sunday’s parliamentary elections, that too by a landslide. For this was a man whose triumph in the presidential poll last year came by a fluke.

Back then, the 45-year-old mayor of the capital Male entered the presidential race only at the eleventh hour as a proxy candidate, after the country’s Supreme Court barred the leader of the opposition, former President Abdulla Yameen, from contesting the vote over a bribery conviction.

On campaign banners and posters, it was Yameen’s face that featured most prominently. And at campaign rallies, the seat at the front and centre stood empty, reserved for the jailed leader.

Muizzu wooed voters on promises to free Yameen and see through the politician’s “India out” campaign to end what they called New Delhi’s outsized influence in Maldives – an archipelago home to 500,000 people in the Indian Ocean – and expel Indian military personnel stationed there.

But soon after his election win in October, Muizzu and Yameen – who was moved to house arrest – fell out, prompting the president-elect to set up a separate party, the People’s National Congress (PNC). Amid the bitter split, it looked as if Muizzu would face an uphill battle to obtain enough support in Sunday’s parliamentary polls, especially as the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) – which controls a supermajority in the outgoing parliament or Majlis – still appeared strong.

But Muizzu’s PNC swept the vote last weekend.

The party won 66 seats, while its allies took nine, giving the president the backing of 75 legislators in the 93-member house – enough to change the constitution if he wishes to. The MDP meanwhile won only 12 seats. And Yameen’s party won none.

Muizzu now has “absolute power”, said Ibrahim Ismail, a former legislator and founder of the Mandhu College in Male. “This level of majority is not a good thing. You can expect no checks or balances on the president’s power.”

Ismail, who played a key role in drafting the constitution of Maldives, said he feared a return to “tyranny”, nearly two decades after Maldivians ushered in a multiparty democracy. “The PNC is really not a proper political party. It is not coming from the ground up,” he said. “It was formed during Muizzu’s rise to power and there is no one, no structures in the party to hold him to account. Basically, every member who has been elected to parliament on the PNC ticket is at the mercy of the president.”

This win also gives the president “almost total power over the judiciary”, Ismail said. “It is likely that there will be changes to the courts, quite possibly the replacement of the entire bench of the Supreme Court. And if the judges want to retain their position, they may be forced to compromise their judicial independence, paving the way for tyranny,” he said.

Equally concerning, Ismail said, is that the government “can virtually rewrite the constitution”, potentially weakening provisions ensuring fair elections and imposing term limits on elected officials.

India ties at all-time low

The signs are already worrying.

Although Muizzu promised not to go after his opponents during the presidential campaign, one of the first actions his government carried out in power was to cut off online access to several critical news and satire websites.

The government did backtrack after a public outcry, however.

“I foresee serious challenges for Maldives’s democracy,” said Ahmed “Hiriga” Zahir, managing editor of the Dhauru newspaper. “There are concerns over transparency. The Muizzu government has failed to disclose expenses on the presidential palace as well as the number of political appointments it has made,” the veteran journalist said. “And there has been virtually no interaction between the government and the media six months into his term. If this goes on, and if there is no sizeable opposition, it will be tough for our democracy.”

Still, Zahir said, the Maldivian public was likely to turn on Muizzu in the next election if he fails to deliver on campaign pledges.

The president – a civil engineer by profession – campaigned on promises to boost infrastructure development, of which the most spectacular was establishing a brand new population centre on an island reclaimed from the sea connected to the capital by an underwater tunnel.

It is unclear, however, if he can deliver on these megaprojects.

The tourism-dependent island nation’s debt stands at about 113 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), more than half of it owed to China and India, amounting to about $1.6bn each. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in February warned that the country was at risk of high debt distress and called for “urgent policy adjustments”, including reforms to healthcare and subsidy programmes as well as bloated state-owned enterprises.

“The situation is pretty challenging,” said Mark Bohlund, senior analyst at REDD, a London-based financial intelligence provider. “I think the Maldives will need external support in some form. Whether it be from India, China or the Middle East.”

But so far, very little help has been forthcoming.

Ties with India – which often steps in to bail out Maldives, including during the COVID-19 pandemic – are at an all-time low, due to Muizzu’s efforts to expel the 75 Indian military personnel stationed in the country. The troops operate two India-donated Dornier aircraft that assist in medical evacuations and rescue operations. New Delhi has agreed to replace them with civilians and the last batch are to leave Maldives by May 10.

Relations came under further strain when three of Muizzu’s deputy ministers made derogatory comments about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January, branding him a “clown” for launching a campaign to boost tourism on India’s Lakhswadeep islands, located north of the Maldivian archipelago.

The row resulted in Indian social media activists calling for a boycott of Maldives tourism. Arrivals from India – which was the largest source of tourists last year – have since plummeted.

‘A lot of leverage’ for China

Muizzu has had little help from partners in the Middle East too.

He was scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia soon after his inauguration in November, but the visit was abruptly called off without explanation. The president did visit Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, but there have been no public offers of financial aid.

China, too, so far has appeared reluctant.

Despite Muizzu making a visit in January to Beijing, where Chinese President Xi Jinping called him an “old friend”, it is not clear what help, if any, was offered. Maldivian media reported that China agreed to provide grant assistance to Maldives — although the amount was not disclosed — and said it would consider restructuring debt repayments, a large chunk of which is due in 2026.

