epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Monday, July 22, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Afghanistan War Commission opens inquiry of America’s longest conflict (Washington Post)
Washington Post [7/19/2024 7:32 PM, Abigail Hauslohner, 54755K, Negative]
Against the backdrop of America’s roiling political landscape and two raging foreign wars, a coterie of former U.S. government officials and academics on Friday opened what will be an extensive examination of the United States’ 20-year foray in Afghanistan — the nation’s longest conflict.

“Today we make history,” said Shamila N. Chaudhary, co-chair of the Afghanistan War Commission. “Never before has the United States commissioned such a wide-ranging independent legislative assessment of its own decision-making in the aftermath of a conflict.”

The mission is daunting. The 16-member bipartisan panel has been tasked by Congress with determining what went wrong and what U.S. leaders could do differently the next time the United States goes to war. Their mandate encompasses policies and actions taken by four presidential administrations, the U.S. military, the State Department, U.S. allies, and many other agencies, organizations and people.

The commission has 18 months to carry out its research and until August 2026 to deliver a final public report.

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 ended the war, but delivered the country back into the hands of the Taliban, an enemy Washington spent trillions of dollars trying to vanquish beginning in the aftermath of 9/11. The bloody and chaotic exit resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghans; left thousands of American allies behind to an uncertain fate; triggered broad, bipartisan outrage; and gave rise to bitterly politicized congressional inquiries and hearings.

The Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee is expected next month to deliver a final report detailing the findings of its investigation of the withdrawal. That inquiry has featured hours of heated and sometimes emotional testimony from Biden administration officials, military commanders, veterans and their families. The committee next week intends to interview Jen Psaki, President Biden’s White House press secretary at the time of the withdrawal.

The war commission’s 4½-hour discussion Friday, held in the Washington headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, featured former ambassadors, military officers and CIA personnel as witnesses. It drew a small crowd of observers, many of whom were also connected to the war.

Chaudhary and her co-chair, Colin F. Jackson, a former Defense Department official, are cognizant of the charged atmosphere that surrounds their undertaking. The commission itself was born of the collective outrage that followed the withdrawal three years ago.

But they stressed that they seek a dialogue that is thoughtful and apolitical, even if commission members were handpicked by Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the heat of national anguish. “We are bipartisan in our composition, but our work is nonpartisan,” Chaudhary said.

It’s hard to ignore the issue of blame, they concede. It “keeps coming up in our conversations,” Chaudhary told the panelists. People want to know if the commission will name and shame; if it will deliver some measure of justice by calling out the leaders who made the worst critical decisions in the war.

The commission will try not to do that, while at the same time endeavoring to produce “a full, objective, rigorous, unvarnished and unflinching account of our performance as a government and a military,” Jackson said. “We owe it to the generation that served in Afghanistan, and the generation that will serve somewhere else.”

It isn’t just an assessment of the war’s failures. The commissioners’ report will include guidance, they said: practical advice that could be applied to other wars the United States is involved in, such as those ongoing in the Middle East and Ukraine, or to wars that have yet to happen, but someday will.

If the first hearing can serve as a guide for what commissioners are likely to conclude, it’s that so many different things went wrong.

Consecutive administrations failed to address the critical role that Pakistan — an ostensible U.S. ally — played in sustaining and shielding the Taliban, said Nader Nadery, a witness who served as a senior Afghan government official. U.S. leaders also often prioritized short-term military goals over longer-term values, and sometimes employed rhetoric that undermined the Afghan government’s credibility, he said.

There were convoluted chains of command throughout the war; disruptive personality clashes between American decision-makers and agencies; and commanding officers served tours of duty that were so short as to represent “the institutional equivalent of a frontal lobotomy,” said another witness, Ronald Neumann, a former ambassador to Afghanistan and the author of “The Other War: Winning and Losing in Afghanistan” — published 11 years before the U.S. withdrawal.

There was a terribly devised system for parliamentary elections that invited fraud, said Noah Coburn, a political anthropologist who provided testimony Friday. There was too much public meddling in Afghan politics by U.S. leaders, and too little policy input solicited from the Afghans. Poor U.S. decisions when it came to security partners, development and investments fueled corruption, which spread mistrust of the government and support for the anti-government Taliban, said Coburn. Civilian casualties, abusive warlords and poor security did that too.

It’s not that no one was saying this during the war. Much has been written. Experts and documentation of on-the-ground events were ample as they were happening, commissioners and panelists acknowledged. But often, U.S. officials failed to absorb the information, and consecutive administrations failed to use that knowledge to change course.

Jackson, the co-chair, said, “A fair question is, but what decisions are you going to look at?”

“The easy answer is we’re going to consider a much larger set of decisions than we can possibly cover in detail, and there will be a very difficult winnowing process,” he said.

Among the obvious points of interest, Jackson said, will be the decision to invade Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The commissioners will examine the decision to surge U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2009. They will look at the decision-making that went into negotiations with the Taliban. And of course, they will look at decisions related to the withdrawal.

The commissioners acknowledged that their mandate has become vast — to cynics, perhaps, so ambitious as to be almost impossible. What started as a mission to understand and to educate is also partly an exercise in collective therapy, the commissioners said, an opportunity not just for government officials, but for the larger population, and particularly veterans, to come to terms with what happened.

“For so many of us, the war still lingers in our minds. We carry the moral, physical and emotional injuries in our daily lives,” Chaudhary said. “Closure may not be possible for everyone.” But a space is needed for “civic discourse,” she added.
America’s Afghan Allies Were Promised Help But Remain in Danger or with No Status (Times of San Diego – opinion)
Times of San Diego [7/21/2024 7:34 PM, Kawser Amine, 347K, Neutral]
For 20 years, the United States was at war in my home country, Afghanistan. During those years, many of my fellow Afghans supported U.S. troops. They fought alongside Americans, helped with translation and intelligence, and risked their lives as allies. The United States needed their help.

So, when America promised to protect its Afghan allies at the war’s end, we believed them. June marked the third year of my advocacy efforts to support the Afghan Adjustment Act, which still has not passed. It’s time to keep the promise and take real action.

Since the fall of Kabul in August 2021, only about 90,000 of the 124,000 allies America evacuated have been able to come to the U.S. Many fled to Pakistan, where they remain at risk of being deported back to the arms of the Taliban. An estimated 154,000 allies couldn’t leave at all. They live in constant fear because they chose to help America. Other Afghans are struggling in third countries with stay visa issues and need immediate expatriate assistance in their pending cases, including women and single females.

Even those allies who now reside in the United States lack security. Just a small fraction—around 21,000—have been issued a Special Immigration Visa, which provides a route to permanent status here. The remaining 70,000 remain in limbo, facing potential deportation, despite proposed bills meant to help them.

It’s time to act. Legislators must pass the bipartisan Afghan Adjustment Act. The act would carefully screen Afghan allies already paroled into the country by the President and then grant them permanent residency and a pathway to citizenship. The act would also allow more Afghans currently residing outside the country to come here on Special Immigrant Visas.

Over the last decade, America allocated just 38,500 of these visas. This barely covered the Afghans, whose allyship made them Taliban targets prior to American withdrawal. Then America left—and abandoned an estimated $7 billion worth of military equipment. With that weaponry likely now in Taliban hands, there is a dire need for both more Special Immigrant Visas and refugee-status visas.

Currently, tens of thousands of vulnerable judges, lawyers, military commandos, journalists, civil society members, and women at risk remain trapped in the country alongside the wives, parents, and children of evacuated allies. The Afghan allies who are now living in America face a predicament similar to that of other foreign nationals who’ve received temporary protected status, or TPS.

Like these TPS holders, their legality is tenuous—renewable every few years if the President agrees to it. Under the previous administration, there was a concerted effort to end protections for TPS holders. There’s no guarantee the same won’t happen to Afghans in the future.

Last June, President Biden extended temporary protections—in this case called “humanitarian parole”—to the Afghans that America evacuated. This short-term executive order is the limit of his power. Only Congress can turn this band-aid into a permanent solution.

When you’re on temporary status, never knowing what the future holds, it’s tough to build a life. Afghans with humanitarian parole can work, but many are forced into low-paying, low-skilled jobs because employers are uncertain about their future residency status. I know many well-educated Afghans with highly skilled backgrounds—some former government officials—who are now driving for Uber and making Amazon deliveries.

The employment barriers among this displaced population are a significant issue. Resettlement is not welcoming in the United States, and welcoming is not destiny. We also need to increase the local and state funding opportunities since the housing crisis is a significant issue across the United States, including California.

A lack of legal resources, housing, and case management can increase the time families need to get support. Under the U.S. refugee admission system, many opportunities for Afghans and other nationals experiencing war and violence should be prioritized, including TPS extension for other nationalities who lack access.

The United States must keep its promise to Afghanistan. After 20 years, Americans abruptly pulled out and left the country, leaving behind chaos and a trail of broken promises. My fellow Afghans risked everything. They remain in mortal danger. Congress and the American public, make good on your promise—please help us.
Pakistan
Pakistan calls Israel’s Netanyahu a ‘terrorist’ (VOA)
VOA [7/19/2024 2:05 PM, Sarah Zaman, 4M, Neutral]
Under pressure from right wing protesters, Pakistan’s government declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a terrorist Friday, demanding the leader be brought to justice for alleged war crimes against Palestinians.

The statement by Rana Sanaullah, adviser to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on political and public affairs, was part of a deal with a religious political party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan or TLP, to end its days-long sit-in on a key road outside the capital.

“Netanyahu is a terrorist and a perpetrator of war crimes,” said Sanaullah, acceding to a key TLP demand. The adviser sat flanked by TLP leaders and Minister for Information Attaullah Tarar at a press conference in Islamabad.

Thousands of TLP supporters rallied near the capital last Saturday to condemn Israeli strikes in Gaza. They demanded the government declare Netanyahu a terrorist, boycott Israeli products and send aid to Palestinians.

After the rally, many continued a sit-in at a busy interchange that connects Islamabad to the neighboring garrison city of Rawalpindi, causing a severe disruption for commuters.

“We demand that he [Netanyahu] be put on trial,” the Pakistani prime minister’s top aide said Friday. “We wholeheartedly condemn this cruelty [Israel’s actions in Gaza], Israel, and all the powers that are involved in it.”

The radical TLP has a history of bringing the government to its knees through public agitation. In 2017, thousands of its supporters held a nearly three-week sit-in against an amendment to the oath for parliamentarians, paralyzing the capital.

Pakistan does not have diplomatic or trade ties with Israel, a state Islamabad has not recognized. It supports the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders.

Despite no trade ties between the two countries, many Pakistanis have called for a boycott of Israeli products as well as Western brands seen as supportive of the Middle Eastern state.

“We will not only boycott Israel, but all products related to it, and companies that are directly or indirectly involved in this cruelty or are helping those forces,” Sanaullah said, adding that the government will form a committee to research which products had links to Israel.

The government also promised the radical party it will send more than 1,000 tons of relief supplies for Palestinians by the end of the month. Since October of last year, Pakistan has sent nine humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza.

More than 38,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed and public service infrastructure decimated in Israeli operations meant to eliminate Hamas. The military action came after the militant group struck Israel on Oct 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 civilians and taking more than 250 hostages.

On Friday, the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, declared Israel’s settlement policies and exploitation of natural resources in the Palestinian territories were in breach of international law.

South Africa is pursuing a genocide case against Israel in the U.N.-affiliated court, based at The Hague in the Netherlands. While the court declined to declare Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide, it has called on Israel to halt military actions in parts of the Gaza Strip and not engage in actions that could cause further harm to Palestinians.

The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court recently sought arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three Hamas leaders, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Israel and the United States condemned the court’s action, saying Israel had the right to defend itself.

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, has called the situation in Gaza a genocide.

In April, the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a non-binding resolution Pakistan presented on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, calling for an end to the sale, transfer and diversion of military arms and equipment to Israel.
Pakistan says it arrested an al-Qaida leader who was a close aide to Osama bin Laden (AP)
AP [7/19/2024 8:54 AM, Babar Dogar, 456K, Neutral]
Pakistan counterterrorism police have arrested an al-Qaida leader who was a close aide to Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, officials said Friday.

Deputy inspector general of police Usman Gondal identified the man as Amin ul Haq and said he was nabbed by the Counter-Terrorism Department in Punjab province after a yearslong hunt. The arrest foiled possible attacks being planned by Haq in the province, Gondal said at a news conference in Lahore.

Haq’s name is included in a U.N. sanctions list of people linked to al-Qaida. An Afghan, he was accused of working as a financer for al-Qaida and supplying arms to insurgents. Gondal said he was arrested in a town near Jhelum city, but it was unclear exactly when the arrest was made.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Pakistan arrested and turned over several top al-Qaida officials to the U.S. They included bin Laden deputies Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah. Pakistan’s support for the U.S. has angered militants, who since then have attacked security forces and civilians.

On Friday, two people were killed in a roadside bombing in South Waziristan, a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban in the northwest bordering Afghanistan, local authorities said.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in violence since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021. Most of the attacks have been blamed on the Pakistani Taliban, who are also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. They are a separate group but an ally of the Afghan Taliban.

Earlier this week, insurgents killed eight soldiers when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the outer wall of an army housing complex in Bannu, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Ten insurgents were killed by troops after the attack.

On Friday, thousands of residents carried white flags symbolizing peace in a rally in Bannu demanding peace in the region. However, unidentified gunmen opened fire at the rally, killing three people and wounding two dozen others, police said. It was unclear who was responsible, and police said they were trying to control the situation.
Imran Khan’s jail interview: ‘I’m locked in a death cell for terrorists’ (The Sunday Times)
The Sunday Times [7/21/2024 12:01 AM, Christina Lamb, 109K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan has said he is being caged like a terrorist, in a rare interview from behind bars.

“I am confined in a 7ft by 8ft death cell, typically reserved for terrorists to ensure they have no contact with anyone,” he told The Sunday Times. “It is solitary confinement with barely any space to move. I am under constant surveillance by the agencies, being recorded 24/7, and I am denied basic prisoner and human rights such as visitation,” he said.

The former cricket star, 71, has been in a maximum-security prison for almost a year, convicted on three charges — corruption for allegedly selling state gifts; treason for leaking state documents; and illegal and un-Islamic marriage.

His third wife, Bushra, is also in jail. His first wife was Jemima Goldsmith, with whom he has two sons.

The interview was conducted via Khan’s lawyers because he is not allowed pencil and paper.

This month a UN working group on human rights declared his incarceration arbitrary and in violation of international law, demanding his immediate release.

Recent judgments in Pakistan have ruled in his favour. In June, the so-called Cipher Case — for leaking state secrets — was overturned, as was, on July 13, his convictions for illegal marriage and for selling state gifts such as jewellery from the Saudi crown prince.

Khan was, however, denied bail by a Lahore court over accusations that he had incited his supporters to riot in May last year after being pushed from power. Protesters stormed the home of the local army commander and stole white peacocks from his garden.

The government is threatening to ban his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which won more seats than any other in elections in February. This is despite what Khan has called “unprecedented pre-poll rigging”, including his imprisonment along with that of many of his key lieutenants and the banning of his party symbol, the cricket bat.

“The election results and the voter turnout were nothing short of a soft revolution that took place under a martial law environment,” he said. “People voted for me because they are fed up with the current system and how Pakistan is being run.”

Khan was not allowed to form a government after other parties formed an alliance against him, encouraged by the powerful military. But a Supreme Court ruling last week awarded him more seats and he insists his party “secured a significant majority of approximately 175 seats, not the 93 that were officially acknowledged after being usurped”.

Last Monday Attaullah Tarar, the information minister, declared that the government would bring proceedings in the Supreme Court to ban the PTI permanently. “We are going to impose a ban on PTI and we believe that article 17 of the constitution gives the government the right to ban political parties, and the matter will be referred to the Supreme Court,” he told journalists.

Although Pakistan has spent many years under military rule, no party has been banned, and the US State Department expressed its apprehension. “Banning a political party would be of great concern to us,” a spokesman said.

Khan said: “These games are being played to break me and my party, but by the grace of the Almighty, nothing has or will succeed.”

Zulfikar Bukhari, a friend and adviser to Khan, said the threats to ban the party were a sign of panic. “The establishment is panicking — this was a kneejerk reaction to our back to back victories in court.

“Every day Imran is in prison under their fascist politics he becomes more popular,” he added. “He’s more popular now than in the last 30 years in politics.”

Bukhari is himself in exile, as are many other PTI party members. On Tuesday he will speak in the House of Lords on the erosion of democracy in Pakistan. The session was arranged by Lord Hannan of Kingsclere and Naz Shah, the MP for Bradford West.

They will discuss the opinion issued this month by the UN working group on arbitrary detention, which called for his immediate release with compensation. It was the strongest opinion the UN has offered, said the lawyer Sarah Gogan of Harbottle & Lewis, which represented Khan in petitioning the UN.

Khan said: “This decision echoes what we have been saying for over a year. As an aside, I was the first to advocate for third umpires in cricket because I always believed it would make the game fairer. With this independent opinion, it’s no longer about taking my word for it, nor my party’s word or the government’s.

“Anyone can read the entire report and see for themselves the injustices that have occurred, and what is ultimately damaging the country and hurting its people. I urge other country leaders and human rights organisations to read the UN decision and act.”

