epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Monday, May 20, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Gunman Kills Three Spanish Tourists in Central Afghanistan (New York Times)
New York Times [5/17/2024 4:14 PM, Yaqoob Akbary and Christina Goldbaum, 831K, Negative]
Three Spanish tourists and one Afghan were killed by a gunman in central Afghanistan on Friday, Taliban officials said, in the first fatal attack on tourists in the country since the Taliban seized power in 2021.

Four other foreigners and three Afghans were also injured in the shooting in Bamiyan Province, a serene stretch of valleys, lakes and ancient relics northwest of the capital, Kabul.

The shooting occurred around 5:30 p.m., when at least one gunman opened fire on the group of tourists as they left a bazaar in the capital of the province, eyewitnesses said. Safiullah Rayed, the director of information for Bamiyan Province, said the dead were Spanish nationals.

Four people have been arrested in connection with the attack, officials said. No group has claimed responsibility.

The government “strongly condemns this accident, expresses its deep feelings to the families of the victims and assures that all the criminals will be found and punished,” Abdul Mateen Qani, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said on X.

The attack comes as Taliban authorities have tried to lure foreign tourists to Afghanistan in the hopes of bolstering the country’s economy and revamping the government’s image on the international stage. Western officials have slammed the Taliban’s restrictions on women and, nearly three years since the Taliban seized power, no country officially recognizes its government.

Last month, Taliban officials opened a government-supported tourism and hospitality institute to build up the country’s tourism infrastructure. They have also tried to assure tourism agencies that the country is safe for foreigners, despite the persistent threat from the Islamic State affiliate in the region, which has carried out sporadic attacks in Afghanistan in recent years and sought to destabilize the government.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Afghanistan was part of the overland so-called “Hippy Trail” across Asia. Foreigners were drawn to the country’s rich natural landscapes, centuries-old mosques and ancient relics. Bamiyan, where the shooting on Friday took place, is home to the remnants of 1,500-year-old giant Buddhas that were carved into the side of a cliff and that the Taliban mostly destroyed in 2001 under their first government. The province also boasts the country’s first national park, Band-e-Amir, a sprawling swath of rugged mountains and deep blue lakes.

Tourism in Afghanistan dwindled after the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the violent decades that followed. But after the U.S.-led war ended in 2021 and relative calm returned to the country, so too did some foreign tourists.

In 2021, nearly 700 foreign tourists visited the country, according to the Taliban’s Tourism Directorate in Kabul. That figure rose to around 2,300 in 2022 and reached around 7,000 last year.

The fatal attack on Friday will likely be a setback to the government’s tourism efforts. “This incident may scare other tourists who want to come to Afghanistan,” said Mohammad Saeed, the head of the Tourism Directorate in Kabul.
3 Spaniards were among 6 people killed when gunmen opened fire in central Afghanistan, officials say (AP)
AP [5/18/2024 9:14 AM, Rahim Faiez, 82990K, Negative]
Three Spanish citizens and three Afghans were killed when gunmen opened fire in central Afghanistan, Taliban and Spanish officials said Saturday.

Officials had earlier said that four people died. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the Friday evening attack.

Seven suspects were arrested at the scene in Bamiyan province, a major tourist area, and an investigation is underway, said Abdul Mateen Qani, a spokesman for the interior minister, on Saturday. He said seven other people were wounded.

Qani did not give the nationality of the foreign citizens, but the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that three Spaniards had died in the attack and that at least one more had been wounded. A Taliban official in Bamiyan who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that the four wounded foreigners were from Spain, Norway, Australia and Latvia.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote on social media platform X that he was “overwhelmed” by the news.

Qani said that all those who were wounded have been transferred to capital Kabul for treatment and they are stable condition.

The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said that it was deeply shocked and appalled by the attack on civilians.

“We express our condolences to the victims of the attack, and are providing assistance following the incident,” UNAMA said on X.

Blame for the attack is likely to fall on the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan, a major Taliban rival. IS militants have carried out scores of attacks on schools, hospitals, mosques and minority Shiite areas throughout the country.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO forces were in the final weeks of their withdrawal from the country after 20 years of war.

In April The Associated Press visited the Taliban-run institute training tourism and hospitality professionals in Kabul.

The Taliban is seeking to increase the number of tourists coming to the country. In 2021, there were 691 foreign tourists; in 2022, that figure rose to 2,300; and last year, it topped 7,000.

Bamiyan is probably best known as the site of two massive Buddha statues that were carved into the cliff face between the 4th and 6th century and which were destroyed by the Taliban at al-Qaida’s urging in early 2001.
Islamic State claims attack in Afghanistan that killed three Spaniards (Reuters)
Reuters [5/19/2024 3:30 PM, Ahmed Tolba, 45791K, Negative]
Islamic State on Sunday claimed responsibility for an attack by gunmen on tourists in Afghanistan’s central Bamiyan province, the group said on its Telegram channel.

Three Spanish tourists were killed and at least one Spaniard was injured in the attack, Spain’s foreign ministry said on Friday.

Taliban interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qaniee four people had been arrested over the attack in which gunmen opened fire. In addition to the three foreign tourists, one Afghan citizen had been killed in the attack. Four foreigners and three Afghans were also injured, he added.

Mountainous Bamiyan is home to a UNESCO world heritage site and the remains of two giant Buddha statues that were blown up by the Taliban during their previous rule in 2001.

Since taking over Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban have pledged to restore security and encourage a small but growing number of tourists trickling back into the country. They have sold tickets to see the site of the destroyed Buddha statues.

Friday’s attack was among the most serious targeting foreign citizens since foreign forces left and the Taliban took over in 2021.

The Islamic State claimed an attack that injured Chinese citizens at a hotel popular with Chinese businessmen in Kabul in 2022.
Heavy rains set off flash floods in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 84 people (AP)
AP [5/18/2024 9:40 AM, Rahim Faiez, 39876K, Negative]
More heavy rains in Afghanistan have triggered flash floods, raising the death toll to 84 in the country’s north following weeks of devastating torrents that had already left hundreds dead and missing, a Taliban spokesman said Sunday.

The new round of heavy rains and floods hit four districts in Faryab province Saturday night, leaving 66 dead, five injured and eight missing. Another 18 people had died in floods on Friday, said Esmatullah Moradi, spokesman for the provincial governor in Faryab.

Moradi said that around 1,500 houses were either completely or partially destroyed while hundreds of hectares (acres) of farmlands were washed away and more than 300 animals killed.

Afghanistan has been witnessing unusually heavy seasonal rains.

In the hard-hit western province of Ghor, 50 people were reported dead from Friday’s floods, according to Abdul Wahid Hamas, spokesman for the provincial governor.

The U.N. food agency said Ghor was the most affected by the floods. Last week, the World Food Program said the exceptionally heavy rains in Afghanistan had killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan.

Survivors have been left with no home, no land, and no source of livelihood, WFP said, adding that most of Baghlan was inaccessible by trucks.

The latest disaster came on the heels of devastating floods that killed at least 70 people in April. The waters also destroyed about 2,000 homes, three mosques and four schools in western Farah and Herat, and southern Zabul and Kandahar provinces.
General says he warned that Afghanistan would get ‘very bad, very fast’ (Washington Post)
Washington Post [5/20/2024 5:00 AM, Dan Lamothe, 6.9M, Neutral]
The top U.S. general in Afghanistan during the American military’s 2021 withdrawal repeatedly warned Washington that security would get “very bad, very fast” after troops departed, but the Biden administration still failed to grasp the danger in keeping its embassy open with only nominal protection, he told lawmakers investigating the war’s deadly endgame.

Retired Gen. Austin Scott Miller said in closed-door testimony last month before the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee that, as his tour was nearing its end in July 2021, he was so troubled by the administration’s “lack of understanding of the risk” that he privately warned a Marine Corps commander charged with planning for a possible evacuation to prepare for “really adverse conditions.”

“I did not foresee a good future for Afghanistan as I was departing,” the general said in his testimony, later adding that he wishes he had done more to ensure his perspective from Kabul was consistently represented as plans took shape in Washington.

The transcript of Miller’s interview, obtained by The Washington Post, provides Biden’s critics fresh political ammunition ahead of the November election as they seek to discredit his foreign policy with the scenes of chaos and despair in Kabul when the Taliban stormed back to power.

Miller, who has shunned the spotlight in Washington since relinquishing command in Afghanistan in July 2021, is among about 20 witnesses to meet with the committee to date. Its chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), is expected to issue a report this summer detailing the investigation’s findings.

Reached by phone, Miller said he had nothing to add to his testimony.

One person familiar with his thinking said that the general met with the committee voluntarily believing he would be subpoenaed if he declined, and that he wanted lawmakers to understand the advice he provided and the challenges he faced as he carried out orders to wind down the nation’s longest war. This person, like some others contacted for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a subject that remains highly sensitive.

Another person said the general was “not enthusiastic” about testifying because he doesn’t want to be used to wage political attacks on any administration.

McCaul said in a statement that Miller’s testimony reveals how the Biden administration’s “hasty Go-to-Zero order” expedited Afghanistan’s fall and the violent tragedy that marred the Pentagon’s race to evacuate as many people as possible.

The administration and its allies on Capitol Hill have criticized McCaul’s investigation, alleging it has glossed over pivotal decisions made by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, including a deal with the Taliban that set a May 2021 deadline for the full military withdrawal but imposed few conditions and left Biden boxed in with no plan to conduct it.

An official with the White House National Security Council defended Biden’s decision-making, saying that ending the war was “the right thing to do” and allowed the United States to focus on other challenges, such as the war in Ukraine that erupted six months later. Biden, the NSC official said, “refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended long ago.”

A U.S. official, addressing Miller’s criticisms, said that as security deteriorated in Kabul, the State Department “pivoted and worked shoulder to shoulder with our military and other government colleagues to conduct the largest airlift in history.”

But while the United States extracted nearly 124,000 people from a single airfield in the Afghan capital, the success of that mission came at enormous cost.

Biden declared an evacuation Aug. 14, one day before the Afghan government collapsed and its leaders fled the country. The panic drove massive crowds to Kabul’s airport, which was overrun by people desperate to escape the incoming authoritarian regime. Crucially, the Afghan security forces trained, supported and financed by the United States over 20 years wilted and dissolved.

A U.S.-led crisis-response force was flown in to restore order, but two weeks of misery followed. A suicide bombing killed 13 American troops and an estimated 170 Afghans. Days later, a botched U.S. drone strike claimed 10 members of an Afghan family, including seven children.

Tens of thousands of Afghans who had worked for the U.S. and Afghan governments were left behind.

Miller, whose command assignment began in September 2018, told lawmakers he saw Afghanistan “as being on fire” as early as March 2020, shortly after the Trump administration agreed to remove all U.S. troops by May 2021. As 2021 progressed and the American military presence steadily shrank, he said, he grew “scared” for his personnel positioned far from Kabul in southern Helmand province.

No U.S. troops were killed in combat after the deal with the Taliban was signed, but Miller characterized the agreement as “a tough one for the Afghans to absorb.” The militants demanded the release of 5,000 prisoners and regularly attacked Afghan forces. He said he worried they would turn their guns on Americans, too, after the May 1 deadline passed. The Biden administration deliberated on its own plan until April, and then said it would have all forces out by September.

Under questioning by Democrats, Miller also highlighted the mission’s challenges while Trump was commander in chief.

In 2018, Miller recalled, he was awakened in the night by a phone call informing him the military had been directed to prepare “to leave in the middle of the night.” Miller said he responded that this was “not feasible.”

“It wasn’t disobeying an order,” Miller said in his testimony. “I just said, ‘I can’t do it. It’s too hard to do.’”

Miller said he heard rumors of other withdrawal orders in 2020, but those were “walked back or rescinded.

When he arrived in Afghanistan, Miller took command of about 15,000 U.S. troops and assessed following a review that he could reduce the number to about 8,600. He significantly boosted airstrikes against the Taliban, he said, to pressure the militants to negotiate.

The Trump administration signed the deal with the Taliban in February 2020, even though senior Afghan officials were excluded from the discussion, Miller noted. Later in the year, Trump ordered additional reductions, first to 4,500 U.S. troops and then to 2,500 days before he departed office.

Miller told the committee he thought a force of 2,500 could be sufficient for an undefined period — but with the caveat that a “surge” of additional troops “down the road” might be necessary. Under questioning from Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, Miller said the security situation was in a “slow bleed” at that point.

Biden has vigorously defended his decision to end the mission in Afghanistan and, in an ABC News interview amid the evacuation, claimed that “no one” among his senior military advisers said to him that the United States should retain a force of 2,500 there. Senior defense officials later contradicted him, telling Congress after the operation that they had recommended a couple thousand personnel stay.

In his testimony, Miller described an unusual amount of interaction, for a field commander, with members of Trump’s Cabinet, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose involvement he called “extensive” and “helpful.”

When the Biden administration took over, it brought a more conventional way of doing business. Miller said he did not hear directly from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, acknowledging that the secretary was not obligated to reach out to the general and that there may have been “sensitivities” within the Defense Department if he had.

Miller said he did consult with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin; Gen. Mark A. Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, who took over as head of U.S. Central Command in 2019. Other State Department officials also made trips to Kabul and met with him as the administration assessed its options, he said.

Miller, asked about his involvement in the Biden administration’s planning, said he routinely sent McKenzie his assessments and “wasn’t shy” about sharing his opinion. But he added he “wasn’t clamoring” to be in additional meetings. He told lawmakers that, in hindsight, he wishes he had been more directly involved in the deliberations.

James Adams, a Pentagon spokesman, said Austin and Milley, as Biden’s top military advisers, attended those planning sessions. Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, sought out Miller for information separately, said another official familiar with the process.

Miller said the plan in early 2021 had him leaving with the last U.S. forces from Bagram air base, a major installation north of Kabul. But as the crisis grew and the Biden administration sought to continue evacuating U.S. citizens and at-risk Afghans, the plan changed. Bagram was vacated in early July, and a force of about 700 troops was kept in Kabul split between the airport and the embassy.

Brian McKeon, a former deputy secretary of state who oversaw aspects of the withdrawal, said in an interview with The Post that the State Department has maintained embassies in several other dangerous countries. Diplomatic officials, he said, believed that keeping the facility open would help facilitate the departure of more people.

Miller, like other senior military officers involved, told the committee he thought the Biden administration should have declared a U.S. evacuation sooner but that “I understand the quandary.”

“If you start pulling people out,” he asked, “do you precipitate the crisis?”
Three years after the US exit, Afghanistan still needs our help (The Hill – opinion)
The Hill [5/18/2024 9:00 AM, Noor Scavotto and Rodney Knight, 18067K, Neutral]
Numerous other crises in the world are overshadowing the one in Afghanistan. Yet forgetting that country may turn out to be malpractice by policymakers.

As we approach World Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Day (June 20), it is important to keep Afghanistan in mind as an example of the political constraints under which migration operates today, and the widespread ramifications of migration crises.

