SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS

epubdos : Afghanistan

Prepared for the U.S. Department of State

Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs

By TechMIS
www.TechMIS.com

Mobile User Copy

TO:	SCA & Staff
DATE:	Tuesday, March 12, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan

Unemployed Afghans Risk Death And Debt In Hunt For Gold (Agence France-Presse)

Agence France-Presse [3/12/2024 4:30 AM, Susannah Walden, 374K, Negative]
Tearing off a piece of mouldy flatbread, Homayon gulped tea in a brief reprieve from the din of the machines he and a dozen other men were using to dig for gold on a mountainside in northeastern Afghanistan.

The 30-year-old found little work as a mechanic in nearby Faizabad city, so he banded with other unemployed men to try their luck carving out a living in the rocky mountains that dominate Badakhshan province.

"Five, six of us were jobless, we came here to see if we can find anything," Homayon told AFP, as the handful of men finished their break and returned to work at the small-scale mine they had set up.

Their efforts digging four tunnels have borne little fruit, even as they pour money into fuel, tools and labour.

Other mines in the area had proved productive, Homayon said, so they kept digging -- the promise of a windfall outweighing the risks of debt.

The losses can be significant, warned fellow miner Qadir Khan.

"There are people who went into debt and were not able to find anything from these kinds of tunnels," he said.

"They lost two to three hundred thousand (Afghanis, or roughly $2,800-$4,200), and there was nothing to do but try to find different work, make money, and come back to pay their debts."

Despite being 74, Khan says he has no choice but to keep working, as he hunches over a pile of rocks to break them into smaller pieces.

The Afghan Taliban’s takeover of the country in 2021 may have seen an end to two decades of war with the United States and its allies, but, according to a World Bank report, half the population is still living in poverty.

Labourer Sharif, 60, said he used to keep livestock but has been mining for the last year. Two of his sons had left for Iran to find work.

"We are still farming, but it is not the way it used to be," he said, complaining of a lack of water -- another shortage drought-hit Afghanistan has faced in recent years.

The rocks Sharif helps mine are broken up and hoisted down the steep mountainside, then pulverised into a flour-like substance.

On the banks of the Kokcha River, which snakes between snow-capped peaks, men use makeshift buckets to scoop water over piles of the powder. It is then sifted as it runs down a sluice covered by material pulled from car interiors.

The proceeds of the first wash are used to fund the equipment and labour and to keep the mine going. The gains from the second and third washes are shared between those bankrolling the operation.

A young man stopped swirling water around a shallow dish to separate the powdery rock from gold, pulling from his pocket a bit of plastic wrapped around 4,000 Afghanis-worth of the precious metal.

As of late February, 4.5 grams (0.16 ounces) of the precious metal could be sold for 18,000 Afghanis (about $250), Homayon said.

Global gold prices hit an all-time high of $2,141.79 per ounce on March 5.

Even if the miners can collect significant amounts of gold, a fifth of proceeds will go to the Taliban authorities.

Delving deep into the Afghan mountains, the miners risk not just debt, but death as well.

Mine collapses are common in Afghanistan, which is rich with precious minerals like the lapis lazuli Badakhshan is famous for.

The miners on the Kokcha said they had lost friends recently, and local media reported earlier this month that a gold miner died when part of a mine collapsed in neighbouring Takhar province.

In 2019, at least 30 people were killed when a gold mine collapsed in Badakhshan.

Despite the risks, the men continue digging.

"So far we have not found much of anything," said Homayon. "But we have hope, we trust in God."

Congressional inaction will cost Afghan ally lives (The Hill – opinion)

The Hill [3/11/2024 6:00 PM, Kim Staffieri and Joseph M. Azam, 1592K, Neutral]
In August 2021, the world watched with dread as the Taliban swiftly regained control of Afghanistan while U.S. forces exited the country. In those early days, it became clear that an ominous fate awaited America’s most committed Afghan allies. Women and men who fought shoulder to shoulder alongside U.S. troops were left facing inevitable retribution from the Taliban. As the challenges of the U.S.-led operation to evacuate vulnerable Afghan allies became painfully clear, it also became obvious to many of us that some of the most at-risk Afghans were likely to be left behind.

In fact, despite the large number of Afghans evacuated during the U.S. withdrawal in August 2021, a report from the Association of Wartime Allies (AWA) in February 2022, showed that of the estimated 81,000 Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants in Afghanistan that had visa applications pending as of Aug. 15, 2021 — the day Kabul fell — some 78,000 were not evacuated in this effort. At least 96 percent of the SIV population remained in Afghanistan and in grave danger of reprisal by the Taliban.

The plight of these allies — many of whom were and remain eligible for SIVs — remains a deep concern of Americans who took their country’s promise to these Afghans as their own. In the years that have passed since the last American military plane took off from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), advocates for these courageous Afghans — including millions of American veterans — have dealt with a flood of desperate pleas for help from at-risk allies and an avalanche of inaction from the lawmakers whose job it is to ensure that America follows through on its promises.

All of this must change.

Congress created the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009 as a means of offering protection and a pathway to both lawful permanent residency and United States citizenship to all qualified Afghans employed by the U.S. government in their country through an SIV.

The Afghan SIV program represents a covenant that the U.S. made with its allies to bring them to safety for their faithful and valuable service to the U.S. government. Afghans who served in these roles put their lives and the lives of their families at risk and they did it because they believed in the mission and the word of the Americans fighting alongside them. While the mission may have ended, the obligation to keep our word endures. Following through on that promise of safety is not only the right thing to do but a national security imperative as America cannot afford to surrender its ability to be trusted by its allies.

As with most government programs, the Afghan SIV program is complicated and requires oversight and maintenance. Most acutely, the program does not have an unlimited number of visas available and relies on congressional reauthorization of visas to allow America to continue to bring those left behind in Afghanistan to the safer shores of the U.S. Based on the rate of issuance, there are likely less than 7,000 visas remaining available for Afghan allies, with some 140,000+ SIV applicants waiting to receive one. At the current pace, this supply of visas will be exhausted as early as mid-August of this year.

The consequences of not allocating additional visas to the program would be catastrophic and are entirely avoidable.President Biden requested 20,000 additional visas for this program in the FY2024 budget request, and the Senate passed an authorization of 20,000 visas through their Appropriations Committee. To date, the House of Representatives has not passed any legislation to authorize more visas.

This week, as House and Senate leaders negotiate the remaining Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations bills, Congress has the opportunity to heed the call for decency, integrity and accountability coming from veterans, Afghan-Americans, and across civil society by including the language from the Senate’s version of the State and Foreign Operations (SFOPS) Appropriations bill — specifically Section 7034(d)(9)) of the Senate’s SFOPS bill which authorizes these 20,000 lifesaving visas.

America’s Afghan allies are running out of time and Congress is running out of excuses.

Is the US giving up on Afghan allies? (Washington Examiner – opinion)

Washington Examiner [3/11/2024 1:25 PM, Beth Bailey, 554K, Neutral]
Without abrupt congressional intervention, Afghan allies who risked their lives to support U.S. personnel during nearly 20 years of operations in Afghanistan may soon lose access to the special immigrant visas they were promised.

A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that “approximately 8,000” SIVs remain as of Feb. 1. At the current rate of issuance, the spokesperson said that it will exhaust the remaining visas “by September 2024.” According to the most recent State Department quarterly SIV report, there are more than 147,000 SIV applicants at various stages of processing.

A diverse group of advocates, including Andrew Sullivan, the director of advocacy at No One Left Behind, and Shawn VanDiver, the president of the #AfghanEvac coalition, is raising alarm bells throughout Congress — with little success.

Sullivan told the Washington Examiner that in the nearly three years since the United States departed Afghanistan, Congress has only authorized 4,000 additional SIVs. Now Congress has failed to allocate the additional 20,000 SIVs that President Joe Biden requested in his budget for fiscal 2024. Sullivan said the Senate Appropriations Committee has passed a version of the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act that would allow for the additional SIVs. The House, however, “passed no piece of legislation that authorizes additional visas.”

The Washington Examiner received no response from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) about whether the House plans to include language in its own appropriations bill that would allow for additional SIVs.

If no new visas are granted, it would put a swift end to the aspirations of applicants such as Maissam Saee, who asked the Washington Examiner to identify him by name. Saee worked for two years as a translator for the Army Corps of Engineers on a contract with Global Technology. Saee achieved chief of mission approval, the first phase of the SIV process, in 2022. In August 2023, he learned that his COM approval had been revoked due to unspecified problems with his recommender.

After reapplying with a new recommendation letter, Saee’s application was denied for a “lack of qualifying employment.” Saee says all former employees of Global Technology faced similar denials. No longer able to appeal those denials, Saee and his colleagues must submit new applications with just six months of visas remaining.

Sullivan has been following Saee’s case. He told the Washington Examiner that Saee, “who has done all the right things, who has served the country, who put himself and his family at personal risk … is likely to be unable to get an SIV only because we’ve imposed this artificial cap.”

Sullivan fears that many of the thousands of SIV applicants in No One Left Behind’s network, hundreds of whom have COM approval, will not achieve their SIVs unless Congress acts quickly to create additional visas. He explained that Afghans are continuing to send new applications, which are “coming this late in the game because [applicants] have been in hiding from the Taliban.”

VanDiver has long called for calm among volunteers in the face of various evacuation-related emergencies. Now he wants all volunteers to speak out. Without new SIVs, “the U.S. government infrastructure we’ve been building for the past four years could come to a grinding halt,” he explained. “Members of Congress have been telling us that they stand with us. They’ve been telling us they want to help,” VanDiver said. But now, he says the “Republican Congress who has so much to say about the withdrawal is going to break the State Department’s ability to stand by [Afghans].”

Worse still is the situation for the remaining Afghan applicants hoping for relocation. “First they weren’t lucky enough to get to the airport” in Kabul, where the initial evacuation took place, VanDiver said. “Now they’re not lucky enough to be in a tranche of 8,000 visas that we have left.”

A veteran himself, VanDiver also worries about how changes will affect the volunteer and veteran communities. Having personally quit two jobs to continue leading the #AfghanEvac coalition, VanDiver knows firsthand how volunteers “have made [supporting Afghans] their entire identity.”

Kate Kovarovic is the former director of resilience programming for the #AfghanEvac coalition. During her time in the role, she oversaw 50 calls from American volunteers experiencing suicidal ideation because they were overwhelmed by the demands of supporting Afghan allies struggling with myriad post-withdrawal difficulties. Kovarovic attributes one volunteer’s suicide to the encompassing trauma of volunteer work. She told the Washington Examiner that the “willful conclusion of the SIV program would have catastrophic consequences for the volunteer community.”

Pakistan

Pakistan swears in newly elected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s 19-member Cabinet (AP)

AP [3/11/2024 2:44 PM, Staff, 761K, Neutral]
The 19-member Cabinet of Pakistan’s newly elected Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif was sworn into office on Monday and held its first meeting. The prime minister appointed several top government posts and promised to tackle the country’s unrelenting economic crisis.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari administered the oath of office to the ministers at the presidential office in the capital of Islamabad, with Sharif in attendance. Sharif was elected as prime minister by the parliament on Sunday, a month after parliamentary elections and after his Pakistan Muslim League-N party formed a coalition with several allies.