Bukhari said the decision had buoyed Khan, whom he described as being in good spirits despite the conditions in which he is being held. “His spirits are very high — he flourishes in adversity,” he said.

Khan is keeping his morale high by keeping fit whenever possible. “I engage in whatever physical exercises I can and read extensively,” he said.

He insists he will be back. “I spend most of my time planning for the future,” he said. “Despite being caged, the entire country looks to me for hope and resilience. Most importantly, my prayers keep me steadfast, my belief in God assures me that justice will prevail over tyranny.”
Pakistan Reopens Key Border Point With Afghanistan Following Complaints (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/21/2024 10:04 AM, Staff, 1530K, Neutral]
Pakistan on July 21 reopened a key border crossing point with Afghanistan after a nine-month closure following complaints by residents. Pakistan in October closed the Chaman-Spin Boldak border that runs through Pashtun communities, ending the century-old Easement Rights, which had allowed certain communities along the 19th-century Durand Line border to cross freely. Pakistan began requiring people show valid documents like passports and visas to cross into Spin Boldak, a district in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, sparking anger. Pashtun communities on both sides of the border argued that it harmed their livelihoods and caused significant financial losses.
Thousands Stage Sit-In Protest In NW Pakistan After Military Allegedly Fires On ‘Peace March’ (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/20/2024 6:54 AM, Staff, 1530K, Negative]
Thousands of demonstrators in northwest Pakistan are participating in a sit-in protest after authorities fired on participants of a “peace march” in the Bannu district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province on July 19.

Leaders of the rally told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal that the Pakistani military fired on participants of the peace march, held as the region has experienced a spike in militant attacks.

Doctors at the Bannu district hospital said that they had received one dead body and 27 injured people following the march.

The military has so far not commented on allegations that it was responsible for the violence.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government, which has shut down mobile and Internet services in the Bannu district amid the unrest, on July 20 announced the formation of an investigative commission to look into the incident.

Nasir Bangash, a leader of the sit-in protest, told RFE/RL that the sit-in will continue until the government provides assurances that peace in the restive province can be restored.

Amnesty International sharply criticized the authorities’ use of violence to break up the march, saying that the “use of lethal force at a peaceful rally advocating for peace is unlawful” and calling for a prompt investigation to “hold to account officials responsible for the attack.”

The rights watchdog further said that restrictions on mobile and Internet services in Bannu “curtail the people’s ability to mobilize” and also “increase the spread of misinformation during emergencies and create panic.”

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has also urged the government to “hold to account those responsible for protesters’ deaths and injuries.”

“This seemingly state-sanctioned violation of citizens’ right to life and right to freedom of peaceful assembly is reprehensible and reflects a dangerous contempt for citizen-led calls for peace,” HRCP said in a statement on X on July 19.

The provincial assembly of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa denounced the violence against “peaceful protesters” in a session held late on July 19, as demonstrations spread to other cities in the province, including the regional capital, Peshawar.

Leaders of Pashtun nationalist political parties have also condemned the violence used against protesters in the Bannu district.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province has seen an increase in deadly attacks in the past two years, mostly blamed on Islamist extremist groups, including the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and affiliates of the extremist group Islamic State.

A number of deadly incidents have taken place in recent months, leading to reports that the military is considering an operation to turn the tide of rising terrorism.

While residents of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province have complained that Islamabad is not doing enough to provide security, they have also expressed fears of a large-scale operation.

Pakistani security forces have recently said they have conducted targeted operations against militants in several parts of the province.

On July 15, eight Pakistani soldiers were killed when a militant rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into the outer wall of a garrison in Bannu.
Pakistan opposition party reports ‘abduction’ of media team members (VOA)
VOA [7/20/2024 10:10 AM, Ayaz Gul, 4032K, Negative]
Pakistan’s main opposition party, led by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, said Saturday that its foreign media coordinator and several social media activists were “abducted” and have “disappeared.”

Relatives and Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, accused personnel of state security agencies of being behind the disappearances, demanding their early and safe recovery.

A spokesperson for the PTI said that among those who went missing was Ahmed Janjua, an international media coordinator working at the party’s headquarters in the capital, Islamabad.

“And due to consistent international reporting of all the atrocities that are taking place in Pakistan, now my team is being abducted along with others,” Zulfiqar Bukhari wrote on social media platform X.

“This continuous deterioration of basic human rights won’t be allowed to continue for long,” he said.

Janjua’s wife swiftly petitioned the federal high court for his early recovery. Farhana Barlas stated that, "20 people dressed in plain clothes forcibly entered their house early in the morning and conducted a search before taking him away, along with his mobile phone and laptop.”

Her lawyer, Imaan Zainab Hazir, later posted security camera video of the raid on Janjua’s home, stating that their “habeas petition” will be heard Monday.

VOA contacted but did not receive an immediate response from Pakistan’s federal minister for information and broadcasting, Attaullah Tarar, via his WhatsApp number regarding his reaction to allegations that government security agencies were behind the abductions of PTI media team members.

Earlier this month, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that PTI was eligible for around two dozen extra reserved seats in parliament, saying the party was unconstitutionally deprived of them.

Analysts say the ruling has ramped up pressure on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s weak coalition government and strengthened PTI allegations that the February 8 national elections were heavily rigged to keep the party from returning to power.

Khan has also won several other legal battles in recent days, leading to the quashing of all charges, ranging from corruption to sedition and a fraudulent marriage.

But the 71-year-old former prime minister, jailed since last August, was unable to walk out of jail because the government swiftly detained him on new charges of graft and inciting anti-state rioting, which Khan denies as frivolous.

Khan, a cricket hero turned prime minister, was ousted from power in 2022 through a parliamentary vote of no confidence after a falling out with Pakistan’s powerful military.
‘I fear they will kill me for talking’: The Pakistani poet abducted for his activism (The Guardian)
The Guardian [7/21/2024 10:00 PM, Shah Meer Baloch and Hannah Ellis-Petersen, 86157K, Negative]
It was late at night in Islamabad and Ahmad Farhad was returning from a quick trip to the shops when someone walked up behind him. “Don’t be scared, don’t scream and come with us,” the figure, dressed in civilian clothes, whispered discreetly into his ear.

Still clutching bread, eggs and jam intended for the next morning’s breakfast, Farhad went to the car without a sound. With a sinking feeling the poet recognised the vehicle, with its blacked-out windows, as one known to be used by shadowy military agencies in Pakistan for abductions.

“We have to tie your hands behind your back and put a cloth on your face,” the man told Farhad, before everything went dark. Certain he would never see his wife and children again, Farhad pleaded with those in the car to take him out with a single bullet rather than torture and mutilate him. They replied: “Don’t worry. Things don’t turn out that way.”

Farhad, known for political resistance poetry that has criticised the military for treating the constitution “like a toy”, had long feared he was a target of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. Just days before his abduction he had tweeted about threats to his life.

Pakistan’s military, the most powerful institution in the country, is notoriously intolerant of dissent and for decades has been accused of using various agencies to carry out abductions, killings and disappearances of critics, though they deny the practice. Many of those taken do not make it out alive, with families often receiving mutilated corpses, and few who do survive are willing or able to discuss their ordeal.

Speaking for the first time about his experience of abduction in May, Farhad told the Guardian he was thrown into a tiny, hot, foul smelling cell and began to become unwell soon afterwards, but was given no medical attention. Instead he was pulled in for interrogation.

His captors made it clear that his political poetry, his activism and a recent post on social media calling for Pakistan’s powerful army chief to resign, were the reasons he had been picked up.

“They asked me many times, what’s my issue with the army chief and the military?” he said. “The interrogator then pressed me harder, asking about my resistance poetry, particularly my two poems on the military and enforced disappearances. He would scream at me ‘why did you use the name of the army as a title of the poem, why do you hate the military?’”

Farhad responded that he did not hate the military or the chief but believed all should follow the constitution.

Shut off from the world Farhad did not know that his abduction had sent ripples across Pakistan, elevating him from a little-known poet to a national figure of resistance as his political verses began to be spread widely.

His wife, Syeda Urooj Zainab, filed a case in Islamabad’s high court, accusing the powerful security agencies, including Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, ISI, of being behind the abduction of her husband.

The judge summoned the security agency heads, as well as senior figures from the government ministries of interior and defence, demanding an explanation of where Farhad was. If they did not produce him, warned the judge, he would call for the prime minister to explain.

ISI and the department of defence denied knowledge of Farhad, but back in his interrogation cell the officer began to put even greater pressure on him. “He threatened me that they could easily kill me and dump my body and it would be no issue,” said Farhad. “He listed other journalists and activists who have been killed and said, ‘what happened to their cases? – nothing’.”

Two weeks after he was abducted, Farhad resurfaced in the custody of police in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir and was later released on bail. He now faces a criminal case of “obstructing” a public servant at a checkpoint. He claims he was handed over to police by intelligence agencies, and denies any incident occurred at a checkpoint.

The Inter-Services Public Relations, a media wing of the armed forces, refused to comment on Farhad’s case.

Just before his release, Farhad was told not to give any interviews, but to keep a low profile and not use social media again. However, he says he has refused to stay silent and still plans to publish a book of his resistance poems.

“I fear they will kill me for talking,” he said. “But I believe I should tell my story. I was abducted and I know who abducted me.”

The situation in Pakistan for artists, poets and critics who speak out was best summed up, Farhad said, by one of his own political poems, Fauj Nama, or Verse on the Army, which was among those that had riled his interrogators. One line runs: “We live here merely to draw our breath / The entire land of Pakistan belongs to the army.”
Pakistan demands Germany prosecute consulate attackers (VOA)
VOA [7/21/2024 1:35 PM, Staff, 4032K, Negative]
Pakistan has condemned Germany’s "failure" to safeguard its consulate in Frankfurt from being stormed and vandalized Saturday by dozens of protesters reportedly carrying Afghanistan’s national flag.

In a Sunday statement issued in Islamabad, the foreign ministry, without naming any specific nationality, described the assailants as “a gang of extremists” and decried the security breach of the consular mission, saying it endangered the lives of its staff.

“We are conveying our strong protest to the German government,” the ministry said. It urged Germany to take "immediate measures to fulfill its responsibility” under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to ensure the security of the Pakistani diplomatic missions and staff in the country.

Social media video from Saturday’s incident shows scores of people holding the tricolor Afghan national flag and jumping the fence to get into the consulate building in Frankfurt, with one of them taking down Pakistan’s flag. The protesters were reportedly shouting abuses and pelted the diplomatic facility with stones.

Diplomatic sources and witnesses in the German city confirmed the authenticity of the video to VOA, but it was not immediately known what the crowd was protesting.

Pakistani official sources told VOA that the attack was "a serious security lapse on the part of the German side.” They said German authorities did not inform the consulate staff about the upcoming protest or increase security for the diplomatic facility as per the “standard operating procedures.”

There was no immediate reaction from the German government to the attack and its denunciation by Pakistan.

Taliban authorities in Afghanistan did not comment on the incident either.

“We also urge the German authorities to take immediate measures to arrest and prosecute those involved in yesterday’s incident and hold to account those responsible for the lapses in security,” the Pakistani statement said.

Earlier, the Pakistani Embassy in Berlin also denounced the consulate attack as a “reprehensible vandalizing act.” It wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that the diplomatic mission was in contact with the German authorities “to ensure such a situation doesn’t arise again and the miscreants face legal consequences.”

The embassy appealed to Pakistanis in Germany to remain patient and calm in the aftermath of the episode.

German authorities have increasingly linked Afghan asylum-seekers in the country to criminal activities and announced last month they are considering resuming deportations of criminals to Afghanistan.

The announcement by German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser came just days after a 25-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker was accused of fatally stabbing a police officer in Manheim.

Germany ceased deporting migrants to Afghanistan after the Taliban regained power in August 2021 due to the risk of death in their home country.

"It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Interior Minister Faeser told a June 4 news conference.

She emphasized that her country’s “security interests clearly outweigh the interests of those affected” and, “We are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people” to Afghanistan and Syria.

On July 8, Germany abruptly announced the closure of its consulate in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi until further notice. It cited “imminent security concerns” but did not specify them. A consulate announcement last Friday, however, said the German diplomatic facility had “resumed normal operations.”

The abrupt closure of the German consulate apparently had surprised and upset the Pakistani hosts.

“Consulates in various cities offer important consular services and promote business-to-business ties,” Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Baloch told reporters Friday, just hours before the German consulate announced the resumption of its operations.

“Closure of operations of any consular mission in Karachi would affect these services and slow down engagement with the biggest metropolis and the financial and commercial center of Pakistan,” Baloch said.
India
What to Expect From India’s Budget, From Tax Cuts to Welfare Support (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/21/2024 11:19 PM, Ruchi Bhatia and Shruti Srivastava, 27296K, Positive]
In India’s first budget under a new coalition government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to stick to a plan of curbing the fiscal deficit, while still cutting taxes and boosting welfare spending to keep his allies happy.

Modi’s government is expected to reduce its deficit target slightly from the 5.1% of gross domestic product projected before the elections, according to economists in a Bloomberg survey. It’s also likely to focus on measures to lift consumer spending and jobs, especially in rural areas, after voters signaled their discontent with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party at the polls.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to deliver her budget speech on Tuesday at 11 a.m. in New Delhi.

A large windfall from the central bank and a surge in tax revenues as the economy expands more than 7% this fiscal year gives the government ample resources to lift spending without damaging its deficit plans.

The budget “will be an important platform for the government to signal its intent on fiscal consolidation, showcase how it plans to manage allies’ financial demands and present its vision for the next five years,” said Sonal Varma, chief economist for India and Asia ex-Japan at Nomura Holdings Inc.

Despite Modi’s weaker political mandate, and demands from his two main coalition partners for billions of dollars in spending, the budget will likely signal policy continuity and a focus on maintaining fiscal credibility, Varma said.

Here’s a look at what’s expected from the finance minister’s speech:

Deficit and Borrowing

After surging to 9.2% of GDP during the pandemic, the government has been steadily bringing down the fiscal deficit over the years, a key requirement for the country’s credit ratings to be upgraded. In February, Sitharaman had projected a deficit of 5.1% for the fiscal year through March 2025, and pledged to lower it even further to 4.5% by March 2026.

Economists in a Bloomberg survey predict the government will be able to narrow its deficit to 5% this year, largely thanks to a $25 billion record dividend from the central bank. Net direct tax collections have also grown at about 20% so far this fiscal year, faster than the full-year estimate of 12% given in the interim budget.

All this adds up to an additional revenue of 1.4 trillion rupees ($16.7 billion), according to Pranjul Bhandari, chief India economist at HSBC Holdings Plc. “We believe the government will spend one part of this bounty, and save the other,” she wrote in the note, projecting a budget gap at 4.9% of GDP in the current year.

A likely smaller deficit will allow the government to keep its borrowing needs unchanged at 14.1 trillion rupees this fiscal year, according to the Bloomberg survey. That could give an extra fillip to India’s bond market, where benchmark yields are edging toward a two-year low.

Lifting Consumption

The economy grew 8.2% in the past fiscal year, but growth in private consumption, which makes up more than half of the country’s GDP, was a much slower 4%. To give consumers a boost, the government may consider lowering personal income tax for those with the highest propensity to spend, Bloomberg News reported last month. Individuals with annual earnings of 500,000 rupees to 1.5 million rupees — currently taxed anywhere from 5%-20% — could benefit from the move.

“Tax cuts for middle-income households is a high possibility along with higher expenditure allocation for marginal and rural section of the population,” said Kaushik Das, chief economist for India at Deutsche Bank AG.

Welfare Support

The BJP will face a series of crucial state elections in coming months including in Maharashtra, Haryana and Delhi. To bolster its chances, economists expect the government to increase cash handouts for farmers and hike funds for rural housing. The government could also increase wage rates under the fixed employment program.

Local media reports suggest the government will expand the public health insurance program to cover all individuals aged over 70 years, at an estimated cost of 120 billion rupees.

Infrastructure Push

India’s economic revival since the pandemic has largely been driven by government spending on infrastructure, which has increased more than threefold since the 2018-19 budget. In February, Sitharaman raised the allocation for capital expenditure by 11.1% for the current fiscal year, taking the spending to 3.4% of GDP.

Improving infrastructure was one of the BJP’s key election pledges and economists expect the Modi government to continue prioritizing spending billions on upgrading the nation’s roads, railways, seaports and airports, along with digital infrastructure like fibre-optic lines.

Manufacturing Boost

India’s lack of jobs despite its fast economic growth emerged as a key voter concern highlighted by opposition groups. The budget may see the government trying to address some of those concerns by boosting manufacturing and job creation.

The government in February said it will expand its production-linked incentives for labor-intensive sectors, including toys and leather and footwear sector. It may also extend the concessional 15% corporate tax rate for new manufacturing entities beyond March 31, Upasna Bhardwaj, chief economist at Kotak Mahindra Bank, wrote in a note.

There could also be more support measures for small and medium enterprises, which create the most jobs in the country. World Bank data shows the share of manufacturing in India’s GDP has declined from 16% in 2015 to 13% in 2023.

Creating Jobs

According to Citigroup Inc. estimates, the government needs to create about 12 million jobs a year over the next decade to absorb those entering the labor market. Even with a 7% growth rate, India can generate only 8-9 million jobs a year, according to the investment bank.