Migration is never just about migration. There are political, governance, economic and environmental consequences that can rarely be contained within borders. The effects can be regionally destabilizing.

As one policy recommendation for Afghanistan’s continuing crisis, we are proposing that the U.S. shift more of its aid to development rather than humanitarian assistance, through both bilateral and international agencies. For our purposes, development aid promotes economic development and welfare, whereas humanitarian aid provides material assistance used to relieve suffering during emergency situations. The difference may appear slight, but it is significant. By providing more resources for development aid rather than humanitarian assistance, the international community, led by the U.S., can help Afghanistan achieve longer-term stability, becoming less prone to shocks such as the extremist activities of the sort that led to 9/11, as well as natural disasters, such as earthquakes and drought.

This may be a difficult or unpopular view for Americans, who saw hundreds of billions of their dollars spent in Afghanistan over the course of 20 years, not to mention the enormous military and civilian casualties suffered. But that doesn’t mean Washington can ignore this geopolitical hotspot. There is some historical precedent for this: the U.S. took its eye off the Afghan ball in 1989, after it had achieved its Cold War aim of ousting the USSR from the country. Destabilization and turmoil ensued, with disastrous consequences a dozen years later.

Earthquakes happen frequently in Afghanistan, with 23 in the last 20 years, all of which registered as 4.6 magnitude or higher on the Richter scale. However, on Oct. 7, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck western Afghanistan, levelling homes and killing almost 2,500 individuals. The earthquake resulted in thousands of Afghans migrating from their damaged or destroyed homes to locations with better conditions.

Unlike other countries, where those affected by a natural disaster migrate both internally and internationally, most Afghans could only move internally, due to the extreme policies of the Afghan government and its neighbors regarding movement of the Afghan people to other countries.

In addition to with these limitations, Afghans face an international community that has placed severe constraints on assistance to Afghanistan. The U.S. provides humanitarian assistance through international organizations like the UN and non-profits, but it restricts the use of money for reconstruction and other development efforts.

Without sufficient resources for reconstruction, Afghans refugees are left in limbo living in locations away from their homes, with little hope of return. Prior to the earthquake, Afghanistan already had the second-largest internally displaced population in the world with over 6 million living in internal displacement at the end of 2022, due to conflict and natural disasters, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. The earthquake highlights the extreme conditions and constraints Afghans face politically and economically.

Long-term displacement and poverty internal to Afghanistan is no recipe for peace and stability in that country or in the region. Making matters worse, the earthquake has affected a part of the country key to the Afghan economy. The epicenter, near the city of Herat, is known for its pistachio and opioid production and has historically drawn migrant Afghans rather than produce refugees. The earthquake changed this.

Necessities such as food, shelter, and medicine have become hard to obtain hard to obtain. Afghans are sleeping outdoors, including right outside of mosques, in order to ensure their survival through the night. Mosques, not the government, often serve as the key source of local support for those affected by the earthquake.

Resource scarcity now has thousands from the affected region walking hundreds of miles south to take advantage of the opioid economy and opportunities that are there. If they were to follow other natural disaster migration trends, these individuals, if they had sufficient resources and ability, would continue on to other nations.

Pakistan and nearby former Soviet bloc nations would be target destinations for many, largely due to their proximity as well as cultural and ethnic ties. But this will not be a viable migration route for most Afghans for two reasons. The first is the Taliban regime, which has recently called for an end of Afghan emigration as an unsustainable brain drain burdening the nation. The Taliban hope to establish their legitimacy as a government, but cannot do so if everyone with skills and knowledge leaves. At this time, the Taliban emigration policy states that “only Afghan citizens with valid legal documents can enter the airport” for immigration purposes.

The second obstacle is the Pakistani government, which has cracked down on immigration and expelled 330,000 Afghans since November. This is setting a potential precedent for neighboring nations that would, historically, take in Afghan refugees and migrants. By pushing so many Afghans back into Afghanistan, Pakistan deepens Afghanistan’s existing problems, thereby pressuring Afghanistan to deal with the issue that Pakistan has raised of Afghanistan being a staging area for terrorist attacks on Pakistan.

Consequently, Afghans are trapped in a country unable to adequately respond to this crisis and denied the option to migrate internationally to seek better circumstances. Development aid is one tool the U.S. could employ. It is proactive — in comparison to humanitarian aid’s reactivity — which allows for key issues to be addressed at their source, such as lack of stable infrastructure. Not only would it generate more jobs and stability for Afghans, but also create less urgency when humanitarian aid is needed.

Other actors are stepping in. AidData’s Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset reports that from 2000 to 2021, China has provided $587 million in assistance to Afghanistan for food aid and disaster relief. While this number pales in comparison to other funding China has provided to developing countries, it is concerning from a US strategic perspective, for Afghanistan has pledged to join the Belt and Road Initiative, which promises an exponential increase in Chinese financial flows to Afghanistan in the future.

If the U.S. and the rest of the international community want to help the people of Afghanistan and compete with Chinese ambitions, then investing in the country’s foundation is crucial. It would result in less need for humanitarian assistance in the long run, especially with the country’s high frequency of high-magnitude earthquakes. It would also make Afghanistan more stable and consequently less likely to serve as a breeding ground for extremist activities. If we fail to provide this form of aid, and do so quickly, we may be ignoring Afghanistan’s calls for help at our own peril.
Pakistan
Are Those Mimes Spying on Us? In Pakistan, It’s Not a Strange Question. (New York Times)
New York Times [5/19/2024 4:14 PM, Christina Goldbaum, 831K, Neutral]
The street performers first appeared a few years ago along busy intersections of Islamabad. Coated head to toe in eye-catching gold paint, they stood perfectly still, leaning on glimmering canes and tipping their top hats open. Some cracked a smile or offered a slow nod when they earned tips from passers-by.

Perhaps in a different place, the emergence of mimes on the street looking to earn a few dollars might go unnoticed. But this is Pakistan, where things under the security state often are not as simple as they seem. So as the number of golden performers grew, so, too, did the intrigue around them. Could they be informants for the country’s intelligence agency? Lookouts for powerful politicians? Maybe spies for the C.I.A.?

“In any other country, if you see a beggar, it’s clear he’s a beggar,” said Habib Kareem, 26, a lawyer in Islamabad, the capital. “But here, you see a beggar and you think to yourself, ‘He’s working for them,’” he added, referring to Pakistan’s powerful intelligence services.

Today, the “golden men” of Islamabad have been added to the ranks of the conspiracy theories sprouted, knocked down and rehashed every day across the city. In Pakistan, where the hand of the security services is seen everywhere, conspiracy theories have been embraced in the mainstream for decades, driving conversations among street vendors, politicians and everyone in between.

Suspicion has become so universal that wild tales take root after almost every news event. In the wake of catastrophic floods in 2010, people asserted that they had been caused by C.I.A. weather-controlling technology. Media pundits claimed that an American “think tank” was behind a failed car bombing by a Pakistani American in Times Square that year, and that Osama bin Laden was actually Jewish.

Others were convinced that the C.I.A. staged the assassination attempt on Malala Yousafzai, the girls’ education activist, in 2012 after a local newspaper ran a satirical “investigation” describing the plot with outlandish details. (A disclaimer was later added to the article, which was meant to poke fun at the country’s love of conspiracy theories, to clarify that it was fiction.)

Some trace Pakistan’s embrace of conspiratorial thinking back to the Mughal emperors of the 16th and 17th centuries, whose reigns consolidated Islam in South Asia and were full of palace intrigue. In more recent decades, fantastical notions have sprung from the mythology that has built up around the Pakistani military and the main intelligence service, the seemingly all-seeing forces guiding the country’s politics from behind the scenes.

In such a climate, everyone — even street performers — can be seen as potential tools of the state.

“Some of those guys are definitely from the agencies,” said Aqsa Batool, 24, who was sitting at an outdoor cafe with her friend Shiza Kajol, 23, on a chilly spring evening in Islamabad. They leaned back from a red plastic table while cradling cups of sweet, milky tea.

Spend enough time in the city, they explained, and you develop a trained eye to spot informants working for the primary spy service, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., and other intelligence agencies.

They have certain tells: They all wear casual shirts and pants but have on dress shoes. The cuffs of their shirts are always buttoned. Their clothes are stiff, as if properly pressed. They often hold phones to their ears but do not actually talk into them.

“Did you see the man who was just here?” Ms. Batool said, by way of explanation. She was referring to a man who had approached a table where I was sitting with friends a few minutes earlier. The man held a coat draped over his head and mumbled about spare change before sitting on a curb nearby.

“Yeah, yeah, that guy! He was in a very different get-up,” Ms. Kajol said.

“And he went right to your table because you’re a foreigner,” added Ms. Batool. Both agreed: He was most definitely I.S.I.

As for the golden men, the two young women were wary of them but less certain. On the one hand, the street performers could not really eavesdrop while standing at a busy intersection, they mused. On the other hand, they could keep tabs on the cars passing through.

“I’d have to see them doing something obvious, like taking pictures of the cars on their phones, to be sure,” Ms. Batool said.

As with many conspiracy theories, the suspicions came from kernels of truth.

Pakistan’s security services not so subtly hint at their vast powers to keep politicians and others in check.

Political scandals erupt from voice recordings or videos captured presumably from bugs inside people’s homes and then mysteriously leaked. Intelligence agents occasionally tail people of interest, sometimes overtly (and occasionally even offer a friendly hello from their cars). Ride-share drivers sometimes admit to being paid by the intelligence services.

People so widely assume they are being surveilled that they speak in code, referring to the military as the “sacred cow” and the I.S.I. as “our friends” in case intelligence agents are listening in.

“There’s been a meta narrative that our intelligence agency is the best in the world, it’s everywhere, it’s always watching whether you are in your house or outside, there are eyes watching you,” Mr. Kareem, the lawyer, explained. “It’s been intentionally constructed by the state itself.”

For most of Pakistan’s 76-year history, the surveillance was a routine — if slightly resented — facet of daily life. But in recent years, frustration with the military’s role in politics has exploded, making its ever-present eyes and ears less tolerable for many people.

“With the political atmosphere being so polarized, we’re becoming more suspicious of being watched or who is listening,” said Ali Abas, 25, who was sitting outside a tea stall late one afternoon with his friend Amal, 26.

“It’s getting worse nowadays,” Amal said, referring to the surveillance. Amal, who preferred to go by his first name for fear of retribution, took a slow drag of his cigarette, fiddling with a pack in his other hand.

“People are getting more frustrated with it all,” Mr. Abas chimed in. “There’s a sense of: Are we safe in our house? Is there someone watching us right now? Is there someone roaming on our street to watch us? It’s too much.”

On the other side of Islamabad, Mustaq Ahmed, 53, stood on a grassy median of a busy intersection. His jean jacket, canvas pants, walking cane and top hat were all spray-painted gold. Gold makeup was caked onto his face and hands and smudged onto his bright green, blue and purple sunglasses.

Mr. Ahmed calls himself the Golden Thakur of Islamabad, a nod to a famous Pakistani actor and comedian known as Iftikhar Thakur whom he — slightly — resembles. Each golden man has a different repertoire of poses, each with its own name, he explained. His favorite was to extend his left heel and cane in a precarious lean — what he refers to as “London style.”

Mr. Ahmed once sold umbrellas on the side of the road, but became the Golden Thakur three years ago after he overheard another golden man saying he made up to 8,000 Pakistani rupees — or nearly $30 — each day. It was more than five times what Mr. Ahmed was taking home.

That cash has dwindled recently as the novelty of the golden men has waned, he said. When asked if he would ever supplement his income with a little side work for the intelligence agencies, he immediately replied: “No, no, no.”

Was there any chance that the other golden men in the city were earning a few extra dollars that way? He paused and shifted his cane between his hands.

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug. “It’s Pakistan.”
Pakistani minister: Islamabad would like Beijing to talk to Kabul on terrorism (VOA)
VOA [5/19/2024 3:25 PM, Sarah Zaman, 4186K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s minister for planning and development, Ahsan Iqbal, says his country is not opposed to Afghanistan’s inclusion in a Chinese-funded mega-development project, but would like Beijing to persuade Kabul to crack down on terrorist groups operating on its soil against Islamabad.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s new government, which took office in March, is anxious to revive the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC – a roughly $62 billion flagship project that is part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative – which has suffered a slump in recent years due to political, economic, and security problems in Pakistan.

Iqbal recently met officials in China to prepare for Sharif’s upcoming visit aimed at quickening the pace and broadening the scope of CPEC.

Securing CPEC

Threats against Chinese nationals have emerged as a major impediment to CPEC’s progress in recent years. Since 2021, at least 17 Chinese nationals have died in targeted attacks in Pakistan.

In late March, five Chinese workers and their Pakistani driver were killed when a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into their bus. Pakistani authorities identified the attacker as an Afghan national and claimed the attack was planned in Afghanistan.

"I think this is a cause for concern," Iqbal said about the alleged use of Afghan territory for attacks on Chinese citizens in Pakistan.

Speaking exclusively to VOA, Iqbal said his government would like Beijing to use its influence to push Kabul to take action against cross-border terrorists.

"We also hope that China would also persuade Afghanistan because Afghanis [Afghans] also listen to the Chinese government in the region," he said.

The Afghan Taliban deny giving space to terrorists, but research suggests terrorist groups have a presence there.

When asked if Islamabad had formally requested Beijing to push the Afghan Taliban to curb anti-Pakistan terrorist groups, Iqbal referred VOA to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The minister rejected the idea that attacks on Chinese nationals were a failure on Pakistan’s part, where a special military unit as well as local law enforcement are tasked with ensuring their safety.

"When you’re fighting a war against terrorism, terrorists always find a way," Iqbal said, adding that major powers like the United States and Russia were also victims.

Chinese officials are pressing Pakistan publicly to ensure better safety of their workers and to hold those responsible for the killings accountable.

Iqbal said Beijing was right to demand better security for its nationals and that it knows Pakistan is doing more.

"But the Chinese government has said it very clearly that such cowardly incidents will not deter them from pursuing CPEC," he added.

Washington vs. Beijing

Chinese funding, while welcome, comes largely in the form of expensive loans. According to AidData, a research unit based at the College of William and Mary in the U.S. state of Virginia, between 2000 to 2021, Pakistan’s cumulative debt to China stood at $67.2 billion.
Intense Border Clashes Between Taliban, Pakistan Cause Deaths, Destruction (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/17/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Negative]
At least one Taliban border guard and one Pakistani soldier have been killed and several more injured in the latest border clashes between them.

The clashes continued into the early hours of May 17 after they first erupted five days ago. Pakistani and Taliban forces targeted each other in several places along the eastern Afghan provinces of Paktia and Khost, which borders Pakistan’s western Kurram district.

Most of the casualties occurred on May 15 when one Pakistani soldier was killed and six more injured after a Taliban rocket hit their post, according to official sources in the country. The Taliban also acknowledged the death of one of its fighters.

