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

Afghanistan
When the US left Kabul, these Americans tried to help Afghans left behind. It still haunts them (AP)
AP [8/30/2024 12:17 AM, Rebecca Santana and Farnoush Amiri, 456K, Negative]
The United States’ longest war is over. But not for everyone.

Outside of San Francisco, surgeon Doug Chin has helped provide medical assistance to people in Afghanistan via video calls. He has helped Afghan families with their day-to-day living expenses. Yet he remains haunted by the people he could not save.

In Long Beach, California, Special Forces veteran Thomas Kasza has put aside medical school to help Afghans who used to search for land mines escape to America. That can mean testifying to Congress, writing newsletters and asking for donations.

In rural Virginia, Army veteran Mariah Smith housed an Afghan family of four that she’d never met who had fled Kabul and needed a place to stay as they navigated their new life in America.

Smith, Kasza and Chin have counterparts scattered across the country — likeminded people they may never have heard of.

The war in Afghanistan officially ended in August 2021 when the last U.S. plane departed the country’s capital city. What remains is a dedicated array of Americans — often working in isolation, or in small grassroots networks — who became committed to helping the Afghan allies the United States left behind. For them, the war didn’t end that day.

In the three years since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, hundreds of people around the country — current and former military members, diplomats, intelligence officers, civilians from all walks of life — have struggled in obscurity to help the Afghans left behind.

They have assisted Afghans struggling through State Department bureaucracy fill out form after form. They have sent food and rent money to families. They have fielded WhatsApp or Signal messages at all hours from Afghans pleading for help. They have welcomed those who have made it out of Afghanistan into their homes as they build new lives.

For Americans involved in this ad hoc effort, the war has reverberated through their lives, weighed on their relationships, caused veterans to question their military service and in many cases left a scar as ragged as any caused by bullet or bomb.

Most are tired. Many are angry. They grapple with what it means for their nation that they, ordinary Americans moved by compassion and gratitude and by shame at what they consider their government’s abandonment of countless Afghan allies, were the ones left to get those Afghans to safety.

And they struggle with how much more they have left to give.

How we got here

The American mission in Afghanistan started with the goal of eradicating al-Qaida and avenging the group’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the mission morphed and grew over two decades. Every president inherited an evolving version of a war that no commander-in-chief wanted to lose — but that none could figure out how to win.

By the time President Joe Biden decided to pull the U.S. military from Afghanistan by Aug. 31, 2021, the American mission there was riddled with failures. But by early August the Taliban had toppled key cities and was closing in on the capital. With the Afghan army largely collapsed, the Taliban rolled into Kabul and assumed control on Aug. 15. The Biden administration scrambled to evacuate staff, American citizens and at-risk Afghans.

One Biden administration official recently described the chaos of those three weeks to The Associated Press, saying that it felt like nobody in the U.S. government was able to steer the ship. With the Taliban in control of the capital, tens of thousands of Afghans crowded the airport trying to get on one of the planes out.

That is when this informal network was born.

Past and current members of the U.S. military, the State Department and U.S. intelligence services were all being besieged with messages begging for help from Afghans they’d worked with. Americans horrified by what they were seeing and reading on the news reached out as well, determined to help.

Veterans who’d served multiple tours in Afghanistan and civilians who’d never set foot there all spent sleepless weeks working their telephones, fighting to get out every Afghan they could and to help those still trapped.

‘Only thing I can think of’

One of those civilians was Doug Chin. A plastic surgeon in Oakland California, he was already familiar with Afghanistan, although he’d never been there. A few years before the Taliban takeover, he’d become involved with the then Herat-based Afghan Girls Robotics Team. So impressed was he with their mission that he’d joined their board and sometimes traveled to their international events.

Then, in August 2021, the Taliban entered Herat. Eventually came the scenes out of Kabul airport: mothers hoisting children over barbed wire, men falling to their deaths as they clung to the bottom of departing planes. Chin, working contacts, worked to help the team, their extended families, staff and others get on flight manifests, navigate checkpoints and eventually escape Kabul.

The work was so intense that he shut down his business for three months to focus on helping Afghans. For a time, he was supporting dozens of people in Afghanistan.

Now, three years later, the work is shifting. It’s a matter of trying to get visas for Afghans so they can escape — an educational visa to study in Europe, for example.

He advocates for human rights activists in Afghanistan and also helps provide medical services remotely to people in there. Once or twice a week he gets requests via the secure messaging app Signal to help someone in Afghanistan. Chin will either give advice directly or help them get in touch with doctors in Afghanistan that can help.

Some memories still move him to tears. In one case, in August 2021, a busload of people he’d helped evacuate was heading to the Kabul airport. One woman wasn’t on the passenger manifest. U.S. officials coordinating the evacuations told him that the Taliban controlling access to the airport might turn the entire bus around because of this one passenger. Chin had to order her off the bus. She later escaped Afghanistan, but it remains painful for him.

“The only thing I can think of,” he says, “is the people that I haven’t helped.”

An imperfect pathway

In those initial months, there was a frantic intensity to the efforts to get Afghans into the Kabul airport and onto the American military planes. Volunteers pushed U.S. contacts in Kabul to let Afghans into the airport, coordinated to get them onto the flight lists, lobbied any member of Congress or government official they could find and helped Afghans in Kabul find safe places to go. Even leaders of the U.S. administration and military resorted to the volunteer groups and journalists to get out individual Afghan friends or ex-colleagues.

By the time the last plane lifted off on Aug. 30, 2021, about 76,000 Afghans had been flown out of the country and eventually to the U.S. Another 84,000 have come since the fall of Kabul – each a victory for the Americans helping them over the Taliban and over a tortuous U.S. immigration process.

But more are still waiting. There are about 135,000 applicants to the special immigrant visa program and another 28,000 waiting on other refugee programs for Afghans connected to the U.S. mission. Those numbers don’t include family members, meaning potentially hundreds of thousands more Afghans are waiting in limbo and in danger in Afghanistan.

In 2009, Congress passed legislation creating a special immigrant visa program to help Afghans and Iraqis who assisted the U.S. government emigrate to the United States. The idea was that they’d risked their lives to help America’s war effort, and in return they deserved a new life and protection in America.

But ever since its inception, the SIV program has been dogged by complaints that it has moved too slowly, burdening applicants with too much paperwork and ultimately putting America’s wartime allies in danger as they waited for decisions.

Under the Biden administration, the State Department has taken steps to streamline the process and has boosted the number of special immigrant visas issued each month to Afghans. The department says that in fiscal year 2023, it issued more SIVs for Afghans in a single year than ever before — more than 18,000 — and is on track to surpass that figure this year. State has also used what it’s learned to streamline processing of SIV applicants to increase the number of refugees it is admitting to the United States from around the world.

The Biden administration official said most people remember only the chaos of those last two weeks of August and have no idea about the work that has been done in the three years since. But for those still waiting to come, they do so under constant threat and stress.

No One Left Behind, an organization helping Afghans who used to work for the U.S. government get out of Afghanistan, has documented 242 case of reprisal killings with at least 101 who had applied or were clearly SIV-eligible.

An opportunity to pay back

Faraidoon “Fred” Abdullah is one of the volunteers often referred to as caseworkers. He has helped hundreds of Afghans fill out immigration and visa forms or hunt down letters of recommendation from former employers.

“They’re eligible. They have the documentation, but (the) Department of State is too slow,” Abdullah says.

His journey to this work started a little differently. The 37-year-old Afghanistan native began to work with the U.S. military as a translator during the war. He left his home country in 2016 through the same program he’s trying to help people through now. A year later, he enlisted in the U.S. Army.

“I lost many American friends while they served my country, while they were helping Afghan people,” Abdullah says. “So it was always like a dream for me to wear the uniform officially as a part of the United States military to pay them back with my service, with my time.”

He describes the work he has done over the last several years — as one of the few people who speaks the language and understands Afghan culture — as similar to that of a social worker. The calls come at random and varying hours of the night and day, he says.

“It’s like PTSD, and they might just snap at you like for no reason,” Abdullah says about the people he’s tried to help. “And not everybody has the patience and tolerance and the ability to deal with that.”

He was on active duty when the United States decided to withdraw. He had left his mom, siblings and other relatives in Afghanistan, thinking that the democracy that had been slowly built over the years would endure. It didn’t.

Over the last few years, Abdullah has been able to relocate a few family members out of Afghanistan. But more than a dozen still remain stuck in a process run by the departments of State and Defense. Now he worries that attention has faded from Afghanistan as other conflicts take precedence. The same urgency to donate, volunteer or sustain Afghans as their status remains in limbo is no longer there.

“Afghanistan is, right now, not an important issue — not a hot potato anymore,” Abdullah says. “That focus has shifted to Ukraine, Gaza, Israel and Haiti. And then we are kind of like, you know, nowhere.”

‘By, with and through’

To understand what has taken place since the last U.S. flight left Afghanistan, former military members will point you to the Special Forces operational approach titled, “by, with and through.”

The term effectively means that nothing the United States does on the ground in a partner state is done without allies. In the case of Afghanistan, that’s the Afghans who — at great risk to themselves — turned against the Taliban to work with the Americans.

So when Kabul fell, the obligation to their Afghan allies left behind was equal to the responsibility to their own fellow service members. Just as they would never leave another service member behind, so too with the Afghans they worked with.

It is a commitment Thomas Kasza knows all too well.

He spent 13 years active duty in the U.S. military, 10 as part of U.S. Army Special Forces, with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. As he prepared to leave active duty in August 2021, Kasza was planning to go to medical school. Then came the evacuation.

Like many U.S. military veterans, Kasza started helping Afghans he knew who were still in Afghanistan. At first, he was determined to limit his involvement.

Today, the notion of medical school has been abandoned. He’s the executive director of an organization called the 1208 Foundation. The group helps Afghans who worked with the Special Forces to detect explosives to come to America. Kasza and another Special Forces member and six Afghans do the work.

The foundation does things like pay for housing for the Afghans when they travel to another country for their visa interviews or paying for the required medical exams. They also help Afghans still in Afghanistan where they’re hunted by the Taliban. In 2023 they helped 25 Afghan families get out of Afghanistan. Each is a hard-fought victory and a new life. But they still have about another 170 cases in their roster, representing more than 900 people when family members are included.

To focus on the mission — getting those Afghan team members to safety — he limits the conversations he has with them. “You have to maintain a separation for your own sanity,” he says.

As the third anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan arrives, Kasza is preparing to step back from the executive director role at the organization he helped found although he’ll still be involved in the organization. Everything that’s happened over the last three years still weighs on him.

“I can’t do what our government did and look the other way,” he says.

Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret who spent several deployments training Afghan special forces, describes the work of the past few years as “being on the world’s longest 911 call” and unable to hang up. “It is like one of the most taboo things in the world to leave a partner on the battlefield in any way,” he says.

Scott adds that many veterans, like himself, are only alive now “because on at least two occasions Afghan partners prevented” them from getting killed.

“And now those very people are asking me to help their father or their mother who were on the run,” he says. “How do you hang up the phone on something like that?”

The notion of ‘moral injury’

Some of the volunteers spoke of tapping their own retirement accounts, or their children’s college funds, to keep stranded Afghan allies housed and fed, sometimes for years. Marriages reached breaking points over the time that volunteers were putting into the effort. Spouses and children warned their loved ones that they had to cut back.

One veteran who worked at the heart of the logistics network by which volunteers got grocery and rent money to Afghan allies talked of the loneliness of the work, where once he’d had fellow troops with him in tough times. As the effort went on, he upped his antidepressants. Then did it again. And again.

“Moral injury” is a relatively new term that is often referred to in the discussion about how many volunteers, especially military veterans, feel about the aftermath of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan and the treatment of allies. It refers to the damage done to one’s conscience by the things they’ve had to do or witnessed or failed to prevent — things that violate their own values. In this case, they feel betrayed by their country because they feel it has failed to protect Afghan allies.

It is a concept that Kate Kovarovic feels passionate about.

She is not a veteran, nor does she come from a military family. But she became involved in the effort after a friend reached out to her in 2021 to ask for her social media expertise. From there Kate got more and more involved until she became the director of resilience programming for #AfghanEvac, a coalition of organizations dedicated to helping Afghans trying to leave Afghanistan. She held that position for over a year. She describes it as the hardest job of her life.

During the evacuation and its aftermath, volunteers were focused on helping Afghans flee or find safe houses. But a few months later volunteers started realizing that they needed support as well, she says.

The ease of communication meant volunteers were always getting bombarded with pleas for help.

Kovarovic says they tried a little bit of everything to help the volunteers. She held a series of fireside chats where she’d talk to mental health professionals. They created a resource page on #AfghanEvac’s website with mental health resources. And she helped create a Resilience Duty Officer support program where volunteers needing someone to talk to could call or text a 24-hour hotline. She describes that program as “catastrophically successful.”

The volunteers weren’t just calling to vent a little. Kovarovic says the calls were graphic. Desperate.

“I personally fielded over 50 suicide calls from people,” she recalls. “You were hearing a lot of the trauma.”

A Plea for help

Messages from people still in Afghanistan pleading with American volunteers for help and from American volunteers describing the toll this effort has taken on them.

She lost weight, wasn’t sleeping and developed an eye twitch that made it difficult to see. Loved ones asked her to stop. In 2023, she took a break. Home from a two-week vacation, she landed at the airport and her eye twitch immediately returned. She sat down and texted colleagues that it was time for her to stop.

“I wept. I have never felt such a heavy sense of guilt. I felt like I hadn’t done enough and that I had failed people by abandoning them,” she says.

