epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Wednesday, July 17, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
The Americans being held by Taliban to swap for Guantanamo Bay prisoners (The Independent)
The Independent [7/17/2024 4:45 AM, Arpan Rai, 235K, Neutral]
Do not travel to Afghanistan due to the risk of violence, detention or kidnapping. That is the advice from the American government to its citizens considering visiting the central Asian country, ruled by the Taliban since they seized Kabul in August 2021.

Few Americans have gone against the advice but last week the US State Department confirmed that two men who did travel to Afghanistan and one who was already there have been arrested by the Taliban on seemingly spurious charges.

A State Department spokesperson identified them as Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmood Habibi.

The Taliban have admitted to detaining only two of the men, Mr Corbett and Mr Glezmann.

“Both American nationals violated the country’s law and discussion has been held with the US officials in this regard,” the Taliban said on Sunday.

They are holding them, a Taliban spokesperson suggested, to exchange for Afghans imprisoned by the US in Guantanamo Bay.

“We also have prisoners in America, prisoners in Guantanamo,” Zabiullah Mujahid said earlier this month.

“We should free our prisoners in exchange for them.”

The military jail near Cuba, notorious for the humiliating and allegedly abusive treatment of its prisoners, was set up by the George W Bush administration after 9/11 and once held over 200 Afghans, most without charge or legal recourse to challenge their detention. The Voice of America reported earlier this year only one Afghan national remains detained there.

Here’s what we know about the three Americans held by the Taliban.

Ryan Corbett

Mr Corbett from New York started an enterprise called “Bloom Afghanistan” in 2017 to boost the country’s private sector by providing business consulting services, microfinance lending and evaluation of international development projects. He wanted to help Afghans start their own businesses.

But after the Taliban drove out Western troops and captured Kabul, he left the country with his pregnant wife and children.

He returned, apparently to train the Bloom Afghanistan staff, but was detained in August 2022 despite having a valid visa. The State Department said last year that he was wrongfully detained.

The Taliban haven’t stated a reason for Mr Corbett’s detention but have allowed him to make eight “desperate and difficult” calls to his wife in the past 22 months, his lawyer Ryan Fayhee told The Independent.

“On top of being beaten severely, he’s deprived of food, nutrients, sunlight and any human interaction. We are told that he has experienced fainting spells and lost significant weight in the Taliban’s custody,” the lawyer said, claiming that Mr Corbett was being held in a small basement cell.

The Taliban have not allowed consular access to Mr Corbett. The Independent previously reported that they do not provide adequate medical assistance to prisoners they call “Western collaborators” who are injured during torture.

“This is what we call hostage diplomacy because on one hand they want to join the world community but then reject the established norm of consular services that allow another country’s representatives to go in and see after the care and safety of individual prisoners,” Mr Fayhee said.

His wife, Anna Corbett, told The Independent that “it is a race against time to bring Ryan home before it is too late given ongoing reports of his deteriorating health”. She has called on US president Joe Biden “to undertake the difficult work it will take to free Ryan”.

Mr Fayhee said the Taliban are making a mistake thinking they can get their people out of Guantanamo by “victimising an innocent man and family”.

“This is not a step forward but backward and the Taliban will not gain anything from this bargain,” he said.

The US government, the lawyer pointed out, has substantial leverage over what the Taliban want. “The Taliban want legitimation as the sovereign authority in Afghanistan, they want to be part of the world community, they want sanctions to be lifted and they want to be taken seriously. Quite like Russia and quite like Iran, the choice is to recognise the rule of law and to have a legitimate criminal justice system,” he said.

“But the Taliban choose not to be a part of the international community on their own by detaining and torturing foreign citizens like Ryan Corbett in basement cells without offering any transparency.”

George Glezmann

Mr Glezmann, 65, travelled to Afghanistan in December 2022 to explore its culture and artefacts. He was on a five-day vacation from his work as an airline mechanic for Delta Airlines in Atlanta.

He has reportedly spent the past 18 months in a small underground cell with other detainees, with intermittent periods of solitary confinement, and his health is declining.

His ordeal was highlighted when the US Congress passed a resolution seeking his release last Tuesday. “During his detention, George Glezmann has had only seven phone calls totaling 54 minutes with his family and limited in-person visits with representatives of Qatar, the protecting power of the United States in Afghanistan,” the resolution read, adding that he suffers from several medical conditions like facial tumours, hypertension, and severe malnutrition.

The Taliban have held Mr Glezmann “without charging him with a crime or granting him due process in any judicial proceedings”, the resolution said.

His family fears he may not survive the detention.

The US Secretary of State said last October that Mr Glezmann was wrongfully detained.

His wife has urged the Taliban to release him on humanitarian grounds. He was a simple tourist travelling to Afghanistan as part of his plan to visit 100 countries, Aleksandra Glezmann has said.

Mahmood Habibi

Mr Habibi seemingly paid the price for the American strike that killed Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan on 31 July 2022.

The Taliban likely assumed Mr Habibi’s employer, the US Federal Aviation Administration, was involved in the strike, but did not charge the civil aviation expert with a crime.

His detention was flagged in March by the US Congress in a resolution seeking his release. Mr Habibi was born in Afghanistan but has US citizenship.

He was arrested on 10 August 2022 after the Taliban searched his home and took away his laptop and paperwork.

Mr Habibi’s wife, with whom he has a young daughter, has had no contact with him since he was taken away.

He is reportedly held by the General Directorate of Intelligence but the Taliban have denied having him in custody, the Congress resolution noted.

“He could live anywhere but he preferred to live there, to work for his country and work for the future of Afghanistan,” his sister Amna Nawaz told PBS.

American lawmakers have urged the Biden administration to ask the “Taliban to respect Mahmood Habibi’shuman rights and provide full, unfettered, and consistent health and safety visits to Mahmood Habibi while in detention”.
Appeals court voids Marine’s adoption of Afghan orphan; child’s fate remains in limbo (AP)
AP [7/16/2024 8:55 PM, Martha Mendoza, Juliet Linderman, and Claire Galofaro, 85570K, Negative]
A Virginia appellate court ruled Tuesday that a U.S. Marine should never have been granted an adoption of an Afghan war orphan and voided the custody order he’s relied on to raise the girl for nearly three years. The decision marked a major turning point in a bitter custody battle that has international ramifications far greater than the fate of one child.

The appeals court decision dealt a significant blow in Marine Maj. Joshua Mast’s yearslong legal quest to keep the child, who was orphaned on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2019.

Mast and his wife, Stephanie, convinced the courts in his hometown, rural Fluvanna County, Virginia, to grant him an adoption of the child, even though she remained in Afghanistan as the government there tracked down her extended family and reunited her with them. The family fled Afghanistan with thousands of other evacuees when the Taliban took over in the summer of 2021. Once she arrived in the United States, Mast used the Fluvanna County documents to convince federal government officials to take the child from her Afghan relatives and give her to him.

She turns five years old this month. The Masts have insisted they are her legal parents and “acted admirably” to save a child in a desperate and dangerous situation. The Afghan family, who challenged Mast’s adoption, have not seen her for nearly three years.

The child’s fate is still in limbo: The decision by the appellate court Tuesday does not clarify who should ultimately get to raise the girl, and she remains with the Mast family for now. No government agencies involved would clarify Tuesday what the next steps might entail, or what their role might be in determining where the child should live as the remaining legal fight unfolds.

The Masts could appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court and ask that Tuesday’s decision not be enforced through that process.

All the parties involved have been forbidden by the court to speak to the press about this case. Attorneys for the Masts and the Afghan couple did not return phone calls. A lawyer appointed by the court to represent the interests of the child, who is referred to in court records as Baby Doe to protect her identity, also did not respond.

Several legal organizations supporting the Afghan couple said they were encouraged.

National Center for Youth Law senior attorney Becky Wolozin said that by “clearly stating that the Masts have no legal rights over Baby Doe, the Court refused to legitimize their unlawful actions - actions which have led to profound and unnecessary suffering.”

Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Claude Worrell last May vacated Mast’s adoption order, which was granted by another judge in 2020, but left in place a custody order that allowed the child to stay with the Masts. A three-judge appellate panel heard arguments in the fall, and issued a 23-page order Tuesday that dissolved Mast’s legal guardianship over the girl.

Appellate Judge Daniel E. Ortiz wrote in Tuesday’s order that Mast’s adoption “did not fit into any” of the criteria required by state law. He said the “procedural errors” that led to it were “so outside the scope of the adoption code that the circuit court lacked the power” to sign the adoption. He also acknowledged that Mast failed to inform the court of key developments, including that the government of Afghanistan never gave up its claim to the girl, that she had been given to Afghan relatives and that a federal court had already rebuffed his efforts to stop that reunification.

How exactly the court justified granting the Marine the adoption in the first place remains shrouded in secrecy. The Associated Press filed in court to get the case unsealed. In January 2023, Worrell granted that request, ordering the case opened to the public. But more than 18 months later, the court continues to keep the entire file hidden despite numerous letters sent by lawyers representing The Associated Press.

The appellate panel directed the circuit court to dismiss all adoption proceedings and conduct a hearing on the Afghan couple’s adoption petition, which is currently pending before the court. The Masts may file their own petition as well, Ortiz wrote.

Retired Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore, who issued the original adoption order, declined to comment on the case.

The U.S. government has insisted in court that Mast never had any claim to this child, and that she be returned immediately to her Afghan family. Justice Department lawyers have written that allowing the child to remain with the Marine could have broad consequences for American foreign policy: from threatening international security pacts to endangering troops stationed abroad by feeding Islamic extremist propaganda.

But the federal government has not stepped in outside of court filings to steer a pathway for the girl to be returned to the Afghans.

The State and Defense departments referred AP to the Justice Department, which declined to comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Virginia, the Virginia Attorney General and the FBI all also declined on Tuesday to comment. US Citizenship and Immigration Services said the situation is not under their purview.

A spokesperson for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which handles major criminal investigations for the Marines and the Navy, confirmed that the agency is “conducting a thorough investigation into this situation.”

Major Joshua Mast remains on active duty during the investigation, said Maj. Johnny Henderson at the Marine Forces Special Operations Command. “To protect the integrity of the investigative process, no other information is available at this time.”
Flooding in Afghanistan leaves about 40 people dead (CNN)
CNN [7/16/2024 8:11 PM, Sahar Akbarzai, Michael Rios, and Michael Mitsanas, 22739K, Negative]
Flooding from heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan has left about 40 people dead and 347 injured, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

The storms have destroyed many homes, the health ministry added, leaving about 1,500 children displaced, according to Save the Children.

Save the Children also said the storms damaged a reception center in Torkham, which was set up to support some of the 650,000 Afghans who have returned to the country since September 2023, after being forced out of Pakistan in a crackdown on migrants.

Many people have been stranded without access to basic needs, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Emergency personnel have responded by providing health services “with full dedication,” the health ministry said.

The IRC has deployed a mobile health team to the worst affected areas in Nangarhar province and is preparing to deploy another two emergency response teams.

“The loss of life and devastation in flood-affected areas is a fresh disaster for Afghanistan. Our thoughts are with the people impacted by this tragedy and the first responders working to rescue and provide medical care to families and individuals,” IRC Afghanistan Director Salma ben Aissa said.

The storms come just two months after major flooding and rainfall in the northeast killed more than 300 people and destroyed over 1,000 homes, according to the Word Food Programme.
Families buried, livelihoods lost as Afghan storm toll hits 47 (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [7/16/2024 10:53 AM, Staff, 85570K, Negative]
The death toll from heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan climbed to 47 on Tuesday, as victims recounted how the tempest demolished entire homes and buried families alive.

Some 350 people were injured and 400 houses razed as rain and hail lashed eastern Nangarhar on Monday evening, according to the provincial disaster management authority.

Charbagh Safa -- a village outside the provincial capital Jalalabad -- was in ruin by daybreak on Tuesday, a landscape of sucking mud where more than half the houses were gone.

The home of Sajidullah had been packed with relatives eager to meet his brother’s newborn baby when the deluge collapsed the building -- killing the new father alongside ten others.

"When the storm came here, the wall fell over them," he told AFP. "I was in the shop when I received the call and I ran here."

"The stream here was flooding so our way was cut off and our injured didn’t reach the hospital on time and got martyred."

Among the poorest countries in the world after decades of war, Afghanistan is particularly exposed to the effects of climate change which scientists say is spurring extreme weather.

In Charbagh Safa valuable livestock lay crushed under the rubble, crops killed by wind or water, and solar panels providing precious power had blown kilometres away.

Trees were either uprooted by the gales or shaken entirely free of leaves. Many of the houses still standing were riddled with cracks, threatening to cave in.

"When this happened, we came here and the martyrs and wounded were all under the rubble," said resident Samiullah Raeeskhil.

"Our area is far-flung so people tried their best to pull victims out of the rubble and take them to hospital but it took more time unfortunately."

"These people in our neighbourhood are in a very poor economic situation," he added. "They don’t have any choice but to live in houses like this, which aren’t good quality."

The Taliban government said it chaired an emergency meeting to scramble local and foreign aid agencies "to provide necessary assistance".

However, villagers complained they had received little help. "No one has come so far to deliver the aid," said one, reporting he had only seen Taliban government security forces.

The Taliban takeover of August 2021 ended two decades of war but many foreign missions and aid groups fled the country, shrinking the help available to Afghans.

"We want the NGOs and the authorities to help us," complained Mosam, amid the wreck of Charbagh Safa.

"We are poor people, we made efforts and cultivated our crops," he said. "But they all were destroyed so our spending was in vain."

This year, Afghanistan witnessed an unusually wet spring after a very dry winter.

Flash floods in May then killed hundreds and swamped swathes of agricultural land in a country where 80 percent of people depend on farming to survive.

The United Nations says 29 million Afghans inside the country are currently in need of humanitarian assistance.

