epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Friday, June 14, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
American held by the Taliban needs urgent medical care, says UN expert (Reuters)
Reuters [6/13/2024 5:03 PM, Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber, 85570K, Negative]
The Taliban must provide Ryan Corbett, an American held in Afghanistan for nearly two years, with immediate medical care to prevent irreparable harm to his health or even his death, a United Nations expert said on Thursday.

"The Taliban must provide Ryan Corbett with medical treatment in a civilian hospital without delay," said Alice Jill Edwards, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Corbett, an aid worker, has been held without charge in conditions "utterly inadequate and substantially below international standards," she said.

"This is having a significant impact on his physical and mental health, which is declining rapidly," added Edwards. She said she had raised the issue directly with the Taliban.

"Without adequate medical care he is at risk of irreparable harm or even death," she said.

The United States is in contact with Edwards’ office and welcomes the efforts to call for more humane conditions for Corbett and others held by the Taliban, a spokesperson for the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York said.

"We consider Ryan’s detention to be wrongful and we will continue to work securing his immediate release," the spokesperson said.

Corbett and his family moved to Afghanistan in 2010. He worked with non-governmental organisations and then started his own - Bloom Afghanistan - to bolster the country’s private sector through consulting, micro-finance and project evaluation.

He left with his family following the Taliban takeover in 2021, but he continued working with his organisation and went back in January 2022 to renew his business visa.

Despite having a valid visa, he was arrested by the Taliban in August 2022 after he returned to pay and train his staff, his lawyers have said. A German and two Afghans with whom Corbett was arrested have since been released.

The U.N. expert said Corbett has developed several medical problems, including ringing in his ears, and severe weight loss. He has also repeatedly expressed intentions of suicide and self-harm.

The United States has had no diplomatic presence in Kabul since it fell to the Taliban in August 2021 as U.S. troops pulled out after 20 years of war.
Taliban’s Education Ban On Afghan Girls Fuels Spike In Child Marriages (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/13/2024 6:15 AM, Firuza Azizi, 1530K, Neutral]
Amina was in the seventh grade when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

Shortly after their takeover, the militants banned teenage girls from attending school, dashing the 14-year-old’s dreams of completing her education.

Months later, Amina’s family in the central province of Maidan Wardak forced her to marry a local 37-year-old man.

Amina, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, said she was “traumatized and sick” when she was told of her family’s plans.

“My family faced economic ruin after the Taliban takeover,” Amina, now 16, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

Amina’s husband paid a "walwar" -- a premarital fee given to the bride-to-be’s parents -- that amounted to around $12,000. Walwar payments are common in Afghanistan and provide an incentive for parents to marry off their daughters at a young age.

Amina is among the thousands of underage girls who have been forced into marriage since the fall of the Western-backed Afghan government in August 2021.

Activists say the Taliban’s education ban has contributed to the surge in early and child marriages. A devastating humanitarian crisis and the lack of educational and professional prospects for women have fueled the sharp uptick, they say.

‘I Had No Choice’

Mursal was 15 years old when her family forced her into an engagement with an older man.

"I had no choice because my family told me that in the absence of education, my only option was to get married," said Mursal, now 17.

Mursal, whose name has also been changed to protect her identity, said her dream was to become a doctor.

For some families, marrying their girls off provides some sense of security: fewer mouths to feed at a time when the country is dealing with a humanitarian crisis and economic ruin.

Some parents have also married off their adolescent daughters to avoid forced marriages to Taliban fighters.

But activists say the Taliban’s September 2021 decision to ban millions of girls above the sixth grade from attending school has also helped fuel the spike in child marriages.

June 13 marks 1,000 days since the Taliban announced its ban, a move that triggered international condemnation and protests inside Afghanistan.

During its nearly three years in power, the militant group has severely curtailed women and girls’ appearances, freedom of movement, and right to work and study.

‘Very Dangerous’

Child marriages have increased by around 25 percent since the Taliban takeover, according to UN Women, the United Nations agency for gender equality and the empowerment of women.

“This is terrible and very dangerous for the future of Afghanistan,” Shaharzad Akbar, an Afghan rights campaigner who headed the former Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, told Radio Azadi.

Akbar, who now runs the independent advocacy organization Rawadari, said their research has established the potentially devastating impacts of the Taliban’s education ban on teenage girls.

“In the future, we won’t have female university students," she said. "And there will be no female health-care workers or other [educated female] workers.”
‘Nobody is coming to help us’: Afghan teenage girls on life without school (The Guardian)
The Guardian [6/14/2024 2:00 AM, Annie Kelly, Tom Levitt, and Hikmat Noori, 86.2M, Neutral]
ust over three years ago, Asma’s* future contained many possibilities. Aged 15, she was at secondary school. After that lay the prospect of university and then onwards, striding forwards into the rest of her life.

Like many Afghan girls, she understood that education was her route out of the isolation and repression that had constricted the lives of her mother and grandmother under the previous Taliban regime. She was part of a new generation of Afghan women who had the chance to build independent and economically autonomous lives.

In May 2021, a few months before Taliban militants swept to power, Asma was in class when bombs began exploding outside her secondary school. She woke up in hospital to learn that 85 people, mostly other schoolgirls, had been killed. By the time she had started to recover, the Taliban were in charge and her chances of returning to school were over for good.

It is now past 1,000 days since the Taliban declared schools only for boys, and an estimated 1.2 million teenage girls such as Asma were in effect banned from secondary schools in Afghanistan.

What has happened to them since has been catastrophic: forced and early marriage, domestic violence, suicide, drug addiction and an eradication from all aspects of public life, with no end in sight.

“We’ve now reached 1,000 days, but there is no end date to the horror of what is happening to teenage girls in Afghanistan,” says Heather Barr from Human Rights Watch. “What the Taliban have done is not put the dreams of all these girls on hold, they have obliterated them.”

Without being able to go to school, Asma’s fate has been predictable. She has been forced into an early marriage to a man she didn’t know, exchanging the four walls of her father’s house for those of her new husband’s family.

She says she begged her parents not to force her into marriage. “When I told them about my studies and dreams, they laughed and said: ‘Since the Taliban has come, girls will never be allowed to study. It’s better to get on with your life and get married,’” says Asma. “[After the wedding], my husband’s family told me, ‘We bought you and paid for you, we didn’t get you for free. So you should be at home and working for us.’”

Now 18, Asma is pregnant. “When I discovered my baby is going to be a girl, the world became dark before my eyes because being a girl here in Afghanistan is not worth it,” she says. “She will never achieve any of her dreams. I wish I was having a boy.”

With diminishing status in society and no protection from the authorities, teenage girls, especially those forced into early marriage, are facing domestic violence inside the home and violence from the authorities outside, say human rights groups.

Benafasha* was 13 years old when the Taliban took power and her family decided that if she couldn’t go to school she had to get married. Her sister Qudsia* says that Benafasha was sent to live with her fiance who was instantly violent, brutally beating and abusing the now 16-year-old.

Qudsia says that Benafasha, desperate and afraid, went to the Taliban courts to ask to be allowed to separate. Instead, they sent her to prison.

“We had pictures demonstrating how he had beaten my sister, and text messages and voice recordings showing how he would insult and beat her,” says Qudsia.

“The judge took her husband’s side, saying women are always looking for a small excuse to separate. She was told that as long as she refuses to live with her fiance, she will remain in prison.”

The prospect of a life of social and intellectual isolation and domestic servitude is pushing many teenage girls to deep despair.

A United Nations survey last December found that 76% of women and girls who responded classed their mental health as “bad” or “very bad”, reporting insomnia, depression, anxiety, loss of appetite and headaches as a result of their trauma.

Almost one-fifth of girls and women also said they hadn’t met another woman outside their immediate family in the three preceding months. Another survey from the Afghan digital platform Bishnaw found that 8% of those who took part knew at least one woman or girl who had attempted to kill themselves since August 2021.

Marzia*, the mother of 15-year-old Arzo*, says her daughter has become increasingly withdrawn and depressed since she has been unable to go back to school. “She talks less and sleeps most of the time,” she says.

“I know the reason is the school closure, but there’s nothing we can do,” she says. “I always dreamed that my daughter would study and become a doctor so she could stand on her own feet.”

Barr says the Taliban have taken away “girl’s social networks, their friends, the outside world”. “They can’t go to school, or to national parks, or beauty salons or the gym or, increasingly, outside the house at all without fear of intimidation. They’re taking away everything that makes them human,” she says.

She says the international community cannot continue to ignore what is happening to teenage girls in Afghanistan.

“It is a threat to the rights of all women and girls around the world because if the Taliban can do this with impunity, then who will be next?”

Last month, a report by the UN special rappateur for Afghanistan assessed the dire situation facing girls and women in Afghanistan. “Many [girls now denied a secondary education] are driven to psychological distress, including suicidal thoughts and actions. Denial of access to equal education is causing transgenerational disempowerment that will increasingly ingrain the debased socioeconomic status of Afghan women and girls and their state-enforced dependence on men,” it said.

Fariah*, a mother of a 16-year-old in Kabul says that her daughter is refusing to give up hope that her life is not always going to be the way it has been for the last three years but that she is close to despair.

“It is a tragedy beyond I can express in words, not just for her, but for Afghanistan and for the world,” she says.

“My daughter is among the smartest of her generation, and I am not just saying this as her mother. I have seen first-hand her strong leadership skills, her ambitions and her determination to achieve them. Sometimes, my daughter tells me that she thinks that, by some miracle, school will be back on. I don’t want to crush her optimistic spirit and I tell her, ‘yes, that’s possible’, but deep down, I know it is a lie. I experienced this regime 25 years ago, and they haven’t changed. I don’t have any hope for our future. Nobody is coming to help us.”
Empty platitudes and online courses won’t save Afghan women and girls (The Hill – opinion)
The Hill [6/13/2024 1:30 PM, Sola Mahfouz, 18752K, Neutral]
“Afghan women’s rights” — these words now compel me to turn away in disgust. They have become nothing more than hollow slogans. While the Taliban has come up with ever more brutal methods of oppression, the international community responds with empty proclamations and superficial actions.

It’s been 1,000 days since the Taliban banned schooling for girls beyond sixth grade. The Taliban’s cruelty has evolved with modern technology; they enforce their policies with relentless efficiency. Despite the global community’s vocal support, effective strategies to ensure that Afghan girls and women receive the education they deserve under this tyrannical regime remain elusive.

While there are courageous individual efforts fighting for change, the lack of coordinated, large-scale actions is a glaring failure. Our collective inaction in the face of such grave injustice is unacceptable. The time for real action is now.

In the dusty streets of Kandahar, my 10-year-old niece clutches her books to her chest. “I feel like my feet are tied,” she says over the phone, “and I can’t move.” She stands at the gates of her old school, now just a skeleton of what it once was. She is in her final year of schooling permitted by the Taliban and wants to fail her final exams just so she can stay in school a year longer.

The discourse surrounding Afghan women’s rights often reveals a stark contrast between the spectacle of advocacy and the harsh reality on the ground. The international community showcases its commitment in grand events, speeches and declarations that seldom translate into substantive change for the women and girls who suffer the most.

This approach not only fails to address the root problems but also perpetuates a cycle of ineffectiveness and disillusionment. Afghan women under Taliban rule continue to face severe restrictions on their freedoms, and the international community’s response has been woefully inadequate. Despite knowing the dire situation, the world has mustered neither collective will nor coordinated efforts needed to make a real difference.

Afghanistan is one of the only countries where more women die by suicide than men, and data shows there has been a massive surge in suicides and attempted suicides by Afghan women since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Today, 75 percent of all suicide attempts in Afghanistan are by women.

Afghan women’s rights activists and their supporters often speak empty words, merely to feel good about themselves. The Taliban are more creative than them. They use advanced technology to oppress women and the general population, while everyone else makes headlines with empty promises.

For example, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced in February that American companies like Microsoft, LinkedIn and Coursera will provide job training, certifications and employer connections to Afghan women. Such efforts lack transparency and will likely be subject to limited rollouts. The suggestion that these efforts constitute substantial support is an insult to the dignity of Afghan women. Meanwhile, the urgency for a comprehensive solution remains.

This initiative shows a profound disconnect from the actual needs and realities of Afghan women. They can’t just randomly go to Coursera classes without the right platform that incorporates the specific needs of Afghans in this extreme situation. As someone intimately familiar with the online education system, I can tell you there is nothing substantial there.

The physicist in me calls this change without change, a concept from physics that describes how a system or object can transform while keeping its core properties intact — its essence remains the same despite its altered appearance.

In the world of celebrity activism and big proclamations, this idea fits well. Celebrities and politicians support causes related to inclusivity and rights for marginalized communities, but this support is often shallow. Their activism changes the appearance — drawing public attention and praise — while the basic structure of societal inequalities stays the same.

When the Taliban was in power in the 1990s, brave teachers ran secret schools for female students. Some of these schools still exist, but they are rare, and risky to attend. Today, a safer underground school could look like a digital space where women can safely connect and learn.

Most existing online learning platforms are only designed to supplement in-person education for students in the West. They also require significant data and bandwidth, which is often not feasible in Afghanistan.