According to REDD, however, the restructuring of Chinese debt alone is unlikely to be sufficient for Maldives to avoid increased external debt distress because of an Islamic bond worth $500m that is also reaching maturity in 2026.

A former senior government official, who spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity, said China may now be more amenable given Muizzu’s landslide win. “China has a lot of leverage,” the ex-official said, and will likely seek favours in return, including the ratification of a Free Trade Agreement that has languished since 2014 and access to key east-west trade routes that Maldives straddles. Indian and Western diplomats have previously expressed worries this access may pave the way for China to secure an outpost in the Indian Ocean.

David Brewster, senior research fellow at the National Security College in Australia, was sceptical that Maldives would allow a Chinese military presence, even if it meant the alleviation of its financial woes.

“Certainly China will have a lot of leverage, but I would be very surprised if there is any military presence. Because the consequences of that in terms of Maldives’s relations with India and other countries will be so severe,” he said, noting that Maldives now also has “very large debt to India”.

Taking the example of neighbouring Sri Lanka, another nation highly indebted to China and which suffered a financial crisis in 2022, Brewster wondered just how much help Beijing may offer.

“In Sri Lanka, China was not particularly helpful in terms of renegotiating debt and alleviating their debt. So we don’t know what Beijing will do in the Maldives,” he said. “In Sri Lanka, it was India that came in with the large loan and really helped the country get through the crisis, while all international debts were rescheduled. And it was only after that China grudgingly agreed to a debt deal itself,” he said.

Maldives, he said, most likely will need to go to the IMF very soon.

“It’d be interesting to see how that plays out, whether China will be interested in playing a constructive role or not,” he added.
Nepal’s president asks visiting Qatari emir to help free student held hostage by Hamas (AP)
AP [4/24/2024 6:14 AM, Binaj Gurubacharya, 22K, Negative]
Nepal’s president asked the emir of Qatar, who is on a two-day visit to the South Asian country, to help release a Nepali student held hostage by Palestinian militant group Hamas, officials said on Wednesday.

President Ram Chandra Poudel met with Sheik Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani at the president’s house in the capital, Kathmandu.

Al Thani said he would do everything possible to help release Bipin Joshi, the Nepali president’s press advisor, Kiran Pokharel, told The Associated Press.

Joshi was among 17 Nepali students studying agriculture in Alumim kibbutz, near the Gaza Strip, when Hamas attacked Southern Israel on Oct.7. Ten of the students were killed, six injured while Joshi was abducted and taken to Gaza.

Though there has been no information on his condition or whereabouts, Nepali officials said they believed he was still alive.

Hamas’ sudden attack on Israel in October killed 1,200 people and some 250 others hostage were taken hostage. This has sparked a war that has so far killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, at least two-thirds of them women and children, according to the local health ministry.

Qatar has played a key intermediary role throughout the war in Gaza. Along with the U.S. and Egypt, the Gulf State was instrumental in helping negotiate a brief halt to the fighting in November that led to the release of dozens of hostages.

Pokharel also said the emir discussed the conditions of an estimated 400,000 Nepali migrant workers residing in Qatar, who mostly work in construction and manual labor. Concerns about working in extreme heat — that could reach over 40 C (104 F) — inadequate living facilities and abuse have risen in recent years.

Human Rights Watch released a statement on Sunday, asking that labor protection for migrant workers be prioritized during the emir’s visit.

The emir said there were programs planned to help Nepali workers find employment in other sectors, Pokharel said.

Al Thani also said his country planned to cooperate with Nepal on building hydropower plants, food production, and in the agriculture and tourism sectors.

The emir’s stop in Katamdnu is his last after visiting Bangladesh and the Philippines. He flies home later on Wednesday.
Sri Lanka’s Debt Restructuring Talks With Private Bondholders Hit a Snag (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [4/24/2024 2:10 AM, Rathindra Kuruwita, 201K, Neutral]
On April 16, the Sri Lankan government announced that the country’s debt restructuring process with private bondholders had hit a roadblock. The Ministry of Finance said in a press release that despite “constructive discussions” with some of the Steering Committee members of the Ad Hoc Group of Bondholders, which consists of some of the country’s biggest private holders of debt, the two sides could not reach agreement on “restructuring terms.”

The Steering Committee comprises 10 of Sri Lanka’s largest bondholders and the Ad Hoc Group controls “approximately 50 percent of the aggregate outstanding amount of [international sovereign bonds] ISBs.” These bondholders hold about $12 billion of Sri Lanka’s total debt.

On March 11, the Ad Hoc Group, which is advised by White & Case and Rothschild & Co., sent their debt treatment proposal to the government. The government sent its proposals to the group on March 25, which were rejected by the Steering Committee of the Ad Hoc Group when the two sides sat down for discussions on March 27 and 28.

Before the meetings, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted an initial, informal evaluation of the proposals regarding their alignment with Sri Lanka’s IMF-supported program parameters and goals for debt sustainability.

IMF officials determined that the debt treatment scenario outlined in the Sri Lankan government’s proposal was in line with the debt sustainability targets of the IMF-supported program, whereas the scenario outlined in the Ad Hoc Group’s March proposal was not.

In its proposal, the Ad Hoc Group calls on the Sri Lankan government to issue a Macro-Linked Bond (MLB) as a part of new securities that will be offered to those who hold existing bonds. In a press release issued on October 2023, the Group stated that the MLB is designed to be “liquid and index-eligible,” with payouts that “are linked to the evolution of Sri Lanka’s gross domestic product.”

