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:
Tuesday, February 6, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Afghan diplomat shuns Taliban rule by refusing to leave post, calls on West to ‘mobilize’ against abuses (FOX News)
FOX News [2/6/2024 4:00 AM, Beth Bailey, 9M, Neutral]
When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, Afghan Ambassador to Austria Manizha Bakhtari faced a serious dilemma. Should she continue to represent the former government from her Viennese post or abandon her title and role?

"We were in a state of shock," Bakhtari told Fox News Digital. "After a couple of days, my team and I came to the conclusion that we must continue as the representatives of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan." The Taliban now calls the country the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

For more than two years following that monumental decision, Bakhtari remains the only female ambassador to stay the course, operating with a lean team from a small office in Vienna. In addition to helping diaspora Afghans with their consular needs, Bakhtari continues to travel to conferences and meetings with fellow world leaders to speak about the tragedies unfolding in Afghanistan. Chief on her list of concerns is the Taliban’s treatment of Afghan women.

"Five years before, we had hundreds of women in our parliament, in our government, in the civil societies … and now a woman cannot exhibit her rights," Bakhtari explained. She noted that the Taliban’s "violations and discriminatory measures" against women have escalated in recent months. After closing domestic violence shelters in 2021, Afghanistan’s rulers have begun imprisoning women to protect them from gender-based violence.

Flouting their own decrees, the Taliban have recently arrested young girls and women who disobeyed rulings about proper dress codes. These arrests have specifically targeted women in areas populated predominantly by members of Tajik and Hazara minority groups. These events are accompanied by the stricter enforcement of laws governing travel without a male escort, and the mass layoffs of 600 women at two Afghan manufacturing plants.

Recent reports have highlighted the edicts and directives – over 100 to date – which have whittled away women’s freedoms, depriving them of access to education beyond the sixth grade, and keeping them from moving about freely, accessing public services, or holding a growing variety of jobs.

Bakhtari is urging the West to look beyond these rulings to see the societal impact of the Taliban’s misogyny. The ambassador noted that human trafficking was on the rise, particularly as women-led families seek assistance to escape the country due to Taliban restrictions. Bakhtari related that some women have been sexually victimized while being ferried to their destinations.

The State Department’s 2023 report on trafficking in persons in Afghanistan corroborates Bakhtari’s concerns. According to the report, "some intermediaries and employers force Afghans into labor or sex trafficking," while some Afghan women and girls "are exploited into sex trafficking and domestic servitude" after being sold in neighboring countries, or within Afghanistan. While the prior Afghan government had myriad laws and penalties for various trafficking offenses, the Taliban "did not report any law enforcement efforts to combat human trafficking."

Bakhtari is also concerned about increases in child and forced marriages. According to a report from human rights organization Rawadari, the Taliban continues to force underage girls into marriage despite Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada forbidding this practice.

In a climate of economic desperation, Afghan girls who lack education or employment prospects retain value in the form of the dowry price they command. A recent Washington Post opinion piece found that in a single settlement in Herat province, 40% of surveyed families had either sold their young daughters into marriage or awaited buyers for their daughters. While the Taliban have refuted these findings, author Stephanie Sinclair insists that life will soon be a "nightmare" for child brides who are "saddled with housework and often subject to verbal, physical and sexual abuse."

Bakhtari noted that loss of employment, social access, education and freedom have led to "dire mental health consequences," with "reports of depression and suicide, especially among young girls." The Taliban reported that 360 suicides occurred in Afghanistan in 2022. Comparatively, Rawadari found that in Badakhshan, one of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, 35 children had committed suicide between August 2021 and October 2023.

Bakhtari believes that the Taliban’s actions "constitute a grave form of gender apartheid." She has joined Afghan women and women’s rights advocates in advocating for gender apartheid to be included in a United Nations draft treaty concerning crimes against humanity. "Only by putting a label on these atrocities will we be able to mobilize real actions against the perpetrators," Bakhtari explained.

Current international reactions to the human rights disaster underway in Afghanistan frustrate Bakhtari.

She believes that the exclusion of Afghan women from international discussions about the future of Afghanistan "is [a form of] violence against women." So too are suggestions that the Taliban have achieved enduring peace in Afghanistan. "Peace does not mean the absence of war," Bakhtari retorted. "Peace means justice. Peace means equality for everyone in the country."

For the leaders who urge that the Taliban need time to change and modernize before facing international condemnation, Bakhtari points out the generational setbacks Afghan women have already endured. "We have already lost three, four, or five generations of our women going to school [so] even if the Taliban goes today, we need at least 20 years to build once again," the ambassador insisted.

Bakhtari believes some Western leaders remain silent about the Taliban’s rulings out of a belief that they reflect overall cultural attitudes about women among Afghans. Bakhtari admits that there remain small pockets of Afghans in rural areas who see no value in educating girls, and who expect women to don the burka.

The ambassador fights for a more inclusive Afghan culture. She demonstrated family pictures taken after her mother and her mother-in-law graduated from college in the 1970s. Neither woman wears a head covering. Another photograph showed Bakhtari’s parents on the day of their wedding. Her father wore a western suit, his hair slicked back in a style reminiscent of Elvis. Her mother wore a form-fitting dress with a beehive hairdo.

"These are the good examples of how Afghan society works," Bakhtari said.
Opposition to the Senate border bill jeopardizes help for Afghans who aided U.S. troops (AP)
AP [2/5/2024 2:52 PM, Farnoush Amiri, 179K, Neutral]
The massive $118 billion Senate border bill not only contains once-in-a-decade border security legislation and wartime aid to Israel and Ukraine, but also offers a chance for the U.S. to keep its promise to Afghans who worked alongside U.S. soldiers in America’s longest war.

Tucked inside the sprawling package is a measure that would provide a long-awaited pathway to residency for tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who arrived in the U.S. on military planes after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

But the measure may fail if members can’t agree on the bill’s larger, unrelated provisions. Democrats, especially members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, have voiced opposition for what they call the extreme, far-right border policies in the legislation that they say do nothing to help fix the country’s broken immigration system.

Conservatives have said the package does not go far enough in limiting the number of daily migrant crossings at the southern border.

If it fails, it will represent yet another disappointment for the more than 76,000 Afghans currently living in the U.S. who remain in immigration limbo as a result of years of congressional inaction.

A small group of bipartisan lawmakers and advocacy groups have worked for nearly three years to get a House or Senate vote on a standalone bill, the Afghan Adjustment Act, that would prevent Afghans from becoming stranded without legal residency status when their humanitarian parole expires. But advocates have repeatedly faced strong opposition from some Republican lawmakers to vetting requirements for the refugees who were brought here and their family members still stranded in Kabul.

The bipartisan border deal offered long-awaited breakthrough. Both Republican and Democratic senators and their staff worked to bridge the divide and produce legislative text that both sides could support. The new proposal would couple measures enabling qualified Afghans to eventually apply for U.S. citizenship, as was done for refugees in the past, including those from Cuba, Vietnam and Iraq, with stricter and more expedited vetting processes.

“I think the most gracious thing would be to say there’s been a lot of twists and turns, but I’m very happy with the result,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, one of the lead sponsors of the effort, told The Associated Press on Monday. “And I’m very glad that it’s included because this is an important signal that the United States stands by those who stand by us.”

The U.S. government admitted the refugees on a temporary parole status as part of Operation Allies Welcome, the largest resettlement effort in the country in decades, with the promise of a pathway to life in the U.S. for their service.

“Our position is that Afghans stood by us for 20 years and over the past three years, they’ve been asked to take a backseat to every other bill,” said Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran and head of #AfghanEvac, a coalition supporting Afghan resettlement efforts. “And so it is really nice to see that they’re included in this one.”

But hopes for fulfilling that promise to longtime allies of America’s mission in Kabul could be short-lived. Republican leaders in the House have declared the bill a non-starter, and even passage through the Senate, where the deal was negotiated, is an uphill climb.

As proponents of the Afghan provision await the fate of the package, they are trying to remain cautiously optimistic that their campaign is making headway.

VanDiver, who has worked with the State Department on this issue since the U.S. withdrawal, said that he has heard a lot of excitement from Afghan allies and their family members in the last 12 hours about the inclusion in the package.

“The worst part about it is that it is now on us to manage expectations,” he said. “These folks have already been through so much and it’s frankly embarrassing that we can’t figure out how to give them the permanency that they’ve earned.”
Afghanistan clears electricity debts to Tajikistan (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/5/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Positive]
Tajikistan may not recognize the Taliban government of neighboring Afghanistan, but the two countries are starting to cooperate better on trading electricity.

On February 1, Energy and Water Resources Minister Daler Juma informed reporters that Afghanistan had fully paid off its debts for power delivered to date.

Kabul has since 2021 proven an unreliable customer. While regularly paying off part of its dues to Tajikistan, it has struggled to clear its debts outright.

In 2023, Tajikistan exported 2.7 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, worth $110.4 million, Juma said. That was 5 percent more than in 2022, said Juma, without specifying how much of the total was reserved for Afghanistan.

Tajikistan at present exports power to Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Juma says most of this power is delivered in spring and summer, when hydropower facilities produce excess capacity. The exception is Afghanistan, which continues to receive electricity in small quantities to keep key infrastructure up and running. The precise tariff structure for that electricity is not made public.

Ever since the Taliban seized power and installed a self-styled Islamic Emirate, Tajikistan has adopted a cool stance toward Afghanistan.

President Emomali Rahmon has been downright hostile. In August 2021, he stated his government would not recognize the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan unless the country’s ethnic Tajik minority, which he claimed accounted for 46 percent of the total population, was accorded a “worthy role” in the running of the country.

That notwithstanding, the countries are in economic dialogue. Trade turnover in 2023 amounted to $98 million, which was 12 percent below the year before.

Tajikistan and Afghanistan entered into an agreement in 2008 on the supply of Tajik electricity through to 2028.

At the end of each year, the parties sign a renewal protocol, which determines the cost and volume of electricity supplies for the next year. The chair of Tajik state power company Mahmadumar Asozoda met in December in Turkey with his Afghan opposite party, Alhaj Mullah Muhammad Hanif Hamza, head of Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat, or DABS, to sign an electricity purchase agreement for 2024.

The pair used the meeting to also discuss “the possibility of extending a new 500 [kilovolt] transmission line from Tajikistan to Afghanistan,” DABS said in a statement.

Kabul has further registered interest in continuing to work on implementing CASA-1000, a Western-backed project to link hydropower rich nations Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan
Discontent and Defiance on the Road to Pakistan’s Election (New York Times)
New York Times [2/6/2024 12:13 AM, Christina Goldbaum and Zia ur-Rehman, 831K, Negative]
The highway is the most politically charged slice of a politically turbulent country. It winds 180 miles from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, through the fertile plains of Punjab Province to Lahore, the nation’s cultural and political heart.

For centuries, it was known only as a sliver of the Grand Trunk Road, Asia’s longest and oldest thoroughfare, linking traders in Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent. But in Pakistan, this stretch of the smog-drenched highway has become the stage for major rallies and protests led by nearly every famed civilian leader the country has had.

As Pakistan heads into national elections on Thursday, the road is buzzing. Politics dominates the chatter between its vendors and rickshaw drivers, their conversations seeped in a culture of conspiracy, cults of political personality and the problems of entrenched military control.

Nearly every day, hundreds fill the street — its overpasses plastered in green, red and white political posters — to rally for their side. Many more, their preferred party effectively disbanded amid a military crackdown, quietly curse the authorities before an election widely viewed as one of the least credible in the country’s history.

Mile 38: The Economic Crash

The newsstand just off the main highway in Gujar Khan is little more than a metal chair with newspapers fanned out carefully in a circle. Men gathered around the stand, chatting as they drank their morning tea and electric rickshaws rumbled by. Every day, the papers arrive with a new political advertisement splashed across their front page, said the vendor, Abdul Rahim, 60. But he has not been swayed by any of their catchy slogans or artful headshots.

Like many people across Pakistan, he has become fed up with the country’s political system. After former Prime Minister Imran Khan ran afoul of the country’s powerful military and was ousted by Parliament in 2022, infighting seemed to consume the country’s political and military leaders. All the while, people like Mr. Rahim were getting crushed by the worst economic crisis in Pakistan’s recent history, which sent inflation soaring to nearly 40 percent last year, a record high.

“For five years, I’ve been worrying about how to put food on the table — that’s all I’ve spent my time thinking about,” Mr. Rahim said.

Three governments, led by three different parties, have been in power since inflation began to surge in 2019. None were able to put the economy back on track, Mr. Rahim and some men gathered around the stand explained.

“The rulers are becoming richer, their children are becoming richer and we are becoming poorer every day,” Abid Hussein, 57, a nearby fruit stall vendor, piped in. “This is the worst period in my lifetime in Pakistan.”

Mile 74: The Crackdown

The fliers are hidden at major intersections in Jhelum, wedged between the fruits and sunglasses of vendors’ carts and surreptitiously handed out to passers-by. They have a photo of Mr. Khan in the top left corner along with his party’s new slogan: “We will take revenge with the vote.”

Most of the campaigning for Mr. Khan’s political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or P.T.I., has taken place in these shadows after the military started a monthslong intimidation campaign.

“They are working to crush the party. But they can’t because the party is in the hearts of the people,” the provincial assembly candidate in Jhelum, Yasir Mehmood Qureshi, said as he stood in a large, shaded yard surrounded by around two dozen supporters.

The military’s crackdown was designed to sideline the populist Mr. Khan, but most analysts say it has instead increased his support. While his popularity had plummeted as the economy declined in his last months in office, he now has a cultlike following. Supporters see him — and by extension themselves — as wronged by the military leaders who they believe orchestrated his ouster.

“We are frustrated,” one P.T.I. supporter, Momin Khan, 25, said. “Everyone is angry.”

Mile 118: The Young Vote

The young men sat on a dead patch of grass at the edge of a field in Wazirabad, half-watching a cricket match. Bored with the game, Umer Malik, 28, pulled out his phone and began scrolling through TikTok. Within a few seconds, there was a video showing a P.T.I. gathering with the words “Vote Only Khan,” another mocking the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, or P.M.L.N., the party seen as favored by the military in this election, and one slow-motion shot of Mr. Khan walking through a crowd.

“Every third video is about political stuff,” Mr. Malik muttered.

Mr. Malik and his friends had been captivated by the flood of political content created by P.T.I. in the past few years. The videos explained in layman’s language how Pakistan’s military had kept an iron grip on power. They taught the history of the military’s several coups. They slammed the generals for Mr. Khan’s ouster.

That content, outside the reach of state censorship, had stirred a political awakening for their generation, which makes up around half of the country’s electorate. While young people in Punjab would once take voting instructions from elders who had been promised projects like new roads by party leaders, they are now casting votes for whomever they prefer.