"Intense shooting is spreading a wave of fear among locals,” Imran Ali, a Pashtun tribal leader in Kurram, told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal on May 17.

Sameer Khan, a resident of the Teri Mangal area straddling the border, said that locals are moving to safer regions after mortar shells landed in civilian homes.

Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, a Taliban official in eastern Afghanistan, said they are collecting information on the human and material losses in the fighting.

The clashes erupted on May 13 after Pakistani forces began repairing the barbed-wire fence it first erected in 2017 to demarcate the Durand Line border, which no government in Afghanistan has formally recognized after it was first drawn by the British Empire in India in 1893.

Relations between Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers and Pakistan have been tense since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Islamabad blames the Taliban for sheltering the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TPP), a longtime ideological and organizational ally of the Taliban.

The recent tensions were partly flamed by an alleged Pakistani air strike in the southeastern Paktika Province, reportedly targeted by the Pakistani Taliban.

On May 12, at least seven Pakistani soldiers were killed and two more injured in two separate militant attacks in Pakistan’s North Waziristan district, which borders Paktika.

Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, director of news at the Khorasan Diary, a website tracking militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, says the Taliban blames Islamabad’s border fence for the tensions. At the same time, Pakistani authorities allege that the TTP is exploiting the border to infiltrate Pakistan with the help of the Taliban.

“Unlike previous Afghan regimes led by Karzai and Ghani, which largely relied on verbal criticisms over border issues, the Taliban has resorted to force,” he said, referring to former Afghan presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani.

He said that the clashes have severely disrupted trade between the two countries, wreaking havoc among the Pashtun border communities in the two countries.

“Border tensions not only disrupt trade but also undermine trust,” he said. “This underscores the pressing need for a peaceful resolution to this long-standing dispute.”

But both the Taliban and Islamabad have been silent over the clashes, which experts say might indicate a complete breakdown in their relations.
India
Strangers in Their Own Land: Being Muslim in Modi’s India (New York Times)
New York Times [5/19/2024 4:14 PM, Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar, 831K, Neutral]
It is a lonely feeling to know that your country’s leaders do not want you. To be vilified because you are a Muslim in what is now a largely Hindu-first India.

It colors everything. Friends, dear for decades, change. Neighbors hold back from neighborly gestures — no longer joining in celebrations, or knocking to inquire in moments of pain.

“It is a lifeless life,” said Ziya Us Salam, a writer who lives on the outskirts of Delhi with his wife, Uzma Ausaf, and their four daughters.

When he was a film critic for one of India’s main newspapers, Mr. Salam, 53, filled his time with cinema, art, music. Workdays ended with riding on the back of an older friend’s motorcycle to a favorite food stall for long chats. His wife, a fellow journalist, wrote about life, food and fashion.

Now, Mr. Salam’s routine is reduced to office and home, his thoughts occupied by heavier concerns. The constant ethnic profiling because he is “visibly Muslim” — by the bank teller, by the parking lot attendant, by fellow passengers on the train — is wearying, he said. Family conversations are darker, with both parents focused on raising their daughters in a country that increasingly questions or even tries to erase the markers of Muslims’ identity — how they dress, what they eat, even their Indianness altogether.

One of the daughters, an impressive student-athlete, struggled so much that she needed counseling and missed months of school. The family often debates whether to stay in their mixed Hindu-Muslim neighborhood in Noida, just outside Delhi. Mariam, their oldest daughter, who is a graduate student, leans toward compromise, anything to make life bearable. She wants to move.

Anywhere but a Muslim area might be difficult. Real estate agents often ask outright if families are Muslim; landlords are reluctant to rent to them.

“I have started taking it in stride,” Mariam said.

“I refuse to,” Mr. Salam shot back. He is old enough to remember when coexistence was largely the norm in an enormously diverse India, and he does not want to add to the country’s increasing segregation.

But he is also pragmatic. He wishes Mariam would move abroad, at least while the country is like this.

Mr. Salam clings to the hope that India is in a passing phase.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, is playing a long game.

His rise to national power in 2014, on a promise of rapid development, swept a decades-old Hindu nationalist movement from the margins of Indian politics firmly to the center. He has since chipped away at the secular framework and robust democracy that had long held India together despite its sometimes explosive religious and caste divisions.

Right-wing organizations began using the enormous power around Mr. Modi as a shield to try to reshape Indian society. Their members provoked sectarian clashes as the government looked away, with officials showing up later to raze Muslim homes and round up Muslim men. Emboldened vigilante groups lynched Muslims they accused of smuggling beef (cows are sacred to many Hindus). Top leaders in Mr. Modi’s party openly celebrated Hindus who committed crimes against Muslims.

On large sections of broadcast media, but particularly on social media, bigotry coursed unchecked. WhatsApp groups spread conspiracy theories about Muslim men luring Hindu women for religious conversion, or even about Muslims spitting in restaurant food. While Mr. Modi and his party officials reject claims of discrimination by pointing to welfare programs that cover Indians equally, Mr. Modi himself is now repeating anti-Muslim tropes in the election that ends early next month. He has targeted India’s 200 million Muslims more directly than ever, calling them “infiltrators” and insinuating that they have too many children.

This creeping Islamophobia is now the dominant theme of Mr. Salam’s writings. Cinema and music, life’s pleasures, feel smaller now. In one book, he chronicled the lynchings of Muslim men. In a recent follow-up, he described how India’s Muslims feel “orphaned” in their homeland.

“If I don’t pick up issues of import, and limit my energies to cinema and literature, then I won’t be able to look at myself in the mirror,” he said. “What would I tell my kids tomorrow — when my grandchildren ask me what were you doing when there was an existential crisis?”

As a child, Mr. Salam lived on a mixed street of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in Delhi. When the afternoon sun would grow hot, the children would move their games under the trees in the yard of a Hindu temple. The priest would come with water for all.

“I was like any other kid for him,” Mr. Salam recalled.

Those memories are one reason Mr. Salam maintains a stubborn optimism that India can restore its secular fabric. Another is that Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalism, while sweeping large parts of the country, has been resisted by several states in the country’s more prosperous south.

Family conversations among Muslims there are very different: about college degrees, job promotions, life plans — the usual aspirations.

In the state of Tamil Nadu, often-bickering political parties are united in protecting secularism and in focusing on economic well-being. Its chief minister, M.K. Stalin, is a declared atheist.

Jan Mohammed, who lives with his family of five in Chennai, the state capital, said neighbors joined in each other’s religious celebrations. In rural areas, there is a tradition: When one community finishes building a place of worship, villagers of other faiths arrive with gifts of fruits, vegetables and flowers and stay for a meal.

“More than accommodation, there is understanding,” Mr. Mohammed said.

His family is full of overachievers — the norm in their educated state. Mr. Mohammed, with a master’s degree, is in the construction business. His wife, Rukhsana, who has an economics degree, started an online clothing business after the children grew up. One daughter, Maimoona Bushra, has two master’s degrees and now teaches at a local college as she prepares for her wedding. The youngest, Hafsa Lubna, has a master’s in commerce and within two years went from an intern at a local company to a manager of 20.

Two of the daughters had planned to continue on to Ph.D’s. The only worry was that potential grooms would be intimidated.

“The proposals go down,” Ms. Rukhsana joked.

A thousand miles north, in Delhi, Mr. Salam’s family lives in what feels like another country. A place where prejudice has become so routine that even a friendship of 26 years can be sundered as a result.

Mr. Salam had nicknamed a former editor “human mountain” for his large stature. When they rode on the editor’s motorcycle after work in the Delhi winter, he shielded Mr. Salam from the wind.

They were together often; when his friend got his driver’s license, Mr. Salam was there with him.

“I would go to my prayer every day, and he would go to the temple every day,” Mr. Salam said. “And I used to respect him for that.”

A few years ago, things began to change. The WhatsApp messages came first.

The editor started forwarding to Mr. Salam some staples of anti-Muslim misinformation: for example, that Muslims will rule India in 20 years because their women give birth every year and their men are allowed four wives.

“Initially, I said, ‘Why do you want to get into all this?’ I thought he was just an old man who was getting all these and forwarding,” Mr. Salam said. “I give him the benefit of doubt.”

The breaking point came two years ago, when Yogi Adityanath, a Modi protégé, was re-elected as the leader of Uttar Pradesh, the populous state adjoining Delhi where the Salam family lives. Mr. Adityanath, more overtly belligerent than Mr. Modi toward Muslims, governs in the saffron robe of a Hindu monk, frequently greeting large crowds of Hindu pilgrims with flowers, while cracking down on public displays of Muslim faith.

On the day of the vote counting, the friend kept calling Mr. Salam, rejoicing at Mr. Adityanath’s lead. Just days earlier, the friend had been complaining about rising unemployment and his son’s struggle to find a job during Mr. Adityanath’s first term.

“I said, ‘You have been so happy since morning, what do you gain?’” he recalled asking the friend.

“Yogi ended namaz,” the friend responded, referring to Muslim prayer on Fridays that often spills into the streets.

“That was the day I said goodbye,” Mr. Salam said, “and he hasn’t come back into my life after that.”
As India votes, a streetwise pol proves pragmatism often trumps ideology (Washington Post)
Washington Post [5/20/2024 1:00 AM, Gerry Shih and Anant Gupta, 6.9M, Neutral]
For decades, Tapas Roy’s influence has permeated his local district like the summer heat in West Bengal. He has found jobs for the unemployed. He has managed a college scholarship for the poor. He has provided stipends for widows.

In March, the longtime local politician quit his centrist, secular Trinamool Congress party and accepted the right-wing, Hindu nationalist BJP’s offer to run for Parliament in the national elections currently underway. In America, it would be difficult to imagine Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis running for president as a Democrat after failing to secure the 2024 Republican nomination. But in northern Kolkata, longtime Trinamool voters have shrugged at Roy’s leap across the aisle, saying they’ll support Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, too.

In India, the political elite can easily switch parties, and entire blocs of voters, known as “vote banks,” will often follow. In a country where ordinary citizens turn to community political bosses or their caste leaders to provide jobs, food, business permits, cash handouts and guidance on how to vote, allegiances are influenced by pragmatism, personal loyalties — even bribes — as much as they are by deeply held convictions.

That peculiar truth helps explain how Modi has stitched together his support base and what motivates India’s nearly 970 million eligible voters, who are often as practical as they are ideological.

To fire up his base in the Hindi-speaking heartland and among the upper castes who traditionally embrace Hindu nationalist ideology, Modi has stoked Hindu pride and deployed divisive rhetoric, condemning Indian Muslims as “infiltrators” who bear many children. To woo poor voters, he has offered the hard currency of government assistance, promising to build tens of millions of free brick homes and give grain to 800 million voters. And to make inroads in opposition strongholds, like Kolkata in West Bengal state, the BJP has simply cajoled or pressured local leaders like Roy into joining their ranks, hoping to also peel away their supporters.

Pratima Bag is one of those who have followed Roy into the BJP camp. That’s because he had promised the 30-year-old widow a monthly living stipend of 2000 rupees, or $24, after her husband died of a stroke.

“I will vote for Tapas Roy,” Bag said, standing in her doorway beneath a saffron flag of her newly adopted party. “It only makes sense to stand by someone who stood by us in our time of need.”

Ahead of the election, which began April 19 and lasts until June 1, a parade of politicians made the last-minute jump from opposition parties to Modi’s BJP. Nearly 30 percent of the 444 parliamentary candidates fielded by the BJP are defectors from other parties, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. Opposition parties, struggling with mass defections, have accused the BJP of using bribes and the threat of anticorruption investigations to poach their local leaders.

“We are a vibrant democracy, and we value democracy very much, but we are a poor democracy,” said Zaad Mahmood, a political scientist at Presidency University in Kolkata. “The expectation from a leader is not necessarily ideological. It is to deliver, to help.”

It is then natural, Mahmood said, for an Indian politician and his or her supporters to flip-flop, gravitating to whichever party promises their caste or community more opportunities to run for office, more public sector jobs and more welfare handouts.

But seven decades into India’s democratic journey, the increasingly common sight of politicians switching parties and espousing drastically different views raises questions: What role does ideology play in India’s politics? What do its politicians stand for?

Tathagata Roy, a former state president for the BJP in West Bengal, said the phenomenon pointed to the superficial nature of many Indian parties.

“Apart from the BJP and the communists, the rest of the parties don’t have any ideology,” said Roy, who is not related to the candidate. “They’re bound together by families and personalities. That’s why they’re fragmenting.”

Political realities

In the early years of independent India, the center-left Congress party of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru faced vigorous opposition from communists on his far left and the nationalist predecessors to the BJP on his right. But after Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, became prime minister in 1966, Indian politics lost much of its ideological character, and its battle lines were defined by loyalty — or opposition — to Gandhi herself.

Politicians frequently joined and left the Congress. Party-switching became so rampant that state governments often collapsed. Indian leaders passed anti-defection laws in the 1980s, believing that as Indian democracy matured and its parties’ positions grew sharply defined, the practice would fade away, said Neelanjan Sircar, a political scientist at the Delhi-based Center for Policy Research. But the laws never became effective deterrents.

In the 1980s, the fledgling BJP distinguished itself by the sheer fervor of its cadres, who were motivated by the dream of remolding India into a Hindu religious state, and its hard-working volunteers were often rewarded with a chance to run for office. Today, the BJP may also be drifting away from its traditions in pursuit of electoral wins, Tathagata Roy said.

“A party that functions on the basis of an ideology ought to be careful about absorbing people who are lukewarm to its ideology,” Roy said. “By my moral standards, switching parties should not be encouraged. But there are ideals, and then there are political realities.”

Even in Kolkata, a city enthralled for decades by leftist politics, Tapas Roy’s supporters described the voters of their Kolkata North district, a grid of stately boulevards and busy alleys, as mostly driven by pragmatism. Here, his backers argued, Bengali-speaking voters will choose the BJP not because of God or nation or Modi but because of Roy’s record. As he rose, serving in his local ward and then the state assembly, he organized street fairs, got coveted jobs at Indian Railways for 200 people, and helped renovate a hospital.

In a cramped courtyard, Bag, the widow, said she didn’t care about Roy’s party-hopping or what the various parties stood for. She only worried about paying her $12-a-month rent and feeding her two children.

“I’m not interested in secular versus Hindu parties,” Bag said. “There’s no point in thinking too far ahead.”

Overnight makeover

One day in April, Roy sat in his air-conditioned home office, seeming irritated as he batted away familiar questions from yet another visiting reporter.

No, Roy answered, he had not been pressured to defect. “The BJP leadership got in touch with me and said, ‘Your service is required by society,’” he said.

And no, Roy said, joining the Hindu nationalist party was not inconsistent with his long-held beliefs. Just that morning, on the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, he had paid his respects at the local mosque. “Look, I am a Hindu,” he said. “But it is still my duty to reach out to any person of any religion.”

