epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Friday, July 12, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
UN: Afghan Taliban increase support for anti-Pakistan TTP terrorists (VOA)
VOA [7/11/2024 2:32 PM, Ayaz Gul, 4032K, Negative]
A new United Nations report says the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an alliance of extremist groups, is “the largest terrorist group” in Afghanistan and receives growing support from that country’s Taliban rulers to conduct cross-border attacks in Pakistan.

The U.N. sanctions monitoring team released the assessment late Wednesday amid a dramatic surge in TTP-led terror attacks against Pakistani security forces and civilians, killing hundreds of them in recent weeks.

“TTP continues to operate at a significant scale in Afghanistan and to conduct terrorist operations into Pakistan from there, often utilizing Afghans,” the report read. It noted that the globally designated terrorist group, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, is operating in Afghanistan with an estimated strength of 6,000-6,500 fighters.

“Further, the Taliban have proved unable or unwilling to manage the threat from Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, whose attacks into Pakistan have intensified,” the document said. “Taliban support to TTP also appears to have increased.”

The deadly violence has strained relations between Islamabad and the de facto Taliban government in Kabul, which denies allegations of the presence of any terrorist groups or that it allows the use of Afghan soil to threaten neighboring countries.

“The Taliban do not conceive of TTP as a terrorist group: the bonds are close, and the debt owed to TTP is significant,” the U.N. report said.

TTP emerged in Pakistan’s volatile border areas in 2007, providing recruits and shelter to the Afghan Taliban as they intensified insurgent attacks against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan in the years that followed.

The international forces withdrew from the country in August 2021, clearing the way for the Taliban to reclaim power from the then-U.S.-backed Afghan government in Kabul.

Al-Qaida links

The U.N. report said regional al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan, who have long-term ties to the Taliban, are assisting TTP in conducting high-profile terrorist activities inside Pakistan.

The Taliban have not immediately responded to the latest U.N. findings, but they have previously rejected such reports as propaganda meant to malign their government, which they call the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

The U.N. assessment quoted member states as noting that TTP operatives, along with local fighters, are being trained in al-Qaida camps that the terrorist outfit has set up in multiple border provinces such as Nangarhar, Kandahar, Kunar, and Nuristan. Al-Qaida’s support for TTP also involves sharing Afghan fighters for military staffing or attack formations.

The report quoted one U.N. member state as expressing concern that “greater collaboration” with al-Qaida could transform TTP into an “extra-regional threat.”

US weapons and TTP

U.N. member states reiterated that NATO “caliber weapons, especially night vision capability, that have been provided to TTP since the Taliban takeover add lethality to TTP terrorist attacks against Pakistani military border posts.”

Officials in Islamabad have also repeatedly attributed the increasing number of casualties among security forces to the modern U.S. weapons that were left behind by international forces and have fallen into the hands of TTP.

The U.S. Department of Defense responded to the allegations in a quarterly report made public in late May, saying that Pakistani intelligence forces recovered a few U.S.-manufactured small arms, including M-16 and M-4 rifles, following counterterrorism operations earlier this year.

“Militants, including the TTP, are probably using only a limited quantity of U.S.-origin weaponry and equipment, including small arms and night vision goggles, to conduct attacks in Pakistan,” the U.S. report said. It added, however, that “the amount of U.S.-origin weaponry that Pakistani sources allege is in the hands of anti-Pakistan militants is likely an exaggeration.”

Islamabad has repeatedly called on Kabul to rein in TTP-led cross-border terrorism, apprehend its leaders, including Mehsud, and hand them over to Pakistan. The Taliban’s response has been that TTP is an internal security issue for Pakistan to handle instead of blaming Afghanistan.

TTP has gradually intensified the number of attacks against Pakistan from 573 in 2021 to 1,203 in 2023, with the trend continuing into 2024, according to the U.N. report. Pakistani officials also attribute the spike in violence to the “greater operational freedom” the terror outfit has enjoyed in Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power almost three years ago.

The Taliban’s spy agency, the General Directorate of Intelligence, facilitated three new guest houses in Kabul for TTP leaders and reportedly issued passes to senior TTP figures to facilitate ease of movement and immunity from arrest, as well as weapons permits, according to the U.N. report.

The assessment noted that the Taliban are concerned that “excessive pressure” might lead TTP to collaborate with the Afghanistan-based Islamic State affiliate, known as IS Khorasan, which routinely plots deadly attacks on Taliban security forces and members of the Afghan Shiite minority.
Pakistan
44,000 Afghans In Pakistan Still Awaiting U.S., Foreign Resettlement (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [7/11/2024 4:50 PM, Zain Zaman Janjua and Joe Stenson, 1530K, Negative]
At least 44,000 Afghans approved for relocation to Western nations following the Taliban’s return to power are still waiting in limbo in Pakistan, Islamabad said Thursday.

In the days after the NATO-backed government collapsed in August 2021, more than 120,000 people, mostly Afghans, were airlifted from Kabul in a chaotic evacuation.

Hundreds of thousands more Afghans have fled Taliban rule since then, with many promised new lives in the nations involved in their country’s 20-year occupation.

Pakistani foreign office spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said that three years after the Taliban takeover, there were still 25,000 Afghans approved for relocation to the US living in Pakistan.

A further 9,000 Afghans resident in Pakistan have been accepted by Australia, as have 6,000 by Canada, 3,000 by Germany and more than 1,000 by Britain -- all yet to be relocated.

"We have urged them to expedite the approval and visa issuance process for these countries, for these individuals, so that they are relocated as early as possible," Baloch told reporters at a weekly press briefing.

Most countries shut their Afghan embassies as Kabul fell, and as a result, many parked Afghan migrants in Pakistan while their Islamabad embassies processed their cases.

Many of the Afghans promised relocation were involved in the foreign-backed government and are fearful of reprisals by Taliban authorities.

On Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif pressed UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi over the backlog of Afghans awaiting relocation, as well as the large numbers of refugees who have arrived with no plans for onward travel.

According to a statement released by his office, Sharif told Grandi that "the international community must recognise the burden being shouldered by Pakistan while hosting such a large refugee population, and demonstrate collective responsibility".

Some 600,000 Afghans have travelled to Pakistan since the Taliban took over and implemented their austere version of Islam.

Millions more came in the four decades before that, fleeing successive conflicts including the Soviet invasion, a civil war and the post-9/11 US-led occupation.

Since last year, however, Islamabad has waged a campaign to evict huge numbers of undocumented Afghans, as relations with Kabul soured over security.

More than half a million have crossed back into Afghanistan, fearing arrest.

On Wednesday, Islamabad said it would extend the right of registered Afghan refugees to stay for another year -- but continue its push to send those without papers back home.
Pakistan will consider expelling hundreds of thousands more Afghans in a continued clampdown (AP)
AP [7/11/2024 2:47 PM, Munir Ahmed, 85570K, Neutral]
Pakistan will consider a plan to expel hundreds of thousands more Afghans who have been living in the country for years, the foreign ministry said Thursday, the latest in a monthslong government clampdown on undocumented migrants.

The plan is still in the works, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told reporters — and the government may ultimately reject it.

It would mark the “second phase” of the “Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan” and it would involve persons who had been given identification documents known as “Afghan citizen cards” to legalize their stay in Pakistan for a limited time.

“At this stage, I do not have a date to share with you,” she said at a weekly news briefing in the capital, Islamabad, adding that an announcement about the action would be made “at an appropriate time.”

Pakistan’s crackdown on undocumented migrants has drawn sweeping criticism from the United Nations, aid agencies and human rights groups.

Since the deportations started, an estimated 600,000 Afghans have gone back to Afghanistan. After forcing thousands back daily, the deportations slowed down and appeared to halt in recent months.
On Wednesday, following a visit by the U.N. refugee agency chief, Filippo Grandi, Islamabad announced it has extended the stay of 1.45 million Afghan refugees residing in the country.

During his visit, Grandi welcomed what he described as the Pakistan government ‘s suspension of the deportations.

However, Baloch denied that was the case and said there has been no suspension in the anti-migrant crackdown that targets those without valid papers. The deportations only involve those in Pakistan illegally — and they are being carried out in a “humane manner,” Baloch said.

She insisted Afghan refugees living here need not worry as their stay has now been expended.

Amnesty International said Thursday it welcomed Islamabad’s decision to extend one-year stays. Thyagi Ruwanpathirana, the group’s regional researcher for South Asia, urged Pakistan to “extend this lifeline to all Afghan refugees in Pakistan.”

She also urged Pakistan to formally suspend the “Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan” and top all forcible returns of Afghans in the country.

Pakistan has long hosted an estimated 1.7 million Afghans, most of whom fled during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of their country. More than half a million others escaped Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021, with thousands waiting in Pakistan for resettlement in the United States and elsewhere.

Baloch also urged the international community to expedite the process for the relocation of thousands of Afghans who fled the Taliban takeover, most of who are still in Pakistan, she said.

These Afghans have been desperately waiting for their visa applications to be processed so they could leave for the United States, Canada, United Kington, Germany, Australia, Italy and several other countries.

The delay in the resettlement has left these Afghans in a vulnerable position, contending with economic hardship and lack of access to health, education and other services in Pakistan.

Baloch’s remarks appeared to catch Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation off guard.

Abdul Mutalib Haqqani, a spokesperson with the refugee ministry, said they had heard through official channels that the deportations have stopped. He said no Afghan refugees have been forcibly deported from Pakistan — whether they had proper papers or not — and that there were no reports of arrests in the neighboring country in the past 24 hours.

Haqqani appealed on the Islamabad government to give Afghans enough time to leave Pakistan in an orderly fashion and that there be no forced deportations.

“Our second request is for our Afghan brothers to return to their country voluntarily,” he said. “Now there is peace in the country ... the refugees should return to their country.”
Pakistan steps up clampdown on Afghan migrants (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [7/11/2024 1:40 PM, Staff, 15592K, Neutral]
Pakistan intends to expel more Afghan migrants residing in the country illegally, Islamabad announced on Thursday.

Tens of thousands of Afghans remain stranded in Pakistan despite having been approved for relocation to other countries.

Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, the spokeswoman for the Pakistani foreign office, told reporters that the upcoming deportations would be the "second phase" of the "Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan." It would target "Afghan citizen card" holders whose documents are valid for a limited time.

Since the deportations started last year, an estimated 600,000 Afghans have gone back to Afghanistan.

What do we know about the Afghans leaving Pakistan?

Many Afghan citizens have lived in Pakistan for decades, having fled the neighboring country amid years of conflict.