She now hosts a podcast called “Shoulder to Shoulder: Untold Stories From a Forgotten War” with a retired Air Force veteran that she met during the evacuation. They talk to guests like a Gold Star mother and an Afghan interpreter who lost his legs in a bomb blast.

She wants people outside the community to know that the work of helping Afghans during the withdrawal and all that has happened since has been its own front line in the war on terror.

“What I hope that people will understand one day is that these are lifelong conditions,” she says. “So even people who leave the volunteer work, even if you never speak to another Afghan again, this is going to sit with you for the rest of your life.”

What comes next?

Everyone in the movement, spread out across time zones, has varying views of where this effort goes from here. Many want Congress to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would provide a permanent emigration pathway for Afghans. Others would like support for volunteers’ mental health concerns. Many just want accountability.

None of the four presidents who oversaw the war in Afghanistan has taken public responsibility for the chaos and destruction that followed America’s withdrawal. Biden, in charge when U.S. troops left, has come under the most criticism.

The Biden administration official, who spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity, said that the unwillingness by the U.S. government to admit its mistakes in regards to Afghanistan is perpetuating the moral injury felt by those who stepped up.

In the meantime, the work goes on — getting Afghans to safety and helping them once they’re here.

In 2022, at Dulles International Airport, Army veteran Mariah Smith got to experience that moment. Smith spent three tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. With retirement from the military nearing in 2020, she joined the board of No One Left Behind. Then came the U.S. withdrawal.

One of the Afghans the group was helping was a woman named Latifa who had worked for the U.S. government. With the Taliban encircling and constant concerns over bombings, Latifa and her family didn’t want to risk taking the young children to the airport.

She was eventually able to get a visa to what is likely one of the least used Afghan immigration routes: Iceland. From there, No One Left Behind helped her process her special immigrant visa. That’s how Smith and the woman started talking.

They discussed where the woman and her family were going to live. Mariah lives in Stephens City on a farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley countryside. She also owns a home in town that she usually rents out but was empty at the time. She offered it to Latifa and her family.

Mariah was amazed at the response by the town of roughly 2,000 people where the Afghan family lived. Latifa, her husband and two kids came with the luggage they could carry, but Mariah said the mayor, police chief, town clerk, town manager and others all pitched in with furniture, toys and household items: “People really, really tried hard. And that was wonderful to see too.” The Afghan family stayed for over a year before moving to Dallas.

Why did she make that offer of a place to stay? Smith says it was a way to help a woman, her family, her children who’d had everything taken from them in their home country — helping them find a safe place, showing them that it was possible to start over here. Filling a gap. Helping.

“It felt like being a part of, I guess, the fabric of America.”
As a young Afghan interpreter, he helped a US officer. Then he needed help getting out (USA Today)
USA Today [8/30/2024 5:15 AM, Chris Kenning, 27782K, Negative]
One day in April, Ahmadullah Karimi nervously packed his family’s meager belongings into a handful of suitcases, knowing the next few hours would decide his fate.

Karimi, 31, was in Pakistan. He’d been holed up there with his wife and two kids for more than 2½ years, waiting.

When the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan ended on Aug. 30, 2021, he had stood outside Kabul’s airport, watching fellow Afghans so desperate to flee some of them clung to the outside of military planes as they lumbered into the air.

But Karimi, a former U.S. military interpreter – like thousands of other Afghan allies vulnerable to Taliban reprisal – had been left behind.

Instead, he and his family had made it as far as neighboring Pakistan. Interpreters like Karimi were supposed to be eligible for a pathway to the U.S. called a special immigrant visa. Now, after years of struggle, red tape and critical help from his former boss and friend, retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Will Selber, Karimi finally had his.

Still, Selber, who worked in intelligence and spent countless hours since the withdrawal helping other former Afghan colleagues, knew even the visa wasn’t a guarantee. He had seen some people disappear or be killed. Both men feared that despite valid paperwork, Karimi could still be blocked, detained or even deported to Afghanistan by Pakistani authorities.

“If they see me and my family trying to go to the airport, they probably will make some excuses” to intervene, said Karimi, who was with his wife, 6-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.

Being sent back to live under Taliban rule would mean he could face death for his work with U.S. forces, while his wife would be prohibited from studying beyond the sixth grade or showing her face in public.

Selber, 46, who monitored his progress from the United States, knew that despite organizing help, nothing was certain. “A thousand things could go wrong,” he said.

Today, three years after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan ended the nation’s longest war, the U.S. has resettled more than 160,000 such vulnerable Afghans and their families as part of what veterans and advocates view as a national moral obligation.

The Biden Administration has worked to accelerate processing for Afghans who seek admission as refugees or through other immigration programs. Special immigrant visas, for example, for those who worked directly with the U.S., are on pace this year to surpass the 18,000 granted last year, according to the State Department.

Yet despite the progress, at least 250,000 vulnerable Afghans, including former interpreters, Afghan military personnel, civil society staff and family members remain stranded in Afghanistan and third countries amid barriers and backlogs, according to advocates.

Many are still waiting for eligibility decisions including about 130,000 applicants for special immigrant visas, according to Andrew Sullivan of the group No One Left Behind.

Long waits have led several thousand to risk a dangerous trek to the U.S. southern border. Still more face challenges in bringing extended family members to safety.

And Congress has yet to approve the Afghan Adjustment Act, proposed two years ago to speed resettlement and provide Afghans admitted under temporary, two-year parole a path to permanent residency.

“So much more needs to be done to keep our promise to protect our allies,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the head of Global Refuge, a resettlement agency.

Though the effort will take years, progress is being made and thousands are being relocated to the U.S. each month, said Shawn VanDiver, President of the group AfghanEvac.

He said those gains have come in partnership with veteran and nonprofit groups that have scrambled to help relocate former friends and colleagues. Individually, many veterans have helped people they knew with money for housing or help with bureaucratic jams.

That includes Selber, who served multiple times in Afghanistan and has aided many former Afghan allies. Most made it, he said. Some didn’t.

Karimi was the last interpreter he knew well still in harm’s way. He vowed to do everything he could to see him to safety.

But it would be no easy feat.

Trusted Afghan allies form bond in war

The men’s paths first crossed a decade earlier in a dusty Afghan outpost northwest of Kandahar.

The village in the Ghorak district had no schools or medical facilites. Residents lived in deep poverty. With the Taliban not far away, supplies had to be air-dropped to his small camp.

It marked Selber’s second deployment to Afghanistan. During his first, he had worked on projects such as digging wells and repairing mosques, stories he would later recount in a book review. The job let him spend long hours drinking chai with Pashtun elders. He found Afghans generous and fascinating.

He would learn the language, but still needed a translator for his new mission – serving as the local governor’s adviser to build support for the U.S.-backed Afghan government. The few dozen special forces soldiers he was with were tasked with training and supporting local police.

Karimi hadn’t yet turned 20 – a young interpreter from Kandahar who loved reading and cricket. He’d taken the job mainly because it would qualify him for a U.S. visa, Karimi said.

“He was a baby,” Selber recalled, laughing. “Eager and green and excited.”

Over that year, they bonded during meetings with area elders and civilians. Back at base, not far from where the governor had been installed in a rented house, Selber and Karimi hung out in the interpreters’ tent. They posed for a photo, arm-in-arm, in desert-colored fatigues near armored vehicles.

While they didn’t see combat together, Karimi learned the risks of his job were ever-present. Military interpreters were despised by some in rural areas more favorable to the Taliban, he said.

“They were hating us” for working with U.S. forces, he said. “And they announced money if anybody killed us.”

When Selber’s deployment ended, he wrote Karimi a letter of recommendation for his SIV visa.

He lost track of Karimi as a steady stream of Afghan interpreters came and went during his deployment to Afghanistan in 2014 and again in 2020 ahead of the U.S. withdrawal.

“I said goodbye to Ahmadullah,” Selber said in a blog post, “and hoped to run into him sometime down the road.”

They would indeed reconnect - but not where either man expected.

Fall of Kabul brings a blocked path

In August 2021, Ahmadullah barrelled toward Kabul with his family in hopes of getting on a plane to safety.

Ahead of the U.S. withdrawal, the Tablian began retaking territory. By mid-August, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as Taliban forces advanced on the capital.

President Joe Biden later said U.S.-trained and equipped Afghan National Security collapsed faster than some expected.

Karimi had stopped interpreting for the military in 2014 to earn a college degree. He went on to work for a United Nations-funded aid organization. But he knew his past work for the military meant he would be a target for reprisal killings.

“Especially my mom, she was really concerned about me,” he said. “We worked for the U.S. forces. So they won’t let us live. They will kill us.”

With his visa eligibility, and a sister in Canada advocating on his behalf, he was hopeful he’d get a seat on a plane.

Meantime, Selber, whose deployment at the U.S. Embassy ended earlier that summer, was back in the U.S. working the phones and contacts to help the U.S. get vulnerable allies inside an airport thronged by chaotic crowds and surrounded by Taliban checkpoints.

Selber didn’t know Karimi and his family were among them, waiting for hours in the sun, moving back and forward with the crowd, hoping for an opening to reach U.S. forces and tell them he had worked as a military interpreter.

On Aug. 30, he finally got close to U.S. forces to do that. But he was told there were no more flights for civilians or Afghans. He waited at the door for four or five hours, hoping that might change. But the answer was the same.

“It’s all over,” he was told.

But he still had to get out. Like others, he looked to the nearest border.

The following month, they packed a car and drove south to a Pakistani crossing, hoping to pass unnoticed. He waited for hours in a line of refugees, his kids thirsty and crying, hoping he wasn’t stopped by the Taliban or refused entry.

At the border station, he showed his Afghan identification. The guards asked his reason for seeking to enter Pakistan.

“My wife is sick,” he recalled telling them. “I want to take her to the hospital.” He handed over 20,000 Pakistani rupees, about $71 today. He was waved across.

But he wasn’t out of danger yet.

Facing danger and red tape, veterans aid former allies

In 2022, an email with an unexpected question landed in Selber’s inbox: Are you Maj. Will Selber?

“I’m Lt. Col. Will Selber,” he corrected the emailer. “What’s up?”

It was a lawyer hired by Karimi’s sister in Canada to find Selber – not only his last U.S. military supervisor, but a friend he knew would come to his aid.

He’d tried to reach Selber. He still had the recommendation letter Selber had written nearly a decade earlier, but the listed email address no longer worked after Selber had taken on new assignments.

Selber learned that Karimi had applied for the SIV, by then a notoriously slow program. But there were hitches, including a clerical error from his former interpreter contractor showing he’d been fired, which wasn’t the case. Could he help?

Selber, who had been consumed by efforts to help evacuate Afghan allies since 2021, remembered his old friend and colleague and quickly agreed.

“By the time Ahmadullah reached out to me, I’d become an expert at it,” he said.

Karimi’s family had reached Islamabad, a city filled with refugees seeking safe passage out, living on financial help from family and friends. He’d registered with the United Nations refugee system, a process that can take years. His son fought an illness while he battled red tape.

He told his family they’d be here for a few months, tops. His son kept asking. “Dad, when will your three months get completed?”

He still sought to win an SIV visa, and with it, eventual U.S. permanent residency.

Selber penned an affidavit vouching for him and pushed to get his mistaken record corrected. Once it was, Karimi submitted his SIV application again.

“It sailed through,” Selber recalled. “He got his approval within a year, which is pretty fast.”

In 2023, however, staying in Pakistan got more dangerous when the country announced plans to deport large numbers of Afghan refugees, Sullivan said.

And the dangers in Afghanistan were evident in reports from the U.N. and other groups that had documented reprisal killings of people who had worked with U.S. forces. Further, the economy had cratered and women’s rights were being strictly curtailed, with prohibitions on girls going to school and as time went on, women speaking in public.

Selber, with the help of fellow veterans, found the family safe house to stay hidden. He tapped his veteran community, setting up a GoFundMe campaign to help his former interpreter seeking about $7,000. It drew five times that much within days.

Finally, in April he was approved to go.

Selber and other supporters bought him a ticket instead of waiting what can be months for one provided by the government. He even had a U.S. letter stating that he should not be detained.

But Selber knew it could go sideways. He even told Karimi he might have to make a run for it.

On the way to the airport, his son was happy. Karimi tried to hide his nerves while his driver, whose identity he’d confirmed with a code phrase, took routes to avoid police checkpoints.

But all the support paid off. Karimi said that with help he got inside and through customs without being challenged or turned away.

Settling into his airplane seat on a flight to Qatar, he buckled his seatbelt and exhaled.

Amid ramped-up processing and new lives, others remain stuck

In mid-April, Selber stood inside Boston Logan International Airport, wearing a shirt that read, Operation Enduring Freedom.

Soon Karimi walked from the gate with his wife, daughter and their son, who was dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, meeting Selber in what he described as an “unbelievable” moment.

“He did a lot for me and my family,” he said. “He saved my life.”

Selber, too, could finally relax after many nerve-wracking months. “I was just like, oh my God, I can finally rest,” he said.

Selber drove the family about 180 miles north to Montpelier, Vermont, a town of about 8,000 residents set along the Winooski River, where they would be resettled with the help of refugee agencies and friends.

They soon moved into their first apartment. Karimi was delivering food for Door Dash and Uber Eats. By late August, he started a new job as a cashier at a grocery. His son Abdullah was starting school and his wife was learning English and taking her daughter to the park.

“I’m really happy for my wife and my kids. They can go to school. They have freedom here. They have all the rights that a human should have,” he said.

