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:
Wednesday, February 21, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Taliban’s Boycott Of Key UN Meeting A Blow To Hopes Of Increased Engagement (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/20/2024 11:57 AM, Abubakar Siddique, 223K, Negative]
The Taliban boycotted a United Nations-sponsored conference on Afghanistan, the first time the extremist group was invited to participate in a major international event since it seized power in 2021.

The group’s refusal to attend the February 18-19 conference in Qatar is seen as a blow to the hopes of the international community to improve dialogue with the Taliban government, which remains unrecognized and is under sanctions.

The two-day event brought together representatives of member states, special envoys to Afghanistan, and Afghan civil society members, including women.

The conference came amid a standoff between the Taliban and the international community. Since regaining power, the hard-line Islamists have monopolized power, committed gross human rights abuses, and severely curtailed the freedoms of Afghan women.

The international community has called on the Taliban to reverse its repressive policies and create an inclusive government, which the extremist group has refused.

"One of our main objectives is to overcome this deadlock," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on February 19, adding that "the concerns of the international community” and “the concerns of the de facto authorities of Afghanistan” both need to be taken into account.

While the world body has left the door open for the Taliban to participate in future UN-sponsored meetings, observers said it is unclear if the Taliban and the international community can increase engagement and bridge their differences.

‘Unacceptable’

The Taliban set conditions for its participation in the Doha conference, including that it be the sole representative of Afghanistan at the meeting. The UN chief said the group’s demands were “unacceptable” and amounted to recognizing the Taliban as the country’s legitimate government.

The Taliban has also opposed the appointment of a UN special envoy to Afghanistan, one of the key issues discussed at the Doha meeting. One of the envoy’s main tasks would be to promote intra-Afghan dialogue.

The Taliban’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement issued ahead of the meeting, accused the international community of "unilateral impositions, accusations, and pressurization."

Javid Ahmad, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, said the group wants to engage with the international community on “Taliban-owned terms without having to entertain negotiations that could challenge their grip on power.”

Ahmad said the Taliban was keen to avoid being “pigeonholed by the engagement community into unwanted conference outcomes without prior discussions, which would undermine their authority as rulers.”

That, experts said, would explain the Taliban’s opposition to the appointment of a UN special envoy for Afghanistan, an international interlocutor who would be tasked with promoting dialogue between the extremist group and exiled opposition political figures.

Since seizing power, the Taliban has sidelined many ethnic and political groups as well as women. The Taliban’s theocratic government appears to have little support among Afghans.

“Problems will persist as long as these issues are not addressed,” Ali Ahmed Jalali, a distinguished professor at the National Defense University in Washington, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. “The appointment of the UN special envoy will mean that the Taliban government is downgraded from a government to a group.”

‘Categorical Answer’

Most of the international community’s dialogue with the Taliban has been through its ministers in Kabul and its diplomats in Qatar, where the group maintains a political office.

But experts said the Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, and his key confidants, all of whom are senior clerics, have the real decision-making authority in the group.

The reclusive Akhundzada, a hard-line cleric who rarely leaves the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, has the ultimate say on all important matters under the Taliban’s clerical system.

“The Taliban diplomats will keep the door open,” said Anders Fange, a Swedish aid worker who worked for the UN in Afghanistan. “But the people down in Kandahar will give you a more categorical answer.”

Fange said international pressure on the Taliban is unlikely to work given the fundamentalist views of its leadership.

“The Taliban sees itself as only answerable to Allah and not the people of Afghanistan and even less to the international community,” he added.

International Divisions

One of the key aims of the Doha conference was to reach a consensus among member states on how to deal with the Taliban. But that has been complicated by Afghanistan’s neighbors, as well as Russia and China, who have forged ties with the Taliban.

At the Taliban’s request, the Russian delegation that participated in the Doha meeting refused to meet the Afghan civil society representatives.

China’s special envoy to Afghanistan, who was in Doha, meanwhile called on Washington to unfreeze some $7 billion in Afghan central bank reserves held in the United States, a move that Beijing has said will allow the Taliban to address the devastating humanitarian and economic crises in Afghanistan.

If the West does not engage with the Taliban, it risks “being entirely without influence" in Afghanistan, said Fange.
UN Doha Conference on Afghanistan Fails to Achieve Key Goals (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [2/20/2024 11:08 AM, Freshta Jalalzai, 201K, Neutral]
A high-level conference on Afghanistan from February 18-19 failed to achieve its primary objectives, leaving many participants disappointed.

The two primary objectives of the Doha meeting were to delineate a course for international engagement with Afghanistan and to facilitate dialogue between the Taliban and the global community on vital issues such as women’s rights, girls’ education, and the eagerly awaited appointment of a United Nations Special Representative for the nation.

Unfortunately, neither of these objectives were accomplished during the two-day conference, which convened special envoys from over 25 countries and regional organizations.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres expressed the desire for Afghanistan to achieve internal peace and foster peaceful relations with its neighbors, while also fulfilling the commitments and international obligations expected of a sovereign state. The Taliban, however, refused to participate in the conference.

The Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement reiterating their position as the sole official representative of Afghanistan for engagements with the international community. They stressed that meaningful and transparent dialogue could only take place under their exclusive representation, implying that the involvement of other parties would impede progress. The Taliban’s decision, announced on the eve of the conference, also asserted, “This government of Afghanistan cannot be coerced by anyone.”

For his part, Guterres said the Taliban set conditions for their participation “that were not acceptable.” The U.N. secretary general, speaking at the conclusion of the two-day meeting in Qatar, stated that the Taliban had sent him a letter in which they were seeking treatment equivalent to official recognition as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers. The Taliban’s “conditions first of all denied us the right to talk to other representatives of the Afghan society and demanded a treatment that would, I would say, to a large extent be similar to recognition,” Guterres said.

The U.N. had invited members of Afghanistan’s civil society, including women’s groups, to participate in the conference.

Guterres refuted claims that the Taliban’s non-participation had harmed the process. He emphasized the importance of discussing the meeting’s outcomes with the Taliban, stating, “It did not happen today. It will happen in the near future. I think we will find a solution to allow for the participation of the Taliban.”

Despite the head of the United Nations downplaying the Taliban’s rejection of the conference, it is logical to recognize that the Taliban effectively controls Afghanistan and decides the fate of the millions of Afghans whom the U.N. seeks to reach out to and assist.

Afghans, reflecting various perspectives across age groups, political affiliations, and ethnic backgrounds, expressed mixed reactions to the conference, as evident on social media. Many viewed the Taliban’s non-participation as a significant setback. The Doha meeting’s Afghan participants emerged as a major point of contention in these discussions.

Obaidullah Baheer, a professor of transitional justice at the American University of Afghanistan, voiced concerns on X (formerly Twitter), stating, “As much as the Taliban’s presence at the UN meeting in Doha would’ve been useful, the invitation extended to affiliates of an armed insurgency (NRF) and female drug lords makes a mockery of the whole process. No need for participation if the meeting is designed to platform spoilers.”

It is unconfirmed whether official representatives from the NRF, or the National Resistance Front, were invited to the meeting. However, Baheer’s tweet reflects the widespread frustration among the Afghan population regarding the choices made by the international community regarding representation in discussions on the Afghan crisis.

The NRF is led by the son of the renowned Afghan militia commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who gained global recognition for aiding the United States in combatting al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and his assassination in 2001. However, Massoud also played a significant role in a brutal civil war that claimed the lives of thousands of Afghans, including women and children. Consequently, references to the NRF inevitably stir up painful memories and evoke the horrors of war among Afghan survivors.

Both former heads of state of the erstwhile Afghan Republic maintained silence regarding the Doha conference. However, several former Afghan government employees argued that the Taliban’s decision not to participate was a political misstep, seeing it as a missed opportunity to engage in discussions about Afghanistan’s future with the international community.

However, amid frustration with Afghanistan’s current political stalemate, widespread poverty, and near-global isolation, many Afghans praised the Taliban’s refusal to attend, arguing that the international community, especially the U.N., should recognize Afghanistan’s sovereignty and engage directly with the Afghan people – including the Taliban – on the agenda that affects them.

Many Afghans expressed disappointment with the international community for continuing to select former Afghan officials from the fallen republic, which was globally recognized for its corruption and ineffectiveness, as representatives and providing them platforms.

These individuals are widely seen as primarily responsible for the collapse of a government that the Afghan public staunchly defended. Many of them are also accused of various crimes, including promoting ethnic tensions, drug trafficking, widespread corruption, warlordism, and extortion. Their portrayal as representatives of Afghans has drawn parallels with the 2001 Bonn Conference, largely regarded as a failed experiment where the destiny of Afghans was placed in the hands of individuals embroiled in a civil war that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives and left millions in despair.

Despite the challenges, there remains optimism as the United Nations Security Council is set to convene a meeting on Afghanistan next week. However, although the U.N. secretary general has expressed hope for the Taliban’s inclusion in future discussions, it seems unlikely that they will be part of the conversation on February 26.
Taliban prevent Corbetts from spending 20th anniversary together (Washington Examiner)
Washington Examiner [2/20/2024 5:00 AM, Mike Brest, 554K, Neutral]
A loving married couple with three children will spend their 20th wedding anniversary more than 6,000 miles away from one another — not by choice.

On Feb. 20, 2004, Anna and Ryan Corbett got married in New York before traveling to the United Kingdom and France on their honeymoon. They talked about redoing their honeymoon this February to celebrate two decades of marriage together. But Ryan Corbett can’t be with his wife or children this Tuesday because he’s been wrongfully detained, as determined by the State Department, by the Taliban in Afghanistan for more than a year and a half.

“I’m really sad. It’s been a difficult month. Ryan and my first date was in February, and then we got married in February, so it’s kind of just our month,” Anna Corbett told the Washington Examiner. “And I’m just in shock, I’m completely in shock that we’re apart for this. I never expected last year, when it was our 19th anniversary, that this will still be going on, and on the 20th will be 558 days of separation.”

The Corbetts moved to Afghanistan in 2010 from the United States. Ryan Corbett started a business consulting and microfinance company in 2017. The family evacuated Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in August 2021 as U.S. troops were leaving for good. Ryan Corbett first returned to Afghanistan in January 2022 to help his business, still running, and had no problems coming home. He was detained when he went in back in August of that year.

Anna and Ryan Corbett have three children, the eldest of whom is navigating the pathway toward going to college. She has the stresses of raising their three children without him and has made it her mission to make sure the State Department does everything in its power to secure Ryan Corbett’s release.

“It’s a daily challenge. Earlier this week, I had a breakdown,” Anna Corbett admitted. “It was tough. Like I just can’t function anymore. Had to take a backseat, honestly, because I couldn’t deal with it, and I’m coping better right now. But life is happening.”

Anna Corbett is worried about her husband’s health, expressing concern about how he appeared in the most recent photo she’s seen of him.

The two have spoken three times in total since Ryan Corbett was detained for a total of 22 minutes. They last spoke on Christmas Day 2023, which is when she also received a photo of her husband. During their Christmas phone call, Ryan Corbett wished his wife an early happy anniversary, knowing there was no certainty he’d speak with her before Tuesday. They haven’t.

Anna Corbett traveled to Washington, D.C., last month, when she met with lawmakers and White House officials to discuss their efforts to secure his release. But since those meetings, she said, she feels like “things are at a standstill.”

“We continue to pursue every lead to bring Ryan Corbett home,” a White House official told the Washington Examiner last month during Anna Corbett’s visit. “The national security adviser spent about an hour with Ryan’s wife last week. Previous meetings have been held with other administration officials as well. In every engagement, U.S. officials have articulated our commitment to getting Ryan home. As you know, we have had small successes like monthly calls home and a recent welfare check.”

Anna Corbett said she’s in “very close contact” with the State Department office that handles wrongful detention cases, adding, “I’m waiting for the next step to be taken, and it’s been a challenge to keep this on the forefront of their work. There are so many priorities and crises in the world and in the U.S. And this is a U.S. citizen who is not doing well, who’s deteriorating.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently spoke about “hostage diplomacy,” or the act of state or nonstate actors detaining innocent civilians for political or nonrelated purposes to use them as bargaining chips.

“Unfortunately, this is part of a rising trend. Increasingly, states, but also nonstate actors, are wrongfully detaining people, often as political pawns,” he said last week during a speech at the Wilson Center. “This practice threatens the safety of everyone who travels, conducts business, who lives abroad. It’s, of course, a brazen violation of individual human rights of the victims, a violation of international law, a violation of state sovereignty, and first and foremost, a violation of their basic humanity.”

The event he spoke at coincided with the third anniversary of the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations, an initiative designed to emphasize the global stance against hostage diplomacy. Seventy-four countries and the European Union have signed on to it as of the anniversary last week.

There are dozens of Americans held by state and nonstate actors whom the department considers wrongfully detained. The administration has successfully negotiated the release of wrongfully detained Americans in Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan, and Russia, though dozens more hostages are still being held, all of whom have families, like Anna Corbett and her three children, desperate to see their loved ones again.

But, as is the point with hostage diplomacy, the U.S. has to give up concessions to whomever it is negotiating with to secure the release of the wrongfully detained American, and at times, that has included the release of arrested and convicted foreign nationals in the U.S.

“Now, bringing people home is our primary focus. But it is not, in and of itself and alone, enough to resolve what is genuinely a crisis. The international community has to join together to deter future detentions so that we can actually put an end to this practice once and for all. And the most effective way to do that is through collective action,” Blinken continued. “I know that homecomings are bittersweet things, even painful things, for the families whose loved ones remain detained. I mean, on the one hand, it’s a reminder that everything is possible and that, yes, we are going to bring their loved one home. But until that day happens, it’s also painful.”
Pakistan
An Election Shatters the Image of Pakistan’s Mightiest Force (New York Times)
New York Times [2/21/2024 1:06 AM, Christina Goldbaum, 831K, Neutral]
The intimidating myth of an all-powerful military in Pakistan has been smashed in public view.

The first cracks began to appear two years ago, when thousands of Pakistanis rallied alongside an ousted prime minister who had railed against the generals’ iron grip on politics. A year later, angry mobs stormed military installations and set them aflame.

Now comes another searing rebuke: Voters turned out in droves this month for candidates aligned with the expelled leader, Imran Khan, despite a military crackdown on his party. His supporters then returned to the streets to accuse the military of rigging the results to deny Mr. Khan’s allies a majority and allow the generals’ favored party to form a government.

The political jockeying and unrest have left Pakistan, already reeling from an economic crisis, in a turbulent muddle. But one thing is clear: The military — long respected and feared as the ultimate authority in this nuclear-armed country of 240 million people — is facing a crisis.

Its rumblings can be heard in once unthinkable ways, out in the open, among a public that long spoke of the military establishment only in coded language.