“The old era is over,” said Abid Mehar, 34, whose parents are staunch P.M.L.N. voters, while he supports P.T.I. “We will vote by our conscience.”

Mile 137: The Chosen Party

It was nearly midnight when the leaders of P.M.L.N. appeared at the rally in Gujranwala. Hundreds of party supporters crammed into rows upon rows of seats, cheering and clapping as fireworks lit up the sky. Political songs blasted from speakers: “Nawaz Sharif, he will build Punjab!” “Nawaz Sharif, he will save the country!”

Mr. Sharif’s near-certain return to power has offered a redemption of sorts. He has served as prime minister three times — never completing a single term. Twice he was ousted after falling out with the military. Then, in 2017, he was toppled by corruption allegations.

But for a military bent on gutting P.T.I., Mr. Sharif was seen as perhaps the only politician who could counter Mr. Khan’s popular appeal. After spending four years in exile, Mr. Sharif was allowed to return to the country in October to shore up P.M.L.N.’s support.

“When he returned, it revived the party,” said Ijaz Khan Ballu, a P.M.L.N. campaigner in Gujranwala. “All these votes for P.M.L.N. are really votes for Nawaz Sharif.”
Imran Khan’s Absence Fuels Defiance and Despair for Pakistan Voters (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/5/2024 10:00 PM, Betsy Joles, 5543K, Neutral]
At a campaign office of Imran Khan’s beleaguered political party in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city, workers remain defiant about an election later this week even as the former prime minister sits in jail and another ex-leader, Nawaz Sharif, is the favorite to take power.

“We will not panic,” Tasawar Farooq, 38, said in an interview at the office ahead of Thursday’s vote. “We will compete with them fully.”

One of Farooq’s brothers, a politician with Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, is being tried in a military court for alleged involvement in an attack on government and army buildings after the one-time cricket star was first detained last May. Another is running in his place as an independent candidate, the only possibility for Khan supporters after a court banned them from contesting the election under the PTI banner.

But despite the confidence, the PTI party workers aren’t sure if the office will get shut down. Khan has been convicted in multiple cases that he says are politically motivated and is receiving new jail terms by the day. On Saturday, a court sentenced him and his wife to seven years in prison over an unlawful marriage, his third conviction in the past week.

Pakistan’s roughly 129 million voters go to the polls with a political landscape drastically changed from the last election in 2018. The country’s politics have been in flux since Khan was removed in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April 2022 after falling out with the military, prompting him to stage rallies and whip up his millions of young supporters until the government and army clamped down.

Khan’s party is now gutted, its remaining candidates no longer able to run under the PTI name, and not even allowed to use its symbol — a cricket bat — to help illiterate voters choose. Another political heavyweight, three-time former premier Nawaz Sharif, 74, has returned from exile in London, been acquitted of corruption charges and is running again as PM. His revival is widely seen as blessed by the military, as a way to counter Khan’s popularity.

Yet for all this change, some things remain the same. Analysts say the army, which has run Pakistan directly or indirectly for much of the nation’s history, is as powerful and involved in politics as ever.

The nuclear-armed nation of more than 240 million people is important for regional and global stability, and its economy remains fragile, with inflation running at 28% and $25 billion of external debt payments due in the fiscal year starting July. The International Monetary Fund’s latest bailout program, Pakistan’s 23rd since independence in 1947, expires in March, making negotiating a fresh deal the new prime minister’s first priority.

At a gathering of Pakistan’s business elite in Karachi last week, many people interviewed said they predicted a hung parliament and then a weak coalition government. Most expect it to be led by Sharif — or his brother, Shehbaz, also a former prime minister. They described the current army chief, Asim Munir, as hafiz, someone who knows the Koran by heart, and all agreed he’s the true power in Pakistan.

The army didn’t respond to a request for comment. In November 2022, a previous army chief said the military has decided not to interfere in political matters.

For emerging and frontier markets money manager FIM Partners, the base case is the new prime minister will continue Pakistan’s reforms. Pakistan’s dollar bonds have rallied going into the election, with the notes gaining 9% last month, making them among the best performers in the world. They returned almost 100% in 2023. The country’s benchmark stock index has gained more than 50% since late June, when Pakistan clinched its IMF bailout. The rupee is up more than 2% in the period, making it the best-performing currency in Asia.

If Nawaz Sharif returns as prime minister, he’ll face two challenges, according to Madiha Afzal, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution. One is “managing Pakistan’s economic problems, especially soaring inflation,” she says. The other is “managing his relationship with a strengthened military.”

With Khan in jail, Sharif’s main challenger, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, is someone who also knows all about how being a high-profile politician in Pakistan can go wrong. His mother, Benazir Bhutto, twice prime minister, was assassinated at a political rally in 2007. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was removed as prime minister in a military coup and then executed in 1979.

Khan may be out of the picture, but he still has the highest approval rating going into the election at 57%, according to the latest Gallup Pakistan survey published in January. That compares to 52% for Nawaz Sharif and 35% for Bhutto Zardari, 35.

One wild card is the more than 200 PTI members, like Farooq’s brother, who are running as independents. There are 266 seats up for direct election in the national assembly, meaning a party would need to win 134 of them to clinch a majority. If the PTI independents cumulatively get a majority, the next question will be whether they are allowed to form a government.

What’s more likely is other parties will try to poach them, with the military also putting pressure on them to join a particular coalition, according to Niaz Murtaza, a political economist and op-ed writer for Dawn, Pakistan’s largest English-language newspaper.

“Everybody will be ready with their nets out,” Murtaza said. Elected lawmakers could shift their allegiances to “whoever offers the highest bid,” he said.

It’s also unclear whether PTI supporters will turn out in large numbers or boycott the elections, according to analysts.

The process of finalizing the government will take until the end of the month, potentially fueling political and market uncertainty if there’s no clear winner.

In the Sharif heartland of Lahore, Muhammad Naeem, 50, a local travel agent, says he knows what to expect if Nawaz Sharif becomes prime minister again: better infrastructure and incentives for the business community.

Another potential implication of a Sharif return is improved relations with India. The politician has sought to improve ties with Pakistan’s arch-rival. In 2014, he attended Prime Minister Narendra Mod’s swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi. The following year, Modi made a surprise visit to Lahore.

“He made things better here,” Naeem said of Sharif. “The people are smart – they will only vote for someone who has delivered.”

Down the street, three young men sitting outside a shrine are divided. One supports Khan’s party, one Sharif’s and one a far-right religious group.

“Nawaz Sharif, we’ve given three or four chances already,” said Abdul Aleem, 21, a student. “One more chance will be too much.”

Then a man leans out from a rickshaw to make his preference known. “Imran Khan, zindabad!” he proclaims in Urdu. Long live Imran Khan.

Pakistan’s youth, big backers of Khan, are “disillusioned about the electoral system,” according to Amna Kausar, senior projects manager at the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency. People aged 18 to 35 account for more than 40% of eligible voters, and over the past eight elections, only 31% of them on average voted, the think tank said.

“If you ask everyone from university, they will say I want to move outside to foreign countries,” said Alizan Mary Gill, 21, a psychology student at Forman Christian College in Lahore.

Few expect large-scale political unrest from Khan’s supporters after the crackdown on PTI protesters in May. The party has faced restrictions staging physical rallies and has moved much of its campaigning online. It’s even using artificial intelligence to craft and deliver speeches in Khan’s voice. Supporters are also adopting Prisoner No. 804 — Khan’s jail tag — as a rallying call.

And back at the campaign office, Farooq also puts a brave face on PTI’s predicament.

“They are trying to finish the party,” he said. “But parties don’t vanish like this.”
How Imran Khan is campaigning from jail in Pakistan: AI and covert canvassing (Reuters)
Reuters [2/5/2024 9:29 PM, Asif Shahzad and Ariba Shahid, 5239K, Negative]
Days before Pakistan’s Feb. 8 election, a masked and headscarf-clad Komal Asghar led a team of similarly dressed women through alleys in the eastern city of Lahore.

Their mission: to knock on doors and distribute campaign pamphlets adorned with photos of jailed former prime minister, Imran Khan.

Asghar, a 25-year-old insurance company employee, gave up her day job for a month to canvass for Khan’s embattled Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

Khan has been in prison since August. Numerous PTI candidates are behind bars or on the run from criminal and terrorism charges that they say are politically motivated. A Reuters reporter witnessed one of the many rallies that PTI supporters say have been disrupted.

"I’m with Khan. I don’t care about my life. My God is with me," said Asghar, adding the former premier’s opponents can "do whatever".

Asghar said the face and hair coverings - which not all the women usually wore - made it easier for them to canvass without attracting unwanted attention. The public perceives women as non-threatening, she said, making it less likely their campaigning would lead to conflict.

The PTI is deploying a two-pronged campaign strategy of secretive campaigning, often led by female teacher volunteers, and generative AI technology, according to interviews with fifteen of its candidates and supporters, as well as political analysts and IT experts.

The party has used generative AI to create footage of Khan, its founder, reading speeches he conveyed to lawyers from his prison cell, urging supporters to turn out on election day. It has organised online rallies on social media that have been watched by several hundred thousand people at a time, according to YouTube data.

Khan, who was barred by a court from holding political office last year, is not the first Pakistani leader to be imprisoned during a campaign. But PTI’s ability to tap into new technology and the former cricketer’s personal popularity have kept him in the headlines.

ONE-MAN SHOW?

Khan was sentenced to ten years imprisonment on Jan. 30 for leaking state secrets. He then received a 14-year sentence on Wednesday for illegally selling state gifts. And on Saturday, he was sentenced to seven years for unlawful marriage. He denies all charges and his lawyers say they plan to appeal.
The 71-year-old won the last election, in 2018, but was ousted in 2022 after falling out with the country’s powerful military, which PTI has accused of trying to hound it out of existence.

The military denies the allegations and interim Information Minister Murtaza Solangi told Reuters that PTI was only stopped from campaigning when it did not have the required permits or if supporters clashed with law enforcement.

Usman Anwar, police chief of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, said his force’s job was to provide security: "We have not and will not interfere in any political process."

Rights groups and rival politicians have accused Khan of undermining democratic norms when in power by cracking down on media and persecuting his opponents through the same anti-graft tribunal that sentenced him on Wednesday.

PTI and Khan have called the allegations baseless.

No reliable polling is publicly available but PTI’s workers and independent analysts such as Madiha Afzal of the U.S.-based Brookings Institution think-tank say Khan maintains strong support, especially among the nation’s large youth population.

Nonetheless, restrictions are likely to limit PTI’s ability to compete with rivals such as the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), led by the frontrunner, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, said Afzal. Sharif returned from exile late last year and his corruption convictions and lifetime ban from politics were recently overturned by the Supreme Court.

A PML-N spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

"The major structural barriers to the PTI in this election ... make it likely that the party will lose despite its popularity," said Afzal, adding that Khan’s dedicated supporters meant it was too early to write off the party entirely.

PTI has not said who it will put forward as prime minister if it is victorious on Feb. 8.

VIRTUAL CAMPAIGN

The restrictions on the party have forced it to prioritise digital campaigning, said PTI’s U.S.-based social media lead Jibran Ilyas, who like the party’s other digital leaders is based abroad.

Though only about half of Pakistan’s 240 million people have smartphones and internet connectivity is patchy, PTI hopes that it can reach enough young people to impact the election. The voting age is 18 and more than two-thirds of the electorate is under 45.

Central to this strategy is reminding people who may have voted for PTI due to its famous founder that it is still Khan’s party.

"We have never had a political rally without Imran Khan so when we were planning the online rally, we wanted to find a way to present him to the people," Ilyas said.

His team used generative AI software from U.S. startup ElevenLabs to create three clips of the former premier delivering speeches. Khan’s lawyers passed messages between PTI and its founder during jailhouse visits and the party wrote the speeches off his notes.

"We debated the misuse potential and decided to stick with audio AI only," Ilyas said.
ElevenLabs didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

PTI also created an app that allows Facebook and WhatsApp users to find the party’s candidate in their constituency. Many voters had identified PTI with its cricket bat electoral symbol but the electoral commission recently banned PTI from using it on the technical grounds that it did not hold an internal leadership election. The decision means the PTI candidates are running without official party affiliation.

The PTI has also held online rallies in an attempt to recreate jalsas, the massive Urdu-language rallies that take place in parks and major intersections nationwide.

But voters have had trouble accessing the rallies. Since Khan’s first arrest in May, the Netblocks global internet monitor found six disruptions of access to social media platforms including YouTube, X and Facebook at times when the PTI was holding virtual jalsas.

Information minister Solangi said the national disruptions were due to technical reasons unrelated to PTI’s campaign. Pakistan’s IT ministry and telecommunications authority did not return requests for comment.

POLICE PRESENCE

Despite PTI’s online reach, elections in Pakistan - whose voters live in teeming port cities, vast desert and some of the world’s highest mountains ranges - depend on election workers generating turnout.

Banners and posters for parties such as PML-N are a common sight nationwide, but Reuters reporters in Karachi and Lahore - cumulatively home to more than 30 million people - saw almost no PTI banners.

Lahore-based PTI organiser Naveed Gul said that posters were often taken down by authorities shortly after being put up, an accusation that Punjab police chief Anwar called "malicious." Reuters could not independently verify that PTI party material was taken down.

The ongoing crackdown boiled over on Jan. 28, when PTI planned to hold nationwide rallies on a cool Sunday morning.

But in Karachi, Pakistan’s most populous city, police and Khan’s backers violently clashed. Law enforcement fired tear gas shells, according to television footage. A police spokesperson said 72 arrests were made in the three days after the clashes.

In Lahore, hundreds of PTI workers and supporters gathered at the home of Khan’s lead lawyer, Salman Akram Raja, who is also a PTI legislative candidate. As he emerged from his house, Reuters reporters saw him met by a large police contingent.

Raja said that he was threatened with detention if he did not cancel the planned rally, and Reuters reporters heard a police official telling him they had "orders from high ups."

Asked about the incident, police chief Anwar said he would hold an inquiry if a formal complaint was made.

After consulting with his aides, Raja told supporters to disperse peacefully. He told Reuters that it was important to be free from detention and able to campaign, even in a limited way, in the immediate run-up to the election.

