SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Monday, August 26, 2024 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
Three years after Kabul’s fall, veterans still helping allies left behind (Washington Post)
Washington Post [8/25/2024 7:00 AM, Hope Hodge Seck, 54755K, Neutral]
As Sean Halpin gears up every morning for the product marketing management he does from his Midlothian, Va., home, he also starts checking in with the 176 Afghan linguists and family members he tracks via a spreadsheet that he has carefully maintained for nearly three years. He wants to make sure those still awaiting a pathway out of Afghanistan are safe. He tries to boost spirits with his messages, adding funny memes and links to music like the theme song from “Rocky.”When one of these contacts needs money for food or a sudden surgery, Halpin does his best to cover it from his own savings. The former Army intelligence officer estimates that he has spent some $400,000 on such emergencies since the U.S. military’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan in the waning days of August 2021. He even diverted the proceeds from a house sale in Texas, which were supposed to go toward his family’s new home in Virginia, and moved his wife and two children into an apartment. The decision nearly ended his marriage.Helping the allies whom American troops left behind has never felt optional. Not for Halpin, nor for other veterans who continue to stand in the gap at significant personal and financial expense. Dozens of loosely formed volunteer organizations with names like Badger 6 and Heart of an Ace have emerged to coordinate the efforts.What happened to those Afghans, in Halpin’s view, was “a soul-crushing betrayal.”Yet with tens of thousands of people still thought to be at risk because of their past work for the United States, the veterans are taking stock. The nonprofit Operation Recovery this month launched a website, Impacts of War, a first-of-its-kind project that invites veterans to report their contributions of time and money to Afghan rescue and resettlement.Elizabeth Lynn, an Air Force and Navy veteran who directs government relations for that group, says tallying up these donations and sacrifices is not merely about recording history. It’s about making U.S. government leaders understand what the cost of Afghanistan’s aftermath has been.“I don’t think that they saw what the impact of the withdrawal was,” said Lynn, who has repeatedly wired her own money to the interpreter with whom she’d worked most closely during her deployment. “We need to hand it to them in black and white and say, ‘This is what the effect of the withdrawal had on our veterans and our civilians alike that worked there for years. This is the financial toll, in addition to the mental toll, the moral injury.’ That’s not free, because that comes at a cost, and the veterans felt obligated to pay, where the government didn’t.”The State Department estimates that more than 120,000 Afghans have applied for the visas reserved for allies from that country, waiting 18 months on average to be processed.Biden administration officials say their fate has not been forgotten. On Monday, the U.S. and Philippine governments announced an agreement to temporarily relocate Afghan allies to the relative safety of southeast Asia as they await visa adjudication. But given how modest the impact may be — initially affecting only 300 people — the veterans say their mission will continue.Indeed, the vets’ sense of obligation seems to have no expiration date. They describe a complex, enduring guilt over a commitment they feel was broken.“How do I put this thing down?” asks Peter Lucier, a Marine Corps veteran in St. Louis who has contributed to Afghan relocation efforts since the fall of Kabul. “Is there a graceful exit? How does this stop being a part of your life, because it can be so consuming? Or how do you find the balance with it?”Some lawmakers are trying to begin making veterans financially whole from their Afghanistan outlays. The Ensuring Voluntary Actions are Compensated (EVAC) Act, a bill introduced last summer by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), would allow any American “who expended personal funds to evacuate American citizens, lawful permanent residents of the United States, or Afghan allies from Afghanistan” to apply for reimbursement from the U.S. government.The measure, which quickly passed in the House Foreign Affairs Committee but has yet to be brought to the House floor, only covers money spent between August and November 2021. While some veterans are skeptical that it will achieve its goal, Lee considers it a starting point in acknowledging the quiet work so many people have done.Rep. Michael Waltz, a retired Green Beret who served early on in Afghanistan, has for almost two decades personally supported the family of an interpreter who died in his arms. The Florida Republican is perturbed by the costs veterans have borne.“I talked to a gentleman who exhausted both of his children’s 529 [education savings] plans and his entire savings and is now in divorce because of it,” Waltz said at a roundtable before the committee in January. “But he can’t not answer the phone.”In an interview this month, Waltz said he understood the sense of honor and duty that kept veterans footing visa application fees and rents for safe houses, even as donor funding to organizations supporting resettlement programs dried up and the U.S. government itself moved on.Some administration officials, he added, still don’t grasp “the moral injury” that the veterans community suffered because of the military’s calamitous exodus.Dave Hicks is a retired one-star Air Force general and founder of an organization that resettles and trains Afghan pilots after they arrive in this country. He has encountered numerous veterans who burned out emotionally after trying, at times futilely, to save their onetime Afghan partners.The war’s aftermath exacerbated the trauma of combat, Hicks said. “It pulled a lot of those scabs off and reopened wounds.”In Halpin’s last deployment to Afghanistan in 2019, he supervised nearly 200 Afghans as a linguist coordinator. The way he sees it, he was tasked with building friendships with the linguists as part of his military duty — and he represented America’s promise to them of protection and a pathway to the United States following their service.Then came the desperate days as Air Force cargo jets took off from the Kabul airport. He fielded calls and texts from interpreters frantic over being left behind amid death threats from the Taliban.“I felt betrayed,” said Halpin, who the following year resigned his commission in dismay. “The thing that resonated with me was, honor the promise, because there was a promise that was made.”Most days now, he says, he spends hours during work lulls and down time sending messages and trying to troubleshoot issues that arise for his contacts in Afghanistan, from paperwork concerns to emergent medical needs. It’s the same on weekends and holidays, “including Christmas, including New Year’s, including when I’m at Disney World.”Some 28 of the Afghan families on his spreadsheet have made it to the United States, and he’s been gratified to meet them and see them start afresh. Some, however, have been lost. The Taliban’s killing in April 2023 of former special forces commander Akmal Amir, one of the names on his list, was a jarring reminder of the perpetual danger.Other veterans are working with Afghans who weren’t promised a special immigrant visa, typically referenced as SIV — a category created for civilians who assisted the U.S. military yet still are in danger because of their role.Jim Papp, a retired Army helicopter pilot living in Montana, counted 18 names on his list at one point, all Afghan pilots whom he trained in Abu Dhabi as a U.S. government contractor. The foreign stamps in their passports, signifying their American-sponsored flight training, marked them as enemies to the Taliban.This year, 14 of them have arrived in the United States via refugee visas. He hopes the remaining pilots will get approval before the year is out.Papp estimates he’s spent $50,000 on visa fees, living expenses and even a safe house in Islamabad, Pakistan, where several babies have been born. And after three years of representing a tenuous thread of hope for these families — living off his retirement pay so he could send checks from his day job overseas — he looks forward to celebrating with them in person in Fort Worth, where most have opted to settle.“I know these guys personally. They’re good people,” said Papp, who does mountain operations at a resort in Big Sky. “They represent the best that Afghanistan had to offer, educated progressives. When you work with them 18 months, and you know these guys, you’re just trying to make a difference, trying to save some lives.” US still hunts attackers who killed Americans during Afghan exit (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [8/23/2024 2:59 PM, Anthony Capaccio, 1290K, Negative]
Three years after the suicide bomber attack at Afghanistan’s Abbey Gate that killed 13 U.S. service personnel and about 170 Afghan civilians, the network behind the perpetrator is "pretty degraded" but not eliminated, the Pentagon’s civilian commando chief said.
"A lot of allied and partner disruptions" of the ISIS-K network have reduced its "capability to conduct such an attack," Christopher Maier, assistant secretary for special operations and low intensity conflict, said in a brief interview after a breakfast meeting with reporters Friday.
President Joe Biden promised the day of the attack outside Hamid Karzai International Airport that "we will not forgive, we will not forget, we will hunt you down and make you pay." Maier said "we are in the process of doing that," and "we have made significant dents in this network that conducted the Abbey Gate attack."
The attack three years ago next Monday marked a devastating low point in an operation that critics have lambasted as chaotic even as 124,000 Afghans were evacuated amid the U.S. exit from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover of the country.
Republicans have seized on the attack to blast Biden’s foreign policy. During his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July, former President Donald Trump said U.S. standing in the world "began to unravel with the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the worst humiliation in the history of our country."
Trump forged a February 2020 deal with the Taliban, but not the Afghan government, that set an initial timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, which Biden modified. Trump and the Republican Party blame Biden - and now Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee to succeed him - for how the withdrawal was carried out.
During the breakfast with reporters, Maier said "we continue to assess that Abbey Gate" was the work of "more than one individual" who benefited from the ISIS-K infrastructure. Since then, he said, the U.S. and partners "have had clear cases where we’ve been able to disrupt the network that was associated with Abbey Gate."
"One of the things we have been able to benefit from is Central Asian countries more attuned from the threat from Afghanistan," he said. "Some of the recent plots that have been foiled point to direct support from some of these partners," he said, without naming the countries involved.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee plans to release its review of the withdrawal from Afghanistan early next month. 3 Years Later, Afghans Still Reeling From Impact Of Devastating Kabul Airport Attack (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [8/26/2024 12:00 AM, Abubakar Siddique and Satar Furogh, 235K, Neutral]
The harrowing events of August 26, 2021, are seared into Shafiullah Samsor’s memory.
Twenty-two years old at the time, Samsor was among the thousands of desperate Afghans who had amassed outside Kabul airport hoping to be airlifted from the country by the U.S. military.
Just days before, the Taliban had seized control of the Afghan capital, triggering panic among the city’s 5 million inhabitants.
Amid the chaotic scenes outside the airport, which was still controlled by departing U.S. forces, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden vest among the crowd, unleashing a scene of horror.
"Suddenly, there was a loud explosion, which threw me to the ground," Samsor recalled. "There was shouting, and people began running everywhere. I remember the blood and dust around me before I fell unconscious."
The university student was rushed to hospital, where he remained in a coma for four days. When he woke up, the doctors informed him that his spine was fractured in four places. A piece of shrapnel had also pierced his throat.
Around 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel were killed in the bombing, one of the deadliest attacks of the entire 19-year U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Hundreds more like Samsor were wounded.
The bombing claimed by the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) extremist group became a symbol of the chaotic and deadly U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan that was completed on August 31.
Three years on, survivors are still reeling from the psychological and physical effects of the attack.
Samor never returned to university to complete his degree in English literature. He cannot work and can barely walk even with the help of crutches.
He and his five sisters and mother depend on remittances sent by his older brother, who works in neighboring Iran.
Samsor’s family spent all their savings and sold off a plot of land and their car to fund his treatment."I hope that Allah will punish those responsible for devastating my life and the lives of so many others," he said.
Meisam Ahmadi lost his two brothers in the bombing.
Alireza Ahmadi, a journalist, and Mujtaba Ahmadi, a photojournalist, had joined the crowd outside Kabul Airport’s Abbey Gate after a friend told them he had been allowed to enter the airport by U.S. forces. The friend, Meisam said, had promised to help the brothers get in.
"Unfortunately, there was an explosion there, and both of them were standing together, and they lost their lives," Meisam said.‘Badly Handled’
Survivors and the families of the victims of the bombing are still seeking answers about what happened.
Two investigations by the Pentagon concluded that all the victims were killed by a lone suicide bomber.
But a CNN investigation based on new video evidence and released in April this year suggested dozens of the victims may have been shot dead by U.S. soldiers.
Three days after the Abbey Gate bombing, the U.S. military carried out a drone strike targeting what it initially said was an IS-K compound in Kabul.
Instead, the U.S. drone strike killed an Afghan aid worker and nine people from his extended family in what the Pentagon called a "tragic mistake."
Michael Semple, an Afghanistan expert at Queen’s University Belfast, said the horrific Kabul Airport attack embodied Washington’s mishandling of the international military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
"It was time for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan, but the scenes of disorder which we saw, and which were sort of epitomized by the carnage which happened at Abbey Gate, show that it was badly handled," Semple said.
In 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement for the phased withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan.
But a lightening Taliban military offensive in the summer of 2021 led to the collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government before all international forces had left the country.
U.S.-led forces kept control of Kabul Airport for two weeks after the Taliban takeover, evacuating tens of thousands of foreign nationals as well as at-risk Afghans. Taliban vice and virtue laws provide ‘distressing vision’ for Afghanistan, warns UN envoy (AP)
AP [8/25/2024 10:38 AM, Staff, 31180K, Neutral]
The Taliban’s new vice and virtue laws that include a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public provide a "distressing vision" for Afghanistan’s future, a top U.N. official warned Sunday.
Roza Otunbayeva, who heads the U.N. mission in the country, said the laws extend the " already intolerable restrictions " on the rights of women and girls, with "even the sound of a female voice" outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers last Wednesday issued the country’s first set of laws to prevent vice and promote virtue. They include a requirement for a woman to conceal her face, body and voice outside the home.
The laws empower the Vice and Virtue Ministry to be at the front line of regulating personal conduct and administering punishments like warnings or arrest if its enforcers allege that Afghans have broken the laws.