More than 17 million people -- 40 per cent of the population -- are struggling to meet their basic food needs, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Pakistan
Pakistan: Attack on northwestern health facility killed 5 civilians, 2 soldiers (VOA)
VOA [7/16/2024 8:51 AM, Ayaz Gul, 4032K, Negative]
Pakistan said Tuesday that a militant attack on a rural medical facility in a northwestern volatile region early in the morning resulted in the deaths of at least five civilians and two soldiers.

The military’s media wing reported that two female health workers, two children, and a security guard at the facility were among the victims of the “terrorist” attack in the militancy-hit Dera Ismail Khan district.

The Inter-Services Public Relations, or ISPR, said that Pakistani security forces in the vicinity “effectively engaged” the assailants, killing three of them and losing two soldiers in the ensuing clashes.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack, but authorities suspected the outlawed Pakistani Taliban carried it out.

The ISPR announcement came just hours after it confirmed the deaths of at least eight soldiers in a pre-dawn militant raid against an army base in the nearby garrison town of Bannu on Monday. It stated that security forces killed all 10 assailants in the ensuing hours-long gunfight.

The military statement asserted the deadly raid was orchestrated by “terrorists” based in neighboring Afghanistan.

“The attempt to enter the cantonment was effectively thwarted by security forces personnel, which forced the terrorists to ram an explosive-laden vehicle into the perimeter wall of the cantonment,” the ISPR said.

It added that the vehicle-born suicide bombing destroyed a portion of the wall and damaged adjoining infrastructure, resulting in the deaths of the eight soldiers.

Militants allied with the globally designated terrorist group, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, took responsibility for the assault shortly after it started.

Multiple security sources in the area reported that the attack had also injured dozens of soldiers. Local police and witnesses said that the intensity of the blast shattered nearby homes, injuring several civilians.

In its statement on Tuesday, the military denounced the attack as “a heinous act of terrorism.” It noted that Islamabad “has consistently raised its concerns” with and asked Afghanistan’s Taliban government “to deny persistent use of Afghan soil by the terrorists.”

It warned, without elaborating, that Pakistan “will take all necessary measures as deemed appropriate against these threats emanating from Afghanistan.” Earlier this year, Pakistani fighter planes bombed suspected TTP targets in Afghan border areas following a dramatic surge in attacks in Pakistan.

Bannu and adjoining districts in the border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have particularly witnessed almost daily TTP attacks, targeting military and police forces since the Taliban reclaimed power in Afghanistan three years ago.

Pakistan maintains TTP leaders and fighters are being increasingly facilitated by the de facto rulers of Afghanistan. The Taliban government dismisses the charges, saying TTP is an internal problem for Pakistan to deal with.

UN findings

TTP is known to have publicly pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban. It provided shelter on Pakistani soil and recruits for their Afghan ideological allies to help them wage insurgent attacks against the U.S.-led NATO troops for years until U.S. and international forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban seized power there.

A new United Nations report released earlier this month described TTP as “the largest terrorist group” operating in Afghanistan, noting that it had intensified its terrorist activities in Pakistan since the Taliban takeover.

“TTP continues to operate at a significant scale in Afghanistan and to conduct terrorist operations into Pakistan from there, often utilizing Afghans,” said the report by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team. It estimated that TTP had “6,000-6,500” fighters based in Afghan territory.

“Further, the Taliban have proved unable or unwilling to manage the threat from Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan…Taliban support to TTP also appears to have increased,” the U.N. report stated. “The Taliban do not conceive of TTP as a terrorist group: the bonds are close, and the debt owed to TTP is significant,” the report added.

Taliban government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid rejected the U.N. report in a statement over the weekend. He claimed that no "foreign groups” operate in the country, nor are "any individuals or entities" being allowed to threaten other countries from Afghanistan.
At least 8 Pakistani soldiers killed in military base suicide attack (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [7/16/2024 8:26 AM, Staff, 20871K, Negative]
At least eight Pakistani soldiers have been killed in an attack after suicide bombers rammed a vehicle loaded with explosives into a perimeter wall at a military base.

Rebels attacked the army outpost in Bannu, on the border with the tribal area of North Waziristan. In a statement on Tuesday, the military said soldiers killed all 10 assailants involved in the assault.

“This timely and effective response … prevented major catastrophe saving precious innocent lives,” it added.

Among the dead in Monday’s attack were seven army members and one paramilitary soldier.

“Pakistan Armed Forces will … take all necessary measures as deemed appropriate against these threats emanating from Afghanistan,” the military said.

The attack was claimed by the Hafiz Gul Bahadur armed group, under the Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, which the army said operates out of neighbouring Afghanistan to “orchestrate acts of terrorism inside Pakistan”.

The British colonial-era base has historically been used as a launchpad for counterinsurgency operations and is surrounded by civilian homes, which were shaken by Monday’s blast, Reuters news agency reported quoting two unnamed local officials.

The initial blast took down the perimeter wall, allowing the other fighters to enter the base.

An unnamed local official also told AFP news agency that 141 people were wounded after fighters wearing suicide vests “infiltrated the residential area”. They fought battles with guns and rocket-propelled grenades for 26 hours.

On Tuesday morning, suspected TTP fighters carried out another attack in Dera Ismail Khan, a district close to Bannu, where two security personnel and three assailants were killed.

Pakistan’s military launched a rare cross-border operation targeting the armed group in March.

Islamabad says it has consistently taken up the issue of cross-border attacks with the Taliban administration, which denies allowing Afghan soil to be used for attacks.

The matter has escalated tensions between the neighbouring countries, leading to clashes between their border forces.

The attack also comes weeks after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced a sweeping new campaign to root out armed groups following a surge in violence.
Pakistan’s JF-17 Thunder fighters may carry nuclear-armed missiles (Business Insider)
Business Insider [7/16/2024 7:01 PM, Michael Peck, 60154K, Neutral]
The nuclear balance of terror between America and Russia, and now also America and China, attracts the most concern about an atomic apocalypse. But the simmering conflict between India and Pakistan — both of which are nuclear powers — is no less dangerous.

Now there are indications that Pakistan is arming its JF-17 fighters with nuclear-capable cruise missiles. The JF-17s are replacing older French-made Mirage jets that Pakistan has tasked for nuclear strike missions, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

"These developments, along with heightened tensions in the region, have raised concerns about accelerated arms racing as well as new risks for escalation in a potential conflict between India and Pakistan, especially since India is also increasing the size and improving the capabilities of its nuclear arsenal," wrote FAS analyst Eliana Johns.

Not surprisingly given Pakistan’s secretiveness over its nuclear program, the evidence for nuclear-armed JF-17s is somewhat circumstantial. Pakistan’s current nuclear strike aircraft are the 1960s-vintage Mirage V, armed with nuclear bombs, and the Mirage III, which has been tested with the Ra’ad cruise missile, which can be armed with nuclear or conventional warheads. And a JF-17 in flight was recently photographed carrying what appears to be a Ra’ad missile.

However, the Pakistani Air Force has at least 130 of the JF-17 Thunder, a joint project between Pakistan and China that created a fighter that is equivalent to the US F-16 (Pakistan also operates 75 F-16s). The aircraft, designated the FC-1 Xiaolong ("Fierce Dragon") in Chinese service, first flew in 2003.

Suspicions that the JF-17 would be armed with Ra’ad missiles were mostly speculative, until a photo surfaced recently. "During rehearsals for the 2023 Pakistan Day Parade (which was subsequently canceled), an image surfaced of a JF-17 Thunder Block II carrying what was reported to be a Ra’ad ALCM," according to FAS. "Notably, this was the first time such a configuration had been observed in public."

The Federation of American Scientists "was able to purchase the original image," and compared the Ra’ad mounted on the JF-17 with previous images. One question was which version of the Ra’ad had been fitted to the JF-17. The Ra’ad I (also known as the Hatf-8) is a subsonic air-launched cruise missile with an estimated range of more than 200 miles, and corresponds to other models such as the Europe’s Storm Shadow, according to the CSIS Missile Threat defense site. The newer Ra’ad II reportedly has a range of almost 400 miles. Pakistan is also developing the Taimoor, an anti-ship version of the Ra’ad.

Using tools such as Photoshop Vanishing Point to analyze the images, FAS concluded that JF-17 had been armed with the older Ra’ad I. If true, this would put numerous targets within western and northern India within range of nuclear or conventional cruise missiles.

The Innovation Edge

"There are several air bases in Pakistan located near the border," Johns told Business Insider. "The aircraft would be able to scramble and fly to dispersal bases within Pakistan’s borders to get closer to potential targets inside India at a range of 350 to 600 kilometers if desired."

There is still considerable uncertainty about the exact capabilities of the Ra’ad. "Observing the differences between the Ra’ad-I and Ra’ad-II missiles raises a few questions," FAS noted. "How was Pakistan able to nearly double the range of the Ra’ad from an estimated 350 kilometers to 550 kilometers and then to 600 kilometers for the newest version without noticeably changing the size of the missile to carry more fuel? The answer could possibly be that the Ra’ad-II engine design is more efficient, the construction components are made from lighter-weight materials or the payload has been reduced."

Thus for now, Pakistan’s air-launched cruise missile capability will remain a mystery. It is "unclear whether either of the Ra’ad systems has been deployed, but this may only be a question of when rather than if," FAS said. "Once deployed, it remains to be seen if Pakistan will also continue to retain a nuclear gravity bomb capability for its aircraft or transition to stand-off cruise missiles only."

And though the JF-17 is a joint Sino-Pakistani aircraft, Johns doubts that China will try to restrain Pakistan from modifying it into a nuclear strike aircraft. "China and Pakistan have enjoyed economic and technical partnership for a long time," Johns said. "It is suspected that Pakistan received a blueprint for its first nuclear device from China. The JF-17s were not built for a nuclear mission in the Chinese air force. Nonetheless, Pakistan seems to be preparing it for this capability since the Mirage III and V aircraft are aging."

Pakistan’s main delivery system for its estimated 170 nuclear weapons will continue to be ballistic missiles, which include at least six models of road-mobile rockets. But extending the range of Pakistani aerial nuclear weapons will only exacerbate the potential for nuclear war. Both Pakistan and India are already developing multiple warhead, or MIRV, versions of their ballistic missiles, and Pakistan is working on short-range, dual-use ballistic missiles. India and Pakistan have fought four wars — and numerous border clashes — since the Indian subcontinent was partitioned in 1947. In 2019, Pakistan made veiled nuclear threats after Indian aircraft bombed Kashmiri militant bases in Pakistan.

"This context presents an even greater need for transparency and understanding about the quality and intentions behind states’ nuclear programs to prevent mischaracterization and misunderstanding," Johns concluded.
Why Pakistan cannot resist going back to the IMF for another fix (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [7/16/2024 5:00 PM, Adnan Aamir, 2042K, Neutral]
Earlier this month, hundreds of people marched through Islamabad’s central commercial district on a Friday afternoon carrying signs and chanting slogans such as "Tax the rich" and "Reduce tax on salaried people."

The protest passed peacefully but was still an ominous signal for the government of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. His coalition administration took power in March after almost a month of bargaining in the wake of a general election marred by alleged military-directed manipulation. It excludes Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) even though candidates from the party, founded by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, have the most seats in Parliament.

While Pakistan has so far avoided defaulting on its debts like Sri Lanka did in 2022, its economic and financial position remains precarious. Of Pakistan’s $130.4 billion in external debt, credit rating agency Fitch Ratings estimates that around $20 billion is due for repayment in the new fiscal year that started this month. The country, however, has only $9.4 billion in foreign reserves.

Its position is all too familiar for Pakistan. As it has done so many times before, Islamabad has turned to the International Monetary Fund to bridge a gap and avert default. Last Friday, the fund announced it had preliminarily agreed to provide about $7 billion to the government under a 37-month extended fund facility (EFF).

"The program aims to capitalize on the hard-won macroeconomic stability achieved over the past year by furthering efforts to strengthen public finances, reduce inflation, rebuild external buffers and remove economic distortions to spur private-sector led growth," Nathan Porter, the fund’s Pakistan mission chief, said in the announcement.

The deal, which awaits approval by the IMF Executive Board, marks the 24th time Pakistan has borrowed from the fund, keeping it just ahead of Argentina, which is by far the IMF’s biggest borrower and is now preparing for talks for what will be its 23rd support package.

While disbursing new funds, the IMF also expects Pakistan this year to repay the equivalent of $814.38 million on amounts previously borrowed as well as $320.27 million in interest and fees, according to a financial statement on the fund’s website.

To many observers, Pakistan’s relationship with the IMF is simply dysfunctional. Neither side wants things to keep going the way they have. Ostensibly, each IMF aid package has been granted to deal with a short- or medium-term squeeze on Pakistan’s finances. These packages have tided Pakistan through crisis after crisis, but Islamabad has proved incapable of breaking the cycle.

Speaking to Nikkei Asia following the announcement of the preliminary agreement on a new loan, Porter said, "In all IMF programs, we focus on what is needed to stabilize the economy and the measures required to create the environment for higher inclusive growth of the economy and to control inflation."

Help from the IMF comes with strings attached, however. Under the standby arrangement reached a year ago, through which the fund made available 2.25 billion of its special drawing rights, equivalent now to $2.97 billion, the IMF asked Islamabad to raise taxes, reduce electricity and gas subsidies, raise interest rates and privatize loss-making state-owned enterprises. A budget for the new fiscal year that had just been adopted weeks earlier had to be revised to reduce spending and further boost revenues.

To pave the way for Pakistan’s upcoming IMF package, Sharif’s government took things further in the budget for the fiscal year that started this month when it was adopted in June.

Base income tax rates have been raised, and people with annual taxable income of more than 10 million Pakistani rupees ($36,000) will now be subject to a special 10% surcharge. Those who fail to file or pay their taxes can be barred from foreign travel or see their mobile phone service suspended. Reduced subsidies will increase power charges for consumers by as much as 50%.

All told, the government is aiming to collect 38% more taxes this fiscal year than in the year that ended in June. And according to the IMF’s July 12 announcement, the national government plans a further tax increase of equal magnitude to be implemented over the next two fiscal years while pushing provincial governments to raise their own tax revenues while taking on more responsibility for infrastructure and social spending.