To address the issue, the government may introduce employment-linked incentives for companies, especially in the labor-intensive sectors, to boost job creation, local media reported.
India’s Modi boasts record job creation amid opposition’s attack (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [7/21/2024 11:00 PM, Kiran Sharma, 2042K, Neutral]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been exchanging volleys with the opposition camp regarding the country’s employment situation, recently received some ammunition from the central bank, which now estimates India’s employment growth rate surged to 6% for the financial year through March, nearly double the 3.2% recorded the previous 12 months.

In a report released earlier this month, the Reserve Bank of India shared provisional data for the just-ended fiscal year showing India added 46.66 million jobs during the 12 months, taking the total number to 643.33 million in the South Asian nation of 1.4 billion.

With the government highlighting job creation over the past few years, the opposition is disputing the numbers, questioning whether these jobs were on family farms or unpaid work at home.

This is the first time the RBI, which usually only shares historical data, has given provisional estimates for a recently ended fiscal year.

Analysts have been pointing to unemployment and inflation as key factors in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party losing its solo majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, in recent general elections. While Modi secured a rare third consecutive term as prime minister, his weakened party had to rely on allies to form a government.

In the wake of the opposition’s attack on the government over growing unemployment, Modi said at an event in Mumbai on July 13 that his government has been continuously working to help workers develop skills and generate employment.

"During the past four to five years, despite the COVID pandemic, there has been a record generation of employment," he said. "Recently, the RBI released a detailed report on employment, according to which the country generated 80 million new jobs in the past three to four years.

"These numbers have silenced those spreading false narratives about employment. Such people are enemies of investment, infrastructure building and development of India. Each of their policy is [aimed at] betraying the youth and preventing employment [generation]."

Modi said that whenever a bridge, railway track, road or coach of a commuter train starts getting built, jobs open up. "As the pace of infrastructure construction is accelerating in India, the pace of employment generation is also growing," he said. "In the times to come these opportunities are only going to rise further with new investments."

The Modi government, meanwhile, blasted a recent research report by Citigroup that predicted India would struggle to create sufficient job opportunities even with 7% economic growth. India’s gross domestic product grew 8.2% for the fiscal year ended March, up from 7% the previous financial year.

In a July 8 statement, the Indian Ministry of Labour and Employment cited data from the country’s periodic labor force survey and the RBI to conclude that India had generated more than 80 million employment opportunities in the four years through March 2022.

"This translates to an average of over 20 million employments per year," the statement says, "despite the fact that the world economy was hit by COVID-19 pandemic during 2020-21, which contradicts Citigroup’s assertion of India’s inability to generate sufficient employment."

Despite the new numbers, the country’s opposition bloc, led by the Indian National Congress, which emerged stronger from the general elections, has been ramping up its criticism of Modi’s jobs record.

"The ‘disease of unemployment’ has taken the form of an epidemic in India, and the BJP-ruled states [of the country] have become the ‘epicenter’ of this disease," Congress leader Rahul Gandhi posted on X on July 11, in Hindi. Gandhi shared a viral video showing a stampede-like situation in a district in western Gujarat state. The footage captures the situation when nearly 1,000 people turned up for walk-in interviews at a company looking to fill about 40 vacancies.

Gujarat, Modi’s home state, is ruled by his BJP. Harsh Sanghavi, a minister in the state government, said the video attempts to defame Gujarat.

"The walk-in interview [advertisement] clearly states that experienced candidates are needed, implying they are already employed," he wrote on X. "Thus, claiming these individuals are unemployed is baseless."

Jairam Ramesh, Congress party general secretary (communications), said in a statement on July 15 that the Modi government’s forthcoming budget, due on Tuesday, would "undoubtedly make use of the RBI data to paint a rosy picture of the economy."

"The reality on the jobs front, however, is extremely grim -- both because of mass unemployment and an abundance of low-quality employment. This dual tragedy will certainly get overlooked in the budget speech next Tuesday," he added.

Ramesh said that a large part of the reported job creation growth comprises unpaid household work done by women as employment.

"Amidst the poor economic climate, the share of salaried, formal employment in the labor market has decreased," Ramesh said. "Workers are moving to low-productivity informal and agricultural jobs. This is an economic tragedy."

The RBI report’s data measuring industry-level productivity and employment contradicts figures shared by private institutes.

According to the Mumbai-based think tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, the country’s unemployment rate rose to 8% in the financial year through March, from 7.6% and 7.7% in the preceding two years. The think tank’s monthly figures are starker. The unemployment rate for June grew to 9.2%, up from 7% in May and 8.5% 12 months earlier, it said separately.

V. Upadhyay, a retired economics professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, opines that the RBI data could be talking about "low-paying, temporary or unpaid jobs," citing examples of people working on family farms and in their own homes and shops, especially "because of the lack of well-paying jobs."

"People from rural areas who are unable to find jobs or have lost jobs in cities," he told Nikkei Asia, "are returning to their homes and mainly working in the agriculture sector, probably on very low wages."
India to seek licences to scout Pacific Ocean for critical minerals (Reuters)
Reuters [7/22/2024 4:23 AM, Neha Arora and Mayank Bhardwaj, 5.2M, Neutral]
India will apply for licences to explore for deep-sea minerals in the Pacific Ocean as it competes to secure supplies of minerals critical for energy transition technologies, a top government scientist told Reuters.

The UN-backed International Seabed Authority (ISA) has issued 31 deep-sea exploration licences, including two for India in the Indian Ocean, but is yet to allow mining because the 36-member body is still working on regulations.

The 36-member ISA council is meeting in Jamaica this month to negotiate the latest draft of a mining code.

M. Ravichandran, the top scientist at India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences, said his ministry will work closely with India’s mining industry as it readies to apply next year for exploration of seabed minerals in the Pacific.

India’s critical minerals plans in the Pacific have not been previously reported.

China, Russia, and some Pacific Island nations have already secured exploration licences for the Pacific Ocean.

India plans to focus on the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast plain between Hawaii and Mexico known to hold large volumes of polymetallic nodules containing minerals used in electric vehicles and solar panels including manganese, nickel, copper, and cobalt.

First discovered by British sailors in 1873, the potato-shaped nodules take millions of years to form.

RESERVOIR OF MINERALS

Unlike China, India lacks seabed mining expertise and will take at least three to four years before it is ready to extract minerals from the ocean’s depths, experts said.

"We have done a lot of work on the deep sea mining technology but not perfected (it). In that aspect, we are not yet ready," said M. Rajeevan, former chief of India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences.

Opponents of deep-sea mining say that not enough is known about its impact on marine ecosystems.

"I am not confident that current technologies and methods can overcome the environmental concerns," said Pradeep Singh, an ocean governance specialist at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam, Germany.

Some 27 countries have called for a moratorium or suspension of all ocean mining-related activities, but some Pacific nations including Nauru and Cook Islands favour deep-sea mining. Nauru is expected to submit a mining license application to the ISA on behalf of Canada’s The Metals Company (TMC.O)
, opens new tab later this year.

India also expects to receive two more exploration permits from the ISA this year for the Indian Ocean, focused on the Carlsberg Ridge and Afanasy-Nikitin Seamount regions, known for polymetallic sulphide deposits and ferromanganese crusts, Ravichandran said.

The permits last for 15 years, according to the ISA website.

Polymetallic sulphide deposits contain metals such as copper, gold, silver and zinc. Ferromanganese crusts are known for cobalt, nickel, manganese, platinum and rare earth elements among other resources.

India, which relies on imports of raw materials such as copper and lithium, has listed 24 minerals as "critical" for energy transition. It is also scouting for overseas mineral assets to meet its rising green energy requirements.

"This is like racing," Ravichandran said of the urgency to seek seabed minerals.
India’s hidden COVID deaths: Was the toll in 2020 eight times higher? (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [7/19/2024 11:09 PM, Yashraj Sharma, 20871K, Neutral]
India’s actual death toll during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged the world’s most populous country could be eight times higher than the government’s official numbers, reveals a new study.

While that initial wave of the virus caught the world off guard, leaving governments and health systems scrambling for responses, India, after implementing a strict lockdown, appeared to have escaped the worst of its effects. The country was devastated by the delta variant in 2021 when hospitals ran out of beds and oxygen, people died gasping outside healthcare facilities and rows upon rows of smouldering pyres chequered cremation grounds across the country.

But the new research suggests that the first wave, while not as deadly as the one in 2021, wrought far greater devastation than has been acknowledged until now.

What does the new research show?

The study, co-authored by 10 demographers and economists from elite international institutes, found that India had 1.19 million excess deaths in 2020, during the pandemic’s first wave, compared to 2019.

That’s eight times India’s official COVID-19 toll for 2020, of 148,738 deaths. The study was published Friday in the Science Advances publication.

The numbers in the research, based on the Indian government’s 2019-21 National Family Health Survey (NFHS), a comprehensive report on the state of the country’s health and family welfare, are also 1.5 times the World Health Organization’s (WHO) estimate for India’s COVID-19 death toll in 2020.

India’s own total count of deaths from the virus until the end of 2021 stands at 481,000.

But the new research also uncovers deep inequalities among the pandemic’s victims – based on gender, caste and religion.

Did COVID kill some communities disproportionately?

The research found that in 2020, the life expectancy of an upper-caste Indian of the Hindu faith went down by 1.3 years. By contrast, the average lifespan for people from ‘scheduled castes’ – communities that for centuries faced the worst discrimination under the caste system – went down by 2.7 years.

Indian Muslims suffered the worst: Their life expectancy went down by 5.4 years in 2020.

These communities had lower life expectancy at birth relative to high-caste Hindus even before the pandemic, the study noted. “The pandemic exacerbated these disparities,” it added. “These declines are comparable or larger in absolute magnitude to those experienced by Native Americans, Blacks, and Hispanics in the United States in 2020.”

“Muslims have been facing marginalisation for a long time, and it has been intensified in the last few years,” said Aashish Gupta, one of the authors of the study and a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Oxford.

“We do not have any data to suggest that one group or community had more infection than others,” Gupta told Al Jazeera. “However, when Muslims did get COVID, findings show that they were really shunned, faced stereotypes and lacked access to healthcare. The marginalised communities were left to their devices.”

T Sundararaman, a public health expert who has served as executive director of the National Health Systems Resource Centre, the Indian Ministry of Health’s think tank, said that this trend is “consistent with what we know about how the disease affects mortality rates”.

“The consequences are more pronounced upon more marginalised sections … everything adds on,” he said.

Women were more vulnerable than men

The study found that women also suffered more than men. While the life expectancy among Indian men fell in 2020 by 2.1 years, it fell an extra year for women. This contrasts with the global trend – overall, across the world, the life expectancy of men fell more during the pandemic.

“There are several aspects, including the longstanding gender-based discrimination and inequality in resources allocation, in a largely patriarchal society, that contribute to higher female life expectancy declines,” said Gupta. “We knew that women were particularly vulnerable in Indian society but the difference was shocking to us.”

The youngest and oldest Indians saw the steepest increases in mortality rates, but the researchers caution that this could be because of disruptions to public health services, including childhood immunisations, tuberculosis treatment and other indirect effects of COVID-19.

What do these new numbers say about India’s COVID-19 response?

While 481,000 Indians died from the pandemic, according to the government, the WHO estimates that the death toll actually stands at between 3.3 million and 6.5 million Indians – the highest for any country.

The Narendra Modi-led government has dismissed the WHO numbers, arguing that the model used by the United Nations body for calculations may not apply to India.

But it is not just global bodies. Independent public health experts and researchers have repeatedly accused the Indian government of undercounting its dead amid the pandemic. “The government’s efforts have been far shorter than what is required to address the inequality in access to healthcare,” Sundararaman told Al Jazeera. “The government needs to bring out the data in public for scrutiny. Nothing can be gained by not engaging with these studies,” he added, referring to the findings in the latest research.

‘Release the data’

When the pandemic hit, Gupta said that researchers like him believed that “the government would understand the importance of good mortality data”. Instead, he said, “things that were earlier available are not being made public any more”.

The new study only extrapolates the numbers for 2020 due to the absence of quality data to read corresponding figures for 2021 when the Delta variant struck. “There are just data gaps everywhere we look,” added Gupta. “The estimates for 2021 are expected to be even higher than 2020.”

Prabhat Jha, director of the Centre for Global Health Research in Toronto, who was among the experts who backed the WHO’s excess death calculation, said, “From our understanding and forthcoming work, the Delta wave was way more deadly than 2020.”

“Our estimate for the whole period [of the pandemic] was about 3.5-4 million excess deaths and nearly 3 million were from the Delta wave,” said Jha, adding that he finds the new study’s estimations for 2020 “much higher” than he had expected.

Jha cited disruptions in data collection for the NFHS survey during the pandemic as a factor that could have affected the quality of the data used for the new research.

But Gupta argued that the authors put “a number of data checks in the paper that suggest that data quality was not compromised because of the pandemic”. The authors of the study also noted that the sample is “representative of one-fourth of the population”.

All the experts agree on one thing: Greater transparency in data collected by the government could tell India once and for all how many people it lost to the pandemic.

“The Indian government can seal this entire debate by releasing the data that has direct evidence on the excess deaths,” said Jha.
Modi’s embrace of Putin is a calculated diplomatic gamble (The Hill – opinion)
The Hill [7/21/2024 3:00 PM, Imran Khalid, 18752K, Neutral]
For obvious reasons, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Moscow, his first since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, stirred significant global attention. Modi’s embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin occurred amidst the grim backdrop of a missile strike on a Ukrainian children’s hospital, eliciting strong condemnations from critics, including Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who labeled Modi’s visit “a huge disappointment.”

The United States also voiced its concerns over India’s ties with Russia, highlighting the delicate diplomatic balancing act Modi faces. However, Western critiques of Modi’s visit overlook the complexities of the Russia-India relationship, which remains crucial for both nations. For New Delhi, nurturing this relationship is a crucial test of its diplomatic agility. The India-Russia bond, forged during the Cold War, remains robust.

Russia has become energy-thirsty India’s largest oil supplier, a vital source of fertilizers, and a key provider of grain. Trade between the two nations has surged dramatically. Before the Ukraine conflict, a $25 billion annual trade target seemed lofty. Today, that figure has ballooned to $65 billion, with Modi and Putin ambitiously aiming for $100 billion by 2030. This growing economic partnership underscores a broader strategic alignment, positioning India as a pivotal player in global geopolitics.

While the West may view India’s engagement with Russia with skepticism, it is clear that New Delhi values its historical ties with Moscow. For Modi, strengthening this relationship is not just about trade; it’s about securing India’s strategic interests in a turbulent global landscape. Modi’s diplomatic maneuvers reflect a calculated strategy to elevate India’s status — and his own after less-than-expected electoral performance — on the global stage.

With a keen sense of realpolitik, Modi aims to capitalize on others’ conflicts to bolster his country’s and his own international standing. His ambition is to position India as a pivotal power, sought after by both democracies and autocracies. Building stronger ties with Russia serves India’s immediate strategic interests. Modi’s game plan includes inserting India between Beijing and Moscow, thereby preventing a closer alliance between the two. This is crucial for India, particularly as it faces potential conflicts with China over territorial disputes in the Himalayas. Russia’s neutral stance could be crucial if conflict were to erupt closer to India’s borders.

Russia’s deepening dependence on China poses a significant challenge for India, stirring concerns that Moscow could become a subordinate partner in light of the growing economic, demographic, and technological disparities between the two giants.

The strengthening of Russia-China ties creates a precarious balance, potentially sidelining other global players. India’s strategic partnership with Russia introduces a new dynamic, allowing New Delhi to counterbalance China’s influence in Eurasia. By aligning closely with Russia, alongside its alliances with the U.S. and Japan, India is trying to enhance its position within the Asian security framework. This trilateral alignment provides India with a strategic advantage over China, asserting its role in regional stability.

Moscow, aware of India’s apprehensions, has steered its relationship with New Delhi carefully, acknowledging India’s ties with Western allies while maintaining its partnership with Beijing.

Oil is another key factor. Since the onset of the war and the implementation of the Western price cap on Russian crude, India has emerged as a major beneficiary, importing discounted oil that has boosted its industries. This strategic importation has reportedly saved India around $7.9 billion between April 2023 and March 2024, making it the second-largest importer of Russian oil after China.

This influx of cheap oil has not only supported Indian industry but also indirectly funded Putin’s war efforts in Ukraine. Critics may question Delhi’s ethics, but India’s response highlights a pragmatic approach: By purchasing Russian oil, it claims to help stabilize global oil prices. Modi’s geopolitical acrobatics, therefore, are not just about diplomacy but about securing strategic and economic advantages for India in an increasingly complex world.

India’s trade imbalance with Russia has become a pressing issue for New Delhi. Despite a total trade volume of $65 billion, India’s exports to Russia are a meager $5 billion. This stark disparity highlights an unsustainable economic relationship. Additionally, India harbors growing concerns about Russia’s ability to meet its defense commitments, especially in light of Western sanctions affecting semiconductor chip supplies. For India, securing timely delivery of defense spare parts and the S-400 systems is crucial, which was major part of Modi’s agenda in Moscow.

But Prime Minister Modi’s overtures to Vladimir Putin have challenged the idea of Russia’s global isolation. Modi’s visit forms part of a broader diplomatic trend. Before meeting Modi, Putin engaged with Central Asian countries at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kazakhstan, where he also interacted with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Additionally, Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he affectionately calls his “dear friend,” a sentiment reciprocated by Xi.

Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s self-proclaimed mediator in the Ukraine conflict, also visited Moscow. This series of diplomatic engagements suggests a growing line of international leaders seeking dialogue with the Kremlin. Despite Western efforts to isolate Russia, these meetings denote a persistent global connectivity.

Putin is using his diplomatic outreach to assert his vision of a declining U.S. and a rising multipolar world. By forging ties with global partners like India, he not only strengthens Russia’s position but also sends a message to Beijing. Putin’s strategy involves demonstrating that Moscow has a range of international relationships, including with one of China’s major rivals, to avoid over-reliance on Beijing.

Yet, this diplomatic balancing act comes with significant risks. China wields substantial economic influence over Russia, a leverage that India cannot match. Nearly half of Russian oil and gas exports are directed towards China, which also supplies critical industrial equipment and electronics to Moscow. By diversifying his international partnerships, Putin aims to remind China of the complexities in their relationship, ensuring that Moscow remains an influential player in the global arena.

Modi’s recent embrace of Vladimir Putin has sent a clear signal: Russia remains integral to India’s strategic calculus, despite Western concerns. This visual declaration illustrates New Delhi’s determination to prioritize its strategic interests over external pressures. India’s stance exhibits confidence that the West values its partnership as much as India does theirs, risking strained relations and strategic complexity in the region. Modi’s visit to Moscow highlights the importance of diplomatic engagement and strategic autonomy but also reveals the complex tensions inherent in India’s foreign policy strategy.
NSB
Bangladesh Scales Back Policy on Public-Sector Hiring That Sparked Unrest (New York Times)
New York Times [7/21/2024 4:14 PM, Anupreeta Das and Saif Hasnat, 831K, Neutral]
The Supreme Court of Bangladesh on Sunday drastically reduced the number of government jobs reserved for war veterans and their descendants, a momentous decision spurred by violent student protests that had resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people and brought the country to a standstill.

Under the court’s orders, Bangladesh will now reserve only 5 percent of government jobs for the children and grandchildren of those who fought for the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971, according to Shah Monjurul Hoque, a lawyer representing student groups. That is down from a quota of 30 percent for the group.

The court ruling also orders the reduction of quotas for some other groups, and abolishes quotas for women and those from certain districts. It cuts the quota of jobs for ethnic minorities to 1 percent, down from 5 percent, but leaves in place the 1 percent of jobs that are already reserved for those with disabilities.

In all, the ruling shrinks the number of reserved jobs to 7 percent from 56 percent, a move that will open up many more civil service jobs to university students, who had called the old system unfair and demanded its overhaul.

Since July 1, thousands of students have been protesting the reinstatement of the quota system, which had been abolished once, in 2018, before being restored this year.

The protests escalated into violence when the student wing of the Awami League, the political party of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, began attacking the protesters. Last week, the government deployed the police and paramilitary forces to contain the violence, but the students did not back down. On Friday, the government declared a curfew and brought in the army to quell the protests.

The quota system was put in place by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh, who led the fight for independence from Pakistan. Mr. Rahman, the father of Ms. Hasina, reserved government jobs as a reward for those who fought in the war. In 1997, and then again in 2010, the quotas had been expanded to include the children and grandchildren of so-called freedom fighters.

Students had labeled it an unfair system and called for most of the government jobs to be filled on merit alone. In June, the high court had reintroduced the quotas after descendants of the freedom fighters made their case. When the protests began, the Supreme Court paused their reinstatement, pending a ruling, which arrived on Sunday.

In delivering its verdict, the top court also asked students to return to class, Mr. Hoque said.

“As the demands of students are met, they should stop the protests,” Am Amin Uddin, Bangladesh’s attorney general, told reporters after the verdict.
Bangladesh Orders Curfew in Effort to Quell Deadly Unrest (New York Times)
New York Times [7/20/2024 4:14 PM, Saif Hasnat and Anupreeta Das, 831K, Neutral]
The authorities in Bangladesh have ordered a nationwide curfew and deployed the army as clashes between student-led protesters and the police and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of people and brought Dhaka, the nation’s capital, to a halt.

The curfew, announced late on Friday, was imposed indefinitely, but government officials who were not authorized to speak publicly said the government was hopeful that things would calm down by Monday, although they added that the situation was fluid. Officials said the army was needed to help curb vandalism and restore order.

Across the country, university students have been agitating for weeks about a quota system for government jobs that they say limits their opportunities by benefiting only certain groups, including the families of those who fought for independence from Pakistan.

Officials of the Awami League, the political party led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, have said they want to negotiate with the students. But student leaders have held their ground, refusing to hold talks until the quota system is permanently removed.

The demonstrations at first were peaceful. But public anger against Ms. Hasina grew quickly as police and paramilitary forces tried to disperse the protests with increasing force, including by firing rubber bullets and pellets. Protesters armed with sticks and bats fought with the police and counterprotesters. Casualty counts vary: by Friday, government officials put the death toll at 33, but activists said at least 60 have died.

Facebook and other social media platforms have been awash with videos of violent clashes, and multiple news outlets carried videos showing state buildings that the students had set on fire.

Earlier this week, the government shut down internet connectivity in the name of public safety, saying that such a move was necessary to stop the spread of rumors and disinformation. But it also had the effect of stopping protesters from sharing information and making plans on social media, and choked the flow of information in and out of the country.

As reports of deaths have mounted, human rights groups condemned the security forces’ crackdown and the internet shutdown.

“The unlawful force used against protesters shows a callous disregard for the right to life,” Amnesty International said in a statement on Friday.

The group said that blanket internet shutdowns sow instability and panic: “It is reckless to impede access to information during what has been a week of escalating violence and heavy-handed crackdown on student-led protests across the country.”

This is not the first time that Bangladesh has enforced a curfew. In 2007, an army-backed interim government imposed curfews in six of the country’s largest cities to quash unrest by students demanding an end to emergency rule. The curfew cleared the cities of protesters, forced residents to stay home and briefly shut down mobile phone service.
Behind Bangladesh Protests, Rage Over Inequality (New York Times)
New York Times [7/21/2024 3:47 PM, Anupreeta Das, 3994K, Neutral]
The video, taken this month, shows a Bangladeshi protester wearing a black T-shirt and standing on one side of an empty street. His arms are outstretched, and he is holding a stick in one hand.

Across the street stand several police officers, wearing bulletproof vests and helmets and pointing their guns at him. He does not move, daring the officers to shoot.

They begin to fire.

As Bangladesh was going through one of its worst bouts of violence since it gained independence in 1971, the video — verified by the news agency Storyful and carried by multiple television channels in the country — came to symbolize the helplessness and defiance of student protesters demanding the reform of a system of preferential treatment for coveted government jobs.

The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina responded to the escalating protests by deploying ever greater force. Officials shut down the internet. Paramilitary troops were called in. A curfew was declared. Protesters were beaten, and more than 100 were killed. Late on Friday, the government declared a nationwide curfew and brought the army in to restore order. On Saturday alone, the police reported that 12 people had died.

On Sunday, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh stepped in with a ruling that was a significant concession to the protesters — and one that could open up job opportunities for thousands of students.

The streets of Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, were mostly empty after the verdict came down. A few protests were still going on, and helicopters were circling overhead as military patrols drove around the city. Some students said that they would continue to protest until the bill supporting the ruling was formally passed.

The protests erupted out of students’ anger at a quota system for public-sector jobs that benefited certain groups, including the families of war veterans. Collectively, the quotas added up to 56 percent of all government jobs.

Under the Supreme Court’s orders, Bangladesh will now reserve only 7 percent of those posts, a move that will open up many more civil service jobs to university students, who had called for a merit-based system.

The children and grandchildren of those who fought for the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971 will have a quota of 5 percent, down from 30 percent. The ruling abolishes quotas for women and for those from certain districts. It also cuts the quota of jobs for ethnic minorities to 1 percent, from 5 percent, but leaves in place the 1 percent of jobs that are currently reserved for people with disabilities.

Analysts say the weekslong revolt reflected a broader resentment over the uneven distribution of wealth and opportunity in an economy that has begun to wobble after years of rapid growth.

The protests expressed the “frustration many people feel about how economic growth has been uneven, and there is huge inequality and corruption,” said Pierre Prakash, director of the Asia Program at the International Crisis Group. “The quota protest is just the manifestation of a widespread malaise that’s not just about quotas but also economic and political.”

In recent decades, Bangladesh’s economy has lifted millions out of poverty on the back of a robust garment-export industry. But the coronavirus pandemic hit hard, with consumers around the world cutting back on clothing purchases and remittances from the diaspora falling. At the same time, consumers endured an inflationary burst, with food and fuel costs rising sharply.

Inflation remains high at 10 percent, and the pace of job creation has slowed. As of 2022, the youth unemployment rate, at 16.1 percent, was about three times as high as the overall rate.

Public-sector jobs are desirable because they are stable and prestigious, and they come with generous benefits. But they are tough to obtain. Every year, roughly 4,000 government positions open up, and more than 300,000 students compete for them.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s founding leader and father of the current prime minister, Ms. Hasina, created the quota system in 1972 to ensure that the thousands of men and women who fought in the war of independence from Pakistan would be taken care of.

The quota was extended in 1997 and in 2010 to include the children and then grandchildren of war veterans, leading to the perpetuation of a favored class that many deemed unfair, especially since many of the fighters had retired or died.

Ferdie Hossain, 34, an alumnus of the University of Dhaka, where the protests started, said the idea of quotas for those known as freedom fighters made sense as a reward at the time. People were even willing to tolerate the extension of those quotas for the offspring of those fighters, said Mr. Hossain, who left Dhaka in 2009 and now works as a financial analyst in Wales. “If it’s the family and children, it’s fine,” he said.

But the anger began building after the quota was extended to the freedom fighters’ grandchildren in 2010, he noted.

Over time, guaranteed government jobs created a “political class” and a hierarchy, as well as a class of wealthy people, said Saad Hammadi, a policy and advocacy manager at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario. That, along with the rising cost of living and clampdowns on free expression, brought Bangladeshis to this moment, Mr. Hammadi added.

“It was a volcanic eruption of all the frustrations people had been living with,” he said.

Other factors fueled the anger, including corruption. Last year, Bangladesh was ranked No. 149 out of 180 countries on an annual corruption index released by Transparency International, a global nonprofit.

Students and analysts said it was not unusual for someone to bribe an official for a government post or for the questions to an exam. Local papers recently reported on a long-running scheme to leak exam question papers, including those for the Bangladesh Civil Service exam, which is the qualifying test for a government job.

Anti-quota protests have erupted many times in the past two decades. The most recent demonstrations had their roots in a student movement that started in 2018 and that led Ms. Hasina to abolish the system. But after a lawsuit by the descendants of some freedom fighters, a court in June reinstated the quotas, which set off renewed protests.

Initially peaceful, the demonstrations intensified after a news conference in which Ms. Hasina called the protesters “razakars” — a derogatory term for those who supported Pakistan during Bangladesh’s independence war.

“We demanded rights, but we got called ‘razakar,’” students chanted for days on the streets of Dhaka. As their cries faded amid the government’s crackdown, some Bangladeshi emigrants took up the cause. Last week, around 1,000 protesters gathered in Times Square in Manhattan, chanting, “We want justice.”

Mr. Hammadi, who is from Bangladesh, said he had felt helpless and heartbroken, especially when he saw the video clip of the student with his arms outstretched.

“It could be a heroic representation of a student protest for justice,” he said of the images.
Toll in Bangladesh rises beyond 100 as Dhaka falls quiet under curfew (Washington Post)
Washington Post [7/20/2024 9:54 AM, Azad Majumder and Rebecca Tan, 54755K, Negative]
Life in the Bangladeshi capital ground to a halt Saturday as the government enforced a curfew to quell violent clashes between student protesters and security forces.

Shops and businesses were closed and roads were largely empty in the typically congested city of 10 million people, save for military and paramilitary personnel on patrol. Late on Saturday, scattered street battles were reported across Dhaka. Sweeping restrictions on the internet imposed on Thursday remained in place.

According to a Washington Post tally of hospital and police reports, at least 110 people have been killed in the demonstrations over the past four days — the most of any protests in Bangladesh in over a decade. Police forces said several of their personnel are among the dead. Thousands of others have been wounded.

Mohammed Abir, a medical examiner at the morgue at Dhaka Medical College hospital, said he received 33 bodies Friday evening.

The U.N. humans rights chief, Volker Türk, on Friday called the violence “shocking and unacceptable” and urged restraint. There needs to be “impartial, prompt and exhaustive investigations” into the attacks against students, he said, adding that he was especially worried about the actions of the government’s paramilitary police units, “which have long track records of violations.”

Dhaka and several other major Bangladeshi cities have been engulfed this past week by protests against a new governmental policy of reserving a portion of civil service jobs for specific groups, including descendants of the nation’s freedom fighters. The quota system, which the protesters see as unfair, has fueled explosive anger toward the government under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which has deployed increasingly draconian methods to quell the unrest.

Leaders of the student protest movement told reporters they met with government officials Saturday to convey a list of demands, including an overhaul of the job quota system, the resignation of certain cabinet ministers, and immediate trials for those responsible for the killing of students.

The government must release student protesters who have been arrested, Abdullah Saleheen, a student activist, said in an interview. “Until that happens our protests will continue,” he added.

Calls on Saturday from The Post to the Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry and Home Affairs Ministry, as well as the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka, went unanswered.

In an alert Saturday, the embassy described the situation as “extremely volatile and unpredictable,” advising staff to shelter in place. “The Bangladeshi Army has been deployed nationwide. … Guns, tear gas, and other weapons have been used in the vicinity of the U.S. Embassy,” the alert said.

Earlier Friday, the State Department issued a travel advisory for Bangladesh, urging U.S. citizens to reconsider travel “due to civil unrest” in Dhaka.

On Friday, protesters stormed a jail in the district of Narsingdi, northeast of the capital, freeing hundreds of inmates. Police posts across Dhaka were set on fire as paramilitary and military forces deployed tear gas, rubber bullets and smoke bombs to disperse large crowds.

At the end of the night, the government announced a nationwide curfew, ordering people to stay home until 10 a.m. Sunday local time. There was a two-hour window on Saturday from noon to 2 p.m. for public movement.

Internet services have been shut down and mobile services disrupted in a near-total “blackout” that has left many of the country’s 170 million people unreachable. Banks have reported disruptions in operations.

Bangladeshi officials say they have slowed internet connectivity to stop the spread of misinformation. But in a letter, a coalition of more than 300 digital rights groups said it is likely to have the opposite effect by reducing people’s ability to counteract misinformation and spurring panic. “Government agencies have a duty to ensure that people can access open, secure, and unrestricted internet when they need it the most,” the #KeepItOn coalition wrote.

Another digital rights advocacy group, the Asia Internet Coalition, urged Bangladesh “to consider the serious impact of its action on its people and the country’s reputation as an investment destination.”

Several of the biggest companies in the textile industry, a major contributor to Bangladesh’s economy, said they would close their factories on Sunday. Hasina has canceled a planned trip to Europe to deal with the unrest, her office said.
Uneasy Calm Across Bangladesh as Curfew Quells Jobs Protests (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/22/2024 2:51 AM, Arun Devnath and Niki Koswanage, 27296K, Neutral]
Security forces patrolled Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka on Monday, as a government-imposed curfew attempted to quell student-led protests against a public sector hiring system.

The uneasy calm comes a day after the country’s supreme court ruled to remove most of the government job allocations for families of veterans who fought in the nation’s war of independence in 1971, bringing forward a review originally scheduled for August. The country’s internet stayed offline for a fourth day.

The Supreme Court asked the students to return to their universities, which have been shut for days. It isn’t clear if the court’s ruling will fully placate them. In an attempt at easing tensions after the deadly protests last week left more than 150 people dead, the government declared Sunday and Monday as public holidays.

The government jobs quota system, which were unexpectedly reinstated last month by a lower court, hit a raw nerve in a country with both persistently high youth unemployment and a private sector that’s struggled to create jobs.

The unrest is the deadliest since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina extended her grip in power for a fourth term in elections in January, promising to further develop the country. It is also a distraction for a government seeking more funds from creditors and the International Monetary Fund to bolster dwindling foreign-exchange reserves.

While Hasina has overseen one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and helped lift millions out of poverty, those achievements are often overshadowed by her authoritarian turn, with critics alleging the 76-year-old leader has used state institutions to stamp out dissent and stifle the media. The opposition boycotted this year’s elections.

Last week, Hasina had asked the students to have faith in the court process but she has also vowed to go after what she called the anarchists involved in the protests. Police have remanded six opposition leaders for alleged attacks on government property, according to Ekkator TV.

“The rising death toll is a shocking indictment of the absolute intolerance shown by the Bangladeshi authorities to protest and dissent,” said Babu Ram Pant, Deputy Regional Director for South Asia at Amnesty International. “The unlawful force used against protesters shows a callous disregard for the right to life.”
More Than 500 Arrested In Bangladesh Capital Over Deadly Unrest (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [7/22/2024 4:50 AM, Shafiqul Alam, 85570K, Negative]
More than 500 people, including some opposition leaders, have been arrested in Dhaka over violence that has wracked Bangladesh and killed 163 people since students started protesting against civil service hiring rules, police said Monday.