Sharif held the same position from April 2022 to August 2023, when he replaced archrival Imran Khan, a former cricket star turned Islamist politician who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly.

Sharif’s new government faces daunting challenges, including an unprecedented economic crisis, regular power cuts, near-daily militant attacks and a challenging relationship with neighboring Taliban-run Afghanistan.

In televised remarks, Sharif vowed to improve the country’s economy and contain rising inflation and halt price hikes during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. Ramadan for most Muslim countries started on Monday.

Sharif appointed lawmaker Ishaq Dar as foreign minister and re-appointed Khawaja Mohammad Asif as defense minister. Mohsin Naqvi, who served as caretaker chief minister in the eastern Punjab province, was appointed interior minister while Attaullah Tarar was named information minister.

The post of finance minister went to Muhammad Aurangzeb. The minister for climate change is yet to be selected from among the remaining ministers.

Zardari was appointed president on Saturday by the newly elected parliament. His office is mostly a ceremonial role and he is Sharif’s main ally. However, no one from his Pakistan People’s Party has been appointed to the Cabinet. Zardari’s son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, was foreign minister during Sharif’s previous stint as premier.

On Sunday, police detained dozens of Khan’s supporters while protesting alleged rigging in last month’s parliamentary elections, which the ousted politician’s party claimed was aimed at blocking it from getting a majority. Election officials have denied the charge.

Ex-JPMorgan Banker Becomes Pakistan’s New Finance Minister (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [3/11/2024 8:53 PM, Faseeh Mangi and Ismail Dilawar, 5543K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s newly elected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif picked a former banker from JPMorgan Chase & Co. as finance minister to help bolster the cash-strapped economy after a contentious election.

Muhammad Aurangzeb, 59, was appointed to the position, the Finance Ministry confirmed in a post on X. He earlier stepped down as chief executive officer of Pakistan’s biggest bank by deposits — Habib Bank Ltd.

The new finance minister’s most pressing challenge would be to secure at least $6 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund to tide over the economy, which has been battered by surging inflation and slowing growth. Shehbaz Sharif has said Pakistan needs to secure a new loan as a priority.

The nation also needs to unlock the final $1.1 billion tranche from an IMF program that ends next month. Some $1 billion of Pakistan’s dollar denominated bonds mature in April as well.

Aurangzeb was chosen over other possible candidates, including longtime Sharif ally Ishaq Dar and ex-central bank governor Shamshad Akhtar. His appointment suggests Sharif wants technocrats to help fix the country, which narrowly avoided a sovereign default last year.

“We have to carry out a surgical operation as antibiotics will not work at all,” Sharif said after the cabinet appointments. “There will be a deep surgery, so that the roots of this country can deepen. Whenever there is a will, there is a way and it is never too late.”

A former CEO with JP Morgan’s Global Corporate Bank in Singapore, Aurangzeb is a seasoned banker who has headed Habib Bank for the past six years. He said last year any new government will have to address structural benchmarks set by the IMF to move the economy to growth mode.

Still, Sharif has the experience of closing a deal with the multilateral lender as prime minister. He personally negotiated with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, sidelining the former finance minister Ishaq Dar who stalled on some reforms, according to a report from the United States Institute of Peace published after the elections.

Bloomberg Economics analyst Ankur Shukla said Sharif has the track record of carrying out reforms and his return as prime minister for a second term increases the chances of securing a new IMF package. His party’s election manifesto — which includes cutting the fiscal deficit and fixing the current account balance — are aligned with the IMF targets or, in some cases, even more ambitious, Shukla wrote in a report.

IMF aid will help in retaining support from creditor nations such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which poured billions of dollars in financing.

Pakistan has rewarded investors who still ploughed in funds. The nation’s dollar bonds handed them a gain of almost 25% this year, the biggest in Asia. The currency is up about 1%.

Despite the new appointment, some observers remain pessimistic.

“Even if you bring legendary people like Larry Summers or Rubin, they can’t do anything,” said Nadeem Ul Haque, a former economist with the IMF. “We have deep, deep problems in the economy and society that need to be fixed. Changing people or the IMF program is just window dressing.”

CEO of Pakistan’s largest bank picked to lead country out of economic crisis (Reuters)

Reuters [3/11/2024 2:15 PM, Ariba Shahid, 5239K, Neutral]
Muhammad Aurangzeb, picked by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to be Pakistan’s finance minister, is a vastly experienced private banker who is one of the most highly paid executives in the country, but has never held public office before.

The chief executive officer and president of Pakistan’s largest bank, HBL, Aurangzeb was picked over several veterans previously involved in handling the troubled $350 billion economy, including Ishaq Dar, who has been finance minister in four previous administrations.

HBL confirmed his resignation shortly afterwards he took the oath of office.

"Aurangzeb now embarks on a new chapter of service to the nation, underscoring a commitment to national responsibility," said HBL Chairman Sultan Ali Allana.

Aurangzeb will leave behind an annual salary of 352 million Pakistani rupees ($1.28 million), which made him one of the highest paid CEOs in the country, for a government position that pays roughly one-tenth the amount.

His first taste of public office comes at a time Pakistan urgently needs a fresh IMF agreement to shore up an economy suffering from high inflation, low reserves and high external financing needs.

Pakistan’s current $3 billion, nine-month IMF bailout programme expires next month, and it is crucial for the country’s economic team to negotiate a longer term programme immediately afterwards.

Aurangzeb does not currently have a seat in parliament, but has six months to become a legislator. All cabinet ministers have to be parliamentarians.

He led HBL to a record profit in 2023, at 113.6 billion Pakistani rupees ($407 million), a 47% jump from the previous year, as well as a turnaround in its international businesses, according to the bank’s financial statement.

The bank has a balance sheet of 5.5 trillion Pakistani rupees ($20 billion), and has grown its business in a country which has one of the smallest shares of population with bank accounts in the world.

The Switzerland-based Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) owns more than a 50% stake in HBL.

As CEO of HBL, Aurangzeb has worked closely with the government on various initiatives, including partnering to disburse 90 billion rupees to an estimated 7.5 million beneficiaries of state financial support during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Wharton MBA has also served as the CEO of JP Morgan’s Global Corporate Bank based in Asia, and has extensive experience working with global markets.

Aurangzeb has previously placed strong emphasis on using technology for growth, saying that his goal at HBL was to ensure that the bank would be known as a tech company with a banking license.

Steering Pakistan out of its latest economic crisis will, however, present a different challenge, as will bringing stability to a country plagued by crippling boom-bust cycles that has seen it enter more than 20 IMF programmes in the 76 years since it won independence.

Aside from negotiating a new IMF programme, the new finance tsar will have about three months to prepare a federal budget that will need to strike a difficult balance between tough reforms and rejuvenating a struggling economy.

Pakistan also needs to attract foreign investment to bring in funds to shore up its low reserves, which are critical to meeting a large external financing needs, as well as kick starting its flagging economy, which shrunk -0.2% last year.

He will also have to work with the powerful military, which has increased its role in recent years in the country’s financial decision-making and has a formal role in policy through a powerful economic body of which the army chief is a member.

Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), leading a minority government, will be relying on the support of different parties to pass critical legislation, with alliance partner Pakistan Peoples Party saying it would support the government on an issue-to-issue basis.

Efforts to assuage growing public anger at record inflation hovering around 30% will also be challenging with limited fiscal space.

Pakistan’s debt-to-GDP ratio is already above 70% and the IMF and credit ratings agencies estimate that the interest payments on its debt will soak up 50% to 60% of the government’s revenues this year. That is the worst ratio of any sizable economy in the world.

Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s former finance chief, takes up role as foreign minister (Reuters)

Reuters [3/11/2024 1:45 PM, Staff, 5239K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s former finance minister Ishaq Dar was named on Monday as the country’s foreign minister, at a time when growing economic and security challenges will dominate the nation’s foreign policy.

Dar, 73, a chartered accountant and a seasoned politician, comes from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, which is leading a minority government as part of a ruling coalition.

He is also a close relative of, and close aide to, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif.

The senator is also a previous four-time finance minister, suggesting a ramped up role for economics in the nation’s diplomacy as the country tries to secure another International Monetary Fund Deal and shore up external financing from foreign capitals.

“Economic diplomacy is the need of the hour for sure,” Dar told Reuters

However, even his political allies have criticised his handling of the economy in his tenure as finance minister in the last coalition set-up, which took over in April 2022 after the removal of former Prime Minister Imran Khan in a parliament vote of confidence.

Inflation spiked as high as 38% and interest rates to 22% during Dar’s 16-month stint, mostly due to the IMF’s policy requirements.

Dar has defended his actions, saying he had to take tough measures to avert a sovereign default by securing the IMF programme, which Khan had scuttled days before leaving his office, an accusation the former cricket-star denies.

However, under Dar, Pakistan struggled for seven months to unlock the remaining tranches of its last $6.5 billion bailout programme, and ultimately it took Shehbaz Sharif’s intervention to secure a new last-ditch deal.

During that time, Dar regularly criticised the IMF on public platforms in the middle of negotiations. He is best known for favouring market intervention to prop up the Pakistani rupee - something the IMF has warned against.

In his new job, Dar will have to handle delicate relationships, including with China and Gulf countries that are key sources of financing for cash-strapped Pakistan, as well as with Washington.

He also faces prickly neighbours, including arch-rival India, which will go to the polls this year, and Taliban-led Afghanistan, which Pakistan accuses of harbouring militants who are increasing attacks on Pakistani soil. The Taliban deny that claim.

Dar will have to navigate these challenges in a minority government that will rely on the support of different parties to pass critical legislation, with alliance partner Pakistan Peoples Party saying it would support the government on an issue-to-issue basis.

In the role, he will also likely have to consider the powerful military, which has maintained a huge influence on the country’s foreign policy, although it denies meddling in politics.

Pakistan police crack down on PTI protests over alleged rigging in election (Al Jazeera)

Al Jazeera [3/11/2024 8:56 AM, Abid Hussain, 2060K, Negative]
The police in Pakistan have been accused of launching a brutal attack on the supporters of the main opposition party and arresting more than 100 of its members during countrywide protests over alleged rigging in last month’s general election.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) had called for the protests on Sunday to demand the restoration of their “stolen mandate” in the February 8 election as well as the immediate release of its leaders, including party founder and former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Last month’s vote saw large-scale allegations of rigging which the PTI says was carried out by the authorities to stop it from coming to power.

Since Khan’s government was removed from power in 2022, PTI has seen an unprecedented crackdown. Khan himself has been in prison since August last year following his conviction in cases related to the leaking of state secrets, corruption and even “unlawful” wedding. He denies the charges, calling them politically motivated and intended to keep him out of active politics.

Meanwhile, the crackdown on his party saw the PTI losing its election symbol days ahead of the polls it was widely favoured to win. The action forced its candidates to contest the polls as independents.

The election day was marred by violence, followed by unusually delayed results, raising fears that the votes were manipulated by the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Yet, the PTI-backed candidates emerged as the largest political group in parliament, winning 93 seats. But its rivals – the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) with 75 seats and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) with 54 – entered into an alliance and formed the government earlier this month.

The PTI says it is opposed to the new government since the votes were rigged and has demanded action against election authorities and the interim government that oversaw the polls.