What we need for Afghan women and girls is something different — something that takes into account their culture, their context and their aspirations. Something that fosters a sense of community and solidarity. Something that empowers them to express themselves and share their stories. It needs a thought-out plan and the resources to get it right.

Afghan women and girls can be an abstraction for most people. But for me, they are my own young self, my relatives. My young nieces in Kandahar open their eyes, hoping their schools will be reopened. Sometimes, they venture out just to stare at the skeletons of their old classrooms. This reality demands more than empty promises; it needs sustained efforts to create spaces where Afghan women can thrive despite their oppressive circumstances.

The international community must move beyond hollow proclamations and token gestures. It is imperative to design and implement educational initiatives that are accessible, culturally relevant and sustainable. Only then can we hope to make a meaningful impact and support Afghan women and girls in their fight for a brighter future.
Almost no one recognizes the Taliban. But Russia appears set to start. (Christian Science Monitor)
Christian Science Monitor [6/13/2024 4:16 PM, Fred Weir, 646K, Neutral]
As Russia’s showcase economic forum, presided over by President Vladimir Putin, got underway in St. Petersburg in early June, an unusual thing happened.

A delegation from Afghanistan’s Taliban government took full part in the conference and talked up a range of economic cooperation opportunities with Russian companies. This, despite the group being listed as a “terrorist organization” in Russia, with any public contact with them remaining a criminal offense.

Indeed, at least one Russian journalist is currently in prison, awaiting trial, for having penned words deemed supportive of the group. Russia, along with the United Nations and most of the world, remains officially unwilling to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government.

Nonetheless, the sight of a Taliban delegation wandering the halls of the exhibition center, rubbing shoulders with Russian officials and giving interviews to the media, highlighted that political realities are fast overtaking Moscow’s previous reluctance to engage with the group. And Mr. Putin gave the signal that an official change in course is imminent.

“We have always believed that we need to deal with reality. The Taliban are in power in Afghanistan,” he told journalists. “We have to build up relations with the Taliban government.”

Moscow never closed its embassy in Kabul, despite the lack of official relations, and low-level contacts have since been steadily on the rise. Russia’s foreign and justice ministries have begun lobbying to have the Taliban’s “terrorist” status removed and experts say that step is probably imminent.

“It’s not a matter of whether to recognize the Taliban or not,” says Andrey Klimov, deputy head of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament. “Afghanistan is a nearby country, and what happens there inevitably affects us and our neighbors. ... It’s just an objective situation. People may accuse us of dealing with an unsavory regime, but many Western countries also deal with unpleasant regimes.”

Security cooperation likely tops the agenda in secret talks between Moscow and the Taliban, experts say.

A March terrorist attack that killed 145 concert-goers near Moscow was apparently staged by the group known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), a Taliban rival based in Afghanistan. It has forced Moscow to shore up its security arrangements in former Soviet Central Asia, which is the source of a great many of the migrant workers who keep the Russian economy afloat.

“The issue is Russia’s vulnerable southern underbelly,” says Alexei Kondaurov, a former KGB major-general and terrorism expert. “Russia hopes to enlist the support of the Taliban against ISIS. The calculation probably is that supporting the Taliban and building relations with it is preferable, because the Taliban is less dangerous than ISIS.”

Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003 over their alleged ties with Chechen Islamists. Though that condition no longer applies, the Taliban’s links with other shadowy terrorist groups are still a potential obstacle to Russian recognition, experts say.

“This is a very peculiar moment for Russian diplomacy,” says Vladimir Sotnikov, an international affairs professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “Lifting the Taliban’s terrorist status is a relatively easy step, but full recognition will probably have to wait for the United Nations to accept the Taliban and seat it in the General Assembly. Meanwhile, there is much that can be done.”

Mr. Sotnikov says there are reasons to believe that today’s Taliban are not the same organization that ran Afghanistan before the United-States-led invasion in 2001, and there may be many constructive ways to engage with them.

For one thing, he says, the Taliban has kept their promise to crack down on opium production, and Russian law enforcement has noted a significant drop in narcotics transiting Russian territory.

With Western influence gone from Afghanistan, perhaps permanently, the door is open for the country to join Russian and Chinese-led regional groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and perhaps start forging business ties.

“There is a great deal of logic driving Russia’s opening to the Taliban,” Mr. Sotnikov says. “A lot of problems have to be solved. But on principle, political recognition can lead to beneficial security cooperation, humanitarian links, and even lucrative business dealings. The Taliban isn’t going away. It’s here to stay and we need to deal with it.”
Pakistan
Unusually heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan will affect 200,000 people, a top UN official warns (AP)
AP [6/13/2024 9:20 AM, Munir Ahmed, 31180K, Neutral]
An estimated 200,000 people in Pakistan could be affected by the upcoming monsoon season, which is expected to bring heavier rains than usual, a top U.N. official warned on Thursday.

The United Nations, with help from local authorities, has prepared a contingency plan, with $40 million set aside to respond to any emergencies, said Mohamed Yahya, the newly appointed Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in Pakistan.

Yahya told journalists in Islamabad that the weather forecasters in Pakistan are projecting above-normal rainfall in the coming weeks. However, the rains would not be as heavy as in 2022 when devastating floods killed 1,739 people, destroyed 2 million homes, and covered as much as one-third of the country at one point.

Pakistan is one of the countries in the world most vulnerable to climate change, in part because of its immense northern glaciers, which are now melting as air temperatures rise. Warmer air can also hold more moisture, intensifying the rains of the monsoon.

Until recently, public opinion and even some government officials took little account of the possible negative impact from climate change on daily life. Pakistan’s weather patterns have changed in recent years, forcing cities to strengthen their infrastructure and farmers to adapt their practices.

The 2022 floods caused more than $30 billion in damage to Pakistan’s already cash-strapped economy.

Analysts and government officials say Pakistan in recent years failed to achieve goals for economic growth because of man-made disasters, which have repeatedly hit the country in the form of droughts, heatwaves and heavy rains, which badly damaged the road network, bridges, power system and other infrastructure.

Pakistan says despite contributing less than 1% to carbon emissions worldwide, it is bearing the brunt of global climate disasters. This year, Pakistan recorded its wettest April since 1961, with more than double the usual monthly rainfall.

Yahya said he was in contact with officials at Pakistan’s ministry of climate change, who were preparing their contingency own plans for monsoon season, which in Pakistan runs from July to October.

Earlier this week, weather forecasters in Pakistan urged people to stay indoors as the third heatwave in a month began. A recent study by the United Nations children’s agency said that Pakistan could avert 175,000 deaths by 2030 by developing resilient energy systems to power its health facilities.

On Thursday, temperatures in various parts of Pakistan soared as high as 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit), forcing many people to stay indoors. Authorities are asking people to hydrate and avoid unnecessary travel.
Is China Souring on Pakistan? (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [6/13/2024 9:01 AM, Eram Ashraf, 1156K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif recently returned from an official visit to China. While there, he not only met President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Qiang, and other officials, but also members of China’s business community at the Pakistan-China Business Forum 2024 in Shenzhen.

According to Pakistani media, the prime minister gave a clear and strong message of commitment to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Sharif’s views on CPEC had been appreciated by the Chinese even during his time as chief minister of Punjab province. As a result of his quick delivery of CPEC projects in Punjab, Chinese diplomats had given him the title “Shehbaz Speed.”

The importance of his trip, however, was not just to relay Pakistan’s commitment to CPEC but also to convince his hosts of Pakistan’s determination to address two important concerns that China had been consistently raising – namely, stability and security in Pakistan. Political instability in Pakistan had added to the country’s economic woes, and a deteriorating security situation inside Pakistan, with Chinese citizens increasingly targeted, was taking the shine off China’s “flagship” Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

These issues appeared prominently in the 2024 China-Pakistan joint statement released at the end of Sharif’s visit in early June. We can glean additional insights about the relationship by comparing the most recent statement with three others: the 2018 joint statement issued after former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to China, the 2022 joint statement after the visit of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif when he had replaced Khan, and, lastly, the 2023 joint statement after interim Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar’s visit.

These statements, agreed by both governments, provide a window into some of the issues discussed privately between them. As such changes in these documents can shed light on any change in their priorities.

Stability and Bilateral Relations

The two mantras of “stability” and “security” were first raised by China’s then-Foreign Minister Qin Gang during his visit to Pakistan in May 2023. His visit had come nearly a year after former Prime Minister Imran Khan had been replaced by Shehbaz Sharif, following a vote of no confidence in Parliament. Stability, Qin explained, was a prerequisite for development while security was the foundation for strength and prosperity of a country. He publicly censured Pakistani officials with “friendly advice” to build consensus among themselves and to bring stability and development to the country.

After Qin’s visit, more political upheaval followed in Pakistan with the arrest of Khan and riots all over the country, now referred to by authorities as a “dark day.” Despite Chinese narratives of continued support for CPEC, political instability and security issues inside Pakistan appear to be taking a toll on relations between both countries.

China and Pakistan describe their relations as an All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership, which has weathered global challenges. For Pakistan, China is the cornerstone of its foreign policy, evident in all four joint statements examined. China, however, appears to have changed its view on relations with Pakistan, as evident from the 2023 joint statement onwards.

In both the 2018 and 2022 joint statements, China described relations with Pakistan as China’s “highest priority in its foreign policy.” But in the 2023 joint statement, as well as in the 2024 joint statement issued earlier this month, China-Pakistan relations for China are described as just “a priority in its foreign relations.” The adjective “highest” to describe Pakistan’s priority in China’s foreign relations has been omitted in recent statements.

This raises a whole host of questions. The fact the description has been published twice in successive joint statements suggests it was not a mistake. This then opens the possibility that China may have decided to downgrade relations with Pakistan from “the highest priority” to “a priority” in its foreign relations. It is perhaps a reflection of how, 10 years after choosing CPEC as the flagship BRI project, China now views its relations with Pakistan.

Security

Other changes seen in the 2024 joint statement when compared to previous joint statements relate to security, such as the special mention of the suicide attack on Chinese engineers working on the Dasu Dam project. That reflects China’s serious concerns with Pakistan’s security provisions for their citizens inside Pakistan. Chinese officials wanted Pakistan to not only hunt down the perpetrators but also severely punish them for their crime.

Pakistan, after the 2024 Bisham attack, in which five Chinese engineers including a woman were killed, for the first time sacked security officials and police officers in charge of security for the convoy attacked. It has been suggested that after the recent suicide attack, China has been pressuring Pakistan to carry out a large-scale military operation against militants, which is being resisted.

While China may be focused on militancy inside Pakistan, Pakistan appears to be more concerned with what is happening inside Afghanistan as reflected in the 2024 joint statement. Although the statement spoke of cooperation and coordination between both countries on Afghanistan, it made no mention of support for Afghanistan’s development, as seen in the 2018 and 2022 joint statements. The 2022 statement issued during Sharif’s visit to China also mentioned extending CPEC into Afghanistan, but any such reference was absent from the 2023 and 2024 joint statements.

What the 2024 joint statement did do, however, was for the first time put the onus of responsibility on the interim (Taliban) government in Afghanistan to firmly fight against terrorism and not allow its soil to be used for terrorist activities. That reflected Pakistan’s recent security concerns about terrorist incidents planned inside Afghanistan and carried out on its territory – including attacks on Chinese nationals. Pakistan’s interior minister, in a press conference, had specifically asked the Taliban government to arrest and hand over the alleged masterminds of the Bisham suicide attack in which five Chinese engineers and their driver were killed.

It was interesting to note words such as “trust” and “cooperation” used multiple times for relations between the armed forces of China and Pakistan in the joint statements. The 2024 statement, however, also referred to how they had also developed close coordination with each other, perhaps referring to their joint military exercises. This closeness has led some to call China-Pakistan relations a “threshold alliance.”

CPEC

Some of the CPEC projects mentioned in the 2024 joint statement appear to have undergone minor adjustments. The early harvest project, the ML-1 railway project is still included (it was missing in the 2018 joint statement) but the Karachi Circular Railway, mentioned in the 2022 joint statement as an urgent requirement, was not. It was not included in the 2023 joint statement, either, reflecting its fall in priority.

Some see progress in the ML-1 project under Sharif as modest, with China only agreeing to advance the first phase. Sinosure, the Chinese state-owned insurance company that approves mandatory insurance for major CPEC projects, has been showing concerns about unpaid dues Pakistan owes to Chinese power companies working in the country under CPEC. Their financial concerns regarding current CPEC projects somewhat help explain the slow progress of the expensive ML-1 project and why the 2024 joint statement did not reveal a new major CPEC project. With Pakistan’s rising circular debt crisis hindering the country’s growth, new and costly projects would have to wait.

In the 2024 joint statement, third-party investment priority areas such as agriculture, IT, industry, science and technology are retained, but oil and gas, present in the 2022 joint statement, has been replaced with mining. What is also noticeable is the Chinese government’s assurance to encourage Chinese companies to actively invest in Pakistan’s offshore oil and gas projects. Similarly, the Chinese government promised to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Pakistan’s special economic zones, with a caveat that the projects fulfill market and commercial principles. In other words, such investments will be strictly business, with no special favors for Pakistan.