"Pakistan has a very low tax-to-GDP ratio," Porter said. "More revenue is required to meet Pakistan’s development needs and social spending to build human capital and protect the vulnerable."

Yet the government’s tax grab is hardly making Sharif’s fledgling administration popular.

"No other class in Pakistan is so much burdened with taxes as the salaried class," said Wahaj Siraj, chief executive of broadband network Nayatel, who joined a number of the recent protests in the capital. "Due to inflation and the rising cost of utilities, an average salaried class person can now only pay their electricity bill and nothing more."

Islamabad resident Bashir Ahmed was even more scathing, noting that members of the middle class feel they have little choice but to pay for private health care, education and home security as well as buy backup power generators and solar panels given the shortcomings of public services in the country.

"Why do we need to pay taxes to the government?" Ahmed asked. "The state of Pakistan does not have moral authority to levy taxes on most of its citizens."

Pakistan’s basic economic dilemma, as highlighted last year by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, an international research organization, is that it brings in around $50 billion a year from exports and foreign remittances but spends around $70 billion a year on imports of fuel and other goods and services. Islamabad could fill this gap by drawing more foreign investment, but Pakistan’s political and economic turmoil keeps away many prospective investors.

In 2018, the Pakistani economy grew at a healthy 6.2% clip but then came COVID. The economy contracted 1.3% in 2020 as controls on movement to reduce the spread of the virus curtailed activity. Massive floods in 2022 then pushed almost 9 million people into poverty and caused over $30 billion in damage and economic losses. As elsewhere, inflation accelerated that year, too, eventually peaking in 2023 at 38%. In the year ended June 2023, gross domestic product fell 0.2%.

The way that working-class and middle-class Pakistanis have absorbed so many blows in recent years has made them wary of government strategies like the measures included in the new budget. While they are already feeling the pain of higher tax rates and reduced subsidies, burdens on the elite and big business have not changed much. Indeed, even as the government raised other taxes in the new plan, it created a tax exemption for gains from the sale of property by active and retired military personnel and civil servants.

"My driver who earns 40,000 rupees per month pays withholding income tax on his cellphone bill and sales tax on everything he purchases," said Abdul Rehman, the owner of a small home electronics business in Islamabad. "Whereas an agricultural landowner I know who makes 40 million rupees is exempt from paying income tax."

That is poised to change as Islamabad has promised the IMF that it will start collecting new agricultural taxes next year via provincial levies. Porter said that delivery on this commitment will be crucial for the success of the IMF’s support program.

"In the new EFF, we have focused on raising revenue from currently undertaxed sectors of the economy," he told Nikkei. "So with this budget and program, the tax system will be fairer for every sector in Pakistan."

Adeel Malik, an associate professor of international development at Oxford University and a Globe Fellow in the economies of Muslim societies there, said the IMF should raise objections in the meantime to the new tax break on property sales.

"If this is endorsed, it will be clear evidence against the IMF program, showing that it benefits the ruling elite while burdening the lower-income segment of society," he said.

"The elites know that an equitable and efficient tax system ... would require them to bear some of the burdens, which they are unwilling to do," Malik added, suggesting they have defused pressure for broader reform by supporting government and military gestures to please Washington, which plays an outsized role at the IMF.

"The elites understand that all they need to do is make some geopolitical concessions to the U.S.-led West to secure a deal from the IMF," he said.

This formula, however, merely perpetuates Islamabad’s dependence on the fund for "crisis" support rather than getting Pakistan onto a sustainable economic path, Malik argues.

"One program after another fails to achieve its objectives," he said. "If the IMF programs were effective, they would have resolved our structural problems in the last two decades. The IMF does not help improve Pakistan’s economy; it merely helps manage the books."

Few would appear to disagree with this diagnosis, yet Pakistan’s debt load has gotten so heavy that it can be hard for the authorities to see past the next round of bills coming due. Indeed, 53% of planned spending in the government’s new budget is allocated for debt servicing.

"No one, including friendly countries, will lend us any money unless we are in an IMF program," said Ikram ul Haq, founder and chief partner of law firm Huzaima & Ikram in Lahore and author of "Tax Reforms in Pakistan: Historic & Critical Review." He added, "The only option is to be in the IMF program and implement reforms."

Meanwhile, Pakistan is also seeking debt relief from China, which accounts for 30% of its external borrowings. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb is expected to visit Beijing soon to request an extension on $15.4 billion due to be repaid for the construction of power plants built as part of the $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative. A Pakistani official told Nikkei Asia confidentially that he did not expect China to be agreeable.

Observers say that the key for Pakistan to break out of its cycle with the IMF is to develop new economic drivers.

Muzzammil Aslam, PTI spokesperson on economic and finance issues, said that if Imran Khan is able to return as prime minister, he will move to close the country’s persistent financing gap by luring investment from Pakistanis overseas. "We will keep the IMF program side-by-side as a watchdog of our performance," he added.

For the fiscal year that ended last month, the IMF projects that Pakistan’s economy grew 2%, far below the level needed to meaningfully advance the country’s development and move residents out of poverty. Fitch Ratings projects growth of 3% this fiscal year, with an upside from this subdued pace being that sluggish demand for imports is easing pressure on Pakistan’s balance of payments.

To Aqdas Afzal, an associate professor of social development and policy at Habib University in Karachi, the key to Pakistan’s advancement is better workforce education and training. The country has given this area little attention to date, he argues.

"This underinvestment is now manifesting itself in the economy’s inability to produce high value-added exports and ever-widening current account deficits," he said.

To this diagnosis, business executive Ammar Habib Khan adds that Pakistan needs to improve crop yields and improve its food supply chain. This would result in more manageable food costs, giving households more leeway to invest or spend on other things.

"Basically, we have our own unique challenges, stemming from food and energy security," said Khan, chief executive of CreditBook Financial Services, a local financing platform for small businesses. "To address problems of inflation and lower-income households, it is important that Pakistan comes up with its homegrown economic plan such that any such pain going forward can be avoided.

"The IMF can solve the bridging deficit problem, but structural problems need to be solved internally," Khan concluded.

Yet it will be difficult for Sharif’s government to make more headway on Pakistan’s structural problems than its predecessors given its weaker political position and questions about its legitimacy.

Said the IMF’s Porter, "What past experience has shown is that broad-based political ownership of [IMF] programs’ goals and implementation, without backtracking, are critical to success."

Already, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the key coalition partner of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, was heavily critical of the new government budget while claiming not to have been consulted in its drafting.

"Do the people of Pakistan deserve this anti-people budget?" said PPP leader Aseefa Bhutto Zardari, daughter of President Asif Ali Zardari, during a parliamentary debate last month.

Yet her party’s legislators ultimately fell in line and voted the budget through unanimously.

"While Pakistan has a poor record of sustaining reforms over time, the absence of viable alternatives has strengthened support for tough policy decisions, at least in the near term," noted Fitch Ratings in a client note last month.

Sharif’s government has gotten some other good news lately.

Pakistan’s consumer price index rose 11.8% in May, the country’s slowest inflation rate in 2-1/2 years and less than a third of the peak level reached last year. The country’s stock market, meanwhile, has been among the world’s top performers over the past year. The benchmark KSE-100 Index has risen 80% and has repeatedly reached new highs, with another record level achieved on Monday in the first session of trading following the IMF announcement.

With inflation cooling down, the State Bank of Pakistan last month reduced its benchmark interest rate by 1.5 percentage points from an all-time high of 22%.

"We believe this is the start of an interest rate easing cycle," wrote Thomas Hugger, chief executive of Asia Frontier Capital, a Hong Kong-based emerging market-focused fund management company, in a client note this month. "Historically, declining interest rates have been positive for stock market sentiment in Pakistan, and we believe it will be no different this time around."

Yet while falling interest rates will be good for corporate profits and investment, it is open to question whether this will give Pakistan enough momentum to really make headway on weaning itself off IMF injections. As Fitch analysts wrote, the country’s financial imbalance "leaves Pakistan exposed to external funding conditions and policy missteps" so they continue to rate Pakistan’s creditworthiness only a notch above Sri Lanka’s.

Meanwhile, Pakistani authorities are bracing for a new round of mass demonstrations as households start receiving power bills reflecting the recent jump in rates. Electricity is a sore subject as the country’s overburdened power network has led to frequent supply cuts even in major cities baking in temperatures of up to 40 C, leading to frequent small protests.

"Last year, there were some cases of people committing suicide due to inflated power bills they could not afford to pay," said business owner Rehman. "This year the situation will be worse. We will continue protests in all possible ways to stop the government from economically strangulating us."
Pakistan says 4 nationals killed in Oman attack (VOA)
VOA [7/16/2024 7:41 AM, Ayaz Gul, 4M, Negative]
Pakistan said Tuesday four of its nationals were killed and 30 others injured in an unprecedented gun attack targeting a Shi’ite Muslim minority mosque in Oman’s capital, Muscat.

Omani authorities said, based on initial reports, the shooting resulted in the killings of four worshipers and injuries to "several others” in the otherwise peaceful Sunni Muslim-majority sultanate. There were no immediate claims of responsibility.

In a statement, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry condemned what it said was “the dastardly terrorist attack.” It added without elaborating that Islamabad was “heartened” that Oman’s authorities had “neutralized” the assailants.

The ministry said that Pakistan’s embassy in Muscat was in contact with Omani authorities "for the identification and repatriation of the mortal remains" of the slain Pakistanis. It added that Pakistani Ambassador Imran Ali is also visiting local hospitals to inquire about the well-being of injured Pakistani nationals.

"The Royal Oman Police have responded to a shooting incident that occurred in the vicinity of a mosque in the Al-Wadi Al-Kabir area," a Muscat police statement said. It said that "all necessary security measures and procedures have been taken to handle the situation" following the attack.

"The authorities are continuing to gather evidence and conduct investigations to uncover the circumstances surrounding the incident," police wrote on social media platform X.

“Pakistan has offered all possible assistance to Omani authorities in the investigation and in bringing to justice those responsible for this heinous crime in this holy month of Muharram,” the Pakistani statement said.

The U.S. Embassy in Muscat issued a security alert following the shooting and canceled all visa appointments on Tuesday. The embassy wrote on social media platform X, "U.S. citizens should remain vigilant, monitor local news, and heed directions of local authorities.”

Video verified by the AFP news agency shows people fleeing near Imam Ali Mosque, its minaret visible, as gunshots ring out.

A voice can be heard saying “Oh God" and repeating "Oh Hussein," referring to the imam who Shi’ites view as the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad.

The area where the shooting occurred was reportedly still cordoned off later on Tuesday, preventing journalists from accessing the mosque.

Shi’ites this week mark Ashura, an annual day of mourning that commemorates the seventh-century battlefield martyrdom of Imam Hussein.

Oman officially has a population of four million, with 40% of them expatriate workers.
India
India Nominates Retired Diplomat as US Ambassador to Secure Ties (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/17/2024 2:14 AM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 5.5M, Neutral]
India has nominated retired diplomat Vinay Kwatra as its next ambassador to the US, months before the country heads to a pivotal election, according to people familiar with the matter.

Kwatra, who retired as India’s foreign secretary earlier this month, will look to bring certainty to the India-US relationship as countries brace for a possible change in administration after November’s US elections. An immediate priority of Kwatra’s will be to reach out to officials who could play an important role in India-related policy in the next administration, the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private.

India and the US have been growing closer for the past two decades, including under the previous Trump and current Biden administration. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former president Donald Trump shared a good rapport and held a joint rally in the US in 2019.

Kwatra, a career diplomat, has previously served in China, the US, in Modi’s office and as India’s envoy to France before his tenure as the top bureaucrat in the foreign ministry. The position of India’s ambassador to the US has been vacant since Taranjit Singh Sandhu completed his tenure in January.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs didn’t comment when asked about the appointment. An announcement is expected soon after formalities in the US are complete, the people said.

India-US ties have strengthened under Modi, with India seeing the US as a partner in standing up to a more assertive China. At the same time, India has pursued a foreign policy much in line with its decades-old stance of not aligning too closely with any great power. India has, for example, maintained its long-standing ties with Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine, with Modi visiting Moscow earlier this month.

The US meanwhile sees India as a key bulwark in Asia to an increasingly powerful China, but the relationship has at times appeared to frustrate Washington. It has chastised India over alleged human rights violations and treatment of minorities and the relationship has been rocked by recent allegations that New Delhi tried to assassinate a US citizen for advocating a separate homeland in India for the country’ Sikh minority.

Despite that, the US—India relationship has a strong business and geopolitical logic behind it but needs constant nurturing especially with any new administration, the people familiar said.

New Delhi is hoping to make rapid progress under a critical and emerging technology sharing initiative which includes the manufacturing of jet engines and semi-conductors in India.
India to Fast-Track China Visas After Businesses Hit by Delays (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/16/2024 11:02 PM, Shruti Srivastava, 27296K, Negative]
India’s government is finalizing rules to cut down visa delays for Chinese technicians, responding to complaints from businesses who say the restrictions are hurting the country’s ability to become a manufacturing hub.

The Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade is working with the ministries of home and external affairs to put in place a framework that will fast-track visas for engineers and technicians needed to install Chinese-made machines in Indian factories, people familiar with the matter said. The aim is to cut down the visa processing time to within 30 days from the 4-5 months it currently takes, the people said, asking not to be identified as the discussions are private.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government imposed strict rules on China following a deadly 2020 border clash between the two nations that led to a downward spiral in relations. Hundreds of Chinese apps were banned, approvals for Chinese investments and visas slowed and direct flights between the two countries were cut. Local media estimated that India issued just 2,000 visas to Chinese nationals in 2024 from about 200,000 before the pandemic in 2019.

There are on-going talks to resolve the border crisis but ties remain strained, with New Delhi insisting relations can’t return to normal until the dispute is settled.

The government is planning to streamline the visa process by allowing all companies in targeted sectors that receive government subsidies to apply for business visas for Chinese workers, people familiar with the matter said. Under current rules, only manufacturing businesses that have won approval under the incentive program can apply for business visas for Chinese workers, with the rest forced to apply for cumbersome employment permits, which require extensive paperwork.

