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

Afghanistan
Suicide Bombing in Afghanistan Targets Taliban Heartland (New York Times)
New York Times [3/21/2024 4:14 PM, Taimoor Shah and Christina Goldbaum, 831K, Negative]
A suicide bombing outside a bank in southern Afghanistan on Thursday killed at least 20 people, including several members of the Taliban, according to hospital staff, in a bloody reminder of the terrorist threats that have persisted in the country since the U.S.-led war ended.

The attack occurred about 8:30 a.m., when a bomber detonated explosives in front of a branch of the New Kabul Bank in Kandahar City, the capital of Kandahar Province, according to Taliban officials. The blast appeared to have targeted Taliban members who had gathered at the bank to collect their salaries, witnesses and hospital staff said.

About 50 others were injured, according to a doctor and a nurse at Mirwais Regional Hospital in Kandahar City who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.

Taliban officials, disputing that higher death toll, said that three people had been killed and a dozen others injured in the blast.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Taliban officials at the Ministry of Interior said their initial investigations suggested that the Islamic State affiliate in the region — the Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K — had been behind the blast.

The government “condemns this attack and assures people that the perpetrators of this attack will be identified, arrested and handed over to judicial centers as soon as possible,” according to a statement from the ministry that was published on X.

Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban movement and home to the government’s supreme leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada. The explosion appeared to send a message that even Taliban soldiers in the group’s heartland were not safe.

While overall security in the country has improved since the U.S.-led war ended in August 2021 and the Taliban seized control, there have been sporadic attacks across Afghanistan, mostly targeting Taliban security forces and the Hazara ethnic minority.

The Islamic State affiliate in the region has claimed responsibility for many of the attacks. Since seizing power, Taliban security forces have carried out a ruthless campaign to eliminate ISIS-K. Last year, the Taliban killed at least eight leaders of the group, according to American officials, and pushed many other ISIS-K fighters into neighboring Pakistan.

But the group, which has been antagonistic toward the Taliban, saying they are not carrying out true Shariah law, continues to pose a threat in Afghanistan. It has also launched large-scale attacks in Pakistan over the past two years, fueling concerns that the region is becoming a hotbed of international terrorism.

Hameedullah Sherzad, 40, said he was asleep in his home next to the bank in Kandahar City on Thursday when his apartment building suddenly shook, waking him. He ran outside and saw the Taliban police rushing to the bank and others loading mangled bodies onto the back of their pickup trucks.

“People were bloodied and lying on the bed of the vehicles,” he said. As more police vehicles arrived, Mr. Sherzad said, he helped carry four bodies and eight other injured people to be taken to the hospital.

Dastagir Wafaiee, 24, a local resident, said he, too, had been awakened by the sound of the explosion. Rushing to the roof of his apartment building, he saw Taliban vehicles racing to the scene.

As the Taliban police loaded the dead and wounded into their vehicles, others collected victims’ clothes and shoes, and swept up shards of broken glass, said Mr. Wafaiee.

A photo from the aftermath of the attack circulating in Taliban WhatsApp groups and viewed by The New York Times shows shattered windows on the second floor of the bank and streaks of blood staining the ground outside the bank’s entrance.

Immediately after the explosion, Taliban officials sought to downplay the severity of the attack and to allay concerns that it represented a security lapse by their intelligence and military forces.

“The wounded people are not in serious condition; they have superficial injuries,” Inamullah Samangani, director of information and culture of Kandahar Province, said in a statement. “The situation is under control.”
Islamic State group claims responsibility for bombing at Afghan bank and says it targeted Taliban (AP)
AP [3/22/2024 2:42 AM, Staff, 456K, Negative]
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing that targeted people trying to collect their salaries at a bank in southern Afghanistan. The bombing Thursday at a branch of New Kabul Bank in Kandahar city killed three people and wounded 12 others.

All of the victims had gathered there to collect their monthly salaries, said Inamullah Samangani, head of the government’s Kandahar Information and Culture Department.

Abdul Mateen Qani, spokesman for the Taliban Interior Ministry, said the target of the attack was civilians and the victims were local people. He said an investigation is continuing.

The Islamic State group’s affiliate, a major Taliban rival, has conducted attacks on schools, hospitals, mosques and Shiite areas throughout Afghanistan.

The militant group said in a statement posted on its news agency, Aamaq, late Thursday that the suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt among Taliban gathered near the bank to receive their salaries.

Kandahar city is a spiritual and political center for Afghanistan’s rulers because the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, is based there and his decisions on major issues are implemented by authorities in Kabul, the capital.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 during the chaotic departure of U.S. and NATO troops after 20 years. Despite initial promises of a more moderate stance, the Taliban have gradually reimposed a harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah, as they did during their previous rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
Deadly Suicide Bombing Strikes Outside Bank In Kandahar As Taliban Employees Wait For Pay (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [3/21/2024 4:55 PM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
A suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt outside a bank in the Afghan city of Kandahar early on March 21 as Taliban employees waited for their salaries.

The bombing, later claimed by the Islamic State (IS) extremist group, killed 19 people, according to a source who spoke to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity.

The source at Kandahar’s Mirwais Hospital said the bodies of 19 people were transported to the hospital from the scene along with 18 people who were injured.

Another source quoted by the AFP news agency said 20 people had been killed. That source also spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal for speaking to the media.

A statement from the Taliban-led government’s police headquarters in Kandahar said three had been killed in the incident and 13 were injured.

Inamullah Samangani, the director of information and culture for Kandahar Province, said that the situation at one of the city’s hospitals where the wounded were transported was under control, denying that there was an urgent need for blood donations.

"There is no such issue, and the wounded people are not in serious condition, they have superficial injuries," he said in a message to journalists quoted by AFP.

The bombing took place around 8 a.m. local time as people employed by the Taliban gathered outside a local branch of the New Kabul Bank to collect their salaries, reports said.

Mullah Asadullah Jamshid, the spokesman of the Taliban’s police headquarters in Kandahar, said most of the victims were civilians who were waiting to receive their pay.

An IS fighter "detonated his explosive belt" near a bank in Kandahar city, said a statement from the militant group’s Amaq news agency on Telegram. The statement also made reference to a "gathering of the Taliban militia."

One of the dead, Khalil Ahmad, a father of eight in his 40s, had gone to the bank to get his salary, said his nephew, Mohammad Shafiq Saraaj.

"We beg for security to be properly maintained in the country and especially in crowded places, and that our nation be saved from this kind of tragedy," Saraaj was quoted by AFP as saying.

Taliban Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told AFP that an investigation had been launched and that "the criminals will be identified...and punished for their actions."

The number of random bombings and suicide attacks in Afghanistan has declined since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, but multiple explosions have been reported since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on March 11 as the regional chapter of IS and other armed groups remain a threat.

The U.S. Charge d’Affaires for Afghanistan, Karen Decker, condemned the bombing at the bank as a "cowardly act" in statement on X, formerly Twitter, and offered condolences to the victims’ families.

"Afghans should be able to observe Ramadan peacefully and without fear," she said.
Pakistan
No Need for US Waiver to Build Gas Pipeline With Iran, Pakistan Says (VOA)
VOA [3/21/2024 5:20 PM, Sarah Zaman, 761K, Neutral]
Pakistan said Thursday that it does not need a waiver from U.S. sanctions to build its portion of a pipeline to import natural gas from Iran.

"It is a segment of the pipeline which is being built inside Pakistani territory. So, we do not believe that at this point there is room for any discussion or waiver from a third party," Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said in response to a VOA question at the weekly news briefing.

Donald Lu, U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, said Wednesday that the department was monitoring the planned pipeline between Iran and Pakistan. He told a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Islamabad had not requested a sanctions waiver to conduct gas trade with Iran.

"We have also not heard from the government of Pakistan [on a] desire for any waiver for American sanctions that would certainly result from such a project," Lu said.

Last month, Pakistan’s outgoing caretaker government gave approval to begin construction of an 80-kilometer section of the pipeline, largely to avoid paying Iran billions of dollars in penalties for years of delays on the $7 billion project.

Pipeline’s history

Pakistan and Iran have been in talks to build a gas pipeline between the two countries since the mid-1990s.

The two sides signed a Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement in June 2009 for a pipeline that would supply 750 million to 1 billion cubic feet per day of gas to energy-starved Pakistan from Iran’s South Pars Field.

The two sides held an inauguration ceremony at the border in 2013 for construction on the Pakistani side. Iran had already begun work on its side in 2010.

While Iran claimed it had completed construction of 900 kilometers of the pipeline on its side by 2011, construction has not started on Pakistani side until now.

Islamabad suspended the project multiple times as officials cited concerns that Pakistan would invite U.S. sanctions for importing energy from Iran. Tehran faces U.S. banking sanctions for its nuclear program.

Over the years, Iran repeatedly threatened to take Pakistan into international arbitration and slap it with a penalty of nearly $18 billion for breach of contract. Just as time was running out for Islamabad to meet Tehran’s deadline of commencing construction by March 2024, the country’s outgoing government green-lighted the project.

In the approved first phase, Pakistan will construct an 80-kilometer section of the pipeline from its border with Iran to its port city of Gwadar in the southwestern province of Balochistan.

Pipeline’s future

Pakistan spent more than $17 billion on energy imports last year. It was a reduction from prior years as demand for fuel fell with rising inflation.

According to the International Energy Agency, natural gas makes up the largest proportion of Pakistan’s energy portfolio. Nearly a third of it is imported.

Although Pakistan does not need a sanctions waiver from Washington to build the pipeline, it will require it to buy Iranian energy.

Washington-based security affairs expert Kamran Bokhari told VOA that while Pakistan could build the case for a waiver from Washington to buy gas from Iran, it has little room to negotiate.

"Pakistan has very little leverage right now because Pakistan has too many asks of the U.S. because of its economic, financial situation,” he said.

Pakistan’s internal and external debt is ballooning. The country is on its way to seeking a 24th bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

Bokhari said Washington would also be unwilling to allow any arrangement for Pakistan that could help Iran.

"[The] United States is locked in a very strategic regional struggle with the Iranians, and they need to be able to make sure that the Iranians do not get breathing space,” he said.

Countries that purchase energy products from Iran do so in limited quantities to avoid U.S. sanctions.

Naeem Yahya Mir, former managing director of state-run Pakistan State Oil, told VOA that Pakistan could bypass U.S. banking sanctions by not paying for Iranian gas with dollars.

"If you negotiate, they [Iran] have been doing barter … also it is in their [Iran’s] interest to open this market,” Mir said. “It’s a mutual benefit."

In June 2023, Pakistan authorized barter trade with Iran as its foreign exchange reserves dipped to dangerously low levels. However, Bokhari does not believe Pakistan can viably barter for Iranian gas in the long run.

Mir, who also served as the technical adviser for Kuwait Petroleum Corporation for nearly three decades, blamed Pakistani bureaucracy for the delay in building the pipeline and failing to request a waiver from Washington to buy gas from Iran.

"It is not the U.S., it is Pakistan’s internal decision-making process. … They can’t make decisions."

If Pakistan gets to the second phase of the project with Iran, it will extend the pipeline to the country’s southern region, which could be prohibitively expensive for the cash-strapped country.

Lu told the committee it will not be easy for Pakistan to arrange funds for the project.

"Honestly, I don’t know where the financing for such a project would come from,” Lu said. “I don’t think many international donors will be interested in funding such an endeavor."

Lu said the U.S. is working with Pakistan to explore other sources of energy, including environmentally friendly options.
Pakistan PM Sharif says another IMF bailout is inevitable (Reuters)
Reuters [3/21/2024 7:50 AM, Asif Shahzad, 11975K, Negative]
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Thursday that a long-term bailout from the International Monetary Fund (MF) was inevitable given the South Asian country’s broken economy.

The comments came a day after the IMF agreed a provisional or staff-level agreement with Islamabad which, if approved by its board, would disburse the last tranche of $1.1 billion under an existing $3 billion standby arrangement.

"We hope to get the $1.1 billion IMF tranche next month," he told a meeting in Islamabad that was broadcast live, adding: "We couldn’t survive without yet another IMF programme."

With a long-term, two-to-three year IMF programme, he said, the $350 billion economy that has long been under extreme stress with a yawning balance of payment crisis would need deep-rooted structural reforms.

The IMF mission that visited Islamabad for five days on the last review of the stand-by programme said Pakistani authorities expressed interest in yet another bailout.

The stand-by arrangement expires on April 11. The lender has already said it would formulate a medium-term programme if Islamabad applies for it.

The government has not officially stated the size of the additional funding it is seeking under the long-term bailout. Bloomberg reported in February that Pakistan planned to ask for a loan of at least $6 billion.

Ahead of the stand-by arrangement, Pakistan had to meet IMF conditions including revising its budget, and raising interest rates, as well as generating revenue through more taxes and hiking electricity and gas prices.

It resulted in inflation rising as high as 38% last summer, a historic depreciation in the local currency and the economy contracting.
Attack in Pakistan’s Gwadar strikes near heart of China’s interests (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [3/22/2024 4:23 AM, Adnan Aamir, 293K, Neutral]
A militant attack near the southwestern Pakistani port of Gwadar has reignited security concerns surrounding China’s Belt and Road projects in the country, challenging the new government in Islamabad and undermining assurances to Beijing.

Eight militants stormed the Gwadar Port Authority complex on Wednesday, 7 kilometers from the port itself and operated by China Overseas Ports Holding as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). They crashed a car full of explosives into the gate of the complex, but it did not fully detonate. As many as five security personnel were killed, along with all eight attackers, local officials told Nikkei Asia.

