epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Thursday, February 1, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
UN: Al-Qaida, Afghan Taliban Assist TTP With Attacks in Pakistan (VOA)
VOA [2/1/2024 5:41 AM, Ayaz Gul, 223K, Negative]
A new United Nations report warns that al-Qaida has established eight new training camps in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and is increasingly assisting anti-Pakistan militants to launch cross-border attacks.

The report said an al-Qaida camp in the Afghan border province of Kunar is "conducting suicide bomber training" to support operations of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, a globally designated terrorist group leading attacks against Pakistani security forces.

The U.N. Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team released its findings this week, providing a fresh assessment of the threat militant groups, particularly TTP, pose to the region from their sanctuaries in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

Thursday, the de facto Afghan authorities rejected the U.N. findings as "false allegations."

The report noted that the Taliban’s relationship "remains strong" with senior al-Qaida leaders, particularly with the terror group’s regional affiliate, al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent or AQIS.

It found that the Taliban "are generally sympathetic to TTP aims" and have not responded to Pakistan’s repeated requests to prevent cross-border militant violence, which last year alone killed nearly 1,000 Pakistani security forces and civilians.

"The short-term detention of 70 to 200 TTP members and the relocation of personnel northward away from the border areas by the Taliban were assessed as deflecting pressure from Pakistan to contain TTP," the report noted.

"Besides supplying weapons and equipment, Taliban rank and file, Al-Qaida core and AQIS fighters assisted TTP forces in cross-border attacks … Some Taliban members also joined TTP, perceiving a religious obligation to provide support."

TTP members and their families receive regular aid packages from the Taliban, the U.N. report said, adding that the de facto Afghan authorities reportedly provided a monthly $50,500 to TTP leader Noor Wali Mehsud.

"A notable development is the increase of Afghan nationals in the TTP ranks. Al-Qaida core and AQIS continue to provide training, ideological guidance, and support to TTP," the report said. It added that al-Qaida recently ordered all its vehicles to be "gifted" to TTP due to fear of being targeted by the United States.

The support has "strengthened and emboldened" TTP to increase attacks "with a broader degree of autonomy to maneuver." The U.N. report noted that AQIS reportedly supplied armed fighters to support a major TTP assault on security outposts in the Pakistani border district of Chitral, increasing the group’s morale.

The report said a newly emerged group, Tehrik-e-Jihad Pakistan, or TJP, is operating from Afghan territory, possibly with support from al-Qaida and providing TTP with "plausible deniability to alleviate the pressure from Pakistan on the Taliban government."

TJP has claimed responsibility for several high-profile attacks against the Pakistani military in recent months. Officials in Islamabad said some of the assailants killed by security forces involved in these attacks were Afghan nationals.

Last December, TJP militants, including suicide bombers, assaulted an army base in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing 23 soldiers and making it the deadliest raid against the Pakistan military in recent years.

The U.N. study said that several member states reported "continued proliferation of weapons from stockpiles" left by U.S.-led coalition troops after they withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, when the then-insurgent Taliban seized power.

"In one case Taliban commanders were reported to have provided TTP with significant quantities of weaponry, including M24 sniper rifles, M4 carbines with Trijicon ACOG scopes, and M16A4 rifles with thermal scopes," the report said.

It added that weapons and equipment, particularly night vision capability, have reportedly added "lethality to TTP attacks on Pakistani security forces."

The chief Taliban government spokesperson Thursday rejected as propaganda the U.N. report about the presence of al-Qaida camps or allegations that Kabul is providing support to militant groups.

"There is no one related to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, nor does the Islamic Emirate allow anyone to use the territory of Afghanistan against others," Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.

Mujahid previously also refuted Pakistani allegations that his government is allowing TTP to conduct cross-border attacks.

"We will not allow anyone to use the soil of Afghanistan against Pakistan. However, it is not our responsibility to prevent and control attacks inside the territory of Pakistan," the Taliban spokesperson said in a recent statement.

TTP is known to have provided recruits and sheltered Taliban leaders on Pakistani soil while they directed insurgent attacks against U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan for years.

The group moved its command-and-control operations to Afghan border areas after the Taliban takeover and is conducting attacks with greater operational freedom from there, according to Pakistani officials.
‘All Doors Are Closed’ For Single And Unaccompanied Afghan Women Under The Taliban (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [1/31/2024 10:25 AM, Naqiba Barekzai, Abida Spozhmai, and Khujasta Kabiri, 223K, Negative]
Women have borne the brunt of the Taliban’s repressive laws in Afghanistan, where the extremist group has imposed constraints on their appearances, freedom of movement, and right to work and study.

But women who are unmarried or do not have a "mahram," or male guardian, face even tougher restrictions and have been cut off from access to health care, banned from traveling long distances, and pressured to quit their jobs.

The Taliban’s mahram rules prohibit women from leaving their home without a male chaperone, often a husband or a close relative such as a father, brother, or uncle.

Single and unaccompanied women, including an estimated 2 million widows, say they are essentially prisoners in their homes and unable to carry out the even the most basic of tasks.

Among them is Nadia, a divorced woman from the northern province of Kunduz. The mother of four has no surviving male relatives.

"These restrictions are stifling for women who now cannot do the simple things independently," Nadia told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

The 35-year-old said women also need to have a male escort to visit a doctor, go to government offices, or even rent a house.

She said she had to pay a man to be her chaperone in order to meet a realtor and sign a rental agreement.

Nadia also paid a man in her neighborhood around 1,000 afghanis, or $15, to accompany her to the local passport office. But the Taliban refused her passport application and ordered her to return with her father, who died years ago.

"Even visiting the doctor is becoming impossible," she said. "We can only plead [with the Taliban] or pray. All doors are closed to us."

Mahram Crackdown

Women who violate the Taliban’s mahram requirements have been detained or arrested and are often released only after signing a pledge that they will not break the rules again in the future.

In its latest report, the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said the Taliban’s notorious religious police was enforcing the rules by carrying out inspections in public spaces, offices, and education facilities as well as setting up checkpoints in cities.

Released on January 22, the report said three female health-care workers were detained in October because they were traveling to work without a mahram.

In December, women without male chaperones were stopped from accessing health-care facilities in the southeastern province of Paktia, the report said.

And in the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban visited a bus terminal and checked if women were traveling with a male relative, the report said.

In late 2021, the Taliban said women seeking to travel more than 72 kilometers should not be offered transport unless they were accompanied by a close male relative.

In another incident, the Taliban advised a woman to get married if she wanted to keep her job at a health-care facility, saying it was inappropriate for a single woman to work, the report said.

In a report issued on January 18, the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) said the Taliban’s restrictions on single and unaccompanied women has ensured that female-led households receive less income and food.

"Their share of employment has nearly halved, decreasing from 11 percent in 2022 to 6 percent" in 2023, the report said.

The report noted that female-headed households typically care for more children and get paid less for their work and consume lower quantities of food.

"Female-headed households have greater needs for humanitarian assistance and yet report more restrictions to accessing such assistance," the report said.

"Unaccompanied access by women to public places such as health facilities, water points, and markets has declined in the past two years," the report added.

‘Deeply Insulting’

Parisa, an unmarried woman, takes care of her elderly parents in the northeastern province of Takhar.

With her father bedridden and her two brothers working in neighboring Iran, she has been forced to take care of the family’s needs.

But she said she has been repeatedly harassed by the Taliban while trying to buy groceries in the local market, located some 10 kilometers away from her house.

"What can women do when men in their families are forced to leave the country for work?" she told Radio Azadi, giving only her first name for security reasons.

"I have no choice but to look after my family’s basic needs. The Taliban’s attitude is deeply insulting and extremely aggressive."

Parisa said she has pleaded with local Taliban leaders to relax the mahram requirements. But she said her efforts have been in vain.

"They start abusing and threatening us whenever we try to tell them that we have to leave our houses to meet our basic needs," she said.

Parasto, a resident of Kabul, said the Taliban’s restrictions are preventing single women from seeking the limited health care that is available.

"The doctors in the hospitals and clinics are reluctant to see unaccompanied women," she told Radio Azadi.

Parasto said the Taliban’s mounting restrictions on women, especially those who are unmarried or do not have a male guardian, have made life unbearable.

"Single women are trying to survive without rights and opportunities," she said.
Wet Winter Weather Brings New Miseries To Vulnerable Afghans (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [1/31/2024 11:45 AM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
Ongoing snowfall and rain that ended a long dry spell in Afghanistan are now bringing new problems to impoverished Afghans across the country as heating needs jump while humanitarian aid deliveries are impeded.

Since January 28, most of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces have experienced snowfall or rain.

While the precipitation has been widely welcomed because it will help avoid a much-feared drought, some of the most vulnerable Afghans are struggling in its aftermath.

Many citizens don’t have the means to buy gas, coal, wood, or fuel to cook and heat their households. Those who live in remote regions also face humanitarian aid delays as the heavy snow makes roads impassable.

“People face serious problems after all the rain and snow,” Ali, a resident of the northern Balkh Province, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

“We don’t have any money and remain hungry," he added.

Khatira, a resident of the capital, Kabul, says her family is miserable because of a lack of heating in the cold winter.

"We cannot keep our children warm by giving them proper clothes or food this winter," she told Radio Azadi.

Some Afghans are unable to do their jobs because of the weather conditions, curtailing their already meager income.

"We don’t even have a little food to survive because there is no work, and we are losing hope," Noor Agha, another Kabul resident, said.

Meanwhile, the UN World Food Program says the weather has cut 10 million people off from food aid in Afghanistan.

“Most of whom have to choose between feeding their children or keeping them warm,” the organization said on X, formerly called Twitter.

According to the UN, Afghanistan is expecting a further deterioration in food security by March. Some 15.8 million Afghans, or 36 percent of the total population of over 40 million, will require food aid by the spring.

According to the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), some 29.2 million Afghans out of a population of more than 40 million need humanitarian assistance.

The UN plans to reach 22.3 million of them with more than $3.2 billion in humanitarian funding.
Pakistan’s deportation push strands Afghan refugees who worked with U.S. (Washington Times)
Washington Times [2/1/2024 5:35 AM, Stephen Dinan, 223K, Negative]
Pakistan has forced nearly 500,000 Afghans to return home over the last four months, complicating life for Afghan refugees who worked with the U.S. and who were promised a special visa to rebuild their lives in America.

Many of the refugees fled to Pakistan to try to connect with U.S. authorities and now find themselves thrown back into danger, one of the findings of a new U.S. government watchdog report being released Thursday.

The problem is that the U.S., in the wake of its hasty, chaotic troop pullout in 2021, no longer has a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan so it can’t complete the interviews necessary to issue those allies the special visas. Others awaiting approval as refugees to the U.S. are also in danger of being sent back.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, in the latest survey, said three people the IG’s office itself was sponsoring to be refugees have been deported from Pakistan, including one categorized as “most vulnerable to Taliban retribution.” Another 23 of the office’s candidates are also in danger of imminent deportation.

Once back in Afghanistan, they’ll find a country still on a downward spiral since the U.S. withdrawal, the inspector general said in its latest quarterly report.