Since the Taliban took over in 2021, approximately 600,000 Afghans have fled to Pakistan. Islamabad increased the deportation of Afghan citizens due to deteriorating relations with Kabul over security concerns.

They are hoping to the be relocated to Western countries, with Baloch putting the number at at least 44,000 Afghans who have been approved for relocation abroad.

The majority, 25,000, were approved for relocation to the US, followed by 9,000 to Australia, 6,000 to Canada, 3,000 to Germany, and over 1,000 to Britain.

"We have urged these countries to expedite the approval and visa issuance process for these individuals so that they can be relocated as soon as possible," Baloch said.

Over 120,000 people were airlifted from Kabul in the days following the collapse of the NATO-backed government in August 2021. Most of them were Afghans, and hundreds of thousands more have since fled.

Many were promised relocation by the countries involved in Afghanistan’s 20-year occupation. However, with most diplomatic missions in Kabul closed since the Taliban takeover, many migrants stopped in Pakistan, where the Islamabad embassies processed their cases.
Imran Khan Gets Relief from Pakistan Court for Parliament Seats (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/12/2024 3:27 AM, Kamran Haider, 5.5M, Neutral]
A Pakistan top court has decided to hand two dozen seats from this year’s elections to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s rivals, undermining the government’s ability to pass through reforms.

The country’s supreme court handed 24 seats set aside for women and minorities to Imran Khan’s supporters that makes them a powerful block in parliament. The legislators had contested the Feb. 8 national election as independents after Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, was barred from contesting over past irregularities.

The legislators will now be part of the Sunni Ittehad Council, a religious group sanctioned by Khan after the election to get access to reserve seats. The group currently holds 84 seats in 336-member parliament.

The verdict could complicate the passage of key, government-backed legislation as it continues negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a new loan package. Currently, the ruling coalition has 209 members in the house and the court’s decision means it will remain shy of the two-thirds majority required to amend the constitution in order to pass critical legislation.

Even though the Supreme Court’s verdict strengthens Khan’s hand, he himself continues to languish in prison, and faces about 200 cases stemming from his time in office and after he was removed from power in 2022 by a parliamentary vote. Khan denies all allegations and accuses the country’s powerful military and the US of orchestrating his ouster - a charge denied by both.
Imran Khan’s party wins reserved seats in Pakistan’s parliament (Reuters)
Reuters [7/12/2024 4:33 AM, Asif Shahzad and Gibran Peshimam, 5.2M, Neutral]
Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party was eligible for over 20 extra reserved seats in the national legislature, ramping up pressure on the country’s weak coalition government.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party candidates contested the Feb. 8 election as independents after it was barred from the polls. They won the most seats but the election commission said independents were ineligible for the grant of 70 reserved seats, meant for political parties only.

The commission had ordered the reserved seats instead to be distributed among other parties, mostly to those in the ruling coalition.

""As a political party, the PTI is entitled to its reserved seats," said Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa while reading out the order, which was supported by eight judges and opposed by five of the 13-member full court bench.

The granting of 23 reserved seats does not affect the parliamentary majority of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government.

Under Pakistan’s election rules, parties are allocated 70 reserved seats - 60 for women, 10 for non-Muslims - in proportion to the number of seats they win. This completes the National Assembly’s total strength of 336 seats.

The decision does however bolster the political position of Khan’s supporters, whose rallying cry has been that the election commission and a pro-military caretaker government that oversaw the polls indulged in electoral fraud to deprive it of a victory.

The commission and military deny the charges, but questions have been raised in the West about the transparency of the polls.

The U.S. House of Representatives, as well as European countries, have called on Islamabad to open a probe into the allegations - a move that Pakistan has thus far rejected.

Khan was ousted from power in 2022 after he fell out with the country’s powerful military generals. The military denies it interferes in politics.
Pakistan’s New Military Operation Alarms Pashtuns (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [7/11/2024 4:14 PM, Osama Ahmad, 1.2M, Neutral]
On June 25, the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) launched a massive rally in the Khyber district. Thousands of people attended. The rally was called in response to the Pakistan federal government’s latest decision to launch a new military operation, named Azm-e-Istehkam, to counter the rising tide of terrorism in the country. The announcement came days after Chinese officials expressed displeasure over Pakistan’s deplorable security situation, and urged Islamabad to improve security for Chinese workers in Pakistan and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.

While the specific target area for the military operation is not yet known, the announcement has sent shockwaves across the Pashtun region in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including the former tribal districts known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), prompting strong reactions from both nationalist and religious parties.

Pashtuns’ concerns are not unfounded, as they have endured significant suffering during past operations, leading to worries that the new operation could bring back that traumatic past.

Kaleem Dawar*, a 46-year-old fruit seller in the North Waziristan district, told The Diplomat, “We have seen enough wars, destruction, and bloodshed. We don’t want it anymore. Our memories hurt, and we don’t want to go back to the past again.” Dawar concluded with tears forming at the corners of his eyes, asking, “Who in the whole world would want continuous wars and bloodshed?”

Following Pakistan’s announcement of a new military operation, the Hafiz Gul Bahadur (HGB) group announced the launch of a counter-operation named Al-Fatah bi al-Nusratul Rehman, to oppose the security forces in North Waziristan. Additionally, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) also announced a counter-operation named Azm-e-Shariat in response to Pakistan’s military operation, aiming to increase its attacks in Pakistan.

It is feared that in the ensuing struggle between the militants and the military, average Pashtuns are likely to suffer the most.

Doubts About the New Military Offensive

Pashtuns are skeptical about the motives behind the new military offensive. Some in the Pashtun nationalist leadership argue that the offensive should have been launched in the Punjab province instead, where religious extremism is deep-rooted and widespread, with numerous militant groups operating in the region.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the president of Awami National Party (ANP) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told The Diplomat, “There are around 70 terrorist organizations in Punjab which, according to the National Action Plan, should have been eradicated, but they haven’t been. If a military operation has to start, it has to start from Punjab.”

ANP is a traditional Pashtun nationalist party.

“The decision to launch a military operation was made in haste and without any consultation, and without taking the parliament and stakeholders into confidence, that’s why we reject it,” added Hussain.

Prominent Pashtun nationalist leader Mehmood Khan Achakzai also strongly protested the decision, stating that military operations in the tribal areas are carried out to take control of natural resources. He made these comments while addressing a jirga in Peshawar. Achakzai is the leader of the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PKMAP) and the opposition alliance of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI). He threatened to take the issue to the International Court of Justice.

Knowing well that the past military offensives were ineffective and useless, Afrasiab Khattak, a former senator and leader of the National Democratic Movement, considers the Azm-e-Istehkam operation part of “a new great game.” He said that the operation would bring more bloodshed, cause further displacement, and lead to the destruction of people’s homes.

Effects of Military Operations in the Pashtun Areas

Terrorism on a significant scale has emerged twice in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. First, several years before the formation of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to 2017, and then after the fall of Kabul to the Afghan Taliban in 2021. To fight the first wave of terrorism in Pashtun areas, Pakistan launched a series of military operations, starting with Operation Al-Mizan in 2002 in the North Waziristan tribal agency and continuing on to Operation Zarb-e-Azb in 2014 in multiple locations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

These operations led to massive civilian casualties, internal displacement, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. In 2009 alone, more than 6,000 civilians were killed in operational attacks and Pakistan’s armed forces injured more than 3,000 more. Meanwhile, around 6 million Pashtuns have been displaced.

Azam Wazir, a 34-year-old rickshaw driver from North Waziristan, told The Diplomat, “I lost both my parents and my two siblings in the conflict between the militants and the armed forces. I was the only survivor of the gunfire from both sides. We were going home, and the fighting was extremely intense, and with bullets flying everywhere, it was impossible to avoid getting hit.”

Wazir had to move to a more peaceful region, so he moved to Dera Ismail Khan but stayed far away from his hometown. He was torn away from his family and hometown in 2007. “I feel a hole in my heart,” Wazir concluded, expressing his grief.

There are others like Wazir who lost almost everything in Pakistan’s earlier military offensives in the Pashtun tribal areas. Aleem Jan Mehsud, who lived in South Waziristan before the war, told The Diplomat, “I, along with my family, were holed up in our house for three full days as the war raged on until our ration went out, and we had to find some food to survive till the guns were silenced. But we did not know what awaited us. A huge rocket hit that part of our house where we had taken refuge, and the whole thing fell, and everything went black. As I recovered consciousness, I saw that there was only rubble. I immediately stood up to rescue my family, but they were deep down beneath the rubble. Only my younger sister and I survived the destruction.” Like Wazir, he also had to move somewhere else to restart his life. He moved to the Tank district in 2016 and has never returned to his hometown.

These stories represent the experiences of almost everyone in the Pashtun tribal districts, which remained the battleground for militants and the Pakistan armed forces.

Resisting Terrorism and Military Adventurism

With the fall of Kabul in 2021, terrorism returned to Pakistan. However, the resurgence was mainly observed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa came out against this development in large numbers in different cities in an organized effort called Ulasi Pasoon (Public Uprising). The first major Ulasi Pasoon was observed on October 11, 2022, in which thousands of people took to the streets of Swat in what is termed the biggest protest in Swat’s history to protest against the resurgent violence, with some 15,000 people participating. The protest was sparked by the assassination of a school bus driver by unknown assailants. The protestors claimed that they were worried about the spiraling terrorism and the return of the past.

Other huge demonstrations like the one in Swat followed in Lakki Marwat, Peshawar, Mardan, Charsadda, and many other locations. This year, too, peace rallies have been held against terrorism. On June 22, PTM held a huge gathering in Razmak, South Waziristan, to protest against the rising terrorism. Similarly, following the killing of ex-senator Hidayatullah in a bomb blast recently, a huge rally was held in Bajaur district on July 5 to protest his killing and rising terrorism.

Similar to resisting terrorism, the Pashtuns have equally resisted military adventurism on their land. Like the PTM rally in Khyber district against the proposed military operation but on a slightly lower scale, the Dir Olasi Pasoon arranged a rally on June 24 in Timergara, Lower Dir, against the proposed military operation. In another episode, leading a peace rally in Mingora on July 4, the Provincial Minister for Forests, Environment, Climate Change, and Wildlife, Fazal Hakeem, said that no one would be allowed to disturb the peace of Malakand division in the name of military operations.

Opposition to the proposed military operation amongst the Pashtuns is expanding. On July 5, a protest was organized in the Orakzai tribal district against the proposed military operation. The same-day peace walks were held in different locations in Swat Valley as well.

