epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Tuesday, July 9, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
The Taliban’s morality police are contributing to a climate of fear among Afghans, UN says (AP)
AP [7/9/2024 3:45 AM, Staff, 456K, Negative]
The Taliban’s morality police are contributing to a climate of fear and intimidation among Afghans, according to a U.N. report published Tuesday. Edicts and some of the methods used to enforce them constituted a violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the report said.

The Taliban set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” after seizing power in 2021.

Since then, the ministry has enforced decrees issued by the Taliban leadership that have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, like dress codes, segregated education and employment, and having a male guardian when they travel.

“The punishments attached to non-compliance with instructions and decrees are often arbitrary, severe and disproportionate,” said the report from the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan. “Sweeping bans with a discriminatory effect on women have been introduced. Human rights violations, as well as the unpredictability of enforcement measures, contribute to a climate of fear and intimidation among segments of the population.”

The mission said it documented at least 1,033 instances between August 2021 and March 2024 where ministry employees applied force during the implementation of orders, resulting in the violation of a person’s liberty, and physical and mental integrity.

“This includes the use of threats, arbitrary arrests and detentions, excessive use of force by de facto law enforcement officials and ill-treatment.” These instances mostly affected men, who were punished for allegedly violating Taliban orders or because their female relatives had breached them, according to the report.

It said the ministry’s role was expanding into other areas of public life, including media monitoring and eradicating drug addiction.

“Given the multiple issues outlined in the report, the position expressed by the de facto authorities that this oversight will be increasing and expanding gives cause for significant concern for all Afghans, especially women and girls,” said Fiona Frazer, the head of UNAMA’s Human Rights Service.

The ministry rejected the U.N. report, calling its findings false and contradictory.

“Decrees and relevant legal documents are issued to reform society and should have their implementation ensured,” the ministry said.

The mission’s report comes a week after a Taliban delegation travelled to Qatar to attend a U.N.-sponsored meeting on increasing engagement with Afghanistan amid the country’s economic challenges and humanitarian crises.

That meeting sparked anger from rights groups and activists because it excluded Afghan women and civil society.
Taliban promotes sanctioned official to central bank governor (Reuters)
Reuters [7/8/2024 9:49 AM, Staff, 48440K, Neutral]
The Taliban has promoted an official, who is the subject of U.S. counter-terrorism sanctions, as the central bank’s new acting governor, a spokesman said, a move likely to be watched by Washington which has frozen billions of the bank’s reserves.

Taliban administration spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid announced the appointment of Noor Ahmad Agha, also known as Ahmad Zia Agha, by the Taliban supreme spiritual leader to the helm of the central bank in a statement on Saturday.

He said former central bank governor Hidayatullah Badri, who is subject to U.S. and United Nations sanctions, would take up the role of acting Minister of Mines and Petroleum.

Afghanistan’s central bank appointments are closely tracked by the United States, which froze $7 billion of its reserves held in the U.S. after the Taliban took over in 2021 as foreign forces withdrew from Afghanistan.

Washington later transferred half of the money to a trust fund in Switzerland overseen by U.S., Swiss and Afghan trustees.

One of several proposed U.S. conditions for considering letting the central bank access the funds is the replacement of senior Taliban members at the institution with experienced professionals to insulate the bank from political interference.

“It seems like the standoff will continue between the Afghan central bank and the international banking system,” said Graeme Smith, a senior analyst at Brussels-based thinktank International Crisis Group.

“Ahmad Zia Agha, also known in Afghanistan as Noor Ahmad Agha, has been sanctioned by the US Treasury which has labelled him as a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ for allegedly managing funds intended for bombs and for distributing money to Taliban commanders and associates abroad,” Smith added.

Mujahid and a spokesman for the Afghan central bank did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Agha’s inclusion on sanctions lists and any potential reaction from Washington.

A Taliban delegation recently met with international diplomats in Doha in a summit arranged by the United Nations, and again called for the return of the central bank assets, Mujahid told media.
Taliban Authorities Slash Government Salaries Of Afghan Women (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [7/8/2024 9:59 AM, Aysha Safi, 1530K, Negative]
Afghan authorities have slashed the salaries of women government workers who have been forced to stay at home since the Taliban seized power, the finance ministry said Monday.

After kicking out the foreign-backed government in 2021, the Taliban government stopped most women employed in the public sector from attending their offices while continuing to pay them.

"Women who are at home and do not go to the office... their salaries are 5,000 Afghanis ($70) a month," Ahmad Wali Haqmal, the finance ministry spokesman, told AFP.

Women who are permitted to work in segregated areas such as in government hospitals or schools would continue to get paid a salary according to their position.

Women had previously earned up to around 35,000 Afghanis in the public sector, including university professors forced off campus.

Administrative roles in ministries could pay around 20,000 Afghanis, although this was reduced for many to around 15,000 after the Taliban seized power.

A 25-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified for security reasons and who has worked for the Information and Culture department outside Kabul since early 2021, said her salary has dropped from 10,000 Afghanis.

"Making women stay at home is already a very big problem for us -- we are in a very bad mental and psychological condition -- and now that our salaries have decreased, this has only worsened," she told AFP.

She uses her salary to support the seven members of her family, including her sick mother, but said it would barely last her two weeks.

The salary change came into effect in July and is estimated to affect tens of thousands of women who work in the public sector, the finance ministry spokesman said.

Since returning to power in 2021, Taliban authorities have curtailed the freedoms of women based on a strict interpretation of Islamic law, which the United Nations has labelled "gender apartheid".

Women have been pushed out of public life, including bans on education, as well as visiting public parks, gyms and baths.

Afghanistan has been battered by decades of war, long propped up by international aid that has been dramatically reduced since the Taliban took back power.

In 2023, an estimated 29.2 million people -- almost 70 percent of the population -- were in need of urgent humanitarian aid to survive, according to UN Women.
Thousands of Afghans fought with the US against the Taliban. Why have they been forgotten? (Boston Globe – opinion)
Boston Globe [7/9/2024 3:38 AM, Anjana Sankar, 4M, Neutral]
“Aslam” is a battle-hardened Afghan army veteran who fought on the front lines against the Taliban in Kandahar Province. “Mohammed” was ambushed and shot by Taliban assailants because he had spent years defending the rights of abused women. Captain “Nadir” collected and analyzed intelligence for the Afghan National Defense Forces in close collaboration with US troops.

All three men had battled or publicly defied the Taliban, and they feared for their lives and their families’ lives after the US withdrew its troops in the summer of 2021. (They asked me to withhold their real names or initials because they still fear reprisal by the Taliban.) And all three had been led to believe that the United States would provide them transport to safety and perhaps even a life in America.

They spent years hiding and waiting, but no help arrived. So they fled, eventually finding their way to Latin America, where they joined the river of migrants from many nations flowing through the deadly jungle of Panama’s Darién Gap and the sun-scorched plains of Mexico en route to the US border.

Although the United States and its allies evacuated some 80,000 Afghans before the fall of Kabul, many thousands more were left behind. According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, about 19,000 Afghans applied for asylum between 2021 and October 2023. By many accounts, most have not received it.

Many fled to refugee camps in Pakistan or Iran, where they faced threats of expulsion before they fled again to Latin America and ultimately the US-Mexico border.

The scope of the crisis is unclear, because the United States does not have statistics on the number of Afghans crossing the southern border in search of asylum. But Afghan support organizations and migrant advocacy groups estimate that as many as 15,000 Afghans have crossed the border since August 2021. One San Diego-based migrant advocacy group, the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA), says it assists several hundred Afghans every month after they have crossed from Tijuana into California.

Those support groups estimate that thousands more Afghans are stranded on the Mexico side of the border. At just one migrant shelter in Tijuana, run by a nonprofit called the Latino Muslim Foundation, the majority of the 180 occupants are Afghans, aid workers say.

“We are talking about around 100 Afghans at any given point,” says Arash Azizzada of Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, an Afghan American nonprofit based in New York that provides legal and resettlement assistance to Afghan migrants. The migrants include “families, children, women police officers, ex-soldiers, prosecutors — it is a cross section of the society,” he adds.

Migrants who have some money may stay in Tijuana for months, waiting for interview appointments with US Customs and Border Protection. Advocates note that CBP One, the US government app migrants can use to apply for asylum, is difficult to navigate and does not include options in Dari or Pashtun, the main languages spoken by Afghans.

Many more migrants are thought to cross illegally into the United States, where they turn themselves over to the border patrol and request asylum. Some Afghans are detained by the border patrol despite having documents to show their association with the US forces in Afghanistan. Maria Chavez, an immigration attorney with PANA, says several of her Afghan clients are currently languishing in the Otay Mesa Detention Center in El Cajon, Calif., awaiting security clearance for their release.

Once released, they may seek out Afghan American communities in places like New York City and begin the hunt for housing while they await CPB’s decision, a process than can take many months. If all goes to plan, they can receive work permits six months after applying for asylum.

Their stories sound much like the stories of thousands of other migrants who have been flooding across the Mexico border from Latin America, China, and Africa. But the Afghan migrants are unique because their plight is the direct result of American policies. They are the soldiers, interpreters, lawyers, clerks, drivers, and cooks who worked for or fought beside Americans during our 20-year war against the Taliban. And now their lives, and the lives of their families, are in peril.

In that way, they are more like the Vietnamese or Hmong from Cambodia who allied themselves with the United States, only to be left behind when US forces left the region in the 1970s. Those who weren’t killed or put in prison faced extraordinary hardships in fleeing as refugees to other Southeast Asian countries. It would take years before the United States adjusted its immigration policies to allow larger numbers of them to become citizens.

Bills have been floating around Congress that would allow qualified Afghans to obtain green cards and establish a pathway to citizenship. Yet despite bipartisan support, these have been shelved amid political gamesmanship over immigration policy. Meanwhile, former president Donald Trump has threatened to deport undocumented migrants and tighten up asylum rules — actions that would imperil the safety of the Afghan migrants.

For Aslam, 35, the wounds from bullets and shrapnel have healed, but his mental scars from years of war persist. He suffers from symptoms of acute PTSD. These days he’s living in a shelter in New York while waiting for his application to be processed. Azizzada says Aslam will often complain that Americans asked him to fight against the Taliban for democracy — and that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was a profound personal betrayal.

The day the US gave up

From the time he left college about a decade ago, the man I’m calling Mohammed, who is 30, had one mission: to improve the civil rights of Afghan women. A lawyer who was trained in part by Western nongovernmental organizations, he helped women in rural Baghlan Province in northern Afghanistan bring cases against abusive men, work that put him in direct and sometimes violent conflict with the Taliban, its supporters, and much of traditional Afghan society. Anonymous threats demanding that he stop promoting “anti-Islamic ideas” were part of his life.

“These were unforgivable sins in the eyes of the Taliban,” he told me.

One evening in March 2021 while Mohammed was driving to Kabul with two associates, a vehicle filled with gun-toting men cut off their car and opened fire, he said. The assailants killed one of his companions and severely wounded him and the other man. Bleeding from gunshots to his stomach, he survived by pretending to be dead.

As American troops departed in August 2021 and Taliban forces closed in on Kabul, Mohammed knew he had to escape. Four times he went to the Kabul airport, carrying papers he says showed he worked for the government court system. Each time, he was turned away by security guards or was unable to fight through the crowds of panicked fellow Afghans trying to board planes. He and his wife and their two small daughters went into hiding as he continued to petition the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other Western governments for asylum. No one responded.

He had believed “that America will help us rebuild Afghanistan into a modern nation where women can play an equal role.” But now he felt betrayed. “We worked with them (Americans) for over 20 years. Then on a fine day, they handed over the country and people like us to the Taliban.”

Finally, in 2023, he received a humanitarian visa to enter Brazil. Leaving his family behind, he traveled to Sao Paolo, where he paid $5,000 to a trafficker who helped him journey roughly 6,000 miles to reach the US border with Mexico. In Tijuana, he found the Afghan shelter, applied for an asylum hearing with the Customs and Border Patrol agency, and then crossed the border into Southern California. Today, he lives in El Cajon, working as a cashier at a supermarket, while he awaits a decision on his application.

A harrowing journey

The man I’m calling Nadir, 40, still speaks in a hushed tone as though someone were watching him. For 15 years, he worked for the Afghan military, most recently collecting and analyzing intelligence used by Afghan and US forces to combat Taliban forces. He is the kind of soldier the Taliban would imprison or execute if they could catch him.

Like Mohammed, he tried repeatedly to reach the Kabul airport as American forces fled in 2021, but he was turned away each time. In dismay, he later learned, he says, that people who had not fought for the military or worked with the US government succeeded in escaping on those last flights out of Kabul. “Every baker, tailor and taxi driver was trying to flee the country,” Nadir says. “We were the ones fighting the Taliban. We were at risk. Yet we were abandoned.”

For more than a year, he too fruitlessly petitioned Western governments for a visa; none responded. Leaving behind his six children, wife, and parents, he traveled to a refugee camp in Pakistan and obtained a visa to Brazil. There he joined eight other Afghans and started the arduous journey on foot through nine countries to the United States.