At the same time, he said, “I have a lot of stress and tension and concern about my parents. They are still in trouble.”

His father worked as a government driver, he said, so his parents have been moving, changing where they stay every couple of months to keep ahead of the Tablian. Two of his sisters, who worked in healthcare, now can’t leave their homes.

Like others, he wants to help get his family out. But getting extended relatives visas is more difficult than for immediate family members. From Vermont, it’s anguishing to see what’s become of his country, he said.

“We lost all the progress that happened in the last 20 years,” he said. “Everything is destroyed.”

Selber retired from the Air Force in July. He said a crowd of Afghans came to the event. He still keeps in touch with Karimi and other former interpreters and Afghan colleagues now in the U.S.

Many are thriving, he said. Some are still learning English. Some former Afghan elites are driving Uber or working as security guards. Most are financially supporting families back home. Still more have survivor’s guilt.

“All of them are 100% grateful to be here,” he said. “But I’ve never met one that didn’t wish they could come back.”

There are hopeful signs more will follow in Karimi’s path. SIV and refugee admissions have risen and earlier this year Congress expanded the available SIV visas. Recently, the Philippines agreed to temporarily host a visa processing center for a small number of Afghans seeking to resettle in the U.S.

But advocates say the progress needs to be sustained over a number of years to get everyone eligible to safety. And they hope Congress will pass the Afghan Adjustment Act in part so that those here on a temporary status can avoid the U.S. asylum system that has a backlog of more than 2 million applicants.

“It’s still frustratingly slow for people who are facing danger in Afghanistan,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.

Selber said that the way things ended in Afghanistan broke his heart. But he hopes his efforts to help Karimi and others help him heal.

Earlier this week, Karimi called Selber with welcome news. He’d received his coveted “green card,” making him a permanent resident – a fitting coda to a friendship that Karimi credits with saving his life.

“I don’t have words to tell him thank you,” Karimi said.
An Afghan woman who sings outdoors to protest the Taliban´s morality laws says she won´t be silenced (AP)
AP [8/29/2024 1:40 PM, Staff, 88008K, Neutral]
A woman who posted a video of herself singing outdoors in Afghanistan to protest the Taliban’s morality laws, which include a ban on women’s voices in public, said Thursday she won’t be silenced.

The 23-year-old graduate is from the northeastern province of Badakhshan and only gave her last name, Efat, to avoid reprisals.

“No command, system or man can close the mouth of an Afghan woman,” she told The Associated Press. “If you close one part of the body of an Afghan woman, another part will work.”

The Taliban last week 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 have triggered widespread condemnation and accusations that the Taliban are erasing women from public life and granting broad powers to enforcers from the Vice and Virtue Ministry. The Taliban reject the accusations.

Afghan women both inside and outside the country have posted videos of themselves singing in protest at the new laws.

Efat’s face is barely visible in the 39-second video, which was recorded by her older sister and posted to social media on Tuesday. She wears a dark top, a light blue scarf and sunglasses. She sings outdoors, an act prohibited under the new laws.

“Because we are in Afghanistan, and the region has less freedom and more fear, if a sound is heard, it will be shut down,” Efat said. “While I was singing, I had the same fear. That if someone heard it, it would be the last time I sang.”

She chose the song because of its message of defiance, protest and strength: “I am not that weak willow that trembles in every wind/I am from Afghanistan/I remember that day when I opened the cage/I took my head out of the cage and sang drunkenly.”

At the end of the video, she says: “A woman’s voice is not intimate.” It’s a direct reference to the Taliban laws and what they say are the reason for a woman’s voice to be concealed outside the home.

“We will remain stronger than before,” she said.

Efat protested in the city and market when the full veil, or burqa, became mandatory. She speaks openly and criticizes the Taliban on her social media pages. The local Taliban have told her family that she should not do this.

“There is obviously fear. But Afghan women carry the same fear in our lives for the freedom of our voice,” she said.
Taliban bans mixed martial arts in Afghanistan for being too violent (The Telegraph)
The Telegraph [8/29/2024 6:06 PM, Akhtar Makoii, 31540K, Negative]
Afghanistan’s Taliban has banned mixed martial arts (MMA), claiming it is too violent and in breach of Islamic law.

A spokesman for the hardline Islamic group, which carries out public executions and the stoning of women, said the sport featured dangerous moves that raised concerns over athletes’ safety.

“The free fighting games are banned from now on and no one is allowed to practise them,” Atal Mashwani, a spokesman for the Taliban’s sports department, told The Telegraph from Kabul.

“Those athletes who were involved in the sport can move to another sport of their choice and continue their activities,” he added.

The sport became popular in Afghanistan, like it did around the world, with the launch of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the early 1990s.

The mixed martial arts federation of Afghanistan was founded in 2008 and The Snow Leopard Fighting Championship, the country’s first private MMA tournament, was founded in 2015. The Afghanistan Fighting Championship, founded in 2018, hosted dozens of fights before the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Its rule that “face-punching” was illegal effectively put an end to it and all combat sports.

Mr Mashwani said the Taliban had been exploring whether the sport could be held to comply with Islamic law but found it couldn’t.

“After the investigation, it was decided that the sport should be banned,” Mr. Mashwani added.

He said that Afghan sports authorities do not have statistics on the number of athletes involved in the sport.

“They were part of private organisations and were not registered with the sports department,” he said.

The country’s ministry for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice, which gave the order for the sport to be banned, said it “poses a risk of death,” the letter, seen by the Telegraph, reads.

Most MMA fighters have left Afghanistan since the Taliban’s return to power – but of those that stayed, their future looks uncertain.

“I had a scheduled match in Pakistan, but it was cancelled. I had been preparing for it for the past two months to make our nation proud,” one MMA fighter said.

“Now, I have no choice but to leave my homeland and go to another place where I can win trophies for my people,” he added.

Despite its stated aversion to the violence of MMA, the Taliban is accused by rights groups of being one of the world’s most repressive regimes, using violence to enforce its draconian set of laws, such as public stoning and flogging and executions.

“Multiple UN agencies reported an increase in child and forced marriage, as well as gender-based violence and femicide with impunity,” Amnesty International has said.
Germany deports 28 Afghan nationals to their homeland, the first since the Taliban takeover in 2021 (AP)
AP [8/30/2024 4:31 AM, Stefanie Dazio, 456K, Negative]
Germany deported Afghan nationals to their homeland on Friday for the first time since August 2021, when the Taliban returned to power.

Government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit described the 28 Afghan nationals as convicted criminals but did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify their offenses.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called the move a security issue for Germany.

Germany does not have diplomatic relations with the Taliban, requiring the government to work through other channels. It’s unlikely that Friday’s actions will lead to a wider thawing of relations between Germany and the Taliban, especially after last week’s issuing of the first set of laws to prevent vice and promote virtue in Afghanistan. They include a requirement for a woman to conceal her face, body and voice outside the home.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has slammed the morality laws in posts on X.

While media reports say the deportations have been in the works for some time, they occurred a week after a deadly knife attack in the town of Solingen in which the suspect is a Syrian citizen who had applied for asylum in Germany.

The suspect was supposed to be deported to Bulgaria last year but reportedly disappeared for a time and avoided deportation. He was ordered held Sunday on suspicion of murder and membership in a terrorist organization pending further investigation and a possible indictment.

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for last Friday’s attack, without providing evidence. The extremist group said on its news site that the attacker targeted Christians and that he carried out the assaults “to avenge Muslims in Palestine and everywhere.” The claim couldn’t be independently verified.

There has also been debate over immigration ahead of regional elections Sunday in Germany’s Saxony and Thuringia regions where anti-immigration parties such as the populist Alternative for Germany are expected to do well. In June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed that the country would start deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria again after a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant left one police officer dead and four more people injured.

Faeser on Thursday announced a plan to tighten knife laws, according to German news agency dpa. Along with other officials in the governing coalition, she also pledged during a news conference to make deportations easier.
Pakistan
Pakistan security officials in ‘Taliban’ captivity appeal for help (VOA)
VOA [8/29/2024 12:34 PM, Ayaz Gul, 4566K, Negative]
Militants in northwestern Pakistan released video Thursday of an army colonel and his brother, a senior civilian security officer, showing them in captivity and requesting authorities help secure their freedom.

The officers are part of a group of four people, including their third brother and a nephew, whom gunmen abducted Wednesday evening while attending their father’s funeral in the militancy-hit Dera Ismail Khan district.

The outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for kidnapping the four men but did not share their demands publicly.

"We are safe and well and in the custody of the Taliban in a remote area where the Pakistani government has no control," Lieutenant Colonel Khalid Amir stated in the 35-second video.

Two men dressed in traditional attire, holding assault rifles, are seen in the background with their faces deliberately kept out of the video frame.

"We appeal to the government and our higher authorities to promptly accept the Taliban’s demands for our release," Amir said without elaborating.

The brother of the army officer, Asif Amir, a police assistant commissioner, made a similar statement and urged his relatives to pressure Pakistani authorities to secure their freedom.

Area security officials confirmed the identities of the hostages and the authenticity of the video to VOA on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the matter with the media.

The fate of the other two hostages was not immediately known. The TTP sources claimed that they do not produce videos of civilian captives who are not associated with the Pakistani military and law enforcement agencies.

The Pakistani Taliban routinely carry out hit-and-run attacks against security forces and government targets in Dera Ismail Khan and other districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.

Pakistan maintains that the TTP, a globally designated terrorist group, orchestrates deadly cross-border attacks from sanctuaries on Afghan territory and receives growing support from the Islamist Taliban leaders of the neighboring country.

The violence has killed hundreds of Pakistanis, primarily security forces, in recent months, straining Islamabad’s ties with Kabul’s de facto Afghan rulers.

Taliban officials reject the Pakistani allegations, saying the TTP is not present in Afghanistan.

However, recent United Nations security reports disputed Taliban claims and described the TTP as "the largest terrorist group in Afghanistan," being trained and equipped in al-Qaida-run training camps in areas near the border with Pakistan. The U.N. assessments also noted that Afghan Taliban fighters are participating in TTP-led cross-border attacks in Pakistan.
Pakistan military launches strikes in response to Balochistan attacks, army says (Reuters)
Reuters [8/30/2024 5:17 AM, Asif Shahzad, 5.2M, Negative]
Pakistan’s military has launched intelligence-based operations in the southwestern Balochistan province in response to attacks by insurgents that killed over 50 people this week, the army said on Friday.

In a statement, the army said five insurgents were killed and three others wounded in the three operations it had launched in the province.

"Operations will continue until all perpetrators, facilitators and abetters of these atrocious acts are brought to justice," the statement said.

Ethnic Baloch insurgents earlier this week hit several civil and military targets in a coordinated string of attacks. The army said it retaliated, killing 21 militants.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has claimed responsibility for one of its deadliest attacks in recent years as it seeks to win secession of the resource-rich province, home to major China-led projects such as a deep-water port and a gold and copper mine.

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has said the attacks were aimed at hurting the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an over $65 billion scheme to develop road, rail and port infrastructures in Pakistan that is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Beijing has condemned the attacks.
A mudslide triggered by heavy monsoon rain kills 12 people, mostly children, in northwest Pakistan (AP)
AP [8/30/2024 1:32 AM, Staff, 456K, Negative]
A mudslide triggered by heavy monsoon rain hit a house in a remote part of northwestern Pakistan, killing 12 people, mostly children, a rescue official said Friday.

Inayat Ali, an official of the state-run emergency service, said the mudslide happened overnight in Upper Dir in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa near Afghanistan. He said rescuers retrieved the bodies of nine children, two women and a man.

Ali provided no further details.

Authorities have warned that ongoing heavy rain, which began last month, could cause landslides and flash floods across Pakistan. Since July 1, more than 275 people have died in rain-related incidents in various parts of the country.

Pakistan’s annual monsoon season runs from July through September. Scientists have blamed climate change for heavier rains in recent years.

In 2022, downpours inundated one-third of the country, killing 1,739 people.
Schools in Pakistan’s Karachi closed as rare August cyclone builds up (Reuters)
Reuters [8/30/2024 2:33 AM, Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam, 5.2M, Negative]
Heavy rains and stormy winds forced authorities in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, to close schools on Friday, after a deep depression in the Arabian Sea that the weather office says could develop into a cyclonic storm.

Parts of Karachi received 147 mm (5.79 inches) of rain overnight, the local weather office said, and the city’s mayor, Murtaza Wahab, in a post on X, asked residents to avoid "unnecessary movement".

The deep depression which is off the Rann of Kutch in India’s Gujarat, is expected to intensify into a cyclonic storm on Friday, India’s weather office said, adding that it would move north-west over the Arabian Sea in the next two days.

Authorities in Pakistan asked fishermen and sailors not to venture out to sea, and warned that the storm is likely to result in flooding in cities as well as flash floods in hilly areas in coming days.

More than 28 people died and around 18,000 have been evacuated since Sunday from cities near the Gujarat coast, disaster management authorities said on Thursday, even as more rain was expected in the state as the cyclonic storm builds up.

The formation of a cyclonic storm over the Arabian Sea in August was a rare occurrence, the Indian Express newspaper reported, saying the last such storm was in 1964.
India
India Inducts Second Ballistic Missile Submarine Into Fleet (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [8/29/2024 11:45 AM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 27782K, Positive]
India commissioned its second nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine into its naval fleet on Thursday, the country’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement. The development will add to its ability to launch nuclear weapons from sea, air or land.

Indian Naval Ship Arighaat will “enhance nuclear deterrence, help in establishing strategic balance & peace in the region,” India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said at the induction of the new boat in the southern Indian city Visakhapatnam.