Outside, Roy’s supporters also embraced his overnight switch. Roy’s friends from his Trinamool days sipped chai and mingled with young new BJP volunteers who assembled flags. An open-top Jeep that Roy used on the campaign trail sported new cardboard cutouts of Modi — a man Roy had lambasted on television just months earlier.

By dusk, Roy was in the low-slung Kolkata outskirts that comprised the other half of his constituency. Unlike the urban Bengalis who were drawn to Roy, the mostly Hindi-speaking migrants from northern India here were attracted by Hindu nationalism and loyal to the prime minister himself.

After Roy prayed at a small Hindu shrine as prospective voters watched, he climbed into his Jeep and slowly wound his way through the slum, waving to a sea of well-wishers.

Rajesh Singh, 48, watched the caravan pass and dismissed Roy as an opportunist. But the shopkeeper said he was less bothered by Roy’s past and more worried about the BJP losing and India turning into a country where Muslim criminals would run amok.

“I will vote for the BJP even if it declared a rock as its candidate from this constituency,” Singh said.
India votes in fifth phase of election including in city where PM opened controversial Hindu temple (AP)
AP [5/20/2024 1:21 AM, Piyush Nagpal and Biswajeet Banerjee, 82990K, Neutral]
Millions of Indians across 49 constituencies began casting ballots on Monday as the country’s six-week-long election enters its final stages with voting also being held in northern Ayodhya city, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened a controversial Hindu temple on the site of a razed mosque.

Monday’s polling in the fifth round of multi-phase national elections across six states and two union territories is crucial for Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party as it includes some of its strongholds in states like Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The polls in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya are seen as a litmus test for Modi’s Hindu-first politics, as he has hailed the opening of the Hindu temple as his government’s crowning achievement.

The staggered election will run until June 1 and nearly 970 million eligible voters, more than 10% of the world’s population, will elect 543 members to the lower house of Parliament for five years. The votes are scheduled to be counted on June 4.

Modi this year opened the controversial Hindu temple built on the grounds of a centuries-old mosque razed by Hindu mobs in 1992. The temple was built at an estimated cost of $217 million and its opening was seen as a political triumph for the populist leader who is seeking to transform the country from a secular democracy into a Hindu state. It also fulfilled a longstanding demand of the majority Hindus.

Modi and his party, who have mixed religion and politics, hope that Hindu sentiment and fervor over the opening of the temple will help catapult the prime minister to a record third successive term. But experts say the issue may not be enough to rally the region’s Hindu majority toward the BJP, particularly at a time when many Indians say they are affected by rising unemployment and inflation.

“Issues like unemployment, inflation, lack of security and the government’s attempts to muzzle dissent are glaring problems that the BJP has no answers to,” said Amarnath Agarwal, a political analyst.

Agarwal said excitement over the Hindu temple may not have translated into a significant political issue for the ruling party and it is “evident from the lack of interest among voters, reflected in a notably low turnout.”

With two more phases of polling left, overall voter turnout has been lower than in previous elections. Some poll experts have suggested that some of Modi’s party core supporters were staying away.

Most polls show Modi and his party leading in the race for seats in the lower house of Parliament over their main challenger, a broad opposition alliance led by the Indian National Congress and powerful regional parties. However, it faces stiff resistance from the opposition, which appears to have tapped into discontent against Modi’s government.

In Ayodhya, where the temperature is expected to touch 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), voters lined up at polling stations early in the morning to cast their ballots.

Sudha Pandey, a teacher, said she isn’t sure whether opening of the temple will benefit Modi’s party but said the Hindu majority is extremely happy because of it.

“Ram Temple is a matter of our faith. Our faith has been emboldened by it,” she said.

Shachindra Sharma, who also votes Monday, said while the temple was a matter of faith for many Hindus like him, he would vote for a party that upholds constitutional values.

“Why should the Ram Temple be a guiding factor for voters? Lord Ram is a matter of faith, while voting is a democratic process to elect a government. Is there any guarantee that a party advocating for the Ram Temple will provide security and lead the country towards progress?” Sharma said.

His wife, Renuka Sharma, disagreed, arguing that the temple remains a crucial deciding factor in polls.

“I will vote for the party that built the Ram Temple because Lord Ram is the biggest issue in this election,” she said.

Modi’s party has repeatedly reiterated the temple’s centrality to the election narrative. He has also increasingly used anti-Muslim rhetoric in his campaign speeches.

Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, in an election rally last week, said the choice between “devotees of Ram” and “anti-Ram forces” is the defining theme of the national election, referring to the opposition parties.

“You should vote for devotees of Ram because they are the people who built Ram Temple for you,” he said.

Modi has also capitalized on the emotive appeal of the temple among Hindus and sometimes falsely accused opposition parties of attempting to overturn the court’s verdict that allowed its construction. On Friday, he claimed that if the opposition comes to power it will raze the temple.

Monday’s polling will also see opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, running for office from Rae Bareli constituency in Uttar Pradesh state.

Gandhi also ran for office from Wayanad in southern India, which has already voted. India allows candidates to contest multiple constituencies but they can represent only one.
Climate change impacts millions in India. But as the country votes, some politicians skirt the issue (AP)
AP [5/19/2024 10:14 PM, Sibi Arasu, 27514K, Negative]
Almost 970 million Indians are voting in general elections amid sweltering heat and unpredictable weather extremes exacerbated by human-caused climate change, leading to loss of livelihood, forced migration and increasingly difficult living conditions for millions across the country.

Voters are looking for politicians who promise relief, stability and resilience to the wide-ranging and damaging effects of a warming climate. In their election manifestos, India’s top political parties, including the governing Bharatiya Janata Party and the main opposition, the Congress party, have made multiple promises to act on climate damage and reduce emissions of planet-heating gases.

But there has been little talk about climate change on the campaign trail.

“Climate change is still not among the headlines during these elections despite its obvious impact on millions of Indian lives,” said Anjal Prakash, author of multiple United Nations climate reports.

The Indian subcontinent — surrounded by ocean on three sides and the Himalayan ranges to its north — is vulnerable to sea level rise, severe storms, heavy floods and melting glaciers. It’s also experienced extreme heat spells and severe drought as global average temperatures climb. A report by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment said India experienced extreme weather on nearly 90% of the days last year.

Here’s a look at how the effects of climate change are influencing voters.

EXTREME HEAT AND LONGER DROUGHTS IN WESTERN AND CENTRAL INDIA

Vaibhav Maske’s millet farm was dry to the bone in early May, even though he dug three borewells 600 feet deep looking for water.

The 25-year-old lives in Marathwada, one of the most acutely affected heat and drought-prone regions in western Maharashtra state, and farmers there say the current summer is the worst major drought in almost a decade. But politicians haven’t been paying attention.

“Politicians are only talking about religion and caste. No one is talking about the environment or farmers issues,” said Maske. “They are saying Prime Minister Modi is giving money to farmers, that’s good. But at the same time, the taxes are so high on everything including our farm equipment, so how can we make ends meet this way?"

Since February 2019, a federal government scheme transfers $70 to around 100 million farmers a year to supplement their income. But Maske said it’s of little use as farm expenses like water, fertilizers and farm gear now cost him up to $180 a month.

Instead, Maske said local and federal governments need to prioritize providing a water source for farming. “They need to dig canals or divert some water from rivers in nearby areas, so we have some steady supply of water. No one has done anything about this,” he said.

STRONGER AND MORE FREQUENT CYCLONES FOR COASTAL REGIONS

India’s eastern coasts have long been prone to cyclones, but the number of intense storms is increasing along the country’s coast. Last year was India’s deadliest cyclone season in recent times, killing 523 people and costing an estimated $2.5 billion in damage.

Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said their studies found that “floods have increased threefold since the 1950s and cyclones have increased by 50% since the 1980s.”

It’s making disasters a political focal point for the regions worst affected by them.

Around 25,000 people in the Ennore neighborhood in Chennai planned to boycott the Indian general elections in part due to lack of government support post Cyclone Michaung, which devastated the eastern coasts of southern India in December 2023.

“Politicians just come asking for votes making promises,” said Subhashini Ravi, a 37-year-old resident of Ennore. “Once elections are over, they just disappear.”

Still, the boycott was called off at the last minute after the regional government said it would address the issues post-election.

Issues related to religion, caste and employment still determine most Indians’ political preferences, but Koll said that at local levels, climate is playing a role when “the entire community is affected.”

Local and federal authorities have managed to adapt partially to increasingly frequent cyclones by evacuating coastal residents in time and drastically reducing loss of life. But as cyclones get more intense, many residents like Ravi are still worried for the future.

UNPREDICTABLE AND INCREASED FLOODING IN ASSAM

Thousands in Assam state are dependent on fishing and selling produce like rice, jute and vegetables from their small farms on floating river islands in the Brahmaputra River, known locally as Chars.

When it floods, residents of Char islands often row in makeshift rafts to dry land, and return once it subsides. But floods are now more devastating and unpredictable because of climate change, locals say, making it harder to stay on the islands.

Residents are wary nothing will change no matter who they vote for.

“All the politicians promise to solve problems related to flooding but after elections are over, no one cares about it,” said Yaad Ali, a 55-year-old farmer in Sandahkhaiti, a village located on a small river island in north eastern India’s Assam state.

Badruddin Ajmal, the leader of the All India United Democratic Front, a regional party in Assam and the main opposition in the state, has repeatedly talked about providing for long term relief from flooding during his campaigns this election.

Leaders of national parties such as the BJP — also in power in Assam state — and the Congress Party have largely ignored the issue during their election campaigning in Assam this year.

Considered one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change according to a 2021 report, Ali said the lack of political will is only making life harder.

MELTING GLACIERS AND INTENSE RAIN IN THE HIMALAYAS

In Shimla city in India’s mountainous Himachal Pradesh state, apple farmer Sanjay Chauhan recalls the deadly rainfall in the region last year that killed 428 people and broke local rainfall records.

“I had not seen anything like this,” Chauhan said. He incurred $5,000 worth of damage to his orchards in the heavy rain, and property damage across the state was estimated at $1.42 billion. “Many issues were raised after the devastation last year but the government and political leaders are only providing temporary relief,” he said.

Rising global temperatures means more water evaporates in the heat which is then dumped as heavy rain. Fast melting glaciers in the region that scientists say could lose 80% of their volume by the end of the century means the Himalayan region and its people are at further risk.

But climate-related concerns like heavy flooding and melting glaciers have not featured in the election campaigns in the state. Most political speeches in Himachal Pradesh have focused on issues related to corruption, price rise and unemployment, regardless of party allegiance.

Meanwhile, Chauhan said, locals are “worried about what the monsoons will bring this year.”

Other regions also suffered heavy losses in terms of lives, property and farmland due to heavy rain — including the neighboring state of Uttarakhand, Delhi and most northern and western Indian states.

“What we need are long term strategies” to combat extreme weather events, Chauhan said.
Tourist couple injured in militant shooting in India’s Kashmir amid elections (Reuters)
Reuters [5/19/2024 1:29 AM, Fayaz Bukhari, 45791K, Negative]
A tourist couple was injured in India’s Kashmir after militants fired on them late on Saturday night, police said, ahead of voting scheduled in the volatile region for India’s ongoing election.

The couple from the Indian city of Jaipur was evacuated to the hospital and the area where the attack took place was cordoned off, Kashmir police said on social media. The condition of the injured tourists is said to be stable, they said.

India is in the middle of a marathon election with the remaining two seats in Kashmir going to polls on May 20 and May 25.

Voters turned out in large numbers for polling in the first seat in Srinagar on May 13, reversing the trend of low vote counts in the first polls since Prime Minister Narendra Modi removed the region’s semi-autonomy in 2019.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is skipping elections in Kashmir for the first time since 1996 saying it will support regional parties instead.

Major parties in Kashmir, the National Conference and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), have focused on restoration of semi-autonomy in their campaigns.

Analysts and opposition parties say the BJP is not contesting elections in Kashmir because it fears the outcome will contradict its narrative of a more peaceful and integrated region since 2019.

In a separate incident, unknown militants shot dead former village headman and BJP party member Ajiaz Ahmad Sheikh in Shopian district on Saturday.

The last major attack on tourists in Kashmir had happened in 2017 when a Hindu pilgrimage bus was targeted, killing eight people.
NSB
Rescuers in Nepal Retrieve the Bodies of an American Climber and Her Guide (New York Times)
New York Times [5/18/2024 4:14 PM, Bhadra Sharma, 831K, Neutral]
Rescuers successfully retrieved the bodies of an American climber and her guide from the slopes of Mount Shishapangma, in the Chinese region of Tibet, more than seven months after they were lost while trying to summit the world’s 14th tallest peak.

The American climber, Anna Gutu, 33, and the guide, Mingmar Sherpa, 27, were buried in the avalanche around Oct. 7, 2023, while racing to make history: Ms. Gutu had hoped to become the first American woman to climb 14 mountains higher than 8,000 meters (26, 247 feet). Mount Shishapangma rises 8,027 meters (26,335 feet) above sea level.

The climbers’ bodies were brought to Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, on Saturday, after being retrieved last week, according to Elite Exped, the expedition company.

A team of nine climbers led by Nirmal Purja, popularly known as Nimsdai, brought back the bodies in a rescue mission that lasted for three days and nights. Of the rescuers involved in the mission, three fell ill; two had to be put on oxygen by the time they reached the beginning of the glacier; and one was sent on another mission, to Mount Everest.

“We were able to climb on Shishapangma and were able to bring them down the mountain and cross the border,” Nimsdai wrote on X. “From there we brought them to Kathmandu and onward to be reunited with their families.”

Nimsdai, who has summited peaks higher than 8,000 meters 45 times — more than anyone else in history — said the retrieval mission was one of the most challenging tasks he had ever undertaken.

Another American woman, Gina Marie Rzucidlo, and her guide, Tenjen Lama, were on Mount Shishapangma at the same time as Ms. Gutu and Mr. Sherpa, trying to best Ms. Gutu to achieve the record. Pushing herself to reach the summit before her competitor, Ms. Rzucidlo and Mr. Lama were caught in a separate avalanche and buried. Both died.

Mr. Lama, a renowned mountain guide working with a Norwegian climber, Kristin Harila, had already set a world record, for having climbed the 14 tallest peaks in 92 days, faster than anyone.

Seven Summit Treks, another expedition company, arranged for Mr. Lama to work with Ms. Rzucidlo.

An effort to bring back the bodies of Ms. Rzucidlo and Mr. Lama this spring was postponed after China denied the rescuers permission to enter Tibet. The two bodies remain on the mountain. Mr. Lama’s former climbing partner, Ms. Harila, had become involved in trying to bring his body back to Nepal.
Nepal’s prime minister wins confidence vote in parliament, his fourth since taking office (AP)
AP [5/20/2024 4:54 AM, Staff, 235K, Neutral]
Nepal’s prime minister will continue leading his shaky governing coalition after winning his fourth vote of confidence in two years on Monday.