To push for its demands, the PTI called on its supporters across the country to hit the streets on Sunday.

As PTI members and supporters rallied, raising slogans against the government and calling for its dismissal, the demonstration in the eastern city of Lahore turned violent.

Multiple videos on social media showed police officers attacking the protesters with sticks and shoving people inside police vehicles.

One video showed a bearded man holding a PTI flag being dragged out of his car. A large crowd gathered around his vehicle forcing the police to let the man go. Another video showed a PTI leader being pulled inside a police vehicle as he continued to raise slogans.

In a statement, the PTI said all its arrested leaders should be immediately released and “the shameful series of state repression, brutality and fascism should be abandoned”. The party said it will hold weekly protests until its demands are met.

“A majority of those arrested [on Sunday] have now been released, but the point is the police cannot arrest people carrying out peaceful protests,” PTI leader Shayan Bashir told Al Jazeera.

Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law Targets Youth on Social Media (Human Rights Watch)

Human Rights Watch [3/11/2024 9:00 PM, Patricia Gossman, 190K, Neutral]
In Pakistan, a WhatsApp message – even an alleged one – can have deadly consequences. Last week, a court in Gujrat district, Punjab, sentenced a 22-year-old student to death on charges of sharing blasphemous pictures and videos. A 17-year-old student was sentenced to life imprisonment in the same case because Pakistani law prohibits the death sentence for child offenders.

Blasphemy is an offense punishable by death in Pakistan. And although Pakistan’s blasphemy law has long been used abusively to carry out personal vendettas or prosecute members of minority religious communities, the increasing use of blasphemy provisions to jail and prosecute people for comments made on social media is a dangerous escalation.

However, the Punjab case is not first time that someone has been condemned to death over a social media post.

Aneeqa Atiq, 26, remains on death row after a court in Rawalpindi district sentenced her to death in January 2022, for allegedly sharing blasphemous material via WhatsApp. Junaid Hafeez, a university professor, has been imprisoned for more than 10 years and is facing a possible death sentence for accusations of sharing blasphemous material on Facebook. His lawyer, Rashid Rehman, was murdered in May 2014, an apparent reprisal for his willingness to defend people charged under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

In Pakistan, the mere accusation of blasphemy can put you at risk of physical harm. Since 1990, at least 65 people have reportedly been killed in Pakistan over claims of blasphemy. And on August 16, 2023, several hundred people attacked a Christian settlement in Faisalabad district, Punjab province, after two members of the community were accused of committing blasphemy.

Expanding the use of blasphemy cases against people for what they say or share on social media is an invitation for witch hunts.

The Pakistani government should amend and ultimately repeal its blasphemy laws, not further extend their scope online.

India

India’s Controversial Citizenship Law Slammed by Opposition (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [3/12/2024 12:45 AM, Swati Gupta, 5543K, Neutral]
India implemented a religion-based law that’s seen as discriminatory toward Muslims, sparking a backlash from opposition parties, who accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of polarizing voters weeks before elections.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act — which fast-tracks citizenship rights for immigrants from neighboring nations except for those who identify as Muslim — was enacted through a notification in the Gazette of India on Monday. Although the law was passed more than four years ago, it takes effect just days before India is expected to announce its election dates.

Questioning the timing of the notification of the rules just before the elections, Jairam Ramesh, the spokesperson for the Indian National Congress said it’s “evident that it is being done to polarize the elections.” Leaders in opposition-controlled states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu also slammed the move as divisive, vowing to oppose it.

The CAA prioritizes citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and people of several other faiths from three neighboring Muslim-majority countries — Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan — who entered India before 2015. The Ministry of Home Affairs said Monday applicants can apply for citizenship through a web portal.

When the law was passed in 2019, it triggered violent protests and panic among many Indians who risked becoming stateless without proper documentation. The law is seen as a precursor to a proposed population register, which will require Indians to prove their citizenship.

If that happens, critics fear that Muslims who immigrated from the three neighboring countries and who have lived in India for decades without official papers may be deported or placed in detention camps. In Assam, which borders Bangladesh and is the only state that’s implemented a population register, 1.9 million people were rendered stateless by the process.

Modi has previously denied that the CAA law discriminates against Muslims. His ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is widely expected to return to power, buoyed by strong support from its majority Hindu base.

Opposition parties and state chief ministers issued statements Monday criticizing the timing and the motivation behind the government’s move.

“This is to divide the people, incite communal sentiments and undermine the fundamental principles of the Constitution,” Pinarayi Vijayan, Kerala’s chief minister, said in a post on social media platform X. “This move to stratify Indian citizens who have equal rights, must be opposed unitedly.” He added that the CAA won’t be implemented in his state.

Amit Shah, India’s home minister who has been a fierce advocate of the CAA, posted on X that the enactment of the law fulfills one of Modi’s promises, and would allow persecuted minorities in neighboring countries to acquire citizenship in India.

Opposition groups and activists fear the BJP will expand the population register in Assam to other states, as it’s promised. That would strip rights from tens of millions of Indians until they gain residency again through the CAA, although that path wouldn’t apply to Muslims.

According to the most recent census, Hindus account for 80% of India’s population of 1.4 billion, while Muslims make up about 14%.

India announces steps to implement a citizenship law that excludes Muslims (AP)

AP [3/11/2024 11:22 AM, Sheikh Saaliq, 22K, Negative]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on Monday announced rules to implement a 2019 citizenship law that excludes Muslims, weeks before the Hindu nationalist leader seeks a third term in office.

The Citizenship Amendment Act provides a fast track to naturalization for Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before Dec. 31, 2014. The law excludes Muslims, who are a majority in all three nations.

The law was approved by Indian Parliament in 2019, but Modi’s government had held off with its implementation after deadly protests broke out in capital New Delhi and elsewhere. Scores were killed during days of clashes.

The nationwide protests in 2019 drew people of all faiths who said the law undermines India’s foundation as a secular nation. Muslims were particularly worried that the government could use the law, combined with a proposed national register of citizens, to marginalize them.

The National Register of Citizens is part of Modi government’s effort to identify and weed out people it claims came to India illegally. The register has only been implemented in the northeastern state of Assam, and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has promised to roll out a similar citizenship verification program nationwide.

Modi’s government has defended the 2019 citizenship law as a humanitarian gesture. It argues that the law is meant only to extend citizenship to religious minorities fleeing persecution and would not be used against Indian citizens.

“These rules will now enable minorities persecuted on religious grounds in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to acquire citizenship in our nation,” Home Minister Amit Shah wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

India’s main opposition Congress party questioned the announcement, saying “the timing right before the elections is evidently designed to polarise the elections.”

Human rights watchdog Amnesty India in a statement called the law “discriminatory” and said it “goes against the constitutional values of equality and international human rights law.” It said the law “legitimises discrimination based on religion” and is “exclusionary in its structure and intent.”

India is home to 200 million Muslims who make up a large minority group in the country of more than 1.4 billion people. They are scattered across almost every part of India and have been targeted in a series of attacks that have taken place Modi first assumed power in 2014.

Critics say Modi’s conspicuous silence over anti-Muslim violence has emboldened some of his most extreme supporters and enabled more hate speech against Muslims.

Modi has increasingly mixed religion with politics in a formula that has resonated deeply with India’s majority Hindu population. In January, he opened a Hindu temple at the site of a demolished mosque in northern Ayodhya city, fulfilling his party’s long-held Hindu nationalist pledge.

Most poll surveys suggest Modi will win a majority in a general election that is scheduled to be held by May.

India implements citizenship law opposed by Muslims before election (Reuters)

Reuters [3/11/2024 8:14 PM, YP Rajesh, 5239K, Negative]
India moved on Monday to implement a 2019 citizenship law that has been criticised as discriminating against Muslims, weeks before Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a rare third term for his Hindu nationalist government.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) grants Indian nationality to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India due to religious persecution from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before Dec. 31, 2014.

Modi’s government did not implement the law following its December 2019 enactment as protests and sectarian violence broke out in New Delhi and elsewhere. Scores were killed and hundreds injured during days of clashes.

Rights groups and Muslim groups say the law, combined with a proposed national register of citizens, could discriminate against India’s 200 million Muslims - the world’s third-largest Muslim population. Some fear the government might remove the citizenship of Muslims without documents in some border states.

"The Modi government announces implementation of Citizenship Amendment Act," a spokesperson for the prime minister’s office said in a text message.

"It was an integral part of BJP’s 2019 manifesto. This will pave (the) way for the persecuted to find citizenship in India," he said, referring to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 2019 election manifesto.

A Home (interior) Ministry statement said the law would remove legal barriers to citizenship for refugees, giving a "dignified life" to those who have suffered for decades.

"Many misconceptions have been spread" about the law and its implementation was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the statement said.

"This act is only for those who have suffered persecution for years and have no other shelter in the world except India," it said.

PROTEST CALLED

The government denies it is anti-Muslim and says the law is needed to help minorities facing persecution in Muslim-majority nations.

It says the law is meant to grant citizenship, not take it away from anyone, and has called the earlier protests politically motivated.

Modi swept to power in 2014 and has consolidated his hold since with a focus on growth, welfare economics, boosting infrastructure and aggressive Hindu nationalism.

Opinion polls suggest he will comfortably win a majority in a general election that must be held by May.

The main opposition Congress party said Monday’s announcement was motivated by the approaching election.

"After seeking nine extensions for the notification of the rules, the timing right before the elections is evidently designed to polarise the elections, especially in West Bengal and Assam," Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said on X.

The eastern states of West Bengal and Assam are home to large Muslim populations and witnessed protests against CAA as some Muslims feared the law could be used to declare them illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh and take away their Indian citizenship.

The opposition Communist Party of India, which rules the southern state of Kerala, called for state-wide protests on Tuesday.

"This is to divide the people, incite communal sentiments and undermine the fundamental principles of the Constitution," Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said in a statement. "This move to stratify Indian citizens who have equal rights, must be opposed unitedly."

India Adds Firepower to a Missile Program Focused on China (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal [3/11/2024 1:49 PM, Rajesh Roy, 810K, Neutral]
India has successfully conducted the maiden flight test of an indigenously developed ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple warheads, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Monday, a development that enhances the country’s nuclear deterrence against rivals China and Pakistan.

The intercontinental ballistic missile called Agni-5, which in Sanskrit means “fire,” is equipped with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles, or MIRV technology, that allows it to launch multiple attacks in one go across different locations, according to two senior serving government officials.

The missile technology has been under development for the past several years by state-run Defense Research and Development Organization, or DRDO. With the flight test, India has joined the league of a few elite nations such as the U.S., China, Russia and France that have this technology.

The flight test was conducted from an island in eastern India’s Odisha state, according to a statement from India’s Defense Ministry.

India has been developing and testing its Agni series of missiles for more than a decade as it looks to catch up with China’s military strength. It first tested the Agni-5 series in 2012, and since then has been adding technological advancements to it and retesting. The country has said its Agni-5 program is in line with India’s stated policy to have a credible minimum deterrence and its commitment to no first-use of nuclear weapons.

In 2019, India successfully tested a missile capable of destroying a satellite in space, technology also held by only a few powers.

The surface-to-surface Agni missile is capable of striking targets of more than 5,000 kilometers, or 3,100 miles, with a high degree of accuracy. That trails the capabilities of China’s longest-range missiles.