“Generals should stay out of politics,” said Tufail Baloch, 33, a protester in Quetta, a provincial capital in the country’s restive southwest.

“The military should focus on combating terrorism, not managing the elections,” said Saqib Burni, 33, who demonstrated in Karachi, the country’s most cosmopolitan city.

No one thinks that the military, with its lucrative business interests and self-image as the backbone holding together a beleaguered democracy, will cede power anytime soon. And even after this election, in which Mr. Khan’s allies won the most seats, the generals’ preferred candidate from another party will become prime minister.

But after the outpouring of voter support for Mr. Khan — and the botched effort at paralyzing his party — an overwhelming swell of Pakistanis now view the military as yet another source of instability, analysts say.

As the military’s legitimacy is tested, the country is waiting to see how the army’s chief, Gen. Syed Asim Munir, will respond.

Will the military exert an even heavier hand to silence the uproar and quash questions about its authority? Will it reconcile with Mr. Khan, who is widely seen in the top military ranks as a wild card who could turn the public tide back in its favor? Or will the military stay the course and risk having the unrest spiral out of its control?

“This is the biggest institutional crisis that the military has ever faced in Pakistan,” said Adil Najam, a professor of international affairs at Boston University. “It is not just that their strategy failed. It’s that the ability of the military to define Pakistan’s politics is now in question.”

Since Pakistan’s founding 76 years ago, the generals have either ruled directly or been the invisible hand guiding politics, driven by a view that politicians are fickle, corrupt and insufficiently attuned to existential threats from archrival India and the wars in Afghanistan.

But after a mounting public outcry forced the country’s last military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to resign in 2008, the military’s power calculus changed. While true democracy had proved unstable, ruling the country directly opened the military up to too much public scrutiny. Allowing civilians to be elected in democratic votes — while still steering the policies that mattered — could insulate the military from public criticism, or so the thinking went among top brass.

The result was a veneer of democracy that had all the trappings of participatory politics — elections, a functioning Parliament, political parties — but none of the heft. For a decade, prime ministers came and went, ushered in when the military favored them and forced out when they stepped out of line.

The fallout from the ouster in 2022 of Mr. Khan, a populist leader who pitched himself as an alternative to the country’s entrenched political dynasties, torpedoed that uneasy status quo. Once a darling of the military, Mr. Khan blamed the generals for his removal, popularizing once unimaginable rhetoric among the country’s huge population of young people that the military was a malevolent force in politics.

“There is a new generation that doesn’t see the military as something that rescues them from bad politicians — it is seen as an institution which is in fact part of the trouble,” said Ayesha Siddiqa, author of “Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy.”

The military’s response to Mr. Khan’s resurgent public support was bungled at best — and severely miscalculated at worst, analysts say.

The state censorship machine could not keep up with the flood of viral videos on social media spreading Mr. Khan’s anti-military messages. Arrests and intimidation of military veterans and those in the country’s elite who backed Mr. Khan only seemed to isolate the military from one of its key support bases and drive voters to cast ballots just to spite the generals.

As Mr. Khan was slapped with multiple lengthy prison sentences days before the vote, it deepened people’s sympathy for him, instead of demoralizing them and keeping them home on Election Day, analysts and voters said.

The military’s strategies “completely backfired,” said Aqil Shah, a visiting professor at Georgetown University and author of “The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan.” “They miscalculated the amount of resentment and backlash against what the military was doing and the other parties that were seen as being in collusion with it.”

In the days after the election, the military’s favored party of the moment, led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, announced that it had cobbled together a coalition with the country’s third-largest party and others to lead the next government.

But as candidates aligned with Mr. Khan won the most seats, it proved to Pakistanis that there are limits to the military’s power to engineer political outcomes. And any social legitimacy that the military had left, analysts say, was eroded by widespread allegations of vote tampering to narrow the winning margins among Mr. Khan’s allies.

For now, most expect the generals to stay the course and back the government led by Mr. Sharif’s party, hoping the uproar subsides. But in the months and years to come, they will need to rebuild public trust to stabilize the country, and they have few good options.

Should the current unrest boil over, analysts say, the military may use an even heavier hand to reassert its authority, like imposing martial law. But when the generals have exerted their authority forcibly in the past, they have tended to do so with the public’s support at times of growing exasperation with elected governments.

General Munir or his successor could strike a deal with Mr. Khan to bring him back into politics in the hope that it quells the unrest. While many in the military’s top ranks view Mr. Khan as self-involved and an unreliable partner, his cultlike following could be used to change public opinion about the military.

Though Mr. Khan has portrayed himself as a martyr for democracy, most analysts believe that he would embrace the military and its role in politics again if he was allowed to return to the political scene. But, so far, General Munir has appeared to be steadfast about keeping Mr. Khan out of politics.

The only certainty, experts agree, is that the military’s prominent role in politics is here to stay — as is the instability that the country has been unable to shake.

“What’s unfolding in front of us is something that will lead to a new model of the military’s relationship with politics and society,” Mr. Najam, the professor at Boston University, said. “We don’t know what that will be. But what we know is that the military will remain a force in politics.”
Pakistan Old-Guard Parties to Form Coalition, Thwarting Khan (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/20/2024 8:14 PM, Ismail Dilawar and Kamran Haider, 5543K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s two old-guard political parties agreed to form a government, a move that breaks an almost two-week deadlock and likely keeps jailed former premier Imran Khan’s party out of power even though it won the most seats in the country’s contentious election.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party will join a coalition with the Sharif clan’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Bhutto Zardari said at a joint news conference in the capital Islamabad close to midnight local time on Tuesday. Shehbaz Sharif will be prime minister while Bhutto Zardari’s father, Asif Ali Zardari, will be nominated as president.

“Both the parties have the numbers to form a government,” Bhutto Zardari, 35, the son of slain former premier Benazir Bhutto, said, with his father and Sharif next to him.

The development will probably end days of uncertainty after the inconclusive Feb. 8 election, in which Khan’s candidates, running as independents, defied the odds by winning the most seats but fell short of clinching an outright majority. Rounds of negotiations followed, culminating in the announcement Tuesday night.

Investors will be watching what this means for Pakistan’s markets, which have been rocked after the polls. The benchmark stock index has fallen for six of eight trading days since Feb. 8. Dollar bonds due 2031 climbed 1.2 cents to 66.04 cents on the dollar on Wednesday, while notes maturing 2051 also rose.

Questions also remain about how Khan’s supporters will respond. His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party posted on X a picture of Sharif, Bhutto Zardari and his father moments after the announcement, using the hashtag #MandateThieves.

The party, also known as PTI, held protests over the weekend against alleged vote-rigging. Its claims were bolstered when a Pakistani official said he had manipulated the vote count — and that the Election Commission of Pakistan, which oversaw the polls, was also involved. The ECP and the interim government of Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar deny allegations of rigging.

PTI was effectively barred from contesting in the elections under its own name after its coveted cricket bat symbol, used on ballot papers to help illiterate voters identify candidates, was taken away. The authorities also stopped most of its campaign rallies. The party ran its candidates as independents and attempted to stage online rallies, which were disrupted by social media blackouts.

Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, remained inaccessible for a third day across Pakistan Tuesday, according to internet watchdog NetBlocks, as authorities moved to thwart the protesters.

The deadline for holding a parliament session for forming the new government is Feb. 29, Murtaza Solangi, the country’s interim information minister, has said.

The new administration will have to shore up an economy battered by Asia’s fastest inflation, running at 28%, and negotiate a new loan with the International Monetary Fund after the current program expires in April. Sharif has said that will be one of his first priorities if he becomes prime minister. At the press conference with Bhutto Zardari and his father, Sharif said the challenges will be “a journey of blood, sweat and sacrifice.”

Pakistan is getting by on the basis of loans, he told reporters. “We will have to end this, but it’s easier said than done.”

This isn’t the first time the two family-controlled parties have come together. They spearheaded a coalition after Khan was ousted in April 2022 and ruled the country for about 16 months. Shehbaz was prime minister, while Bhutto Zardari was his foreign minister.

During that period, Bhutto Zardari’s party appeared to distance itself from the economic reforms carried out by the Sharif government, including raising fuel prices.

For this year’s election, the two parties contested as rivals but later agreed to hold talks to “save the country from political instability,” according to Sharif.
Rivals of Pakistan’s ex-premier Khan name Shehbaz Sharif as joint candidate for prime minister (AP)
AP [2/20/2024 9:47 PM, Munir Ahmed, 22K, Neutral]
The political rivals of Pakistan’s imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan announced details of a power-sharing agreement late Tuesday, naming Shehbaz Sharif as their joint candidate for prime minister.

The much-awaited announcement followed days of talks among the leadership of the Pakistan Muslim League, or PML, the Pakistan People’s Party, or PPP, and other parties that did not gain enough seats in the Feb. 8 vote to govern on their own.

Candidates aligned with Khan won the most seats in the parliamentary elections but also did not win enough of them to form a government.

Sharif, the brother of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is himself a former prime minister, who replaced Khan when he was ousted through a no-confidence vote in parliament in 2022. Since then, Khan has been convicted of several offenses in what his supporters call politically motivated moves to keep him out of office.

Khan’s rivals said at a late-night news conference of party leaders that they had secured the required majority of votes to form a coalition government. The parliament will elect Shehbaz Sharif of the PML as the new prime minister when the inaugural session of the National Assembly is convened later this month, the party leaders said.

They also said former President Asif Ali Zardari of the PPP will be their joint candidate for president when the new parliament and all the four provincial legislatures elect the successor of the outgoing President Arif Ali in the coming weeks.

Earlier Tuesday, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party asked for the resignation of the head of Pakistan’s Election Commission, Sikandar Sultan Raja, for allegedly failing to conduct the elections in a free and fair manner. Khan’s party claims the victories of dozens of its candidates were converted into defeat, a charge the elections oversight body denies.

Though Khan’s candidates won 93 out of 265 National Assembly seats in the elections, it was not enough to form a government. Sharif’s PML and Zardari’s PPP won 75 and 54 seats respectively.

Khan is serving multiple prison terms after being sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison on charges of corruption, revealing official secrets and marriage law violations in late January and early February during trials at a prison in Rawalpindi.

The surprisingly strong showing for Khan’s party in the recent elections were a shock for former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had earlier been marked out as the powerful security establishment’s preferred candidate. Shehbaz Sharif, his younger brother, thanked his allies for agreeing to choose him as their joint candidate for prime minister.
Pakistan’s largest parties strike deal on coalition government (Reuters)
Reuters [2/20/2024 10:20 PM, Gibran Peshimam, 11975K, Negative]
Two major Pakistan political parties said on Tuesday that they had reached a formal agreement to form a coalition government, ending ten days of intense negotiations after an inconclusive national election did not return a clear majority.

The agreement between Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of three-time Premier Nawaz Sharif ends days of uncertainty and negotiations after the Feb. 8 elections produced a hung national assembly.

Bhutto Zardari confirmed at a late night press conference in Islamabad that former premier Shehbaz Sharif, who was seated beside him, would be the coalition’s candidate for prime minister.

He added that his father Asif Ali Zardari will be the alliance’s candidate for the country’s president.

Shehbaz Sharif, the younger brother of Nawaz, said the two parties had the numbers to form government, and also had the support of other smaller parties.

PML-N is the largest party with 79 seats and PPP is second with 54. They, along with four other smaller parties, have a comfortable majority in the legislature of 264 seats.

The delay in forming a government in the nuclear-armed nation of 241 million has caused concern as Pakistan is grappling with an economic crisis amid slow growth and record inflation, rising militant violence, and needs a stable administration with the authority to take tough decisions.

Bhutto Zardari said the parties would push to form government as soon as possible.

According to the country’s constitution, a session of parliament has to be called by Feb. 29 after which a vote for a new prime minister will take place.
Pakistan’s major political parties formally announce coalition (CNN)
CNN [2/20/2024 10:16 PM, Azaz Syed, Sophi Saifi, and Rhea Mogul, 6098K, Negative]
Two of Pakistan’s dynastic political parties have formally announced the formation of a coalition government, a move that brings an end to nearly two weeks of negotiations and likely keeps an incarcerated Imran Khan out of power despite his affiliates winning the most seats in the country’s controversial election.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) announced the coalition late Tuesday, naming former premier Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister and Asif Ali Zardari as president.

“I had offered the independent candidates to form the government first as nobody had a clear mandate; now we have the required number,” Sharif said during the news conference. “It would not be an easy ride. We will work together to bring this country on the path of development and progress.”

The development comes atter the South Asian nation’s general election failed to produce a decisive winner earlier this month.

Independent candidates affiliated with former Prime Minister Khan’s Pakistan Tehereek-e-Insaf (PTI) party secured the most parliamentary seats, in a stunning victory for the jailed cricket icon.

But none of the three major parties that contested won the necessary seats to declare a majority in parliament.

Shortly after the coalition announcement, the PTI accused the PMLN and PPP of stealing their mandate to govern.

“Together they stole the nation’s mandate now together they’ll loot the country but the nation will not let that happen,” Khan’s party wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The PTI was effectively banned from contesting this month’s general election after its cricket bat symbol, used on ballots to identify candidates, was removed and party members’ speeches were barred from airing on television. PTI member instead stood as independent candidates.

The party also made claims of wide-scale poll rigging, with Khan releasing a statement from prison last week saying: “I warn against the misadventure of forming a government with stolen votes. Such daylight robbery will not only be a disrespect to the citizens but will also push the country’s economy further into a downward spiral.”

A steel dynasty scion, former premier Shehbaz Sharif is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, a three-time former Pakistani prime minister.

Shehbaz Sharif was sworn in as Pakistan’s prime minister in April 2022, after Khan was dramatically ousted from power in a parliamentary no-confidence vote, setting the stage for a tense political showdown between the two men.

Khan has since been jailed and sentenced to at least 14 years in prison on multiple charges, including corruption and revealing state secrets.

Sharif is on course to become prime minister for the second time, with Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of Pakistan’s slain former leader Benazir Bhutto, by his side.
Pakistan government deal agreed despite opposition from Imran Khan’s PTI (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [2/20/2024 4:02 PM, Staff, 2060K, Neutral]
Two of Pakistan’s leading political parties have reached a formal agreement to form a coalition government, they say, days after inconclusive national elections did not return a clear majority.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) now have the “required numbers” to form a government, PMLN President and former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Tuesday.

Sitting beside Sharif at a news conference in Islamabad, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, former foreign minister and chairperson of the PPP, confirmed that Sharif would be their coalition’s candidate for prime minister.

He added that his father, Asif Ali Zardari, would be the alliance’s candidate for president.

Sharif, who is the younger brother of another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, said the PMLN-PPP coalition also had the support of other smaller parties.

The announcement comes after 10 days of intense negotiations following the February 8 elections, which resulted in a hung National Assembly when no party secured the 134 seats needed for a simple majority and to form government on its own.