The attack "was foiled by the security forces," a security official said on condition of anonymity. The Majeed Brigade of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist group that wants to carve out an independent state in the province of Balochistan, claimed responsibility. The BLA called the attack a warning to foreign investors interested in Gwadar -- an apparent reference to the Chinese operating Gwadar port.

Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Thursday reiterated that Beijing stands with Pakistan. "We firmly support Pakistan’s efforts to fight terrorism and defend national security and stability," he told reporters.

But the deadly incident calls into question the effectiveness of Pakistan’s efforts to expand security for Chinese interests in the country. Beijing has repeatedly urged Islamabad to do more to protect its nationals and investments, which cash-strapped Pakistan sorely needs. Already, Chinese personnel were restricted to the port compound in Gwadar, the centerpiece of the $50 billion CPEC.

It also comes weeks after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif took office following Pakistan’s controversial elections. The fledgling government aims to resume active work on CPEC projects.

Fakhar Kakakhel, an independent analyst specializing in militancy in Pakistan, called Wednesday’s attack symbolically significant. "It made headlines, and that is what the Baloch insurgents want," he said. The BLA "wanted to register a message that despite strict security measures they [are] able to reach their targets."

Kiyya Baloch, an independent analyst who tracks violence in Balochistan, said the attack took place inside a high-security zone in one of Pakistan’s most well-guarded cities. "Through this attack, Baloch separatists delivered a message to the world that Gwadar is not safe to invest in, for China or any other interested foreign party," he said.

In a news conference on Tuesday, Lin, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, insisted that Beijing "stands ready to work with Pakistan to build an upgraded CPEC to deliver greater benefits to the two peoples." But experts say the attack will once again pressure Pakistan’s government to step up security for Chinese concerns.

"Both Baloch insurgents and [Pakistani Taliban] fighters are targeting the region where CPEC is passing through," noted Kakakhel, who has authored a book on militancy. "Peace in the region is the only solution to CPEC completion." He believes that the government needs to pursue dialogue on addressing the needs of Balochistan, particularly with the youth, rather than "escalating tension and applying the same [hard-handed] tactics."

The analyst Baloch suggested that China might again demand the right to bring in its own security, a proposal Pakistan turned down in 2022.

At the very least, the attack is likely to lead to tougher measures in and around Gwadar, experts say.

"Now more security checkpoints in Gwadar might be established, and targeted operations can also be carried out against the insurgents," Baloch said. "Islamabad can raise this issue with Iran, demanding it to take action against Baloch separatists allegedly based in Iran."

Nasir Sohrabi, president of the Rural Community Development Council of Gwadar, said the latest attack has unnerved the local population.

"The situation is tense in Gwadar, and people are worried about their safety and mobility in the aftermath," he said. "The image of Gwadar as a destination for investment will be affected as a consequence."
India
India arrests Delhi chief minister as crackdown on opposition spreads (Washington Post)
Washington Post [3/21/2024 2:09 PM, Gerry Shih, 6902K, Negative]
Indian law enforcement officials on Thursday arrested Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi and an up-and-coming opposition leader, in an alleged money-laundering case that his supporters say has been trumped up by the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Kejriwal, leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, which rules the Indian capital and the state of Punjab, is the second opposition party chief to be arrested in recent weeks after Hemant Soren, the leader of Jharkhand state, was taken into custody in January over an alleged land scam.

Since 2022, Kejriwal and his allies have been accused by the BJP of selling liquor licenses and receiving kickbacks from vendors in the capital. India’s Enforcement Directorate, which investigates money laundering, has alleged it has evidence that Kejriwal’s party received millions of dollars from a liquor group.

While Kejriwal’s role and culpability in the affair remains unclear — Kejriwal has denied wrongdoing — opposition parties in recent months have increasingly accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP of unfairly using federal investigative agencies to systematically pressure political rivals — or jail them outright ahead of crucial national elections that begin April 19. Aside from Kejriwal, three other leaders in his party, seen as a potent future challenger to the BJP in national politics, have been jailed in the past year in the liquor case.

The Indian National Congress, another opposition party, has similarly accused the BJP of using tax agencies to cripple its operations ahead of upcoming elections. On Thursday, Rahul Gandhi, a Congress leader, told a news conference that his party has not been able to access any funds for the past month, or “even buy a rail ticket,” because its bank accounts have been frozen by the government as part of a years-old tax case.

After news of Kejriwal’s arrest broke, Gandhi condemned the government’s move as autocratic.

Kejriwal’s AAP said late Thursday that it would challenge his arrest in the Supreme Court as his supporters flocked to his Delhi residence, blocked roads and occasionally tussled with police. Speaking to television reporters outside Kejriwal’s home, his party colleagues said the Enforcement Directorate’s investigation was a ploy by Modi to prevent Kejriwal from campaigning in the upcoming election.

“It is clear to everyone who is afraid of a loss in the upcoming election,” AAP official Somnath Bharti told reporters. “Is this free and fair? Opposition leaders are being imprisoned; bank accounts of opposition parties are being frozen.”

BJP officials, meanwhile, doubled down on their accusations of Kejriwal’s alleged corruption and called the arrest justified.

While the BJP is viewed as the most popular party in India and Modi is widely expected to win a third term in the upcoming polls, his Hindu nationalist party’s monopoly over the state machinery and its outsize dominance in campaign financing have raised intense public debate about the fairness and vigor of Indian elections.

This month, a landmark Indian Supreme Court judgment forced the government to reveal detailed records about an opaque campaign financing scheme that allowed Indian companies to give unlimited and anonymous campaign contributions. The data showed that the BJP had received more than half of the roughly $2 billion in donations made by companies since 2018 — or more than what 20 other parties combined received — leading some in the opposition to cry foul.
Prominent Modi Rival Arrested Weeks Before India’s Elections (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [3/21/2024 9:09 PM, Swati Gupta and Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 5543K, Neutral]
A key opposition leader in India, who is also the chief minister of the capital Delhi, was arrested by the federal anti-money laundering agency, just weeks before the national elections.

Arvind Kejriwal was arrested by the Directorate of Enforcement, or ED, on Thursday, said Atishi, one of the leaders in the Aam Aadmi Party, in a post on X. The ED didn’t confirm the details of the arrest.

Delhi is controlled by Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, or AAP, in India’s federal government system. The chief minister, 55, is a key member of an opposition alliance challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bid for a third straight term in office in nationwide elections that kick off in April.

Modi, 73, remains a popular leader with voters and his Bharatiya Janata Party is in a strong position to return to power. The opposition alliance, created last year to mount a united defense against Modi, has been hamstrung by defections, government investigations and a cash crunch.

Atishi, a minister in Kejriwal’s cabinet who goes by one name, said the party would seek a Supreme Court hearing to quash the arrest.

The ED has been investigating Kejriwal over allegations that his government skewed the state’s alcohol pricing in return for bribes. Other federal anti-corruption agencies, including the Central Bureau of Investigation, are also probing the alcohol policy. Introduced in 2021, the policy was rolled back within months following allegations of wrongdoing.

Kejriwal and his party have denied the allegations, saying the investigations are illegal and politically motivated. The AAP had been anticipating Kejriwal’s arrest since the ED sought to question him over the bribery scandal in November.

Since the AAP took control of Delhi in 2013, several of its leaders have been the target of raids, arrests and investigations by Indian authorities. Kejriwal is the third senior Delhi state leader arrested in the alcohol pricing scandal. The ED arrested his deputy Manish Sisodia in February last year, while another AAP lawmaker Sanjay Singh got jailed in October.

A trained mechanical engineer, Kejriwal joined the civil service in 1995 and worked as a tax collector for the government. He later became an activist, helping people with their grievances against Delhi’s poor water and power supply as well as corruption in government.

The AAP also controls the northwestern state of Punjab where it swept state elections in 2022, defeating the BJP and the main opposition Indian National Congress.
New Delhi’s top elected official arrested in liquor bribery case (AP)
AP [3/22/2024 12:11 AM, Ashok Sharma, 22K, Neutral]
Anti-corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal was arrested Thursday by the federal investigative agency for suspected financial crimes, which accused his party and ministers of accepting 1 billion rupees ($12 million) in bribes from liquor contractors nearly two years ago, his party said, adding a fresh challenge for India’s opposition ahead of general elections.

Atishi Singh, a leader of Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, or Common People’s Party, denied the accusations. She charged they were fabricated by the federal Enforcement Directorate, which is controlled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Opposition figures and critics slammed the move as undemocratic, and accused Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party of misusing the agency to weaken the opposition just weeks before voting begins April 19.

“This is no longer a fight between the BJP and the AAP. This is a fight between the country’s people and the BJP. This is no longer a fight of the AAP, but a fight of all those who want clean politics in the country,” Sandeep Pathak, an Aam Aadmi Party lawmaker, said at a news conference held at midnight.

Kejriwal’s party called for a nationwide protest Friday against the arrest, and said it would ask India’s Supreme Court to quash the arrest since the investigation is still in progress. Kejriwal will continue to be Delhi’s chief minister while the party fights the accusations, Singh said.

Footage from local TV showed police whisking away Kejriwal’s supporters in buses as federal agents arrested him after questioning him for hours at his residence in New Delhi.

One of the charges under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act is that 14 wholesale liquor distributors earned an “excess profit” of 3.38 billion rupees ($41 million) when the now-scrapped liquor policy was in operation two years ago. Government attorney S.V. Raju alleged the liquor distributors in turn paid 1 billion rupees ($12.1 million) in bribes to Kejriwal’s party and other ministers.

The arrest came hours after Delhi’s High Court refused to grant any protection to Kejriwal, 55, over the summons issued to him by the Enforcement Directorate, which is the main federal agency for investigating economic offenses.

The agency had called Kejriwal for questioning nine times in recent months, but he skipped the summons each time, saying he was busy with his political work, a government lawyer said.

AAP is part of a broad alliance of opposition parties called INDIA, the main challenger to Modi’s BJP in the national elections to be held in April-June. Led by the Indian National Congress party that once dominated the country’s politics, the unity front includes over two dozen powerful regional parties.

“A scared dictator wants to create a dead democracy,” Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said about the arrest in a post on X, adding that “the arrest of elected chief ministers has become a common thing.”

Kejriwal’s arrest is another setback for the bloc, and came after the Congress party accused the government earlier Thursday of crippling the party by feeezing its bank accounts in a tax dispute ahead of the national elections.

The opposition has long claimed it has been unfairly targeted and in a manner that undermines India’s democratic principles.

The Enforcement Directorate has launched probes of many key opposition leaders, all of whom are political opponents of the BJP. Modi’s party denies using law enforcement agencies to target the opposition and says the agencies act independently.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has been defeated in Delhi state elections by Kejriwal’s party and also was defeated in northern Punjab state in 2022.

Kejriwal launched the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012, and it won the Delhi state legislature election a year later, when he became the chief minister. Kejriwal, a former civil servant, campaigned on a promise to rid the Indian political system and governance of corruption and inefficiency.

The party’s symbol — a broom — and its promise to sweep the administration of graft struck a chord with Delhi residents, fed up with runaway inflation and slow economic growth. But he resigned as the chief minister 49 days later because his minority government couldn’t enact an anti-corruption law due to a lack of support from other political parties.

He took over as chief minister for a second five-year term in 2015 after his party’s stunning victory in the state elections when it grabbed 67 of 70 seats.

In the 2020 elections, Kejriwal’s party re-emerged victorious and retained power in Delhi. Kejriwal was sworn in as chief minister of Delhi for the third time in a row. Outside Delhi, his party registered another major victory in the 2022 Punjab state elections.
India opposition members detained after arrest of Delhi leader Kejriwal (Reuters)
Reuters [3/22/2024 4:19 AM, YP Rajesh, Tanvi Mehta, and Sakshi Dayal, 5.2M, Negative]
Dozens of members of the opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) were detained in New Delhi and sporadic protests erupted elsewhere across India on Friday against the arrest of AAP’s top leader for graft, weeks before general elections.

India’s financial crime agency arrested Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of the national capital territory of Delhi on Thursday in connection with graft allegations relating to the city’s liquor policy.

Kejriwal’s arrest, less than a month before India begins voting on April 19, is a setback for AAP and the larger opposition alliance of which he is a key leader.

All the main leaders of his decade-old party are in jail in connection with the liquor case.

AAP members, including some ministers in the Delhi city government, were stopped by police and taken away in buses as they shouted slogans and sought to march towards the city court where Kejriwal is expected to be produced, TV visuals showed.

Kejriwal has been arrested to stop him from campaigning in the general elections, said AAP leader and Delhi finance minister Atishi, who uses only one name.

"This is a way to steal elections," she said in a statement.

AAP supporters also protested in the northern state of Punjab, the other state ruled by the party, staging sit-ins, shouting slogans and holding placards that read "I am also Kejriwal".

"They can jail Kejriwal but they can’t jail his thoughts," one AAP supporter told the India Today TV channel.

OPPOSITION UNDER PRESSURE

AAP activists also staged protests in the eastern state of Odisha, the western state of Gujarat, and in Srinagar, the summer capital of the federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

"BJP wants to distract people’s attention from their corrupt practices," AAP’s Odisha convener Nishikanta Mohapatra told reporters, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"BJP knows that an honest leader like Arvind Kejriwal is capable of defeating them. This is why they arrested him," Mohapatra said.

Kejriwal’s lawyers had petitioned the Supreme Court against his arrest but withdrew it on Friday saying they would fight it in the city court first.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is investigating allegations that a liquor policy implemented by the Delhi government in 2022, which ended its control over sale of liquor, gave undue advantages to private retailers.