Joint statements released by China and Pakistan provide a good barometer for where CPEC may be headed. The 2024 joint statement emphasized an “upgraded version of CPEC” with eight major steps aligning with Pakistan’s “5Es Framework” – and yet there are no new major projects to show for it. But more importantly, the statements reveal the state of relations between both countries, such as the dropping of Pakistan from “the highest priority” to “a priority” in China’s foreign policy, both in 2023 and 2024. It appears Pakistan has yet to allay China’s concerns with stability and security for Chinese citizens inside Pakistan.
Will Pakistan’s new budget help the country’s poorest? (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [6/13/2024 10:21 AM, Haroon Janjua, 15592K, Neutral]
Pakistan wants to achieve economic growth of 3.6%, the country’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said on Wednesday while presenting his first budget to lawmakers.

Aurangzeb emphasized the need to expand Pakistan’s tax base as a strategy to prevent overburdening existing taxpayers. The goal of his budget is to ensure equitable distribution of tax responsibilities while meeting revenue targets.

Aurangzeb also said inflation had dropped to 12% per year. Pakistan has been grappling with soaring inflation amid its worst economic crisis in decades. At one point in 2023, inflation went above 40%, sparking angry protests as Pakistanis struggled to afford essential items.

"Now we are moving towards the right direction," Aurangzeb said, adding that Pakistan is setting a challenging target of collecting 13 trillion rupees ($44 billion, €41 billion) in taxes — 40% more than in the current fiscal year.

But Pakistan faces significant tax-collection challenges. A large part of its economic activity remains informal and unregistered — impacting its fiscal stability and growth.

Struggles of a single mother

Amid the soaring costs of essential goods, many ordinary Pakistanis remain doubtful that the budget will deliver meaningful change.

Shahnaz Akhter, a domestic worker in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, told DW that the new budget will make life more difficult for her.

"The prices of the daily staple foods in the markets have been increasing every week and there is no regulation to control things and bring ease in common people’s lives," said the 45-year-old single mother who’s raising six children.

Akhter expressed her frustration, stating that previous governments had not provided any relief for those struggling with poverty.

‘Taxation heavy’ budget

Some analysts echoed Akhter’s sentiments about the budget offering little relief to ordinary Pakistanis.

"The budget will not bring ease in people’s lives. It’s taxation heavy," Safiya Aftab, an Islamabad-based economist, told DW, describing it as a difficult budget presented amid difficult times.

The economist told DW that she believed poor people have been crushed by successive governments in Pakistan.

"The items prices always increase in the budget with the burden of more taxes on the poor," she said, "primarily the fuel prices and electricity tariffs."

Navigating economic challenges

As Pakistan grapples with the rising costs of basic necessities, the government’s new budget proposal includes a salary increase for government employees. Simultaneously, negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) continue regarding a potential bailout.

Analysts highlight that the expanded budget — now approximately $68 billion, up from $50 billion in the previous fiscal year — aims to meet the criteria for securing a substantial IMF loan. The authorities hope to receive between $6 billion and $8 billion. This financial infusion is crucial for stabilizing the economy, especially after the near-default on foreign debt payments in 2023.

"Pakistan’s budget will help in fiscal consolidation and is broadly in line with IMF guidelines," Mohammed Sohail, CEO of Topline Securities, a Karachi-based brokerage firm, told DW.

"Though the tax collection target is high, we believe that considering new taxation measures, Pakistan may be able to reach closer to the primary and fiscal deficit estimates."

Pakistan’s informal economy

Only a small percentage of people contribute to Pakistan’s budget, partly due to corruption among tax authorities and businesses.

Out of every 100 rupees collected in taxes, only 38 rupees reach the government, while the remaining 62 rupees are divided among taxpayers, tax collectors and tax practitioners, according to an article

in The Express Tribune — resulting in significant unrealized tax income.

Analyst Aftab stressed that the strategy of imposing higher taxation on a few groups while leaving large parts of the economy untaxed is not a good one.

"People will either evade taxes or will take their legitimate businesses ‘underground’ or in the informal economy," said Aftab.

Economic revival?

Pakistan is looking to revive its economy, which has faced a long term recession in the past years following political instability.

The country narrowly avoided default last year, as the value of the rupee plummeted against the dollar and Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves dwindled so low that imports were heavily restricted.

"This budget is not for economic stability, this is to show the IMF the government resort and commitment that it can actually bring economic policy reforms," Abid Qaiyum Suleri, a social policy analyst, told DW.

"It’s basically one agenda point to start negotiation with the IMF program for the next extended fund."

The success of Pakistan’s budget will depend on its effective implementation and addressing challenges related to tax collection, the informal economy and economic stability.
India
US lawmakers to meet Dalai Lama on India trip next week (Reuters)
Reuters [6/13/2024 3:14 PM, Shivam Patel, Michael Martine, and David Brunnstrom, 10447K, Negative]
Republican Representative Michael McCaul is expected to lead a bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation to India in the coming days, where he and other lawmakers, including Democratic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, plan to meet Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

McCaul, Pelosi and a group of other U.S. lawmakers will visit Dharamsala – the town in the northern Indian Himalayas where the 88-year-old Tibetan monk lives in exile - from June 18-19, an official of the Tibetan government in-exile, known as the Central Tibetan Administration, told Reuters.

Republican Representative Michael McCaul is expected to lead a bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation to India in the coming days, where he and other lawmakers, including Democratic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, plan to meet Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

McCaul, Pelosi and a group of other U.S. lawmakers will visit Dharamsala – the town in the northern Indian Himalayas where the 88-year-old Tibetan monk lives in exile - from June 18-19, an official of the Tibetan government in-exile, known as the Central Tibetan Administration, told Reuters.

The meeting comes days ahead of a planned trip by the Dalai Lama to the U.S. to undergo medical treatment for his knees, but it is unclear whether he will have any engagements during that time.

U.S. lawmakers have regularly visited Dharamsala and touted the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Dalai Lama’s work to draw global support for linguistic and cultural autonomy in his remote, mountainous homeland. China considers him a dangerous separatist.

The lawmakers’ trip is likely to coincide with a separate visit to India by top Biden administration officials, including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, who have sought to boost U.S.-India ties amid Washington’s growing rivalry with Beijing.

McCaul’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Pelosi’s office said it could not confirm or deny any upcoming travel due to longstanding security policies.

Spokespersons for the U.S. State Department and the White House National Security Council did not immediately respond when asked about Sullivan and Campbell’s trip and whether they planned to meet the Dalai Lama, or whether President Joe Biden or other U.S. officials would meet him in the U.S.

The Dalai Lama has met U.S. officials, including U.S. presidents, during previous visits to the U.S., but Biden has not met him since taking office in 2021.

As a candidate in 2020, Biden criticized Donald Trump for being the only president in three decades who had not met or spoken with the Tibetan spiritual leader, calling it "disgraceful."

Any such engagement would likely anger Beijing at a time when the U.S. and China have sought to stabilize rocky ties.

The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet. Chinese officials chafe at any interaction he has with officials from other countries.

Last week, China’s Washington embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said Beijing "firmly opposes any anti-China separatist activities conducted by Dalai in any capacity or name in any country, and opposes any forms of contact by officials of any country with him."
India can be part of Quad collective defense, university report says (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [6/13/2024 3:11 PM, Ken Moriyasu, 2042K, Positive]
India’s participation in a collective security arrangement with the U.S and its allies, especially Japan and Australia, is no longer an inconceivable proposition, a former Indian naval officer says.

Prakash Gopal, who is now a lecturer at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security, said in a recent university report that there is "a greater appetite in New Delhi to engage with questions that would have been off-limits earlier."

These include discussions over India’s diplomatic and military options in the event of a Taiwan conflict, and permitting Quad partners access to air and naval facilities at Port Blair on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which sits strategically at the mouth of the Malacca Strait.

The report, published by the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, is titled "India and collective defense in the Indo-Pacific: Possibilities, prospects and challenges."

This renewed interest is because Chinese President Xi Jinping’s vision for China "is incompatible with India’s perception of the region, and of its position in it," he told Nikkei Asia, noting that the Chinese leader’s efforts to alter the regional strategic balance in Beijing’s favor is a direct threat to New Delhi’s growing economic interests and ambitions to be a regional power.

Twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers were killed in a clash along the Himalayan border region in 2020. Since the skirmish, thousands of soldiers have been deployed on both sides of the de facto border, the Line of Actual Control.

"India’s hopes for rapprochement with China along the land border have progressively diminished, and with Xi’s continued leadership, India seems to be digging in for a prolonged period of contestation with China," Gopal said.

India "will seek to constrain Chinese ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, and towards that end, be willing to work with the United States, Japan and Australia to preserve the existing regional order," he added.

The four-way grouping known as the Quad has so far stuck to non-security cooperation, such as vaccine distribution. Last month, the Quad began coordinating on the ground to collectively deliver assistance to victims of the Papua New Guinea landslide.

India has historically shunned collective defense arrangements and Gopal acknowledges in the report that it is unlikely New Delhi will ever seek to be part of a formal defense arrangement.

But, he added, "India’s willingness and ability to contribute to new forms of collective deterrence, if not defense, appears to be growing."

On Taiwan, Gopal noted in the report that in August 2023, three former chiefs of the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force held closed-door discussions with Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry.

"Interestingly, they were accompanied by former Indian military officers with experience in scenario simulation and war-gaming for Indian professional military education establishments," he said in the report.

As the only Quad country to share a land border with China, India will be cautious to take part in a Taiwan-related conflict, which may provoke Chinese retribution across the Himalayan border, and potentially result in a considerable loss of Indian territory.

At the same time, the recent border clashes have taught India’s political and military leadership that appeasement does not work against China, Gopal argued.

The key to future security cooperation with Quad partners comes down to flexible thinking, he suggested. Instead of a binary "in or out" framework of traditional military alliances, there could be a "spectrum of options" that India might consider adopting in response to different regional contingencies, Gopal said.

On Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell welcomed India’s recent engagement in the Quad.

"In many respects they are the leading nation in the Quad, frankly," he said at a seminar at the Stimson Center in Washington. After being initially reluctant, "they are now fully embracing the potential" of the Quad, he said in the report.

Campbell will accompany U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan to India next week to discuss areas of coordination.

Meanwhile, at the end of May, the new Chinese Ambassador to India Xu Feihong presented his credentials after an 18-month vacancy.

There is also speculation that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could meet Xi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kazakhstan in July.

But Campbell said that China and India have structural issues that will be difficult to resolve.

"One of the things we’ve seen under Xi Jinping, [is that] anything that bridges or touches territorial matters, I think it’s very hard for the Chinese to show any flexibility or any desire to find common ground."
Modi Retains Former Super Spy as India’s National Security Adviser (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [6/13/2024 11:14 AM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 27296K, Neutral]
India re-appointed Ajit Doval as national security adviser, in yet another move intended to showcase continuity in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third term in office.

The announcement Thursday comes days after key ministers, including those of foreign and defense, retained their posts in Modi’s latest cabinet. Modi’s party failed to win a majority for the first time in a decade and he currently leads a coalition government with the backing of two regional political parties.

Doval’s re-appointment makes him the longest serving national security adviser in India’s history. A career intelligence officer, Doval, 79, is considered close to Modi and has held the position for the past decade. Doval headed the federal Intelligence Bureau prior to becoming Modi’s NSA and has extensive field experience.

Under his watch, New Delhi decided to bomb alleged terror camps in Pakistan just before the national elections in 2019, following a suicide attack that left over 40 Indian soldiers dead. India also removed the special constitutional guarantees of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir — India’s only Muslim majority state — in 2019, soon after Modi assumed power in his second term.

Doval has also helped steer an agreement between the US and India to share critical and emerging technologies. Doval’s US counterpart, Jake Sullivan, is expected in New Delhi next week to discuss progress on that key agreement, among other issues.

Doval will travel with Modi to Italy for the Group of Seven summit of leading economies Thursday. Modi is likely to meet French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, among other world leaders, on the sidelines of the summit.
India brings home bodies of 45 workers killed in Kuwait fire (Reuters)
Reuters [6/14/2024 4:04 AM, Jose Devasia, 5.2M, Neutral]
The bodies of 45 Indians who died in a fire in a labour housing facility in Kuwait were flown to India on Friday, as bereaved relatives and experts urged New Delhi to do more to protect the lives of those who work abroad and send remittances home.

An electrical short circuit is likely to have caused Wednesday’s fire in the housing facility in Mangaf, a coastal city south of the capital Kuwait City. The Indian workers were among the 49 people who perished. A further 33 are being treated in hospitals.

Television showed bereaved families waiting at the airport to receive the bodies of their loved ones. On arrival, the coffins were placed with photographs of the deceased on separate tables in the cargo complex of the airport.

Families, friends, ministers and officials paid homage while police gave them a guard of honour.

Twenty-three of the 45 were from the southern Indian state of Kerala and its chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, called the accident "a national tragedy".

"This is the biggest tragedy involving migrants. We consider the migrants as our lifeline. It’s a big loss to the state," he told reporters.