Still, this puts Beijing and its neighborhood within the direct target range of India’s Strategic Forces Command, the dedicated tri-services nuclear force under the direct control of the prime minister, said New Delhi-based defense analyst N.C. Bipindra.

The MIRV-capable ballistic missile can target multiple strategic sites about 1,500 kilometers, or 930 miles apart, and “that is a significant nuclear strike capability for any nation to have,” he said. He added that Agni-5 development was largely focused on China, which New Delhi now views as the most serious military threat to India.

Relations between India and China have been fraught since they fought a war in 1962 over the delineation of their borders. China dominated the short but intense war, which was focused on the eastern stretch of boundary between the two countries. The war didn’t settle the matter, and much of the 2,000-mile de facto border remains in dispute.

Tensions flared up again in June 2020 following a deadly clash between Indian and Chinese security forces in the disputed Himalayan region that led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese. Since then, the two countries have deployed tens of thousands of troops, as well as artillery and howitzers along their disputed border.

India conducts first flight test of homegrown missile, PM Modi says (Reuters)

Reuters [3/11/2024 8:02 AM, Krishn Kaushik and Sakshi Dayal, 5239K, Positive]
India successfully conducted the first flight test of a domestically developed missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on messaging platform X on Monday.

Indian scientists have integrated the technology - which delivers multiple warheads to different targets fired from the same missile on the Agni-V platform - and is the latest in India’s nuclear-capable Agni missile series.

Agni-V has a range of 5000 km (3100 miles), making it India’s sole contender for Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) long range category.

America, Britain, France, China and Russia are among the countries that already use MIRV missiles, while Pakistan tested it in 2017, according to Washington-based non-profit advocacy group, the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

The Indian MIRV missile was developed by the country’s military research arm, the Defence Research and Development Organisation.

China Opposes Modi’s Border Move to Allow Faster Troop Access (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [3/11/2024 7:21 AM, Staff, 5543K, Negative]
China criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inauguration of a tunnel that will give Indian troops easy access to areas close to the disputed border between the two countries.

Beijing lodged a diplomatic protest with New Delhi over the development in India’s northeastern Arunachal Pradesh region, an area China calls Zangnan and claims as its own.

“The Chinese government has never recognized the so-called Arunchal Pradesh locally set up by India, and we firmly oppose this,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters Monday in a regular briefing.

Modi was in the region’s capital Itanagar on Saturday, where he unveiled the Sela tunnel during a video ceremony, dedicating it to the development of India’s northeastern states. The tunnel, built under the Sela pass at about 13,700 feet, is expected to aid movement of troops to locations along the Line of Actual Control, an area that is disputed between the two nations.

“The China-India boundary question has yet to be solved. India has no right to arbitrarily develop the area of Zangnan in China,” Wang said.

China has consistently opposed India’s development projects and visits by Indian leaders in the region. “India’s relevant moves will only complicate the boundary question. China is strongly dissatisfied with this and firmly opposed to the leader’s visit to the eastern section of the China-India boundary,” the ministry’s spokesman added.

Modi said on the weekend that the tunnel “provides all-weather connectivity to our people in Tawang, making transportation easier for the locals and boosting tourism in Arunachal.” Addressing a gathering in Itanagar, Modi said “several such tunnel projects are rapidly progressing in this region.”

India rejects China’s objections to Modi’s visit to Himalayan border state (Reuters)

Reuters [3/12/2024 2:52 AM, Sudipto Ganguly, 5.2M, Neutral]
India on Tuesday rejected Chinese objections to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s weekend visit to Arunachal Pradesh, saying the northeastern border state has always been "an integral and inalienable part of India".

The Indian foreign ministry’s comments came a day after Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Beijing was firmly opposed to Modi’s activities in the region and has lodged a diplomatic protest with India.

Modi visited Arunachal Pradesh on Saturday to inaugurate infrastructure projects, including a tunnel that will provide all-weather connectivity to the strategically located border area of Tawang.

The tunnel is expected to ensure faster and smoother movement of troops in the frontier region.

China claims Arunachal Pradesh to be a part of southern Tibet. New Delhi rejects the claim, saying Arunachal Pradesh has always been a part of India.

"Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other states of India. Objecting to such visits or India’s developmental projects does not stand to reason," said Randhir Jaiswal, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson.

"Further, it will not change the reality that the state of Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India."

The nuclear-armed neighbours share a 3,000-km (1,860 mile) frontier, much of it poorly demarcated. At least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese troops were killed in 2020 in clashes elsewhere along their border in the western Himalayas.

Both militaries have fortified positions and deployed extra troops and equipment along the border since, having been uneasy neighbours for decades after a bloody border war in 1962.

Last year, China ratcheted up tensions with India by giving Chinese names to 11 locations in Arunachal Pradesh.

Another Chinese research vessel spotted off India, fueling unease (Reuters)

Reuters [3/11/2024 6:33 AM, Krishn Kaushik, 11975K, Neutral]
A second Chinese research vessel in two months has been spotted near India’s coast, adding to New Delhi’s anxiety over possible military intelligence-gathering in its backyard.

The two Asian superpowers have uneasy ties, with a military standoff on their Himalayan border since mid-2020 and a war fought between them in 1962.

The Xiang Yang Hong 01 was seen off India’s eastern coast over the weekend, according to an Indian security official, a geo-intelligence researcher and ship tracking information.

It follows a similar ship’s docking at a Maldivian port last month. Both are owned by units of China’s natural resources ministry.

Beijing says the vessels carry out ocean-bed surveys for peaceful scientific reasons only and dismisses any concerns as ungrounded fear-mongering. But Indian officials worry the vessels could also gather information that may be of use to China’s military, including for submarine deployments.

Damien Symon, a researcher with The Intel Lab, a global network of geospatial intelligence experts, said via X on Sunday evening that the latest Chinese boat had entered the Bay Of Bengal region.

A senior Indian official, speaking anonymously, said the Chinese ship was operating southeast of the Indian coastal city of Vizag and was under "active surveillance".

The Indian navy and Chinese defence ministry did not respond to requests seeking comments.

Sri Lanka last year imposed a moratorium on foreign research ships, after which the Maldives allowed them. The Maldives has pivoted ties towards China and away from India of late.

In January a U.S. think tank had voiced concerns similar to India’s, saying that detailed knowledge of ocean depths, currents and temperature was vital to the growing submarine operations of China’s navy.

India Finally Embraces Trade Deals as Companies Look Past China (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [3/11/2024 7:30 PM, Shruti Srivastava, 5543K, Positive]
Gautam Nair is preparing to ramp up production at his clothing factory in Gurugram, betting on a surge of orders from brands like Marks & Spencer and Next as India pursues more free trade pacts with the rest of the world.

Within three years, he expects Matrix Clothing Pvt Ltd.’s exports to the European Union and the UK to more than double from current levels. “The industry is very excited,” Nair, who co-founded the company, said by phone.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is taking advantage of India’s growing appeal as the world’s fastest-growing major economy and an alternative to China for global supply chains to clinch a number of free trade pacts. India expects its deals with countries from the UK to Australia will help boost its manufacturing and soak up the tens of millions of young people entering the workforce in the years ahead.

The latest, and among the most ambitious, was a trade and investment pact signed with four European countries, including Switzerland and Norway, on March 10. It signaled India’s readiness to take on commitments in areas such as labor, environment and sustainability and gender — topics it had shied away from in the past. It was also the first time India secured an investment commitment — of $100 billion over 15 years — in such a deal.

India has now signed four FTAs in quick succession since 2021 after a gap of about nine years where no agreements were inked. The latest pact with the European bloc of countries, known as the European Free Trade Association, or EFTA, was hailed by Modi and comes just weeks before elections in which he’s seeking to extend his decade in power.

Negotiations with the UK and Australia are likely to culminate after the Indian elections in April-May, while talks with Oman have already concluded and an agreement may be signed as soon as this month, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the negotiations are private.

The hope is that such deals will give a level playing field to India’s textiles sector, which comprise more than 14% of the nation’s annual exports, employs over 45 million people directly, and contributes over 4% to gross domestic product. Marine goods, auto and machine parts, chemicals, leather and footwear and gems and jewelery products are also poised to benefit.

In a departure from its protectionist past, India is embracing trade deals in a bid to cash in on shifting global trade alliances. Companies from Apple Inc. to Samsung Electronics Co. have boosted manufacturing in India, taking advantage of production incentives offered by Modi’s government.

“This is India’s big historic moment, probably its biggest opportunity on the world stage since India gained its statehood in 1947,” said Alex Capri, a lecturer at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

To seize that opportunity, the South Asian nation must plug infrastructure gaps and improve the ease of doing business by cutting down on over regulation, taxation and red tape. “Delhi is pulling out all the stops. They know they must fix this,” Capri said.

By integrating into global value chains, India can create 80 million jobs by 2030, according to a government report.

Geopolitically, New Delhi has been forging deeper ties with Group of Seven nations. Now, it’s aiming to align economically as well in order to compete with countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh that are also positioning themselves as alternative manufacturing destinations to China.

The services sector, which makes up more than half of the nation’s GDP, is also expected to get a fillip. The trade deals will help India secure easier access for professionals in sectors including IT, health and accounting.

For counterparts, India and its market of 1.4 billion people holds massive appeal. On the sidelines of the 13th World Trade Organization ministerial conference last month, EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis noted the “willingness to move forward when we know that traditionally India has been a relatively closed market.”

Tim Ayres, Australia’s assistant trade minister, said early results from the interim trade deal showed strong outcomes for businesses and noted the two nations are working toward phase two.

Yet for all that enthusiasm, roadblocks remain. India and the UK still haven’t resolved differences on issues including investment protection, social security agreements and market access for British apples and cheese.

Non-Tariff Barriers

At home, there’s pockets of resistance too. For instance, the confederation of Indian alcoholic beverage companies has expressed concern over opening up the market without getting reciprocal treatment.

Vinod Giri, director general of the association, said while most of the focus of trade talks has been duty concessions, non-tariff barriers such as maturity requirements for whiskey in the UK and Europe have made Indian beverages uncompetitive.

Giri said the UK law requires whiskey be matured for a minimum of three years, whereas in warm climates like India’s, whiskey matures 3-5 times faster than in the colder climates of the UK and EU.

“Most of our whiskey is unable to hit those markets due to these barriers and we want them removed,” Giri said, adding that the longer maturation condition pushes up production costs by as much as 35%. “As long as FTAs are fair and equitable, we have no problem.”

And many are still finding it difficult to do business in India. While there’s a rise in the number of corporates mentioning India or Indian investment on earnings calls, that doesn’t always translate into commitments, said Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Singapore-based Hinrich Foundation.

“In many cases, the obstacles to investment or development on the ground in India remain significant,” she said. “These gaps are creating problems for businesses, which means that the positive story around Indian prospects might not be delivered.”

India’s government is aware of the challenge. It’s helping states simplify rules, decriminalizing minor offenses and repealing redundant laws. The government has also come out with a single window system to speed up the process of getting approvals and clearances needed by investors while cutting compliance burdens.

For Matrix’s Nair, he’s also tempering his optimism. Companies are wary, “because we have been waiting for a long time for the deals to happen,” he said.