According to the finance ministry, issues relating to MLBs are the main stumbling block in reaching an agreement.

The Ad Hoc Group proposal recommends a combination of cash and payment-in-kind coupons, with cash coupons starting from 2028 offering interest rates ranging between 8 and 9.5 percent, depending on the maturity.

The Ad Hoc group believes that Sri Lanka and the IMF have underestimated the country’s GDP growth. In 2022, the GDP of Sri Lanka was $74.85 billion. In 2023, the GDP declined by 2.3 percent. However, the country’s GDP is to grow by 2.2 percent and 2.5 percent in 2024 and 2025, respectively. The bondholders propose that Sri Lanka’s GDP would grow at a higher rate and thus, the country can pay higher interest rates for the new series of bonds it will issue when restructuring privately owned debt.

However, critics of the government’s restructuring efforts claim there are only minute differences between the proposals of the Ad Hoc Group and the government. Critics argue that the alleged impasse between the two sides is only an attempt by the government to convince Sri Lankans, in an election year, that it is trying its best to get a good deal from the private creditors.

Economic analyst Dhanusha Gihan Pathirana told The Diplomat that ideally, when restructuring debt, efforts should be made to reduce the interest rates paid to creditors. However, the suggested interest rates, by both parties, hover around 9 percent, which is significantly higher than the average commercial loan rates of 5 to 6 percent. He said that the proposed terms stipulate that Sri Lanka must pay an interest rate of 9.75 percent starting in 2028, contingent upon the country’s cumulative GDP growth surpassing 5.3 percent from 2024 to 2028. This creates a disproportionate scenario where the interest rate far exceeds the anticipated growth rate.

According to economic theory, maintaining a balance between growth rates and interest rates is crucial to avoid exacerbating inequalities. When the profit rate significantly outpaces the growth rate, it leads to substantial disparities. Therefore, the proposals of both the bondholders and the government seem to disregard fundamental economic principles.

“Given that there is virtually no difference between our proposals and the private creditors’ proposals, all these discussions are performative. The current government will likely sign a disastrous agreement with the creditors, leading to trouble in the future,” Pathirana said.
Central Asia
A high-profile murder trial in Kazakhstan boosts awareness of domestic violence (AP)
AP [4/25/2024 12:02 AM, Joanna Kozlowska, 456K, Neutral]
The CCTV footage shown at the domestic abuse trial was disturbing: The defendant is seen dragging his wife by her hair, and then punching and kicking her. Hours after it was recorded, she died of brain trauma.

The trial of businessman Kuandyk Bishimbayev, Kazakhstan’s former economy minister, in the death of his wife, Saltanat Nukenova, has touched a nerve in the Central Asian country. Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for harsher penalties for domestic violence.

On April 11, senators approved a bill toughening spousal abuse laws, and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed it four days later. It’s been dubbed “Saltanat’s Law” in her honor.

Kazakhs are riveted by Bishimbayev’s trial, the first in the country of over 19 million people to be streamed online, and debates about it are dominating social media. Many see it as a moment of truth for Tokayev’s promises of reforms and making officials accountable.

The 44-year-old Bishimbayev, once seen as a fresh, Western-educated face of Kazakhstan’s government under former leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, was jailed for bribery in 2018 before being pardoned less than two years into his 10-year sentence.

Nukenova, 31, was found dead in November in a restaurant owned by one of her husband’s relatives. Bishimbayev, who was charged with torturing and killing her, for weeks maintained his innocence but admitted Wednesday in court that he had beaten her and “unintentionally” caused her death.

His lawyers initially disputed medical evidence indicating Nukenova died from repeated blows to the head. They also portrayed her as prone to jealousy and violence, although no video from the restaurant’s security cameras that was played in court has shown her attacking Bishimbayev.

Aitbek Amangeldy, Nukenova’s elder brother and a key prosecution witness, told The Associated Press that he had no doubt his sister’s tragic fate has shifted attitudes about domestic violence.

“It changes people’s minds when they see directly what it looks like when a person is tortured,” Amangeldy said in a video interview, citing the harrowing video played in court.

“Of course, it’s difficult for me to be in court, to listen to various things that the defendant’s side has been saying,” he said. “It’s even more painful to know that (their) words are being broadcast across the country. But I understand that these broadcasts are also educational material, including for lawyers and human rights defenders.”

Like neighboring Russia, Kazakhstan largely remains a patriarchal society, and progress has been slow on issues such as domestic violence, sexual harassment, and disparities in employment.

According to a 2018 study backed by UN Women, the United Nations’ gender equality agency, about 400 women die from domestic violence each year in Kazakhstan, although many abuse cases go unreported.

In 2017, Kazakhstan decriminalized beatings and other acts causing “minor” physical damage, making them punishable only by fines or short jail terms. Russia enacted a similar law that year, outraging women’s rights advocates. Kazakhstan’s new law reverses this, increasing penalties for assailants and introducing new criminal offenses, including harassment of minors.

Days after Nukenova’s death, her relatives launched an online petition urging authorities to pass “Saltanat’s Law” to bolster protection for those at risk of domestic violence. It quickly got over 150,000 signatures.

As Bishimbayev’s trial began, more than 5,000 Kazakhs wrote senators urging tougher laws on abuse, Kazakh media said.

Still, Amangeldy said the law’s final version failed to include all the provisions his family and allies had wanted, noting that “we still have no legal norms around stalking and harassment” of adults.