Millions of foreign workers make up the majority of the labour force in Kuwait and some of its Gulf neighbours, and often live in overcrowded accommodation.

On Thursday, Kuwaiti prosecutors ordered one citizen and a number of residents to be remanded in custody over accusations of manslaughter due to safety negligence at the building.

India’s foreign ministry said 176 workers lived there.

The other dead included three Filipino workers, the Philippine migrant workers ministry said, adding that two more were in hospital and in a critical condition.

Local authorities did not disclose what kind of employment the workers were engaged in, although like in other Gulf states, Kuwait relies heavily upon foreign labour in industries like construction.

About 13 million Indians work abroad - more than 60% of them in Gulf nations - according to information shared with parliament by the Indian foreign ministry in 2023. Kuwait accounts for the third highest for a country with nearly 850,000.

The Indian foreign ministry says it has a "robust mechanism" to monitor working conditions abroad. But commentators said it needed to do more.

The Kuwait fire "is a reminder of the dismal working conditions of a large, and often ignored, section of the Indian diaspora", the Indian Express said in an editorial on Friday.
Kuwait fire leaves 24 families in India’s Kerala state bereft (Reuters)
Reuters [6/13/2024 7:28 AM, Jose Devasia and Chris Thomas, 42991K, Negative]
From a father-of-two who planned to leave his job to a 29-year-old due to visit his family in August, two dozen Indians from the southern state of Kerala died in a fire that ripped through a labour-housing facility in Kuwait on Wednesday, leaving their families bereft.

Around 40 Indians died in the blaze, which also killed at least 9 other people in Mangaf city, while more than 50 were injured, according to India’s foreign ministry. Most of the Indian victims came from Kerala.

Norka Roots, a government agency for Keralites living outside the state, put the number of the state’s dead at 24 with seven others injured and their condition serious. The federal government had arranged a special flight to bring the bodies, Norka Secretary K Vasuki said.

Among the Keralite victims was Muralidharan Nair, who had been working in Kuwait for 32 years, including 10 as a senior supervisor in the company that owned the housing facility where the fire broke out.

"He came on leave in December for two months with a plan to end his career in Kuwait. The company called him back," his brother, Vinu V Nair, told Reuters, adding that the family identified the 61-year-old from a list published by India’s embassy. His two roommates also died in the blaze.

Millions of foreign workers make up the majority of the labour force in Kuwait and some of its Gulf neighbours, and often live in overcrowded accommodation.

For decades, a disproportionately large share of Indian workers in the Gulf have been drawn from Kerala, a densely packed state along southern India’s Arabian Sea coast.

News of the disaster spread quickly in Kerala. The family of Saju Varghese, 56, found out about the fire from television and social media, and confirmed his death from friends and relatives in Kuwait.

Working in the Gulf nation for the last 21 years, Varghese planned to visit Kerala later this month to arrange his daughter’s higher education.

"The family is in a state of shock," their neighbour, George Samuel, said.

Another victim, Stephin Abraham Sabu, 29, was an engineer in Kuwait since 2019 and called home almost daily.

He had visited his hometown Kottayam "two or three times" since he left, and had booked air tickets to return in August for the housewarming of his family’s new home and to help them buy a new car, his friends said.

Sabu’s father has a small shop in Kottayam while his mother is a housewife. His brother, Febin, also works in Kuwait but lived separately.

Authorities in Kuwait have not officially disclosed the nationalities of those who died. The other dead included three Filipino workers, the Philippine migrant workers ministry said on Thursday, adding that two others were hospitalised and in critical condition.
‘State of shock’: Kuwait fire leaves many families bereft in India’s Kerala (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [6/13/2024 9:00 AM, Staff, 20871K, Negative]
From a father-of-two who planned to leave his job to a 29-year-old due to visit his family in August, two dozen Indians from the southern state of Kerala died in a fire that ripped through a labour-housing facility in Kuwait, leaving their families bereft.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday said 40 Indians died in the blaze at a building housing workers in Kuwait’s Mangaf city, which also killed at least nine others, including three Philippine nationals.

Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Abdullah al-Yahya told reporters on Thursday that one person succumbed to injuries, taking the number of deaths to at least 50.

More than 50 other workers were injured, some critically, but their nationalities could not immediately be confirmed by the Kuwaiti government.

Most of oil-rich Kuwait’s four million-plus population is made up of foreigners, many of them from South and Southeast Asia working in construction and service industries. They often live in overcrowded accommodations.

For decades, a disproportionately large share of Indian workers in the Gulf have been drawn from Kerala, a densely populated state along southern India’s Arabian Sea coast.

In Kerala, Norka Roots, a government agency for the state residents living outside, placed the number of dead from the state at 24. The federal government arranged a special flight to bring the bodies, Norka secretary K Vasuki said.

In a post on X late on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country was “doing everything possible to assist those affected by this gruesome fire tragedy”. Next of kin will receive payments of 200,000 rupees ($2,400), his office announced.

Kirti Vardhan Singh, India’s junior foreign minister, reached Kuwait on an Indian Air Force plane to help survivors and repatriate remains. “Some of the bodies have been charred beyond recognition, so DNA tests [are] under way to identify the victims,” he told Indian media.

‘State of shock’

News of the disaster spread quickly in Kerala.

Among the victims from the state was Muralidharan Nair, who had been working in Kuwait for 32 years, including 10 as a senior supervisor in the company that owned the housing facility where the fire broke out.

“He came on leave in December for two months with a plan to end his career in Kuwait. The company called him back,” his brother, Vinu V Nair, told the Reuters news agency, adding that the family identified the 61-year-old from a list of names published by India’s embassy. His two roommates also died in the blaze.

The family of Saju Varghese, 56, found out about the fire from television and social media and confirmed his death from friends and relatives in Kuwait.

Working in the Gulf nation for the last 21 years, Varghese planned to visit Kerala later this month to arrange his daughter’s higher education.

“The family is in a state of shock,” their neighbour, George Samuel, said.

Another victim, Stephin Abraham Sabu, 29, who worked as an engineer in Kuwait since 2019, called home almost daily.

He had visited his hometown Kottayam “two or three times” since he left, and had booked air tickets to return in August for the housewarming of his family’s new home and to help them buy a new car, his friends said.

Sabu’s father has a small shop in Kottayam while his mother is a housewife. His brother, Febin, also works in Kuwait but lives separately.

Authorities in Kuwait have not officially announced the nationalities of those who died. But the other dead included three Filipino workers, Leo Cacdac, the Philippine migrant workers minister, said in a statement on Thursday. Two other Filipinos were hospitalised and in critical condition.

Kuwaiti officials have detained the building’s owner over potential negligence and have warned that any blocks that flout safety rules will be closed.

The blaze was one of the worst seen in Kuwait, which borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia and sits on about 7 percent of the world’s known oil reserves.

In 2009, 57 people died when a Kuwaiti woman, apparently seeking revenge, set fire to a tent at a wedding party when her husband married a second wife.
Heavy rain, landslides kill 6 in India’s Sikkim, 2,000 tourists stranded (Reuters)
Reuters [6/14/2024 3:38 AM, Tora Agarwala, 5.2M, Negative]
At least six people have been killed this week and around 2,000 tourists stranded in India’s Himalayan state of Sikkim in landslides and floods after incessant rainfall, officials said on Friday.

Another four people have been killed in Nepal’s Taplejung district, which borders Sikkim, after a landslide following rains swept away the house in which they were sleeping, officials there said.

Heavy rains triggered landslides at several locations in Mangan district, which covers north Sikkim and lies about 100 km (60 miles) north of the state capital Gangtok, the local government of the northeastern Indian state said.

"It’s been raining continuously for 36 hours. The road to north Sikkim has been damaged in multiple locations, snapping connection to the district," said Hem Kumar Chettri, the district magistrate of Mangan.

"The stranded tourists are all safe but we have not been able to evacuate them because of the damage," he said, adding that 11 of them were foreign nationals.

The small Buddhist state of 650,000 people, wedged between Bhutan, China and Nepal, is a popular tourist destination but also faces natural disasters caused by extreme weather events in the Himalayas.

At least 179 people died last year in Sikkim when a Himalayan glacial lake outburst triggered floods.

Personnel and machinery have been deployed to fix the road, Chettri said, adding that the damage was "extensive" and repair will take some time. About 50 houses have been partly or fully damaged by the rains and people have been take to a relief camp.

While eastern parts of Nepal have been lashed by heavy rains, the Himalayan country’s western areas are facing one of the hottest seasons, weather officials said.
India attracts chipmaking equipment companies as China alternative (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [6/13/2024 1:13 PM, Ryosuke Hanada and Kotaro Hosokawa, 2042K, Neutral]
The chipmaking equipment industry is moving to set up bases of operation in India, as the country emerges as a promising alternative to China amid tensions between Beijing and the West.

International chip industry group SEMI will hold its Semicon exhibition in India for the first time in September near New Delhi. The exhibition has been held in the U.S., Japan, Europe, Taiwan, South Korea, China and Southeast Asia.

Japanese companies like Tokyo Electron, Disco, Canon, Tokyo Seimitsu and Daifuku are scheduled to attend. Tokyo Electron will show equipment for wafer deposition, coating and other front-end steps in the chipmaking process. Disco is expected to exhibit equipment for back-end processes like grinding and dicing wafers to form chips.

Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA from the U.S. will also have large booths.

Due to concerns about infrastructure like water and electricity, India has yet to attract many semiconductor fabrication plants, or fabs. The country’s share of the chip equipment market is thought to be less than 1%, showing a large gap with market leader China’s 34%.

In recent years, however, the restructuring of international supply chains away from China due to tensions with the U.S. has become a tailwind.

Apple is shifting production of iPhones and other products from China to India. As suppliers flock to where smartphones, PCs and other finished products are produced, the prevailing view among analysts is that India’s market is headed for strong growth.

Indian conglomerate Tata Group plans to build a semiconductor fab in Gujarat, India, with technology provided by Taiwanese contract chipmaker Power Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. It will likely be India’s first chipmaking plant for front-end processes.

"India will be among the top five chip ecosystems in the world by 2029," Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s electronics and information technology minister, said at a groundbreaking ceremony in March.

Total investment in the fab, which is scheduled to start operation in 2026, will reach 910 billion rupees ($10.9 billion).

The back-end process of finishing semiconductors into electronic components is labor intensive, so many companies are making plans to build plants in India, where labor costs are low.

U.S. memory manufacturer Micron Technology is also building a factory in Gujarat set to start operations in 2024. Japan’s Renesas Electronics has announced plans to build a factory with local companies.

Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Technology Market Research says India’s semiconductor-related market will reach $64 billion in 2026, nearly triple the size in 2019. SEMI has also praised India as an attractive place for semiconductor manufacturing and procurement.

In anticipation of the new chipmaking plants, equipment makers are beginning to set up shop.

Tokyo Electron has already established a marketing base.

"For the semiconductor industry, which requires a concentration of suppliers, India is an attractive market where both technological innovation and market growth can be expected," the company said. It said it plans to expand its bases in line with client trends, anticipating increased demand for front-end equipment.

Disco, which specializes in back-end equipment, is considering establishing a local subsidiary to handle sales and maintenance services. The company currently covers the Indian market from a Singapore subsidiary, but as back-end factories proliferate, a local base will be needed.

"We will respond to customer requests as factory construction projects take shape," the company said.

Japanese testing equipment maker Advantest has a base at an Indian software developer it acquired in 2013 and is working on software related to performance testing.

As front-end and back-end factories are anticipated, Advantest said it is considering opening a sales base in India.

Canon said this month that contributing to the semiconductor industry in India was seen as a growth pillar, noting opportunities in demand for lithography and other equipment.

Among U.S. companies, Lam opened an engineering center with simple development functions in 2022 in response to customer requests. Applied Materials has indicated plans to invest $400 million to set up a development center.

For India, a country with a large population where job creation is a challenge, launching cutting-edge industries has been a long-cherished wish. The administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in 2021 that it would invest 760 billion rupees to support semiconductor and liquid crystal panel production.

However, infrastructure concerns remain. Front-end assembly and testing processes are extremely complex, said Crawford Del Prete, head of technology research firm IDC. He added that until an industrial infrastructure is in place, the focus will likely be on building clusters of companies involved in back-end processes.
India’s opposition leveraged caste and constitution to shock Modi in election (Reuters)
Reuters [6/13/2024 10:48 PM, Shivangi Acharya and Krishn Kaushik, 42991K, Neutral]
A seminal moment in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unsuccessful campaign to retain his parliamentary majority occurred days before India’s marathon election began in April.

Speaking in the constituency that includes the Hindu temple town of Ayodhya, lawmaker Lallu Singh said that his and Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was seeking a supermajority in parliament’s lower chamber to make material changes to the constitution.

Opposition parties latched onto Singh’s remark to assert, without evidence, that the BJP would amend modern India’s founding document to strip Hindus at the bottom of the caste hierarchy of access to affirmative action policies.

The attack line hit a nerve - splitting the Hindu vote and ending the BJP’s decade-long dominance in the country’s most populous state.