NSB

Indian Troops Begin Maldives Pullout After Quit Order (Agence France-Presse)

Agence France-Presse [3/12/2024 12:44 AM, Staff, 374K, Neutral]
India has begun withdrawing military personnel operating surveillance aircraft in the Maldives after the new pro-China president ordered them to leave, local media reported Tuesday.

The Mihaaru newspaper reported that 25 Indian troops deployed in the southernmost atoll of Addu had left the archipelago ahead of March 10, the official start of the withdrawal agreed by both sides.

President Mohamed Muizzu came to power in September on a pledge to kick out Indian security personnel deployed in the Maldives to patrol its vast maritime border.

Following talks with New Delhi, the two sides had agreed to complete a withdrawal of 89 Indian troops and their support staff from the nation of 1,192 tiny coral islands by May 10.

Mihaaru said the three Indian aircraft -- two helicopters and one fixed-wing plane -- will be operated by Indian civilian staff, who have already arrived.

There was no official confirmation from either the Maldivian or Indian authorities, but Mihaaru said the Maldivian National Defence Force confirmed the Indian withdrawal had begun.

Last week, the Maldives signed a "military assistance" deal with China as the Indians prepared to leave.

The Maldivian defence ministry said the deal was to foster "stronger bilateral ties" and that China would train its staff under the pact.

"We support the Maldives in safeguarding its territorial sovereignty," China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.

"We also support the Maldives in developing friendly exchanges and cooperation with all parties on the basis of its independence and autonomy."

India is suspicious of China’s growing presence in the Indian Ocean and its influence in the Maldives as well as in neighbouring Sri Lanka.

The archipelago, better known for its white sand beaches and where tourism accounts for nearly a third of the economy, is also strategically placed halfway along key east-west international shipping routes.

Relations between Male and New Delhi have chilled since Muizzu won elections in September.

New Delhi considers the Indian Ocean archipelago to be within its sphere of influence, but the Maldives has shifted into the orbit of China -- its largest external creditor.

Muizzu, who visited Beijing in January where he signed a raft of infrastructure, energy, marine and agricultural deals, has previously denied seeking to redraw the regional balance by bringing in Chinese forces to replace Indian troops.

India last month said it was bolstering its naval forces on its "strategically important" Lakshadweep islands, about 130 kilometres (80 miles) north of the Maldives.

The Indian naval unit based on the island of Minicoy will boost "operational surveillance" of the area, the navy said.

Protests drove Nepal’s king off the throne 16 years ago. Now, protests are trying to bring him back (AP)

AP [3/12/2024 12:04 AM, Binaj Gurubacharya, 456K, Neutral]
Sixteen years ago, mass protests in Nepal forced then-King Gyanendra Shah to give up the throne and clear the way for a republic. Now, a new wave of protest is trying to bring him back.

The capital of the Himalayan country is again teeming with demonstrators, this time demanding that Shah be reinstated as king and Hinduism brought back as a state religion. Royalist groups accuse the country’s major political parties of corruption and failed governance and say people are frustrated with politicians.

“Come back king, save the country. Long live our beloved king. We want a monarchy,” the crowd chanted at a rally last month in Kathmandu.

Growing frustration with the present system has led to calls for radical change. Pro-monarchy rallies have been growing larger, and an increasing number of homes and businesses are displaying portraits of the ex-king and his ancestors.

Gyanendra was a constitutional head of state without executive or political powers until 2005, when he seized absolute power. He disbanded the government and parliament, jailed politicians and journalists and cut off communications, declaring a state of emergency and using the army to rule the country.

Protests that drew hundreds of thousands of people forced him to give up power to the parliament in 2006, and two years later parliament voted to abolish the monarchy and Gyanendra left the Royal Palace to live the life of a commoner.

But many Nepalis have grown frustrated with the republic, saying it has failed to bring about political stability and blaming it for a struggling economy and widespread corruption. Nepal has had 13 governments since the monarchy was abolished in 2008.

Many Nepalis believe elected politicians are more interested in power and patronage than addressing their problems, said Dhruba Hari Adhikary, an independent analyst based in Kathmandu. “That’s why some people started to think that, well, it was far better under the monarchy,” he said.

In November, tens of thousands rallied in support of the king in Kathmandu, where riot police officers used batons and tear gas to halt them from marching to the center of the capital.

Kings were long considered reincarnations of the god Vishnu in the majority-Hindu nation.

“The king is the umbrella that is really needed to block and protect (the country) from all the pressure and influence that is being put on Nepal by countries like India, China or America,” said Rudra Raj Pandey, who was among the protesters at last month’s rally.

“Our country will retain its values and identity only if it is turned back to a monarchy and the king is reinstated to the throne,” he said.

But the movement is too small to prevail any time soon, Adhikary said.

With polls and surveys rarely conducted in Nepal, it’s not clear how many people support the monarchy. Gyanendra was an unpopular king, but the monarchy remained broadly popular before he seized absolute power.

The country’s major political parties have rejected the possibility of the king returning to power.

“Nepal is a republic and the monarchy will never be reinstated,” said Narayan Prakash Saud of Nepali Congress, which led the revolt against the kind in 2006 and is currently the largest party in parliament. “The only way it would be possible would be through changing the constitution, but there is no possibility of that happening at all.”

The most powerful group supporting restoration of the monarchy is the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, or national democratic party, which was founded in the 1990s by allies of the monarchy. It has 14 seats in parliament — around 5% — but wields outsize influence as a representative of the protest movement.

Party leaders met with the prime minister in February and presented their demands.

“I think it is very possible and the environment throughout the country has never been so congenial for this agenda,” said Rabindra Mishra, deputy chairman of the party.

“If we can’t restore the institution of the monarchy in this country, there is no future for the youth in this country and the existence of this country itself could be at risk,” he said.

Gyanendra himself hasn’t commented on the movement. He has stayed out of open involvement in politics since his abdication, and only rarely makes public appearances.

Other groups supporting the king have sprung up.

“We need a monarchy. Without a king, we have no identity as Nepalese and all of us might as well just declare ourselves as refugees,” said Pasupathi Khadga, who leads a youth organization that supports the reinstatement of the monarchy.

Nepal’s monarchy did not allow political parties to form until 1990, when a pro-democracy movement brought in elections and reduced the monarchy to a ceremonial role. Gyanendra became king after his elder brother, then-King Birendra, and his family were killed in a massacre at the royal palace in 2001.

Central Asia

First Cargo Containers Delivered From China Via Kazakhstan Reach Azerbaijan (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [3/11/2024 1:17 PM, Staff, 223K, Positive]
The leaders of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan on March 11 greeted the first containers delivered from China to Azerbaijan’s eastern Abseron district via a new train route crossing the vast territory of Kazakhstan.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his Kazakh counterpart, Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, monitored the arrival of the containers via a video-link in Baku.

The 61 containers filled with goods covered the 7,000-kilometer trek from China’s Xi’an Province in 11 days. After leaving Xi’an by train, the containers arrived at a terminal on the Kazakh shore of the Caspian Sea, from where they were loaded onto a vessel that crossed the land-locked body of water to Azerbaijan.

The containers were then taken by rail to Abseron. Authorities expect that 10 such container trains will reach Azerbaijan from China via Kazakhstan each month.

Toqaev arrived in Baku on March 11 for a two-day official visit that includes participation in the first session of the Azerbaijani-Kazakh interstate council.

Aliyev and Toqaev signed several bilateral documents, including a memorandum on supporting small and medium-sized businesses in the two countries, an agreement on cooperation between Azerbaijan’s investment holding and Kazakhstan’s state wealth fund, and other documents.

Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company, SOCAR, and Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy giant, KazMunaiGas, signed an agreement on increasing volumes of Kazakh oil transported to Western markets via Azerbaijan.

Kazakhtan oil output is expected to pick up in the coming years amid expansion at the giant Tengiz oil field.

The two former Soviet republics are members of the Organization of Turkic States, of which Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan are also members, while Hungary, Turkmenistan, and Northern Cyprus have observer status in the grouping.

Nazarbaev Paid $5 Million For Controversial Oliver Stone Miniseries To Whitewash Image, Investigation Finds (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [3/11/2024 4:59 PM, Staff, 223K, Neutral]
A foundation controlled by former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev paid at least $5 million for a 2021 documentary that sought to whitewash the authoritarian leader’s image, an independent investigation has revealed.

Qazaq: History Of The Golden Man, a documentary produced by pro-Kremlin U.S. filmmaker Igor Lopatonok, centers around a lengthy interview with the long-serving Nazarbaev done by famous yet controversial U.S. film director Oliver Stone, who also made documentaries about Russian President Vladimir Putin, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

Nazarbaev, who ruled Kazakhstan with an iron fist for 30 years, speaks about his childhood, political career, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Kazakhstan’s formation as an independent state.

The documentary was criticized by many film experts and dubbed by one a "hagiographic ode" that became part of Nazarbaev’s "ongoing cult of personality."

The documentary was released in 2021 both as an eight-part miniseries and feature film. It had been in the works since late 2019 -- after Nazarbaev had stepped down from the presidency, though he continued to enjoy enormous political clout in Kazakhstan.

According to an investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a global network of investigative journalists, and the Kazakh-based media site Vlast.kz that was released on March 5 (From Nazarbaev To Lukashenka: Hollywood In The Service Of Dictators), Nazarbaev was personally involved in the making of the film.

"Nazarbaev would constantly edit the film, trying to improve [the depiction of] his image," a member of the film crew told OCCRP.

Nazarbaev was reportedly satisfied with the final cut of the film, the investigators said.

The Nazarbaev Fund -- a charity foundation established when Nazarbaev was in power in 2010 and chaired by daughter Darigha Nazarbaeva -- paid at least $5 million to Lopatonok and Stone, according to the investigation.

Lopatonok and Stone had previously denied any Kazakh government involvement in the project.

Neither Nazarbaev nor his daughter responded to the investigators’ request for comment.

Lopatonok agreed to speak to OCCRP and Vlast, but he became increasingly angry during the video interview last month when quizzed by the journalists about the financing of his films. "We’re going after you, personally. We know you. We’re going after your sources," Lopatonok threatened them. "We’re going to destroy you, your credibility."

In 2021, Lopatonok refused to respond to an RFE/RL correspondent’s question about the financing of the Nazarbaev documentary, saying he would have no comment because RFE/RL was a "foreign agent."

Russia’s so-called "foreign agents" law is used to label and punish government critics who receive money from abroad.

The Kazakh ‘Template’

The documentary about Nazarbaev was shown on Kazakh state television just once, in December 2021.

The next month, the oil-rich Central Asian country saw bloody nationwide unrest, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets to protest former President Nazarbaev and what they saw as his legacy of social injustice, economic inequality, corruption, and a cult of personality.

Authorities say at least 238 people were killed when those demonstrations turned violent, with most of the protesters killed by state security services. The people’s economic grievances were a key factor behind the protests, which started with a peaceful protest about a fuel price hike.

But many Kazakhs believe that a power struggle between the inner circles of Nazarbaev and his handpicked successor, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, played a major role in stirring up the violence.

Following the protests, Toqaev’s government sidelined Nazarbaev, his family, and his cronies from politics and business. Several of Nazarbaev’s relatives and allies are now in prison.