Viktoriya Kim, a Kazakhstan-based researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the very notion of “domestic violence” is absent from the country’s criminal code. Including it, she said, would send “a clearer signal.”

But Amangeldy argues that Kazakh society has clearly “passed a point of no return.”

“For years, across Kazakhstan and the whole region, the issue (of domestic violence) was shrouded in silence. Raising the issue is already half the solution,” he said.

Women’s rights advocate Aigerim Kussainkyzy said Bishimbayev’s trial has led to “a collective awakening” among politicians and ordinary citizens.

“Some may even label it the trial of the century. ... Male politicians, in particular, have started to consider the implications of domestic violence for their own daughters,” said Kussainkyzy, who was among civil society representatives that lawmakers consulted before passing the bill.

The proposals encountered fierce pushback from the Kazakh Union of Parents — an influential association that echoes Russia’s opposition to feminist initiatives and LGBTQ+ rights. On the day Tokayev signed the domestic violence law, the organization gave its “Mother of the Year” award to Bishimbayev’s mother, Almira Nurlybekova, in recognition of her “courage ... supporting her son through court proceedings and fighting for his rights.”

Tokayev has talked repeatedly about strengthening protections for women. In January, he intervened after the Justice Ministry refused to consider the petition by Nukenova’s family.

Despite the inclusion of activists in the legislative process, some Kazakh rights defenders argue the law’s passage has been accompanied by continuing pressure on those advocates, independent of the government.

Last month, authorities in Almaty — Kazakhstan’s largest city and business hub — blocked a rally for International Women’s Day to show solidarity with victims of domestic abuse. Feminita, the feminist and LGBTQ+ rights group that tried to organize it, has struggled for years for official registration.

In December, Kazakhstan put women’s rights activist Dina Smailova on its wanted list after authorities launched a criminal fraud investigation that she described as likely retribution for her work.

Smailova, head of the NeMolchi.KZ foundation, which means “Don’t Be Silent” and advocates for abuse survivors, told AP that she and her organization were unable to join discussions on the new law.

“I’ve lost faith in the authorities, because even as they pass a law protecting women and children from violence, they pass harsher laws against independent journalists and bloggers,” Smailova said in an interview from Montenegro, where she lives.

She welcomed the bill “as a first step,” but said it can only be adequately implemented after tackling “corruption and nepotism” within law enforcement and the courts, citing the fraud case against her.

“Kazakhstan is a country where everyone has a lot of relatives … and if there’s a case concerning a relative of someone in law enforcement, then that person will certainly evade responsibility,” she said, adding that education and media campaigns are needed to change attitudes.

Senate Speaker Maulen Ashimbayev said that properly implementing the law will require “a great deal of work,” including educational campaigns in schools and the media, as well as vigilance from civil society groups.

HRW’s Kim told AP the investigation of Smailova, who has repeatedly criticized officials’ failure to protect abused women and children, was marred by “numerous procedural infractions,” raising “serious concerns that she is being persecuted.”

“I would like to see more willingness from authorities to help and support those who fight for and promote women’s rights,” the researcher said, noting concerns about Kazakhstan’s global reputation played a role in its willingness to act on domestic violence.

“International organizations have called for this particular step for years. That’s something the authorities were ready to do to meet rights defenders halfway,” she said.

Meanwhile, Bishimbayev’s trial continues to spark controversy. Police are investigating telephone threats reported by Judge Ayzhan Kulbayeva after she disallowed forensic evidence from defense lawyers alleging Nukenova’s death could have been caused by a preexisting condition.

As closing arguments approach, debate rages in Kazakhstan over its justice system and women’s rights, with many believing the trial already has changed the country forever.
Kazakh Foreign Minister, U.K. Foreign Secretary Hold Talks In Astana (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [4/24/2024 2:49 PM, Staff, 223K, Positive]
Kazakh Foreign Minister Murat Nurtileu and visiting British Foreign Secretary David Cameron held talks on April 24 in Astana, focusing on bilateral ties, regional security, cooperation, and the ongoing war in Ukraine, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said. Nurtileu said his country supports a “peaceful solution to the conflict in Ukraine.” An agreement on strategic partnership and cooperation between the two nations was signed during the talks. Earlier this week, Cameron also held talks with top officials in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. He is also scheduled to visit Mongolia during his ongoing diplomatic tour.
Arson Attacks Reported In Kazakh Town After Alleged Rape Of Teen Girl (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [4/24/2024 12:24 PM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
Law enforcement beefed up security measures in Kazakhstan’s southern town of Zaghambar on April 24 amid a series of crimes feared to be part of ethnic violence. Local police say a teenage boy suspected of sexually assaulting a teenage girl was detained. Media reports say police also launched a probe into arson attacks on two private cars and several households belonging to the suspects’ relatives. The town has been cordoned by police and access to the Internet was blocked in the area. Some 4,000 of the 5,400 residents of Zaghambar are ethnic Uzbeks. Similar situations in the past have caused ethnic conflicts in the Central Asian nation.
Relatives Demand Open Trial For Kyrgyz Group That Protested Border Deal (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [4/24/2024 6:43 AM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
Dozens of relatives of 27 members of a Kyrgyz group that is on trial for protesting a border deal rallied in Bishkek on April 24, demanding the trial be open and nine defendants held in pretrial detention be released. The defendants were arrested in 2022 and charged with organizing mass disorders and plotting to seize power after they protested the deal that saw Kyrgyzstan hand over the territory of the Kempir-Abad reservoir to Uzbekistan. The trial is being held behind closed doors as materials of the case were tagged as classified.
8 Members Of Tajik Opposition Group Detained In Italy (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [4/24/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Negative]
Activists from the Tajik opposition movement Group 24 said on April 24 that police in Italy detained the movement’s eight members a day earlier. According to the Group 24, Tajik opposition activists from the EU countries gathered in Rome to take part in a rally challenging policies of the Tajik President Emomali Rahmon during his ongoing official visit to Italy. Rahmon has been criticized by international human rights groups for years over his disregard for independent media, religious freedoms, civil society, and political pluralism. In March 2015, Group 24’s founder, Umarali Quvatov, was assassinated in Istanbul, Turkey.
Indo-Pacific
Rising Threat At The Water’s Edge: Along the mighty Bay of Bengal, forces unleashed by climate change overwhelming lives and livelihoods (Washington Post)
Washington Post [4/24/2024 9:00 PM, Michael Robinson Chavez and Karishma Mehrotra, 6.9M, Negative]
Along the Bay of Bengal, where nearly 1.4 billion people live, water has become perilously unpredictable. On the coast of India’s Odisha state, repeated floods swallow villages. In Sri Lanka, a scarcity of water is carving cracks where ponds once formed and drying out paddy fields. In the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans forest that straddles the border between India and Bangladesh, rising seas and cyclones are driving people inland, to congested cities like Kolkata for work.