Opinion polls had pointed to a landslide in Ayodhya’s home state of Uttar Pradesh and nationally but when results came through on June 4, the BJP had lost 29 seats in the state - nearly half of all the party’s losses nationwide.

"It hit the people like fire," said Awadhesh Prasad of the opposition Samajwadi Party (SP), whose base comprises Muslim and lower-caste voters in Uttar Pradesh. He successfully wrested the constituency anchored by Ayodhya from Singh, who had held it since 2014.

Despite the BJP’s best efforts to debunk the emerging narrative, the damage was done.

"The prime minister and other leaders tried to explain to the people, but by then their mood was set," said Dileep Patel, a state BJP official in Varanasi. Singh declined to comment.

Reuters interviewed 29 party leaders and workers from the BJP and rival parties, four analysts and 50 voters for this story. They described how lower caste concerns about affirmative action, along with a shortage of jobs, and complacent BJP activists combined to tip the scales in Uttar Pradesh, which sends the most lawmakers to parliament.

After a decade of electoral near-invincibility that combined economic success with a narrative of Hindu supremacy, Modi’s party was reduced to 240 seats nationwide. He was able to form a third government only with the help of allies, some of whom have a reputation for political fickleness.

It was a reminder that BJP cannot take Hindu votes for granted.

THE SUPERMAJORITY CALL

Ayodhya was supposed to be the safest of seats.

In January, Modi inaugurated a grand temple there to the deity Lord Ram in a ceremony that sparked national euphoria. It also fulfilled a decades’ long pledge used by the BJP to rise from India’s political margins into a major force.

Singh’s speech made no mention of taking benefits from lower castes and Modi’s aides have frequently downplayed concerns about changes to the constitution, which guarantees school and government job quotas to historically disadvantaged castes and tribal groups, both still among India’s poorest.

But it quickly spread on social media, fuelling an opposition campaign.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav wrote on social media that the BJP wanted to end the quota system and keep underprivileged segments of society "as their slaves."

At election rallies, Yadav’s ally and the opposition’s main figurehead, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party, began whipping out a pocket-sized copy of the constitution, warning it was under threat.

The message was echoed in media advertisements and by the regional party’s workers in Uttar Pradesh, which a SP spokesperson described as 600,000 strong.

India’s castes have co-existed uneasily with each other for millennia.

The BJP was long considered a bastion of upper-caste Hindus, but Modi, who belongs to a lower caste, had previously made inroads with marginalised groups, according to analysis by the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).

He has sought to unite Hindus by shifting focus from traditional notions of caste, instead putting the spotlight on the poor, youths, farmers and women - which he calls the four biggest castes in modern India. In power, Modi successively backed a man from a lower caste and a woman from a tribal group for India’s largely symbolic presidency.

A relatively united Hindu vote in the last two national elections allowed the BJP to sideline India’s nearly 200 million Muslims and overcome longstanding concerns around unemployment, inflation and rural distress.

Sandeep Shastri, coordinator of a program on Indian elections at CSDS said the number of people voting primarily on Hindu ideology appeared to have plateaued in 2019.

This year, BJP won just 54 of the 131 seats reserved for candidates from underprivileged groups, down from 77 in 2019. It won eight of the 17 reserved seats in Uttar Pradesh, compared to 14 the last time.

Dharmendra Yadav, a 30-year-old in Varanasi constituency who comes from a lower caste, said he believed the BJP "would have ended the reservations."

"When the opposition raised the issue of the constitution, it just verified it for us," said Dharmendra, whose surname indicates a caste affiliation with the SP’s Akhilesh, who he is not related to.

Dharmendra previously backed the BJP but went for the opposition this year.

"Caste politics still has a major influence in the Hindi belt," state BJP official Patel said, referring to states across central India that have been BJP’s stronghold since 2014.

WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

Surveys suggest Modi remains the world’s most popular elected leader.

But this year, Modi’s personal majority in his seat, centred around the holy city of Varanasi, shrank by more than 300,000. He retained his constituency with the lowest margin of any sitting premier in over three decades.

"The BJP heavily relied on the prime minister’s leadership to ... win votes and also maybe to camouflage problems that people are facing," said researcher Shastri.

Among those problems is a lack of jobs created over the past decade.

Young voters like Dharmendra had backed BJP in a landslide in 2014, when Modi promised to create 20 million jobs a year nationwide. The pledge has not been fulfilled.

Dharmendra said he had taken numerous exams for white-collar government jobs, highly prized for their security and benefits. In February, nearly 4.6 million people applied for 60,000 constable vacancies in Uttar Pradesh, only to have the BJP-run state government cancel the exam after the test was leaked online.

Banaras Hindu University political science professor Ashok Upadhyay said the exam leak, which was not the first and was repeated in March, gave young Indians, who have grown up in an increasingly unequal country, a sense that the job selection process was unfair.

Adding to the BJP’s electoral missteps, some voters and BJP leaders said the party faltered because they had assumed another landslide victory and were dismissive of issues that were important to voters.

DON’T WANT VOTES?

The redevelopment of Ayodhya into a temple town was preceded by the demolition of thousands of homes and stores. Nearly two dozen locals, including BJP supporters, told Reuters they were dissatisfied with the compensation offered.

A SP voter who identified himself by his first name of Shakti said he was part of a group that had lobbied BJP leaders for support.

"They said they didn’t want these 10,000 to 20,000 votes from local businessmen, they would win anyway," he said.

Another Ayodhya trader confirmed Shakti’s account and local BJP leader Veerchand Manjhi said he had also found it difficult to get locals’ issues addressed by authorities.

District magistrate Nitish Kumar said in response to Reuters questions that the compensation process was fair.

Ratan Sharda, a senior leader of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological parent, wrote in the June 16 issue of its "Organiser" magazine that the result was a "reality check."

BJP activists and leaders were "happy in their bubble, enjoying the glow reflected from Modiji’s aura, they were not listening to the voices on the streets," he wrote.

BJP RESILIENCE?

The BJP retains many strengths, including a leader with popular backing across the party, control of Uttar Pradesh’s state government and the backing of the influential RSS, said Delhi University professor Chandrachur Singh.

Analysts such as CSDS’s Sanjay Kumar noted that the BJP did well in states where there wasn’t a strong local party like the SP in Uttar Pradesh, which was able to capitalise on regional discontent.

And while Congress tried to nationalise its message that the BJP posed a threat to affirmative action, caste-based messaging held less appeal in urbanising India’s many cities. "In urban areas, caste is overridden by class identities," Singh said.

The BJP’s Patel said that the party had launched a detailed review of the loss and was confident of winning state elections in Uttar Pradesh that are due by 2027.

"The BJP either wins, or it learns," a BJP worker in Ayodhya told Reuters.
Too ill to work, too poor to get better: how debt traps families working at India’s kilns (The Guardian)
The Guardian [6/13/2024 11:00 PM, Anumeha Yadav and Utter Pradesh, 86157K, Negative]
The phrase “khat rahein hain” (“being worn down”) is how Suma Devi describes her 16 years of labouring at the brick kilns near the city of Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, more than 500 miles from her own state of Bihar.

Six years ago Devi had just given birth to her baby daughter when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and put on a nine-month course of antibiotics. It is an effective way to treat TB but Devi had to abandon the course halfway through to find work at the Madhav brick kiln in Naujheel, far from her home in a village near the city of Gaya.

It has made the last few years the toughest of her 16 seasons working in kilns. “I don’t feel well. I have not got better in five to six years,” she says, coating clay in sand and moulding it into rectangular blocks on a wooden frame on a sweltering day.

Devi starts work at 8am, stopping at 1pm to avoid the worst of the heat. During her break she cooks for her husband and daughter and sweeps their temporary shelter, a brick hut.

After sunset she goes back to work, hoping to make at least 2,000 bricks by 1am. They earn 500 rupees (£4.70) for making 1,000 bricks.

Devi belongs to the marginalised Dalits – the people at the bottom of India’s caste system, who were formerly known as “untouchables”. She says her family has no choice but to take this work.

Last year they borrowed 80,000 rupees from the kiln owner and had hoped to clear it during the season – which starts in October and ends in early June, when kilns are shut down at the onset of the monsoon rains – but they still owe 30,000 rupees and have had to borrow more to make ends meet.

The lingering TB has left Devi stuck in a cycle of illness and visits to doctors. “We cannot repay the advance, because I keep falling ill,” says Devi. “We have spent up to 12,000 rupees on medicines and tests at a private clinic. We have to borrow more and more,” she says.

Every year, after the rains, millions of rural women – including pregnant women and mothers – travel long distances across northern India to work in the brick kilns.

Their wages are paid only to their male relatives. India’s public healthcare services for poorer workers – including free treatment for TB, vitamin supplements, vaccines, food rations for those who are breastfeeding and a freshly cooked meal if pregnant – are out of reach for these migrant workers.

Brick kilns are located outside villages and towns, and the women and children toiling in them are – like many seasonal workers in India – cut off from such healthcare.

“The women usually spend less than six months in their village – [so] their rights are curtailed,” says Lokesh (who goes by her first name only), the director of the Centre for Education and Communication (CEC), a campaign organisation that supports migrant workers and child labourers.

“In the kilns, the women are neither registered as a primary worker, nor even informally in registers. If they were registered as workers, they would get paid maternity leave and other assistance,” Lokesh adds.

Workers do not tend to carry documents – such as the Mamta card for pregnant women and new mothers to record antenatal care and vaccines, or the Aadhaar, a biometric identity card – for fear of losing them on their long journeys or in insecure temporary housing.

But without them they have no access to entitlements. For example, women cannot open a bank account to receive the maternity benefit of 5,000 rupees without showing the Aadhaar card.

Shrinking budgets for childcare mean clinics cannot include migrant workers in the antenatal or nutrition programmes. Asha Rawat, a rural health worker at a state-run childcare centre in Meerpur, says: “We get no additional provisions to include those from outside the state.

“We see that the women and children [at the kilns] are very, very poor. We want to serve them. But we can barely cover the local children and women who are supposed to get take-home rations.”

Research on the children of migrant brick-kiln workers in Bihar published in 2022 found the cumulative effect of poor food and lack of healthcare left them vulnerable to chronic undernutrition and more likely to have stunted growth. Many of the children also work alongside their parents.

At the Madhav kiln, dozens of female workers queue in the shade of an acacia tree waiting to see a doctor conducting basic check-ups at a health camp organised by the CEC for the afternoon.

Nearly all of the women are underweight, and most of their babies have lightened hair colour – a clear indication of malnutrition.

Many do not have the ration card that entitles them to 5kg of free grain every month, or health insurance for those below the poverty line.

Heera Devi, 24, is worried that her baby, Kartik, is weak and cannot sit up. She says she usually lays him on a sheet on the ground while she works.

She weighs 37kg (82lb), and one-year-old Kartik is severely underweight at just 2.9kg – the average weight of a newborn in the west. “I feel he is not growing, but shrinking,” she says.

The health worker suggests getting Kartik to the malnutrition treatment centre for infants in Mathura, 25 miles away. For Devi, a week-long stay there is out of the question. As the family is struggling to pay off a loan of 70,000 rupees, she cannot miss work for that long.

Manisha, 10, has brought her 18-month-old brother to be seen by the health worker. The infant has been suffering with diarrhoea for three days. “He is going unconscious from the illness,” his sister says. His face is dotted with black soot, nazar teeka – the family’s effort to ward off evil eye.

Lalit Singh, who has coordinated the health camp for the CEC, phones the toddler’s parents and asks them to walk to the camp, a nearly a mile away, so the visiting doctor can give advice on their son’s treatment in person.

“The parents are very worried, but they cannot agree to come to the camp themselves,” one worker says. “The mother wishes to come and see the doctor. But the boy’s father is angry and says she cannot afford to miss their target of brick production for today.”
How an inadvertent free speech coalition upended India’s election (The Hill – opinion)
The Hill [6/13/2024 12:00 PM, Shareen Joshi, 18752K, Neutral]
The news that India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to secure a parliamentary majority in the recent election shocked almost everyone. Despite exit polls forecasting a landslide win, a beleaguered opposition secured unexpected victories.

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this was a personal setback. Once touting his divine endorsement to govern, he barely won his own seat. He now clings to power through the much more earthly expedient of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition whose participants are eager to wield influence.

How did this happen? BJP supporters emphasize dirty tactics from a disorganized and crippled opposition. Critics say the BJP’s lackluster performance was driven by its poor record; the party’s polarizing ethnocentrism and Islamophobia; and neoliberal economic policies that have exacerbated inequality while failing to address joblessness and inflation.

These narratives are intriguing, but they all miss a key variable driving the surprising election result: the BJP’s decade-long crackdown on free speech. Leading up to the election, Team Modi made some blunders related to expressive liberties and failed to correct them. This galvanized a far-flung coalition of unlikely allies. Timely judicial rulings on free speech allowed these allies to coalesce outside the sightlines of centralized power. This coalition, which lacks even a formal name, is arguably the true victor of the recent Indian election and could shape Indian politics and inspire democracy-watchers across the world.