India’s Ministry of Home Affairs and Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade didn’t immediately respond to requests for information.

India remains heavily reliant on imports from China, especially machinery needed in manufacturing. The Chinese engineers are typically needed to install the equipment, conduct repair work and train Indian workers on their use.

Businesses say the government’s hard line on Beijing appears to be undermining India’s manufacturing push and the billions of dollars in subsidies paid to electronics, cars and pharmaceuticals makers. Modi has sought to make India an alternative manufacturing hub to China, especially in electronics, with companies like Apple Inc. setting up production facilities in the country in recent years.

While the government has streamlined the visa process for businesses under the incentives programs, executives say there are still significant challenges.

A top executive of an electronics manufacturing company based in Noida, close to the capital New Delhi, said the visa restrictions are leading to escalating costs, investments being blocked and a loss of credibility of Indian firms as reliable suppliers. The person asked not to be identified in order to speak freely on the matter.

The India Cellular & Electronics Association estimates the border standoff with China has cut production in the sector by about $15 billion from 2020-2023 and led to a loss of 100,000 job opportunities. The association counts Apple and its suppliers as well as Chinese smartphone firms such as Oppo and Vivo among its members.

“The industry is very cognizant about the nation’s security requirements but at the same time, transfer of skills, investments, technology transfer, absorption of technology etc., are critical for achieving” India’s economic goals, said Pankaj Mohindroo, chairman of the association.

Mohindroo said government action against Chinese firms have also impacted the industry as not many Chinese nationals are willing to travel to India to explore business opportunities. The Modi government widened its probes
against firms such as Xiaomi Corp.

and Vivo for alleged tax evasion and money laundering since the border dispute.

“We are cautiously optimistic that this matter will be resolved in the best interest of the industry and the nation in a timely manner,” Mohindroo said.
Activists say Rohingya refugees are hounded in India (VOA)
VOA [7/17/2024 1:43 AM, Shaikh Azizur Rahman, 4M, Negative]
Since entering India in 2017, Rohingya refugee Noor Mohammad and his wife have been forced to move at least a dozen times to escape unsafe conditions in the refugee camps and to avoid deportation.

Over the past seven years, shanties where they lived were destroyed twice when unexplained fires swept through Rohingya refugee camps in the northern Indian cities of Jammu and Nuh.

“Hindu leaders ordered us to vacate different areas a number of times in north India. They also threatened to retaliate with violent consequences if we disobeyed them,” Mohammad told VOA this week from an unidentified city in southern India.

“The police arrested some Rohingya on charges of illegal entry into India. To evade arrest and possible deportation with my children and wife, I kept moving from one area to another. Now, I have taken shelter in an urban slum and have gone underground,” said Mohammad, 37, who migrated to India following a military crackdown in Myanmar that forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.

For more than 50 years, minority Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighboring countries, including Bangladesh and India, to escape persecution and discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. But in recent years in India, the Rohingya refugees have been detained by police for illegal entry and threatened with deportation.

Last week, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on India to end the arbitrary detention and forcible deportation of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar, where they would “risk being subjected to serious human rights violations and abuses.”

In a statement issued on July 2, the U.N. committee said it was “concerned about reports of arbitrary mass detention of the Rohingya, including children, in inadequate conditions, and in some cases without due process or access to legal representation.”

According to a 2019 UNHCR estimate, over 40,000 Rohingya refugees were in India, including around 22,000 who are registered with the U.N. agency. The refugees mostly work in menial jobs and live in decrepit shack colonies.

India has not signed the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and views Muslim Rohingya refugees as "illegal immigrants,” although the Rohingya have mostly lived peacefully in the country for decades.

But the refugees began facing resistance after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014. In 2017, in the northern Indian city of Jammu, the BJP and other Hindu right-wing groups launched a campaign demanding the ouster of all Rohingya living in a nearby refugee camp.

Although no police record in India has linked the refugees to any terrorist or criminal activities, on social media, Hindu nationalist groups label the Rohingya as “terrorists” and “jihadists,” and have for years demanded their expulsion from India.

In the past seven years, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs has repeatedly asked state governments to identify and deport all Rohingya “illegal immigrants” to Myanmar, where a widening civil war has brought new violence to their homeland in Rakhine State.

According to rights activists, around 800 Rohingya, including women and children, are currently in Indian jails and detention centers after being charged with illegal entry. So far, only 18 Rohingya refugees have actually been sent back to Myanmar since 2021.

Some rights activists argue that the deportations are illegal under Indian law.

Ujjaini Chatterji, a New Delhi-based lawyer, said that even though India is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, India’s constitution guarantees “the right to life and personal liberty, along with the right to equality before law” for every person, including noncitizens, within the territory of India.

"The Citizenship Act, 1955 and the Foreigner’s Act, 1946, define an illegal migrant who can be deported by the executive in India; however, the Rohingya are not illegal migrants. They are, as per the Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) circulated by the Union of India dated 20 March, 2019, ‘foreigners claiming to be refugees,’ and they cannot be either detained or deported without their claims being assessed within the timeframes as per the SoP,” Chatterji told VOA.

“This is not being followed by the authorities, and detentions are happening without a fair assessment of the refugee claims.”

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia deputy director at Human Rights Watch, said that while the Rohingya are among the most persecuted communities in the world, “instead of treating them with empathy, Indian authorities and ruling political leaders have incited hate against them.”

“There is an ongoing conflict in Rakhine State. Most governments struggle when it comes to protecting refugees, but deporting them when their lives will be at risk not only violates international law but basic decency,” Ganguly told VOA.

“The Indian government should instead be working with partners, including ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations], Bangladesh and others to ensure that Myanmar can have a rights-respecting government, and the Rohingya refugees can safely return.”

An official from the Indian Home Ministry in New Delhi that handles refugee-related matters declined to comment on Rohingya issues.

Bangladeshi author and rights activist Farhad Mazhar said that Rohingya refugees are being hounded in India largely because they are Muslim.

“BJP, the ruling party of India, supports the Hindutva forces that aim to turn India into a Hindu-only country. The party openly discriminates against Muslims,” he said, noting that a recently enacted measure offering citizenship to persecuted religious minorities from neighboring countries does not apply to Muslims.

“The world identifies the stateless Rohingya as the most persecuted minority in the world. Yet India is nonchalant about the plight of the Rohingya community from Myanmar simply because they are Muslim,” Mazhar said.
Modi’s China Bind (Foreign Policy – opinion)
Foreign Policy [7/16/2024 6:00 AM, Sushant Singh, 2014K, Positive]
When Narendra Modi won a third term as India’s prime minister last month, he was congratulated by all the major global leaders. Except one. Xi Jinping, China’s president and general secretary of the Communist Party, did not send a congratulatory message to the Indian leader he has met more than 20 times in the past decade. In 2019, Xi was among the first to publicly congratulate Modi when he was reelected as prime minister. This year, Xi has conveyed his regards to Shehbaz Sharif in Pakistan and Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh when they became prime ministers. It was Chinese Premier Li Qiang who sent a brief congratulatory message to Modi a week later, further underscoring the absence of any felicitous missive from Xi.

Other provocations followed, this time from Modi. His actions could be seen as a direct outcome of the result of the Indian elections, from which he had emerged diminished. Since then, he has been trying hard to project strength—and to satisfy his base, which sees China as an adversary.

At the same time, though, India is becoming more dependent on China economically. Indian corporates are publicly pushing the Modi government to make concessions to China. Even though the government argues that ties with China can’t be normal till the problems on the border are resolved, it is unable to prevent the deepening of economic relations. Meanwhile, Beijing is happy with the status quo, both on the border and in its state of bilateral ties with New Delhi. Even if some temporary solution is found on the border, the trust between the two sides has completely broken down. This means that the engagement between India and China will be sporadic and inconsistent, alternating between hope and disappointment. It is a tough spot for Modi to begin his third term as India’s prime minister, and a balancing act he will have to continue to strike.

For most Indians, China is an adversary and a threat. Last year, a Morning Consult poll revealed that Indians see China as India’s “greatest military threat”—43 percent of respondents named China, while only 13 percent cited Pakistan. A recent Pew Research survey shows only 18 percent Indians have a favorable view of China, the lowest figure among the middle-income countries surveyed. Emotions about China are running especially high in India since it lost 20 soldiers in a clash with the People’s Liberation Army on the border in June 2020, the first such loss of lives since 1975. There has been no closure of that episode.

Consequently, India’s foreign policy has become heavily clouded by the threat, real or perceived, posed by China. When Modi was recently in Russia, most Indian analysts justified his bearhug with President Vladimir Putin as an attempt to prevent Moscow from ending up as a Beijing lackey. “A Russia under sanctions goes deeper into the Chinese embrace,” wrote another former diplomat, “Modi’s hug was to pull it back.”

The election results were a political and personal setback to Modi. His party lost one-fifth of the seats and is dependent on two fickle regional allies for a parliamentary majority. In his own parliamentary seat, Modi’s winning margin came down sharply and his party’s candidates lost half the seats where he personally campaigned. (Five years ago, his party had won 80 percent of such seats.)

When populist authoritarians struggle, they turn inwards to rally their base. New Delhi officially adheres to a “One China” policy even though it has not reiterated that position since 2009. Modi has never officially interacted with any leader from Taiwan in his decade-long stint as India’s prime minister. But when the Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te congratulated him on X, Modi proceeded to thank him and state that he looked forward to a “mutually beneficial economic and technological partnership.” Beijing publicly protested about the virtual interaction, declaring China’s “position is very clear and India knows this well.”

Soon after, a high-level U.S. congressional delegation, led by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and including House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) met with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama at his Indian home. The visit was condemned in advance by China’s government and could not have materialized without the express permission of the Indian government. A day later, Modi hosted the same delegation.

Modi then decided to absent himself from the summit of the leaders of member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Astana earlier this month. Before the Indian election results came in, many had expected Modi to meet Xi on the sidelines of the summit and find a breakthrough to the unresolved border crisis that has bedeviled ties between the two populous countries for over four years.

Pre-election optimism on engaging China sprang from Modi’s interview to Newsweek magazine during the voting period. To an international audience, Modi expressed his belief that “we need to urgently address the prolonged situation on our borders so that the abnormality in our bilateral interactions can be put behind us.” This idea gained credence as a new ambassador from China took his post in Delhi after a gap of 18 months.

But after a shrunken mandate, a bold political outreach towards Beijing has become a casualty. Having fashioned himself domestically as a strongman who will be tough in dealing with China, Modi has now trapped himself in a bind. In a survey of 7,000 Indians in 2020, 72 percent of those polled said “India can win against China” in a military conflict. The reality is different. A new report by a retired Indian general which evaluates the military capabilities of the two countries concludes that “China’s substantial investment in defense, driven by a robust and largely self-reliant defense industrial base, positions the PLA for significant advancements in both conventional and unconventional warfare capabilities.” Even in force structures, technological advancements and doctrinal developments, Beijing has a massive advantage over New Delhi. This gap, where India has limited military leverage over China, will not be bridged for a decade at least, and perhaps two.

With Modi missing at Astana, India’s foreign minister S. Jaishankar held a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines. It was another occasion on which both sides stuck to their respective positions and talked past each other. Jaishankar linked “complete disengagement from the remaining areas in Eastern Ladakh and restor[ing] border peace and tranquility” with the “return of normalcy in bilateral relations.” Wang delinked the two, arguing for “properly handling and controlling the situation in the border areas, while actively resuming normal exchanges.”

These negotiations have reached a stalemate because the Indian side wants the Chinese to first disengage from two remaining disputed areas, Depsang and Demchok, before agreeing to step forces back from the rest of the border in eastern Ladakh. The PLA generals refuse to concede on these two areas and want India to agree to de-escalation from other places. India has deployed around 50,000 additional soldiers in the area for the past four years while American experts assess that around 20,000 PLA soldiers are deployed over the 250-mile front. India remains at a disadvantage in eastern Ladakh as its soldiers can’t access 26 of the 65 patrolling points they used to reach until 2020.

While the base expects Modi to take a tough line on China, Indians corporates want him to make concessions. China surpassed the U.S. as India’s biggest trading partner in fiscal 2023, albeit with a trade deficit of a staggering $85 billion. China now accounts for over 10 percent of India’s overall trade and 15 percent of its imports. The rhetoric of economic punishment and the harassment of Chinese firms by tax authorities has outlived its utility. India has no leverage left. It banned Chinese fashion giant Shein from selling products on its app in 2020 but the company is returning to India via Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail. Another major Indian corporate, Tata, is looking at a majority stake in the Indian arm of Chinese mobile manufacturer Vivo. Chinese mobile brands still have a 75 percent share of the Indian mobile market. China’s SAIC Motor has announced a $1.5 billion tie-up with Indian steelmaker JSW to build and sell MG-branded EVs in India. There are more proposals in the pipeline as the government has hinted at clearing them if Indian firms have a majority share. The delay, if any, is due to the reluctance of the Chinese companies.

Other top Indian corporates like the Adani Group, seen as a Modi favorite, want Chinese workers to be given visas on priority to install new machinery as manufacturing has stalled. Even the government’s own ministries are pressing for removing visa restrictions for Chinese technicians. The Modi government has already been forced to expedite visas for some Chinese citizens for projects that fall under its production-linked incentives scheme—the billions of dollars’ worth of subsidies earmarked to promote manufacturing in India.

Confederation of Indian industry, the country’s largest corporate lobbying group has told the government to review a 2020 rule which restricts Chinese investment in India. It has also asked the government to adopt a non-restrictive approach towards investments, component imports, openness towards technology transfer in deficient areas, ease of inward movement of skilled manpower and easing of non-trade tariffs against China. The government is under pressure from the electronics industry which claims that the restrictions on China have cost them $15 billion in production losses over the last four years. Modi’s party suffered in the elections due to his poor record on generating employment and he can no longer afford to turn a deaf ear towards demands of the manufacturing sector.

