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:
Monday, February 5, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Amnesty International Demands Release Of Afghan Educational Activists Held By Taliban (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/3/2024 12:17 PM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
Amnesty International called on Afghanistan’s de facto Taliban rulers to free two activists working for the Fekre Behtar educational organization, who the rights group said were “arbitrarily arrested” in October 2023 in Kabul. Amnesty said that “Ahmad Fahim Azimi and Seddiqullah Afghan’s arrest and arbitrary detention are against international human rights law. They must be immediately and unconditionally released.” Amnesty said the men were falsely accused of assisting girls from the national robotic team to leave the country, inciting women protesters, and organizing protests. They have denied the allegations. After taking power in August 2021, the Taliban severely restricted the rights of women and girls, especially in educational matters.
Pakistan
Pakistan’s Military Has Swayed Many Elections. Now It’s Going Full Tilt. (New York Times)
New York Times [2/4/2024 4:57 PM, Christina Goldbaum and Zia ur-Rehman, 441K, Negative]
Tucked away on a patch of dying grass on the outskirts of Islamabad, the gathering hardly looked like a political rally at the height of an election season. Two dozen men sat on plastic chairs in silence. There were no posters to promote a campaign, no microphones to deliver speeches, no sound system to amp up the crowd.

Even the candidate, Aamir Mughal, was missing: He had gone into hiding months earlier, at the first signs of a military-led crackdown on his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or P.T.I. The authorities had already raided his home, arrested two of his sons and lodged a case against him in connection with anti-military protests.

“They are putting pressure on us to quit the party and to quit politics,” Mr. Mughal said in an interview from a safe house where he stayed before emerging for gatherings this weekend. “It’s all part of an effort to weaken and eliminate the party.”

As Pakistan heads to the polls on Thursday, its powerful military is using a familiar playbook to sideline its nemesis of the hour, crippling P.T.I. in the first national election since the party’s leader, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, ran afoul of the generals and was ousted by Parliament in 2022.

P.T.I. candidates have been detained and forced to denounce the party, the candidates say. Their relatives have been arrested and their homes ransacked in an effort to intimidate them, candidates, their relatives and human rights observers say. Officials have prevented other P.T.I. candidates from campaigning, censored news coverage of the party and used internet blackouts to block live-streamed speeches by P.T.I. leaders. The dragnet has also ensnared hundreds of supporters who have been detained.

Last week, Mr. Khan, who has been jailed since August, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of leaking state secrets and to a 14-year term in a separate corruption case. On Saturday, Mr. Khan was given an additional seven-year sentence, as was his wife, Bushra Bibi, on a charge that their marriage broke the law.

While military intervention in Pakistan’s elections is nothing new — Mr. Khan himself was a beneficiary in 2018 — the current crackdown has been more visible than those in previous years, analysts say, making this vote among the least credible in Pakistan’s 76-year history.

“These elections won’t have any legitimacy, even less than the 2018 elections,” said Zaigham Khan, a political analyst and columnist based in Islamabad, the capital. “And if an elected government doesn’t have legitimacy, you can’t expect to see political stability or economic stability.”

The military has wielded a heavier hand as it confronts a particularly turbulent moment in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 240 million people where frustration over the generals’ iron grip has boiled over in recent months.

For most of Pakistan’s existence, the military has either led the country directly or exerted enormous influence on civilian governments. When Mr. Khan was ousted after a dispute over the military’s leadership, he accused the generals of orchestrating the move. At rallies attended by thousands of supporters, Mr. Khan railed against those generals by name — direct criticism that was once unheard-of in a country where people only ever complained in code, referring to the military as “the establishment.”

Viral videos created by Mr. Khan’s party stoked frustration with the military among a large base of young supporters who for the first time are coming to terms with what the generals’ hold means for the country’s seemingly eternal quest for sustainable politics. When Mr. Khan was arrested in May, hundreds of protesters attacked military installations in once unimaginable scenes.

In the months since, the military has sought to reassert control and make clear that its hand in politics will be lasting, analysts say.

Government officials have denied any unlawful meddling in the elections intended to sideline P.T.I. They have defended the arrests of P.T.I. members and leaders as a necessary response to the violent protests in May.

“It appears the party looks at their defeat looming large and is using the victim card to cover up the criminal actions of some of their leaders,” said Murtaza Solangi, the interim information minister. “The law has taken its course,” he added.

Most election observers expect a victory by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, or P.M.L.N., the party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif — who himself fell out of favor with the military in 2017, only to find himself once more in its favor in this election.

The crackdown has made this perhaps Pakistan’s most muted election in decades. Streets that would normally be filled with political rallies have remained empty. For weeks, many people were convinced that the election would not even be held on the scheduled date. By demoralizing and confusing P.T.I. supporters, analysts said, the military hoped to prevent them from going to the polls.

“It looks unlikely that P.T.I. voters will come out; they feel that they already know the election result, it’s predetermined,” said Mohammad Waseem, a professor of political science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Last month, Mr. Khan’s party was barred from using its iconic cricket bat symbol — a nod to his sporting fame — to represent its candidates on ballots. That dealt a critical blow to the party in a country where around 40 percent of people are illiterate and voters rely on symbols to identify candidates.

P.T.I. candidates have also effectively lost their ability to campaign. Permits to hold public rallies have been either revoked or outright denied, according to campaigners and to paperwork viewed by The New York Times. Printing companies have been told not to produce P.T.I. posters, employees say. Those that do manage to get printed quickly disappear.

To shore up support, P.T.I. candidates are campaigning in the shadows in small, private gatherings. Last Monday night, dozens of P.T.I. supporters met at a run-down apartment building on the outskirts of the eastern city of Lahore to hear a P.T.I. candidate speak.

Men trickled in from the unlit street, using the flashlights on their phones to climb three flights of concrete steps until they reached the rooftop. Perched on a railing was a green and red P.T.I. flag.

“We are going door to door to spread Imran Khan’s message in these difficult times,” the candidate, Wasim Qadir, told the crowd. “I know you are all supporting us.” He reminded the voters that, with the party’s cricket bat icon prohibited, he would be represented on the ballot by a wicket, while another candidate was using a medallion symbol.

Mr. Qadir had planned to hold a public rally earlier that day after receiving permission from the authorities for the first time since he began campaigning. But that morning, four unmarked vehicles arrived at his campaign headquarters, and security officials arrested one of his drivers and confiscated a sound system, according to his campaign manager. The message was unofficial but clear: No rally would be allowed.

The crackdown on P.T.I. supporters has reached into pockets of Pakistani society that were once safe from military harassment. Women have been arrested in droves in connection with the violent protests against the military in May. Even Pakistan’s elite — which have traditionally held close ties to the military — have been swept up.

In Lahore, a sprawling metropolis and the capital of Punjab Province, the arrest in May of the granddaughter of a former army chief sent shock waves through the upper echelons of Pakistani society. The granddaughter, Khadijah Shah, a well-known P.T.I. supporter, faces charges of terrorism, sedition and rioting.

Ms. Shah, who has denied involvement in any illegal activities, was granted bail last month after spending seven months in jail. Many believe the military was using her to deliver a warning to the rest of the country’s elite: Their days of being out of the military’s reach are over.

The intimidation campaign has even entangled some who say they do not support P.T.I. In October, an Islamabad-based podcaster, Imran Noshad Khan, was arrested and detained for three days after posting a podcast critical of the military. He has been charged with sedition.

“It has a chilling effect,” Mr. Khan said. The message, he added, is this: “Don’t provide a platform for people who criticize the establishment for its role in politics.”
Poll: Pakistani Youth Hope for Transparent Elections, Trust Military (VOA)
VOA [2/2/2024 6:23 PM, Staff, 761K, Neutral]
A new opinion survey of young voters in Pakistan reports that a majority anticipate that national elections next week will be transparent and fair, even though one of the front-runners has been jailed and the country’s independent human rights commission says there is little chance of a free and fair vote.

The youth survey, commissioned by VOA and conducted by international polling agency IPSOS, delved into the voting trends, institutional trust and foreign policy preferences of voters aged 18 to 34. More than 56.8 million young people are eligible to vote on February 8.

In the months leading up to the polls, a major political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, led by former Prime Minister Imran Khan, has been subjected to a nationwide military-backed state crackdown, with hundreds of grassroots workers detained, abducted and forced to quit the party or politics altogether.

The imprisoned Khan was sentenced to 14 more years this week on charges of corruption and leaking state secrets. The Supreme Court also has backed the election commission’s decision to deprive the former cricket captain’s party of its iconic cricket bat electoral symbol.

Despite those actions widely seen as targeting one of the country’s leading parties, the survey found about 65% of respondents expressed hope that the elections will be conducted transparently.

The survey also found that Pakistan’s powerful military, which this year has been again accused of interfering in the country’s politics, remains the most trusted institution among the youth.

Some 74% of respondents expressed trust in the military. The Supreme Court was rated as the second most reliable institution, with 58% of respondents saying they trust it. The media was third, with 54% support. The election commission garnered the least confidence, with 42%.

Bilal I Gilani, executive director of Gallup Pakistan, another survey research and consultancy firm, said that the results showing broad support for the military are consistent with previous polls, including a Gallup survey conducted in June 2023 that showed 88% of people trusted the military.

He said the military’s political interference in politics is usually associated with generals and other high-ranking officers — not with common soldiers. Pakistan has one of the world’s largest militaries, with around 630,000 active-duty troops, and 150,000 members of the Frontier Corps and Rangers, according to the 2023 estimates in the CIA Factbook.

That’s why, he said, the army’s interference in politics doesn’t usually come to mind whenever the people are asked about their trust in the military, and they usually respond by keeping the military’s combat roles in mind.

The survey also probed the perceived influence of institutions on elections, with most young people asserting that no institution in Pakistan can manipulate the electoral outcome. However, among those who believe elections can be rigged, the military emerged as the institution most capable of influencing the electoral process.

International influence on the elections was also explored in the poll, revealing that one in four young people believes the United States can influence the February 8 balloting.

Some 60% of young people in Pakistan told pollsters that political leaders do not understand their issues or priorities; however that does not appear to be diminishing their interest in voting.

The survey reported 70% of respondents said they are planning to participate in the elections. Most of them also said they plan to vote for the same party they supported in the 2018 elections. About one in five of those surveyed expressed a willingness to explore alternative political options.

Approximately 17% of the surveyed youth, on the other hand, declared their decision never to vote.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political commentator and a former caretaker chief minister of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, thinks that despite distrusting the election commission, young people are likely to vote in large numbers because of effective campaigning by the political parties.

He said that in past elections, young people did not turn out in large numbers, but with the popularity of social media, he expects more to become politically engaged.

Qazi Khizar Habib, a member of Human Rights Commission Pakistan and a longtime election observer, said that in the last eight Pakistan elections, the maximum turnout has gone up to 50%.

He says that youth turnout in those elections was much lower and suspects the percentage of young people who do not plan to go to the polls is higher than 17%.

Young voter issues

Pakistan’s economy is a top concern. Last year Pakistan recorded 29% inflation, and the survey showed that inflation (cited by 70% of respondents) and poverty (cited by 59%) are the most important issues for young voters. Additionally, three out of four said religious freedom and freedom of speech are important factors when deciding who to support.

In foreign relations, the survey reported 69% of young people expressed a desire for better relations with India. The recent policy of deporting illegal Afghan refugees found support among 66% of the surveyed youth.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor was identified as a valuable project for Pakistan by three out of four Pakistani youths. This widespread endorsement across all provinces indicates a consensus among the youth regarding the strategic importance of CPEC for the country’s economic development and regional connectivity.
Khan’s party navigates Pakistan blackouts to keep campaign alive (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [2/4/2024 11:00 AM, Staff, 163K, Neutral]
Former prime minister Imran Khan’s party has redefined election campaigning in Pakistan with its social media rallies and use of AI technology in a bid to sidestep a nationwide crackdown that has followed it online.

Khan was jailed in the build-up to the campaign, while his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has been heavily restricted from campaigning for Thursday’s vote and banned from the television airwaves.

Censorship then followed as the party pushed its election campaign online.

"They can ban what they want, they can ban YouTube and TikTok, whatever they want but our vote is for Imran Khan," 18-year-old Imran Aziz, a first-time voter, told AFP at a bustling electronics market in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

Pakistani internet freedom watchdog Bytes 4 All recorded four hours-long social media shutdowns in January that cut off access to TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube while Khan’s PTI live-streamed to its supporters.

The blackouts were blamed by the government on "technical difficulties".

The party’s main website was also blocked in January and, within hours, a seemingly perfect duplicate appeared -- except that it contained disinformation meant to confuse voters.

The methods are not new, and were also used by Khan when he was in power, but activists say the scale of the crackdown is "unprecedented".

"It challenges the democracy of a nation when you have the incumbents preventing the opposition’s ability to participate," said Alp Toker, the director of global network monitor NetBlocks.

Websites removed

Khan says the campaign against him is an attempt by the government and military to keep him from returning to power after analysts say he fell out with the generals -– Pakistan’s kingmakers.

PTI websites have been blocked, including an official portal listing its candidates nationwide.

A duplicate site with a slightly different web address appeared online hours later containing misleading candidate information, directing voters to cast ballots for representatives from other parties.

PTI activists told AFP they have had the fake site taken down but their own candidate webpage is still blocked.

It had already been severely hampered by a ban preventing the party from using its traditional election symbol of a cricket bat. Literacy rates hover around 60 percent in Pakistan, so parties use symbols to identify their candidates.

Despite the restrictions, PTI remains far ahead of its rivals when it comes to connecting online with Pakistan’s youthful population and tens of millions tune in to its live streams.

It has also become the first party to use AI voice-cloning technology, releasing a fresh speech by Khan from behind bars.

"They have apps, they have online speeches, they’ve done a TikTok jalsa (gathering) which is unprecedented, at least in Pakistan, so they have a way of innovating and it’s always been the case," said Ramsha Jahangir, a technology journalist.

She said censorship efforts by the government have little impact on PTI’s popularity because the party is nimble enough to keep reaching its voters.