"Each time we go out to campaign, there is fear hanging over our most candidates," he said. "Everybody feels that each day of campaign ... is a war."
The Military Is Still Pulling the Strings in Pakistan’s Elections (Foreign Policy)
Foreign Policy [2/5/2024 8:00 AM, Muneeb Yousuf, Jamia Millia Islamia, and Mohammad Usman Bhatti, 315K, Neutral]
Pakistan is scheduled to hold elections on Feb. 8, the latest crucial date in the country’s democratic experiment. Some observers feared Islamabad’s election commission could postpone the vote due to worsening security conditions, but even as the elections go ahead, many analysts worry they may not be free or fair. Pakistan has a long history of political interference in democratic processes by its powerful military.

The upcoming elections offer little hope for near-term political stability. Pakistan, currently led by a caretaker government, faces myriad political, economic, and security threats. Popular opposition leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan sits in prison, convicted on corruption and state secrets charges. On Feb. 8, the military establishment is betting on a leader it dethroned not too long ago: former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose brother Shehbaz led the most recent coalition government.

Because Pakistan’s civil-military relations tilt in favor of the army, politicians are incentivized to side with the generals to attain power. This dynamic has weakened the constitution, compromised the judiciary, and undermined democratic elections. The military no longer intervenes in politics via coup, but its leaders have invested in the political system. Pakistan has developed into a hybrid regime where elements of electoral democracy and military influence mingle. Next week’s vote will only mark the next chapter of hybrid rule.

In 2017, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ousted Sharif as prime minister after his family was linked to offshore companies in the Panama Papers leak; he was later disqualified from holding public office. Sharif had also tried to assert civilian supremacy over the army, and there are strong claims that the army played a role in his ouster, as well as the election of Khan in 2018. As Khan suffered his own fall from grace, Sharif was allowed to return to Pakistan last year. The cases against him have been cleared, potentially enabling him to participate in the elections—hinting that the military may condone his return to the prime minister’s seat.

Many observers regard Khan’s rise to power in 2018 as the outcome of electoral engineering by the military establishment. For a time, Khan seemed to share a mutually beneficial relationship with the army. However, he made a series of missteps in policy areas dominated by the military. First, he endorsed an inexperienced official to become chief minister of Punjab province, which irked then-Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. His disagreement with Bajwa in 2021 over a replacement for the director-general of Pakistan’s premier intelligence service further alarmed the army.

Khan had promised to create Naya Pakistan—a new Pakistan—and to carry out sweeping reforms, but he mostly failed to realize these promises during his almost four years in power. Growing economic volatility and the indifference of some of Pakistan’s closest allies toward the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government further undermined Khan’s leadership. In April 2022, the old guard led by the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) called a vote of no confidence against Khan. He was voted out and sentenced to three years in jail last August after a conviction for illegally selling state gifts. Khan alleges the military arranged his ouster.

Motivated by their own interests, Pakistan’s political elites have long been complicit in tolerating the military’s domination of the democratic system. But Pakistan’s political parties have also attempted to establish civilian supremacy and failed to sustain it. As prime minister in the 1990s, Sharif sought to exert his control over state institutions, including the military. Gen. Pervez Musharraf led a military coup against his government in 1999 and became president in 2001. A conflict between Pakistan and India in the hills of Kargil is widely seen as the reason for the coup, but such analysis ignores the role of Sharif’s quest for civilian supremacy.

Musharraf not only prolonged the first exile of Sharif and the self-exile of then-opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, which reshaped Pakistan’s political parties. Ultimately, rivals PML-N and the PPP grew closer, especially after the fallout between the judiciary and Musharraf over the latter’s decision to suspend Pakistan’s chief justice. In 2006, the PML-N and the PPP agreed on a Charter of Democracy, an unprecedented development that sought to limit the army’s role in politics. In 2008, the two parties briefly formed a coalition government to keep the army and its disciples away from politics.

Sharif’s PML-N won a simple majority in the 2013 elections, and Pakistan saw its first peaceful transfer of power. However, Sharif’s growing clout didn’t sit well with the military establishment. In 2014, the military helped Khan launch mass protests against the government; they were also supported and attended by prominent religious figures and clerics. However, Khan called off the four-month protest movement in the wake of a terrorist attack against Peshawar’s Army Public School that killed 149 people. “Pakistan cannot afford [our] opposition in these testing times,” he said at the time.

A deteriorating security situation also contributed to the end of Khan’s tenure in 2022. Following his removal, a coalition of traditional political parties led by PML-N took over, with Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister. It needed the army’s backing to succeed. Instead of working for democratic rights, the coalition government amended Pakistan’s Official Secrets Act to give vast powers to the army and intelligence agencies to conduct raids and arrest civilians. The Pakistan Army Act amendment of 2023 criminalized criticism of the military, especially from retired service members. Army Chief of Staff Asim Munir became a member of a new council aimed at garnering foreign investment and boosting economic growth.

The expanded powers that the Pakistani Army now possesses seem to classify the state as what scholar Ayesha Siddiqa calls a hybrid-martial law system, in which all real power lies with the military while a civilian government is relegated to the position of junior partner. It now appears the judiciary is also toeing the military establishment’s line, with the Islamabad High Court recently acquitting Sharif in a corruption case and ultimately enabling him to contest elections. Khan, in prison, still faces a host of charges. His supporters have not been allowed to hold political conventions or meetings ahead of the elections. Mass protests against Khan’s initial arrest last May seemed to spook the military establishment.

The military’s greater machinations have yet to play out. Interestingly, the PPP chairman, Bilawal Bhutto, has accused the establishment of favoring Sharif—raising questions about the strength of the party’s alliance with PML-N. Bhutto may be filling the political vacuum left by the sidelining of the PTI. Sindh province recently saw a reshuffling of senior bureaucrats seen as favoring the PPP. Meanwhile, the PTI has raised concerns about election officers appointed ahead of the vote and demanded the appointment of officials from the lower judiciary as supervisors for the polls.

PML-N appears to be forging alliances with its traditional partners such as Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Pakistan (Fazl), or JUI-F, which has significant political support in the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In Baluchistan province, PML-N has managed to secure two dozen so-called electables, local leaders with strong support base. The new Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party—made up of disgruntled former PTI members—has announced a pre-election seat-sharing arrangement with PML-N. The PML-N also finalized a seat-sharing arrangement with the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid e Azam Group, itself formed by former PML-N members in 2002.

Even behind bars, Khan remains the most popular politician in Pakistan. If the military establishment secures an election outcome in its favor, the next coalition government will still struggle to maintain its power across Pakistan’s political institutions. Pakistan urgently needs consensus among its stakeholders about how to create a robust democracy; the easiest way to reach it would be through free and fair elections without military interference. Perhaps the political parties should come up with a new charter of democracy.

But until and unless politicians stop pursuing narrow interests, the military establishment will continue to pull the strings of any government in power in Pakistan.
Army looms large as Nawaz Sharif eases towards fourth term in Pakistan (The Guardian)
The Guardian [2/5/2024 8:36 AM, Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shah Meer Baloch, 12499K, Negative]
With days to go before Pakistan goes to the polls, the feverish buzz and boisterous rallies that usually mark the campaign season have been unusually muted.

“There is a sense among many people that the outcome is already predetermined,” said Samina Yasmeen, a fellow from the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

The man widely expected to become the next prime minister after Thursday’s elections has been a familiar face in Pakistani politics for almost four decades. Nawaz Sharif, the three-time former prime minister, is likely to be on the brink of a fourth term having been brought back from exile in the UK.

It was an alleged backroom deal made with Pakistan’s powerful military that enabled Sharif’s return from exile and he is widely regarded as its “selected” candidate for prime minister, making him a clear frontrunner.

For those who view Sharif as one of the few experienced politicians able to finally bring Pakistan out of its long-running economic crisis, his imminent return is being met with relief. His focus on the campaign trail has been on bringing jobs back and food prices down.

“We want Nawaz Sharif because we are faced with an economic crisis and whenever the Sharifs come into power, they have brought stability to Pakistan,” said Sana Saleem from Lahore. “The country is in a very bad shape and I believe it can only be managed by Sharif’s party. We don’t have any other option than him.”

Others have expressed concern that Sharif’s return would do little to release the country from the stranglehold of military influence or break the dominance of the same few political dynasties who have run Pakistan for almost half a century.

The country’s most popular political leader, the former prime minister Imran Khan, is behind bars and unable to run in the election, leading to accusations of pre-poll rigging.

Sharif’s three previous terms in office ended prematurely after his relationship with the military leadership fell apart. Yet his rise to power has inseparably entwined with the military, who are seen as the shadowy kingmakers of Pakistani politics, and at times have ruled the country directly after taking over in coups.

“Like most Pakistani political leaders, Nawaz Sharif is not anti-military establishment, he is a product of military patronage,” a close political ally said. “He never started a grassroots political movement against the military. He only talks about civilian supremacy when he is thrown out of power, until they offer him a deal to come back.”

Sharif’s career began when he was plucked from relative obscurity by Gen Zia-ul-Haq, the military leader who ruled as president for a decade from 1978. Sharif was elected prime minister in 1990 and it was then that he began building a reputation for economic capability. After coming to blows with army leadership, however, he was forced to resign in what would become a recurring pattern over the next three decades.

He was re-elected in 1997, this time seen as the military’s preferred candidate over the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was later assassinated in 2007. “There is a history of Nawaz Sharif repeatedly being brought back by the military at intervals when they thought he was the candidate to get what they wanted done,” said Yasmeen.

As well as carrying out Pakistan’s first nuclear tests, Sharif built significant bridges with India during during his second term in office, despite his past inclinations to the contrary, realising the economic potential of building ties and opening up trade. He established an unprecedented rapport with his Indian counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the two countries signed the Lahore declaration, pledging to avoid nuclear conflict.

But after the Kargil war between India and Pakistan in 1999, Sharif found himself at the centre of a blame game and his relationship with the military disintegrated again. He was removed in a coup by Gen Pervez Musharraf and sentenced to 10 years in jail, but was allowed to flee into exile in Saudi Arabia where he lived for almost a decade.

Democratic processes were largely suspended in Pakistan under Musharraf, who imposed two states of emergency during his rule. But after Sharif was allowed to return from exile in 2008, he once again found favour with the military and won the 2013 election. Eventually a familiar discord emerged between him and the military leadership, however, and he began to vocalise his frustration at the generals. His downfall was orchestrated in 2017.

“Once the military decided he wasn’t performing according to their expectations, it was a slippery slope,” said Yasmeen. “First he was disqualified, then banned from politics, then arrested and jailed for corruption. It was at that time the military decided they wanted to go for a ‘third way’, which meant supporting Imran Khan.”

Sharif was sentenced to a decade in jail for corruption, just before the 2018 election that would bring the former cricket star to power for the first time in an election widely seen as rigged. With Khan, the so-called “blue-eyed boy” of the military, in place as prime minister, Sharif fled into exile in the UK, his political rehabilitation seemingly beyond revival.

Few alliances in Pakistani politics have fallen apart as dramatically as that between Khan and the military. He was toppled from power in April 2022 having tried to assert himself over the army leadership. He began an unprecedentedly public tirade against the generals, accusing them of bearing a personal grudge and trying to assassinate him. He was eventually arrested in August and has since been given a 10 and a 14-year jail sentence in two separate cases.

Pakistan’s economy meanwhile continued into freefall, causing widespread poverty, hunger and anger. Instability has been worsened by a surge in terrorist attacks by militant Islamist groups.

With few other options, Sharif was brought back from the cold. Since then, a series of favourable verdicts have overturned all past convictions against him, clearing his path back to power.

“The military establishment believes they need Nawaz Sharif to take the country out of this economic mess,” said Absar Alam, a political analyst. “Their project with Imran Khan failed badly, so now they’ve turned back to Sharif who at least has a better economic record. He’s known for investing in infrastructure and creating stability and could help rebuild essential relations with the US, China and India that were harmed badly under Khan.”

Sharif’s main pledges on the campaign trail have been focused on the economy and offering a “message of peace” to India, while insisting the election will be free and fair.

But out on the streets of Lahore, a former stronghold of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League, or Nawaz party, the mood remained overwhelmingly in support of Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, despite the continuing crackdown against it.

“I will vote for Khan, or I won’t vote at all,” said Fawad Hassan, 38, a salesman from Lahore. “Even after everything that Khan has faced, he has stayed in Pakistan, but as soon as Nawaz gets into any trouble, he just flees. We know who the real leader of our country is.”
Economic Pessimism Hits Record in Pakistan Ahead of Election (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/5/2024 8:00 PM, Faseeh Mangi and Niki Koswanage, 5543K, Negative]
Pakistan’s voters are the most pessimistic about their economy in years ahead of Thursday’s election, according to a Gallup poll, as the fastest inflation in Asia makes it increasingly difficult for them to make ends meet.

Some 70% of Pakistanis said the economic situation around them is getting worse, the highest level in the 18 years that Gallup has been polling them, the opinion survey company said. Almost half said it was hard to get by on their present income.

Consumer prices rose 28% in January from a year earlier, by far the highest level of any country in Asia.

Pakistan has been struggling with a heavy debt load that has led to another bailout by the International Monetary Fund, the 23rd since independence in 1947. It has also relied on financial support from allies such as China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The latest IMF program expires in March, meaning the winner of the election will probably have to negotiate with the lender for more funds and push through fiscal reforms including broadening the tax base.

“The country of 241 million requires considerable political and economic reform to remedy the structural nature of its fiscal debts,” Gallup’s Hashim Pasha and Benedict Vigers said in the report published Tuesday. “For whoever wins the election, reform will be difficult without a popular mandate.”

The public mood in Pakistan is equally glum when it comes to politics in the nuclear-armed country. Seven out of 10 Pakistanis aren’t confident that their elections are fair — a reflection of the simmering discontent over the ouster of former Prime Minister Imran Khan in April 2022.

Here are some of the other findings from the survey:

Around 61% said their standard of living was getting worse

Almost nine out of 10 people believe corruption in Pakistan’s government is widespread. Just one in four approved of Pakistan’s leadership

Pakistani hostility toward migrants has risen in tandem with the country’s economic and security challenges. About 37% believed immigrants living in Pakistan was a “good thing” in 2023, compared to 53% in 2022
Pakistanis Like Me Are Losing Faith in Democracy (New York Times – opinion)
New York Times [2/6/2024 1:00 AM, Bina Shah, 831K, Negative]
This is a critical week for Pakistanis. On Thursday, we will vote in nationwide federal and provincial elections with the future of our democracy in question. We are not the only country facing such a moment this year. National elections will be held in more than 60 countries, which account for nearly half the global population.

But I suspect that millions of voters around the world are, like me, wondering whether they even believe in the promise of democracy anymore. Pakistan has never been able to get it right; next door in India, the world’s biggest democracy, elections a couple of months from now are likely to extend the grip of Narendra Modi’s Hindu-supremacist government; and Donald Trump is on the upswing again in America, which votes in November. The world is in a state of turmoil and instability — with harrowing conflicts raging in Gaza and Ukraine — partly because of the chaos of the modern political process and the shortsighted leaders who take advantage of it.