Lopatonok and his team have since pitched similar films to other authoritarian leaders, including Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev and Belarus’s Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the investigation revealed.

"The Kazakh film may have given Lopatonok a template for how to approach other dictators: They or people close to them would provide the funding, and he’d deliver a hagiography with high production value and a star interviewer [Stone] to boot," the journalists wrote.

The documents obtained by the investigators show that among the topics proposed for Stone’s interview was Azerbaijan’s "success" under the "dynastic rule" of the Aliyev family.

Aliyev, who came to power in 2003 by taking over the presidency from his late father, has been widely criticized for clamping down on his opponents, severely restricting civil liberties, and exploiting political power to enrich his own family. His wife serves as vice president.

In his pitch to Aliyev, Lopatonok wrote that the planned film would "have a unique positive impact on [the] publicity of [the] president and Azerbaijan." He added that the film about Aliyev would cost $15 million to produce. It’s not known if Aliyev has responded to the proposals.

But Lopatonok’s documentary about Lukashenka had already begun filming at locations across Belarus, including Lukashenka’s childhood home. Lukashenka was to be interviewed in each location. But the work was halted after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Lopatonok, 56, was born in eastern Ukraine. He emigrated to the United States in 2008, where he started Grading Dimension Picture, a little-known Hollywood entity. Since acquiring U.S. citizenship, Lopatonok has often expressed staunchly pro-Kremlin views.

It’s not clear how Lopatonok first encountered Stone, but they worked together on two films about Ukraine: Ukraine On Fire in 2016, followed by Revealing Ukraine in 2019.

The documentaries give a Moscow-friendly view of Ukraine’s 2014 Euromaidan revolution that culminated in the ousting of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The 77-year-old Stone, a four-time Academy Award winner, has had his own share of controversies, including his 2017 work The Putin Interviews, which was described by The New York Times as "obsequious" and "embarrassingly generous" to the Russian leader.

Stone’s close friendship and support for the controversial Venezuelan leader Chavez was also criticized.

Former Kazakh Minister Pleads Not Guilty Of Beating Wife To Death (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [3/11/2024 12:13 PM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
A former Kazakh minister who was arrested in November on charges of killing and torturing his wife pleaded not guilty to all charges as the preliminary hearings into the high-profile case kicked off on March 11.

In opening remarks to the court, the prosecutor accused Economy Minister Quandyq Bishimbaev of viciously beating his wife, Saltanat Nukenova, for hours inside a restaurant that belonged to a relative. The 31-year-old Nukenova later died from the assault.

Bishimbaev faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. His defense team asked the court to change the charge to "unintentional manslaughter."

The case has attracted nationwide attention amid growing outrage over domestic violence in Kazakhstan, where one in six women say that have faced some form of physical violence by their male partner. About 80 journalists were allowed to monitor the hearing via a video link.

Domestic violence has historically gone unpunished in the Central Asian country, where it is not considered a standalone criminal offense. The Kazakh parliament has been dragging its feet for years on a bill that would criminalize domestic violence. Women account for about one-quarter of Kazakh lawmakers.

Bishimbaev was arrested in November and initially charged with murdering his wife in the Astana restaurant. That charge envisioned a punishment of between eight and 15 years in prison.

Amid the public outcry over the brutual death of Nukenova, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev publicly called on the Interior Ministry to take the case under its "special control."

The 43-year-old Bishimbaev served as economy minister from May to late December 2016. Before that, he occupied different managerial posts in government agencies.

In 2018, Bishimbaev and 22 others faced a high-profile corruption trial that ended with Bishimbaev’s conviction on charges of bribery and embezzlement while leading a state-controlled holding company.

A court in Astana sentenced him to 10 years in prison, but Bishimbaev, who comes from an influential family, was granted an early release through a mass amnesty decree issued by the government. He had served only 18 months of his term.

The Interior Ministry said earlier that more than 100,000 cases of domestic violence are officially registered each year, though the number of unregistered cases, analysts say, is likely much larger.

International rights watchdogs have urged Kazakh officials to curb domestic violence for years.

According to the United Nations experts, about 400 women die in Kazakhstan as a result of domestic violence every year.

With Journalists Behind Bars, Kyrgyzstan Enters New Era of Repression (The Diplomat)

The Diplomat [3/11/2024 8:00 AM, Ilya Lozovsky, 201K, Neutral]
On Aike Beishekeyeva’s 23rd birthday on January 16, the young Kyrgyz journalist was planning to buy a cake to share with her colleagues.

That celebration never happened. Instead, early that morning, Beishekeyeva was arrested at her family home on suspicion of “inciting mass unrest.” For weeks, she has been awaiting trial in Detention Center 1, a grim warren of low-slung buildings in the center of Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek.

Her mother, Nazgul Matanayeva, recalls how her daughter looked at a court hearing — brave, but tired. “She holds herself well, but you can tell by her eyes,” she says. “As a mother, I can tell. … She’s not getting enough sleep.”

Matanayeva has been frantic with worry. “I’ve lost weight. I couldn’t sleep for two weeks. If I don’t distract myself, all kinds of bad thoughts come,” she says. “Twenty-three years old — for me, she’s still little. For a mother, she’ll always be little.”

Beishekeyeva may be young, but she was doing serious work. Just a few months into her career, she had recently been hired by Temirov Live, a team of journalists whose video investigations — sometimes performed as traditional Kyrygz poems — have repeatedly uncovered gross corruption on the part of top officials in the Central Asian country. (OCCRP has partnered with Temirov Live on several investigations.)

“I told her this was dangerous work,” Matanayeva says, “But she always calmed me down: ‘Mom, don’t worry, there are journalists like this all over the world.’”

In Kyrgyzstan, though, there may soon be none left. Along with Aike, 10 other current and former Temirov Live employees were arrested on that January day. They, too, are accused of inciting mass unrest under a law being used with increasing frequency to target dissenting voices. If convicted, they face years in prison.

All 11 have denied the accusations. “‘Look at her. She’s still a child,’” Matanayeva says she told the officers who came to arrest her daughter. “‘How could she gather people for a demonstration? Or is she so rich that she could pay someone [to protest]?’”

The campaign against the group is the latest symptom of Kyrgyzstan’s deepening democratic malaise.

The country was once the freest of Central Asia’s former Soviet republics by a large margin. Though known for frequent revolutions — it’s had three since independence in 1991 — it also had real elections, a vibrant media scene, and a vigorous civil society that included everything from feminist groups to disability rights activists.

In the last few years, however, under a president who combines populist rhetoric with Russian-style methods of control, the noose has tightened. Multiple independent outlets have been pressured or closed. On Reporters Without Borders’ index of worldwide press freedom, Kyrgyzstan’s rank has dropped 50 places in a single year, plunging from the level of Japan to the level of South Sudan.

The detentions of the Temirov Live staff, observers say, are part of a campaign directed against the outlet’s founder and one of the government’s most vocal critics, Bolot Temirov.

“The authorities simply want to play this scorched-earth strategy, where they just burn everything around Temirov, so he has no team,” says Leila Nazgul Seiitbek, a Kyrgyz human rights activist working from exile in Vienna.

“The only thing the authorities want right now, more than anything else, is for everyone to just be silent and do nothing,” Seiitbek says. “And the question is, are people ready to do that?”

One person not ready to be silent is Temirov himself. The 44-year-old has already paid dearly for his investigative journalism. In the last few years he has been beaten, bugged by the secret services, deprived of his citizenship, and deported to Russia. His wife, who worked as the director of Temirov Live, was among the journalists arrested in January.

Now working from an undisclosed location in Europe, Temirov maintains a furious stream of videos and social media posts decrying the authorities and demanding that they free his colleagues.

The authorities have attempted to get to Temirov through his staff before. In a 2022 investigation, OCCRP revealed how agents of Kyrgyzstan’s secret service, the GKNB, entrapped a young woman who worked for Temirov, threatening to release compromising videos unless she provided information about him and his work.

Now, the jailed journalists have been questioned about Temirov’s whereabouts, he says. And his wife was warned that the couple’s 11-year-old son could be placed in an orphanage if she did not cooperate with investigators.

Kyrgyz officials at the presidential administration, the interior ministry, the prosecutors’ office, and the GKNB did not respond to OCCRP’s requests for comment on the case. But in the two months since the arrests, several have made revealing public statements.

On a talk show hosted by Radio Azattyk, Deputy Chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s Cabinet of Ministers Edil Baisalov framed the case as a matter of discipline and re-education.

“These young guys, of course they’re not enemies, of course they’ve made a mistake. Neither the president, nor any state bodies or courts want them to rot in prison,” Baisalov said.

“It’s a question of education. A fatherly, brotherly duty — education,” he continued. “In some cases, someone — the head of a family, the master of a house — has to call things to order.”

In response to a request for comment about his statements, Baisalov again emphasized that “no one among the authorities considers these guys to be enemies of the people.”

Kyrgyz society is undergoing a transformation, he wrote, with a growing economy and a new willingness to reconsider old priorities. “I’m talking about education because we need to reorient the youth, we need to build the country and raise up the people, to distract from empty actions, to say that this is no longer trendy and dignified,” he wrote.

President Sadyr Japarov has aired his own views in an interview with the newspaper Vecherny Bishkek, arguing that boundaries must be imposed on freedom of speech to preserve security.

“In today’s turbulent and restless times, freedom of speech is tightly intertwined with responsibility,” he said. “Countries that one could count as the most democratically developed are already instituting restrictions against those who use freedom of speech to reach political goals and destabilize society. In this respect, we have to take preventative measures.”

“In the current case,” the president continued, referring to the Temirov Live arrests, “the forensic service of the Justice Ministry established that video messages from [Temirov’s wife] Makhabat Tazhibek kyzy include calls to mass unrest.”

In the video he referred to, posted on YouTube in December, Tahibek angrily denounces corruption and authorities who have been “sitting in their chairs for 30 years.” It does not contain any calls for uprising or violence.

“She says in this video that all coups and revolutions are useless, because one clan will only replace another,” Temirov says. “It’s hard to describe this as a call to revolution.”

This accusation, Temirov says, demonstrates the absurdity of the whole affair.

According to multiple people with knowledge of the case, Makhabat’s video was the only piece of evidence officials have presented as justification for all 11 detentions — though six of the detained are no longer employed at Temirov Live. Some haven’t been there for years.

“None of the others have any connection to this video,” Temirov says. “Not even the camera operator.”

Rapper and Poet Among Those Arrested

The YouTube channel on which the video appeared, called Ait Ait Dese, is one of Temirov’s most unique projects. A sister channel of the main Temirov Live account, it posts videos entirely in Kyrgyz — a way, Temirov says, of reaching the widest possible audience: “Our goal was to be closer to the people, become the voice of the people and speak with them in one language.”

In addition to more traditional journalistic reports, Ait Ait Dese features rhymed performances by traditional poets, called akyns, calling for action against social problems, inveighing against corruption, or even presenting the findings of Temirov Live’s investigations.

In one video for the channel, an akyn named Bolot Nazarov retells in poetic form an investigation into Maltese offshore companies allegedly tied to relatives of the chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s Council of Ministers, Akylbek Japarov. In another performance, he denounces the dual power wielded in the country by President Japarov and secret service head Kamchybek Tashiev.

The technique is powerful, says Seiitbek, the exiled human rights activist.