What began as demonstrations against politicised admission quotas for sought-after government jobs has snowballed into some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure.

A curfew has been imposed and soldiers are patrolling cities across the South Asian country, while a nationwide internet blackout since Thursday has drastically restricted the flow of information to the outside world.

"At least 532 people have been arrested over the violence" since the unrest began, Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain told AFP.

"They include some BNP leaders," he added, referring to the opposition Bangladesh National Party.

Bangladesh’s top court on Sunday pared back the hiring quotas for specific groups for government jobs, which are seen as secure and sought-after.

But the decision failed to mollify university student leaders, whose demonstrations against the quota scheme have sparked nationwide clashes that have killed 163 people, including several police officers, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals.

A spokesman for Students Against Discrimination, the main group responsible for organising the protests, told AFP: "We won’t call off our protests until the government issues an order reflecting our demands."

Ali Riaz, a professor of politics and leading Bangladesh expert at Illinois State University, described the violence as "the worst massacre by any regime since independence".

"The atrocities committed in the past days show that the regime is entirely dependent on brute force and has no regard for the lives of the people," he told AFP.

"These indiscriminate killings cannot be washed by a court ruling or a government announcement."

Diplomats in Dhaka questioned Bangladeshi authorities’ deadly response to the protests following a presentation by the foreign minister that blamed demonstrators for the violence, diplomatic officials said.

Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud summoned ambassadors for a briefing on Sunday and showed them a 15-minute video that sources said focused on damage caused by protesters.

But a senior diplomatic official in Dhaka, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that US ambassador Peter Haas said Mahmud was presenting a one-sided version of events.

"I am surprised you did not show the footage of police firing at unarmed protesters," the source quoted Haas as telling the minister.

A US embassy official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the ambassador’s comments.

The diplomatic source added that Mahmud did not respond to a question from a United Nations representative about the alleged use of UN-marked armoured personnel carriers and helicopters to suppress the protests.

Bangladesh is a major contributor to UN peacekeeping operations around the world -- earning significant revenues from its efforts -- and has UN-marked equipment in its military inventories.

Government figures have repeatedly blamed the protesters and opposition for the violence.

Dhaka police spokesman Hossain said at least three policemen had been killed in the capital and about 1,000 injured, at least 60 of them critically.

The detainees included the BNP’s third-most senior leader Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury and its spokesman Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, he said.

A former national football captain turned senior BNP figure, Aminul Huq, was also held, he added, as was Mia Golam Parwar, the general secretary of the country’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the quota scheme’s reintroduction deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

The Supreme Court decision curtailed the number of reserved jobs from 56 percent of all positions to seven percent, most of which will still be set aside for the children and grandchildren of "freedom fighters" from Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

While the decision represented a substantial reduction to the contentious "freedom fighter" category, with 93 percent of jobs to be awarded on merit, it fell short of protesters’ demands to scrap it altogether.

The "freedom fighter" quota in particular is resented by young graduates, with critics saying it is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina’s ruling Awami League.

Opponents accuse her government of bending the judiciary to its will.

Hasina, 76, has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina inflamed tensions this month by likening protesters to the Bangladeshis who had collaborated with Pakistan during the country’s independence war.
US urges people to not travel to Bangladesh amid ‘civil unrest’ (Reuters)
Reuters [7/20/2024 8:48 PM, Kanishka Singh, 42991K, Negative]
The U.S. State Department said on Saturday it has raised Bangladesh’s travel advisory to level four, which urges people to not travel to the Asian country due to what Washington described as "civil unrest" amid ongoing protests.

The State Department also said it authorized the voluntary departure of non-emergency U.S. government employees and family members in Bangladesh. A day earlier, the department had urged people to reconsider travel to the country.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

Massive protests have broken out in Bangladesh over student anger against quotas that set aside 30% of government jobs for the families of those who fought for independence from Pakistan.

Police have fired tear gas to scatter protesters in some areas while the government has banned public gatherings, imposed communications restrictions, deployed the army in some parts and imposed a curfew. Dozens have been killed in the past week.

KEY QUOTES

"Travelers should not travel to Bangladesh due to ongoing civil unrest in Dhaka. Demonstrations and violent clashes have been reported throughout the city of Dhaka, its neighboring areas, and throughout Bangladesh," the State Department said in a statement.

"Due to the security situation, there may be a delay in provision of routine consular services," it added.

The State Department also said that due to security concerns, U.S. Embassy personnel in Bangladesh are subject to some movement and travel restrictions, which could limit their ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in Bangladesh.

REACTION

The United States and Canada have called on Bangladesh to uphold the right to peaceful protest and expressed concern over violence that has occurred in the country in recent days.

CONTEXT

Students have protested over public sector job quotas, which include a 30% reservation for family members of fighters from the 1971 War of Independence from Pakistan. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said the government would form a judicial committee to investigate the killings.

The quotas have caused 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.
Nepal’s new prime minister seeks vote of confidence in parliament, secure more than two-third votes (AP)
AP [7/21/2024 9:22 AM, Binaj Gurubacharya, 1814K, Positive]
Nepal’s newly appointed prime minister secured overwhelming support in parliament on Sunday with more than two-thirds of members voting in his favor.

Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli got the support from members of his Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), his main coalition partner Nepali Congress and several smaller parties.

During voting in the House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament, 188 out of a total of 275 members voted in his favor during the vote of confidence motion, Speaker Dev Raj Ghimire announced.

Supporting members applauded soon after the announcement was made and they lined up to shake hands with Oli to congratulate him.

Oli was named Nepal’s prime minister last week after the previous coalition government collapsed after Oli’s party withdrew their support earlier this month.

The next election in Nepal is scheduled for 2027.

This is the fourth time that Oli, 72, is serving as prime minister of the Himalayan nation.

Oli’s biggest challenge as prime minister will be balancing Nepal’s relationship with its giant neighbors India and China, as both seek to wield influence over the small nation. Landlocked Nepal is surrounded by India on three sides and imports all of its oil and most supplies from the country. It also shares a border with China.

Oli was born in a village in east Nepal and has been involved in politics since he was young.

He worked his way up the ranks of the communist party and was jailed a total of 14 years for opposing the autocratic rule of Nepal’s monarchs. The royals banned political parties until 1990, when street protests forced then King Birendra to hold free elections that turned Nepal into a constitutional monarchy, which was formally abolished in 2008.

Oli has had two kidney transplants.
Central Asia
Stand Down! Kazakh Comedian’s Arrest Chills Blossoming Stand-Up Comedy Scene (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/19/2024 4:36 PM, Chris Rickleton and Madina Quanova, 235K, Neutral]
At the recent "Dirty Mic" night at the Central Almaty Stand Up club, the change in atmosphere was hard not to notice.

As spectators filtered into the venue, club staff issued warnings about the use of profanity and harsh language on stage and informed them that "comics do not have the goal of offending anyone."

The host of the July 11 event, comic Duman Beisen, reminded the audience of these terms and conditions repeatedly before the comedians began their acts and in some cases during them.

He implored spectators not to film or record the comics and warned that anybody who found the jokes offensive was free to leave.

"If you so much as look at your telephones to check a text, I may get nervous," Beisen joked.

Spectators are traditionally encouraged not to film such events.

But since the second half of May, Kazakhstan’s stand-up circuit has been understandably on edge.

That was when a comic well-known for his political jokes, Nuraskhan Basqozhaev, was arrested and sentenced to 15 days in administrative detention just weeks after his act in the same venue landed him in trouble.

In the period since then, both Basqozhaev and the Central Almaty Stand Up club have faced anonymous threats, raising questions about where the growing comedy scene can go from here.

‘Might Negatively Affect The Youth’

Basqozhaev’s problems began after a prominent Kazakh model, Madina Mamadalieva (Madlen), took offense at a sexist joke that seemed to imply that she was quite literally at the beck and call of corrupt government officials.

"You go on f***ing stealing cash and f***k off to Dubai, order [yourselves] bloggers like Madlen while you watch how the whole north of Kazakhstan is drowning," Basqozhaev vented, at a time when several Kazakh provinces were badly affected by flooding.

"There should be a punchline here but I haven’t thought of it yet," the comic added.

Mamadalieva promptly made her displeasure at the joke known on Instagram, where she has some 2 million followers, and promised to take legal action against Basqozhaev.

Public apologies from Basqozhaev and Central Almaty Stand Up followed, and Mamadalieva declared the matter settled.

But on May 23, Basqozhaev was summoned by the police and asked to provide a written explanation of his words.

He was subsequently detained on charges of "minor hooliganism." An Almaty court then ruled against him, charging that the comedian’s statements "resonated widely in the society and might negatively affect the youth."

The administration of Central Almaty Stand Up, whose director is Basqozhaev’s wife, Aigerim Inayat, stated that it considered the arrest "persecution of speech."

Beisen, the host of the July 11 comedy night, went further.

He told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service that he considered the punishment less to do with Basqozhaev’s standoff with Madlen and more to do with the politically sensitive jokes by the club’s comics that target Kazakhstan’s political leadership.

There have been plenty of those, said Beisen, who confirmed that men introducing themselves as representatives of the security services had made contact with Central Almaty Stand Up in the past.

‘Today It’s 15 Days, Tomorrow It’s 15 Years’

Beisen did not specify what was in their requests.

But in one of his jokes, showcased on the Central Stand Up club’s YouTube channel in April, it is notable that President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev’s name is censored out. The moment comes as the comic compares political regimes to washing-machine cycles -- known as "regimes" in Russian.

"Then along came [censored]. He promised us a more delicate wash but he pulled out the automatic [guns]," Beisen told his audience, who responded with gasps and laughter.

That could be interpreted as a reference to Kazakhstan’s January 2022 unrest, which left at least 238 people dead and is a highly sensitive topic for the administration of Toqaev, who issued a "shoot to kill" order to troops during the peak of the demonstrations.

One of Basqozhayev’s jokes, in turn, touched on apparently leaked footage of the torture in jail of activist Timur Danebaev, who attempted to sue Toqaev in connection with the president’s infamous assertion that "20,000 terrorists" had attacked Almaty during the unrest.

"Personally, I took this as a signal to people to shut the f**k up," Basqozhaev said at the time.

Was Basqozhaev’s arrest a similar signal?

"Today it’s Nurashkhan, tomorrow it’s me or any other comedian. Today it is 15 days, tomorrow it is 15 years because of a joke," Zarina Baibolova, a comedian from Astana, wrote on Instagram after her colleague’s arrest.

"Sitting [in jail] because of a joke, even a very bad one, is something very North Korean," she added.

Stand-up comedy is on the rise in both of Kazakhstan’s two largest cities, albeit from a low starting point and after a pandemic-era hiatus that dealt a blow to its early development.

As the scene has become more popular, more and more comics have ventured into the sticky territory of politics.

The beginning of Toqaev’s presidency in 2019 hinted at a more relaxed brand of authoritarianism than that espoused by his long-ruling predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbaev.

But recent years have provided a reality check.

Would-be opposition party heads and journalists have been sentenced or are facing sentences for serious crimes in contested cases.

Public demonstrations, meanwhile, are as difficult to stage as ever, despite Toqaev hailing changes to the legislation governing them.

Can the stand-up scene withstand any further pressure?

A number of comics contacted for interviews by RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service this month refused. Others agreed at first before having second thoughts.

This is a sign that "fear has won" after the first arrest to hit the scene, according to Assem Zhapisheva, a journalist, screenwriter, and regular attendee of stand-up nights.

"But this didn’t begin with [comics]," Zhapisheva told RFE/RL.

After Bloody January "forbidden topics and forbidden names have returned, just as was the case during the Nazarbaev era. If something happens in the country, then many major media outlets either do not write about it or write about it the way [the authorities] need them to."
8 Kyrgyz Women, 14 Children Return Home From Syrian Camps With U.S. Help (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/19/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Neutral]
The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry said on July 19 that 8 Kyrgyz women and 14 children returned to the Central Asian nation from refugee camps in Syria’s northeast. The ministry said the United States gave "direct support and assistance" in implementing another Aikol-6 humanitarian mission to repatriate Kyrgyz citizens from Syria. Hundreds of Kyrgyz citizens, mostly women and children, have been repatriated from Syria in recent years with the involvement of international organizations. Kyrgyz authorities said in 2018 that 850 Kyrgyz nationals, including about 140 women, had joined terrorist organizations in Syria and in Iraq, of whom 150 were killed in these places.
Dead Fish And Dirty Air: Chinese Firms Leave Waste As They Mine Tajikistan’s Gold (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/22/2024 1:01 AM, Staff, 235K, Neutral]
For the some 150 people in the tiny Tajik village of Khumgaron, the pollution and waste from the Chinese gold-mining operation nearby is not what they bargained for.

"How will we live if the air and water are polluted?" asked one villager. "What meaning does life have when a person loses their health?"

Fed up with the severe pollution in their village caused by the Zarafshon mining company, a group of angry women traveled to the nearby city of Panjakent last year to file an official complaint on behalf of the village.

But instead of the local officials promising to look into the issue, the women say they were taken to the police station and harshly warned to stop criticizing the sprawling Chinese mining project near their village.

The women, who spoke to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity, say the intimidation has been effective and many villagers are still afraid to voice their grievances about the nearby gold mine.

Ever since the Chinese-run gold mine started operating in western Tajikistan in 2007, villagers say government officials have turned a blind eye to growing air, water, and land pollution in the area -- on land they say the mining company is using without their permission.

This situation near Tajikistan’s remote northwestern border with Uzbekistan provides an up-close look at how Dushanbe’s growing economic reliance on Chinese investment is playing out on the ground, where Chinese firms are tapping into the country’s vast mineral wealth while receiving impunity and preferential treatment from the Tajik government.

A monthslong RFE/RL investigation on four Chinese-run projects in Tajikistan -- including three mining ventures -- highlights this pattern.

Stolen Land?

A resident who asked to remain anonymous showed RFE/RL property deeds in her name for farmland where the Chinese mining operation has built refineries for the gold they extract.

She says this was done without her permission and she has neither been compensated nor received an official response despite raising the issue with Panjakent officials several times. Other villagers make the same claim.

While locals living near these multimillion-dollar investments grapple with environmental degradation and health concerns stemming from the chemicals used in the vast mining and agricultural projects, Tajik officials protect the Chinese companies from public scrutiny because China is Tajikistan’s main source of foreign investment.

In the case of the Zarafshon mine, which accounts for 70 percent of the gold mined in Tajikistan, officials at various levels of government who spoke with RFE/RL -- including a high-ranking Environmental Protection Committee official -- praised the company and defended their support for Chinese companies.

They pointed to the firms’ economic importance in the investment-starved country and dismissed complaints about environmental pollution.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon also put his stamp of approval on the Zarafshon plant when he visited it in July 2023.

Please Don’t Go

But the high-level official from the Tajik Environmental Protection Committee, the country’s main environmental agency, told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity that the state body has been ordered to turn a blind eye to any environmental or health issues stemming from the Zarafshon mine.

"We also have complaints about environmental pollution, but if we put too much pressure on Zarafshon or increase inspections and fines, the Chinese investor may leave Tajikistan," he said. "This would be very harmful for our economy because [the Chinese company] produced some 2.2 billion somoni ($201 million) worth of [gold] in six months of 2023."

He added that Tajikistan’s gross domestic product (GDP) in that period was 54 billion somonis ($4.9 billion).

"So imagine the harm that the firm’s failure would cause the country’s economy," he said.

The official said the taxes levied on the gold mine make up a large part of the budget of Sughd Province, where the mine is located, and that officials don’t want to jeopardize this crucial source of revenue by issuing fines for pollution or allowing public criticism to mount.

"If we end the mining operations, the budget will lose millions of dollars," he said.

The official said a similar dynamic exists at other Chinese-run projects that were investigated by RFE/RL, including a gold mine in Pokrud; a lead, zinc, and copper mining site in Zarnisor; and a cotton farming venture in western Tajikistan.

"There is currently no other option but to put up with this situation [of the Chinese companies polluting the environment]," he added.

A New Dependency

The poorest country in Central Asia, Tajikistan’s economy has struggled over the years as it has grappled with the fallout from a devastating civil war in the 1990s and has relied on Russia for trade, investment, and loans. With a major shortage of jobs, Tajik migrants have flocked to Russia and the remittances they send home are estimated by the World Bank to be more than 40 percent of Tajikistan’s GDP.

But autocratic President Rahmon, who has ruled Tajikistan with an iron fist since 1994, has moved the country closer to Beijing and is an enthusiastic member of its flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Since 2010, China has emerged as the country’s largest trade partner, foreign investor, and lender, with Beijing owning more than half of Dushanbe’s foreign debt.

As Dushanbe has increasingly looked to the East, China has taken pole position in the country’s economy, building new roads and investing in sectors such as telecommunications, agriculture, and mining -- where Tajikistan needs financial help to develop the expensive infrastructure required to exploit its mineral wealth.

Chinese construction firms have also built several important government buildings in the heart of Dushanbe, the capital, including the country’s new parliament building.

Rahmon said in Dushanbe on July 5 during an official visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping that China invested more than $4 billion in Tajikistan from 2007 to 2023 and that more than "700 companies with Chinese capital" are operating in the country.