Climate change is warming waters, shifting ocean patterns and transforming the region’s yearly monsoon from a reliable lifeline into a menace.

The water in the bay is rising faster than in other major bodies of water. The challenges confronting nations adjacent to it, densely populated along their coasts, probably foreshadow the struggles ahead elsewhere on Earth.

To explore these consequences, photographer Michael Robinson Chávez and reporter Karishma Mehrotra journeyed along the bay, documenting the myriad effects wrought on Indian and Sri Lankan communities by climate change.

In the Indian state of Odisha, they found that coastal communities that had relied for generations on fishing were being forced to rethink their livelihoods and look for new ways to eke out an existence. In the Indian megatropolis of Kolkata, climate refugees from coastal and island villages have crowded into teeming slums, desperate to find work as laborers. And in Sri Lanka’s Trincomalee district, the journalists discovered that climate change has confounded the monsoons, producing droughts that have ravaged rice paddies and drained reservoirs.

CHAPTER 1
ODISHA, INDIA

The fishermen and their families in the coastal village of Ramayapatnam can say few words in English. But almost everyone here uses the phrase “climate change” in describing the changes they’re seeing. The villagers used to see 450 varieties of fish in their corner of the Bay of Bengal. After four severe cyclones over the past two decades, damaging the coral reefs and other habitats, they say they now see only 10 varieties, and their catch is dwindling.

Tidal surges have swallowed almost a thousand feet of their village: First, the beach road five years ago succumbed to erosion and then a row of homes four years ago. The remaining roadway ends abruptly at the crest of steep cliffs.

Along a coastline piled with crumbled concrete and brick walls, wildlife is replacing human settlement. Dogs, roosters and pigeons nibble at discarded plastic bags. Men point in the distance to show where the sea used to stop. “Another two full moons, and this corner we are standing on will disappear too,” they say.

Nonetheless, they pray twice a year to the sea, sacrificing goats and sheep.

Hundreds of villagers, the vast majority, have migrated often to other coastlines, where they feel most at home, resettling in the city of Chennai to make nets or the state of Goa to make alcohol. More often than not, they head to the seaport of Paradeep to engage in large-scale commercial fishing. Two hundred miles away, the gloomy gray-green water is barely visible behind hundreds of rusting fishing boats, moored side by side, as crows hover above.

Some fishermen from Ramayapatnam blamed Paradeep for reducing fish populations. But the port feels the effect, too.

An auctioneer at the Paradeep fish market with little to sell on a recent day shouted over the cacophony of an aggressive and tense fight about the scant supply. Only one boat had caught enough to sell.

“This is what happens when the fish don’t come,” he said.

Past the rubble of a godown storage shed and damaged nets strewn along the shore, R. Gudduamma sets up for the day’s fish market. Most of the members of her household have gone to Goa, where they spend long seasons working and saving just to repay the loans taken out to meet daily needs. She sits among other female fish sellers, whose husbands have all migrated for work, often commercial fishing, and have left the traditional fishing to them. They can feel the changes wrought by climate change.

“The sea has become violent,” said Pokallu Gangamaa.

A development of new homes built by the government for those displaced from their homes is too far from the water for the Ramayapatnam fishermen. They need to be able to watch for birds circling over the sea and silent waves on the horizon before deciding when to venture out to fish. And for those who would be willing to move to the development, many lack the documents to stake a claim to the transfer.

Only six homes out of hundreds in the dreary colony were occupied. A small church was silent and desolate. A few kids on roller skates whisked by.

Just north along the coast, another village called Podompetta has only two families left. The rest have abandoned their homes.

Purohit was one of the first to leave. He climbs up an embankment where his home once stood, heading to his new neighborhood and the nearby liquor shop. Every evening, two swigs of local liquor made of the mohua flower help him forget what happened, he said.