The policy was subsequently withdrawn and the AAP government has said no evidence of wrongdoing has emerged in the investigation.

AAP is part of the 27-member ‘INDIA’ bloc which has dismissed graft investigations against multiple opposition leaders as a politically-motivated smear campaign by the BJP, which runs the federal government that controls the Enforcement Directorate.

The federal government and BJP deny any political interference and say law enforcement agencies are doing their job.

Opposition leaders have condemned Kejriwal’s arrest and accused Modi of seeking to squeeze and weaken the opposition ahead of the elections.

On Thursday, the main opposition Congress party accused Modi of crippling it before the upcoming general election by freezing its accounts in an income tax case, charges BJP denied.

"The question is, is Arvind Kejriwal above the law of the land? Can he indulge in corruption and not face investigative agencies?" federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur posted on X. "The truth is before the country."
A Modi rival is arrested. Now, supporters of the opposition leader are protesting in India’s capital (AP)
AP [3/22/2024 4:45 AM, Sheikh Saaliq and Krutika Pathi, 456K, Negative]
Supporters of an anti-corruption crusader and one of India’s most consequential politicians of the past decade held protests Friday against his arrest, which opposition parties say is part of a crackdown by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government before national elections.

Arvind Kejriwal, who is New Delhi’s top elected official, was arrested Thursday night by the federal Enforcement Directorate, which is controlled by Modi’s government. The agency accused his party and ministers of accepting 1 billion rupees ($12 million) in bribes from liquor contractors nearly two years ago.

Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, or Common People’s Party, denied the accusations and said they were fabricated. The party said Kejriwal will continue to be Delhi’s chief minister while it fights the accusations in court.

Adding to the party’s troubles, as part of the same case, the agency also arrested Kejriwal’s deputy Manish Sisodia and AAP lawmaker Sanjay Singh in 2023.

In the lead up to the general election, which starts April 19, India’s opposition parties accuse the government of misusing its power to harass and weaken its political opponents to gain an unfair advantage in the polls. They point to a spree of raids, arrests and corruption investigations against key opposition figures. Meanwhile, some probes against erstwhile opposition leaders who later defected to Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have been dropped.

“It looks like harassment because only opposition leaders are being singled out,” said political commentator Neerja Chowdhury, adding that there’s been no probe against anyone in the BJP. “It’s not a level playing field.”

The BJP denies using law enforcement agencies to target the opposition and says the agencies act independently.

On Friday, hundreds of AAP supporters and some senior party leaders clashed with the police, who whisked a number of them away in buses.

“This is dictatorship. All this is done to win the national polls,” said AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj, referring to the BJP.

Kejriwal’s AAP is part of a broad alliance of opposition parties called INDIA, the main challenger to Modi’s BJP in the elections to be held in April-June.

His arrest is another setback for the bloc, and came after the Congress party accused the government Thursday of crippling the party by freezing its bank accounts in a tax dispute. But it has also led to a rare show of strength by the opposition figures who slammed the move as undemocratic, and accused Modi’s party of misusing the agency to weaken them.

“A scared dictator wants to create a dead democracy,” Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said about the arrest in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“India is under an undeclared Emergency. Our democracy stands critically endangered today,” said Raghav Chadha, a lawmaker from the AAP.

Meanwhile, the BJP’s spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said Kejriwal’s party was playing the “victim card,” and that the leader should resign from his chief minister post.

The Enforcement Directorate has investigated many key opposition leaders and others have faced a variety of legal sanctions.

In January, the agency arrested Hemant Soren — who was, until then, the chief minister of eastern Jharkhand state — for allegedly facilitating an illegal land sale. Soren’s party denies the accusations.

Gandhi was convicted of criminal libel in 2023 after a complaint by a member of Modi’s party. A two-year prison sentence disqualified him from parliament for a time, until the verdict was suspended by a higher court.

Kejriwal launched the AAP in 2012 and campaigned on a promise to rid the Indian political system and governance of corruption and inefficiency. The party’s symbol — a broom — and its promise to sweep the administration of graft struck a chord with Delhi residents.

The party won the Delhi state legislature election a year later, when he became the chief minister — a feat he repeated in 2015 and 2020. Kejriwal’s party also governs northern Punjab state.

Modi has previously said his party is targeting 370 seats out of 543 in the upcoming national polls. To achieve that, experts say the BJP will have to repeat its electoral triumph in 2019, in which they won an overwhelming majority of the seats in northern India, including all seven seats in Delhi.

Chowdhury, the commentator, said Kejriwal is the star face of his party. “He’s very politically savvy and in Delhi, the AAP has goodwill — their tie-up with the Congress for the elections would have posed a challenge for the BJP to pull that off again.”

“But the big question is: Will Kejriwal’s arrest galvanize voters? The investigations against opposition leaders so far has not had the kind of traction they may have expected,” Chowdhury said, “but now with this arrest, will public opinion start to turn?”
Indian Opposition Parties Say They Face Tide of Troubles as Vote Nears (New York Times)
New York Times [3/21/2024 4:14 PM, Sameer Yasir, 831K, Neutral]
The head of one of India’s leading opposition parties was arrested in dramatic fashion on Thursday, the same day another party said it had been blocked from access to its bank accounts — actions taken by the government of Narendra Modi, critics say, to put his rivals at a disadvantage before a pivotal general election in April.

The leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, Arvind Kejriwal, was taken into custody late on Thursday at his home in New Delhi, where hundreds of protesters had gathered to protest his arrest by the federal financial crime agency. Mr. Kejriwal, who is also the chief minister of the national capital region of New Delhi, was arrested on allegations of corruption involving the city’s liquor policy. His party’s leaders say the charges are fraudulent.

Campaigning is heating up for a six-week-long election that starts on April 19 and will determine the next prime minister for the world’s most populous democracy. To run election campaigns from the Himalayan mountains to India’s southern shores, political groups spend billions of dollars in what is seen as one of the world’s most expensive elections.

As the vote gets closer, opposition figures say they are fighting a tide of troubles from the government, including Mr. Modi unleashing the country’s major investigating agencies against them while shielding those who switch to his side.

Among them is Mr. Kejriwal, who had been stuck in a game of cat and mouse with the agents in recent months after at least two of his ministers were sent to jail. More than a dozen officers arrived at his home on Thursday night, and, according to leaders of his party, took away his cellphone and those of family members. He was arrested after hours of questioning.

“The central government wants to finish all opposition parties,” Atishi Marlena, a minister in the Delhi government, said outside Mr. Kejriwal’s residence, referring to Mr. Modi’s government.

She said Mr. Kejriwal was just about to launch the party’s general election campaign.

Mr. Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has sought to contain the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party ever since it tried to expand outside the national capital region of New Delhi. The disputed 2021 New Delhi liquor policy apparently offered an opportunity.

Under the policy, the Delhi government allowed private vendors to make all liquor sales in the city, a departure from earlier regulations that permitted a mix of public and private vendors. The central government accuses officials of Mr. Kejriwal’s party of getting kickbacks.

Another politician, Hemant Soren, the chief minister in the eastern state of Jharkhand, was arrested in January after being accused by federal agents of corruption in land dealings. He denied the allegations, handing in his resignation before going to prison.

Mr. Kejriwal’s arrest capped a day of political turmoil in New Delhi, coming soon after India’s largest opposition party accused national authorities of paralyzing its political activities by blocking access to its bank accounts.

Officials with the party, the Indian National Congress, said that eight of its 11 main accounts at four banks had been frozen, and that there was no clear indication of when the party would regain access to the money.

“We can’t support our workers; we can’t support our candidates,” Rahul Gandhi, an Indian National Congress leader, said at a news conference in New Delhi. “Our leaders can’t fly. Forget flying — they can’t take a train.”

“Our ability to fight elections has been damaged,” he said.

The country’s Income Tax Department, which is controlled by Mr. Modi’s government, froze the Congress party’s accounts over its 2017-2018 filings, saying the party had been 45 days late in filing tax returns.

Under Indian law, political groups are exempted from paying income taxes on their funding from individuals and corporations, but must declare their income to the tax authorities each year. The current dispute relates to how heavily the Indian National Congress should be penalized for past irregularities.

The Congress party has acknowledged the returns were late, but argues that freezing its accounts so close to the elections is a heavy-handed political move aimed at crippling India’s main opposition group to make way for one-party rule.

“The idea that India is a democracy is a lie,” Mr. Gandhi said.

Mr. Modi’s officials rejected those claims, describing them as a desperate attempt by a political opposition that is struggling in an election campaign likely to return the Bharatiya Janata Party to power.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, a leader from the governing party, said the tax exemption for any political group remained valid only if the group declared any contributions to the national tax authorities on time.

The issue of political financing has exploded in India in recent weeks. The country’s top court recently forced the government-owned State Bank of India to release a list of all those who had made anonymous political donations through a financing mechanism known as “electoral bonds,” removing a veil of secrecy that opposition groups had long argued was helping those in power.

Mr. Modi’s party received the highest amount of the funds.
India’s Congress accuses Modi of ‘crippling’ it ahead of elections with tax case (Reuters)
Reuters [3/21/2024 10:28 AM, Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Nikunj Ohri, 5239K, Neutral]
India’s main opposition Congress party accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday of crippling it before the upcoming general election by freezing its accounts in an income tax case.

A part of the Congress’ bank accounts was frozen last month pending a tax case that dates back to 2018-19, the party has said previously. Earlier this month, a tax tribunal dismissed its appeal to pause recovery of 1.35 billion rupees ($16.32 million) in income tax from its bank accounts.

On Thursday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said all accounts belonging to the party had been frozen, leaving it with no access to funds for campaigning.

"20 percent of India votes for us and we can’t even pay two rupees for anything. It has been orchestrated to cripple us in the elections," Gandhi said at a press conference.

A spokesperson for the Income Tax department, in its response to Reuters’ queries, said it cannot disclose information of taxpayers, and cited a tax tribunal and a court order in its favour.

General elections are scheduled to be held in seven phases starting next month, with most opinion polls predicting an easy win for Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Congress, which leads a rag-tag bunch of bickering opposition parties in alliance for the general elections, is seen as Modi’s main challenger.

"We can do no campaign work. Our leaders cannot fly from one part of the country to the other. Forget about flying, they cannot even buy a rail ticket," Gandhi said about the tax case, which he said had caused all the party’s bank accounts to be frozen.

The BJP was quick to deny Gandhi’s charges, saying the Congress was guilty of tax evasion and had to face action because of that.

The Congress has said that the frozen accounts had funds including those collected by the party through crowd-funding and membership drives.

The party, which has ruled India for 54 of its 76 years since independence from Britain, has sunk to record low numbers in parliament after Modi swept to power in 2014 and is struggling to revive support.
India Reveals Biggest Donors to Modi’s Party Under Now-Banned Electoral Bond (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [3/21/2024 12:52 PM, Swati Gupta, Advait Palepu, and Andre Tartar, 5543K, Neutral]
India’s Election Commission released new information Thursday showing the ruling party’s biggest donors under a now-banned political financing tool.

Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd. was the largest donor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party over the past five years, purchasing about 6.7 billion rupees ($81 million) of electoral bonds, data from the commission showed.

Qwik Supply Chain Pvt Ltd., Aditya Birla Group and Bharti Airtel Ltd. were close behind, based on Bloomberg calculations of the figures released. The BJP’s top five donors, including subsidiaries, made contributions of a total of at least 19 billion rupees to the party through electoral bonds from March 2018 until January 2024. The party earned 60.6 billion rupees via the bonds over the period, almost half of all funding raised through the system.

Founded in 1989, Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructure is involved in road construction, dams, irrigation projects, power plants, transmission lines, communication equipment, renewable energy and media.

The company’s order book stood at more than 1.87 trillion rupees as of September 2023, according to a Jan. 10 note by Crisil Ratings. The group also owns a 50.2% stake in Olectra Greentech Ltd, an electric bus manufacturer with a long-term technology sourcing agreement with China-based Byd Co Ltd.

More than 90% of donations made by Qwik Supply Chain and Bharti Airtel went to the BJP, compared with about 60% of contributions by Megha and Vedanta Ltd., the sixth-biggest donor, the figures show.

In a surprise decision last month, the Supreme Court banned electoral bonds, which allowed political parties to anonymously receive campaign contributions from donors. The court said the system was unconstitutional and violated voters’ rights to information necessary for them to cast their ballots.

The data released by the Election Commission on Thursday came from State Bank of India, the only lender authorized to facilitate the buying and cashing of the electoral bonds. The bank released information that allowed donations to be matched to recipients, shedding light on political parties’ source of funding through the bonds for the first time.

Opposition parties and critics have said the electoral bonds scheme and the anonymity which came along with it provided an unfair advantage to the ruling party. India’s main opposition party collected only 14 billion rupees through electoral bonds over the past five years, or about 11% of the total bonds sold.

The data comes weeks before India’s national elections kick off on April 19. Voting will take place over seven phases until June 1. The results are expected to be declared on June 4.
Kremlin says India’s Modi has open invitation to visit Russia (Reuters)
Reuters [3/21/2024 6:38 AM, Staff, 5239K, Neutral]
The Kremlin said on Thursday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had an open invitation to visit Russia and that a meeting with President Vladimir Putin would take place, though details were still to be worked out.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to a question about a report that Putin had invited Modi to visit Russia.

"This has yet to be agreed through diplomatic channels," Peskov told reporters.

"In any case, meetings will take place in the first half of this year, we hope, in a multilateral format, and there will also be bilateral talks on the margins.