The addition to India’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet capable of launching nuclear weapons is a significant event given the growing competition between China and the US and it’s allies for dominance in the Indian Ocean Region. To this end, the US, UK and Australia entered into a defense pact in 2021 to help Canberra build nuclear-powered, albeit not nuclear missile, submarines to contain China’s aggressiveness.

Nuclear-powered submarines can stay underwater for an extended amount of time making them difficult to detect unlike conventional diesel-electric powered vessels which need to surface at regular intervals to charge batteries.

The South Asian country has a “No-First-Use” nuclear doctrine, which means it will not initiate but will retaliate when attacked. Only a few countries including the US, China and Russia have nuclear-powered submarines.

India already has one operational homemade nuclear-powered submarine — INS Arihant — and intends to build a few more although the numbers have not been made public.

The submarine is “significantly more advanced” than the previous one, said Singh at the induction ceremony of the vessel.
The first election in a decade is planned in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Here’s what to know (AP)
AP [8/29/2024 11:57 PM, Aijaz Hussain, 456K, Neutral]
Residents of Indian-controlled Kashmir are gearing up for their first regional election in a decade that will allow them to have their own truncated government, also known as a local assembly, instead of remaining under New Delhi’s direct rule.

Muslim-majority Kashmir is divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan and claimed in its entirety by both. The Indian-administered part has been on edge since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government ended its special status in 2019 and also scrapped its statehood.

The three-phased polls will take place amid a sharp rise in rebel attacks on government forces in parts of Hindu-dominated Jammu areas that have remained relatively peaceful in the three decades of armed rebellion against Indian rule.

With campaigning picking up in the runup to the election, India’s main opposition Congress party has formed an alliance to jointly seek the vote with the National Conference, the region’s largest pro-India Kashmiri political party. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has a weak political base in the Kashmir Valley, the heartland of decades of anti-India rebellion, while it’s strong in Jammu.

Here is what you need to know about the coming election:

The history of disputed Kashmir

Kashmir’s future was left unresolved at the end of British colonial rule in 1947 when the Indian subcontinent was divided into predominantly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan. Pakistan has long pushed for the right to self-determination under a U.N. resolution passed in 1948, which called for a referendum on whether Kashmiris wanted to merge with either country.

Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989, while India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, a charge Islamabad denies. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict which most Kashmiri Muslims consider a legitimate struggle for freedom.

What is the current status of the region?

Indian-administered Kashmir has been without a local government since 2018 when India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ended its support to the local Kashmiri People’s Democratic Party, bringing down the coalition government and causing the assembly to dissolve. A year later, Modi’s government revoked the region’s semi-autonomy and downgraded it to a federally controlled territory.

As a result, Indian-held Kashmir lost its flag, criminal code, constitution and inherited protections on land and jobs. It was also divided into two federal territories, Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir, ruled directly by New Delhi, allowing it to appoint an administrator to run it along unelected government officials.

Since then, a slew of legal and administrative changes have been installed without public input, much to the anger of the region’s people whose civil liberties have also been curbed and media intimidated.

Indian officials have repeatedly said that the move — to shape what it calls “Naya Kashmir,” or a “new Kashmir” — was necessary to tackle separatism, foster greater economic development and fully integrate the region into the country.

Even after the election, India’s federal government will still make the decisions
The election will take place between Sept. 18 and Oct. 1, and votes are set to be counted on Oct. 4.

In theory, the polls will see a transition of power from New Delhi to a newly elected local assembly with a chief minister serving as the region’s top elected official with a council of ministers, a similar setup to before 2018.

But the new polls will hardly give the new government any legislative powers as Indian-controlled Kashmir will continue to be a “Union Territory” — a region directly controlled by the federal government — with India’s parliament remaining as the region’s legislator. The elected assembly will only have nominal control over education and culture.

Kashmir’s statehood status has to be restored for the new government to have power. Even Kashmiri pro-India parties, like the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party, have vowed to politically and legally fight for the return of Kashmir’s semi-autonomy.

How do Kashmir residents view the upcoming election?

Many are indifferent, while some believe their vote could be a way to express deep resentment of Modi’s party. Most Muslim residents of the region want independence from India or unification with Pakistan.

However, Kashmir’s pro-India political elite, many of whom have been jailed for allegedly disrupting peace and slapped with corruption cases in 2019, see an opportunity in these elections to politically oppose the changes by India’s ruling party.

Historically, elections in Indian-held Kashmir have remained a sensitive issue, with many believing that they have been rigged multiple times in favor of the region’s pro-India politicians.

Previous elections have seen Kashmiri Muslim separatist leaders who challenge India’s sovereignty over the region call for a boycott of the vote, calling it an illegitimate exercise under military occupation.
Danish man avoids extradition to India in arms smuggling case, court rules (Reuters)
Reuters [8/29/2024 8:44 AM, Isabelle Yr Carlsson, 37270K, Negative]
A Danish court said on Thursday it had rejected a request by India for the extradition of a Danish national wanted over a 1995 weapons smuggling case, citing the risk of human rights breaches.

India has for years sought to have Niels Holck extradited to stand trial on suspicion of supplying a West Bengal rebel group with around four tons of weapons.

Sending Holck to India would violate Denmark’s extradition act due to a risk that he would be subjected to treatment in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, the court ruled.

Public prosecutor Anders Rechendorff, who last year nominated Holck for a handover to stand trial in India, told Reuters it had yet to be decided whether the decision would be appealed.

"The guarantees India has provided are not valid," defence lawyer Jonas Christoffersen told Reuters.

"It’s been six years of negotiating the conditions between the public prosecutor and India. Now the court says that his safety can’t be guaranteed," Christoffersen said.

Holck previously admitted in a Danish court that he was onboard a Russian cargo plane with six others, smuggling weapons into West Bengal in December, 1995. At the time he was known by the alias Kim Davy.

The arms were intended for people associated with Ananda Marga, a rebel movement that, according to Holck, needed weapons to defend against soldiers of the communist party in power in West Bengal at the time, Christoffersen said.

However, the weapons landed elsewhere than planned and were discovered by the Indian authorities, who prosecuted and imprisoned the whole crew in India, except for Holck who escaped to Nepal and returned to Denmark in 1996.

The trial in Denmark did not rule on whether Holck is innocent or not, but whether the criteria of the extradition law were fulfilled, according to the Danish public prosecutor.
NSB
Bangladesh’s government led by Yunus signs UN convention involving enforced disappearance (AP)
AP [8/29/2024 9:19 AM, Julhas Alam, 1342K, Negative]
Bangladesh’s interim government on Thursday signed the instrument of accession to an international convention of the United Nations aiming at preventing enforced disappearances as a state party, authorities said.

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who took over this month as head of the government after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepped down and fled the country to India amid a mass uprising, signed the accession to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, his press department said in a statement.

The signing took place during a weekly meeting of the interim government’s advisory council amid applause from the council members, the statement said.

"It is a historic occasion," Yunus was quoted as saying.

The move came just one day before the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. There have long been accusations that during Hasina’s 15-year-rule, hundreds of Bangladeshis, including critics and opposition activists, became the victims of enforced disappearances.

Earlier this week, the interim government established a commission to investigate cases of enforced disappearances during Hasina’s rule since 2009.

New York-based group Human Rights Watch, in a letter to Yunus, said that according to Bangladeshi human rights monitors, security forces carried out more than 600 enforced disappearances since 2009. While some people were later released, produced in court or said to have died during armed exchanges with security forces, nearly 100 people still remain disappeared.

The group also said that leaked information from military intelligence records indicates that some individuals who were forcibly disappeared were killed in custody. For victims who were returned and for those who are still missing, justice and accountability remains elusive, it said.

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance is an international human rights instrument of the U.N. intended to prevent forced disappearance, which has been defined in international law as part of crimes against humanity. The document was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2006 and opened for signature the next year.

On Thursday, Hasina faced a 100th case - all of them on murder charges - involving the recent student protests. The U.N. said nearly 650 people died since July 15 when the student protests turned violent, and the figures also covered the deaths of many in new violence after Hasina left the country on Aug. 5.

Also, on Thursday, a father of a slain student who died in the student protest filed a complaint with a tribunal in Dhaka against 52 people, including Hasina and 32 journalists, teachers and writers. The case document seen by The Associated Press accuses them of instigating Hasina to commit mass murder during the recent protests by using security forces to quell the demonstrations.

Many of the senior journalists have gone into hiding in fear of being arrested and harassed.

One of the journalists whose name is on the list told the AP that such cases were being filed as a scare tactic and to stifle the freedom of expression. He spoke on condition of anonymity over fears of further harassment.

Human Rights Watch recently expressed concern over the recent arrest of a journalist couple in a similar case.

Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy director of the agency’s Asia Division, in an email to the AP, recently said that it was extremely concerning that the justice system "is replicating its abusive and partisan behavior since the fall of the Awami League government of Hasina with arbitrary arrests and failure in due process, merely reversing those targeted."

"While there is legitimate anger over the abuses under Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian governance, the focus should be on reform, not reprisal, which will only serve to undermine the pledges of the interim government," she had said.

The Yunus-led government has attempted to restore political stability in the country as police forces and other government sectors are demoralized after attacks by protesters. The interim government is also facing new challenges as a devastating flood ravaged the country’s eastern and other regions. Thursday’s latest count said that at least 52 people died in the flooding.
‘Disappeared’ victims emerge in Bangladesh, seek justice despite hurdles (Reuters)
Reuters [8/29/2024 10:35 PM, Krishn Kaushik, Maksud Un Nabi, and Ruma Paul, 37270K, Negative]
Bangladesh indigenous people’s rights activist Michael Chakma says he was woken up by his captors earlier this month in the dark, tiny cell where he was being held and thrown into a car, handcuffed and blindfolded.

"I thought they will kill me," he said. Instead, he was freed.

It was five years, Chakma told Reuters, since he was abducted by armed men outside a bank near the capital Dhaka. Since then, he said, the world outside did not know where he was or if he was even alive.

He was questioned about his opposition to then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and beaten for weeks, he said, but then left alone in one of what he said were "hundreds" of cells with no sunlight at an unknown detention facility.

Hasina had ruled the South Asian nation of 200 million people for the past 15 years, marked by arrests of opposition leaders, crackdowns on free speech and suppression of dissent, and she resigned this month in the face of deadly student-led protests that killed hundreds.

Investigations into how hundreds of people were "disappeared", and some executed, during her tenure are a priority for the interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Human Rights Watch said in a report in 2021 that according to Bangladeshi human rights groups, nearly 600 people have been forcibly "disappeared" by security forces since 2009.

It verified 86 enforced disappearances cases in which the fate of the victims remains unknown. Others were freed, shown as arrested or found dead, it said.

The rights group and activists say the victims were held in different detention centres across the country and any involvement of the army, paramilitary or police could pose a challenge to the interim government’s investigations.

Spokespersons for Bangladesh’s military and police did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Hasina, who is living at an undisclosed location near the Indian capital New Delhi, could not be reached. Her son Sajeeb Wazed, who lives in the U.S. and has been speaking on her behalf, did not respond to questions about these allegations.

The government has formed a five-member commission, headed by a former high court judge, to probe the disappearances.

"There are concerns that perpetrators might try and cover up their crimes," said Asia Deputy Director for Human Rights Watch Meenakshi Ganguly. "As a first step, the security forces should release all those that are disappeared, or if they were killed in custody, provide answers to the families."

‘DIFFICULT TO BREATHE’

Chakma was freed on Aug. 7 in teak gardens near Chittagong district in southeastern Bangladesh, around 250 km (150 miles) from Dhaka. He said he did not know then that Hasina had been ousted from office and fled to neighbouring India less than two days earlier.

Sitting in a small room with a table and a few plastic chairs in an apartment in Dhaka, Chakma, a short, stocky man, controlled his tears as he shared his ordeal.

"It was difficult to breathe. Initially, they told me that they would release me soon, but as months and years passed, I gave up hope of getting out. Each day felt like 100 days there."

At least two other people were freed after what they said were years of secret detention on the same day as Chakma, but few details have emerged on who held them and where.

The interim government said this week the commission will "investigate enforced disappearances that occurred" since Jan. 1, 2010 "allegedly involving members of the police" and arms of the paramilitary, intelligence and military.

Nur Khan, a member of the commission and a prominent human rights activist in Bangladesh, told Reuters that the members are yet to meet so it was "very difficult to talk about how optimistic we are about the success of the commission."

But, he added: "With the forming of this commission the victims and their families at least have a platform from where they can seek fair trial and punishment for the perpetrators."

Reuters spoke to 15 people, including victims of such detentions, families of some who are still missing, human rights advocates, government officials and observers, about the challenge to seek justice.

One was Shafiqul Islam Kajol, a photojournalist in Dhaka who says he was kidnapped by a group of eight or nine people at gunpoint near Dhaka University in March 2020.

Talking to Reuters from London, he said: "They beat me a lot there."

Between threats of killing him, he said his captors asked him about what he knew about Hasina.

"They tortured me... I used to bleed from my nose and mouth," Kajol said.

After 53 days in captivity, he says he was left near a border town and promptly arrested by Bangladesh’s border police. He was released in December, 2020, after the courts acquitted him of trespassing charges.

Kajol went to London on a visit last year and applied for asylum, which is still under review.

"I want to return to my country if I get security. I want to file a case against all those who disappeared me, including Sheikh Hasina," Kajol said.