In retrospect, the BJPs misstep is easy to spot. In February, it unveiled the election slogan “400 paar” (“400+”), indicating the party’s aim to increase its share of seats in parliament from around 330 to 400. The ostensible goal was to get a parliamentary supermajority that would facilitate new constitutional amendments.

The announcement left many Indians spooked. Muslims feared the implementation of draconian citizenship laws. Dalits (Hindus who are historically marginalized in the caste system) feared the cancellation of affirmative action programs. Journalists, academics, public intellectuals and citizens, already squeezed after a decade of restrictions, feared total marginalization.

In normal circumstances, a government would see, hear and feel such citizen backlash. But this government has not held a press conference in its decade in power. The media is now mostly owned by pro-government businesses; India stands at a dismal rank of 159 out of 181 countries in the Freedom of Press Index. Speech is heavily restricted.

The IT Rules Act of 2021 and compliant American technology companies have given the government the power to censor online speech, which it has eagerly exploited. In preparation for elections, the BJP established a “Fact Checking Unit (FCU)” to take down anti-government content. Any dissenting citizen now faced an opponent and referee rolled into one. Some went to jail. Most muzzled themselves.

But then came a surprise. On March 21, the Supreme Court suspended the FCU, citing constitutional concerns. Just before that, it dismissed criminal proceedings against a professor who had critiqued the ruling party’s policies in Kashmir on WhatsApp. On April 8, the court also restored the bail granted to a YouTuber who criticized a political leader online. In a now famous line, Justice Oka asked the government’s lawyer, “If before elections, we start putting behind bars everyone who makes allegations on YouTube, imagine how many will be jailed?”

Social media became a safe space for independent journalists and influencers to challenge the government and its fawning media. Record numbers flocked online for satire, comedy and live events. Dhruv Rathee, a vlogger with 22 million subscribers, tripled his following during May. One of his videos, titled “Is India becoming a DICTATORSHIP?” gathered 27 million views. Videos by independent journalist Akash Banerjee (aka Deshbhakt) emphasizing constitutional protections as well as daily economic issues gained 45 million views in just a single month. These independent journalists, some argue, beat the media-savvy BJP at their own game.

The opposition — the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A), a messy coalition of 42 small parties headed by the Indian National Congress (INC) — saw common denominators among disparate supporters. By April, they adopted the campaign slogan of “samvidhan bachao” (save the constitution). The INC leader, Rahul Gandhi, began to carry a copy of the constitution at rallies. Others, like the Samajwadi Party, combined these messages with themes of social justice. Young leaders like Kanhaiya Kumar, once jailed for sedition, sprung onto the national stage with scathing criticisms of those in power.

The formula worked. The INDIA Bloc won 232 seats out of 543, doubling its strength from the last election. Though Modi has been sworn in as prime minister, two “kingmakers” in his coalition — Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu — could dethrone him by switching to the INDIA bloc.

The real victor here is the motley coalition of voters who delivered a course correction for Indian democracy — a poignant echo of India’s historic freedom struggle.

So what will change after this election? Some might say, “Not much.” The BJP remains in power. Muslims and Dalits are still underrepresented in new ministries. The government intends to continue with restrain speech via proposed bills such as the Telecommunications Bill, Broadcasting Services Bill and Digital Personal Data Protection Act.

Yet there’s hope. The kingmakers, opposition and courts are poised to push back, reining in the BJP’s authoritarian and anti-secular tendencies. Most importantly, the free speech coalition seems to be here to stay. As Dhruv Rathee recently stated, “wherever democracy is weakening in the world, and people need courage, let our story be an inspiration for them.”
NSB
Diplomat: US committed to work with Bangladesh on corruption (VOA)
VOA [6/13/2024 4:54 PM, Satarupa Barua, 4032K, Neutral]
The United States is "committed to working with Bangladesh to fight corruption," Donald Lu, U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs, told VOA’s Bangla Service.

Lu visited Bangladesh in mid-May and met with senior government officials and civil society leaders. Shortly after his visit, the U.S. announced sanctions against former Bangladesh army chief General Aziz Ahmed for what it termed his involvement in “significant corruption.”

In an interview conducted by email on Monday, Lu spoke about topics that included economic cooperation, the climate crisis, women’s rights and the commitment of the United States to work with the people of Bangladesh on issues of democracy and human rights. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: In your recent visit to Bangladesh, you expressed the administration’s intention to move beyond the tension between Bangladesh and the U.S., which was caused by your administration’s initiative to promote democracy and a free, fair and peaceful election in Bangladesh in January this year. Is this an indication of a U.S. policy shift toward Bangladesh where you intend to focus more on geopolitical, economic, environmental and strategic bilateral issues rather than promoting democracy?

Donald Lu: As I said during my recent visit to Dhaka, we are looking forward, not back. We are ready and eager to advance our partnership with Bangladesh across a broad range of issues. We hope to continue deepening our trade ties with Bangladesh. We want to advance our shared interest in women’s economic security. We are already working together to address the climate crisis. We are optimistic about the opportunities for continued partnership on our shared priorities.

Promoting democracy and human rights in Bangladesh remains a priority for us. We will continue to support the important work of civil society and journalists and to advocate for democratic processes and institutions in Bangladesh, as we do in countries around the world.

VOA: Opposition political parties in Bangladesh and sections of civil society have criticized the U.S. administration for being “soft” on the current government of Bangladesh regarding the January 7 election issues, which include human rights violations. How would you respond to this criticism?

Lu: The United States staunchly supports free and fair elections and is firmly committed to promoting respect for human rights. Throughout the election cycle, we regularly engaged with the government, opposition, civil society and other stakeholders to urge them to work together to create conditions for free and fair elections. We were outspoken in our condemnation of the violence that marred the election cycle and we have urged the government of Bangladesh to credibly investigate incidents of violence and hold perpetrators accountable. We will continue to engage on these issues.

VOA: In your recent visit, you did not meet with the representatives from the opposition parties who boycotted the election, although you met with members of the civil society. Why did you decide not to meet with the opposition members?

Lu: It is true that last year ahead of the elections I had the opportunity to meet with a roundtable of leaders from several political parties. It’s not a pre-election period, so I didn’t meet with political parties during this visit.

I was fortunate to meet with a diverse group of Bangladeshis while in Dhaka, from civil society representatives to government officials, to the Bangladesh National Women’s Cricket Team, who taught me a thing or two about bowling and batting.

VOA: You highlighted your government’s plan to work together with Bangladesh to fight corruption and ensure financial good governance. Is the recent sanction against the former Bangladesh army chief General Aziz a part of that fight against corruption? Are you satisfied with the Bangladesh government’s willingness to cooperate to mitigate these issues?

Lu: When I was ambassador to Albania and the Kyrgyz Republic, we sanctioned corrupt officials. This was not popular with the governments at the time, but now those sanctioned former corrupt officials are all in jail. Societies around the world are eager to see justice for corruption.

We are committed to working with Bangladesh to fight corruption, and on May 20, we announced the public designation of former General Aziz Ahmed under Section 7031(c), due to his involvement in significant corruption. We welcome statements by government ministers that this corruption allegation will be fully investigated.

VOA: You have offered Bangladesh authorities free real-time use of satellite data to monitor the impact of climate change. How has Bangladesh responded to this? Which areas, in your opinion, should be prioritized in the cooperation between the two countries regarding climate change?

Lu: I felt firsthand the impact of climate change during my visit to Dhaka in May as I sweltered alongside Bangladeshis in the extreme heat. We are committed to partnering with Bangladesh to address the climate crisis. We’re focused on building clean energy capacity, reducing greenhouse gas emissions in sectors like agriculture and power, and conserving ecosystems to maintain biodiversity and reduce vulnerability to climate change. Our discussions with Bangladeshi officials were extremely positive.

VOA: In what ways can Bangladesh play an important role in the U.S. government’s Indo-Pacific policy? What are the priority areas where you seek Bangladesh government’s cooperation?

Lu: The United States and Bangladesh share a vision of an Indo-Pacific region that is free and open, connected, prosperous, secure and resilient. With a dynamic and fast-growing economy, Bangladesh is positioned to act as a bridge for commerce and an anchor for prosperity in the region. We’re focused on working with our Bangladeshi partners to boost inclusive economic growth in the region, as well as increasing security cooperation, addressing the climate crisis, and promoting democracy and human rights. Coordination on these and other issues benefits the people of both of our countries.
Sea Swamps Bangladesh At One Of World’s Fastest Rates (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [6/14/2024 12:00 AM, Mohammad Mazed and Zunayet Anis, 1.4M, Neutral]
After cyclone gales tore down his home in 2007, Bangladeshi fisherman Abdul Aziz packed up what was left of his belongings and moved about half a kilometre inland, further away from storm surge waves.

A year later, the sea swallowed the area where his old home had been.

Now, 75-year-old Aziz fishes above his submerged former home and lives on the other side of a low earth and concrete embankment, against which roaring waves crash.

"The fish are swimming there in the water on my land", he told AFP, pointing towards his vanished village. "It is part of the advancing ocean."

Government scientists say rising seas driven by climate change are drowning Bangladesh’s densely populated coast at one of the fastest global rates, and at least a million people on the coast will be forced to relocate within a generation.

"Few countries experience the far-reaching and diverse effects of climate change as intensely as Bangladesh," Abdul Hamid, director general of the environment department, wrote in a report last month.

The three-part study calculated the low-lying South Asian nation was experiencing a sea level rise in places more than 60 percent higher than the global average.

By 2050, at present rates of local sea level rise, "more than one million people may have to be displaced", it read, based on a quarter of a century of satellite data from the US space agency NASA and its Chinese counterpart CNSA.

Sea levels are not rising at the same rate around the world, due chiefly to Earth’s uneven gravity field and variations in ocean dynamics.

Study lead A.K.M Saiful Islam said Bangladesh’s above-average increases were driven by melting ice caps, water volumes increasing as oceans warm, and the vast amounts of river water that flow into the Bay of Bengal every monsoon.

The study provides "a clear message" that policymakers should be prepared for "mitigation and adaptation", he said.

Islam, a member of the UN’s IPCC climate change assessment body, examined the vast deltas where the mighty Himalayan rivers of the Ganges and Brahmaputra reach the sea.

"In recent decades, the sea level rose 3.7 millimetres (0.14 inches) each year globally," Islam added.

"In our study, we saw that the sea level rise is higher along our coast... 4.2 millimetres to 5.8 millimetres annually."

That incremental rise might sound tiny. But those among the estimated 20 million people living along Bangladesh’s coast say the destruction comes in terrifying waves.

"It is closing in," said fisherman Aziz about the approaching sea. "Where else can we escape?"

The threat is increasing.

Most of the country’s coastal areas are a metre or two above sea level, and storms bring seawater further inland, turning wells and lakes salty and killing crops on once fertile land.

"When the surge is higher, the seawater intrudes into our houses and land," said Ismail Howladar, a 65-year-old farmer growing chilli peppers, sweet potatoes, sunflowers and rice.

"It brings only loss for us."

Cyclones -- which have killed hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh in recent decades -- are becoming more frequent as well as growing in intensity and duration due to the impact of climate change, scientists say.

Shahjalal Mia, a 63-year-old restaurant owner, said he watches the sea "grasp more land" each year.

"Many people have lost their homes to the sea already," he said. "If there is no beach, there won’t be any tourists."

He said he had experienced cyclones and searing heatwaves grow worse, with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

"We are facing two, three, even four cyclones every year now," he said.

"And I can’t measure temperatures in degrees but, simply put, our bodies can’t endure this".

Bangladesh is among the countries ranked most vulnerable to disasters and climate change, according to the Global Climate Risk Index.

In April, the nation of around 170 million people experienced the hottest month, and the most sustained heatwave temperatures, in its history.

Last month, a cyclone that killed at least 17 people and destroyed 35,000 homes, was one of the quickest-forming and longest-lasting seen, the government’s meteorological department said.

Both events were pinned on rising global temperatures.

Ainun Nishat, from Brac University in the capital Dhaka, said that the poorest were paying the price for carbon emissions from wealthier nations.

"We cannot do anything for Bangladesh if other nations, notably rich countries, do not do anything to fight emissions," he said.

Bangladesh is running out of time, Nishat added.

"It is becoming too late to prevent disasters," he said. "We are unequipped to bring change."
Will the Congress Party’s Strategy Against the BJP Work For the Bangladesh Nationalist Party? (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [6/13/2024 10:13 AM, Saqlain Rizve, 1156K, Neutral]
The political fightback of the opposition Congress party in the recent Indian general election has won hearts and fired the imagination of many Bangladeshis. People are discussing whether the Bangladeshi opposition can find a way to conjure up resolve and draw on the strategy of the Congress and the INDIA coalition to weaken the iron grip of the ruling Awami League (AL) in Bangladesh.

Bangladeshis have paid close attention to Congress leader and member of Parliament Rahul Gandhi’s cross-country marches, the Bharat Jodo Yatra and the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, which helped him connect with the masses, enthuse Congress cadres, and draw attention to the divisive governance and injustices of the Narendra Modi government.