Bytes 4 All director Shahzad Ahmed agreed that, in a country with more than 70 million social media users and a median age under 21, such "shutdowns are counterproductive".

"The youth is quick to adopt new technologies to circumvent such blockades," he said, pointing to the use of virtual private networks (VPN).

‘Attack on freedom’

Independent candidates with scant resources who rely on social media to spread their message have also been hit hard.

Lawyer Jibran Nasir, who is running in the port city of Karachi, has taken the government to court over the social media shutdowns, saying it sets a "dangerous precedent" for the future and violates people’s constitutional rights.

"It is a direct attack on the freedom of expression of all Pakistanis regardless of what part of the political spectrum they belong to," he told AFP.

"I primarily rely on social media because, given the inflation, it is virtually impossible to run a fully fledged campaign within the budget limits."

AFP spoke to two other independents who said their messaging was also affected.

Apart from the curbs on political freedom, the measures have seeped into the operations of online businesses in a country facing an economic crisis.

Rabia Farhan, who runs a baked-goods business on Instagram from her home in Islamabad, said the outages left her unable to connect with vendors at a time when millions of Pakistanis are struggling due to rampant inflation and currency devaluation.

"Everything was paused online until and unless we used physical resources," she told AFP.

Saba Mushtaq, of ride-hailing and delivery service Bykea, said the company experienced "significant operational disruptions" affecting 100,000 commuters and 25,000 drivers.

IT trade association Pasha told AFP it was trying to get the government to ensure internet shutdowns do not knock out the tech sector, by protecting certain websites.

The brazen attempts to shut down the party’s online presence only hardens the resolve of PTI supporters.

"They are imposing these restrictions but they cannot take (Khan) out of our hearts," PTI supporter Malik Noman, 28, said.
Pakistan’s Elections Are Being Brazenly Rigged. Why Doesn’t the U.S. Seem to Care? (Time)
Time [2/5/2024 3:00 AM, Charlie Campbell, 1.4M, Neutral]
For a man staring down the barrel of a 10-year jail sentence, Imran Khan was oddly nonchalant in court last Tuesday. As his representatives argued passionately for a fair hearing, Pakistan’s ex-Prime Minister retrieved his eyeglasses, unfolded a newspaper, and did his utmost to ignore the surrounding commotion.

“At one point he looks up and says, ‘Oh, I don’t need to listen to this, it’s a fixed match, I know what the result is going to be,’” Khan’s sister, Aleema, tells TIME. “‘So why are all of you wasting your time?’”

It’s not a difficult conclusion to draw. Khan’s trial for allegedly leaking state secrets was conducted in camera inside a makeshift courtroom within a jail complex, with public and media banned. Khan’s own defense team were blocked from taking part, with the judge appointing two state-employed colleagues of the prosecution to represent the former national cricket captain instead. “When they gave the sentence, he said, ‘Oh, it’s only 10 years? I thought it would be 15,’” says Aleema. “So he’s laughing through the whole thing.”

The case heard one of more than 180 separate charges Khan, 71, currently faces and that have rendered a return to power nigh impossible for Pakistan’s most popular politician. He was back in court on Thursday on separate corruption charges related to the transfer of land for a charitable university he founded. On Saturday, he was sentenced to an additional seven years for having an “un-Islamic marriage.” “It’s becoming such a joke,” says Aleema.

But few in Pakistan are laughing as the nuclear-armed nation of 240 million stumbles towards general elections on Feb. 8. The legal onslaught on Khan dovetails with a broader purge of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which has seen thousands of workers arrested, dozens of its leaders quit under duress, its famed cricket-bat logo banned, and constituency boundary lines redrawn to allegedly benefit its opponents. Khan’s name has been scrubbed from mainstream media and his own nomination papers rejected. “Of course, there is no level playing field and no way this election can be seen as ‘free and fair,’” says Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch.

The obvious question is why a U.S. whose President has called democracy promotion overseas “the defining challenge of our time” has not taken a stronger stance to condemn such shenanigans. When asked at a press briefing Wednesday about attempts to muzzle the PTI, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller cut the question short, saying he couldn’t comment on the specific report because “I haven’t seen it,” before issuing the bromide “we want to see free and fair elections take place in Pakistan.”

Pakistan is, after all, a U.S. treaty ally (albeit one whose interests have not always aligned on security matters, to put it mildly.) America remains its top export destination and a key source of aid, thus retaining significant influence. A power vacuum and popular unrest serves nobody’s interests at a time when the U.S. is desperately trying to stop Israel’s war against Hamas from spilling into a broader regional conflict.

In truth, American reticence is both personality-driven and structural. Khan retained an oddly chummy relationship with the overtly Islamophobic Donald Trump, but he proved no friend to Joe Biden, fuming over the President’s failure to call him following his 2020 election victory and ranting about a U.S.-sponsored plot to oust him. (The case regarding leaking state secrets relates to allegations Khan released a confidential diplomatic cypher that he tenuously claims proves Washington pulled the strings of his ouster in an April 2022 no-confidence vote.)

American engagement in Pakistan boils down to wanting the South Asian nation to keep a lid on Islamic terrorism and stabilize relations with its historic nemesis India—and Khan’s record is poor on both. On his watch, deaths from terrorism soared dramatically while Pakistan also ranked as the world’s fifth most dangerous country for journalists. Regarding relations with New Delhi, Khan called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “racist” and “Hindu supremacist” and raised the prospect of war over disputed Kashmir. More egregiously, Khan shamelessly cozied up to both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

But the bigger issue for the U.S. is structural. Ultimately, it doesn’t much matter who holds political office in Pakistan because true power lies with its military, which has ruled the nation for over half its history and today acts as kingmaker. As one former top U.S. diplomat in Islamabad tells TIME: “When we had a [crisis], we didn’t call the prime minister—we called the Chief of Army Staff.”

General Asim Munir occupies that rarified post today, and it is he who has orchestrated Khan’s downfall after the two fell out spectacularly over military appointments and other bugbears—not least the ransacking of military properties by PTI supporters on May 9. It was also Munir’s decision to bring back three-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from exile, quash his corruption conviction, repeal his lifetime ban from politics, and pave the way for a historic fourth stint in power. But as no Pakistani Prime Minister has ever completed a full term, few are betting on Shariff staying around long. Relations with Pakistan’s top brass take precedence. Tellingly, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted Munir in Washington in December.

“Given that Nawaz’s three terms in power ended with a fall out with the military, we can expect the same will happen this time around,” says Madiha Afzal, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution.

In the near term, however, from the U.S. perspective Sharif is a safe, predictable pair of hands who won’t rock the boat with India. “The State Department seems to be quite comfortable with Nawaz Sharif,” says Tariq Amin-Khan, a politics professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. But Sharif’s record on the economy is poor and reputation for graft “really quite legendary,” adds Amin-Khan. Since the turn of the millennium, per capita GDP in Pakistan has risen by an average of just 1% annually. In 2000, the average Pakistani was some 50% richer than his Indian counterpart; today, they are 25% poorer. Headline inflation rose to 29.7% year-over-year in December owing to tax hikes and a sharp fall in the currency.

“Having been prime minister for more time than anyone else since 1990, [Sharif] must take a fair share of blame for Pakistan’s poor economic performance over this period,” writes Gareth Leather, senior Asia economist for Capital Economics, in a briefing note. Despite his spotty diplomatic and security record, growth under Khan averaged at 6% for his last two years in office, despite headwinds such as the pandemic.

The risk is that a spiraling economy overseen by a government that lacks broad popular support would set the stage for significant social unrest—chances of which would be amplified by interference with the actual voting process. The PTI is refusing to give up and has managed to register candidates for the vast majority of constituencies. With the PTI logo banned, the party has set up an online portal to show supporters which officially independent candidate has its backing. “Give me a free and fair election and I think we will run away with three-quarters [of seats] if not more,” says Raoof Hasan, PTI’s principal spokesman and a former special assistant to Khan.

Various opinion polls put Khan’s popularity at around 60% to 80% and the threat of a strong showing from his supporters may prompt the military to take more decisive action to hobble them. “The election as it is set up is already not free nor fair,” says Afzal. “The only question, in my view, is if there is overt rigging on election day.”

Street violence and any security response would, above all, make it more difficult to secure another IMF bailout—one deemed essential to avoid default and potential economic collapse. “My greatest fear is that this election is going to be called out for being a sham,” says Anita Weiss, a professor of international studies at the University of Oregon. “And there will be riots all over Pakistan that it can barely endure because of the severe economic crisis.”

As such, the Biden Administration may yet regret not taking a stronger stance to protect the democratic values it claims to hold so dear. “It would likely not have changed the overall direction of what’s happening,” says Afzal. “[But] Washington voicing concern would have given Pakistan’s military establishment pause, and perhaps softened the extent of the crackdown.”
Pakistan Imran Khan Faces Another Conviction Days Before Vote (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/3/2024 7:26 AM, Kamran Haider, 5543K, Negative]
A Pakistani court sentenced jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi to seven years imprisonment, saying their marriage six years ago was unlawful.

The conviction comes ahead of next week’s general election and is Khan’s third since August when a special court sentenced him to a three-year jail term for hiding income from the sale of state gifts he acquired when he was in power.

The couple were present in the courtroom when the verdict was announced, Gahar Ali Khan, Khan’s lawyer and party’s interim chief, told reporters outside the prison. They have been accused for breaking the Islamic practice of observing a waiting period of four months before re-marrying, with Saturday’s ruling coming within three weeks of being indicted. The couple has denied any wrongdoing.

“This is to scandalize them before elections,” lawyer Khan said, adding that they will challenge the verdict in a higher court.

Khan been slapped with over 170 cases, which the former cricket star says are political motivated to keep him out of elections. Khan, who is still considered as the most popular politician in Pakistan, is already barred from holding public office.
Imran Khan and his wife get seven-year prison sentence for unlawful marriage (Reuters)
Reuters [2/3/2024 3:13 PM, Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam and Ariba Shahid, 5239K, Negative]
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Khan were sentenced to seven years in prison and fined on Saturday by a court that ruled their 2018 marriage broke the law, his party said.

It was the third ruling against Khan this week and comes ahead of national elections on Thursday that he is barred from contesting.

Khan, 71, has in recent days been sentenced to 10 years for leaking state secrets and 14 years along with this wife for illegally selling state gifts. His representatives say he will launch appeals in all three cases.

It was not immediately clear if his various sentences would run concurrently.

Khan is in prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, while his wife will serve her sentence at their hilltop mansion in nearby Islamabad. He already faces a 10-year disqualification from holding public office.

"After hours of rushed hearings at court, no cross examination of witnesses, and no due process - a mockery of the law," Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), said in a statement.

"With the way these trials are being conducted, there will be a huge question mark on the February 8th elections. This is a test case for Pakistan’s higher judiciary."

The couple were each fined 500,000 rupees ($1,800), ARY News reported.

Bushra was accused of not completing the waiting period mandated by Islam, called "Iddat", after divorcing her previous husband and marrying Khan.

The Khans signed their marriage contract, or "Nikkah", in January 2018 in a secret ceremony seven months before the former cricket superstar became prime minister for the first time.

There was controversy over whether they had wed before the period was complete. After initial denials of the marriage, PTI confirmed it weeks later.

The Khans both denied wrongdoing.

"Can say I’m a witness in the Nikkah and it’s a categorically yet another fake case," Khan’s media advisor Zulfi Bukhari told Reuters. "From witnesses to the evidence to the procedure."

CRIMINAL COMPLAINT

Bushra’s ex-husband, Khawar Maneka, to whom she was married for about 30 years, brought a criminal complaint against the Khans, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Khan has often called Bushra his spiritual leader. She is known for her devotion to Sufism, a mystical form of Islam.

Born Bushra Riaz Watto, she changed her name to Khan after her marriage. Her husband and followers commonly refer to her as Bushra Bibi or Bushra Begum, titles that denote respect in Urdu.

It was not clear when or how Khan met Bushra, but former aide Aun Chaudhry said Khan was impressed with her spirituality.

Khan, who had acquired a playboy image in the 1990s as his cricket career took off, has said he is keenly interested in Sufism.

Khan’s two previous marriages - to Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of tycoon James Goldsmith, and television journalist Reham Nayyar Khan - ended in divorce.

Khan has been fighting dozens of cases since he was ousted from power in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence in 2022. He says his removal was backed by the powerful military with whom he fell out while in office.

He and his party say they have been subjected to a military-backed crackdown, including arrests of hundreds of supporters, party members and key aides.

The military, which has for decades held sway over Pakistan’s politics, denies the claims.

NAB, the anti-graft agency that put Khan on trial, has at various times investigated, tried and jailed all prime ministers to have served since 2008, including Nawaz Sharif, whose party is considered the frontrunner in next week’s election.
Pakistan military kills 24 militants in Balochistan week before elections (Reuters)
Reuters [2/2/2024 5:56 AM, Ariba Shahid, 5.2M, Negative]
Pakistan’s military has killed 24 militants in three days in the restive southwestern province of Balochistan, the military said in a statement on Friday, less than a week before national elections.

Four law enforcement personnel and two civilians have also been killed, the statement said.
Militant violence in Pakistan’s border areas has put authorities on alert ahead of next Thursday’s polls.

Militants, including suicide bombers, attacked Mach and Kolpur complexes in Balochistan, the military’s Inter Services Public Relations agency (ISPR) said on Tuesday.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of several separatist groups in Balochistan, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The group aims to achieve independence for mountainous and mineral-rich Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province by territory but the smallest in terms of population, which has seen a decades-long insurgency.

Balochistan borders Afghanistan to the north, Iran to the west and has a long coastline on the Arabian Sea. It has Pakistan’s largest natural gas field and is believed to hold many more undiscovered reserves.

It is also rich in precious metals including gold, the production of which has grown over recent years.

Balochistan is a key location in China’s huge multi-billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of President Xi Jinping’s massive Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.
At least 10 police personnel killed in attack on police station in Pakistan -police (Reuters)
Reuters [2/4/2024 11:10 PM, Saud Mehsud, 5239K, Negative]
At least 10 police personnel were killed and six more injured in a militant attack on a police station in northwest Pakistan on Monday, police said.