Pakistanis have been haunted by feelings like this for decades. In 1977, when I was a girl, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was deposed in a military coup that plunged the country into dictatorship and martial law. Mr. Bhutto was hanged two years later, and the darkness of that day has never left me — the eerily empty streets, the newspapers declaring it a “black day” in block letters on the front pages. Military rule finally ended in 1988, followed by a welcome — though often politically chaotic — decade of democratic rule, but then yet another period of military dictatorship. Experiments with democracy resumed in 2008, but the repeated blatant thefts of power have left us shellshocked.

And here we are again.

The elections on Thursday will proceed without Imran Khan, the popular former prime minister who was sentenced last week on questionable charges of leaking state secrets and corruption (he was given prison terms of 10 years and 14 years, respectively). When he was elected in 2018, Mr. Khan promised to free Pakistan from corrupt dynastic politics. But his term ended four years later in much the same way as those previous periods of democratic rule. The United States looked the other way while his elected government was removed from power.

Mr. Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or P.T.I., faces severe electoral challenges in this week’s elections, including an authoritarian crackdown on its members. Former P.T.I. figures must now run as independents. The Supreme Court has even barred the party from using its popular election symbol, a cricket bat. (Mr. Khan was a national cricket hero before turning to politics.)

So we will go to the polls this week with a sense of frustration and futility. Pakistanis, especially young adults eligible to vote for the first time, are asking themselves: Why vote for politicians who seem to have no goal other than to take power and use it against their opponents?

The somber mood is everywhere on the streets. Canvassing and campaigning are muted, and there is far less of the political song-singing, the flags, banners and other trappings of past elections. These had at least brought some excitement and a festival-like atmosphere to break up what can often be a chaotic, stressful life for so many of Pakistan’s 245 million people.

The election gloom matches the existential difficulties that Pakistan faces. An economic crisis, marked by spiraling inflation and unemployment, compound the challenges for a country already struggling to house, educate and provide proper health care for the world’s fifth most populated country.

The caretaker government installed after Mr. Khan’s ouster issues announcements almost daily of its resolve to uphold a peaceful electoral process: The army will be deployed, schools will be closed for eight days and officials have denied rumors that social media and internet access will be shut down. But there is still palpable tension, demoralization and the unavoidable question: What is this election even for?

I’ve been discussing the idea of democracy with concerned former classmates from my college days in the United States. Some are from countries like mine, where the cycle of democracy and dictatorship is familiar. Others are Americans who are wary of what the U.S. elections might portend. Western countries have been selling Pakistanis on democracy’s superiority over all other political systems for as long as we can remember. But in the United States, the Trump presidency and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, made us scratch our heads and wonder: Are Pakistanis trying to become more democratic like the United States, or are Americans inadvertently, carelessly, becoming less democratic, like us?

In past Pakistani elections — including when Mr. Khan was elected in 2018 — excitement was always sky-high, even though we knew we would probably never have Western-style democracy. Today, it’s sinking in that we may not achieve anything more than the strange hybrid of civilian and military leadership that we have now, and which will always be at risk of some force coming along and snuffing democracy out.

Democracy is infinitely better than out-and-out fascism or authoritarianism. Still, perhaps we are reaching a point where countries are evaluating how effective American-style democracy can realistically be for them, and whether it is a panacea for all cultures and national conditions. We’ve seen democracy’s flaws and how they can be used to undermine the democratic system itself.

Pakistani elections are marked by vote-rigging, political horse-trading and corruption. No matter who wins, they inevitably disappoint because they are always focused more on staying in power than serving the people. Healthy democracy seems more like an El Dorado that is further out of reach with each election.

Yet despite all of this, it’s difficult to fully let go of the democratic idea. So the train keeps running in Pakistan, picking up hopeful new passengers along the way. There has been a surge in registered voters for this election, 44 percent of which are below the age of 35, and more female candidates.

So we will vote this week, our deep sense of pessimism accompanied by faint hope that someday something might change. Voters around the world this year will be told that their voice matters. But in Pakistan, we’re still waiting for proof that anyone is listening.
India
India won’t aid Canada probe on Sikh separatist’s killing till evidence shared - report (Reuters)
Reuters [2/5/2024 11:41 AM, Shubham Kalia, 5239K, Negative]
India will not provide information to Canadian investigators over the murder of a Sikh separatist leader until Canada shares evidence, India’s High Commissioner to Canada told the Globe & Mail newspaper in an interview, opens new tab published on Monday.

"We need relevant and specific evidence for us to help the Canadian authorities,” High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma told the Globe & Mail a week ago.

“Unless we see something relevant and specific, it would be extremely difficult for us to do anything to help the Canadian authorities.”
Pigeon accused of spying for China freed in India after 8-month detention (Washington Post)
Washington Post [2/6/2024 3:58 AM, Kelsey Ables, 6.9M, Neutral]
A pigeon held for eight months on suspicion of spying for China has been released after Indian authorities determined it was no avian agent of espionage, but a disoriented Taiwanese racing bird that had lost its way.

Police found the pigeon near a port in Mumbai in May with two metal rings tied to its leg and what looked like Chinese writing on the underside of its wings. For eight months, the alleged secret agent was held in custody, first by police and then by the city’s Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals, which confirmed local media reports about the pigeon and its origin.

Mumbai police told The Washington Post that after “deep and proper inquiry and investigations,” they did not find “any suspicious material or fact” associated with the pigeon. It was released last week and is in fine health, according to the hospital.

The animal rights nonprofit PETA helped secure the bird’s release. “Like all birds, pigeons should be free to soar in the skies, forage for food, and raise their young as a couple,” PETA India Director Poorva Joshipura said in a statement, which noted that pigeons demonstrate self-awareness and intelligence.

Experts say the bird probably got lost during a race off the coast of Taiwan and may have hitched a ride on a boat to make the roughly 3,000-mile journey.

“A racing pigeon can fly for up to 1,000 kilometers [about 620 miles] in a day, but for it to fly to India, it had to make stops,” said Yang Tsung-te, the head of the Taiwanese racing pigeon trading platform Nice Pigeon, adding that some racing pigeons from the island have made it as far as the United States and Canada.

The espionage allegations follow concern in the United States last year over Chinese spy balloons and amid continued tensions between China and India, two nuclear powers that share a contested border and have been vying for influence in the region.

It’s also not the first time Indian authorities wrongfully locked up a pigeon for alleged spying. A similar incident in 2015 sparked amusement in India and Pakistan, and in 2020, police briefly held a Pakistani fisherman’s pigeon after it flew over the countries’ heavily militarized border.

Although the allegations might sound absurd in an age of satellites and cyberespionage, pigeons do have a history of use in reconnaissance operations.

During World War I, Germany deployed pigeons with cameras strapped onto their chests, and in World War II, Allied forces used the birds to exchange secret messages, according to the National Audubon Society, an American nonprofit organization dedicated to bird conservation. Because pigeons are a “common species,” the camera-equipped birds could conceal their intelligence collection “among the activities of thousands of other birds,” according to the CIA, which also developed such a camera.

According to the International Spy Museum in Washington, pigeons were “distinguished by their speed and ability to return home in any weather.”

Those same qualities make pigeons good for racing — a much more common use of the birds these days. During races, pigeons are released sometimes hundreds of miles from home and owners wait for them to return.

Colin Jerolmack, a professor at New York University and the author of “The Global Pigeon,” said it was “quite comical” that Indian authorities saw Chinese writing and assumed espionage, especially considering the enormous popularity of pigeon racing there and the fact that China has many “more sophisticated” tools than a pigeon.

Once dubbed “the poor man’s horse racing,” it is becoming big business, he said, noting that winning pigeons can fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction — or much more.

In Taiwanese competitions, rather than racing over land, pigeons are brought out to sea and released 124 miles to 310 miles offshore, said Ya-Ching Huang, a researcher at Boston University who has studied Taiwan’s pigeon racing culture. Because of this format, “it’s not uncommon for pigeons to end up landing in neighboring countries or on boats that take them even further away,” she said.

While pigeon fanciers maintain that the birds receive great care during training, animal rights groups and ethicists have long criticized the sport. According to PETA, millions of pigeons die every year in Taiwan’s seasonal races, with many drowning from exhaustion, dying in storms or being killed for being too slow.

In racing and espionage, “pigeons are used as tools for human ends,” said Jan Deckers, a researcher at Newcastle University in Britain who studies animal ethics. “No pigeon chooses to release themselves a long way away from their lofts and to carry messages, tags or rings back home.”
A blaze in a fireworks factory in central India has killed six people and injured scores of others (AP)
AP [2/6/2024 4:14 AM, Staff, 456K, Neutral]
A fire raced through a firecracker factory in central India on Tuesday, killing six people and injuring about 40 others as it sparked other explosions, officials said.

Videos on social media showed smoke and flames billowing from the factory as people fled the area in fear.

The cause of the fire in Harda in Madhya Pradesh state was not immediately clear.

Chief Minister Mohan Yadav told a local television channel that at least six people died. About 40 people were injured and others were feared to be trapped, local official Rishi Garg told the Press Trust of India news agency.

There is a huge demand in India for firecrackers, which are used in religious festivals and weddings. Fatal accidents occur nearly every year as people work in makeshift factories without proper safety measures.

An explosion at a firecracker factory in southern India last July killed eight people. In 2018, a massive fire at a firecracker factory in New Delhi killed 17 workers. A year earlier, a blast killed 23 people while they were making firecrackers in a village in Madhya Pradesh state in central India.
In Modi’s constituency Varanasi, India’s next temple-mosque spat explodes (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [2/5/2024 10:25 PM, Priyanka Shankar, 2060K, Neutral]
A festive atmosphere engulfed Varanasi, one of Hinduism’s holiest cities situated on the banks of the river Ganga.

It was the week Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated the new temple to the Hindu deity Ram where the 16th century Babri Masjid once stood in the city of Ayodhya, 200km (124 miles) to the north.

In Varanasi, the streets and boats on the river were decked up with saffron flags bearing illustrations of Ram. Outside Varanasi’s famous and historic Kashi Vishwanath temple, the smell of burning camphor and the sound of Indian classical music drifted through the air as pilgrims flocked in large numbers to the temple to offer their prayers.

But next door, towards the west of the temple, the carnival-like spirit was replaced with a strict and sombre atmosphere, with barricades and police officers greeting crowds.

The officers were guarding the Gyanvapi Mosque – which is widely believed to have been built on the ruins of a 16th-century Kashi Vishwanath temple demolished by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1669.

While the partially ruined Kashi temple has been reconstructed and stands adjacent to the Gyanvapi Mosque, Hindu supremacist groups have been trying to reclaim the mosque for decades.

In May 2022, some Hindu patrons went to the Varanasi local court asking for permission to worship within the mosque’s complex after a court-ordered video survey found that a ‘Shivling’ – a symbol of the Hindu deity Shiva – was found near the wuzukhana, a well used by Muslim devotees at the mosque.

This case gained momentum in January this year when a survey from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), among other things, stated that a large Hindu temple existed on the site before the mosque and that sculptures of Hindu deities were also present in the cellars of the mosque.

Within a few days, on January 31, Judge Ajaya Krishna Vishvesha from Varanasi’s local court passed an order ruling that Hindus would be allowed to pray in the mosque’s basement – a section which had been sealed due to security concerns.

“District court Varanasi has created history today,” Vishnu Jain, a Supreme Court lawyer representing the Hindu side said in a post on X.

A day later, videos and images began appearing on social media of a priest offering prayers to the Hindu deities inside the mosque cellar.

The Anjuman Intezamia Masajid, the committee managing the Gyanvapi Mosque, rejected the local court’s order and is scheduled to challenge the case at the Allahabad High Court in the city of Prayagraj, formerly known as Allahabad, on February 6.

“It seems like the judicial system is against Muslims,” Rais Ahmad Ansari, an advocate in Varanasi representing the Muslim side, told Al Jazeera.

Even amid a heightened momentum among India’s Hindu supremacist movement to target mosques, often facilitated by government authorities – a centuries-old mosque was razed in New Delhi last week – the case involving the Gyanyavi structure holds deep political significance. Varanasi is the electoral constituency of Modi, who leads the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that rules the country, yet has built strong relations with the presidents and ministers of Western liberal democracies.

India will vote in general elections expected to be held between March and May.

‘You can feel a Hindu vibe all around you’

While the court order hasn’t stirred any violence or communal riots, a sense of anxiety is prevalent in the Muslim neighbourhoods of the city, according to advocate Ansari.

“Muslim-owned shops closed after the [January 31] hearing fearing a dispute. Friday’s namaz [prayers] was also greeted with tight security presence as hundreds gathered outside the Gynavapi Mosque to offer prayers. There is a sense of anxiety in every Muslim’s mind,” he said.

“It is still peaceful in Varanasi. But this peace feels uneasy,” he added.

Meanwhile, some news channels in the country hailed the local court order and the onset of prayers in the mosque as “a big win for Hindus” – a sentiment shared by several Hindus in Varanasi.

“We plan to go visit the site and see the priest performing rituals at the mosque as soon as our exams end,” Ayush Akash and Harshit Sharma, two 21-year-old political science students at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), told Al Jazeera.

Nita*, a Hindu devotee at the Kashi Vishwanath temple, was also keen to pray at the temple.

“We feel great about it [court ruling]. If we are let to visit and pray, we will go. When Hindus pray in Varanasi, they have their own places of worship. My brother is a priest and can only worship in his temple. But if the priest allows us into Gyanvapi, we will surely go,” she told Al Jazeera.

“People here have been going crazy since the inauguration of the Ayodhya temple,” Nita said.

“You can feel a Hindu vibe all around you on the streets. It was never like this before, but everybody is happy about things that are happening and that the Gyanvapi is a Hindu temple,” she added.

BHU’s Akash pointed out that people from all religions in Varanasi have coexisted peacefully for years and are mature enough not to riot over the temple-mosque dispute.

“It might look like Hindus are in power, and yes, some Muslim people might be unhappy about the local court’s decision on the Gyanvapi Mosque. But in this city, while ideologies do differ, it doesn’t stop Hindu-Muslim friendship. That’s how the real Varanasi is,” he said.

‘All about politics’

Since Modi came to power in 2014, critics and rights groups have accused his government of encouraging or facilitating a rise in Hindu supremacy, while instances of discrimination and violence against Muslims – who represent the largest religious minority in the country – have grown.

Hindu nationalist groups have also increasingly launched or intensified legal campaigns against several centuries-old mosques, claiming they are built on the remains of Hindu shrines.