Independent candidates aligned with another leading political party – jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) – won the most seats at 93 but did not have the numbers or a political party or coalition that would enable them to govern.

PTI-aligned candidates were forced to run as independents in the face of state restrictions against the party.

The PMLN is the largest party with 79 seats, and the PPP is second with 54. They along with four other smaller parties have a comfortable majority in the legislature of 264 seats.
Vote rigging

In response to the announcement by the two parties, the PTI, which had also been trying to form coalitions with smaller parties, branded their rivals “mandate thieves” in a post on the social media platform X.

The PTI has alleged there was widespread vote rigging in the elections, a claim that was seemingly backed up when a senior bureaucrat on Saturday admitted to his involvement in changing election results.

The PTI faced a severe crackdown from government agencies and security forces in the weeks before the elections.

In January, the party was even denied the use of its election symbol, the cricket bat, which resulted in its candidates running as independents instead of as members of the party itself.

Meanwhile, the social media platform X has been disrupted across Pakistan since Saturday when the vote manipulation admission was made public and people went out into the streets to protest.

“X has been inaccessible in Pakistan [since Saturday] because it is used by the public to protest,” Usama Khilji, a digital rights activist told the Agence France-Presse news agency. However, Pakistan’s government has not acknowledged the outage.

The delay in forming a government in Pakistan – a nuclear-armed nation of 241 million people – has caused concern as the country grapples with an economic crisis amid slow growth and record inflation and rising violence by armed groups. It needs a stable administration with the authority to take tough decisions.

Bhutto Zardari said on Tuesday that the PPP and PMLN would push to form a government as soon as possible.

According to the country’s constitution, a session of parliament has to be called by February 29, after which a vote for a new prime minister will take place.
The Taliban Want a Piece of Pakistan (Foreign Policy)
Foreign Policy [2/20/2024 1:20 PM, Lynne O’Donnell, 315K, Neutral]
Mohsin Dawar’s campaign for re-election to Pakistan’s parliament was almost cut short before it began in early January when his convoy was ambushed in a village just a few minutes’ drive from his home in Miran Shah in Pakistan’s North Waziristan district, near the lawless borderlands with Afghanistan. As his car came under attack from militants armed with automatic weapons, sniper rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades, he and his team were lured into a compound by residents who promised them safety.

It was a trap. Once the gates closed behind Dawar, the attack intensified. For almost an hour, he said, they were pinned down. Police and Pakistan Army backup finally arrived but not before two of Dawar’s team had been shot and injured. The vehicle took more than 80 bullets, and the windows show just how accurate the attackers’ aim was: Either one of the shots to the windshield or passenger window would have struck and likely killed him if he hadn’t been protected by bulletproof glass.

The Jan. 3 attack on a popular, outspoken, liberal leader in one of the most vulnerable regions of a country fighting a growing insurgency by extremist militants hardly registered in Pakistan, where most believe the military attempted—and failed—to manipulate the Feb. 8 election in an effort to install Nawaz Sharif as prime minister for a fourth time and where media operate under tight government control.

The election wasn’t quite the foregone conclusion that had been expected, with candidates aligned with the jailed cricket star-turned-populist leader Imran Khan winning more votes than each of the major parties—the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party—forcing them into a coalition to get the majority needed to form a government. PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif nominated his brother, Shehbaz Sharif, to become prime minister and his daughter Maryam Nawaz as chief minister of Punjab province, ensuring the dynastic line continues.

Candidates across the country, not only those loyal to Khan, alleged that the results had been rigged against them and in favor of military-backed candidates. Two days after the election, with his seat still undeclared amid growing concerns nationwide about vote rigging, Dawar and about a dozen of his supporters were injured when security forces opened fire on them as they gathered outside the official counting room.

At least three people died of their injuries; What Dawar had believed was an unassailable lead, according to polling by his secular National Democratic Movement party, had disappeared. In the count that was listed as final by Pakistan’s Election Commission, the seat went to Misbah Uddin of the Taliban-aligned Jamiat Ulama-e-Islam-Fazl party. Dawar is still recovering from a serious leg wound.

Dawar’s hometown is, once again, the battleground of what he calls “Project Taliban”—a war against the Pakistani state.

The Taliban’s transnational ambitions are threatening security beyond the borders of Afghanistan, and nowhere is this more evident than in Pakistan’s northwest, where the militant presence has been growing since the terrorist-led group came back to power in August 2021. Attacks on civilians, soldiers, and police have soared. The region bristles with checkpoints and hilltop outposts and is heavily patrolled on the ground and in the air by the Pakistan Army and armed border police. That’s during daylight hours, Dawar told Foreign Policy. Once night falls, it’s a different story.

“The Army checkposts you will only see during the daytime. Before sunset, they go to their barracks, and the people of Waziristan are at the disposal of the militants. Everyone has to secure himself or herself for their own protection,” he said. “It is militarized, and I believe it is a continuation of a proxy war that was started long ago. ‘Project Taliban’ is still continuing.”

The roots of militancy and terrorism in Waziristan go back to colonial times, when the mostly Pashtun people here were characterized as fearless fighters and pressed into service for the British. The stereotype stuck; the region became a center of recruitment and training for young men to fight the Soviets after Moscow’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

After the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks, leaders of the Taliban and al Qaeda moved over the border and for the following 20 years enjoyed the protection of the Pakistani military’s intelligence wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

The ISI wanted a tame Taliban-led Afghanistan to thwart the ambitions of archrival India to become the dominant regional power. The Taliban had different ideas. The group’s return to power has inspired affiliated and like-minded groups worldwide, as the extremist regime provides safe haven for dozens of militant groups, according to the U.N. Security Council. They now openly use Afghanistan as a base to train fighters seeking to overthrow governments from China and Tajikistan to Iran and Israel. Among them is Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which, Afrasiab Khattak, a former Pakistani lawmaker and now a political analyst, said, is “just Taliban, there is no difference.”

Earlier this month, the Taliban reiterated the group’s stance on the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan when the acting foreign minister, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, said the government doesn’t recognize the Durand Line that has delineated the two countries since 1893. The line runs through the tribal regions, dividing ethnic Pashtun and Baloch tribespeople. Recent bilateral tensions have often focused on the border, with tit-for-tat closures impacting cross-border trade.

In comments that Pakistan’s foreign ministry later called “fanciful” and “self-serving”—and which underlined the simmering hostility between Pakistan and the Taliban it helped put in power—Stanikzai said: “We have never recognized Durand and will never recognize it; today half of Afghanistan is separated and is on the other side of the Durand Line. Durand is the line which was drawn by the English on the heart of Afghans.”

The Security Council said in 2022 that the TTP had up to 5,500 fighters in Afghanistan. That number has likely risen, Dawar said, as neither country, mired in economic mismanagement and crisis, can offer its youthful population an alternative livelihood. Victory brought strength, Dawar said, and the Taliban “can attract the youth because money and power is what attracts youth the most.”

The simmering conflict threatens to return Pakistan’s northwest to the wasteland of less than decade ago, when the TTP controlled the region: Dissenters were routinely killed. Terrorists turned the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), now part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province after an administrative merger in 2018, into a death zone. Millions of people were displaced as those who could leave fled to peace and safety.

Those who stayed lived in fear and poverty until the Army finally took action in 2016 and ended the TTP’s 10-year reign by simply killing them, often in attacks that also killed civilians, or pushing them over the porous border into Afghanistan, where they joined Taliban forces fighting the U.S.-supported republic until it collapsed in 2021.

The TTP wants an independent state in these border regions. It broke a cease-fire with the government in November 2022 and has demanded that the merger of the FATA with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa be reversed. Attacks on the military and police have escalated alarmingly, presenting what a senior government official, who spoke anonymously, called “not only an existential threat to the state but also to the common man”—a recognition that what Dawar calls “Project Taliban” not only threatens to engulf the northwest but, if not contained, poses a potential threat to a fragile and barely stable state.

Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar disagreed, telling reporters before the Feb. 8 vote that the military had the upper hand in the region, by virtue of numbers alone. “I don’t see that they pose an existential threat to the state of Pakistan,” he said, while nevertheless conceding it was a “big challenge” that could take years to dislodge.

He could be right. After the failure of peace talks, ironically brokered by the Taliban’s acting interior minister, U.N.-listed terrorist Sirajuddin Haqqani, Pakistan stepped up pressure on the TTP. Asfandyar Mir, an expert on South Asian political and security issues, said this appeared to have made a “marginal” difference.

“For instance, we haven’t seen a complex or suicide bombing attack by the TTP or one of its fronts for a couple of months now,” he said. “In that sense, it appears the Taliban is sensitive to pressure,” though “smaller-scale attacks and the erosion of Pakistani state authority in parts of the northwest continue.” Things could change, he said, once a new government is installed and, perhaps, brings some stability to the political landscape.

For the people of Waziristan, struggling to survive unemployment, a lack of development, and government neglect of basic services such as roads, electricity, clean water, and education—coupled with a downturn in vital cross-border trade with Afghanistan—priorities have again switched to peace. “The local people have learned through their own bitter experience of devastating war” what a Taliban resurgence means, said Khattak, the political analyst. The security establishment is playing a dangerous game, indulging the TTP so that “local people become so desperate they want the military to come in and help them,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of people have marched through the streets and bazaars of North and South Waziristan over the past year, demanding action against terrorism and an end to state violence. Yet it continues. “No one is safe. Everyone is a target,” said a man in his 30s as he rolled off a list of potential victims: politicians, business people, teachers, doctors, journalists, civic activists, women’s rights advocates, anyone deemed “un-Islamic.” Even barbers are not immune from extremists who ban men from shaving: The day before the Jan. 3 attack on Dawar’s convoy, the bodies of six young hairdressers were found in the nearby town of Mir Ali.

Another local resident pointed to a “Taliban checkpoint” on the road between Miran Shah and the bustling town of Bannu. The long-haired, kohl-eyed, gun-toting youths in sequined caps stand outside their roadside hut in the shadow of an Army post on the hill above. Around the clock, the resident said, they randomly stop vehicles to shake down the drivers. “It’s just for money,” he said. “Money and power.”

But it’s killing, too, “on a daily basis,” said a government worker who left Miran Shah with his family at the height of the TTP terror and visited in early February from Peshawar so he and his wife could vote for Dawar. The aim, he said, is “to create an atmosphere of fear so that people leave and what is here is theirs.”

Dawar said the turning of the Taliban tables on Pakistan “was predictable.” The Taliban “are now a threat to Central Asia. They are now a threat to Iran, to Pakistan, and to even China. All of them thought we will control the Taliban after the takeover. The problem is it didn’t happen,” he said.

In 2011, then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Pakistan’s leaders that they couldn’t keep “snakes,” as she called the Taliban, in their own backyard and “expect them only to bite your neighbors.”

“There used to be a time when people were sent from here to Afghanistan. Now they are coming around, they are biting,” Dawar said.
India
Greek prime minister asks India to build global partnerships amid Ukraine and Middle East wars (AP)
AP [2/21/2024 5:23 AM, Ashok Sharma, 201K, Neutral]
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday asked India to play a leading role in building international partnerships to meet the unprecedented challenges brought by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and changes in climate and energy security.

“We view India as one of the main pillars of stability and security in the Indo-Pacific region,” Mitsotakis said after his talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

Modi told reporters that India and Greece agreed to boost ties in the defense, pharmaceutical, space and shipping sectors as they seek to double their bilateral trade by 2030 from nearly $2 billion in 2022-23.

Modi also said the two countries set up a working group to cooperate in the fields of cybersecurity, counterterrorism and maritime security. He added that new opportunities are arising in India in defense manufacturing and that the two countries agreed to cooperate in this key sector but did not give details.

Mistotakis, who arrived in India on Tuesday, will also visit Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment hub, on Thursday. He is accompanied by a large business delegation. He said Greece and India are investing in renewable energy, infrastructure, ports and shipping.

India mainly exports aluminum, organic chemicals, and iron and steel to Greece, whose exports to India include minerals, mineral oils, sulfur, aluminum foil, electrical machinery and equipment and building stones.
Police fire teargas as Indian farmers resume protest march to New Delhi after talks fail (AP)
AP [2/21/2024 3:12 AM, Altaf Qadri and Krutika Pathi, 456K, Negative]
Police fired tear gas on Wednesday at thousands of Indian farmers who resumed their protest march to New Delhi after talks with the government failed to end an impasse over their demands for guaranteed crop prices.

The protests come at a crucial time for India, where national elections are due in the coming months and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party is widely expected to secure a third successive term in office.

The farmers began their protest last week but were stopped some 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the capital. Authorities are set on containing the protest, which has renewed the movement from over two years ago when tens of thousands of farmers had camped out on the outskirts of the city for over a year.

At the time, the farmers pitched tents, bought food supplies and held out in the sit-in until they forced Modi to repeal new agriculture laws in a major reversal for his government.

This time around, the authorities have barricaded the highways into New Delhi with cement blocks, metal containers, barbed wire and iron spikes to prevent the farmer from entering.

On Wednesday, the farmers arrived at the barricades with bulldozers and excavators to try and push through.

Jagjit Singh Dallewal, one of the farmers leading the march, said they did not want any violence, but condemned the federal government over the massive security measures.

“It is our request that we want to go to Delhi in a peaceful manner. The government should remove the barricades,” he said.

Last week, the farmers had paused their protest and hunkered down near the town of Shambhu, close to the border between Punjab and Haryana states, as farmers unions engaged in discussions with government ministers.

They rejected a proposal from the government that offered them five-year contracts of guaranteed prices on a set of certain crops, including maize, grain legumes and cotton, and the farmers resumed their march on Wednesday.

The protest organizers say the farmers are seeking a new legislation that would guarantee minimum prices for 23 crops.

The government protects agricultural producers against sharp falls in farm prices by setting a minimum purchase price for certain essential crops, a system that was introduced in the 1960s to help shore up food reserves and prevent shortages. The system can apply up to 23 crops, but the government usually offers the minimum price only for rice and wheat.

The farmers say guaranteed minimum support price for all 23 crops would stabilize their income. They are also pressing the government to follow through on promises to waive loans and withdraw legal cases brought against them during the earlier 2021 protests.

Several talks so far have failed to break the deadlock. But Arjun Munda, one of the ministers negotiating with the farmers, said they were willing to hold another discussion and that the government wanted to maintain peace.

“It is the prime minister’s responsibility, who has been elected with majority votes, to handle the situation and accept our demands,” Sarwan Singh Pandher, a farm leader, told the Press Trust of India news agency.

The farmers are an influential voting bloc and particularly important to Modi’s base — especially in Northern Haryana and several other states with a substantial farming population that are ruled by his Bharatiya Janata Party.
Police fire tear gas on Indian farmers marching to capital, government offers talks (Reuters)
Reuters [2/21/2024 4:27 AM, Sunit Kataria, 5.2M, Negative]
Indian police fired tear gas on Wednesday to scatter thousands of protesting farmers as they sought to resume a march to Delhi after rejecting a government offer on prices for their produce, while authorities offered a fresh round of negotiations.