Pakistan has seen a resurgence of attacks by Islamist militants, especially those targeting security personnel, since 2022, when a ceasefire between the Pakistani Taliban and the government broke down.

Monday’s attack occurred at 3 a.m. local time (2200 GMT) when militants first targeted constables using snipers and then entered the police station, police officers in Pakistan’s Draban region said.

"After entering the building of the police station, the terrorists used hand grenades which caused more casualties to the police," said Malik Anees ul Hassan, the deputy superintendent of police in Draban.

At least 23 soldiers were similarly killed in December when a six-man suicide squad drove an explosive-laden truck into a military camp, set up in a police station complex, in northwest Pakistan.

Violence has also escalated in the last few days in Pakistan as the South Asian nation approaches its national elections later this week.
Pakistan: Marching for the thousands who disappeared in Balochistan (BBC)
BBC [2/2/2024 7:17 PM, Kelly Ng, 14192K, Negative]
Pakistan is dominated by news of politics as it prepares for general elections next week. But when hundreds of citizens marched on the capital Islamabad in December, they did so with a completely different agenda.

Among them was Sammi Deen Baloch, hugging a laminated photograph of her father - as she had done on numerous occasions over the past 14 years - and demanding to know where he is.

Or if he is even still alive.

The 26-year-old is one of several women who led the march, which saw protesters walk almost 1,000 miles from the restive Balochistan province, demanding the whereabouts of family members whom they say have been "forcibly disappeared". At least 200 people were arrested and police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowds.

Campaigns like this are routine in the conflict-ridden province and women play a key part in organising them.

Balochistan, in the west of Pakistan, has been the scene of a long-running nationalist insurgency.

Separatist militants say they are fighting for a free Balochistan.

The protesters say their loved ones - many of them men - have been picked up, tortured and killed with impunity by Pakistani security forces, amid a bloody counterinsurgency operation. Islamabad authorities have denied these accusations.

They believe there have been thousands of such disappearances over the last two decades.

The UN defines enforced disappearances as "the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the state".

Vanished without a trace

Sammi’s father, Deen Mohammad Baloch, was forcibly disappeared when she was just 11. In June 2009, armed forces stormed a public hospital in south-western Balochistan when he was the doctor on shift and detained him.

"Until today we do not know what has happened to him. My mother does not know if she is a widow or still married. And we still don’t know why they took him," she told the BBC.

The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, a non-profit organisation representing family members of those who disappeared in Balochistan, says approximately 7,000 cases have been registered with them since 2004.

The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances convened by the government records 2,752 active cases of enforced disappearances in the province as of January 2024, but Pakistan’s interim prime minister claimed in a recent interview with the BBC that only about 50 people are missing.

In 2021, Pakistan’s parliament - the National Assembly - passed a bill to criminalise enforced disappearances, but it has not yet come into force. Court directives have also been issued over the years to hold the state responsible for such disappearances, but rights groups say these pledges have rung hollow.

The state has branded Baloch activists - many of whom have advocated Baloch nationalism and irredentism - as secessionists or trouble-makers.

But many people who were picked up in recent years are Baloch people who do not have anything to do with the armed resistance, Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui claims.

He said officials instead detain "on mere suspicion and at times on false information provided by rival pro-Pakistan groups based in Balochistan".

Protesters have been calling for Pakistani authorities to deal with the accused according to the law, not detain them arbitrarily.

"If they had done anything wrong, produce them to the court. These forced disappearances have brought so much suffering to our family. My life has completely changed since 2009. We’ve been put through so much mental torture. I don’t know what life we are living. It is very painful," Sammi said.

Mahrang Baloch, who organised last year’s long march and was arrested twice in the midst of it, told the BBC she hoped it "brought global attention to the human rights violations and state oppression prevalent in Balochistan".

The 30-year-old, who is a prominent figure in the Baloch resistance movement, said that in 2009 her father Abdul Gaffar Langove was taken - allegedly by security service officers - and found dead with signs of torture two years later. Her brother was detained for three months in 2017.

"Cases of forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Balochistan escalated to an alarming extent… Many people remain unaccounted for. Some may be released after being held in secret cells and tortured. But the conditions of their mental and physical health are far from normal," she said.

A Baloch man living in exile in London said he fled Pakistan for fear of being abducted.

"The Pakistani army had been trying to impose hegemony on citizens in Balochistan. We have a lot of gold and other natural resources in the province, but the Baloch people do not receive resources from the national government. Some places don’t even have proper drinking water," said the man, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity.

He noted cases of Baloch activists who mysteriously died while in exile, including activist Karima Baloch who was found dead in December 2020 near Lake Ontario in Toronto, Canada. Earlier that year, Pakistani journalist Sajid Hussain, who served as editor-in-chief of The Balochistan Times while in exile in Sweden, was found dead in a river north of Stockholm. Authorities in the respective countries have said the circumstances around both deaths were suspicious.

Exploited and alienated

Balochistan recently returned to the global spotlight after it was hit by air strikes from Iran in January, leading Pakistan to retaliate with strikes in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province.

Both states say they were targeting Baloch militants.

Historically, the term Balochistan has been used to refer to a wider territory that includes land in Iran and Afghanistan.

Baloch groups in both Pakistan and Iran are part of a decades-long struggle for greater autonomy, with some fighting for an independent Balochistan state.

The Balochs have blamed the Pakistani government for exploiting and profiting from the province’s resources while neglecting its development.

It is also a crucial part of a multi-billion dollar project funded by China called the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, but many believe the Baloch people will not receive the employment opportunities created through the project.

"The entire province is racked by alienation, dejection and frustration towards Pakistan as well as those Punjabi socio-political elites who call the shots in Pakistan," said Burzine Waghmar from the University of London’s SOAS South Asia Institute.

Protesters and observers believe it is in Pakistan’s political and economic interest to resolve the conflict in Balochistan, but they hold little hope that the upcoming elections would bring change for the Baloch people, and fear it may even disenfranchise the community further.

The state has been pushing non-Baloch candidates to contest in Baloch constituencies, which will further alienate the already-marginalised community, Mr Siddiqui said.

The election is of little significance for the Baloch, Mahrang said.

"Whichever government comes into power, the human rights violations and extrajudicial killings will persist in Balochistan. It has never been of genuine concern to the leadership," she said.
India
Indian Embassy Employee in Moscow Arrested for Spying for Pakistan (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/5/2024 12:54 AM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 5.5M, Neutral]
An employee at India’s embassy in Moscow was arrested for allegedly spying for Pakistan, a development that could sour relations between the South Asian neighbors.

Satyendra Siwal, a security assistant in the Moscow embassy, was arrested Sunday after Indian officials found that he was working on behalf of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, according to a statement from the Uttar Pradesh police. Siwal, who’s been posted in Moscow since 2021, is suspected of leaking information about India’s defense and foreign relations, the police said in the statement.

The spy allegations risk fresh tensions between India and Pakistan, which have struggled to get along for decades. The nuclear-armed neighbors have fought three wars over Jammu and Kashmir, a disputed region in the Himalayas claimed by both governments.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs is aware of the arrest and assisting investigators, according to senior foreign ministry officials, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Indian Foreign Secretary Visits Bhutan as New Government Tales Charge (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [2/5/2024 4:15 AM, Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, 201K, Neutral]
India is increasingly feeling under pressure in its own neighborhood as China improves relations with countries that have traditionally been seen by New Delhi as close partners within the region. Many of these countries have resented Indian dominance within the region and see China as a potential balancer against India. Even if the current government is supportive of India, there is usually a political opposition that tends to be pro-China, meaning orientation toward India and China could change with an election. This happened recently in Maldives and was seen as a possible danger in Bangladesh, too.

But even by the standards of India’s relations with its neighbors, the India-Bhutan relationship is special. India took over the British colonial government’s role in Bhutan, essentially making Bhutan a protectorate. This has increasingly come under challenge as Bhutan has evolved politically, with questions about the relationship becoming increasingly salient within Bhutanese politics.

Bhutan also is a critical country for India because Bhutan also shares a border with China. And China has been increasing pressure on Bhutan’s border. In 2017, China and India almost came to blows as Chinese forces tried to enter Bhutanese territory in the Doklam region, which would have given them a tactical advantage over a narrow corridor that connects mainland India to its northeastern region. Thus, New Delhi is particularly sensitive about China-Bhutan relations, especially because any concessions to China by Bhutan on the border can negatively impact India’s security.

It is this context that is important to understand Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra’s three-day official visit to Thimphu in late January. The visit took place a day after a new government took charge in Thimphu under Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay. During the visit, Kwatra called on the prime minister as well as Foreign Minister D. N. Dhungyel in addition to holding discussions with his counterpart, Aum Pema Choden, on a range of subjects under the rubric of bilateral cooperation between India and Bhutan.

The foreign secretary also had an audience with King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. Following the meeting with the king, the Indian mission in Bhutan tweeted that it was “An honour to receive the audience from His Majesty the King of Bhutan and benefit from his guidance on ways to further deepen the India-Bhutan unique ties of friendship.” In other words, New Delhi was bending over backwards to please Thimpu.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs in a press release stated that the foreign secretary’s “visit is in keeping with the well-established tradition of regular exchanges between Bhutan and India, and to further strengthen the existing close ties of friendship and cooperation between the two countries.” Speaking about Kwatra’s meetings, the press release said that it provided “an opportunity for wide ranging discussions on all aspects of the bilateral relationship including development partnership, 13th Five Year Plan, cooperation in energy, trade, technology, connectivity, infrastructure, economic ties, and people-to-people connections between the two countries.”

The foreign secretary’s visit is significant with the new Bhutanese government getting ready to take on the challenging task of working out its border issues with China. Bhutan and China signed a “Cooperation Agreement” on the delimitation and demarcation of their boundary in October 2023 at the 25th round of boundary talks between the two countries. The agreement detailed the responsibilities and functions of the Joint Technical Team (JTT) that has been assigned with the task of the delimitation and demarcation of the Bhutan-China boundary. Finding a border settlement is key to establishing diplomatic relations between Bhutan and China.

The JTT was instituted at the 13th Expert Group Meeting held in August 2023 in order to help implement the Memorandum of Understanding on a Three-Step Roadmap for border settlement which had been agreed upon by Bhutan and China in 2021. The roadmap included the processes of delineating the border on maps, thereafter, visit to the ground and surveys and finally formal demarcation.

There exists no formal diplomatic relations between Bhutan and China, due to Bhutan’s policy of avoiding diplomatic relations with all U.N. Security Council permanent members. Nevertheless, the two countries have maintained regular linkages through high level visits. India, however, is demonstrating that it will do its best to maintain its own ties with Bhutan and limit any Chinese efforts to put pressure on its small but vital neighbor.
Lights! Camera! Modi! It’s a One-Man Show on Indian Television. (New York Times)
New York Times [2/3/2024 4:14 PM, Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar, 831K, Neutral]
The people streaming into the holy town came on an intimate quest: to be among the first to seek the blessings of a beloved god they said was returning home after 500 years.

These Hindu devotees took leaves of absence from work. They ate with fellow pilgrims, slept in the cold and sipped tea at roadside joints as they waited to see the dazzling new temple devoted to the deity Ram. Early in the morning, as a soft devotional melody played from speakers strung to electric poles, they took purifying dips in a river.

But it was another, smaller group, camped on the riverbank in Ayodhya, that made sure the moment was as much about India’s powerful prime minister, Narendra Modi, as it was about Lord Ram.

As a show of laser lights and bone-jarring beats went on in the background, about a dozen national television channels tried to outdo each other in what for most has become a guiding mission: to shine a favorable spotlight on the prime minister’s every move.

“We should not forget that this is because of Narendra Modi,” a commenter on one of the shows reminded his viewers.

Through a mix of incentives and coercion, the broadcast media has been enlisted in an image-building machine that glorifies Mr. Modi as an infallible, godlike leader. Through this prism, he is the author of every national success, an inescapable figure for ordinary people like the Ayodhya pilgrims, his continued rule seemingly inevitable.

At the same time, news of setbacks — Chinese encroachment on Indian border territory, deadly ethnic conflict in a northeastern region, unequal economic growth that is not producing enough jobs — is rarely discussed on TV, and even more rarely attributed to Mr. Modi. Posing questions to a prime minister is a thing of the past; Mr. Modi has not held a proper news conference in the decade since he took charge.

The inauguration of the Ram temple last month was rushed to coincide with the launch of the prime minister’s campaign for a third term in office. On display for the millions tuning in during his address was the full range of his skills as a communicator — his powerful oratory, his keen eye for symbolism and his savvy understanding of messaging in a new media age.

The temple’s construction, on land disputed between Hindus and Muslims, was the culmination of a four-decade movement by India’s Hindu right, the cornerstone of their effort to remake a secular republic into a Hindu majoritarian state.

The consecration ceremony was both religious ritual and viral spectacle, with Mr. Modi cast in the role of ultimate victor, striding alone in the frame. He said nothing of the bloody, divisive legacy associated with the dispute, in which a mosque that had stood for centuries was razed in 1992 by a Hindu mob that was driven by the belief that a temple had been there before.

Instead, in one stroke, he put himself at the center of a 500-year history and an even longer future.

“We have to lay the foundation of India for the next 1,000 years,” he said, after helicopters had showered flowers from above.

The guest list was heavy on Bollywood and entertainment royalty, businessmen generous with their purse, and gurus with a foot in each of those realms. The seating arrangement, one organizer jokingly said, was based on who had the most social media followers.

That tracked with how Mr. Modi’s tech-savvy party has harnessed celebrities and influencers in the service of his image.

In moments of political tension, stars with huge followings put out nearly copy-and-paste messages of support. And as the election nears, cabinet ministers have turned to podcasts and online broadcasts with influencers to reach a generation that gets its information outside the traditional channels that Mr. Modi has co-opted.

Front and center in the audience at the temple inauguration were stars like Amitabh Bachchan, one of India’s biggest cinema icons. With his phone out, he took photographs and videos of the moment for his combined following of over 100 million people across social media accounts.