The Tajik president added that the work of Zarafshon is "a clear example of effective investment cooperation between the two countries."

Beijing’s oversized economic footprint has translated into political influence, with China becoming an important pilgrimage for Rahmon and members of his powerful family. Beijing has also played a growing security role in the country with joint counterterrorism exercises, police exchanges, and approval to operate a series of outposts inside Tajikistan near its southern border with Afghanistan.

Tajikistan’s increased dependency on its eastern neighbor has fueled fears about its growing influence and the concern that the majority of Chinese investment in Tajikistan has come as loans, which Dushanbe might not be able to repay.

Tajiks have already paid a steep price for the country’s indebtedness: In 2011, Tajikistan ceded more than 1,000 square kilometers of its territory to China in return for canceling an unspecified debt.

A similar dynamic is at play in Tajikistan’s mining sector, where two Chinese-operated mines -- Zarafshon and Pokrud -- account for 84 percent of the country’s annual gold output. In the case of Zarafshon, the mine alone paid some $40 million in taxes in 2021 compared to a total national budget of nearly $3.9 billion.

In 2016, the Tajik government banned the publishing of official statistics about gold production in the country, but statements by ministers in 2019 and 2023 claim it has been rising by more than 10 percent annually and China’s Zijin company has continued to expand its operations at Zarafshon. The profits made in Tajikistan by the Chinese mining companies are also not made public.

Tajik authorities have also continued to green-light new Chinese investments in the mining industry, often with seemingly little public debate.

In 2019, for instance, the Tajik parliament approved a deal with China’s Kashgar Xinyi Dadi Mining Investment Company to develop the Yakjilva silver deposit in the remote eastern district of Murghob after less than 30 minutes of debate.

The Tajik government has defended China’s growing position within the mining sector by claiming that Chinese firms have set themselves apart by being the only foreign companies willing to take on such large projects.

"Only the Chinese are willing to invest and develop mines [in the country]," Zarobiddin Faizullozoda, the former head of the Industry and New Technologies Ministry, which oversees the mining industry, said while minister in 2019.

Green Tomatoes

Asadullo Rahmonov, a 62-year-old farmer from Khumgaron, says the quality of the produce he grows has diminished in recent years as the scale of operations at Zarafshon has expanded, including a new 30-hectare area granted by the government in December.

"The tomatoes don’t ripen very well anymore, and I’ve been planting cucumbers for three years. They bloom, their flowers fall off, but they don’t grow," he said. "The peaches also only ripen halfway and then fall from the tree. This wasn’t the case even a few years ago."

Five other local farmers who spoke to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal for criticizing the Chinese mining operation also claimed that the nearby gold refinery is affecting harvests and the environment at large, pointing to a dark-colored dust that is found in streams and on agricultural fields.

The gold mine in Zarafshon has been operational since 1994 and was managed by the British-based Commonwealth and British Mineral firm until Zijin acquired a 70 percent share in 2007. The remaining 30 percent of the mine is owned by the Tajik government. Profits from the gold that is mined are divided based on ownership percentage.

The gold mine currently employs some 2,800 workers, with Zarafshon Deputy Director Bobokhon Bobokhonov telling RFE/RL that 98 percent of workers are Tajik citizens. And job security seems good, as he added that Zijin recently had its rights to the land extended by 20 years.

The mined gold is refined nearby as well as at refineries near Panjakent -- which is some 20 kilometers to the east -- for further purification, and locals primarily blame this process for the adverse effects on the environment.

The dominant method in the world for refining gold involves using cyanide: a highly toxic chemical used to extract gold from the rock that can be fatal to humans.

Flaviano Bianchini, the director of Source International, an NGO focused on environmental pollution, said cyanide should only be used in controlled environments and that even small amounts in the environment can contaminate an entire area.

"If you lose 1 kilogram of cyanide into a water supply, that could easily kill 200 people or completely destroy the environment around it," he told RFE/RL.

The crushed rock from the mine is transported to the refinery where it is treated with cyanide, which dissolves the gold from the rock. While cost-effective, it is considered very damaging to the environment. The use of cyanide in mining operations has forced the displacement of many communities around the world.

Most scientists agree that cyanide decomposes in sunlight and is not dangerous if greatly diluted, but its use can also release harmful metals from the rock. Multiple studies have shown that cyanide can convert into other toxic forms and persist, particularly in cold climates.

Gold mining itself is also a waste-intensive process. Some estimates say that 10-15 grams of gold can be found for every one ton of rock, leaving more than 999 kilograms as waste, which can also take the form of harmful dust.

Stillborn Babies

Villagers from Khumgaron told RFE/RL that they believe cyanide is being used in high levels and has seeped into the ground, polluting the environment, damaging fruit and vegetable harvests, and causing health issues for residents.

In 2022, village residents signed a letter and sent it to the Tajik President’s Office complaining of worsening health issues that they associate with the nearby mine.

"[Villagers] are getting sick more often, childlessness in young families due to the number of stillborn babies has increased," the letter read.

Residents also complain that the air in the village is dirty because of the pollution emitted by the Zarafshon gold and lime refineries and say there is a foul odor when the wind blows. Residents from Shing -- a village near the Zarafshon mine in the Panjakent region -- told RFE/RL that the number of people who complain of breathing problems has increased.

The Health Ministry in Panjakent told RFE/RL it does not have cumulative statistics on health issues affecting the people of Khumgaron and said to contact the Health Ministry’s main office in Dushanbe. So, too, did the Central Hospital and the Sanitary and Epidemiological Department in Panjakent.

But the Health Ministry did not supply any information to RFE/RL despite a formal inquiry sent in November 2023 and in direct talks with a ministry spokesperson.

Zarafshon mine officials would not agree to an interview with RFE/RL or respond to written requests for comment.

Despite refusing to acknowledge criticism of the mining site in Zarafshon and people’s complaints of pollution and its adverse health effects, Tajik officials have issued some token fines to the Chinese company over the years.

The operation was fined in 2019 for dumping waste from a lime production plant attached to the mine in Shing into the Shing River. Tajik authorities said the dumping was responsible for a mass die-off of fish in the river.

Yet the company was only fined the equivalent of about $1,100.

A far more severe fine came four years later when Tajik Prosecutor-General Yusuf Rahmon (an in-law of President Rahmon) announced in April 2023 that the Zarafshon mine operators would be fined the equivalent of $1.7 million for causing some $14.6 million in environmental damage. No details about the damage were given, but the head of Panjakent’s Environmental Department told RFE/RL that the fine was issued because part of the onsite refinery was built without applying for regulatory documents.

Broken Promises

The years of complaints from Khumgaron residents led to the mining company beginning a community outreach program in 2021 with promises to build four kilometers of a new road, renovate a school (costing about $90,000), and install plumbing to bring drinking water into the villagers’ homes.

The company also agreed to pay a lump sum of $13,700 per month to the villagers -- approximately $90 per resident. It says the money will be paid "until the Tajik government provides land plots to 47 farmers and their families."

But besides the cash payment to the village, Khumgaron residents said the company’s other grand promises went unfulfilled.

As part of government requirements for companies to keep a mining license, firms engaged in mining must make some improvements for local residents, such as building a school, a hospital, or a road.

But in a very rare bit of public criticism in 2018, then-Industry and New Technologies Minister Shavkat Bobozoda said at a press conference that none of these obligations had been fulfilled by the Zijin mining company.

"They have already extracted 20 tons of gold, but they could leave tomorrow [and] what else would remain there?!" he exclaimed to a room of reporters.

A 2023 visit by RFE/RL to the village showed that none of the construction projects had begun and the main road remained in disrepair, which residents say is damaged by the heavy trucks carrying rocks that constantly travel back and forth from the mine.

Sanat Rahim, the head of the Tajik industry and mining sector’s inspection service, said at a press conference in July 2023 that one of the government’s "strategic goals" is "rapid industrialization."

He explained that setting up an industry leads to the establishment of "a refinery, a garbage dump, [etc.], and new businesses are created. Ecology and industrialization do not go hand in hand [but]…. We specialists must as much as possible reduce the [environmental] damage caused by industrialization."

‘It Could Kill People’

Some 350 kilometers from Khumgaron and the Zarafshon mining operation sits the Pokrud gold mine, another vast Chinese mining project where locals say pollution is contaminating rivers and nearby land.

Here, the China Nonferrous Gold (CNG) company operates a gold concession with 100 percent ownership, with internal CNG reports from 2021 seen by RFE/RL saying that the company "has a strong relationship with the government of Tajikistan." In the same report, the firm lauds its environmental standards and claims it has a strong relationship with the local communities.

Located in Tajikistan’s Romit Gorge, villagers living close to the mine say that the only benefit they’ve felt from the gold mine is that CNG has built a road to access its deposits that villagers from the remote, mountainous area can also use.

But they say contamination is increasing from the Chinese-owned mine.

Residents of several upstream villages in the area told RFE/RL that the company pours wastewater from its refinery directly into the sprawling Romit River. Several villagers said that they stopped using drinking water taken from the river after several people became ill.

During a 2023 visit to the mouth of the Romit River near the Pokrud mine, RFE/RL reporters saw a pipe coming directly from the refinery and feeding untreated wastewater into the river.

Bianchini, the mining expert from Source International, said such a practice is highly dangerous.

"The water that comes out from the [refining] process is poisoned," he said. "You can’t leave water like that. It’s not just an issue of polluting the river. It could kill people."

Despite these big concerns, the Chinese company has received minimal scrutiny from Tajik authorities. At the same time, the operation has received high-level political backing.

When the first gold bar from the mine was poured in 2016, Rahmon visited the site and -- in scenes shown on state television -- praised the $256 million Chinese investment while proudly holding two gold ingots.

Tajikistan’s Environmental Protection Committee told RFE/RL that it inspected CNG’s refinery in the summer of 2023 -- a few weeks after RFE/RL saw the wastewater being dumped into the river -- and said it found a "number of deficiencies, including nonobservance of solid household waste management procedures and an excessive discharge of waste into the atmosphere."

The committee did not comment on the video of the wastewater being discharged into the river.

Big Promises Amid Water Shortages

In Zarnisor -- a town in northern Tajikistan of some 5,000 people about 60 kilometers north of Khujand on the Uzbek border -- there is another high-profile Chinese mining project that is affecting nearby communities.

Established in 2007 as a subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned Tibet Everest Resources, the Tajikistan-China Mining Industry Company (TCMIC) mines lead, zinc, and copper from the area. The mining process for those minerals requires vast quantities of water, which residents say is creating a shortage for them.

Idiboy Fozilov, a pensioner who lives in Zarnisor, said that since the Chinese operation started people have only had access to clean drinking water for one hour a day and people are forced to store drinking water in tanks.

He said that during the Soviet era locals built a water line to bring potable water to the village. But he added that residents have only had access to drinking water for one hour per day -- in the evening -- since the Chinese company arrived.

In addition to shortages, several villagers who spoke to RFE/RL said the company is not upholding its pledge to invest in the local infrastructure.

TCMIC had agreed to repair and refurbish a day-care center, local roads, and provide street lighting for the village. But with the exception of the road that leads to the company’s main office, the other roads in the area remain in poor condition and the day-care center is decrepit.

RFE/RL reported very poor roads in Zarnisor, streets not well lit, and the village school dilapidated and in urgent need of repair -- though the road to the central office of the Chinese company and the dorm for its Chinese workers is paved.

As with other Chinese companies involved in Tajikistan’s extractive sector, TCMIC plays a particularly large economic role in the country.

In July 2022, its parent company, Tibet Everest Resources, pledged to build an industrial park in Tajikistan that would create 10,000 new jobs. But two years later, there has been no update about the project.

Other numbers issued by Tibet Everest Resources suggest its economic activities also do not add up.

In interviews and public statements over the years, TCMIC executives have claimed the company employs more than 4,000 people in Tajikistan -- but other times have said their workforce totaled about 3,000.

Similar inconsistencies have occurred over the amount of taxes and fees the firm contributes to the state budget.

In 2022, the independent Tajik news agency Asia-Plus quoted TCMIC head Li Yaohui as saying the company had paid 33 billion somonis (some $3.1 billion) in taxes and fees since it began operating in the country in 2009.

But in public comments made in 2021, Li said the company had paid a much smaller amount -- 4.2 billion somonis (about $383 million) -- to the government since its founding.

In comments to RFE/RL, TCMIC defended its record of working with local communities and building infrastructure, claiming it had made school repairs in Zarnisor while also constructing a town hall and repairing a hospital in Guliston, a nearby city of some 50,000 people. The company also funded the reconstruction of 38 kilometers of a remote road linking the towns of Buston and Zarnisor that cost some 100 million somonis ($9.1 million).

An official with the Guliston city government told RFE/RL that TCMIC and the Tajikistan-China Mountain Company are developing a plan to better supply the city and surrounding area with drinking water.

The official added that there are parts of Guliston that only have access to water at certain times of the day but the workers for the Chinese company living in a series of four-story buildings on Rafoqat Street have water 24 hours a day. Tajik security forces would not allow RFE/RL correspondents to enter the Chinese mining company’s office building or a nearby hostel housing Chinese workers to confirm the information. The road leading to the buildings was very well maintained.

After complaints from other people living on Rafoqat Street who had a very limited supply of water, access was increased to 12 hours per day.

Cotton-Farming Woes

While forays from Chinese companies into Tajikistan’s lucrative mining sector have left a trail of health and environmental concerns, so has an ambitious cotton-farming initiative involving Chinese farmers working on land in western Tajikistan’s Yovon district -- just 25 kilometers from Dushanbe.

Mirzoali Azizov, the head of the Yovon district’s Agricultural Department, told RFE/RL in June 2023 that the Chinese are renting 960 hectares of farmland in Yovon. Local residents told RFE/RL that in the late 2000s, when public land was allotted for agriculture, most Tajik farmers did not have the money required to buy seeds, machinery, and the other costs needed to farm and many people went to Russia to find work.

Locals said the Chinese took advantage of this situation and started leasing land in 2014.

Yovon district agricultural officials told RFE/RL that the amount of land being used by the Chinese was immense at first but later some Tajik farmers took over some of the land from the Chinese.

Both officials and local residents said the Chinese farmers have more money and financial options, such as bank loans, and can therefore use better fertilizer and farming equipment than Tajiks.

As a result, officials say Tajik farmers yield an average of four tons of cotton per hectare of land, while Chinese farmers in Tajikistan harvest nearly seven tons per hectare.

But many locals are concerned about the overuse of certain fertilizers and the lack of regulations for which and how many chemicals can be used.

The Chinese firm Agricultural Development of Tajikistan and China owns almost 1,000 hectares of land in the Yovon district while Juntai-Khatlon-Sin Silu owns 3,365 hectares of land in the southwestern Dusti district.

Saidjafar Usmonzoda -- the former chairman of the Democratic Party of Tajikistan who was a member of parliament in 2019 when the issue of leasing land to Chinese farmers was being debated -- told RFE/RL that she raised questions about which fertilizers would be used but was never given an answer despite the government approving the deal. (Usmonzoda was arrested on June 14, 2024, for "plotting to overthrow the government.")

"Couldn’t the land be turned into a desert after years of overuse?" she recalled asking at the time.

Despite the concerns raised by Usmonzoda and local farmers, experts told RFE/RL that no independent research has been done on the types of fertilizers or other chemicals used by the Chinese farmers and whether or not they could have harmful effects on the land. Yovon district agricultural officials also told RFE/RL they lack the lab equipment needed to conduct such tests.

Ruzimurod Boimurodov, an associate professor of agricultural chemistry and soil science at the Agrarian University of Tajikistan in Dushanbe says that excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides is a major concern, because a large percentage of the fertilizers are not absorbed by the crop and instead go into the soil, which can cause long-term, adverse effects.

"There are delayed effects from these remaining substances and in the future they can have a negative effect on the composition, quality, and fertility of the soil and plant growth," he told RFE/RL.

Boimurodov said that according to his research, Tajik farmers typically use around 450-600 kilograms of nitrogen fertilizer per hectare or 200-260 kilograms of phosphorus fertilizer per hectare.

‘A Safe Future For Our Children’

But Usmon Yatimov, a Yovon district agricultural official, told RFE/RL that according to his data, Chinese farmers growing cotton on these plots of land are using around 1,500-1,600 kilos of both nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer.

The overuse of fertilizers and other chemicals has long been an issue in China, leading to large harvests but a decline in soil quality over time. Farmers in China have in recent years begun to cut back on fertilizers, but their application is still high compared to global averages.

Despite Tajik residents’ widespread concern and complaints about polluted air, land, and rivers due to the work of Chinese companies, as well as a lack of investment in the communities the Chinese firms are working in, officials in Tajikistan continue to support these enterprises.

Many residents of the areas where Chinese firms are operating told RFE/RL that they are not against the companies, they only want them to take care of the environment and invest reasonably in the communities where they work, as the firms have pledged to do.

But due to the decrepit state of its economy and low standard of living, Tajikistan’s great dependence on China and its economic resources will allow the Chinese companies to operate as they wish.

A villager who lives next to the Chinese gold mine in Khumgaron summed up the feelings of many.