“There is a slogan which Hindu nationalists have been using which says ‘Ayodhya Jhaki hain, Kashi-Mathura Baki Hain,’” said BHU’s Akash. Translated, the slogan says ‘Ayodhya is just a preview, Kashi [Varanasi] and Mathura are left’. It’s a reference to how the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 in Ayodhya has been used by Hindu majoritarian groups to seek similar actions with the Mughal-era mosques in Varanasi and Mathura.

“But right now, in Varanasi, the Gyanvapi case is all about politics. It seems like the local court gave its ruling in time for the upcoming general elections. I feel the ruling is to unite Hindus before the elections,” he said.

Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, secretary of the Indian History Congress and professor of medieval history at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) shared a similar view but highlighted that this case is not like Ayodhya.

“Nobody has ever said that where the Gyanvapi Mosque stands today, there had been no temple. It is clear there was a temple and it was demolished. One can even see that with the naked eye,” Rezawi said.

“The reason behind why the temple was broken is where the contention arises since the manner in which the history of temple demolitions is currently being presented is a false narrative.”

Rezawi highlighted how the book, Temple Desecration and Muslim States in Medieval India, written by American scholar Richard Eaton, explains that in pre-colonial India, every dynasty had a deity they prayed to. If the ruler of the dynasty was defeated and the kingdom was taken over, then the deity and everything devoted to the deity – including the temple – was destroyed by the triumphant ruler.

“This was an accepted practice among kings and is exactly what [the emperor] Aurangzeb did. But the reason behind why he demolished the Vishwanath temple and built the mosque has many theories with some historians saying it was due to religious reasons and others claiming it was Aurangzeb’s way of punishing the Hindu family who managed the mosque since they had helped the Hindu king Shivaji escape,” he added.

“What Aurangzeb did should be condemned. But he lived during an era when there was no constitution. We have an Indian constitution which guarantees certain rights to people. So I don’t understand why the courts and prime minister are ignoring this and committing a crime more heinous than Aurangzeb,” Rezwai said.

Constitutionally, India is a secular state. The country also passed a law in 1991 called the Places of Worship Act, which prohibits the conversion of places of worship and stresses that their religious nature should be maintained.

But the final say about the future of the mosque lies with the country’s courts.

Abhishek Sharma, a Kashi temple devotee and coordinator at the Swagatam Kashi Foundation, told Al Jazeera that “people in Varanasi believe in ‘Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb’,” a metaphor for social harmony that references the mingling of the waters of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers.

“We have always believed in living together in sanctity. We pray that this peace is not be disturbed in any way,” he said.
NSB
Bangladesh welcomes Biden letter on support for economic goals (Reuters)
Reuters [2/5/2024 8:44 AM, Ruma Paul, 5239K, Neutral]
President Joe Biden said the U.S. is willing to work with Bangladesh to help the South Asian nation achieve its economic goals, nearly a month after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was sworn in following an election boycotted by the opposition.

Biden made his comments in a letter to Hasina, Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud told reporters on Monday, adding through this letter ties between the two countries will advance further.

Hasina and her party won a fourth straight term in the Jan. 7 election, which the main opposition dismissed as a sham.

Biden’s government has been critical of Bangladesh’s democracy and human rights records, with the U.S. State Department saying the poll was not free or fair.

"We welcome the letter written by President Biden. Through this letter our relationship will improve further and reach new heights," Mahmud said.

"The United States is committed to supporting Bangladesh’s ambitious economic goals and partnering with Bangladesh on our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific," Biden said in his letter, provided to reporters.

The U.S. embassy in Dhaka didn’t immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comments.

The United States, the biggest buyer of Bangladeshi clothes, in May adopted a policy, opens new tab allowing it to restrict visas for Bangladeshis "believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process" in the country.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose leaders are either in jail or in exile, stayed away from the polls after Hasina refused its demand that she resign and let a neutral authority run the general election.

Hasina has been credited with turning around the economy before the Russia-Ukraine war led to a sharp increase in prices of fuel and food imports, though critics have also accused her of human rights violations and suppressing dissent.
For the first time, Myanmar forces flee into Bangladesh during fighting with an ethnic armed group (AP)
AP [2/5/2024 1:56 PM, Julhas Alam, 2565K, Neutral]
More than 100 members of Myanmar’s Border Guard Police have fled their posts and taken shelter in Bangladesh to escape fighting between Myanmar security forces and an ethnic minority army, an official with Bangladesh’s border agency said Monday.

It is the first time that Myanmar forces have been known to flee into Bangladesh since an alliance of ethnic minority armies in Myanmar launched an offensive against the military government late last year.

Shariful Islam, spokesperson for Border Guard Bangladesh, said the Myanmar forces entered over the past two days during fighting with the Arakan Army in Myanmar’s Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh.

The 103 troops entered through the Tombru border in Bandarban district, he said.

“They have been disarmed and taken to safe places,” he said.

Myanmar’s military government had no immediate comment.

Also on Monday, Bangladeshi media said two persons — a Bangladeshi woman and a Rohingya refugee— were killed in shelling from Myanmar after a house in Bandarban was hit.

Bangladesh’s law minister, Anisul Huq, told Parliament that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had instructed the military and paramilitary border guards to have patience in dealing with the tensions across the border.

“Bangladesh is observing the situation closely and steps will be taken,” the United News of Bangladesh agency quoted him as saying.

Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud said Monday that Myanmar’s ambassador to Bangladesh, U. Aung Kyaw Moe, and Deputy Foreign Minister, U. Lwin Oo, told Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they would take back their troops sheltered in Bangladesh.

The ministry also sent a “note verbale” to the Myanmar envoy in Dhaka, protesting bullets and mortar shells from Myanmar landing in Bangladesh.

The Arakan Army is the military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority that seeks autonomy from Myanmar’s central government. It has been attacking army outposts in the western state since November.

It is part of an alliance of ethnic minority armies that launched an offensive in October and gained strategic territory in Myanmar’s northeast bordering China. Its success was seen as a major defeat for the military government, which seized power in February 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and is now embroiled in a wide-ranging civil war.

The alliance, called the Three Brotherhood Alliance, said in a statement Monday that the Arakan Army had attacked two border outposts in Maungdaw township in Rakhine state and captured one of them on Sunday.

Khaing Thukha, an Arakan Army spokesperson, said that fighting continued Monday at the second outpost.

Bangladesh shares a 271-kilometer (168-mile) border with Myanmar and hosts more than 1 million Muslim Rohingya refugees, many of whom fled from Buddhist-dominated Myanmar starting in August 2017 when its military launched a brutal “clearance operation” against them following attacks by an insurgent group.
Two killed in Bangladesh as fighting rages on Myanmar border: police (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [2/5/2024 12:58 PM, Staff, 13914K, Negative]
At least two people were killed in Bangladesh Monday after mortar shells fired from Myanmar during clashes there landed across the border, as terrified residents reported heavy fighting and medics treated several with gunshot wounds.

Parts of Myanmar near the 270-kilometre (167-mile) border with Bangladesh have seen frequent clashes since November, when rebel Arakan Army (AA) fighters ended a ceasefire that had largely held since a 2021 coup.

Bangladeshi villagers living close to the border said they were fearful of the fighting, with aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF) saying they had treated 17 people wounded in the clashes on Sunday following fighting at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

"All the patients had gunshot wounds", MSF said Monday. "Two were in life-threatening condition, and five were seriously injured."

Local police chief Abdul Mannan said a Bangladeshi woman, named as 48-year-old Hosne Ara, and an unnamed ethnic Rohingya man had been killed Monday afternoon.

"They were sitting in the kitchen... when a mortar hit the place," Ara’s daughter-in-law said.

"She was serving lunch to the Rohingya man who was hired by the family for farm work when they were hit."

With conditions deteriorating, the United Nations Security Council was to hold a closed-door meeting Monday regarding Myanmar.

Nine countries including three permanent Security Council members -- Britain, France and the United States -- issued a joint statement expressing concern about the "dire" situation in Myanmar, notably 18 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and 2.6 million displaced from their homes.

Britain’s UN mission said its envoy will tell the council the countries "strongly condemn the ongoing violence harming civilians, including the military’s continued use of indiscriminate air strikes."

Bangladeshi villagers living close to the border said fighting broke out across the frontier last week, with many sending their children away to relatives to escape the conflict.

"We are living in fear," said Abdus Shukkur, 75, from Tumbru Bazaar, a Bangladeshi border village. "It’s not our war, but they are attacking our homes and people."

Hasina Banu, 50, returned to her home in Tumbru early Monday after four days, only to be caught in fresh clashes. She reported seeing helicopter gunships firing nearby.

"I didn’t eat anything since last night," Banu said. "We are in constant fear for our life."

Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said Sunday that border police officers from neighbouring Myanmar’s Rakhine state had "entered our territory for self-protection" ahead of advancing AA fighters.

A spokesman of the Border Guard Bangladesh, the country’s frontier forces, told AFP Monday that "at least 95 border officers of Myanmar have crossed the border and taken shelter in Bangladeshi border posts".

A Myanmar junta spokesman could not be reached for comment on the clashes.

Myanmar’s rebel Three Brotherhood Alliance, of which the AA is a member, said late Sunday that AA fighters were battling Myanmar border guard forces near Bangladesh.

They reported nearly 60 members of the Myanmar security forces had "sneaked into Bangladesh through the border and escaped with weapons".

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.

Bangladesh is already home to around one million Rohingya refugees, driven out of Myanmar in a military crackdown in 2017.

Britain and eight other countries said in their statement that conditions have "further deteriorated" in Rakhine state, and called for "the voluntary, safe, dignified, and sustainable return of Rohingya refugees and internally displaced persons."
Bangladesh weans garment industry off subsidies for new-look economy (EurasiaNet)
Nikkei Asia [2/6/2024 3:10 AM, Faisal Mahmud, 293K, Neutral]
Bangladesh has begun a process of unwinding subsidies and preparing to graduate out of Least Developed Country status in 2026, prompting an outcry from the crucial apparel industry but also cautious optimism from some experts.

Just weeks after a controversial "one-sided" election in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured a new five-year term, the central bank at the end of January announced it was cutting export incentives, specifically targeting the country’s main export earner -- the ready-made garment (RMG) sector. According to the bank’s circular, the step was taken in compliance with the World Trade Organisation’s regulations, which prohibit such incentives once a country transitions out of the least-developed group.

The shift highlights the delicate balancing act the nation of about 170 million faces as it attempts to reposition and repurpose its economy.

Bangladesh had been giving cash incentives ranging from 1% to 20% of the value of exports of 43 products. But the incentive for ready-made garments has been reduced to 0.5% from 1%, while that for leather products -- the No. 2 export earner -- has been slashed to zero from 10%.

Now the overall range of incentives is 0.5% to 15%. In addition, support for exploring new markets such as jute, frozen fish and agricultural products has been cut from 4% to 3%.

The change comes at a challenging time for garment producers, which are grappling with wage hikes, weakening international orders and volatile currencies. Siddiqur Rahman, a former president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) -- the main apparel trade body -- stressed that the government did not need to do this now.

"The government could have continued [the full incentives] for at least one more year," Rahman said. "Incentive cuts during this tough time are very harmful for us," he added, noting the companies have consistently communicated their concerns.

Rahman pointed out that in January, garment factories already implemented a mandated 56% wage increase for their workers. On top of slowing exports, he said, "now the freight costs have increased by many times because of the Red Sea conflict. How could we remain competitive in the global market if there is an incentive cut now?"

Data from the government’s Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) shows apparel products accounted for the lion’s share of cash incentives -- nearly 65%, or roughly $750 million -- in the last fiscal year, which runs from July to June.

BGMEA President Faruque Hasasn told a media briefing that the incentive cut could "severely" impact competitiveness in the global market, with a large chunk of orders going to rivals like Vietnam and India. Without the benefits, the companies could need to charge more to stay profitable, handing competitors an edge.

Likewise, leather exporters have complained of a big blow. "The government repeatedly pushed us for increased export so that they could cut their dependency on one product," said Shaheen Ahmed, president of the Bangladesh Tanners Association (BTA), referring to ready-made garments. "But now they have completely cut incentives on leather. It’s baffling."

The government has a different perspective.

A.H.M. Ahsan, vice chairman of the Export Promotion Bureau, told Nikkei Asia that the government’s hands will be tied once Bangladesh loses its LDC status -- a United Nations classification that exempts the poorest nations from tariffs on exports to developed countries. Bangladesh has already met the criteria for graduating.

"Graduation is just a little more than two years away," Ahsan said. "So, instead of snatching the incentives overnight, we are preparing the exporters gradually."

He also pledged that the government would look to help exporters through alternative means even after the LDC graduation. "The Commerce Ministry has been studying how other developing countries, like Vietnam, subsidize their export sectors to shape future support strategies."

Despite the protests from garment makers, analysts view the incentive cut as a necessary shift away from taxpayer-funded subsidies, which they say serve Western buyers and consumers more than Bangladesh’s own development.

"I believe this is a step in the right direction," said Zahid Hussain, former lead economist at the World Bank’s Dhaka office. "Following graduation in 2026, Bangladesh will lose the special and differential treatment as an LDC that allowed subsidization of exports. It is therefore important to start unwinding the subsidies."

Hussain said exporters have benefited from the large depreciation of the taka, the local currency, during the last two years even though adjustments in the official rate have not caught up to the market rate. "The subsidy regime needed rationalization anyway because it fell short of achieving the objective of diversifying exports," he said.

Akhter Mahmood, a Washington-based economist, said he is not surprised that Bangladeshi businesses are complaining about the incentive cuts. "Who does not want subsidies, especially if these come with no performance discipline attached?" he said.

He said he has long argued that such support should be conditional on performance -- and should be provided to bring about desirable change, not just maintain the status quo.

"By change I mean productivity improvement, innovation, product development, diversifying exports both in terms of new markets and new products, and introduction of good social and environmental practices," he said, suggesting the government should define indicators to measure such progress.

Over the long term, he was hopeful that the "withdrawal of subsidies may generate the incentive for firms to be more efficient and innovative."

"Being more efficient and innovative will be the best way to compete in a post-graduation world," Mahmood said. "So the withdrawal of subsidies will actually be good. It may also weed out some inefficient firms."
Chinese vessel in Maldives being used for scientific research -foreign ministry (Reuters)
Reuters [2/6/2024 2:35 AM, Joe Cash, 5.2M, Neutral]
Research being carried out by a Chinese vessel calling at a port in the Maldives is exclusively for peaceful purposes and enhancing scientific understanding, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Tuesday as the research vessel is set to arrive in the island nation.
The Xiang Yang Hong 3 will "make a port call, for rotation of personnel and replenishment", the Maldivian foreign ministry had said in a statement in January.