His face was everywhere: welcoming passengers at the newly erected airport, and smiling out from billboards selling everything from flour to a “7 star” property in Ayodhya, a “kingdom reborn.”

In the days leading up to the ceremony, the television channels shouted their excitement from the riverbank, the noise increasing as you went upstream.

There was the state television network, Doordarshan, and NDTV, once an independent broadcaster but now under the control of a billionaire ally of Mr. Modi’s, both tying the prime minister to the monumental occasion, at least implicitly.

On another station, Republic Bharat, an anchor dived into the crowd to get their views. “Modi-ji did his duty, he built the temple,” said one man, before declaring the next targets for the construction of temples, in a refrain of the Hindu right that has intensified in recent days.

By happenstance, the laser light show on the eve of the inauguration fired up the moment the channel went live. Urged on by the producers from a corner, people danced in their chairs, and after the show closed, they broke into an all-out rave.

“It was our luck today — I really enjoyed it,” said the show’s main producer, Pratap Singh.

It mattered little that not much could be heard over the din. “Who listens to the guests these days?” he said with a grin. “It’s about the show you put on — you could see everyone was dancing.”

Farther up, another channel, ABP, turned for the second straight night to a program that made its intentions abundantly clear: “Who Will Become Prime Minister?” read the poster for the show, decorated with red thrones.

Participants, including one who, with a slip of the tongue, said he was on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” — the names sound very similar in Hindi — made clear that the answer to the election question was Mr. Modi.

Placed between Republic Bharat and ABP was a channel that often has a single objective: stoking the polarization under which Mr. Modi’s ruling party thrives.

Sudarshan News, which like the rest of India’s broadcast media receives ample government advertising money, is unabashed in its divisive agenda — and was unmoved by the government’s advisory to the media before the inauguration against publishing content that “disturbs communal harmony.”

Every time guests veered into theological tangents, Suresh Chavhanke, the channel’s chairman, interjected to steer the show back to its focus: the opposition Congress party, which had to pay for its absence from the consecration, and India’s Muslim minority.

“We can get religious knowledge from anyone,” he said in cutting off a seer. “Tell me what your message is to the enemies.”

When another seer struck a tone of reconciliation, saying that the temple dispute was now in the past and that Muslims and Hindus should work on “brotherhood,” Mr. Chavhanke interrupted him. He pivoted to something often instigated by the Hindu right: an economic boycott of Muslims.

“See, on Sudarshan, this ‘brotherhood’ doesn’t work,” he said. “This drug of ‘brotherhood’ has damaged the Hindus a lot.”

At the inauguration, Mr. Chavhanke and several other media barons were among the handpicked guests, seated close to the front.

In an interview, Mr. Chavhanke denied saying what reporters from The New York Times had heard him say during his show, including a question he posed to the Hindu audience about how many kept swords in their homes.

“You are telling lies,” he said, although videos of his broadcast remain on the channel’s platforms.

Asked whether his channel had flouted the government advisory on communal harmony, Mr. Chavhanke said it followed all directives.

“Until today,” he said, “we have faced no action on the violation of any guidelines.”
Modi Can’t Be Everywhere in India. Cutouts of Him Can. (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [2/3/2024 7:34 AM, Tripti Lahiri and Vibhuti Agarwal, 810K, Neutral]
Everywhere you go in India these days, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is there, gazing at you with a slight smile.

His image has long appeared on billboards and signs throughout India, but now his visage, in board, is popping up at train stations, airports, monuments and parks as national elections approach. The government calls them 3-D selfie points.

At a park in central New Delhi on a recent weekday, Muzzamil Raza, an 18-year-old high-school student, took a photo of himself embracing a cutout of Modi, flanked by two electricity towers, promoting the government’s efforts to expand electricity access in villages.

“Everyone wants to take selfies with celebrities, actors and cricketers,” Raza said. “For me, he is the biggest celebrity.”

Government departments have erected the selfie points in recent months, celebrating a variety of advances India has made. In one, Modi stands next to a rocket promoting India’s space program. In another, he is next to a building with a schoolgirl who can now study with the help of a light.

Since the middle of January, Akash Ujjainwal, 28, has been directed to stand guard over one of the displays at the park in New Delhi. At times, admirers want to stand too close and drape an arm around the prime minister’s shoulders for their photo, he said. Such enthusiastic displays of affection led to a crack in the board that required repairs.

“People shouldn’t put their hands on him,” said Ujjainwal. “He is the prime minister.”

Not everyone is taken by the photo op. Aman Punia, a 21-year-old with a science degree, recently met friends near a selfie stand in the park but said he didn’t plan on taking a photo beside it.

“What’s the use of this pomp and show?” asked Punia, who said he is disappointed with the government for not creating more jobs for educated young people such as him. “All this is a false showcase of Modi’s government.”

Some have objected to the selfie points, saying they constitute a misuse of public funds for political purposes. After the Ministry of Defense instructed its departments to put up more than 800 selfie points, a former civil servant and a social activist filed a petition in court arguing the government shouldn’t be using officials and army personnel to do so.

The petition also said the selfie points give the government an unfair advantage ahead of elections. India is expected to hold national elections by May. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is widely expected to win a third term, thanks in large part to the popularity of the prime minister.

“It is about the use of public funds, public servants, official machinery for running the political campaign in the guise of a government program,” said Pranav Sachdeva, a lawyer for the two men who brought the suit.

The prime minister’s office didn’t respond to questions. The government has told the court the publicity efforts are intended to make citizens aware of programs they are eligible for and don’t carry any party insignia.

The temporary selfie stalls cost $1,500 each to set up, according to information disclosed by a railroad official in response to a freedom of information request, reported on by local newspapers. On Facebook, some critics of the program have shared photos of poor travelers at train stations sleeping around displays that proclaim a “new India.”

It isn’t unusual for Indian leaders to appear in ads or billboards promoting their party’s work. In one instance, in 2015, that drew some public scorn, a state leader’s face appeared on disaster-relief material distributed after a flood.

Modi’s government has proved particularly adept at finding novel ways to deploy his image. In 2015, soon after being elected, Modi promoted a #SelfiewithModi campaign, in which people could take a photo with the prime minister via a mobile app that inserted him into the shot and were invited to share the image on social media.

The selfie points that have gone up in recent months put an interactive spin on political branding at a time when more Indians than ever before have phones.

At a museum in New Delhi dedicated to India’s prime ministers, a popular feature allows people to take a photo with any Indian prime minister from history using augmented reality. Over about half an hour on a recent weekday afternoon, roughly a dozen people paid a little more than 50 cents to get a picture with one of the country’s leaders. All except one chose Modi.

Sujay Pandey, who was visiting from Washington, D.C., with her husband, Rakesh, said she considered a photo with Indira Gandhi, India’s only female prime minister. She remembered Gandhi, the daughter of the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, from when she was growing up in India. But in the end, she opted for a photo with Modi.

Rakesh Pandey said he credited Modi with making Indians feel proud of their heritage and culture. “I have lived outside for so long—more than 30 years,” he said. “I’ve seen how India’s prestige has gone up in this time period.”

Minutes later, 26-year-old Nisha Devi fussed with her clothes and hair before sitting down in a white formal chair for her photo with Modi. She was visiting from the northern Indian city of Rajasthan on a family vacation and said she didn’t know much about India’s struggle for freedom that was recounted in the museum.

Her main reason for visiting was because she had heard she could take a photo with Modi.

“I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to get a photo clicked with Modi-ji for posterity,” she said, using a Hindi suffix after Modi’s name to denote respect. “I can proudly tell my children one day that I had a chance to meet India’s best prime minister.”
Unusual election year budget in India signals Modi’s sky-high confidence (Reuters)
Reuters [2/4/2024 10:08 PM, Krishna N. Das and Aftab Ahmed, 5239K, Neutral]
India’s finance minister presented an austere budget last week despite upcoming general elections, a strong display of the administration’s confidence that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would return to power for a third straight term.

Instead of the usual voter-friendly measures announced in election years, Nirmala Sitharaman’s interim budget focused on fiscal discipline and cut subsidies on food, fertiliser and fuel.

In the interim budget before the last general election in 2019, Modi’s government announced direct cash support of 750 billion rupees (then about $10.5 billion) for poor farmers, extended income tax exemptions to more people and offered various other sops which led to a wider-than-estimated fiscal deficit.

But Sitharaman left little doubt who she thought would be back after the elections, to be held by May, to present the full budget.

"In the full budget in July, our government will present a detailed roadmap for our pursuit" of a developed India by 2047, she said.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is high in confidence ahead of the election, with Modi delivering on key parts of a nationalist agenda aimed at pleasing the country’s majority Hindus as well as the country’s stellar economic growth.

"The BJP will do very well because people have confidence in the prime minister and there are so many other factors like the economy," said Tariq Mansoor, a party vice president.

India’s economy is now the fifth-largest in the world, from the tenth-largest when Modi first took office a decade ago, and the fastest expanding among major nations.

Growth, however, has been centred in urban areas and not in the vast hinterlands where more than 60% of India’s 1.42 billion people live. Some critics have noted that similarly lopsided growth led to a shock loss for the party in the 2004 general election.

But most analysts say there is little chance of a surprise in this election and it is all but certain that Modi, 73, would romp to a rare third term in office.

The reasons, they say, include Modi’s high approval ratings, effective implementation of welfare measures like free rations for 800 million poor and the inauguration of a grand temple on the site of a razed mosque that has energised the BJP’s Hindu base. The opposition, they added, is in disarray.

"There will be no repeat of the 2004 debacle unless there is some Black Swan event in the next three months or so, which is very unlikely," said Yashwant Deshmukh, founder of polling agency CVoter Foundation.

"It’s not only because of the economy but more importantly that he has delivered on emotive issues for the cadre, the rank and file of the BJP, and at large the Hindutva (Hindu right) vote base."

CVoter is in the midst of a new survey but Deshmukh said "numbers are suggesting that they are going to get a majority on their own very easily at this point of time".

OVER 400 SEATS

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition won more than 350 of the 543 directly elected seats in the decision-making lower house of parliament in the 2019 election.

"We are looking at beyond 400 for the alliance this time," the BJP’s Mansoor said. That number would give the coalition more than a two-thirds majority in the legislature, which will allow it to bring in changes in the constitution.

Harsh Mander, a human rights worker and political columnist, said the budget was an indication of the government’s thinking.

"Normally a pre-election budget would have a certain kind of last-minute set of promises," said Mander, who has been critical of many government policies.

"The fact that they don’t feel the need to do that, asserts a high level of confidence that their policies, not economic policies but their social policies of basically Hindu supremacy, will trump whatever discontent is there."

Modi’s current government has already delivered on two of the BJP’s long-running promises: building a temple on the site of a razed mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya where many Hindus believe the god-king Ram was born, and removing the autonomy of the Muslim-majority region of Jammu and Kashmir.

The consecration of the Ram Temple last month, overseen by Modi, sparked unprecedented nationwide celebrations.

The main opposition Congress party said the government had failed in its promises to double farmers’ incomes by 2022 and create millions of jobs every year. But the party’s INDIA coalition has been badly hurt by the defection of a major regional leader to the BJP alliance last month and it has yet to formulate an effective counter to Modi’s muscular pro-Hindu agenda.

Elara Capital analysts said the budget deliberately steered clear of any major announcements "in a studied step to showcase confidence as regards a re-election encore".

Modi himself has also not disguised his confidence.

"In my third term ...," he said in a speech to business leaders on Friday before being interrupted by claps and chants of "Modi, Modi".

"A word to the wise is enough," he said with a smile when he resumed. "In my third term, our country is bound to become the third-largest economy in the world."
‘Who’s next?’: Modi government raids, arrests rivals before India election (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [2/2/2024 4:14 PM, Yashraj Sharma, 2.1M, Negative]
Indian investigators have raided multiple premises linked with a prominent rights activist in the national capital – a move that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s critics say is part of a pattern that has seen his government targeting political opponents two months before general elections.

Officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday morning raided the residence of former bureaucrat Harsh Mander and the office of a think tank, the Centre for Equity Studies (CES) in New Delhi, linked to him, alleging financial irregularities under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act.

Mander served as an Indian Administrative Service officer for 22 years before he resigned in 2002 in the wake of the riots in Gujarat state when Modi was its chief minister. More than 1,000 people died in the violence, most of them Muslims, according to the state government.

Mander has been a fierce critic of the Modi government’s Hindu supremacist agenda since the prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014.

But he is only the latest in a series of critics and opponents who have faced raids or arrests from federal agencies in recent weeks — including four state chief ministers belonging to opposition parties.

On Wednesday, India’s financial crimes agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), arrested Hemant Soren hours after he resigned as the chief minister of Jharkhand state. Soren is accused of corruption, a charge his party has denied.

Other opposition leaders, including Tejashwi Yadav, the former deputy chief minister of neighbouring Bihar state, and Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, have also been raided by federal agencies in recent months. Kejriwal’s deputy and one of his party’s parliamentarians are already in jail.

In the central Chhattisgarh state, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and his associates were picked up by the ED officials right before elections in November last year. The BJP accused them of multiple scams, including an illegal coal mining deal, and used the charges as a major plank to win the state polls.

‘It is paralysing’

Apoorvanand, professor of Hindi literature at the University of Delhi and one of Mander’s close acquaintances, said he woke up to the “upsetting news” of Friday’s raids.

“Mander and the civil society members have been relentlessly hounded by the investigative agencies,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It is not only about Harsh [Mander], it is a pattern that we see. Civil society in India has been defunded and several have been jailed. It is paralysing,” he said. “It is also a signal to civil society: you can talk on water conversation or solar panels in villages but do not speak for human rights or rights of minorities.”

The government has alleged Mander accepted foreign contributions amounting to nearly $14,000 between 2011 and 2018 in the FCRA account of his association, violating the law. Recently, the government suspended FCRA licences of several think tanks and close to 6,000 NGOs, including Oxfam India and Amnesty India.

“These raids or allegations of financial irregularities seem to have become a norm for the authorities to silence peaceful criticism,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, told Al Jazeera.