“The akyns are traditionally these voices that always spoke about the problems that the Kyrgyz people had. And it’s also traditional that the rulers never went after the akyns. That’s their job to speak about grievances, to make fun of politicians.”

“Many people don’t watch things on YouTube if they are not traditionally Kyrgyz things,” she says. “But people do go to concerts to listen to akyns, because that speaks to their heart. It’s something that they understand, something they grew up with.”

With the January arrests, Ait Ait Dese’s work is now on hold. One of the channels’s star performers, rapper and poet Azamat Ishenbekov, is among those in detention.

As Temirov tells it, Ishenbekov left school to work as a migrant worker in Russia while building a following for his performances on TikTok. When one of Temirov’s colleagues noticed his popularity, he was invited to collaborate.

“Though driving taxis in Moscow he earned much more, he chose to become a member of our team,” Temirov wrote in a Facebook post calling for Ishenbekov’s freedom.

The arrest of a streetwise artist who has appeared in hip-hop videos and crooned pop songs underscores the diverse backgrounds of the jailed 11. Among them is Aktilek Kaparov, who went from attending Temirov’s fact-checking trainings to working for Temirov Live to opening his own outlet, and Saipidin Sultanaliev, an educator who came to journalism later in his life and whom Temirov calls “an interviewer from God.”

And then there’s Aike Beishekeyeva, the youngest of them all, arrested in her parents’ apartment on her 23rd birthday.

Her mother, Matanayeva, says she was a studious child who preferred to spend time reading books and learning languages online over going out with friends.

“I wanted to sign her up for courses, but she felt sorry for us, [saying] ‘Why should you spend money on courses? Let me just study at home,’” Matanayeva says.

To expand her horizons, Beishekeyeva took an internship in Japan, a country her mother says she admired for its culture, and studied journalism at a university in Poland.

But Matanayeva was shocked when her daughter actually went into the profession, taking a job with the Temirov Live team. Her father, a professional musician, was dead-set against a career he considered far too dangerous. He fought with his daughter, and with his wife, who was more supportive. Just a few months later, the police were at the family’s door.

Frantic with worry, Matanayeva has withdrawn into herself since her daughter’s arrest. “If anyone says anything about it, I just start to cry. So I’m trying not to see anyone,” she says.

A Climate of Fear

While some in Kyrgyzstan stay silent out of grief, others do so out of fear. An analyst based in the country declined to be interviewed for this story, citing concern for their personal safety — the first time this has happened in this reporter’s experience.

Activists describe a suffocating dread spreading across Kyrgyz civil society that can be felt even from afar.

“People are very afraid,” says Seiitbek, the Vienna-based human rights activist. “Even our colleagues, which I’ve never seen before. There were situations where they were afraid to bring books with them [back to Kyrgyzstan] from trips abroad. That never happened before.”

The feeling that anyone could be targeted next is only enhanced by the absurdist flavor that sometimes accompanies Kyrgyzstan’s recent cases of repression.

When OCCRP’s award-winning Kyrgyz member center, Kloop, was shut down by court order last month, prosecutors used testimony from psychiatrists to show that the outlet “affected people’s mental health” by “upsetting” them with negative information. (Kloop is fighting the decision and plans to continue to operate.)

Then there’s Japarov’s explanation for why the country’s highest-profile case against a group of dissidents was being conducted in secret. Asked at a national gathering of community leaders about the jailed opponents of a land swap with neighboring Uzbekistan, he said their efforts had been financed by the ambassador of an unnamed foreign country.

“If we make this public, you’ll start to hate this country,” he said. “And then there could be a misunderstanding, our relationship could be disrupted. That’s why it’s a closed case.”

‘There Are No Institutions’

How did Kyrgyzstan come to this? After all, the country was once commonly referred to as Central Asia’s “island of democracy,” with observers often impressed by its repeated popular revolutions against unpopular regimes.

Asel Doolotkeldieva, an expert on Kyrgyzstan and non-resident fellow at George Washington University, agrees that the Kyrgyz public has strong democratic expectations. But, she said on a recent episode of the Talk Eastern Europe podcast, a mobilized public isn’t enough.

“You can’t expect such deep transformations of society just on the back of vibrant civil society alone,” she said. “There are no institutions to carry out democratization… You need political parties, you need ideologies, left, right, you need proper political conflict to formulate these ideologies. Without that, you can’t expect sustainable changes.”

Indeed, it was a popular uprising that put Kyrgyzstan’s current leaders in power. In October 2020, Kyrgyz citizens poured onto the streets in outrage at the results of an allegedly rigged election and at the government’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the chaos, Sadyr Japarov — a former member of parliament and populist firebrand who was serving a prison sentence for kidnapping a local official — was sprung out by a crowd of supporters. He then managed to maneuver himself into the halls of power, first becoming interim president and then winning a presidential election several months later.

One of Japarov’s most consequential decisions was to appoint his ally, Kamychbek Tashiev, to run the GKNB. Both men have made frequent use of nationalist rhetoric, aggressively decrying foreign values and influence and claiming to stand for ordinary Kyrgyz citizens. In practice, as the influence of the secret service has grown, they have built what local specialists call a “tandem” rule over the country.

“Since 2020, a lot of money from the budget was allocated to strengthen the special security forces,” said Doolotkeldieva. “In these three years, there have been allegedly 50 new buildings opening across the countryside, which are basically the buildings of the special security forces. Which means that [it’s] not only the capital, there is a huge effort to take under control the countryside as well.”

With little organized political opposition and no genuinely independent judiciary, Japarov’s government has also been pushing a series of laws — on misinformation, on the media, on the nonprofit sector, and on “foreign agents” — to tighten his control.

Much of this legislation is reminiscent of the laws used against dissidents in Russia, and observers say this has been no accident.

“The Russian security services have been sitting in the GKNB building for years. And it’s a big contingent, it’s not like one or two people,” says Seiitbek.

“Kyrgyzstan is under very strong Russian influence, stronger than anyone would have guessed. It comes from the authorities being weak by themselves. They have to rely on somebody to keep their power safe and keep them in power. So they traditionally see Putin as this guarantor of their safety. And when you have Putin as your lord protector, obviously there isn’t much you can do in terms of development of democracy.”

U.S. Ambassador Calls On Tajik Authorities To ‘Support Journalists’ Rights’ (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [3/11/2024 8:17 AM, Staff, 223K, Neutral]
The U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan, Manuel Micaller, called on Tajik authorities on March 11 -- the Day Of Press in the Central Asian nation -- "to support the rights of journalists and to respect their freedom of expression," stressing that "an independent press is a key element of building democracy." In recent years, several Tajik journalists, rights activists, and opposition politicians have been handed lengthy prison terms on charges seen by rights groups as trumped up and politically motivated.

Uzbekistan: Kitschy Bukhara development proceeds amid growing objections (EurasiaNet)

EurasiaNet [3/11/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
On the afternoon of February 26, demolition crews began work on dismantling a 23,000-seater soccer stadium near the historic heart of Bukhara.

The razing of this building is only the start.

Under a contentious project devised by the government of Uzbekistan and dubbed Bokiy Bukhoro (Eternal Bukhara), dozens of buildings are to be torn down across an area of 326,000 square meters, enough to accommodate 60 soccer fields.

A sprawling tourist center will be erected in that space. With Uzbek tourism officials laying an ever-heavier emphasis on promoting mass tourism, installing infrastructure to accommodate those vast numbers of visitors is viewed as a priority.

But the initiative has sparked anger, as the area under redevelopment is part of a so-called buffer zone around the hallowed historic section of the city. They argue that the project has been rushed through and will culminate in a kitschy architectural parody standing right next to the real thing.

Among the most vocal critics is Alerte Héritage, a non-governmental organization dedicated to the protection of Central Asia’s architectural cultural heritage.

“The only publicized project is catastrophic in every respect and above all in its design,” Alerte Héritage said in a statement on Facebook. “Knockoffs like these might look amusing in Las Vegas or Macau. But a fake ‘Orient’ in visual proximity to the historical core of Bukhara is doomed to … repel citizens and scare away tourists.”

Bukhara should by rights have some immunity from rushed development. The historic center of the city was inscribed among UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites in 1993.

The designation was granted, as UNESCO has put it, because of Bukhara’s “overall townscape,” which demonstrates “the high and consistent level of urban planning and architecture that began with the Sheibanid dynasty.”

Far from consulting UNESCO, however, Bukhara city authorities are proceeding against the organization’s explicit wishes. In February, a spokesperson for UNESCO’s office in Tashkent told a local news outlet that the government of Uzbekistan should refrain from implementing the buffer zone project pending more consultations.

This was an uncharacteristically firm position for UNESCO, which has come under fire from Uzbek activists for its frequently passive stance in the face of multiple crude redevelopments in and around important historical sites.

Neither President Shavkat Mirziyoyev nor his daughter, Saida, who frequently position themselves as champions of preserving cultural heritage sites in Uzbekistan, has commented on the situation.

Local authorities reject the charge that they are engaged in vandalism. They argue that there was “no harmony” between the historic center and the buffer zone, which extends in its entirety to 3.39 million square meters.

“In recent years, with the development of the tourism sector, the flow of domestic and foreign tourists to Bukhara has increased significantly. The decision to build the Bokiy Bukhoro ethnographic tourist center was made to create comfortable conditions for residents of the old part of the city and reduce the burden [on their neighborhoods],” the city chief architect, Zukhriddin Mukhiddinov, has said.

Opinions among Bukhara residents are split.

“We Bukharans find all this [demolition] unpleasant to see. When I see this, it feels like the last days of Pompeii. My heart bleeds,” renowned photographer Anzor Bukharsky told Eurasianet.

Officials’ insistence on the need to improve the city’s tourism infrastructure fuels cynicism.

“Since the morning, we have had no cold water. Let them improve the infrastructure in the city. That would be an improvement,” Bukharsky said. “Infrastructure is not these dollhouses. Infrastructure is things that should support human life.”

Others welcome what is being sold as the modernization and reimagining of the city.

“The rebuilding in Bukhara completely suits me and my family. One might even say it makes me happy,” Abdulaziz, a 30-year-old city resident, told Eurasianet on condition that his surname not be used.

This project will make Bukhara more like “a new city existing in 2024,” Abdulaziz said.

Although, in fact, there is not much clarity about what the project will end up looking like. As is often the case in Uzbekistan, the authorities have made little effort to share its vision with the public.

What is known is that the redeveloped zone will feature four five-star hotels with many hundreds of rooms and a “multifunctional” Bukhara National Cultural Center which will host congresses and festivals. There will also be a musical fountain surrounded by cafes and restaurants. The total cost of the project is estimated at $470 million. Construction is expected to last until 2026.

To add just more to the murk and controversy, the project is being implemented by a company called Enter Engineering, which has been involved in many other major undertakings, including the Humo Arena ice-skating complex in Tashkent and the UzGTL synthetic fuel plant.

An investigation by RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service in 2023 alleged links between Enter Engineering and Samarkand-born businessman Bakhtiyor Fazilov, who is in turn said by investigative reporters to be financially supported by business circles close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Among the 30 or so government buildings earmarked for demolition are the headquarters of the Bukhara regional government, an example of Soviet modernism conceived by the architect Richard Bleze, whose works also include some highly recognizable buildings in Tashkent. Other doomed buildings are the stadium, which is already being deconstructed, the regional prosecutor’s office, and a local art school.