Days blurred into nights as they navigated dense forests and treacherous terrain, surviving at times on meager rations like two dates a day. They stumbled on corpses and saw fellow migrants fall to their deaths off steep cliffs. It took his group seven days just to cross the jungles of Panama’s Darién Gap, facing constant threats from smugglers.

To Nadir, the trek was more dangerous than fighting the Taliban. “It almost felt like all the milk I drank from my mother went dry,” he says, using a traditional Afghan saying to refer to an experience that he felt would kill him.

At last, with a ladder provided by a trafficker, he climbed over the wall at the US border. “I slid down the wall into American soil,” he says. “Finally, I was safe.”

Like Mohammed, he now awaits adjudication of his asylum application in El Cajon, where he shares a small apartment with other Afghan migrants. He works odd jobs to pay for food while waiting for an official work permit that could take months more to arrive.

Afghanistan may be lost, he told me, but the US government should not give up on Afghans like him. “I am tired of all the wars,” he says. “I just want to live in peace. We deserve that.”

A moral failure

Three months before the United States completed the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan, David Helvey, an acting assistant secretary of defense, told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “We have a moral obligation to help those that have helped us over the past 20 years of our presence and work in Afghanistan.”

But for most of the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who worked with or fought alongside the United States, that help is yet to arrive. They are trapped in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Or languishing in refugee camps in Pakistan or Iran. Or wandering as refugees in the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. Or living in a liminal state in the United States, where their uncertain immigration status makes them unable to work legally, plan their futures, or rescue their families from Afghanistan.

Beyond the 80,000 or so Afghans who were airlifted from Kabul in the fall of 2021, aid groups estimate that at least 150,000 more Afghans could qualify for asylum in the United States because they face retribution by the Taliban. That number does not include their families, who are also living in fear of reprisal. A senior UN official reported in March 2023 that Afghanistan “remains the most repressive country in the world for women’s rights” and noted a pattern by the Taliban of “arbitrary arrests, killing and torture of former government officials and security forces.”

The answer for these Afghans is legislation stuck in Congress known as the Afghan Adjustment Act. Similar to legislation passed in the 1970s and 1980s to help Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees following the Vietnam war, it would create a pathway to citizenship for those Afghans under humanitarian parole, which allows them temporarily to work and live in the United States. The bill also expands eligibility for special immigrant visas to people who worked for the Afghan military and their families. To be approved, the applicants would have to prove their identities and pass security background checks to ensure they were not criminals and do not have ties to terrorist groups.

The bill would go well beyond the Special Immigrant Visa program that has helped thousands of Afghan refugees come to the United States. The cap of nearly 39,000 visas under that program has been reached, and so far Congress has failed to approve the Biden administration’s request to expand it by 20,000 more visas.

Though the bill has gained 130 cosponsors in the House, bipartisan support in the Senate, and the backing of veterans’ groups, Congress has repeatedly failed to pass it. “Our dysfunctional immigration system is still failing the thousands of Afghans who fled the Taliban — stuck in administrative limbo here in America waiting to start their new lives for good,” Representative Seth Moulton, a Salem Democrat, told the Globe.

Moulton asserted that there is, however, strong support for the bill in Congress if partisan gamesmanship over immigration, intensified by the 2024 presidential race, ends. “Veterans in Congress especially know that it’s our duty to help our Afghan allies, so we’ll continue advocating for its passage,” he said.

While lawmakers dither, nongovernmental groups are trying to fill the void. Among them, the Association of Wartime Allies, a veteran advocacy group, recently helped two Afghan ex-soldiers cross the southern border. “We do not advise anyone to break the law. We knew about these two men, and we wanted to be there for them,” says Kim Staffieri, the group’s cofounder and executive director.

The plight of the Afghans who were hastily evacuated by the US forces in 2021 are only marginally better. They came to the US on humanitarian parole, but this was intended to expire on Nov. 20, 2023. The Department of Homeland Security has extended its Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghanistan until May 2025 to cover Afghans who were residing in the United States as of March 2022.

More than 18,200 Afghans currently on parole in the United States have applied for TPS.

Parole gives no legal guarantee to permanent residency and could be revoked by the next president. Trump did just that with other groups under humanitarian parole after he was elected in 2016.

However, many fear that a new executive order by President Biden could harm Afghans seeking asylum, as it allows the government to turn away migrants at the border when there is a high volume of daily border crossings. Migrant rights activists say the rule may force migrants, including Afghans, to remain in shelters in Mexico as they await narrowing opportunities to enter the United States through the southern border.

One thing seems clear: As the United States continues to delay help, Afghans will resort to dangerous ways of entering the country. Their increasing numbers at the southern border seeking sanctuary is as much proof of their desperation as it is of a broken American promise.

Our country may be divided about the unregulated migration across the southern border and its economic and social repercussions. But the Afghan ex-soldiers, lawyers, and human rights defenders and their families adding to those numbers are proof of our moral failure. They once served the American interest in Afghanistan, and now it is our turn to return the favor. As Mohammed asks, “What is our fault in all this?”

He lives in perpetual fear for his family in Afghanistan, though he is grateful to be safe in California. “We do not deserve this,” he says.
Pakistan
UN chief meets Pakistan’s premier to discuss the situation of Afghan refugees following clampdown (AP)
AP [7/9/2024 4:53 AM, Munir Ahmed, 42991K, Neutral]
The head of the U.N. refugee agency met the Pakistani prime minister Tuesday to discuss the situation of Afghan refugees living in uncertainty since Islamabad began a persistent anti-migrant crackdown last year.

Pakistan has long hosted an estimated 1.7 million Afghans, most of whom fled during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation. More than half a million others escaped Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021, with thousands waiting in Pakistan for resettlement in the United States and elsewhere. Since the widely criticized clampdown started in November, an estimated 600,000 Afghans have returned home.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, who arrived in Pakistan on Sunday, spent two days meeting Afghan refugees. He posted on social media platform X: “I spent time with Afghan refugees whose resourcefulness is testimony to their strength — and to Pakistan’s long hospitality.” Grandi added that his visit aimed to “discuss how we can best support both amidst growing challenges.”

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif told the UN refugee agency head that Afghan refugees were treated with “exemplary respect and dignity” despite facing multiple challenges, according to a statement released by his office Tuesday. Sharif also urged the international community to “recognize the burden being shouldered by Pakistan while hosting such a large refugee population and demonstrate collective responsibility.”

The prime minister also asked for help from UNHCR to repatriate the refugees in “a safe and dignified” manner.

Also on Tuesday, Grandi met with Asif Durrani, the country’s special representative for Afghanistan. Durrani wrote on X that the two sides “expressed readiness to find a durable solution to the Afghan refugee problem, including their repatriation”.

Since the crackdown, the neighboring Taliban-led government said it set up a commission to deal with repatriated nationals and has criticized Islamabad’s actions.

Pakistan has also faced a surge in militant attacks on security forces and civilians alike, mostly blamed on Pakistani Taliban — a separate militant group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban— straining the ties between the two countries.
Pakistan Looks to Leverage SCO for Regional Support on Counterterrorism (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [7/8/2024 7:50 AM, Umair Jamal, 1156K, Negative]
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during his recent participation at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Astana described the issue of terrorism as a major concern for member states and called for collective efforts to counter the challenges posed by militancy.

Sharif’s speech at the SCO summit reflected the urgency with which Pakistan views the threat of terrorism and its desire to see regional countries take a more proactive role in addressing this issue. Pakistan has long been grappling with the problem of terrorism, with militant groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) carrying out attacks against the country’s security forces.

The premier’s focus on terrorism as a regional problem was motivated by three key factors.

Firstly, the SCO summit provides Pakistan with an opportunity to bring its concerns to a forum that includes its neighbors, key allies, and adversaries, such as China, Russia, and India. Sharif used this platform to build a case for Pakistan being under the threat of “state-sponsored terrorism,” indirectly accusing India of supporting and carrying out assassination campaigns in the country.

Secondly, Sharif’s emphasis on the terrorism issue was also driven by Pakistan’s bilateral challenges with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Islamabad has been struggling to convince the Afghan Taliban to disallow militant groups like the TTP from operating against Pakistan. However, its efforts have been largely unsuccessful, with the two countries’ ties suffering as a result. The Afghan Taliban have traditionally refused to discuss terrorism with Pakistan at international forums, calling on Islamabad to resolve its issues with the TTP bilaterally. This has frustrated Pakistan as the country has not been able to build regional pressure on the Afghan Taliban to contain TTP.

During the SCO summit, the Pakistani premier urged the interim Afghan government to “take concrete and effective measures to prevent the use of Afghan soil for terrorist attacks against other states” in an effort to put pressure on Kabul from a regional perspective and highlight the threat emanating from Afghanistan. Moreover, other leaders who spoke at the SCO forum emphasized the importance of a peaceful Afghanistan for regional stability. A former observer state, Afghanistan, did not attend the meeting.

Thirdly, the timing of the SCO summit was important for Pakistan as it has announced a new counterterrorism campaign, “Zarb-e-Istehkam,” to defeat the rising threat of militancy by enlisting support from regional countries. SCO was the first major gathering of regional powers where Pakistan could make a case for its counterterror campaign and rally support for its upcoming measures to fight militancy domestically.

Pakistan desperately needs regional support to resolve its problems with terrorism and militancy, some of which stem from Afghanistan, while others originate from across the border with Iran and elsewhere. Taking part in the forum allowed the country to express its frustration as it struggles to convince regional countries to pay attention to its militancy concerns.

However, it remains to be seen whether Pakistan was able to make tangible progress in convincing countries like China, Iran, Russia, and others to back its counterterror initiatives at the regional level and compel India as well as the Afghan Taliban to refrain from undermining its security interests.

It is pertinent to note that Pakistan’s closest regional ally, China, has urged the country to swiftly root out militancy, a factor that has undermined bilateral cooperation. At the same time, Beijing has not actively helped Pakistan address its militancy concerns vis-à-vis Afghanistan by pushing Kabul to address Pakistan’s concerns.

By raising the issue at the SCO summit, Prime Minister Sharif attempted to rally regional support and cooperation in countering the challenges from militancy. However, the big question is whether these calls will translate into practical support from regional allies and countries.

It seems unlikely that Pakistan will receive the support it is looking for.

One reason is that previously, regional states had similar complaints with Pakistan and found it frustrating to convince the country to address their concerns.

Moreover, Pakistan’s security policy has frustrated many in the region, with some of its allies convinced that Pakistan lacks the will to fight militancy and extremism at home, which they believe is the root cause of much of its extremism-related problems that at times spill over its borders.

Overall, Sharif’s speech at the SCO summit reflected Pakistan’s continued struggle with the problem of terrorism and its desire to see regional countries take a more proactive role in addressing this critical issue.

To convince forums such as the SCO to take Pakistan seriously on its terror concerns, Pakistan must demonstrate its resolve at home by building consensus and avoid giving the impression to regional powers that the country is incapable of forging a united anti-terrorism plan because of political infighting. The failure to demonstrate resolve and a united front will only result in Pakistan’s calls for cooperation going unanswered by the regional community.
Kenyan court rules police acted out of line in killing of Pakistani journalist (VOA)
VOA [7/8/2024 12:51 PM, Sarah Zaman, 4032K, Negative]
A court in Kenya said Monday that police acted unlawfully in using lethal force against a Pakistani journalist killed near the capital in October 2022, ordering thousands of dollars in compensation for his widow.

Arshad Sharif, 49, died when Kenyan police opened fire on his car at a roadblock outside Nairobi. Authorities said it was a case of mistaken identity.

On Monday, the court in Kajiado, where Sharif was killed, ruled the use of deadly force against the Pakistani journalist was “arbitrary, un-proportional, illegal and unconstitutional,” and ordered the state to pay over $77,000 to the family.

The payment was suspended for 30 days after the state’s attorney claimed lack of funds.

The court also ordered authorities to conclude their investigation and take action against the police officers involved.

Javeria Siddique, one of Sharif’s two wives, filed the lawsuit in Kenyan court last year on October 23 – exactly one year after her husband’s killing.

Speaking to VOA, Siddique said getting a verdict in this case in Kenya was a “big deal” for her.

“I was not very hopeful. This was a politically motivated murder,” Siddique said. “Of course, implementation will take time. For me, today’s victory will leave a huge mark on press freedom and freedom of expression.”

Sharif, a prominent news anchor, fled Pakistan in August 2022 while facing sedition charges. He had become a vocal critic of Pakistan’s powerful military establishment after former Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed from office in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence in April 2022.

In a letter to Pakistan’s Supreme Court in late 2022, Sharif’s mother Riffat Ara Alvi listed several members of the military’s top brass, including then-army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, who she said should be questioned about her son’s killing.

The Pakistani military and its spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have denied playing any role in the killing.

Sharif’s family has been unable to lodge a police report in Pakistan for the crime. Speaking to VOA, Siddique rejected a report Islamabad police filed two years ago against three Pakistani nationals who hosted her late husband in Kenya as bogus.