Several activists are currently facing charges, some under draconian terror laws. “When independent state agencies are seen to act in a partisan manner, with politically motivated targeting of dissent, it undermines India’s image as a country that upholds the rule of law,” Ganguly said.

‘Agencies work for BJP’

Sushil Sunny Agrawal, a 39-year-old former minister in Baghel’s cabinet, was among the politicians the ED raided before the state elections last year.

“They mentally tortured us. The ED officials told me: ‘What’s in there to stay with the Congress? Join BJP, that’s where the future is,’” Agrawal told Al Jazeera.

“These agencies have become liaisons for the BJP. They deal on their behalf: If you go with Modi, you will be cleared from all this and stand a chance at a bright future.”

The upcoming general elections are keeping Agrawal on edge. “The BJP knows no limits. And they are in a full-on attacking mode, weaponising the central agencies to completely curb the opposition,” he said.

Agrawal said he looked to India’s judiciary to address the escalating crackdown on opposition parties.

In March 2023, a group of opposition parties petitioned India’s top court, stating “a clear pattern of using investigative agencies … to target, debilitate and in fact crush the entire political opposition and other vocal citizens”.

The petition noted that since 2014, when Modi came to power, 95 percent of the cases taken up by the CBI and the ED have been against politicians from the opposition – a 60 percent and 54 percent rise, respectively, from the days of the previous Congress-led government.

However, the Supreme Court refused to rule on the petition, noting that politicians could not be placed on a pedestal higher than citizens, could not seek special treatment under the law, or immunity from arrest.

“When [political parties] argue that there is a chilling effect on the opposition because of CBI/ED cases against opposition political leaders, the answer lies in the political space and not in courts,” said the court.

Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan said, “Like the politicians, the civil society or anybody who is a critic of this government is being targeted.”

“This is the rise of a fascist state under Modi and unfortunately, the judiciary is doing very little or hardly anything to protect the rights and liberties of the citizens. Its independence appears to have collapsed.”

Agrawal said the Modi government is “hijacking” the forthcoming vote by targeting opposition leaders and activists. “Democracy has completely ended in India,” he said.

Apoorvanand concurred. The crackdown by the government was an attempt to establish a one-party rule in India, he told Al Jazeera.

“When the opposition parties should be hitting the roads [to campaign] ahead of the elections, they are running from one agency to another,” he said. “The campaigns are distracted and their followers will be demoralised. You can practically achieve a one-party state without changing the constitution.”

“From the civil society to academia, I can feel this fear – who’s going to be next?” said Apoorvanand.

According to Agrawal, the answer is clear. “Whosoever that doesn’t walk with Modi, who raises voice against them, they are the next,” Agrawal said.

“If a common man raises his voice against the government, then the civilians will be the targets.”
Modi’s ‘divine India’ vision threatens to marginalize millions (CNN)
CNN [2/4/2024 7:01 PM, Rhea Mogul, 6098K, Neutral]
The consecration of a controversial Hindu temple symbolizes the seismic shift from India’s secular founding values, analysts say, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi disregards norms separating religion from state in his push to win a rare third term this year.

Modi presided over a lavish opening ceremony last month of the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir in the sacred town of Ayodhya, fulfilling a longstanding promise to voters that helped propel him and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in 2014.

“(Today) is the beginning of a new time cycle,” Modi said at the new temple honoring Hindu deity Lord Ram. “After centuries of waiting, our Ram has arrived.”

Modi’s vision of a “divine India” is a far cry from the ideas of the modern country’s founding fathers. During nearly a decade in power, the prime minister has enveloped himself in the language of religion in pursuit of his Hindu nationalist agenda, isolating millions among India’s sizable religious minorities.

“This moment is both a culmination of a political project that has been 100 years in the making, and a new departure for India, no longer a secular republic,” said political scientist Gilles Verniers, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

“India becomes a de facto Hindu nation, where the task of building national Hindu religious symbols falls to the state. And in which its leader officiates simultaneously as prime minister and head priest for the country.”

‘King of Gods’

The Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir stands on the site of the Babri Masjid, a 16th century mosque that was destroyed by hardline Hindus in 1992, setting off a wave of deadly sectarian violence not seen in India since its bloody 1947 partition.

The temple’s inauguration was attended by thousands of hand-picked guests – including cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar and billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani – and streamed live to millions across the country.

In Ayodhya, billboards celebrating the temple’s opening featured an image of Hindu deity Ram alongside Modi’s face, with the leader of his BJP even dubbing the prime minister “The King of Gods.”

Modi fasted for 11 days in a purification ritual before the event and visited temples across the country, performing customs sacramental to India’s majority faith.

He publicly called himself “an instrument” of Lord Ram, anointed by the divine to “represent all the people of India.”

At the consecration, Modi presided over the “Pran Pratishtha” – the unveiling of the much-anticipated Ram idol – taking on a role typically reserved for priests. The move was well received in most quarters, with his supporters praising the leader’s actions.

But for some Hindus, Modi’s actions represent a betrayal of their religion for political capital.

“This is obviously an electoral stunt, it should not be happening in the name of my faith,” said Indian American activist Sunita Viswanath and member of the US-based Hindus for Human Rights group in a statement the day before the temple opening.

“Modi is not a priest, so leading this ceremony for political gain is both technically and morally wrong. This weaponization of our religion tramples what’s left of India’s secular democratic values.”

Yet, in blurring the lines between state and religion, Modi has achieved what his predecessors were unable to, analysts say.

“Much of this is about solidifying his image in India as someone who is devout, someone who delivers on his promises,” said Foreign Policy editor-in-chief and former CNN New Delhi bureau chief, Ravi Agrawal.

“This is a very popular move, and while it’s being criticized… it remains popular in a country that is 80% Hindu.”

Hindu right emboldened

Modi rose to power in 2014 with a pledge to reform India’s economy and usher in a new era of development – but he also heavily pushed a Hindutva agenda, an ideology that believes India should become a land for Hindus.

When he stood for reelection in 2019, Modi’s Hindutva policies became more brazen, according to analysts.

A few months after winning, he announced he was stripping the statehood of India’s only Muslim-majority territory, Jammu and Kashmir, and turning it into two union territories while bringing it under federal control. Later that year, his government passed a controversial citizenship law considered by many to be discriminatory against Muslims.

And he reiterated his party’s desire to build the Ram Temple on the contested holy site.

Many Hindus believe the Babri Masjid was built on the ruins of a Hindu temple, allegedly destroyed in 1528 by Babar, the first Mughal emperor of South Asia. For years, they rallied to tear down the mosque and make way for a temple.

The dispute reached its climax in 1992 when, spurred on by the BJP and right-wing groups, Hindu hardliners attacked the mosque, triggering widespread communal violence that killed more than 2,000 people nationwide.

In a victory for Modi and his supporters, India’s Supreme Court in 2019 granted Hindus permission to build the temple, ending the decades-long dispute – but dealing a blow to millions of Muslims who fear that religious divisions are becoming more pronounced under Modi’s BJP government.

The Indian government denies it is discriminating against minorities, but analysts say last week’s festivities have only emboldened right-wing Hindus to act with impunity against minorities.

Communal tensions rose in western Maharashtra state, with three reported altercations between Hindus and Muslims, according to local police.

In a separate incident in central Madhya Pradesh state, a group of right-wing Hindus was seen placing saffron flags on top of a Christian church. The color is closely associated with Hinduism.

“India has become more majoritarian. India has become more nationalist. India has become more pro-Hindu,” Agrawal said. “This is partly due to the government’s ability to point to India’s history and the wrongs they perceive India to have faced.”

Shedding colonialism, correcting injustice

Since assuming power nearly a decade ago, Modi has positioned himself as a disrupter of India’s colonial legacy, often in speeches marked by emotive language.

He has emphasized the need to “liberate (India) from the slavery mindset,” making steps to steer the country away from what the government has called the “vestiges of British rule.”

Similarly, Modi has also made comments about India’s erstwhile Islamic rulers, the Mughals, who ruled much of the country from 1526 to 1858. Many hardline Hindus believe the era was a period of oppression under Muslim rule, a view that has also been echoed by some members of the BJP.

Hindu groups have for decades claimed the Mughals destroyed Hindu temples, building mosques and other monuments in their place. Many of these cases are now being debated in courts across the country, in a move Indian liberals fear could spark further violence and disharmony.

Just this week, a court in the city of Varanasi ruled that Hindus can pray inside the disputed Gyanvapi mosque built by former Mughal ruler Aurangzeb - purportedly on the site of a destroyed Hindu temple – in another major religious dispute.

“Aurangzeb severed many heads, but he could not shake our faith,” Modi said in a 2022 speech, referring to the ruler who died more than three centuries ago.

As the country heads toward a national election expected to be held in April and May, the government “sees itself as addressing these injustices,” said Foreign Policy’s Agrawal.

Gilles, the political scientist, said last week’s display of Hindu nationalism at the Ram Temple shows the strength of the alliance between the BJP and India’s business and cultural elites.

The temple’s inauguration was a “dark day for India’s religious minorities,” he said.

“(They) have officially become second-class citizens.”
India Confers Top Award on Former Official Behind Ayodhya Temple (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/3/2024 4:25 AM, Ashutosh Joshi, 5543K, Positive]
India has conferred its highest civilian award on former deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani, a key figure behind the construction of a major Hindu temple at a disputed site in Ayodhya, where a mosque stood for decades.

Advani will be awarded the honor of Bharat Ratna, a statement from the Indian President’s secretariat said on Saturday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi published a post on social media platform X before the formal announcement, congratulating Advani and describing his contribution to the development of India as monumental.

Last month, Modi inaugurated the temple complex devoted to the Hindu god-king Ram, in a grand ceremony that was attended by thousands of guests including priests, billionaires and movie stars. The event, which was watched by millions live on TV, has also attracted criticism that it could signal a change in India from a secular democracy to an explicitly Hindu nation.

The temple is built on the site of a 16th century mosque demolished by a Hindu mob in 1992, which led to a courtcase in which Advani and other senior leaders of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party were charged and acquitted in 2020.

Advani emerged as the face of the BJP’s hardline Hindu nationalist agenda after he led a sustained campaign for decades to build the temple in Ayodhya, a riverside city in the Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh. The 96-year-old and other party officials charged in the case are no longer involved in the active decision-making processes of the BJP — which is now steered by Modi and his close aides.
NSB
Myanmar Clashes Along Bangladesh Border: Official (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [2/4/2024 11:33 PM, Staff, 304K, Neutral]
Fighting in Myanmar raged close to the Bangladesh border on Sunday, with terrified residents reporting bullets crossing the frontier, medics treating patients and the government saying guards had fled seeking shelter.

Aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said its medics in Cox’s Bazar had "received a large number of patients, following fighting at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border".

MSF said that on Sunday evening 17 patients had been admitted to Kutupalong Hospital for treatment, without giving further details of their nationalities or injuries.

Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said at least 14 border officers from neighbouring Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state "entered our territory for self-protection" ahead of advancing rebel Arakan Army (AA) fighters.

However, Bangladesh’s private broadcaster Channel 24 said the number of guards was higher, reporting at least 66 officers had sought shelter, including 10 with bullet wounds.

"The Arakan Army has captured many areas of Rakhine state one after another," Khan told reporters in Dhaka.

"According to our information, they are advancing forward."

Parts of Myanmar near the 270-kilometre (167-mile) border with Bangladesh -- as well as neighbouring India to the north -- have seen frequent clashes since November, when AA fighters ended a ceasefire that had largely held since a 2021 coup.

In October, an alliance including AA insurgents and other ethnic minority fighters launched a joint offensive across northern Myanmar, seizing vital trade hubs on the Chinese border.

Last month, the alliance announced a China-mediated ceasefire, but it does not apply to areas near the Bangladeshi and Indian border, where fighting continues.

Bangladeshi villagers living close to the border said they were fearful the fighting would spill over.

Khairul Bashar, 25, said his uncle was shot in the leg by a stray bullet fired from Myanmar.

"We are spending sleepless nights in fear", Bashar said.

Rahima Begum, 67, said she had fled the Bangladeshi village of Tumbru, saying her grandson "screamed in fear" when gunfire came close.

"Our homes were sprayed with bullets," Begum said.

"One bomb fell near our home and it shook terribly."

Primary teacher Helal Uddin said students had stopped coming to her school near the border, and she had moved into Cox’s Bazar for "safety and shelter".

MSF said it was monitoring the situation, expressing "concern for people living on both sides of the border who are affected by violence".

Khan said Bangladesh had bolstered security along its border, and would contact Myanmar to return the guards.

"Whoever enters inside our border, we will detain and hand them over to Myanmar," he said.

Bangladesh is already home to around one million Rohingya refugees, driven out from Myanmar in a military crackdown in 2017.
India to Pull Out Troops From Maldives by May 10, Male Says (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/3/2024 3:33 AM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 5543K, Neutral]
Maldives said India will withdraw its troops from the island nation by May 10, a move that makes good President Mohamed Muizzu’s election promise as he draws closer to China.

India will replace its military personnel operating the three aviation platforms by the date, with the first phase of the withdrawal concluding by March 10, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Maldives said late Friday after the second high-level meeting between the two sides in New Delhi.

Tensions between India and the Maldives have been rising since Muizzu came to power in September on a campaign to reduce India’s influence in the island. Last month, Muizzu had asked New Delhi to pull out its troops by March 15.

India has about 70 soldiers who operate and maintain radars, helicopters and aircraft in the Maldives, some of which are used for medical evacuations. Its navy also patrols surrounding waters. There’s no clarity on whether Maldives will replace India’s military personnel with civilians to operate the helicopters and aircraft.

“Both sides also agreed on a set of mutually workable solutions to enable continued operation of Indian aviation platforms that provide humanitarian and medical evacuation services to the people of Maldives,” India’s foreign ministry said in a statement Friday.

India and China have alternatively vied for influence in the tourism-dependent country, which sits on a busy Indian Ocean shipping lane.