Determined and committed to resisting the new military offensive, the PTM called for a nationwide protest on July 7, urging Pashtuns in Pakistan to come out in all the districts and record their protests. To register their protest, Pashtuns came out in large numbers in multiple districts. These rallies and marches with large numbers of people participating in them in different areas speak volumes about how the ordinary Pashtuns perceive the proposed military offensive. They feel threatened by it.

As the terrorists continue carrying out attacks and Pashtuns oppose them, a military operation is a more destructive and unacceptable phenomenon to them. Hashim Afridi*, a low-key businessman in the Khyber district who has witnessed the destruction caused by military operations in his region, told The Diplomat, “The terrorists ask for extortions, but they at least let us continue working. In the military operations, we lose everything…our homes, our shops and businesses, our loved ones, and our lives.”

“I have rebuilt my lost fortune with hard work and cannot tolerate more senseless wars, indiscriminate violence, and destruction. We need our businesses and houses intact, and we need to live for which we would oppose any new military operation!” he concluded emotionally.

He had lost his warehouses and shops in the early days of a military offensive in the Khyber district and had moved to Peshawar before returning to his hometown once again in 2020.
Saudia Aircraft Landing Gear Catches Fire in Pakistan (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/11/2024 5:12 AM, Ismail Dilawar and Leen Al-Rashdan, 27296K, Neutral]
Fire broke out on the front landing gear of a Saudia plane in Pakistan, prompting passengers to evacuate using slides.

The incident occurred on an aircraft that had flown passengers from Riyadh to Peshawar, Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement on Thursday. All 276 passengers and 21 crew were safely evacuated and fire services quickly extinguished the fire and prevented a major incident, according to the statement.

The aircraft, a seven year old Airbus A330-300, is now undergoing comprehensive inspections and subsequent tests to ensure its safety, Saudia said in response to questions from Bloomberg.
India
Biden administration disturbed by Modi-Putin visit during NATO summit (Washington Post)
Washington Post [7/11/2024 12:46 PM, Ellen Nakashima and Gerry Shih, 6.9M, Neutral]
Senior Biden administration officials are frustrated that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow as President Biden was kicking off a major NATO summit in Washington this week, underscoring the challenges the United States faces in a relationship it considers one of its most consequential.

The Moscow meeting came despite concerns conveyed to New Delhi by several senior administration officials earlier this month that the timing would complicate the “optics” for Washington, according to several U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Among those officials was Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, who spoke with Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra in early July in hopes that the Modi-Putin encounter might be rescheduled to avoid coinciding with this week’s summit, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive conversations. The summit is commemorating the 75th anniversary of the alliance’s founding, and its members are seeking to signal strong support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s aggression.

Despite U.S. reservations, Modi arrived Monday in Moscow and embraced Putin in a warm bear hug — an image that was criticized by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — just hours after Russian bombs killed several dozen people in strikes across Ukraine, including at a children’s hospital in Kyiv. Modi called Putin “my dear friend.”

The episode highlights the complexities for the Biden administration as it seeks to deepen its strategic relationship with a rising Asian power that is willing to partner with the United States against China — but is also determined to remain independent of Washington and maintain ties with Moscow.

This week, there was broad concern within the Biden administration about the meeting and its timing, the people said. The optics were “terrible,” said one official.

“Deeply inappropriate,” said another.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters on Monday, “We have made quite clear directly with India our concerns about their relationship with Russia.”

At a news conference Thursday in New Delhi, U.S. Ambassador Eric Garcetti offered a veiled criticism of the Moscow meeting and warned India that it should not take the U.S. friendship “for granted.”

“I’ll have to fight a lot of defensive battles trying to help this relationship ahead,” he said. “I respect that India likes its strategic autonomy. But in times of conflict, there is no such thing as strategic autonomy.”

The Indian Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Indian officials say they are deeply concerned about the growing closeness between Beijing and Moscow and contend that their diplomacy with Moscow acts as a brake on unbridled cooperation. They say they have no choice but to cultivate ties with both the United States and Russia and balance the two relationships.

During the Cold War, Indian leaders maintained a policy of “nonalignment” that in practice resulted in a close military relationship with the Soviet Union and distrust toward the United States. The country is determined to remain independent, seeking to avoid being seen as aligned too closely with Moscow or Washington and positioning itself as a leader of Global South nations.

India has turned to America for help countering China, a giant neighbor with which it shares a tense and contested border. It is also eager for investment and sharing of technology from the U.S. defense, space and semiconductor industries to strengthen its manufacturing base and expand its high-tech capacity. The United States is one of India’s largest sources of foreign direct investment, and the government has courted Western tech companies such as Apple that are seeking to diversify their supply chains.

But India relies heavily on Moscow to provide cheap energy for an economy growing at 7 percent a year, and officials in New Delhi say they need Russian ammunition and parts to maintain their military.

“I think there is an understanding within the [Biden] administration that India’s continued relationship with Russia is driven partly by self-preservation, partly by self-interest, but also by a strategic assessment focused on China,” said Sameer Lalwani, a senior expert on South Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

India needs to maintain access to supplies, spare parts and technical support to sustain its vast arsenal of Russian weapons, Lalwani said. It also has an interest in taking advantage of cheap Russian oil — it is now the largest such buyer — to fuel its developing economy.

Indian and Russian officials announced this week that they were in talks over a long-term deal for Russia to supply crude oil, natural gas and uranium nuclear fuel to India. The Russian state atomic energy company said it was offering to build more nuclear reactors in India.

Campbell, according to officials familiar with the matter, told Kwatra that the administration understands that New Delhi has a long relationship with Moscow and that it is trying to ensure that the Russia-China relationship does not further deepen. The main concern, though, was that Modi meeting with Putin as the leaders of NATO’s 32 countries were converging on Washington would complicate the alliance’s effort to isolate Putin and raise questions about ambitious plans to further deepen the U.S.-India relationship and regional dialogue.

NATO has invited four Indo-Pacific countries and long-standing NATO partners — Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea — to attend the summit, and will hold a working session Thursday. India, which has refrained from condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is not a NATO partner nor a member of this group, called the “Indo-Pacific 4.”

On Wednesday, H.R. McMaster, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, posted on X: “It is time to reassess the relationship with India based on much lower expectations.”

Campbell, a staunch advocate of the U.S.-India relationship, assured Kwatra that the Biden administration will continue to work with Modi’s government to push ahead projects in advanced technology, defense cooperation and clean energy. He told Kwatra the administration supports his appointment, expected soon, as India’s next ambassador to the United States.

The United States sees India as a strategic counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific region. National security adviser Jake Sullivan and Campbell traveled to New Delhi last month to advance U.S.-India partnerships in technology and discuss stepping up India’s role in multilateral engagements with other key regional partners.

In February 2022, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged a “no-limits” partnership just days before Putin sent tens of thousands of troops over the border into Ukraine. This week, NATO’s members issued a joint communiqué declaring that China “has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine through its so-called ‘no limits’ partnership and its large-scale support for Russia’s defense industrial base.”

The “deepening strategic partnership between Russia and the [People’s Republic of China] and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut and reshape the rules-based international order, are a cause for profound concern,” the document said.

This week, Russian officials and state media appeared to revel in Modi’s visit. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said Western governments were “jealous — that is why they are closely monitoring it.”

The Biden administration “assesses that India is far too important to their goals with China to sacrifice the relationship based on this unhelpful visit,” said Lisa Curtis, director of Indo-Pacific security at the Center for a New American Security and a former senior White House official in the Trump administration.

But, she added, while India “certainly has good reasons to try to drive a wedge between China and Russia, the reality is they will not be able to do this. I think it’s wishful thinking.”
Indian opposition leader Kejriwal gets interim bail in graft case but stays in jail (Reuters)
Reuters [7/12/2024 2:12 AM, Arpan Chaturbedi and Shivam Patel, 5.2M, Neutral]
India’s Supreme Court granted interim bail on Friday to opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in a graft case, but he will stay in jail due to his arrest in another case.

Kejriwal was arrested in March by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), India’s financial crime-fighting agency, over alleged corruption in the city’s alcohol sales policy.

A fierce critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a former anti-corruption crusader, Kejriwal, 55, denies any wrongdoing and calls the case politically motivated.

His lawyers had challenged his arrest in the top court, which referred the matter to a larger bench while giving him temporary relief.

"Given that right to life and liberty is sacrosanct, and Arvind Kejriwal has suffered incarceration for over 90 days ... we direct that Arvind Kejriwal will be released on interim bail," Justice Sanjiv Khanna said.

However, Kejriwal remains in detention because of his arrest last month by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s federal police, in another corruption case related to the Delhi liquor policy.

His counsel Vivek Jain told Indian news agency ANI that he will seek his release on bail in the CBI case at the Delhi High Court on July 17.

Kejriwal’s decade-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has quickly risen in mainstream politics and voted to power in Delhi and in the northern state of Punjab, but its clout is still relatively smaller than older parties.

He was previously granted temporary bail by the top court for three weeks until June 2 to campaign in national elections.
Gandhi embraces role as India opposition leader (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [7/11/2024 8:36 AM, Murali Krishnan, 15592K, Neutral]
Just three days after a crowd crush disaster at a religious event in northern Uttar Pradesh state killed more than 120 people, Rahul Gandhi, the newly appointed leader of the opposition in the lower house of India’s Parliament, visited the site to meet with family members of those killed.

"It is a matter of grief that so many families have suffered, so many have lost their lives," Gandhi told reporters after meeting with the families. "I don’t want to speak through a political prism, but there have been some lapses on the part of the administration. There have been mistakes, which should be identified."

Soon after, Gandhi visited relief camps in Manipur, a state in northeastern India that has been torn by ethnic conflict.

"I want to tell Manipur, I come here as your brother. I want to work with you to bring back peace in Manipur," he said.

At each stop, Gandhi railed against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). For Gandhi, who has often been portrayed as an unserious politician, the gains by his Congress Party and the opposition in the recently concluded national elections have given him a wider, more prominent platform to take on the BJP.

New role, same rhetoric

Despite having won a third consecutive term, Prime Minister Modi’s BJP failed to win an outright majority and now relies on coalition partners to remain in power.

In his first address to parliament earlier this month, his first since being appointed leader of the opposition, Gandhi picked up where he left off on the campaign trail, attacking Modi’s government on various fronts.