Chakma also said he was willing to depose before the commission but worried about his safety.
"There were many people involved in these crimes, and they remain strong."

These people have "created a system that is beyond all accountability, so I am not sure how much this government can change them", he said.
More than 1,000 killed in Bangladesh violence since July, health ministry chief says (Reuters)
Reuters [8/29/2024 11:01 AM, Ruma Paul, 37270K, Negative]
Violence that erupted in Bangladesh during last month’s anti-government protests killed more than 1,000 people, the interim health ministry chief said on Thursday, making it the bloodiest period in the country’s history since its 1971 independence.

The violence erupted during a student-led movement against public sector job quotas, which later intensified into an uprising against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who resigned and fled to India on Aug. 5 moments before her residence was stormed by hundreds of protesters.

An interim government led by Nobel prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus replaced Hasina’s administration, quelling the violence that had flared for weeks before her departure, as security forces cracked down on protests, and continued for some days after she fled.

"Over 1,000 people have been killed and over 400 students have lost their eyesight," a statement from the health ministry said, quoting its chief Nurjahan Begum.

"Many have become blind in one eye, many have lost sight in both eyes... many people have leg injuries and many of them had to get their legs amputated," the statement said.

The ministry did not mention in its statement how it assessed the death toll, but a home ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he believed it was based on hospital records and information from local administration.
With Hasina Gone In Bangladesh, A Rival Family Tastes Power (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [8/29/2024 4:14 PM, Arunabh Saikia, 1.4M, Neutral]
Two women dominated Bangladeshi politics for decades. One was chased into exile. The other is newly free from custody and too sick to rule, but her heir looks set to take power.

Autocratic ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, 76, fled the country by helicopter for neighbouring India this month as huge crowds demanding an end to her rule marched towards her palace.

Hours after the student-led uprising sparked the sudden collapse of her government, her lifelong rival and two-time prime minister Khaleda Zia, 79, was released from house arrest for the first time in years.

Members of Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) endured crackdowns and mass arrests under Hasina, who pointed to her opposition’s cosy relations with Islamists as justification.

A caretaker government has run the country since Hasina’s ouster -- but it has to hold new elections eventually, and now that the BNP has emerged from the underground, its members are confident of their prospects.

"People who supported us from behind for a very long time, they are now coming to the front," Mollik Wasi Tami, a leader of the party’s student wing, told AFP.

Interim leader and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, 84, has said he has no plans to continue in politics after his current role is finished.

The students who led Hasina’s overthrow have no fondness for Zia either, and it remains unclear whether they would support a future BNP government or seek to form their own party.

But whatever they decide, analysts say that when polls are held, the BNP is the force with the cross-country network, the political experience and the drive to win.

"In the next election, whenever it takes place, the BNP has more appeal," Bangladeshi politics expert and Illinois State University professor Ali Riaz told AFP.

Zia herself is too ill to assume the prime ministership a third time.

She has suffered from numerous chronic health complaints since she was jailed in 2018 after a graft conviction widely seen as politically motivated, whatever the charge’s true merits.

Zia has only appeared in public once since her release, in a pre-recorded video statement to a BNP rally in Dhaka from a hospital bed, during which she appeared sick and frail.

"We need love and peace to rebuild our country," she told thousands of party faithful at the rally, held two days after Hasina left Bangladesh.

Her supporters are planning to take her abroad for urgent medical care, clearing the way for her eldest son and heir apparent Tarique Rahman to take the reins.

Tarique has led the BNP since his mother’s conviction while in exile in London, where he fled to avoid his own set of graft charges -- which his party is now working to quash.

"When the legal problems are solved, he will come back," Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the BNP’s secretary-general, told AFP.

Tarique’s visage already appears alongside that of his mother on the party’s banners and campaign materials, including at the rally held two days after Hasina’s toppling.

The fact that rally happened at all was a remarkable departure from Hasina’s rule.

The BNP’s senior leaders and thousands of activists were jailed late last year ahead of January elections that -- absent any genuine political opposition -- returned Hasina to power.

The decades-old contest between Zia and Hasina is a dynastic battle that predates the political career of both women.

Hasina’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Zia’s husband Ziaur Rahman both led the country in the early years after its 1971 liberation war against Pakistan. Both were assassinated.

Both women joined forces in protests that ousted a military dictator in 1990 and then contested elections against each other the following year.

They have alternated in power ever since, with their parties serving as vehicles for their fierce rivalry.

Zia’s first administration in 1991 was hailed for liberalising Bangladesh’s economy, sparking decades of growth.

But her second term from 2001 saw several graft scandals -- some implicating Tarique -- and Islamist attacks, including one that almost killed Hasina.

Zia was also accused of steering Muslim-majority Bangladesh, and her nominally big tent BNP, away from their secular roots by allying with the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami.

The partnership gave Hasina cover to persecute both parties by claiming she was fighting extremism -- an excuse bolstered by several terror attacks during her time in office.

Retired Dhaka University professor Abul Kashem Fazlul Haq told AFP that any collaboration between both forces risked antagonising the avowedly secular students who toppled Hasina.

"They are aware that they will be hurt if they do politics based on religion," he said.

But Alamgir, the BNP’s secretary-general, said the party was open to renewing the alliance if it boosted their chances of forming the next government.

"BNP will definitely look for victory," he said. "If Jamaat helps, then definitely."
Bangladesh Can’t Afford to Let Chaos Reign (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [8/29/2024 5:00 PM, Mihir Sharma, 27782K, Negative]
The eyes of the world have moved on from Bangladesh, where protests ousted the world’s longest-serving female leader earlier this month. It would be a mistake, however, to assume stability has returned to one of the world’s most populous countries. The new regime shouldn’t underestimate how urgent that task is.

Any expression of concern about Bangladesh’s path causes some, particularly in the country’s active and vocal diaspora, to fume. A certain amount of turmoil in reaction to former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s long and increasingly authoritarian rule is understandable, they argue. And it is true that the arrival of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to lead an interim government has calmed some nerves. The Bangladeshi military seems to be staying in its barracks for now.

Yet such defensiveness is wrong and counterproductive. Vigilantism and extremism cannot be allowed to take over — and there are too many indications that is precisely what is happening.

In particular, there’s evidence that Bangladesh’s Hindu minority is being singled out for violence. Some have argued that this is because they were steadfast supporters of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party, not because of their religion. That’s hardly a defense.

In fact, there are plenty of other signs that political Islamism, long suppressed by Hasina, is returning. The interim government has lifted a ban on the operations of the country’s largest Islamist political force, the Jamaat-e-Islami.

And consider what’s happening at universities, always the first target of obscurantists. A mob of students intimidated the dean of Dhaka University into quitting after he prevented a Quran recitation on campus.

Tellingly, the dean was forced to participate in a prayer session immediately after drafting his letter of resignation. Several other university administrators with ties to the old regime have also left or been driven to quit. Organizations linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami have staked a claim to their positions.

The new establishment seems to be weaponizing the judicial system, too. Multiple ministers in past governments have been arrested on what appear, in many cases, to be trumped-up charges. Some have even been assaulted by lawyers while appearing to defend themselves in court. A former Supreme Court judge was beaten badly enough to require hospitalization.

Journalists attempting to leave the country have been arrested at Dhaka airport and had their names added, apparently arbitrarily, to murder investigations. That’s allowed authorities to throw them in jail without trial.

Even one of Bangladesh’s best-known sportsmen — named by Hasina to Parliament earlier this year — has been implicated in a murder case. He’s currently representing Bangladesh on a cricketing tour of Pakistan and was instrumental in an unprecedented victory for the cricket-mad nation this week. That he may nevertheless be arrested on his return is one indication of how unconstrained the anti-Awami factions are feeling.

Already conspiratorial thinking — a curse associated with basket case economies such as Pakistan’s — seems to be taking over. When devastating floods hit Bangladesh last week, leaving more than a dozen dead and millions stranded, anti-India protesters immediately (and wrongly) accused New Delhi of releasing dam waters deliberately.

Democracies, from India to the West, cannot be expected to ignore these danger signs. Every day that such tumult continues, Bangladesh loses more investment. One Indian industrialist told Bloomberg News last week that his company was postponing plans for a large new factory in the country.

Bangladesh can ill afford to dismiss such fears. Integration with the world economy has served the country well. Exports, particularly of ready-made garments, have sharply reduced poverty and ensured the country’s per capita income is comparable to that of neighboring India.

But this sector, which relies on short-term contracts, is particularly sensitive to political risk and social instability. If Bangladesh turns inward, it could easily lose the gains it has made.

Foreign investors have long appreciated the country’s commitment to modernization and secularism. The new government needs to make clear — quickly — that this commitment isn’t being abandoned.

It can do that by laying out a timeline for both elections and the restoration of institutional integrity, as well as a commitment to allow the Awami League to participate. Otherwise the interim government risks being seen by the world as no better — and perhaps worse — than the regime it replaced.

Bangladesh’s new leaders have won one battle, against a regime that had spent years abusing its authority and eroding its democratic legitimacy. They need to fight another, against the forces of chaos and extremism.
Tourist Haven Maldives Under Markets Pressure as Debt Slumps (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [8/29/2024 6:58 AM, Kerim Karakaya, 27782K, Negative]
Fitch Ratings downgraded the island nation of Maldives on Thursday, citing an increased risk of default, even as bond investors continued to dump the country’s debt that’s already totted up the worst monthly performance in emerging markets.

The security due 2026 dropped to 70.24 cents on the dollar Thursday, a record low. The sukuk has posted double-digit losses in August, trailing all its peers on the Bloomberg EM Sovereign Total Return Index. The country’s conventional dollar bonds also fell.

The ratings company downgraded the country standing in the second such cut since June. It said “intensified pressures from the country’s recently deteriorating external financing and liquidity metrics have made a default event more likely within the rating horizon.” Fitch also saw greater uncertainty over the government’s plan to access the market and partly refinance the $500 million sukuk in 2025.

The notes came under renewed pressure this week after Bank of Maldives, the country’s biggest commercial bank, introduced new limits on spending in foreign currency for its customers on Sunday. The decision was reversed — spooking some investors.

“Changes to card limits for foreign transactions announced on 25th August 2024 has been reversed based on instruction from our regulator, the Maldives Monetary Authority,” said the bank in a short written statement.

Bond investors were alarmed by conflicting reports regarding foreign-currency restrictions even as they worried about the country’s fiscal deficit, debt and upcoming financing needs, said Hasnain Malik, a Dubai-based strategist at Tellimer.

“The episode highlights that neither is the Muizzu-led government implementing much needed fiscal consolidation nor is it enjoying harmonious relations with all of its own business community,” he said.

Maldives’ ruling People’s National Congress party won an absolute majority in parliament in elections held April, giving President Mohamed Muizzu’s pro-China policies a boost. Muizzu won the presidential vote last year on a campaign to reduce India’s presence in the country.

The Maldives’ foreign reserves declined to $395 million as of June 24 from about $700 million a year ago, according to official data. The International Monetary Fund warned in May that without significant policy changes, the country will face a high risk of debt distress.
What Next for Nepal’s Transitional Justice Process? (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [8/29/2024 11:25 AM, Meena Bhatta, 1198K, Negative]
Eighteen years after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, Nepal’s major political parties were able to ink a four-point agreement to resolve the critical issues of Nepal’s transitional justice process. On August 7, the Nepali Congress, Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), and Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center), signed an agreement that would move forward the long-pending transitional justice process, which had been stalled owing to political differences and disagreements among conflict victims.

As a result, Nepal’s federal parliament endorsed the transitional justice law on August 14, thus paving the way for addressing the issues of human rights violations and abuses committed by both sides during the ten-year-long conflict between 1996 and 2006. Some 17,000 people were killed in Nepal’s civil war and nearly 1,400 are still listed as missing.

The upper house unanimously passed the transitional justice bill on August 22. The bill was then forwarded for authentication from the president, which occurred on August 29. Now the bill will come into force upon being formally published in the Nepal Gazette.

The new law will lead to new appointments to Nepal’s two transitional justice bodies, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons, which were formed nearly a decade ago. These commissions have had no leadership for the past two years and have over 65,000 pending complaints from conflict victims and their families awaiting justice.

The new agreement on Nepal’s transitional justice process has been welcomed and supported by the international community. The United Nations’ Human Rights Chief Volker Turk praised Nepal as "a regional and global example of a successful peaceful transition towards democratic, constitutional, and federal governance."

However, not everyone is pleased.

Prior to the upper house passing the bill, dozens of victims staged a sit-in protest in the capital asking for necessary amendments before it was endorsed by the National Assembly. Victim groups as well as civil society and human rights organizations say there were few formal consultations held with them prior to the agreement between the political parties. As a result, critics say the current bill lacks a victim-centric approach. Parts of the law are also being accused of being perpetrator friendly, thus safeguarding them from accountability for serious crimes committed during the war.

A recent joint statement issued by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW)called the new law a "flawed step forward." The groups pointed out "serious shortcomings" and implementation challenges that could hinder the success of Nepal’s transitional justice law. According to these rights organizations, despite some positive provisions, "accountability gaps" will pose major challenges.

What’s Contentious in the Transitional Justice Bill?

Rights advocates, victim groups, and some civil society organizations have pointed out a couple of loopholes in the new transitional justice law. The changes, which represent the third amendment of an existing law, divided crimes committed during the conflict era into "violations of human rights" or "serious violation of human rights." The bill says that offenses defined as human rights violations could be granted amnesty while "serious violations of human rights" could be referred for prosecution in a special court. "Rape or serious sexual violence," "intentional or arbitrary killing," "enforced disappearance, provided that the victim’s whereabouts remain unknown," and "inhuman or cruel torture" are all listed as "serious violations of human rights."