"Of course, the prime minister of India has an open invitation to visit our country."

Russia and India enjoy close ties. Moscow ramped up its oil exports to India after Western sanctions over Ukraine began to bite.
India pharma quality lapses force U.S. to look to China for vital drugs (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [3/21/2024 11:00 PM, Sayan Chakraborty and Cissy Zhou, 293K, Neutral]
In the final weeks of 2022, a small team of inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were far from home, investigating a pharmaceutical factory in western India.

Indian drugmaker Intas was making cancer drugs for the United States at the plant where, in a trash bin, inspectors found documents doused in acetic acid. More papers with manufacturing and drug testing data were shredded and tucked away in plastic bags under a stairwell, indicating that Intas executives had manipulated data and tried to cover it up.

Six months later, the FDA called the drugs adulterated and halted imports from the plant, contributing to a severe shortage of life-saving cancer drugs in the United States.

U.S. physicians say the cancer drug shortage could lead to thousands of deaths. The crisis has compelled Washington to turn to China despite broader efforts at reducing its reliance on the nation. China’s Qilu Pharmaceutical has been called in to make up for the shortfall.

India’s lax regulatory oversight, analog practices where things should be digitized, and data integrity issues have far-reaching consequences that include hundreds of children dying from contaminated cough syrups across the world, and the potential to reshape geopolitical dynamics in the global drug trade.

“If Indian drugmakers really want to cater to overseas markets, it is very important they adhere to global standards, however stringent,” Brajesh Singh, an associate director at consultancy Arthur D. Little, told Nikkei.

“It will be an opportunity lost if they don’t … because the ‘China plus one’ policy really makes it India’s moment to seize,” Singh said, referring to a strategy in which companies reduce their dependence on China by diversifying their supply chains to other countries.

India’s Intas was a key supplier of chemotherapy drugs cisplatin and carboplatin for the U.S. market. The version of cisplatin made by China’s Qilu, not yet approved by the FDA, is now available by prescription for U.S. patients. When asked about the timeline for an approval, the FDA said it cannot confirm the existence of or comment on any current or pending product applications.

n a country vying to become the pharmacy of the world by selling off-patent drugs worth billions of dollars to treat everything from the common cold to cancer, the Intas delinquency was not an isolated incident.

Pharmaceutical consultant Chinmoy Roy was approached by a senior executive at Ranbaxy in the summer of 2010. “He asked me if I could help his company ‘get around’ U.S. government regulations involving pharmaceutical manufacturing,” Roy told Nikkei Asia on the phone from his home in northern California. Roy was quick to refuse.

Three years later, Ranbaxy, once India’s largest drugmaker, was found guilty of falsifying data and selling adulterated drugs in the United States. In the 10 years that have followed, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has censured several Indian pharmaceutical makers for lapses in quality control.

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries and Cipla – which make up India’s Big Pharma – have also received warning letters from the U.S. FDA, which has set up offices in India.

Even amid a global “China decoupling,” India’s drug lapses are likely to make the $86 billion U.S. generics market – the world’s biggest and one in which India accounts for almost one in three drugs sold – a battleground for Indian and Chinese manufacturers.

With abundant natural resources and a large pool of talented human capital, India provides 60,000 generic brands across 60 therapeutic categories, according to research and consultancy firm EY. It accounts for 40% of the generics supply in the U.S. and about 25% of all medicines in the United Kingdom.

“India can maintain its lead if it undertakes reforms to bring regulations closer to international standards, invests in state-of-the-art facilities and technology, and focuses on training,” Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow in global health at American think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told Nikkei.

Drugmakers in India have been penalized by both U.S. and domestic authorities for offenses that ranged from poor manufacturing practices to manipulation of data. India’s own drug regulator has deemed nearly 2,000 medicine samples as substandard since March 2019, when data became readily available.

And just months after cough syrups manufactured in India were connected to child fatalities across the world, Indian authorities last year found a cough syrup and an antihistamine syrup made by Norris Medicines to be “toxic.”

“Even though Indian pharma has consistently been a major player in generic drug production, recurrent quality control issues could undercut its aspiration to become the global pharmacy,” CFR’s Huang said.

India’s quality issues threaten one of the few sectors in which the country has become a commanding global force.

The concerns come as the Narendra Modi-led government pulls out all the stops to boost manufacturing in the world’s most populous nation. New Delhi has been modifying labor laws and offering subsidies to wean the world’s industries away from China in hopes of accelerating production across all sectors.

But India will continue to face serious competition from China, Neils Graham, associate director at think tank Atlantic Council, told Nikkei. “Beijing is implementing … policies to increase the international competitiveness of its pharmaceutical sector, including reducing the cost of domestic drug development and bringing the Chinese regulatory framework in line with global standards.”

The United States recorded around 1.9 million new cancer cases and 609,360 cancer deaths in 2022, according to the American Cancer Society.

Americans have also had difficulty procuring essentials such as children’s acetaminophen and antibiotics. Reasons vary from U.S. generic drugmakers halting production due to narrow margins, to quality issues at plants overseas. Together, they illustrate the fragility of a supply chain that can be disrupted by one outage at a single plant across the world.

China’s Qilu, which supplies the U.S. with more than 20 other drugs, has almost doubled its monthly cisplatin production to about 1.5 million units to fill the gap left by India’s Intas, its vice president, Zhang Hanchang, told Nikkei.

Warming up to China is a sharp turn from the FDA’s stance in 2022, when it declined three cancer drugs made there — one jointly developed by Eli Lilly and Innovent Biologics, another by Coherus BioSciences and Shanghai Junshi Biosciences, and one more by Hutchmed. Reasons cited varied from questionable quality to insufficient trials.

But as demand for cisplatin continues to outstrip supply, a protracted U.S. reliance on China is likely.

“This could be an opportunity [for China], but China must ensure its pharmaceutical products meet international standards,” CFR’s Huang said.

A Nikkei analysis of U.S. FDA inspection records shows that Indian pharmaceutical companies face far higher scrutiny than their peers in China, despite China having its own quality issues and a comparable number of plants.

The U.S. decision to ease drug shortages with Chinese imports comes as tensions are on the simmer between the world’s top two economies. Issues include China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports and Washington’s sanctions on Chinese technology companies like Huawei and social media app TikTok.

“A complete decoupling of the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain from China is impossible,” said the Atlantic Council’s Graham, noting that “derisking” is possible. “But it does speak of the challenges of shifting from a global supply chain that emphasizes efficiency to one that prioritizes resilience.”

Industry observers note that both Indian and Chinese manufacturers are found wanting when it comes to quality control, and a U.S. House panel in July called “effective foreign inspection programs” in India and China “critical.”

Taking advantage of cheaper infrastructure and inexpensive labor in countries like India and China, the U.S. relies on foreign manufacturers for more than half its active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) – the components responsible for the remedial effect in medicine – for its essential drugs.

U.S. producers facing squeezed margins on domestic production are also offshoring the manufacturing of generics. These are made by other drugmakers after the patent runs out at the company that developed the original drug, and account for nine of 10 prescription drugs sold in the United States.

“The way the Intas-related shortages are read here in the U.S. is very much not Indian versus Chinese versus anything, it’s foreign versus domestic,” Marta Wosinska, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Schaeffer Initiative on Health Policy, told Nikkei. “The reaction really is, we need to have domestic manufacturing.”

U.S. imports of ready-to-consume drugs, referred to as “formulations,” jumped more than 400% to $94.02 billion in 2022, according to Comtrade.

“America’s generic pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is all but gutted,” think tank Coalition for a Prosperous America, said in a 2021 report. The average annual salary at a U.S. drug manufacturing facility hovers around $46,000 compared with $6,000 in India, the report said, adding that stringent environmental compliance norms in the U.S. also increase the cost of domestic manufacturing.

The market price of generics has also been driven down by consolidation among bulk buyers, increasing their bargaining power over manufacturers. Consultancy firm KPMG estimates that groups such as Walgreens Boots Alliance, Red Oak and ClarusONE bought 92% of the generic drugs in the U.S. in 2018. Consequently, margins for such drugs fell to 12.8% in 2019 from nearly 20% in 2016.

U.S. manufacturers have begun to feel the heat; drugmakers such as Akorn and Lannett even filed for bankruptcy last year.

“The scale and cost advantages of Indian pharma have just one competitor, i.e, China, and nobody else comes close,” Anand Batepati, co-founder of Hong Kong-based investment management firm GFM Focus, told Nikkei.

In 2022, India and China were among the top five sources of branded and generic formulations for the U.S. market.

But quality remains a concern. In 2014, four years after his disconcerting encounter with the Ranbaxy executive, Chinmoy Roy was astonished once more. Standing on the factory floor of a pharmaceutical plant in southern India, the vice president of quality at another major pharmaceutical company declared ignorance of the updated standards set by the International Society of Automation for alarm management systems, pulling out his phone to search for details.

Such systems ensure that alarms go off as soon as production equipment starts malfunctioning. Not maintaining updated standards can invite a warning from the FDA.

In 2015, Dr. Reddy’s received warning letters for violations that included hiding a quality testing laboratory from regulators. Sun Pharma’s infractions included leaking walls in areas meant to be aseptic. U.S. sales at both companies nosedived and took several years to recover.

And in 2019, at a drug facility in southern India, a handful of executives spent a weekend shredding documents on the manufacturing process for a U.S.-bound shipment. Any such shredding activity must be documented; this wasn’t.

When FDA inspectors came calling a few days later, they fished out the shredded documents from a scrapyard. They issued a warning letter; the head of operations lost his job.

“It was sheer callousness. … The shredded documents were not originals,” a former senior executive at the company told Nikkei. “The problem is that we just don’t pay attention.”

The attitude is illustrative of a results-oriented culture where breaching guardrails stems from a place of getting things done amid resource constraints, Saswati Barat, an industrial psychologist and CEO of AIOU, a boutique behavioral consultancy, told Nikkei.

In a country of 1.4 billion people, with more than three times the U.S. population on less than 3 times its land, people are jostling to make their way up in life.

The concept of “manage,” a colloquial Indian English term for quick-fix workarounds that often bend the rules to get things done, worries Ajaz Hussain, a former deputy director in the office of pharmaceutical science at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the U.S. FDA.

“I have seen senior vice presidents of quality saying, ‘Sir, don’t worry, we will manage,’ and I would tell them that I don’t want you to manage but do things the right way,” Hussain told Nikkei in an interview.

“Lack of resources … have led to ‘making do’ a matter of pride, which inadvertently foments disregard for rules and regulations," Barat said. “‘Managing’ is mostly talked about in terms of creativity, but when it becomes patchwork, then it becomes a problem.”

The flurry of reprimands in India has made investors cautious. India’s pharma stocks – under pressure from regulatory scrutiny, pricing pressures and increasing competition – have been underperforming the broader market.

Analysts say things are much better at a few companies now than they were a decade ago, but the industry still has a long way to go.

Dr. Reddy’s and Cipla, both of which have been adopting technology to streamline operations, were featured in the World Economic Forum’s 2023 list of 132 companies that deploy state-of-the-art technology on their factory floors.

Also home to the world’s largest vaccine developer Serum Institute of India, the country was producing nearly 60% of the world’s vaccines even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. India also developed its own vaccines against the virus, and produced the Oxford-AstraZeneca formula.

U.S.-headquartered Perfect Day bought India’s Sterling Biotech for $1.1 billion in 2022 in the largest pharma buyout in the country in the past five years.

Several others are expanding operations in India. In 2021, AstraZeneca launched a clinical data division in Bengaluru. The next year, Roche opened a data analytics facility in Hyderabad, the Swiss drugmaker’s second such unit in India.

Also in 2022, Pfizer opened a 61,000-square-foot drug development center in the southern Indian city of Chennai, its first such facility in Asia. The same year, Merck announced a laboratory in Bengaluru to help companies with drug discovery, development and manufacturing.

Dinesh Thakur, a Ranbaxy whistleblower who exposed the drugmaker’s violations, told Nikkei that senior leaders at Indian pharma companies are often reluctant to invest in digitalization, which would eliminate nearly all human intervention and minimize the possibility of fudged data.

“Most Indian generics companies are family-owned, with little appetite to invest because the entire model is based on cost arbitrage,” Thakur, now a public health activist, said. “It’s all about maximizing profit.”

“Suppose we are expected to check the progress of crystallization every five hours,” a quality control professional at an Indian diabetes API maker told Nikkei. “With manual documentation, they can take one record after four and a half hours and the next after five and half hours, but still enter them as records taken at an interval of five hours.”

In one of its warning letters to Intas in November, the FDA noted that the drugmaker “manipulated particle and other defect counts” at least nine times since 2021 “to keep the finished product batches within rejection limits,” adding the company’s practices were “egregious.”

The regulator even found injection vials to contain extraneous white particles and glass. The root cause had not been identified; the findings had not even been documented. Intas did not respond to Nikkei’s request for comment.

The head of quality control at another Indian company that makes antidepressants and gets most of its revenue from North America told Nikkei that "deliberate attempts are still being made to game the system.”

He recounted instances when drugs were released despite failing to meet specifications. With “out of specification” (OOS) results, companies are required to test further to detect the root cause of the error or reject the batch if they fail to identify what caused the anomaly, but either move would delay shipments and revenue.

Instead, companies might combine the OOS results with “in specification” results to test for an average, and greenlight the drugs if that average passes the threshold.

“This is a new focus area for the FDA, after they noticed that (drug batch) rejection rates in India are low,” the executive said.

In an indication of how important the U.S. pharmaceutical market is to India, the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), a consortium of Indian drugmakers, has recently hired Washington-based lobbyist MEDSecurean to engage with U.S. regulators.