"All religions talk about courage. All our great men have spoken about non-violence and fear. But those who call themselves Hindu only talk about violence, hatred, untruth," said Gandhi, referring to the BJP.

He finished the statement by asking in Hindi, "Are you Hindu or not?"

This remark led to loud protests from the BJP members and their allies. The comment was considered so inflammatory that it was later expunged from the parliamentary record. For many, though, the comments signaled a change in the power dynamics of the newly constituted legislature.

"Gandhi surprised Modi and his political opponents by his sharp speech in parliament. He has emerged as a powerful voice on issues that have put the government on the defensive," political analyst Rasheed Kidwai told DW. "Gandhi wants to prove his detractors wrong that he lacks application and avoids a position of responsibility."

Gandhi’s more prominent role

As the Congress Party’s most prominent face, Gandhi’s popularity has soared since the election. His image was bolstered in the run-up to the election as Gandhi embarked on a 6,700-kilometer-long (4,160 miles) trek across India. Some observers believe that these actions have transformed his image into that of a "poor man’s leader."

"His constant mention of social justice, and saving the Constitution not only pulled in more listeners but has solidified his support base. For the first time, there was great coherence in Gandhi’s pitch," Alishan Jafri, a commentator told DW, adding that Gandhi needs to continue to debate Modi on real issues that matter to all Indians.

"Modi has altered the thought process of many Indians. They see rights with contempt and government as the ultimate authority before which all subjects must kneel. For Gandhi, the real challenge is to remind the people that all Indians have the right to have rights," added Jafri.

Political columnist Radhika Ramaseshan told DW that Gandhi’s new position is markedly different from his previous stint as the Congress president.

"The difference this time is that he has accepted a constitutional post. The Congress Party’s vastly improved performance in the election has given him the confidence he lacked," said Ramaseshan.

She pointed out that these were still early days and the Gandhi would be tested in and out of parliament. "Consistency is all-important to motivate the Congress workers and galvanize their morale. It is a long haul and the onus to take the party to a position where it can respectably challenge the BJP lies squarely on Gandhi."
India’s Modi departs from privatisation plans, will overhaul state-run firms (Reuters)
Reuters [7/12/2024 4:02 AM, Nikunj Ohri and Manoj Kumar, 5.2M, Neutral]
India plans to overhaul more than 200 state-run firms to make them more profitable, signalling a departure from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aggressive privatization programme that has struggled to take off, government sources said.

The programme to privatise a major portion of India’s lumbering $600 billion state sector announced in 2021, had slowed ahead of the general election in April-May and now faces more resistance after Modi lost his majority in parliament and had to rely on coalition allies to return to office.

Expected to be unveiled as part of the annual budget on July 23 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the new plans include selling large parcels of underutilised land owned by these companies and monetisation of other assets, said two officials who are aware of the policy. Some aspects are yet to be fine-tuned, they added.

The aim is to raise $24 billion in the current April-March fiscal year and re-invest the funds in the companies, while setting five-year performance and production targets for each company, instead of short-term targets.

The plans to overhaul state firms have not been reported previously.

The officials declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak on confidential deliberations.

The finance ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

In an interim budget presented before the election, the government did not provide any figures on stake sales for the first time in more than a decade.

"The government is shifting focus from indiscriminate asset sales to enhancing intrinsic value of state-owned companies," said one of the officials.

Among other plans, the government intends to introduce succession planning in majority-owned companies alongside a proposal to train 230,000 managers across firms to prepare them for senior roles, the officials said.

Currently, the government appoints top executives in state-owned companies.

The government is likely to implement a plan that includes training of managers, professional recruitment to company boards and incentives for high performance from the 2025/26 fiscal year, with the expectation that increased autonomy would make companies more competitive.

The 2021 announcement to sell most state-run companies included two banks, one insurance company and firms in steel, energy and pharmaceutical sectors besides closure of loss-making companies.

But India has been able to only complete the sale of debt-ridden Air India to the Tata Group, while rolling back plans to sell some others. Only a 3.5% stake in LIC has been sold besides shares in few other companies.

Hardeep Puri, India’s oil minister, said last week a plan to sell state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL.NS) was no longer on the table as the company was making almost as much profit in a year as the price it was to be sold for.

Sunil Sinha, chief economist at India Ratings, the local arm of Fitch ratings agency, said the sale of government companies, marred by allegations of "selling family silver" at a cheaper price, would be difficult to push after Modi’s reduced majority in parliament.

"This (privatisation) can actually snowball into a political slugfest...recouping it may become very difficult and they may have to pay a political price for it."

BOOMING MARKET

Despite hurdles in privatisation and stake sales, the overall market valuation of state-run firms has more than doubled in the past one year on hopes of reforms in the sector.

The BSE PSU index (.BSEPSU), which tracks state-owned companies, has surged over 100% in the last one year, outperforming the benchmark BSE Index’s (.BSESN), opens new tab 22% rise.

"We find the valuations of many PSU stocks to be quite bizarre, when compared with their fundamentals," Sanjeev Prasad of Kotak Institutional Equities said in a note.

"Some of these companies will require extraordinary assumptions and a massive turnaround in their operations (and financials) to justify their current market caps."

But the government views the market’s response as a mark of investor confidence, said a senior official at the NMDC (NMDC.NS), India’s state-run iron ore company.

Looking ahead, the government expects its reforms would translate into higher profits and, subsequently, increased returns for the state, the official said.

State firms were expected to pay substantially higher dividends to the government, compared to earlier estimates of 480 billion rupees ($5.8 billion) in 2024/25, said the second government source.

Analysts however said India risked missing the opportunity to cash in on the booming valuations of state companies.

The government could raise about 11.5 trillion rupees ($137.75 billion) at current market capitalisation by selling minority stakes in state-owned companies, while maintaining 51% stake, CareEdge Ratings said in a note last week.

"The conclusion of the election season, combined with stock market hovering around all-time highs, provides a perfect opportunity to advance some significant divestment initiatives," said Rajani Sinha, chief economist, CareEdge Ratings.
India warns UK not to impose deadline on trade talks (The Independent)
The Independent [7/11/2024 7:25 AM, Alisha Rahaman Sarkar, 56358K, Neutral]
India warned the UK against imposing a deadline on the already stretched-out trade talks as it remained optimistic about closing the deal "very quickly" with the new Labour government.

Britain’s post-Brexit free trade negotiations with India, which began in January 2022 to double trade between the two countries to £86bn by 2030, were stalled this year due to general elections in both nations.

The talks are scheduled to resume this month to resolve pending issues, according to local reports.

The two nations were "pretty much on board on most of the issues we have discussed", Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal told The Financial Times ahead of his British counterpart’s visit to New Delhi.

Mr Goyal said the Labour government should not repeat a mistake made by Boris Johnson when the then-prime minister rushed the free trade agreement (FTA). The British government had committed – first under Mr Johnson – to reaching a trade deal with India by Diwali 2022, but negotiations were derailed by comments made by Suella Braverman about Indians overstaying their UK visas.

“India does not believe any [free trade agreement] should have a deadline for negotiations,”Mr Goyal told the newspaper. “We never discuss any FTA with any country or group of countries with a gun [to] our head.”

With the trade deal, India hopes to increase exports of leather, jewellery, textiles, and food products, with post-study work visas and immigration for Indians to the UK as big areas of priority.

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

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

Besides tariffs, Britain has also reportedly pushed India to agree on strong investment-protection provisions either as part of the deal or in a parallel investment treaty.

Officials involved in the 14th round of negotiations claimed that the majority of issues in the proposed FTA were either finalised or were at an advanced stage of discussion.

Britain’s newly-elected prime minister Keir Starmer during his call with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, last week said he "stood ready to conclude a deal that worked for both sides".

Mr Goyal said he had secured commitments from Labour prior to the elections that they could continue negotiations after forming the government but noted that the deal had to be “equitable, fair and balanced”.

He told The Financial Times that the deal is “something which is ready to be closed very quickly, but that it could take very long also”.

Mr Goyal said: “Personally if you ask me, in the FTA I don’t find any big issue left, except that we have opened up very significantly on the services side, contingent to certain commitments that we expect from the UK.”

Any deal needs “a fair balance, given our different size of population, given our different aspiration levels, given our different growth projections”, he added.
Police in India book journalists after posts on alleged Muslim lynching (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [7/11/2024 9:52 AM, Staff, 20871K, Negative]
Media watchdogs in India have accused the police in Uttar Pradesh state of “grave overreach” for filing cases against journalists after they wrote about the alleged lynching of a Muslim man last week in social media posts.

Police in the northern state’s Shamli district charged two journalists – Wasim Akram Tyagi and his cousin Zakir Ali Tyagi – for commenting on the killing of Firoz Qureshi in the district’s Jalalabad town.

The journalists were charged with causing “hatred and anger” in society. Three other Muslims who shared their social media posts were also named in the first information report (FIR) filed by the police. None of them have been arrested so far.

Wasim, a reporter with Hind News newspaper in Dehli, told Al Jazeera on Thursday he was “shocked” when he heard that charges had been filed against him over the alleged lynching.

“Now, as journalists, if we can’t call murder a murder, what should we call it, then? If a journalist is not going to raise questions, who will? … If we are going to be charged for this, it raises questions on press freedom,” the 36-year-old told Al Jazeera.

“The impact this will have is that anytime you write something, you will have to think twice: What if an FIR is filed over writing this or that?”

Zakir, 25, also rejected the police charges, saying he merely disseminated information that had already been shared by the Qureshi family. He said he was “not surprised” by the FIR against him.

“I was expecting the FIR for a long time because I had been only posting and writing about lynching cases recorded across India,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that this was not the first time a police case was registered against him.

Cases of mob lynching of Muslims by Hindu groups and mobs, mainly under the pretext of protecting cows, an animal considered holy by a large section of Hindus, spiked after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014. Dozens have been killed in such attacks.

Zakir said the people charged by the police in the Shamli case, including him, were being targeted because they were Muslims.

“Everything we wrote, all the questions we have raised, were also written or used in videos by Hindu journalists,” he told Al Jazeera. “But no FIR was registered against them.”

Al Jazeera reached out to police officials in Shamli but received no response.

Meanwhile, the police also filed an FIR against several persons allegedly involved in Qureshi’s killing after his family filed a complaint against the suspects. It is not yet clear if any arrests were made.

But the police claim Qureshi’s death was not a case of mob lynching. “The man was beaten up by a few men when he entered their home. But he died at his [own] home. We have also conducted a postmortem,” a senior police officer in Shamli told India’s Scroll website.