"After decades of war and in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis, the Afghan people deserve much better than being threatened or jailed if they happen to be late for prayers, glance at a member of the opposite sex who is not a family member, or possess a photo of a loved one," Otunbayeva said.
The mission said it was studying the newly ratified law and its implications for Afghans, as well as its potential impact on the U.N. and other humanitarian assistance.
Taliban officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the U.N. criticism.
In remarks broadcast Sunday by state-controlled broadcaster RTA, Vice and Virtue Minister Mohammad Khaled Hanafi said nobody had the right to violate women’s rights based on inappropriate customs.
"We are committed to assure all rights of women based on Islamic law and anyone who has a complaint in this regard will be heard and resolved," he added.
Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said last year that Afghan women are provided with a "comfortable and prosperous" life, in spite of decrees barring them from many public spaces, education and most jobs.
The U.N. has previously said that official recognition of the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan is nearly impossible while restrictions on women and girls remain.
Although no country recognises the Taliban, many in the region have ties with them.
Last Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates accepted the credentials of the Taliban’s ambassador to the oil-rich Gulf Arab state.
A UAE official said the decision reaffirmed the government’s determination to contribute to building bridges to help Afghans. "This includes the provision of humanitarian assistance through development and reconstruction projects, and supporting efforts that work towards regional de-escalation and stability."
Otunbayeva is scheduled to report to the U.N. Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan on Sept. 18, three years after the Taliban stopped girls’ education beyond sixth grade.
Acting Higher Education Minister Nada Mohammed Nadim said religious scholars were researching female education and it was their findings that would determine if schools and universities will reopen.
"Nobody should make himself a cleric or tell us if education is permitted for women," he told a news conference in Kabul on Sunday. "We have proven that any decision won’t be against Islamic law or Afghan culture. This is a very sensitive issue so deciding in weeks or months is not possible. We can’t say exactly that, on this date, this will be solved." Afghanistan’s future uncertain three years after Taliban takeover (The Hill – opinion)
The Hill [8/25/2024 2:30 PM, Imran Khalid, 18.8M, Neutral]
On Aug. 14, the Taliban marked the third anniversary of their return to power in Afghanistan with a public holiday and a televised military parade at the former U.S.-run Bagram airbase. Dubbed “victory day,” the celebrations occurred against the backdrop of global condemnation of the Taliban regime for creating what many call “the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis” and for making Afghanistan the only country where girls are banned from education beyond sixth grade.
Afghanistan is now a breeding ground for uncertainty. With a fragile power base and an escalating economic and humanitarian crisis, the Taliban face internal and external threats.
Neighboring countries, wary of a possible influx of international terrorist groups such as the Islamic State Khorasan Province, view the situation with increasing unease. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s foreign assets remain frozen, sanctions persist and humanitarian aid has been largely cut off. The U.S. withdrawal, far from the political settlement many hoped for, allowed the Taliban to seize power almost by default.
The absence of a comprehensive diplomatic effort has left Afghanistan’s neighbors in a precarious position, watching as the country teeters on the edge of deeper crisis. The implications of this power vacuum, particularly for global security, are profound.
Last month, the third round of UN-led talks on Afghanistan ended in confusion, revealing a persistent deadlock between the international community and the Taliban. Notably, this marked the Taliban’s first participation in these UN-sponsored negotiations. Yet despite diplomatic efforts, the talks produced no reform pledges or concessions from the Taliban. International organizations and special envoys from nearly two dozen countries convened in Doha, Qatar, to meet with Taliban officials after a prolonged hiatus. UN Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo described the discussions as “constructive” and “useful,” while the Taliban echoed similar sentiments, emphasizing their counter-narcotics programs.
However, the glaring omission of women from the talks prompted outrage from civil society and human rights activists, who criticized the UN’s approach as contradictory to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The outcome of these Doha talks leaves little doubt: The international community, especially Afghanistan’s neighbors, remains eager to engage with the Taliban, despite understanding that no immediate flexibility on contentious issues will be forthcoming.
The global community finds itself caught between pragmatism and principle, tackling an increasingly complex Afghan reality. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ conspicuous absence from the third round of talks was no accident. Having attended the first two rounds, Guterres deliberately opted out this time, signaling his own diminished expectations for any breakthrough. His decision appeared strategic — a clear attempt to avoid lending the Taliban any semblance of indirect recognition.
In recent months, the Taliban have exhibited a newfound optimism about their international recognition. Kazakhstan has already removed them from its list of prohibited groups, and Russia seems poised to follow suit. In June, a Taliban delegation made an appearance at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia. For the Taliban, participation in the Doha talks was not just a diplomatic move; it was a symbol of their growing status as Afghanistan’s de facto rulers.
Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi captured this sentiment, proudly announcing their participation while emphasizing the regime’s strengthening ties with neighboring countries, as well as with Western and U.S. governments. His words hinted at a swelling confidence within the Taliban leadership, suggesting they believe their gradual acceptance by the international community is inevitable. But beneath this confidence lies a more troubling reality – one where pragmatism collides with principle, as the world grapples with how to engage a regime still largely unrecognized.
Central to the Taliban’s strategic calculus is the contentious matter of unlocking roughly $7 billion in Afghan central bank reserves currently frozen in the U.S. This financial impasse underscores a larger issue: Afghanistan’s isolation from the global banking system and the SWIFT network. Western banks’ hesitation to engage with Afghan financial institutions has severely impeded the country’s economic integration, amplifying the difficulties it faces in reconstructing its financial framework amidst persistent international scrutiny and sanctions.
This financial estrangement has not only stifled economic prospects but also exacerbated the challenges of addressing the pressing needs of the Afghan people. The Taliban’s adherence to their hard-line policies has been a major obstacle. Despite mounting international pressure and extensive discussions during the Doha talks, the regime remains resolute in its exclusion of women and girls from public life. This refusal to amend its policies reveals the deep-seated resistance to reform that continues to define the Taliban’s approach.
With foreign development aid suspended, Kabul faces mounting difficulties in addressing the nation’s spiraling economic troubles. In April, the World Bank reported that the sharp decline in international assistance following the Taliban’s takeover had left Afghanistan without internal growth drivers, resulting in a staggering 26 percent contraction in real GDP. This economic collapse highlights the devastating consequences of the Taliban’s isolation on the country’s already fragile economy.
If the Taliban hopes to forge constructive global relationships, adaptation is not just advisable – it’s essential. The reality is that they have little choice but to heed the demands of the international community, particularly on women’s rights. However, expecting the Taliban to bow under the pressure of more sanctions and boycotts is futile, especially after what they perceive as their victory over the United States following two decades of war.
The Taliban might be more responsive to a credible offer of recognition from a U.S.-led coalition, but such an offer is now virtually impossible. If U.S. foreign policy’s primary objective were to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, it would require cooperation with key regional players — China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India and the UN — to establish a common platform for engagement.
Unfortunately, cooperation with Russia and Iran is off the table. Ties with China and Pakistan remain strained. India, balancing its interests between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine, is equally unlikely to complicate its delicate diplomatic equation by engaging more deeply in Afghanistan. U.N. must focus on improving lives of suffering Afghans (Nikkei Asia – opinion)
Nikkei Asia [8/25/2024 4:05 PM, Farhan Bokhari, 2042K, Negative]
This month’s third anniversary of Taliban rule in Afghanistan is a reminder that there’s little hope of conditions on the ground improving anytime soon -- particularly the harsh treatment of women and members of minorities in the country.The previous Taliban regime in the late 1990s remained in place while it committed some of the worst crimes in memory. This was in spite of international sanctions.Eventually, it was driven from power in a U.S.-led military invasion following the audacious 9/11 attacks on New York and other places, which were linked back to the Afghan territory used by Osama bin Laden to plan the tragedy. It was part of a broader "war on terror," backed by an international coalition, seeking regime change in Afghanistan.The post-9/11 military push was primarily a response to America’s targeting by the Afghanistan-based al-Qaida, rather than out of consideration for the terrible suffering of the Afghan people.Arguably, the previous Taliban rule would have continued without interruption if the former Taliban rulers had denied space to bin Laden and not played host to global terrorist networks on their soil.In some ways, the trends of the past three years are comparable to the earlier Taliban rule of the 1990s. Back then, the reclusive Taliban leader Mohammed Omar issued decrees such as preventing women from working -- conditions similar to Afghanistan today.In 1990s Kabul, impoverished widows and single women were reportedly forced to marry Taliban members, as the hard-liners came knocking on their doors to question them on their commitment to morality.The consequences were terrible. Hospitals were left without female doctors and nurses, meaning that many women gave birth without professional supervision, often at the hands of barely literate women from their families. The screams of delivering mothers were clearly audible to family members waiting nearby.Babies that needed caesarean section were considered dead before their birth, unless their families had the resources to take them across the border to hospitals in Pakistan or Iran.The unbearable conditions of the 1990s followed a long-drawn-out conflict after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Late Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev famously proclaimed the end of the invasion in 1989 as a push to heal the "bleeding wound" of Afghanistan.But, tragically, that wound continues to bleed even today. The 1990s witnessed repeated changes of power from one warlord to another before the Taliban arrived.And the subsequent two-decade, U.S.-led invasion cost more than $2 trillion, making it the most expensive war fought in history. But the hasty 2021 U.S. withdrawal -- reminiscent of Washington’s exit from Vietnam in 1973 -- left behind a power vacuum that was again grabbed by the Taliban.In the 1990s under Taliban rule, the U.S. and other Western powers made the terrible mistake of imposing sanctions that blocked nearly all economic flows into Afghanistan, including a large part of the humanitarian assistance that was due to go to the country. As Afghanistan today reels under diplomatic isolation, it is vital to remember two equally significant lessons from the past.First, economic sanctions enforced blindly often risk hurting those that external forces have an interest in protecting. And sanctions time and again have proven to be no more than semi-useful in targeting the forces meant to be penalized in the first place. A broad and comprehensive global review is necessary to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of cases of sanctions since the 20th century. In many instances, the result has largely been a further hardening of the behaviour of targeted forces rather than nudging them toward greater compliance.Second, it is also dangerous to impose hard-line structures of rule while using the bait of economic tools. In the 1990s, bin Laden and his al-Qaida group became the critical financial backers of the Taliban, once the regime was pushed to the wall. Information that passed around the circles of Afghan warlords then, mentioned annual contributions of $100 million or more from bin Laden to keep the Taliban afloat.While the Taliban have indeed behaved with the utmost disrespect to human dignity in the last three years, punishment inflicted upon Afghanistan must ensure the protection of ordinary citizens. A fresh international humanitarian initiative spearheaded personally by the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to provide economic support for the Afghan people must be urgently undertaken.The revival of Afghanistan’s repeatedly destroyed infrastructure to create economic opportunities for its people -- especially women -- must now take a much higher priority.A valuable lesson from the 1990s clearly demonstrates the urgent need to prevent Afghanistan’s rulers from ever relying on another nonstate actor with destructive designs. And, more importantly, the empowerment of the Afghan population while the country remains in diplomatic isolation could eventually help to push the well-meaning goals that many within and outside Afghanistan aspire to.A new U.N.-led humanitarian mission could begin a high-profile dialogue with the Taliban, persuading them to accept goals that are well within their hard-line ideology. For instance, education of women at home using social media tools could be one way to offer technical training while observing the laid-down official norms. Another could be the creation of institutions to support young women run completely by Afghan women who are already qualified.Similarly, critical facilities such as hospitals staffed by women and food distribution points catering just for women could also be causes worth pursuing further.Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers in their present form are unlikely to undergo a behavioral change anytime soon. But the cause of supporting the Afghan people needs to be served urgently. Pakistan
Power production contracts with Chinese companies need review, Pakistani minister says (VOA)
VOA [8/24/2024 3:28 AM, Sarah Zaman, 4032K, Neutral]
Pakistani Minister for Power Awais Leghari says contracts with Chinese power producers that built and run power plants in Pakistan need to be revised.
"I think the terms and conditions that we already have with the Chinese as far as their IPPs [independent power producers] are concerned, they need another look," Leghari told VOA in an interview this week.
The power projects, set up mostly in the last decade, helped end hourslong blackouts. But contracts require that Pakistan pay for the entire generation capacity of each power plant, regardless of how much electricity is used. A failure to spur industrial growth that could help utilize additional power, and the inability to reduce transmission losses, has left Pakistan with huge bills to pay for unused and wasted power generation capacity in addition to repaying project loans.
Independent power plants set up by Pakistani companies in the country also have contract terms similar to those of Chinese-run plants. Experts say Pakistan’s efforts to conduct an across-the-board audit of domestic and foreign-owned independent power plants show Beijing does not want its companies to be singled out as problematic, nor does it want to be alone in offering concessions to Islamabad.
Leghari is leading a power sector reform task force created after his recent trip to China. Reform plans aimed at cutting power sector losses include auditing all independent power plants.
Experts say Pakistan’s efforts to conduct an across-the-board audit of domestic and foreign-owned independent power plants in the coming days show Beijing does not want its companies to be singled out as problematic, nor does it want to be alone in offering concessions to Islamabad.