Fleeing the stinging gas and clouds of smoke, the farmers, some wearing medical masks, ran into the fields surrounding their gathering-point on a highway about 200 km (125 miles) north of New Delhi.

The police action came as the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a new offer to resume talks on the farmers’ demands. Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda urged the farmers to resolve their grievances through the talks.

"After the fourth round, the government is ready to discuss all the issues" such as guaranteed prices for the farmers’ crops, he posted on social network X, as the march resumed.

"I again invite the farmer leaders for discussion. It is important for us to maintain peace."
Farmers’ leaders went into a huddle to discuss Wednesday’s offer after the police action brought the march to a halt, media said.

Top police and district officials were at the site, mediating between the leaders and the government, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

On Monday, the farmers’ groups had rejected the government’s previous proposal for five-year contracts and guaranteed support prices for produce such as corn, cotton and pulses.
The farmers, mostly from the northern state of Punjab, have been demanding higher prices backed by law for their crops. They form an influential bloc of voters Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot afford to anger ahead of general elections due by May.

STICKS, STONES, GAS MASKS

The farmers, accompanied by cranes and excavators, began marching at 0530 GMT from the spot where authorities had stopped them by erecting barricades on the border of Punjab state with Haryana, blocking a key highway.

"It is not right that such massive barricades have been placed to stop us," said one of the farmers’ leaders, Jagjit Singh Dallewal. "We want to march to Delhi peacefully. If not, they should accede to our demands."

Police in riot gear lined both sides of the highway as the farmers, gathering earlier amid morning fog, waved colourful flags emblazoned with the symbols of their unions, while loudspeakers urged them to fight for their rights.

Television images showed some wearing gas masks.

Late on Tuesday, Haryana police’s chief ordered the immediate seizure of the heavy equipment brought by the farmers, to keep protesters from using it to destroy barricades.
Police also asked owners of such equipment not to lend or rent it to protesters, as its use to harm security forces would be a criminal offence.

About 10,000 people had gathered on Wednesday, along with 1,200 tractors and wagons at Shambhu on the state border, police in Haryana posted on X, warning against the risk of stone-throwing as they were armed with sticks and stones.

Security was also stepped up at entry points to New Delhi, with police in riot gear manning barricades topped with barbed wire in some places, slowing traffic entering the city of more than 20 million and causing snarls.

Two key entry points north of the city have been shut for days and traffic diverted.

Sunday’s government proposal of minimum support prices to farmers who diversify their crops to grow cotton, pigeon peas, black matpe, red lentils and corn was rejected by the protesters, who wanted additional foodgrains covered.

Similar protests two years ago, when farmers camped for two months at the border of New Delhi, forced Modi’s government to repeal a set of farm laws.
‘We want dignity’: Indian farmers defy pellets, drones to demand new deal (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [2/21/2024 4:43 AM, Rifat Fareed, 2.1M, Neutral]
Balvinder Singh lies on his side, writhing in pain, on a hospital bed in the northern Indian state of Punjab.

When Singh, 47, was hit by a volley of piercing objects while marching towards New Delhi with thousands of other farmers, he did not know what had struck him.

But his body is pockmarked with telltale black scars from iron pellets fired by security forces to prevent farmers from crossing over from Punjab into the state of Haryana, which borders New Delhi. Haryana is ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, whose federal policies the farmers are protesting against.

Singh, a farmer from Faridkot district in Punjab, who was admitted at Rajindra Hospital in the city of Patiala, was hit when he was calming the angry young farmers at the front of the protest site, metres away from the border on February 14, a day after the protests began.

“I was calming down the protesters when I was hit,” Singh says, his left eye bloody from a pellet injury. “I could not understand whether it was a bullet or something else that hurt me.”

Singh says he had never heard of iron pellets being used as ammunition by security forces against civilian protesters. In the past, such pellets have been mostly used in Indian-administered Kashmir as a crowd-control mechanism. Pellet guns have blinded scores of people in Kashmir.

Now, they are part of the intensifying confrontation between farmers and the government. The government in Punjab, which is ruled by the Aam Aadmi Party that is in opposition nationally, has said that three farmers have lost their eyesight after being hit with the Haryana police pellets and a dozen others have also suffered pellet injuries.

Critics of the farmers, meanwhile, argue that the central government cannot allow the protests to escalate the way they did in 2021, when clashes broke out on the streets of New Delhi. Some protesters reached the Red Fort – from where the prime minister delivers the Independence Day speech – and were accused of yanking down the national flag. A security crackdown followed.

Yet, days after this latest agitation kicked off, there are growing signs of a repeat of the kind of escalation in tensions that India witnessed three years ago.

Thousands of farmers in their tractor trolleys, small trucks, on foot, and scooters have travelled from rural areas of Punjab and gathered on the Punjab-Haryana highway waiting to march on the capital city. They are hoping to press the BJP government for demands including a guaranteed minimum support price (MSP) for their crops and loan waivers, among others.

In Haryana, the government has been criticised for using drones to drop tear gas shells on the protesting farmers. The state’s police have sealed the border with heavy cemented blocks, iron nails and barbed wire.

Singh, who owns a four-acre plot where he grows rice and wheat, says there is no guarantee of price in the fluctuating market for other crops.

“We spend more on cultivation [when growing other crops] and there is no earning,” he says.

“Now, we are also facing water shortages for even growing these two crops [rice and wheat]. We are in deep stress.”

At present the government buys rice and wheat from farmers for public distribution, and offers them a minimum support price for these grains. But other agricultural commodities do not receive this price protection. That, farmers say, has in turn led to the overproduction of rice and wheat. Paddies in particular, are water intensive, leading to depleted groundwater levels.

“If I want to diversify to other crops, there should be financial security for me that I will get a good price – that is what we are asking. We are asking for our rights,” says Singh, from the hospital, where eight other farmers, some aged above 60, are also being treated.

One of them, Mota Singh, 32, from Hoshiarpur in Punjab, said that he was hit by a rubber bullet on his hand. To Mota, something even more fundamental is at stake than crop prices.

“Farmers are demanding dignity, we cannot be poor forever,” says Mota, when asked why he was protesting.

Why are farmers again on the roads?

More than 250 farmers’ unions have supported the protest that is being organised from Punjab.

Up to two-thirds of India’s 1.4 billion population are engaged in agriculture-related activities for their livelihoods and the sector contributes nearly a fifth of the country’s gross domestic product.

Farmers say that their main demand – minimum support price legislation – would ensure that the rates of their crops are sustainable and provide them with decent earnings.

At present, the government protects wheat and rice against the price fall by setting a minimum purchase price, a system that was introduced more than 60 years ago, to ensure food security in India.

Development economist Jayati Ghosh says that if other crops were also brought under the MSP regime, it would help provide sustainable financial support to the farmers. This wouldn’t mean that the government would need to buy large volumes of these crops, says Ghosh, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

It’s only when the price drops below the MSP that the government would need to step in and buy just enough that the price rises above the minimum set bar, she says.

“It’s a market intervention that makes sure that farmers have this other option,” Ghosh says.

In India, experts say that agriculture has been going through a severe crisis due to increasing extreme weather combined with a lowering water table, affecting yields and pushing farmers deep into debt. Thousands of farmers take their own lives each year. In 2022, data collected by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that 11,290 farmers died by suicide.

Ghosh questions why the government is reluctant to write off farm loans.

“Every year the banking system writes off loans of lakhs of crores (billions of dollars) of money taken by large corporations and that is not even mentioned and it is not even news,” she says. “The corporations can get away with all kinds of loan waivers but the farmers are asking a small fraction of that and … are treated as criminals.”

‘Government not honouring its promises’
The farmers are also demanding that the Modi government withdraw cases filed against them during the last protest in 2020-21.

Held on the outskirts of New Delhi for 13 months, those protests were against a set of three farm laws brought in by the BJP government that aimed to push India’s family-based, smallholdings-driven farm sector towards privatised and industrialised agriculture.

The government argued that the laws would improve market competition and in turn bring new wealth, especially to smaller farmers. But farmers protested, worried that the laws would leave them at the mercy of big corporations.

Eventually, Modi agreed to repeal the laws, and his government said it would set up a panel of stakeholders to find ways to ensure support prices for all produce.

The protesting farmers now accuse the government of not honouring those promises. And they are readying for a long wait to pressure the government.

Hardeep Singh, 57, from Gurdaspur in Punjab, has come prepared with bags of rice, flour, and other essentials in his tractor.

“We are here even if it takes months,” says Hardeep, who left his home with dozens of other villagers on February 11.

“We might not be allowed to go forward but we will not go backward, either.”

‘Not afraid of losing my health’

Darshan Singh, 66, sits silently on the side of the highway. He carries a passport-size photo of his son, 27-year-old Gurpreet Singh, in his wallet.

Gurpreet was among more than 700 farmers who died during the previous farmers’ protest in 2021.

“He was at the protest site for a year. He fell sick at the site and died after returning to the village. We are giving sacrifices for this movement,” Darshan tells Al Jazeera. But that tragedy has not deterred the father from joining the protest this time. “I am not afraid of losing my health here.”

Darshan says he wants justice for the two children and young wife his son left behind.

With national elections in India just two months away, the farmers are trying to ensure that they cannot be ignored. Because of their sheer numbers, farmers constitute a significant chunk of Indian voters.

The ruling BJP government recently conferred the nation’s highest civilian award on MS Swaminathan, a pioneer of the agricultural revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Meanwhile, the opposition Congress party has promised to legalise an MSP on crops if elected to power.

A government delegation has been engaged in negotiations with the protesting farmers without a breakthrough.

“We feel the government wants to suppress us and pass time,” Manjeet Singh, a leader of Bhartiya Kisan Union Shaheed Bhagat Singh, a local farmers’ union from Haryana, told Al Jazeera.

A fourth round of talks on Sunday evening, held between a 14-member farmers’ delegation and government representatives, including three federal ministers, failed to yield a breakthrough.

The government has offered farmers MSP for pulses, cotton and maize. The crops, according to the proposal, would be bought by the government agencies on an agreement for five years.

But the farmers have rejected the offer, which they argue only temporarily addresses their demand – unlike a law that would guarantee them MSP for these commodities in the long run. The farmers say they will continue with their protest march to New Delhi.

‘Why can’t farmers be prosperous?’

Devinder Sharma, a food and agricultural expert based in Chandigarh, the capital of both Punjab and Haryana, says that the farmers’ demands have merit.

“We have deliberately kept agriculture impoverished,” he says, adding that an MSP law could provide an unprecedented economic boom for the country by improving the income of a majority of the nation’s families that depend on agriculture.

He is not surprised at the pushback the farmers are facing from critics, mostly in the cities, though.

“The problem is when the prices go up the corporate profit is reduced. The (corporates) want to ruthlessly exploit farmers and I think enough is enough,” he says.

“Why can’t farmers be prosperous?”
Great Nicobar: Indian president visits island as fears grow for tribe (BBC)
BBC [2/20/2024 10:57 AM, Flora Drury, 14192K, Neutral]
India’s president has made a whistle stop tour of an island earmarked for multi-billion dollar development that experts warn could wipe out the indigenous tribe which calls it home.

Droupadi Murmu visited Great Nicobar on Tuesday - a remote island Indian officials hope will be transformed into a shipping hub and tourist destination.

The government says the plans will unleash the region’s potential.

But experts say it would be a "death sentence" for the Shompen people.

In a letter sent to President Murmu earlier this month, 39 experts warned the scheme turning the southern part of Great Nicobar into the "Hong Kong of India" would result in the Shompen "fac[ing] genocide".

But while the letter made headlines around the world, there were fears it had failed to make the government reconsider its plans. Importantly, President Murmu is the head of the state, but does not exercise executive powers.

"If President Murmu’s visit signals the government’s determination to push through the Great Nicobar mega-project, it is a death knell for the indigenous Shompen people," warned Callum Russell, spokesperson from Survival International.

According to Survival International, the Shompen - who number between 100 and 400 people - are nomadic hunter gatherers who live in the island’s rainforest. They are one of five "particularly vulnerable" tribes across the Nicobar and Andaman islands chain, but the only one on Great Nicobar.

Very few of the Shompen have ever had contact with the outside world, in part helped by the fact just another 8,000 people live on Great Nicobar, which is hundreds of kilometres east of India in the Indian Ocean.

However, the government’s $9bn (£6bn) scheme envisages as many as 650,000 people will end up on the island after the town, shipping port, international airport and power plant are built.

The island’s location, it argues, puts it in the perfect spot to take advantage of the international shipping trade - not to mention a good position to challenge China’s growing influence in the region.

A promotional video shared by India’s Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways includes images of skyscrapers rising up behind the new port, as well as what appear to be large holiday developments.

The video says the shipping port and other parts will improve "quality of life for current and future residents of Great Nicobar".

But these new plans, Survival says, will not only eat into the lands the Shompen live and hunt in, but also increase the risk of contact with other people.

Any contact at all could destroy the tribe. In their letter, the experts, led by Dr Mark Levene, of the University of Southampton, warned that "simple contact... is certain to result in a precipitous population collapse" because the Shompen have "little to no immunity to infectious outside diseases".

And even if contact did not happen, the impact of the development on the group could result in a "collective psychic breakdown".

Even the government’s own report acknowledges "any disturbance or alteration in the natural environmental setup where they live, may cause serious threat to their existence".

Despite these fears - and warnings from other groups over not only the Shompen, but also the potential damage the island’s unique ecology - the government is expected to push ahead with the scheme later this year.

Mr Russell told the BBC they were continuing to call on the "deadly project" to be abandoned in order to save the Shompen.

"There is simply no way they will survive this catastrophic transformation of the island - the only home they have ever known. And the authorities have been clearly warned that this is the inevitable result," he told the BBC.

The BBC has contacted the Indian government for comment.
Indian delegation in UK for final push on free trade agreement (The Independent)
The Independent [2/21/2024 5:35 AM, Namita Singh, 201K, Neutral]
An Indian delegation has landed in London to iron out the differences in the long-delayed and ambitious free trade agreement (FTA) between India and the UK.

The visit assumes significance in terms of timing as elections are expected to be announced in India in less than a month, which will trigger the Model Code of Conduct, restricting the ability of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s ability to announce the deal.

The visit comes almost a month after a delegation from the UK arrived in New Delhi to discuss the remaining aspects of the 26-chapter agreement. The negotiation began in 2022 on the deal that aims to double trade between the two countries to £86bn by 2030. India hopes to increase exports of leather, jewellery, textiles, and food products, with post-study work visas and immigration for Indians to the UK big areas of priority.