This very categorization of rights violations "serious" or (implicitly) "not so serious" - and torture as either "inhumane or cruel" or (again implicitly) not - is a flawed concept. Any violation of human rights or torture of any kind is a grave matter in itself.

Another provision that reduces sentences by 75 percent in cases except for rape or serious sexual violence has also invited criticism. According to this provision, the perpetrator is subject to a reduction in sentencing provided that certain criteria - such as disclosing the truth, making an apology to the victims, or paying compensation - are fulfilled.

This provision could support amnesty in camouflaged form. Reduction of an offender’s sentence should be determined based on a thorough investigation of the facts and submissions by the parties to the proceeding.

Also, as per the new law all disqualified Maoist combatants along with the families of security personnel who died or were injured during the insurgency, will get reparations and compensation. But the bill is mum on issues specific to child soldiers. Out of 4,008 Maoist combatants who did not qualify for integration in the Nepali Army, 2,973 were identified as minors.

Accountability and Trust at the Core of Implementation

The survivors of the decade-long war and the families of victims have now been awaiting justice for almost two decades. Some still feel the pain of physical and psychological injuries, some are in desperate need of compensation, and some are also struggling to know the truth about their loved ones. All are waiting to see perpetrators brought to the books of justice.

The endorsement of the bill is now at least expected to provide some respite to the victims and their families, and also provide a logical end to Nepal’s peace process. However, its successful implementation is contingent upon many factors.

From the very beginning, Nepal’s transitional justice process has largely failed to develop political consensus and garner the trust of the victims. Victim groups have constantly complained that the transitional justice process is arbitrary and has not fully safeguarded their security and confidentiality while lodging complaints. The dissent expressed by the victim groups this time too does not indicate a completely rosy picture. Ensuring confidentiality and security yet again remains at the core of its implementation.

Nepal’s transitional justice system also has a history of inordinate delays and indifference in providing justice to the victims, which has led to citizen’s "fatigue" with the process. The process has also faced overt manipulation from the political parties for personal and political advantage, which has again eroded the trust toward the two commissions.

Both the commissions have repeatedly underperformed and there is no guarantee that the next commissioners will be devoid of political influence. If a non-partisan and transparent process is not adopted while appointing the new heads of these two bodies, the long struggle of conflict victims and their families might again be submerged beneath political motives.
Sri Lanka president defends IMF bailout in campaign launch (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [8/29/2024 7:26 AM, Staff, 88008K, Neutral]
Sri Lanka had no option but to agree to an International Monetary Fund bailout that required tough austerity measures, President Ranil Wickremesinghe said Thursday as he launched his re-election campaign.

An unprecedented economic crisis two years ago led to months-long food and fuel shortages, triggering street protests that forced Wickremesinghe’s predecessor to briefly flee the country.

The 75-year-old president said the $2.9 billion IMF rescue package he negotiated last year required reforms that the island must implement or risk a repeat of those struggles.

"The agreements with the IMF and by our bilateral lenders cannot be changed," he said at a campaign event to launch his manifesto ahead of September 21 polls.

"Some candidates think they can renegotiate, but that is only going to be a waste of time."

His main rivals, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, 57, and Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, 55, have vowed to open fresh talks with the IMF to rewrite the agreement.

Premadasa has pledged to cut income taxes, which were doubled by Wickremesinghe.

"We will strengthen fiscal discipline as per the IMF agreement... However, we will make amendments," Premadasa’s manifesto said.

Dissayanaka’s party says it will halt touted privatisations of state enterprises.

Wickremesinghe said he had agreed with the IMF to ease the tax burden on middle and low income groups from next year, but did not give details.

Sri Lanka is still negotiating with international bondholders after defaulting on its $46 billion foreign debt in 2022, a year when the economy shrunk by 7.3 percent.

Wickremesinghe is also facing a challenge from the largest party in parliament which had backed his ascension, but where his predecessor’s family still wields great influence.

Lawmaker and Rajapaksa clan scion Namal, 38, is among the 38 other candidates challenging Wickremesinghe in next month’s poll.

Wickremesinghe is also under fire for refusing to fund a local government election last year, saying the country had no money to pay for it.

The Supreme Court ruled last week that he was guilty of violating the fundamental rights of Sri Lankan voters as a result and ordered it to be held as soon as possible.
Central Asia
Kazakhstan Pauses Rate Cuts After Inflation Accelerates (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [8/29/2024 3:04 AM, Nariman Gizitdinov, 27782K, Negative]
Kazakhstan paused its monetary easing cycle after a recent weakening of the national currency and an acceleration in inflation last month.

The National Bank of Kazakhstan kept its benchmark at 14.25% on Thursday, following two consecutive decisions to reduce borrowing costs. Four of six economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected the move, with two forecasting a cut of 25 basis points.

A greater risk of inflation “makes it highly likely that the base rate will remain at the current level until the end of 2024,” the central bank said in a statement.

Annual inflation in July increased for the first time since February 2023, reaching 8.6%, while monthly price growth also quickened. The uptick was in part due to an increase in government spending that began two years ago.

“Inflationary pressure within the economy is increasing,” the central bank said. That’s “due to growing volumes of fiscal stimulus, continuing growth in tariffs as part of the housing and utilities reform, and sustained domestic demand.”

The state has bought tenge with dollars from the national oil fund to help cover the budget shortfall caused by the rise in expenditures. Those transfers in turn supported an appreciation in the national currency during the first half of the year. However, the tenge has weakened about 1.6% since the last rate decision on July 12.

Central Asia’s largest oil producer plans to spend even more next year, relying on bigger transfers from the national fund to bridge the gap in budget revenue. Officials plan to withdraw 5.25 trillion tenge ($10.9 billion) from the oil fund next year.

Those transfers “may lead to an increase of our inflation outlook in the next forecast rounds,” central bank Governor Timur Suleimenov said on Tuesday. The bank also cited the risk posed by uncertainty over how the government will cover its budget gap this year and after 2025 in its statement after the rate decision.

The country’s oil fund transfers may reach about 5 trillion tenge this year, Halyk Finance analyst Sanzhar Kaldarov said in a report. “Ongoing problems with the budget, exchange rate and dynamics of withdrawals from the oil fund” remain, and will force the bank to “act more conservatively” with rate cuts, Kaldarov said.

The central bank said it expected inflation at 5.5% to 7.5% next year. The central also forecast the economy to grow 3.5%-4.5% this year and 5%-6% in 2025, helped by a plan to increase oil production.

The central bank, whose next policy meeting is scheduled for Oct. 11, maintained its rates corridor — formed from the overnight deposit and lending rates — at plus-or-minus one percentage point around the benchmark.
Imprisoned Ex-Wife Of Former Kazakh President’s Nephew Gets Additional Prison Term (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [8/29/2024 10:15 AM, Staff, 1251K, Negative]
The Specialized Inter-District Court in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, on August 29 sentenced the already imprisoned ex-wife of a convicted nephew of the Central Asian nation’s former authoritarian president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, to 12 years in prison.

Gulmira Satybaldy was found guilty of forcibly holding her relative and former business partner Abai Zhunusov in isolation against his will for 165 days in 2019 to force him to give up his stakes in several businesses.

Her former driver Madi Batyrshaev was convicted of assisting to forcibly hold a person in isolation and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Satybaldy is concurrently serving two sentences -- eight years for embezzlement and the illegal appropriation of shares and assets of several enterprises, and seven years for abduction and actions aiding the commission of a crime.

The sentences were handed down by a court in May and June last year.

The court ruled that Satybaldy must serve the new 12-year sentence concurrently, meaning that the total time to be spent in prison by Satybaldy would be 12 years.

Gulmira Satybaldy was arrested along with her ex-husband Qairat Satybaldy in March 2022. He was tried separately in September 2023 and sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty of fraud and embezzlement.

On August 16, a court in Kazakhstan’s eastern city of Oskemen replaced Qairat Satybaldy’s six-year prison sentence with a suspended sentence.

Court No. 2 in the capital of the East Kazakhstan region ruled on August 16 that Qairat Satybaldy must be released with a suspended 40-month sentence, saying the once powerful businessman and politician had returned all the money he was accused of embezzling to the State Treasury.

The probes launched against the couple were part of a series of investigations targeting relatives and allies of Nazarbaev following unprecedented anti-government protests that turned into deadly mass disorders in early January 2022.

After the deadly events, the Kazakh regime began to quietly target Nazarbaev, his family, and other allies, many of whom held powerful or influential posts in government, security agencies, and profitable energy companies.
Despite Furor, Pro-Putin Russian Artists To Top The Bill On Kyrgyz Independence Day (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [8/30/2024 5:06 AM, Chris Rickleton and Kanymgul Elkeeva, 235K, Neutral]
While mainstream Russian pop artists have found themselves “canceled” in other Central Asian countries following Moscow’s brutal invasion in Ukraine, at least three will be on stage to ring in independence day in Kyrgyzstan on August 31.

And not everyone is happy about that.

As one activist put it: Who did Kyrgyzstan gain its independence from, if not Moscow?

But Kyrgyz officials all the way up to President Sadyr Japarov have told critics to keep a lid on their complaints, which means that Russia’s 57-year-old stadium favorite Filip Kirkorov will be bringing his inimitably camp brand of pop to Bishkek on August 31.

All that remains to be seen now is what outfit the bearded diva will choose to wear.

‘We Didn’t Pay For It.’ So Who Did?

More relevant questions seem destined to remain unanswered.

In a typically dismissive response to public criticism surrounding the booking of the artists, Japarov took aim at "short-sighted politicians" and their supporters.

"Remember when people would say that no one recognizes us and no one wants to come to our country? Now the situation has changed: all countries have begun to reckon with Kyrgyzstan,” Japarov told the state media outlet Kabar on August 28.

Along with Kirkorov, Russian artists Stas Mikhailov and Lusia Chebotina will perform in Kyrgyzstan’s Ala-Too Square, as well as turn-of-the millennium stars Ingrid Alberini (In-Grid) of Italy and Staffan Olsson (Bosson) of Sweden.

Since the Culture Ministry announced the lineup earlier this week, social-media invective has focused on why Kyrgyz artists were not being afforded top billing on the country’s most politically important public holiday, the cost of bringing the artists to Bishkek, and the Russian singers’ perceived support for the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Regarding the second complaint, Japarov said that “[the artists] seemingly aren’t accepting fees -- God bless them,” without offering any further information about sponsorship of the event.

Few believe in the idea that the musicians are singing out of the goodness of their hearts.

“What is worse? If we aren’t paying them ourselves it means that the person who did pay for them thought that precisely these Z-artists should be performing at a holiday celebrating our freedom,” wrote journalist Mahinur Niyazova on Facebook. Niyazova suggested that August 31 might better be called “Dependence Day” in light of the concert.

Both Mikhailov and Kirkorov are long-term bastions of the Russian pop culture establishment, with all that entails.

Earlier this year, Mikhailov was vociferously critical of other Russian artists that had left the country in the wake of the invasion.

“Firstly, Russia made them important and recognizable people. As soon as they stop understanding this, they will cease to exist as individuals. [Later] they will still crawl on their knees and stand at Russia’s feet and kiss its feet,” the Russian media outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda reported him as saying in March.

Dual Bulgarian-Russian national Kirkorov, meanwhile, has never openly condemned or supported the war. But he was earlier this year shown in footage giving a concert for injured Russian soldiers in Russian-occupied Ukraine, and has in the past staged concerts in the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine.

‘The Minority Must Submit To The Majority’

Kyrgyz Culture Minister Altynbek Maksutov was equally combative in his comments on criticism of the concert.

He claimed that the Russian artists had themselves suggested the visit, wishing to congratulate the Kyrgyz people both on independence and on the 100-year anniversary of the foundation of the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast, which will be marked in October.

“Most people will greet [the concert] with joy. The minority must submit to the majority,” he said, pointing out that anybody that didn’t like the musicians didn’t have to attend.

That the artists were apparently so aware of the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast’s upcoming centennial is curious.

Some Kyrgyz historians point to the creation of the territory as a vital step toward modern Kyrgyz statehood, coming at a time when the outsized Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was being broken into smaller parts.

They argue that, were it not for the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast, the territory currently known as Kyrgyzstan might have been divided up between other Central Asian countries, and credit its formation to the advocacy efforts of Kyrgyz statesmen at the time.

But it was Moscow, of course, that took the final decision to grant it this status.

And modern-day Kyrgyzstan would exist as a subentity under the purview of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic until 1936, when it was able to join the ranks of other fully fledged Soviet republics that later became independent states.

A gift then, like Kirkorov’s upcoming presence in Bishkek?

The Kremlin has traditionally enjoyed inflated influence in independent Kyrgyzstan, even compared to its sway over other Central Asian countries.

Since the invasion began more than two-and-a-half years ago, neighboring Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have both been responsive to cries to “cancel” pro-war Russian artists with gigs booked in their countries.

In June 2023, officials in southern Kazakhstan blocked a concert by pro-Kremlin Russian singer Grigory Leps after a public outcry over his strong backing for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier that year, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan all moved to cancel the Zhara music festival featuring Russian stars, many of whom were identified as being supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kyrgyzstan, though, allowed the Russian group Gorod 312 to hold a concert at a "veterans" football match in which Japarov and other officials played, just months after the same group had played at a pro-war concert in the Russian city of Ufa.