Not only is New Delhi unable to decouple from Beijing, it also can’t de-risk its economic dependence on China in critical sectors such as pharmaceuticals, electronics, solar power cells, electric vehicles and heavy machinery.

Demonstrating strength is a domestic imperative for a politically diminished Modi. These gestures are often hollow and misdirected. Direct India-China flights, which reached a peak in December 2019 with 539 scheduled flights, have not resumed since they were stopped during the pandemic. New Delhi refuses to accede to Beijing’s request to do so. China is providing more than 2,000 visas to Indian citizens every day while Indian restrictions remain on regular Chinese visitors. More than 20,000 Indian students have returned to China for higher studies. India has a single journalist remaining in Beijing while there is no Chinese journalist left in Delhi.

Modi is running out of options and his recent tactics only demonstrate a lack of imagination in breaking the impasse with Xi. He is being forced to make concessions to Beijing while remaining constrained by his own choices. A peaceful and normal relationship between the world’s two most populous countries looks unlikely anytime soon.
Modi’s New Budget Shouldn’t Break the Bank (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [7/16/2024 5:00 PM, Mihir Sharma, 27296K, Positive]
Things seem to be falling comfortably into place for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Yes, he lost seats in India’s recent general election — but he was, nevertheless, re-elected for a third term. Yes, he is dependent upon smaller allied parties for the first time in his political career. But those allies have been complaisant so far, and he has kept them out of major ministerial roles without any blowback.

That period of calm may be coming to an end, however. Next week, India will unveil its tax-and-spending plans for the ongoing financial year, which ends in March 2025 — and, according to Reuters, the allies’ bills will come due.

The two largest regional parties in Modi’s coalition are together apparently asking for $5.75 billion of federal government funds to be transferred to their regions and preferred programs over the next eight months. Chandrababu Naidu, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in India’s south, wants to build a new capital city for his state. Nitish Kumar, who runs India’s poorest state of Bihar, has made a name for himself as a designer of clever but expensive welfare schemes.

Modi is a fiscal conservative. He doesn’t like spending two rupees when one would do, and he won’t spend that rupee when he could make a costless contingent guarantee instead.

Thanks to those instincts, the Indian government managed to control its spending during the pandemic years and has emerged from that crisis with a clear path for fiscal consolidation. The interim budget in February promised that the deficit would shrink to below 4.5% of gross domestic product by March 2026.

While the markets may quibble over the details, there’s agreement on the direction of India’s deficit: downwards. Modi needs to preserve that trust, even when faced with new demands from pesky regional parties.

Such pressures are, after all, only part of the strains that India’s budget will have to address. Most politicians interpreted the unexpected election results as a sign that India’s job shortage was beginning to bite. The government will be tempted to respond by being more generous — for example, by expanding the number of make-work public sector jobs available to India’s vast army of unemployed youth.

To excuse fuzzier fiscal math, Modi’s officials might look to another source of support. On June 28, India formally became part of JPMorgan Chase & Co’s index of emerging-market government bonds. Starting from Jan. 31, 2025, the appropriate Indian government paper will also be added to the Bloomberg Emerging Market Local Currency Government Index. (Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, offers index products for various asset classes through Bloomberg Index Services Ltd.)

Some estimate that the June addition alone could lead to an inflow of about $2 billion a month more into rupee-denominated government securities. That would likely push down borrowing costs for New Delhi.

Finance Ministry bureaucrats might also feel a little less worried about the effect of their mammoth borrowing plans on the rest of the domestic bond market. The central bank will be relieved that its troublesome charges in the banking sector will be able to access additional liquidity.

The government has long seen inclusion in emerging-market bond indices — and the capital inflows and lower borrowing costs that come with it — as hard-earned reward for what it believes has been an outstanding macroeconomic performance. The risk is downplayed: India’s economy is too large, officials think, and these purchases too small to cause a major crisis if they were to reverse.

That’s no justification for billion-dollar handouts to your political supporters, however. While increased access to foreign financing makes the job of budgeting easier, the exposure imposes additional responsibilities.

You must be more transparent and fiscally responsible, not less, or you risk the shocks that come with reversing capital flows. Economists at the Finance Ministry’s in-house think tank have already warned that India must prepare for “greater scrutiny on the government’s fiscal metrics and its broader macro-fiscal policy framework.”

One or two spendthrift budgets may not cause a crisis. Still, a sudden outflow of cash would make a bad decision look worse. As former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’s disastrous 2022 budget showed, you don’t want to be caught between spiraling rates, plummeting confidence, and a yawning deficit.

The price India’s government will pay for lower borrowing costs is being accountable to a new and sensitive set of critics: the bond markets. Even if everything looks to be falling into place for Modi, he can’t relax his fiscal vigilance yet.
NSB
Bangladesh Deploys Border Force to Try to Quell Student Protests (New York Times)
New York Times [7/16/2024 4:14 PM, Saif Hasnat and Anupreeta Das, 831K, Negative]
Bangladesh deployed a paramilitary force on Tuesday after at least five people were killed during violent demonstrations by thousands of university students, raising the specter of instability in a country familiar with protests.

For weeks, students across Bangladesh have been protesting quotas for government jobs that were recently reinstated after being abolished in 2018 following another countrywide student protest.

Demonstrations intensified in recent days, with parts of the capital, Dhaka, blockaded and students refusing to attend classes. Even female students — who are not allowed out of their dorms after 9 p.m. — broke the rules to join the protests, a measure of the gravity of the situation.

The protests were first started by students of the University of Dhaka, the nation’s pre-eminent institution, and have spread to other universities and cities and turned increasingly political, pitting the ruling party against the opposition.

Members of the Border Guard of Bangladesh, which is normally responsible for border security, were sent to five districts across the country to control the “law and order situation amid ongoing quota reform movement,” according to a statement provided by the force.

Since the protests began roughly two weeks ago, hundreds of demonstrators have been injured in clashes with the police and with counter protesters. Citing the safety of students, government officials announced late on Tuesday that they would shut down most schools and colleges indefinitely. Facebook, the main social media platform that protesters used to organize and share news, was partially unavailable as of Tuesday night.

The demonstrations started in early July after a Dhaka court overturned a 2018 decision by the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to abolish the country’s job quota system, which had existed for decades.

The system reserved more than 50 percent of lucrative government jobs for quota holders, including women and those with disabilities. They were initially devised as a way to reward those who fought for the country’s freedom from Pakistan in 1971, ensuring that their descendants would always be provided for. The latest ruling reinstated a 30 percent quota for those descendants.

Although the Bangladeshi economy has seen a steady rate of growth, and the private sector is a significant employer, government jobs are coveted because they are considered stable and come with a lot of benefits. The reinstated quota system — which the Supreme Court has paused temporarily because of the protests — could potentially force hundreds of thousands of new graduates to fight for a small number of open government jobs.

Student activists have argued that most of the government jobs should be given on merit.

“Students will not leave the streets until this demand is met,” Nahid Islam, a coordinator of the protests, said at a gathering in Dhaka on Tuesday.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh, created the quota system in 1972, only for his daughter Ms. Hasina to abolish it in October 2018 after students protested the dismissal of a writ appeal some of their peers had made earlier that year to change the system. Families of freedom fighters then protested, and the court sided with them last month.

In explaining the rationale for her 2018 decision, Ms. Hasina said at a news conference on July 14 that she had become “very annoyed” by the incidents the students were causing, including attacking the office of her political party, The Awami League. Referring to them as “some so-called intellectuals sitting in their house and recording false propaganda to spread,” Ms. Hasina added: “At one point, I said, let’s just abolish the quota system. The purpose of this was to see what would happen if the quota system was abolished.”

The 2018 student movement, which built momentum gradually, was nothing like the unrest now unfolding on the streets of Dhaka.

Graphic images and videos circulating on social media show men beating female students, while others contain images of wounded students lying on the floor of Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Earlier this week, members of the student wing of the Awami League began attacking student protesters, even as police officers fanned out across Dhaka and other cities to curb the violence.

Obaidul Quader, an influential leader of the ruling party, said their student wing would “respond to those displaying arrogant behavior,” referring to the protesters.

Since coming to power in 2009, Ms. Hasina has won four elections, which have been marred by boycotts, widespread violence and irregularities. Her government has come down hard on dissenters. In 2018, Awami League members violently tackled another student demonstration, the road safety movement; the party’s student wing even brutally attacked schoolchildren to disperse protests.

On Tuesday, the quota fight became overtly political when Asaduzzaman Khan, the home minister of Bangladesh, pointed his fingers at the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main opposition party, saying their members may be involved in the violence.

In turn, the B.N.P. leader, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, urged everyone to join the protests.
Government urges Bangladesh’s universities to close after 6 die in protests (AP)
AP [7/17/2024 4:12 AM, Julhas Alam, 456K, Negative]
Authorities in Bangladesh urged all universities to close on Wednesday, the day after at least six people died in violent protests over the allocation of government jobs and police raided the headquarters of the main opposition party.

Dhaka University, at the center of the violence, decided to suspend classes and close its dormitories indefinitely, a university official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to media.

The University Grants Commission asked all public and private universities to close until further notice, in order to protect students, but the request did not have legal force and it was not immediately clear how many universities would comply.

Authorities said that at least six people were killed on Tuesday in violence across the country as student protesters clashed with pro-government student activists and with police, and violence was reported around the capital, Dhaka, the southeastern city of Chattogram and the northern city of Rangpur.

Overnight, Dhaka police raided the headquarters of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, accusing it of playing a role in the violence.

Detective chief Harun-or-Rashid told reporters that police had arrested seven members of the party’s student wing in connection with two buses that were set on fire Tuesday. He added that detectives found 100 crude bombs, 500 wooden and bamboo sticks, and five to six bottles of gasoline in the raid.

Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, a senior BNP leader, accused the government of “staging” the raid to divert attention from protests.

The protests began late last month, demanding an end to a quota that reserves 30% of government jobs for relatives of veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence in 1971, but turned violent on Monday as protesters at Dhaka University clashed with police and counter-protests organized by the student wing of the governing Awami League party, leaving 100 people injured.

Violence spread overnight to Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, and was reported elsewhere around the country on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, stray protests took place at Dhaka University and elsewhere in the country. Police were deployed on the campus, while paramilitary border forces patrolled the streets in Dhaka and other big cities.

Protesters argue the veterans’ families quota is discriminatory, and argue it benefits supporters of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose Awami League party led the independence movement. Ruling party leaders accuse the opposition of backing the protests. Protesters have said they are apolitical.

The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and membesr of ethnic minorities, but protesters have only sought to end the quota for families of veterans.

While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh’s private sector, many people prefer government jobs because they are seen as stable and high-paying. Each year, nearly 400,000 graduates compete for 3,000 such jobs in the civil service exam.

The quota system was temporarily halted in 2018, following a court order that followed an earlier wave of mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh’s High Court nullified that decision, angering students and triggering renewed protests.

Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court’s order for four weeks, as the chief justice asked students to return to classes. But the protests continued.

Hasina defended the quota system Tuesday, saying that veterans deserve the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political affiliation.

“Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had,” she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Bangladesh shuts universities, colleges indefinitely after protests turn deadly (Reuters)
Reuters [7/17/2024 3:58 AM, Ruma Paul, 5.2M, Negative]
Bangladesh announced it will indefinitely shut down all public and private universities from Wednesday after protests by students against a quota system for government jobs turned deadly this week, leaving at least six people dead and scores injured.

The South Asian nation has been rocked by protests for weeks over public sector job quotas, which include a 30% reservation for family members of freedom fighters from the 1971 War of Independence from Pakistan. It has sparked anger among students who face high youth unemployment rates, with nearly 32 million young Bangladeshis not in work or education out of a total population of 170 million people.

Demonstrations intensified after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina refused to meet the protesters’ demands, citing ongoing court proceedings, and labelled those opposing the quota as "razakar" - a term used for those who allegedly collaborated with the Pakistani army during the 1971 war.

The protests turned violent this week when thousands of anti-quota protesters clashed with members of the student wing of the ruling Awami League party across the country. Police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the protesters.

Six people, including at least three students, were killed during the clashes on Tuesday, police said.

"We urgently call on the Government of Bangladesh to immediately guarantee the safety of all peaceful protesters and proper treatment of all those injured," Amnesty International said in a post on X.

Authorities have deployed riot police, along with the Border Guard Bangladesh paramilitary force, at university campuses across the country to maintain law and order.

Late on Tuesday, the University Grants Commission ordered all universities to shut down and instructed students to vacate the premises immediately for security reasons. High schools, colleges and other educational institutions were also shut.

Nahid Islam, the coordinator of the anti-quota protests, said students will hold processions on Wednesday carrying coffins in solidarity with those that lost their lives.

"Many have left the dormitories out of fear due to attacks by cadres of the student league (the student wing of the ruling party)," said a female student of Dhaka University, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.

"Still, many students remain, especially in the men’s dormitories. Those of us currently staying in the dorms are not leaving easily."

Police raided the headquarters of the main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), in Dhaka around midnight on Tuesday and arrested seven activists, including a former leader of its student wing.

Harun Or Rashid, the head of police’s detective branch, said they recovered 100 crude bombs and several bottles of petrol during the raid that was conducted after a bus was set on fire near the BNP office.

Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, the senior joint secretary of BNP, condemned the raid and said the government planted the recovered items to discredit the anti-quota protests.

The protests are the first significant challenge to Hasina’s government since she secured a fourth consecutive term in January in an election boycotted by the BNP.

Experts attribute the unrest to stagnant job growth in the private sector, making government jobs, which offer regular wage hikes and other privileges, increasingly desirable.

Currently, 56% of government jobs in Bangladesh are reserved under various quotas, including 10% for women, 10% for people from underdeveloped districts, 5% for indigenous communities, and 1% for people with disabilities.
‘We sought rights’: Bangladesh on edge after quota protest turns violent (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [7/16/2024 8:03 AM, Faisal Mahmud, 20871K, Negative]
Maliha Namlah was scared for her life.