A Pakistani fact-finding mission which visited Kenya in November 2022 concluded that the father of five was the victim of a targeted killing.

"Arshad Sharif’s death is not a case of mistaken identity - I can say, and on the evidence we have so far, this prima facie is a target killing,” then-Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah told reporters in Islamabad in December 2022. The minister said the journalist’s body had bruises and signs of torture.

In a statement marking the first anniversary of Sharif’s killing last year, journalists’ advocacy group Reporters without Borders accused authorities in Pakistan and Kenya of duplicity.

“Kenya is protecting its police officers and Pakistan is deliberately steering clear of the possibility that its security services were involved,” the watchdog’s head of investigation Arnaud Froger said in an online statement.

The country’s top court began scrutinizing the Pakistani government’s investigation in December 2022. Siddique told VOA she has been waiting for nearly a year for the court to set a date for a hearing.
Pakistan hearings on surveillance, TikTok worry digital rights advocates (VOA)
VOA [7/8/2024 4:52 PM, Staff, 4032K, Neutral]
Two hearings at high courts in Pakistan in July are being viewed as a further sign of the eroding digital rights in the country.

In Islamabad, a submission to the high court said that telecom companies had been ordered to install a mass surveillance system. And in Peshawar, the Chinese social media app TikTok told the high court it would allow the Telecoms Ministry access to remove content deemed “blasphemous.”

Digital and free expression advocates criticized the moves. Haroon Baloch, a digital rights activist at Bytes for All, said mass surveillance has no place in a democratic society.

“Physical or online surveillance needs a legal justification. The government should justify the need and gauge for online surveillance,” he told VOA.

The Islamabad case focuses on the surveillance of citizens whose phone calls were recorded and later released on social media, the news website Dawn reported.

Among those affected are the wife of former leader Imran Khan and the son of the former chief justice, both of whom petitioned the courts over their leaked calls.

A submission to the court said that Pakistani telecom companies were ordered to “finance, import, and install” a Lawful Intercept Management System at a surveillance center for the use of designated agencies.

In Pakistan, “agencies” often refer to the country’s powerful intelligence service.

The court noted that the software provides the ability to surveil up to 2% of their consumers, or 4 million citizens, “at any given time.”

People will lose their privacy through such surveillance, said Aftab Alam, executive director of the Islamabad-based think tank Institute for Research Advocacy and Development. “This [mass surveillance] is against the constitution and laws.”

Nighat Dad, who serves on Meta’s oversight board, told Dawn it was “mind boggling” that Pakistan’s telecom companies “do not feel the need to be transparent towards their own consumers.”

Separately in Peshawar, TikTok told the court on July 1 that it would provide access to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.

In that case, a petitioner is seeking a countrywide ban on TikTok for allowing what he described as “‘un-Islamic posts.”

Like Instagram, TikTok is a popular platform in Pakistan where users access it for diverse views, entertainment and marketing.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority did not respond to VOA’s requests for comment.

With traditional media restricted or navigating official and unspoken red lines of what can and cannot be discussed, social media offers a rare platform in the country for independent or diverse views.

Issues off limits, including for broadcast journalists, include subjects that go against anything deemed as “national interests,” as well as missing persons, criticism of the armed forces, voices of dissent, and the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement or PTM. After an army spokesperson said in 2019 the media should avoid giving coverage to the PTM, most local stations stopped reporting on the movement and its rallies.

But as more viewers turn to social media, Pakistan has seen more restrictions on digital platforms.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority banned X after users on the platform questioned the transparency of February elections.

The ban was not announced formally, but officials told a high court in April it was imposed “in the interest of upholding national security, maintaining public order and preserving the integrity of our nation.”

The social media platform can still be accessed via VPN.

Digital rights activist Farieha Aziz told VOA that Pakistan is moving toward greater “control” of the technology sector. As a result, she said, “We will have to suffer.”
Pakistan’s rooftop solar boom shines spotlight on power crisis (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [7/8/2024 5:00 PM, Adnan Aamir, 2042K, Positive]
Srinagar Highway offers a sun-drenched, 25-kilometer straight shot from Islamabad’s international airport to the center of Pakistan’s capital. It also affords a clear view of how increasing numbers of citizens are reacting to frequent power cuts and bloated electricity bills: Rooftops on buildings lining the route are covered in solar panels.

Atesham ud Din is among the homeowners who made the switch, investing $9,000 in a solar panel system two years ago to take advantage of one of Pakistan’s most plentiful natural resources. "Now we never face the problem of power cuts, and our power bill is almost nil," the 34-year-old development professional told Nikkei Asia.

Amid rising power prices, consumption of electricity from the national grid skidded 10% in fiscal 2023 from the previous year. That is exacerbating problems in the crisis-ridden electricity sector, which is straining under $8.3 billion of debt, much of it owed to Chinese energy producers.

And the cash-strapped government is facing further pressure to increase electricity prices in budget-balancing moves on which its hopes of securing a loan deal with the International Monetary Fund rest.

The strain on the national grid is apparent. During the last week of June alone, there were 12 hours of "load shedding," or power cuts, in many areas of Lahore due to transmission flaws, reducing people’s ability to use electric fans or air-conditioning systems just as temperatures in the city of more than 11 million people reached 46 degrees Celsius.

It’s not immediately clear exactly how many people are switching to solar panels as an alternative source of electricity. Some households have opted for simple set-ups to fuel their own needs, residents says, while others, like ud Din, have invested significant sums into bigger solar panel systems, with a view to selling excess power generated to the national grid.

Saif ur Rehman, 48, a Lahore importer of medical equipment, has installed a system of 14 solar panels at his office.

"Now I can get peace of mind and focus on my business with uninterrupted access to electricity all day long and don’t have to worry about load shedding," Rehman told Nikkei Asia.

Shahzad Qureshi, a vendor of solar panels in Lahore, said he has witnessed an exponential increase in sales of inexpensive panels, mostly imported from China.

"There is an increase of more than 50% in sales of solar panels this summer," he said. Panels cost $90 apiece on average, and vary in size and capacity.

The roots of the crisis in the power sector can be traced back to 1994, when Pakistan offered lucrative deals to foreign investors to establish power plants as the country with a rapidly growing population -- 130 million at the time, 241 million by 2023 -- chased economic growth.

Called independent power producers (IPPs), these operators secured a guaranteed return on investment indexed to the U.S. dollar, plus payment for fixed capacity charges -- covering their debt servicing and other fixed costs -- regardless of whether the power plants are operational.

Consequently, Pakistan pays a hefty amount to IPPs every year. In fiscal 2023, the government paid them $4.7 billion just for capacity payments. That figure is expected to cross $9 billion in fiscal 2024 due to a combination of factors, the most important being the reduction in demand for electricity.

Payment of capacity charges increases the electricity production costs for the government, which translates into increased power bills for consumers, a bane for large sections of society in a developing economy like Pakistan.

The government initially sought to incentivize the solar panel business. In 2017, it started a system for "net metering," in which people can sell excess electricity produced by their solar panels back to the national grid.

In March 2023, a Gallup Pakistan survey found 88% of respondents expressing satisfaction with the overall performance of the solar panels installed at their homes.

Still, solar power has plenty of room to grow, since it contributes a negligible portion of Pakistan’s power mix. As of June 2023, the installed capacity of solar power in Pakistan stood at 630 megawatts, just 1.4% of the overall installed power capacity.

And as per the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority’s State of Industry Report 2023, there were merely 56,000 net-metering connections, representing just 0.15% of the nation’s electricity consumers.

But the appeal of solar is evident in distant rural regions that have limited connections to the national grid.

For example, the remote village of Kardigap, in Balochistan province, nearly 1,000 kilometers southwest of Islamabad, gets electricity from the national grid for merely three hours per day. Solar panels are becoming more common on the rooftops of houses in the village of 5,000 people, according to one resident who has gone a stage further and installed a full solar energy system sufficient to cater to his household’s needs around the clock.

Vaqar Ahmed, joint executive director at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), an Islamabad-based think tank, agrees that solar energy offers an ideal solution for rural areas. "Solar has been a sort of blessing for rural areas of Pakistan, with more stable provision of energy, and these regions do not have high power demand," Ahmed said in an interview.

But even as the solar panel business has boomed, in March the government indicated it wanted to end the net-metering policy as it seeks to meet the IMF’s criteria for state spending commitments.

Experts believe that the government is not sending a strong signal to potential investors in solar energy.

"Solar energy has faced policy whiplash in the last few years," said Aadil Nakhoda, an assistant professor of economics at the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi. "Frequent remarks by policymakers to reduce net-metering rates and then end the [practice] entirely has caused distress among domestic consumers."

Experts think the government fears that the continued spread of rooftop solar panels will increasingly lead to a loss of customers paying for electricity from the national grid.

A government official familiar with the developments told Nikkei on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the matter, that the government fears losing substantial investments in the electricity grid and generation systems: "If solar energy replaces [part of] the electric grid, then it will be a major economic blow that the government can’t handle under current economic distress."

The Ministry of Energy did not respond to questions on the matter.

In the meantime, power industry watchers say solar offers one route for Pakistan to exit its energy woes.

"Pakistan has been ranked at No. 26 on the Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Index by Ernst & Young," Aftab Alam, an expert on climate change and social development, told Nikkei Asia. "It would be an inexcusable failure if the government does not convert such blessings into socioeconomic development."

The SDPI’s Ahmed said Pakistan could follow China’s lead when it comes to solar power. "In China, there is no shortage of electricity but they are still building solar parks to keep future power needs in mind."

As things stand, existing users of solar panels are counting on the government to facilitate the spread of solar energy.

Rehman, the businessman from Lahore, said the government should encourage the local manufacturing of solar panels, which would help to maintain foreign exchange reserves.

Khuram Idrees, a resident of Rawalpindi who has a solar system at his home, recommended that the government provide interest-free loans to consumers to install solar systems. "All around the globe, green energy is supported by governments by incentivizing people to adopt such technologies," Idrees told Nikkei.

Back by the Srinagar Highway, solar adopter ud Din remained concerned by the government’s uncertain policy, saying its changing approach on net metering has confused the existing users.

"If the government scraps the net-metering policy, then we will be left high and dry, our investment will be wasted, which is a terrifying prospect," he said.
India
As Modi Meets Putin in Moscow, India Seeks to Chart Its Own Course (New York Times)
New York Times [7/8/2024 4:14 PM, Anupreeta Das and Hari Kumar, 831K, Neutral]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India arrived in Moscow on Monday to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a visit that signals the Indian leader’s determination to stick to his own diplomatic path even as the West continues to isolate Moscow over its war on Ukraine.

For Mr. Putin, Mr. Modi’s visit will be a way for Russia to show that the Kremlin continues to have a strong partnership with India, despite India’s deepening relationship with the United States. India’s purchases of discounted Russian petroleum have helped fill Russia’s coffers depleted by international sanctions over the war, and Russia has sought to cast India as a partner in reshaping the Western-dominated global order.

This is the first visit to Russia by Mr. Modi in five years. He arrived to a red-carpet welcome at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, where he was met by a Russian military band, as well the first deputy prime minister, Denis V. Manturov.

In a message posted on the social platform X after his arrival, Mr. Modi said he looked forward to deepening the “special and strategic partnership” between India and Russia, noting that stronger ties “will greatly benefit our people.”

Mr. Modi arrived on a day when Russia unleashed a brutal aerial bombardment against Ukraine, including a strike on that country’s largest children’s hospital, in Kyiv. The attack has drawn condemnation from the West, and could shine a harsh spotlight on India’s ties with Russia.

The South Asian nation became a major buyer of cheap Russian oil at a time when sanctions by Western countries limited what Russia could sell or charge for the product in international markets. India is building massive nuclear energy power plants with technical assistance from Russia. Russia is also India’s biggest supplier of arms, making the relationship key for India, which has long had to defend its borders against China.

The meeting in Moscow on Tuesday will coincide with the first day of a high-profile summit of NATO leaders in Washington. During the NATO meeting, Western allies are expected to announce additional air defense systems for Ukraine and offer assurances of the alliance’s long-term commitment to Kyiv’s security.

India and Russia are longstanding partners.

Speaking to reporters in New Delhi ahead of Mr. Modi’s trip, Indian officials said the summit between Mr. Modi and Mr. Putin was of “great importance,” but emphasized that relations with Russia were not aimed at any third party. They also sought to downplay the timing of the meeting.

“I would not want to read anything more in that in terms of its significance, except to say that we attach great importance to this annual summit,” Vinay Mohan Kwatra, the foreign secretary of India, said at a news conference on Friday.

The annual summit is an aspect of a longstanding strategic partnership between India and Russia. The two leaders last met in 2021 as part of that partnership, when Mr. Putin visited Delhi. They have met at other events and spoken on the phone multiple times, Indian officials said.

In the nearly two and a half years since launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Putin has attempted to double down on his relationships with global leaders outside the West, as he pursues what he calls a “multipolar” world order free of singular American dominance.

With its vast economic and military resources, China has become the most critical partner in that effort, but Mr. Putin has also touted relations with other nations, including Vietnam, Brazil and India, to prove that Russia will not succumb to the isolation the West is hoping to see.