The Taliban, which ousted the U.S.-based government in Kabul in a lightning military assault, has begun a new crackdown on women and girls improperly dressed according to Islamic Shariah legal codes. Child and forced marriages are increasing, the economy continues to deteriorate, and food shortages are spreading and affecting nearly 40% of the population this winter, the inspector general said.

“Although there is improvement in a few areas such as counternarcotics, most social, economic and humanitarian indicators are clearly worsening,” the inspector general said.

Afghanistan remains an embarrassment for the U.S. and particularly President Biden.

He ended a 20-year war effort with a chaotic pullout that saw 13 American troops killed in a suicide bombing. The hastily organized U.S. airlift included tens of thousands of Afghans who had no legitimate claims to protection while stranding thousands of Afghans who did assist the U.S. and may be eligible for the special visa or refugee status.

Those left behind have struggled, with some telling The Washington Times they have to move homes to avoid detection by the Taliban regularly. Going to Pakistan had been a safety valve, with Afghans slipping over the border while waiting to hear from the U.S. or for a chance to be interviewed — the key middle step in the process for a U.S. visa.

Now Pakistan’s “Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan” threatens that whole approach. Islamabad say the program is a national security move and an effort to force the Taliban regime in Kabul to take the threat of terrorism in the insecure border areas more seriously.

The plan could oust up to 1.3 million Afghans living in Pakistan, according to U.N. estimates. Some 29,3000 were already deported and Pakistan has forced more than 460,000 others to depart, the inspector general reported.

The State Department told the inspector general that Pakistan is using the people as a foreign policy tool, targeting in particular the Taliban’s de facto support for the TTP, a terrorist group that is increasing its attacks on Pakistan.

American officials had thought they’d secured an agreement with Pakistan in November not to deport Afghans who were using the country as a way station en route to the U.S., but the inspector general said some have been ousted anyway.

The latest data, dating back to Sept. 30, showed more than 68,000 special visa applications are filed and awaiting initial action. Another 67,000 are waiting on an eligibility determination and more than 10,000 people are waiting for an interview, after which the visa can be issued.

Those interviews can no longer take place in Afghanistan, which is one reason why Afghan allies told The Washington Times they went to Pakistan, where the embassy is conducting interviews.

The State Department, in a statement to The Times, acknowledged the difficulty of not having a presence in Afghanistan. It said it has a program to help assist some Afghans eligible for the special visa to relocate outside the country. Others must find their own way.

“The administration has made clear that we have an enduring commitment to continue resettlement efforts for our Afghan partners and their eligible family members,” the department said.

U.S. veterans say leaving so many behind to the Taliban’s mercy is a breach of America’s commitment.

After a rise early last year, the pace of special visa processing dropped toward the end of 2023. Just 881 new primary visas and 2,990 derivative family visas were issued from July to September, down nearly 40% from the previous quarter. Initial denials, meanwhile, rose from 4,261 to 4,521.

Perhaps most worrying for applicants is the timeline between applying and being issued a visa.

It skyrocketed to 609 days, or more than a year and a half. That’s a major reversal from earlier in 2023, when the State Department said it had gotten the process down to just 270 days.
Pakistan
Pakistan’s Political Roller Coaster: Prime Ministers, Prisons and a Powerful Military (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [1/31/2024 11:43 AM, Saeed Shah, 810K, Neutral]
Nawaz Sharif was in prison just over five years ago when his popular rival and former cricket star, Imran Khan, was elected prime minister. Now it is Khan who is in prison and Sharif who is seen as the front-runner to become prime minister in elections next week.

The reversal of fortunes reflects the roller-coaster ride that is Pakistani politics and the influence of the country’s powerful military. The nuclear-armed country of 240 million people has seen four military dictators but in recent years the armed forces have preferred to exercise sway from behind the scenes.

On Wednesday, Khan, who was ousted by a 2022 parliamentary vote after locking horns with the military, was convicted on a corruption charge and sentenced to 14 years in prison. That followed a conviction on Tuesday for disclosing official secrets. He is barred from running in the Feb. 8 vote.

Meanwhile, after Sharif returned from a four-year exile in October, a rapid succession of moves paved the way for him to become the front-runner. Pakistan courts overturned his corruption convictions and a court also scrapped another provision that disqualified him from elections. The army sought a rapprochement with Sharif and the smoothing of his path back to power after its confrontation with Khan, political analysts say.

The army has said it interfered in Pakistan’s politics in the past but denies doing so any longer.

Shuja Nawaz, author of a book on the Pakistan army, said that the poor performance of civilian governments has undermined their ability to stand up to the powerful military.

“The political parties constantly seek the military’s approval and once they lose it, they lose viability due to poor governance,” said Nawaz, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington. “The military has coercive power and it does what it knows best, which is to get rid of the problem.”

Pakistan’s next prime minister will inherit an economic mess. A doubling of external debt since 2015 means that annual debt repayments eat up more than the country’s entire tax revenues, the International Monetary Fund said last year. Inflation is running at a punishing 30%. The country’s economy is being kept afloat by an IMF bailout program that will need to be renegotiated this year.

A survey released on Jan. 10 by Gallup Pakistan, a local pollster, showed a tight race, with Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party having the edge, despite its leader being in jail. However, a controversial Supreme Court ruling this month further tilted the electoral field in Sharif’s favor, say political experts, by barring Khan’s party from using its recognizable cricket bat symbol on the ballot, which will make it difficult for voters to identify its candidates.

Khan has said he would turn Pakistan into a country of justice modeled on Islamic ideals and fight corruption. Sharif has pitched reviving economic growth and big infrastructure projects. The pro-business Sharif drew Pakistan closer to Beijing in his last term, following his election in 2013, with a $30 billion Chinese construction program that also added to Pakistan’s debts.

“If our last government had been allowed to finish its term, there would be no one jobless here,” Sharif told a crowd of thousands on Sunday in the city of Sialkot, in the important electoral province of Punjab.

Sharif’s term ended abruptly in 2017 after the Supreme Court disqualified him from office. Sharif says the military leadership conspired against him. His previous two terms also ended prematurely due to military intervention, including a coup in 1999. His outreach to archenemy India was among the issues that riled the armed forces.

No prime minister has ever managed to complete their five-year term in office.

By the time of the 2018 elections, Sharif had been convicted of corruption in connection with the purchase of a plush London apartment. He denies wrongdoing. In 2019, he was allowed to leave Pakistan from jail to seek medical treatment, entering a life of comfortable exile in that apartment.

This time, it is Khan who has faced imprisonment after a run-in with the military. Following his 2018 election, friction emerged as Khan too tried to implement his policies. It was Khan’s decision in 2019 to replace Lt. Gen. Asim Munir as head of Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, with his own choice for the job and keep him there for longer than the military wanted.

Matters came to a head in late 2021. The army, then led by Gen. Qamar Bajwa, saw Khan’s move as interference with its internal workings, according to officials involved.

Sharif’s party was encouraged by the military to spearhead the 2022 no-confidence motion in parliament that toppled Khan, according to officials involved. The party and the military deny conspiring against Khan and say that the no-confidence motion was constitutional.

Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif’s younger brother, was then made prime minister for a short-lived administration by a parliamentary vote. Later that year, with Bajwa retiring, the younger Sharif brother appointed Munir, the intelligence head whom Khan replaced, as the next army chief.

Khan hasn’t gone quietly. Instead, he has responded with a political campaign alleging that the military conspired against him, delivering fiery speeches that struck a chord with the public and boosted his popularity. Khan has said in speeches that real freedom for the country will come when the military’s role in politics is ended.

In May, Khan was arrested, and his Tehreek-e-Insaf party has faced a crackdown after his supporters protested his arrest, including at military sites.

A security official said that the military “has no preference or otherwise towards any specific political orientation.”

The military said Wednesday that it would provide security during the election, as Pakistan’s constitution allowed.

“No one would be allowed to indulge in violence in the name of political activity and sabotage the quintessential democratic exercise of conduct of free and fair elections,” a statement from the military said.

Saeed Butt, a 65-year-old running a roadside food stall in Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab, the hometown of both Sharif and Khan, said that younger voters were with Khan but he supported Sharif.

“Imran Khan talks a lot, but what has he actually done?” said Butt. “It is Nawaz Sharif who makes roads.”

Sharif has been in politics since the 1980s, leading the main faction of Pakistan’s oldest political party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, with a web of political relationships reaching down to street level in Punjab province, the country’s most heavily populated region. More than half the seats in parliament come from Punjab, meaning that to become prime minister, a large haul of seats is needed there.

Sharif has repeatedly tried to push for more civilian control in the past, leading many to question how long his current good relations with the military will last.

Some political analysts suggest that it may ultimately be Shehbaz Sharif, considered more pliable by the military and likely coalition partners, who takes the role.

The third political force, the Pakistan Peoples Party, is seeking to spoil Sharif’s plans, by enticing enough independent members of parliament to join it after the election to form a government. Instead, an alliance as the junior partner to Sharif’s party is seen by analysts as a more likely outcome.

The armed forces have traditionally regarded foreign and security policy as their domain. But since Khan’s removal, the military has formally taken a bigger role in economic planning too. That creates yet more potential for friction.

Bajwa, in a speech just before his retirement, said that the military had interfered in politics for decades, which he said was against the constitution. He said that it would stay out of politics in the future.

Ijaz Gilani, head of polling at Gallup Pakistan, said that the election exercise was increasingly empty, not leading to better governance or social consensus. He said that the country needed to deepen its democracy by also electing officials at the local level, which would foster new political leadership.

“Each election is producing worse wounds,” said Gilani.
Ex-PM Imran Khan’s leak of secret cable hurt Pakistan - court ruling
Reuters [2/1/2024 3:42 AM, Asif Shahzad, 5.2M, Neutral]
Former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan’s leaking of a secret diplomatic cable hurt the South Asian nation economically, politically and diplomatically, said a detailed court judgment issued on Thursday after a guilty verdict that sentenced him to 10 years in jail.

The special court convicted Khan on Tuesday for leaking state secrets, and also disqualified the former cricket star from holding any public office for 10 years, a setback to him and his party ahead of the Feb. 8 general election.

"It is evident that Pakistan has faced serious economic, diplomatic and political consequences due to the offences committed by accused Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi," the judgment said, adding, "which in turn weakened Pakistan’s economy, thus, adversely affecting national security."

The judgment found Khan, 71, guilty of making public as well as mishandling, misusing, and tampering with a secret cable from Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington to the Islamabad government. It found him guilty on four counts under the Official Secrets Act.

Khan has said the cable was proof of a conspiracy by the military and U.S. government to topple his government in 2022 after he visited Moscow just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Washington and Pakistan’s military deny that.

He has also been sentenced to three years in a corruption case in August although the sentence has been suspended. He was also sentenced to 14 years on graft charges on Wednesday, which had already ruled him out of the upcoming polls.

"This judgment is full of faults," said Khan’s lawyer Intezar Panjutha, adding, "It wouldn’t stand in any higher court."

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who analysts consider the frontrunner to form the next government, and his daughter, Maryam Nawaz, were similarly convicted and jailed over graft charges ahead of the last general election in 2018. Analysts say that helped Khan win, while Khan’s sentence now helps Sharif. Both blame the military, a charge the army denies.