She and hundreds of other students had been protesting outside the residence of the Jahangirnagar University (JU) vice chancellor on the outskirts of the country’s capital. The campus was on the boil. Earlier in the day, members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of the governing Awami League party, had attacked students.

Then, as Monday evening set in, Namlah and the other protesters heard that BCL members were approaching the vice chancellor’s home again, along with armed outsiders, and the prospect of another clash loomed. So Namlah and her friends rushed into the residence, finding shelter and safety there.

The incident was one of many similar tense altercations that have played out across Bangladesh’s universities in recent days as students have protested against a recent High Court decision to reinstate a controversial quota system in government jobs.

This quota system was abolished in 2018 following widespread protests and its reinstatement has fuelled widespread anger and frustration among many young Bangladeshis seeking government jobs, who believe their chances have been hurt by the quotas.

The protests escalated dramatically late on Sunday night, with thousands of students across the country leaving their dormitories to demand the immediate elimination of quotas. On Monday, university campuses turned into battlegrounds, with heavily armed BCL activists clashing with students protesting the quota system. Hundreds of students were injured.

Namlah narrowly escaped harm during the afternoon, but later that night, she found herself trapped in a small room with a dozen others inside the vice chancellor’s residence compound. The students allege that BCL activists hurled bricks and even petrol bombs at them.

“We thought we wouldn’t make it out alive,” Namlah recounted. “Neither the police nor university administration came to help us. Eventually, our fellow protesters gathered in large numbers and rescued us, but several of us were seriously injured,” she told Al Jazeera.

Why did the protests escalate?

In the capital’s Dhaka University (DU), the ground zero of quota reform protests, the situation was bleaker on Monday than on previous days.

Wearing helmets and wielding sticks and iron rods, hundreds of BCL members, many reportedly from outside DU, assaulted protesters throughout the campus. Students were left bruised and bloodied. “We were peacefully marching in the DU campus, but all of a sudden the Chhatra League activists attacked us with sticks and even machetes,” one female DU student told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity.

A group of Awami League supporters even stormed the emergency department of Dhaka Medical College Hospital in the evening, where injured students were taking treatment. The attack caused widespread panic among doctors, nurses, patients and visitors, and disrupted medical services at the country’s leading medical facility.

However, BCL president Saddam Hossain insisted that the student body had been provoked.

“Those who openly identify as ‘Razakar’ must face consequences. Such individuals have no place in this country, and we have decided to politically confront the students protesting quota reforms,” Hossain stated during a media briefing on Monday.

Hossain was referring to a late-night protest on Sunday where students were chanting slogans in Bengali, meaning “Who are you? Who am I? Razakar, Razakar!” and “We sought rights, but we’ve been labelled as Razakars”.

Earlier that Sunday afternoon, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had also referenced Razakars — collaborators with the Pakistani Army in 1971, when up to three million people were killed and millions more were displaced, including to India, during the creation of Bangladesh.

“If the grandchildren of freedom fighters don’t receive quota benefits, should the grandchildren of Razakars?” Hasina said.

Hasina’s remark offended protesting students and job seekers who have been demonstrating against the 30 percent quota reserved for family members of freedom fighters from the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. They believe this quota unfairly limits their opportunities and are suspicious of the accuracy of the beneficiary list.

Explaining the students’ reaction, Nahid Islam, a spokesperson for the protesters, clarified that they were being sarcastic when they chanted the Razakar slogan, in a direct response to the PM’s comment.

But the Bangladesh government has questioned that explanation. Mohammad A Arafat, state minister for information, told Al Jazeera that until Monday, neither the Awami League nor the BCL had tried to counter the student protesters.

“Students self-identifying as Razakar” is what provoked them, he said, adding that BCL members had also been injured in the campus clashes.
Yes quota, no quota, yes quota

Yet Asif Nazrul, a law professor at Dhaka University, told Al Jazeera that the message the students intended to convey through their slogans was clear. “I doubt any student at Dhaka University would identify themselves as Razakar,” he remarked.

Nazrul also criticised the government’s response, suggesting they were eager to suppress the ongoing protests and had found a convenient pretext to do so.

Quota systems in government jobs were originally introduced to ensure representation and inclusion. Established in 1972 for freedom fighters, the quota system was discontinued but reinstated in 1996.

Currently, 56 percent of government jobs are reserved for specific groups, including the largest share of 30 percent for freedom fighters’ descendants, women, minorities and people from districts lagging on socio-economic indices.

This system has long been criticised for excluding other qualified candidates and leaving positions unfilled if designated candidates fail recruitment tests.

In 2018, amid an earlier bout of quota reform protests, Prime Minister Hasina abruptly abolished quotas in public service recruitment to quell unrest.

However, this decision was met with criticism for neglecting historical injustices and marginalising certain groups. Recently, the High Court ruled in favour of freedom fighters’ dependents, arguing that the quota removal violated their rights established in a previous court verdict.

Saiyed Abdullah, a law graduate and activist, told Al Jazeera there was a misconception about the students’ demands. “The students protesting are not pushing for the complete abolition of quotas; rather, they are advocating for a reasonable percentage of quotas” for traditionally disadvantaged communities, he said.
Has Bangladesh Lost Its Footing in the China-India Balancing Act? (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [7/16/2024 4:14 PM, Syful Islam, 1.2M, Neutral]
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last week concluded an official visit to China, a few weeks after visiting the closest neighbor, India, from June 21-22. Hasina and her ruling Awami League have been getting all-out political support from New Delhi for over 15 years, and her trips to China and India were closely watched by diplomats in the other country.

Hasina went to China with a jumbo delegation of 196 members, including her Cabinet colleagues, top government officials, and business leaders, among others.

Bangladesh’s topline expectation from this visit was securing a $5 billion loan as budget support, mainly to replenish the country’s dwindling foreign currency reserve.

Bangladesh and China have an annual bilateral trade turnover of $23 billion. Of that, less than $1 billion is accounted for by Bangladeshi exports to China; the vast majority is Bangladesh’s imports. The trade deficit with China has been putting pressure on Bangladesh’s foreign currency reserves, which are already struggling to stay afloat amid the inflation sparked by the Russia-Ukraine war. The government was forced to cut down monthly imports to below $5 billion from a usual over $8 billion a month in the past to cope with the pressure on the forex reserve.

Before Hasina’s visit to China, government officials of the two nations negotiated for several weeks over Bangladesh’s request to get $5 billion worth of Chinese yuan as budget support so that pressure on Dhaka’s forex reserve lessens. However, things did not advance as expected. China showed interest in providing the sum as a trade facility with a high interest rate, while Bangladesh was seeking it as low-cost budget support.

The situation did not change during Hasina’s days in Beijing from July 8-10. A dramatic announcement of budget support from the Chinese side was expected by many officials of the government. However, the Bangladeshi premier returned from China almost empty-handed in terms of monetary gain. China announced a financial assistance of 1 billion yuan, which is merely $137 million.

Hasina returned home early from the trip, which many media outlets took as a sign of her displeasure with the outcomes.

However, Hasina does not think that her China visit was fruitless since Bangladesh and China signed 21 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) on the occasion. On Sunday, at a press briefing following her China tour, she said that she had talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping who agreed to provide $2 billion to Bangladesh in the form of “grants, interest-free loans, concessional loans and commercial loans.” But the joint statement issued at the conclusion of her visit made no mention of such a deal, and it’s unclear how much money would be provided via each funding channel.

Experts and political analysts believe that Hasina’s “excessive devotion” to India is behind China’s unwillingness to cooperate with Bangladesh on the loan program. The Bangladeshi premier visited India just before visiting China and has made many commitments of bilateral cooperation including rail transit to India through Bangladeshi territory. Dhaka has also agreed to implement the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project with Indian assistance, which hurt China’s interests.

China had already announced a $1 billion fund to implement the Teesta water project under India’s nose. However, Bangladesh was hesitant whether India would allow this to happen, and thus did not give a final nod to the Chinese-funded project. A few months back India entered into the scene and announced its interest to fund the same project for which China had already conducted a feasibility study.

India’s expression of interest in the Teesta water project meant that China would be pushed out from the scene, which happened during Sheikh Hasina’s India visit. At the conclusion of her visit the two sides declared: “As part of our development cooperation, we will also undertake conservation and management of Teesta River inside Bangladesh with Indian assistance within a mutually agreed timeframe.” This has put the last nail in the coffin of the prospect of China’s engagement with the project, which to some extent strained the bilateral relations.

As Bangladesh’s economy is undergoing a tough time and no signs are visible for immediate recovery, experts also opine that China is now somewhat skeptical about Bangladesh’s economy, and thus hesitant to extend the loan facility as sought. Since March last year, China has not provided any new loans to Bangladesh. In 2016 China pledged to provide $24 billion in loans to Bangladesh across 34 projects but so far the two sides have signed deals for only $5.61 billion.

“When a country becomes poor, friends do not remain beside her. We didn’t get much from China and India,” Ahsan H. Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, told a local newspaper.

He said that budget support in Chinese yuan amounting to the equivalent of $5 billion could have covered the cost of imports from China, which may have helped Bangladesh to save previous dollars. India was also supposed to offer a new Line of Credit (LoC) but that has not materialized, either.

Had Bangladesh secured these loans, the forex reserve could have increased by $4 billion or $5 billion, said Mansur, who is also a former senior official of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

M. Humayun Kabir, a former ambassador of Bangladesh to the United States, also echoed Mansur’s views. He said the expectation of getting financial support from China has to take into consideration Bangladesh’s ongoing economic crisis. “I think China is also observing it,” Kabir said. “They will give money if the [economic] management is good. If the management is not good, any lender will be hesitant in this case.”

During Hasina’s China visit, he noted, there was a lot of hype but the outcome fell short of expectations. “We did not see anything about budget support, also nothing has been done about trade facilitation, and [there was] no concrete promise made about Payra port area development,” Kabir pointed out.

Prior to the trip, officials told Bangladeshi media that infrastructure development centering on Payra port would be the focus of “special attention” during Hasina’s visit.

Kabir argued that China is many times more powerful than India in terms of its ability to offer financial and economic benefits. “But I think, their own assessment about our ability, and the state of our financial management worked as factors behind not granting budget support,” he concluded.

That said, Kabir said a few positive developments came out of Hasina’s trip to China, which include the conclusion of a free trade agreement (FTA) study, continuation of duty free facilities even after Bangladesh’s graduation from “least developed country” status, opening branches of some Chinese banks in Bangladesh to facilitate trade transaction, and Chinese help in Rohingya repatriation. “The achievements are more futuristic than in the present,” he noted.

As for Sheikh Hasina’s India visit, Kabir said India has definitely gained in the short term, but it is also not possible to say where the achievements will stand in the long term. Bangladesh got some positive indications about a possible extension of the Ganges water-sharing deal and some other economic assistance, as well as the potential of getting direct access to Nepal and Bhutan.

Indian interest in the Teesta water management is a new development “but I am not sure how it will shape up in the future.” India’s government has long balked at a formal water-sharing agreement over the Teesta due to political opposition in West Bengal state. A breakthrough on the issue depends on political will, Kabir said, adding it is difficult to make a comparison about gains and losses.

“In my view, the visit was directed towards India strengthening its strategic vision both on the land and on the sea. They wanted to get Bangladesh and we have in many cases endorsed their expectations,” he told The Diplomat.

Md. Touhid Hossain, a former foreign secretary of Bangladesh, told The Diplomat that China has seriously taken the rail transit access granted to India by Bangladesh as well as the development over the Teesta water management project.

After the World Bank withdrew funding from the Padma Bridge, China helped Bangladesh to construct the bridge, which sports a four-lane highway on the upper level and a single-track railway on the lower level. Now that India has been granted rail transit, in the coming days trains laden with goods will travel through the Padma rail bridge to India’s landlocked northeastern region, which China did not take well.

Hossain said that during her India trip, apart from delegation-level meetings Hasina had a one-on-one meeting with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi where it is believed he raised Indian concerns – including the Teesta water project. The Teesta project area is close to India’s strategically important Northeast, thus India is not comfortable with China undertaking the work. For security reasons Indian officials do not want to see a large group of Chinese nationals stay and work for a long time in the Teesta water project area. Thus it became clear before Hasina’s arrival in Beijing that China has been excluded from the Teesta project.

As a result, Bangladesh made little progress on the economic issues like budget support and project loans that its government had prioritized ahead of Hasina’s China visit. The 1 billion yuan China granted to Bangladesh as assistance is a very small amount compared to the country’s present need.

“We don’t see any mentionable achievements from the China visit,” Hossain said, asserting that the MoUs signed during the trip are of no importance.

If any country is going to maintain geopolitical balance, it needs some leverage, he explained – which Bangladesh does not have now.

In the past, it was assumed that Bangladesh had been maintaining a kind of balance in relations with China and India. But many analysts feel the country is no longer at that point, as Bangladesh is showing much more interest in meeting Indian needs. China may have come to the same conclusion.

“We have become more prone to India in terms of the geopolitical point of view. Because we have taken many decisions recently despite knowing that China will be unhappy,” Hossain said.

“We have recently come out from maintaining a balanced relation with China and India,” he concluded, adding: “We are not getting any scope to keep China under consideration [while] meeting India’s expectations.”
Nepal coalition to amend constitution, change electoral system (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [7/17/2024 4:40 AM, Pranay Sharma, 15592K, Neutral]
A new coalition government came to power in Nepal when pro-China leader K. P. Sharma Oli of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and Sher Bahadur Deuba, an ally of India, of the Nepali Congress entered into a power-sharing agreement to amend the constitution to change the electoral system and bring stability to the country.

Oli was appointed prime minister on Sunday, a few days after his predecessor, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, lost a parliamentary vote of confidence and was ousted. The new coalition came to power on Monday.

Nepal has a mixed electoral system -- partly proportional representation and partly first-past-the-post -- to elect members to parliament. This system was brought in to encourage federalism and ensure representation for minorities and marginalized groups, including women, Dalits, and Muslims. But the big political parties feel this gives smaller parties too much power and opportunity to shift allegiances, contributing to instability.