Leghari said the Chinese government and companies are already engaging with Pakistan on the reprofiling of power sector debt and to convert coal-fired power plants to local fuel.
"Those are changes in the terms and conditions of how the Chinese IPPs are working with us. Those would give us very substantial benefits to harvest in terms of [electricity] tariff reductions," the power minister said, referring to Pakistan’s efforts to also bring down skyrocketing electricity prices for consumers.
Islamabad owes more than $15 billion to Chinese power plant operators. It is seeking rescheduling of payments to gain financial breathing room in a bid to obtain much-needed financing from the International Monetary Fund.
Leghari and Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb went to Beijing late last month to discuss power sector debt relief.
The trip came days after Islamabad reached a staff-level agreement with the IMF for a three-year, $7 billion loan program. The bank’s board must still approve the deal.
Leghari said China, like the IMF, wants to see broader reforms from Pakistan.
China and the IMF "are wanting to look at the entire economic or power sector reform that we have already authored and embarked upon," Leghari said. "I think the more the confidence they have in our economic reform agenda, the better would be the response."
Beijing has not publicly addressed Islamabad’s request for rescheduling energy sector debt. However, Pakistan’s daily Express Tribune reported it has agreed to convert three Chinese-owned power plants in Pakistan from using imported to local coal.
Pakistan hopes to save hundreds of millions of dollars annually by switching to local coal for power generation.
The change may come at a high cost. Experts say Chinese investors struggling to recover payments may demand higher insurance premiums and profit margins if they are to expand mining operations, reducing savings for Pakistan.
"It’s going to be a win-win situation for everyone," Leghari said, rejecting the concerns.
"Unless that isn’t there, people will not invest, lenders will not give money."
Pakistan will also need infrastructure to transport local coal long distances, and power plants may need to make technical design changes to use Pakistani coal, which is known to be dirtier and less efficient than imported coal.
"There has been an overwhelming response to have a look and run technical and financial feasibilities on all the aspects of coal conversion and reprofiling," Leghari insisted, while rejecting environmental concerns about shifting to local coal.Leghari played down the possibility of scaring Chinese investors as Pakistan seeks a review of past contracts, saying Islamabad holds relationships with investors "dear to our heart."
"Whatever will happen, with whomever, will be with mutual consent," he said. Spate of timed militant attacks in Pakistan’s largest province kills 33 (Reuters)
Reuters [8/26/2024 4:30 AM, Saleem Ahmad, 5.2M, Negative]
Separatist militants attacked police stations, railway lines, and vehicles on highways in Pakistan’s province of Balochistan, killing at least 33 people, officials said on Monday, in the most widespread assault by ethnic insurgents in years.
Militants have fought a decades-long ethnic insurgency to demand the secession of the resource-rich southwestern province, which is home to a number of major China-led projects, including a strategic port and a gold and copper mine.
The largest of the attacks confirmed by authorities targeted vehicles from buses to goods trucks on a major highway, killing at least 23 people, officials said, with ten vehicles set ablaze.
A rail line between Pakistan and Iran and a railway bridge linking Quetta, the provincial capital, to the rest of the country were also hit with explosives in militant attacks, railways official Muhammad Kashif said.
Rail traffic with Quetta was suspended, he added.
Around the same time, militants also targeted police and security stations in the sprawling province, officials said, one of which killed at least 10 people.
Militant group the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) took responsibility in a statement emailed to journalists that claimed many more attacks, including one on a major paramilitary base, though Pakistani authorities have yet to confirm these.
PASSENGERS KILLED
On Sunday night, armed men blocked a highway in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province, marched passengers off the vehicles, and shot them after checking their identity cards, a senior superintendent of police, Ayub Achakzai, told Reuters.
"The armed men also not only killed passengers but also killed the drivers of trucks carrying coal," said Hameed Zahir, the deputy commissioner of the area, adding that at least 10 trucks had been set on fire after their drivers were killed.
Militants have targeted workers from the eastern province of Punjab whom they see as exploiting their resources. In the past, they have also targeted Chinese interests and citizens operating in the province.
China runs the strategic deepwater port of Gawadar in Balochistan’s south, as well as a gold and copper mine in the west.The BLA said its fighters had targeted military personnel travelling in civilian clothes, who were shot after being identified.
Pakistan’s interior ministry said the dead were innocent citizens, however.
STATIONS ATTACKED
Six security personnel, three civilians and one tribal elder made up the ten killed in clashes with armed militants who stormed a station of the Balochistan Levies in the central district of Kalat, police official Dostain Khan Dashti said.
Officials said police stations had also been attacked in the two southern coastal towns, but the toll had yet to be confirmed.
The office of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attacks in a statement, vowing that security forces would retaliate and bring those responsible to justice.
Balochistan, which borders both Iran and Afghanistan, is Pakistan’s largest province by size, but the least populated and it remains largely underdeveloped, with high levels of poverty. 3 Killed, Including 2 Children, 18 Wounded In Bomb Blast In Pakistan’s Southwest (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [8/24/2024 6:47 AM, Staff, 1530K, Negative]
Three people, including two children, were killed and 17 others, including two police officers, were wounded in a bomb blast in Pishin, a district in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, a police official told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal."An improvised explosive device (IED) was fitted onto a motorcycle in Pishin city on the morning of August 24 where two children were killed and 12 people sustained injuries," Muhibullah Kakar, the head of district police station told Radio Mashaal immediately after the incident.Pishin is locate some 55 kilometers north of Quetta, the capital city of restive Balochistan Province.The medical superintendent of the District Headquarter Hospital in Pishin, Wakeel Sherani, told Radio Mashaal that his hospital received two dead bodies and 18 wounded people, including three women."Seventeen of those wounded were referred to Quetta Civil Hospital for further treatment," Sherani added. Two of the wounded people are in critical condition, medical officials said.They added later that one of the three women succumbed to her injuries.No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack. Police have begun an investigation into the incident but have not arrested any suspects so far.Militant attacks have recently increased in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Balochistan provinces.Balochistan is a mineral-rich province that borders both Afghanistan and Iran and is regularly targeted by Islamist militants, sectarian groups, and Baluch separatists fighting for independence.The Baluch Liberation Army, a Baluch militant group, and its "special force" Majid Brigade have recently intensified attacks on Pakistani military bases and Chinese nationals in Balochistan.Pakistan’s National Counterterrorism Authority (NACTA) on July 31 added Hafiz Gul Bahadur and the Majid Brigade to its list of terrorist organizations, raising the number of Pakistani groups on the list to 81.The Hafiz Gul Bahadur militant group is active in the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Dozens Are Killed in Two Unrelated Bus Crashes in Pakistan (New York Times)
New York Times [8/25/2024 4:14 PM, Salman Masood, 831K, Negative]
At least 37 people, including a dozen who were returning from a religious pilgrimage in Iraq, died Sunday in two unrelated bus crashes in Pakistan, officials said.
Though the causes were under investigation, the accidents highlighted road safety in a country that experts say is known for poor road conditions, lax traffic enforcement and fatal crashes.“Poor enforcement, untrained traffic officers and unsafe vehicles make things worse,” said Syed Kaleem Imam, a former police inspector general.
The first accident occurred in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where a bus carrying pilgrims returning from Iraq plunged into a ravine on a coastal highway.
Twelve people were killed and 23 were injured, rescue officials said, adding that the accident was probably caused by speeding or brake failure.
Every year, at least 50,000 Pakistanis travel to Iraq to commemorate the Shiite holiday of Arbaeen.
The second accident occurred in Kahuta, near the northern city of Rawalpindi. A bus drove into a ditch, killing all 25 people on board, including four women and a child, said Farooq Butt, a rescue official.
One injured man was pulled from wreckage but died on the way to the hospital, Mr. Butt said.
Officials said the cause of the accident was not yet known. In a statement, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed grief over the loss of life.
The crash in Balochistan came less than a week after 28 Pakistani pilgrims died in a bus accident in Iran. Twenty-three others were injured, 14 of them critically, according to Pakistani Embassy officials in Tehran. Mourners in southern Pakistan attend funerals for 28 Shiite pilgrims killed in a bus crash in Iran (AP)
AP [8/24/2024 3:53 AM, Asim Tanveer, 31180K, Negative]
Hundreds of mourners in various parts of southern Pakistan attended funerals for 28 Shiite pilgrims who were killed in a bus crash in Iran this week while heading to Iraq, community leaders and officials said.
The victims of the crash were later buried in various graveyards in the Sindh province, local Shiite leader Jaafar Hussain said.
The funerals took place hours after a military aircraft brought home the bodies and the injured on orders from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. All the victims were from Sindh province, where the plane landed.
Authorities have not announced the cause of the crash near the city of Taft, some 500 kilometers (310 miles) southeast of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
In southern Pakistan, Zawaar Javed, the father of a man who died, said his son minutes before the crash sent him a message on WhatsApp, saying the brakes of bus had failed, and later he heard news about the accident.
In a state TV report, Mohammad Ali Malekzadeh, a local Iranian emergency official, also blamed the crash on the bus brakes failing and a lack of attention by the driver.
The Pakistani pilgrims had been on their way to Iraq’s holy city of Karbala, to commemorate Arbaeen - Arabic for the number 40 - marking the end of the annual 40-day mourning period after the date of the seventh century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, a central figure in Shiite Islam.
Hussein died at the hands of the Muslim Umayyad forces in the Battle of Karbala, during the tumultuous first century of Islam’s history. India
Indian Leader Visits Kyiv as Ukraine Pushes Diplomacy (New York Times)
New York Times [8/23/2024 4:14 PM, Andrew E. Kramer, 831K, Neutral]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India visited Kyiv on Friday, furthering a diplomatic effort by Ukraine to engage non-Western nations in potential settlement talks with Russia, even as Ukraine’s military pressed ahead with an offensive into Russian territory.
Ukraine has been pursuing parallel tracks of seeking international backing for its plans for peace talks while capturing Russian territory that Ukrainian officials say could provide leverage in negotiations, if the ground can be held long enough (a notion that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has tried to dispel).
The diplomacy has focused on outreach to India and China, exploring possible roles for the countries in settlement talks.
Mr. Modi’s visit is a first by an Indian leader since Ukraine gained independence in 1991. It is the highest-profile wartime visit of a leader of a nation with a neutral stance on the conflict, and leaders in Kyiv have been trumpeting it as a show of diplomatic support for Ukraine and a potentially positive sign for advancing settlement negotiations.
In Kyiv on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine greeted Mr. Modi with a hug and the two leaders lay flowers at a memorial for children killed in the war.
In a joint statement, the leaders indicated they had raised their views on various topics with each other. Mr. Zelensky broached the issue of India’s purchases of Russian oil, which helps fund Moscow’s war effort, but reached no immediate agreements. Mr. Modi expressed support for a move toward settlement talks that involve Russia.“The Indian side reiterated its principled position and focus on peaceful resolution through dialogue and diplomacy,” the statement said. It noted that, “Prime Minister Modi reiterated the need for sincere and practical engagement between all stakeholders.”
Earlier in the day, Mr. Modi visited a memorial in Kyiv to Gandhi, underscoring the focus on peace.
In Washington, the White House welcomed Mr. Modi’s visit.“If that can be helpful to getting us to an end to the conflict that comports with President Zelensky’s vision for a just peace, well then, we think that would be helpful,” John F. Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, told reporters.
Mr. Modi has carefully calibrated his country’s relations with the two warring nations. On a trip to Moscow last month, Mr. Modi hugged President Putin, and India has remained an important trading partner with Russia.
India sent a representative to a Ukrainian-organized peace summit in June that Kyiv hoped would win backing for its negotiating positions in potential talks. But India did not join the nations that signed a communiqué at the end of the summit supporting three points of the Ukrainian plan.
Russia was not invited to those talks, and Indian officials have taken the position that their country will not endorse negotiations that do not involve the two warring parties.
Still, India is seen as interested in a settlement to avoid further isolation of Russia that could push Moscow into a tighter embrace with China, India’s rival in Asia. India relies on Russian weaponry for its military and, during the war in Ukraine, has purchased discounted oil from Russian companies that have been placed under sanctions by the United States and Europe.
Mr. Zelensky said last month that Russia could be invited to talks by the end of the year. In the statement on Friday, Ukraine again raised the possibility for engagement with Russia, saying its diplomacy could include “peace based on dialogue.”Ukraine’s plan lays out 10 points for negotiation, including payment of reparations for war damage and prosecutions of war crimes. But at the June summit in Switzerland, Ukraine was forced to scale back its framework to three points, because most attendees would not sign on to a broader framework.
India’s Minister of External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, told a news conference in Kyiv on Friday that the two leaders had a “very back and forth discussion.” India, he said, had conveyed an offer to assist in talks. “We are willing to do whatever we can,” he said, “because we do think that the continuation of this conflict is terrible, obviously for Ukraine itself but for the world as well.”
Mr. Modi’s visit to Kyiv coincided with a Ukrainian military incursion into Russia that officials in Kyiv say is intended to give them leverage in possible talks and divert Russian forces that have been attacking inside Ukraine. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has rebuffed the idea, saying he won’t negotiate while Ukrainian troops are on Russian soil.