City authorities had promised that some of the municipal buildings, including the art school, would be moved to the site of another grandiose project: Bukhara-City. This $225 million undertaking, to be erected beyond the center, was conceived along the lines of analogous projects popping up across the country and was to include business centers, shopping complexes, restaurants, congress halls and residential buildings.

Most of the planned projects at Bukhara-City were supposed to be built in 2022, but little has been done since then and the site is now standing idle.

Students from the Bukhara Specialized Art School – the only one of its type in the province – underwent a costly refurbishment in 2021. Students are now forced to huddle in the disused dormitory of a former factory.

“Classes cannot be held in this building. There is a smell inside the premises. There are no conditions. How can we accept a new intake of students next year?” reads a statement posted on Potrebitel Bukhara, a Telegram channel focused on city affairs.

Twitter

Afghanistan

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[3/11/2024 9:01 AM, 79.2K followers, 62 retweets, 104 likes]
Afghanistan: Woman human rights defender Manizha Seddiqi and education activists Ahmad Fahim Azimi and Sediqullah Afghan are arbitrary detained, and the Taliban refuse to release them despite holding no evidence against them. Join us in calling for their immediate and unconditional release. Read our Urgent Actions here: Manizha Seddiqi: https://amnesty.org/en/documents/asa11/7611/2024/en/ Ahmad Fahim Azimi and Sediqullah Afghan: https://amnesty.org/en/documents/asa11/7663/2024/en/

Sahar Halaimzai
@SHalaimzai
[3/11/2024 5:09 PM, 848 followers, 14 retweets, 27 likes]
The impact of the Taliban’s 95+ decrees on Afghan women and girls is often overlooked & poorly understood, yet it significantly affects the freedoms of millions. Here, @Metra_Mehran, @mari_thero and I try to shed light on the profound changes in their day-to-day lives. Listen https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/inside-afghanistans-gender-apartheid-listen-as-women-reveal-the-impact-of-the-talibans-oppressive-decrees/?network_account=AtlanticCouncil&utm_campaign=read&utm_content=1709917738&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_source=twitter

Pakistan

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[3/11/2024 11:47 AM, 42.5K followers, 4 retweets, 20 likes]
18 federal ministers sworn in today in Islamabad; 18 men, 0 women. (One woman sworn in as minister of state)

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[3/11/2024 11:35 AM, 42.5K followers, 64 retweets, 215 likes]
Watching what’s happening in Pakistan suggests the new leadership and establishment are digging down, ignoring the message of the election... and actively trying to quash it. Doesn’t bode well, won’t end well.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[3/11/2024 11:28 AM, 42.5K followers, 67 retweets, 257 likes]
Message for Pakistani leaders making cabinet decisions: bankers are not economists. A misconception that has led to a string of problematic finance ministers for the country.

India

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[3/12/2024 12:35 AM, 96.1M followers, 1.1K retweets, 3.6K likes]
Bapu’s ideals are our guiding light. The inauguration of the revamped Kochrab Ashram and launch of the Gandhi Ashram Memorial Master Plan will further his vision and inspire every Indian for generations to come.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[3/12/2024 12:12 AM, 96.1M followers, 2.5K retweets, 7.9K likes]
A landmark day for Indian Railways! Addressing a programme in Ahmedabad. Do watch. https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1BRJjPAwrgoKw

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[3/11/2024 11:34 PM, 96.1M followers, 3K retweets, 16K likes]
I look forward to being in Pokhran later today. This place has an emotional attachment with every Indian. In Pokhran, I will have the opportunity to witness a demonstration of indigenous defence capabilities in a Tri-Services Live Fire and Manoeuvre Exercise. I am glad that this programme will feature weapon systems and more which are vital in the quest to make India self-reliant in defence.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[3/11/2024 11:27 PM, 96.1M followers, 2.3K retweets, 14K likes]
Paying homage to all those who took part in the Dandi March under Bapu’s leadership, which began on this day in 1930. Later today at around 10 AM, I will attend a programme to mark the inauguration of the redeveloped Kochrab Ashram, which had a very special place in Mahatma Gandhi’s life. The Master Plan of the Gandhi Ashram Memorial will also be launched. These projects will deepen the bond between our youth and Gandhi Ji’s thoughts.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[3/11/2024 8:04 AM, 96.1M followers, 17K retweets, 71K likes]
Proud of our DRDO scientists for Mission Divyastra, the first flight test of indigenously developed Agni-5 missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[3/11/2024 4:13 AM, 96.1M followers, 4.2K retweets, 15K likes]
The inauguration of the Haryana section of the Dwarka Expressway and the launch of 112 National Highway projects mark a milestone in the country’s infrastructure development.

Vice President of India
@VPIndia
[3/12/2024 2:23 AM, 1.5M followers, 16 retweets, 177 likes]
Hon’ble Vice-President, Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar interacted with the 77th Batch of Indian Revenue Service Officer Trainees in Parliament House Complex today. @IRSAssociation #IRS

Rajnath Singh
@rajnathsingh
[3/11/2024 8:46 AM, 24M followers, 702 retweets, 4.4K likes]
India today successfully tested Mission Divyastra - the first flight test of indigenously developed Agni-5 missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology and joined the select group of nations who have MIRV (Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry) capability. Congratulations to our @DRDO_India scientists and the entire team for this exceptional success. India is proud of them!

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[3/11/2024 10:43 AM, 3M followers, 291 retweets, 2.5K likes]
Interacted with youth Delegation from Central Asian countries on an India immersion visit. Happy to hear their impressions on India’s blend of technology and tradition. Was particularly pleased to hear their experiences in Hindi. Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1767214810431934537

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[3/11/2024 11:21 AM, 262.6K followers, 88 retweets, 424 likes]
The MIRVed missile test demonstrates India’s success in developing re-entry vehicles small enough to arm a ballistic missile with multiple warheads. (How many warheads the new Divyastra missile system carried is not known at the moment.) MIRVed missiles will enhance survivability of the Indian nuclear arsenal against an enemy’s first strike. MIRVs are also useful to defeat the other side’s missile defenses. A salvo of multiple warheads would be able to overwhelm and penetrate ballistic missile defense interceptors. To be sure, more MIRVed missile tests would be needed before India deploys its new capability.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[3/11/2024 9:06 AM, 262.6K followers, 549 retweets, 2.2K likes]
India’s nuclear deterrent takes a big step forward with the flight test of an ICBM with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). The MIRVed Agni 5, aka Divyastra, will bolster India’s second-strike capability against China, engaged in a nuclear buildup frenzy.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[3/11/2024 8:59 AM, 262.6K followers, 377 retweets, 1.5K likes]
India’s Citizenship Amendment Act finally takes effect, more than four years after it was passed by Parliament. The law is about granting citizenship to members of religious minorities that fled persecution in neighboring Islamic countries up to 2014. It is akin to a U.S. law (Lautenberg Amendment) whose coverage was expanded from Soviet Jews to persecuted religious minorities from elsewhere, including Christians. The Modi government has offered no explanation why it held up the law for so long or why it has brought it into force just before national elections.

Amit Shah
@AmitShah
[3/11/2024 10:16 AM, 34.6M followers, 23K retweets, 63K likes]
The Modi government today notified the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024. These rules will now enable minorities persecuted on religious grounds in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to acquire citizenship in our nation. With this notification PM Shri @narendramodi Ji has delivered on another commitment and realised the promise of the makers of our constitution to the Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians living in those countries. https://indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in/UserGuide/E_gazette_11032024.pdf

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[3/12/2024 12:46 AM, 8.4M followers, 157 retweets, 478 likes]
Arrested again after spending just five hours at home. Kashmiri journalist Asif Sultan spent six years in jail just for writing one article about Burhan Wani. #JournalismIsNotACrime @CPJAsia @RSF_inter @freepressunltd @hrw https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-68508882

Richard Rossow
@RichardRossow
[3/12/2024 2:22 AM, 28.8K followers, 3 likes]
U.S.-India goods trade is below $10b for the third consecutive month. Annualized goods trade totals are down 8% year-on-year.

NSB

Awami League
@HamidMirPAK
[3/11/2024 7:31 AM, 636.7K followers, 37 retweets, 114 likes]
#AwamiLeague General Secretary and Road Transport and Bridges Minister @obaidulquader said @bdbnp78 has become isolated from the people in #politics after failing to read the pulse of people. He also said as long as #SheikhHasina remains in power, #Bangladesh will never lose its path. https://link.albd.org/5rbqn

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladesh
@BDMOFA
[3/11/2024 5:51 AM, 34.4K followers, 18 retweets, 42 likes]
Sri Lankan HC to Bangladesh H.E. Mr. Dharmapala Weerakkody paid a courtesy call on HFM today at latter’s office. During the meeting, both discussed the matters of mutual interests. HFM urged Sri Lanka to work on expanding trade & commerce for economic development of both countries .

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[3/12/2024 3:04 AM, 256.9K followers, 2 retweets, 9 likes]
Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Nepal H. E. Mr. Aleksei Novikov paid a courtesy call on the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Hon. Mr. Narayan Kaji Shrestha today.

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[3/11/2024 3:04 AM, 256.9K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
The two sides discussed on various issues of Nepal-Russia relations including the Nepali nationals in the Russian Army.@sewa_lamsal @amritrai555

MFA SriLanka
@MFA_SriLanka
[3/11/2024 10:35 AM, 38.1K followers, 4 retweets, 10 likes]
The 59th Session of the Programming Committee of #SAARC was held from 6-7 March 2024 in Kathmandu, #Nepal under the chairmanship of Nepal. National Focal Points of Member States, including #SriLanka, participated in the meeting. (1/2)

MFA SriLanka
@MFA_SriLanka
[3/11/2024 10:35 AM, 38.1K followers, 1 like]
The inaugural session was addressed by the Foreign Secretary of Nepal @sewa_lamsal and Secretary General of SAARC Md.Golam Sarwar.(2/2) #DiplomacyLk #lka

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[3/11/2024 7:07 AM, 79.2K followers, 31 retweets, 47 likes]
Sri Lanka: Ahead of comedian Nathasha Edirisooriya’s next hearing at the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court on 13 March, we urge the authorities to drop any pending charges against her.

Central Asia

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[3/12/2024 1:43 AM, 22.8K followers, 3 likes]
Indeed, Kyrgyzstan was once the freest in Central Asia: “Though known for frequent revolutions — it’s had three since independence in 1991 — it also had real elections, a vibrant media scene, and a vigorous civil society …” @ichbinilya @OCCRP

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[3/11/2024 3:36 PM, 22.8K followers]
The FY 2025 Congressional Budget Justification for @StateDept @USAID: $3 bln for democracy, human rights, and governance; to promote free/independent media, civil society, counter corruption, bolster reforms, advance technology ... https://state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/FY-2025-Congressional-Budget-Justification-Department-of-State-Foreign-Operations-and-Related-Programs.pdf

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[3/11/2024 8:08 AM, 4.5K followers]
Participation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the tree planting campaign https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/14572/participation-of-the-minister-of-foreign-affairs-in-the-tree-planting-campaign

{End of Report}

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