However, Qureshi’s brother Mohammed Afzal insisted it was a case of lynching. He told The Quint website there were injuries all over the deceased’s body, including on his stomach and back, suggesting he was assaulted with an intent to kill.

Journalist Wasim also questioned the police version.

“While the police say this was not a case of lynching, the family says Qureshi was beaten up. There is a recorded video of them saying that. And it was on that basis that we raised questions regarding the police’s conduct towards the death,” he said.
‘Crime to report a crime’

India’s press bodies, including the Press Club of India, the Indian Women’s Press Corps and Digipub News India Foundation, a group of digital-only news outlets, condemned the police action against the journalists, saying they were “extremely perturbed” by the charges levelled against the journalists and demanding that the FIRs be immediately withdrawn.

“Registering an FIR against journalists sharing information in the public interest is a grave overreach and misuse of criminal laws and an assault on press freedom that has a chilling effect,” Digipub said in a post on X.

“While the police has contested the nature of the incident, saying it wasn’t communal in nature, there was no cause for filling cases against journalists who were putting out information made available to them.”

Kunal Majumder, who represents the Committee to Protect Journalists in India, said the investigations against Zakir and Wasim Akram for highlighting “police misconduct and sectarian tensions” were alarming.

“The authorities should drop this investigation and focus on addressing the issues raised by these journalists rather than punishing them for their work,” he said in a statement.

Journalist and author Ziya Us Salam told Al Jazeera that the police filing cases against journalists was meant to “simply intimidate” them.

“On one hand, the mainstream media turns a blind eye to lynching instances. On the other, when independent media covers such attacks, the administration tries to muzzle it through such actions,” said Salam, whose 2023 book, Being Muslim in Hindu India, argues that the minority community is “under siege” in a BJP-ruled India.

“It seems it’s a crime in Modi’s India to report a crime,” he said, adding that “one has to fight on” since being silent was “not an option”.

Multiple journalists have complained of harassment in recent years, with rights groups and media watchdogs accusing the Modi-led government of cracking down on the press critical of its affairs.

In October, NewsClick website’s founder and editor Prabir Purkayastha was arrested, after a New York Times report alleged his portal was supported financially by a Chinese-based network. India’s Supreme Court in May ordered Purkayastha’s release on bail, calling his arrest “illegal”.

Indian tax authorities also raided the offices of the BBC in New Delhi and Mumbai in 2022, shortly after the British broadcaster released a documentary critical of Modi.

India is ranked 159 out of 180 countries in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index, released by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Parts of a northwest Delhi flooded after canal breach (Reuters)
Reuters [7/11/2024 10:48 AM, Tanvi Mehta, 42991K, Negative]
Parts of north-west Delhi were flooded on Thursday after a breach in a canal that supplies water from a nearby state, and repair work was being carried out to minimize the impact, a senior local official said in a social media post.

Residents of the capital have experienced a series of extreme weather events in the past two months, from sizzling temperatures to floods and heavy rainfall that caused a roof collapse at the city’s airport.

"Today (in the) early morning there has been a breach in one of the sub-branches of Munak Canal ... Water has been diverted to the other sub-branch of the canal," Delhi Water Minister Atishi said in a post on X.

Visuals from ANI news agency, in which Reuters has a minority stake, showed residents wading through knee-deep muddy water in the district of Bawana in north-west Delhi.

The Munak canal is situated on the Yamuna river near Delhi’s northwestern border with the state of Haryana, which also runs the canal. No casualties have so far been reported from the latest flooding.

Parts of Delhi have recently suffered from a severe water shortage after the hottest summer on record, and Atishi went on a brief hunger strike to demand more water for the city.

Delhi relies for most of its water on the Yamuna river that runs through the capital and which flooded a year ago after heavy rains.

Multiple rivers in India’s eastern state of Bihar are also close to breaching their banks as water flows downstream from neighbouring Nepal, parts of which were also flooded earlier this week.

Heavy rainfall in Assam in the east of the country has triggered flash floods in recent weeks in which at least 79 people were killed and thousands displaced.
Why both businesses and scammers love India’s payment system (BBC)
BBC [7/11/2024 5:14 PM, Priti Gupta, 65502K, Neutral]
Every day, for the last seven years, Arun Kumar has set up his fruit stall on a busy Mumbai street.

It’s not an easy way to make a living.

“Being a street vendor is a challenge. There’s the fear of being robbed or, as I am not a licensed vendor, the local body can come and dismantle my store anytime," he says.

But over the past four years at least one aspect of his work has become easier.

“Prior to Covid everything was in cash. But now everyone pays with UPI. Scan the code and the payment is done within seconds.

"No issues of handling cash, giving change to customers. It has made my life and business smooth,” he says.

UPI, or to give it its full name the Unified Payments Interface, was launched in 2016 in a collaboration between India’s central bank and the nation’s banking industry.

It’s an app-based instant payment system, which allows users to send and receive money, pay bills and authorise payments in a single step - no need to enter bank details or any other personal information. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s free.

It has become so popular that India is now the biggest real-time payments market.

In May, UPI recorded 14 billion transactions, up from nine billion the year before.

But the popularity and ease of use has made it a rich feeding ground for scammers.

“While digital payments are convenient, they do come with vulnerabilities," says Shashank Shekhar, founder of the Delhi-based Future Crime Research Foundation.

Mr Shekhar says that scammers use a variety of ways to trick people, including persuading them to share their UPI pin number, which is needed to authorise payments.

Some scammers have also created fake UPI apps, that are clones of legitimate banking apps, and then steal login details or other valuable information.

"The pace at which digital transformation took place in the country means unfortunately digital literacy and safe internet practice could not catch up," says Mr Shekhar.

He says that between January 2020 and June 2023 almost half of all financial fraud involved the use of the UPI system.

According to government figures there were more than 95,000 cases of fraud involving UPI in the financial year ending April 2023, up from 77,000 in the previous year.

Shivkali was one such victim. She had always wanted to own a scooter, but they were beyond her budget.

However, earlier in the year the 22-year-old, who lives in Bihar state in northeastern India, spotted one for sale on Facebook that looked like a great deal.

"I grabbed the opportunity without thinking," she says.

A couple of clicks later and she was talking to the owner, who said that for $23 he would send over the vehicle papers.

That went smoothly, so Shivkali continued to send the owner money, via instant transfers. She eventually ended up paying $200, but the scooter (also commonly called a Scooty in India), was never delivered.

Shivkali realised she had been scammed.

"I did not think I could be cheated, as I have some education background and know what is happing in the world. But scammers are smart. They have an art of speaking to convince the opposite person,” she says.

The government and the central bank are looking at ways to protect UPI users from scammers.

But at the moment, if a victim wants compensation, they have to approach their bank.

“The problem is deep rooted," says Dr Durgesh Pandey, an expert in financial crime.

"Most of the onus lies with banks and telecom companies. They are lax in making identity checks, that’s why the fraudster can’t be traced.

"But the challenge for banks particularly is that they have to balance between inclusivity, ease of business and enforcement of identity checks. If they are too rigid, the vulnerable section of society will remain without banking facilities.”

But Dr Pandey argues that in most cases of fraud, the bank is not totally to blame.

“It’s a complex question because the problem lies with banks, but it’s the victim who is giving his credentials in most case. I would say both victim and bank should bear the loss.”

Despite those problems, UPI is being promoted in rural areas where access to banking services can be difficult.

Poonam Untwal from Rajasthan runs a guidance centre which helps people use the internet and digital banking.

"Most of us are not that educated, nor know the proper use of smartphones. I teach them that phones are no longer a device just to talk to people but banks at their fingertips," she says.

She believes that UPI will help develop the local economy.

"Many women like me have a small business that we run from our home. Now we can receive and send money with UPI. People who don’t have smart phones come to my centre to get their transactions done," she says.

As well as making inroads into rural areas, UPI is spreading overseas.

Retailers in Bhutan, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka and UAE will take UPI payments.

And this year, France become the first European country to accept UPI payments, starting with tickets to the Eiffel Tower.

Back in Mumbai, Mr Kumar is happy that he no longer has to use cash, but remains wary.

If he can’t get a good internet connection then customers can, by accident or design, make off without paying.

"For a small vendor like me it [UPI] made receiving money very easy. But I am always scared of fraud. I keep hearing in the news how the UPI frauds are increasing. Hopefully some mechanisms are invented so a small vendor like me doesn’t face losses.”
NSB
Tens of Thousands of Students Protest Job Quotas in Bangladesh’s Streets (New York Times)
New York Times [7/11/2024 4:14 PM, Saif Hasnat, 831K, Neutral]
Tens of thousands of students blocked the main streets of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, on Thursday, demanding that quotas for civil service jobs be abolished and those jobs given to candidates on the basis of merit.

The protests broke out after a Dhaka court recently reinstated quotas for government jobs, which were abolished by a government order in 2018 following another countrywide student protest. The appellate division halted the new ruling for four weeks on Wednesday, but that did not quell the demonstrations.

Protesting students blocked entry and exit points as well as key intersections in Dhaka, one of the world’s most crowded cities, causing major traffic congestion. The demonstrations also severely affected Dhaka’s only metro rail route.

Students broke a police barricade in Dhaka’s Shahbag area on Thursday evening to conduct a large sit-in. Some protesters also climbed police vehicles meant to disperse the disruptive gatherings.

“Due to the quota system, talented students cannot launch important jobs where talented people are required, like teaching at primary schools,” Akram Hossain, who was among the coordinators during the anti-quota movement in 2018, said in a phone interview.

Bangladesh reserves more than 50 percent of government jobs for quota holders, including the grandchildren of freedom fighters who took part in the country’s war of independence in 1971. Student leaders say those quotas are among many that are unacceptable now.

In 2018, students across the country staged demonstrations against the existing quota system, which guaranteed that quota holders would get more than half of government jobs. Following weeks of widespread protests, the government, led by Bangladesh’s longest-serving prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, announced that quotas would be abolished and government jobs would be awarded based on a merit system.

Mr. Hossain, the 2018 protest coordinator who attended Thursday’s demonstrations in Dhaka, said the current movement this time is more organized because six years ago students feared attacks from the student wing of the ruling party. He added that in 2018, organizers used fake social media accounts to spread the word about marches and other gatherings while dodging the government’s eyes.