The strategy is fraught with risks: For the operation, Ukraine pulled troops from defensive positions inside the country. Those positions are now under attack by Russian troops moving relentlessly forward.
Ukraine has courted support for its negotiating plan from developing nations by pointing at the war’s risks to grain exports over the Black Sea; earlier in the conflict, a Russian blockade of grain shipments caused a spike in global food prices. Ukraine has also argued that any settlement shifting borders would set a precedent endangering stability in Asia, Africa and South America.
Ukraine’s interests lie in winning diplomatic backing for its negotiating positions from as broad an international coalition as possible. The visit by Mr. Modi, though he did not endorse the Ukrainian initiative, helps to signal non-Western support for settlement talks that take into account Kyiv’s interests, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said in an interview on Thursday.“Russia’s main narrative is this is a war of the West against the rest,” Mr. Kuleba said. “Everything that has been happening over the course of the past months defies this argument. This is a strategic line that we have pursued from the very beginning.”
He said he presumed that Mr. Putin would be “very upset” by Mr. Modi’s visit.
For Mr. Modi, the Kyiv visit is “about positioning India as a voice of the global south” on the war in Ukraine, Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London, said in an interview. He added that the trip created a chance “to talk about, in some ways, the impact this conflict has had” on poorer nations.
Mr. Modi arrived, as other foreign dignitaries have, by train to Ukraine’s capital, where flights have been grounded as too dangerous since Russia’s all-out invasion two-and-a-half years ago. India’s Narendra Modi Seeks to Repair Ukraine Ties With a Visit (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [8/23/2024 1:17 PM, Rajesh Roy, Tripti Lahiri, and Isasbel Coles, 810K, Neutral]Weeks after his visit to Moscow infuriated Ukraine, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday made his first-ever trip to Kyiv and offered his help to end the Russia-Ukraine war as a “friend” to President Volodymyr Zelensky.“India was never neutral, but always on the side of peace. I want to assure you that in all efforts toward peace, India is ready to play its role. And as a friend, I am ready, too” in the larger interest of the world, Modi told Zelensky during the first visit to Ukraine by an Indian prime minister since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine had sharply criticized Modi’s visit to Moscow in July, which began on the same day Russia launched a salvo of missiles at Ukrainian cities that struck, among other targets, a Kyiv children’s hospital where two people died and dozens were wounded.
At the time, Zelensky called footage of Modi’s warm greeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin “a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts.” U.S. officials said they had expressed concern over the visit to India and closely tracked outcomes.
In Kyiv on Friday, Zelensky made a point of reminding the Indian leader of the price Ukraine’s youngest generation has paid since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Modi, as he met Zelensky, conveyed what he had broadly gauged from his Moscow visit last month, according to Indian officials. And he reshared his thoughts on diplomacy and dialogue, not victory on the battlefield, as the path to an enduring peace.
The Ukrainian president took Modi to an exhibition in Kyiv dedicated to the 570 children Kyiv says have been killed since the war began, whose names and faces are displayed at the site. After honoring a minute’s silence for the victims, both leaders placed soft toys at a memorial to the young victims—a dark space that simulates the conditions inside a bomb shelter.
Modi shook hands and hugged President Zelensky. “The first casualty of any war is the death of innocent children. No society based on human values can ever accept such a painful thing,” Modi said.
The prospects of a near-term peace deal have dimmed in recent days as Kyiv seeks to build on an incursion that has seized dozens of Russian towns and villages. Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said this week that Moscow wasn’t ready to hold talks with Ukraine in light of the incursion into Kursk, but that earlier peace proposals remained on the table. Those proposals, which would entail Ukraine’s withdrawal from four regions partially occupied by Russia, including several major cities, would be tantamount to capitulation for Ukraine.
Current and former Indian diplomats said criticism of Modi’s visit to Moscow didn’t affect the timing of his travel to Ukraine.“The war can’t go on forever,” said Harsh Vardhan Shringla, India’s former foreign secretary, calling it significant that Modi headed “on an exploratory visit to Ukraine soon after returning from Moscow.”
Ukraine is hoping the trip signals a more-balanced approach on the part of India.“They view India as basically supportive of Russia,” said James Crabtree, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
India has longstanding close ties with Russia dating back to the Cold War, and deep reliance on Russian military equipment. India has declined to take part in Western-led efforts to isolate Moscow, buying up Russian oil at large discounts in what officials say is a national necessity.
On a trip to India this week, Richard Verma, the State Department’s new special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery, said he “was delighted” about Modi’s visit to Kyiv. He didn’t address a question about whether it was overdue.
Donald Lu, a State Department official for South Asian affairs, told the House Foreign Relations Committee in July that he was disappointed by the timing and the symbolism of Modi’s Russia visit, which came as Washington was hosting a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He also noted that no substantive defense or technology agreements had emerged from the trip.
Before the Kursk incursion, Ukraine had intensified diplomatic efforts as it faced setbacks on the battlefield, while the looming U.S. election threw the future of western aid into doubt. Kyiv has struggled to garner support for its terms to end the war beyond its core partners in the West.
A peace summit in Switzerland in June highlighted cracks in global sympathy for Ukraine.
India sent a senior diplomat to the summit but refrained from signing a statement affirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity and calling for talks among all parties to find a lasting solution to the conflict. Zelensky had previously urged India to participate in the summit “at the highest level” and invited Modi to visit Ukraine “at a convenient time.” Ukraine’s Zelenskiy says he would support India hosting second summit on peace (Reuters)
Reuters [8/25/2024 8:52 AM, Anastasiia Malenko, 42991K, Positive]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said negotiations were ongoing with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Switzerland regarding the second summit on peace in a conversation with Indian journalists shared on his social media on Sunday.Zelenskiy also said he had told India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he would support India hosting the second summit on peace as Kyiv hopes to find a host among the countries in the Global South."But I want to be frank, and this applies not only to India, but to any state that would be positive about hosting a second summit. We will not be able to hold a peace summit in a country that has not yet joined the peace summit communique," Zelenskiy said.The Ukrainian president added that he discussed all of the points from the communique and previous peace summit during the meeting with Modi on Friday. India approves assured pension scheme for federal government employees (Reuters)
Reuters [8/24/2024 12:59 PM, C.K. Nayak and Manoj Kumar, 42991K, Positive]
The Indian government approved on Saturday a pension scheme which will guarantee federal government employees 50% of their base salary as a pension, moving away from a current scheme where the payout is linked to market returns.The Modi government has been forced to reassess the current pension system, adopted after a significant fiscal reform in 2004, as some states switched back to the older, fiscally straining system of fully funding a guaranteed pension.The Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) for India’s over two million federal government employees is set to be implemented from April 1, 2025, said Ashwini Vaishnaw, a cabinet minister.He said it will ensure 50% of the base salary drawn during the last 12 months before retirement as a pension for government employees who complete a minimum of 25 years of service.The current National Pension Scheme requires employees to contribute 10% of their base salary and the government 14%. The eventual payout depends on the market returns on that corpus, which is mostly invested in federal debt.Trade unions and opposition parties have been advocating for a guaranteed minimum pension for government employees, and it was a major political issue in the recent general elections.The financial implication of the UPS on the government exchequer is expected to be about 62.5 billion rupees ($745 million) in the fiscal year 2024-25, with the annual cost varying each year depending on the number of retiring employees, the minister said. NSB
Deadly Floods Strike Troubled Bangladesh (New York Times)
New York Times [8/23/2024 4:14 PM, Saif Hasnat, 831K, Negative]
Floods in Bangladesh have killed at least 13 people and affected millions of others in the country’s northeast, adding to the challenges of an interim government struggling to return order to a country plunged into anarchy after mass protests forced out its autocratic leader.
The regions of Feni and Cumilla were worst hit, the country’s ministry of disaster management and relief said. Communication lines have been affected, with almost all cellphone towers losing electricity. Rail service has been suspended and roads have been damaged, hampering delivery of emergency aid. Bangladesh’s army and navy have been deployed for rescue operations.
Residents described water levels beyond any they had seen in recent years.“I can recall a flood in 2004, but as I remember the water level wasn’t this high,” said Ahmed Farabee, 27, a resident of Noakhali, one of the worst-affected areas, where he estimated that 90 percent of homes were flooded with knee-high water. “This time, the rainwater couldn’t drain properly because the canals and wetlands are full,” he said.
The floods hit the country just weeks after its long-serving prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, was toppled by a student-led protest movement. Her crackdown, before she relinquished power and fled the country, left hundreds dead.
An interim government led by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, which includes representatives of the protesters, is trying to restore order to what was a dangerous and violent vacuum. The natural disaster adds to the government’s long list of challenges, including discredited law enforcement, an economy in a downward spiral and a banking sector on the verge of collapse.
People surrounded the country’s water management body early Thursday, protesting the government’s slow response and demanding that speedboats and rescue boats be sent to the flooded regions.
Nahid Islam, 26, a protest leader turned cabinet member, was among them, urging officials to act swiftly.
The floods have also increased tensions with neighboring India.
Members of the interim government have accused India, which is upstream of Bangladesh, of opening dam gates without warning. India was a close backer of Ms. Hasina and is sheltering her, so relations between the two countries are already fraught.
The Indian government has rejected claims that it opened dam gates in Tripura, an Indian state that borders Bangladesh. India’s foreign ministry said flooding because of heavy rain has been a problem on both sides of the border, and that the damage in Bangladesh was caused primarily by water from catchments downstream of the dam in question.
Bangladesh’s low-lying geography means floods caused by monsoon rains and cyclones are common. Recent encroachment and infrastructure development have also affected the natural flow of the rivers and made them more likely to overflow, said G.M. Tarekul Islam, a scholar at the Institute of Water and Flood Management at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
In May this year, Cyclone Remal caused devastation, killing over a dozen people in Bangladesh. Last year in May, Cyclone Mocha also caused widespread damage, leaving thousands homeless, including Rohingya Muslims seeking refuge in Cox’s Bazar after fleeing persecution in Myanmar. Twenty dead, 5.2 mln affected in Bangladesh floods (Reuters)
Reuters [8/25/2024 5:17 PM, Ruma Paul, 42991K, Negative]
At least 20 people have died and more than 5.2 million have been affected in Bangladesh by floods caused by relentless monsoon rains and overflowing rivers, officials said on Sunday.The floodwaters have left many people isolated and in urgent need of food, clean water, medicine, and dry clothes, particularly in remote areas where blocked roads have hampered rescue and relief efforts.Government Chief Adviser Mohammad Yunus said in a televised address that the administration has adopted all necessary measures to ensure a swift return to normality for flood victims.Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is leading the interim government that was sworn in after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country following a student-led uprising this month.Abdul Halim, a 65-year-old farmer from a village in the Comilla district, said his mud hut was swept away by a 10-foot-high surge of floodwater in the middle of the night."There are no goods and no water. Barely anyone has come with the relief (aid) deep inside the villages. You have to physically go close to the main road to collect it," he told Reuters television.Some people in Bangladesh have alleged that the floods were caused by the opening of dam sluice gates in neighbouring India, an assertion New Delhi has rejected."We have begun discussions with neighbouring countries to prevent future flood situations," Yunus said.The Bangladesh Meteorological Department has warned that flood conditions could persist if the monsoon rains continue, as water levels are receding very slowly.More than 400,000 people have taken refuge in around 3,500 shelters in the 11 flood-hit districts, where nearly 750 medical teams are on the ground to provide treatment, with the army, air force, navy, and Border Guard Bangladesh assisting in rescue operations, authorities said.An analysis in 2015 by the World Bank Institute estimated that 3.5 million people in Bangladesh, one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, were at risk of annual river flooding. Scientists attribute the exacerbation of such catastrophic events to climate change.The impact of this year’s monsoon rains has been widespread and devastating," said Kabita Bose, Country Director of Plan International Bangladesh."Entire communities have been completely inundated, and there are now millions of people, including children, in need of safe shelter and lifesaving humanitarian assistance," she said. Floods ease in Bangladesh but 300,000 still in shelters (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [8/25/2024 12:15 AM, Mohammad Mazed, 85570K, Negative]
River waters in low-lying Bangladesh are receding after days of deadly floods but 300,000 people are still in emergency shelters requiring aid, disaster officials said Sunday.
The heavy floods, which killed at least 18 people in Bangladesh, have added to the challenges of a new government who took charge early this month after a student-led revolution.
Rescue teams -- including joint forces of the army, air force and navy -- are helping those forced from their homes and bringing aid to those who have lost all, said Faruk-e-Azam, the disaster management minister."The flood situation is improving as the flood water started to recede," Azam told AFP.
More than 307,000 people are in shelters and more than 5.2 million have been affected by the floods, the ministry said.
"Now we are working to restore communication in the affected areas so that we can distribute relief food," Azam added.
"We are also taking steps so that contagious diseases don’t spread."
It adds to the woes of a nation still reeling from weeks of political turmoil, which culminated in the toppling of autocratic leader Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India by helicopter.