Britain, meanwhile, aims to double its total exports to India, up to as much as £28bn a year by 2035, thereby increasing wages across the UK by up to £3bn. The UK also wants an agreement that includes cutting tariffs on exports of British-made cars and Scotch whisky.

The fourteenth round of negotiation, which began on 10 January, involves discussion on matters related to goods, services and investment. Officials involved in the discussion claimed that the majority of issues in the proposed FTA were either finalised or were at an advanced stage of discussion.

"The majority of the chapters are either closed or at an advanced stage of negotiation. Discussions are being held at the higher level as well as at the team level to iron out differences,” said L Satya Srinivas, additional secretary in the Department of Commerce, earlier in January.

The India-UK FTA talks have hit several roadblocks and the ambitious pact now stands delayed by over a year from its previous deadline. The deal is reportedly being held up by a variety of issues, including a disagreement over the number of visas for Indians to work in the UK and differences over the level of access British car manufacturers should be given to India’s market.

Then interior minister Suella Braverman sparked a row in 2022 with comments about the possible impact of Indian migrants in trade talks, citing concern both with any “open borders migration policy with India” and those who overstay visas. A spokesperson for prime minister Rishi Sunak later said the UK had no plans to change its approach to reducing net migration in order to help secure a free trade deal with India.

However, India’s High Commissioner to Britain Vikram Doriaswamy said that the notion India wanted more visas had been in the British press but not in Indian media.

“We never said that the visas are part of our ask,” he told Times radio, adding that India instead sought simpler ways for companies to move UK and Indian nationals between the countries. “We are not asking for migrants to be able to come here.”

For India, a deal with the UK would be its first with a developed country after it signed an interim trade pact with Australia in December 2022. It comes at a crucial time for Mr Modi, who is looking to solidify India’s business-friendly image in the run-up to national elections.

Britain, on the other hand, has prioritised a deal with India as part of its Indo-Pacific foreign policy tilt aimed at enhancing ties with the region’s fast-growing economies.

The British Department for Business and Trade earlier said "the UK and India continue to work towards an ambitious trade deal that works for both countries. We have always been clear we will only sign a deal that is fair, balanced and ultimately in the best interests of the British people and the economy".
India to oppose extended e-commerce tariff ban at WTO meet - sources (Reuters)
Reuters [2/20/2024 9:33 AM, Manoj Kumar, 5239K, Neutral]
India will oppose U.S. and European efforts to extend a global ban on cross-border e-commerce duties at the World Trade Organization meeting next week, two government officials said on Tuesday, fearing a continued huge loss of revenue.

New Delhi, South Africa and Indonesia want to allow developing nations to tax cross-border electronic transmissions and India will push the case at the WTO’s Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi starting on Monday, the officials said.

New Delhi has said that physical goods like books and videos, once governed by traditional tariff rules, were now available as digital services and should be subject to duties.

"Before asking for the extension of a moratorium, these issues need to be discussed and settled," one of the officials said.

WTO members reached a deal in 2022 to extend the moratorium on e-commerce duties. Backed by major players like the United States, Britain and the European Union, they have argued that letting it expire would threaten a global e-commerce recovery.

"At present there is no consensus on the scope of what this moratorium is... and we will oppose the extension of the moratorium," one of the officials told reporters.

The officials declined to be identified according to government policy on discussions at international forums.

The commerce ministry, which is leading India’s negotiations at the WTO, declined to comment.

Developing countries lost about $10 billion in customs duties income on the import of e-commerce products from developed countries in 2017, including a nearly $500 million loss for India, according to WTO estimates.

India says with a rise in imports of electronic transmissions, including of movies, digital books and video games, the potential revenue loss has gone up substantially since then.

"There is no change in India’s position," said one of the officials, adding India had moved three proposals - a strengthening of consumers rights and digital public infrastructure and promotion of competition in e-commerce.
How India Became the World’s Most Nimble Energy Buyer (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [2/20/2024 7:00 AM, Megha Mandavia, 810K, Neutral]
Global energy markets have been on a roller coaster for the past few years. While major industrial economies have been thrown for a loop, India, facing record import needs on a tight budget, is almost enjoying the ride.

A deal signed this month is the latest indication that the world’s most populous country, still a distant third in energy consumption but growing quickly, is handling its entry into the big leagues with aplomb. Government-owned Petronet renewed a contract to buy 7.5 million tons of liquefied natural gas annually from Qatar from 2028 for 20 years in one of the largest-ever deals for the super-chilled fuel. India is looking to sign more such long-term LNG supply contracts as demand grows.

While the pricing terms weren’t disclosed, the deal comes at an opportune time, when LNG prices have crashed from the highs seen after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. According to data shared by Argus Media, prices for LNG delivered to India averaged $13 per million British thermal units in 2023—sharply lower than an average of $30 in 2022. Currently, Asian natural-gas prices are lingering around $8.50, according to Refinitiv.

This megadeal is another example of India’s emergence as a large energy buyer in the global market as it gears up to meet the country’s ever-expanding energy needs. It has shown an ability to quickly clinch deals when prices drop in the face of geopolitical or economic disruption.

India’s aggressive purchases of cheap Russian oil have angered many in the West, but saved its refiners and consumers money. Before that, India was a major purchaser of crude from relatively nearby Iran, which also faced sanctions.

Raghav Mathur, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said that the move by India to renew the contract with Qatar during a time of softer prices is a smart one since it sets a base for future contracts. This agility is especially critical in light of the absence of sufficient oil and gas reserves at home, the growing air-pollution crisis and increasing pressure globally to diversify away from coal.

A study by the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute found that India accounted for 60% of the increase in global air pollution between 2013 and 2021. And pollution is a potent domestic concern, too. India’s fuel mix, along with other factors, has made air in the capital, New Delhi, among the least healthy in the world.

Being green is particularly expensive for developing countries, though. Indian buyers have increased their exposure to long-term contracts, according to Mathur, to reduce exposure to erratic swings in energy prices. A focused effort to secure long-term supply also points to India’s increasing sophistication as an energy dealmaker versus moving in only when the opportunity arises.

Nimble energy dealmaking is important as India embarks upon industrializing its economy, upgrading its infrastructure and staking its claims as an alternative to China’s factory floor. It wants to lift the share of natural gas in its energy mix to 15% by 2030 from about 6% at the end of 2023. India is now the world’s largest LNG buyer after China, Japan and South Korea, and imports about 45% of natural gas used in the country. It could move to number three by the 2030s, according to Wood Mackenzie, which said the demand for LNG from India could cross 90 million metric tons per annum by 2050 from just over 20 million in 2023. With 85% of crude oil imported, it hopes to use natural gas as a generation fuel for electric vehicles or directly in compressed form to replace some of that in the transportation sector.

And even while India is hungry for energy, it is often a price-sensitive buyer. India’s record annual LNG imports of 26 million metric tons occurred during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, according to Anu Agarwal, Asia head of liquefied petroleum gas at Argus Media, when weak global demand pulled down spot prices to as low as $2 per million British thermal units. India absorbed surplus supply over the year as European and northeast Asian buyers stepped back from the global market. Imports fell sharply in 2022 when prices shot higher.

The same opportunism was on display in 2022 and 2023, when the world shunned energy imports from India’s long-term ally Russia, which contributed more than 35% of India’s total crude imports in 2023, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights data. When China banned Australian coal in late 2020, affordable coal found its way to India. Shipments from Australia to India grew more than 500% in the first three quarters of 2021, according to S&P.

Balancing energy security, sustainability and affordability is no mean feat. The Indian elephant is walking the tightrope with grace.
NSB
Bangladesh resists growing calls to accept more Rohingyas from Myanmar (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [2/20/2024 9:05 PM, Syful Islam, 293K, Negative]
Bangladesh faces intensifying pressure to accept more Rohingya Muslims fleeing the civil war in neighboring Myanmar, a burden the government in Dhaka insists it cannot bear.

Hundreds of Rohingyas have gathered at various points along the nations’ border, seeking shelter as Myanmar’s military regime battles a strong resistance offensive. Mostafa Mohammad Sazzad Hossain, a spokesman in Dhaka for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told Nikkei Asia this week: "It is vital that civilians -- children, women and men -- fleeing conflict be allowed to seek and access safety. Denying access to safety further puts them at risk."

But the Bangladeshi government is holding firm, arguing that it already hosts over a million Rohingya refugees and cannot take in any more.

At a meeting of the National Task Force on Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals in Dhaka on Feb. 14, the UNHCR’s representative, Sumbul Rizvi, asked Bangladesh to accept 900 Rohingya people who were waiting at 19 different points along the border, citing humanitarian grounds, according to officials in Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry.

Sources familiar with the talks said Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen refused and referred to recent, repeated comments by other ministers who have said that no additional Rohingya refugees would be accepted.

"We will not allow any more Rohingya to enter the country," Obaidul Quader, the minister of road transport and bridges, told reporters earlier this month. "They have already become a burden for us," he added, stressing that international aid had declined. "How long can we support them?"

The UNHCR’s Hossain told Nikkei, "We continue to advocate with Bangladesh authorities, in Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar, to enable civilians fleeing conflict in Myanmar, Rohingyas and non-Rohingyas, access to safety." Most of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh live in camps in Cox’s Bazar. He vowed that the U.N. refugee agency and its partners would offer support in assisting any new arrivals.

Bangladesh considers the existing refugees both a financial and security problem. It wants to send them back, but attempts to arrange repatriation have gone nowhere, amid concerns over their safety. Around 700,000 of them fled a brutal military crackdown in 2017 that a United Nations fact-finding team said had "genocidal intent" -- an allegation denied by Naypyitaw.

With an estimated two-thirds of Myanmar now engulfed in conflict, according to the U.N., repatriation appears to be an even more remote prospect.

This month, around 330 Myanmar nationals -- mainly regime forces as well as some civilians -- crossed into Bangladesh. They were running from fierce attacks by the Arakan Army, one of many armed ethnic resistance groups, near the border with Bandarban and Cox’s Bazar districts. Amid strong protests by the Bangladeshi government, which was also angered by stray gunfire landing in its territory, Myanmar took them back on Feb. 15.

As conditions inside Myanmar deteriorate, worries are growing about the impact on not only Bangladesh but other neighbors as well.

Donald Lu, U.S. assistant secretary for South and Central Asia, on Saturday voiced concerns over risks to Bangladesh and India stemming from the Rohingya crisis and ongoing conflict.

"The situation there [in Myanmar] doesn’t appear to be getting better and what worries me is that this refugee crisis, the security problems that it’s creating for Bangladesh and potentially for India as well, could get deeper in the coming days," he said at an event organized by the United States Institute of Peace, marking the second anniversary of President Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy.

Munshi Faiz Ahmed, a former Bangladeshi ambassador to China, insists that the country should not allow in any further Rohingya people despite "pressure" from the international community.

"Pressure will continue coming and we have to overcome that," he told Nikkei Asia. "Because, we already gave shelter to Rohingyas more than our capacity." He sees no chance of repatriation without a regime change and restoration of peace in Myanmar.

M. Shakhawat Hussain, a security analyst and retired brigadier general, said the refugee crisis had turned into a "big problem for Bangladesh for a long period" and argued that new solutions are needed. Bangladesh, he suggested, should ask the International Red Cross to push for a safe zone for Myanmar nationals, so they are not forced to flee toward Bangladesh.
COVID proved Nepal’s new federal system works (Nikkei Asia – opinion)
Nikkei Asia [2/21/2024 4:00 AM, Kushal Pokharel, 293K, Positive]
Nepal’s Constitution took eight years to hammer out, but in 2015 finally established the Himalayan nation, ruled for centuries as a unitary kingdom, as a federal democratic republic, with three empowered levels of government.

This structure, though, has come increasingly under question. Nepal’s fastest-rising political force, the Rastriya Swatantra Party, is demanding that the three levels be reduced to two and refusing to enter candidates in provincial elections. The party, founded just two years ago, is now the fourth-largest of the 14 represented in the lower chamber of Nepal’s parliament.

It is timely, then, to consider how well federalism has delivered on its promises for Nepal.

The COVID pandemic provided the first substantial stress test for Nepal’s new governance structure.

K.P. Sharma Oli, prime minister for the first year and a half of the pandemic, failed to recognize the seriousness of the new coronavirus and repeatedly advised citizens that they could rely on home remedies like drinking hot water or gargling with guava leaves for protection.

When officials belatedly started to seek supplies of masks, noncontact thermometers and other medical provisions, they awarded a procurement contract to a company whose inflated bids then fed into a sprawling corruption scandal.

Yet even as Oli dithered, many of Nepal’s local administrations successfully mobilized resources to combat COVID-19 despite scarce fiscal and technical resources, and confusing national policies and regulatory frameworks.

Dhulikhel, a city of 40,000 southeast of Kathmandu, took the initiative to set up health centers in each ward as well as a 70-bed quarantine center for women and the disabled. It also moved to directly secure COVID test kits and PCR machines to process them.

Even municipal authorities in rural areas with more limited resources were proactive about confronting the crisis.

For example, officials in Likhu Tamakoshi in eastern Nepal took the initiative to secure a jeep and two ambulances to transport residents for COVID treatment. They paid out 10,000 Nepali rupees ($74) to families who suffered a COVID death. As a further measure to support the local economy amid the stresses of the pandemic, they offered subsidized loans of up to 500,000 rupees for small businesses and agriculture-related businesses.

Still, it must be acknowledged that the quality of the crisis response of Nepal’s local governments during the pandemic did vary widely. Those that navigated better generally had leaders with preexisting political connections, a clear vision of serving the public, a favorable geographic location or better access to financial and human resources.

For example, authorities in Bidur, a town northwest of Kathmandu, responded more effectively to COVID than their counterparts in Temal, a rural area beyond Dhulikhel, thanks in part to superior infrastructure and better financial and human resources. With a well-equipped district hospital with 15 beds, as well as six health posts and five urban clinics, Bidur could provide much better testing and treatment than Temal, which lacked health facilities or staff to manage quarantines or deal with returning migrant workers.

If Nepal had not had local administrations in place, the suffering of the public might easily have gone unabated during the pandemic. For comparison, one could look at how areas of Pakistan, lacking empowered local administrations, failed to take steps to evacuate citizens or minimize damage during catastrophic flooding in mid-2022.

The strength of Nepal’s local governments was shown again during the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Jajarkot district last November.

Local officials led search and rescue efforts, and the identification of victims, as well as coordination among different agencies. To ensure fair and equitable distribution, local officials channeled relief materials through their own offices rather than through community-based organizations, charities or other nonstate agencies. This helped ensure that aid reached those most in need, and renewed hope and trust among the public in area officials.

Indeed, Nepalis in general are supportive of their local administrations. In a 2022 survey sponsored by the Asia Foundation, 70.4% of respondents said conditions in their area were improving thanks to local government action.