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal called the vote in Nepal’s lower house of parliament after a minor party in his coalition broke apart and its members withdrew support from the government. Dahal won the vote with 157 votes, a majority of the 272-member house.

Dahal has struggled to keep his coalition together since becoming prime minister in December 2022 following an inconclusive election. Dahal’s Nepal Communist Party Maoist Center came in third in that election, but was the first party to piece together majority support.

That left him in a precarious position. He has had to switch coalition partners to keep his majority.

The latest challenge is allegations that his Home Minister was involved in financial irregularities involving cooperatives.

Opposition lawmakers are demanding the minister resign and have been protesting for days inside the House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament, shouting slogans and trying to block the vote of confidence on Monday.

Security officers had to block the protesters to make the vote possible.

Dahal briefly told the protesting members it was unfair for them to protest during an important vote while he was doing all he can to work with them.
Dead or alive? Parents of children gone in Sri Lanka’s civil war have spent 15 years seeking answers (AP)
AP [5/18/2024 3:02 PM, Krishan Francis, 27514K, Negative]
For 15 years, Rasalingam Thilakawathi has been trying to find out what happened to her daughter at the end of Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war. Or if she might still be alive.

The last evidence she has is a photo from a newspaper that shows her daughter, who was 19, sitting inside a bus along with others. The photo, according to the newspaper, shows captured Tamil Tiger fighters in the last stages of the war in May 2009.

Now, 15 years after the end of the long battle between Sri Lankan government forces and Tamil Tiger separatists, Thilakawathi searches for answers. Was her daughter among the 100,000 people killed in the 26-year-civil war? Many more people are missing.

“Tell me whether she is dead or alive,” the mother, who lives in Moongilaaru village of Mullaitivu district, asks authorities again and again. “If you shot her tell me that you shot her, I will accept it.”

In the years since the war ended, many of those who lost children or other family members have grown too feeble to actively search for their loved ones. Others have died.

“I don’t want to let go but I can’t walk properly now,” says 74-year-old Soosai Victoria who has been searching for her son who went missing at 21. “I am praying for him to return. I believe that he is there,” Victoria said.

On Saturday, a memorial service marked the 15th anniversary of the war. It took place on the strip of land in Mullivaikal village where the civilians had pitched their tents for the last time before the whole area fell under government forces. Thousands of people were believed to have died here.

The island nation of Sri Lanka has been riven by the conflict between the largely Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the minority Tamils, who are Hindu and Christian. The mistreatment of Tamils sparked a rebellion, with Tamil Tiger fighters eventually creating a de facto independent homeland in the country’s north. The group was crushed in a 2009 government offensive that UN experts say killed tens of thousands of Tamils, many of them civilians.

Both sides were accused of serious human rights violations. The government was accused of deliberately targeting civilians and hospitals and blocking food and medicine for those trapped in the war zone. The Tamil Tigers were accused of conscripting child soldiers, holding civilians as human shields and killing those trying to escape.

Many blame the United Nations for failing to step in to stop the bloodshed.

Farmer Subramaniam Paramanandam recounts how he and a dozen others begged U.N. officials and other international humanitarian groups not to leave the battle zone.

As the Tamil Tigers retreated under a government onslaught, Tamil civilians fled with them into their shrinking territory.

“We heard that the international organizations were packing up to leave,” Paramanandam recalls the exit of the last batch of humanitarian workers. “Hearing this, about 10 or 11 of us ran to their offices. We pleaded with them with clasped hands asking them not to leave.”

Their pleas were not answered, and fighting escalated.

“Our sufferings can’t be put to words and we only had our trust in the U.N. and the international organizations. Nothing happened,” he said.

Severe criticism against the U.N. led then Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to set up an internal review panel to look into its actions during the last phase of the war.

Its 2012 report said the relocation had a severe impact on the delivery of humanitarian assistance and reduced the potential for protecting civilians.

Citing the report Ban said it concluded that the U.N system failed to meet its responsibilities.

“This finding has profound implications for our work across the world, and I am determined that the United Nations draws the appropriate lessons and does its utmost to earn the confidence of the world’s people, especially those caught in conflict who look to the organization for help,” Ban said.

In Vejle, Denmark, people gathered from all over Europe to remember slain Founder of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran. Prabhakaran died in 2009, but in the proceeding years, some have come forward to say Prabhakaran is alive and living abroad, and are collecting money on his behalf. His family is trying to dispel the myth he is alive.

Thilakawathi and other parents of missing children have demonstrated and protested, and said they will continue until they get answers. She has visited state security agencies and government-appointed commissions but hasn’t received any information. She said her daughter was recruited as a child soldier by the Tamil Tigers three years before she went missing. She worked in their computer department, fearing her siblings too will be taken if she left them.

Many parents have refused to accept death certificates for their children without information on what happened to them.

Sellan Kandasamy left his injured wife as he crossed over with his family to the government-controlled area when fights were nearly ending. He hasn’t heard from her since.

“She wasn’t registered and we were not allowed to ask for details. We requested that someone stayed with her but we were chased away with poles. So we had to leave her on the rubble and leave,” said Kandasamy as his tears welled up in his eyes.

Paramanandam himself has lost three sons, one fighting for the Tamil Tigers and two who were not part of fighting went missing as their family moved to escape shelling.

Paramanandam’s plea now is that the U.N ensures that there is accountability for the excesses committed by both sides.

“Whatever happened should be investigated truth must be found out there should be accountability and there should be assurance for such things not to happen again.”

A new U.N. Human Rights Commission report recommends establishment of an independent prosecution and a special court to bring perpetrators to justice. It also says that the international community should initiate prosecutions in their own countries.

“This report is yet another reminder that tens of thousands of Sri Lankans who were forcibly disappeared must never be forgotten,” U.N High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said. “Their families and those who care about them have been waiting for so long. They are entitled to know the truth.”
UN: Sri Lanka must clarify fate of thousands who vanished during war (VOA)
VOA [5/18/2024 9:55 AM, Lisa Schlein, 4186K, Negative]
A report by the U.N. human rights office criticizes the Sri Lankan government’s failure to acknowledge and hold accountable the perpetrators of tens of thousands of enforced disappearances during the country’s decades-long civil war.

The report notes that nearly 15 years have passed since the end of the armed conflict and yet “Sri Lankan authorities are still failing to ensure accountability” for the violations that occurred then as well as during “the earliest waves of enforced disappearances.”

In a statement issued Friday to coincide with the publication of the report, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said, “Accountability must be addressed. We need to see institutional reform for reconciliation to have a chance to succeed.”

While the civil war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and the Tamil Tigers was fought between 1983 and 2009, the report notes that from the 1970s through to the end of the war in 2009, “widespread enforced disappearances were carried out primarily by Sri Lankan security forces and affiliated paramilitary groups,” which used them “as a tool to intimidate and oppress perceived opponents.”

Authors of the report also accuse the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of “engaging in abductions,” which were described as “tantamount to enforced disappearances” by the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

Human rights officials conducted dozens of individual and group interviews with victims, mainly women. They found that the forcible disappearance of a relative continues to have profound psychological effects, including feelings of shock, fear, anger, helplessness and guilt.

“Decades later, victims reported the inability to find closure. Most cling to the hope that their relative will return,” they said.

The report describes the enduring social and economic impact on the families of those forcibly disappeared, especially on women.

It observed that “as most disappeared individuals have been male, women have often become the sole income earner for a family, in a labor environment that poses many obstacles to women’s participation, including risks of sexual harassment and exploitation.”

It adds that many women who have actively sought to find out what happened to their loved ones “have themselves been subjected to violations, including harassment, intimidation, surveillance, arbitrary detention, beatings and torture at the hands of army and police.”

On the government’s response to the report, the high commissioner’s spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, told journalists in Geneva Friday that “generally, there appears to be a lack of political will to provide accountability to these cases.”

“There are a lot of recurring obstacles to accountability,” she said. “There is frequent unwillingness on the part of the police to receive complaints, delays in the justice system, conflicts of interest in the attorney general’s office and reparation programs have not been developed with sufficient consultation with the victims.”

The report acknowledges that in recent years, successive Sri Lankan governments have taken some positive steps to address the issue of the missing. Those include the ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the establishment of the Office on Missing Persons and the Office for Reparations and criminalizing enforced disappearances.

However, the report finds that “tangible progress on the ground towards comprehensively resolving individual cases has remained limited.”

For example, the report notes that criminal proceedings in Sri Lanka generally are “beset by prolonged delays,” but that in cases involving enforced disappearances or other serious violations involving state officials, “the delays are even more pronounced … and are a strategy to avoid accountability.”

The report cites the case of “one of the few enforced disappearance-related cases” in which an individual was convicted and “in 2020, the then Sri Lankan president pardoned that individual.”

According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, under international law, the state has a clear obligation to resolve cases of enforced disappearances “until the fate and whereabouts of those disappeared are clarified.”

“The government owes it to all those who have been forcibly disappeared … for these crimes to be investigated fully,” said Türk. “These crimes haunt not only their loved ones, but entire communities and Sri Lankan society as a whole.

“This report is yet another reminder that all Sri Lankans who have been subjected to enforced disappearance must never be forgotten,” he said, adding that “their families and those who care about them have been waiting for so long. They are entitled to know the truth.”
Sri Lanka Tamils mark 15 years since end of civil war (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [5/18/2024 3:47 AM, Amal Jayasinghe, 82990K, Negative]
Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil community marked 15 years since the end of the island nation’s civil war on Saturday in an emotional ceremony that proceeded despite fears authorities would attempt to prevent its staging.

Public events celebrating the Tamil Tigers separatist group -- which fought a no-holds-barred battle to establish an ethnic minority homeland -- are illegal and authorities have blocked past memorials.

Tamils say the events are held to remember all victims of the decades-long war, which concluded in 2009 after a military offensive in the last Tigers stronghold. The operation was condemned internationally for the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians.

"Thousands died here the day before the war ended," a 41-year-old Tamil village official, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, told AFP at the memorial site in Mullivaikkal.

"There were lots of wounded people crying for help," he added. "This will haunt me for the rest of my life."

Several thousand Tamils had travelled to the village for the remembrance, where they lit oil lamps to commemorate the dead.

Sri Lankan authorities have repeatedly disrupted similar memorials in the island’s former war zones over the years and arrested participants, but Saturday’s ceremony went ahead without incident.

This year it was attended by Amnesty International’s global chief Agnes Callamard, the most senior foreign dignitary so far to attend a remembrance event in Sri Lanka’s battle-scarred north.

The rights watchdog has for years pressed Sri Lankan authorities, who have repeatedly refused to permit an international probe into wartime atrocities, to properly investigate and prosecute those responsible for abuses.

"We are here to remind the international community that there are people in Sri Lanka waiting for justice," Callamard told reporters after the event.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, which in 2022 voted to recognise May 18 as Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day, said on Saturday his country would "always advocate for justice and accountability for the crimes committed during the conflict".

"Today, we honour the victims, survivors, and their loved ones, who live with the lasting pain caused by this senseless violence," Trudeau said in a statement.

Tamil residents near the ceremony site told AFP that security forces had been noticeably more active in their communities as the anniversary neared.

"There is heavy surveillance of the people, and it is intimidation," one Tamil resident said Thursday, asking not to be named for fear of harassment.

Saturday marked 15 years since the killing of the Tamil Tigers’ charismatic but reclusive leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, who had led the separatist group in open rebellion against Sri Lankan forces since 1972.

His death in the village of Mullivaikkal was the culmination of the lightning military offensive that killed at least 40,000 civilians in the final months of the fighting, according to UN estimates.

Sri Lankan forces were accused of indiscriminately shelling civilians after telling them to move to "no fire zones" to clear the path of their assault.
Sri Lanka’s killing fields cast a long shadow (Al Jazeera – opinion)
Al Jazeera [5/18/2024 7:38 AM, Madura Rasaratnam and Ambikai Akilan, 20951K, Negative]
Today we mark the 15th anniversary of the bloody end of Sri Lanka’s three-decades-long civil war. This anniversary comes around at a critical historical juncture, amid the humanitarian catastrophe unleashed by Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The global response to Gaza, across many states, peoples and international institutions, shows that there is a strong will to uphold international norms on protecting civilians and a strong will to address the underlying political injustices of the conflict itself, rather than seeing it merely as a problem of security and terrorism. The international failure to translate this will into concrete action is appalling but sadly not unprecedented.

The state of Sri Lanka, 15 years after the end of the armed conflict there, shows what happens when mass atrocities are unaddressed and the political fault lines that led to them in the first place remain unresolved and are arguably exacerbated. There are also striking and unavoidable similarities between the events still unfolding in Gaza and those that took place in the Vanni, the area of northern Sri Lanka where the war ended.

In the final months of the conflict, the Sri Lankan military besieged and bombarded a civilian population of 330,000 along with an estimated 5,000 Tamil Tiger fighters, corralling them into ever thinner strips of land in the Vanni. The offensive was brutal and unconstrained. It destroyed and defeated the Tamil Tigers’ armed group LTTE but also made a raging bonfire out of international humanitarian law, the laws of war and basic norms of civilian protection.

The Sri Lankan military bombed and shelled food distribution centres, hospitals and civilian shelters even though it had received the precise coordinates of these from the United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross. It ordered civilians into ever-shrinking “no-fire” zones that it would then relentlessly attack using unguided artillery shells and multi-barrelled rocket launchers, firing hundreds and sometimes thousands of shells a day.

The last of the no-fire zones was a mere 2-3 square kilometres and the death toll often reached 1,000 civilians a day, sometimes more. Sri Lanka also limited the supply of food and essential medicines including anaesthetics in moves calculated to compound and exacerbate the humanitarian distress.

Subsequent UN investigations concluded that the Sri Lankan military’s campaign amounted to the “persecution of the Vanni population”. At least 40,000 people were reported killed in the fighting, but some estimates based on population figures suggest the death toll could be as high as 169,000.

At the end of the war, the Sri Lankan authorities summarily executed LTTE cadres and others who surrendered and herded the remaining civilians into barbed wire-ringed internment camps, allegedly for “processing”. The government only released them after immense international pressure.

Sri Lanka justified its campaign as the only way to defeat “terrorism” and proclaimed its “victory” over the LTTE as a military model that other countries could follow. It has consistently and vehemently rejected international demands for meaningful accountability and has also refused to implement political changes that would ensure real political equality for the Tamils and address the root causes of the conflict.

Yet, Sri Lanka’s trajectory after 2009 shows that mass atrocities and the “victory” they secure entail consequences that rebound and not just for the Tamil population. After the war ended, Sri Lanka simply doubled down on its repression of Tamils.

The high-intensity bombardment turned into a suffocating and all-pervasive de facto military occupation that continues to this day. Five out of seven of the army’s regional commands are stationed in the northern and eastern provinces and in some districts, there is one soldier for every two civilians.

The military is also participating in the ongoing process of “Sinhalisation” and “Buddhisisation” of the northeast. Military personnel accompany Buddhist monks and Sinhala settlers as they violently seize Tamil lands and places of worship so that they can be converted into Sinhala ones.