“It wasn’t the height. It was the speed of the wave,” said C.H. Pratima, one of the remaining few, standing in sand where three roads once ran before they were swept away. She looked toward a horizon of heavy clouds and said: “We knew it might happen. But we didn’t know it would happen so soon.”

Nearby, rice fields were submerged in water. Overgrown shrubs have engulfed the abandoned homes. Their paint has chipped away, leaving only the outlines of colorful paintings of gods. Bedroom doors have collapsed, allowing pigeons to fly straight through the rubble of the homes, out to a view of the sea.

A cyclone shelter at the end of the lane is now occupied by dogs.

Like Purohit, most of the folks of Podompetta bought government land six years ago down a rocky road lined with pine trees past a sprinkling of huts and fish farms. This nearby area has been set aside for those impacted by cyclones. On the nearby shore, Purohit weaves new nets, a skill learned from his father at the age of 15.

“Of course, there is pain,” said Chandragiri Danama, watching another home get built alongside her friend Bunga Kali. “We have no agricultural land. We only have the sea.” Schoolchildren with red ribbons cycle by.

“Fishing here, or fishing there, this is our only life,” said Kalaka Daneya, standing beside her.

CHAPTER 2
KOLKATA, INDIA

At the heart of one of the most threatened regions lies Kolkata, a bustling city of 15 million stretching to accommodate the region’s climate refugees. In its slums are those trying to flee the menacing waters. Creeping sea levels and disastrous cyclones have pushed tens of thousands of migrants out of the islands and into cities like Kolkata, where they often join construction crews and leave their fishing lives behind.

To the city’s south lies the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans. The mangrove roots twist and weave above the swampy surface, much like the intertwined rivers that connect them with the coasts of Bangladesh and India.

The train from the Sundarbans to Kolkata blares its horn near the cramped tailor shop of Swapan Mondol, who was one of the early migrants to flee the forests.

“I am scared of the river water,” said Mondol, who used to fish for shrimp along the shores of the island of Kumirmari in the Sundarbans before moving to the suburb Piyali on the outskirts of Kolkata in 2009. Amid cyclone after cyclone, he had watched the river “push into the island from all sides.” His wife describes it as the river “eating up the island.”

On an overcast day, the couple reminisced about their previous home, a farm that was engulfed by the torrents as they hid behind an embankment. Whatever remained would be ruined by the salt. “Soon, there will be no island,” Mondol said.

The couple now mentor fresh arrivals as they adjust to a new way of life in a neighborhood filled with climate refugees from the Sundarbans, like Anup and Ratna Bhuyan.

The Bhuyans moved next door to the Mondols after Super Cyclone Amphan in 2020 consumed the eastern banks of Gangasagar island. The newcomers hope to one day buy land and return to the village. “It’s like a root. Our birthplace. It’s always on our mind,” said Anup.

CHAPTER 3
TRINCOMALEE, SRI LANKA

A country crushed by economic and political crises, Sri Lanka now also confronts incessant droughts, which have plunged its small-scale farmers into further hardship.

Disappointing monsoons have yellowed paddy fields, charred palm trees, browned water lilies and emptied reservoirs in Trincomalee district. Last year’s drought may have caused the loss of up to 75,000 acres of paddy, according to the country’s agriculture minister, and economic experts now worry that the cash-strapped country may eventually have to rely on food imports.

Weragoda Ralalage Chaminda Rohana points to the depiction on Google Maps of his nearby reservoir, comparing it with the barren land now in front of him. This reservoir water was meant to nourish his six-acre farm, but for the past four years, he suffered losses as the rainfall failed. The breeze whistles against the invasive reeds that have survived the drought, overtaking the paddy.

“Rain is our life,” Rohana said. “It’s not just cultivation. It’s our daily life, our children, our food.”

On a cloudless day, he sat with a group of farmers arguing with the regional water manager and irrigation engineer about allocating water.

“We have no water,” the engineer said, slapping the table, red-eyed. “I can’t do miracles.”

“What happened here?” asks Praba Sudarshani, a schoolteacher married to Rohana. She holds up a drawing by one of the 7-year-olds in her class, who was asked to draw a drought.

“We don’t have water,” the class responds in rough unison.

“So what resulted?” Sweat beams on her upper lip in the heat. She wraps the drape of her sari around her waist.

“The area is burnt.” They call out after each other.

“Animals die.”

“Plants die.”

“The soil breaks.”

“Leaves fall.”

A lake once came close to the back of the school but has shrunk, retreating by 100 feet. Siberian storks used to visit. The teachers tell the children to bring drinking water from their homes; salty water fills the school’s pipes and breaks the filters. The drinking fountain is filled with mud.

Asantha Amal Wickremesinghe’s father used to look up at the moon and, by its phases, select what he believed were the most propitious times to work in the fields. But he can no longer plan this way, because the weather has grown so erratic.

With poorer harvests, he has less feed to provide his eight cows, and he says they give only a third as much milk as before. And in the past, they would usually become pregnant two months after their previous birth. He points to a skinny cow named Lokki, who has gone eight months since her last birth.

“They only mate when they have energy. There is no nutrition in the grass they eat. It is blackened and dry,” Wickremesinghe said, picking his teeth with a toothpick and looking down at the dirt. “I feel most sad that the animals have no food.” His wife next to him holds back her tears.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Massoud Hossaini
@Massoud151
[4/24/2024 10:15 AM, 31.2K followers, 7 retweets, 16 likes]
#TalibanTerrorist fighters in #Khost arrested 3 radio journalists for calling women and asking about their favorite music! #FreedomOfSpeech & media that the western countries were proud as their golden achievements in #Afghanistan is totally eliminated by #terrorist s!