Apart from the students of the University of Dhaka, the largest university in Bangladesh, students from other elite schools also joined protests in the cities Chattogram, Comilla, Rajshahi and Sylhet. Student leaders said police officers used bullets and batons to disperse protests at the Comilla University in Comilla, a southeastern Bangladesh city.

“We want the government to call for a special parliament session and take a decision about our demand,” Sarjis Alam, a coordinator of the current protests, said, his voice strained and cracking from relentless chanting.
Bangladesh Police Fire Tear Gas, Rubber Bullets At Student Protesters (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [7/11/2024 8:33 AM, Staff, 85570K, Neutral]
Bangladesh police on Thursday fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse university student protesters demanding the scrapping of quotas they say are rigged to support pro-government job candidates.

The quota system reserves more than half of well-paid civil service posts, totalling hundreds of thousands of government jobs, for specific groups including children of heroes from the country’s 1971 liberation war.

Students launched protests earlier this month, demanding a merit-based system, and have continued demonstrations despite Bangladesh’s top court suspending the quota scheme this week.

Officers forcibly dispersed around 150 students in the eastern city of Comilla after they attempted to blockade the main highway to the capital Dhaka, police inspector Syed Fazle Rabbi told AFP

"Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them," he said.

Comilla Medical College Hospital director Sheikh Fazle Rabbi told AFP that 11 protesters had been injured, with two since discharged. None of the injured had been hit by rubber bullets.

Police in Dhaka tried in vain to stop thousands of young protesters from blocking roads around the megacity for the second time in as many days.

Footage broadcast by local broadcaster Jamuna TV showed several protesters mounting a police vehicle and hundreds of others dismantling a police barricade.

In the port city of Chittagong, police charged hundreds of protesters with batons in an attempt to prevent them from marching on a major road, witnesses told AFP.

"Police tried to stop us from holding our protests," Dipa, a student from the city who did not give her last name, told AFP.

"We will not leave the road until our demand is met."

Students are demanding that only those quotas supporting ethnic minorities and disabled people -- six percent of jobs -- should remain.

Bangladesh’s top court on Wednesday temporarily suspended quotas but protesters have vowed to continue until the parts of the scheme they oppose are scrapped completely.

Critics say the system benefits children of pro-government groups, who back Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Hasina, 76, won her fourth consecutive general election in January, in a vote without genuine opposition parties, with a major crackdown against her political opponents who boycotted the poll.

Critics accuse Bangladeshi courts of rubber-stamping decisions made by her government.

Hasina has condemned the protests, saying the matter had been settled by the court.

"Students are wasting their time," Hasina said Sunday.
Bangladesh charges 26 for destruction of vast mangrove forest (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [7/11/2024 6:03 AM, Staff, 85570K, Negative]
Bangladeshi police have charged 26 people for destroying a swath of mangrove forest that protects the low-lying nation from storm surge waters exacerbated by climate change, environmental officers said Thursday.

"They have destroyed parts of a unique ecosystem, which has been declared as an ECA (Ecologically Critical Area)," Jamir Uddin, a deputy director of the environment department, told AFP.

Uddin said it was "one of the largest environmental cases" the agency had tackled.

The men are accused of felling about 560 acres (225 hectares) of the southeastern Sonadia coastal forest, close to Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar, to turn it into commercial shrimp and salt farms.

"They face charges under the country’s environmental laws and could be sentenced to 10 years in jail if convicted," Sonadia police station chief Sukanta Chakrabarty told AFP.

Bangladeshi newspaper Prothom Alo, the country’s largest Bengali daily, said at least 2.3 million trees were felled to clear an area for at least 45 shrimp and salt farms.

Several of those charged are officials from the ruling Awami League party, Chakrabarty said.

Charges were filed against the men on Tuesday.

Shrimp is one of Bangladesh’s major exports. To raise shrimps, farmers divert sea water into their farms, making the land unfit for other crops.

Bangladesh is at the forefront of the world’s climate crisis, with cyclones and floods becoming more frequent and powerful, according to scientists.

Mangroves are trees that grow mainly in seawater or brackish water along coastlines and tidal rivers.

They protect coastlines from erosion and extreme weather events, improve water quality by filtering pollutants and serve as nurseries for many marine creatures.

They can help fight climate change by sequestering millions of tons of carbon each year in their trees’ leaves, trunks, roots and the soil.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned in May that half of the world’s mangrove ecosystems are at risk of collapse due to climate change, deforestation and pollution.

Mangroves are a key feature of the country’s coast, with the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and home to rare Bengal tigers, credited with minimising the damages of cyclones.

A forest official said the Sonadia mangroves were an important site for migratory birds, including the rare spoon-billed sandpiper.
‘Are you rich in goats?’: chronicling the extraordinary work of Bhutan’s ‘happiness surveyors’ (The Guardian)
The Guardian [7/11/2024 9:31 AM, Charlotte O’Sullivan, 86157K, Neutral]
How often do you get angry? Are you prone to envy? Are you rich in goats? These are the questions Amber Kumar Gurung is employed by the Bhutan government to ask its citizens. Along with his colleague, fellow “happiness surveyor” Guna Raj Kuikel, he then calculates each subject’s general wellbeing, assigns them a score out of 10 and feeds it into the country’s gross national happiness index.

This singular man and his peculiar profession are now the subject of an eye-opening and frequently very funny new documentary, Agent of Happiness, by directors Arun Bhattarai who is from Bhutan, and Dorottya Zurbó from Hungary.

The pair shot Gurung as he went about his work, while also on the lookout for colourful interviewees. They found a widower who believes his beloved wife has been reincarnated (pretty chipper), a beautiful transgender dancer (depressed), a social-media-obsessed teen with an alcoholic mother (stricken) and a rich farmer with three wives (smug).

We watch as wife number one weeps as she talks about how abusive her husband can be. Then all three women start insulting him: “His belly is getting bigger”, “Yeah, his ass shrank, though.”

Bhattarai and Zurbó recently invited all the subjects to a screening. Didn’t the farmer get angry when he saw his segment? “No,” says an amused Zurbó, “he was so arrogant, he didn’t understand the film.” They “dared” to shoot the scenes in the first place, continues Zurbó, because they sensed the farmer’s power was on the wane. “When the women were very young,” says Bhattarai, “obviously the man was dominant. But over the years, the three of them built a sisterhood together. Now he’s in the minority.”

Meanwhile, Gurung, who is single and lives with his mother, is struggling with his own happiness. As well as being responsible for a frail parent, the fortysomething is in a bind because he’s ethnic Nepalese, which means that, since the 1990s, he’s been stripped of his citizenship rights and can’t leave the country.

This means he can’t travel to Australia with Sarita, a demurely pragmatic student obsessed with Instagram, who he’d like to marry.

Bhattarai, like Gurung, is from the ethnic Nepalese community and struggled to get his own citizenship papers. This commonality oiled the wheels with Gurung. “Often we don’t have deep political conversations in Bhutan. It’s still a taboo to talk about citizenship. But I could talk about anything with Amber.”

They are also both still living with their parents – and under considerable pressure to marry and move out.

Thanks to Covid, the documentary took an excruciatingly long time to complete. In the middle, Bhattarai directed a 22-minute short, Mountain Man, which was acquired by Guardian Documentaries, which had tracked the project’s progress after it won the prestigious If/Then Global Pitch award at IDFA film festival in 2019. The short film is about scientist Phuntsho Tshering (an old school friend) who measures the impact of global warming on Bhutan’s lakes and glaciers. Tshering has an 11-year-old daughter, Yangchen, who’s fascinated by her father’s expeditions. In the movie, parent and child FaceTime each other and chat about the physical dangers Tshering faces as he treks through the ravishing-looking Himalayas, as well as scary stuff taking place in the family home (his wife is prone to seizures).

Bhattarai was “very surprised” when Mountain Man won a prize at the DOC NYC film festival, thereby qualifying for the 2025 Oscars. He says, without bitterness, that the chances of it actually being nominated are “extremely slim”, because it “doesn’t have a big distributor or producer behind it to fund its campaign”. That said, he was “super-thrilled that the jury at NYC understood the essence of the story. Stories about climate change so often try to give the broader picture. But climate change is also very personal.”

There’s an especially upsetting moment where Yangchen’s voice drops to a whisper as she discusses the fact that many people in their village now believe her father is causing the floods and changing weather patterns. In their eyes, he is desecrating the mountain (even Tshering himself, as a devout Buddhist, has doubts about his mission). Far from being viewed as a selfless hero, this man is on the verge of becoming a pariah.

“There are so many ironies in his position,” says Bhattarai. “So much internal conflict. And I think that’s why viewers relate to him. All of us have two sides to us. We are all vulnerable people.”

The directors included. How do they pay their bills? Zurbó concedes that making documentaries is “never financially rewarding. You need to have a second profession. I teach a course on documentary film-making.”

“I do a bit of commercial work on the side,” says Bhattarai, before adding, a touch sheepishly: “Of course, it helps that I live with my parents.”

Collaboration helps, they say. “Documentary-making is a very lonely profession,” says Zurbó, “I think it’s actually impossible to do it alone. Co-direction somehow increases and doubles your creativity. We have the same references. We understand each other, from half-sentences.”

They are definitely in-sync. When I ask which dead person they’d most like to meet through reincarnation, Zurbó says: “I would choose my grandmother.” Bhattarai gasps: “Oh my God. This is so strange. That’s what I was about to say as well!”

They nod and laugh: happiness index high, despite the doomy subject.
More Than 60 Are Missing in Nepal After Landslide Sweeps Buses Into River (New York Times)
New York Times [7/12/2024 4:11 AM, Bhadra Sharma, 831K, Negative]
More than 60 people are missing after a landslide swept two moving passenger buses into a river swollen by monsoon rains in central Nepal in the early hours of Friday, officials said.

According to a Nepal Police spokesman, Dan Bahadur Karki, the buses were pushed into the Trishuli River by a landslide that roared over a road connecting Chitwan and Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city.

A vehicle operated by Angel Bus was heading to Kathmandu, and a Ganapati Deluxe-operated bus was en route to Rautahat from the capital, when the accident occurred at around 3:30 a.m., according to the local police. Mr. Karki said 24 passengers were on the bus traveling to Kathmandu, and 41 were on the other bus.

However, three passengers on the Rautahat-bound bus survived by jumping off the bus as it went into the river, he said.

Rescuers from the Nepal Army, the Armed Police Force and the Nepal Police were deployed to the scene soon after the accident, but they have yet to rescue or recover any passengers.