Finally, military personnel exercise a constant surveillance of everyday Tamil social, cultural and political activities that has a chilling effect on everyday life and makes meaningless any talk of “reconciliation” or even a return to “normalcy”.

Yet Tamils in the former war zones and the now extensive diaspora have not been cowed into submission. They have worked to keep alive the struggle for justice and accountability. These efforts have kept Sri Lanka on the back foot internationally with repeated UN investigations and resolutions at the UN Human Rights Council. Sri Lankan officials also have to live with the ever-present danger of sanctions and possible prosecutions for their involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The war and its aftermath empowered the Rajapaksa family and their unvarnished form of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. From 2005 until 2022, they dominated the Sinhala electorate, lauded as the leaders who had finally vanquished the Tamil separatists. Yet, their reckless and nepotistic approach to the economy and international politics brought financial ruin and increasing isolation.

Colombo sought to play off the geopolitical rivalries of India, China and Western states but this failed to secure any tangible material benefits and also could not avert the escalating debt crisis. In April 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt amid acute shortages of food, fuel and essential medicines. The outrage and roiling protests triggered by the economic meltdown ousted the last Rajapaksa president but Sri Lanka is yet to find a viable or stable post-Rajapaksa settlement.

Meanwhile, the same militarisation and repression used against Tamils are now being deployed against other communities. Sri Lanka has used “high security zones” extensively in the Tamil-speaking areas to confiscate land, displace civilians and militarise public space. This same tactic has now been deployed to restrict protests in the capital city of Colombo. The anti-terrorism measures that were normally reserved for use against Tamils are now being deployed against other dissidents and critics.

In the years after the end of the war, Muslim and Christian communities have also become targets of violence and hatred. Buddhist monks have led attacks on Muslim homes and businesses and on churches. They have led campaigns against Halal meat and the headscarf. During the pandemic, Muslims who had died as a consequence of COVID-19 infection were forcibly cremated for spurious “public health” reasons.

The impunity with which Sri Lanka’s security forces operate is now a threat to all communities on the island. There is no better illustration of this than Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith’s ongoing campaign calling for an international investigation into the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks that killed 250 people.

Cardinal Ranjith had previously been a staunch Rajapaksa ally and had opposed Tamil demands for international accountability for the crimes committed at the end of the war. He is now calling for an international investigation because he is convinced, like many on the island, that elements of Sri Lanka’s security state were aware of the plans for the appalling Easter Sunday attacks but did not take action in order to bolster the eventually successful 2020 presidential campaign of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

The effects of Sri Lanka’s massacres have extended well beyond May 2009 and the killing fields of the Vanni. They are evident in the ongoing de facto occupation of the Tamil-speaking areas by a military that eats up the scarce resources of a now effectively bankrupt state. They are evident in the political instability and growing repression in Colombo. They are also evident in security forces who have become such a power unto themselves that they have been accused by a formerly loyal cardinal of allowing brutal terrorist attacks to take place to secure electoral victory for their preferred candidate.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has rightly brought international attention and focus on the need to uphold and defend humanitarian law. Sri Lanka shows what happens when states that commit mass atrocities are allowed to go scot-free.

Remembering and effectively addressing the Vanni atrocities is not just about the past, it is also about the future. Most immediately, it is about Sri Lanka’s future. But it is also about re-building and securing the viability and integrity of international humanitarian law and the possibility of securing genuine and lasting peace, security and prosperity.
Central Asia
Bishkek University Reportedly Calm After Mob Violence That Injured At Least 29 (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/18/2024 1:35 AM, Staff, 1299K, Negative]
The situation in Bishkek was stable late on May 18, police said, after mob violence against foreign students injured at least 29 people, including several foreigners, and triggered diplomatic tensions with Pakistan and India.

RFE/RL correspondents reported that the situation near the dormitory where foreigners live at Kyrgyz International University in the eastern part of Bishkek was calm on the evening of May 18 and said security measures had been strengthened.

Kyrgyz authorities said the Pakistani Embassy and a dormitory where foreigners live were put under strict security.

The Health Ministry said on May 18 that 15 of the 29 people injured in a brawl the night before were taken to the Bishkek City Emergency Hospital and the National Hospital and the rest were treated on the spot.

Health Minister Alymkadyr Beishenaliev said three foreign students were hospitalized, one in the maxillofacial department and two in the trauma department.

The nationality of the injured students was not released, but students confirmed to RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal that Pakistani students were involved in the incident and some of them were injured.

Indian media reported that Indian and Pakistani students were injured, and Indian Foreign Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar said he was monitoring the situation.

About 140 students and 40 other Pakistanis flew out of Bishkek late on May 18. The students were received by Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi at Lahore International Airport, Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) officials told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal. A second flight is arriving on May 19, the CAA officials said.

Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar, who is also foreign minister, and Minister for Kashmir Affairs Amir Muqam, will leave for Bishkek from Islamabad on May 19 at the direction of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to accelerate the evacuation of students, officials told RFE/RL.

The Kyrgyz government said earlier that four foreign nationals born between 1993 and 2003 had been arrested following the violence. It said they were placed in a temporary detention facility as part of a criminal case for hooliganism without stating their nationalities or the circumstances of their arrests.

Those found guilty will be punished, the Kyrgyz government said in a statement, rejecting what it said were "insinuations aimed at inciting intolerance toward foreign students." But it appeared to lay the blame for the violence on illegal migrants, saying authorities had been taking "decisive measures to suppress illegal migration and expel undesirable persons from Kyrgyzstan."

The Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said in a statement on May 18 that the violence was triggered by the appearance on social media of a video purportedly showing a group of "persons of Asian appearance" harassing foreign students on the night of May 13 and then pursuing them to their dormitory, where at least one foreign student was assaulted by several men and dragged on the floor.

Samiulla Qureshi, a fifth-year medical student at the International University of Bishkek, said the fight on May 13 broke out between Egyptian students and local residents.

Later a video of Egyptians beating international students went viral on social media, he said.

The violence that started on the night of May 17 occurred when "local guys gathered and decided to visit the places where international students live,” Qureshi said. They were beaten “regardless of whether they are from Pakistan, India, or [another country], he added.

The ministry, which posted a version of the video on its Telegram channel, said other foreign students, alerted by the intruders’ apparent attempt to enter the female students’ quarters, mobilized and fought off the attackers.

"A fight ensued between them in the hostel yard, during which three of the attackers fled, leaving one behind," the statement said.

It said four foreign nationals born between 1993 and 2003 were detained and placed in a temporary detention facility as part of a criminal case for hooliganism without stating their nationalities or the circumstances of their arrests.

The ministry said authorities are still looking for two of the alleged attackers who were identified as natives of Kyrgyzstan’s Kemin district: Nursultan Mukaev, born in 2006, and Tilek Shermatov, born in 2005.

The ministry claimed in its statement that the emergence of the video on social media on May 17 "without an explanation of the true circumstances of the incident" triggered a public outcry, and 500-700 people gathered, demanding action by authorities against those responsible for the May 13 incident at the hostel.

The ministry claimed security forces cordoned off the area where people had gathered at the intersection of Kurmanjan-Datka Street and Chui Avenue. "Explanatory work was carried out onsite, and after some time, the crowd dispersed," the statement said.

However, the statement does not explain how dozens of people were injured on the night of May 17, while the official account was contradicted by video footage appearing to show attackers ransacking a student hostel and beating up people, as well as riotous crowds in different parts of the city.

It also did not clarify why authorities took four days to intervene and identify the alleged suspects.

Muhammad Ihtisham Latif, a Pakistani medical student in Bishkek, told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal, "The situation is bad here. The situation started when Egyptian students clashed with locals here. The locals are now protesting and they are beating Indian and Pakistani students.... They chase them in their hostels and houses...hostel [doors] were broken. I am locked up in the university along with other students since yesterday and I am sharing my voice with you."

Syed Shah Rukh Khan, a medical student in his final year, told Radio Mashaal the past night had been "living hell."

"Our hostel and many other hostels were attacked. The locals beat whoever came their way, boys or girls, and they were dragged to the ground. Even outside the universities, they went after the Pakistani and Indian students and beat them," Khan said.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed "deep concern" over the situation of Pakistani students in Kyrgyzstan, saying in a statement that he directed Pakistan’s ambassador to provide all necessary help and assistance to the students.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on X, formerly Twitter, that the reports of mob attacks on students in Kyrgyzstan are extremely concerning.

"We have established contact with the Kyrgyz authorities to ensure protection of Pakistani students. I have instructed our ambassador to Kyrgyzstan to fully facilitate them," Dar said.

In a separate statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said the charge d’affaires of the Kyrgyz Embassy to Islamabad, Melis Moldaliev, was summoned to the ministry, where he "was conveyed the deep concerns of the government of Pakistan about the reports of last night’s incidents against Pakistani students studying in the Kyrgyz Republic."

Moldaliev was told that Islamabad expects the Kyrgyz government to take all possible measures to ensure the safety and security of Pakistani students and citizens in Kyrgyzstan.

The head of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee on National Security (UKMK), Kamchybek Tashiev, appeared to try and lay the blame for the violence on illegal migrants, saying protesters were demonstrating against migration.

Tashiev claimed Kyrgyzstan has been grappling with an influx of illegal migrants coming to the country, mostly from Pakistan and Bangladesh, many of whom "break the law."

"We identify at least 20-30 or 50 illegal migrants per day and try to expel them from the country. Based on official statistics, most of the foreigners who break the law are citizens of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Of these, we returned about 1,500 people from Pakistan and about 1,000 people from Bangladesh to their countries."

The incident comes amid a drive by Kyrgyz authorities to expel foreign workers. On May 16, the UKMK announced the arrest of 28 alleged illegal Pakistani workers from a sweatshop. On May 15, Bishkek police shut down delivery services conducted by more than 400 foreign students on motorcycles and scooters, citing traffic safety concerns.
Pakistan protests to Kyrgyz diplomat after violence (Reuters)
Reuters [5/18/2024 5:33 AM, Ariba Shahid, 82990K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said on Saturday it had summoned and handed a note of protest to Kyrgyzstan’s top diplomat in the country in response to violence against Pakistani students in Bishkek.

Kyrgyz police said they had mobilised forces in the Central Asian nation’s capital on Friday to quell the violence, in which hundreds of Kyrgyz men attacked buildings housing foreign students, including Pakistanis.

The attack, the police said, was prompted by foreigners - whose nationality was not immediately clear - beating up locals in the city.

"It was impressed on the Kyrgyz charge d’affaires that the Kyrgyz government should take all possible measures to ensure the safety and security of Pakistani students and citizens," Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

The statement said the Kyrgyz health ministry had confirmed four Pakistanis were given first aid and discharged while one was still under treatment for injury.

Pakistan said it had set up emergency hotlines for those affected by the violence.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a statement expressed concern over the incident, saying Islamabad would fly back any of Pakistani citizens who wanted to leave the country immediately.
Pakistan Evacuates Students Following Bishkek Attacks On Foreigners (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/19/2024 5:04 AM, Staff, 1299K, Negative]
Top officials from Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan have met after mob violence in Bishkek against foreign students injured at least 29 people, including several foreigners, and triggered diplomatic tensions with Pakistan and India.

Kyrgyz Deputy Foreign Minister Avazbek Atakhanov held talks on May 19 in the Kyrgyz capital with Hassan Ali Zaigham, Pakistan’s ambassador to Kyrgyzstan.

Atakhanov said the situation was under control and added that Kyrgyz authorities had launched a probe into the incident, allegedly sparked by an unclear dispute days earlier involving migrants.

Kyrgyz Deputy Prime Minister Edil Baisalov and Ali Zaigham visited the hostel where most of the violence took place and met with international students. Baisalov apologized on behalf of the Kyrgyz government and the Kyrgyz people for failing to protect the students.

Meanwhile, Pakistani officials said a planned visit to Bishkek by a Pakistani delegation, including Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, had been canceled after Kyrgyz officials had assured them the situation was now calm.

About 140 students and 40 other Pakistanis flew out of Bishkek late on May 18. The students were received by Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi at Lahore International Airport, Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) officials told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal.

The Pakistani Embassy in Bishkek informed Radio Azattyk on May 19 that special flights have been arranged to repatriate Pakistani students for the next few days.

A Pakistani student told Radio Mashaal he had spent the night at Bishkek’s international airport waiting to fly out.

“Our university arranged transport last night.... There were three vans…. We were brought to the airport and here we are completely safe. Our flight is scheduled for today. It is a direct flight from Bishkek to Islamabad. We spent the night without any trouble and there was no attack," Hasnain Ali, a student of medicine at Ala-Too International University in Bishkek, told Radio Mashaal.

Another described how foreign students were being told not to venture outside.

"We are also getting messages from the university that things are normal, but one can’t believe it. It is not fully normal because they are asking us that if you want to go out, do it only in groups of three or four, but not alone. We are restricted to our hostel,” explained Syed Shah Rukh Khan.

RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service also spoke with people at the VIP Hostel in Bishkek, which was the epicenter of the mob attacks.

"The students who are here only came to study. And now the students are really scared. I know that no country is bad. But, thanks to some bad people and their behavior, the students are scared. They are someone’s children. They came here only to study, and they [the mob] came in and beat them," said Ahmed Faiz, a student from Pakistan at Kyrgyzstan’s International University.

Ahmed Umer, another Pakistani student at Kyrgyzstan’s International University, described some of the violence at the hostel.

"Some locals went into our hostel, and they harassed women. Also, they broke windows, everything. They stole things from us," he told RFE/RL.

Sajjad Ahmad, head of the VIP Hostel, said faculty from Kyryzstan’s International University were helping students cope with the aftermath.

"They have been sleeping here since yesterday. They have been calming down the students. Now, the students are calm.... Of course, the situation is scary. They will now head home. We are [arranging] plane tickets and flights," Ahmad said.

An estimated 500 people live at the hostel, and Ahmad said all of them were expected to leave.

"They didn’t expect such a thing to happen here. The atmosphere was very good in Kyrgyzstan. Now they are saying that they urgently need to [leave]," Ahmad told RFE/RL, adding that their course work would continue online.

"Let’s see if they come back. Then they will continue their education here," he said.

Meanwhile, three foreign nationals injured in the unrest in Bishkek remain in a stable condition on May 19, according to Health Ministry spokesman Jyldyz Aigerchinova, who spoke to RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service.

The Health Ministry said on May 18 that 15 of the 29 people injured had been taken to the Bishkek City Emergency Hospital and the National Hospital and the rest were treated on the spot.

The Kyrgyz government said earlier that four foreign nationals born between 1993 and 2003 had been arrested following the violence. It said they were placed in a temporary detention facility as part of a criminal case for hooliganism without stating their nationalities or the circumstances of their arrests.