The IPA did not respond to Nikkei’s requests for comment. MEDSecurean said in a regulatory filing that its scope of work includes getting the IPA “a seat at the table on significant security and healthcare-pharmaceutical policy discussions” apart from working with the U.S. FDA “and develop a goodwill campaign.”

A Nikkei examination found that while the U.S. has become a key export destination for both the Indian and Chinese pharmaceutical industries, India has a lot more at stake.

Lagging in generics, but leading the world in active pharmaceutical ingredient exports of $14 billion, China provides roughly half of India’s APIs.

In some ways, India’s value-added manufacturing ecosystem is emblematic of the irony in Modi’s “Made in India” campaign. From toys to drugs, any production increase in India is reliant on a rise in imports of raw materials from China. In other words, as India ramps up production in competition with China, it also becomes more dependent on its jousting neighbor.

Consultancy PwC estimates that manufacturing APIs in China could be 10% to 15% cheaper than in India, primarily due to advantageous infrastructure such as special economic zones, and cheaper loans at interest rates of 5% to 7% compared with 11% to 14% in India.

Localizing the API supply chain is onerous and time-consuming but helps keep quality management in-house and shields companies from supply chain disruptions, Nilima Divi, director at Indian API maker Divi’s Laboratories, told Nikkei.

“Chemical manufacturing is not that easy,” Divi said. “It’s not that chemistry is difficult, but there are a lot of other factors like [processing] the effluents [industrial waste] and the costs.”

Divi’s, which says it is the world’s largest API maker of the anti-inflammatory drug Naproxen, is one of a handful of Indian companies to localize the entire supply chain for its generics portfolio, Divi said.

The Indian government has announced incentives worth 219 billion rupees ($2.63 billion) to promote local manufacturing of APIs and earmarked 30 billion rupees for API-focused industrial parks.

“When it comes to supporting Indian manufacturers, the cost is slightly higher (but) we make sure that we are not completely dependent on China,” Divi said.

China accounted for nearly 50% of India’s total API imports in 2022, up from 2.5% three decades ago, acccording to data by Comtrade.

For essential drugs, that dependence is even higher. A report by Research and Information System for Developing Countries found that China accounts for more than 90% of India’s imports of components for close to 50 drugs such as ibuprofen and paracetamol painkillers, Vitamin B12, cortisone steroids and penicillin antibiotics.

Despite nearly identical population counts, the two markets are vastly different. India’s domestic pharmaceutical sales stood at $24 billion in the last fiscal year, while exports totaled $25 billion. China’s domestic sales were roughly ten times that at $246 billion. Its exports stood at about $70 billion in the calendar year 2022.

“A large part of the disparity in market size and exports has to do with domestic market consumption,” said the Atlantic Council’s Graham. “China, with its aging population, wealthier middle-class with higher healthcare demands and an expansion of insurance coverage mean its internal market is consuming a larger portion of the products its domestic pharmaceutical industry produces.”

China spent around 10 times more per capita on healthcare than India did in 2020, the latest data available. Its gross national income per capita that year stood at $10,520, five times higher than that of India.

The failings of India’s pharmaceutical industry have become a cause for global concern. Since 2022, the World Health Organization has linked the deaths of at least 141 children across Gambia, Uzbekistan and Cameroon to cough syrups made by India’s Maiden Pharma, Marion Biotech and Riemann Labs that allegedly contained toxins. In 2014, several years before Maiden was held responsible for the deaths in Gambia, it was barred by Vietnam for quality issues.

More than 10 children died through December 2019 and January 2020 in India’s northern state of Jammu after allegedly consuming cough syrup manufactured by Digital Vision. An eye drop made by India’s Global Pharma Healthcare has been linked to four deaths and blindness in the United States.

The deaths have raised questions about the role of local enforcement. While New Delhi in March canceled the licenses of 18 drugmakers after nationwide raids on more than 70 companies, analysts say the actions are too little, too late.

Experts are also skeptical about a bill passed this year, which seeks to replace jail time for manufacturers of substandard drugs with a fine. They argue this would allow impunity at a time when the industry is battling a trust deficit. “We don’t learn any lessons because our national regulator is either incompetent or complicit with the wrongdoers,” Thakur said.

India must act now if it has ambitions of becoming the pharmacy of the world, Thakur said. “It’s only a matter of time that the Chinese catch up on our formulation skills too.”
India blocks access, residency permits of overseas ‘citizen’ critics (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [3/21/2024 6:53 AM, Leela Jacinto, 929K, Negative]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi often draws crowds of supporters from the Indian diaspora on his foreign visits. But back home, his administration has been revoking visas and residency permits of foreign nationals of Indian origin as well as spouses of Indian citizens. For those denied access or kicked out of India, the experience can be traumatic.

Vanessa Dougnac was at home in her New Delhi apartment on January 18, when she received a hand-delivered envelope that raised her spirits.

The French journalist glanced at the letterhead bearing the insignia of the Indian interior ministry’s Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) and immediately thought this meant good news.

“Then I read the letter. It was totally the opposite. It was really, really bad news,” she recounted.

Dougnac, 51, had lived in India for a quarter-century, or most of her adult life. For 23 years, she served as the India-based freelance correspondent for a number of French publications. Along the way, she covered stories across the country, married an Indian national, raised a son, and mastered the ropes in the place she came to call home.

But in India, things that were once fairly straightforward were now getting complicated – and stressful.

The official letter, delivered on January 18, informed the veteran French journalist that her Indian residency had been revoked.

Dougnac had joined the growing list of overseas critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist policies being banned from India, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

They are part of the Modi administration’s broader crackdown on Indian citizenship laws, which have snowballed in various forms. But the intent of the “ever-expanding arsenal of laws and policies” is singular: to “target and punish dissenting voices”, said Amnesty International in a statement noting the international human rights contraventions that have increased during Modi’s 10 years in power.

With the upcoming 2024 elections widely predicted to propel Modi into his next decade in power, experts warn that India’s secular democracy is being reshaped as a Hindu-first majoritarian nation intolerant to dissent and minority religious communities.

Citizenship lies at the heart of the reshaping, with the government pushing through laws and regulations on myriad fronts, upending lives and plunging dissenters into an omnipresent state of dread.

Diaspora with dollars to invest home

Dougnac was one of nearly 4 million people holding an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card, which comes as a light blue, passport-lookalike and confers on the holder visa and residency rights.

Since India does not permit dual citizenship, OCI cards are provided for the equivalent of $275 to foreign nationals of Indian origin and the spouses of Indian nationals or OCI card-holders.

The residency status is the latest iteration of a decades-long bid by successive governments to tap into the economic potential of the Indian diaspora, the largest in the world, clocking nearly 18 million in 2020, according to UN figures. It’s also among the wealthiest, with strong ties to the motherland. In 2022, for instance, India’s inward remittances hit a record of almost $108 billion, around 3% of GDP, more than in any other country.

Attracting the diaspora’s dollars without offering citizenship rights historically entails acronyms in India. NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) before the 1990s gave way to PIOs (Person of Indian Origin) before the nomenclature settled on the current OCI. The latest overseas “citizen” of India is a misnomer since holders do not have voting rights or citizenship guarantees. But since the OCI privileges were an improvement on the earlier NRI and PIO categories, few made any fuss.

That was until the government began tinkering with citizenship and visa regulations after Modi was re-elected in 2019 to a second term in office.

Many acronyms, few rights

Just months after Modi’s May 2019 re-election, the Indian parliament, dominated by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), passed a controversial citizenship amendment law, which gained notoriety as the country erupted in what was commonly called “anti-CAA” (Citizenship Amendment Act) protests.

The new law, which offers citizenship to non-Muslim migrants and refugees from neighbouring countries, was widely criticised for discriminating against Muslims, an allegation the Modi government denies.

While the anti-CAA protests drew international press coverage, the insertion of a subclause covering OCI cancellations passed largely unnoticed.

As Modi nudged past the half-way mark of his second term, the regulations got tighter. By 2021, the government required its overseas “citizens” to apply for “special permission” to “undertake” research, journalistic, missionary or mountaineering “activities”.

So on January 18, when Dougnac received a letter from the Foreign Regional Registration Office (FRRO), she initially thought she had finally received her journalist permit, which was denied in September 2022, for no stated reason.

For the freelance journalist, the denial of a journalist permit meant a precarious dip in her income and she was eager to get back to work.

But that was not to be. The FRRO letter revoking Dougnac’s OCI instead accused her and her articles of being "malicious" and of harming "the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India". The notice put the onus on the freelance journalist, requiring her to respond to why her OCI should not be cancelled.

Dougnac has launched a petition in the Delhi High Court, adding to the legal appeals and challenges launched by several others in a similar state. But nearly a month after she received her notification, Dougnac was forced to leave the country she had made her home for 25 years and return to France.

In a statement released February 16, the French journalist noted that it had become “clear that I cannot keep living in India and earning my livelihood. I am fighting these accusations before the competent forums and I have full faith in the legal process. But I can’t afford to wait for its outcome. The proceedings with respect to my OCI status have shattered me,” she noted.

‘Showing animus’ to governments, not country

The list of shattered lives has been increasing over the past few months, perpetuating a climate of fear among overseas Indians. An investigative report published on February 12 by Indian news site Article 14 found that more than 102 OCIs were cancelled under section 7D between 2014 and 2023.

Many targeted OCI-holders prefer not to speak to the press out of fear of scuppering their appeals process and being permanently deprived of the ability to travel to a country where many have families, including aging parents and ailing loved ones.

Some high-profile cases do make the news, such as British-American writer and journalist Aatish Taseer, whose OCI was revoked in 2019, shortly after Time magazine published his excoriating cover story, “India’s Divider in Chief”, on Modi’s brand of Hindutva populism.

Indian authorities said Taseer’s OCI was revoked because he “attempted to conceal” the fact that his biological father was a Pakistani national. The journalist, who was brought up in India by his single mother and wrote a critically acclaimed book in 2009 on his journey to meet his father, Pakistan’s former Punjab governor Salman Taseer – who was assassinated two years after his son’s book was published – dismissed the claim.

The official cancellation explanations for the recent spate of OCI scraps include ill-defined allegations of “showing animus” towards India, or “attempting to destabilise the social fabric” of the country.

“In some cases, the authorities have openly cited criticism of BJP government policies as evidence to revoke the visa status,” noted Human Rights Watch, citing the case of octogenarian British activist Amrit Wilson, whose OCI was cancelled due to her social media posts on the Kashmir crisis and a 2020-2021 farmers protest movement.

Indian authorities note that governments across the world have the discretion to grant or refuse visas to their countries. It’s a point that Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, acknowledges. “Of course, every government has the right to determine who gets visas or not. But those rights cannot be based on discriminatory ideas,” she noted. “Any democracy relies on a foundational principle of permitting dissent. That is what distinguishes it from authoritarianism. Now all dissent and all ideas may not be accepted by the state. But the fact that those opinions are put forward should not be seen immediately as something that is against the country, it is against government policies, and governments change.”

‘I miss India’

In its attempts to ensure the government does not change after the 2024 general election, the Modi administration has been pushing through key campaign promises that are popular with the BJP’s Hindu nationalist base.

On March 11, just weeks ahead of the elections, the Indian government announced the implementation of the new citizenship law. While parliament approved the CAA in 2019, the Modi government held off on the implementation following deadly protests against a law that was widely viewed as discriminatory against Muslims.

Responding to the move, the US expressed “concern” with a State Department spokesperson noting that Washington is “closely monitoring how this act will be implemented”.

The concern was echoed by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. "As we said in 2019, we are concerned that India’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 (CAA) is fundamentally discriminatory in nature and in breach of India’s international human rights obligations," said a spokesperson.

The Modi administration’s response to the expressions of concern was forthright. The citizenship law was an “internal matter”, an Indian foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters in New Delhi, noting that the US State Department’s statement was “misplaced, misinformed and unwarranted”.

But Ganguly believes the changes in citizenship and residency laws warrant the attention of India’s democratic allies, particularly those measures that affect their own nationals of Indian origins. “It needs attention from foreign governments, because there is a lot of interest in the Indian market and in strategic partnerships. Those are legitimate interests. But when they want to do business with India, foreign governments need to be aware that any claims of partnerships between democracies is seriously undermined if the government is going to be so repressive on freedom of speech and in cracking down on its critics,” she noted.

As India heads for critical elections, Dougnac is in France, watching the coverage from thousands of miles away. “I covered elections in India for 20 years. Now for the first time, I will not be there to cover it. I miss India,” she said.

While her appeal works its way through the Indian courts, the French journalist confesses she’s still in a state of shock. “Really, it’s too emotional for me,” she confessed. “I led a life filled with adventures and interactions across the subcontinent, and had the opportunity to witness over two decades of India’s history. Now I’m in France, I feel like I’m in exile in my own country.”
What Happened When India Pulled the Plug on TikTok (New York Times)
New York Times [3/22/2024 12:31 AM, Alex Travelli and Suhasini Raj, 831K, Neutral]
In India, a country of 1.4 billion, it took TikTok just a few years to build an audience of 200 million users. India was its biggest market. Then, on June 29, 2020, the Indian government banned TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese apps, after a simmering conflict between India and China flared into violence at their border.

A popular form of entertainment, which had not been the subject of political debate, vanished overnight. Now, as politicians are wrangling in Washington over a plan that could shut access for the 170 million Americans using TikTok, the example set by India gives a foretaste of what may come — and how audiences and other social media companies catering to them might respond.