Bilal Sarwary
@bsarwary
[4/24/2024 12:48 PM, 253.3K followers, 13 retweets, 19 likes]
Destructive wave of flash floods, Yaftal, Badakhshan province in North-eastern Afghanistan

Bilal Sarwary
@bsarwary
[4/24/2024 12:24 PM, 253.3K followers, 10 retweets, 36 likes]
Some new reveals about the Abbey Gate’s attack suggest some truths were initially concealed. Sarah Adam @BenghaziAttacks , a former CIA targeter, wrote in her LinkedIn about the Taliban’s involvement in the attack as well. According to her the coverup from the US administration might be a face-saving tactic due to the US so-called peace deal with the Taliban. The attack should be investigated professionally and Afghans should be also included in the process. Afghanistan and the US lost so many innocent lives to the attack. The investigation process should not be politicized at all.: https://cnn.com/2024/04/24/world/new-evidence-challenges-pentagon-account-kabul-airport-attack-intl?cid=ios_app

Lina Rozbih
@LinaRozbih
[4/24/2024 11:07 AM, 409.4K followers, 5 retweets, 14 likes]
The Taliban government has entered its first talks with the United Nations, donors, and non-governmental organisations over the impact of climate change in Afghanistan, organisers said Wednesday. #Taliban

Lina Rozbih
@LinaRozbih
[4/24/2024 11:24 AM, 409.4K followers, 11 likes]
The Taliban’s government has no knowledge and expertise to discuss climate change. The Taliban believe that natural disasters such as flood, earthquake, hurricane, or famine happen when God is mad at you :)
Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[4/24/2024 7:07 AM, 6.7M followers, 237 retweets, 820 likes]
I offered Fateha at Mausoleum of the Father of the Nation, Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah during my visit to Karachi. Every time, I come here it reinvigorates my resolve to carry forward his vision and work towards building a society that upholds the values he cherished.

The President of Pakistan
@PresOfPakistan
[4/24/2024 10:25 AM, 733.8K followers, 43 retweets, 57 likes]
Chairman of China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA), Mr Luo Zhaohui, called on President Asif Ali Zardari.

The President of Pakistan
@PresOfPakistan
[4/24/2024 8:45 AM, 733.8K followers, 59 retweets, 126 likes]
President Asif Ali Zardari has stated that Pakistan and China enjoy long-term strategic relations, which need to be further strengthened in the areas of trade, economy, agriculture, people-to-people contacts, and culture.

The President of Pakistan
@PresOfPakistan
[4/24/2024 8:45 AM, 733.8K followers, 4 retweets, 6 likes]
He underlined the need for both countries to continue to work together to take bilateral relations to new heights. He was talking to the visiting Chairman of China International Development Cooperation Agency, Mr Luo Zhaohui, who called on him, at Aiwan-e-Sadr, today.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan
@ForeignOfficePk
[4/24/2024 10:37 AM, 476.4K followers, 27 retweets, 75 likes]
Assistant Secretary General of the UNDP, Kanni Wignaraja, met with Foreign Minister @MIshaqDar50 today. They discussed UNDP’s work post the 2022 floods in Pakistan, Sustainable Development Goals, and climate change. Foreign Minister Dar expressed Pakistan’s support for UNDP’s work in climate resilience, SDGs, and socio-economic development. He stressed the need for international solidarity in bridging the financing gap for climate initiatives and supporting vulnerable countries. Assistant Secretary General Wignaraja thanked Pakistan for its support and active engagement at the UN.
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[4/24/2024 11:58 PM, 97.4M followers, 10K retweets, 30K likes]
Bhopal and BJP have a special bond, which was clearly seen during yesterday’s roadshow. Here are the highlights. https://twitter.com/i/status/1783344774600081564

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[4/24/2024 9:59 AM, 97.4M followers, 6.7K retweets, 23K likes]
Am told there are discussions on a ‘One Year, One PM’ formula in the highest echelons of the INDI Alliance! https://twitter.com/i/status/1783133722897764716

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[4/24/2024 7:47 AM, 97.4M followers, 7.4K retweets, 50K likes]
My deepest respects and best wishes to Most Revered Swami Gautamanandaji Maharaj on being elected as the President of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. I am sure that he will guide our society to greater wisdom and compassion. The Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission has a very special place in the lives of countless Indians. Their efforts to further popularise the ideals of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Maa Sharada Devi and Swami Vivekananda are noteworthy.

Rajnath Singh
@rajnathsingh
[4/24/2024 10:32 AM, 24.1M followers, 673 retweets, 1.7K likes]
Today’s roadshow at Ankapalli in Andhra Pradesh was massive. The overwhelming support NDA candidates are receiving is extremely encouraging. Developed Andhra Pradesh is important to realise the dream of Developed India.