With an interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus still finding its feet, ordinary Bangladeshis have been crowdfunding relief efforts.
Highways and rail lines were damaged between the capital Dhaka and the main port city of Chittagong, making access to badly flooded districts difficult and disrupting business activity.
Monsoon rains cause widespread destruction yearly, but climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.
The nation of 170 million people is crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers and has seen frequent floods in recent decades.
Much of the country is made up of deltas where the Himalayan rivers the Ganges and the Brahmaputra wind towards the sea after coursing through India.
It is among the countries most vulnerable to disasters and climate change, according to the Global Climate Risk Index.
Floods across the border in upstream India have also left a trail of destruction, with at least 24 people have been killed in Tripura state since Monday. Bangladesh Starts Economic Clean-Up After Hasina’s Exit (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [8/26/2024 1:52 AM, Arun Devnath, 5.5M, Neutral]
Bangladesh will examine data anomalies that allegedly inflated economic performance during former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime, in an effort to stamp out corruption that plagued the South Asian nation for most of the past 15 years.
The country’s interim government has asked Debapriya Bhattacharya, an economist and public policy analyst, to produce a “white paper” documenting mismanagement under Hasina’s rule. Bhattacharya has 90 days to write the paper and plans to submit an initial report to Nobel-winning banker Muhammad Yunus, who’s leading Bangladesh’s temporary administration.“We have a serious problem with data,” Bhattacharya, 68, said in an interview in Dhaka on Saturday. “Data were manufactured. Data were suppressed. I call that data anarchy.”From a distance, Bangladesh was widely perceived as an economic success story, propelled by the world’s second-largest garment exports industry. But Bhattacharya said Hasina’s administration likely released inaccurate data on exports, inflation and gross domestic product, creating “unprecedented economic vulnerabilities.”
Hasina, who resigned and fled to India this month in the face of mass protests, left behind 18.36 trillion taka ($153 billion) of local and foreign debt as of December. That’s equal to the national budget for three fiscal years.
Bhattacharya identified three key setbacks for Bangladesh: macroeconomic instability, inflation and a dearth of foreign exchange reserves. Stability was disrupted over the last couple of years and Hasina blamed it on the Ukraine war, which “we thought was not very justified,” he said.
Bangladesh has a 7.3% tax-to-GDP ratio, one of the lowest in the world. The ratio is estimated to improve to 8.8% in the fiscal year ending June 2025.“This is one of the paradoxes. You have 5% to 7% steady growth and you do not collect taxes, which essentially means that either the growth was fictitious, or those who benefited from the income generated from the growth did not come under the tax net,” Bhattacharya said. “Maybe a large part of it was funneled out of the country.”
The interim government’s immediate task is to shore up funds needed to pay for services like electricity. Newly appointed central bank Governor Ahsan H. Mansur said last week the country is in talks with the International Monetary Fund for an additional $3 billion in emergency aid, and is also seeking funds from other multi-lateral lenders.
Disruption to exports have put strain on foreign exchange reserves, which had already slumped before the current crisis. The central bank is buying dollars from the interbank market in order to meet its obligations, the governor said.
Bangladesh, which has 170 million people, is struggling to move into the next stage of development. One critical question is whether the nation is ready to graduate from being a least developed country in 2026. The United Nations recently postponed the Solomon Islands’ move out of the LDC category following a change of government there and social chaos that followed.
Bhattacharya said issues facing Bangladesh aren’t “problems of graduation” but “problems of development.” For now, he said, the country remains on track, despite the unrest and a shakeup in leadership.“Bangladesh is still above all the three sets of criteria for graduation: per capita GNI, human assets and economic and environmental vulnerability index,” said Bhattacharya, who sits on the UN panel.
Bangladesh is grappling with severe political turmoil. More than 600 people were killed during violent demonstrations in past weeks, the UN Human Rights Office said. The upheaval in Bangladesh fits the “playbook of any authoritarian government,” Bhattacharya said.“What has happened in Bangladesh is no exception,” he said. “First, you abhor pluralism, then you banish democratic accountability, and then you put your partisan people in all institutions — not necessarily on merit, but more based on their loyalty, and often sycophancy,” Rohingya refugees mark the anniversary of their exodus and demand a safe return to Myanmar (AP)
AP [8/25/2024 11:44 PM, Shafique Rahman and Julhas Alam, 4032K, Negative]
Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who live in sprawling camps in Bangladesh on Sunday marked the seventh anniversary of their mass exodus, demanding safe return to Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
The refugees gathered in an open field at Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar district carrying banners and festoons reading "Hope is Home" and "We Rohingya are the citizens of Myanmar," defying the rain on a day that is marked as "Rohingya Genocide Day."
On August 25, 2017, hundreds of thousands of refugees started crossing the border to Bangladesh on foot and by boats amid indiscriminate killings and other violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
Myanmar had launched a brutal crackdown following attacks by an insurgent group on guard posts. The scale, organization and ferocity of the operation led to accusations from the international community, including the U.N., of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Then-Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ordered border guards to open the border, eventually allowing more than 700,000 refugees to take shelter in the Muslim-majority nation. The influx was in addition to the more than 300,000 refugees who had already been living in Bangladesh for decades in the wake of waves of previous violence perpetrated by Myanmar’s military.
Since 2017, Bangladesh has attempted at least twice to send the refugees back and has urged the international community to build pressure on Myanmar for a peaceful environment inside Myanmar that could help start the repatriation. Hasina also sought help from China to mediate.
But in the recent past, the situation in Rakhine state has become more volatile after a group called Arakan Army started fighting against Myanmar’s security forces. The renewed chaos forced more refugees to flee toward Bangladesh and elsewhere in a desperate move to save their lives. Hundreds of Myanmar soldiers and border guards also took shelter inside Bangladesh to flee the violence, but Bangladesh later handed them over to Myanmar peacefully.
As the protests took place in camps in Bangladesh on Sunday, the United Nations and other rights groups expressed their concern over the ongoing chaos in Myanmar.
Washington-based Refugees International in a statement on Sunday described the scenario.
"In Rakhine state, increased fighting between Myanmar’s military junta and the AA [Arakan Army] over the past year has both caught Rohingya in the middle and seen them targeted. The AA has advanced and burned homes in Buthidaung, Maungdaw, and other towns, recently using drones to bomb villages," it said."The junta has forcibly recruited Rohingya and bombed villages in retaliation. Tens of thousands of Rohingya have been newly displaced, including several who have tried to flee into Bangladesh," it said.
UNICEF said that the agency received alarming reports that civilians, particularly children and families, were being targeted or caught in the crossfire, resulting in deaths and severe injuries, making humanitarian access in Rakhine extremely challenging. An Old Bangladeshi Reflex Threatens Its Revolution (New York Times – opinion)
New York Times [8/24/2024 4:14 PM, Tahmima Anam, 831K, Neutral]
In Bangladesh, we are experts at erasing history.
Ever since our young nation was born 53 years ago in a traumatic war of liberation from Pakistan, historical amnesia and censorship have afflicted Bangladeshis like a chronic illness. When a regime is toppled, its successor moves quickly to erase the symbols and legacy of the previous one as if it had never existed.
That is why, for decades, when one of the two political parties that have dominated Bangladesh — the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party — was in power, the other would often boycott Parliament or refuse to participate in elections it alleged were rigged. There has never been a healthy relationship between the people in power and those who oppose them. Party was always placed before country.
This has been a curse, preventing solid democratic institutions from flourishing in Bangladesh and making our politics fractious, hateful and peppered with violence and counterviolence.
The unexpected revolution that toppled the increasingly autocratic and corrupt rule of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina this month offers Bangladesh a chance to break free of this cycle. What makes this revolution unprecedented and so meaningful is that it was a grass-roots movement led by idealistic university students, not one of the warring main political parties. As a Bangladeshi, I am watching with jubilation.
Yet, I also worry that the old Bangladeshi reflex to expunge the past is kicking in.
Just a few weeks ago, when visitors flew into Dhaka, the capital, they were greeted at the airport by an enormous mural of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Ms. Hasina’s father, who was the leader of Bangladesh’s 1971 independence movement and the nation’s founding figure. In 1975, when he was president, he was assassinated in a military coup along with most of his family. The mural’s caption welcomed travelers to “Mujib’s Bangladesh.”
Since Ms. Hasina’s overthrow, portraits and statues of Sheikh Mujib are being defaced and taken down across the country. His former home, which had become a museum to his memory, was looted and set on fire. Ms. Hasina’s declaration of Aug. 15 — the anniversary of her father’s assassination — as a national day of mourning was canceled.
This habit of altering the past goes back to the nation’s founding. When Bangladesh, then known as East Pakistan, rebelled against Pakistani control in 1971, the Pakistani Army and its collaborators killed thousands of people, including many leading intellectuals. Up to three million people may have died in the conflict and millions were displaced.
After independence, Sheikh Mujib kept alive the memory of that slaughter and other Pakistani atrocities. But after his assassination, those who seized power tried to erase his legacy. People accused of war crimes were not tried and Bangladeshi school textbooks glossed over the mass killings and rapes committed by Pakistan’s army. The usurpers created a new narrative that diminished Sheikh Mujib’s place in history and valorized their own.
When Ms. Hasina returned to power in 2009 (she had been prime minister from 1996 to 2001), she reversed this, re-emphasizing the central importance of the war for liberation and her father’s role in it. She brought her father’s killers to justice and tried people accused of collaborating with the Pakistan military. Many Bangladeshis welcomed her changes. But a cult of personality was built around Sheikh Mujib. He, his allies and their descendants were hailed as the country’s true “freedom fighters” while their political opponents were sometimes branded as “razakar” — the Bangladeshi slur for those who collaborated with Pakistan. And so it went, back and forth, one party, then another, claiming they were the main characters in Bangladesh’s story.
The revolution that brought down Ms. Hasina has echoes of this fight. Starting in June, University of Dhaka students staged demonstrations calling for repeal of a quota system, started by Sheikh Mujib, that reserved 30 percent of government jobs for descendants of “freedom fighters,” which many students viewed as a ploy to fill coveted jobs with cronies of the ruling party. Ms. Hasina dismissed the protesters as razakar, the worst kind of traitor.
Incensed protesters quickly escalated the pressure, and government forces responded by firing on unarmed demonstrators. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands injured. Days later, after the army refused to fire on its own citizens, Ms. Hasina fled the country.
I feel a deep and personal sense of relief over the downfall of Ms. Hasina, who regularly threatened to jail my father, Mahfuz Anam, a co-founder and editor of The Daily Star. She was angered by the newspaper’s uncompromising coverage of her, as well as my father’s support for Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient whom Ms. Hasina viewed as a political threat. (Mr. Yunus is now the interim head of a transitional Bangladesh government.) Living abroad, I dreaded a late-night phone call informing me that my father had been arrested. Fortunately, that call never came.
The scenes in Bangladesh are thrilling and inspiring. After seeing their comrades killed, starry-eyed university students have literally reclaimed the streets, directing traffic, cleaning up sidewalks and painting beautiful murals. They represent a political movement that offers something new and different from the two parties that monopolized power for the past 53 years. Their demands are about justice and an end to corruption and dynastic politics. Everywhere you look, hope is surging.
And yet, there is vengeance in the air. Since the interim government took over, Awami League politicians, former ministers and judges, scholars, lawyers, and even journalists who sided with the old regime have been arrested and charged with murder. There is no doubt that crimes were committed in the name of Ms. Hasina’s government. These must be handled fairly and according to legal due process.But Bangladeshis will gain little if we choose, again, to erase the past. Whatever Ms. Hasina’s opponents think about her, they cannot deny that her father was a great political leader who inspired millions to fight for independence and whose commitment to secularism, democracy and religious freedom became the nation’s founding values. To burn down his home and censor his image is to erase the origin stories upon which the country was built.
Bangladeshis have an opportunity to end the toxic political culture that has prevented their country from realizing its full potential and to write a new story — one that holds on to the past while looking to the future. Nepal Asks China to Wipe Away a Loan It Can’t Afford to Pay Back (New York Times)
New York Times [8/23/2024 4:14 PM, Bhadra Sharma and Daisuke Wakabayashi, 831K, Neutral]
When Nepal’s new international airport opened last year in one of the country’s biggest cities, it was the type of landmark project expected to elevate the fortunes of one of Asia’s poorest countries while deepening its ties with China, which built and financed the project.
But the Pokhara airport has become a symbol of another sort: the pitfalls of China’s international infrastructure projects, which face criticism for sometimes costly and poor-quality construction that leaves borrower countries awash in debt.
On Thursday, Nepal’s one-month-old government, led by the country’s largest communist party, which has close ties to Beijing, formally asked China to convert a $216 million loan for the airport into a grant, wiping away the debt. It made the request during a visit by a Chinese delegation including Sun Weidong, China’s vice foreign minister.
The airport has been beset by problems. A few weeks after it opened in January 2023, a domestic flight headed for the city crashed into a river gorge, killing 72 people. The airport has not attracted any regular international flights, dimming the financial outlook for the project. Over the last year, Nepal’s anti-corruption agency and a parliamentary committee started investigations into the airport’s construction.