At an investment forum in Moscow last December, Mr. Putin praised the Indian leader for pursuing an independent foreign policy and refusing to bow to Western pressure. Mr. Modi hasn’t been “scared, intimidated or forced into taking actions or decisions that would go against the national interests of India and the Indian people,” Mr. Putin said.

India’s ties with Moscow and Washington are a balancing act.

For Mr. Modi, the meeting is an opportunity to signal India’s determination to carve its own foreign policy path. India, which needs both the United States and Russia to counter China, is constantly trying to balance its relations between Washington and Moscow. Even as it has bolstered ties with Washington, India has refused to publicly denounce Russia over Ukraine, despite pressure from the United States to do so.

Delhi might be seeking to reinforce its relations with Russia to counter Russia’s growing closeness with China, said Happymon Jacob, an associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and expert on Indian foreign policy. Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China have become increasingly aligned after declaring a “no limits” partnership in 2022. (The two leaders hailed their countries’ ties at a meeting in Kazakhstan last week.)

India probably realizes that the United States is “unlikely to penalize India for continuing its relationship with Russia,” Mr. Jacob said, with China emerging as Washington’s “principal adversary.”

Mr. Modi could also take up the contentious issue of Russia’s recruitment of Indian nationals to fight its war on Ukraine, according to Mr. Kwatra, the Indian foreign secretary. Several dozen Indian citizens were lured to Russia under “false pretenses,” he said, and the government is working to bring them back.

At the same time, India also needs American backing against China’s potential aggressions in its backyard. China and India have had several border clashes over the decades, including in 2022 and 2020, when 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops were killed. India needs munitions to defend its northern and eastern borders.

Military, economic and energy ties are on the agenda.

Russia is India’s largest supplier of military equipment, but over the years, the share of Russian arms has been declining — partly because that country has older technology. India has sought to diversify its sources of military supplies and pursue defense cooperation agreements, including with the United States. And the United States and India have also said that they would expand cooperation on advanced weaponry, supercomputing and other high-tech fields.

But American officials are concerned about providing equipment and sensitive technology to India if there is a risk that Russia’s military might gain access to it. On a recent visit to New Delhi, Kurt Campbell, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, said the United States wanted a strong technological relationship with India, and has been clear about “which areas are affected by the continuing relationship between India and Russia militarily and technologically.”

India’s defense ties with Russia “may be an irritant for the United States but is insufficient to derail Washington’s military cooperation with India,” said Nandan Unnikrishnan, who oversees the Eurasia studies program at the Observer Research Foundation.

Mr. Unnikrishnan said he did not expect India to announce any new military purchases from Russia during the summit. But he thought that the leaders might announce deals in trade and investment and energy cooperation.

Indian officials have said that the country’s trade imbalance with Russia will be a priority for Mr. Modi. India exports only $4 billion worth of goods to Russia and imports $65 billion, much of it because of its purchases of enormous quantities of oil. India wants to increase its exports to Russia across the board, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals and services.
Putin receives Modi in Moscow with high stakes for both Russia and India (Washington Post)
Washington Post [7/9/2024 1:00 AM, Gerry Shih, Catherine Belton, and Mary Ilyushina, 6.9M, Neutral]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been welcomed by President Biden for a state dinner and lavished with praise by White House officials, who describe U.S.-India ties as “the most consequential relationship” of all.

But this week, Modi reminded the world that he has another close relationship — with “my friend Vladimir Putin.”

As Modi makes his first visit to Russia since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, the images emerging from Moscow send a clear signal that the South Asian giant will maintain deep ties with Russia despite the Biden administration’s efforts to woo Modi, and indicate that the Russian president has not been as isolated as the White House has hoped.

For Modi, Russia remains a crucial source of weaponry, energy and space technology that India sees as indispensable in becoming a great power. Putin’s war effort, meanwhile, has been funded in significant part by Indian purchases of Russian oil products, which have increased almost 20-fold since 2021, and Modi’s visit has bolstered Putin’s international standing.

On Monday, Modi hailed India’s “special and privileged strategic relationship with Russia” as he departed for Moscow, where he was welcomed by a dancing troupe and well-wishers waving Indian and Russian flags.

Putin and Modi met Monday evening at the Russian leader’s Moscow region residence in Novo-Ogaryovo over tea on an outside terrace.

“It is a great honor to visit a friend’s home,” Modi said, according to clips released by Russian state media.

“We have official talks tomorrow, but today we can talk in a home environment, in my residence,” Putin said. “I’d like to congratulate you on your reelection as prime minister; that is not accident but a result of your work over many years. You have your own ideas, you are very energetic and you are successful in achieving results in the name of the Indian people.”

The trip, coming less than a month after Modi was sworn in for a third term, gives him a chance to show Putin that India has not slipped too far into the Western camp, even as U.S.-India cooperation reaches its highest level in decades, Indian analysts say.

“The decision to go early in the term is a signal that India remains invested in the Russia relationship — that is part and parcel of India’s foreign policy, cutting across party lines,” said Pankaj Saran, a former Indian ambassador to Russia and deputy national security adviser who continues to advise the Indian government.

The Indian establishment, Saran added, prioritized cultivating ties with Washington while seeking to assuage U.S. concerns by presenting India as a potential interlocutor between Russia and the West.

Even though the India-Russia relationship reaches back to the Cold War era, the energy and defense ties between Russia and India — the world’s largest weapons buyer and the No. 3 importer of oil — have deepened in many ways. Indian imports of Russian crude rose from $2.5 billion in 2021, before the Ukraine war erupted, to $46.5 billion in 2023, according to Indian Commerce Ministry data.

Indian officials say the transactions have been priced below the $60 per barrel cap imposed by the Group of Seven countries, and the United States has refrained from criticizing India’s purchases. But the purchases represent such a large windfall for Russia that Indian officials have begun to voice concerns about India’s mounting trade deficit.

And while U.S. officials have publicly and privately urged India to wean itself off Russian weapons, the Russian state-owned arms manufacturing giant Rostec announced last week that it would produce armor-piercing tank ammunition in India to supply the Indian army.

In exchange for lending its support, Indian officials and observers say they hope Putin will signal to Modi that he has maintained a degree of independence from China, India’s rival, at a time when Russia is increasingly seen as a junior partner to Beijing.

India hopes to “engage Russia, to provide options to Russia and to remind Russia that they have to be cognizant in how they conduct their relationship with China,” Saran said. “India will be closely watching the Russia-China military or intelligence relationship and how much of it will be detrimental to India.”

For Putin, Modi’s visit, which wraps up Tuesday, provides a further chance to demonstrate he is not totally isolated over his war in Ukraine.

“For Putin it’s very important. It is international recognition,” a Russian official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. Touting Russia’s relationship with India also allows Putin to boost Russia’s position in relation to China, he said.

Russian officials and analysts say that despite the bonhomie and “no limits” friendship between Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the Russian president has demonstrated that he has kept a certain distance from China. Just last month, Putin visited North Korea in a visit that was “not received very well in Beijing,” said a Russian official who is close to senior Russian diplomats.

“When we became completely dependent on China, we suddenly had the visit to North Korea and now, this balance with India,” the official said. “With these types of triangles, [Putin] is able to balance the situation to show that he is not completely subservient.”
Putin, Modi hold informal talks at Kremlin leader’s residence (Reuters)
Reuters [7/8/2024 5:49 PM, Lucy Papachristou, 85570K, Neutral]
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi late on Monday and toured him around his residence outside Moscow ahead of official talks in the Kremlin on Tuesday.

Putin embraced the Indian leader at his home at Novo-Ogaryovo, greeted him as his "dear friend" and said he was "very happy" to see him, according to an account by Russia’s TASS state news agency.

"Our official talks are tomorrow, while today in this comfortable, cozy setting we can probably discuss the same issues, but unofficially," TASS quoted Putin as saying.

The Russian president offered Modi, who is on his first visit to Russia in five years, tea, berries and sweets and took him on a tour of the grounds in a motorised cart.

Modi’s trip to Moscow and India’s relationship with Russia amid the war that Russia has been waging against Ukraine raise concerns, the U.S. State Department said.

Thousands of people have died on both sides since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. India, which has enjoyed a close relationship with Moscow for decades has refused to condemn Russia for the war, instead calling for an end to the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.

Russian state news agencies said Putin and Modi visited the residence’s stable and watched a show with performing horses.

A top Indian official said last week that fixing India’s trade imbalance with Russia and securing the discharge of Indian citizens who were "misled" into fighting in the Ukraine war would be among Modi’s top priorities in Moscow.

India, which has links with Moscow dating from the Soviet era, has increased purchases of cheap Russian oil to record levels.
India’s Modi on visit to Moscow appreciates ‘dear friend’ Putin (Reuters)
Reuters [7/9/2024 4:39 AM, Krishn Kaushik and Shivam Patel, 5.2M, Neutral]
India’s relationship with Russia is based on "mutual trust and mutual respect," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Moscow on Tuesday, where he also said he appreciated President Vladimir Putin’s leadership.

Modi was speaking in an address to the Indian diaspora on his first visit to Russia in five years.

His two-day visit coincides with a NATO summit in Washington expected to be dominated by the Ukraine war, although a senior Indian foreign ministry official last week said there was no significance in the timing and Modi’s visit was part of a long-standing calendar of summits between the two countries.

"Every Indian considers Russia to be India’s friend in good and bad times," Modi said.

"The commitment of our relationship has been tested multiple times, and it has emerged very strong each time," Modi said, adding that he appreciated his "dear friend" Putin for it.

Russia has been India’s largest weapons provider for decades and New Delhi and Moscow have had close ties since Soviet times.

The West, especially the U.S., has been seeking to strengthen ties with India as a potential counterweight to an ascendant China in the region.

But New Delhi and the West have taken differing stances on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The U.S. State Department said on Monday it had raised concerns with India about its relationship with Russia.

India has refrained from criticising Russia and has increased its purchases of cheap Russian oil to record levels, while urging Ukraine and Russia to resolve their conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.

Putin welcomed Modi late on Monday, greeting the Indian leader as his "dear friend" and said he was "very happy" to see him, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported.

Just before Modi met Putin, at least 41 people were killed in a Russian missile strike on a hospital in Kyiv.

Later, as Modi shared his image hugging Putin on social media platform X, Ukraine’s President Volodmyr Zelenskiy said

, opens new tab that it was a "huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day".

Putin and Modi are scheduled to hold official talks in the Kremlin later on Tuesday, focusing on cheaper energy supplies and deeper economic and strategic ties.
US says it has raised concerns with India about its ties with Russia (Reuters)
Reuters [7/8/2024 4:28 PM, Simon Lewis and Kanishka Singh, 42991K, Neutral]
The United States has raised concerns with India about its relationship with Russia amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, a U.S. State Department spokesperson told reporters on Monday in response to questions about a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT

India has faced pressure from the West to distance itself from Moscow after Russia invaded Ukraine.

New Delhi has thus far resisted that pressure, citing its longstanding ties with Russia and its economic needs.

Modi met Putin in Russia on Monday in the prime minister’s first visit since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. In a post on social media platform X, the prime minister said his talks with Putin "will surely go a long way in further cementing the bonds of friendship" between the two countries.

KEY QUOTE

"I will look to Prime Minister Modi’s public remarks to see what he talked about but as I said, we have made quite clear directly with India our concerns about their relationship with Russia," a State Department spokesperson said in a press briefing.

"And so we would hope (that) India and any other country when they engage with Russia would make clear that Russia should respect the U.N. Charter, should respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity."

CONTEXT

Russia has been India’s largest weapons supplier since the Soviet Union days. However, India has also been seeking other options, as the Ukraine war hobbled Russia’s ability to supply munitions and spares.

Washington in recent years has looked to woo New Delhi, with political analysts saying the U.S. sees India as a counter to China in the Asia-Pacific.

While the West has tried to isolate Putin, China, India and powers in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America have continued to build ties.
Zelenskiy Blasts Modi’s Visit to Russia as a Blow to Peace (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/9/2024 1:27 AM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen and Dan Strumpf, 5.5M, Negative]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy slammed a visit by India’s prime minister to Russia, calling it a blow to peace efforts that fell on the same day as a deadly Russian missile strike.

“It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day,” Zelenskiy said in a post on the social-media site X. The post included photos of a missile strike that hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv and killed dozens.

Zelenskiy’s comments came on the second day of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Moscow, a trip that affirms longtime ties between the two countries but that has drawn concerns from the US, which has sought to isolate Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Modi met Russian President Vladimir Putin for a private dinner on Monday following his arrival in the Russian capital, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said. Russia’s first deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov received Modi at Moscow’s airport.

US State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Monday that Washington has already raised its concerns about India’s relationship with Russia.

“We welcome people engaging with Russia about the war in Ukraine if they made clear to Russia that Russia needs to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” Miller said.

India has avoided censuring Russia for its war and abstained at United Nations votes on the issue, but has advocated diplomacy to resolve the conflict.