Beijing upgraded its diplomatic ties with the Maldives to a “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership” during Muizzu’s five day visit to China in January. President Xi Jinping said China will seek to boost direct flights to the island nation, and wants to increase cooperation in areas of trade, investment, agriculture and others.
India to replace troops in Maldives with civilians by May (Reuters)
Reuters [2/3/2024 8:05 AM, Krishn Kaushik and Mohamed Junayd, 5239K, Neutral]
India will remove its troops in the Maldives by May, the Maldivian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday, as the two countries seek agreement on a pullout that has strained ties.

The roughly 80 soldiers stationed in the Indian Ocean archipelago will be replaced by civilians, officials from both countries said.

As global powers jostle for influence in the Indo-Pacific region, India and China have wooed the Maldives, which has traditionally been close to neighbour India.

New Delhi’s ties with Male have under strain since Mohamed Muizzu was elected president of the Maldives last year, pledging to end the country’s "India First" policy.

He has called for the withdrawal by March 15 of the troops stationed to provide support for military equipment given to the Maldives by New Delhi and assist in humanitarian activities in the region.

The first set of Indian troops will leave by March 10 and the rest by May 10, the Maldives said, citing an agreement reached at a high-level meeting in the Indian capital on a range of issues concerning bilateral cooperation.

India’s foreign ministry said the two countries "agreed on a set of mutually workable solutions to enable continued operation of Indian aviation platforms" that provide humanitarian services to Maldives.

The ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the troop pullout, and its statement did not mention a timeframe.

India says the soldiers, who include a dozen medical personnel, provide help with humanitarian aid and medical evacuations for the residents of the country’s remote islands.

New Delhi has given Male two helicopters and a Dornier aircraft, which are mostly used for marine surveillance, search and rescue operations and medical evacuations. The Indian troops manage those operations.

The next bilateral meeting will be in Male in the last week of February, the Maldives foreign ministry said.
Maldives government asks India why its coast guard boarded 3 fishing boats (AP)
AP [2/3/2024 5:18 AM, Mohamed Sharuhan, 2565K, Neutral]
The Maldives government says it has asked for clarification of why Indian coast guard personnel boarded three Maldivian fishing vessels operating within its economic zone earlier this week without consultation.

The Maldives defense ministry said in a statement Friday night that its military was informed on Wednesday that personnel from a foreign military had boarded a Maldives fishing vessel, and on reaching the location it was found that they were from the Indian coast guard.

The Maldives military also found that Indian coast guard personnel had boarded two more boats, the statement said without explaining what they did on the boats.

“On Feb. 1, 2024, the foreign ministry of the Maldives has asked (India) officially for the details of the operation that was carried out while Maldivians were fishing in the Maldivian exclusive economic zone, without any coordination with the relevant authorities and against all international laws,” the statement said in the native Dhivehi language.

This is the latest in a series of conflicts that has led to a setback in relations between the two nations since a pro-China leader was elected in the Maldives last November.

Both India and China have been vying for influence in the Maldives, which is located strategically along a key sea route, in their competition to control the Indian Ocean.

Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu was part of an “India Out” campaign as an opposition politician, demanding the removal of Indian military personnel stationed in some islands. He campaigned for the presidency on the same promise and made an official request to India soon after his election.

On Friday contradictory statements emerged from the two countries in relation to the withdrawal of Indian troops.

The Maldives foreign ministry said in a statement that officials from both countries met in New Delhi and agreed that India would begin withdrawing troops from the Maldives on March 10 and complete the process by withdrawing from all three aviation platforms by May 10.

But an Indian foreign ministry statement did not mention a withdrawal, saying instead that both sides agreed on a set of solutions “to enable continued operation of Indian aviation platforms that provide humanitarian and medevac services to the people of Maldives.”

It is believed there are at least 75 Indian military personnel in the Maldives and their known activities include transporting patients from remote islands and rescuing people at sea.

The dispute between the two countries worsened last month when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted pictures on social media of himself strolling and snorkelling on the beaches of Lakshadweep, an Indian archipelago that looks nearly identical to the Maldives islands.

The Indian government believes that its chain of islands has untapped potential for tourism, and some in the Maldives thought that Modi’s posts were a way of luring tourists away from the famous white sand beaches and luxury island resorts of the Maldives.

Three Maldivian deputy ministers posted derogatory posts against Modi which inflamed many Indians, leading to a social media campaign to boycott Maldives. The largest number of tourists visiting the Maldives come from India, making up 11% of the total last year.

The posts were taken down, the deputy ministers were suspended and the Maldives government stressed that the views expressed did not reflect government policy.

Muizzu’s China visit also coincided with the dispute, and he came back announcing plans to rid his nation of dependence on India for health and education and import of staples. He also cautioned that the Maldives’ smaller size did not give any country the license to bully it, an apparent indirect reference to India.
Debt-laden Sri Lanka marks Independence Day with Thai prime minister as guest of honor (AP)
AP [2/4/2024 3:18 AM, Bharatha Mallawarachi, 2565K, Neutral]
Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin was the guest of honor at Sri Lanka’s 76th Independence Day celebrations on Sunday, as the island nation struggles to emerge from its worst economic crisis.

Srettha joined Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe at a low-key ceremony near the country’s main seaside esplanade that included a military parade and parachute jumps. The holiday commemorates Sri Lanka’s independence from British rule in 1948.

Sri Lanka declared bankruptcy in April 2022 with more than $83 billion in debt, more than half of it to foreign creditors. The economic upheaval led to a political crisis that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign in 2022. The parliament then elected Wickremesinghe as president.

Srettha arrived in Sri Lanka on Saturday and the two countries signed a free trade agreement aiming to boost trade and investment.

Wickremesinghe said on Saturday that Sri Lanka has made significant progress in economic stabilization and sought the help of Thailand in efforts to transform the battered economy and regain international confidence.

Sri Lanka suspended repayment of its debt in 2022 as it ran short of foreign currency needed to pay for imports of fuel and other essentials. Shortages led to street protests that changed the country’s leadership. The International Monetary Fund approved a four-year bailout program last March.

The economic situation has improved under Wickremesinghe, and severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine have largely abated. But public dissatisfaction has grown over the government’s effort to increase revenue by raising electricity bills and imposing heavy new income taxes on professionals and businesses, as part of the government’s efforts to meet the IMF conditions.

Sri Lanka is hoping to restructure $17 billion of its outstanding debt and has already reached agreements with some of its external creditors.
Thailand, Sri Lanka sign free trade agreement (Reuters)
Reuters [2/3/2024 6:36 AM, Uditha Jayasinghe, 293K, Neutral]
Thailand and Sri Lanka signed a Free Trade Agreement on Saturday, a move Sri Lanka hopes will help it emerge from its worst financial crisis in decades.

The island nation has been renewing a focus on trade deals to foster economic growth and help its battered economy, which is estimated by the World Bank to have contracted 3.8% last year, after a severe foreign exchange crunch plunged it into a wider financial crisis.

The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is aimed at enhancing market opportunities, with negotiations covering various aspects such as Trade in Goods, Investment, Customs Procedure and Intellectual Property Rights, the short statement added.

A delegation headed by Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin arrived in Colombo on Saturday to sign the FTA along with other agreements and Thavisin will also attend Sri Lanka’s 76th Independence Day celebrations on Sunday.

"This will provide tremendous business opportunities for both sides. We encourage our private sectors to explore the potentials of two-way trade and investment," Prime Minister Thavisin told a joint media briefing following the signing.

The two countries also signed a new bilateral air services agreement, providing for liberalized air services between the two countries.

The countries’ two-way trade was worth about $460 million in 2021, Sri Lankan central bank data shows. Sri Lanka exports mainly tea and precious stones to Thailand and imports electronic equipment, food, rubber, plastics and pharmaceuticals.
Central Asia
China reports robust trade growth with Central Asian states (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/2/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
Trade between China and Central Asian states surged in 2023, according to data published by China’s customs agency, or GACC. But the flow of commerce is increasingly favoring Beijing.

Annual trade turnover for the region as reported by the GACC totaled $89.4 billion in 2023, a 27 percent increase over the previous year’s level of $70.2 billion. The balance of trade, however, was lopsided: goods and services exported to Central Asian states amounted to $61.4 billion, while Beijing’s imports from the region were worth $28 billion.

Kazakhstan was China’s largest trade partner in 2023, with bilateral trade turnover reaching $41 billion, a 32 percent increase over the previous year’s total. Kazakh exports to China were worth $16.3 billion, imports amount $24.7 billion.

Tajikistan achieved the greatest percentage gain year-on-year with China, with trade turnover soaring 54 percent this year compared with 2022’s number. However, the volume of Tajik-Chinese trade was the lowest of any Central Asian state, totaling $3.9 billion. The GACC figures show that Tajikistan’s exports to China accounted for only $250 million of the overall turnover amount.

Turkmenistan was the only Central Asian state to experience a decline in trade volume with China. Annual bilateral turnover in 2023 was down 5.2 percent to $10.6 billion, compared to the previous year’s figures. At the same time, Turkmenistan was an exception in terms of balance of trade, with the total tilting firmly in Ashgabat’s favor because of natural gas exports.

Turkmen exports to China accounted for $9.6 billion of the annual total. That number, however, was 6.6 percent lower than 2022’s amount. China’s $1 billion in exports to Turkmenistan in 2023 marked an 11.3 percent increase over the previous year’s figure.

Kyrgyzstan increased trade turnover with China by 28.8 percent to $19.8 billion. Like Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan’s balance of trade was entirely one-sided. Bishkek’s exports to China amounted to a measly $80 million.

China’s annual turnover with Uzbekistan rose by 45 percent in 2023, totaling $14 billion, with the balance heavily weighted toward Beijing. Uzbek exports, according to the GACC, accounted for $1.6 billion of the total figure.

Statistics provided by Central Asian states often do not align with official Chinese data. For example, Uzbekistan’s Statistics Agency has reported bilateral Uzbek-Chinese trade turnover for 2023 at $13.7 billion. The Uzbek figures valued exports to China at $2.5 billion and imports at $11.2 billion.
Kyrgyz Leader Eyeing A Second Term With The Political Landscape Transformed (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/4/2024 8:38 AM, Chris Rickleton, 223K, Neutral]
To anyone watching Kyrgyzstan these last three years, the revelation that President Sadyr Japarov intends to run for a second presidential term will not be surprising.

More striking for most observers is the extent to which he and his ally -- national-security chief Kamchybek Tashiev -- have managed to tame the country’s once chaotic political landscape without, so far, coming unstuck in the process.

The deputy chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers, Edil Baisalov, said on January 29 that “the people themselves will not allow” the 55-year-old Japarov to quit the presidency after just one term.

“Our president will participate in the next elections,” Baisalov said in response to a question on Ekspertter Taldait (Expert Analysis), a talk show produced by RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service.

“The constitution allows it, so he won’t leave halfway. The people themselves will not allow it. The people have hope and will witness great achievements in the next three years,” Baisalov said.

Baisalov’s words were quickly confirmed by Japarov’s official spokesman, who said the Kyrgyz leader will take part in the next presidential election, which would officially be held in 2026.

Japarov’s de facto co-ruler, Tashiev, gave his endorsement to the idea of a second Japarov term in December, quieting speculation that he was seeking the job for himself.

The president’s long-time ally moreover asserted that the head of state was in his rights to serve out a six-year term, because he was elected in January 2021 under the old constitution. That constitution did not allow presidents to seek reelection. But since the new constitution passed just months after that vote does permit two-term presidencies, Japarov will still be able to run for a second, five-year stint under the new constitution in 2027, Tashiev explained on Facebook.

After clarifying this curious legality, Tashiev then added: “I believe that in eight years time another person will appear in the country, who will root for the people, just like Sadyr Japarov.”

This all seems to point to a long-term plan for a regime in a country where politics has often been a short-term affair, with three presidents forced from office during three decades of independence.

Then again, Kyrgyzstan is looking rather different these days.

Gone, seemingly, are the notorious backroom powerbrokers who seemed to enjoy the same power and privileges as presidents.

Also gone is the carousel of politicians and business magnates who bounced between the government and the opposition and who could always be relied upon to throw their hats into the ring at election time.

Hushed, if not silenced, is Kyrgyzstan’s once noisy civil society, amid a steady stream of imprisonments that have taken in activists and journalists as well as political opponents.

“In the intermediate period, the current leadership seems to be in a better position to centralize power than previous leaders,” said Johan Engvall, an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. “But if Kyrgyzstan’s history teaches us anything, it is that things can change quickly if the government goes too far."

Capturing ‘Income Streams’

For the decade prior to Japarov’s and Tashiev’s arrival in power, Kyrgyzstan operated under a constitution that had been specifically designed to reign in the ability of presidents to concentrate power in their hands.

It didn’t always work out like that, of course, but Almazbek Atambaev, the first popularly elected president under that older version of the basic law, at least accepted that he could not run again.

The logic for passing the country’s 2010 constitution was the behavior of the country’s first two presidents, Askar Akaev and Kurmanbek Bakiev, who were overthrown in revolutions as they took steps to consolidate and expand their power, with notable help from family members.

This political turbulence marked an obvious difference with neighbors like Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, where regimes have been able to see off challenges.

According to Engvall, who authored a book on Kyrgyzstan titled The State As Investment Market, the difference partly lies in Kyrgyzstan’s style of political economy.

“Political power and economic wealth are intimately connected in Kyrgyzstan, but the country’s economic resources have been relatively dispersed among various businessmen and parliamentarians, with presidents unable to fully centralize control over the most lucrative income streams,” Engvall told RFE/RL in e-mailed comments.

For the moment, it seems that Japarov and Tashiev are learning from the mistakes of authoritarian Bakiev, under whose reign both men served as top officials.

Capturing “income streams” emerged as an early priority as government forces seized control over the then-foreign-run Kumtor gold mine in 2021, with Canadian company Centerra Gold later settling with the government out of court.

The move, taking place in the duo’s first full year after taking power, boosted government revenues, enabling hikes in state salaries that have helped to keep their approval ratings high -- always a problem for the notoriously venal Bakievs.

At the same time as the mine takeover, authorities began detaining high-profile politicians in a criminal investigation related to historic corruption at Kumtor. They were released, but not without first coughing up considerable sums of money.