The presence of the vessel is likely to raise the concern of India, which has previously viewed such vessels close to its shores as problematic.
Central Asia
Kazakhstan’s President to Name Chief of Staff as Prime Minister (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/6/2024 1:45 AM, Nariman Gizitdinov, 5.5M, Neutral]
Kazakhstan’s president is poised to name his chief of staff to the post of prime minister following the resignation of the previous cabinet.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will discuss Olzhas Bektenov’s candidacy with key lawmakers after Yerlan Koshanov, the chairman of the ruling Amanat party and leader of the lower house of parliament, nominated him for the role, according to a statement on the president’s website.

Bektenov, 43, led the country’s anti-corruption agency before he was named head of the presidential administration in April last year. Before that, he had worked in the anti-corruption agency in different positions since 2018.

Tokayev accepted the resignation of the government led by Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov on Monday. A former finance minister and first deputy premier, Smailov, 51, was appointed to head the government in January 2022 in the aftermath of unrest sparked by rising fuel prices that killed at least 230 people and injured hundreds more.

The new government is likely to continue efforts to boost business activity, aided by increased budget spending, a decrease in inflation last year and accelerating economic growth.

Tokayev is expected to lead a government meeting scheduled for Wednesday.
Kazakhstan’s president dismisses his Cabinet (AP)
AP [2/5/2024 9:33 AM, Staff, 22K, Neutral]
The president of Kazakhstan on Monday fired his Cabinet after criticizing its performance.

A decree released by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s office said he had accepted the resignation of the Cabinet led by Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov. He named Smailov’s deputy, Roman Sklyar, as the acting premier. The president ordered Cabinet members to continue exercising their duties pending the approval of a new Cabinet.

The decree didn’t explain the reason for the Cabinet’s resignation, but Tokayev had criticized the ministers last year and said the Cabinet was responsible for the failure to stem inflation and improve the country’s aging infrastructure.

Smailov, 51, was named prime minister in the wake of violent protests in January 2022 that left 225 people dead in the worst unrest since the Central Asian nation gained independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

His role has been mostly technical, with Tokayev dominating the country’s politics.

Under the law, the ruling Amanat party is to nominate a candidate for prime minister to Tokayev, and submit his choice to parliament for approval.

Tokayev is set to preside over a meeting with top officials on Wednesday and is expected to set priorities for the new Cabinet.
Kazakh government quits amid attempt to pass reforms (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [2/5/2024 6:59 AM, Staff, 2728K, Negative]
The government of Kazakhstan under Prime Minister Alichan Smailov resigned on Monday, the president’s office announced.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev accepted the decision and named Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar as Smailov’s acting successor.

"The members of the government of Kazakhstan will continue carrying out their functions until the new executive is approved," the statement from the president’s office said.

Why did the Kazakh government resign?

The presidential statement did not give a reason, but Tokayev has recently been pushing for sweeping reforms to attract foreign capital into the economy.

Government reshuffles are not uncommon in the Central Asian country where much of the power is in the hands of the president.

Kazakh political scientist Talgat Kaliyev told Spanish news agency EFE that President Tokayev had repeatedly expressed his disappointment with the cabinet.

"The resignation is connected to the future economic development of Kazakhstan," Kaliyev told EFE. "The president criticized the government for its inability to propose an effective economic strategy."
HRW Urges Kazakh Authorities To Drop ‘Dubious Fraud Charges’ Against Women’s Rights Activist (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/5/2024 9:03 AM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged Kazakh authorities to stop targeting well-known women’s rights advocate Dinara Smailova (aka Dina Tangsari) with criminal charges in retaliation for her work.

In late December, a court in Kazakhstan issued an arrest warrant for Smailova, the self-exiled 55-year-old leader of the NeMolchiKZ group that monitors domestic violence in the Central Asian nation.

Kazakh authorities said at the time that Smailova was accused of financial fraud, violating laws on privacy and spreading false information.

Smailova registered her group in Georgia, where she lived for some time, but after Tbilisi refused to allow her back in the country following an international trip last year, she moved to an EU member state where her asylum application is currently under review.

HRW said in its February 5 statement that the due process rights of Smailova should be upheld in full in any investigation and the authorities should ensure that the criminal justice system is not being manipulated and weaponized to silence her.

Smailova faces up to 10 years in prison on various criminal charges, including large-scale fraud. The pretrial investigation is ongoing.

“The authorities appear to be on a fishing expedition for evidence of wrongdoing by Smailova, raising serious concerns about the motivations in this case,” HRW’s assistant Central Asia researcher Vika Kim said.

“The authorities’ spirited efforts against Smailova look more like an attempt to discredit her organization’s legitimate work, than a move to root out criminal activity.”

Bank accounts of Smailova’s organization were frozen in Kazakhstan in November.

Smailova has been known as an outspoken critic of the tightly controlled former Soviet republic’s authorities for their failure to protect women and children from sexual and domestic violence.

Smailova’s NeMolchiKZ foundation has consulted via the Internet thousands of women in Kazakhstan experiencing domestic violence and abuse.

The group’s activities have led to the imprisonment of dozens of men on criminal charges of sexual violence.

About a dozen police officers have been held accountable for neglect and inaction, and more than 200 law enforcement officers faced disciplinary restrictions as a result of the work by Smailova’s foundation.
Kyrgyz Activist Extradited From Russia Detained In Disputed Uzbek Border Deal (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/5/2024 10:14 AM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
The Birinchi Mai district court in Bishkek told RFE/RL on February 5 that activist Kanykei Aranova, who was extradited from Moscow last week, was placed in preliminary detention until March 22 as part of a case concerning protests against a Kyrgyz-Uzbek border deal that led to the arrests of 27 activists, politicians, and journalists. Aranova was charged with inciting hatred and public calls to seize power. The 37-year-old Aranova left Kyrgyzstan for Russia in 2022 after she openly protested the border demarcation deal, which saw Kyrgyzstan hand over the territory of the Kempir-Abad water reservoir to Uzbekistan.
Tajikistan: Social norms complicate battle against domestic violence (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/5/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Negative]
Rukia, a mother of three, was between life and death when she was dropped off at the home of her parents.

Yet again, her husband had vented his rage. There is always an excuse.

“There are all kinds of things that make him aggressive,” said Rukia, a 25-year-old from Romit, a town about a 90-minute drive from Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe. “His mother complains that I am not doing the housework properly, that I am refusing to listen to her, that I am chatting too much with the neighbors, that I am being disrespectful to his family.”

A bad mood is enough. Rukia told Eurasianet that on occasions, when her husband was in a foul state of mind, he has beaten her till she lost consciousness. At times, he has locked her in a room and prevented her from going to the bathroom.

The worst incident happened in summer. Rukia’s broken ribs were causing her such pain that she could not do any household chores or give the children the attention they needed.

“Since I couldn’t do anything, my husband took me and the children to my parents. He said that I was a good-for-nothing, that I didn’t want to work. The truth was that I didn’t have the strength to stand up,” said Rukia, who is not being identified here by her real name for reasons of safety.

Situations like these are not rare. Government representatives and international organizations have in the past estimated that one in two women in Tajikistan have at some time experienced domestic violence. It is this reality that underlies the often-unacknowledged epidemic of suicide and self-harm among Tajik women.

Taboos around this topic are especially strong in rural communities, which account in Tajikistan for more than seven-tenths of the population.

Abusive men are enabled by a popular norm best encapsulated by the Tajik proverb: “When a toad has a husband, she has respect.” That is to say, unmarried women of a certain age enjoy a lower standing in most traditional communities, so many are prepared to endure physical abuse to avoid experiencing social death.

What is more, girls are taught from an early age that they are a guest in their home, and that when they reach adulthood, they should leave.

This socially enforced norm compels women who go to live under the roofs of their husband’s family after marrying to abide by certain strictures. A wife must uncomplainingly clean, cook, and take care of her in-laws.

Even in those situations where women are prepared to flee an abusive relationship, however, there are few options available. Tajikistan, with its population of 10 million people, has only seven shelters for women. They offer accommodation for only up to six months. There is about twice that number of so-called crisis centers for women, but they are located mostly in major towns and cities.

Rukia’s story is, once again, a grim illustration of all these problems.

With little by way of an education and non-existent job prospects, Rukia will find it difficult to make her own way. And her own family was quick to push her to return to her husband.

“Mom prepared us a meal, she bought candy and things for the kids, and then she sent us back to my husband,” she said. “She insisted I be patient. She said that all families have crises in their relationship, that in future, as [my husband] gets older, his temper will abate.”

Rukia told Eurasianet that the first day she returned home, her mother-in-law gave her the silent treatment. And her husband beat her.

The law is not much help.

Legislation on the prevention of domestic violence, known as the Family Violence Law, was adopted in 2013, but critics view it as toothless.

“The Family Violence Law does not recognize domestic violence as a crime, providing only for administrative liability,” Human Rights Watch said in a 2019 report. “The law does not criminalize domestic violence. Victims seeking prosecution and punishment of the abuser must bring claims under articles of the Tajik Criminal Code that govern assault and similar acts involving force or violence.”

The implication of administrative liability is that penalties, when they are imposed, are relatively light – either a small fine or, in a more severe case, up to two weeks in jail. Lobbying by activists for domestic violence to be included in the Criminal Code have fallen on deaf ears.

All the while, a National Program on the Prevention of Domestic Violence 2014-23, developed jointly by the state’s Women and Family Affairs Committee, other government bodies and civil society groups, has run its course.

According to a UNDP survey published in 2021, women confronted with violence in the household tend first of all to seek help from their own parents, their in-laws, or their husband’s wider family. Only 10 percent of victims contact law enforcement or seek legal help. In the latter scenario, women are routinely advised to consider being patient and not to put the integrity of the family unit at risk.

Arguably one of the chief failures of the National Program on the Prevention of Domestic Violence has been that many women appear still not to accept that they are victims.

Rukhshona, 45, lives in the Jaloliddin Balkhi district, in the southern Khatlon region. For 20 years, she endured the drunken, violent rages of her husband.

“He beat me so much that I was concussed multiple times. Now I suffer from constant headaches. But I put up with it until my husband came to his senses. It has been a year now since he has raised his hand to me. All the neighbors say that I am a saintly woman, that even though I have been through so much, I stuck by my family,” Rukhshona told Eurasianet.

Rukhshona say her husband only turned over a new leaf, though, after he was warned by a doctor that he might drop dead from liver failure if he continued to drink.

All that notwithstanding, Rukhshona said she would not have had it any other way. A man has the right to beat his wife if she is overly argumentative, dress inappropriately or fails to do the housework, she told Eurasianet.

Kanoat Khamidova, head of the non-governmental group League of Women Lawyers, told Eurasianet that in most cases, women who find themselves victims of domestic violence lack support and self-confidence. Victim-blaming is rampant, she said.

“We need to do more awareness-raising work among the population. We need to let women know that they are not alone, and there are organizations that can provide support,” Khamidova said. “Those women, for the most part, do not know any other life. Their mothers were beaten, their grandmothers were beaten, their neighbors and friends also get it, and they think that violence is an ordinary everyday problems, not a crime.”
Uzbekistan: Imprisoned citizen journalist gets early release (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/5/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Positive]
Otabek Sattoriy, a citizen journalist in Uzbekistan who was ordered to serve more than six years in prison on extortion and libel charges in 2021, has been released after serving less than half his sentence.

A court in the city of Qarshi ruled to commute the sentence on February 5 and ordered that Sattoriy perform correctional labor over the remaining three or so years, Qashqadaryo regional court said in a statement.

Investigators claimed that Sattoriy had at the time of his arrest been caught red-handed while taking a mobile phone he allegedly extorted from the head of a local bazaar in exchange for not disseminating unfavorable reports about him.

Sattoriy denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer insisted the charges were fabricated and that investigators were unable to provide any evidence of Sattoriy’s guilt.

Prior to his arrest, Sattoriy was a popular blogger – as citizen journalists are commonly known in Uzbekistan – in his native Surkhandaryo region. He reported on sensitive local issues and repeatedly criticized the authorities, including the region’s former governor, for alleged mismanagement. He amassed thousands of followers through his Telegram account and a YouTube channel called Xalq Fikri (Voice of the People). His abrasive and confrontational manner, however, rubbed many officials up the wrong way.

Sattoriy’s case drew wide attention both within Uzbekistan and abroad. His imprisonment was condemned by human rights organizations, which called the court’s decision “a miscarriage of justice” and a “blow to freedom of speech.” Last March, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that “the basis for the arrest and subsequent detention of Mr. Sattoriy was in fact his exercise of freedom of expression”.

Sattoriy’s unexpected release comes two months after he was transferred from a penal colony to a colony settlement – a low-security facility where inmates are permitted to move more freely and wear civilian clothes.

In January, Abdurakhmon Tashanov, the head of Tashkent-based rights group Ezgulik, visited Sattoriy, who thanked his supporters and said he was counting the days until he was free.

“He wants to work quietly in IT. He considers … President Shavkat Mirziyoyev a leader with great potential and that he will be proud to serve him,” Tashanov wrote on Facebook following the visit.

Sattoriy has no plans to lodge any further appeals to overturn the 2021 verdict, Tashanov said.
Did an arrested Uzbek ‘mafia chieftain’ organise killings of dissidents? (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [2/5/2024 6:46 AM, Staff, 2060K, Negative]
On his Swedish visa application, Yuri Zhukovsky said he was an administrator of Pakhtakor, ex-Soviet Uzbekistan’s most popular football club, and attached a letter of recommendation.

The burly, dark-haired 35-year-old arrived in Stockholm in February 2012 and travelled hundreds of kilometres up to Sweden’s frigid north to the Arctic town of Stromsund, an unlikely place to encounter an Uzbek imam.

But there he was – Obid-kori Nazarov, full-bearded and bespectacled, living with his family far from his arid Central Asian home in an apartment provided by the Swedish authorities, who granted him asylum in 2006 after he fled Uzbekistan.

It wasn’t Zhukovsky’s first time in Stromsund. At his trial, he would testify that he had already been there twice to secretly videotape Nazarov. He sent the footage to the man who hired Zhukovsky as a hitman for $200,000.

On February 22, 2012, the 54-year-old imam finished the midday prayer at a nearby mosque and went to his honey-coloured apartment building.

Zhukovsky whipped out a gun with a silencer and shot Nazarov four times. Three bullets entered Nazarov’s head. His nine-year-old grandson found him lying in a pool of blood by a stairwell.

Zhukovsky dashed away, leaving the gun just metres away from the apartment building along with a bag with plenty of his DNA samples for his future conviction.