Last year, The New York Times reported that China CAMC Engineering, the construction arm of a state-owned conglomerate, Sinomach, had inflated the cost of the project and undermined Nepal’s attempts to keep tabs on construction quality.
Through its Belt and Road Initiative, a signature campaign of President Xi Jinping, China has extended more than $1 trillion in loans and grants, according to some estimates, for international infrastructure projects. The initiative is part of Beijing’s efforts to forge economic and diplomatic ties with other countries, while building a lucrative portfolio of construction work for its state-owned enterprises. But for some developing countries, the loans have become a financial albatross as they struggle to repay the debt.
In an interview on Friday, Bishnu Prasad Paudel, Nepal’s deputy prime minister and finance minister, said it had made the request to China as “our neighboring country” because Nepal was still scrambling to revive its economy.“We are hopeful,” Mr. Paudel said, but he declined to elaborate.
The Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If Beijing agrees to Nepal’s request, it will be another indication of a strengthening relationship between the country’s new government and China.
In July, Nepal’s biggest communist party joined forces with the Nepali Congress, the largest party in the country’s Parliament, to create a coalition government, led by K.P. Sharma Oli. He forged a reputation for opposing the influence of India, Nepal’s neighbor to the south and a regional rival to China, during three previous stints as prime minister.
His government has wasted no time cozying up to Beijing. On Thursday, he overturned a ban on TikTok, the popular social media app owned by Chinese technology giant ByteDance, that his predecessors had imposed less than a year ago.
On the same day, Nepal also said the two countries had agreed to a series of development projects, including two to upgrade highways that connect to the Chinese border. They also agreed to build integrated check posts along the border between Nepal and China.
Nepal’s economy, heavily reliant on overseas remittances and tourism, has struggled to recover since the pandemic. The international airport in Pokhara, a picturesque city in the foothills of the Himalayas, was seen as a way to bolster tourism and breathe new life into the economy.
But so far, the airport has failed to attract any commercial international flights, largely because India has refused to grant permission for its carriers to fly in and out of Pokhara. This has raised fears that the airport would not generate enough revenue to pay back the loan from the Export-Import Bank of China. Nepal is scheduled to start repayment of the loan in 2026.
At the same time, there are two investigations into the airport’s construction. Nepal’s Commission for the Investigation of Abuse and Authority is looking into reports of corruption by the Chinese construction company for compromising construction quality to maximize profit. Nepali officials are also accused of accepting kickbacks while awarding the contract to CAMC. A separate parliamentary committee was formed to investigate possible irregularities in construction.
CAMC did not respond to a request for comment about the investigations.
Binoj Basnyat, a retired Nepali general working as a researcher with Rangsit University in Thailand, said China would probably convert the loan to a grant because it wanted to build a strong relationship with Nepal’s communist party. He also noted another benefit for China if it agreed to the request.“The investigation into the corruption charges will quickly come to an end,” Mr. Basnyat said. “Nobody will talk about that anymore.” Busload of Indian Tourists in Nepal Plunges Into River, Killing at Least 27 (New York Times)
New York Times [8/24/2024 4:14 PM, Bhadra Sharma, 831K, Negative]
At least 27 people died in Nepal on Friday when a tour bus fell into a gorge and went into the Marsyangdi River in the central district of Tanahun.
The bus, carrying tourists from Maharashtra State in the center-west of India, was en route to Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, from Pokhara, a popular tourist destination. Nepal gets a lot of Indian tourists, mostly families who arrive by road to visit major Hindu temples.
The cause of the accident was not immediately clear.
Birendra Bahadur Shahi, a superintendent of police in Tanahun, said 16 others were injured in the crash. According to hospital reports, many of the injured were in serious condition. Mr. Shahi said they had been airlifted to Kathmandu for treatment.
The difficulty of the local terrain hampered rescue efforts, officials said. It took rescuers seven hours to lift the injured and the dead using ropes.
Nepal’s prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli, said he was “deeply saddened” by the accident. On Saturday, India sent a government minister, Raksha Khadse, to Kathmandu to help with the treatment of the injured and the return of the dead.
Nepal has long struggled with road safety in its difficult, mountainous terrain. Roads are often narrow, and large parts of the country remain hard to reach.
Last month, a landslide sent two moving buses into the Trishuli River, killing more than 60 people. Between April 2022 and April 2023, there were more than 2,300 traffic fatalities.
The prevalence of such accidents, as well as a longstanding problem with aviation safety, endangers not only Nepal’s people, but also an important source of revenue in a poor nation: the tourism sector.“Bad news spreads faster than good news,” said Babar Jung Gurung, a tourism entrepreneur in Pokhara. Sri Lanka Marxists Eye Selective Foreign Capital If Win Presidency (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [8/26/2024 5:00 AM, Staff, 85570K, Neutral]
Sri Lanka’s main Marxist leader and a key presidential hopeful in elections next month pledged on Monday to selectively welcome foreign investors, especially in green energy, if he wins.Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, a 55-year-old former agricultural minister and vocal campaigner against graft, is popular with voters fed up with the endemic corruption he blames for the island’s 2022 economic meltdown.The September 21 vote will be the first since protesters furious at an unprecedented financial crisis toppled strongman president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.President Ranil Wickremesinghe, elected by parliament after the ouster, is seeking a mandate to continue with a $2.9 billion IMF bailout loan to stabilise the economy.But Dissanayaka promises to renegotiate that deal -- although he has not provided specific changes beyond wanting to cut heavy taxes."We will invite foreign companies into sectors like renewable energy, where we don’t have the capacity to invest large amounts of capital," Dissanayaka said as he launched his manifesto.There are 39 candidates in the fray, but next month’s contest is viewed as mainly between Dissanayaka, Wickremesinghe and the Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa.Both Wickremesinghe and Premadasa are ideologically aligned.Dissanayaka contested the 2019 presidential election but came a distant third with just three percent of the vote.He leads the People’s Liberation Front (JVP), the main constituent in the National People’s Power coalition, which has three seats in the 225-member parliament.But his calls to cut taxes have found popular support among many.The JVP led two unsuccessful armed insurrections in 1971 and 1987, both crushed with the loss of some 80,000 lives, and the party has since renounced violence.Dissanayaka is pledging to scrap Sri Lanka’s presidential system and revert the country to the British-style parliamentary democracy, which existed until 1978.However, almost all Sri Lankan leaders in the past three decades have promised to scrap the powerful presidency, but failed to deliver. Central Asia
Human Rights Foundation Submits Case Of Imprisoned Kazakh Activist To UN Special Procedures (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [8/23/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Neutral]
The New York-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF) said on August 22 that it had filed a submission with the Special Procedures division of the UN Human Rights Council on behalf of Marat Zhylanbaev, the imprisoned leader of the unregistered Algha Qazaqstan (Forward Kazakhstan) political party.
Zhylanbaev, a noted human rights activist and athlete, was arrested in May 2023 and initially sentenced to 20 days in jail for holding a picket two months earlier to demand the release of political prisoners and to ask Western nations to impose sanctions on Kazakh officials for "helping" Russia evade sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
Zhylanbaev was later remanded in custody on charges of taking part in a banned group’s activities and financing an extremist organization.
In late November 2023, a court in Astana found Zhylanbaev guilty and sentenced him to seven years in prison while also banning him from engaging in social and political activities.
In June 2024, the Supreme Court of Kazakhstan rejected Zhylanbaev’s appeal against his incarceration.
Investigators say the activities of Zhylanbaev and his followers were coordinated by the fugitive critic of the Kazakh government, Mukhtar Ablyazov, whose Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement was labeled as extremist and banned in the country in March 2018. Zhylanbaev is also accused of transferring money to supporters of DVK twice.
Zhylanbaev rejects the charges against him, calling them politically motivated.
"Kazakhstan failed to release Mr. Zhylanbaev when his pretrial detention was set to end in July 2023 and held him in a cell with a convicted individual while awaiting trial. His closed trial took place before a tightly controlled judiciary, and all but one of his requests to call witnesses was denied. His detention cannot be justified under these circumstances," HRF International Legal Associate Kaitie Holland said.
"The Kazakh regime has demonstrated a pattern of suppressing dissent by consistently classifying the opposition as ‘extremist.’"
HRF asked UN Special Procedures to investigate Zhylanbaev’s case and called on Kazakhstan to release him immediately. Kazakhstan to Lukashenko: mind your own business (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [8/23/2024 4:14 PM, Almaz Kumenov, 57.6K, Neutral]
Belarus’ dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko, recently called out Kazakhstan for not being sufficiently supportive of Russia’s efforts to militarily bludgeon Ukraine into submission. Kazakh officials did not take kindly to such criticism.
Lukashenko took a not-so-veiled swipe at Kazakhstan’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine war during an interview broadcast on Russian television on August 15, casting Astana as a pacifist observer. He also hinted that Kazakhstan was insufficiently grateful for the political support that Moscow has provided in the past and may provide in the future. Russian forces helped quell upheaval in early 2022 in Kazakhstan, a bout of violence now commonly referred to as the January events.“The time is not far off when you will come to Russia and ask for support and help. There is no one else to ask,” Lukashenko said in the interview, making an apparent reference to Kazakhstan.
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry summoned the Belarusian ambassador to explain Lukashenko’s unwelcome intervention. During the August 21 meeting in Astana, Foreign Minister Murat Nurtleu reminded the Belarusian ambassador, Pavel Utyupin, that Kazakhstan pursues “a peaceful foreign policy based on the principles of the UN and international law,” the press service of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry reported.
In the most diplomatic of terms, Nurleu effectively told the Belarus to butt-out, hinting that Lukashenko had committed a diplomatic sin by airing criticism publicly and not behind closed doors. Belarus and Kazakhstan are ostensibly allies via shared membership in the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.“Our country is firmly convinced that all disagreements between states should be resolved by political and diplomatic means,” the Foreign Ministry statement cited Nurleu as saying. “In the current geopolitical conditions, the country’s foreign policy course developed by the Head of State has proven its effectiveness.”
To hammer home the point that Lukashenko was out of line, the Kazakh minister “called on the Belarusian side to objectively assess Astana’s position on the ongoing processes.”
With an eye on securing its own northern regions, Kazakhstan has expressed its commitment to the principles of the inviolability of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine since the start of Russia’s unprovoked invasion in February 2022. Officially, Astana also complies with sanctions imposed on Russia by the West, although there have been multiple reports of sanctions-busting activities.
Kazakhstan has long pursued a multi-vectored foreign policy, striving to balance the interests and influence of major powers, including Russia, China, the United States and European Union.
In June of that year, at an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev publicly, with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin sitting next to him, declared that his country does not recognize the independence of the eastern regions of Ukraine, the Russia-backed self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. A month later, Tokayev, during a telephone conversation with the head of the European Council Charles Michel, assured him of Kazakhstan’s readiness to provide support in solving energy problems in European countries, which have significantly reduced oil and gas imports from Russia. Relatives Fear Discussing Ethnic Kazakh Intelligentsia Behind Bars In China’s Xinjiang (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [8/25/2024 3:05 AM, Asemgul Mukhitqyzy and Chris Rickleton, 1530K, Neutral]
At the peak of China’s repression of Turkic and Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang region some six years ago, Kazakhstan was a kind of hub for activism and reporting on what international rights experts said were "crimes against humanity."
Then came the fear.
With a population likely numbering more than 1 million people -- official statistics are lacking -- ethnic Kazakhs are the second-largest Turkic group living in Xinjiang.
Unlike the more populous Uyghurs, they live next door to a country where they are a titular people and where many of them traveled regularly before China’s crackdown began.
When arrests started really flowing in late 2017 and 2018, hundreds of Xinjiang-born Kazakhs who had moved to Kazakhstan before the crisis organized to issue appeals for missing relatives, both to the Kazakh government and the international community at large.
Yet the group that drove that effort, Atazhurt, soon came under pressure from local security services.
Atazhurt splintered into factions, and its co-founder -- who claimed the Kazakh authorities were being directed by their Beijing allies -- now lives in de-facto exile in the United States.
Discussions related to the plight of the Xinjiang Kazakhs are therefore sensitive, while most of the Kazakhs in Xinjiang who have been reunited with relatives in Kazakhstan in the past couple of years -- sometimes after years of separation -- are in no hurry to talk about their experiences.
That makes any effort to restart the conversation in Kazakhstan’s local press noteworthy.
One such effort occurred at the end of July when the Kazakh-language newspaper Zhas Alash published an article on what it said were 22 members of the ethnic Kazakh intelligentsia currently languishing behind bars in China.
But as the article’s author said in an interview with RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, the Kazakh-based relatives of these detainees are increasingly reluctant to say anything about their cases.
"All of them refused to comment. The reason is obvious. Advocacy could worsen the situation for their relatives in detention," said Zhaqsylyq Qazymuratuly.‘I Never Saw Any Of Them Speak Out Against Chinese Authorities’
So who are these 22 authors?