Pakistan’s recovery from an economic crisis depends on political stability. The election comes as Pakistan is navigating a tricky recovery path under a $3 billion International Monetary Fund bailout that helped it narrowly avert a sovereign default last year.
Costs, crackdown put a damper on Pakistan’s election campaigns (Reuters)
Reuters [1/31/2024 9:12 PM, Ariba Shahid, 5239K, Neutral]
Higher living costs and political uncertainty have muted Pakistan’s once boisterous election campaigns, with both candidates and those who supply them with materials bemoaning the need to do more with much less.

The Feb. 8 general election, the first since 2018, will take place as Pakistan battles an economic crisis, inflation running at almost 30% and a weak currency while navigating a recovery path under a $3 billion International Monetary Fund bailout.

The vote also follows a widespread state-sanctioned crackdown on the Tehreek-e-Insaf party of popular former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has been in jail since August over a raft of charges, including corruption.

"There was a lot of activity in previous elections and our business boomed, but in this election our business has been reduced to half compared to the last one," said Jawad Jiwani, who sells party flags in the commercial hub Karachi.

Candidate are hosting fewer outdoor gatherings for supporters and the trucks that usually drive up and down the streets, festooned with campaign posters and blaring music and slogans, are also noticeably quieter.

Syed Arsalan Haider, a Karachi printer, said the cost of a square foot of banner was up by 130% since the last election. Lahore printer Abdul Aziz said the cost of printing stickers had risen almost 70% and posters by nearly 90%.

TV adverts are also limited, with Senator Taj Haider from the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of prime ministerial candidate Bilawal Bhutto Zardari saying his party chose TV over public rallies and printed materials in a bid to save costs.

"If we had resources like we did in our past campaigns, then we could have done it better," added Senator Faisal Subzwari of the Mutahida Quami Movement (MQM) which is known for its colourful campaign materials.

THE KHAN FACTOR

Pakistan’s political parties are mainly funded by wealthy candidates and donors from within the country and abroad, but uncertainty over the election date affected this funding.

The elections were supposed to be held in November after parliament was dissolved in August, but was postponed to February because of a census. In January, members of Pakistan’s Senate called for further delays citing security reasons.

The absence of Khan’s PTI - and fears of falling foul of the politically powerful military establishment - have also put a damper on campaigning, businessmen and candidates say.

Khan, whose party won the last election, says the military wants to keep him from power, which the military denies.

Meherbano Qureshi, a PTI candidate and daughter of the party’s jailed vice chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi, said people were scared to show their support and hang campaign material.

"Wherever we have put them up, they have been torn down, or people are too scared to put them up, because the moment a house puts up a flag, they put up a target on their backs, and then they are harassed by the local police," she said.

There was no immediate comment from the Lahore police when asked about the intimidation.

Khurram Sher Zaman, a former PTI member of parliament and current candidate, also said fundraising had become challenging because businessmen were reluctant to support the party.

"They’re probably scared of the establishment. Whatever we are spending it’s from our pocket," he added.
Pakistan election battlegrounds heat up as Imran Khan hit by jail terms (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [1/31/2024 9:54 PM, Adnan Aamir, 293K, Negative]
With Pakistan set to go to the polls in one week and former Prime Minister Imran Khan reeling from multiple decade-long jail sentences, the race is heating up in the country’s most populous province of Punjab.

At the same time, the outcome in the smallest province by population, Balochistan, is sure to be closely watched by China, as the restive region forms the heart of its Belt and Road investments in the South Asian nation.

Put simply, what happens in Punjab will decide who rules Pakistan after next Thursday’s elections -- a reality some analysts say requires reform to ensure a fairer democratic system.

Pakistan’s lower house, the National Assembly, has 266 directly contested seats, out of which 141 are for Punjab. In addition, 60 assembly seats are reserved for women, 32 of which will go to Punjab. This means that a party that sweeps Punjab can form a government without any support in the country’s other three provinces.

In addition, much of the civil and military bureaucracy, business community and media elite are concentrated in Punjab, adding to resentment that has historically simmered in the other provinces of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

"Given its sheer size, political parties do not need to campaign out of Punjab for forming a government in the center, and this leaves the smaller provinces out of the power corridors," said Tahir Naeem Malik, a professor of international relations at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML) in Islamabad.

Not surprisingly, Punjab is the focus of the current confrontation between Nawaz Sharif -- leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and a three-time prime minister widely believed to be the favored candidate of the powerful military establishment -- and independent candidates backed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party of Imran Khan.

The Khan allies are effectively independents because the PTI was prohibited from running a cohesive campaign under its trademark cricket bat symbol, over an election rules breach. Many see this as part of a relentless campaign by the establishment to weaken the party, which openly clashed with the military in the months after Khan was removed from office in an April 2022 no-confidence vote.

The latest blows to Khan came this week, when he was handed a 10-year prison term on Tuesday for leaking state secrets and a 14-year sentence on Wednesday for illegal sales of state gifts. As the former cricket star, who denies all wrongdoing, had already been jailed since August on corruption allegations and barred from running in the election, this did not technically change the outlook for the polls. Still, an aide to Khan told Reuters that while the cases appeared to be an attempt to weaken support for the former leader, "people will now make sure they come out and vote in larger numbers."

The tables have fully turned since Sharif was sentenced to jail for corruption ahead of the 2018 elections that put Khan in office. He would later spend four years in exile in London before returning home last October, apparently with the military’s backing, and has had his legal troubles quashed.

Both Khan and Sharif hail from Lahore, the capital of Punjab. Experts say Sharif is focusing all his campaign energy on the province.

Sharif’s "PML-N aims to secure 90 to 100 seats from Punjab, so it would not care about developments in [the smaller] provinces," said Shahid Maitla, a political analyst in Islamabad, the national capital. He added that the PML-N, during its times in power in the past, has generally focused much of its development efforts in Punjab to strengthen its position there.

Malik expressed concern that if the PML-N succeeds in Punjab, there will be no significant checks on Sharif’s power. "History tells us that whenever Sharif has an absolute majority he turns into a dictator, which does not bode well for the country," he argued, referring to past pressure on the media and apparent bypassing of parliament.

Either way, experts say Pakistan’s current political model -- a federation dominated by Punjab -- requires a rethink.

The analyst Maitla said the number of seats in the National Assembly should be trimmed through a new division of regional units. "Better governance warrants [the division of Punjab] into at least three provinces," Maitla said.

While most of the attention is on Punjab, the polls -- national and provincial -- carry a different sort of significance in Balochistan. What happens there could send ripples beyond Pakistan’s borders.

The province is home to the port of Gwadar, center stage in the $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Winners in Gwadar may directly deal with China and would have policy input about the future of CPEC in Gwadar.

For Gwadar’s provincial assembly seat, the main battle is between Hammal Kalmati, scion of the Kalmati political clan that has dominated local politics for decades, and Maulana Hidayat ur Rehman, the firebrand Islamist leader of the Gwadar Rights Movement, which has emerged as a force advocating local interests and at times targeting its pressure at CPEC.

Kiyya Baloch, an independent security analyst, told Nikkei Asia that although Gwadar is the site of considerable foreign investment, overall there has been little development to benefit local residents under the Kalmati dynasty, which has not faced serious competition until now. "That’s why people are now shifting their support toward the Gwadar Rights Movement, which will help them in the elections," Baloch predicted.

Experts say that CPEC and China have not featured in the campaign in Gwadar so far.

"No candidate is mentioning China or CPEC in the election campaign, and the focus is on the grievances of the people of Gwadar," said Nasir Sohrabi, president of the Rural Community Development Council of Gwadar. Those complaints include deep-sea fish trawling that has hurt local livelihoods, drinking water shortages, alleged harassment at security checkpoints, poor sanitation and long power outages.

Sohrabi added that many in Gwadar are coming to the realization that sending a competent person to the National Assembly would help to protect local interests.

As the complexion of local politics changes, so too may the way China engages with Pakistan.

Typically, Beijing has relied on the federal government in Islamabad to arrange CPEC projects and handle related issues. "If Beijing starts dealing with the elected representatives of Gwadar, after the elections, then it will make it much easier for China to deal with problems related to CPEC," Baloch said.
Pakistan election candidate shot dead in tribal district - police (Reuters)
Reuters [1/31/2024 1:20 PM, Mushtaq Ali, 11975K, Negative]
A national assembly candidate in Pakistan’s election next week was shot dead on Wednesday in a tribal district along the Afghan border, police said, in the second killing of a candidate linked to jailed former leader Imran Khan’s party this month.

Rehan Zaib Khan, an independent candidate in the Feb. 8 election who had claimed to be supported by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and four aides were shot in Bajur district, police officer Rasheed Khan said.

Rehan Zaib Khan died at a local hospital and his aides were in a critical condition, he said.

No one has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack in a region where Islamist militants operate on both sides of the border. It was the second killing of a candidate linked to the PTI in northwestern Pakistan’s tribal regions in recent weeks.

Wednesday’s attack took place a day after a bombing claimed by Islamic State in southwestern Balochistan region following a rally held there by PTI, raising security concerns amid an uptick in militant violence around the parliamentary vote.

The PTI said on Wednesday that Imran Khan and his wife Bushra were jailed for 14 years in a graft case.

The PTI says it been subjected to a military-backed crackdown, including arrests of hundreds of supporters, party members and key aides. The military, which has for decades held sway over Pakistan’s politics, denies the charges.

Imran Khan’s party has been stripped of its traditional electoral symbol, a cricket bat, on technical grounds, and its candidates are contesting the election as independents.

PTI’s provincial president Atif Khan said Rehan Zaib Khan was a party member but the PTI had another candidate in the constituency with its official backing. In absence of the party symbol on the ballot, several independent candidates are claiming to have PTI’s support.

Also Wednesday, a local leader of the left leaning Awami National Party was shot and killed by gunmen at its election office in Chaman district in Balochistan on the Afghan border, said local police official Zahoor Ahmed.

U.S. State Department expressed concerns about the violence, which it said could undermine the electoral process.

"Pakistani people have the right to choose their leader without fear for the country’s stability and prosperity. Our deepest sympathies to those affected," it said in a statement.
Pakistan election panel summons meeting on rising poll violence (Reuters)
Reuters [2/1/2024 1:43 AM, Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam, 5.2M, Neutral]
Pakistan’s election panel has summoned top security officials for a meeting on Thursday to discuss increasing violence in the country’s western provinces ahead of next week’s national election, including the killing of a candidate a day earlier.

The South Asian nation of 240 million is to go to the polls on Feb. 8, but a surge in militant attacks and violence in its provinces of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan has raised concerns about security for the exercise.

The meeting has been called to discuss the "deteriorating" law and order situation in the two provinces, a statement from the Election Commission of Pakistan said. Top security officials and intelligence agency representatives have been asked to join, it added.

Pakistan faces twin insurgencies - one in the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa by Islamist groups and one in the southwest by the ethno-nationalist Baloch groups.

A national assembly candidate was shot dead on Wednesday in a tribal district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa along the Afghan border. On the same day, another political leader was shot dead in his party’s election office in Balochistan.