“As many as 250 rescuers equipped with rescue boats are deployed to the place from where the buses plunged into the river,” Mr. Karki said. “Sadly, they haven’t been able to locate the missing buses, either.”

Initially, the collapsed earth from the landslide also blocked the path of rescuers. As the river level rises from more heavy rain, it is increasingly complicating the search-and-rescue operations.

In a separate episode, the driver of another bus on the same section of road died after a boulder hit his vehicle as he drove to Kathmandu from Butwal.

This year, monsoon-related disasters have been deadlier than usual in Nepal, a country particularly vulnerable to climate change. Earlier this month, floods and landslides from seasonal rains killed at least 15 people in 24 hours. On Thursday night, 11 people died in a landslide in Pokhara. Among those killed were seven people from a single family, The Kathmandu Post reported.

The Nepalese agency that deals with disaster management and risk reduction reported that at least 88 people had been killed by monsoon-related landslides, floods and lightning through Thursday.

Expressing concern over certain late-night bus trips, some officials called for adjusting bus operation schedules during monsoons. Rajendra Prasad Pandey, a legislator, proposed banning night bus service.

The monsoon-related death toll is increasing in Nepal at a time when political parties are busy breaking or making alliances to run the government. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal faces a vote in Parliament on Friday that could topple his government.
2 buses carrying at least 60 people swept into a river by a landslide in Nepal. 3 survivors found (AP)
AP [7/12/2024 3:33 AM, Binaj Gurubcharya, 317K, Positive]
A landslide swept two passenger buses carrying at least 60 people into a swollen river in central Nepal early Friday, and continuous rain and more landslides were making rescue efforts difficult.

Three survivors apparently swam to safety, but rescuers by late morning had not found any trace of the buses, which likely were submerged and swept downstream in the Trishuli River. Nepal’s rivers generally are fast-flowing due to the mountainous terrain. Heavy monsoon downpours in the past few days have swollen the waterways and turned their waters murky brown, making it even more difficult to see the wreckage.

The buses were on the key highway connecting the capital to southern parts of Nepal when they were swept away around 3 a.m. near Simaltal, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Kathmandu.

More landslides blocked routes to the area in several places, government administrator Khima Nanada Bhusal said. Additional rescuers and security forces were sent to help with the rescue efforts. Police and army personnel were searching using rubber rafts. Divers with scuba gear were also dispatched, according the Chitwan district police.

One bus was carrying at least 24 people, while the other had at least 42, but more could have boarded en route, Bhusal said.

The three survivors were being treated in the hospital, Bhusal said, adding that they reportedly jumped out of the bus and swam to the banks, where locals found them and took them to a nearby hospital.

A third bus was hit by another landslide on Friday morning a short distance away on the same highway. Bhusal said the driver was killed but it was not clear if there were any other casualties.

Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said he was saddened by the news and expressed concern over recent flooding and landslides. He added that several government agencies were searching for the missing, in a post on the social media platform X.

On Thursday night, a landslide buried a hut and killed a family of seven near the resort town of Pokhara. The family were asleep when the landslide crushed their hut and damaged three more houses nearby.

Monsoon season brings heavy rains to Nepal from June to September, often triggering landslides in the mountainous Himalayan country.
Central Asia
Kazakhstan Orders Local Funds To Divest Russian Securities Over Sanctions (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/11/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Neutral]
The Central Securities Depository (CSD) of Kazakhstan said on July 11 that it had ordered brokers and management companies to divest Russian securities from their holdings by August 1. The CSD’s press service said the move was necessary to adhere to U.S. sanctions imposed on the Moscow Stock Exchange (MSE) and its structures. In June, the United States and Great Britain imposed sanctions on several major financial structures in Russia, including the MSE, the National Clearing Center, and the National Settlement Depository, which act as intermediaries in trading dollars on the Russian currency market. The sanctions were the latest measures taken in response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
Biden admin slaps restrictions on releasing migrants from Central Asian country amid terror concerns: report (FOX News)
FOX News [7/11/2024 5:48 PM, Adam Shaw, 48215K, Neutral]
The Biden administration has reportedly slapped new restrictions on the release of migrants into the interior from at least one Central Asian country amid ongoing concerns about terrorism.

The New York Post reported this week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has received orders that migrants from Tajikistan shouldn’t be released from custody, and if they are, they need to be first interviewed by intelligence officials.

It comes after a series of terror-related concerns connected to some nationals from the Central Asian country. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Last month, eight Tajikistan nationals with ties to ISIS were busted by federal authorities in New York City, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. All eight came in via the southern border illegally, but no derogatory information was flagged during processing.

The suspected terrorists were "fully vetted" and nothing was flagged, according to a federal source. The source said after the suspected terrorists were released into the U.S., information was flagged with national security concerns, including the individuals’ ties to ISIS.

Since then, DHS has identified more than 400 individuals brought to the U.S. from Eastern European and Central Asian countries by an ISIS-affiliated smuggling network in the past several months.

A senior DHS source told Fox last month that more than 150 people so far have either been removed, placed in removal proceedings or are currently receiving additional screening. The source would not confirm if or how many matched the terror watch list. Of the remaining 50 people at large, they acknowledged that a small number "may match the terrorism watch list."

"There is no intelligence that suggests the remaining individuals pose an imminent threat to the homeland," the official said.

DHS does not believe this is an ISIS terror operation but rather a network taking advantage of migrants seeking entry to the U.S., the source said. However, there is heightened security risk due to their countries of origin. Fox was told at that time that border officials were instructed to detain any people coming from certain countries or associated with the network so that additional vetting could be carried out. The Post report appears to confirm that nationals from Tajikistan are included.

It comes amid an ongoing crisis at the southern border now into its fourth year, although numbers have dropped recently.

San Diego has been one of the hot spots for arrivals this year, San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond told Fox News Digital on Wednesday in response to a question about the report of new restrictions, and that the issue is one of vetting.

"Border Patrol has been overwhelmed, there just has not been enough proper vetting of people coming across our borders," he said in an interview. "And I think that’s the number one issue: the safety of the people here in our country, of who is being let in and unfortunately, we don’t know we don’t know a lot of the people [or] their background."

"Our Border Patrol just has not been able to properly vet people coming across our border. And to me, that’s not only just a security issue for San Diego County, but also for the entire country," he said.

Federal officials have noted the difficulties in correctly vetting migrants coming across the border. Acting ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner recently said that "sometimes there is just no information on individuals" when they’re being vetted.

"It is quite common where there is just nothing, you don’t have anything. There’s no criminal convictions, no threat information or whatever on these individuals. Or maybe these individuals are from an area that is particularly of concern but that pops up later when you get information later on," he said.
Uzbekistan Convicts Man For Joining Wagner Mercenary Group In Ukraine (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/11/2024 5:59 AM, Staff, 1530K, Negative]
A court in Uzbekistan has convicted a 26-year-old man for being a mercenary after he returned to the Central Asian nation following a six-month stint in the ranks of the Wagner group where he was recruited from a Russian prison. The website Migrant.uz published the July 9 ruling by the Ohangaron City Court, according to which Shavkat Yuldashev was handed a parole-like 30-month sentence, during which, 20 percent of his salary will be taken by Uzbekistan’s State Treasury. Authorities in Uzbekistan and other Central Asian nations have warned their citizens residing and working in Russia that being a mercenary is a crime in their countries.
Twitter
Afghanistan
SIGAR
@SIGARHQ
[7/11/2024 11:21 AM, 170.4K followers, 2 likes, 9 likes]
(1/2) UN’s 2024 Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (#HRP) warns that #AFG remains in a state of emergency, with severe displacement, mine and explosive ordnance contamination, restrictions to the freedom of movement, increased risk of gender-based violence,

SIGAR
@SIGARHQ
[7/11/2024 11:21 AM, 170.4K followers, 2 likes]
(2/2)…child labor & early marriage, & increased need for mental health support. Forced return of hundreds of thousands of Afghans from Pakistan exacerbated humanitarian crisis as limited resources at border & in host communities are straining capacities https://sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2024-04-30qr.pdf#page=50

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[7/12/2024 3:39 AM, 81.9K followers, 4 retweets, 4 likes]
Afghanistan: In a powerful show of global solidarity, 354,847 signatures have been collected calling on the Taliban de-facto authorities to respect and protect human rights in Afghanistan. As the catastrophic human rights situation persists, we must continue our joint demand for accountability and justice in Afghanistan. #EndImpunity

Jahanzeb Wesa
@JahanzebWesa
[7/11/2024 6:35 PM, 2.6K followers, 5 retweets, 10 likes]
In a new report, the United Nations sanctions monitoring team has announced the names of 61 Taliban officials who are under international sanctions. According to this report, 35 of the 61 people under sanctions are cabinet members and senior officials of the Taliban.

Jahanzeb Wesa
@JahanzebWesa
[7/11/2024 6:33 PM, 2.6K followers, 4 retweets, 5 likes]
Heartbroken
—The situation of women in Afghanistan Report from Kabul about a woman who committed suicide.
—After the silence of the republic in Afghanistan, there have been reports from various provinces that women have committed suicide for various reasons. #Afghanistan
Pakistan
Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[7/12/2024 1:31 AM, 3.1M followers, 1 retweet, 9 likes]
Islamabad: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif chairs a meeting on restructuring of Wheat Board and matters related to PASSCO.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/12/2024 12:11 AM, 42.8K followers, 5 retweets, 53 likes]
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Pakistani op-ed pages as negative about a government budget and as hopeless about the economic situation ordinary citizens are facing as in these last few weeks.

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[7/11/2024 1:46 PM, 81.9K followers, 2.1K retweets, 3.4K likes]
PAKISTAN: Two brothers of PTI member Azhar Mashwani, Mazhar-ul-Hassan and Zahoor-ul-Hassan, as well as Shahbaz Gill’s brother, Ghulam Shabbir, were disappeared on 6 June and 9 June respectively. The whereabouts of all 3 individuals remain unknown as the families await justice from the courts. @amnesty calls for an effective, independent, and impartial investigation into the disappearance of these individuals. Join our call: https://amnesty.org/en/documents/asa33/8255/2024/en/

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[7/11/2024 10:54 AM, 81.9K followers, 53 retweets, 122 likes]
PAKISTAN: “The decision by the Pakistan government to extend the stay of PoR card holders for another year is a welcome development. However, Amnesty International urges the Government of Pakistan to extend this lifeline to all Afghan refugees in Pakistan and formally suspend the ‘Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan’. The uncertainty hanging over the future of more than 2.1 million Afghan refugees must end.” @amnesty reiterates its call to the Government of Pakistan to stop all forcible returns. Read more: https://amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/pakistan-one-year-extension-of-un-registered-afghan-refugees-a-welcome-first-step-lifeline-must-extend-to-all/.