Gandhi and the Congress used social media skillfully to engage the Indian youth. Their campaign focused on the decline of democracy under Modi’s rule. Gandhi emphasized the need to defend constitutional rights and used the Constitution as a symbolic prop throughout his campaign. He also addressed issues like unemployment, inflation, and secularism. Responding to BJP and public criticism of the Nehru-Gandhi family’s domination of the Congress party, Mallikarjun Kharge, a Dalit leader, was appointed as Congress president, the first non-Gandhi to hold the post in 24 years.

The Congress leveraged the influence of its regional leaders. It also reached out to other opposition parties to form the INDIA coalition and made concessions to its coalition partners on seat-sharing to ensure the bloc’s survival during the elections.

The INDIA bloc’s creditable performance came despite the systematic efforts of the Modi government to weaken the opposition. In addition to throwing opposition leaders into jail, the BJP split parties, cornered funds through the electoral bonds scheme, and froze the Congress’ funds. The Election Commission of India functioned as an extension of the BJP.

Yet, the INDIA bloc fought the odds to put up a credible performance in the recent elections. It has inspired Bangladeshis. Some are asking whether the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) too can fight the ruling Sheikh Hasina-led AL.

Since 2009, Bangladesh has been ruled by the AL, which like the BJP in India has crushed opposition parties and jailed their leaders en masse. There has been significant democratic backsliding in Bangladesh under Hasina’s rule.

The 2014, 2018, and 2024 general elections in Bangladesh were held not under a neutral caretaker government as demanded by the opposition but under the AL government. All elections in the country have witnessed widespread rigging and other irregularities. Elections have been far from free or fair.

Additionally, BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia, a two-time prime minister, was jailed on corruption charges in 2018 and has been living under house arrest due to her ill health since 2020. The party’s acting chairman is her son, Tarique Rahman, who lives in self-exile in London.

The BNP’s strategy to fight the AL government has included calling for strikes and shutdowns, violent protests, and boycotting of elections. It boycotted the general elections of 2014 and 2024, because elections under an AL government would not be free and fair.

However, the BNP’s boycotts didn’t pay off. Despite its boycott call in 2014, the election went ahead and the AL won a landslide majority with 153 of the 300 directly elected seats uncontested, amid a backdrop of violence, arrests of opposition members, and international criticism of the election’s legitimacy. Fast forward to 2024, the BNP’s boycott call, while underscoring the party’s stance against the electoral process, has entrenched the AL’s hold on power. Indeed, questions are being raised over the future of multiparty democracy in Bangladesh.

The BNP participated in the 2018 general election; one of the reasons for doing so was to maintain party registration. Despite the challenging political landscape, the BNP’s participation marked a significant shift in its strategy. However, the BNP secured only seven seats of 300. This result allowed the BNP to retain only a formal presence in the national parliament, ensuring its continued existence in the political arena and maintaining its eligibility for future electoral contests. However, this election too was marked by vote-rigging and suppression of the opposition.

The BNP’s fight against the AL has suffered on account of the absence of leadership on the ground. While Zia remains in detention, Rahman’s self-imposed exile in London since 2008 has left a leadership vacuum and hindered the BNP’s efforts to reorganize the party and mobilize support.

Also, Rahman faces corruption charges and has been linked to a history of violent politics. Critics accuse him of fostering intimidation and corruption, leading to charges, including involvement in the 2004 Dhaka grenade attack. His association with Hawa Bhaban, a parallel power center during the BNP’s rule, was infamous for corruption, including its role in the 10-truck arms haul case in 2004. This case implicated Rahman, marking a significant episode in Bangladesh’s political history and reflecting its complex landscape.

Rahman is accused in over a dozen cases due to his involvement in these major incidents. Last year, he received a nine-year prison sentence for his involvement in a corruption case initiated by the Anti-Corruption Commission back in 2007.

The long list of criminal charges he faces and his status as a fugitive from the law have eroded Rahman’s credibility and capacity to inspire the masses. It has impacted the BNP’s image as well and led to internal discord, undermining its ability to present a cohesive and effective political strategy domestically.

Furthermore, the BNP’s decision to boycott elections has been criticized for failing to engage the political process constructively and not providing a viable alternative to the electorate.

BNP leaders sought foreign help to advocate for a fair and transparent electoral process in Bangladesh, particularly by seeking to establish a strong connection with the U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh. They also tried to connect with the grassroots by distributing leaflets calling on people to boycott the election; however, these efforts lacked impact without a leader engaging directly with the masses. The BNP’s senior leaders face legal and other issues. The leadership from abroad hasn’t compensated for the lack of a physical presence on the ground.

BNP leaders need to revitalize the party’s image and policies, listen to the grassroots, discuss issues like inflation, and work toward strategic alliances with other parties to form a long-term vision for party growth. To accomplish these, Rahman needs to return to Bangladesh first, or allow alternative leadership to emerge. The absence of the top leadership on the ground, issuing directions to those working at the grassroots, has cost the BNP dearly.

However, the BNP faces far greater challenges than does the INDIA bloc.

It will be difficult for Rahman to come home and lead the party. The Hasina government is determined to extradite him to face corruption and violence charges. He will be arrested and jailed upon his return.

Moreover, the AL government’s crackdown on the opposition, journalists, and civil society groups has been far more intense and sweeping than that by the BJP government in India. According to BNP records cited by The Daily Star, a Bangladeshi daily, over 141,633 cases have been filed against 4,926,492 BNP leaders and activists since 2009. The Cyber Security Act, formerly the Digital Security Act, has been used to suppress dissent, fostering a culture of fear among civilians and oppositions.

Moreover, enforced disappearances in Bangladesh under Hasina’s rule have reached alarming proportions. According to Human Rights Watch, from January 1, 2009, to July 31, 2020, at least 572 people were forcibly disappeared by security forces and law enforcement agencies in Bangladesh. An Asian Human Rights Commission report claimed that at least 623 people have been victims of enforced disappearances between January 2009 and June 2022.

Furthermore, although the BNP has sought to build a coalition, it has partnered with religious parties, which are also under government pressure.

The alliance between the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami is deeply controversial as the JI collaborated with Pakistan during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War. Since coming to power in 2009, the AL government has put JI leaders on trial in the domestic International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), resulting in convictions and sentencing of its leaders.

Though criticized for procedural flaws by international human rights organizations, the JI cannot shake off the stain of 1971. The BNP may need to rethink its alliance with the JI.

Bangladeshi analysts are skeptical about the BNP putting up a tough fight against the AL regime.

Shantanu Majumder, professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Dhaka, told The Diplomat that he is skeptical that “anyone in Bangladesh can change the political landscape like Gandhi did.” To do so, “leaders must change the strategy in a way that suits our nation,” he said.

Discussing whether Rahman could provide the leadership that Gandhi did, Majumder pointed out that “there are a lot of differences in their ideology.”

“A big question,” he said, is “whether Rahman is prepared to face the court for the charges against him, and then start working at the grassroots.”

Replicating the Congress’ strategy in Bangladesh will be challenging.

The Congress’ mass mobilization campaigns and social media engagement worked in India, but the BNP faces a more complex environment, marked by intense crackdowns on dissent and a leadership vacuum. The BNP can draw inspiration and ideas from India but must tailor its strategy to address Bangladesh’s unique political challenges, including fostering internal cohesion, revitalizing its image, and building alliances that resonate with the Bangladeshi electorate.
Central Asia
Kazakhstan: Astana seeking public input for water-management plan (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [6/13/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
Kazakhstan’s government is seeking input from non-governmental stakeholders as it develops a water resources management plan covering 2024-28.

A draft water management plan was posted on a government portal designed to facilitate input from experts and accredited organizations.

Among measures currently outlined in the draft plan are the construction of new reservoirs and the renovation of existing facilities, as well as steps to automate and digitalize water-management systems. The plan also envisions steps to introduce water-saving technology and modernize drainage networks. It identifies over 5,000 specific projects in need of funding to improve water-usage efficiency nationwide.

The initiative is the outcome of a government decree adopted in February. That decree acknowledged that existing water-usage patterns are unsustainable.

“The situation in the water sector of the economy requires a radical improvement of the state’s water policy and industry management, a review of the existing structure, delimitation of the functions of water management entities, and the development of new mechanisms of economic relations,” the draft plan states.

A major challenge outlined in the draft plan is connected to outdated systems that supply drinking water and irrigation for agriculture. “A full-scale modernization of water infrastructure is required,” the draft plan says. It pinpoints the weakest links in the water-management system at “individual water management facilities that are in municipal and private ownership.”

Input from stakeholders is open until June 18. Among the suggestions received to date is a recommendation from environmental activist Grigory Vingerter for the plan to “take into account safety from chemical pollution.” The widespread use of pesticides within a 2-kilometer range of riverbeds, Vingerter maintained, “threatens chemical pollution of water bodies.”
Victims Of 2010 Ethnic Clashes Commemorated In Kyrgyzstan (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/13/2024 6:22 AM, Staff, 1530K, Negative]
Local residents and officials in Kyrgyzstan’s southern Jalal-Abad region have commemorated victims of deadly clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in June 2010. The commemoration event was held on June 13 at a memorial complex in the Suzak district, where the region’s Deputy Governor Maksat Sydykov called on local residents to "preserve inter-ethnic concord." The ethnic clashes started on June 10, 2010, in Jalal-Abad and another southern region, Osh, and lasted for several days. At least 446 people were killed and thousands more were injured or displaced during the violence. Dozens more went missing. Most victims were ethnic Uzbeks.
‘ISIS isn’t done with us’: Arrested Tajiks highlight US fears of terror attack on US (CNN)
CNN [6/14/2024 2:00 AM, Katie Bo Lillis and Josh Campbell, 22.7M, Negative]
The recent arrest of eight Tajik nationals believed to have connections to ISIS has heightened concerns among national security officials that a dangerous affiliate of the now-splintered terror group could potentially carry out an attack on US soil, according to multiple US officials who spoke to CNN.

Members of the group initially entered the US at the southern border and requested asylum under US immigration law. It’s unclear whether they entered at the same time and place.

By the time intelligence collected on overseas ISIS targets connected the men to the terror group, they had already been vetted by immigration authorities and allowed into the country, officials said.

Though there is no hard evidence indicating they were sent to the US as part of a terror plot, at least some of the Tajik nationals had expressed extremist rhetoric in their communications, either on social media or in direct private communications that US intelligence was able to monitor, three officials said.

That discovery set off a flurry of emergency investigative efforts by federal agents and analysts across the country, sources said, including physical and electronic surveillance of the men — a counterterrorism operation reminiscent of the years immediately following 9/11, when the FBI investigated numerous homegrown plots.

After a period of surveillance, federal officials in recent days faced a difficult decision: whether to continue surveilling the men in order to determine if they were part of any potential plot or wider terrorist network, or to move in and take them off the street. Rather than risk the worst-case scenario of a potential attack, senior US officials decided to move in and have the men apprehended by ICE agents, one source told CNN.

The men remain in federal custody on immigration charges and will eventually be deported following the counterterror investigation into them.

Tajiks recruited by ISIS

Of particular concern to US officials was that the men hail from Tajikistan, a corner of Central Asia that in recent years has been a source of steady recruitment by ISIS-K, the Afghanistan-based affiliate of the Islamic terrorist group. ISIS-K is led primarily by Tajiks, who have carried out a series of recent attacks in Europe on behalf of the group, including the Crocus Hall attack in Moscow in March that killed more than 100 people.

National security officials fear that at least some of the eight Tajiks were ripe for radicalization by ISIS-K while they were inside the United States, potentially struggling with isolation, financial stress or discrimination — all things that could make a person susceptible to ISIS propaganda glorifying violence.

Senior officials now see a so-called “lone-wolf” attacker who emerges seemingly from nowhere as perhaps the more likely — and potentially equally dangerous — threat, rather than the more traditional coordinated plot carried out by trained operatives.

Compared to terror networks, whose communications can provide possible avenues for surveillance exploitation, lone individuals who do not telegraph their attack plans to anyone present an additionally difficult challenge for security officials.

“We can’t assume it’s not all of the above,” said one senior US official. “We’re too early to know everything we want to know about the depth and texture of the links that might be there” between these eight people and ISIS.

The episode comes as senior intelligence officials have been publicly warning that global conditions have put the risk of a terror attack on US soil at its highest level in recent memory — at the same time that many national security officials also acknowledge that American drawdowns in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East have reduced intelligence-gathering on traditional terrorism threats.

“It’s no secret that since our drawdowns in various places around the world, we collect less intelligence. This was always a tradeoff we knew we were making,” the senior US official said.

Former acting CIA Director Michael Morell this week co-wrote a widely circulated piece in Foreign Affairs warning that terrorism warning lights are “blinking red,” echoing a recent warning by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who said he sees “blinking lights everywhere I turn.”

“The combination of stated intentions of terrorist groups, growing capabilities they have demonstrated in recent successful and failed attacks around the world, and the fact that several serious plots in the United States have been foiled, point us to an uncomfortable but unavoidable conclusion,” the Foreign Affairs piece read. “Put simply, the United States faces a serious threat of a terrorist attack in the months ahead.”