On Tuesday, a bomb attack following an election rally killed four people in Balochistan. Islamic State claimed responsibility.

Separatist Baloch militants, including three suicide bombers, also launched a massive coordinated attack on a town in Balochistan on Monday which took hours for security forces to clear. At least 15 people were killed.

The U.S. State Department has already expressed concern about the violence, which it said could undermine the electoral process.

Previously, Pakistan’s Senate had passed a non-binding resolution calling for a delay in the elections due to security reasons.
Pakistan vote body calls security meeting after campaign violence (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [1/31/2024 8:02 AM, Staff, 11975K, Negative]
Pakistan’s election commission on Wednesday announced an urgent meeting of security officials after a candidate was shot dead and several others wounded in separate attacks a week before the country goes to the polls.

Elections in the South Asian nation are often marred by violence, with candidates and rallies targeted by militant groups as well as over personal vendettas.

Rehan Zeb Khan, standing as an independent after failing to get a ticket for former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was shot dead in his car after leaving a stump gathering in the former tribal district of Bajaur in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

"The killing of Rehan Zeb is a targeted killing aimed at creating chaos during the elections," district police officer Kashif Zulfiqar told AFP.

The Election Commission of Pakistan told media that it would meet with government and intelligence officials on Thursday to discuss the violence.

"In view of the deteriorating law and order situation in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Election Commission has convened a meeting on February 1," it said.

Authorities had previously announced that thousands of paramilitary troops would be deployed in the days leading up to the February 8 polls.

Also on Wednesday, two candidates -- one standing for the national assembly, the other for a provincial seat -- were attacked with grenades in the Baluchistan provincial capital of Quetta.

"They were both in the office when terrorists attacked," a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) spokesman told AFP, adding that five people were wounded.

A PPP candidate was also targeted with grenades at his home near Buleda, by the Iranian border, but no one was harmed in the attack.

Police on Tuesday said at least four people were killed by a bomb blast near a PTI rally in Quetta.

The attack came just hours after party founder Khan was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of having leaked classified state documents.

He was later handed another 14-year sentence for graft.

The 71-year-old former cricket star was ousted from office in 2022 and launched a campaign of defiance against Pakistan’s military kingmakers, who he said conspired to end his premiership.
The bodies of 9 Pakistanis killed by unknown gunmen in Iran have been repatriated (AP)
AP [2/1/2024 1:31 AM, Staff, 456K, Neutral]
The bodies of nine Pakistani laborers killed by gunmen in Iran last week were repatriated to their home country Thursday.

It was still unclear who was behind the attack Saturday in a home in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province. Three Pakistanis wounded in the attack were still being treated at an Iranian hospital.

Tehran handed over the bodies of the slain men at the Taftan border crossing, local government administrator Waqar Kakar said. He said the bodies were being flown to the city of Multan and will be sent from there to their hometowns.

The killings occurred as tensions erupted between Pakistan and Iran after Pakistan launched retaliatory strikes inside Iran that were said to be targeting militant hideouts and killed at least nine people. An Iranian attack against alleged militant hideouts inside Pakistan killed two children in southwestern Baluchistan province.

Following the tit-for-tat attacks, both sides agreed Monday to improve their security cooperation.

The attacks appeared to target two Baluch militant groups with similar separatist goals. The two countries have accused each other of providing safe haven to the groups in their respective territories.
Pakistan Ex-PM Khan’s Wife Back Home After Residence Declared ‘Sub-jail’ (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [2/1/2024 4:14 AM, Staff, 304K, Neutral]
The wife of former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan -- jailed alongside her husband Wednesday for 14 years for graft -- is serving her sentence at home after their residence was officially declared a "sub-jail" by authorities.

Bushra Bibi, a Muslim faith healer who met Khan when he approached her for spiritual guidance, handed herself in to authorities on Wednesday shortly after the pair were sentenced in a case involving the sale of foreign gifts received while he was premier.

Khan, who was also sentenced to 10 years in jail on Tuesday in a separate case after being found guilty of leaking state secrets, remains at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, where the trial was held.

The former international cricketer and his legal team have slammed the convictions and myriad other charges as a ploy by the military-led establishment to keep him from returning to power in elections next week.

Late Wednesday the government said Bibi had been transferred to her home on the outskirts of Islamabad from Adiala jail.

"The Chief Commissioner, Islamabad Capital Territory is pleased to declare the residence of convict Mst. Bushra Bibi... as Sub-Jail, as on 31-01-2024, till further orders," read an order seen by AFP.

The Khan home -- a rambling bungalow in a large compound surrounded by high concrete walls -- is in the plush Bani Gala area of the capital.

Pakistan goes to the polls on February 8 in a ballot already marred by allegations of rigging, with Khan barred from running and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party subject to a massive crackdown.

Thousands of supporters were detained when riots broke out after Khan’s first arrest last year, with around 100 people awaiting trial in secretive military courts.

Bibi is a polarising figure whose marriage to Khan in 2018 -- months before he was elected prime minister -- both scandalised and titillated the nation.

Oxford-educated Khan earned a reputation as a playboy during his cricket-playing bachelor days, frequently photographed alongside society beauties and models.

His first marriage to Jemima Goldsmith -- the daughter of a British multimillionaire -- ended in divorce.

He then married Reham Nayyar, a television journalist who published a kiss-and-tell memoir after they divorced within a year.

Bibi, his third wife, rarely appears in public and wears a face-covering hijab when she does.
India
India’s government announces a short-term budget until national elections are held by May (AP)
AP [2/1/2024 4:11 AM, Ashok Sharma, 456K, Neutral]
India’s finance minister unveiled on Thursday a short-term budget to meet government expenditures until national elections are held by May, saying it will boost spending on infrastructure projects, build homes for poor villagers and cut the fiscal deficit by reducing subsidies.

Nirmala Sitharaman announced plans to raise skills for young people and boost small and medium enterprises to create jobs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government faces criticism for not creating enough jobs despite offering billions of dollars in subsidies to boost manufacturing.

National elections due by May have generated expectations of populist giveaways to woo voters. The short-term budget is mostly free of big-spending new programs.

Modi is leading the race, with his Hindu nationalist party expected to win a third straight term because of his immense popularity and a badly divided opposition led by the Congress party.

The short-term budget must be approved by Parliament. A full-year budget will be presented by the new government after it assumes power.

Sitharaman said the government plans to build 20 million affordable houses over the next five years if voted back to power, adding to the 30 million already built. The government allocated $145 billion for infrastructure projects in the short-term budget.

She said government policies would focus on the development and empowerment of the poor, farmers, youth and women.

Sitharaman also announced the government will strengthen the electric vehicle ecosystem by supporting the manufacture of EVs and building charging stations, as well as encouraging a greater adoption of electric buses for public transport. She did not specify the cost or timeline for the project.

India expects that its economy will grow by about 7% during the next fiscal year despite global headwinds and geopolitical risks, and that it expanded by 7.3% this fiscal year, which ends on March 31. The International Monetary Fund expects India’s GDP to grow by 6.7% this financial year.

The Modi government’s budget last year totaled $550 billion and focused on ramping up capital spending to spur economic growth.

Sitharaman said India attracted $596 billion in foreign direct investment over the past nine years. She said the government is negotiating trade treaties with various countries to enable India to become a developed country by 2047.

Last year, India surpassed the United Kingdom to become the world’s fifth largest economy with a GDP of $3.7 trillion. The Modi government expects the economy to become the third largest in the next three years with a GDP of $5 trillion.
India refrains from populist budget before election, trims fiscal deficit (Reuters)
Reuters [2/1/2024 4:59 AM, Nikunj Ohri and Shivangi Acharya, 5.2M, Neutral]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government resisted the temptation of spending trillions of rupees on schemes for the poor in its last budget before elections and instead stuck to the path of fiscal consolidation to attract investors.

The lack of social spending largesse is indicative of Modi’s confidence in returning to power for a rare third term. His stratospheric approval ratings have been further boosted by the building of a grand Hindu temple on long disputed land that appealed to his nationalist base.

Tax policies were left unchanged in Thursday’s budget, major subsidies on food, fertiliser and fuel were 8% lower and an allocation for a rural employment scheme was held steady.
"This is an indication that the ruling BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is feeling fairly confident about securing another big victory in the upcoming general election," said Shilan Shah from Capital Economics.

National elections are due by May this year.

India will reduce its budget gap sharply in 2024-25 to 5.1% of gross domestic product (GDP), Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told parliament as she presented the budget, while revising the current fiscal year’s gap lower by 10 basis points to 5.8%.

"In this budget, capital expenditure has been raised to a historic high of 11.11 trillion rupees ($133.90 billion), while keeping the fiscal deficit in control. To put it in the terms of economists, this is a sweet spot," Modi said after the budget presentation.

The fiscal consolidation will help the Indian government to make a stronger case for a higher sovereign credit rating in the coming months, economists said. S&P and Fitch rate India at BBB-, while Moody’s rates the South Asian country at Baa3, the global ratings agencies’ lowest investment grades.

"The interim budget effectively juggled the need to support growth while signalling continued fiscal consolidation. This will be reassuring for investors and rating agencies alike," said Sachchidanand Shukla, economist at Larsen & Toubro.

However, Moody’s said after the budget that India has not seen a significant enough improvement in debt affordability to warrant a rethink of its ratings upgrade.

The agency also said government has to take "proactive" measures for revenue generation to meet the fiscal deficit target of 4.5% of GDP in 2 years.

Over the last three years, the government has stepped up spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure as a way to boost the economy and create jobs.

The budget foresees an increase in capital expenditure on such long term projects by another 11% over last year, even as the government’s overall spending rises at a slower 6%.

The pace of increase in capital spending is lower than in the previous year.

The federal government will also provide 1.3 trillion rupees in long term loans to states to spend on infrastructure.

There are weak spots in the economy, though.

While India’s economic growth is expected to notch a record-beating 7.3% pace for the financial year ending March 31, 2024, consumption - which accounts for close to 60% of GDP - has remained weak, with growth at just over 4%.

Weak growth in wages and high inflation has hurt lower income earners, particularly in rural areas, impacting their ability to spend on even items of daily use.

"The budget lacks consumption triggers. Thus, it is a departure from the previous pre-election vote on accounts," said Garima Kapoor, economist at Elara Capital.

Finance Minister Sitharaman said the government will build 20 million affordable houses in the next five years, to add to the 30 million houses built already.

The government will also launch a scheme for housing for the middle class, she said, without providing details.

The government will borrow a lower-than-expected 14.13 trillion Indian rupees ($170.33 billion) from the bond markets to fund its fiscal deficit.

The budget had little impact on the country’s equity and currency markets, but a better than expected fiscal deficit target and lower than estimated borrowing boosted gains in bonds.
Equity markets wavered between gains and losses, with both the benchmark BSE Index (.BSESN), opens new tab as well as wider NSE Nifty 50 index < .NSEI> trading little changed, but off their days highs.