Kamran Khan
@AajKamranKhan
[7/11/2024 2:28 PM, 5.6M followers, 51 retweets, 136 likes]
Fingers crossed, Pakistan is impatiently waiting for China to unlock it from a very difficult nonpayment situation on Chinese debt servicing for independent power projects (IPPs) established under CPEC. An even more difficult near-default situation exists on payments of profits of IPPs that Pakistan owes to China. This was the crux of an intense Q&A session I had with Mr. Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan’s Minister for Planning (CPEC), from Beijing this evening. CPEC Minister Ahsan Iqbal, who’s currently visiting China to convince Chinese leadership for a bailout package of sorts, was, however, hopeful that all-weather friend China will come to Pakistan’s rescue as it fully understands the economic predicaments Pakistan is facing today. The most painful reality of these IPPs remains that nearly 10 years after multiple power plants were established in Pakistan under the CPEC program, the country is facing the worst energy crisis in its history, with its people and businesses forced to buy the most expensive electricity in the world. "Any independent international audit will confirm that, from the beginning, Chinese power plants were highly overpriced. In addition, the Chinese were also promised nearly 17% dollar-denominated returns. Capacity payments, pledged under an unbelievable take-or-pay policy, made this package a sure shot recipe for disaster," said one of the most knowledgeable energy experts, who didn’t want to be named since he also works for the government. https://x.com/i/status/1811467697022013521

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[7/11/2024 10:29 AM, 228.4K followers, 41 retweets, 125 likes]
In Quetta, Baloch protestors were demanding the release of their missing relatives, whom they say had been abducted by the military but the police opened fire on them and attempted to disperse the rally violently, injuring many, including women. #Balochistan
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/11/2024 10:48 AM, 99.9M followers, 2.5K retweets, 14K likes]
Had a wonderful interaction with IAS officer trainees of the 2022 Batch who are currently posted as Assistant Secretaries. Emphasised on ways to contribute to India’s growth trajectory and bringing a positive difference in the lives of our people. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2032534

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/11/2024 10:45 AM, 99.9M followers, 4.8K retweets, 38K likes]
Earlier today, interacted with eminent economists and heard their insightful views on issues pertaining to furthering growth.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/11/2024 9:55 AM, 3.2M followers, 136 retweets, 1K likes]
Pleased to meet @FMBhutan DN Dhungyel on the sidelines of BIMSTEC Retreat. Exchanged views on taking forward our unique ties of friendship and goodwill.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/11/2024 9:48 AM, 3.2M followers, 119 retweets, 907 likes]
Pleased to receive Sri Lanka MoS @TharakaBalasur1 on BIMSTEC FMs sidelines. Discussed our bilateral partnership.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/11/2024 9:41 AM, 3.2M followers, 367 retweets, 4.9K likes]
Glad to receive Nepal Foreign Secretary @sewa_lamsal this evening on BIMSTEC Retreat sidelines. Discussed the steady growth of India-Nepal cooperation.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/11/2024 9:40 AM, 3.2M followers, 82 retweets, 495 likes]
Met with DPM and FM U Than Swe of Myanmar on the sidelines of BIMSTEC Foreign Ministers’ Retreat. Shared our concerns regarding border stability and flow of displaced persons. Also spoke about issues of illegal narcotics and arms trade and activities of insurgent groups. Pressed strongly for the early return of Indians unlawfully detained by cyber scam gangs. India supports the return to democracy in Myanmar and engages all stakeholders in that regard.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/11/2024 9:38 AM, 3.2M followers, 101 retweets, 751 likes]
Good to meet Bangladesh FM @DrHasanMahmud62 this evening in New Delhi. The frequent high level exchanges reflects the strength of India-Bangladesh Maitri. Discussed ways of advancing it further.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/11/2024 9:35 AM, 3.2M followers, 213 retweets, 1.3K likes]
A productive 2nd BIMSTEC Foreign Ministers’ Retreat. Thank Thailand FM @AmbPoohMaris , Bangladesh FM @DrHasanMahmud62, @FMBhutan DN Dhungyel, Myanmar DPM and FM U Than Swe, Sri Lanka MoS @TharakaBalasur1, Nepal FS @Sewa_lamsal and Secretary General @IndramaniPR for joining. Our conversation covered the whole gamut of BIMSTEC collaboration. Discussed strengthening connectivity, institutional building, cooperation in trade and business, collaboration in health and space, digital public infrastructure, capacity building and societal exchanges, as well as weighing on the merits of new mechanisms. Confident that today’s deliberations will contribute to solid outcomes and practical collaborations at the forthcoming BIMSTEC Summit in Thailand. https://mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/37957/Opening_Remarks_by_EAM_Dr_S_Jaishankar_at_the_BIMSTEC_Foreign_Ministers_Retreat

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/11/2024 4:49 AM, 3.2M followers, 442 retweets, 3K likes]
Welcomed colleagues in New Delhi for the 2nd BIMSTEC Foreign Ministers’ Retreat. Today’s discussions will be helpful in infusing new energies, resources and commitment towards BIMSTEC cooperation.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/11/2024 8:46 AM, 211.1K followers, 22 retweets, 104 likes]
In my latest for @ForeignPolicy, I explain why this week’s Modi-Putin summit—and the broader India-Russia relationship—doesn’t bode quite as badly for Washington as some may think. The Russia factor is a manageable challenge for the US-India relationship. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/10/modi-putin-summit-india-russia-us-relations/

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/11/2024 10:46 PM, 211.1K followers, 13 retweets, 107 likes]
Why India-Russia ties aren’t all bad news for US:
-Less favorable trend lines than previously and divergent geopolitical alignments
-India opposes Ukraine war and strengthens int’l pressure on Russia to deescalate
-India-Russia partnership is a check on growing Russia-China ties

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/11/2024 10:46 PM, 211.1K followers, 14 likes]
"The Modi-Putin summit made for an awkward few days for U.S.-India relations. But it also provided a reminder that the Russia factor is a manageable challenge—and not a paralyzing problem—for the partnership between the world’s two biggest democracies."
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[7/11/2024 12:50 PM, 639.3K followers, 21 retweets, 69 likes]
Bangladesh & China have agreed to enhance cooperation in financial regulation, and encouraged increased use of #localcurrency settlement in #bilateraltrade, according to a joint statement issued after HPM #SheikhHasina’s 3-day official visit to #Beijing. https://link.albd.org/xpusb

Awami League
@albd1971
[7/11/2024 10:55 AM, 639.3K followers, 20 retweets, 53 likes]
#China has expressed its support to continue the zero-tariff treatment on 98 per cent of taxable items to #Bangladesh for a transitional period beyond 2026 when Bangladesh will graduate from #LDC status. https://link.albd.org/a8xxi #BangladeshChinaFriendship #DevelopingCountry

Saima Wazed
@drSaimaWazed
[7/11/2024 6:21 AM, 14.7K followers, 53 retweets, 220 likes]
We’ve just concluded a productive discussion with #Bangladesh’s Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. We discussed the upcoming @WHOSEARO Regional Committee Meeting in #Dhaka, as well as the @UN General Assembly’s focus on antimicrobial resistance this year. Thank you to Minister Dr. Samanta Lal Sen, and Secretary Health Services Division Mr. Jahangir Alam, for their cooperation with the work that lies ahead of us.

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[7/11/2024 9:27 AM, 81.9K followers, 28 retweets, 45 likes]
BANGLADESH: Amnesty International is concerned by the media reports of at least 20 people including students being injured as police cracked down on students from Comilla University. The students were participating in the nationwide protests against the reinstatement of a quota system in government jobs. Peaceful assemblies play a critical role in allowing people to air their grievances in the public domain. Bangladesh’s commitments under international law and its own constitution enshrine the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. The authorities must respect the right to protest, protect peaceful protestors and halt the use of unnecessary and excessive force. #ProtectTheProtest

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/11/2024 9:15 AM, 99.4K followers, 2 retweets, 11 likes]
Met with the executives of the Ministry of Agriculture & Livestock and the GovTech Agency for a detailed review of their annual work plan for FY 2024-25. Emphasized the necessity of developing clear, measurable objectives within concrete timelines.

Maldives in USA
@MDVinUSA
[7/11/2024 5:22 PM, 490 followers, 3 retweets, 5 likes]
Ambassador @aghafoormohamed and his team were delighted to welcome Minister @em_saeed and the @MoEDmv delegation to the Embassy of Maldives in the #USA during their official visit to Washington, D.C., to take part in the third meeting of the Maldives-US Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) Council.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[7/11/2024 4:36 AM, 5.9K followers, 11 likes]
I had the pleasure of meeting with the business delegation headed by Ms. Chenling Zhang, the CEO of Oneroad Group Dubai. We discussed the investment opportunities available in Sri Lanka in the areas of industrial, manufacturing, logistic, retail, pharmaceutical, agriculture and tourism.

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[7/11/2024 7:03 AM, 356.4K followers, 1 retweet, 23 likes]
Today, #COPF passed crucial PFMB, repealing FMRA. It clarifies fiscal rules, strengthens budgeting & enhances scrutiny. However I oppose arbitrary primary expenditure cap as it will restrict needed public investment to achieve 10% growth req to be HIC by 2040. We will amend soon!
Central Asia
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[7/11/2024 5:12 AM, 195.6K followers, 4 retweets, 40 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev has reviewed new social protection measures. A digital system for determining disability will be implemented in #Tashkent and #Navoi regions, expanding nationwide by 2025. The plans include developing a barrier-free environment and enhancing access to services. The "Inson" project, backed by the @WorldBank, aims to integrate vulnerable populations and establish 55 regional centers. Additionally, a "social card" will be introduced to automate social benefits and services.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[7/11/2024 3:09 AM, 195.6K followers, 3 retweets, 34 likes]
President of #Uzbekistan Shavkat #Mirziyoyev reviewed a presentation on the activities and future prospects of the #BYD Uzbekistan Factory, which specializes in electric vehicles and hybrids. Opened in June, the factory has already demonstrated potential to become a leading car manufacturer in the region, owing to its high-quality products and advanced technology. The presentation included discussions on measures to boost production volumes and speed up localization to meet set targets. The President outlined tasks to further develop a cooperation strategy, increase production capacity, and enter export markets.

{End of Report}
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