There remain, however, critical challenges to be addressed to make Nepal’s local governments more effective.

For one, there should be proper institutional arrangements in place for the exchange of ideas, experiences, learning and good practices across federal, provincial and local administrations. This would be of immeasurable benefit in times of crisis like COVID-19.

Nepal also needs to ensure that local administrations have sustained access to financial resources, which can help them to be prepared to deliver important services during times of crisis. More programs to provide training and capacity-building can strengthen human resource capabilities at a local level.

For many in Nepal, the transition to federalism was marked with optimism about the possibility of improved public service delivery. To a significant extent, the pandemic showed that this redistribution of authority made for a more effective crisis response.

From the declaration of a public health emergency to the activation of disaster management committees, local governments remained alert and ensured emergency services to citizens throughout the pandemic. In many parts of Nepal, local governments proved capable of setting up and managing quarantine centers, as well as of providing economic support through aid to agriculture and small business.

As the first point of direct contact for citizens with economic or social development needs, Nepal’s local governments handled the COVID crisis far better than the national government despite limited technical, financial and human resources capabilities. In this sense, federalism has already delivered considerable benefits for Nepal.
Central Asia
Kazakhstan: Population resettlement program declared a failure (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/20/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Negative]
A senior politician in Kazakhstan has admitted that state programs designed to encourage people living in the populous south to relocate to the north of the country, to areas bordering Russia, has proven a failure.

In a speech to the upper house of parliament on February 20, Senate speaker Maulen Ashimbayev said draft legislation now under consideration will consider new incentives to increase labor mobility.

A decade’s worth of the government policies that Ashimbayev says have fallen short have focused on one overriding problem: while densely populated cities in the south persistently attract large numbers of new arrivals, thereby compounding labor surplus there, fewer people are prepared to move to the north, the site of some of the country’s most important industrial concerns.

One initiative, Serpin-2050, has been in place in 2014 and provides young people from the southern regions with free training in education, and technical or agricultural sciences as an incentive to relocate to northern regions.

Another, Enbek, helps unemployed people in the south find jobs and provides money toward paying rent and utility bills in return for making the move. Officials say more than 32,000 people moved north and east under the program between 2017 to 2021.

But even that figure is less impressive than it seems. Half of those people were classified as disabled and ineligible for employment.

In February 2023, the Labor and Social Protection Ministry’s Migration Committee announced that proposals were in place to provide applicants willing to move up to 4 million tenge ($8,800) toward the cost of buying a new home.

Government demographers have identified troubling long-term trends in population patterns in Kazakhstan. According to forecasts from 2021, while the population of northern regions of Kazakhstan were on track to decrease by 600,000 before 2050, the population of southern regions, even when excluding the cities of Almaty and Shymkent, was poised to increase by 1.6 million.

Ashimbayev provided a sobering update.

“Over the past few years, the population of the North Kazakhstan, Pavlodar and Kostanay regions has decreased. In North Kazakhstan, according to the data I have seen, there is a 23 percent drop in population in recent years. In the Pavlodar region, it is an 8 percent population decline,” he was quoted as saying by Zakon.kz news website.

Ashimbayev spoke about corollary efforts to maintain population levels in rural areas.

He attributed the creation of 12,000 jobs in rural locations to the system of micro-credits handed out as part of the government’s Auyl Amanaty, or Rural Heritage, program of microcredits. At the same time, the money available for that initiative is not always being used in a timely fashion, he said.
Company fined over massive Kazakhstan methane leak (BBC)
BBC [2/20/2024 10:20 AM, Marco Silva and Rayhan Demytrie, 13914K, Negative]
The owners of a well linked to one of the worst methane leaks ever recorded are to be fined more than 350 million tenge ($774,000; £614,000), authorities have said.

Last week the BBC published new analysis showing thousands of tonnes of the greenhouse gas escaped from a well in southwestern Kazakhstan in 2023.

Buzachi Neft, the Kazakh company that owns the well, denies this.

But authorities say "violations of environmental legislation" took place.

The leak began in June last year, when a blowout was reported at an exploration well in the Mangistau region in southwestern Kazakhstan. It went on until Christmas Day.

While methane is invisible to the naked eye, some satellites are able to track plumes of the gas.

By using five different satellite instruments, scientists detected high concentrations of methane on 115 separate occasions in that six-month period.

They estimated that 127,000 tonnes of methane escaped from this single well.

That is the equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions from more than 717,000 petrol cars over a year.

Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

In a statement released on Monday, the Department of Ecology in the Mangistau region said it found "excessive amounts of methane in the air" between June and December 2023.

It also said it carried out an "unscheduled inspection" in January.

While pollutants were found in the soil, the department told the BBC no further methane was found in the air.

Recent satellite readings appear to back this up.

"Three subsequent observations on 1, 12 and 14 January 2024 confirm the definitive cessation of the leak," said Luis Guanter from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, who helped verify the leak.

According to "preliminary calculations" by the department, Buzachi Neft faces a fine of more than 350,000 tenge.

The company has also been ordered to come up with a "remediation programme" to deal with the environmental impact.

Buzachi Neft did not respond to our request for comment.

But the company had previously told the BBC it denied any "substantial amount" of methane had leaked from the well.

An official investigation into the causes of the accident - led by Atyrau’s Industrial Safety Committee - found that Buzachi Neft failed to appropriately supervise the drilling of the well.

It also blamed Zaman Energo, a subcontractor, for numerous failures in the drilling process. Zaman Energo declined to comment.

At last year’s COP28 climate summit, Kazakhstan joined the Global Methane Pledge - a voluntary agreement by more than 150 countries to slash their methane emissions by 30% by 2030.
Turkmenistan: Sowing the seeds (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/20/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
The trans-Afghan TAPI natural gas pipeline is the Groundhog Day of infrastructure projects.

Over and again, officials from some or all of the countries involved — which is to say Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India — meet and exchange assurances that the project will happen. When it does, everybody will prosper, they agree.

And then nothing happens.

But time is now pressing.

Kabul-based outlet ToloNews reported on February 19 on a meeting between Shahabuddin Delawar, the acting Mines and Petroleum Minister in the Taliban-run government in Afghanistan, and Muhammetmyrat Amanov, chief executive of the Ashgabat-based TAPI Pipeline Limited Corporation.

As ToloNews reported, discussions centered on “accelerating the process of starting the TAPI project.”

A spokesman for the self-styled Islamic Emirate implied that Afghanistan could not be blamed for the hold-up as it has provided all necessary security guarantees.

“We hope that the TAPI project will be started but you know that this is not only the subject of one country, four other countries are also engaged with it and they all should be ready,” the spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, was quoted as saying by TOLONews.

This is not happening in a vacuum, however.

As Lahore-based newspaper The Nation reported, also on February 19, Pakistan is “contemplating” starting work on building an 80-kilometer stretch of pipeline that would run from the port of Gwadar to the border of Iran. This section would become part of the long-delayed Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline.

The Nation’s sources claim the urgency behind this initiative is that Pakistan is nervous about a potential $18 billion penalty for failure to implement a project that has been decades in the making.

An Iran-Pakistan pipeline could well undermine the financial viability of TAPI, which will be making Turkmenistan — a leading beneficiary of the latter project — nervous.

To complicate the geopolitics of all this, Russia is playing a curious role. It has expressed willingness to provide material support for both projects at various junctures, in effect rendering it an important broker in the economic fortunes of several countries in the region.

At the moment, though, Moscow is engaged in some very aggressive courting of Turkmen favor. Barely a week passes without a major Russian official or politician going on record to express their enthusiasm for Russo-Turkmen amity.

On February 18, the duty fell to Russia’s Ambassador in Ashgabat, Ivan Volynkin, who used the Day of Diplomatic Workers holiday to praise Turkmen diplomacy and the country’s commitment to the principles of neutrality.

Turkmenistan’s international initiatives are “strengthening peace and security in Central Asia,” Volynkin said.

The highlight of the holiday was the opening a diplomat training institute and museum dedicated to the history of Turkmen diplomacy in Ashgabat.

Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov illustrated his commitment to neutrality in a highly visual manner at one opening ceremony by having the Russian ambassador, Volynkin, and U.S. ambassador Matthew Klimow stand on either side of him, holding up a green ribbon that he then cut.

Earlier in the week, on February 15, President Serdar Berdymukhamedov dealt with the altogether more pedestrian business of appointing a new prosecutor for Ashgabat. Nedirguly Allanazarov will leave his post as deputy prosecutor of the Ahal province to take up the job.

This appointment is mainly of note as Allanazarov’s predecessor, Ovezmammed Shykhmammedov, was reportedly arrested after being fired all the way back on February 2 for “improper performance of official duties and serious shortcomings in his work.” RFE/RL’s Turkmen service, Radio Azatlyk, which reported on this development, suggested that Shykhmammedov, along with the also-recently fired General Prosecutor Serdar Myalikgulyev, were responsible for embezzlement that led to chronic shortages at subsidized state stores.

Amsterdam-based Turkmen.news reported earlier this month on how the cost of bread and flour at those state stores has been spiraling upward.

If this is indeed happening as a result of the Berdymukhamedov regime’s desire to transition the economy to market rules, an early lesson is being imparted on what that agenda implies.

As Turkmen.news relayed on February 19, rising prices for domestically produced flour has compelled many in the Mary province to opt instead for the variety imported from Kazakhstan. While the latter is slightly more costly, it is also much better in quality. The outlet’s informants claim that Turkmen flour is inclined to spoil due to the poor quality of seeds used for the wheat crop.

All the pieces of the puzzle are now shifting.

Berdymukhamedov on February 9 signed a resolution — cast as a measure to aid agricultural development — to increase the price that the government pays farmers for their wheat and cotton crops. The last time this was done was in 2019.

The hike for wheat is notable in scale — up from 800 manat ($230 at the entirely bogus and overvalued official rate) per ton to 2,000 manat.

If the motivation here is to ease the life of long-suffering and low-earning farmers, the effect is likely to be cancelled out by another measure reported by Turkmen.news. Namely, the manifold increase in the cost of fertilizers, irrigation and renting government-owned equipment.

This is playing out against an alarming backdrop.

Meteozhurnal, a weather-focused Russian website that is a veritable Cassandra on all things Turkmenistan, carried an article on February 18 about the strange weather patterns observed in February. The piece described unseasonably warm conditions in the middle of the month suddenly being displaced by a cold snap accompanied in some places by a dust storm.

If persistent, such madcap meteorological phenomena pose more than just short-term dangers. Farming becomes a fraught business, and where little or no thought is given to bolstering resilience, which appears very much the case in Turkmenistan, only bad things can happen.

The regime’s priorities may be elsewhere, though.

Berdymukhamedov met on February 13 with Stefano Pontecorvo, the chairman of Italian aerospace and defense equipment manufacturer Leonardo, seemingly to discuss the possibility of Turkmenistan buying a satellite from the company.

In 2015, Turkmenistan blasted a satellite into orbit onboard a SpaceX craft. The 4.5-ton satellite, known confusingly by the double monicker TurkmenAlem 52°E / MonacoSAT on account of being operated jointly with the principality of Monaco, was built on order by France’s Thales Alenia Space and has provided telecommunications services across Europe and Africa, and Central Asia. As it has now passed the halfway point of its anticipated lifespan, a replacement must be prepared.

It is something of a puzzle why Turkmenistan would need to expend doubtless considerable financial resources on buying a satellite designed to provide services that could more easily and cheaply be provided by major global companies.

Except that one of the transponders on the TurkmenAlem satellite is notably centered on the territory of Turkmenistan, suggesting that the Turkmen authorities prize the privilege of controlling a wholly exclusive channel of digital data. Dreams of building a sovereign internet immune from the pernicious influences of the outside world may hinge in future on investments like a new satellite.
Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan Crackdown Gets A Helping Hand From Kazakhstan (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/21/2024 5:10 AM, Chris Rickleton, 223K, Negative]
Uzbek national Aqylbek Muratbai said he received some unsettling advice from an Uzbek diplomat last year after being invited to his home country’s consulate in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty.

The diplomat, an adviser to the Uzbek consul-general, warned Muratbai (aka Muratov) that he should “soften the tone” of his statements relating to Karakalpakstan, a nominally autonomous and sovereign republic of Uzbekistan that was roiled by unrest and a lethal state crackdown in 2022.

The diplomat raised concerns that some of activist’s remarks online and in press interviews might be “blown up” by the mass media, Muratbai said.

Muratbai, a 35-year-old ethnic Karakalpak and a resident of Kazakhstan for more than a decade, considered the diplomat’s intervention an act of intimidation.

He recalled that Uzbek diplomats had objected to the “tone” of a friend and fellow activist in August 2022, the month after protests erupted in Karakalpakstan over constitutional changes that would have brought its legal status closer to that of other regions in Uzbekistan.

Less than two weeks later, that activist was detained by Kazakh police and went on to spend exactly a year in jail -- the maximum allowed under Kazakh law for anyone awaiting a decision on extradition to another country -- before being released.

“The adviser to the consul-general responded to this by smiling and assuring me that I had nothing to worry about,” Muratbai said at the time in comments reported by Kazakh media. (Uzbekistan’s mission in Kazakhstan did not respond to a request to confirm the conversation that Muratbai said took place at Uzbekistan’s consulate in Almaty in October 2023.)

Muratbai’s nighttime arrest at his home last week and subsequent incarceration in an Almaty detention facility over the weekend suggests that the activist was perfectly right to be concerned.

According to his lawyer, Inara Masanova, his February 15 detention was triggered by charges of calls for mass unrest and offenses against public order issued by Uzbek authorities.

Masanova was prohibited from attending the February 17 hearing that saw Muratbai transferred to a temporary detention facility in Almaty for an initial period of 40 days.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, human rights lawyer Steve Swerdlow called IT professional Muratbai’s detention on the extremism-related charges “absurd.”

“There has been no Karakalpak voice more clear-eyed, professional, or helpful than Aqylbek for the almost two years since the beginning of the Karakalpakstan crisis,” said Swerdlow, a lecturer at the University of Southern California.

“Unfortunately, Kazakhstan has so far not extended asylum to any Karakalpak activists previously detained and threatened with extradition. While it hasn’t forcibly returned them, it has also refused to apply international refugee [protections]. Aqylbek will be the biggest test to date,” Swerdlow added.

‘Foreign Evil Forces’

According to official Uzbek statements, at least 21 people died during unprecedented unrest in Karakalpakstan that peaked July 1 and 2, 2022, overwhelmingly civilians.

A group of rights defenders that published a report on the crisis under the umbrella of the Vienna-based Freedom For Eurasia rights group put the figure more than three times higher.

Over 500 people were arrested and dozens sentenced to prison terms in trials held in Uzbekistan -- but outside of Karakalpakstan -- last year.