TikTok, owned by ByteDance in Beijing, came to India early, establishing a wide base in 2017 in dozens of the country’s languages. Its content — short videos — tended to be homey and hyperlocal. An endless scroll of homemade productions, many of them shot in small towns or farms and set to popular music, helped while away the hours across the world’s cheapest and fastest-growing mobile-data network. As it has in the United States, TikTok became a platform for entrepreneurial extroverts to build businesses.

Veer Sharma was 26 when the music stopped. He had collected seven million followers on TikTok, where he posted videos of himself and friends lip-syncing and joking around to Hindi film songs. He was the son of a laid-off millworker from the central Indian city of Indore and barely finished formal schooling. His TikTok achievements filled him with pride. He felt “beyond happy” when people recognized him on the street.

They were happy to see him, too. Once, Mr. Sharma said, an “elderly couple met me and said they would watch my show before going to bed, for a laugh.” They told him that his “show was a way out of their daily life’s drudgery.”

With his new stardom, Mr. Sharma was earning 100,000 rupees, about $1,200, a month. He bought a Mercedes. After the ban in 2020, he barely had time to make one last video for his fans. “Our times together will be ending soon, and I don’t know how or when we will be able to meet again,” he told them.

“Then, I cried and cried,” he said.

Yet short videos, including many preserved from TikTok and uploaded to other sites that aren’t banned, continue to draw Indians.

India’s online life soon adapted to TikTok’s absence. Meta’s Instagram swooped in with its Reels and Alphabet’s YouTube with Shorts, both TikTok-like products, and converted many of the influencers and eyeballs that had been left idle.

The services were popular. But something was lost along the way, experts said. Much of the homespun charm of Indian TikTok never found a new home. It became harder for small-time creators to be discovered.

Nikhil Pahwa, a digital policy analyst in New Delhi, tracks the overall change to the departure from TikTok’s “algorithms, its special sauce,” which was “a lot more localized to Indian content” than the formulas used by the American giants that succeeded it.

Several Indian companies tried to get into the gap caused by the disappearance of Chinese competition. But America’s tech giants, with their deeper pockets and expanding global audiences, came to dominate India. The country is now the biggest market for both YouTube (almost 500 million monthly users) and Instagram (362 million), with roughly twice as many users as either has in the United States, though they earn far less revenue per consumer.

The decision by India to cut its population off from TikTok was as sudden as the American efforts, which began in 2020, are protracted. But the motivation was similar — and even more dramatic. Whereas the United States and China are engaged in a new kind of cold war over economic dominance, India and China have had troops standing off at their border since 1962. In 2020, that frozen conflict turned hot. In one night of brutal hand-to-hand combat, 20 Indian soldiers were killed, along with at least four Chinese, which China never officially confirmed.

Two weeks later, India switched off TikTok. The app disappeared from Google and Apple stores, and its website was blocked. By then, India was well practiced in blocking objectionable websites and even shutting down mobile data across whole regions, in the name of maintaining public order.

There were few other signs of retaliation by India, but this one action commanded the public’s attention. The list of Chinese apps that India has banned continues to grow, now to 509, according to Mr. Pahwa.

Until then, India’s internet had presented an open market to China. In contrast to India’s domestic media companies, tech start-ups were free to take investment from China and other countries. TikTok was only the most popular among dozens of Chinese-owned games and services distributed to Indians online.

Since at least 2017, after a similar border skirmish, the possibility that Chinese consumer technology might pose a risk to India’s sovereignty had been circulating in national security circles.

Indian officials had expressed concern that Chinese-owned apps could provide Beijing with a potent messaging tool within India’s raucous media environment. Just two months before the ban, India announced new restrictions on investments from any country “sharing land border with India.” Technically, that would apply to Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan. But China was understood to be the real target.

On June 29, 2020, the official order that blocked TikTok and dozens of lesser-known Chinese services did not mention China explicitly, nor the bloody fight on the border. Instead, the measure was described as a matter of “data security and safeguarding the privacy” of Indian citizens from “elements hostile to national security and defense of India.”

In subsequent years, India’s government has used the rationale about maintaining the “safety and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace” to dictate terms even to American tech companies. It has complained to Apple and Twitter, as well as to Meta and Google, sometimes to prevent speech that is critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party.

But the government bore no grudge against TikTok’s influencers. After the ban went into effect, the B.J.P. reached out to Mr. Sharma, who said he had become depressed. Between losing his income and his fame, he felt his “world crashing down.” He had already been contacted by Moj, a Bangalore-based TikTok rival. Mr. Sharma’s career and income bounced back after he posted a clip with his state’s chief minister and started making promotional videos with other B.J.P. office holders. He feels proud now to be helping further Mr. Modi’s political agenda.

Another TikTokker who was temporarily “heartbroken” by the ban was Ulhas Kamathe, a 44-year-old dad from Mumbai. He somehow achieved a moment of international fame by devouring chicken platters while murmuring “chicken leg piece” with his mouth full, an instant meme. After losing his nearly seven million TikTok followers overnight, he says he has recovered — by finding five million on YouTube, four million on Instagram and three million on Facebook.

“In the past three years, I have rebuilt without any help — all by myself,” he said.
China’s Indian land grab has become a strategic disaster (Nikkei Asia – opinion)
Nikkei Asia [3/22/2024 5:00 AM, Brahma Chellaney, 293K, Neutral]
The military standoff along the long Himalayan frontier between China and India may not be grabbing international headlines these days given the open warfare raging elsewhere in the world, but the threat of the confrontation returning to armed conflict cannot be discounted.

Last week, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar called the Chinese border situation "very tense and dangerous." Both sides have been significantly ramping up deployments of troops and weapons, girding for the possibility of war.

Soon to enter its fifth year, the current standoff was triggered by furtive Chinese encroachments into India’s northernmost territory of Ladakh in April 2020, just before thawing ice would normally reopen Himalayan access routes after the brutal winter.

Ahead of this year’s spring thaw and possible new Chinese provocations, India moved an additional 10,000 troops to the frontier. "The possibility that we may face a similar situation that we faced in 2020 is keeping us active all the time," Indian Defense Secretary Giridhar Aramane said last month.

China has also been expanding its troop presence and frenetically building warfare-related infrastructure along the inhospitable frontier. This has included boring tunnels and shafts in mountainsides to set up command positions, reinforced troop shelters and weapons-storage facilities.

In addition, it has planted settlers in new militarized border villages that are becoming the equivalent of the artificial islands it created in the South China Sea to serve as forward military bases.

About 100,000 troops remain locked in a faceoff along the border’s westernmost Ladakh sector. Another key sector is the vulnerable area where the borders of Tibet, Bhutan and India’s Sikkim state meet, a 22-kilometer-wide corridor known as "the chicken neck" due to the crooked way it connects India’s northeast to the country’s heartland.

The corridor’s vulnerability has been increased by Chinese encroachments on Bhutan’s southwest borderlands, with the chicken neck now potentially within striking distance of China’s long-range conventional weapons.

There are also troop faceoffs in the eastern Himalayas along Tibet’s long border with India’s Arunachal Pradesh state. This has long been a heavily militarized area, largely because China claims the Indian state is part of Tibet, although the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, says this has no historical basis.

Talks to de-escalate tensions along the frontier have made little progress. In January, Indian Army chief Gen. Manoj Pande said the standoff would continue until China rolled back from its Ladakh encroachments, calling restoration of the previous frontier line "our first aim to achieve."

Despite taking some flak at home for losing border areas to Chinese encroachment, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to seek a negotiated end to the crisis.

While his government has banned numerous Chinese apps, blocked investments by certain Chinese companies and launched enforcement actions against others over alleged tax and foreign exchange violations, it has not imposed broad sanctions against its northern neighbor.

Consequently, despite the border confrontation, China’s annual trade surplus with India has continued to rise; it is now larger than India’s annual defense spending.

Modi discussed the crisis in brief with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of multilateral summits in November 2022 and August 2023. Jaishankar reiterated earlier this month that New Delhi remains "committed to finding a fair, reasonable" agreement.

Now Xi is faced with the challenge of resolving the Himalayan military crisis without losing face.

For four years, tens of thousands of Chinese troops have remained deployed in extremely harsh conditions along the Himalayan frontier. If Xi somehow came to an agreement with Modi about undoing China’s territorial encroachments, he would face questions about why he embarked on the aggression in the first place.

The longer the standoff persists, though, the greater the risk that Beijing turns India into an enduring enemy, a development that would weigh down China’s global and regional ambitions.

Xi has already been confronted by his failure to anticipate India’s robust military and strategic response, with the standoff driving New Delhi closer to Washington. It also set in motion a major military buildup and modernization drive, as illustrated by a flight test last week to demonstrate that India now can put multiple independently targetable nuclear warheads on a single intercontinental ballistic missile.

Since the standoff began, India has tested several other leading-edge missile systems, including a hypersonic cruise missile, a hybrid missile-torpedo for use against submarines and aircraft carriers, an anti-radiation missile for destroying radar-equipped air defense systems and a new generation, intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads.

India has also been importing major weapon systems from the U.S. as well as France and other sources. In November, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh told his U.S. counterpart that their two governments are "in agreement on strategic issues, including countering China’s aggression." India’s growing alignment with the U.S. undoubtedly worries Xi.

Without the elements of stealth, deception and surprise that characterized China’s 2020 encroachments, the People’s Liberation Army would be hard put to get the better of India’s armed forces in a Himalayan war. While the PLA relies heavily on conscripts, India has an all-volunteer force that is considered the world’s most experienced in mountain warfare.

As two of the world’s most ancient civilizations, China and India need to find ways to peacefully coexist as neighbors and to cooperate on shared objectives. But it is far from certain that reconciliation between the two most populous nations will be possible while Xi and the Chinese Communist Party remain in power.
NSB
Indian PM Modi in Bhutan to shore up ties with eye on China (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [3/22/2024 3:45 AM, Staff, 307K, Neutral]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Bhutan on Friday for a two-day state visit to the tiny but strategic Himalayan nation also being courted by China.

Landlocked Bhutan, known for its policy of prioritising "Gross National Happiness" over growth, has long been regarded by New Delhi as a buffer state firmly within its orbit.

India is determined not to let China gain further toeholds across what it sees as its natural sphere of influence, following trade and infrastructure deals Beijing sealed over the years with other neighbours.

"The visit is in keeping with the tradition of regular high-level exchanges between India and Bhutan and the Government’s emphasis on its Neighbourhood First Policy," said a statement from Modi’s office announcing his arrival.

India effectively oversaw Bhutan’s foreign policy until 2007, the year before the kingdom’s first multi-party elections.

Bhutan does not have formal diplomatic relations with China but the two countries inked a "cooperation agreement" last October after talks over their long-disputed frontier.

A December report from Britain’s Chatham House think tank included satellite photographs it said showed an "unsanctioned programme of settlement construction" by China in Bhutan’s northern frontier region.

It added that the developments could "become permanent Chinese territory" if a border deal was struck.

Modi last week hosted Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay in his first official overseas visit after returning to office for a second term in January.
Sri Lanka Clinches Initial Approval for $337 Million IMF Loan (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [3/21/2024 7:01 AM, Ronojoy Mazumdar and Asantha Sirimanne, 5543K, Positive]
Sri Lanka secured initial approval for the next loan tranche from a $3 billion International Monetary Fund bailout program, as the nation seeks to complete its debt restructuring.

The staff-level agreement for the second review of the program gives the nation access to a payout of about $337 million — subject to approval from the IMF’s executive board, the Washington-based lender said in a statement.

Funding is also contingent on implementation of prior actions, completion of financing assurances and adequate progress on debt restructuring, according to the statement. Some reforms are still ongoing and the IMF is closely monitoring the implementation of the Public Finance Management Bill, senior mission chief Peter Breuer told reporters in Colombo on Thursday.

Almost two years after falling into a historic sovereign default, Sri Lanka remains dependent on IMF aid as the South Asian nation faces nearly $7 billion of external financing needs this year. The IMF lifeline is crucial in restoring growth to the economy, which has been hit hard by the pandemic and the debt crisis.

“Sustaining the reform momentum is critical to put the economy on a path towards lasting recovery and stable and inclusive economic growth,” the IMF said.

Investors are optimistic over Sri Lanka’s prospects, with the currency approaching its strongest level since June, while dollar bonds are up about 9% this year, among the best performers in Asia.

Dollar bonds maturing in 2030 extended early gains to climb 1.9 cents to 56.6 cents on the dollar, the highest since November 2021 according to indicative pricing compiled by Bloomberg. Notes maturing in 2027, 2028, and 2029 also gained.

Investors and Sri Lankan officials are expected to start negotiations aimed at restructuring $12 billion in defaulted global bonds next week, Bloomberg reported earlier. President Ranil Wickremesinghe said earlier in March that progress is being made as the nation seeks relief from payments through 2027.

Sri Lanka has already secured an initial restructuring deal with official creditors including India, China and the Paris Club. It still needs to clinch a deal with China Development Bank.
IMF says the economic situation in debt-stricken Sri Lanka is gradually improving (AP)
AP [3/21/2024 10:44 PM, Bharatha Mallawarachi, 22K, Neutral]
The economic situation in debt-stricken Sri Lanka has started to gradually improve following its worst economic crisis two years ago, the International Monetary Fund said Thursday.

Inflation has come down from a peak of 70% in 2022 to 5.9% last month and the country’s economy expanded in the second half of last year following a year and a half of contraction, the IMF said.

Sri Lanka’s year-on-year economic expansion in the third quarter of 2023 was 1.6% and in the fourth quarter 4.5%, the IMF said.