The current system was adopted after a new constitution was written in 2015 and brought into force two years later. Now the bigger parties are demanding a constitutional amendment to create a first-past-the-post voting system that would curb the power of small parties and, they argue, ensure political stability.

"The decision to amend the constitution is an admission that Nepal’s experiment with federalism failed," said commentator Yubaraj Ghimire. "The 2015 constitution was rushed through without debate or consultation, and its weakness is now coming to the fore," he added.

But other experts fear moving to amend the constitution may open questions on sensitive issues like declaring Nepal a Hindu rashtra (polity), and restoring the monarchy. Both were scrapped when Nepal became a republic in 2008.

"Tampering with the constitution is risky, as it can bring up other contentious issues, including the demand for a Hindu rashtra," said Ranjit Rae, a former Indian ambassador to Nepal.

The country’s 240-year-old Hindu monarchy was abolished in May 2008 as part of a peace agreement between the Maoist rebels and democratic forces that ended an 11-year insurgency.

"The demand was to take back power from King Gyanendra’s attempt to turn into an absolute monarch and restore constitutional monarchy, not to abolish monarchy," said Ghimire. Many people in Nepal see the monarchy as a source of stability in Nepal and believe it should be restored, he added.

Rae, on the other hand, cautions that if the constitution is amended in a way that negates the achievements from 2008 onward, it could lead to broad protests in Nepal. "Opening the constitution is like kicking a hornet’s nest as more issues will tumble out, including the demand for a Hindu rashtra and restoration of the monarchy," he said. "Such a situation can pose a huge challenge not only for Nepal but also India."

Oli and Deuba have collaborated in past governments. But their coming together amid heightened rivalry between India and China, which are jostling for influence in Nepal and South Asia, has surprised many. Skeptics doubt the longevity of the new political arrangement. "Nepal is yet to develop a culture for running coalition governments," said Lokraj Baral, a veteran commentator and former Nepalese ambassador to India.

In March, Oli supported Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, popularly known as Prachanda, to become prime minister in an all-communist party coalition government. But in early July he struck a deal with Deuba and withdrew his support from Prachanda. The Maoist leader has used similar tactics against rivals in the past to seize the prime minister’s chair.

Since multiparty democracy was introduced in Nepal in 1990, the country has had 32 governments.

Rae, the former Indian diplomat, pointed out the two big parties’ collaboration may bring stability in parliament for a while but it will not bring fundamental change.

The pro-China Oli has had strained relations with India in the past but realizes he needs the support of both India and China to survive. He has already reached out to New Delhi, seeking support for a stable and fruitful partnership.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quick to congratulate Oli, posting on Monday on X, "Look forward to working closely to further strengthen the deep bonds of friendship between our two countries and to further expand our mutually beneficial cooperation for the progress and prosperity of our peoples."

China had been quick to welcome the all-communist party coalition government of Prachanda in March. It has not commented on the new dispensation, although it is widely believed that Oli will soon reach out to China.

Oli and Deuba both face multiple corruption charges, ranging from allegations of kickbacks on Chinese projects and defense deals to the "Bhutanese refugee" scandal in which senior politicians and government officials issued fake documents to get Nepalese resettled in the U.S. by allowing them to pose as Bhutanese refugees.

Observers think the two leaders will be able to slow the ongoing investigations while in government. "It is the issue of corruption, not any ideology, that has brought them together," said K. V. Rajan, a former secretary of the Indian Ministry of External affairs who also served in Nepal as India’s ambassador.

The current arrangement allows Oli and Deuba to take turns as prime minister for the remainder of the current parliamentary term, which ends in November 2027. There is no guarantee, however, that this will bring stability.

The prospect of political tension in Nepal is cause for concern for both India and China, the two big investors in the country. India has an open border that allows free movement of people and goods from Nepal. Between 3 million and 4 million Nepalese nationals study, live and work in India under a 1950 friendship treaty, according to Nepali official reports. Nepal has a total population of about 29 million.

China has also made big investments in Nepal and wants to wrap up its projects in the country under the Belt and Road Initiative. Instability in Nepal jeopardizes those projects and threatens to destabilize Tibet, which borders the country.

"Oli has kept his options open with the U.S. as well, and many in his ranks are supporters of the ‘free Tibet’ movement," said Ghimire.

Indian observers think there may be a problem for New Delhi when the time comes for Oli to hand over the reins to Deuba. "If Oli decides to hang on to power, he will fall back on China for support. And he can reopen contentious issues with India like the boundary dispute and play the nationalist card to garner support in Nepal," said Rajan.
Central Asia
Kazakh Government, Moldovan Businessman Settle Longtime Legal Battle (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/16/2024 8:18 AM, Staff, 1530K, Neutral]
The government of Kazakhstan said on July 16 that it had settled a longtime legal battle with Moldovan businessman Anatol Stati over energy-related assets.

"The parties are pleased to have reached an agreement on favorable terms, which will bring an end to all legal proceedings and the suspension of any ongoing claims across all jurisdictions," a government statement said, adding that the terms and conditions of the deal were confidential.

Stati, his son Gabriel, and two family-controlled companies, Ascom Group and Terra Raf Trans Trading, have been involved in legal battles with the Kazakh government for years.

The Statis, who invested in Kazakhstan’s oil and gas industry, claimed they were subjected to significant harassment from the state aimed at forcing them to sell their investments cheaply.

The Statis refused to sell the assets to the government and found an alternative buyer. However, they claimed, that deal fell through after the government seized the oil fields.

In 2013, Anatol and Gabriel Stati and the two companies won an international arbitration award of around $500 million against the Kazakh government.

The Kazakh government has denied the allegations, refused to pay, and filed a civil racketeering lawsuit in a federal U.S. court against the Statis and their two firms in October 2017.

In December 2017, Bank of New York Mellon in the United States froze for more than a month $22.6 billion in assets owned by Kazakhstan’s National Fund after Stati filed a lawsuit against the Kazakh government.

Stati said in January 2018 that he will demand the sale of a $5.2 billion stake in the Kashagan oil field in Kazakhstan if the Kazakh government refuses to pay an arbitration award.

In 2016, a community of investigative reporters known as RISE Moldova issued a report, saying that the Statis had been involved in controversial deals over the years and established multiple offshore companies to hide and rechannel their assets.
Kazakh Supreme Court Denies Retrial Of Activists Convicted For Almaty Airport Unrest (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/16/2024 7:26 AM, Staff, 1530K, Negative]
Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court on July 15 has denied a retrial for five activists who were handed prison sentences in July 2023 for "organizing mass unrest" at the airport in Almaty during unprecedented anti-government protests in January 2022 that turned deadly. Noted civil rights activist Aigerim Tileuzhan was sentenced to four years in prison, while the other activists -- Qalas Nurpeiisov, Nurlan Dalibaev, Ermukhamet Shilibaev, and Zhan-Aidar Karmenov -- each received eight-year sentences. Some were also charged with storming a building, vehicle hijacking, and robbery. All have denied any wrongdoing while taking part in the demonstrations.
The ‘Kyrgyz Prince’ In The White Helicopter: President Apologizes For Relative’s Extravagant Behavior (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/16/2024 1:25 PM, Baktygul Chynybaeva, 1530K, Negative]
A lavish engagement party of the Kyrgyz president’s niece in late June became the most talked about event in the Central Asian country. The groom used a government helicopter to propose, prompting President Sadyr Japarov to issue an apology. A few weeks later, the wealthy groom was arrested on drug-dealing charges.

A popular and extravagant Instagram user who also happens to be Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov’s niece, Lazzat Nurkojoeva seemingly had everything when she got engaged late last month.

But her lavish celebration of that moment sparked public outrage when it became known she arrived at the party in a government helicopter, an event she live-streamed.

The Emergency Ministry confirmed that Nurkojoeva’s fiancé had rented the helicopter, paying about $2,000 and apparently using his girlfriend’s connections for the special privilege to do so.

At the same time as Nurkojoeva was being flown to a romantic mountainside spot for the marriage proposal and celebration, large parts of southern Kyrgyzstan were suffering from heavy floods that resulted in 17 deaths, many of them young children.

The juxtaposition of events angered many Kyrgyz, who wondered why the Emergency Ministry’s helicopter was serving as a luxurious vehicle for a relative of the president instead of being used for search-and-rescue purposes.

Shortly after the hours-long engagement ceremony -- replete with bonfires and thousands of white roses -- public criticism raged over the wastefulness of the president’s relatives. This led the president to issue a public apology for his “young and immature” niece’s behavior.

Just before Nurkojoeva’s June 24 engagement party, Japarov had criticized officials for spending excessively on lavish ceremonies and had urged them to set an example in the fight against extravagance. But after the helicopter incident, he admitted that some of his family members had acted shamefully.

“I used to criticize others; now I have been criticized myself. I apologize to the [Kyrgyz] people for my niece. She is still young and she, too, sees the outrage of society,” Japarov said.

The scandal of the “Kyrgyz prince” in the white helicopter seemed to have ended with the president’s official apology. But it reawakened several days later, on July 9, with the arrest of Nurkojoeva’s fiancé, Aftandil Sabyrbekov, on charges of dealing synthetic drugs in a nightclub in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital.

Presidential spokesman Askhat Alagozev immediately commented on the arrest on Facebook, saying that "Aftandil Sabyrbekov tried to find a ‘protege’ from higher authorities to hide his illegal activities."

Japarov has not commented on the arrest.

Japarov’s ‘Eagle Eyes’ On Social Media

Japarov, the youngest president in Central Asia at 55 years of age, is an avid user of social media and is acutely aware of the power of public opinion online and its potential to cause political change and influence state affairs.

While imprisoned from 2017 to 2020, Japarov used social media sites as his primary tool to communicate with the public and build his support base as an opposition politician.

Japarov often uses his Facebook page with around 100,000 followers to discuss important state issues and sometimes even make decisions with the call, "I want to consult with the people." Examples of this are when he went on Facebook to choose a name for the new presidential building and informed people about proposed changes to the country’s flag late last year.

Yet Japarov’s government is intolerant of criticism on social media, despite the president’s ample use of it himself.

Since coming to power amid unrest in 2020, independent media, journalists, bloggers, and other government critics have experienced growing pressure, including trumped-up criminal charges, detentions, and incarceration.

Dozens of social media users have been arrested, with some jailed for at least three years on charges of “attempting to organize a coup” simply for posting criticism or opposing views.

In August 2023, opposition writer Oljobai Shakir was detained and jailed and on May 14 was sentenced to five years in prison on a charge of calling online for mass unrest.

On July 1, Japarov’s regime sentenced well-known folk singer and political activist Askat Jetigen to three years in prison on a charge of calling for a seizure of power after he criticized government policy live on social media.

International human rights organizations have warned Kyrgyzstan about its rapid drop on indexes that had recognized it as the only Central Asian country where free speech was allowed.

The crackdown on social media users, activists, and journalists is a daily reality and has led to Kyrgyzstan falling to 122nd out of 180 countries in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, a drop of 50 places from the previous year.

Japarov’s Brother And The Gold Bars

As a former opposition politician in jail before he took power in 2020, Japarov frequently criticized those in power for involving their relatives in the running of the country. The stinging criticism gave him political traction as he pledged he would not allow his relatives to wield or impact power were he in such a position.

Bishkek-based political expert and journalist Adil Turdukulov told RFE/RL that the extravagant engagement celebration by Japarov’s niece caught him off guard.

“Now Japarov wants to prove to people that he can act against his relatives by arresting his niece’s fiancé,” he said. “The absence of a search-and-rescue helicopter during the floods, coupled with the fact that one of the Emergency Ministry’s main vehicles was rented by [the boyfriend of] Japarov’s close relative, was a significant blow to his standing."

But the president’s niece was not his only relative to make headlines in Kyrgyzstan.

In May, exiled political activist Askhat Osmonov posted a video on Facebook claiming that gold bars had been taken out of Kyrgyzstan and sent to foreign countries. He linked these transfers to the Kyrgyz president’s brother, Sabyr Japarov, who had been photographed in 2022 holding gold bars in an incident that also was widely discussed on social media.

As usual, the president reacted quickly, telling the national news agency Kabar that his relatives are focused on attracting investment to Kyrgyzstan, not taking things from the country.

"When I leave office after my term ends, I will provide a report not only about myself but for each of my family members, including my children. I will detail how much money they have invested and brought from foreign countries to Kyrgyzstan; which institutions they have built; and how much money they have invested in various industries. I will also explain how they have benefited the Kyrgyz people and the country. Then you will know many truths,” Japarov promised.

Meanwhile, social media users are making sarcastic comments about his niece’s wealthy groom and his surprising arrest on serious drug charges.

The groom, Sabyrbekov, and his older brother will remain in detention until August 3 for allegedly selling thousands of doses of synthetic drugs in Kyrgyzstan.
Ethnic Tajik Journalist Arrested In Uzbekistan Over Posting Song Online (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/16/2024 7:06 AM, Staff, 1530K, Neutral]
Sources close to Uzbek law enforcement told RFE/RL that noted ethnic Tajik journalist, Salim Inomzoda, was arrested on July 13 over a song he placed on social media. Inomzoda was charged with the distribution of "materials threatening public safety." Investigators say the song performed by Tajik singer Afzalshoh Shodiev about Uzbekistan’s ancient cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, which have a significant Tajik diaspora, is of "a religious character, and contains elements of separatism." If convicted, Inomzoda, 58, faces up to eight years in prison. Civil rights activists in Uzbekistan said administrators of Inomzoda’s Tajiks of Uzbekistan Facebook account were summoned for questioning.
Indo-Pacific
Heavy Downpours and Flooding Kill Dozens Across South Asia (New York Times)
New York Times [7/16/2024 4:14 PM, Sameer Yasir, 831K, Negative]
Torrential rainfall and floods have killed more than 200 people and displaced millions across South Asia, the result of more frequent extreme weather and rapid urbanization that has pushed people into flood-prone areas.