Modi posted photos of himself on X hugging Putin when they met Monday, saying he was looking forward to further talks “which will surely go a long way in further cementing the bonds of friendship between India and Russia.”

Isolated for its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has laid out the red carpet for Modi. India is a major buyer of Russian oil and military hardware supplies. Maintaining the relationship is a balancing act for Modi, which is seeking investment and technology from the US. Washington is also seeking closer ties with India, which it sees as a regional counterweight to China.

Economic issues, energy supplies and manufacturing will dominate Modi’s visit, as the two countries look to bolster the relationship, Indian officials said. On Tuesday, Modi will visit an exhibition of the Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy industry in Moscow before engaging Putin in formal bilateral talks in the afternoon.

Russia and India are likely to agree on a long-term uranium supply pact for a nuclear power plant coming online in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and also sign an agreement allowing the military to use each other’s facilities for training, port calls and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.
As Head of Democratic India, Modi Should Raise Abuses in Ukraine with Russia During Moscow Visit (Human Rights Watch)
Human Rights Watch [7/8/2024 9:00 AM, Meenakshi Ganguly and Rachel Denber, 2.1M, Neutral]
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Moscow on July 8, the abiding question will be his government’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the horrific suffering that Russia’s abuses have caused millions of Ukrainian civilians.

“Today’s era is not the era for war,” Modi had said in 2022 to Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling him that “democracy, diplomacy and dialogue – these things help the world.” India’s external affairs minister in March said they spoke “very frankly and bluntly” to Russia about resolving the conflict.

However, such private criticism has clearly had no impact on Russia’s conduct of the war. A Russian official told an Indian journalist that the Modi administration should show “real, clear understanding of Russia’s position”, and when asked about his government’s indiscriminate bombing in Ukraine, declared that “everything is justified when it comes to the existence of Russia.”

Russia’s toxic global standing has made it rare, these days, for leaders of major democratic powers like India to visit. So, when Modi visits Moscow, many Ukrainians may feel aggrieved if he fails to publicly acknowledge the atrocities and their suffering. The many Russians horrified by the Kremlin’s abusive war may also feel betrayed.

Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 has had a disastrous impact on Ukraine, killing thousands of civilians, injuring many thousands more, and destroying much private property and infrastructure. Russian forces have committed a litany of violations of international humanitarian law, including widespread indiscriminate bombing and shelling of populated areas that have damaged and demolished homes and healthcare centres, educational facilities, as well as museums, archives, cultural sites, and places of worship.

Russian forces carried out repeated bombing campaigns of Ukraine’s electricity grid, which, during the 2022-’23 winter, left millions temporarily without heat, water and other essential services. It prompted the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Russia’s top military commanders. But the bombing of infrastructure persists, putting Ukraine’s energy grid at risk ahead of the next winter.

In areas they occupy, Russian forces and proxy forces in southeastern Ukraine commit horrific abuses against civilians, especially those they suspect of resisting the occupation, including torture, summary executions, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, and looting of cultural property.

Some of Russia’s breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law that seek to erase Ukrainian statehood, culture, and language mirror tactics of colonial armies. For example, the occupying authorities have imposed the Russian state curriculum in schools in areas they occupy and Russian as the language of instruction, banned the Ukrainian curriculum, and severely limited the teaching of the Ukrainian language.

The history and social studies elements of the curriculum amount to efforts to indoctrinate Ukrainian schoolchildren with the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrainian narrative. Textbooks distort Ukrainian history, deny the existence of the Ukrainian state and language, and falsely claim that today’s Ukraine is led by a “neo-Nazi regime”. The Russian occupiers harshly retaliate against school workers who refuse to cooperate with the occupation.

The school curriculum includes elements that amount to blatant war propaganda, and many Ukrainian schoolchildren are subjected to military training in schools. Occupation authorities threaten parents whose children study online in the Ukrainian school system with fines, detention, and deprivation of child custody. Russian forces conscript Ukrainian civilians in occupied areas or otherwise try to forcibly enlist them into the Russian military, essentially forcing them to fight their compatriots.

The repression of the Ukrainian state and culture started not with the full-scale invasion in 2022, but with Russia’s initial invasion in 2014 when its forces occupied Crimea. In a matter of months after that, Russian authorities shattered free expression and restricted the right to peaceful assembly on the peninsula. Russian authorities relentlessly persecuted those who opposed Russia’s actions in Crimea, targeting in particular the Crimean Tatar community, a Muslim ethnic minority native to the Crimean peninsula who have openly opposed Russia’s occupation.

In June, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that Russia was responsible for committing systemic human rights violations in Crimea and detailed a pattern of ghastly abuses that Russia has perpetrated in Crimea since the start of the occupation, including against Crimean Tatars.

Russia’s abuses in Ukraine do not appear to have seriously tested India’s longstanding friendship. Apart from voting for a May 2023 United Nations resolution that explicitly acknowledges “the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine” that was part of a broader call for global cooperation, India has mostly abstained from UN action on Ukraine, including resolutions that established and extended a UN commission of inquiry to examine all abuses in the war. India has even helped Russia’s war economy by purchasing its crude oil following sanctions imposed by the US and the EU that shut most Western markets for Russian exports.

Yet when Modi met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in June during the G-7 summit in Italy, he recommended “a human-centric approach” to the hostilities that he said the Indian government would support.

Modi’s administration has been far from “human-centric” at home, where his party lost its majority in Parliament in the Lok Sabha elections in April-May. The government has long discriminated against religious minorities, cracked down on civil society, and failed to uphold economic and social rights.

But the Indian government also wants to be recognised as global leader and the “Mother of Democracy.” To do that entails telling truths to friends when it counts, even if it might make them uncomfortable. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that because of the “very trusting nature” of the relationship between the two leaders, no topic is off-limits.

It would be pity, in that case, if Modi can’t tell Putin that his abuses against Ukrainian civilians are wrong. Perhaps he can, as prime minister of a country that bore the brunt of colonial domination and erasure, say that teaching Ukrainian children to hate their country, to forget their language and culture, or to threaten their teachers, is far cry from a rights-respecting approach.
India Poised to Secure Long-Term Uranium Supply From Russia (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/8/2024 8:06 AM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen and Rajesh Kumar Singh, 27296K, Positive]
Russia and India are likely to agree on a long-term uranium supply pact for a nuclear power plant coming online in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, said senior officials with knowledge of the matter.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Russia on Monday and Tuesday for the first time in five years. He’s expected to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin to help re-energize relations between the two countries and likely deliver strategic deals.

During the visit, India and Russia are also expected to sign an agreement allowing the military to use each other’s facilities for training, port calls and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, said the officials who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking details on the long-term uranium supply agreement.

Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom and Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The growing support for nuclear as a low-carbon energy source has seen uranium prices more than triple since the end of 2020, and the market could remain tight until 2029 as utilities replenish their inventories, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Cooperation in civilian nuclear sphere doesn’t fall under the US sanction regime on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

“Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant units 1 and 2 have already become operational, and the work is progressing on units 3 and 6,” India’s Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra said on Friday. Moscow “remains an important partner for India’s energy security and defense,” he added.

Rosatom had previously supplied nuclear fuel to Kudankulam in 2022 and 2023.

The bulk of India’s uranium output comes from Uranium Corp. of India’s mines in the northern state of Jharkhand, where reserves are fast depleting. Efforts to exploit deposits in other states such as Andhra Pradesh and Meghalaya haven’t met expectations, increasing India’s reliance on imports.

India has spot deals for the procurement of the fuel with nations including Kazakhstan, Russia, France, Uzbekistan and Canada.

The military agreement will facilitate the exchange of fuel and spare parts for Russian warships in the Indian Ocean and Indian vessels in the Arctic — an area that has seen increased activity with new shipping routes opening up as ice caps recede.
India suspends six police, government officials for stampede that killed 121 (Reuters)
Reuters [7/9/2024 4:49 AM, Saurabh Sharma and Shivam Patel, 50452K, Neutral]
Indian authorities have suspended six police and government officials after a stampede that killed 121 people last week, accusing them of "negligence" in handling the event featuring a Hindu preacher.

One of India’s worst stampedes in recent years took place after about a quarter of a million people flocked to listen to a self-styled guru, far in excess of the number of 80,000 authorities had permitted.

Tuesday’s preliminary findings of a panel investigating the incident held the event organisers responsible, saying they failed to meet conditions set for the gathering.

"The organisers obtained permission for the event by concealing facts," the government of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh said in a statement, citing the findings of the panel it set up to look into the matter.

"They did not make adequate and smooth arrangements despite inviting an unexpected crowd, nor did they comply with the conditions set by the local administration."

In response, A.P. Singh, a lawyer for the preacher, denied wrongdoing by organisers, saying they did not conceal anything from authorities, adding instead that the stampede was part of a conspiracy by "anti-social elements" whom he did not identify.

Police have arrested nine people involved in organising the event, Singh said.

The government said the panel had not ruled out "the possibility of a major conspiracy behind the accident", but it needed further investigation.

A senior district official in Hathras, the site of the incident, gave permission for the event without inspecting the venue, the state government added.

Local government and police officials did not take the event seriously and did not inform senior officials about it, the government said in its statement.

"They have been held responsible for negligence in performing their duties," it added.

The crush happened when devotees ran after the preacher’s departing car, trampling over one another to seek his blessings and get a closer look at him.
Suspected rebels kill 5 Indian soldiers after ambushing their vehicle in Indian-controlled Kashmir (AP)
AP [7/9/2024 4:56 AM, Sheikh Saaliq, 31180K, Negative]
Suspected rebels fighting against Indian rule in the disputed region of Kashmir ambushed an army vehicle on Monday in the region’s south, killing five Indian soldiers and wounding six, officials said.

No insurgent group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack took place in the Kathua district of the Indian-controlled Kashmir while the military was on a routine patrol, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Police and army reinforcements were rushed to the area, a massive cordon was set up and a search operation was underway, the officer said.

The attacks was the latest in a flurry of violence that erupted on Sunday, when police said two gunbattles killed two Indian army soldiers and six suspected militants in the Kulgam district. Earlier in the day, militants fired at an army camp in the district of Rajouri, wounding a soldier.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since 1947 but coveted in its entirety by both. The two nuclear-armed neighbors have fought three wars over Kashmir.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training insurgents to fight its forces for control of Kashmir, a charge Islamabad denies.

Various rebel groups have been fighting since 1989 for Kashmir’s independence from India or seeking to merge it with Pakistan, which most Muslim Kashmiri residents in the Indian-controlled sector support. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
How Will a Weaker Modi Make India Look Strong? (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [7/8/2024 4:00 PM, Mihir Sharma, 27296K, Negative]
The optics are startling: As NATO leaders gather in Washington this week, India’s leader Narendra Modi is in Moscow visiting President Vladimir Putin. Admittedly, no major deliverables are expected from their summit. But it could help answer one crucial question: how a weakened Modi intends to promote India globally in his third term.

Under Modi, foreign policy has become an important tool of domestic politics. The prime minister’s first term was dominated by the troubled relationship with Pakistan, and he won a landslide following a military confrontation between the two neighbors during his first re-election bid in 2019.

In his second term, Modi positioned himself as having raised India to a leadership role, especially of fellow developing nations, hosting a glittering G-20 summit a few months before launching his re-election campaign. His third term will need its own theme.

Modi’s words and actions in Moscow will thus be scrutinized closely. This is, after all, his first official trip since being returned to power last month. Traditionally, Indian prime ministers visit one of the country’s neighbors before traveling elsewhere. In both 2014 and 2019, Modi flew to Bhutan shortly after winning a parliamentary majority.

This year, of course, Modi’s party lost its majority and will have to depend upon allies to rule. Does this visit to Russia portend a shift for the politically wounded prime minister? It is the first time that Modi and Putin are meeting one-on-one since Moscow’s armies crossed the Ukrainian border more than two years ago. Earlier scheduled visits — the leaders of India and Russia are supposed to meet once a year — were cancelled.

Indian officials downplay such talk. The country’s most senior diplomat told reporters that the “annual summit has not been held between the two countries since 2021, and this has been scheduled to be held at this time. I think this is all there is to it. I would not want to read anything more in that in terms of its significance.”

There’s certainly a lot to discuss. India has now become one of the largest buyers of Russian oil. That has saved the country money but means its trade with Russia is severely imbalanced. Financial and other sanctions on Russian entities have made paying for that oil very difficult, too.

Modi will also likely use this trip as an excuse for not attending last week’s meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a grouping dominated by China. New Delhi has long argued that its outreach to Putin is essential to prevent Russia from drifting further into Beijing’s orbit. Modi is essentially telling Putin: “I am the only major leader besides Xi Jinping who will talk to you — but I won’t talk to Xi and you, only you.”

From that point of view, nothing much is likely to change with Modi’s visit. India’s strategic position remains as strong as it was before the trip was announced.

The prime minister’s political standing is not, however. In the past, he has had ambitions for India to serve as a bridge between East and West, and between North and South. He could reinforce that position by reminding Putin, as he did in 2022, that “this is not an era of war.”