Miraculously, Nazarov survived the 2012 shooting – and woke up from a five-year coma while Sweden got his failed killer extradited from Russia, tried and sentenced to life in jail.
An unprecedented crackdown on a criminal underworld

Salim Abduvaliev, the reported owner of the Pakhtakor football club, was a wrestling champion in the 1970s.

“Wrestling is my life,” he told a video blogger on May 5, 2020, the day he turned 70, as he stood in the courtyard of his mansion in Tashkent styled as an Italian palazzo and surrounded with blossoming flowers.

Abduvaliev heads the Uzbekistan Wrestling Association and serves as deputy head of the National Olympic Committee.

But in 2023, he ended up on a wanted list on suspicion of “extortion, money laundering and document forgery” while Abduvaliev was detained during an operation conducted by gun-toting, masked police officers.

Abduvaliev, who has a penchant for frameless designer sunglasses, bespoke suits and impeccably polished shoes with his personal logo on the soles, was detained in Tashkent on December 1 last year.

Police stormed into his mansion and forced him and an unspecified number of other men into police buses, the Eltuz Telegram channel reported, quoting security officials.

Days later, an Uzbek prosecutor said Abduvaliev was formally arrested and is being investigated for “illegal possession and transportation of arms and explosives” and may face up to 10 years in jail if convicted.

Within days, about 200 men suspected of racketeering and drug trafficking were detained throughout Uzbekistan in an unprecedented crackdown on the criminal underworld of Central Asia’s most populous nation, which borders Afghanistan.

The detainees included alleged gangsters with colourful nicknames such as Aziz “Chuchvara” (“Dumpling”) and Avaz “Korakamish” (“Black Reed”).

“All these scumbags were rounded up all together,” a high-ranking security officer told Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity. “Here’s an end to their cobweb.”

The officer said the detentions would put an end to the trafficking of Afghan heroin to Russia and farther into Europe.

However, in 2019, responding to the alleged criminal connections of Abduvaliev and another Uzbek sports functionary, Gafur Rakhimov, Uzbekistan’s former interior minister said in 2019 that both men had “nothing to do with crime”.

“They’re Uzbekistan’s pride. They’re true patriots,” said Zakir Almatov, who headed the Uzbek police from 1991 to 2006.

A charismatic preacher

In the early 1990s, crowds of worshippers thronged the white-brick Tokhtaboy Mosque in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, to hear Nazarov’s sermons.

Cabbies and market sellers listened to them on audio cassettes, and his rock-star fame made Nazarov a candidate for the mufti’s chair.

Nazarov’s homilies and popularity embodied the renaissance of Islam in Uzbekistan, the Great Silk Road’s focal point, which had spawned Muslim polymaths such as Avicenna, al-Biruni and al-Khoresmi.

Officially atheist Communist Moscow tried to uproot Islam in Central Asia. Uzbekistan’s first post-Soviet ruler, Islam Karimov, tried to harness its revival.

Despite his first name, the former Communist apparatchik Karimov distrusted imams and believers who preached and prayed outside the mosques his officials approved and intelligence services monitored.

And Nazarov often lambasted Karimov’s increasingly heavy-handed policies in his speeches.

By the late 1990s, thousands of Uzbek Muslims were being charged with “extremism” and “terrorism” in what human rights groups and Western governments called government-orchestrated trials. They ended up in maximum-security prisons where they were routinely tortured – occasionally to death.

Nazarov fled Uzbekistan in 1998, first to neighbouring Kazakhstan and then to Sweden. Three of his brothers were jailed for “extremism”. His son Khusnutdin disappeared in Tashkent in 2004.

Nazarov’s contract-style assassination was designed to prove that Karimov’s critics can’t hide even beyond the Arctic Circle, a Swedish prosecutor said.

Krister Petersson told a court in 2015 that Nazarov’s shooting “was carried out following an order of Uzbek authorities” and called Uzbekistan a “gangster state”.

The chaotic 1990s

Uzbekstan’s criminal “cobweb” was woven during Karimov’s rule – and with his tacit approval, according to organised crime experts and leaked United States diplomatic cables.

Gangs headed by former athletes or career criminals known as “crowned thieves” mushroomed throughout the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s at the time of Nazarov’s first fiery sermons.

But while in places like Russia or Ukraine gang wars raged for years, claiming hundreds of lives, Karimov pledged to nip the nascent domestic mafia in the bud.

A teenage bystander was killed during a 1993 shootout in a Tashkent park, and within months, Karimov forced most of the criminal bosses into exile.

But he allowed a selected few to operate in return for cooperation with law enforcement agencies, analysts said.

Former wrestler Abduvaliev and ex-boxer Rakhimov – better known by their first names, Salim and Gafur – topped the list, according to crime experts and media reports.

The deal was conditional: They had to ensure that street crime was “significantly reduced”, had to start legal businesses and sponsor “a sports federation each”, according to Alisher Ilkhamov, the Uzbekistan-born head of Central Asia Due Diligence, a think tank in London.

The last part of the Faustian deal was simple: to provide “services to the country’s special services in the persecution of dissidents”, he wrote.

In 1997, Abduvaliev became head of the Uzbekistan Wrestling Association and in 2000 deputy head of the National Olympic Committee.

Rakhimov held a number of boxing-related jobs and caused an international scandal after reportedly helping Russia “win” the right to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Salim and Gafur grew into organised crime kingpins who “controlled large parts of the illicit economy, sought national recognition, influenced politics and retained vast international connections”, said Erica Marat, a professor at the College of International Security Affairs.

“They also functioned above the law. State authorities had limited to no impact over their activities.”

They were also involved in drug trafficking from Afghanistan to Russia and European counties, she wrote in a 2022 paper co-authored with Gulzat Botoeva.

Gafur and Salim – without any last names – were mentioned in reports written in the late 1990s by Alexander Litvinenko, an officer with the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s main intelligence agency.

Litvinenko said Gafur and Salim used links to Afghan warlord Rashid Dustum, an ethnic Uzbek who controlled parts of northern Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

Litvinenko also alleged that the two developed ties to the Russian mob, corrupt intelligence officials and future Russian President Vladimir Putin, who headed the FSB from 1998 to 1999.

Litvinenko also accused Putin of ordering residential buildings blown up in three Russian cities in 1999 to blame the attacks on Chechen separatists as a pretext to invade the de facto independent Muslim province. He defected to London and was killed by poisoning with radioactive polonium-210 in 2006.

Putin repeatedly called Litvinenko a “traitor” as British authorities said the Russian president “probably” approved his “assassination”.

Another observer who visited Uzbekistan multiple times from 1993 to 2005 to monitor the persecution of the opposition and its human rights situation, pointed to the niche Abduvaliev and Rakhimov occupied in Karimov’s power structures.

Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera: “Salim and Gafur were some sort of shadow ‘problem solvers’ tied to the cotton business, tennis and foreign contacts of criminal character.”

“Gafur and Salim were seen as a branch of power with a specific sphere of responsibility,” he said, adding that his conclusion was based on conversations with former top officials.

‘The princess’

In the early 2000s, Abduvaliev, also known as Salim “Boyvaccha” (“Rich”), also became a mighty powerbroker, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.

A former US ambassador called him a “mafia chieftain” who “often serves as a middleman in fixing [government] tenders and helping applicants obtain government jobs”.

“Foreign investors can ‘win’ [government] tenders by arranging them through Salim, who charges a percentage of revenues as a fee,” the cable said.

The candidates for the government jobs then got a stamp of approval from Gulnara Karimova, the president’s eldest daughter, who created a vast business empire, which operated via the Swiss-registered Zeromax company.

While in Sweden, the failed killer Zhukovsky received a money transfer from a Moscow-based company called Zeromaks, but Swedish authorities couldn’t find link it to Karimova’s Zeromax.

Karimova is currently serving a 13-year jail sentence for extortion and money laundering.

Another leaked cable characterised Abduvaliev as a “crime boss” who threw a lavish engagement party for his son, Sardor, in 2005 at his mountain chalet decorated by a designer from the Versace fashion house.

Among the guests were the wives of the Uzbek justice, finance and foreign ministers – and each received necklaces worth $1,000, the cable said.

Another cable described the guest list at Abduvaliev’s 2006 birthday party, which included Russian, Ukrainian and Georgian mobsters, athletes, celebrities and the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s president.

Imam’s recovery

Zhukovsky, the hitman hired to kill the imam, testified in Sweden that the hit was “commissioned” by an Uzbekistan-born man named Tigran Kaplanov. The two had met in a Russian jail while serving time for illegal arms possession.

Kaplanov was also mentioned by two witnesses who testified in the trial of two men who had gunned down another fugitive Uzbek iman, Abdulaziz Bukhari, in 2014 in Istanbul, Turkey.

The witnesses said Kaplanov “commissioned” the murder – and also planned to organise the assassinations of President Karimov’s main rival, Mohammad Salih, and his son, who also lived in Turkey.

“Tigran Kaplanov was one of the heads of the group that was told to liquidate me, my son Timur Salih, a Kyrgyz imam and Abdulaziz Buhari, who was shot dead in the end,” said Salih, whose Erk political party was forced to disband after he challenged Karimov in the 1991 presidential election.

“What saved us was that my son and I had bodyguards,” he told Al Jazeera.

When Swedish prosecutors asked for Kaplanov’s extradition, Uzbek prosecutors said he had died.

“Tashkent said he had died, but he was in Kazakhstan at the time,” Salih said.

In Tashkent, Kaplanov was seen in Abduvaliev’s coterie, according to Nadejda Atayeva, head of the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia.

Abduvaliev allegedly received “commissions” from Uzbek intelligence to hunt down fugitive dissidents, said Atayeva, whose group has for decades documented rights abuses in Uzbekistan.

“And he was rewarded for it. At the time, he received state orders that were fulfilled by the companies he controlled,” Atayeva, who fled Uzbekistan in 2000 and lives in the northwestern French city of Le Mans, told Al Jazeera.

She accused Abduvaliev’s henchmen of being behind the 2011 contract-style killing of Fuad Rustamkhojaev, a businessman-turned-opposition activist, in the western Russian town of Ivanovo.

Atayeva said Abduvaliev became involved in a crackdown on the Uzbek opposition in 2005 after Karimov ordered a mass shooting of opposition protesters and shut down a US military base on the Afghan border.

She accused the SNB, the National Security Service, of directing the actions of Abduvaliev’s henchmen.

The orders Abduvaliev and his men received from Uzbek intelligence “were about extrajudicial beatings, executions and takeovers of dissidents’ property”, Atayeva said.
‘A very holy man’

Abduvaliev adamantly denied any involvement in organised crime, saying the source of his wealth was “consultations”.

“They come for a consultation, ask for advice,” Abduvaliyev told the video blogger. “I don’t even ask them for money. They bring it themselves and leave by my house.”

He never hesitated to show off his wealth.

He was videotaped while flying in a private jet and boasted that his steam bath was a replica of a hammam shown in a Turkish television series about an Ottoman sultan.

He received “the other Nobel prize” the US-born businessman Ludwig Nobel gives to “wise elders”.

In his house, he welcomed celebrities, including Russian athletes, film actors and television personalities.

And even during lavish parties thrown for them, he didn’t forget to praise Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

Our president, may God bless him with health, is a very holy man,” he said in 2018 while toasting a guest, Mikhail Porechenkov, a Russian film actor who has since been blacklisted in the West for his support of the war in Ukraine.

Mirziyoyev was Karimov’s prime minister for a decade and rose to power after his boss’s 2016 death.

On December 4, 2016, when Mirziyoyev was elected president, Abduvaliev was photographed wearing a T-shirt that read, “My president”.

The new president allowed Abduvaliev “to be affiliated with the government”, Marat and Botoeva wrote.

Seven years later, an Uzbek police official said Abduvaliev’s December 1 arrest followed long periods of scrutiny.

“This information has been verified not for one or two days but for months and years,” the deputy head of the Tashkent police, Donier Tashkhodjayev, said at a news conference on December 12.

An exiled opposition leader, however, said the arrest followed fears of a coup.

“Mirziyoyev is afraid of a coup, and [the criminal gangs] got hold of weapons, began to dominate law enforcement agencies,” the opposition leader told Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity.

Other observers said Abduvaliev and some of the alleged mobsters may walk away scot-free or serve nominal jail sentences after striking a deal with Mirziyoyev’s government similar to the pact made with Karimov in the 1990s.

In exchange, authorities would expect the gangsters to crack down on street crime, fund social and sports projects, and probably, yet again, organize assaults on government critics, Ilkhamov of Central Asia Due Diligence said.

“Considering that Mirziyoyev’s repressive regime is only getting stronger, one can expect such recidivism,” he told Al Jazeera.
With the US looking elsewhere, Uzbekistan and China quietly cement a regional alliance (The Hill – opinion)
The Hill [2/5/2024 11:30 AM, James Durso, 1592K, Neutral]
While the U.S., Russia and Europe are trying to quell (or aggravate) crises simultaneously in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Israel/Gaza, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea/Yemen, Uzbekistan and China have quietly elevated their partnership.

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev made a state visit to China on Jan. 23-25, visiting Beijing and Shenzen. While there he met with China’s President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang.

The meeting between the Uzbek and Chinese delegations produced numerous announcements and agreements, but the most notable may be their upgrading of the Uzbekistan-China relationship to an “all-weather” comprehensive strategic partnership. This is significant, as Pakistan, the linchpin of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), is the only other country in the region so designated. (CPEC is the largest single piece of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.)

Beijing has thus signaled its expectations in Central Asia, and the two “all weather” partnerships position it on two sides of Afghanistan, a potential source of natural resources (and instability) and a transit corridor between Central and South Asia.

The visit was also significant as Xi invested something else in the bilateral relationship: his time and attention.

This was Mirziyoyev’s second state visit to China — the first was in 2017 — and Xi made a state visit to Uzbekistan to 2022. Xi has visited every one of the Central Asia republics and has been to Kazakhstan four times and Uzbekistan three times; no U.S. president has ever visited the region. (Mirziyoyev did meet then-U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018 in Washington, D.C., and President Joe Biden met the five presidents of the Central Asian republics in New York City in 2023.)

State visits and one-on-one meetings are noticed by the Uzbek people, who no doubt appreciated that the leader of the world’s second-biggest country, and biggest economy, by some measures, personally invested his time in the relationship instead of delegating it to subordinates.

U.S. interest has waned now that it no longer needs the region for logistic support of its war against the Afghan Taliban. Though it rhetorically supports regional “stability and sovereignty,” Washington doesn’t seem to understand that as with individuals, so with countries: ready money means freedom, and China is delivering opportunities for Uzbekistan to make money.