Former Prime Minister and one-time presidential candidate Omurbek Babanov, for instance, gave 1 billion soms (more than $11 million) in assistance to the state, Tashiev said.

Lesser cash cows have also been expropriated.

Last year, authorities announced the nationalization of the country’s largest vodka producer, Ayu. The company’s main beneficiary, reportedly in ill health and living abroad, had in the past helped finance a party that competed in parliamentary elections in 2015 and 2020.

And Then There Were Two

But what of the two men who, for many Kyrgyz, served as embodiments of a corrupt and broken system, even as governments came and went?

Sources who spoke to RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service and other media outlets across multiple investigations into smuggling and money laundering portrayed crime kingpin Kamchybek Kolbaev and former customs official Raimbek Matraimov as actors in an underground empire worth billions of dollars.

Both men were slapped with sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department, which described Kolbaev as “a crowned thief-in-law” involved in transnational drug and human trafficking and Matraimov as someone who made “hundreds of millions of dollars” as a result of his involvement in a corrupt customs scheme. "Thief-in-law" is the highest title in the criminal hierarchy traditionally given to kingpins among criminal groups in former Soviet republics.

Yet in Kyrgyzstan, Kolbaev and Matraimov both enjoyed impunity, a fact underscored by the highly symbolic stints that both men spent in jail at the beginning of Japarov’s time in office before walking free and seemingly returning to lives of power.

Not any more, though.

In October, Kolbaev was gunned down by officers of Tashiev’s State Committee for National Security in a dramatic daytime raid on a restaurant in central Bishkek that marked the beginning of a nationwide operation targeting alleged gangsters.

Many of these reputed criminals have since issued video confessions disavowing their lives of crime.

For a long time, Japarov said very little about the killing of Kolbaev, who hailed from his native Issyk-Kul Province.

But on January 25, Japarov used an interview with the state information agency to distance himself from long-standing allegations that Kolbaev had assisted his rise to power during unrest that broke out over parliamentary elections at a time when Japarov was an opposition figure still serving a prison sentence.

As for Matraimov, he is now officially the subject of an arrest warrant, although his whereabouts are unknown.

Speaking in the former official’s home region of Osh, Tashiev said on January 27 that authorities had begun confiscating all of Matraimov’s properties and joked that if the former powerbroker ever wanted to live in Kyrgyzstan in the future, he would have to drive around in a humble Chevrolet Matiz.

Aijan Sharshenova, an independent political scientist, told RFE/RL that the Kyrgyz public would most likely welcome the pair’s downfall, even if Kolbaev had been somewhat successful in creating “the image of a strong man with a romanticized criminal code of honor.”

But even without the powerbrokers, Kyrgyzstan’s new “decisively authoritarian” political system remains “unstructured,” with few signs of institutional development, Sharshenova argued.

“The main issue with the current operation of all branches of state power is that they are personality-oriented and seem to revolve around the two leaders -- President Japarov and the head of security services Tashiev,” Sharshenova told RFE/RL.
Kyrgyzstan: Power plant accident leaves households without heat (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/2/2024 4:14 PM, Ayzirek Imanaliyeva, 57.6K, Negative]
Households across Kyrgyzstan’s capital woke up on February 2 to find they had no running hot water or heating.

The cause was an explosion that occurred overnight at the Bishkek TETs, Kyrgyzstan’s largest thermal power plant, which provides for around 15 percent of the country’s needs.

The incident led to hot water to almost all Bishkek residents being turned off, while sections of the southern parts of the city were left without heating. Schoolchildren were ordered to remain home.

Deputy Health Minister Mederbek Ismailov said five employees at the power plant were injured in the explosion.

As of the evening of February 2, the authorities were uncertain what had caused the accident. Officials said initially that numerous scenarios were being considered, including sabotage. The Prosecutor General’s office said later in the day that it was discounting that latter possibility and that they were leaning toward the improper performance of official duties by technicians and non-compliance with safety rules as more probable causes.

The State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, has initiated criminal investigations into suspected abuse of office and violation of safety rules.

The national leadership has given only a vague sense of the scale of the accident, but the initial picture looks worrying. President Sadyr Japarov took personal charge of the situation from early in the day. He and numerous other top officials, including GKNB chief Kamchybek Tashiyev, demonstratively went in person to the power plant.

Japarov has said that the accident occurred in one of the older sections of the power station. He said he has ordered a total modernization of the facility and will now seek funding to make that happen.

This episode will inevitably reawaken memories of the political scandal that has for years dogged the Bishkek TETs. In 2017, the plant underwent a refurbishment that cost the government around $400 million, only for a major failure to take place there in January 2018, which left large numbers of residents without heating over a number of days.

Japarov said previous efforts at modernization of the power plant, which was built in 1961, were badly executed by earlier governments and that an entire new plant could have been built with the money spent.

He offered another explanation, though. It is possible the accident happened because technicians switched to a new type of coal, Shabyrkul, which he said burned more powerfully than the Kara-Keche coal that has been used before now.

“I’m not an expert in this matter, but I still think that perhaps they did not take into account the power of this coal. They heated the thermal power plant as if they were using Kara-Keche coal, which is weaker. I think maybe this was the cause of the explosion,” he said.

People in the country’s second city, Osh, are experiencing their own problems with centralized heating.

On February 1, Agriculture Minister Bakyt Torobayev told parliament that Osh is suffering from a shortage of natural gas as a result of Uzbekistan slashing its deliveries tenfold.

According to Gazprom, the Russian state-owned company that controls Kyrgyzstan’s gas infrastructure, the decrease in the delivery of fuel is attributable to dwindling reserves at Uzbek fields and a rise in domestic consumption in Uzbekistan following a cold snap.

In situations like these, Gazprom’s office tends to prioritize high-rise buildings, while turning supplies to low-rise neighborhoods of privately owned houses. The thinking is that the latter houses are able to fall back on burning coal or other fuel for heat.
Is Tajikistan’s succession saga any closer to the end? (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/2/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
On January 29, China signed off on an agreement to hand Tajikistan the gift of $2 million to fund the construction of a conference room in a government building.

As grants go, it is not a lot, but the real significance of the development lies elsewhere.

As an official press release asserts, that the money was disbursed at all was the result of a visit paid to Beijing by the 36-year-old chair of the Senate, Rustam Emomali, better known to the public for being the son of President Emomali Rahmon. Common Tajik convention dictates that the son adopt their father’s first name as their surname, hence the echo.

In a pattern reminiscent of the father-to-son transition in Turkmenistan, where Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov yielded the president’s chair to Serdar Berdymukhamedov, in 2022, Emomali has increasingly become his country’s face on the international stage.

He has traveled to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, where he has held meetings with the presidents. In Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, Emomali has met with heads or deputy heads of government.

On January 8-9, he was in Iran, where he held talks with President Ebrahim Raisi and came away brandishing $120 million of cooperation agreements and contracts. It was reported that his China voyage produced $400 million of fresh investments in Tajikistan.

But still, the long wait for transition is making some antsy.

Conversations about a succession plan have been ongoing for around a decade.

Under changes to the constitution approved by a curated referendum in May 2016, the age at which a candidate was permitted to run for presidential office was lowered from 35 to 30. It was thought by many that this was being done to pave the way for Emomali, who was 26 at the time, to stand in the 2020 elections.

There has been more klaxon-volume clue-dropping than even that. In 2017, President Rahmon appointed his son mayor of the capital, Dushanbe, thereby shunting out his old comrade and Kremlin pet, Mahmadsaid Ubaidulloyev. Three years later, Emomali was elected head of the upper house of parliament. He holds both jobs contemporaneously.

There are no more available free rungs on the career ladder in Tajikistan.

At 71, Rahmon is by no means ancient, but he is doubtless aware of his own mortality. His older brother, Nuriddin, died of heart failure at the age of 67 in 2017, despite doubtlessly receiving the best available medical care. And nobody could accuse the corpulent leader of always looking like the poster boy for good health.

So why the wait?

One explanation that has circulated is that there is persistent nervousness about Rahmon handing over the reins to a country that has, after all, known civil war in its relatively recent history. As the poorest country to emerge out of the former Soviet Union, Tajikistan has been assailed by many unexpected shocks.

In the year of the most recent presidential election, 2020, Tajikistan was, along with the rest of the world, brought low by the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic impact of smaller numbers of Tajik migrant laborers being able to earn money to send home, usually from Russia, meant fewer people could afford to buy food.

Once that alarm was more or less weathered, another loomed on the southern border. In August 2021, the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, with which Tajikistan shares a difficult-to-monitor 1,357-kilometer border.

The following year, Rahmon brutally dealt with a domestic security crisis of his own making by going out of his way to crush the remnants of the so-called “informal leadership” network of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in the Pamirs.

That confrontation, which culminated in many Pamiri leaders and activists ending up either dead or in prison, was part of a pattern established soon after the 1997 peace agreement that brought an end to the civil war. Every few years or so, Rahmon has picked a fight with one or other constituency that he perceived could challenge his authority and has then proceeded to obliterate them.

Tajikistan has not had a real, viable political opposition group since 2015, the year that almost the entire leadership of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, or IRPT, was thrown behind bars.

The most recent trouble has come in the shape of deadly border conflicts with Kyrgyzstan, in 2021 and 2022. Very much against expectations, though, there are indications that the territorial disagreements that underlay those miniature wars could soon see some kind of resolution. The process is now ongoing.

Observers wonder if tying that loose end could be the key.

“President Rahmon has needed to resolve thorny issues that a young leader could not handle. If internal political issues do not arise in the near future, then after the border issues with Kyrgyzstan are resolved, early elections will be announced,” one source in the halls of government told Eurasianet on strict condition of anonymity.

If that forecast is accurate – and there is rarely any way of knowing beyond doubt – then a timetable could be coming into focus.

Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Japarov has said that he thinks the Kyrgyz-Tajik border question could be wrapped up toward this spring.

In a recent article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the Tajik succession question, analyst Galiya Ibragimova saw other bumps in the road for a would-be President Emomali. Citing her sources, she said there is much apprehension among the extended ruling family that Emomali could shut them out.

“Not everyone within Rahmon’s large family wants to see Rustam as the successor,” Ibragimova wrote. “Numerous relatives of the president who occupy high positions in government and in the world of business are afraid of losing everything after a change of power, even if it is a change of father to son.”

The presidential family is indeed large. Rahmon has nine children: seven daughters, many of them with husbands who have secured important government posts or snaffled valuable assets by less-than-transparent means, and two sons.

There is nevertheless an air of inevitability about succession. In recent years, Emomali has become a constant feature by his father’s side, forever standing next to him at opening of new factories and schools. He makes a point of being seen meeting with businesspeople and successful sportspeople. News of his charitable work gets ample airing.

In a state of the nation-style address on December 28, President Rahmon said that municipal leaders would do well to learn from the mayor of Dushanbe, his son, who he said had created large numbers of new jobs.

“I would like to express the gratitude of the government of the country to the leadership of the city of Dushanbe. This year alone they created 40,000 jobs … 5,000 of them for women,” Rahmon said, before the camera cut away to Emomali sitting within a row of other officials.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Abdul Qahar Balkhi
@QaharBalkhi
[2/4/2024 12:31 AM, 229.8K followers, 31 retweets, 166 likes]
Today Ms Roza Otunbayeva, head of UNAMA along with accompanying delegation called on IEA-Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi. The meeting focused on the recent diplomatic developments of IEA, the upcoming Doha meeting, the report of Mr. Sinirlioğlu & several other issues.

Abdul Qahar Balkhi
@QaharBalkhi
[2/4/2024 12:31 AM, 229.8K followers, 2 retweets, 10 likes]
At the outset, once again reiterating the position of IEA regarding the Resolution 2127, FM Muttaqi stressed constructive engagement between IEA & UN. Seeking further clarification regarding agenda & structure of the upcoming meeting in Doha, FM Muttaqi said that

Abdul Qahar Balkhi
@QaharBalkhi
[2/4/2024 12:31 AM, 229.8K followers, 3 retweets, 10 likes]
the Islamic Emirate will decide on the participation of a delegation based on clarifications provided regarding the agenda of the meeting. In the end, UN-SRSG presented some information about the Doha meeting and requested for the participation of IEA-delegation
Pakistan
Imran Khan
@ImranKhanPTI
[2/4/2024 5:43 AM, 20.4M followers, 24K retweets, 49K likes]
3rd authorised AI Generated Voice message of Founding Chairman PTI https://twitter.com/i/status/1754093187935973662

BilawalBhuttoZardari
@BBhuttoZardari
[2/5/2024 2:04 AM, 5.1M followers, 340 retweets, 594 likes]
On Kashmir Solidarity Day, we stand firmly with IIOJK’s courageous struggle for self-determination, a right granted by UNSC resolutions. India’s actions on August 5, 2019, were a blatant violation of international law, contradicting UNSC mandates on the disputed territory. We honour the Kashmiri peoples struggle for peace, freedom, security, and dignity, and stand steadfast with them in their cause. #KashmirSolidarityDay

BilawalBhuttoZardari
@BBhuttoZardari
[2/4/2024 9:15 AM, 5.1M followers, 4.1K retweets, 4.6K likes]
Thank you Hyderabad! The people will no longer allow the agents of old politics to divide them. The Pakistan Peoples Party is the only political party that stands for all Pakistanis, regardless of ethnicity, religion, caste, or belief. Stand with us and vote Teer on 8th February and choose to end the politics of division, violence, and hate.