The economic crisis in early 2022 left Sri Lankans suffering from severe shortages of food, medicine, fuel and power, drawing strident protests that led to the ouster of then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The Indian Ocean island nation declared bankruptcy in April 2022 with more than $83 billion in debt — more than half of it to foreign creditors.

Sri Lanka turned to the IMF for help to rescue the economy and secured a bailout package last year. Under the current four-year bailout program, the IMF is to disburse $2.9 billion in tranches after biannual reviews of whether the country is imposing needed economic reforms.

The country has received two payments so far, and also has receiving promises of debt forgiveness from major creditors like India, Japan and China. The government also is in talks with private creditors.

On Wednesday, the IMF said that a team of its officials had reached an agreement with Sri Lankan authorities on the second review of economic reforms. Once the agreement is approved by the IMF executive board, Sri Lanka would have access to the latest tranche of $337 million, for a total so far of about $1 billion.

In July 2022, then-Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed as president. Since then, he has managed to restore electricity, and shortages of essentials have largely abated. Sri Lanka’s currency has strengthened, and interest rates have fallen to around 10%.

However, Wickremesinghe faces public anger over heavy taxes and the high cost of living. Despite improving economic indicators and an easing of the worst shortages, Sri Lankans have lost buying power due to high taxes and currency devaluation. Unemployment remains high, as industries that collapsed at the height of the crisis have not yet come back.
Central Asia
Kazakhstan on a stable growth path with potential pitfalls ahead – report (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [3/21/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
Kazakhstan is expected to remain on a stable growth trajectory for the next two years, driven by continued carbon use and increased consumer spending, according to World Bank projections. At the same time, the bank suggests a new reform approach is needed to improve prosperity.

The bank outlined Kazakhstan’s prospects in a recently published report, titled Preparing for Tomorrow: Reform for Long-Term Prosperity. As Kazakhstan continues to adapt to the shock created by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, growth is expected to moderate to 3.4 percent in 2024, due to lower-than-expected oil production/revenue. Real GDP is projected to pick up in 2025, reaching 4.5-5 percent.

An elevated inflation rate is expected to moderate yet remain above the central bank’s target this year and into next, the report states. Inflation pressures began to decline in late 2023 following monetary policy tightening, registering a 9.8 percent rate in December. WB analysts believe the National Bank of Kazakhstan’s (NBK) inflation-rate target of 5 percent is achievable in 2025 if there is no premature easing of monetary policy, and if fiscal consolidation plans are fully implemented. Continued efforts to phase out market-distorting subsidized interest rates will improve the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission, the report adds.

The state budget plan for 2024-2026 aims at fiscal consolidation. Economic stimulus measures, largely focused on social security programs, resulted in a consolidated budget deficit of 1.8 percent of GDP in 2023. The government wants to trim this deficit over the medium term, while maintaining adequate financial reserves, according to the report.

Increased demand for imports and lower export earnings due to falling oil prices led to a current account deficit of about 3.3 percent of GDP in 2023. The current account deficit is projected to remain in the same range – at 3.0 percent of GDP this year and 2.3 percent of GDP in 2025.

The banking system is a bright spot, demonstrating resilience to external shocks, in particular the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In November 2023, the non-performing loan ratio was 3.2 percent. Banks have maintained uninterrupted funding and high levels of liquid assets in excess of regulatory requirements, the report states.

Between 2018 and 2022, average GDP per capita growth was 1 percent, well below the average of 3.3 percent for upper-middle-income countries. To improve the quality of life and increase the incomes of citizens in a global context striving for decarbonization, a reassessment of reform priorities is necessary, the report urged.

Looking ahead, the WB report says Kazakhstan’s growth prospects face several of downside risks. Disruption in the Black Sea region caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may continue to hinder Kazakh oil exports, a major revenue driver for the state budget. Any large-scale unscheduled oil field maintenance and unexpected delays in the development of the Tengiz field could lead to reduced production and slower economic growth, the report cautions. Unforeseen external pressures and fluctuations in the tenge exchange rate could spur inflation. And given Kazakhstan’s economic ties with Russia, the risk of secondary sanctions remains a concern.
Kyrgyzstan takes page from Russia in pushing ‘foreign agents’ law (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [3/22/2024 4:48 AM, Paul Bartlett, 293K, Neutral]
Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov faces a high-stakes decision on whether to sign new legislation that critics warn will significantly impair how human rights defenders and independent media, among others, can work in his mountainous Central Asian state.

On March 14, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a "foreign agents" bill that mirrors legislation adopted in Russia over a decade ago. The law is designed to control the activities of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations that receive funding from abroad by compelling them to register as "foreign representatives," leading to closer scrutiny of their activities by the authorities.

Japarov has a month from that date to sign it into law.

Many observers have been vocal in their opposition and are urging the president to veto the bill. Syinat Sultanalieva, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Nikkei Asia that this law "would see the further and sharper shrinking of civil society," a sector that has been under attack in Kyrgyzstan for more than a decade.

"Many of the organizations vital to Kyrgyzstan’s political pluralism, democracy and human rights development will shut down, while the more service provision-oriented organizations may need to scale down the scope of their operations," she said.

In February, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote to Japarov to raise concerns that the law would impact programs on health care and education funded by the U.S government and international partners, to the detriment of Kyrgyz citizens. "We are concerned that this legislation will reduce international support for programs that support your economic, health and clean energy priorities," Blinken said, according to a report on the letter on the 24.kg news website.

The International Federation for Human Rights, a body representing rights groups, in conjunction with the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, warned on Tuesday, "If ultimately signed by the president, this law, which clearly mirrors the notorious Russian ‘foreign agent’ law, will significantly restrict freedom of association in Kyrgyzstan and stigmatize nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign funding."

The Russian law, imposed in 2012, performs essentially the same function. Human Rights Watch has called it a "key tool in the Kremlin’s civil society crackdown" and said that "every few years, amendments have harshened this toxic law, extending it to mass media, unregistered organizations, and individuals; expanding the triggers for designating a group or person a ‘foreign agent;’ toughening the inspection regime; and introducing new labeling requirements."

The Krygyz government maintains that its law is needed to protect state security as foreign-funded NGOs could work in the interests of the funder nation rather than the state. Sultanalieva disputes this. "It is apparent that the actual aim of the draft law is to silence the government’s critics, both within the NGO sector and the independent media, which are often registered as public foundations and, as such, would fall under the draft law’s jurisdiction," she said.

"The effort to silence has already started working as many NGOs are planning to shut down if the draft law is signed into law by the president in the next few weeks," she warned.

In a sign that Kyrgyzstan was taking some of the criticism on board, the bill that passed through parliament saw the removal of a clause that proposed prison terms for NGOs that authorities might decide were fomenting civil unrest.

Since coming to power in 2020 on the back of a revolution -- the third in Kyrgyzstan following independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 -- Japarov and his hardliner sidekick, security service chief Kamchybek Tashiev, have taken the country down an increasingly authoritarian path. Kyrgyzstan has slid down international rankings on civil liberty and press freedom.

Civil society has been in the crosshairs. In October 2022, 27 activists, including former MPs and ambassadors, were arrested after being accused of preparing for riots after they set up a committee to oppose a border settlement with Uzbekistan. Ten of the activists remain behind bars, with no trial date set yet for the accused.

In a separate case, lawmaker Adakhan Madumarov, leader of the opposition United Kyrgyzstan party, was arrested last September and remains in detention on charges of treason and fraud.

Independent media has also come under attack. Temirov Live, a site known for its uncompromising investigative reporting, had 11 of its staff members arrested in January for allegedly seeking to stoke unrest. In a separate case, the 24.kg news outlet was also targeted.

The U.S. Congress-funded RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz radio service has faced restrictions on its work in recent years. Kloop, a feisty investigative outlet, saw its Kyrgyz operations blocked last year, although on Monday it was reported that an administrative court had overturned this decision, lifting the block on Kloop’s Russian-language site.

While the passage of the foreign agents bill was taken by many as bad news, it was not all doom and gloom in Kyrgyzstan last week, as the president asked parliament to withdraw a controversial new media law that could lead to increased government control of the sector.

The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed the move. "Alongside Kyrgyzstan’s ongoing media crackdown, jailing of journalists, and Russian-inspired ‘foreign agents’ bill, the vague and repressive mass media bill could have been the nail in the coffin for Kyrgyzstan as a regional beacon for the free press. It is only right that it be retracted," it stated on its website.

But the media law might not be needed to stifle the sector, as the new law on foreign representatives will affect independent media organizations that rely on overseas funding.

Sultanalieva, the human rights researcher, said that this could force many independent outlets to cease operations, leaving the space occupied solely by government-friendly media, an outcome she feels "would be devastating for the country’s further development and well-being."

"Open and free discussion are one of the cornerstones of a vibrant and healthy society, which is what the government of Kyrgyzstan fails to understand," she concluded.
UNESCO says Uzbekistan broke promises over Bukhara development (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [3/21/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, Negative]
UNESCO says that Uzbekistan’s government has broken its promise to refrain from doing demolition and building work near historic zones in the city of Bukhara pending joint agreement on a master plan.

In an emailed response to queries from Eurasianet, a spokesperson for the United Nations agency, part of whose mandate focuses on the preservation of internationally important heritage sites, said on March 21 that it has not yet received a master plan to review.

“UNESCO understands that it should be completed by September 2024,” the agency said.

Meanwhile, a draft management plan 2023-2028 for the hallowed historic area was submitted in December and is still under review by ICOMOS, an advisory body to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, the spokesman wrote in the email to Eurasianet.

In flagrant defiance of pledges given by the Uzbek government, construction workers earlier this year began demolishing buildings in the buffer zone abutting the historic section of Bukhara, sparking a furious reaction from heritage activists.

That work is the first step in implementation of Bokiy Bukhoro (Eternal Bukhara), a contentious project devised by the government that will see dozens of buildings torn down across an area of 326,000 square meters. Those vacated sites are to be filled with high-rise hotels designed to accommodate thousands of tourists at a time.

UNESCO told Eurasianet that it sent a letter to the Uzbek government on February 8 to seek clarification on its plans for this project, which will also entail the installation of a would-be ethnological tourism center.

“A reply has not been received yet,” the agency said.

Alerte Héritage, a non-governmental organization dedicated to the protection of Central Asia’s architectural cultural heritage, has been a particularly vocal critic of the Bokiy Bukhoro initiative.

“The only publicized project is catastrophic in every respect and above all in its design,” Alerte Héritage said in a statement on Facebook last month. “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 is in theory protected against hasty development due to its status. It was added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites in 1993 in recognition of a distinctive cityscape that showcases advanced and uniform urban design and architecture dating back to the Sheibanids, a Turko-Mongol dynasty that descended from Genghis Khan and ruled large swathes of Central Asia.

Officials, however, have argued that Bukhara’s infrastructure, much of which is of Soviet vintage, needs improvement to cater to the needs of tourists.

Neither President Shavkat Mirziyoyev nor his daughter, Saida, who often present themselves as advocates for the conservation of the country’s cultural heritage, have made any statements regarding this issue.
Experts See Central Asia Emboldened by Russia’s Struggles in Ukraine (VOA)
VOA [3/21/2024 8:33 PM, Navbahor Imamova, 761K, Neutral]
Two years ago, as Russia invaded Ukraine’s heartland, Central Asian countries feared they would be next to feel the impact of President Vladimir Putin’s revanchist obsession.

But as Russia has struggled on the battlefield and suffered massive losses against a determined Ukrainian foe, experts and current and former policymakers in Washington see a more confident and assertive Central Asia that is striving for unity and enjoying greater bargaining power, including with Russia, China and the United States.

Some longtime observers warn that the region may yet fall prey to the Kremlin’s ambitions. They argue that the West must understand its challenges and help expand its opportunities.

In their view, the best outcome for Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan would be to emerge from the Ukraine-Russia conflict as a more independent and consolidated region.

Russian threat in decline

Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington, advocates for greater political and economic integration in the region. He observes that the region’s governments have been using “China to balance Russia … and America, to balance them.”

In an interview with VOA, Starr noted that Russian chauvinists have even called for the annexation of Central Asia. “It’s as if they’re announcing to the world that whatever happens in Ukraine, we aren’t done.”

He urges the region to recognize that Putin’s savage attack on Ukraine “has demonstrated, above all, Russia’s weakness.”

“This stripped bare the mask that all those fancy parades in Red Square created, and now we realize that Russia’s military is a farce,” he said. “All it has is numbers and brutal leaders who are willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Russian lives for an objective that is unattainable.”

Starr argued that countries in Central Asia should demonstrate to Russia that they live in a big world, “have friends east, west, north and south. Russia can no longer be treated as a single player on a chessboard.”

This sentiment is echoed by many in the region, who note that the things that make Central Asia dependent on Russia, such as energy, trade and labor migration, make Russia dependent on it as well.

Starr also believes younger Central Asians have a broader worldview and don’t care about Russia as much as the older elite, for whom Russia is “a kind of hangover from Soviet times.”

Better Western ties

The Atlantic Council’s John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan and Ukraine, says Central Asians are interested in a closer relationship with the West “because they are pretty good at geopolitics. Their neighborhood demands nothing less.”

"Given [the region’s] adjacency to China and Russia, the West needs to be far more active in Central Asia than it is,” he said in an address to foreign diplomats, U.S. officials and scholars at George Washington University in Washington. “Russia’s revisionist agenda extends to Central Asia.”

According to Herbst, the most important development in the region is that Central Asia has maintained its independence and stability since the breakup of the Soviet Union, despite internal tensions and the threat of terrorism.