While Chinese officials have presented their post-2016 policies in Xinjiang as an extension of longer-term efforts to combat radicalism and separatism, many of the people mentioned as detained in the Zhas Alash article were directly connected to the Chinese state.
"Some of the arrested individuals I know personally. We were friends, we communicated well. I have been friends with some of them for 15 years, but I never saw any of them speak out against the Chinese authorities," Xinjiang-born journalist Qaliaqbar Usemkhanuly was quoted as saying in Qazymuratuly’s article.
Usemkhanuly would know. Before moving to Kazakhstan, he worked -- like many of the detainees mentioned in the article -- in the state-controlled media in Xinjiang.
As Qazymuratuly argues, this is not a profession that allows room for experimentation.
"How did things work under Soviet rule?... Information in China undergoes a similar procedure before publication," Qazymuratuly told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service.
"Every message, every news item was filtered before publication," the journalist said. "Now, after several years, they find some shortcomings. But this seems to be just an excuse for arresting and imprisoning these people."A red line that has thickened considerably for Xinjiang Kazakhs and other Muslims in the region after the now-retired, hard-line Chinese Communist Party boss Chen Quanguo was installed in 2016 involves apolitical expressions of national identity.
One of the 22 detainees, Qarapa Nasiolla, was an educator who published works by poets, writers, and musicians, as well as reflections on Kazakh literature and history on his WeChat page that was popular with local Kazakhs.
He moved from Xinjiang to another province with a teaching job and has not been heard from since 2021, when he returned to the region from a summer holiday.
Back then, Nasiolla’s Kazakhstan-based mother and brother both released public appeals seeking information about him.
But when RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reached out to Nasiolla’s relatives this month, none of them agreed to an interview.
Toqaev In Xinjiang
In 2018, United Nations experts estimated that more than 1 million Uyghur and Muslim minorities had been detained in Xinjiang indoctrination camps that Chinese officials likened to vocational training centers.
These facilities, reputed for their humiliation and brutality toward detainees, are now believed to be largely closed. Other former detainees, some graduates of the camps, reported being compelled to work in factories whose goods were exported.
A third group, which has ironically received the least international media attention, consists of detainees who are serving hard jail time, inevitably on trumped-up political and terrorism-related charges.
It would be untrue to say Kazakhstan’s government has done nothing for the Xinjiang Kazakhs. Authorities have more than once expressed concern to their Chinese counterparts over problems in the region impacting Kazakh citizens, although always in terms that avoided criticizing China.
Since then, ethnic Kazakhs have continued to leave Xinjiang for Kazakhstan, often arriving in batches, suggesting some level of negotiations by Astana over their resettlement.
But given Astana’s economic dependence on Beijing, it is hard to escape the idea that the repression of ethnic Kazakhs are fairly low on the bilateral agenda.
Indeed, when it comes to tone-setting, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has offered a visible legitimacy boost to the authorities that have overseen the crackdown.
Toqaev in 2023 paid his first official visit to the region, where the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said he held talks with local decision-makers but not with the Kazakh community separately.
In March he held talks in Astana with Erkin Tuniyaz, the second-most powerful Chinese Communist Party official in Xinjiang who, like former boss Chen, is under sanctions from the U.S. government in connection with the Xinjiang incarcerations.
Months before, Turniyaz had been expected for talks in London and Brussels, where he is not under sanctions, but those visits were canceled amid a public outcry.
The Kazakh Service reached out to the Kazakh Foreign Ministry with an official inquiry, requesting comment on the allegedly arbitrary arrest and detention of 22 people in Xinjiang.
Press Secretary Aibek Smadiyarov promised to obtain information from specialists, but no response was received by the time of publication.
Kazakh authorities have previously informed people worried about ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang that Astana’s representatives in the region have elaborated a "family reunification mechanism" in cooperation with Chinese officials.
People were told to apply to the government for help to reunite their family via the eOtinish platform.
As for getting information from China itself, the Kazakh relatives of detainees who picketed the Chinese Consulate in Almaty for more than two years would probably agree that Chinese officials prefer not to engage.
When a correspondent for RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service contacted Ambassador Zhang Xiao at a recent meeting at Kazakhstan’s National Center of Biotechnology, he expressed irritation that the question was about the 22 Kazakhs in Zhas Alash’s article rather about his visit to the center.
"There is nothing of the sort!" Zhang exclaimed before ignoring follow-up questions. Persecution, Jail, Torture, Death: The Price You Pay For Being An Independent Journalist In Turkmenistan (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [8/25/2024 3:04 AM, Farangis Najibullah, 1530K, Negative]
When Soltan Achilova decided to change her profession and become an independent journalist in Turkmenistan nearly two decades ago, she knew her new job would be "different" and require adjustments.
But the Ashgabat-based economist turned reporter did not imagine that her new profession was going to turn her "life upside down" and subject her to persecution, physical assaults, and death threats.
"State security agents have been following me since I started working as a journalist. They harass my family too, surveil our phone conversations," Achilova, 74, told RFE/RL. "Electricity and water were cut off to our home several times. My relatives were threatened by authorities to stop talking to me or they would lose their jobs."
Turkmenistan is consistently ranked by media watchdogs, such as Reporters Without Borders (RSF), among the worst countries in the world for press freedom.Independent media outlets are nonexistent in the authoritarian Central Asian nation, where journalism "amounts only to praise for the regime," according to RSF. The government continues a relentless clampdown on dissent -- with critics being harassed, beaten, tortured, jailed, and even killed. Many others have been forced abroad into self-exile.
Achilova, a correspondent for the European-based Khronika Turkmenistana website and a former RFE/RL reporter, is the last remaining independent journalist in Turkmenistan who openly criticizes the authoritarian government. A handful of others work secretly for some foreign-based outlets.
The recent death of 35-year-old former RFE/RL reporter Hudaiberdy Allashov -- whom Turkmen authorities had vowed to drive to "his grave" -- put the spotlight earlier this month on how Turkmenistan punishes journalists and their families for reporting news.‘You’ll Be Locked Up For A Long Time’
Allashov worked for three months for RFE/RL in 2016, reporting about issues like food shortages, forced labor in the cotton harvest, and wage arrears for state workers in his native region of Dashoguz.
The journalist and his mother, Kurbantach Arazmedova, were arrested in December 2016 and accused of possession of tobacco powder, which is banned but does not entail criminal penalties. It was a trumped-up charge widely seen as authorities’ punishment for Allashov’s work as a journalist.
Sources told RFE/RL at the time that Allashov was beaten and tortured with electric shocks while in custody.
Police also interrogated his wife, Ejesh Arazgylyjeva, and their two young children. Arazgylyjeva was also beaten by police for spreading information about her husband and mother-in-law’s arrest, according to sources close to law-enforcement agencies.
Following widespread condemnation by Western diplomats and international human rights groups, the journalist and his mother were released several months later after a court handed each a three-year, suspended prison sentence.
Allashov stopped working for RFE/RL, but the government’s harassment campaign against him did not stop.
Allashov was briefly arrested again in October 2019 in his hometown of Koneurgench and beaten during several hours of interrogation. His mother fell ill under the stress of her son’s arrest and died in hospital from a heart attack two days later.
Another interrogation followed the next month. Police released the journalist, but he was warned that the authorities would not leave him alone "until they drove him to his grave," he told RFE/RL.
In May 2022, Allashov and his wife were severely beaten by a group of city government employees and suffered injuries. There have never been any clear official charges against Allashov or any members of his family.
Allashov was arrested again in December 2023, when authorities reportedly told the journalist he was going to be "locked up for a long time."
Amid an outcry by international human rights groups, Allashov was released after serving a 15-day administrative arrest. But the reporter’s health began to deteriorate due to his abusive treatment in custody, and he died on August 13.
People who knew Allashov blame his death on the physical and mental stress caused by the government’s eight years of ruthless persecution to punish him for his work as an independent journalist.#
Allashov’s death came 18 years after an RFE/RL reporter in Ashgabat, Ogulsapar Muradova, died in the Owadan-Depe Prison, a remote maximum-security facility in the Karakum Desert amid allegations of torture, including strangulation. Her body bore signs of ill-treatment.
Muradova, 58, had been convicted on the dubious charge of illegally possessing ammunition and sentenced to seven in years in prison after police claimed they found bullets in her car. Right groups say the criminal case against Muradova was retaliation for her work.
In June, independent journalist Nurgeldy Halykov was released after serving a four-year sentence for publishing a photo of a delegation of the World Health Organization visiting Turkmenistan during the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 was a sensitive subject in Turkmenistan where authorities insisted the country did not have a single case of infection.
Halykov, the Ashgabat reporter for the Europe-based independent news website Turkmennews, was found guilty of financial fraud. But his supporters deny the accusation and said it is a ploy against the journalist.‘Brainwashed’ Youth
The Turkmen government targets every aspect of independent journalists’ lives to make it impossible for them to work and live in Turkmenistan, according to Achilova.
"When I try to contact people for information-gathering for my reports, security agents -- who follow me -- get in touch with those people, harass them, and order them not to speak to me," she said, describing how officials try to limit her ability to follow a story.
"There are a small number of people who want their voices to be heard and talk to me about problems like electricity, water, or land issues, but a majority of people in Turkmenistan are too afraid to talk to the media," the journalist said.
She believes that the climate of fear in Turkmenistan forces people to pretend "they don’t hear anything, see anything," and "remain silent" in order to be safe from police.
Achilova has been beaten on the streets, interrogated, and threatened by police, and strip-searched at an airport and then barred from traveling abroad to attend an international conference.
Achilova’s profession has impacted her social life, too. Many friends, relatives, and neighbors have ceased contact with her after being officially warned about "the consequences."
"When I go out to sit on the benches in front of our apartment building where the neighbors gather in the evenings, everybody leaves -- one by one," Achilova said. "They know I am disliked by [the government]. They don’t want to be in trouble."
She is concerned about the impact of the lack of free media and information on the country’s youth. The government has blocked access to almost all social media, messaging apps, and independent news websites.
"Many young people in Turkmenistan are brainwashed by the government ideology; they don’t know any other viewpoint," Achilova said. "Freedom of speech or human rights is a myth for them."
Despite the challenges, Achilova has vowed to continue reporting from Turkmenistan, "for as long as [she is] alive." She believes her work will make a difference. Twitter
Afghanistan
Nargis Nehan@NehanNargis
[8/23/2024 12:49 AM, 52K followers, 76 retweets, 106 likes]
The new law requires women to cover their body and face & their voices should not be heard by any men outside their families. Drivers are instructed not to give ride to women without male guardian. All the men working outside are instructed to attend Friday prayers. Cutting & shaving beard is forbidden. Friendship & assistance to infidels (NonMuslims) is forbidden The new law consolidates all the decrees issued in the last three years for stripping away all rights of people particularly of women and controlling all aspects of their lives.
Sara Wahedi@SaraWahedi
[8/25/2024 1:27 AM, 90.7K followers, 441 retweets, 1.5K likes]
Spoke to a friend in Kabul today. She waited for a taxi, desperate to get to work. With only her mother at home and no male companion, she said: "I waited 30 minutes for a taxi to stop. They charged me four times the rate and said if I get arrested, they won’t help me."
Sara Wahedi@SaraWahedi
[8/25/2024 1:27 AM, 90.7K followers, 75 retweets, 445 likes]
The ban is rolling out unevenly, depending on the Talib you encounter. Some women face harsh threats over clothing and where they are going, others pay extra for transportation to get by the law. Women are actively risking imprisonment because they have no other option.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[8/25/2024 10:48 AM, 230.9K followers, 804 retweets, 2.5K likes]
There is peace in Afghanistan under the Taliban, like the cold peace of a graveyard. They now rule over the people they killed for decades, like a dead nation. There are no rights, no life, no hope, and no joy, with the dreams of 20 million women massacred.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[8/25/2024 11:09 AM, 230.9K followers, 3.1K retweets, 7K likes]
The Taliban’s Minister of Education says that girls’ schools are likely to remain closed permanently. After the initial ban, there was hope they might reopen, but that hope is now gone. They lied. The Taliban haven’t changed and remain the same fanatics they were.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[8/24/2024 3:49 AM, 230.9K followers, 3.3K retweets, 12K likes]
Banned from school, work, travel, and gyms— their faces and voices legally erased, subjected to forced and underage marriages—living under the Taliban is hell for Afghan women. The least the world can do is establish visa programs exclusively for Afghan women and girls.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[8/24/2024 10:59 PM, 230.9K followers, 256 retweets, 732 likes]
I hope more global celebrities and leaders speak out against the Taliban’s draconian law that bans women from showing their faces and speaking publicly. The lives of 20 million women are at risk as they endure a harsh regime of gender apartheid.
Nilofar Ayoubi@NilofarAyoubi
[8/23/2024 5:07 PM, 67K followers, 62 retweets, 172 likes]
We must collectively condemn the Taliban’s decision to ban Richard Bennet from investigating Afghanistan’s human rights crisis. His reports provide vital insights into the dire situation, especially for women. While they can ban him from entering, they cannot silence his mandate. @SR_Afghanistan #Afghanistan #HumanRights #Taliban Pakistan
Government of Pakistan@GovtofPakistan
[8/25/2024 9:54 AM, 3.1M followers, 9 retweets, 45 likes]
Lahore: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif chairs a meeting regarding the closing down of the Public Works Department.