In recent days, more than 100 people were killed in India alone and nearly 40 died in Afghanistan. Flooding and landslides have killed more than 100 people in Nepal in recent weeks. In Bangladesh, more than two million people were affected when dangerous flooding after heavy rains caused major rivers to overflow.

Swollen rivers have breached embankments, particularly in India and Bangladesh, ravaging buildings, bridges and other infrastructure. Rains have also destroyed villages and crops.

Floods are not unusual in South Asia, home to about one quarter of the world’s population. Every year, the monsoon season, which usually begins in June and lasts until September, brings rains that are crucial for millions of farmers in India and other South Asian countries. But in recent years, climate change has amplified flood threats.

Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, a research center, said extreme rainfall events in India have tripled since 1950, according to his research.

“We need to be perpetually prepared for these kind of extreme rainfall events across South Asia,” Mr. Koll said. “There is a definite shift in monsoon patterns with more extreme rainfall events and long dry spells becoming a new reality.”

Scientists say rapid urbanization and the expansion of towns and cities along river banks and coastlines have also increased chances of flood-related fatalities.

On Monday, the Indian Meteorological Department predicted heavy rains in several parts of the country this week, including in northeastern states like Assam, where floods have already affected more than 2.4 million people and about 1,340 villages are under water.

The Kaziranga National Park in Assam, a world heritage site and a home of the one-horned rhino, has lost nearly 200 animals, including 10 rhinos and 179 hog deer, officials said.

In Nepal, at least 106 people have died since early June, when torrential rains set off flooding and landslides. Recently, two buses carrying 66 passengers were swept by a landslide into a swollen river. Just three people are believed to have survived. Rescuers found 13 bodies and the rest of the passengers are still missing.

“Most people died in landslides, floods and lightning,” said Anil Pokhrel, chief executive at Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, a government agency.

The rains caused hardship for another 2,000 people, leaving many homes and farms destroyed.

In India, the downpours have tested the limits of the country’s infrastructure. Dozens of bridges in the state of Bihar were washed away, and a portion of the roof collapsed at New Delhi’s airport, one of the country’s busiest airports. Newly built roads developed large fissures in many places.

In Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, about a million people have been affected, and flash floods have turned streets into raging rivers. Railway lines and bridges have been severely damaged. Around 1,500 villages were affected and five people were killed just this week, officials said.

In an indication of how quickly disaster can strike during flooding, two 8-year-old girls were lost last week in rising waters in Assam as they followed the grandmother of one in search of missing cattle.

“They were walking behind her when they disappeared,” said Bishnu Bordoloi, the father of one of the girls. They were among two dozen children who drowned in the state.
Twitter
Afghanistan
SIGAR
@SIGARHQ
[7/16/2024 11:00 AM, 170.4K followers, 2 likes]
#StateDept’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration: Taliban running humanitarian sites for Afghan returnees, & individuals staying at these sites provided vaccinations, 3 hot meals/day, 10,000 afghanis ($136) in cash assistance, & phone SIM card https://sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2024-04-30qr.pdf#page=54
Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[7/16/2024 8:36 AM, 6.7M followers, 388 retweets, 1.2K likes]
Deeply saddened by the terrorist attack on Imam Bargah Ali bin Abu Talib in Muscat, Oman, resulting in the loss of precious lives, including 4 Pakistani nationals. My heart goes out to the families of the victims. I have instructed the Pakistan Embassy in Muscat to extend all possible assistance to the injured and visit the hospitals personally. Pakistan stands in solidarity with the Sultanate of Oman & offers full assistance in the investigation.

Imran Khan
@ImranKhanPTI
[7/17/2024 1:02 AM, 20.8M followers, 7.8K retweets, 16K likes]
On Ashura Imam Hussain AS & his family & followers fight against the tyranny & oppression & their martyrdom at Karbala remain as a beacon of inspiration for us today: to stand steadfast & fight against tyranny, for truth & justice.

Anwaar ul Haq Kakar
@anwaar_kakar
[7/17/2024 3:01 AM, 139.8K followers, 10 retweets, 42 likes]
I look forward to the forthcoming discussion addressing the challenges and opportunities of serving as the interim Prime Minister with Pakistani students studying in the United States. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GSq8YgwXIAAsGyn?format=jpg&name=900x900

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/16/2024 3:59 PM, 42.8K followers, 9 retweets, 30 likes]
What to watch in Pakistan in the coming days: Does the government go through with its decision to ban PTI? Its plan has been widely derided, including by the govt’s allies. What does the PPP, the govt’s coalition partner, say officially?

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/16/2024 11:05 AM, 42.8K followers, 14 retweets, 43 likes]
Banning Khan’s party could backfire on Pakistan (includes my thoughts) https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-why-banning-imran-khans-party-could-backfire/a-69680227?maca=en-Twitter-sharing

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[7/16/2024 1:58 PM, 8.5M followers, 2.5K retweets, 7.5K likes]
Seven members of Pakistan Bar Council have strongly opposed the appointment of adhoc judges in the Supreme Court of Pakistan. They called upon the members of The Judicial Commission and Parliamentary committee not to endorse the appointment of retired judges in the Supreme Court.
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/16/2024 11:34 PM, 100M followers, 5.4K retweets, 40K likes]
Greetings on Ashadhi Ekadashi! May the blessings of Bhagwan Vitthal always remain upon us and inspire us to build a society filled with joy and prosperity. May this occasion also inspire devotion, humility and compassion in us all. May it also motivate us to serve the poorest of the poor with diligence.

Rajnath Singh
@rajnathsingh
[7/16/2024 7:18 AM, 24.2M followers, 270 retweets, 1.1K likes]
In order to prioritize indigenization of important defence items, the MoD has notified 5th Positive Indigenisation List (PIL) of the DPSUs containing 346 major LRUs/ sub-system/ sub-assemblies/spares & components/ Raw materials etc. having import substitution value worth Rs. 1048 Crore approximately. The Industry is invited to become partner in promoting indigenisation in Defence. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2033571

Richard Rossow
@RichardRossow
[7/16/2024 9:50 AM, 29.6K followers, 70 retweets, 60 likes]
Coalition times in India are back. America needs to do a better job of building ties with India’s powerful regional leaders. My latest- the need for the U.S. to build a stronger strategy to engage Indian states. https://bit.ly/4cHaBcf
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[7/16/2024 4:52 AM, 639.2K followers, 59 retweets, 119 likes]
.@StateDept fell prey to rumours as the @StateDeptSpox himself spread #disinformation on #QuotaProtest that two were killed in the protest, which is a rumor. @bdbnp78 and @BJI_Official activists are deliberately paddling these disinfos to destabilise the situation in #Bangladesh. https://x.com/i/status/1813134620709322848

Awami League
@albd1971
[7/16/2024 12:53 PM, 639.2K followers, 40 retweets, 84 likes]
Armed cadres of #ChhatraDal and @info_shibir torched party office of #AwamiLeague in Bogura, a clear act of provocation and destabilization of law and order. This is not an act of a general student. This is political #violence. #QuotaMovement #Bangladesh #Bogra

Awami League
@albd1971
[7/16/2024 12:16 PM, 639.2K followers, 35 retweets, 84 likes]
In sync with call from #ChhatraDal leaders to use the ongoing bout of #violence as a pretext to overthrow the government, several armed caders have stormed in the room of a @bslBD1971 leader and vandalised his room at a dormitory on Rajshahi University. #QuotaReformProtest

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[7/16/2024 6:32 PM, 5.3K followers]
A breath of fresh air from #Bangladesh’s journalism. This bold & honest editorial captures how inappropriate & undemocratic (to put it very mildly) Sheikh Hasina is. The blatant criticism of Hasina’s bias towards India is also d surprisingly addressed. Well done, @NewAgeBDcom! Remarks of prime minister that are unbecoming, unacceptable https://newagebd.net/post/editorial/240269/remarks-of-prime-minister-that-are-unbecoming-unacceptable

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[7/16/2024 9:53 AM, 5.3K followers, 3 retweets, 14 likes]
Transparency International #Bangladesh (TIB) has condemned and expressed outrage over the attacks on students protesting for quota reform in government jobs, perpetrated by members of the ruling party’s student wing and external attackers. TIB condemns attacks on students protesting for quota reform https://tbsnews.net/bangladesh/tib-condemns-attacks-students-protesting-quota-reform-900876

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/17/2024 3:10 AM, 99.4K followers, 9 likes]
Impressed by the remarkable transformation of the former vegetable/meat market into a clean, beautiful, and lively complex; it represents what we can achieve if we commit ourselves to fulfilling the noble aspirations of His Majesty The King.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/16/2024 3:26 AM, 99.4K followers, 5 retweets, 33 likes]
Sat with the National Statistics Bureau to review their annual work plan. Stressed the importance of their role in delivering not just accurate but also timely data which directly influences our national policies and progress.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[7/16/2024 12:15 PM, 109K followers, 176 retweets, 170 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu attends the closing of the 36th National Quran Competition. This year’s competition took place at King Salman Mosque. A total of 1029 participants, including students from schools, atolls, and city councils, took part in it.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[7/16/2024 1:58 PM, 109K followers, 74 retweets, 71 likes]
Vice President @HucenSembe attends the closing of the 36th National Quran Competition

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[7/16/2024 3:31 AM, 258.5K followers, 31 retweets, 133 likes]
Ambassador of India H.E. Mr. Naveen Srivastava paid a courtesy call on Hon. Foreign Minister Dr. Arzu Rana @Arzuranadeuba at her office today. Various matters relating to Nepal-India relations and cooperation were discussed on the occasion. @sewa_lamsal

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_UNP
[7/17/2024 1:37 AM, 321.7K followers, 9 retweets, 44 likes]
We inaugurated the new swimming pool at Anuradhapura Central College, funded by the Government and Alumni Association. This school, where Mr C.W.W. Kannangara’s reforms began, continues to lead in educational excellence. Our focus is set on a sustainable future. By averting bankruptcy, we’ve taken the first step. Yet, without a shift to an export-driven economy, we risk repeating past mistakes. Our Economic Transformation Act and agricultural modernisation are central to this mission. We plan to establish three new technological universities supported by foreign institutions offering technical expertise. We aim to maximise agricultural output, achieve rice self-sufficiency, and develop solar energy and tourism in the region. Projects like the Trincomalee port with India will further benefit regions like Anuradhapura.
Central Asia
UNODC Central Asia
@UNODC_ROCA
[7/17/2024 2:05 AM, 2.4K followers, 2 likes]
Terrorists hide online, but their crimes leave digital trails. UNODC trains law enforcement officers from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on using digital evidence in cross-border contexts. With support from the Government of Germany. #CounterTerrorism #DigitalSecurity

UNODC Central Asia
@UNODC_ROCA
[7/16/2024 12:51 PM, 2.4K followers, 4 likes]
UNODC opened an innovative computer-based training classroom in UZ, equipping customs officers with continuous learning opportunities & crucial skills. A joint effort by @JapanGov, @Govuz & @UNODC. Read the full story: https://shorturl.at/LNpRn @MittalAshita @TMurshudlu

UNODC Central Asia
@UNODC_ROCA
[7/16/2024 6:35 AM, 2.4K followers, 1 retweet, 4 likes]
July 4-5, @MittalAshita met with the Minister of Internal Affairs Kazakhstan Mr. Erzhan Sadenov. Cooperation in combating drug trafficking, organized crime, terrorism was discussed. UNODC is committed to supporting new initiatives to engage youth and communities in crime prevention.

Furqat Sidiqov
@FurqatSidiq
[7/16/2024 7:36 AM, 1.4K followers, 1 retweet, 10 likes]
Had productive follow-up discussions today with Mr. Brandon Yoder, Deputy Assistant Secretary at @StateINL on enhancing Uzbekistan-US p’ship in combating transnational crime and promoting the rule of law. Focused on deepening our cooperation to make progress on our shared goals.

Joanna Lillis
@joannalillis
[7/16/2024 4:04 AM, 29.1K followers, 17 retweets, 26 likes]
Uzbekistan’s bill targeting "undesirables" may well be aimed at Russian nationalists making disparaging comments, but @ChrisRickleton for @RFERL makes a powerful argument that it could be wielded against foreign journalists + human rights campaigners

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/17/2024 3:04 AM, 26.5K followers, 2 likes]
Uzbekistan: Wrapping up @USAGMgov’s three-day seminar in Samarkand with 20 journalists and bloggers from around the country. @UsAmbUzbekistan told them his country is committed to support Uzbekistan’s media development, including creating free and credible information space. 1/4 @usembtashkent

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/17/2024 3:04 AM, 26.5K followers, 1 like]
Journalists and bloggers from Samarkand, Surkhandarya, Kashkadarya, Jizzakh, Navoi, Syrdarya, Ferghana, and Tashkent @USAGMgov #SolutionsJournalism workshop want more training opportunities and interaction with their American colleagues. 2/4

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/17/2024 3:04 AM, 26.5K followers, 1 like]
Uzbek media community is eager for trainings in ethics, best practices, security, and news management, say @USAGMgov Samarkand workshop participants from around the country. 3/4

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/17/2024 3:04 AM, 26.5K followers, 1 like]
Endless challenges in Uzbekistan media won’t stop them from moving forward, say @USAGMgov workshop participants. It has never been easy. Positive energy, eagerness and openness to be more effective, gaining new skills including in AI in Samarkand this week. Trainings continue in Uzbekistan. 4/4

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/16/2024 7:13 AM, 23.5K followers, 1 retweet, 5 likes]
Uzbekistan Media: Convincing people to share their stories, protecting sources, producing credible content … Andrew Lehren, @CUNY, director of investigative reporting, in an interactive session with journalists and bloggers gathered in Samarkand from Surkhandarya, Kashkadarya, Jizzakh, Navoi, Syrdarya, Ferghana, and other regions for @USAGMgov workshop.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/16/2024 7:01 AM, 23.5K followers, 1 retweet]
Andrew Lehren @CUNY talks with Uzbek journalists and bloggers in Tashkent @USAGMgov workshop on #SolutionsJournalism. Heated discussion on interviewing techniques and working with sources.

{End of Report}
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