Modi could even — and probably should — push his Russian interlocutors to make serious efforts to end the war. That would be welcomed in a West increasingly worried about how a return of Donald Trump to the White House could influence the course of the conflict. Access to Western technology and markets remains critical to Modi’s ambitions for India to modernize and grow into an export power.

But domestic constraints give the Indian prime minister other incentives. He could just as easily use this visit to cast himself as leading a challenge, on behalf of a rising India, to an unequal, West-led global order.

Such an approach could be quite popular. Young Indians, like their counterparts in China, expect that the world order should respond with deference to their country’s emergence as a great power. Even some of those who didn’t vote for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in the recent elections look to him to command that deference on their behalf. The prime minister does best when he has a foil, and seemingly arrogant Western powers offer a powerful one.

So far, Modi has managed to balance growing closeness with the US and friendships with US rivals such as Iran and Russia. But everyone tires of balancing acts. There is no reason to suppose this one will define Modi’s third term as it did his first two.
NSB
Bangladesh PM visits Beijing as China, India eye influence (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [7/8/2024 12:11 PM, Anupam Deb Kanunjna, 15592K, Neutral]
Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has embarked on a three-day official trip to China, starting from Monday, marking her first visit to the Asian giant in five years.

In Beijing, she is expected to hold talks with Chinese leaders and ink a number of bilateral trade and loan agreements, worth billions of dollars.

Bangladeshi media reported that both sides could sign over 20 memoranda of understanding relating to an array of large-scale investments, duty-free provisions and facilitation of trade in local currencies, as well as other issues.

Over the past decade, Bangladesh has increasingly attracted the attention of both China and India as both Beijing and New Delhi seek to expand their influence in Asia

While Bangladesh and India share deep historical, cultural and linguistic ties, China is Bangladesh’s largest trading partner and a major investor.

Balancing strategic ties

Experts view Hasina’s China trip as an attempt to balance Dhaka’s strategic relations with both powers, pointing to a project proposal on the Teesta River which would be funded by China. The so-called Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project is tagged at around $1 billion (€920 million).

But the river flows between India and Bangladesh, and the dredging and embanking plans are likely to cause friction with New Delhi. India’s Siliguri Corridor, often called the Chicken’s Neck, is near the proposed project site. It is a geopolitically sensitive passage connecting northeastern Indian states to the rest of India through a narrow strip of Indian territory measuring 20-22 kilometers (12-14 miles) at its narrowest section.

India fears China might aim to establish its presence near the corridor under the guise of development work with Bangladesh.

New Delhi has recently expressed interest in participating in the project, and is planning to send a technical team to Dhaka to discuss the details.

Munshi Faiz Ahmed, who served as Bangladesh’s ambassador to China from 2007 to 2012, said that Dhaka should adopt a balanced approach.

"Each country has its own demands, and we occasionally need to recognize that. The Teesta project is substantial. If we involve India in certain aspects and China in others, I don’t foresee any issues," he told DW.

Prime Minister Hasina stated that Bangladesh will make decisions based on its own interests.

China, India wrestle for regional influence

China and India have been increasingly vying for economic and political influence in the Indian Ocean region.

Beijing has been actively securing operational rights for ports in countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Djibouti, and proposing investments in the Maldives and Bangladesh.

This has caused significant concern in New Delhi.

In a bid to counterbalance China’s moves, India has secured rights to operate the Chabahar port in Iran, and recently gained the rights to operate the Sittwe port in Myanmar.

India is also reportedly looking to operate the Mongla Port in Bangladesh and build a new terminal there.

Ali Riaz, a Bangladesh expert and professor at Illinois State University in the US, believes the growing geopolitical rivalry between India and China puts Dhaka in a tough spot.

"Both parties are essentially offering such proposals to Bangladesh to safeguard their geopolitical and strategic interests, keeping their national interests in mind," he said.

"This will not be limited to economic dispute, it will inevitably turn into a political conflict. The fact that Bangladesh is consciously entering into this conflict is worrisome," he told DW.

Close trade and financial ties

While hopes are high for the Hasina’s visit, Bangladesh and China have already inked billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure deals in recent years. Some observers are already warning that reliance on Chinese money will make Dhaka beholden to Beijing.

Bangladesh’s foreign loans have increased two fold in the past seven years, from around $45 billion in 2016-17 to more than $100 billion in 2023-2024.

Most of this new debt is spent on major infrastructure construction, power generation and various development activities.

Hasina’s trip to China could potentially secure an additional loan of $20 billion for Bangladesh, with $15 billion allocated for infrastructure projects. The remainder would serve to facilitate payments for imports from China.

Economist Zahid Hussain believes that Bangladesh’s foreign debt-to-GDP ratio is still at a manageable level, relative to the size of its economy. At the same time, he warns there could be adverse effects without Bangladesh boosting its exports and ensuring an increase in foreign remittances.

"It’s unlikely that a loan of this size would be offered without any terms. The issue is what the government might have to offer in exchange," Hussain told DW.

"China typically prescribes which company to procure products from when providing a loan. In such instances, there’s no room for competitive bidding. If such a condition exists, there won’t be a chance to acquire the highest quality product at the most affordable price," he added.

A debt trap?

Critics also point to Sri Lanka’s experience, where Colombo had to cede control of its southern port of Hambantota to China on a 99-year lease after it failed to repay its debts.

But Faiz Ahmad, the former diplomat, believes that the situation in Bangladesh will not mirror that of Sri Lanka. "Which country poses no risk when it comes to borrowing?" he questioned, saying that Beijing, on several occasions, "has even waived off a third of the total loan amount."

"In case of Sri Lanka," he added, "If you don’t do your due diligence before taking a loan, you put yourself at risk. It’s not fair then to point fingers at China."

Riaz, however, stressed that Bangladesh should remain cautious.

"The Bangladeshi government should be transparent to its people. We need to know whether Bangladesh is putting its future in a mortgage?"
Flooding in northern Bangladesh displaces 40,000 people, shuts schools (Reuters)
Reuters [7/9/2024 5:09 AM, Ruma Paul, 37088K, Neutral]
Flooding in Bangladesh has swept away homes and shut schools, displacing tens of thousands of people, the disaster and relief ministry said on Tuesday, and a forecast for more heavy rain over the next few days is expected to worsen the situation.

Some 40,000 people are taking refuge at government shelters and more than 600 medical teams have been formed to treat flood victims, the ministry said.

Television footage showed inundated roads, broken bridges and dams, as well as villagers wading through knee-deep water. Farmers also had to rescue cattle from the gushing waters.

"Bangladeshis are used to flooding, but the water is coming up so high and so quickly in low-lying areas that people are being forced to shelter on anything, even rafts made of banana trees," said Liakath Ali, head of climate change programme at development agency BRAC.

The local meteorological office has forecast more rain for the central and southern regions, but the swollen Brahmaputra river is expected to recede in the next few days.

"Heavy rains in the Indian upstream region mean that the suffering is far from over. We have taken measures to cope with the situation," said Rezwanul Rahman, the head of Bangladesh’s disaster management department.

Seasonal monsoon rains, which start at the end of May, have triggered widespread flooding in India and neighbouring Bangladesh in recent years.

Floodwaters have started receding in India’s Assam, located north of Bangladesh, authorities said, bringing some respite to the 48,000 or so people sheltering in camps. During the last 24 hours, six people died due to rain and flood-related incidents, raising the death toll to 72 in the state since May.

More than 2 million people have been affected by the floods in Assam. The Kaziranga National Park, home to the rare one-horned rhinoceros, was also inundated.

A heavy downpour early on Tuesday in the National Capital Region of Delhi and its suburbs disrupted traffic and just over a week ago, unusually heavy rain in the capital New Delhi caused a roof at the airport terminal to collapse. This week, heavy rains flooded roads and railway lines in the financial capital Mumbai, disrupting flights and forcing schools to close.
Teenage Rohingya refugee killed in Bangladesh by shell fired from Myanmar (The Independent)
The Independent [7/8/2024 9:17 AM, Alisha Rahaman Sarkar, 56358K, Negative]
A Rohingya teenager in Bangladesh has been killed and two others were hospitalised with injuries after being hit by a mortar shell fired from Myanmar.

Mohammad Zubair, 18, and others were crab fishing in the Naf River near the Myanmar border when they were hit by a shell fired from the other side, Mohammad Osman Gani, officer-in-charge of Teknaf police station, told the Dhaka Tribune.

Zubair succumbed to his injuries on the way to the hospital, while the other two were transferred to Chittagong Medical College Hospital for treatment.

Mr Gani said authorities were investigating whether the incident took place during their attempt to cross the border and that it was not known who carried out the attack.

This is the second such incident of cross-border shelling in two years since another teenager died in 2022 after a shell fired from Myanmar exploded in Bangladesh.

At the time Bangladesh said it would lodge a strong protest with Myanmar over the incident.

More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled from Myanmar’s Rakhine state during a military crackdown in 2017 live in overcrowded camps in southern Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar.

The latest bout of aggravated fighting between the Arakan Army (AA), an armed group of the Rakhine ethnic minority seeking autonomy from the central government, and the Myanmar junta has once again displaced tens of thousands in Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh.

Thomas Andrews, a UN special rapporteur, last week said the crisis in Rakhine was "terrifying" and people were at risk of facing "genocidal violence" similar to what the community suffered eight years ago.

The violence in Rakhine escalated in November last year when the AA ended a ceasefire which had largely held since a military coup wrested power from the government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

As fighting rages in western Myanmar near the Maungdaw border of Myanmar, the sounds of explosions and airstrikes have created panic among local residents.

“The war in Myanmar across the river has been going on for the past six to seven months, bringing fear into our lives,” said Nur Hossain, a 55-year-old fisherman.

“The deafening sounds of shells have become a regular occurrence, and sometimes we even see warplanes. Today, we saw airstrikes again.”

The escalating violence has spurred some Rohingya Muslims to flee into Bangladesh, even as Dhaka insists it cannot accept more refugees from the neighbour.

"Some people have managed to enter Bangladesh in various ways and have taken refuge in different places," said Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, the Bangladesh official tasked with refugee relief and repatriation.

He added: "I believe some people are being allowed to enter unofficially."

The AA has captured nine key towns in the coastal province and pursued its offensive to take more territory in a nationwide struggle that has left the junta at its weakest since the coup.

In May, the UN human rights office warned of “frightening and disturbing reports” about fresh violence in Rakhine, pointing to attacks on Rohingya civilians by both the military and the AA.

Liz Throssell, a spokesperson for the UN agency, highlighted the burning of the town of Buthidaung, air strikes, shootings at unarmed fleeing villagers, beheadings and disappearances in the northern part of Rakhine in recent weeks.

“Some of the most serious allegations concern incidents of killing of Rohingya civilians and the burning of their property," she said.
The Killer Stalking Sri Lanka’s Men (New York Times)
New York Times [7/8/2024 4:14 PM, Apoorva Mandavilli, 831K, Negative]
Something odd has been happening to young men in the sultry farming and fishing communities of Sri Lanka.

Since the 1990s, men in their 30s and 40s have been turning up at hospitals with late-stage kidney failure, needing dialysis or even transplants. In some communities, as many as one in five young men is affected.

Their condition has no clear cause; in fact, it is called “chronic kidney disease of unknown origin.” But experts say the illness is most likely the result of exposure to extreme heat, exacerbated in recent years by climate change, and the resulting dehydration, as well as an overuse of toxic pesticides that have seeped into the groundwater.

The trend is most striking in young men, but some women, too, seem to have the disease. And children as young as 10 already show early signs of kidney trouble.

These communities may be the most vulnerable and the first to show signs of damage, but their plight is a reminder of the dangers posed by rising temperatures across the planet.

“Sri Lanka has made the perfect case for how climate change is affecting people in real time,” said Nishad Jayasundara, an expert in global environmental health at Duke University.

Young men in agricultural communities in Nicaragua and El Salvador also experience the illness, and a similar pattern may be emerging in East Africa. But basic health care in Sri Lanka is free and ubiquitous, so there is a better lens on the problem here than in some other low-income nations.

Kidney disease is usually a consequence of obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes. It typically strikes people in their 50s or 60s, progresses slowly and can be managed with some monitoring.

What fishermen and farmers in Sri Lanka are experiencing is far more insidious. They sometimes transition from showing early signs of damage to requiring dialysis or a transplant in just one to four years, Dr. Jayasundara said.

Women and children are less vulnerable, but about 5 to 10 percent of children — perhaps those helping out on the family farm — show early signs of kidney damage, Dr. Jayasundara said. His team is following more than 3,000 children age 10 to 17 in farming communities.

Thenuka Nethsara Bandara, 12, is unluckier than most. He lives in Kadawala Wewa village with his parents, and about a year ago suddenly felt sharp pain in his abdomen. Now diagnosed with acute kidney damage, he is waiting for a transplant.

In his village and in many others, the sun is ablaze by midmorning and remains mercilessly hot till the evening, leading to cases of dehydration and heat stress. Climate change compounds the risks. It may fuel hotter days, and more of them, but few can afford to stop their work to hydrate or seek shade.