The Indian benchmark 10-year bond yield dropped to over six-month lows,.
The yield was at 7.0467%, as of 1:55 p.m., against 7.1267% before the budget announcement. The Indian rupee pared gains after briefly rising to 82.9325 to the U.S. dollar compared with 82.9800 before the budget.
Indian Opposition Leader Arrested Months Before Elections (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/1/2024 2:35 AM, Swati Gupta, Shruti Srivastava, and Shruti Mahajan, 5.5M, Negative]
The chief minister of India’s Jharkand state and leader in the opposition coalition was arrested Wednesday, just months before the country’s elections.

Hemant Soren was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate, the nation’s federal anti-money laundering agency, relating to a case of alleged land fraud, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as the details aren’t public. A charge sheet hasn’t yet been filed, according to the person.

Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha party governs the north-eastern state in a coalition with the Indian National Congress. His party is also a member of the opposition coalition known by the acronym I.N.D.I.A, which was formed last year to fight Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party in national elections, expected to take place in April and May.

Soren resigned as chief minister on Wednesday after he was questioned by the investigative agency.

On Thursday, Soren petitioned the country’s Supreme Court challenging his arrest. Requesting an urgent hearing, his lawyer Kapil Sibal said Soren’s arrest is “a very serious matter.” The court is scheduled to hear the case Friday.

While there have been several chief ministers who have resigned in the past while facing legal charges, Soren is the first sitting head of a regional party to be arrested without any formal charges brought against him.

Leaders from Soren’s party and the opposition alliance said the arrest was politically motivated, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party seeking to intimidate the opposition.

“As part of the conspiracy, BJP’s work to destabilize opposition parties one by one continues,” Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, said in a post on social media platform X.

The BJP denied that opposition groups are being targeted in any way. Sudhanshu Trivedi, the national spokesperson for the ruling party, reiterated on a local news channel Wednesday that the government was pursuing allegations of corruption or fraud against any politician, irrespective of their political allegiances.

Soren nominated veteran party leader, Champai Soren, as his replacement as chief minister after a session with legislative members of his party. The two aren’t related.

Speculation has been swirling for months that the Enforcement Directorate may also target Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of India’s capital Delhi over a bribery scandal. Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, or Common Man’s Party, is also competing in the upcoming polls against the BJP.
Head of India’s Jharkhand state arrested amid graft probe – media (Reuters)
Reuters [1/31/2024 11:44 PM, Jatindra Dash and Sakshi Dayal, 5.2M, Negative]
India’s financial crimes agency arrested the chief minister of resource-rich eastern Jharkhand state late on Wednesday as part of an investigation into money laundering and alleged land fraud, local media reported.

The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) seized cash, a car and "incriminating documents" from Hemant Soren’s home, according to the media reports.

Soren resigned on Wednesday shortly before his arrest, his party the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) said, adding that he had not committed any wrongdoing.

In a post on social media platform X, Soren said he did not own the seized vehicle or "any illicit cash", adding that he would launch an investigation into the ED.

"I will not give up in vain, I will not accept defeat," he said late on Wednesday.

Soren will be replaced as chief minister by JMM Vice President Champai Soren, who was also a cabinet minister in the state, party spokesperson Supriyo Bhattacharya said. Both men are not related.

Jharkhand is among Indian states not controlled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Several tribal groups called for statewide demonstrations to protest Soren’s arrest. JMM supporters held a protest in the state capital Ranchi and chanted slogans against the BJP and the financial crimes agency.
India Court Opens Up Part of Disputed Gyanvapi Mosque to Hindu Devotees (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [1/31/2024 8:55 AM, Shruti Mahajan, 5543K, Positive]
A Hindu group secured a court order to perform prayers inside the premises of a centuries-old mosque in the Indian city of Varanasi on Thursday, days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi consecrated a controversial temple on another site where a mosque once stood.

A lower court in Varanasi ordered the southern basement of the Gyanvapi mosque be handed over to Hindu devotees for their prayers. Some other parts of the mosque remain sealed on the court’s previous orders.

In their petition to the court, the Hindu groups claimed the mosque, which stands adjacent to the Kashi Vishwanath temple, was built on the site where a temple once stood. They’ve petitioned for the removal of the mosque from the location.

Another court had previously ordered a survey of the site to determine its religious nature. Earlier this month, the Archaeological Survey of India’s report of the site indicated a temple likely existed there.

The interim order on Thursday will likely be appealed in higher courts. The main lawsuit for the land title is yet to be decided.

Last week Modi inaugurated the Ram temple in Ayodhya on a site where a 16th century mosque had been torn down by Hindu activists in 1992. Hindu devotees believed the site was the birthplace of the deity Ram and a temple had previously existed there. The Supreme Court handed a Hindu trust full ownership of the site in 2019.

Other similar lawsuits are also before the courts, such as claims against the Shahi Idgah mosque in the city of Mathura, also in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. A survey to look into the history of the disputed site in Mathura was halted by the country’s top court and the issue is yet to be settled.
India deploys unprecedented naval might near Red Sea to rein in piracy (Reuters)
Reuters [1/31/2024 8:40 AM, Krishn Kaushik, 5239K, Neutral]
India has deployed at least a dozen warships east of the Red Sea to provide security against pirates and has investigated more than 250 vessels as Western powers focus on attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, Indian officials said.

India has not joined the U.S.-led task force for the Red Sea and does not have any warships there. But it currently has two frontline warships in the Gulf of Aden and at least 10 warships in the northern and western Arabian Sea, along with surveillance aircraft, the officials said.

This is India’s largest deployment in the region, they said.

Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said India’s growing capability, interests and reputation warranted its help in difficult situations.

"We will not be considered a responsible country when bad things are happening in the surrounding country and we say ‘I have got nothing to do with this’,” he said at a public event on Tuesday.

Other countries have a naval presence in the region, including the United States, France and China, but Indian officials say India’s presence is the largest.

Indian military and defence officials said that navy personnel, including special commandos, have investigated more than 250 vessels and small boats in the last two months, boarding more than 40, as piracy returns after a six-year absence.

At least 17 incidents of hijacking, attempted hijacking and suspicious approaches had been recorded by the Indian Navy since Dec. 1, they said.

Yemen’s Houthis have since November attacked ships in the Red Sea, part of a route that accounts for about 12% of the world’s shipping traffic, in what they say is an effort to support Palestinians in the war with Israel.

A U.S.-led task force is protecting vessels within the Red Sea and launched attacks across Yemen targeting Houthi forces this month.

But Indian experts said that the conflict is spilling beyond the Red Sea.

"Houthis and piracy are disconnected. But pirates are trying to use this opportunity as the West’s efforts are focused on the Red Sea," a navy official said on condition of anonymity.

An Indian Navy spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The Indian Navy is doing classic police work, Harsh Pant, a foreign policy expert at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation think tank, said.

It rescued two Iranian and helped rescue a Sri Lankan fishing vessels in the first two days of this week. In December, it helped two merchant vessels targeted by aerial strikes close to India’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

Two Indian officials said that Iran-made Shahed 136 drones were used in the December attacks without blaming Tehran, which had immediately dismissed U.S. accusations linking it to those attacks. Jaishankar visited Iran this month and raised the issue of maritime security.

"As a regional security provider, (the Indian Navy) is increasingly showcasing the ability to be able to protect not only its interests but also give confidence to regional players that it is willing and able to shoulder regional responsibility," Pant said.
At least 300 tourists rescued from one of India’s highest mountain passes after snowfall (The Independent)
The Independent [1/31/2024 5:48 AM, Shweta Sharma, 3055K, Neutral]
At least 300 stranded tourists were rescued in India’s northern Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh after a delayed spell of heavy snowfall left drivers trapped inside a high-altitude tunnel.

Around 50 vehicles and a tourist bus were stranded in the Atal Tunnel through the Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh for hours after snowfall in many parts of the northern region of the country on Tuesday.

An orange alert has been issued by the country’s federal weather agency for snowfall in the higher mountains and rains in other parts of the state over the next 48 hours.

"Around 50 vehicles and one Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) bus got stuck near the South Portal (SP) of ATR (Attal Tunnel Rohtang), in which 300 tourists were travelling. All tourists have been evacuated from ATR,” police officer Sakshi Verma said.

Videos showed dozens of cars lined up on the highway as snow continued to fall. People and police personnel tried to help those stranded near the Atal Tunnel, said to be world’s longest high-altitude highway tunnel.

Every year thousands of tourists visit the Himalayan states to witness snow but a lack of snowfall this season left the locals and environmentalists concerned. The latest spell of snowfall since Sunday graced the Indian regions of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh with the India Meteorological Department warning of snowfall for this week.

Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, the head of IMD, said that this would mark the initial substantial rainfall in North India this year. The winter season has witnessed minimal precipitation, with just one episode of rain in December, which had no impact on the hills.

The ongoing western disturbances are expected to result in widespread snowfall in the Himalayan region. This snowfall is crucial for the hill ecology as it replenishes water sources and glaciers, which in turn supply water to both the region and the plains of North India, he said.

Environmentalists point out that the region has been experiencing the effects of climate change, leading to extreme weather occurrences and extended periods of dry weather in both winter and summer seasons.

Orange alerts have been issued for Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi for Wednesday, and Thursday for heavy snowfall in higher altitude regions and fog in the plains.
Modi’s Thriftiness May End Up Shortchanging India (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [1/31/2024 5:00 PM, Mihir Sharma, 5543K, Neutral]
A few months from now, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will face India’s electorate and ask them to grant him a third term. In 2019, when he increased his majority in Parliament, most analysts suggested he was buoyed by a wave of nationalism following a military confrontation with Pakistan.

Others, however, believed voters were responding to Modi’s perceived commitment to expanding India’s welfare state. If that were the case, you might expect his government’s spending plans for the coming year, to be announced on Feb. 1, would include big increase in welfare spending in order to lock up this year’s elections as well.

I wouldn’t be so sure. The fact is that Modi has been pretty tight with India’s purse strings while in office. Subsidies for food, fuel, and fertilizers did indeed rise in his second term, driven largely by the pandemic and the Ukraine war. But, once you adjust for economic growth, the government actually paid out about the same last year as when Modi took power just under a decade ago.

Over the years, Modi has instead spent the extra money available to him on infrastructure. Even during the pandemic, the Indian government broadly resisted the temptation to offer large-scale income support. While transfers did increase, that was driven by existing employment guarantee schemes and by a decision to open up public granaries to Indian households.

Meanwhile, the government has kept the fiscal deficit mostly under control, even though some might want it to be brought down more sharply since Indian debt as a proportion of gross domestic product has spiked upwards in recent years.

No word of this conservatism has been allowed to infect Modi’s political messaging. On the contrary, his campaigns emphasize what he has done for the poor. The slogan his Bharatiya Janata Party has been using of late is “Modi’s Guarantee”: a promise that, whatever giveaways the opposition might offer, Modi will be a more reliable provider of goodies than any of his competitors.

How has he gotten away with such a strategy? Why is there a general belief that Modi has been building up India’s welfare state, even as he, in fact, cuts such spending whenever he can?

The BJP’s jealously guarded dominance of the political and media narrative helps. Across the length and breadth of India, posters with Modi’s face are ubiquitous on giant publicity posters for various public programs. The federal government is so determined to ensure Modi gets personal credit for every rupee spent that there are even reports it holds back funds from state governments that are insufficiently enthusiastic about putting up Modi’s photograph at grain distribution centers.