Those found guilty will be punished, the Kyrgyz government said in a statement, rejecting what it said were "insinuations aimed at inciting intolerance toward foreign students." But it appeared to lay the blame for the violence on illegal migrants, saying authorities had been taking "decisive measures to suppress illegal migration and expel undesirable persons from Kyrgyzstan."

The Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said in a statement on May 18 that the violence was triggered by the appearance on social media of a video purportedly showing a group of "persons of Asian appearance" harassing foreign students on the night of May 13 and then pursuing them to their dormitory, where at least one foreign student was assaulted by several men and dragged on the floor.
‘A Living Hell’: Pakistani Students Describe Harrowing Bishkek Scene (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/18/2024 8:30 AM, Daud Khattak and Carl Schreck, 1299K, Negative]
As violent mobs targeting foreign students erupted overnight in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Pakistani medical student Syed Shah Rukh Khan huddled with others in the student hostel where he lives.

"The night passed like a living hell," Khan, who is in his final year of medical studies at Adam University in central Bishkek, told Radio Mashaal, RFE/RL’s service for Pakistan. "Our hostel was attacked and many other hostels, whether private or in the universities, were attacked."

Khan is one of several Pakistani students in Kyrgyzstan who gave harrowing accounts to RFE/RL of the mob violence that engulfed Bishkek in the early hours of May 18 after a video purportedly showing Kyrgyz students fighting Egyptian medical students days earlier was shared widely on social media.

The Kyrgyz government has said more than two dozen people were injured in the violence, which prompted the embassies of Pakistan and India in the Central Asian nation of 7 million to warn their students to remain indoors.

"The locals have beaten whoever came their way, male or female students, and they were dragged on the ground," Khan said. "Even outside the universities, they went after the Pakistani and Indian students and beat them."

Khan told Radio Mashaal that the rampage began around 2 a.m. in Bishkek and that the mobs had scouted out the locations of Pakistani and Indian students prior to the attacks.

"They entered our hostel in the night by breaking the doors and windows. But we were lucky that the [security forces] quickly arrived there," Khan said. "They controlled the situation. In other hostels, the situation was worse. They beat the students and dragged them on the ground outside their rooms."

Hasnain Ali, a Pakistani medical student at the International University of Kyrgyzstan, said he and his fellow students were attacked in their hostel and that several of them suffered serious injuries.

Ali said that in the late afternoon in Bishkek on May 18, local police informed him and others that another mob was heading toward their university and had told them: "Turn off your lights, close your doors and windows, and don’t look outside."

"We are without water and food. The local police are not helping. They came last night when the mob was gone. The Pakistani Embassy also did not send us any help so far. We are looking to the media to let people know about our situation," a terrified-sounding Ali told Radio Mashaal.

Another Pakistani medical student in Bishkek, Farooq Zeb, said he saw angry protesters chanting anti-Indian and anti-Pakistani slogans and breaking through the gates of his hostel.

"We are without food and water, and we are scared not knowing what will happen next," Zeb, who studies at the Ala-Too International University in Bishkek, told Radio Mashaal.

Pakistani student Muhammad Ihtisham Latif said earlier on May 18 that the violence broke out after "Egyptian students clashed with locals here."

"The locals are now protesting and they are beating Indian and Pakistani students.... They chase them in their hostels and houses...hostel [doors] were broken. I am locked up in the university along with other students since yesterday," Latif said.

Radio Mashaal reached Latif later in the day and the student said he was in a police van that was moving him and two dozen other students to a safer location.

Gulbara Kulusheva, rector of the Royal Metropolitan University in Bishkek, told RFE/RL in an interview that the university is attempting to provide food and other necessities to around 800 students.

"The majority of them are from Pakistan," Kulusheva said. "Throughout the night the entire university team was in the dormitory protecting them from an angry mob. We are continuing to protect them now."
Fragility Returns To Kyrgyzstan As Mob Violence Targets South Asian Students (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/19/2024 1:04 PM, Chris Rickleton, 1299K, Negative]
As a swelling crowd moved around him, blocking an important road and refusing to disperse, Bishkek police chief Azamat Toktonaliev looked completely bewildered.

"He doesn’t know what to do. The people are not listening," said a reporter from the private website Kaktus Media in footage filmed on the night of May 17.

Toktonaliev’s visible alarm captured the extent to which authorities in Kyrgyzstan were caught off guard by shocking and apparently spontaneous unrest targeting South Asian students and migrants.

Parts of the capital dissolved into chaos that night after footage of a brawl between foreigners and local Kyrgyz from earlier in the week circulated widely online.

While the crowd that blocked the road -- peaking at more than 1,000 people -- did not disperse until dawn on May 18, multiple dormitories housing students from South Asia were attacked by groups of Kyrgyz, resulting in at least 29 injuries and reportedly leaving several foreigners hospitalized.

These disturbances were the worst seen in Bishkek since the postelection meltdown of 2020 that brought current populist leader Sadyr Japarov to the presidency and marked the third time that power has changed hands in Kyrgyzstan amid unrest.

And although news of the dormitory attacks prompted high-level statements of concern from India and in Pakistan -- where a small protest was held outside the Kyrgyz Embassy in Islamabad and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif saw fit to comment -- some critics say it may be the domestic image of an increasingly authoritarian regime that has taken the worst hit.

"The ruling group came to power on a wave of nationalist and socialist feelings," lawyer Nurbek Toktakhunov told RFE/RL.

"So when it is some liberal trying to hold a peaceful rally for rights and freedom, they can get all brutal and say, ‘No more rallies! Time for stability!’ But when there is a burst of nationalism and violence, they are suddenly helpless."

Mob’s Demands ‘To Some Extent Correct’

Police chief Toktonaliev was at the center of the vain effort to disperse the angry protesters, who had gathered close to the site of the conflict at a dormitory between foreigner students and Kyrgyz in the early hours of May 13.

Another piece of footage showed the official looking distinctly uncomfortable as he tried to address the crowd over whistles and heckles, while leaning on the authority of Rinat Usupbaev, a bodybuilder with more than 250,000 followers on Instagram, who was standing next to him.

"I am personally hearing you out," entrepreneur Usupbaev reassured the crowd, eventually taking the loudspeaker from Toktonaliev and turning the jeers to cheers. "Do you trust me?"

In addition to calls for the foreigners who clashed with the Kyrgyz on May 13 to face justice, members of the crowd demanded an end to labor migration from South Asian countries like India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

In recent years, such countries have sent thousands of students and guest workers to Kyrgyzstan -- a country that hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz leave every year in search of employment.

Speaking on the morning after a night that one Pakistani student described as a "living hell" in an interview, Kyrgyz State Committee for National Security Chairman Kamchybek Tashiev said the crowd’s demands were "to some extent correct."

Tashiev made no mention of the violent attacks on foreign students at the dorms, which correspondents from RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service visited on May 18 to find smashed windows, doors kicked through, and rooms in disarray.

Footage from the night before had shown Asian students cowering in their rooms as men punched, kicked, and cursed at them in turn.

Instead Tashiev -- Japarov’s populist ally -- was focused on the fact that some members of the crowd had been carrying weapons or had "raised various provocative questions against state power and the state system" in messenger chats before the protest.

"We have identified them and will hold them accountable," Tashiev said in a video address that he also used to draw attention to the government’s toughening stance on illegal migration.

As of the morning of May 19, no Kyrgyz official had apologized to students targeted in the attacks, nearly 200 of whom have already arrived back in Pakistan on specially arranged flights.

While Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry said it has opened a criminal case into the mass unrest, there are still plenty of questions about why it took police so long to respond to the clear threat posed to the city’s migrant population.

‘How Much Will They Give For Actual Pogroms?’

What about the spark for the conflict that took place on the night of May 12-13?

On the evening that protesters massed in Bishkek, all they had seen was a video that seemed to have surfaced that day showing a prone Kyrgyz man getting pummeled by non-Kyrgyz attackers in the front yard of a hostel.

At around midnight, police released news that three -- later four -- foreign citizens had been detained on hooliganism charges in connection with the violence.

The Interior Ministry even published a video showing the men -- Egyptians, not South Asians -- apologizing to the Kyrgyz people and promising to accept full responsibility for their part in the violence.

Yet as police acknowledged the following day in a full chronology of events building up to the unrest, these Egyptian men were actually defending a hostel that locals had raided, stealing cash and an iPhone, according to complaints filed by residents of the hostel.

To date, police say they have arrested two of the alleged thieves that infiltrated the hostel that night and identified two others.

It remains unclear if the predominantly young, male crowd that took to the streets would have felt any differently if they had known that context.

Kyrgyzstan has experienced bouts of ethnic violence in the past, most notably lethal clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and minority Uzbeks that claimed hundreds of lives in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010.

But law enforcement’s investigation of this latest unrest will be under some scrutiny, not least due to perception that Kyrgyzstan’s security state has been enthusiastically jailing critics for even the slightest hint of dissent.

In social media discussions about the heinous attacks on foreign students, one name mentioned several times was Oljobai Shakir, a publicist sentenced on May 14 to five years in prison on the charge of making online calls for mass unrest.

Shakir’s arrest came just days after he criticized the government’s decision to hand four spa centers near lake Issyk-Kul to the Uzbek government and challenged Japarov and Tashiev to participate in public debates with him.

"They gave Oljobai Shakir five years for so-called calls [for unrest]," wrote journalist Mahinur Niyazov on X, formerly Twitter. "How many [years] will they give these people for actual pogroms, I wonder?"
Leaders’ Of Banned Islamic Group Detained In Kyrgyzstan (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/17/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Neutral]
The Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said on May 17 that four "leaders" of the Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic group and several of the banned organization’s members have been apprehended in Bishkek and other locations inside the Central Asian nation. According to the ministry, the suspects were detained during a special operation two days earlier. Police confiscated books with "extremist content," mobile phones, and other electronic devices as they searched the suspects’ homes. Hizb ut-Tahrir, along with such Islamic groups as Yakyn Inkar, Jabhat an-Nusra, Jaihul-Mahdi, Ansarullah, Jihad Tobu, and the Islamic Movement of Eastern Turkistan, have been outlawed in Kyrgyzstan since 2003.
Uzbekistan’s Big Gold Bet Paying Off Despite Dependency Concerns (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/19/2024 5:46 AM, Chris Rickleton, 1299K, Neutral]
When it comes to gold, Uzbekistan has bought low and large. Now it is selling high.

World Gold Council data shows that Uzbekistan was the world’s top gold-selling country in March with 11 tons sold, with only Thailand’s 10 tons coming anywhere near in terms of volume.

Most other central banks in the world are trying to accumulate the precious metal, but Uzbekistan did plenty of that before the current trend.

And with several economic headwinds to contend with, Uzbekistan’s strategy to sell gold has a logic to it.

"We have a trade deficit, a budget deficit. Other exports are not perhaps performing as well as hoped. With [gold] prices high on the back of geopolitical instability, there are worse times to sell gold," independent Tashkent-based economist Yuliy Yusupov told RFE/RL.

Nevertheless, analysts argue that growing dependence on gold sales highlights persisting problems in an economy that -- despite notable overhauls in recent years -- is still very much bogged down.

Less Is More

As the second-biggest producer of gold in the former Soviet Union after Russia, and with the state controlling the industry, gold has long been an anchor of the Uzbek economy.

But in the era of second President Shavkat Mirziyoev, the share of international reserves that are in gold has grown significantly, from under 50 percent when Mirziyoev came to power in 2016 from his late predecessor, Islam Karimov, to nearly two-thirds at present, according to central bank data.

Describing the country’s strategy in a November 2022 interview with Bloomberg when Uzbekistan was one of the top global gold buyers, Central Bank Chairman Bekzod Xamraev said "there are two factors for us: the current price and the future price."

"Is the price rising, or has it reached its peak and coming down? This is the moment we are looking for. If the price is rising, we are better off waiting with sales."

Gold has enjoyed a tremendous rally this year, with spot prices increasing by more than 13 percent since January 1.

This led to a situation remarked on by privately owned Uzbek media outlet Gazeta.uz last month, wherein the value of the Central Bank’s gold reserves actually grew by more than 6 percent in March, notwithstanding gold sales that saw the bank’s physical stock of the bullion fall by 10.9 tons to reach 357.7 tons -- a near two-year low.

As of May 1, Uzbekistan’s foreign reserves stood at $34.2 billion, of which some $26.5 billion was in gold.

The high gold price moreover softened the impact of a debt repayment of more than $1 billion on a 2019 Eurobond heralded as marking Uzbekistan’s exit from financial isolation.

But Smail Ospanov, a former Uzbek official who lives in the United States and regularly comments on economic affairs, said the rally is allowing the government to get away with budgetary indiscipline and limited economic reform and innovation.

"The very fact that the government is trying to replenish its empty treasury by selling gold shows the dire state of the country’s economy," he told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service.

"If you look now, Uzbekistan exports mainly gold. The government has failed to diversify its economy in the past decade. Gold is something that should be kept in reserve."

Uzbekistan’s trade deficit in 2023 was an unprecedented $13.7 billion. And while exports rose 24 percent, much of the growth was accounted for by record gold sales, which reached more than $8 billion and accounted for one-third of total goods exported.

Hello, Debt!

After coming to power in 2016, the early years of Mirziyoev’s rule were accompanied by major economic reforms as well as something of a political thaw.

While the new leader had served as hard-line autocrat Karimov’s prime minister, he soon showed he had very different views on the economy, overseeing the liberalization of byzantine currency regulations and leading a foreign investment drive that involved accruing billions of dollars in external debt.

In the last years of Karimov’s quarter-century reign, the state debt to GDP ratio was in the 10-15 percent range. Now, Uzbekistan’s liabilities before foreign creditors are the equivalent of more than one-third of GDP, roughly doubling in the past five years alone.

In a February ratings commentary, the Fitch rating agency reaffirmed a BB- "stable" outlook for Uzbekistan, while warning of "high commodity dependence" and "structural weaknesses in terms of low GDP per capita, an uncompetitive and large, albeit reducing, state presence in the economy, and weak but improving governance levels."

Regular gold purchases from local mining operations -- purchased in the Uzbek currency, the som, and then sold on international markets for dollars -- have also proven an important means of easing pressure on the national currency.

The som has depreciated nearly 15 percent since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, noticeably more than the currencies of neighbors like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, which also have strong economic ties to sanctions-hit Moscow.

That world-changing event, along with the war in the Middle East and a general sharpening of geopolitical tensions, are among the factors likely to keep the price of gold high in the near future.

Yet for many analysts the main problem is not gold sales per se, but rather a concerning lack of alternative revenue sources to cover growing public spending -- a habit not helped by systemic corruption.

In March, the Uzbek Economy and Finance Ministry said the country’s consolidated budget boasts an annual deficit equivalent to $5 billion, or more than 5.5 percent of GDP, another unwanted record that authorities and the IMF have acknowledged is driving up inflation for a poor population.

A recent IMF mission to the country projected that consumer price inflation would reach 11.5 percent this year, up from 8.8 percent at the end of last year and ahead of growth, which is expected at around 5.4 percent for 2024.