Pests and weeds are more hardy, requiring farmers to use more and more pesticides. The runoff from the fields leaches into nearby wells from which families draw water. Frequent floods also speeds the absorption of chemicals into groundwater.

But the problem is not just chemicals. In Kalpitiya, a tranquil fishing town on the country’s west coast, the water is “hard,” containing up to 700 milligrams of magnesium and calcium carbonate deposits per liter, compared with less than 40 in bottled water.

“Boiling water removes this to a certain extent, but not all,” said Mangala De Silva, a researcher at the University of Ruhuna in Matara.

Many people in Kalpitiya are now dimly aware that contaminated water may explain the kidney problems in their community, but only about one in five has access to filtered water.

Even those who drink filtered water may continue to cook with well water. In any case, some filters are not up to the task of purifying water with astronomical levels of contaminants.

Sri Lankans often have too many urgent concerns to fret about a distant health problem, said Thanusanth Santhalingam, a fisheries biologist at the country’s National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency.

“They would rather buy food than clean drinking water, not realizing the impact of their decision,” Mr. Santhalingam said. “They may figure it out only years later, and even then not link health issues to drinking water.”

At Pasikuda beach, north of Batticaloa, the government provides water in large tanks that are replenished every two days. Still, the men set out to fish for calamari at 5 a.m., with just five liters to last till they return midafternoon.

“Sometimes fishing is busy — we aren’t drinking water or eating,” said Christy Navil, 58. “We want to catch the fish.”

Many turn to alcohol, rather than water, to avoid sea sickness, which intensifies their dehydration.

Pesticide contamination is a menace particularly in agricultural areas like Medirigiriya in the central part of the country and Matara in the south. High levels of glyphosate, a widely used broad-spectrum herbicide, are thought to damage the liver and kidneys.

Rising awareness of the problem has prompted the Sri Lankan government to provide filters and to set up more clinics in the affected areas.

Ajith Pushpakumara, a rice farmer in Ambagaswewa village in central Sri Lanka, found out that he had kidney problems about 15 years ago, at a government-sponsored clinic held at a local temple.

He was advised to drink clean water and take care of his health, but he ultimately lacked the means to do so. Medications are supposed to be free, but Mr. Pushpakumara missed out on many because of shortages. As the family’s sole breadwinner, he could not stop working the fields.

About five years ago, his family began drinking filtered water, but continued to use well water for most other purposes, including cooking. Two years ago, when he suddenly began feeling weak and nauseated, doctors told him his kidneys were failing.

Now 40, Mr. Pushpakumara is at the hospital every four days for dialysis. His only hope for recovery is a transplant. His wife, Sulochanie Sandalatha, 39, shows early signs of kidney failure, so she cannot be a donor.

“People keep writing about it,” he said, bitterness in his voice. “But why isn’t anything happening?”
Sri Lanka to wrap up bond talks soon, seek to balance India and China ties (Reuters)
Reuters [7/9/2024 12:15 AM, Ankur Banerjee and Uditha Jayasinghe, 5.2M, Neutral]
Sri Lanka will wrap up talks with international bondholders on restructuring $12.5 billion in debt within a few weeks, Foreign Minister Ali Sabry said on Tuesday, a major step for the island nation to emerge from its worst financial crisis in decades.

Sri Lanka will also seek to balance its ties with giant neighbour India and China to ensure that there is no difference in dealing with the two, he said, as the rival Asian giants are key creditors and investors but are also jostling for geopolitical influence in the small Indian Ocean country.

"Hopefully within a couple of weeks," Sabry said in an interview at the Reuters NEXT conference in Singapore, when asked when the nation’s bond restructuring efforts with creditors will be finished.

"Towards the end of this month, officially, we are done and dusted with the restructuring process, then of course, in line with that, we need to start payment," he said.

Sri Lanka secured a provisional agreement with some of its bondholders to move forward on restructuring its international bonds last week but now needs the other private creditors and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to also agree.

The country, which has $37 billion in external debt in total, clinched an agreement with its official creditors including Japan, China and India in late June to restructure $10 billion in debt.

In total, the debt rework is estimated to save Sri Lanka $8 billion in write-offs and delay capital repayments by at least four years.

Sri Lanka will use this opportunity to restart about a dozen stalled, foreign-funded development projects and promote economic growth, Sabry said.

Sri Lanka needs to continue reforms including imposing property taxes, revamp loss-making state-owned companies and improve dollar reserves to put its economy fully on track, the IMF said in its latest review.

BALANCING INDIA, CHINA

A country of 22 million, Sri Lanka’s economy is heavily dependent on foreign tourists and investments while its strategic location on a major east-west shipping route close to the southern tip of India makes it a key political player.

India, which has strong cultural ties with Sri Lanka, and China have competed for influence in Colombo for years and the island nation has often been caught in their rivalries.

India is also critical to Sri Lanka’s tourism, port development and renewable energy sectors with the two countries planning to connect their power grids eventually, Sabry said.
Closer ties with southern Indian states such as Tamil Nadu will fuel "a lot of synergies" between the two countries that will help Sri Lanka’s economy growth faster.

New Delhi has in recent years objected to Chinese research vessels docking at Sri Lanka’s ports saying it is concerned about the capabilities and intentions of such missions close to its territory, causing Colombo to suspend foreign research ships docking this year.

Sabry said Colombo has now decided to engage with India, China and others while making it clear to its partners that it will "not allow anything which would legitimately threaten" a neighbour’s security.

"We are not going to have a system which applies to everyone else and not to China...all these systems will be universal ... as a neutral player, we should do that," he said.

Sri Lanka is scheduled to hold presidential elections before mid-October, which Sabry said was evolving into a three-horse race between incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe and two opposition politicians with the economy being the key battleground.

Sri Lanka is expected to grow 3% this year for the first time since its financial crisis in 2022 when the economy went into freefall due to a severe shortage of dollars that forced it to default on its foreign debt.
Central Asia
30 Years Since Capital Decision, Astana A Magnet For Kazakhstan’s Transplants (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/8/2024 3:45 PM, Chris Rickleton, 1530K, Neutral]
Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev says Astana is “an important center of our geopolitical region,” while Russian urbanist and blogger Ilya Varlamov calls it “an awful city, unadapted to [human] life.”

But for close to 1.5 million people -- mostly originating from other parts of Kazakhstan -- the country’s capital, Astana, is home.

So why do they come to a monolithic city that was largely created just 30 years ago? And could they ever see themselves leaving it?

No To Nur-Sultan

Astana has many different anniversaries.

But this past weekend’s was an important one, marking 30 years since then-President Nursultan Nazarbaev got the ball rolling on the transfer of the national capital to a provincial town founded in 1830 called Akmola.

Nazarbaev presented the proposal to lawmakers at a session of the Supreme Soviet in the then-capital, Almaty, on July 6, 1994.

It was duly accepted, although not without some resistance as well as chatter in Russia, where the decision was viewed as an effort to counter Moscow’s potential sway over Russian-speaking populations living on Kazakhstan’s side of the world’s longest continuous land border.

The move to make Astana the capital was finalized three years later, and in the years that followed the city has borne the first president’s stamp, even marking its birthday on the same day as his, July 6.

But it seems to be outgrowing its creator.

This fall will mark the two-year anniversary of Astana being called Astana again, after the country’s worst-ever political unrest at the beginning of 2022 played its part in prompting a officials to dump the name Nur-Sultan -- which was given in honor of Nazarbaev.

That 2019 rebranding was one that Toqaev himself proposed to glorify the man he was stepping up to replace -- only to approve the de-naming of it three years later when Nazarbaev fell deeply out of favor. (Unsurprisingly, the Kazakh capital has the Guinness World Record for the capital city with the most name changes in modern times).

And if in 2019 Toqaev marked Astana’s official holiday by praising it as the “vivid embodiment of the successes of Kazakhstan” and a product of the “will and determination” of his veteran mentor, this year he left the congratulations to Mayor Jenis Qasymbek, who avoided any mention of the city’s now 84-year-old architect-in-chief.

Rinat Balgabaev, a filmmaker and communications specialist known for his online satirical humor, was among the many residents of the capital celebrating Astana’s rechristening in 2022, as well as the more general dilution of the former strongman’s cult of personality.

“It drove me mad every time I saw [Nur-Sultan] on an official document,” recalled Balgabaev, who arrived in Astana from the northern city of Pavlodar more than a decade ago to represent an Almaty-based advertising agency that he had been working for remotely.

“I couldn’t bring myself to write it. If officials that I met ever asked me for suggestions for changes to the city, I’d say: Change the name back [to Astana],” he said.

The 38-year-old says he still has issues with a city he says “looks beautiful from above” but is “inhumane,” uncomfortable for pedestrians, and badly maintained.

Yet Balgabaev also argues that it enjoys advantages over Almaty, a city that is set against beautiful mountain scenery but is plagued by heavy smog in the winter months and faces a greater risk of earthquakes.

“In Astana there are more work opportunities. In Almaty every niche is taken,” he said. “Almaty is still a great place to visit and enjoy cafe culture. But people here keep their word more. For instance, I made a film about drug addiction. In Almaty, it was difficult to get people to arrive for interviews on the right day, and that costs me money. In Astana, even the addicts arrived not a minute late.”

Moreover, while Astana has traditionally been a void of political activism compared to its storied rival, Balgabaev said there is now growing civic activism as regards housing and municipal services.

“People became much more active after they called the city Nur-Sultan,” Balgabaev said, citing increased turnouts for demonstrations on International Women’s Day as yet another example.

Looking After The ‘House Of Journalists’

Roza Aldabekova was born more than 1,600 kilometers from Astana in the town of Maaqtaral, near the Kazakh border with Uzbekistan.

She moved north with her two children in 2006, some years after her first husband died from a heart attack.

Hailing from a hot, cotton-growing region, Aldabekova found the climate in the world’s second-coldest capital -- behind only Mongolia’s Ulan Bator -- difficult to handle at first.

“Frosts of minus 40 degrees Celsius! And windstorms like in horror movies!” she laughed. “But I got used to it eventually. Now we can see the city is improving. It is becoming greener, like [cities] in the south. The trees that were planted are tall. People come here from all over [Kazakhstan] to work, but that is as it should be. It is our capital!”

When Aldabekova arrived in Astana, the House of Journalists -- a building opposite Kazakhstan’s presidential administration that houses the offices of several media outlets -- was still being built.

But she and a man who became her second husband looked after it together for nearly two decades, with her husband working there as a security guard and Aldabekova -- a biologist by education -- working as its cleaner and gardener in the warmer months.

“He is from the north and I am from the south, but we are identically Kazakh. He was born in Yermentau, about 120 kilometers from here, in the area where our national hero Bogenbai Batyr is from,” Aldabekova said proudly of her now-retired husband.

The pair have no children together but Aldabekova’s husband had three from a previous marriage.

“We are one big family together,” said Aldabekova. “Just like here, at the House of Journalists.”

Although the cost of living has increased in the city recently, “while we have health we’ll find money,” she said.

City Of Officials?

The official switch of the capital in 1997 reduced demographic pressure on Almaty -- a city still growing by about 60,000 people per year.

But internal migration to the town that was called Tselinograd in Soviet times occurred gradually at first as the infrastructure tried to keep pace with the growth.

One demographic that had little choice over whether to make the move to the new capital was state officials, since very few federal institutions stayed in their offices in Almaty.

In 2014, according to data from the private news agency Vlast.kz, one in 66 people in Astana was a state official, compared to one in 175 in the country as a whole and one in 335 people in Almaty.

Yet at certain times in the mornings and evenings on the “left bank” of the Ishim River that divides Astana, the city can feel like one made for officials, who can be seen hurrying in blue suits near super-modern buildings with nicknames like “the lighter” and “the beer cans.”

Issatay Minuarov, 32, the young head of social research for Kazakhstan’s Samruk Kazyna sovereign wealth fund, said he first visited Astana in 1999 from Karaganda, a city some two hours away where he was attending school.

Although there was an excitement about the city, “there were only a couple of places that could be deemed entertainment venues at that time,” he said.

Minuarov moved to the city in 2010 to study sociology at a university before completing his masters in the same subject at Manchester University in Britain. He then returned to the capital, which he now sees as “a home for me and my future children.”

“The stereotype of Astana as an administrative city of white-collar workers is no longer accurate,” he said. “The face of the city is changing. It is no longer a city of 700,000 where you might be surprised to bump into a compatriot from your hometown. Now it is somewhere that everyone is trying to move to…[because] the labor market in Astana is expanding rapidly and wages are higher than in most of Kazakhstan. But the cost of living is still significantly cheaper than in Almaty,” Minuarov added, noting that migration to the city from other Central Asian countries is also increasing.

“This has a positive effect on the quality of services. If you know the chef in a pilaf restaurant is from Uzbekistan, you can expect it to be good.”

The Waiting Game

Sundet, a taxi driver from the village of Qaraultobe in the south-central Qyzylorda Province, had a quick response when asked what he would change about the city he has lived in since 2013.