BilawalBhuttoZardari
@BBhuttoZardari
[2/3/2024 2:55 PM, 5.1M followers, 6.2K retweets, 6.9K likes]
A special thank you to the sea of people in Mirpur Khas who braved hours of the cold and pouring rain to join me in my struggle against inflation, unemployment, and poverty. Together we will financially empower Haaris, we will ensure labourers and workers get their due, and we will provide unemployment support to the youth. The path for a new, better future for Pakistan lies ahead. On 8th February choose the Teer, and choose the path to a peaceful, progressive, and prosperous Pakistan.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/4/2024 11:23 PM, 205.7K followers, 13 retweets, 36 likes]
I appeared on @NewsHour tonight to discuss elections in Pakistan and the military’s dominant role in politics there, the state of democracy in Pakistan and broader South Asia, and what US policy objectives are in the region these days. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-upcoming-elections-in-south-asia-will-test-democracy-in-the-region

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/4/2024 11:31 AM, 205.7K followers, 189 retweets, 474 likes]
I’m quoted in this excellent on the ground report from @caroline_gm_d on the tactics PTI is using to campaign, under very challenging circumstances, ahead of next week’s election in Pakistan. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68178513

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/4/2024 11:00 AM, 205.7K followers, 199 retweets, 807 likes]
With Pakistan’s election 4 days away, a crucial q is youth turnout. 45% of eligible voters are ages 18-35, but youth turnout has been low in most past elections-up to 70% haven’t voted in the past. With a large base of young voters, a hollowed out PTI badly needs strong turnout.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/4/2024 11:00 AM, 205.7K followers, 8 retweets, 35 likes]
The rapid-fire succession of recent jail sentences announced for Khan are likely to galvanize, not demoralize, the PTI base. But will that translate to more voting? We’ll see. There’s also the fear factor, w/crackdowns and terrorism possibly impacting PTI voter decisions as well.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/4/2024 11:00 AM, 205.7K followers, 6 retweets, 20 likes]
The issue of PTI independents (all PTI candidates must run as independents due to court rulings) is unsettled: Will those that win remain loyal to PTI, or will some align w/different parties? Still, if they’re to have any chance of making electoral impacts, they need turnout.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/4/2024 11:00 AM, 205.7K followers, 10 retweets, 43 likes]
To its credit, PTI has worked assiduously to get candidates registered and campaigning. They’ve used technology and social media-and, most recently, another AI message from Imran Khan-to call for people to vote. As with so much else in Pakistan, young people are a pivotal factor.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/4/2024 11:00 AM, 205.7K followers, 9 retweets, 43 likes]
It’s hard to imagine any party getting an outright majority, and a (weak, exploitable) coalition led by PMLN seems the most likely outcome. But if PTI independents are to play some type of spoiler role, young people will need to vote at higher levels than in most past elections.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[2/3/2024 10:10 AM, 262K followers, 50 retweets, 253 likes]
In military-dominated Pakistan, where the army chief has long acted as the country’s effective ruler, the courts and legislature are so pliable that there is little hope of genuine democracy. Imran Khan’s latest conviction (the fourth) means his jail sentences now total 34 years.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[2/3/2024 3:19 AM, 8.3M followers, 33 retweets, 228 likes]
Why do Pakistani courts change their decisions with a change in the government? Should journalists also follow the footsteps of the courts? Here are some personal experiences detailing how journalism is becoming a dangerous profession in Pakistan https://youtu.be/YQ437NfILcA
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/4/2024 4:25 AM, 95.1M followers, 2.5K retweets, 8.1K likes]
Speaking at birth centenary celebrations of Shri S.N. Goenka Ji. https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1mrGmyzdPeNGy

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/4/2024 2:07 AM, 95.1M followers, 14K retweets, 26K likes]
A significant day for Assam! The projects being launched today will add momentum to the state’s growth journey. https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1yoKMwLQEkjJQ

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/4/2024 12:59 AM, 95.1M followers, 1.3K retweets, 3.5K likes]
Shri Jitendra Haripal was conferred the Padma Shri in 2017 for his exemplary contribution to music. His rendition of Rangabati is widely admired. Glad to have met him in Odisha.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/4/2024 12:59 AM, 95.1M followers, 322 retweets, 952 likes]
Shri Binod Kumar Pasayat Ji of Sambalpur is a distinguished lyricist, playwright and poet. His contribution to Sambalpuri language is invaluable. He stands as an eminent litterateur of Odisha, having been writing for seven decades. He has been conferred the Padma Shri this year.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/4/2024 12:59 AM, 95.1M followers, 462 retweets, 1.2K likes]
Happy to have met Shri Bhagabat Pradhan Ji in Odisha. His dedication to preserving and popularising Sabda Nrutya over five decades is truly inspiring. People like him have made us culturally richer and also ensured that the youth remain connected with their roots. Congratulated him on being conferred the Padma Shri this year.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/4/2024 12:59 AM, 95.1M followers, 1.3K retweets, 3.7K likes]
Privileged to meet Dr. Krishna Patel Ji, a celebrated Sambalpuri folk singer, whose mesmerising voice has resonated for over four decades. Her contribution to our cultural heritage is immense. The Government of India had conferred the Padma Shri on her in 2023.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/4/2024 12:59 AM, 95.1M followers, 1.1K retweets, 3.1K likes]
Meeting Shri Mitrabhanu Gountia Ji was an enriching experience. His versatility as a dramatist, poet, lyricist, and novelist has left an indelible mark, enriching our cultural tapestry. He was honoured with the Padma Shri in 2020.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/3/2024 6:17 AM, 95.1M followers, 5.4K retweets, 36K likes]
Glad to have inaugurated the campus of @iim_sambalpur. When an institution like this gets a modern campus, it leads to several benefits. Students from all over India will come here to study. It will also improve the local economy and make Sambalpur a hub for learning.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/5/2024 1:48 AM, 3M followers, 132 retweets, 999 likes]
Pleased to meet @anuradisanayake, Leader of NPP and JVP of Sri Lanka this morning. A good discussion on our bilateral relationship and the mutual benefits from its further deepening. Also spoke about Sri Lanka’s economic challenges and the path ahead. India, with its Neighbourhood First and SAGAR policies will always be a reliable friend and trusted partner of Sri Lanka.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/4/2024 2:13 AM, 3M followers, 157 retweets, 1.5K likes]
Warm greetings to FM @alisabrypc and the Government and people of Sri Lanka on their Independence Day. Committed to deepening the India-Sri Lanka partnership and promoting greater exchanges.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/4/2024 6:58 AM, 3M followers, 55 retweets, 330 likes]
As Sri Lanka celebrates its 76th Independence Day, here’s a look at forward steps in our close and multi-faceted relationship.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/2/2024 11:59 AM, 3M followers, 279 retweets, 2.1K likes]
Pleased to participate in launch of the book: ‘India and the Future of the G20’ this evening. Our G20 Presidency was a notable period in our diplomatic history. Resonating domestically, its many achievements have been widely appreciated. From getting multilateralism back on track, to fulfilling Modi’s guarantee to Africa, there is much that India should be proud of. Bridging multiple contradictions, our Presidency stood up for the Global South. Initiatives like SDG Action Plan, Green Development Pact, LiFE, the focus on millets, reform of Multilateral Development Banks, support for Digital Public Infrastructure, Women-led development will all have lasting impact. Congratulate ISAS and the authors for putting together this volume.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/2/2024 5:17 AM, 3M followers, 297 retweets, 2.8K likes]
Pleased to meet a Nepali Parliamentary delegation led by Chairman Raj Kishor Yadav. A good discussion on our deepening cooperation and closer linkages. Appreciate the broad-based sentiment in the delegation in favour of stronger cooperation.
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[2/4/2024 9:43 AM, 636K followers, 31 retweets, 88 likes]
#Bangladesh’s total #export value broke all previous records by reaching $5.72 bn in January. Exports grew 11.45% compared to the same period of last Fiscal Year 2023. Total export in July 2023- January 2024 stands at $33.26 bn. https://tbsnews.net/economy/bangladeshs-exports-grow-record-high-576bn-jan-787062 #MadeInBangladesh

Awami League
@albd1971
[2/4/2024 8:34 AM, 636K followers, 71 retweets, 250 likes]
US President @JoeBiden has written to Prime Minister #SheikhHasina expressing his willingness to work together to achieve #Bangladesh’s economic goals. He also expressed willingness to partner with Bangladesh on their shared vision for a free and open #IndoPacific. https://unb.com.bd/category/Bangladesh/committed-to-supporting-bangladeshs-ambitious-economic-goals-biden-writes-pm-hasina/130285 #BangladeshUSARelations @POTUS @BDMOFA @StateDept @usembassydhaka @USAmbBangladesh

Awami League
@albd1971
[2/4/2024 3:40 AM, 636K followers, 31 retweets, 121 likes]
Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister @saberhc has called upon teachers and students to make educational institutions free from all kinds of single-use plastic, including water bottles. https://dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/338496/environment-minister-urges-educational-institution #SayNoToPlastic #Environment

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/4/2024 10:39 AM, 205.7K followers, 69 retweets, 203 likes]
President Biden has sent a warm letter to Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina expressing his willingness to work with her. The letter was conveyed to BD’s foreign secretary by US amb Peter Haas. This, after the US had said the BD election was not free and fair. https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/xqov8lesjb#:~:text=US%20President%20Joe%20Biden%20has,and%20open%20Indo%2DPacific%E2%80%9D.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/4/2024 10:39 AM, 205.7K followers, 3 retweets, 10 likes]
As I recently wrote: "BD will remain a test case for the US’s values-based foreign policy. But so long as it keeps bumping up against the relationship’s strategic imperatives, the experiment could grow increasingly untenable in a world order where realpolitik so often prevails."

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[2/4/2024 3:42 PM, 5K followers]
The US government has completely shifted gears on #Bangladesh. From prioritizing human rights, democracy & election security, it now admits the #Bangladesh “election” was not free & fair, yet the Biden administration will work with the illegal government. This complete inconsistency is unacceptable to those who prioritize human rights.

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[2/4/2024 3:35 PM, 5K followers, 2 retweets, 7 likes]
Let’s get this straight. After 3 years of the US policy towards #Bangladesh being based on human rights, democracy & free & fair elections, the Biden administration has completely shifted gears. Now, it admits the “election” was not free & fair, yet it will “partner” with an illegitimate & authoritarian regime on severity, economy & climate? So now we just overlook all the illegalities & corruption? https://unb.com.bd/category/Bangladesh/committed-to-supporting-bangladeshs-ambitious-economic-goals-biden-writes-pm-hasina/130285

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[2/3/2024 7:28 PM, 5K followers, 6 retweets, 25 likes]
It has come to the attention of many people that the main opposition party of #Bangladesh, the BNP, is absent from the growing, prominent & very necessary #IndiaOut & #BoycottIndia campaigns. The BNP’s reluctance/refusal to ever stand up to Indian hegemonism is noticeable more than ever now. @bdbnp78 @RTD_BD @NurulHaqueNur2

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/4/2024 11:17 PM, 4.5K followers, 153 retweets, 163 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu and First Lady Sajidha Mohamed attend the opening of the People’s Majlis for the year 2024, where the President delivers his first Presidential Address.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/4/2024 11:04 PM, 4.5K followers, 119 retweets, 107 likes]
#Livestream: Presidential Address 2024 by President Dr @MMuizzu at the opening of @mvpeoplesmajlis https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1ypKdknenZvxW

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[2/2/2024 9:38 AM, 12.7K followers, 45 retweets, 89 likes]
It was a pleasure to meet the Secretary-General of the Indian Ocean Rim Association, H.E. @salmanaf2013, in the margins of the 3rd #EUIndoPacific Ministerial Forum in Brussels today. #Maldives is committed towards building a stable, secure and prosperous Indian Ocean. We will work with @IORAofficial and its Member States to achieve this shared goal.

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[2/2/2024 7:53 AM, 12.7K followers, 48 retweets, 85 likes]
Pleasure to participate in the roundtable on “Shared prosperity, economic resilience and investments” at EU Indo-Pacific Ministerial Forum. President Dr @MMuizzu is committed to working with partners, including the #EU, and its member States, in upholding a rules-based international order in the Indian Ocean. I highlighted the #Maldives development priorities and interests, noting the need to enhance resilience and address the challenges faced by Small Island Developing States.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/2/2024 11:05 AM, 205.7K followers, 5 retweets, 12 likes]
In this essay for @9DashLine, I argue that President Muizzu’s pro-China stance is likely less a full-on embrace of Beijing and more about striking a better balance in ties w/India & China. It’s a hedging strategy w/precedent in Maldives foreign policy. https://www.9dashline.com/article/tilting-or-balancing-decoding-muizzus-foreign-policy

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[2/4/2024 9:53 AM, 4.8K followers, 4 retweets, 12 likes]
Islamic Religous observance to celebrate 76th Independence Day at the Historical Red Mosque I called for unity in diversity to conquer the challenges and build a strong, inclusive and a prosperous nation. #76IndependanceDay

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[2/3/2024 9:22 PM, 4.8K followers, 16 retweets, 57 likes]
As we celebrate the 76th anniversary of our #independence today, this milestone carries more significance than ever before. Given the deep economic crisis we were facing only a year ago, the current recovery and upsurge in the economy seemed inconceivable. Though we still have a journey ahead for a full recovery, we can be cautiously optimistic of the way forward in light of the indomitable resilience we have displayed in the face of hardship. May we continue to to have this spirit under a common Sri Lankan identity and rise together. Wishing all Sri Lankans a happy independence day.
Central Asia
MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[2/5/2024 1:50 AM, 4.5K followers, 2 retweets, 3 likes]
Working meeting on preparation for the third Dushanbe Water Conference https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/14285/working-meeting-on-preparation-for-the-third-dushanbe-water-conference

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[2/5/2024 12:03 AM, 22.6K followers, 4 likes]
The Iranian government has traced last month’s twin suicide bombings in Kerman city to ethnic-Tajik fighters of the Islamic State Khorasan who, experts say, are "fairly small" in number but play "an important part" in the group’s military activities.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[2/3/2024 1:23 PM, 22.6K followers, 3 retweets, 5 likes]
Insightful interview in Tashkent by http://Demokrat.uz with @UsAmbUzbekistan, who discussed US policy towards Central Asia and Afghanistan, media freedom and civil society, human rights, environment, Russia-Ukraine war, and the Middle East. @usembtashkent

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[2/3/2024 7:59 AM, 22.6K followers, 1 retweet, 8 likes]
Uzbekistan has delivered 20 tons of liquefied gas from Andijan to support the residents of Jalal-Abad region, currently facing electricity supply disruptions.

{End of Report}
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