"We don’t want money from the Chinese -- we just want a safe future for our children."
Hardened jihadists or guns for hire? The answer may lie in the hills of Tajikistan (The Telegraph)
The Telegraph [7/21/2024 11:37 AM, Sophia Yan, 29812K, Negative]
Part of Saidakrami Rajabalizoda’s ear appeared to have been cut off and shoved in his mouth.

The gory scene was filmed by his captors, likely Russian security services, the day after the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia in decades.

Still bleeding through a white bandage wrapped around his head, Mr Rajabalizoda was soon trotted out in a Moscow court as one of the alleged perpetrators.

The 30-year-old migrant worker was 2,000 miles from his home in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan, where he had left his pregnant wife a few months before.

She gave birth and he has never met his child, relatives in his village told The Telegraph on a recent trip there.

Mr Rajabalizoda is one of four men – all Tajiks – that Russia charged within two days of a shooting spree in late March that killed 137 people at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall.

Clothing they were wearing during their capture appeared to place them at the crime scene.

As their cases roll through the Russian courts, the Kremlin insists that these four men are the hardened terrorists that led an attack in the name of IS-K, a group linked to Islamic State, which is responsible for a growing number of attacks around the globe.

Some experts – and, understandably, family members – have doubts.

The Telegraph travelled through villages and mountains of Tajikistan to track down relatives, friends and neighbours of all four of the accused.

Whether they are jihadists or fall guys, their lives tell a story about those drawn to Russia from Central Asia, state paranoia and also the methods and tactics of one of the world’s most feared terror groups.

The mother of Fariduni Shamsiddin, 25, lives in a modest one-storey house, reinforced with mud and grass, in the village of Hisor, about 20 miles west of Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe.

Muyassar Zargarova, 52, says she spoke to her son, who worked in a flooring factory in Russia, a few hours before the attacks about the simple dinner he was preparing that night.

She is convinced of her son’s innocence and insists he would not hurt a fly, despite spending two years in a Tajik prison.

“If I were to ask my son to kill one of the chickens in our yard, he would refuse to do it,” she said. “He would say. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t’.”

None of the accused knew each other in Tajikistan, a small autocratic country on the old Silk Road wedged between China and Afghanistan.

Dalerjon Mirzoev, 32, grew up in the dusty village of Galahona, dotted with a handful of homes with metal doors and stone walls, flanked by mountains in the distance.

Shomuhammed Nasrulloev, 64, a neighbour who watched him grow up, said he had “a very simple house and young children”.

Mr Mirzoev is a slim, reserved father of four who drove a taxi in Tajikistan.

“These days, we’re thinking more about how to support his family through this,” Mr Nasrulloev said.

Relatives of Mr Mirzoev, who did not want to speak on record over fears of reprisals from the Tajik government, say that he was not living in Moscow at the time of the attacks.

Instead, he was living in Novosibirsk, more than 2,000 miles east of the Russian capital.

Muhammadsobir Faizov, 19, was also living outside of Moscow, hours away in the city of Ivanovo, say those who knew him.

He worked as a hairdresser and no matter the occasion, he was always dressed immaculately, they said.

All four of them had complications with their status in Russia – migrants are required to register with the authorities in a cumbersome process – and most had been planning to return to Tajikistan within days of the attack as a result.

With the exception of Mr Mirzoev, all had arrived in Russia only a few months prior in search of better-paying work.

None were particularly religious and, in some cases, had to be encouraged by family to pray regularly.

Families say that they have had little to no official contact with Tajikstan and Russian law enforcement.

They say they have not been shown any evidence relating to the case and spend their days searching online and checking out the news for updates.

“They are accused of being terrorists,” said one relative. “Nobody will help us.”

“I don’t speak Russian. I can’t hire a lawyer – we don’t have the money,” said another. “What can we do? I know he is innocent.”

Relatives believe that these four men are collateral damage as Russia seeks swift justice to restore shaken public confidence, as Kremlin resources remain directed toward its war on Ukraine.

None of the accused appeared to show pride in their alleged actions in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, which raised questions with counter-extremism experts.

Rustam Azizi, who has interviewed many terrorists for his research, says jihadists are often keen to take credit for what they have done.

His view is shared by many expert observers watching the case closely.

He believes the four may have been set up to take the fall or create a distraction for Russian authorities, or perhaps were accessories to the crime, such as acting as getaway drivers for the main combatants.

This runs counter to some visual evidence, like the emblems on their clothing, linking them to the masked gunmen filmed at the crime scene.

But Mr Azizi says his theory falls in line with what is know about IS-K’s tactics and recruitment strategy – leveraging migrant communities to form small sleeper cells in different countries and bringing in technical expertise to support operations, such as chemists and doctors.

“To go somewhere with your own terrorists is risky, but if you find some locals, it’s not costly as they are already existing there…you just have to find a way to arm them,” he said.

But “you have to use them as soon as possible, because it’s risky to keep them for a long period of time”, said Mr Azizi, the research director of Tahlil, a Dushanbe-based NGO.

“Police can capture them and some might even try to escape the radical group.”

In footage from the attack and images leaked or released by Russia, one of the suspects was pictured after being arrested in a brown T-shirt and trousers with a Boss label, details that appeared to match the clothing worn by a gunman in footage of the attack released by IS-K.

Another suspect wore a grey shirt during his interrogation – clothing that matched that of another assailant seen in the attack video.

A white Renault sedan was photographed in Bryansk, a five-hour drive from Moscow, feet away from where Russian

authorities said one of the suspects was arrested.

A similar car was also seen in footage from outside the concert hall where the attack occurred.

Concrete evidence may never emerge into the public domain given the opacity of and corruption in Russian courts.

The Kremlin itself blamed Ukraine for the attack, further muddying the official narrative in the aftermath of the shooting.

All four of the accused appeared to have been tortured by Russian authorities, as shown in disturbing videos that circulated on social media.

When the suspects appeared in court, they were battered and bruised – Mr Rachabalizoda with his bloodied ear; Mr Mirzoev looking weak and exhausted; Mr Shamsiddin with a swollen face likely from beatings.

Mr Faizov was so indisposed that he was rolled into the courtroom on an orange wheelchair and with a catheter.

Sirojiddin Muhriddin, the Tajik foreign minister, commented in a sign of irritation at the country’s powerful neighbour.

“The use of torture in the form of bodily mutilation is unacceptable,” he said in April during an official visit to Belarus.

“The price of confessions extracted in this way is well-known to everyone.”

The Moscow attack focused global attention on the prominence of Tajik nationals involved with IS-K, which appears to be growing in scope.

This year alone, Tajiks have been linked to bombings and shootings that the terror group claimed responsibility for in Iran, Turkey and Russia.

Tajiks, among other Central Asian nationals, have also been arrested in Europe and the US over the last year for suspected ties to the group.

Central Asia – a region next to IS-K’s home base in Afghanistan with similar culture and customs – is an obvious breeding ground.

The group has issued slick propaganda in local languages, including launching online a Tajik version of its magazine, Voice of Khorasan, a week after the Moscow shooting.

“They are turning Central Asia into a hub for propaganda of radical jihadist ideas,” said Parviz Mollojonov, a political scientist and acting country director for International Alert, a UK-based NGO that promotes peace.

“For IS-K, Central Asia is just one step toward forming a Muslim ‘caliphate’.”

With a January bombing in Iran that killed 95 people and wounded dozens, Tajiks were an asset as they could blend in easily given a shared Persian heritage and language.

Tajik and Farsi are essentially the same spoken language, though the former is written with Cyrillic – a holdover from when Tajikistan was part of the former Soviet Union.

Migrants from Tajikistan, like the initial four arrested, are a particularly vulnerable group.

At home, many face economic difficulties and restrictions on religious freedom, and choose to seek their fortunes abroad, with Russia a top destination.

But working odd jobs in Russia is tough, as Tajiks face discrimination, making them susceptible to being radicalised – for instance, via radical imams in mosques, where many gather in search of community and support abroad.

Recruiting by IS-K is happening offline elsewhere, too, including in prisons as some militants are instructed to land themselves behind bars with the express purpose to gain new members – similar to how criminal gangs might operate.

Some recruits have a criminal, police or military background, such as the late Gulmurod Khalimov, a former Tajik military officer, who was a chief recruiter for IS and later promoted to “minister of war”.

University graduates and young professionals in Tajikistan have also been pulled into militant groups when seeking alternative avenues of information and ways of thinking outside of the official authoritarian government propaganda at home.

The majority, though, are likely to be those who come from a more marginalised part of society – such as the migrants that go abroad – who are used as foot soldiers.

However, IS-K doesn’t have an open-door policy, noted Mr Azizi. Instead, potential new militants have to be introduced into the group and vouched for by current militants.

Experts worry that the group is just getting started.

Recent propaganda has specifically threatened countries including China and global sporting events this summer, including the Paris Olympics.

In June, a prison breakout attempt in Russia was allegedly linked to IS-K, as well as multiple mass shootings on the same day at churches and a synagogue.
Window of opportunity for terrorist groups

The Soufan Center, a DC-based non-profit research group, has highlighted that the US and its allies face a similar challenge.

With attention diverted to China, Ukraine and other pressing global concerns, terrorist groups have had a window of opportunity to rebuild.

Different parts of the US government, including the FBI and the department of homeland security, have over the last year warned of the increasing risk of a terrorist attack by IS-K.

The group is also gaining in prominence by tapping into pre-existing terrorist networks in Afghanistan, emerging despite the fall of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in 2019.
‘We don’t know the truth’

Across Tajikistan, there is widespread doubt about the direct involvement of the four initial suspects.

Most of the people The Telegraph spoke to were concerned that Russia was using the arrests to bully the country.

“We don’t know the truth,” said Rafshan, 45, an onion and potato vendor at the main bazaar in Hisor, where one of the suspects is from. “Tajiks aren’t violent like this, and I don’t believe what they showed us.”

Many are sceptical, because two of four people initially named as alleged suspects – all of whom were Tajik and whose names were released by Russian authorities – were not even in the country; instead, they were at home in Tajikistan, as Tajik authorities confirmed.

Experts say that IS-K’s attacks and recruitment efforts abroad, even if thwarted by the authorities, are helping the group to build an international profile.

The Taliban is also using the growth of IS-K to frame itself as an important partner for global security.

The Taliban can then persuade other governments by saying, “‘You see, now the Taliban has become a factor for your own security, and you have to communicate with us somehow’”, said Mr Azizi.

“So you have to choose between the bad, dealing with the Taliban; or the worse – the Islamic State,” he said.

For Ms Zargarova, it is an agonising time, not knowing the fate or health of her son, Mr Shamsiddin.

“Whenever I’m baking, I always cry, because Fariduni loved this kind of freshly-baked bread,” she said, crying, in her sun-dappled yard.

“Even if they threaten to kill me, I’m not convinced these four are guilty.”
Uzbek Businessman Disillusioned By Mirziyoev’s Promises Of Reforms (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/20/2024 5:49 AM, Barno Anvar, 1530K, Neutral]
A wealthy entrepreneur who pioneered production at Uzbekistan’s first syringe factory has slammed what he describes as widespread corruption in the country and believes President Shavkat Mirzioyev’s promises of reforms have failed to materialize.

Saidikrom Ahrorov -- who was in charge of constructing and operating the Mediz syringe plant in the 1990s -- claims he recently fell victim to large-scale financial fraud as he worked to restart the old factory and turned it into a profitable business.

Ahrorov, 78, returned to Uzbekistan from self-exile after Mirziyoev came to power in 2016, promising to open up the Central Asian country that was stagnant and isolated under his strongman predecessor, Islam Karimov.

Ahrorov’s path in Uzbekistan’s business sphere began in the late 1980s when he was tasked by the former Soviet Uzbek government to build a single-use syringe factory.

A medical engineer by profession, Ahrorov at the time served as the deputy head of UzMedTekhnika, a state agency in charge of providing medical equipment.

Tashkent allocated $16 million for the project and gave Ahrorov just one year to build the facility from scratch, he told RFE/RL.

Ahrorov recalls bringing investors and specialists from Spain who helped to construct the Mediz plant, which officially opened in 1991 as Uzbekistan became an independent country.

Mediz was soon privatized and Ahrorov became the plant’s director and acquired 40 percent of its shares. It’s not known under what circumstances the factory, which was built with state money, had been privatized and how Ahrorov became a major shareholder.

The factory initially produced about 100 million syringes annually, and its production capacity rose to 250 million at its peak by the early 2000s, according to Ahrorov, making Mediz a multimillion-dollar business.

But Ahrorov’s successes came to an abrupt end in 2003 when his son divorced his wife, Lola, who happened to be the youngest daughter of powerful former President Islam Karimov.

“I then came under pressure,” Ahrorov said. “It was like I had to choose between my life and the [business].”

Ahrorov and his family left Uzbekistan, first settling in Spain before moving to the United Arab Emirates, where he entered the real estate business.

Second Chance With Syringe Plant

Ahrorov visited his old syringe factory after his return to Uzbekistan after the regime change in 2016.

“The plant’s operation had been suspended. It was an abandoned place, like a museum; its floors had collapsed,” Ahrorov said in describing the state of the vast, once-vibrant compound in Tashkent Province’s Qibray district.

Ahrorov said he was keen on helping to revive the dilapidated factory and that the plant’s new owner, the Arjun Investment joint-stock company, told him to look for investors.

As Ahrorov was planning the business strategy, the factory changed hands.

According to documents obtained by RFE/RL, the factory was acquired by the newly established MedPharm Co. in 2019. MedPharm was founded by Turkiston Bank, a private joint-stock commercial bank.

“In June 2020, the head of the Turkistan Bank, Sherzod Muhiddinov, and his aide Sardor Yunusov visited me at my home,” Ahrorov told RFE/RL. “They said: ‘The bank bought the factory, but it is not operational. Would you be willing to help rebuild the plant?’”

Ahrorov said he agreed and pledged to resurrect the old business and brand in six months, hiring a team of highly skilled professionals.

“Working day and night, we managed to restore it in four months,” Ahrorov said.

Once again, the factory -- now renamed Med Invest -- became a profitable business, according to Ahrorov. Demand for single-use syringes skyrocketed as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in 2020.

As the factory operated in three shifts to keep up with the increasing demand, Ahrorov decided it was time to modernize its equipment -- to replace the machines left from the 1990s.

After receiving approval from the Economy Ministry and other state agencies, Ahrorov applied for a loan from Turkiston Bank to purchase new equipment for the factory. But Turkiston Bank rejected his request.

Victim Of Fraud?

Ahrorov said he was shocked to find out from the General-Prosecutor’s Office that the Med Invest factory had already been used as collateral by MedPharm and three other companies that borrowed money from the Turkiston Bank in 2022 and failed to repay their debt.

The prosecutors identified the three companies as Central Flour, Raffles Place, and Best Trend Doors. Ahrorov claims he had never heard of the three firms and does not understand how they managed to use the factory he’s been running as a guarantee to secure large loans.

According to documents presented by the prosecutors, MedPharm and Best Trend Doors borrowed nearly $3.1 million and $3.9 million, respectively. The amount of the loans obtained by Central Flour and Raffles Place is unknown.

Both Turkiston Bank and MedPharm were declared bankrupt, and prosecutors began to seize the Med Invest factory’s assets, including its vehicles.

In January, the Med Invest disposable syringe factory closed down for the second time.

RFE/RL contacted the Prosecutor-General’s Office and the Central Bank for comment but did not receive a reply.

No one has been held responsible for the apparent financial fraud. Ahrorov says prosecutors “helped” the fraudulent companies instead of prosecuting them.

Mirziyoev has repeatedly urged Uzbek professionals and businessmen living abroad to return home and help him reform and build up Uzbekistan.

But Ahrorov says the country has failed to follow through with Mirziyoev’s promises of reform and that “theft” and corruption in the business sphere has become much worse than during the Karimov era.

“Corruption obviously did exist in 2003 [when I left the country], but it wasn’t to the extent that we’re witnessing today,” Ahrorov said. “People were afraid back then because they would end up in prison for illegally getting [massive] loans from the bank. Now they are not afraid -- they’re committing such crimes and getting away with it."
Twitter
Afghanistan
Abdul Qahar Balkhi
@QaharBalkhi
[7/21/2024 12:41 PM, 243.2K followers, 88 retweets, 267 likes]
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan strongly condemns air raids by the Zionist regime on Hodeidah port in the Republic of Yemen, resulting in civilian casualties.

Abdul Qahar Balkhi
@QaharBalkhi
[7/21/2024 12:41 PM, 243.2K followers, 12 retweets, 39 likes]
IEA-MoFA calls on international organizations & influential countries to halt crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza & the region so as these crimes & atrocities not lead to more casualties & destruction in the region.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[7/21/2024 3:01 PM, 228.6K followers, 23 retweets, 72 likes]
According to IOM, from April 1 to June 30, 532,854 people left Afghanistan despite closed borders, hard-to-get visas, and many lacking passports or funds. If any country opens its doors, Afghanistan would be empty. Majority of Afghans don’t want to live under the Taliban.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[7/21/2024 6:28 PM, 228.6K followers, 2 retweets, 27 likes]
Yes, Trump made the deal with the Taliban, but Biden executed it in the worst way possible. His legacy is abandoning allies, creating chaos and handing Afghanistan over to the Taliban after 20 years of war, thousands of lives lost, and trillions of dollars spent.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[7/21/2024 3:18 PM, 228.6K followers, 2 retweets, 56 likes]
Joe Biden may have been a good president, but Afghanistan’s chaotic withdrawal was a grave betrayal of its 40 million people. Despite the cowardice and corruption of Afghan leaders, the situation could have been handled more gracefully, even without a continued military presence.