Some of Modi’s success is also due to the choice of programs that receive funding. A lot of money has been saved by phasing out fuel subsidies, for example, which generated surprisingly little political backlash. Meanwhile, cash has been spent on subsidies for home-building, food distribution, or cooking gas connections. Launching new programs that are more personally targeted allows for better branding, and a closer link to the prime minister in particular.

About $29 billion has been spent, for example, on houses under a program that translates from Hindi as the Prime Minister’s Accommodation Plan. About eight million homes have been completed. That’s a drop in the ocean of India’s housing deficit, sure. But pretty much everyone in the country will have seen a government-supported house with the logo of the “prime minister’s” plan on it.

Modi is sometimes described as a populist. If so, unlike some other populists, he has managed his populism without breaking the bank. It seems like the best of all possible worlds for a politician: He’s enjoying the popularity that comes with opening the money tap, without actually spending too much.

He shouldn’t celebrate too soon. Some components of welfare contribute to growth, entrepreneurship and job creation more than others — investment in human capital, in particular. India is at the tail end of a demographic boom and it is vital that its young people receive the best possible education, and that its workforce be healthy.

Previous governments ramped up education spending sharply. Under Modi, spending on education has in fact decreased as a share of expenditure. It’s a similar story with healthcare. New Delhi’s budget allocates only 0.35% of GDP to health, although it its own target was to spend 2.5% of GDP on public health by 2025.

Populism on the cheap may not cost you much money. In the long run, however, it may cost you growth and jobs.
NSB
Out of options, Rohingya are fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh by boat despite soaring death toll (AP)
AP [2/1/2024 12:18 AM, Kristen Gelineau, 456K, Negative]
Across a treacherous stretch of water, the Rohingya came by the thousands, then died by the hundreds. And though they know the dangers of fleeing by boat, many among this persecuted people say they will not stop — because the world has left them with no other choice.

Last year, nearly 4,500 Rohingya — two-thirds of them women and children — fled their homeland of Myanmar and the refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh by boat, the United Nations’ refugee agency reported. Of those, 569 died or went missing while crossing the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, the highest death toll since 2014.

The numbers mean one out of every eight Rohingya who attempted the crossing never made it, the UNHCR said last week.

Yet despite the risks, there are no signs the stream of Rohingya is ebbing. On Thursday, Indonesian officials said another boat carrying Rohingya refugees landed in the country’s northern province of Aceh.

Fishermen provided food and water to 131 Rohingya, mostly women and children, who had been on board, said Marzuki, the leader of the local tribal fishing community, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

Some passengers told officials they had been at sea since last month and their boat’s engine had broken down, leaving them adrift, said Lt. Col. Andi Susanto, commander of the navy base in Lhokseumawe.

“Southeast Asian waters are one of the deadliest stretches in the world and a graveyard for many Rohingya who have lost their lives,” says Babar Baloch, UNHCR’s spokesman for Asia and the Pacific. “The rate of Rohingya who are dying at sea without being rescued — that’s really alarming and worrying.”

Inside the squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh, where more than 750,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims fled in 2017 following sweeping attacks by Myanmar’s military, the situation has grown increasingly desperate. Not even the threat of death at sea is enough to stop many from trying to traverse the region’s waters in a bid to reach Indonesia or Malaysia.

“We need to choose the risky journey by boat because the international community has failed their responsibility,” says Mohammed Ayub, who is saving up money for a spot on one of the rickety wooden fishing boats traffickers use to ferry passengers 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) from Bangladesh to Indonesia.

Global indifference toward the Rohingya crisis has left those languishing in the overcrowded camps with few alternatives to fleeing. Because Bangladesh bans the Rohingya from working, their survival is dependent upon food rations, which were slashed last year due to a drop in global donations.

Returning safely to Myanmar is virtually impossible for the Rohingya, because the military that attacked them overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government in 2021. And no country is offering the Rohingya any large-scale resettlement opportunities.

Meanwhile, a surge in killings, kidnappings and arson attacks by militant groups in the camps has left residents fearing for their lives. And so, starving, scared and out of options, they continue to board the boats.

Ayub has lived in a sweltering, cramped shelter for more than six years in a camp where security and sanitation are scarce, and hope even scarcer. There is no formal schooling for his children, no way for him to earn money, no prospects for returning to his homeland and no refuge for his family amid spiraling gang violence.

“Of course I understand how dangerous the boat journey by sea is,” Ayub says. “We could die during the journey by boat. But it depends on our fate. ... It’s better to choose the dangerous way even if it’s risky, because we are afraid to stay in the camps.”

Two hundred of the people who died or went missing at sea last year were aboard one boat that left Bangladesh in November. Eyewitnesses on a nearby boat told The Associated Press that the missing vessel, which was crowded with babies, children and mothers, broke down and was taking on water before it drifted off during a storm as its passengers screamed for help. It has not been seen since.

It was one of several distressed boats that the region’s coastal countries neglected to save, despite the UNHCR’s requests for those countries to launch search and rescue missions.

“When no action is taken, lives are lost,” says UNHCR’s Baloch. “If there is no hope restored in Rohingya lives either in Myanmar or in Bangladesh, there are no rescue attempts, (then) sadly we could see more desperate people dying in Southeast Asian seas under the watch of coastal authorities who could act to save lives.”

Six of Mohammed Taher’s family members were aboard the boat that vanished in November, including his 15-year-old brother, Mohammed Amin, and two of Taher’s nephews, aged 3 and 4. Their ultimate destination was Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country where many Rohingya seek relative safety.

Taher and his parents now struggle to sleep or eat, and spend their days agonizing over what became of their loved ones. Taher’s mother saw a fortune teller who said her relatives were still alive. Taher, meanwhile, dreamed that the boat made it to shore, where his relatives took refuge in a school and were able to bathe in warm water. But he remains unconvinced their journey ended so happily.

And so he has vowed to tell everyone to stay off the boats, no matter how unbearable life on land has become.

“I will never leave by boat on this difficult journey,” Taher says. “All the people who reached their destination are saying that it’s horrific traveling by boat.”

Yet such warnings are often futile. Ayub is now preparing to sell his daughter’s jewelry to help pay for his spot on a boat. While he is frightened by the stories of those who didn’t make it, he is motivated by the stories of those who did.

“Nobody would consider taking a risk by boat on a dangerous journey if they had better opportunities,” he says. “Fortunately, some people did reach their destination and got a better life. I am staying positive that Allah will save us.”
Ali Riaz on the Future of Bangladesh’s Politics (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [1/31/2024 9:47 AM, Shannon Tiezzi, 201K, Neutral]
Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League (AL), under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has cemented a fourth consecutive term in power – but not because of widespread popular support. Instead, the election on January 7 was heavily stage-managed, with true opposition parties targeted with arrests while “dummy” candidates were brought in to give the veneer of competition. As a result, the AL once again will govern with an untouchable supermajority.

In the eyes of many analysts, Bangladesh’s transition to one-party rule is now complete.

The Diplomat’s Shannon Tiezzi interviewed Ali Riaz, a distinguished professor of political science at Illinois State University and author of the book “Pathways for Autocratization: The Tumultuous Journey of Bangladeshi Politics,” about Hasina’s grip on power, the international reaction, and the future of Bangladesh’s much-diminished democracy.

So far, the “public reactions to this state-managed saga have been remarkably muted,” said Riaz, who is also a nonresident senior fellow of Atlantic Council and the president of the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies. That may be because the Bangladeshi public long ago became resigned to such a result.

But despite the dark times, Riaz emphasized that the future of Bangladesh’s politics is still being written: “If the opposition can realize that the country is now entering the era of one-party rule, it is incumbent on them to come together to face it. The current trajectory is not destiny.”

Bangladesh’s general election took place on January 7. As expected, the ruling Awami League won re-election in a landslide – largely due to a crackdown on the opposition that sparked an electoral boycott. Voter turnout was low; officially 40 percent but rumored to be in the 20s. How is the Bangladeshi public reacting to the polls?

Public reactions to this state-managed saga have been remarkably muted. Although in private interactions citizens are expressing discontent and frustrations, there has not been any public outrage yet.

Three factors can be attributed to the absence of any robust reactions. First, this was not unanticipated. Since October 28, the chain of events had given a clear impression to the public that the election will be as such. Subsequent machinations laid bare the hollowness of the process. In some respects, this is typical where autocracy rises – the debilitation of rights is so incremental that the citizens accept them in a resigning mood.

Second, is the fear of being persecuted. The culture of fear has permeated society; the nature of persecution that we witnessed – arresting children for their fathers’ involvement with the opposition party, families being threatened, custodial death – has sent a clear message.

Third is the absence of unity among opposition parties. While 16 political parties boycotted the election, they failed to come to a single platform. In a similar vein, public perception is that there is not a single charismatic leader who can rally everyone together.
Sri Lanka’s controversial internet safety law comes into force (BBC)
BBC [2/1/2024 3:12 AM, Kelly Ng, 14.2M, Neutral]
Sri Lanka’s draconian law to regulate online content has come into force, in a move rights groups say is aimed at stifling freedom of speech.

The Online Safety Act gives a government commission broad powers to assess and remove "prohibited" content.

Authorities said it would help fight cybercrime, but critics say it suppresses dissent ahead of elections.

Social media had a key role in protests during an economic crisis in 2022, which ousted the then president.

The act was passed on 24 January by 108-62 votes - sparking protests outside parliament - and came into effect on Thursday after the Speaker endorsed it.

The wide-ranging law prohibit "false statements about incidents in Sri Lanka", statements with "an express intention of hurting religious feelings" and the misuse of bots, among other things.

A five-member commission appointed by the president will be given powers to assess these statements, to direct their removal, and to impose penalties on the people who made those statements.

The legislation will also make social media platforms liable for messages on their platforms.

Publicity Security Minister Tiran Alles, who introduced the draft legislation in parliament, said it was necessary to tackle offences associated with online fraud and statements that threaten national stability.

More than 8,000 complaints related to cybercrimes were filed last year, he noted.

A Sri Lankan pro-democracy group said on Thursday that the government’s "adamant pursuit" of the legislation was a "clear indication of its intention to silent dissent and suppress civic activism" as the country was still reeling from the consequences of its worst economic crisis.

Food prices and inflation have reached record levels since the country declared bankruptcy in April 2022 with more than $83bn in debt. Then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to step down and leave the country after thousands of anti-government protesters stormed into his residence.

"While the citizens silently suffer amidst escalating cost of living and unmanageable hunger, it is crucial for the rulers to recognise that this silence does not equate to obedience... It is the precursor to a major backlash against the government’s coercive rule," said the group known as the March 12 Movement.

Rights group Amnesty International said the act’s broad provisions and vague wording would restrict people’s rights to freedom of expression and privacy online.

"[It] is the newest weapon in the government’s arsenal of tools that could be used to undermine freedom of expression and suppress dissent," said Thyagi Ruwanpathirana, the group’s regional researcher for South Asia.