Gaps in intelligence collection

Intelligence officials are keenly aware of gaps in intelligence collection in Afghanistan, where ISIS-K is primarily based. While officials believe that ISIS-K mainly tries to radicalize and inspire attackers rather than train and field operatives, the group’s rise to prominence is a relatively new phenomenon. That means that there is much that US counterterrorism analysts don’t know about its strategy, recruitment efforts and operational tactics.

US officials and analysts who closely track Islamist terror groups do know that ISIS-K has dramatically ramped up its online propaganda machine. Rather than training and deploying fighters — as al Qaeda did in the 9/11 attacks, for example — ISIS-K has instead focused on radicalizing vulnerable populations. Tajikistan, for example, is one of the poorest countries in the world and its population faces extreme religious repression, both factors that terrorism experts say can make a population vulnerable to radicalization.

Colin Clarke, a researcher who specializes in terrorism, said the group is creating “charismatic propaganda” to reach “out to diasporas that are already in place in Europe, in North America and in the region in Central Asia, and attempting to inspire people to conduct attacks.”

“It seems like it’s just a matter of time before they’re able to pull something off successfully,” Clarke said.

Concerns about the border

The arrests also puts a spotlight on vulnerabilities at the US southern border, an issue Republicans have amplified in the midst of a presidential election year.

“We are literally living on borrowed time,” Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said from the Senate floor on Wednesday during a speech about the threat of terrorists entering the US through the southern border.

A June 7 report released by the DHS inspector general found that asylum seekers were not always screened in a timely fashion and that border agents could not access all the federal data they needed to vet noncitizens seeking admission into the US.

The US is “at risk of admitting dangerous persons into the country or enabling asylum seekers who may pose significant threats to public safety and national security to continue to reside in the United States,” the report said.

US officials have been paying particular attention to immigrants from Central Asian countries including Tajikistan since last summer, when a group Uzbek nationals who had crossed the southern border were later found to have been assisted in traveling to the United States by a facilitator who had ties to ISIS.

The episode sparked a scramble across the US government to locate and investigate those people.

Two US officials also said that it spurred national security officials to ensure that immigration and intelligence authorities were appropriately monitoring anyone traveling from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

“I think what [the incident with the Uzbek nationals] did last summer was suggest central Asians are potentially a population of concern, given what we know about the global ISIS network right now,” the senior US official said.

In 2023, CBP reported 169 encounters with individuals identified as “potential matches” with names on the terrorism watch list.

But that’s not necessarily a reliable gauge of the number of actual terrorists who may be trying to enter the United States, US officials argue. When a name pings on a terror watch list, it could mean any number of things: a person could have a very loose, attenuated connection to a known terrorist. Or they could belong to a legacy terror group — like the FARC — that isn’t known for conducting attacks on US soil. Or they could simply have a similar name as a person of legitimate concern.

That’s what happened with the Jordanian national who was arrested at the gates of the US Marines base at Quantico earlier this year, two US officials said. Although his name returned a hit against one of the watch lists, it turned out to be a “bad match,” according to the senior US official.

The blending of criminality and terrorism in poor countries — like Tajikistan — can also prove incredibly difficult for law enforcement officials to unravel. A person may have regular contact with a family member who has done some paid work for ISIS, for example, without themselves sharing any sympathy for the group.

But, Clarke said, the risk is there: “Crushing poverty [and] an extremely religious population that’s suppressed by its leaders — it’s almost a perfect formula for exporting jihadists.”

Said one law enforcement source: “It’s become cliché, but remains absolutely true: We may be done with ISIS, but ISIS isn’t done with us.”
Twitter
Afghanistan
Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[6/13/2024 4:14 PM, 79.5K followers, 224 retweets, 1K likes]
Today marks 1,000 days since girls in my country were banned from education, just for being women. They banned my mother from teaching, and now they target my generation. The Taliban should fear educated women, because we will topple their regime. But first, I’m off to Oxford.

Frud Bezhan
@FrudBezhan
[6/13/2024 9:45 AM, 34.4K followers, 28 retweets, 39 likes]
It is 1,000 days since the Taliban banned teenage girls from going to school in #Afghanistan. One impact of the ban has been a spike in forced and child marriages.

Yalda Hakim
@SkyYaldaHakim
[6/13/2024 5:41 PM, 219.2K followers, 287 retweets, 650 likes]
My thoughts on today’s dark anniversary - 1,000 days since teenage girls in Afghanistan have been banned from school by the Taliban. Women are also forbidden from most public places, barred from universities and restricted in almost all job sectors. #LetAfghanGirlsLearn

Heather Barr
@heatherbarr1
[6/13/2024 3:10 AM, 62.5K followers, 56 retweets, 102 likes]
Earlier intl human rights orgs, in a letter to participating countries of Doha meeting, stated "the world is dangerously close to accepting the legitimacy of the Taliban’s rule”. They urged countries not to grant concessions to Taliban re women’s rights. https://www.afintl.com/en/202406121393
Pakistan
Anas Mallick
@AnasMallick
[6/14/2024 3:23 AM, 73.4K followers, 1 retweet, 7 likes]
Pakistan issues 509 visas to Indian Sikh pilgrims to attend the annual anniversary event of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh scheduled to be held from 21st till 30th of June. #Pakistan #India

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[6/13/2024 8:57 AM, 42.7K followers, 9 retweets, 50 likes]
More pain points for Pakistanis, with higher taxes on top of backbreaking inflation. Ultimately the country’s low tax to GDP ratio is unsustainable and has to be increased - but higher taxes have come without greater prosperity, which makes them yet another major economic burden.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[6/14/2024 12:12 AM, 8.5M followers, 92 retweets, 285 likes]
New budget of PML-N & IMF Govt is a death warrant for the IT Industry. Higher income taxes on the salaried class included in the budget would “further fuel the brain drain of the skilled workforce from the IT industry of Pakistan”. https://www.arabnews.pk/node/2530281/pakistan
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[6/13/2024 6:08 PM, 98.8M followers, 7.1K retweets, 67K likes]
Landed in Italy to take part in the G7 Summit. Looking forward to engaging in productive discussions with world leaders. Together, we aim to address global challenges and foster international cooperation for a brighter future.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[6/13/2024 3:40 AM, 98.8M followers, 5.2K retweets, 47K likes]
Congratulations to Shri Pema Khandu Ji on taking oath as the Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh. I would also like to congratulate all those who took oath as Ministers. My best wishes to them for their future endeavours of serving the people. This team will ensure that the state develops at an even faster pace. @PemaKhanduBJP

Rajnath Singh
@rajnathsingh
[6/14/2024 12:14 AM, 24.1M followers, 280 retweets, 2.6K likes]
Leaving New Delhi for Visakhapatnam. Shall visit the Eastern Naval Command and review the defence preparedness. Looking forward to it.

Suhasini Haidar
@suhasinih
[6/13/2024 10:35 PM, 1.3M followers, 13 retweets, 38 likes]
US NSA Jake Sullivan, Deputy Secy State Kurt Campbell expected in New Delhi next week, Campbell says "irrelevant practices" in ties will be dropped, tech cooperation at the fore. Sullivan says Pannun issue being discussed at "v senior levels". @the_hindu https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/us-nsa-jake-sullivan-deputy-secretary-of-state-kurt-campbell-expected-in-new-delhi-next-week/article68286057.ece

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[6/13/2024 9:22 AM, 210.4K followers, 10 retweets, 75 likes]
The BJP dominates India’s ruling coalition, familiar Modi allies have retained key Cabinet posts & Modi coalition partners are unlikely to resist many of his policies. Still, Modi can’t hide the fact that his wings have been clipped. For @ForeignPolicy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/12/modi-india-bjp-coalition-government-election-politics/

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[6/13/2024 4:16 AM, 3.1M followers, 180 retweets, 2.1K likes]
Congratulate Chief Minister @PemaKhanduBJP Ji; Deputy CM @ChownaMeinBJP Ji and all others who have taken oath in Arunachal Pradesh today. Under PM @narendramodi’s leadership, @BJP4India is committed to bringing growth, development and prosperity for the people of Arunachal Pradesh.
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[6/13/2024 2:32 PM, 638.6K followers, 17 retweets, 41 likes]
The #AwamiLeague government has given directions to ensure safety of homebound people and the sale of sacrificial animals and maintain law and order situation during the upcoming #EidulAdha. The concerned departments were also asked to take measures to ensure supply and stock of essential commodities and keep their prices under control during Eid. https://bssnews.net/news/194878

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/13/2024 6:07 AM, 638.6K followers, 26 retweets, 71 likes]
.@GlobalFund and @StopTB want to include HPM #SheikhHasina in their coalition of leaders and champion global fund. The two organizations consider #Bangladesh a success story in controlling the spread of #Maleria and #HIV. https://link.albd.org/49xzd @PeterASands @LucicaDitiu

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/13/2024 5:08 AM, 638.6K followers, 21 retweets, 52 likes]
The special train service on the #Chattogram-Cox’s Bazar route, which was declared closed on 30 May due to engine shortage, has resumed today (12 June). It will run for a week on the occasion of #EidulAdha or until 24 June. https://link.albd.org/ikblc #Bangladesh #Railway

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[6/13/2024 7:51 AM, 108.7K followers, 100 retweets, 122 likes]
The UNICEF Representative to the Maldives pays a courtesy call on the First Lady https://presidency.gov.mv/Press/Article/31023

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[6/13/2024 5:46 AM, 108.7K followers, 118 retweets, 134 likes]
The Vice Chairman of the 14th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Pays a Courtesy Call on the President https://presidency.gov.mv/Press/Article/31021

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[6/13/2024 9:05 AM, 54.2K followers, 7 retweets, 7 likes]
Director and @UNESCO Representative to #Maldives, Tim Curtis, paid a courtesy call on Secretary, Economic and Development Cooperation Dr. Hussain Niyaaz. Discussed cultural preservation, environmental conservation & education for sustainable development. @unesconewdelhi

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[6/13/2024 9:04 AM, 54.2K followers, 10 retweets, 14 likes]
As part of Skills Development Programme, the Foreign Service Institute of Maldives conducted an informative session on “Dhivehi Bahuge Qawaaidhthakaai Hamathah Hifehettun”. The session was conducted by Ms Aishath Hussain Manik for all diplomats.

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[6/14/2024 12:07 AM, 13.4K followers, 4 retweets, 16 likes]
I met with Heads of Missions and @MoFAmv Executive staff. We reviewed what we have achieved so far and discussed upcoming work of the Ministry and Missions. Noted the importance of regular interactions with counterparts and relevant stakeholders in the countries of representation and engage in discussions of mutual benefit.

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[6/13/2024 11:52 PM, 13.4K followers, 12 retweets, 21 likes]
It is with a heavy heart that I learnt of the tragic fire incident in a building that housed many #Indian workers in #Kuwait, leading to the loss of many precious lives. The prompt response by the Governments of India and Kuwait is admirable. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families. I also pray for the speedy recovery of those who were injured.

NKShresthaPrakash
@nksthaprakash
[6/13/2024 10:06 AM, 331.3K followers, 25 retweets, 94 likes]
Had a phone call with EAM of India @DrSJaishankar. Extended heartiest congratulations on his reappointment. Discussed various aspects of Nepal-India relations. Look forward to working together for further advancing mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[6/14/2024 2:12 AM, 5.7K followers, 5 likes]
Pleased to meet the Secretary General of #SAARC, Md. Golam Sarwar, during his introductory visit to Sri Lanka, this morning at @MFA_SriLanka . We discussed enhancing regional cooperation through SAARC for the benefit of the region and I assured GOSL’s support to the Association in reaching its goals @SaarcSec
Central Asia
Yerzhan Ashikbayev
@KZAmbUS
[6/13/2024 8:12 AM, 2.5K followers, 5 retweets, 31 likes]
We are delighted to welcome @AmbassadorTai on the first-ever visit by a U.S. Trade Representative to Kazakhstan &the region. The visit underscores a mutual commitment to deepening the trade&economic agenda bet’n Kazakhstan & US. We also look forward to exploring new opportunities within the TIFA.

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[6/13/2024 11:11 PM, 4.8K followers, 1 like]
Meeting of Minister with the Regional Director of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/15225/meeting-of-minister-with-the-regional-director-of-the-united-nations-office-for-disaster-risk-reduction

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[6/13/2024 11:11 PM, 4.8K followers, 1 like]
Meeting of Minister with the representative of the United Nations Convention to combat Desertification https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/15224/meeting-of-minister-with-the-representative-of-the-united-nations-convention-to-combat-desertification

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[6/13/2024 11:09 PM, 4.8K followers, 2 likes]
The Ambassador of Tajikistan to Pakistan handed over a copy his credentials https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/15218/the-ambassador-of-tajikistan-to-pakistan-handed-over-a-copy-his-credentials

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[6/14/2024 3:35 AM, 190.1K followers, 7 likes]
In a harmonious ceremony at the "#Kuksaroy" residence, President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev welcomed the President of 🇰🇷, @President_KR Accompanied by a military orchestra, the heads of state reviewed the honor guard and introduced their delegations, signifying a display of mutual respect and cooperation.

{End of Report}
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