Sadanand Dhume
@dhume
[4/24/2024 10:53 PM, 171.3K followers, 6 retweets, 10 likes]
Has corruption vanished as an electoral issue in India, or has the media simply stopped talking about it? The BJP and the opposition have very different answers to these questions. [My take] https://www.wsj.com/articles/indian-corruption-forgotten-but-not-gone-modi-bjp-election-dd43f65d?st=zlsmfh0auuhyrk9&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[4/24/2024 11:07 PM, 637.2K followers, 16 retweets, 40 likes]
Hon’ble Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina delivering her speech at the 80th Session of the UN ESCAP

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[4/24/2024 1:45 PM, 5.2K followers, 2 retweets, 2 likes]
The Coalition for Human Rights & Democracy in #Bangladesh (CHRD Bangladesh) takes the opportunity to greatly appreciate the just and objective Country Report on the Human Rights Practices in Bangladesh for the year 2023. As observed by the report, the deplorable human rights situation in the country has not been any different from the previous years since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina started her authoritarian rule in January 2009. Notably, the report cites serious flaws in the electoral system, which had been designed by the regime to stay in power for perpetuity. All the national elections under the regime in 2014, 2018 and 2024 were totally farcical and non-participatory. Even the election in December 2008 was said to have been rigged by vested quarters to install Sheikh Hasina in power.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[4/24/2024 7:57 AM, 53.7K followers, 19 retweets, 31 likes]
SR on Environment David Boyd called on Foreign Minister @MoosaZameer today and reflected on Maldives’ central role in mainstreaming the right to a healthy environment & discussed ongoing sustainability initiatives in waste management, harnessing renewable energy & climate action.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[4/25/2024 2:37 AM, 5.2K followers, 4 retweets, 16 likes]
Was pleased to have the opportunity to bid farewell to HE Ebrahim Raisi, President of #Iran after a successful visit to Sri Lanka. During his time here, President Raisi inaugurated the Uma Oya Hydropower project, a groundbreaking initiative that leverages state-of-the-art technology to significantly reduce electricity costs. As we move forward, we eagerly anticipate collaborating with the global community to achieve greater shared prosperity @IRIMFA_EN @MFA_SriLanka

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[4/24/2024 4:56 AM, 5.2K followers]
Following the inauguration of the Uma Oya multipurpose development project, President Ranil Wickremesinghe expressed gratitude to Iran for their technical support, emphasizing that without Iran’s assistance, Sri Lanka couldn’t have diverted the Uma Oya tributaries into Kirindi Oya. He highlighted the south’s desire to establish its identity & independence, suggesting that southern countries should now strive for their own strength and autonomy -

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[4/24/2024 11:24 AM, 356.8K followers, 1 retweet, 6 likes]
1/ #CoPF took up Excise gazettes today, incl tax hikes on alcohol & tobacco. Stressing the counterproductive nature of tax up due to Laffer curve, it was revealed that Govt revenue has actually declined in the past 2 months compared to last year, fueling smuggling & alternatives.

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[4/24/2024 11:24 AM, 356.8K followers, 1 like]
2/ #CoPF also scrutinized Excise officials’ inaction on tax evasion & fake stickers, while questioning MoF’s justification for increasing taxes on essential goods like milk powder, when there are many other ways to collect required revenue. #TaxPolicy #RevenueImpact #lka
Central Asia
UNODC Central Asia
@UNODC_ROCA
[4/24/2024 7:06 AM, 2.4K followers, 3 retweets, 10 likes]
During visit of @JoghorkuK to Justice House, #UNODC presented the @EUinKyrgyzstan -funded #JUST4ALL project, its plans to strengthen Probation services in Kyrgyzstan, incl. refurbishment of the 3rd floor of the House to open a resource, training & situation center for probation officers.

Asel Doolotkeldieva
@ADoolotkeldieva
[4/25/2024 12:46 AM, 14K followers, 1 retweet, 19 likes]
Swapping of Kyrgyz exclave Barak located in Uzbekistan is a second significant deal after swapping of Kempir-Abad water dam in Kyrgyz-Uzbek rapprochement. Willingness of the two to solve all standing disputes after Karimov’s death is quite remarkable

Asel Doolotkeldieva
@ADoolotkeldieva
[4/25/2024 12:46 AM, 14K followers, 7 likes]
But since these deals take place with no public involvement, the details are not known. The critics of the Dam Deal are still in detention on dubious charges and the court hearings take place non-transparently. This adds bitterness to the otherwise positive border cooperation.

Asel Doolotkeldieva
@ADoolotkeldieva
[4/25/2024 12:26 AM, 14K followers, 4 retweets, 10 likes]
The Tajik oppositional organizing abroad is the most critical and active one among Central Asia. Despite transnational repressions against them & their relatives in TJ, precarity. It’s absolutely horrible that their voices are being even shut in Europe!

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[4/24/2024 10:59 PM, 23K followers, 5 likes]
With colleagues from Kazinform and Kazakhstan TV @StateDept @State_SCA pressers.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[4/24/2024 6:37 PM, 23K followers, 3 retweets, 8 likes]
Despite hopes in Central Asia for greater U.S. role, experts in Washington don’t anticipate heightened interest in Afghanistan https://www.voanews.com/a/no-longer-a-us-priority-is-afghanistan-a-central-asia-problem-now-/7583597.html

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[4/24/2024 12:14 PM, 23K followers, 3 retweets, 5 likes]
According @aamajnews_24, the Taliban Ministry of Higher Education has prohibited the translation of scientific works for academic promotion into Turkish and Uzbek languages. https://aamajnews24.com/taliban-ban-turkishlanguage/

{End of Report}
To subscribe to the SCA Morning Press Clips, please email SCA-PressOfficers@state.gov. Please do not reply directly to this email.