There have been no known convictions of military personnel who were reportedly involved in the violence that led to the deaths and injuries.

Soon after the bloodshed, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev argued that the violence had been “prepared for years by foreign evil forces” looking to “encroach on the territorial integrity of Uzbekistan and create interethnic conflict.”

That theory was hard to square with the fact that the protests had emerged immediately after the publication of changes affecting Karakalpakstan’s legal status -- including one that would have left the territory without the option, again, purely nominal, given Uzbekistan’s general political environment -- of holding a referendum on secession from Uzbekistan.

Mirziyoev ordered the amendments scrapped after the crisis peaked. But the damage was already done.

While Mirziyoev never named a country in his reference to foreign evil forces, Uzbek officials were soon turning their attention toward Kazakhstan, a Central Asian neighbor with whom Tashkent enjoys very good official relations.

Kazakhs and Karakalpaks have close linguistic and cultural ties, and Kazakhstan shares a border with the regio, which has some 2 million people and accounts for two-fifths of Uzbekistan’s territory, making it a natural home for a Karakalpak diaspora.

In the aftermath of the violence, Muratbai and other members of the diaspora were summoned to talks brokered by Kazakhstan’s State Committee for National Security and involving representatives of law enforcement from Uzbekistan and Karakalpakstan, as well as meetings with Uzbek diplomats.

At that point, Muratbai was an active member of the diaspora and organized ethnocultural gatherings in Almaty, though he had refrained from making any strong political statements.

He only changed tack after the detention of fellow diaspora members in the fall of 2022, setting up an account on X and giving regular interviews to Kazakh and foreign press on Karakalpakstan, where freedom of speech has been strongly curtailed since the crisis.

His most recent interview was on February 1, just two weeks before he was detained, when he gave RFE/RL details of a harsh government campaign targeting youth in Karakalpakstan.

Muratbai told RFE/RL that students in Karakalpakstan were being punished for "sharing or merely liking a comment" on social media that authorities deem a threat to the state.

How Tashkent’s Repression Reached Into Kazakhstan

According to Muratbai’s partner, Indira Beisembaeva, Muratbai was invited the following week for a meeting with Kazakh police at the Almaty City Police Department.

Muratbai said he was unable to attend the meeting, scheduled for February 9.

After he was eventually detained at his home a week later, he phoned Beisembaeva and told her that an officer from Uzbekistan had participated in the detention.

Muratbai is now the sixth member of the Karakalpak diaspora known to have been arrested in Kazakhstan.

Koshkorbai Toremuratov -- the activist whose statements Muratbai said had earlier irked Uzbek diplomats -- was first, along with Zhangeldy Zhaqsymbetov, on September 13, 2022.

The three other Karakalpaks to spend a year behind bars were female activists Tleubeke Yuldasheva, Ziyar Mirmanbetova, and Raisa Khudaiberganova.

All of them have had applications for asylum rejected by Kazakhstan, making them vulnerable to deportation.

Uzbek citizenship, meanwhile, is notoriously difficult to break free of.

In December, rights activists raised the alarm after another Karakalpak had his Kazakh passport canceled by Kazakh authorities, who cited a claim by Uzbek officials that he had not gone through the proper process of ending his Uzbek nationality.

That man was Nietbai Urazbaev, regarded as a diaspora leader and sentenced to 12 years in prison in absentia by an Uzbek court in connection with the unrest.

Last month, the 54-year-old Urazbaev died of a heart attack at his daughter’s home in Almaty. Muratbai broke the news to media outlets, attributing the death to stress.

Toremuratov’s year behind bars in Kazakhstan, meanwhile, come on top of the three years he spent in jail in Uzbekistan after being arrested during a trip to his homeland in December 2014.

“In jail, they would ask me, ‘Why does Kazakhstan allow Karakalpaks to form an official diaspora?’” Toremuratov told RFE/RL in an interview earlier this week. “It was a real problem for them!”

Although he was sentenced to more than six years in prison, he was released in 2017 -- the year after Mirziyoev came to power -- as the new president oversaw something of a thaw compared to the hyper-authoritarian rule of his long-serving predecessor, the late Islam Karimov.

That loosening of control now seems a very long time ago.

And so does the announcement -- just two weeks after the Karakalpakstan bloodshed -- of a 14-member parliamentary commission led by Uzbekistan’s ombudswoman, Feruza Eshmatova.

The commission was tasked with compiling a report on the crisis, including on the state’s response to the unrest.

In its own November 2022 report on the crisis, which found that state troops “unjustifiably” used force against protesters, the international watchdog Human Rights Watch argued that it was "unrealistic to expect the commission to present genuinely independent findings, especially with respect to the actions of police and security forces."

But was it unrealistic to expect a report with findings of some sort, nearly two years after the commission was formed?

“When I recently asked the ombudswoman about this, she said that the report will be published soon,” Gulnoz Mamarasulova, a Swedish-based Uzbek rights activist and arguably the commission’s only critical voice, told RFE/RL.

“But I am not sure it will be published anytime soon.”
Japan’s Role in Healing the Aral Sea and Engaging Central Asia (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [2/20/2024 12:51 PM, Wilder Alejandro Sanchez and Marin Ekstrom, 201K, Neutral]
Multiple international actors have become involved in helping Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan alleviate the devastating consequences of one of the worst human-made environmental disasters across the Central Asian region: the loss of the Aral Sea. One notable partner in these endeavors is Japan. The East Asian nation has a long history of interactions with Central Asia, and its role in environmental cooperation – specifically, in terms of healing the Aral Sea – warrants further discussion due to its potential implications for future Japan-Central Asia relations, particularly with Astana and Tashkent.

What Is Japan Doing?

The Aral Sea used to be the fourth largest saltwater lake in the world, but misguided Soviet irrigation policies initiated in the 1960s gradually dried it out, leaving the sea at just 10 percent of its original volume. The impacts of this disaster encompass elevated health-related issues in local communities, ecological damage via the loss of marine species and salt and chemical build-up, and the loss of economic livelihoods due to the devastation of commercial fishing and tourism.

Japanese and international organizations have embarked on numerous projects to heal the Aral Sea and the surrounding environment. In September 2023, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) announced a $2 million pledge sponsored by the Japanese government. The project focuses on sharing innovative agricultural techniques with communities in Karakalpakstan, an autonomous republic in Uzbekistan bordering the Aral Sea, to adapt more effectively to desertification and climate change.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has pursued recent projects in the Aral Sea region, such as developing climate-resistant agricultural practices and improving medical services. Tokyo has previously provided financial resources to other Aral Sea projects in Uzbekistan, including a $3 million governmental aid allocation to improve the living standards for Aral Sea communities in 2019.

Compared to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan has received less assistance. According to the JICA-Kazakhstan webpage, the two governments stopped technical cooperation in 2012 but continue to promote language and cultural exchanges. However, other Japanese-affiliated organizations still play a role in the country’s Aral Sea alleviation efforts. In September 2023, the Executive Board of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan (EB IFAS) met with representatives of the “Roots and Grasses” program, an initiative associated with the Embassy of Japan in Kazakhstan. Both organizations have collaborated on projects involving the growth and protection of resilient plants and tree species.

Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Japan are also all participants in the Multi-Partner Human Security Trust Fund for the Aral Sea Region, a U.N.-affiliated initiative seeking to “mobilize technical and financial resources for the development of the [Aral Sea] region” by cooperating with multiple stakeholders.

Furthermore, Japanese academic institutions have extensively studied the Aral Sea. Naoki Nihei, a UNDP strategic partnership adviser with extensive experience in Central Asia, said that agricultural and environmental scientists from Kyoto University have pioneered Aral Sea research. “Country-based and international organizations, along with academic institutions, have been the main drivers in Japan’s involvement in healing the Aral Sea,” he told The Diplomat.

Why Is Japan Doing it?

Understanding Tokyo’s interest in healing the Aral Sea is an excellent way to commence a discussion about Japan’s broader Central Asia strategy. Japan is fulfilling its role as a normative power – one of Asia’s most preeminent international aid providers – and aligning itself with U.S. and European initiatives to promote liberal democratic values across Central Asia while counteracting historical Russian and rising Chinese influence. Thus, besides being a substantial Official Development Assistance (ODA) donor and facilitator of aid and infrastructure development projects throughout Central Asia, the country has helped establish such programs as the Central Asia + Japan political dialogue and the Japan-Central Asia Friendship Association (JACAFA) educational and professional exchange network.

Access to Central Asia’s abundant natural resource reserves is a central factor encouraging Tokyo’s presence in the region. Given that resource-poor Japan relies on imports to fuel its energy and industrial needs, diversifying its sources by trading with Central Asia is a wise long-term decision that could help buffer future shocks and supply chain disruptions.

Despite Japan’s promising steps toward helping to heal the Aral Sea, weak spots remain. Nihei explained that “Japanese interest to protect the environment in the Aral Sea region has been there, but not with strong political will while researchers’ interest continued.” He added that “the Japanese government sponsors ODA activities by the funds allocated to international mechanisms, such as community support projects led by the Human Security Trust Fund and UNDP.”

At a 2022 conference by the Carnegie Moscow Center about Japan-Central Asia relations, Professor Tomohiko Uyama stated that economic stagnation and reduced ODA budgets have increased Japanese companies’ aversion to investing in the relatively unfamiliar and riskier Central Asian region. Therefore, while Japan has continued to pursue routine activities in Central Asia, it has recently ceased to develop new projects.

The good news for the communities living along the Aral Sea who want to see life (and water) return is that other international donors remain involved. It is doubtful that Tokyo will have an ongoing leading role in Aral Sea-related operations. “Japan’s political engagement has gradually weakened compared with the one in the period right after the independence of Central Asian countries, and official assistance to the Aral Sea issues is limited to the support [of communities] in the region,” Nihei argued.

Many actors are involved in trying to heal the Aral Sea, although how much of it actually can be restored is an open question. Kazakhstan is heavily invested in restoring the sea, and Uzbekistan is engaged, though Tashkent’s reliance on cotton fields that strain water resources remains problematic. International actors include the UNDP, the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Moscow has also been involved in water-related projects. Perhaps as a gesture to atone for the mistakes of the Soviet Union in desertifying the Aral Sea in the first place, Moscow and Astana have created the Joint Russian-Kazakh Commission on the use and protection of transboundary water bodies. This forum met this past December to discuss transboundary rivers, including the Ural, Big, and Small Uzen, Irtysh, Tobol, Ishim, and the Kigach channels. However, it is unclear if the Aral Sea was also discussed. The Almaty-based Eurasian Development Bank has also addressed future irrigation projects around the Aral Sea.

Tokyo’s Future Role in Central Asia

Tokyo is a silent but important partner to Central Asia. Japan’s trade with the region is significant, but there is room for growth. Bilateral trade between Kazakhstan and Japan was $1.9 billion in 2022 and slightly over $3 billion in 2023, substantially lower than the over $20 billion in Kazakh-Russian trade last year. Japanese trade with Uzbekistan, meanwhile, was even less, amounting to $292 million (approximately 43 billion Japanese yen) in 2022.

At the Carnegie conference about Japan-Central Asia relations, Professor Timur Dadabaev argued, “Japanese businesses are not necessarily interested in the Central Asian market.” He added that while Kazakhstan attracts the most significant attention from the Japanese corporate community, Japanese-led commercial and investment initiatives do not match the quantities of Russian and Chinese projects. However, Dadabaev noted that carving out niche projects and agreements in specific industries could be mutually beneficial – in his words, “quality over quantity.”

To incite more trade, a Japanese business delegation visited Kazakhstan in January; the gathering brought together “more than 200 Kazakh companies and about 60 representatives of the Japanese government and businesses” to discuss digital transformation and green transformation.

Looking to the future, ample alternatives exist for greater engagement between Japan and Central Asia. Tokyo’s interest in Central Asian rare earths, critical minerals, and green energy development are areas for future partnerships. In January 2024, Kazakh Minister of Energy Almasadam Satkaliev and Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Saito Ken signed a memorandum of cooperation on low-carbon development and energy transition. Saito also signed a memorandum with Uzbek Minister of Energy Jurabek Mirzamahmudov regarding economic cooperation and energy transitions.

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Diplomatic Bluebook 2023 highlights how Tokyo wants to “strengthen bilateral ties… through high level talks and will… promote regional cooperation using the framework of the ‘Central Asia plus Japan” Dialogue,” though the scope and logistics for such activities are still being developed.

Japan’s role in the Aral Sea environmental crisis, while not as well known as the initiatives by other actors, is nonetheless significant. Academic research and donations to help local communities are certainly noteworthy. However, it is unlikely that this role will increase, given Tokyo’s limited political interests. Nevertheless, work regarding the Aral Sea helps Tokyo maintain a positive presence in Central Asia that does not appear threatening to other regional powers (e.g., Beijing and Moscow).

Whether Japan has a grand strategy for the future of Japan-Central Asian relations is debatable. Trade activity does exist, and Tokyo would like access to Central Asia’s vital energy resources, including rare earths and critical minerals, which is another unifying link besides the Aral Sea. Future iterations of the Central Asia + Japan Dialogue could achieve a diplomatic breakthrough to elevate interactions and develop a blueprint for the future of Japan’s partnership with Central Asia as a whole, and with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in particular.
Indo-Pacific
What the US National Defense Industrial Strategy Means for the Indo-Pacific (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [2/20/2024 1:25 PM, Monish Tourangbam, 201K, Neutral]
In a first of its kind, the U.S. Department of Defense released a National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) complimenting the priorities of the U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS). Both the strategy documents reflect the geopolitical environment unfolding in the Indo-Pacific, and the threats that the United States perceives primarily from the coercive and assertive actions of the People’s Republic of China.

Irrespective of leadership changes in Washington, the national security perspective in the country has continually seen China’s military and technological rise as the most prominent strategic challenge to the United States. What the NDIS has to say is critical for major stakeholders given the uncertain power balance in the Indo-Pacific, plus the role that the rise of new technologies and new partnerships will play in how the deployment of U.S. power pans out in the region.

Into an Era of Multi-Use Technologies

The advent of dual use technologies that have both civilian and military applications has driven discourse on technologies throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries. From nuclear to outer space and new age cyber technologies, exploiting technological breakthroughs and treading the blurring line between war and peace has had an overwhelming impact on inter-state relations and rivalries.

The U.S. national security and defense strategies in general and the NDIS in particular acknowledge the tectonic shift that technologies are undergoing. With artificial intelligence exponentially growing in its ability to mimic and replicate human actions, the complexity is growing manifold. This is taking military competition in the Indo-Pacific into an era of multi-use technologies, whose applications and implications will go far beyond intended goals. To what extent the United States can shape this future to gain competitive advantage along with allies and partners vis-à-vis adversaries remains the drive for building a modern defense industrial ecosystem.