The Kyrgyz Culture Ministry justified the invitation by noting that, while achieving fame in Russia, Gorod 312 is in fact a Kyrgyz band, drawing its name from Bishkek’s dialing code.

Gorod 312’s Kyrgyz-born lead singer, Svetlana Nazarenko, had earlier written in a social media post that she stood "for a world without Nazism," repeating a trope that Putin’s government has repeatedly aimed at Kyiv.

“I sincerely love my family, loved ones, and friends, and people in general in Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine. I believe in the best for everyone,” she added.

Kyrgyz authorities have denied permission for some other Russian singers to perform, but only those opposed to the Russian authorities.

Hip-hop phenomenon Morgenshtern (born Alisher Valeyev) fell foul of the Kremlin even before the February 2022 invasion, which he has appeared to criticize in his music.

He is now no longer a resident of Russia, where he faces charges of selling narcotics -- a claim his lawyer has denied.

The star was due to play last summer at a music festival in Bishkek.

But Culture Minister Maksutov cited “a criminal case opened in Russia against Morgenshtern” as part of the reason to prevent him from appearing there after a Kyrgyz lawmaker decried the star’s “bad influence” on young people.
US Transferring Afghan Aircraft to Uzbek Control (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [8/29/2024 12:00 PM, Catherine Putz, 1198K, Neutral]
As the erstwhile Afghan Republic collapsed in mid-August 2021, dozens of planes and helicopters took off from the airfield at Mazar-i-Sharif. The harrowing final flights of the Afghan Air Force took them, ultimately, not to Kabul but across the border to Termez, Uzbekistan.

Three years later, the 46 Afghan aircraft that made the flight to Uzbekistan are reporting finally being transferred to Uzbek authorities. Of the aircraft that landed in Uzbekistan, 22 were small fixed-wing aircraft, like A-29s (also called Super Tucanos), and 24 were helicopters, mostly Mi-17s, but also UH-60 Black Hawk and MD-530 helicopters. Among the fixed-wing aircraft were six PC-12 single-engine passenger and light-cargo aircraft.

"This equipment was never Afghan, it was American. [The Afghan Republic’s military] used it, but we have always been the owners," U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan Jonathan Henick told Kun.uz. When asked about the fate of the aircraft, Henik responded, "It will be in Uzbekistan. Yes, it is already official."

Henik’s comment comes a few weeks after news broke that a Colorado-based aerospace and defense company, Sierra Nevada Co., had been awarded a $64.2 million contract to repair six PC-12s. On August 9, the U.S. Department of Defense published a list of contracts, which included the PC-12 deal. The announcement notes, "Work will be performed in Uzbekistan and is expected to be completed by Aug. 7, 2027. This contract involves Foreign Military Sales to Uzbekistan."

Although repair of the A-29s is not mentioned, it is worth noting that Sierra Nevada Co. partners with Embraer on the production of A-29s in the United States. In 2018, the company was contracted to build up Afghanistan’s A-29 fleet. (At the time, that work was slated to be completed by December 2024.)

The Taliban government in power in Kabul has consistently pushed back against the transfer of the Afghan aircraft to Uzbekistan, as well as the transfer of a small number of aircraft that landed in Tajikistan to Dushanbe.

The Taliban’s acting Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob in January 2022 warned the Uzbek and Tajik governments of "consequences" if they did not surrender the aircraft to Afghanistan. Later that year, in September, he somewhat softened his tone when it came to the Central Asian governments, but reiterated the Taliban’s claim that the aircraft belong to Afghanistan.

Yaqoob said at the time, "[The governments of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan] say that the issue is that the Americans don’t let us transfer these helicopters back to Afghanistan. We have spoken with Americans about it and informed them that they belong to the nation, and it is Afghanistan’s right, not someone else’s personal property. As a result, it ought to be returned to Afghanistan."

According to a report from Tolo News, after Henik’s comments regarding the fate of the aircraft in Uzbekistan, the spokesman for the Taliban’s Ministry of Defense, Enayatullah Khwarazmi, strongly objected to the plan in an audio statement.

"The Ministry of Defense clearly declares that the United States has no right to donate or confiscate the property of the Afghan people. The government of Uzbekistan is expected to refrain from any dealings in this regard, to consider good neighborly relations, and to make a wise decision by cooperating in the return of Afghanistan’s air force aircraft," he said.

For its part, the Uzbek government, while engaging diplomatically with the Taliban on matters of trade and transit, has maintained the argument that the aircraft in question belong to the United States. Despite the Taliban government’s insistence that Tashkent should return the planes to Afghanistan, that seems extremely unlikely.

In a May 2022 interview, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s special representative on Afghanistan, Ismatulla Irgashev, told VOA, "The U.S. government paid for them… It funded the previous Afghan government. So, we believe it is totally up to Washington how to deal with them… We’ve kept this military equipment in agreement with the U.S. and have told the Taliban so."

The bulk of the existing Uzbek Air Force is comprised of Soviet or Russian aircraft. According to Flight Global’s 2024 World Air Forces directory, The Uzbek Air Force fields 38 MiG-29s, 20 Su-27s and 13 Su-25s. In regard to combat helicopters, Uzbekistan fields 100 in total, 40 of which are reportedly Mil Mi-8s. When it comes to transport aircraft, Uzbekistan has 13 active planes..

The refurbishment and return to service of the six PC-12s, in particular, will expand the Uzbek Air Force’s capabilities. However, the fact that the Afghan planes are not of Soviet or Russian origin like the rest of the fleet may pose maintenance challenges; put another way, they present an opportunity for U.S.-Uzbek military cooperation.
Upcoming Parliamentary Elections in Uzbekistan: A New Electoral System With an Old Approach? (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [8/29/2024 10:00 AM, Otabek Akromov and Bekzod Zakirov, 1198K, Neutral]
Last week, Uzbekistan’s Central Election Commission registered the five existing political parties - the Liberal-Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (UzLiDeP), Milliy Tiklanish (National Revival) Democratic Party, the Ecological Party of Uzbekistan, the People’s Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (PDP), and the Adolat (Justice) Social-Democratic Party - to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections that will be held on October 27.

As Uzbekistan approaches its next parliamentary election, the spotlight is once again on the role and relevance of parties in the country’s tightly controlled political landscape. Following Islam Karimov’s era of strict control, political parties in Uzbekistan began to demonstrate increased activity, largely due to the reform efforts introduced by the new government after 2016. These reforms have allowed for a modest revival of political engagement by parties, though the environment remains far from fully open or democratic.

Yet, despite the government’s rhetoric about reforms and the introduction of a mixed electoral system for the first time, with the hope of energizing political parties, public interest in parties remains minimal. After all, these entities have always been perceived as mere extensions of the state. The government’s efforts to invigorate political party activism, particularly on non-sensitive social issues, may signal a desire for political opening and change. However, without genuine political freedom and fully open discourse, these attempts at reform may struggle to gain traction, leaving the political environment largely unchanged.

A New Era of Political Party Activism

After the demise of the Soviet Union, independent Uzbekistan saw the emergence of various independent movements and proto-political parties, which reflected growing civic awareness in society. During the early years of independence, entities like Erk and Birlik started challenging the new government in elections. Alarmed by the challenge, President Islam Karimov carefully engineered a fragmented multiparty system with heavily controlled pro-government parties, excluding oppositional parties.

These parties, including the later influential UzLiDeP, were carefully designed to present a window-dressing image of democratic pluralism in Uzbekistan while ensuring no real opposition could challenge the regime. The government introduced new laws in the 2000s to strengthen the role of political parties, but it only legitimized existing state-backed parties without fostering real competition. Consequently, Uzbekistan’s official political parties operated under strict oversight for years, representing various societal interests in appearance only while being disconnected from society.

With Karimov’s death and the rise of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in 2016, Uzbekistan’s political landscape began to shift. Mirziyoyev harshly criticized the political parties for their dormancy and initiated reforms that allowed for a more active, though still limited, participation of political parties in policymaking. According to the government’s Action Strategy, the parliament was supposed to be a platform for healthy debate and discussion, leading to better policymaking and increased political culture. In line with this approach, the government introduced an online portal to solicit feedback from citizens so that they can express their opinions on important issues. Following these changes, the political parties started showing signs of life, becoming more vocal in addressing issues like economic reform and governance.

The people witnessed an active electoral campaign during the parliamentary elections in 2019. National television hosted debates that were very dynamic, with the heads of the parties criticizing one another and concrete government officials. The election was, in some ways, a breakthrough for the new government. First, the election was portrayed as a milestone in Mirziyoyev’s policy of openness and liberalization. The election attracted a record number of foreign observers, including a full-fledged mission from the OSCE. The election coincided with Uzbekistan being named "Country of the Year" by The Economist, increasing international interest.

Second, the government sought to demonstrate a departure from previous electoral practices with the "New Uzbekistan - New Elections" campaign. The initiative aimed to show citizens that elections could be a genuine mechanism for influencing decision-making and enacting change. The media’s coverage of the elections revealed a controlled yet notable shift toward freer expression on certain issues.

As a result, a number of new MPs that were actively engaged in Uzbekistan’s social and political life emerged. For example, MPs Rasul Kusherbayev, Doniyor Ganiyev, and Alisher Kadirov became popular. They earned the hearts and minds of Uzbek citizens by expressing positions on issues such as deforestation or the monopoly in the car industry, thus challenging the interests of some elites. More importantly, however, unlike other MPs who might also be active in contributing to the legislative discussions of social and economic issues, Kusherbayev, Ganiyev, and Kadirov actively used social media platforms, which allowed them to build a fanbase, and ultimately, connected with their constituents.

Compared to Karimov’s rule, the emergence of new political figures expressing alternative opinions on main social and economic issues in Uzbekistan was a positive development. The parliament also gained the right to approve ministers, endorse the annual budget, and hear quarterly government reports, thus obtaining some leverage over the executive branch.

Another surprising development during the 2019 election campaign was the proposal by some parties to put forward their own prominent candidates for the position of prime minister. During Karimov’s era, candidates for the post were purposefully selected from among government officials unknown to the public so as to avoid the emergence of potential leaders that might cast a shadow on the authority of the president. However, this time, parties nominated influential figures for the post of prime minister, including Achilbay Ramatov, a candidate from the PDP, while Adolat nominated the promising young Minister of Justice Ruslanbek Davletov.

Will the Changes Bear Fruit?

However, the extent to which the "New Elections" campaign was actually new in terms of bringing fundamental changes to the party system in Uzbekistan leaves much to be desired. Despite the positive changes, the multiparty system remains paralyzed and uncompetitive for obvious reasons. While the government has granted the parties space for discussing social issues, allowing them to be more active, they still have to operate within predefined boundaries set by the government.

Seeking to increase the role of political parties further and boost the legitimacy of the government in the eyes of both domestic and external audiences, Mirziyoyev’s government recently proposed a switch to a mixed electoral system. However, the upcoming elections will be held with the existing five pro-government parties and without independent candidates. Doniyor Ganiyev was the only MP to vote against the initiative. Additionally, the upcoming parliamentary elections will take place without Kusherbayev, who resigned from his position prematurely, and Ganiyev, who stated that he will not be running in the upcoming elections.

Moreover, the influence of the existing parties is severely limited as they still lack strong connections with their constituencies. According to a survey conducted by one of the most popular news agencies, Kun.uz, most people do not recognize MPs, except the few figures mentioned above who have made active use of social media. This disconnect prevents the parties from effectively understanding and advocating for the people’s demands.

At the same time, due to the unofficial but known boundaries set by the government, the parties’ ability to engage in more substantial debates on critical topics is curtailed. Many observers might be surprised to find out that political parties in Uzbekistan rarely discuss foreign policy issues or propose alternative agendas. The political parties pursue almost identical political programs, which results in a lack of meaningful choice for voters and a stifling of political diversity.

Other parties with contending agendas still face significant challenges as they struggle to register and gain formal recognition. For instance, Khidirnazar Allaqulov made several attempts to register his Haqiqat va Taraqqiyot (Truth and Development) Social Democratic Party. However, state authorities have refused to register his party because, allegedly, the party could not gather the necessary signatures to participate in the elections. This reality highlights the ongoing struggle for political inclusion and the significant gap that remains between the government’s rhetoric of reform and the actual practice of political opening.

It is fair to conclude that the reforms initiated under the new government have undeniably injected new life into the political landscape, allowing registered parties to engage more actively than before. However, this increased activity has yet to break free from the strict limitations constraining the multiparty system. Despite the progress, the parties often remain tethered to state interests, struggling to represent diverse viewpoints or catalyze meaningful policy changes. They also struggle to connect with the citizens whom they ostensibly represent.

As Uzbekistan prepares for its upcoming parliamentary elections, it is important for the government to explore ways in which political parties can evolve into genuine forces for channeling public interests into effective policymaking. Addressing the limitations and enhancing the role of parties in representing diverse viewpoints and advocating for substantial policy changes will be crucial for fostering a more dynamic and inclusive political environment in Uzbekistan.
5 More Central Asians Named In Connection With Crocus Concert Hall Attack, Detention Extended (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [8/29/2024 9:57 AM, Staff, 1251K, Negative]
A court in Moscow has extended the detention and released the names of five more men suspected of being involved in the terror attack at the Crocus City entertainment center that claimed 145 lives near the Russian capital in late March.

The press service for Moscow’s courts of common jurisdiction said on August 29 that the pretrial detention of Shahromjon Gadoev, Zubaidullo Ismoilov, Husein Hamidov, Mustaqim Soliev, and Umedjon Soliev had been extended until at least December 1.

Their names in the high-profile case had not been made public previously.