Last October, the UN’s human rights office raised concerns against the draft law saying that it would give authorities "unfettered discretion to label and restrict expressions they disagree with as ‘false statements’", Sri Lanka’s next presidential elections are expected to be held later this year or early next year.
Sri Lanka eyes near 50% rise in visitors to its temples and beaches (Reuters)
Reuters [1/31/2024 6:47 AM, Uditha Jayasinghe, 11975K, Neutral]
Sri Lanka expects to pull in nearly 50% more tourists this year, a minister said on Wednesday, as the tropical island nation, famous for its ancient temples and golden beaches, pins its hopes on tourism to emerge from a long financial crisis.

Tourist arrivals increased to 1.48 million last year, an increase of 106% from 2022, government data shows. The highest arrivals were from India, Russia and Britain.

It is aiming for 2.2 million tourists this year.

Sri Lanka is also targeting $4 billion in tourism revenue, Tourism Minister Harin Fernando said, almost doubling the $2.1 billion earned last year, and will target travellers from Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Sri Lanka, also famous for its lush hillside tea plantations, will launch a global campaign later this year, after a lapse of about 15 years, to attract tourists, the minister added.

"In January there have been about 200,000 arrivals so Sri Lanka has immense potential. We are a top ten destination on every travel index," Fernando told reporters.

"Our target is to reach 4 million tourists by 2030."

The country of 22 million people, racked by civil war with Tamil separatists between 1983 and 2009, has been struggling to emerge from a severe financial crisis caused by a foreign exchange crunch in 2022.

Sri Lanka’s economy is estimated to have contracted 3.8% in 2023 by the World Bank but is expected to grow by 1.7% this year.

Tourism is Sri Lanka’s second-highest foreign exchange earner after workers’ remittances from abroad, making it crucial to its economic recovery, Fernando said.
Central Asia
Kazakhstan shows improvement on graft, but still struggling (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [1/31/2024 4:14 PM, Almaz Kumenov, 57.6K, Neutral]
An uptick in civic activism in Kazakhstan has helped slightly improve the country’s standing in Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index. The picture is still a grim one overall, however.

An updated version of the index released on October 30 showed Kazakhstan with 39 out 100 available points, a three-point increase on the previous edition.

That is Kazakhstan’s highest-ever score, but the country still classifies as “highly corrupt.” Any nation scoring between 0 and 50 falls into that group.

Transparency International frames the risks of that kind of situation in the gravest terms.

A score below 50 “hinders a country’s economic development and the social wellbeing of citizens,” the organization’s Kazakhstan office said in a statement.

The improvement in the global standings, up from 101st in 2022 to 92nd in 2023, has been attributed in part to the activation of civil society that occurred after the political unrest of January 2022. In a scramble to temper public moods, the authorities have undertaken extensive efforts to return money improperly stashed away in foreign jurisdictions by corrupt officials and their relatives.

Associates and close family members of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, including his late brother, Bolat, have come under particular scrutiny for their business dealings.

“Civil society is starting to wake up,” said Aidar Egeubayev, chairman of Transparency International Kazakhstan. “I am confident that with the further activation of the entirety of society in the interests of combating and preventing corruption, especially in the oil sector, we will be able to see further positive dynamics for the future of our children.”

Transparency International identifies lack of independence in the judiciary and the excessive influence of self-interested political elites as persisting problems.

Kazakhstan can at least take some comfort in how it outperforms its neighbors.

Uzbekistan trails slightly with 33 points, while Kyrgyzstan and Russia are on 26 points. The worst performers in Central Asia are Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, with 20 and 18 points, respectively.
Kyrgyzstan, China to be joined by third border crossing (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [1/31/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
The head of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region has said a third checkpoint will be opened this year on the border between China and Kyrgyzstan.

Erkin Tuniyaz told a meeting of the Xinjiang representative chamber that the crossing would be located at the Bedel Pass, which is situated in remote southeastern corner of Kyrgyzstan, sited roughly equidistantly from the Kyrgyz city of Karakol and Xinjiang’s Aksu Prefecture.

No details are as yet available who will be permitted to use the crossing.

There are at present two entry points between China and Kyrgyzstan: the Irkeshtam pass in the far south of Kyrgyzstan, a few hours’ drive from the country’s second city, Osh, and the further-flung Torugart pass, some 160 kilometers to the east. The Bedel crossing would be the most eastern-sited crossing of the three once it opens.

The Bedel pass was used in antiquity, by voyagers and traders plying what is known as the Silk Road, to travel between the Issyk-Kul region and inhabited areas along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The expectation now is that it will give a new boost to Sino-Kyrgyz trade and ease the burden on existing crossings.

In addition to trailing the opening of the Bedel checkpoint, deputy Prime Minister Bakyt Torobayev in December said that a four-lane bridge would be inaugurated at the Irkeshtam crossing.

Truckers have complained for years of a lack of throughput-capacity at Irkeshtam. In December, representatives of the presidential administration met with transportation, customs, border service, road maintenance, and tax service officials, as well as trucking industry lobbyists, to discuss ways of streamlining the passage of cargo containers through Irkeshtam and reducing logjams along the Osh-Sary-Tash-Irkeshtam highway.

As for Torugart, President Sadyr Japarov’s announced last month that it will from this spring start operating on a 24-hour work schedule. That change was the result of a proposal made in October by Prime Minister Akylbek Japarov – not a relation of the president – to the Chinese government as part of the agenda to increase cargo throughput.

The same thinking lay behind this weekend’s opening of an industrial park at the Kashgar Bonded Zone that has been created as part of an initiative dubbed “Two Countries – Two Parks.” Kyrgyzstan’s Digital Development Ministry said in a statement on January 27 that this facility would enable the delivery of goods between warehouses in the Kashgar Bonded Zone and Kyrgyzstan’s Naryn Free Economic Zone within windows of 48 and 72 hours.
While Small in Number, Tajik Fighters an Asset for Islamic State-Khorasan (VOA)
VOA [1/31/2024 6:56 PM, Roshan Noorzai and Mohammad Ahmadi, 761K, Neutral]
The Iranian government has traced this month’s twin suicide bombings in Kerman city to ethnic-Tajik fighters of the Islamic State Khorasan Province who, experts say, are "fairly small" in number but play "an important part" in the group’s military activities.

The Afghanistan-based branch of the Islamic State (IS-K) claimed responsibility for the January 3 blasts that killed at least 95 people attending the commemoration of the death of Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force, who was killed in a January 2020 U.S. drone attack in Iraq.

A day after the Kerman city attack, top Iranian officials, including President Ebrahim Raisi and IRGC Commander Hossein Salami, claimed that Israel and the U.S. were behind the attack, without offering any evidence.

But a week later, the Iranian intelligence ministry said in a statement that one of the two bombers was a citizen of Tajikistan who received training at an IS-K camp in Afghanistan and crossed to Iran illegally via its southeastern border.

The statement did not name the second suicide bomber but said the mastermind of the attack was also a citizen of Tajikistan who left Iran after planning it.

The number of Tajik citizens in IS-K is "fairly small," said David Sedney, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, adding, "but they are, I understand, a fairly large portion of the more aggressive and successful fighters."

Sedney told VOA that Tajik fighters are well-trained and important to IS-K’s military operations.

Tajik fighters are "a very important part of the Daesh military wing, capable of carrying out suicide attacks and other military activities," said Sedney, using another name for the Islamic State, which is also known as IS or ISIS.

Formed in 2015, IS-K is an offshoot of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria which, according to a June 2023 U.N. report, is "the most serious current terrorist threat in Afghanistan, neighboring countries and Central Asia."

The report estimated IS-K’s fighters and their families number between 4,000 to 6,000, including citizens of Central Asian countries.

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA that though the exact number of Central Asians, including Tajiks, in IS-K is not known, they could be in the hundreds.

Roggio, however, said that the Islamic State has "always been effective in poaching ... disaffected" members of the other militant groups based in Afghanistan.

The U.N. report said there are around 20 militant groups in Afghanistan, including Jamaat Ansarullah, a Tajikistani extremist group, also known as Tajik Taliban.

"The Islamic State is a natural place for individuals who want to get their jihad on now, and aren’t, you know, afraid to be bold and attack China or attack various places," Roggio said.

He added that the Persian-speaking militants are an asset for the IS-K.

"They certainly would leverage individuals who could speak Farsi, who could operate a little bit more easily in Iran for certain," Roggio said.

Islamic State is a Sunni extremist group that considers majority-Shiite Iran as its enemy.

Roggio said that he does not think the Islamic State could pose a significant threat to Iran, but the group can carry out terrorist attacks.

The Islamic State also claimed an attack on a religious shrine in the Iranian city of Shiraz in October 2022, killing 15 people. IS-K is a major rival to the Taliban and carried out several high-profile attacks after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan.

Addressing a press conference in Kabul last month, Taliban defense chief Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid claimed that most of the attacks in Afghanistan were carried out by Tajik and Pakistani nationals.

He also claimed that the Taliban’s security forces killed dozens of Tajiks and more than 20 Pakistanis, and asserted the number of IS-K attacks has decreased by 90%.

Tajik writer and political analyst Sherali Rizoyon told VOA that the Kerman suicide bombers were trained in Afghanistan, and it "either refutes the Taliban’s claim that they are in full control of Afghanistan or shows that the Taliban have relations with such groups."

A U.N. report released in June said members of the Tajik militant group Jamaat Ansarullah helped Taliban fighters battle anti-Taliban resistance forces in the northern provinces of Afghanistan.

Ghaws Janbaz, former Afghan ambassador to Moscow, told VOA that the Taliban’s return to power has inspired militant groups throughout the region.

"The Taliban’s takeover has encouraged and motivated them," said Janbaz, adding that "the Taliban claim that they defeated the superpower in Afghanistan so these [militant groups] think that they can easily defeat the governments in the region."
Twitter
Afghanistan
Nilofar Ayoubi
@NilofarAyoubi
[1/31/2024 7:28 PM, 62.9K followers, 14 retweets, 34 likes]
This testimony by Justin Sapp provides an accurate account of the experiences of former ANDSF soldiers in Afghanistan, particularly those from the Hazara community who have been targeted and hunted down for decades, specifically in the past 2 decades. These soldiers were allies of the American forces and put their lives on the line, but they were ultimately abandoned and left to suffer from torture, Humiliation and face painful end.

Nilofar Ayoubi
@NilofarAyoubi
[1/31/2024 3:02 PM, 62.9K followers, 17 retweets, 28 likes]
According to a recent report by the UN Security Council, it has been revealed that the Taliban continues to maintain its connections with al-Qaeda. Additionally, the report states that al-Qaeda has established eight new training camps in Afghanistan. These camps are located in Ghazni, Laghman, Parwan, and Uruzgan provinces. Furthermore, al-Qaeda has also set up a weapons depot in Panjshir. The report further highlights that there is evidence of support from inside Afghanistan for several attacks carried out by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP). Moreover, the report reveals that commanders of the TTP, along with their families, receive regular aid packages from the Afghan Taliban.