As the NDIS contends, the U.S. Department of Defense “needs to move aggressively toward innovative, next-generation capabilities while continuing to upgrade and produce, in significant volumes, conventional weapons systems already in the force.” Emerging areas of competition including “autonomous systems, quantum technology, artificial intelligence, and advanced materials” will be the focus, and a growing acknowledgement that technological breakthroughs will equally come from the commercial sector, and not just from government research and funding is a pervasive factor. The NDIS argues that the U.S. Defense Department “currently underutilizes innovations and advancements originally developed for non-military purposes that could be quickly and cost effectively adapted for military use.”

Integrated Deterrence: Reassuring Allies and Partners

The economic, political, and military balance that was heavily tilted toward the United States and its allies in the post-Cold War era has been rapidly shifting to a much more complex environment. The lines between friends and enemies are not so clear, as in the bipolar Cold War. Therefore, building deterrence and war fighting capabilities for this new era is equally complicated, and it is not a task that the United States is truly experienced in accomplishing.

For Washington, China is clearly the primary challenger. Russia is a resurgent military threat, and countries like Iran or North Korea pose clear and present dangers, too. However, many U.S. Indo-Pacific partners, including India, may not exactly share the same threat perceptions, and even if they do in some cases, the preferred ways to deal with these issues may not perfectly align. The new U.S. concept of integrated deterrence aims to keep this element in sight, while upgrading all aspects of defense capabilities. Integrated deterrence “entails working seamlessly across warfighting domains, theaters, the spectrum of conflict, all instruments of U.S. national power, and our network of Alliances and partnerships,” according to the U.S. National Defense Strategy.

Against that backdrop, the question of the United States’ overall production capacity in the defense sector looms large. Maintaining resilient supply chains in the face of crises across the Indo-Pacific and other geopolitical theaters is a point of concern for all major stakeholders. The NDIS is ringing alarm bells on the state of the United States’ comprehensive defense requirements from frontline equipment to support systems and enablers. Is the U.S. defense industrial ecosystem struggling to keep pace with evolving threats, rapid advances in multi-use technologies, and active competitors like China? What is the role of public-private partnership and alignment with the defense industrial bases of allies and partners in the international system? How does the United States intend to incorporate allies and partners in defense planning and production, and how will technology-sharing feature in such engagements?

As Washington reshapes the strengthening and deployment of its military power in an uncertain security environment of new adversaries, old allies, and new partners in the Indo-Pacific, complex questions and answers await its national security, foreign policy and defense planners. For major stakeholders in the Indo-Pacific region, including New Delhi, the priorities set out by the NDIS merit acute attention. India and the United States have already signed four foundational agreements, and the projected intention on both sides is to leverage the strong strategic convergence for peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific for a burgeoning military-to-military interoperability.

Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department “made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of India of MQ-9B Remotely Piloted Aircraft and related equipment for an estimated cost of $3.99 billion.” The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) had delivered the required certification notifying the U.S. Congress of the possible sale. The press release from DSCA contended that the “proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by helping to strengthen the U.S.-Indian strategic relationship and to improve the security of a major defense partner” in the Indo-Pacific region.

More recently, the Indian Army chief made an extensive visit to the United States, holding high-level professional discussions with his counterparts. The move to go beyond buying and selling of defense equipment to co-development and co-production has started to “walk the talk.” Initiatives in areas such as outer space and artificial intelligence show that both countries are ready to jointly leverage the potential, and create synergies unlike anything seen before, involving private sector entrepreneurial spirit. With growing business and strategic alignment between the defense industrial conclaves of the two countries, it is imperative to debate and deliberate on the short-, medium-, and long-term consequences of the U.S. National Defense Strategy and the National Defense Industrial Strategy.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Nilofar Ayoubi
@NilofarAyoubi
[2/20/2024 9:33 AM, 63.3K followers, 13 likes]
According to reports, around 30 individuals have lost their lives after a mountain slide in Nuristan province. Local residents managed to retrieve some of the deceased using simple tools like shovels and pickaxes. Locals claim they have yet to receive any assistance, and the exact number of victims trapped under the rubble remains unknown. @sediqnuristani1

Bilal Sarwary
@bsarwary
[2/20/2024 11:17 PM, 251.2K followers, 5 retweets, 12 likes]
Apparently, Hamas was inspired by the Taliban. Hamas replicated some of the Taliban’s modus operandi during the attacks of 7th October last year. However, the relationship between the Taliban and Hamas is more than only inspirational. More time is needed to unfold the Taliban, AQ, and QF involvement in the attacks of 7th October by Hamas.

Bilal Sarwary
@bsarwary
[2/20/2024 8:19 PM, 251.2K followers, 54 retweets, 220 likes]
Ex Afghan President @ashrafghani Ashraf Ghani spotted in Mecca performing Umrah on February 20, 2024. The UAE apparently granted him permission to travel to Saudi Arabia. This is President Ghani’s first overseas trip since the fall of his government in August 2021. The purpose of his visit is unknown. Apparently, it could be more than only Umrah. How will the Taliban react to his visit. Is this a move to send a message to the Taliban who initiated strategic intelligence cooperation with Quds Force.

Bilal Sarwary
@bsarwary
[2/20/2024 9:38 PM, 251.2K followers, 4 retweets, 20 likes]
As of February 29, the fourth anniversary of the #DohaDeal is nearing, which significantly weakened President Ghani’s @ashrafghani authority (rendering him ineffectual or a target). Ghani opted to visit Mecca in exile alone, symbolizing that Afghanistan remains far from achieving peace both internally and with its neighboring countries.

SIGAR
@SIGARHQ
[2/21/2024 3:00 AM, 169.2K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
According to #StateDept, many civil society representatives trained by U.S. govt fled #Afghanistan, reducing subject matter expertise available to advocate for full participation in Afghan society and organizations with which the United States can partner https://sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2024-01-30qr-section2.pdf#page=7

SIGAR
@SIGARHQ
[2/20/2024 2:00 PM, 169.2K followers, 9 likes]
Under Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, #StateDept advocates for consular access & transparency & accountability for Americans. State also supports work of the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs for the release of detained Americans https://sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2024-01-30qr-section2.pdf#page=7
Pakistan
Imran Khan
@ImranKhanPTI
[2/20/2024 10:55 AM, 20.5M followers, 19K retweets, 35K likes]
Founding Chairman Imran Khan’s message through his family from Adiala Jail:
- PMLN’s journey from “vote ko izzat do” to “boot ko izzat do” is perhaps the mother of all u-turns.
- Elections 2024 were characterised as the mother of all riggings (Pre-Poll, Election Day and Post-Poll Riggings), whereby there was an attempt to decimate a party, not allowed to hold rallies, its symbol taken away, its workers abducted and forced to denounce support, and yet, it beat all the odds to emerge victorious after which all illegal tactics and methods were employed to steal the public mandate.
- Pakistan has also now seen the mother of all selections, where criminals have been given a clean chit in their cases, while Imran Khan has been booked under hundreds of bogus cases & sentenced to 30 years in prison under frivolous charges.
- ⁠We have substantial amount of evidence of election rigging, also provided to us by the officials who conducted the elections.
- ⁠It is high time that sense prevails. Honour the public will and respect their mandate before we become a laughing stock in front of the world.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/20/2024 9:57 AM, 209.6K followers, 2K retweets, 4.3K likes]
Today’s the 3rd day Twitter has been restricted in Pakistan. It’s an own goal because (1) Many high-influence PTI supporters & some top members of its social media team are based abroad. (2) VPN downloads have been surging in Pakistan for many months. Content’s not restricted.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/20/2024 9:57 AM, 209.6K followers, 85 retweets, 229 likes]
And meanwhile the move strengthens the PTI’s victimization narrative, emboldens its base, and brings more global attention to the party and its plight and to the state’s actions against it. And it also increases public anger, and not just from PTI supporters. Big policy misstep.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[2/20/2024 11:15 PM, 42.4K followers, 40 retweets, 166 likes]
Pakistan’s military establishment wants a weak coalition government, and it looks like that’s exactly what they’ll be getting.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[2/20/2024 10:24 AM, 42.4K followers, 102 retweets, 331 likes]
Twitter -- vitally important in Pakistan as a source of information, with the mainstream media often muzzled -- down for the past 3 days as uncertainty continues after a marred election.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[2/20/2024 10:00 AM, 42.4K followers, 34 retweets, 126 likes]
What Pakistan needs for stability are free and fair elections -- exactly what its establishment seems unwilling to provide the country’s citizens. The current state of chaos is the result.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[2/21/2024 3:23 AM, 8.4M followers, 62 retweets, 241 likes]
Wrote this article few days before the election. It was clear before February 8 that if @MaryamNSharif was aiming for CM Punjab then @NawazSharifMNS will announce @CMShehbaz as the new PM. Best of luck for Pakistan. https://www.geo.tv/latest/528775-shehbaz-sharif-what-lies-ahead-for-nawazs-saviour
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/20/2024 2:20 AM, 95.5M followers, 5.8K retweets, 20K likes]
A remarkable day for Jammu and Kashmir! Launching initiatives which will propel holistic development in the region.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/21/2024 10:27 AM, 95.5M followers, 1.5K retweets, 7.4K likes]
Greetings on the start of the Sammakka-Sarakka Medaram Jathara, one of the largest tribal festivals, and a vibrant manifestation of the enduring spirit of our cultural heritage. This Jathara is a great fusion of devotion, tradition and community spirit. We bow to Sammakka-Sarakka and recall the spirit of unity and valour they personify.

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[2/20/2024 8:34 AM, 24.1K followers, 348 retweets, 3.5K likes]
President Droupadi Murmu interacted with members of local tribal communities and visited stalls set up by them at Campbell Bay.

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[2/20/2024 5:19 AM, 24.1K followers, 446 retweets, 4.4K likes]
President Droupadi Murmu visited Indira Point, the southernmost tip of the country, where she met the tri-service troops and interacted with them.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/20/2024 1:13 PM, 3M followers, 130 retweets, 1.1K likes]
Glad to meet the L.69 Co Chair, Amb. Inga Rhonda King. L.69’s efforts as one of the voices of the Global South in the UN had been strong and clear. It has pressed for a long overdue representation in the UN Security Council. A multipolar world needs a Council that is equitably represented to maintain international peace and security.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/20/2024 9:11 AM, 3M followers, 277 retweets, 3K likes]
Always good to meet US @DepSecStateMR Richard Verma. Discussed our deepening cooperation and global and regional issues of mutual interest.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/20/2024 7:42 AM, 3M followers, 221 retweets, 1K likes]
Speaking at the second CII-India Europe Business and Sustainability Conclave https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1MYxNozAVbnKw
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[2/20/2024 2:44 PM, 636.1K followers, 46 retweets, 217 likes]
At the first hour of #21stFebruary, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina an d the central leaders of Bangladesh Awami League have paid respect to the martyrs of the #LanguageMovement by placing wreaths at the Central Shaheed Minar in Dhaka. #MotherLanguageDay #Bangladesh #AwamiLeague

Awami League
@albd1971
[2/20/2024 10:40 AM, 636.1K followers, 31 retweets, 84 likes]
Prime Minister #SheikhHasina on Tuesday urged the people to promote the dedicated souls who are selflessly serving society in different parts of the country. She handed over the prestigious "#EkhusheyPadak" to 21 eminent personalities today. https://albd.org/articles/news/41315/

PM Bhutan
@PMBhutan
[2/20/2024 7:37 AM, 103.9K followers, 7 retweets, 31 likes]
Hon’ble Prime Minister convened the first meeting of the Economic Development Board (EDB) this morning. The meeting endorsed the Terms of Reference and finalized the membership.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/21/2024 2:19 AM, 107K followers, 16 retweets, 13 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu met with the residential community of GDh. Gadhdhoo Island, where he assured them of the administration’s commitment to addressing their concerns. The meeting was held at the GDh. Atoll School.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/21/2024 2:14 AM, 107K followers, 23 retweets, 23 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu metwith the members of GDh. Gadhdhoo Island Council and WDC, at the GDh. Atoll School. The Council members discussed the island’s developmental plans with the President, addressing their concerns and most pertinent needs.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/21/2024 1:19 AM, 107K followers, 59 retweets, 57 likes]
This morning, President Dr @MMuizzu arrived in GDh. Gadhdhoo Island, where he was warmly welcomed by the residents upon arrival. A high-level government delegation is accompanying him on the visit.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/20/2024 1:54 PM, 107K followers, 79 retweets, 96 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu met with the members of the South Huvadhu Atoll council at the Secretariat of the South Huvadhu Atoll Council. During the meeting, they discussed various developmental initiatives.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[2/21/2024 2:52 AM, 5K followers, 2 likes] Delighted to have attended as Guest of Honour and spoken at the Int’l Mother Language Day organized by the @bdhclanka this morning. I stressed the importance of creating an inclusive and cohesive society thru linguistic diversity where every individual feels valued & respected

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[2/21/2024 12:45 AM, 5K followers, 3 retweets, 11 likes]
I had a productive bilateral meeting and joint press conference with my friend the Foreign Minister of #Iran Dr.@Amirabdolahian at @MFA_SriLanka.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[2/20/2024 4:31 AM, 5K followers, 10 retweets, 21 likes]
Pleased to welcome Dr. @Amirabdolahian, Minister of Foreign Affairs of #Iran and his delegation to #SriLanka. We had extensive discussions on further strengthening our cooperation in multiple areas, including the energy sector. We agreed to work closely and enhance our partnership further @IRIMFA_EN @MFA_SriLanka
Central Asia
Javlon Vakhabov
@JavlonVakhabov
[2/20/2024 2:19 PM, 5.8K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
Today, I and Evren Rutbil, Director at the International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS UNESCO), were privileged to sign a Cooperation Agreement, first of its kind since we’ve both got our current assignments. IICAS is almost a 30 year old international organization founded and headquartered in #Samarkand as an outcome of the @UNESCO led Silk Road Expeditions to Central Asia back in late 1980s - early 1990s. IICAS is mostly serving as a network for international collaboration connecting local scholars with their counterparts abroad to facilitate a multidisciplinary study of the region, doing researches on tangible and intangible cultural heritage, environment, archeology, history, art, religions, ethnography, geography, written and spoken literature, social sciences and others. As these research areas coincide with what The International Instiute for Central Asia is focusing too, we have determined a number of primary tasks to perform in 2024. This Agreement looks very promising and I look forward to bringing it into fruition.

Joanna Lillis
@joannalillis
[2/20/2024 5:39 AM, 28.7K followers, 21 retweets, 41 likes]
Karakalpak activist @muratbaiman, arrested in #Kazakhstan on #Uzbekistan warrant, faces charges of public calls for riots and mass unrest and violence using media + preparing, storing, distributing material containing threat to public order. None of that is in his public tweets

{End of Report}
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