And as to “deliverables,” there were plenty of those.

The second day of the visit was dedicated to a Joint Investment Forum in Shenzhen that produced agreements on projects in energy and mining, electrical engineering, machine building, infrastructure development, agriculture, education, photovoltaics, wind power and hydropower, and transport and logistics.

The volume of Chinese investment in Uzbekistan has increased fivefold, to $14 billion at the end of 2023, and the number of joint ventures has tripled, to over 2,300. At the end of 2023, trade turnover reached $14 billion — and the two sides are aiming at $20 billion in the near future.

The most high-profile announcement was for the assembly of hybrid and electric cars by a joint venture between BYD (the electric vehicle company that worries Tesla founder Elon Musk) and UzAuto, which locally manufactures Chevrolet-badged automobiles. The JV will produce 50 thousand units per year and may eventually expand production to 300 thousand units annually. BYD also plans to establish local assembly of electric buses, with the local sourcing of spare parts and the creation of engineering and service centers.

The most consequential announcement may have been China’s call for work on the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway to start “as soon as possible.”  The CKU will bypass Russia and likely connect with the Middle Corridor trade route to Europe, which will please Washington, and help to make Uzbekistan the transport center of Central Asia.

The World Road Transport Organization recently announced the inaugural shipment of electronic products from Shenzen, China, to Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, “via a new 6,500-kilometer transportation corridor that runs through Kyrgyzstan” in seven days as opposed to 20 days previously.

And Tashkent recently secured Qatar’s support for the 573-kilometer Trans-Afghan Railway to connect Uzbekistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan. “Support” likely means “funding,” and Tashkent may elect to pay for the project with a mix of loans from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, supplemented by cash from Doha. The project also ensures that China isn’t the only player in local infrastructure development, as Saudi Arabia has also pursued deals, among them power generation and desalinated water production. Demonstrated openness to Middle East investors is a further demonstration of Uzbekistan’s balancing between Russia and China, and now Iran and the wealthy Arab states — something the Americans should encourage.

Uzbekistan has used its location to become a successful regional facilitator and convenor, and has an opportunity to become a host of financial and development organizations as well: The Export-Import Bank of China may open a regional office for Central Asia in the city of capital city Tashkent, which may grow an ecosystem of experienced local officials and private sector firms that will draw similar organizations to Uzbekistan.

Washington may be dubious about any effort that normalizes the Taliban government, but Tashkent doesn’t have that luxury: the countries are “neighbors forever.” That same realistic outlook drove Tashkent’s efforts to open trade and transport ties with Iran, giving it a route to Iran’s 85 million people, and the affluent markets of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The American’s may be tetchy because Uzbekistan may not always be on “our side,” but Uzbekistan can be a valuable mediator now that Washington no longer has a platform in the region.

China isn’t waiting for the green light from Washington. President Xi recently received the credentials of the Taliban’s ambassador to Beijing, so Tashkent, Tehran, Moscow and Islamabad may step up the pace to preserve their influence in Kabul.

The Mirziyoyev-Xi meeting is a signal: to Central Asia, that China has high expectations for doing business; to Arab investors, of the opportunities for projects, as the region has a severe energy infrastructure deficit; and to the West, that the Central Asian republics, led by Uzbekistan, cannot afford to sit still while the U.S. and Europe lurch from crisis to crisis.
Twitter
Afghanistan
SIGAR
@SIGARHQ
[2/6/2024 3:00 AM, 168.9K followers, 4 likes]
Despite mounting economic pressure & food insecurity experienced by more than half of the Afghan population, #StateDept told SIGAR there was no indication the Taliban were devoting any significant portion of their budget to the welfare of the Afghan people https://sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2024-01-30qr.pdf#page=50

Nilofar Ayoubi
@NilofarAyoubi
[2/5/2024 2:07 PM, 63K followers, 7 retweets, 18 likes]
It is crucial to acknowledge and support any efforts aimed at empowering women in Afghanistan. Every step taken towards this goal should be recognized and encouraged. We extend our gratitude to @faisalalmutar and his team at @IdeasB2 for their work in promoting women’s empowerment in Afghanistan. By focusing on empowering Afghan women, we can create a brighter future for all. https://ideasbeyondborders.net/p/a-way-forward-for-women-in-afghanistan

Heather Barr
@heatherbarr1
[2/6/2024 3:31 AM, 62.2K followers, 1 retweet, 6 likes]
UN experts speak out on the latest Taliban right violations while UN Secretary General packs for his trip to Doha for a special envoys meeting to discuss a roadmap to recognition for the Taliban. Women’s rights must be a prerequisite for any normalization. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1146177
Pakistan
Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/5/2024 10:52 PM, 205.7K followers, 201 retweets, 429 likes]
"Gallup surveys show that Pakistanis are more discouraged than they have been in decades about a multitude of economic, political and security challenges that are threatening their country’s stability."70%-Economy getting worse 70%-Elections not honest

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/4/2024 11:23 PM, 205.7K followers, 17 retweets, 48 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.

Husain Haqqani
@husainhaqqani
[2/5/2024 11:39 PM, 459.9K followers, 24 retweets, 98 likes]
Pakistan’s short electoral history: No general elections from 1947 to 1970. Civil war & loss of erstwhile eastern wing after first election, held under military rule in 1970. All elections since then disputed or mired in controversy. 12th one won’t be different.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[2/5/2024 1:29 PM, 8.3M followers, 987 retweets, 5.7K likes]
Khan is jailed & convicted but he is not out of politics.If Nawaz Sharif can make a comeback after convictions and disqualification,why not Khan?If Nawaz can get relief from superior courts,why not Khan. My column about the future of @ImranKhanPTI

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[2/5/2024 11:48 PM, 8.3M followers, 28 retweets, 208 likes]
No relief no incentive for salaried class available in the manifesto’s of major political parties of Pakistan. No party commits to rationalising taxes for the salaried class to address the current brain drain.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[2/5/2024 12:39 PM, 8.3M followers, 283 retweets, 1.4K likes]
Aurat March to condemn the decision of a criminal court against Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Begum. Tuesday 3 pm in front of National Press Club Islamabad.
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/6/2024 1:07 AM, 95.1M followers, 1.3K retweets, 4.3K likes]
A robust energy sector bodes well for national progress. Speaking at the India Energy Week in Goa.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/5/2024 6:24 AM, 95.1M followers, 7.7K retweets, 51K likes]
Delighted to meet a delegation of religious leaders in Parliament today. I thank them for their kind words on the development trajectory of our nation. @Minoritiesfdn

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/5/2024 11:17 AM, 3M followers, 497 retweets, 4K likes]
Prime Minister @narendramodi’s reply in Lok Sabha to the Motion of Thanks to Honorable Rashtrapati ji’s address was a statement of the country’s self belief. This assertion of confidence comes on back of a decade of people focused policies that have delivered growth and development for the nation. Those wishing to know more about the transformational changes that have taken place over the last 10 years in India and our vision for the next term, do watch PM’s speech. https://youtube.com/live/xSyF91YvpvE?si=J_wDuEH4MKednWhz

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/5/2024 9:25 AM, 3M followers, 118 retweets, 1K likes]
Pleasure to meet the Parliamentary Delegation from Suriname led by Chairman of the National Assembly Marinus Bee. Continued exchanges between our two democracies build on our historical connections. Discussions today will further strengthen our partnership in economic, political and development cooperation domains.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[2/5/2024 9:22 AM, 3M followers, 130 retweets, 1K likes]
Interacted with MEA’s 4th Disarmament & International Security Affairs Fellows from across the world. Spoke on contemporary geopolitics, opportunities & challenges of new age technologies, and the economics and politics of globalization. Also addressed democratization of technology, transparency and security of data flows, digital public infrastructure and regional security issues.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[2/6/2024 1:56 AM, 262K followers, 35 retweets, 134 likes]
The Quad has held several summits since 2021, with the last being in May 2023. But with Biden stepping up engagement with China, no new Quad summit (not even a virtual one) is planned, with Garcetti acknowledging that this must wait until after the US election (effectively 2025).

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[2/5/2024 2:06 AM, 262K followers, 5 retweets, 33 likes]
The Quad still lacks clear strategic direction. As if Biden’s efforts to appease China were not bad enough, rising Sikh militancy in the US and Canada, including terrorist threats against India, has begun to cast a shadow over US-India relations. The Quad seems at a crossroads.

Sidhant Sibal
@sidhant
[2/6/2024 3:08 AM, 264.7K followers, 10 retweets, 97 likes]
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dr. Hasan Mahmud will be on a 4 day India visit from today; In Delhi he will be meeting EAM Jaishankar tomm, and will later travel to Kolkata as well. India is the first foreign destination of the FM since the Hasina govt came to power in January

Sidhant Sibal
@sidhant
[2/6/2024 2:49 AM, 264.7K followers, 7 retweets, 65 likes]
India’s troubled neighbourhood, especially Afghanistan, Pakistan etc poses significant risk to India’s security and has implications upon Counter Terrorism strategy of India: Indian Parliament counter terror report
NSB
Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[2/5/2024 6:14 PM, 5K followers, 1 like]
The Indian NSA, along with three senior security officials, visited Dhaka for a day and is said to have had crucial meetings with top #Bangladesh Army officers over the evolving military situation in civil war-torn Rakhine State Was Doval’s Feb 3 visit to Dhaka centred around events in in #Myanmar? https://nenews.in/politics/was-dovals-feb-3-visit-to-dhaka-centred-around-events-in-myanmar/6934/

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[2/5/2024 6:45 AM, 5K followers, 2 likes]
#Bangladesh is not on the US diversity lottery program for 2025.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/5/2024 10:31 PM, 205.7K followers, 3 retweets, 9 likes]
Why did President Biden write his letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and what might it mean for US-Bangladesh relations? I share my thoughts in this Q/A with @Kuthibari: https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/geopolitical-insights/news/what-does-president-bidens-letter-pm-hasina-mean-3536841

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/5/2024 2:40 AM, 106.8K followers, 17 retweets, 19 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu met with the Island Council and Women’s Development Committee members of Madifushi Island in the Kolhumadulu Atoll. This meeting was held at the Secretariat of Guraidhoo Island Council.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/6/2024 1:27 AM, 106.8K followers, 41 retweets, 44 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu met with the residential community of Th. Guraidhoo Island, where he shared with them the Administration’s developmental plans for the island, including an airport project set to be initiated this year.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/6/2024 12:43 AM, 106.8K followers, 98 retweets, 105 likes]
President Dr @Mmuizzu has arrived on Guraidhoo Island in the Kolhumadulu Atoll, where he won the most votes in a single island during the Presidential Election. The President was enthusiastically greeted by the residents of the island upon his arrival.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[2/5/2024 11:33 AM, 53.4K followers, 11 retweets, 20 likes]
#FOSIM began the third round of Pre-Posting Briefing for diplomats, to enhance the skills and capabilities to function as successful diplomats representing the Maldives.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[2/5/2024 11:33 AM, 53.4K followers, 4 retweets, 9 likes]
Today’s sessions covered topics such as Corporate Affairs, Human Resources, Role of a Diplomat, Diplomatic Language and Communication, as well as Multilateral Affairs.

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[2/5/2024 11:38 PM, 12.7K followers, 15 retweets, 27 likes]
Travelling with President Dr. @MMuizzu to Thaa Atoll Guraidhoo. It will be the first stop on his visit to several islands within Thaa Atoll. Looking forward to join the President during his meetings with the local councils, Women’s Development Committees, and interactions with the local community.

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[2/5/2024 10:20 PM, 356.1K followers, 22 retweets, 98 likes]
1/ True #1990SuwaSeriya is losing staff to migration. But we are actively recruiting (roughly 20% success rate; tough criteria and low salary). #SriLanka 41 of 297 locations are offline. In Colombo 4 of 20 locations are idle; ie 20% not 60%. Our staff is totally dedicated and

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[2/5/2024 10:29 PM, 356.1K followers, 1 retweet, 12 likes]
2/ … some are volunteering to shift around while others shifted. None of the critical locations are offline. Fear not, CEO @kcsdesilva head of medical ops Dr Srilal and unsung 1,250 heroes led by 24x7 Chair @DumindraR and board will keep this country’s most loved service going.

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[2/5/2024 10:33 PM, 356.1K followers, 11 likes]
3/ Clarification: offline is only 14% islandwide and 20% is for Colombo district. Could be certain elements internally attempting to bring the service down … unfortunately this happens in this country.

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[2/5/2024 10:23 AM, 76.9K followers, 16 retweets, 30 likes]
Sri Lanka: Amnesty International is concerned by the unlawful force used by police against peaceful protesters in Kilinochchi yesterday during Sri Lanka’s 76th Independence Day and the ongoing crackdown against protests in other parts of the country over the last few weeks.

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[2/5/2024 10:23 AM, 76.9K followers, 4 retweets, 4 likes]
In Kilinochchi yesterday, police used tear gas and water cannons against peaceful protesters, dragged them across the road and arrested some students from the University of Jaffna. Sri Lankan authorities must immediately end the clampdown, intimidation and reprisals against protesters.

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[2/5/2024 10:23 AM, 76.9K followers, 4 retweets, 6 likes]
The government of Sri Lanka has an obligation under international law to facilitate peaceful assemblies and provide an enabling environment for the exercise of the right of peaceful assembly without discrimination.

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[2/5/2024 10:23 AM, 76.9K followers, 4 retweets, 5 likes]
The authorities should ensure that the approach of law enforcement in policing of public assemblies is in line with international human rights law and standards including the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.
Central Asia
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[2/5/2024 9:48 PM, 154.7K followers, 1 retweet, 10 likes]
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev spearheaded a pivotal #meeting with government officials to define 2024’s main priorities in #education, #healthcare, #digitalization, #culture, and #sports. Deliberations centered on cultivating a framework for improved living conditions, reflecting Uzbekistan’s dedication to its citizens’ welfare and the nation’s dynamic advancement.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[2/5/2024 2:55 PM, 154.7K followers, 1 retweet, 17 likes]
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev chaired a pivotal meeting on Uzbekistan’s agricultural future. Government officials presented suggestions, focusing on enhancing the quality and safety of our horticultural products.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[2/5/2024 8:29 AM, 22.6K followers, 3 retweets, 8 likes]
Will of the state: Blogger Otabek Sattoriy released from prison today with a suspended sentence. Kashkadarya court just confirmed the decision which Otabek, who has long maintained to be innocent and charges against him - defamation and financial crimes -”fabricated” is not going to challenge. He was convicted in May 2021 and sent to prison for 6,5 years. He appealed, including to Uzbekistan Supreme Court but the verdict was upheld. Things have dramatically changed since December.

{End of Report}
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