Nilofar Ayoubi
@NilofarAyoubi
[1/31/2024 12:17 PM, 62.9K followers, 7 retweets, 35 likes]
Stop categorizing or dividing women. It is the actions of political leaders and businessmen who have caused turmoil in Afghanistan. Women from different ethnicities, such as Tajik, Uzbek, Turk, Hazara, Baloch, Bayat, Imaq, QazelBash, Hindu, and Pashtun, have all suffered as victims of male politics, patriarchy, and economic crimes throughout history. It is time to stop creating cracks and fostering hatred among women. Women in Afghanistan have endured enough and should not, and will not, be used as tools for men’s political agenda of "divide and rule." Today’s women are more aware of these manipulative tactics and are much smarter to fall for this trap.

SIGAR
@SIGARHQ
[1/31/2024 3:03 PM, 168.6K followers, 2 retweets, 9 likes]
(1/3) SIGAR found that Taliban benefits from UN cash shipments to #AFG. UN entities and UN-partnered PIOs and NGOs receiving cash via UN’s cash shipments use either U.S. dollars or afghanis to fund operations. When these groups require afghanis, they solicit bids from…

SIGAR
@SIGARHQ
[1/31/2024 3:03 PM, 168.6K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
(2/3)…private banks to convert shipped U.S. currency. However, SIGAR found many private banks don’t maintain enough afghanis to exchange for large amounts of U.S. dollars. As a result, the bank typically uses UN-supplied U.S. dollars to purchase local currency from Taliban-

SIGAR
@SIGARHQ
[1/31/2024 3:03 PM, 168.6K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
(3/3) controlled DAB, through currency auctions. This has led DAB, and thereby the Taliban, to accumulate a large supply of U.S. dollars through the conversion process of dollars for afghanis https://sigar.mil/pdf/evaluations/SIGAR-24-12-IP.pdf#page=3
Pakistan
BilawalBhuttoZardari
@BBhuttoZardari
[1/31/2024 10:26 AM, 5.1M followers, 7.6K retweets, 7.5K likes]
Today 2 PPP candidates; Former minister @ZahoorBuledi & Haji Ali Madad Jattak were targeted in 2 separate grenade attacks in Balochistan. I condemn this terrorism in the strongest terms. IA on Feb 8th we will bury the politics of violence, hate and division at the ballot box. We are the party of martyrs. the PPP can not and will not be intimidated by cowardly terrorists.

BilawalBhuttoZardari
@BBhuttoZardari
[1/31/2024 10:42 AM, 5.1M followers, 7.9K retweets, 7.9K likes]
I’ve just been informed of a 3rd grenade attack on the resident of Agha Shakeel Durrani Pakistan People’s Party’s PB-19 candidate and former district Mayor Khuzdar, Balochistan. I hope and pray no one is hurt.

BilawalBhuttoZardari
@BBhuttoZardari
[1/31/2024 6:58 AM, 5.1M followers, 6K retweets, 6.5K likes]
The people of Malakand want a Pakistan where their government is more concerned about their progress than in perpetrating a vicious cycle of political victimisation. Inshallah if I am elected Prime Minister I will start a process of reconciliation so we can bury the old politics of revenge, divisiveness and hatred. The people deserve a government focused on ending poverty, unemployment, and inflation. Vote teer on 8th February and put an end to old politics, and for a better tomorrow for all Pakistanis

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[1/31/2024 11:19 PM, 205.6K followers, 29 retweets, 90 likes]
Election violence is worsening in Pakistan, though it was quite bad in 2018 and especially 2013, during the height of the TTP’s horrific campaign of terror. Polls weren’t delayed either year. Likely won’t be this year, but maybe delays in some districts.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[1/31/2024 9:14 AM, 205.6K followers, 134 retweets, 484 likes]
The State Department has condemned the deadly attack on a PTI election campaign rally in Pakistan yesterday. The US has said less about election concerns in Pakistan than in BD, but it has previously said it hopes to see the election process carried out in a peaceful manner.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[1/31/2024 9:14 AM, 205.6K followers, 8 retweets, 28 likes]
So in that sense it is publicly reacting to the election issues (ie violence) that concern it the most (and this election campaign has seen a series of deadly attacks, including tragically one on a young PTI candidate today, as has been the case in previous election campaigns).

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[1/31/2024 7:31 AM, 205.6K followers, 781 retweets, 2K likes]
Two convictions, a combined 24 years of jail, announced just days before elections after a jail trial w/little transparency. The charges are serious. But Imran Khan got nothing close to a legal fair shake. And so it goes. It’s the 2024 version of the movie we’ve all seen before.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[1/31/2024 11:30 PM, 41.8K followers, 31 retweets, 129 likes]
The barriers to voting for PTI on the ballot are huge -- they lost their party symbol, the bat, and with their candidates contesting as independents, their party name as well. It’s not just about those with limited literacy; it’s now difficult for all prospective voters.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[1/31/2024 1:43 PM, 41.8K followers, 28 retweets, 160 likes]
Violence is directly affecting Pakistan’s upcoming elections. Today, a PTI-affiliated candidate was shot dead in Bajaur, KP. Yesterday, 4 people were killed in a blast at a PTI rally in Sibi, Balochistan.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[1/31/2024 10:11 AM, 41.8K followers, 11 retweets, 88 likes]
Like clockwork — 8 days before the election, another verdict today: 14 years in prison for Imran Khan in the Toshakhana case.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[1/31/2024 1:31 PM, 41.8K followers, 1 retweet, 18 likes]
A number of questions on Pakistan/Khan at the State Dept briefing yesterday. Bottom line from State -- the sentencing "is a legal matter ultimately for Pakistan’s courts." One exchange here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GFMOyDHWkAANcBl?format=png&name=medium
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/1/2024 12:31 AM, 95M followers, 3.5K retweets, 11K likes]
Finance Minister @nsitharaman Ji is presenting the Interim Budget in Parliament. https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1RDxllOyVLExL

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[1/31/2024 10:17 PM, 95M followers, 3.8K retweets, 22K likes]
On the 48th raising day of @indiacoastguard, I convey my best wishes and greetings to all their personnel and staff. Their dedication to maritime safety, national security and care for the environment is unparalleled. India salutes them for their unwavering vigilance and service.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[1/31/2024 6:24 AM, 95M followers, 6.4K retweets, 34K likes]
The Budget Session began with Rashtrapati Ji’s extensive and insightful address highlighting the collective strength of 140 crore Indians, seen in a series of feats our nation has achieved. The Address also highlighted the vision of further developing India in the coming years.

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[1/31/2024 11:46 PM, 23.9M followers, 651 retweets, 4.2K likes]
Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Smt Nirmala Sitharaman along with Ministers of State Dr Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad and Shri Pankaj Chaudhary and senior officials of the Ministry of Finance called on President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan before presenting the Union Budget. President Murmu extended her best wishes to the Union Finance Minister.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/1/2024 2:39 AM, 3M followers, 21 retweets, 121 likes]
Finance Minister @nsitharaman ji presented the Interim Budget that captures a decade of transformation, while laying out a vision of further development. Her focus of inclusive development and growth reaffirmed Modi Sarkaar’s commitment to the welfare of the Garib, Youth, Nari and Annadata. The track record of GDP (governance, development and performance) has been impressive. Our prudent economic management has weathered global headwinds. The new programs and priorities announced speak of the determination and optimism with which we enter the Amritkaal. This budget is a blueprint for the making of Viksit Bharat. It will reinforce trust and confidence in Modi’s Guarantee.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[1/31/2024 4:03 AM, 3M followers, 1.3K retweets, 11K likes]
Thank @rashtrapatibhvn President Droupadi Murmu for highlighting the achievements and outlook of India’s foreign policy in today’s address to the Joint Session of Parliament.

Sadanand Dhume
@dhume
[1/31/2024 7:42 AM, 170.5K followers, 1 retweet, 14 likes]
The sentencing of Imran Khan and his wife to 14 years in prison on corruption charges will no doubt deepen the former PM’s support among many Pakistanis. They will view this as martyrdom, not justice. What it means for Khan’s comeback prospects is harder to predict. Will he return as a triumphant hero to lead his people once again, or fade into history as yet another civilian politician who learned the hard way that messing with the military doesn’t end well in Pakistan? Your guess is as good as mine.
NSB
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladesh
@BDMOFA
[1/31/2024 4:35 AM, 33.2K followers, 26 retweets, 87 likes]
Russian Ambassador to Bangladesh Mr. Alexander V. Mantytskiy called on the Hon’ble Foreign Minister Dr. Hasan Mahmud, MP today. They expressed satisfaction at current cooperation level, stressed on increasing trade volume and underscored the need to broaden and deepen cooperation.

Awami League
@albd1971
[1/31/2024 11:26 AM, 635.7K followers, 34 retweets, 70 likes]
.@USAmbBangladesh Peter De Haas attended the first session of the 12th National Parliament as a guest, entering on Tuesday (January 30) afternoon alongside diplomats from various countries based in #Dhaka. https://en.somoynews.tv/news/2024-01-30/peter-haas-attends-maiden-session-of-bangladesh-s-12th-parliament #BangladeshPolls #Election2024 #January7

Awami League
@albd1971
[1/31/2024 10:21 AM, 635.7K followers, 25 retweets, 57 likes]
Foreign Minister @DrHasanMahmud62 has clarified the govt’s stance on the legal case involving @Yunus_Centre, saying that the government is not a party to it. FM emphasised the transparency of the judicial process in Bangladesh. https://en.somoynews.tv/news/2024-01-30/govt-is-not-a-party-to-dr-yunus-case-foreign-minister #GrameenBank #DrYunus

Awami League
@albd1971
[1/31/2024 8:44 AM, 635.7K followers, 31 retweets, 72 likes]
Russian ambassador to Bangladesh Alexander Mantytsky on Wednesday dismissed the allegations made by @bdbnp78, affirming that the government under Prime Minister #SheikhHasina was democratically elected by the citizens of #Bangladesh.@RussEmbDhaka https://newagebd.net/article/224225/

Bangladesh Nationalist Party-BNP
@bdbnp78
[1/31/2024 10:47 AM, 48.2K followers, 15 retweets, 90 likes]
Most of the time, there is no gas supply at night. Yet, the illegitimate government is shamelessly planning to extract money from the common people using various tactics. https://newagebd.net/article/224238/gas-meter-rent-increase-act-of-revenge-against-people-bnp

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[1/31/2024 10:34 AM, 53.4K followers, 12 retweets, 15 likes]
Director & Head of Office for @UNESCAP Subregional Office for South & South West Asia Mikiko Tanaka called on Foreign Secretary Fathimath Inaya today. Both parties explored avenues for further cooperation in key areas such as climate change mitigation & disaster risk management.

Abdulla Shahid
@abdulla_shahid
[1/31/2024 11:50 AM, 116.9K followers, 6 retweets, 11 likes]
MDP expresses concern over reports of foreign naval/coastguard personnel stopping and searching a Maldivian fishing vessel operating within the Maldives’ Exclusive Economic Zone. http://mdp.org.mv/archives/82592
Central Asia
Furqat Sidiqov
@FurqatSidiq
[1/31/2024 8:54 PM, 1.2K followers, 4 likes]
Have a fruitful dialogue with Scott Worden and the distinguished @USIP team. We exchanged in-depth views on challenges and opportunities in Central Asia, as well as enhancing regional developments. Looking forward to continued work and close partnership.

{End of Report}
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