“They repair the roads every year,” the 40-something man who didn’t want to give his last name, complained. “I think it is because of corruption during tenders. They should [also] invest more money to build houses faster instead of holding public events and spending so much on government buildings.”

The availability of housing is a very pressing issue in Astana.

Sundet, his wife, and six children -- another is on the way -- have been waiting for government housing for large families since he came to the city seven years ago.

He now hopes they have reached the final years of the very long wait.

A move to state-provided-housing should mean a reduction in his monthly housing payments, which are 150,000 tenge (more than $300) from a monthly salary of some 300,000 tenge (around $600).

“I can’t say that we have started to live better. You start to earn more but then food starts to cost more,” said Sundet, who has also worked as a long-distance truck driver in Europe and is looking to go back there for seasonal work.

Sundet returns to Qyzlorda Province once a year. While his wife and children take the train, he drives, taking passengers and parcels using the InDrive ride-sharing service to try to help cover the family’s transportation costs.

He finds people in Qyzlorda more friendly than in Astana, where “everything is about cars and money.” But has no plans to return to the region.

Astana’s winters are no longer as cruel as they once were, he said, adding that he doesn’t look back.

“To speak honestly about my path, it has been a hard one. Many of my closest relatives have passed away and we have few people that we can rely on,” Sundet told RFE/RL. “But I am thankful to Allah. He has created these difficulties for me but he has also given me the strength to overcome them.”
Central Asian States, Azerbaijan Start Military Maneuvers In Kazakhstan (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/8/2024 9:04 AM, Staff, 1530K, Neutral]
The Kazakh Defense Ministry said on July 8 that its armed forces, along with those from Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, had begun joint military maneuvers on the shores of the Caspian Sea in western Kazakhstan. The Association-2024 drills, scheduled to run until July 17, are taking place at the Oimasha military test field and the Cape of Toqmaq in the Kazakh region of Manghystau. In all, up to 4,000 military personnel from the five countries and almost 700 pieces of military equipment and vehicles are taking part in the exercises.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Maryam Rahmati
@maryam_rahmati
[7/8/2024 11:17 PM, 5.5K followers, 4 retweets, 20 likes]
Gender apartheid in #Afghanistan must be criminalized. The international community needs to impose sanctions on the Taliban, just as it did against apartheid South Africa. Engagement is not the answer, the Taliban will never change. Doha negotiations will fail, just like previous peace talks. Global action is crucial to end this oppression. #EndGenderApartheid

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[7/8/2024 6:23 PM, 80.1K followers, 16 retweets, 101 likes]
The Taliban love to praise Afghan men in international sports but go out of their way to condemn Afghan women in the Olympics. This is a clear war against women. It’s called gender apartheid. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240708-taliban-don-t-recognise-women-on-afghan-olympic-team-sport-official

Jahanzeb Wesa
@JahanzebWesa
[7/8/2024 5:12 PM, 2.6K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
Taliban has said that it doesn’t recognise Afghanistan women athletes participating in Paris Olympics 2024. The news was confirmed by a sports official of Taliban. Women’s sport in Afghanistan was effectively banned by the Taliban when they returned to power in 15 August 2021.
Pakistan
Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[7/9/2024 1:07 AM, 3.1M followers, 3 retweets, 10 likes]
Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif received Mr. Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at the Prime Minister House. The Prime Minister appreciated the UN agency’s support to Pakistan in hosting of Afghan refugees for over four decades. The Prime Minister noted that despite numerous challenges, Pakistan had hosted Afghan refugees with exemplary respect and dignity. He also underscored that the international community needed to be mindful of the socio-economic challenges and security threats being faced by Pakistan in this regard. The UN High Commissioner assured that UNHCR would continue to work closely with Pakistan to fulfill the basic needs of the Afghan refugees.

Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[7/8/2024 7:04 AM, 3.1M followers, 13 likes]
Quetta: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif meets members of the provincial cabinet of Balochistan.

Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[7/8/2024 7:06 AM, 3.1M followers, 1 retweet, 6 likes]
Quetta: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif along with Federal Minister, Governor Balochistan, Chief Minister Balochistan and members of the provincial cabinet witnesses the signing of the agreement between federal and provincial governments regarding solarization of tube wells.

Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[7/8/2024 7:07 AM, 3.1M followers, 1 retweet, 6 likes]
Quetta: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif talks to the media after the signing of agreement to solarise agricultural tubewells of Balochistan.

Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[7/8/2024 1:54 PM, 6.7M followers, 20 retweets, 632 likes]
Delighted to speak this evening on telephone with President-elect Dr. Massoud Pezeshkian of the Islamic Republic of Iran and congratulate him on his election success. We discussed ways to enhance cooperation, particularly in trade, commerce & investment, and foster a stronger partnership for regional stability. As brothers and neighbors, our two countries have a shared vision for building a better future together for our peoples.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/8/2024 6:17 PM, 42.8K followers, 18 retweets, 54 likes]
Pakistan’s Foreign Office: US House Res 901 "stems from an incomplete understanding of the political situation & electoral process in Pakistan." On the contrary - I’d argue that members of congress understood both the pre-poll environment & the conduct of the elections very well.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/8/2024 5:35 PM, 42.8K followers, 1 retweet, 3 likes]
Pakistan’s National Assembly dismissed US House resolution 901 on Pakistan’s democracy as "interference." Seems sovereignty trumps democracy for this parliament. https://www.dawn.com/news/1842686

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/8/2024 12:32 PM, 42.8K followers, 6 retweets, 29 likes]
Little wonder Pakistanis are upset with their leaders: milk now costs more in Karachi than in Paris. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-04/pakistan-imposed-a-milk-tax-now-the-staple-costs-more-in-karachi-than-paris

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[7/8/2024 5:31 AM, 8.5M followers, 2.4K retweets, 7K likes]
Lies of Kenyan police exposed. Kenyan Court orders State to pay family of Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif 10 million as compensation. Court said Arshad was subjected to torture and the AG can’t escape responsibility. #JusticeForArshadSharif https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2024-07-08-court-orders-state-to-pay-family-of-pakistani-journalist-arshad-sh10m-as-compensation/

Anas Mallick
@AnasMallick
[7/8/2024 9:42 AM, 73.1K followers, 2 retweets, 14 likes]
Pakistan peoples party will be sending a delegation to the APC where they will put their opinion at the appropriate forum with regards to the operation/counter offensive, says PPP Chair @BBhuttoZardari while addressing a presser in Peshawar.

Masood Khan
@Masood__Khan
[7/8/2024 2:43 PM, 53.8K followers, 3 retweets, 16 likes]
Had a telephone call with Hon. Senator Chris Van Hollen @ChrisVanHollen. He is a great statesman who has made immense contribution to strengthening Pakistan-US relations. Respected in both countries, he is seen as a symbol of friendship between our nations. Equally revered and trusted by Pakistani-Americans from East Coast to West Coast, his connection with Pakistan makes him a pivotal figure in Pakistan-US relations. Grateful for his extraordinary support during my Ambassadorial tenure in D.C.
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/9/2024 2:08 AM, 99.8M followers, 584 retweets, 2.3K likes]
Thank the Indian community in Russia for their warm reception. Addressing a programme in Moscow. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1zqJVYQQXOYGB

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/8/2024 1:40 PM, 99.8M followers, 14K retweets, 104K likes]
Gratitude to President Putin for hosting me at Novo-Ogaryovo this evening. Looking forward to our talks tomorrow as well, which will surely go a long way in further cementing the bonds of friendship between India and Russia.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/8/2024 8:34 AM, 99.8M followers, 13K retweets, 97K likes]
Landed in Moscow. Looking forward to further deepening the Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership between our nations, especially in futuristic areas of cooperation. Stronger ties between our nations will greatly benefit our people.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/8/2024 9:16 AM, 99.8M followers, 8.1K retweets, 60K likes]
A memorable welcome in Moscow! I thank the Indian community for their affection.

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[7/9/2024 1:26 AM, 25.2M followers, 370 retweets, 1.7K likes]
The attack on a convoy of Army personnel in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir by terrorists is a cowardly act that deserves condemnation and firm counter-measures. My sympathies are with the families of the bravehearts who laid down their lives in this ongoing war against terror in its all forms. I pray for the speedy recovery of those injured.

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[7/8/2024 9:59 AM, 25.2M followers, 401 retweets, 3.1K likes]
President Droupadi Murmu inaugurated the Divine Retreat Centre and launched the national campaign ‘Lifestyle for Sustainability’ of Brahma Kumaris at Haridamada village near Bhubaneswar. The President said that small changes in our daily lives pave the way for big changes in society. We have to change our habits to ensure minimum use of natural resources. https://presidentofindia.gov.in/press_releases/president-india-inaugurates-divine-retreat-centre-brahma-kumaris-haridamada-village

Rahul Gandhi
@RahulGandhi
[7/8/2024 10:30 AM, 26.3M followers, 6.5K retweets, 22K likes]
Manipur is a proud State of the Indian Union - every patriot should reach out and help bring back peace here. In the face of this huge tragedy, I request the Prime Minister to come here, listen to the people and offer them comfort. Congress party is ready to support anything that would improve the situation.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/8/2024 2:35 PM, 211K followers, 10 retweets, 149 likes]
Indian officials regularly describe Russia as its most trusted & consistent partner. That projection, combined with the fact that there hasn’t been a Modi-Putin summit for a few years, ensures an all-out optics blitz over the next two days. To reinforce that special relationship.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/8/2024 9:26 AM, 211K followers, 35 retweets, 296 likes]
Modi’s summit with Putin, which unfolds as NATO convenes its own summit in Washington, underscores the sharp divide between the West and the Global South on approaches to Moscow, post-Ukraine invasion. The West favors isolation, and much of the Global South prefers neutrality.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/8/2024 9:26 AM, 211K followers, 4 retweets, 37 likes]
A core goal of Modi’s visit is to reinforce the continued strength of India-Russia partnership, even amid unprecedented US-India security cooperation & growing Russia-China ties. That India views itself as a champion of Global South causes further underscores the West/GS divide.
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[7/8/2024 8:37 AM, 639.2K followers, 46 retweets, 153 likes]
Prime Minister #SheikhHasina was accorded a red carpet welcome and a guard of honor when she arrived at #China’s Beijing Capital International Airport on a four-day state visit on Monday (8 July 2024). At that time, the Vice Minister of China was with the Prime Minister. During her stay in Beijing from July 8 to 11, the Bangladesh prime minister will have a meeting with Chinese President #XiJinping alongside a delegation level bilateral meeting with her Chinese counterpart #LiQiang on July 10. Bangladesh and China are likely to sign 20 to 22 Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) during the premier’s visit. #BDChinaRelations

Awami League
@albd1971
[7/8/2024 4:01 AM, 639.2K followers, 38 retweets, 116 likes]
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left #Dhaka for #Beijing on a four-day official visit to China at the invitation of Chinese premier Li Qiang. A special flight of #BimanBangladeshAirlines carrying the PM and her entourage departed from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 11:05am. The flight is scheduled to land at Beijing Capital International Airport at 6pm local time (4:00pm BST). During her stay in China, #SheikhHasina will have separate meetings with Chinese President #XiJinping and Premier #LiQiang (on July 10) at the Great Hall of the People and join a summit meeting on Trade, Business and Investment Opportunities between #Bangladesh and #China (on July 09). Dhaka and Beijing are likely to sign some 20 MoUs and announce inauguration of some development projects after a bilateral meeting between the two sides to be led by the two premiers.

Tshering Tobgay
@tsheringtobgay
[7/8/2024 9:35 AM, 99.4K followers, 4 retweets, 36 likes]
Hosted a high tea this afternoon to thank Amb @SudhakarDalela & entire organizing team for making this year’s Intl Yoga Day event a tremendous success. Expressed gratitude that RGoB could co-host the event. Bhutan acknowledges the timeless significance of yoga, now and always.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[7/9/2024 10:05 AM, 108.9K followers, 83 retweets, 84 likes]
Vice President @HucenSembe inaugurated the digitised platform for the Corruption Risk Self-Assessment Toolkit developed by @ACC_Maldives.
Central Asia
Joanna Lillis
@joannalillis
[7/9/2024 12:13 AM, 29.2K followers, 1 like]
Important discussion on #Karakalpakstan, two years on from deadly violence - via @Majlis_Podcast with @l_seiitbek @HughAWilliamson Karakalpak activist Mynaim, hosted by @BrucePannier

Furqat Sidiqov
@FurqatSidiq
[7/8/2024 6:27 PM, 1.4K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
Wonderful meeting with @RepBethVanDuyne, a member of @WaysandMeansGOP. Discussed further strengthening the partnership between Uzbekistan and the U.S. Called Congresswoman to be a cosponsor #HRes1755 exempting UZ from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment and #CODEL visit to #Tashkent.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[7/8/2024 10:21 AM, 195.4K followers, 5 retweets, 21 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev met with a Chinese delegation led by Zhao Leji, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. The meeting reaffirmed the high level of strategic partnership and friendship between our countries. They discussed issues of inter-parliamentary cooperation and strategic partnership programs in infrastructure development, industrial cooperation, agriculture, and green energy.

{End of Report}
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