“You need to find ways to make our role in Central Asia more inviting,” Herbst said, appealing to the region. “You will have friends here, who will be making the case publicly along with you and privately.”

Sanctions vs. geopolitical interests

Russian scholar Vladislav Inozemtsev, speaking at the same conference, argued that transport corridors bypassing Russia will increase the strategic importance of Central Asia at a time when the West is seeking ways to minimize Moscow’s economic options.

But Inozemtsev warned that Western sanctions on Russia can have a negative spillover effect on its Central Asia neighbors. “Russians will still find ways to evade them,” he said. “This issue disturbs Central Asian governments and prevents much more fruitful cooperation with the Europeans and Americans.”

His suggestion: “Maybe it’s better not to focus on sanctions and, sorry to say, even on the human rights issues, but fostering just geopolitical goals in the region when we are in times of war.”

Diminished Russian threat?

Allan Mustard, Washington’s former ambassador to Turkmenistan, emphasizes the "discreditation" of Russia as a military threat to its neighbors.

“A few years ago, I talked to some friends in Kazakhstan and asked them what the position was of Kazakh people writ large towards Russia as a security guarantor for Central Asia,” he said at the GWU forum.

“And they said, ‘We’ve never viewed Russia as a security guarantor. We have always viewed Russia as a security threat to Central Asia.’ But that threat is diminishing because we can see what even the Ukrainians can do in terms of destroying the Russian military machine,” he said.

The region has a collective capacity to expand trade, Mustard said. He foresees a bolder Central Asia in the near term, especially with the expansion of a Middle Corridor trade route via the Caspian Sea, which would reduce Russia’s leverage over the region.

Jamestown Foundation’s Margarita Assenova agrees, saying “the primary challenge” for Central Asia and its Western partners is to improve connectivity through the region. But she is optimistic about the prospects for greater collaboration among Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has strengthened Central Asia, Assenova said, “accelerating the original integration and seeking greater Western engagement."
Twitter
Afghanistan
Bilal Sarwary
@bsarwary
[3/21/2024 9:31 PM, 252.2K followers, 26 retweets, 68 likes]
Taliban officials in Kandahar report the death toll in the deadly suicide bombing in Kandahar has risen to 21 people with 60 more people wounded and some in critical conditions. The Taliban claims that Afghanistan will remain safe and secure, but their ability to control security in the country remains in question. How would they ensure regional and international security from threats emanating from Kabul when they fail at home? And how would they prevent further attacks? It’s alarming that ISIS-K claimed responsibility for this attack, which highlights the fact that ongoing threat of terrorism in Afghanistan and in the region exists. Taliban were the once perpetrators of insecurity in Afghanistan are now facing the consequences of their own ideology and oppressed rule.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[3/21/2024 4:14 PM, 226.6followers, retweets, likes]
Afghanistan under the Taliban is the only country in the world where attending school is illegal for girls. #LetHerLearn
Pakistan
Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[3/21/2024 8:56 AM, 209.7K followers, 15 retweets, 53 likes]
Pakistan recently carried out cross-border military operations in Afghanistan. This week for @ForeignPolicy, I explain why the situation on the border with Afghanistan won’t quickly fade away-unlike Pakistan’s brief cross-border crisis w/Iran in January. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/20/pakistan-afghanistan-cross-border-strike-ttp-taliban/

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[3/21/2024 2:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 77 retweets, 365 likes]
Most of the reaction to yesterday’s Congressional hearing with Donald Lu focused on the cipher issue and democracy. For me the big story is how it gave us a detailed appraisal of US policy from the top Pakistan-focused official at State, which drives the relationship w/Pakistan:

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[3/21/2024 2:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 4 retweets, 33 likes]
Lu notably identified counterterrorism as a key priority/interest-this is notable given the administration’s priority on reframing the relationship as one focused less on security and more on trade/investment. At issue here could be the difficulties of making the latter happen.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[3/21/2024 2:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 7 retweets, 27 likes]
On that note, Lu identified specific economic reforms the U.S. would like to see, from reducing bureaucracy to making it easier to move capital. My view is that economic cooperation remains a core U.S. goal for the relationship, even if not feasible in the immediate term.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[3/21/2024 2:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 7 retweets, 31 likes]
Lu seemed to affirm (in response to a query) that Pakistan isn’t part of the U.S. Indo Pacific Strategy. No US official had made this claim previously. He says the reason is bureaucratic-the Indopacom/Centcom issue (Pakistan falls under the portfolio of Centcom, not Indopacom).

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[3/21/2024 2:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 7 retweets, 23 likes]
He appeared to say (before being cut off) that no one in Pakistan has proposed to him a Shakil Afridi/Ayesha Siddiqi swap (frankly I don’t think anyone in Pakistan’s government has ever proposed this to the US.)

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[3/21/2024 2:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 6 retweets, 32 likes]
He said that the relationship would be better off if Pakistan doesn’t deepen ties with Iran. I don’t see this happening, even if it pursues the pipeline with Iran-which he unsurprisingly said the U.S. wouldn’t support (doubtful it’d provide a sanctions waiver if Pak asks).

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[3/21/2024 2:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 6 retweets, 33 likes]
He said the US is making clear its concerns at high levels about rights/democracy issues (eg detentions of opposition, social media curbs). But he put the onus on Pakistanis and Pak institutions to deal with these issues, which suggests US pressure will be relatively limited.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[3/21/2024 11:00 AM, 42.5K followers, 24 retweets, 102 likes]
My main reaction to yesterday’s hearing: the State Dept’s hope that the Election Commission of Pakistan in this election cycle will perform its duties in a nonpartisan manner - from all we’ve seen in the months leading up to the election, on election day, & after - is unfounded.

Husain Haqqani
@husainhaqqani
[3/22/2024 3:17 AM, 460.3K followers, 8 retweets, 21 likes]
Evolution of Pakistan’s Afghanistan Policy (2001-2024)
-We do not support the Taliban
-We are hedging against Indian influence by supporting good Taliban
- Taliban have broken shackles of slavery by forcing the U.S. out
- Taliban have become a threat to our security

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[3/21/2024 5:54 AM, 8.4M followers, 460 retweets, 4.1K likes]
Four chief ministers from three political parties with prime minister of Pakistan. Like it or not but this is the beauty of parliamentary democracy. @CMShehbaz @MaryamNSharif @MuradAliShahPPP @AliAminKhanPTI @PakSarfrazbugti
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[3/22/2024 2:18 AM, 96.4M followers, 2.3K retweets, 14K likes]
Thank you for the warm welcome to Bhutan, PM @tsheringtobgay. May India-Bhutan friendship keep scaling new heights.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[3/21/2024 10:24 PM, 96.4M followers, 6.9K retweets, 50K likes]
On the way to Bhutan, where I will be attending various programmes aimed at further cementing the India-Bhutan partnership. I look forward to talks with Majesty the King of Bhutan, His Majesty the Fourth Druk Gyalpo and Prime Minister @tsheringtobgay.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[3/21/2024 10:52 AM, 3.1M followers, 837 retweets, 6.2K likes]
India begins Operation Indravati to evacuate its nationals from Haiti to the Dominican Republic. 12 Indians evacuated today. Fully committed to the security and well-being of our nationals abroad. Thank the Government of the Dominican Republic for their support.
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[3/21/2024 2:23 PM, 637.1K followers, 16 retweets, 39 likes]
As a part of #Bangladesh’s continuous battle against #Dengue fever, the #AwamiLeague govt has unveiled a 7-year plan to prevent and control the spread of this deadly disease with a target to drastically reduce the mortality and infection rate by 2030. https://link.albd.org/7egex

Sidhant Sibal
@sidhant
[3/22/2024 12:57 AM, 268.4K followers, 122 retweets, 1K likes]
PM Modi’s visit to Bhutan saw an exceptional welcome, with crowds lining the entire 45-kilometer route from Paro to Thimphu with Indian, Bhutanese flags. Significant turnout.

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[3/22/2024 12:27 AM, 257K followers, 7 retweets, 13 likes]
DPM/FM Hon @nksthaprakash addressed the inaugural session of the 2-day Lumbini Conclave at Bhairahawa yesterday evening. Non-Resident Ambassadors to Nepal as well as Honorary Consuls are participating in the Conclave, themed ‘Global Peace for Prosperity’. @sewa_lamsal

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_UNP
[3/21/2024 7:12 AM, 317.6K followers, 47 retweets, 243 likes]
We have entered into an MoU with Microsoft, formalising a pilot project that will introduce AI into the school curriculum for students above Grade 8. This project will be initiated in 20 schools across 20 districts, ensuring each selected school is equipped with the necessary technological tools and conducive classrooms. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr @puneetck, President of Microsoft’s India and South Asia region, and other representatives from Microsoft. They assured us of their support, aligning with our educational goals, and made a commitment to provide a dedicated team to support and facilitate online educational activities. The Education Ministry has set 2025 as the target year for full implementation. With this initiative, we plan to prepare our youth for the evolving needs of the job market and the growing importance of AI across various sectors. Our youth will possess the skills to innovate and lead in AI, data science, cybersecurity, and other fields. We will take every measure needed to prepare our students for today’s jobs and future opportunities, improving their career prospects and competitiveness, both locally and globally.

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[3/21/2024 6:05 AM, 357.8K followers, 8 retweets, 43 likes]
#CBSL Accountability to @ParliamentLK established. Gov @CBSL informed COPF today that they accepted ALL recommendations from COPF report on salary revisions. Pres @RW_UNP to appoint a committee ASAP to review salaries, until which salary increases will be deferred from next month

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[3/21/2024 6:22 AM, 357.8K followers, 1 retweet, 9 likes]
2/ We also agreed on a 4-week timeframe for the committee’s report to ensure a swift resolution. I am glad we were able to come to a consensus without an amendment to the @CBSL Act. Thank you to all involved for working towards a positive outcome. #lka #SalaryRevision #Democracy

Karu Jayasuriya
@KaruOnline
[3/22/2024 1:08 AM, 53.4K followers, 2 likes]
The Parliament is the representation of the people’s will. Its members must carry the burden of the mandate they are bestowed on by the people. Respect of the House must be restored, and it is the responsibility of all parliamentarians today.
Central Asia
UNODC Central Asia
@UNODC_ROCA
[3/22/2024 12:47 AM, 2.3K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
Empowering youth to prevent drug use! Over 100 participants joined @UNODC’s event with @mfa_russia support, discussing strategies for Central Asia and beyond. Key focus: early intervention and a youth network for sharing ideas and experiences #DrugPrevention #YouthEmpowerment

Joanna Lillis
@joannalillis
[3/21/2024 8:01 AM, 28.8K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
Lenient sentence for Nazarbayev nephew over Bloody January involvement after secretive closed door trial suggests "the influence of ‘Old #Kazakhstan’ still exists" - @eurasianet reports on the many questions this raises https://eurasianet.org/kazakhstan-light-punishment-for-ex-presidents-nephew-sparks-anger

Joanna Lillis
@joannalillis
[3/21/2024 5:40 AM, 28.8K followers, 10 retweets, 20 likes]
Son of would-be opposition leader Khidirnazar Allakulov gets 4.5 years in prison over fracas with police. http://youtube.com/live/AE8HRMqjz He’s been trying to register a party for years in #Uzbekistan. Background my interview in 2021 with him on @eurasianet https://eurasianet.org/uzbekistan-yes-to-political-thaw-no-to-political-opposition

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[3/21/2024 3:52 PM, 160.6K followers, 5 retweets, 14 likes]
Celebrations for Navruz unfurled grandly at the "Humo Arena" complex, where President Shavkat Mirziyoyev joined the festivities and warmly addressed the nation with good wishes. The festival of Navruz holds a place in the hearts of people from all nationalities and ethnicities. In Uzbekistan, representatives from over 130 ethnic groups coexist in a spirit of peace and unity, each making a valuable contribution to the flourishing of our country. #NavruzFestivities #HumoArenaEvent #PresidentMirziyoyev #CulturalUnity #DiverseUzbekistan #NationalHarmony

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[3/21/2024 6:23 AM, 160.6K followers, 2 retweets, 7 likes]
During a heartwarming visit to "Muruvvat" boarding school No. 1, dedicated to children with disabilities, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev spent time observing and participating in the children’s daily routines. He assured that there will be an unwavering effort to better their living standards, ensure a more comfortable homelike setting, and assist in nurturing the unique abilities of each child to help them thrive.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[3/21/2024 5:48 AM, 160.6K followers, 3 retweets, 19 likes]
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev visited the Dilbulok makhalla of the Yakkasaray district, which specializes in services and production. There are almost 300 trade and service points and industrial facilities where local youth and women work. In addition, the makhalla has a preschool educational institution, a family clinic, a specialized sports school, and a branch of the pedagogical institute.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[3/21/2024 5:54 AM, 160.6K followers, 1 retweet, 8 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev visited the #Tashkent plant for the construction and repair of passenger carriages. The head of state was presented with a new project that entails the production of electric trains and subway trains. Additionally, he was briefed on the planned launch of a high-speed train service between Tashkent and Khiva.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[3/21/2024 4:54 AM, 160.6K followers, 1 retweet, 9 likes]
The President of #Uzbekistan took part in a tree planting initiative at the developing Youth Park in the Sergeli district, joined by Tashkent citizens, officials from state organizations, the diplomatic corps, and the youth. Comprehensive details about the park’s layout were provided to the President. Occupying more than 75 hectares, it will rank as the second largest park in the capital, following the "New Uzbekistan" park.

{End of Report}
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