One commodity-free export that exploded in the Mirziyoev era is tourism, which authorities hoped to raise to at least 5 percent of GDP by 2025 after canceling visa requirements for the citizens of dozens of countries.

That ambition was announced in 2018 as new businesses opened in anticipation of a boom that was already being felt at street level around the time the coronavirus pandemic struck.

The pandemic caused a steep correction, however, and the sector is currently nowhere near that indicator.

Official figures for 2023 showed 6.6 million foreign tourists, which, while more than 26 percent higher than in 2022, were still a shade under the 6.75 million that visited in 2019.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Afghanistan
@MoFA_Afg
[5/17/2024 12:39 PM, 64.9K followers, 13 retweets, 49 likes]
The recent flash of floods in Afghanistan, which have left hundreds of citizens killed, thousands of houses destroyed, and caused great humanitarian disaster, especially the residents of Baghlan province suffered more than any other region and citizens, for the support of whom,

Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Afghanistan
@MoFA_Afg
[5/17/2024 12:39 PM, 64.9K followers, 4 retweets, 11 likes]
the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan undertook serious actions and drastic efforts in accordance to all its available capacity. Meanwhile, several countries and international organizations of the world and region also expressed their sympathy and solidarity with Afghans.

UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett
@SR_Afghanistan
[5/19/2024 6:53 AM, 39.2K followers, 26 retweets, 84 likes]
I condemn Friday’s armed attack in #Bamyan, #Afghanistan that killed & injured foreigners and Afghans. My condolences to families of those killed and wishing a speedy recovery to the injured. I call for investigation & accountability which must follow int’l human rights standards

Lynne O’Donnell
@lynnekodonnell
[5/20/2024 2:29 AM, 27.1K followers, 4 likes]
Difficult to believe apparently "official" figures for anything in #Afghanistan--5,000 foreign travellers since #Taliban takeover? Encouraged by media (incl @FT & @AP). I guess tourism sector is now DOA. ISIL claims deadly Afghanistan attack on tourists
Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[5/20/2024 1:26 AM, 6.7M followers, 531 retweets, 1.7K likes]
Pakistan had the pleasure of hosting President Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on a historic visit, less than a month ago. They were good friends of Pakistan. Pakistan will observe a day of mourning and the flag will fly at half mast as a mark of respect for President Raisi and his companions and in solidarity with Brotherly Iran.

Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[5/17/2024 10:38 PM, 6.7M followers, 1.2K retweets, 4.6K likes]
Deeply concerned over the situation of Pakistani students in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. I have directed Pakistan’s Ambassador to provide all necessary help and assistance. My office is also in touch with the Embassy and constantly monitoring the situation.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan
@ForeignOfficePk
[5/18/2024 7:43 AM, 478.7K followers, 237 retweets, 378 likes]
Pakistan’s Ambassador to the Krygyz Republic, Hassan Zaigham, briefs about the current situation of Pakistani students in the Kyrgyz Republic and measures taken by the Pakistani Embassy to facilitate them and ensure their safety. @PakinKyrgyzstan

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[5/17/2024 9:57 AM, 210K followers, 46 retweets, 193 likes]
In my column for @ForeignPolicy South Asia Brief this week, I argue that in Pakistan, the urgency is growing for economic reforms. "Pakistan could reach a point where the costs of letting political expediency prevail over prudent economic policy become prohibitively high—for the economy, and for the country on the whole. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/05/15/pakistan-imf-delegation-protests-economy-crisis/

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[5/20/2024 12:36 AM, 42.7K followers, 3 retweets, 13 likes]
An election neither free nor fair: Declared winners of Islamabad parliamentary seats secured less votes than runners-up, audit claims https://www.dawn.com/news/1834326
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/20/2024 2:07 AM, 97.8M followers, 65 retweets, 350 likes]
Thank you Puri. I bow in gratitude to this iconic place, associated with divinity and culture. The roadshow this morning was spectacular. The heat didn’t deter the crowds from coming and blessing us. Each of these blessings are cherished and inspire us to work harder for the people.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/20/2024 12:54 AM, 97.8M followers, 4.4K retweets, 32K likes]
Deeply saddened and shocked by the tragic demise of Dr. Seyed Ebrahim Raisi, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. His contribution to strengthening India-Iran bilateral relationship will always be remembered. My heartfelt condolences to his family and the people of Iran. India stands with Iran in this time of sorrow.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/20/2024 12:09 AM, 97.8M followers, 2K retweets, 6.6K likes]
Spoke to DD News on a wide range of subjects. Do watch the interview. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1OwGWYQdbBexQ

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/20/2024 8:53 AM, 97.8M followers, 4.4K retweets, 21K likes]
As 49 seats across 8 states and UTs go to the polls today in the 5th phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, urging all those whose constituencies are polling today to vote in record numbers. I specially call upon women voters and young voters to exercise their franchise.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/19/2024 10:30 AM, 97.8M followers, 4.5K retweets, 14K likes]
Spoke on a range of subjects in an interview to @ndtv. Do watch. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1yNxaZQXEzqKj

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/19/2024 6:55 AM, 97.8M followers, 3K retweets, 9.4K likes]
TMC, Congress, and the Left have made West Bengal synonymous with corruption and misgovernance. No wonder they are set to be defeated. Watch from Medinipur.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/17/2024 11:58 AM, 97.8M followers, 4.5K retweets, 24K likes]
Thank you, Mumbai! The atmosphere at the iconic Shivaji Park was electrifying. A vote for NDA is a vote for progress, better infrastructure and enhancing India’s pride.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/17/2024 11:24 AM, 97.8M followers, 6.4K retweets, 45K likes]
Upon landing in Mumbai, I went to Chaitya Bhoomi and prayed there. It feels very special to come back here again. Every Indian is grateful to Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar for giving us a Constitution we take immense pride in. Our Government has always and will always strengthen the ideals of Dr. Ambedkar and the values enshrined in our Constitution. Jai Bhim!

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/19/2024 9:09 PM, 3.1M followers, 319 retweets, 1.9K likes]
Urge all eligible voters, especially the youth to cast their votes in the fifth phase of the general elections today. Confident that voters in 49 seats across 8 states and UTs will cast their vote for development.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/17/2024 9:10 AM, 3.1M followers, 400 retweets, 1.5K likes]
As we journey through the Amrit Kaal towards Viksit Bharat, Indians must recognize that the world is today characterized by conflict, tensions and divisions. It requires great experience, good judgement and confident vision to guide the nation through the turbulence and uncertainty of our era. Modi Ki Guarantee not only promises good governance at home but strong leadership abroad. Urge everyone to take the record of the last decade into account and come out in large numbers to support, vote and elect PM @narendramodi. #400PaarMeinEkVoteAapkaBhi

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/17/2024 8:06 AM, 3.1M followers, 442 retweets, 5.9K likes]
Pleased to receive Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi for a courtesy call. @indiannavy

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/19/2024 6:35 AM, 3.1M followers, 176 retweets, 1K likes]
Addressed the CII Annual Business Summit 2024. “ Co-creating the Future Responsibly” is an apt theme for the current times. Highlighted that our foreign policy is advancing Indian prospects. And this includes opportunities and challenges for the business world. Modi Sarkar will facilitate not only Make in India, but also Invest in India, Procure in India, Design in India and Research in India. #TeamMEA will support our economic and employment interests abroad. We are a key source of global growth, resilient supplier and trusted digital player. Confident that as the people of our country make their choice, the world will welcome our efforts in the Amrit Kaal to move towards a Viksit Bharat. Business makes a crucial contribution as creators of jobs, technologies and wealth. As we prepare for the first 125 days of Modi 3.0, business will surely be an able partner in this co-creation endeavor. : https://mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/37816/Remarks_by_EAM_Dr_S_Jaishankar_at_the_CII_Annual_Business_Summit_2024
NSB
Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[5/19/2024 9:27 AM, 13.3K followers, 47 retweets, 70 likes]
Today, I had the pleasure of meeting H.E. Li Xiaosan, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of Yunnan Provincial People’s Congress. Our discussions focused on strengthening Maldives-Yunnan economic and trade cooperation. @ChinaEmbassy_MV

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[5/17/2024 2:19 PM, 5.4K followers, 21 retweets, 67 likes]
On this 15th anniversary of a pivotal moment in our nation’s history, we celebrate the restoration of peace in Sri Lanka. While this is a time to reflect on our journey, we must also acknowledge that deep divisions still persist among our diverse communities. True reconciliation requires more than the absence of violence; it demands empathy, respect, and a commitment to understanding each other. As we reflect on this day, let us renew our efforts to bridge these divides. By embracing our differences and celebrating our rich cultural diversity, we can build a united and prosperous Sri Lanka. Together, with solidarity and a shared vision for our future, we can overcome mistrust and lay the foundation for lasting peace.True reconciliation is not a one-time event but a continuous process that requires give and take from all sides. We must listen with open hearts, engage in meaningful dialogue, and act with empathy. It’s through understanding and respecting each other’s perspectives that we can foster mutual respect and trust.

As we move forward, let us not forget the importance of compassion and compromise. Every step we take towards each other is a step towards a stronger, more unified nation. By working together, we can ensure that the legacy of this day is not just the end of conflict, but the beginning of a truly inclusive and harmonious Sri Lanka. I have always believed in and advocated for a common Sri Lankan identity. Let us come together, not just as individuals from various communities, but as one nation, to unlock the true potential of our beloved country. #SriLanka #Unity #Reconciliation #Diversity #Peace #Empathy #TogetherWeCanWin

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_UNP
[5/19/2024 10:41 AM, 318K followers, 238 retweets, 2.2K likes]
I met @elonmusk today during my official visit to Indonesia for the 10th World Water Forum. He was there to launch the Starlink satellite internet service, aimed at providing internet connectivity to remote areas in Indonesia. We had a fruitful discussion on a variety of interesting topics. Starlink’s expansion could be particularly transformative for countries like Sri Lanka, providing a lifeline to essential services and information.

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_UNP
[5/18/2024 2:15 AM, 318K followers, 50 retweets, 305 likes]
I visited the AiGrow Company’s greenhouse premises in Nelumdeniya, Kegalle, built by Dr Harsha Subhasinghe who pioneered the production of the Vega car. We can tackle today’s agricultural challenges by implementing a comprehensive modernisation program using AI and other technologies. This year, we’ll target 100 Divisional Secretariat Divisions for modern agriculture, starting with 25 in the first phase and another 75 in the second. We invite private entrepreneurs to join this initiative, offering government support with necessary training and financial facilities.

Namal Rajapaksa
@RajapaksaNamal
[5/19/2024 12:23 PM, 436.8K followers, 13 retweets, 69 likes]
Today marks the 15th anniversary of Remembrance Day, commemorating the end of the 30-year Civil War and honoring the soldiers and civilians who lost their lives. Former President Hon. @PresRajapaksa, who led the country to victory, attended the remembrance ceremony.

Namal Rajapaksa
@RajapaksaNamal
[5/19/2024 1:01 AM, 436.8K followers, 1 retweet, 16 likes]
Had a productive discussion with representatives of the Muslim Progressive Forum, gathering their valuable insights on our upcoming programs.

Namal Rajapaksa
@RajapaksaNamal
[5/18/2024 12:42 PM, 436.8K followers, 2 retweets, 19 likes]
Met with our activists from Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna to gather their opinions. #SLPP leader and fifth executive president of Sri Lanka, Hon. @PresRajapaksa, also joined the event.

Namal Rajapaksa
@RajapaksaNamal
[5/17/2024 5:02 AM, 436.8K followers, 1 retweet, 13 likes]
Met with the Young Professionals Association, affiliated with #SLPP, to discuss their crucial role in SLPP policy making. Their insights are key for shaping the way forward.
Central Asia
Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[5/18/2024 6:15 AM, 8.5M followers, 2.9K retweets, 9.1K likes]
Kyrgyzstan is the most dangerous country in the Central Asia. Stop sending Pakistan students to this dangerous country. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/13/kyrgyzstan-erupts-into-ethnic-war

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[5/19/2024 6:07 AM, 8.5M followers, 1.8K retweets, 5.8K likes]
Kyrgyzstan is a very unsafe place for Pakistani students since long. There is a history of violence against foreigners in Kyrgyzstan. Why Pakistani government allow students to go there? There should be a ban on going to Kyrgyzstan due to security reasons.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[5/18/2024 4:03 PM, 210K followers, 246 retweets, 1.1K likes]
Hard to assess the scale of the threat to Pakistanis caught up in anti-foreigner violence in Bishkek--but the fact that the Pak FM is headed there tomorrow & that dozens of Pakistani students have evacuated makes clear it’s serious, perhaps more so than the Pak gov’t has let on.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[5/18/2024 2:48 PM, 210K followers, 399 retweets, 1.6K likes]
Pakistanis constitute about 20% of international students in Kyrgyzstan (12,000 of about 61,000 in total, per UNESCO data). They were targeted by mobs going after foreigners in Bishkek last night--violence reportedly triggered by local students’ clashes w/Egyptian students.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[5/18/2024 2:48 PM, 210K followers, 6 retweets, 63 likes]
I should note that data is from 2021. It may have changed in the post-pandemic era--though as recently as January 2024, the Kyrgyz government cited the 12,000 figure. https://migrationdataportal.org/regional-data-overview/central-asia

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[5/18/2024 2:48 PM, 210K followers, 41 retweets, 120 likes]
Pakistani students in Bishkek interviewed here said that angry mobs targeted both Indian and Pakistani students after having "scouted out their the[ir] locations" in advance. Really scary stuff. https://www.rferl.org/a/kyrgyzstan-pakistan-riots-mob-violence-students-bishkek/32952766.html

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[5/19/2024 11:40 AM, 23K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
This was remarkable: Uzbekistan #MediaFreedom in-depth with @RFERL @ozodlik Pahlavon Sodiq from Prague and me @AmerikaOvozi (VOA) from Washington, moderated from Tashkent by #VatandoshTV’s Ilyos Safarov.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[5/18/2024 4:21 PM, 23K followers, 2 retweets, 5 likes]
Uzbekistan Senate unanimously voted to ratify to enhance military/security/intelligence cooperation with the United States, specifically info exchange/protection in these areas. Something, as this piece indicates, the U.S. wants to do more with Tashkent. https://www.voanews.com/a/congressman-us-needs-counterterrorism-partners-in-central-asia/7603493.html

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[5/18/2024 4:51 AM, 23K followers, 2 retweets, 7 likes]
US-educated Uzbek lawyers, relying on their mentors in US firms and professional networks, are eager to defend UZ/Central Asian migrants. Some want to launch legal clinics at home.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[5/19/2024 9:34 AM, 23K followers, 3 retweets, 3 likes]
Residents of Aqtau, a Kazakhstani port city located on the northeastern shore of the Caspian Sea, are on edge these days. For more than two decades, they have watched the Caspian Sea shrink and the local economy wither.

{End of Report}
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