Government of Pakistan@GovtofPakistan[8/24/2024 7:27 AM, 3.1M followers, 12 retweets, 50 likes]
Islamabad: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif chairs a review meeting regarding Electronic Procurement, e-Pak Acquisition and Disposal System/e-PADS.
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[8/26/2024 1:49 AM, 73.6K followers, 10 retweets, 51 likes]
The attacks by banned terrorist organisation BLA should not be seen in isolation, they coincide with the death anniversary of Nawab Akbar Bugti. #Pakistan
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[8/25/2024 2:22 AM, 73.6K followers, 33 retweets, 244 likes]
Pakistan has sent a formal invite to Indian PM Modi to attend the SCO Heads of Governments meeting in Islamabad scheduled to be held on Oct 15th and Oct 16th, the invite was sent by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif himself. #Pakistan #India
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[8/23/2024 12:45 PM, 73.6K followers, 25 likes]
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has penned a letter to Bangladesh Interim Government’s chief advisor extending support, assistance and sympathies on the recent floods in Bangladesh. #Pakistan #Bangladesh India
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[8/25/2024 11:32 PM, 101.3M followers, 1.6K retweets, 5.2K likes]
The #LakhpatiDidi initiative is making a difference in women’s lives. Spoke to women associated with self-help groups in Jalgaon about their journey.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[8/26/2024 2:48 AM, 101.3M followers, 362 retweets, 1.6K likes]
Creation of five new districts in Ladakh is a step towards better governance and prosperity. Zanskar, Drass, Sham, Nubra, and Changthang will now receive more focused attention, bringing services and opportunities even closer to the people. Congratulations to the people there.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[8/24/2024 1:05 PM, 101.3M followers, 5K retweets, 35K likes]
Met a delegation of staff side from the Joint Consultative Machinery for Central Government employees. They expressed joy on the Cabinet’s decision regarding the Unified Pension Scheme.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[8/24/2024 11:23 AM, 101.3M followers, 7.1K retweets, 47K likes] We are proud of the hard work of all government employees who contribute significantly to national progress. The Unified Pension Scheme ensures dignity and financial security for government employees, aligning with our commitment to their well-being and a secure future. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2048607
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[8/24/2024 11:22 AM, 101.3M followers, 1.8K retweets, 7.2K likes]
Vigyan Dhara will encourage innovation and scientific research among young minds. It will propel India towards becoming a global leader in research, science and technology. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2048572
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[8/24/2024 11:20 AM, 101.3M followers, 2.5K retweets, 9.4K likes]
The BioE3 (Biotechnology for Economy, Environment and Employment) Policy that has been approved by the Cabinet is a landmark initiative that will foster High Performance Bio-manufacturing. This will also encourage scientific, industrial and societal advancements in the times to come. Other benefits include environmental preservation and employment creation. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2048568
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[8/23/2024 9:20 AM, 101.3M followers, 4.8K retweets, 31K likes]
My visit to Ukraine was historic. I came to this great nation with the aim of deepening India-Ukraine friendship. I had productive talks with President @ZelenskyyUa. India firmly believes that peace must always prevail. I thank the Government and people of Ukraine for their hospitality.
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[8/23/2024 7:41 AM, 3.2M followers, 506 retweets, 2.1K likes]
Speaking to the media on Prime Minister @narendramodi’s visit to Ukraine. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1YqJDkazbWQGV
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[8/23/2024 2:46 PM, 212.9K followers, 11 retweets, 101 likes]
Modi’s visit to Kyiv reinvigorated India’s warm ties with Ukraine. But it’s quite clear-as seen from a rather brief trip, a relatively thin joint statement, and a bit of an awkward Modi/Zelensky embrace-that they can’t hold a candle to India’s special relationship with Russia.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[8/23/2024 2:40 PM, 212.9K followers, 46 retweets, 295 likes]
Modi seems to have achieved his objectives for his Kyiv visit: Reassert India’s strategic autonomy by underscoring its friendship w/Ukraine even while maintaining close partnership w/Russia, and reinforce its opposition to war and willingness to play a role in any peace efforts. NSB
Awami League@albd1971
[8/25/2024 7:44 AM, 645.8K followers, 31 retweets, 115 likes]
Academic lives of general students are on the edge. Leaders of #antidiscrimination movement forcing teachers to resign from key ranks at their whim. In all public universities, all teachers from key administrative responsibilities were removed without complying with any law. Classes are not being held regularly. Even students are asked to leave dormitories. #BangladeshCrisis #SaveBangladesh https://bdnews24.com/education/427d7b2f3b8c
Jon Danilowicz@JonFDanilowicz
[8/25/2024 7:55 PM, 7.3K followers, 13 retweets, 77 likes]
Today’s address by @ChiefAdviserGoB answered many of the most pressing questions that domestic and international observers have been asking about #Bangladesh interim government’s intentions. Importantly, he also underscored that the country’s future direction would be determined in consultation with the people. Professor Yunus highlighted the government’s reform priorities, underscoring the extent of the challenges facing the country. Overall, this was a very effective use of the bully pulpit. Combined with recent interviews by other advisers, the government has done a good job in providing an update on where things stand three weeks into its tenure. As today’s headlines show, there are still major challenges to be addressed. Stepping back, however, it is still clear that the situation is much better than that which prevailed prior to August 5.
Jon Danilowicz@JonFDanilowicz
[8/24/2024 12:41 PM, 7.3K followers, 8 retweets, 47 likes]
It is good to see @PowerUSAID connecting with @chiefadviserGOB to discuss ways in which @USAID can assist #Bangladesh at this critical juncture. Amidst other priorities it is important that the international community help the Bangladeshi people. https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/aug-21-2024-administrator-samantha-power-speaks-bangladesh-chief-advisor-muhammad-yunus
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[8/25/2024 11:26 AM, 212.9K followers, 163 retweets, 1.1K likes]
Sheikh Hasina’s presence in India-nearly 3 weeks after fleeing Bangladesh-has become a diplomatic quandary for Delhi. She’s a close friend. But the longer she stays, the harder it is for Delhi to build ties w/new BD gov’t-especially if Dhaka makes a formal extradition request.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[8/25/2024 11:26 AM, 212.9K followers, 7 retweets, 72 likes]
Won’t be easy for her to go to the West, where she has family. A more realistic option may be the Gulf (esp UAE, Qatar). Belarus has also been mentioned as an option. Either way, New Delhi likely has a diplomatic interest in arranging for her relocation sooner rather than later.
Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office@amnestysasia
[8/25/2024 8:06 AM, 91.1K followers, 21 retweets, 37 likes]
BANGLADESH: Seven years on, nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees remain trapped in overcrowded camps in deteriorating conditions, after fleeing atrocities by the Myanmar military. As their plight continues, Rohingya communities in Bangladesh face the threat of forced relocation to Bhasan Char, a remote island, or repatriation to Myanmar – where they risk facing the same systematic violence that forced them to flee. #ProtectRohingya #ProtectRefugees
The President’s Office, Maldives@presidencymv
[8/25/2024 12:02 PM, 109.6K followers, 145 retweets, 155 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu inaugurates the “Sahthavee bina” monument to mark the 100th anniversary of @MajeedhiyaSchool. The President was presented with a model of the monument at the event. He later viewed a photo gallery at Darul Uloom, the school hall.
The President’s Office, Maldives@presidencymv
[8/25/2024 9:11 AM, 109.6K followers, 105 retweets, 100 likes]
Second training cohort of Maldives Leadership Programme set to commence this week https://presidency.gov.mv/Press/Article/31413
The President’s Office, Maldives@presidencymv
[8/24/2024 1:13 PM, 109.6K followers, 148 retweets, 142 likes]
The First Lady stresses on individual responsibility as custodians of the ocean https://presidency.gov.mv/Press/Article/31411 K P Sharma Oli@kpsharmaoli
[8/24/2024 12:32 AM, 857.8K followers, 114 retweets, 1.1K likes]
Deeply saddened by the tragic bus accident in Abu Khaireni, Tanahun, which claimed the lives of 27 Indian citizens travelling from Pokhara to Kathmandu. My heartfelt tributes to the victims and condolences to their families, including Prime Minister Shri @narendramodi ji.Abdulla Shahid@abdulla_shahid
[8/25/2024 4:24 AM, 118.5K followers, 193 retweets, 483 likes]
Enough is enough! The Government of #Maldives must be held to account for their financial mismanagement which continue to impact the people. The lack of vision, absence of sound management, chaotic hirings and firings, and reckless foreign and economic policies have put us deep into a severe financial crisis. The reduction of USD limits on @bankofmaldives cards also severely impacts Maldivian students abroad who rely on it for education and living expenses. Increasing student loans and scholarships while failing to fund them adequately and provide necessary dollar support is yet another example of the lack of a clear plan to steer the country towards a safe economic situation. I urge the Maldivian government to take immediate steps towards course correction, by ensuring adequate access to foreign exchange for our students and protecting the most vulnerable amongst us.Eran Wickramaratne@EranWick
[8/25/2024 11:20 AM, 69K followers, 30 retweets, 54 likes]
Free transport will be provided to all government school teachers by an SJB government, I announced at a press conference today. This will cover their travel to school in the morning as well as travel back home in the afternoon, on government buses and trains. This is part of SJB’s broader vision of elevating the status of teachers, to enable them to better contribute to the development of Sri Lanka’s human capital.
M U M Ali Sabry@alisabrypc
[8/24/2024 4:34 AM, 6.3K followers, 10 retweets, 50 likes]
Presidential Elections 2024 Welcome departure from the past !
As we stand on the brink of a crucial presidential election, there is a sense of hope—a hope that we can finally move beyond the divisions that have long held our nation back. It is inspiring to see all main candidates adopting a national approach, focusing on issues that unite us rather than those that divide us along the lines of race, religion, language, or culture. This shift is not just a political strategy; it is a necessary step towards building a Sri Lanka where every citizen feels safe, secure, and dignified.
But even as we witness this promising change, it is disheartening to see some parties misrepresenting and distorting the speeches of Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Bimal Rathnayake. These speeches, delivered in the painful aftermath of the Easter Sunday Attacks in 2019, were calls for communities to resist extremism from within—a message that, in my view, was sincere and born out of a genuine desire to protect our nation.
I have my differences with the JVP/NPP, particularly when it comes to their approach to the economy, public service reforms, and investment promotion. One significant disagreement lies in their stance on state involvement in business. While I believe in strategic state interests, extending government control beyond these areas can stifle innovation and growth. Additionally, the proposed cap on income tax at 24% for higher earners is another area where we part ways. As you earn more, you must contribute more to the state. This is not only a matter of fairness but a necessity to prevent loss of revenue for the government, which is a critical step in avoiding economic collapse.
However, when it comes to the core values of unity and the rejection of divisive politics, we are aligned. Racism and polarization have no place in our political discourse, and this campaign must focus on what truly matters: the future of our country. In my experience, JVP / NPP has always shunned racism.
At this critical juncture, I firmly believe that Ranil Wickremesinghe is the right choice to lead Sri Lanka. His proven track record in resurrecting the economy speaks for itself. In a time of unprecedented challenges, he has demonstrated the leadership and vision necessary to guide us through. I am confident that the majority of Sri Lankans will see this as well, recognizing his ability to steer us towards a brighter future.
Yet, as we put forward our respective cases to the people, we must do so without sowing the seeds of division. Let us engage in a robust, passionate debate about the direction of our country, but let us do so with respect for the social fabric that binds us together as one nation. We cannot afford to be prisoners of our past mistakes. Instead, let us seize this moment to build a future that all Sri Lankans can be proud of.
In the end, the choice rests with the people. I trust in their wisdom and their ability to see through the noise. But as we move forward, let us all remember that our greatest strength lies in our unity. Together, we can overcome any challenge and build the Sri Lanka we all dream of. Central Asia
UNODC Central Asia@UNODC_ROCA
[8/23/2024 7:01 AM, 2.5K followers, 6 retweets, 10 likes]
On August 21-22 UNODC conducted a workshop on Prison Security Frameworks in Dushanbe, training 20 officers on managing security, risk assessment, and more. Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters Detention Programme funded by @StateDeptCT.
UNODC Central Asia@UNODC_ROCA
[8/23/2024 6:46 AM, 2.5K followers, 3 retweets, 7 likes]
Yesterday UNODC delivered upgraded CCTV equipment to a pilot prison in Vahdat, Tajikistan, enhancing security and humane management in line with international standards.Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters Detention Programme funded by @StateDeptCT.
Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[8/25/2024 6:07 PM, 23.6K followers, 2 likes]
A desert near the Ferghana airport is now #EcoCity (business project) hoping to lure some 80,000 population to live in it. Water chaneled from other parts of the region. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ebFN4svo65E {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.