The men are accused of membership in a terrorist organization, preparing and implementing a terrorist attack, illegally possessing firearms, and illegally manufacturing explosive devices.

The attack at the Crocus City hall took place on March 22, 2024. A group of armed men rushed into the entertainment center where a concert was to be held, opened fire on civilians, and set the building on fire before fleeing.

Some 145 people, including six children, died in the attack, while more than 550 were wounded or injured.

In May, the chief of the Federal Security Service, Aleksandr Bortnikov, said more than 20 people suspected of involvement into the attack had been detained.

Later, the authorities said 12 men had been arrested in the case.

On August 16, a Moscow court extended the pretrial detention of four Tajik citizens -- Dalerjon Mirzoev, Saidakram Rajabalizoda, Shamsiddin Fariduni, and Muhammadsobir Faizov, who are suspected of carrying out the attack.

Three other natives of Tajikistan, all members of one family -- Isroil Islomov, Dilovar Islomov, and Aminjon Islomov, as well as an ethnic Uzbek from Kyrgyzstan and Russian citizen Alisher Kasimov, were arrested for allegedly providing the attackers with accommodation, transportation, and communication.

An offshoot of the extremist Islamic State group known as Islamic State-Khorasan claimed responsibility for Russia’s worst terrorist attack in two decades.

Tajik authorities have officially condemned the treatment of the Tajik suspects amid allegations that the detainees were tortured in custody.

The Kremlin has insisted without evidence that Ukraine, with the help of the United States, was responsible for the attack. Both Kyiv and Washington have dismissed the accusation.

The attack was seen as a major failure for Russia’s security and intelligence services. The United States has said it gave specific information ahead of time, warning of a possible terrorist attack. Iran also reportedly provided a tip ahead of time.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Malala Yousafzai
@Malala
[8/29/2024 9:23 AM, 1.9M followers, 1.2K retweets, 3.7K likes]
For 3 years, the Taliban have showed us exactly who they are: misogynists who oppress girls and women. Their new laws banning Afghan women from speaking in public only further extend their system of gender apartheid. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/aug/26/taliban-bar-on-afghan-women-speaking-in-public-un-afghanistan

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[8/29/2024 2:24 PM, 92.3K followers, 187 retweets, 484 likes]
The Taliban banned radio-based education programs in two provinces this month. They don’t even want women and girls to learn in their homes. I would not be surprised if they announce a national radio ban soon.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[8/29/2024 2:36 PM, 233.5K followers, 3K retweets, 20K likes]
Banned from sports in Afghanistan by the Taliban, para-taekwondo athlete Zakia Khodadadi fled her homeland, joined the refugee team at the Paris Paralympics, and won a bronze medal. The women of Afghanistan are resilient.
Pakistan
Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[8/29/2024 11:48 AM, 3.1M followers, 22 retweets, 108 likes]
Quetta: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif chairs a session of the Apex Committee of the National Action Plan.

Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[8/29/2024 11:48 AM, 3.1M followers, 5 retweets, 7 likes]
Quetta: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif distributes cheques among the families of people who were martyred in terrorist attacks in Balochistan.
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[8/30/2024 2:30 AM, 101.4M followers, 800 retweets, 2.6K likes]
India’s FinTech revolution is improving financial inclusion as well as driving innovation. Addressing the Global FinTech Fest in Mumbai.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[8/29/2024 11:03 AM, 101.4M followers, 3.7K retweets, 23K likes]
I look forward to being among the people of Maharashtra tomorrow, 30th August. I will take part in programmes in Mumbai and Palghar. In Mumbai, I will take part in the Global Fintech Fest 2024 at around 11 AM. This platform showcases India’s strides in the world of Fintech and brings together key stakeholders of the sector. Thereafter, I will be in Palghar for the foundation stone laying programme of the Vadhvan Port project. This is a very important project, signifying our commitment to port-led development and to the progress of Maharastra. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2049776

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[8/29/2024 10:57 AM, 101.4M followers, 5.7K retweets, 57K likes]
Met the Officer Trainees of the 2023 Batch of Indian Foreign Service earlier today.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[8/30/2024 3:00 AM, 3.2M followers, 27 retweets, 193 likes]
Pleased to release Amb Rajiv Sikri’s book ‘Strategic Conundrums: Reshaping India’s Foreign Policy’ today. Spoke about our Neighbourhood First approach and multi-vector foreign policy.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[8/29/2024 7:35 AM, 3.2M followers, 273 retweets, 1.5K likes]
Pleased to attend handing over of Letter of Intent to the University of Southampton which will be establishing a campus in India under NEP 2020. This reflects both the vision of elevating our educational standards to the highest global levels and delivering on the education pillar of India-UK cooperation. Confident that such endeavors will further make our youth world ready and foster a spirit of global understanding and cooperation.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[8/29/2024 12:26 PM, 213K followers, 6 retweets, 28 likes]
This week for @ForeignPolicy, a look at the protests in India—which have played out over more than two weeks—that were triggered by a horrific case of sexual violence at one of the country’s oldest hospitals earlier this month. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/28/india-doctor-protest-killing-sexual-violence/
NSB
Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[8/30/2024 2:18 AM, 6.9K followers, 2 retweets, 1 like]
Human Rights Watch said in a report in 2021 that according to Bangladeshi human rights groups, nearly 600 people have been forcibly "disappeared" by security forces since 2009. It verified 86 enforced disappearances cases in which the fate of the victims remains unknown. Others were freed, shown as arrested or found dead, it said. The rights group and activists say the victims were held in different detention centres across the country and any involvement of the army, paramilitary or police could pose a challenge to the interim government’s investigations. Spokespersons for #Bangladesh’s military and police did not respond to requests seeking comment. Hasina, who is living at an undisclosed location near the Indian capital New Delhi, could not be reached. Her son Sajeeb Wazed, who lives in the U.S. and has been speaking on her behalf, did not respond to questions about these allegations. https://reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/disappeared-victims-emerge-bangladesh-seek-justice-despite-hurdles-2024-08-30/

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[8/30/2024 1:26 AM, 6.9K followers, 6 retweets, 8 likes]
India never wanted a sovereign #Bangladesh that was fully independent of New Delhi. It helped Bangladesh’s independence movement with some ulterior motives. First, it wanted to dismember Pakistan. Second, it wanted Bangladesh as a satellite state, always subservient to India. Third, it wanted to make Bangladesh a monopolistic market for Indian goods and products. Ultimately, Bangladesh became an economic colony of India instead of Pakistan.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[8/29/2024 4:28 AM, 54.6K followers, 45 retweets, 52 likes]
State Minister @SherynaSamad met with @SciDiplomacyUSA Acting Assistant Secretary Jennifer R. Littlejohn, today. Highlighted both govt’s priorities on ocean governance, environmental conservation, and scientific research and discussed potential partnerships in these areas.

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[8/29/2024 7:10 AM, 259.4K followers, 7 retweets, 44 likes]
Ambassador of Bangladesh to Nepal H.E. Mr. Salahuddin Noman Chowdhury paid a courtesy call on Minister for Foreign Affairs Hon. Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba today. Matters relating to Nepal-Bangladesh relations and bilateral cooperation were discussed during the meeting. @Arzuranadeuba

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[8/29/2024 10:53 PM, 6.3K followers, 2 retweets, 9 likes]
Rebutting the false narratives with totally exaggerated figures of those who went missing during Sri Lanka’s operations against the LTTE. The full interview is in the comment below. https://x.com/i/status/1829351614534303985

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[8/29/2024 9:36 AM, 6.3K followers, 5 retweets, 27 likes]
It was good to be present at the launch of the Manifesto of President @RW_SRILANKA. A manifesto, in its true essence, should not be a fairytale of unachievable goals. Instead, it should reflect what is realistically achievable, setting a clear and feasible path for the nation’s progress. The results of the targeted and strategic approach taken by President Wickremesinghe are clearly visible in the strides our nation has made. What our nation needs now is not an experiment in uncertainty, but a continuation of this pragmatic and result-oriented approach. The Manifesto of President Wickremesinghe embodies this very principle, making it a beacon of hope and a roadmap for our nation’s future. @PMDNewsGov

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[8/30/2024 2:02 AM, 356.5K followers, 8 retweets, 34 likes]
Asked @NPPSLOfficial rep simple question: Will they support @CBSL independence, key pillar in our Econ recovery? He had no answer—just empty rhetoric. This is the real #NPP: no substance, no policy, no different from populist Rajapaksas. Sri Lanka deserves better. Choose wisely.

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[8/29/2024 4:46 AM, 356.5K followers, 34 retweets, 205 likes]
Here’s a sneak peek of the first step in our nationwide cold chain logistics network! SJB is committed to transforming #lka agriculture. #BuildingForTheFuture #ColdChainSriLanka https://x.com/i/status/1829078183867519227

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[8/30/2024 2:49 AM, 91.2K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
Letter to UNHRC57 – Sri Lanka: Renew the mandates of the OHCHR for 2 years #HRC57 #SriLanka https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa37/8466/2024/en/

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[8/30/2024 2:57 AM, 91.2K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
Fifteen years since the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009, there has been no justice, truth or reparation for large-scale violations amounting to grave crimes under international law committed by forces on either side in Sri Lanka’s 26-year internal armed conflict. Some alleged perpetrators on the government side now hold high office, while victims and survivors face ongoing repression and rights violations. This legacy of impunity, which facilitated corruption, contributed to the economic crisis that has gripped the country since 2022. Human rights defenders and civil society groups are facing threats from the authorities throughout the country, and the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Sri Lankans - such as freedoms of expression and association - are under assault.

Renewing the mandates established by resolution 46/1 is vital to ensure that all those suspected of criminal responsibility for crimes under international law can be held accountable, while mitigating ongoing abuses and the risk of recurrence, and supporting the calls within Sri Lanka for justice and reform. The government of Sri Lanka has made no progress towards upholding its human rights obligations, nor taken genuine steps towards accountability for the serious international humanitarian law violations and gross human rights violations and abuses identified by the previous OHCHR investigation, that would justify a weakening of the approach at the Human Rights Council. Instead, successive Sri Lankan governments have only obfuscated accountability efforts by establishing domestic mechanisms that repeatedly fail to deliver.
Central Asia
MFA Kazakhstan
@MFA_KZ
[8/29/2024 7:10 AM, 51.6K followers, 14 retweets, 17 likes]
Joint Statement by H.E. Mr. Murat Nurtleu, Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Dr. Robert Floyd, Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization https://gov.kz/memleket/entities/mfa/documents/details/713585?lang=en

Yerzhan Ashikbayev
@KZAmbUS
[8/29/2024 10:21 AM, 2.6K followers, 1 retweet, 8 likes]
It is August 29, International Day Against Nuclear Tests—a reminder of the devastating danger nuclear weapons pose. KZ’s legacy must guide global disarmament. As we honor the past, we must stay vigilant to ensure a safer a future free from the world’s most catastrophic threat!

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[8/29/2024 12:47 PM, 198.7K followers, 12 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev recently visited the newly renovated section of the Tashkent Ring Road in the Mirzo-Ulugbek district. He commended the significant improvements made to the road, such as the expansion from six to eight lanes and the addition of new underpasses, the installation of intelligent traffic lights, which would help improve traffic flow and safety. The president emphasized that these new roads and other infrastructure improvements are a great gift to the country on its Independence Day.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[8/29/2024 12:21 PM, 198.7K followers, 16 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev visited the University of Public Security, highlighting the importance of modern #military #education and the need to adapt curricula to current challenges. The university, as a higher educational and research institution, provides training for skilled professionals who are essential for ensuring public security and law enforcement. During his visit, the head of state commended the new sports and academic facilities of the #university, as well as the achievements of cadets in both sports and academics.

Bakhtiyor Saidov
@FM_Saidov
[8/29/2024 5:23 AM, 5.1K followers, 6 retweets, 398 likes]
Had a productive meeting with the @UNFPAUzbekistan Resident Representative H.E. Dr. @NiginaAbaszada. @GovUz has been actively collaborating with international partners to create the most favorable conditions for improving maternal health, population growth, youth potential enrichment, gender equality, and more. We appreciate all the important work @UNFPA team has been carrying out in our country for over 30 years.

Javlon Vakhabov
@JavlonVakhabov
[8/30/2024 1:07 AM, 6K followers]
In my remarks at today’s Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan Expert Council session, I highlighted the critical importance of ever growing partnership between our two nations. This relationship is not only vital for our countries but also for the broader security and development of Central Asia.
Key Reflections:
- Strategic Partnership: Our alliance is essential for advancing regional security and achieving our modernization goals.
- Economic Progress: We’ve seen remarkable growth, doubling our trade turnover and launching major joint projects, including the International Center for Industrial Cooperation.
- Transport and Connectivity: Strengthening regional links through initiatives like the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway is a top priority.
- Cultural and Humanitarian Exchange: Fostering regional identity through cultural and educational cooperation is key to our success.
- Security Cooperation: We must intensify our joint efforts to combat terrorism and involve Afghanistan in our regional frameworks.
In closing, I emphasized our shared responsibility in leading Central Asia towards a secure and prosperous future. Through close collaboration based on trust between the two countries, shared principles, and mutual respect for interests, we can achieve our collective goals.

Furqat Sidiqov
@FurqatSidiq
[8/29/2024 6:55 PM, 1.4K followers, 1 like]
Held a productive meeting with Eric Toumayan, Senior Advisor at PPG Energy. We discussed the development of mobile and stationary energy generators in Uzbekistan and explored opportunities for collaboration.

{End of Report}
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