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[7/21/2024 12:35 PM, 80.5K followers, 33 retweets, 86 likes]
In my op-ed for @DiplomacyNow, I argue that the sidelining of Afghan women in Doha highlights a serious issue. Their exclusion from peace talks undermines rights entrenched by the UN Charter and sets a dangerous precedent for diplomacy. https://dialogueinitiatives.org/afghan-women-sidelined-again-in-doha/
Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[7/20/2024 2:15 AM, 6.7M followers, 408 retweets, 1.2K likes]
I welcome the historic ICJ Advisory Opinion on Israel’s policies in Occupied Palestinian Territory. The ICJ ruling that Israel must end its occupation & illegal settlements is vindication of the legitimate struggle of the brave Palestinian people. I urge the international community & UN to implement the ruling, ensuring Palestinian self-determination through a two state solution in line with relevant UN resolutions. Proud that Pakistan contributed to the case, demonstrating our unwavering commitment to the Palestinian cause.

Imran Khan
@ImranKhanPTI
[7/21/2024 4:48 AM, 20.8M followers, 16K retweets, 28K likes]
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s jail interview on @thetimes : "I am confined in a 7ft by 8ft death cell, typically reserved for terrorists. People voted for me because they are fed up with the current system and how Pakistan is being run." https://www.thetimes.com/article/1248b7a4-9eda-4596-8304-c31a8f4720f6?shareToken=f975ca4775425b974b7a7214d3fce145

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[7/21/2024 10:26 AM, 85K followers, 3.4K retweets, 6.1K likes]
Pakistan: Firing by officers on peaceful protestors in Bannu today resulting in the death and injury of several protestors, is a violation of their rights to peaceful assembly under international human rights law and Pakistan’s own Constitution. The use of lethal force at a peaceful rally advocating for peace is unlawful and is at odds with the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.

Further, restrictions on mobile internet services in Bannu curtail the people’s ability to mobilise, increase the spread of misinformation during emergencies, and create panic. The Government of Pakistan has repeatedly failed to promote and facilitate peaceful assembly, and to ensure the safety of protestors. @amnesty urges the government to promptly investigate and hold to account officials responsible for the attack. We also urge the Pakistani government to issue strict directives in line with the UN Basic Principles on the use of weapons.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/19/2024 12:44 PM, 42.8K followers, 7 retweets, 54 likes]
The US House resolution on Pakistan’s democracy clearly bothered the civ-mil leadership - but still interesting to see that the govt said it would use the resolution as one reason to ban PTI. They argue that it was pushed by PTI supporters in the Pakistani-American diaspora.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/19/2024 12:47 PM, 42.8K followers, 6 likes]
The resolution is non-binding in terms of US government action. What it should do is invite introspection from Pakistan’s govt.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/20/2024 12:33 PM, 211.2K followers, 1.3K retweets, 3.9K likes]
In Bangladesh’s crisis, there may be a lesson for Pakistan’s leaders: Sidelining the political opposition doesn’t shield you from mass mobilizations by a broader public aggrieved about economic stress, longstanding misgovernance, and state repression.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/20/2024 12:33 PM, 211.2K followers, 210 retweets, 550 likes]
We’re seeing indications of growing discontent in Pakistan--from protests led by the marginalized in KPK and Baluchistan to growing mistrust in state institutions, and high levels of public anger expressed toward the army. And so much pessimism overall, especially among youth.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[7/20/2024 12:48 AM, 8.5M followers, 666 retweets, 2.7K likes]
Law and the constitution is becoming a JOKE in the capital of Pakistan and that’s why judges have only one option left. Register FIRs of illegal abductions in the capital on police officials. https://www.dawn.com/news/1846727
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/22/2024 12:54 AM, 100.3M followers, 1.6K retweets, 6.1K likes]
Sharing my thoughts at the start of the Budget Session of Parliament. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1lDGLlZdvWMGm

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/21/2024 1:46 PM, 100.3M followers, 2.1K retweets, 10K likes]
India considers the preservation of global heritage as its responsibility. We will contribute one million dollars to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/21/2024 1:41 PM, 100.3M followers, 3.3K retweets, 31K likes]
India is delighted to host the World Heritage Committee. Here are a few glimpses from the programme today. Glad that the DG of @UNESCO @AAzoulay also joined the programme.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/21/2024 6:39 AM, 100.3M followers, 8.6K retweets, 76K likes]
Pained by the passing away of Smt. Kamala Pujari Ji. She made a monumental contribution to agriculture, particularly boosting organic agricultural practices and protecting indigenous seeds. Her work in enriching sustainability and protecting biodiversity will be remembered for years. She was also a beacon in empowering the tribal communities. Condolences to her family and admirers. Om Shanti.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/21/2024 10:04 AM, 100.3M followers, 3.3K retweets, 23K likes]
Saddened by the passing away of Dr. MS Valiathan, a pioneer in the field of healthcare and medical research. His contributions have left an indelible mark and benefited countless people. He will be particularly remembered for cost-effective and top quality innovations. He was also at the forefront of improving the medical education sector in India. My thoughts are with his family and countless admirers. Om Shanti.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/21/2024 11:49 AM, 3.2M followers, 224 retweets, 1.3K likes]
An uplifting address by Prime Minister @narendramodi at the inauguration of the 46th Session of the World Heritage Committee. India is proud to host this significant meeting.
5 significant points from PM’s speech:
1 India’s diversity is unparalleled. As heritage is just not history but a shared consciousness of the world, India will continue to share our conservation experiences and know-how, particularly the Global South.
2 Our experiences in Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam stand testimony to our commitment.
3 World must not ignore culture for development. India’s vision of ‘Vikas Bhi Virasat Bhi’ signifies how tradition and technology can work together for national development.
4 India will contribute USD 1 million for UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
5 Proposed inclusion of northeast’s historic Moidam in the UNESCO World Heritage List as India’s 43rd World Heritage site would be a matter of great pride for the nation.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/19/2024 5:59 AM, 3.2M followers, 185 retweets, 1.4K likes]
A good conversation with FM @DmytroKuleba of Ukraine this afternoon. Spoke about further developing our bilateral relationship.
NSB
Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[7/21/2024 5:35 PM, 85K followers, 364 retweets, 597 likes]
BANGLADESH: @amnesty’s South Asia Regional Researcher @taqbirhuda speaks to @AJEnglish about the ongoing crisis and how the internet shutdown blocks human rights monitoring. #ProtectTheProtest #SaveBangladeshiStudents

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[7/20/2024 9:45 AM, 85K followers, 1.4K retweets, 2.2K likes]
BANGLADESH: The Government must immediately overturn the curfew with a ‘shoot on sight’ order that grants excessive powers to the security forces. The curfew must be urgently lifted, and all the people detained or arrested solely for exercising their right to protest peacefully should be immediately and unconditionally released. The authorities are obligated under international law to always exercise restraint and use no more force than is strictly necessary, proportionate and lawful in response to any escalation they may face. #SaveBangaldeshiStudents #ProtectTheProtest

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[7/19/2024 4:02 AM, 85K followers, 1.7K retweets, 2.3K likes]
BANGLADESH: The rising death toll is a shocking indictment of the absolute intolerance shown by the Bangladeshi authorities to protest and dissent. The unlawful force used against protesters shows a callous disregard for the right to life and an abject failure by law enforcement officials to uphold their obligations under domestic and international human rights law. The law enforcement agencies must immediately end their unlawful use of lethal force against protesters and ensure that the right of people to peaceful assembly is guaranteed in law and practice. #ProtectTheProtest #SaveBangladeshiStudents Read more: https://amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/government-of-bangladesh-must-urgently-halt-mounting-death-toll-of-protestors/

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/21/2024 1:45 PM, 211.2K followers, 29 retweets, 74 likes]
The State Department has raised its travel advisory level for Bangladesh to 4, the highest level (Do Not Travel). It’s a clear indication of how serious the situation has become from a stability standpoint. And a potential blow to badly-needed investment. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/bangladesh-travel-advisory.html

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/21/2024 11:57 AM, 211.2K followers, 67 retweets, 265 likes]
Today’s Supreme Court ruling in Bangladesh drastically curtailing job quotas won’t end the crisis. The protestors have specific demands separate from the quotas. And the demonstrations have mushroomed into a broader anti-government movement drawing on longstanding grievances.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/21/2024 11:57 AM, 211.2K followers, 6 retweets, 29 likes]
Also, after the government started cracking down hard, some protestors (part of an otherwise peaceful movement) resorted to their own violence-attacking police facilities, public infrastructure, gov’t buildings and even staging a jailbreak. Hard to dial down so much anger.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/21/2024 4:00 AM, 99.4K followers, 2 likes]
At the 6th National Drug Task Force meeting, we discussed expediting the operationalization of the identified rehabilitation school in Yongphula, establishing a world-class rehabilitation center, and extending full support to the implementing agencies.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/21/2024 4:00 AM, 99.4K followers]
Addressing drug use is a national priority, and we are committed to tackling this issue with utmost urgency.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/21/2024 3:59 AM, 99.4K followers, 1 retweet, 11 likes]
Had the 5th Economic Development Board meeting today. We deliberated on a list of potential investors in renewable energy and FDI in tourism; revised Policy and Rules and Regulations will be submitted to the Cabinet; we also discussed the upcoming Investment Roadshow in India.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/20/2024 10:43 AM, 99.4K followers, 16 likes]
On the final day of the workshop for Local Governments today, I took the opportunity to interact with the LG leaders. I encouraged them to look after their jurisdictions with utmost dedication and diligence, focusing on maximizing social and economic development.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/20/2024 10:43 AM, 99.4K followers, 3 likes]
Stressed the importance of synergy and coordination with other stakeholders to leverage agriculture and livestock produce, enhance education outcomes, increase tourist arrivals, and improve infrastructure development, among others.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/20/2024 10:43 AM, 99.4K followers, 3 likes]
Further emphasized that productivity at the grassroots level is indispensable for the successful implementation of our 13th Five Year Plan.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/19/2024 6:30 AM, 99.4K followers, 11 retweets, 75 likes]
Honoured that H.E. @VikramMisri has chosen to visit Bhutan as his first overseas visit barely 4 days after his appointment as the Foreign Secretary of India. I congratulated him on his appointment, and our discussions covered the full spectrum of our bilateral relations.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/19/2024 6:30 AM, 99.4K followers, 7 likes]
I expressed my heartfelt gratitude to the Government and the people of India for their steadfast support, with a special mention of their generous assistance for the 13th FYP and the Economic Stimulus Programme.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/19/2024 6:30 AM, 99.4K followers, 3 retweets, 8 likes]
We reaffirmed the close bond between Bhutan and India, agreeing that our partnership, rooted in mutual trust and benefit, must continue to flourish.

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[7/19/2024 2:51 PM, 13.6K followers, 38 retweets, 53 likes]
Departing on an Official Visit to China at the invitation of Foreign Minister Wang Yi. I look forward to engaging in constructive discussions with Minister Wang Yi and senior officials of the Government, as well as exploring enhanced cooperation with key Chinese companies. I am hopeful that this visit will strengthen and further enhance the strong partnership between Maldives and China.

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[7/21/2024 12:48 PM, 258.7K followers, 36 retweets, 85 likes]
Updates on Nepali students in Bangladesh: 1. All Nepali students in Bangladesh are safe. The Embassy of Nepal in Dhaka is in regular communication with the local authorities, college administrations, and Nepali students regarding their safety, security, and well-being.

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[7/21/2024 12:48 PM, 258.7K followers, 5 retweets, 8 likes]
2. Today, total 420 Nepali students arrived from Bangladesh, out of which 305 entered from Kakarvitta border point.

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[7/21/2024 12:48 PM, 258.7K followers, 9 retweets, 14 likes]
3. The Embassy continues to facilitate the travel of those willing to go back to Nepal and advise the rest to stay indoors and exercise caution.

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[7/21/2024 12:48 PM, 258.7K followers, 10 retweets, 16 likes]
4. ⁠Till today, more than 1200 students have arrived back from Bangladesh. @Arzuranadeuba @sewa_lamsal @amritrai555

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_UNP
[7/22/2024 12:02 AM, 321.8K followers, 7 retweets, 48 likes]
I inaugurated the University of Science and Technology, dedicated to providing our students with advanced knowledge in science and technology, in the Poonani area of Batticaloa. I had the pleasure of engaging with the students, witnessing their enthusiasm and potential. A special moment was the exchange of a Memorandum of Understanding between the university administration and other higher education institutions, along with the launch of a commemorative stamp. I thank Mr Hezbollah for his contribution to this region and the establishment of this university. With the addition of this new institution, the Eastern Province now has three universities, each striving to offer world-class education. Education should be free from political interference. We must eliminate threatening politics from our universities to ensure that students can pursue their studies without disruption. It’s time to change the mindset that labels our institutions as “degree shops.” Prestigious universities like Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge are non-profit institutions, just like Kotelawala University and NSBM Green University here in Sri Lanka. Our commitment to education doesn’t stop here. We are also planning to establish an institution in honour of Mr Lalith Athulathmudali and launch four new educational institutions, including technical universities.
Central Asia
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[7/19/2024 6:16 PM, 196.7K followers, 4 retweets, 26 likes]
At the conclusion of the state visit of President Sadyr #Japarov of the Kyrgyz Republic to #Uzbekistan, President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev and his wife bid farewell to their distinguished guests at Urgench International Airport. Following this, the head of our state returned to Tashkent.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[7/19/2024 2:33 PM, 196.7K followers, 5 retweets, 21 likes]
Following talks at the #Kuksaroy residence, Presidents Shavkat #Mirziyoyev and Sadyr #Japarov addressed the media, highlighting the outcomes of the historic visit. They emphasized the visit’s pivotal role in launching a new era of bilateral cooperation, expressing satisfaction with the friendly and constructive negotiations. The visit solidified the strategic partnership between #Uzbekistan and #Kyrgyzstan, setting the stage for enhanced regional cooperation ahead.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[7/21/2024 1:24 PM, 196.7K followers, 6 retweets, 21 likes]
After productive negotiations between the Presidents of #Uzbekistan and the #Kyrgyz Republic, a significant number of bilateral agreements were adopted, with 16 documents signed during the state visit. The two leaders also endorsed a joint statement aimed at strengthening and broadening the comprehensive strategic partnership between our nations.

Bakhtiyor Saidov
@FM_Saidov
[7/19/2024 11:36 AM, 3.9K followers, 7 retweets, 26 likes]
#Uzbekistan and #Kyrgyzstan ties have never been so candid, intense, and promising as now. The Joint Statement of H.E. Shavkat Mirziyoyev and H.E. Sadyr Japarov on further deepening and expanding the comprehensive strategic partnership between our two nations underscores the united efforts to elevate bilateral relations in all dimensions without any exception. Our leaders had productive meetings covering all topics. There are no unresolved issues left. The specific focus was paid to enriching the common economic agenda, connecting businesses, creating stronger investment ties, raising trade turnover, and more. @UzbekMFA together with @MFA_Kyrgyzstan will continue close cooperation to make all the arrangements realized timely.

Furqat Sidiqov
@FurqatSidiq
[7/20/2024 2:35 PM, 1.4K followers, 3 retweets, 11 likes]
Just wrapped up an energizing online session with leaders and representatives of 20 Uzbek diaspora communities in the U.S. and Canada. Our discussions focused on promoting the Uzbek language and rich heritage, supporting youths, and ways to address the Uzbek community’s needs.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/21/2024 6:36 AM, 23.5K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
Ecotourism is among many industries Uzbekistan aspires to develop and we just explored a project based in Khiva, Khorezm, as part of @USAGMgov #SolutionsJournalism workshop. Karakol Lake has been shrinking. There is an adjacent artificial lake now and Uzbekistan-Russia business is turning the area into a resort with environmental and cultural preservation components. 1/4

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/21/2024 6:36 AM, 23.5K followers, 1 like]
Ecotourism project in rural, ancient Khorezm, aiming to attract domestic and foreign tourists to a “historical and cultural resort” promising to create local jobs, while preserving ethnic crafts and heritage. @USAGMgov workshop in Urgench-Khiva.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/21/2024 6:36 AM, 23.5K followers]
A promise is not a solution. Who is doing what to solve this or that problem. As part of @USAGMgov workshops with journalists and bloggers, we checked out some of “promising businesses” supported by the UZ government. This one is called City of Magicians/Karakol Ecotourism, which is just getting started.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/20/2024 9:59 PM, 23.5K followers, 1 retweet, 7 likes]
Urgench-Khiva @USAGMgov workshop participants from Khorezm, Karakalpakstan, Bukhara, and Tashkent discussing anti-corruption efforts and lack of transparency and accountability in UZ with @AntikorUz media office chief Sherzod Saparov.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/21/2024 2:05 AM, 23.5K followers]
Uzbekistan: The system is not as open as it was during 2018-2020, say @USAGMgov workshop participants from across 🇺🇿. Press services and public affairs offices are more present than before but they often fail to respond to media inquiries, especially when it comes to questions re corruption. Here in conversation with @AntikorUz media office head Sherzod Saparov.

{End of Report}
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