SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Thursday, May 9, 2024 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
Blast in north Afghanistan kills three Taliban security personnel (Reuters)
Reuters [5/8/2024 2:40 PM, Mohammad Yunus Yawar, 5239K, Negative]
Three Taliban security personnel were killed when a motorcycle carrying an explosive device blew up near a military vehicle in northern Afghanistan being used in opium poppy eradication operations, an interior ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.Protests have roiled several districts in the northern province of Badakhshan, where farmers object to Taliban security forces’ attempts to wipe out opium cultivation - the backbone of many household incomes in impoverished Afghanistan."The explosion took place as the police convoy was passing for the purpose of opium poppy eradication," said interior ministry spokesman Abdul Matin Qaniee, adding that five other people were injured.Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in the provincial capital Faizabad, the group’s Telegram channel said on Wednesday.National and local Taliban administration spokespeople had said the previous day that calm had been restored to the protest-hit areas and teams sent from the national and provincial capital had held discussions with locals.The protests, which began late last week, have resulted in the deaths of two people. The Taliban said they were considering providing financial compensation to the victims’ families.The Taliban have said they are seeking to restore order and security to the war-torn nation after taking over in 2021 as foreign forces withdrew.Nevertheless, attacks have continued and the local branch of the militant Islamic State group, as well as resistance groups, have claimed responsibility for attacks on Taliban security forces. Bomb blast hits Taliban convoy in turbulent Afghan province, kills 3 (VOA)
VOA [5/8/2024 2:51 PM, Ayaz Gul, 761K, Negative]
A bomb explosion in Afghanistan’s volatile northeastern Badakhshan province Wednesday killed at least three Taliban security personnel and wounded six others.Multiple sources, including residents and area hospital officials, confirmed the casualties. They said that a “sticky improvised explosive device” apparently planted on a motorbike struck a Taliban military convoy in the provincial capital, Faizabad.The Taliban’s Interior Ministry spokesman confirmed the casualties, saying the bomb targeted a unit of security forces that were heading to illegal poppy fields to destroy them. Abdul Mateen Qani said the attack was under investigation.Later Wednesday, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bombing in Badakhshan, which has been in the grip of unprecedented violent public protests against Taliban authorities’ poppy eradication campaign. The unrest erupted last Friday and left two protesters dead in clashes with Taliban security forces. The claim was made via its Telegram channel, according to Reuters.Wednesday’s deadly blast came a day after the Taliban’s army chief, Fasihuddin Fitrat, said in a video message that he had addressed complaints of protesting farmers and resolved the unrest. He insisted on receiving public support for poppy eradication.Fitrat arrived in Faizabad from Kabul two days ago as the head of a high-powered delegation to negotiate with the demonstrators’ leaders.Ahead of his visit to the province, the Taliban army chief had threatened to militarily “quell the rebellion” if the demonstrations persisted. He reiterated his government’s resolve to eradicate poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and vowed to achieve this goal, come what may.Since regaining control of the country, the Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, Hibatullah Akundzada, has imposed a nationwide ban on poppy cultivation, production, usage, transportation, and trade of illicit drugs.However, deteriorating economic conditions and the absence of alternatives for poppy-growing farmers have been causing unrest in parts of Afghanistan against the ban, which went into effect in April 2022.The United Nations estimates the ban on poppy cultivation rendered some 450,000 people jobless in poverty-stricken Afghanistan and precipitated a $1.3 billion loss in farmers’ incomes.Badakhshan and surrounding Afghan provinces are ethnically non-Pashtun regions. The Taliban, who represent the country’s majority Pashtun population, were unable to take control of the northern provinces during their first stint in power in the 1990s.Critics argue that the rare public uprising in Badakhshan highlights the potential obstacles that the Taliban may face in maintaining their authority in Afghanistan, reeling from decades of war and the effects of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, and droughts. IS group claims bombing in Afghanistan that killed officers involved in an anti-poppy crop campaign (AP)
AP [5/9/2024 4:21 AM, Staff, 2.1M, Neutral]
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a bombing in Afghanistan’s northeast that killed police officers who were part of an anti-poppy crop campaign.A motorcycle was booby-trapped and exploded, targeting a Taliban patrol in Faizabad town in Badakhshan province, killing and wounding 12 members of the patrol as well as destroying a four-wheel drive vehicle, the group said in a statement late Wednesday.Abdul Mateen Qani, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the officers were on their way to destroy poppy crops in the area.The Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan, a major Taliban rival, has conducted attacks on schools, hospitals, mosques and Shiite areas throughout the country. In March, the group said one of its suicide bombers detonated an explosive belt among Taliban gathered near a Kandahar bank to receive their salaries.The Taliban pledged to wipe out the country’s drug cultivation industry and imposed a formal ban in April 2022, dealing a heavy blow to hundreds of thousands of farmers and day laborers who relied on proceeds from the crop to survive. Opium cultivation crashed by 95% after the ban, a report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said last November.Protests are rare in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, but there was a backlash in Badakhshan last week in response to the poppy eradication campaign.It prompted a high-ranking delegation led by the chief of military staff Fasihudin Fitrat to visit the region and negotiate with protesters.Protests erupted last Friday after a man was shot and killed by the Taliban for resisting poppy eradication attempts in Darayum district. Another was killed on Saturday during a protest in Argo district. Taliban reject claims of Afghan involvement in recent attacks in Pakistan (AP)
AP [5/8/2024 4:56 AM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
The Taliban on Wednesday rejected claims of Afghan involvement in recent attacks in Pakistan, calling it “irresponsible and far from the reality.”Pakistan’s military said Tuesday a suicide bombing that killed five Chinese engineers and a Pakistani driver in March was planned in neighboring Afghanistan and that the bomber was an Afghan citizen.Maj. Gen. Ahmad Sharif, a spokesman for Pakistan’s army, has said that four men behind the March 26 attack in Bisham, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, had been arrested.Enayatullah Khawarazmi, a spokesman for the Taliban’s Ministry of Defense, said in a statement Wednesday that “blaming Afghanistan for such incidents is a failed attempt to divert attention from the truth of the matter and we strongly reject it.”
“The killing of Chinese citizens in an area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that is under tight security cover by the Pakistan Army shows the weakness of the Pakistani security agencies, “ said Khawarazmi.He added that the Islamic Emirate has assured China that Afghans were not involved.Sharif said the Afghan Taliban had failed to honor promises they made to the international community before coming to power, vowing no one would be allowed to use Afghan soil for attacks against any country.Khawarazmi countered that Afghanistan has evidence of Islamic state members coming to Afghanistan form Pakistan, and “Pakistan territory being used against us, for which Pakistan should answer.” Taliban affirms that stoning will be punishment for adulterers — especially women (NPR)
NPR [5/8/2024 8:45 AM, Ruchi Kumar, 5347K, Negative]
"We will flog the women ... we will stone them to death in public [for crimes]," said Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, in an audio message issued on March 24.Akhundzada – who hasn’t been seen in public in a decade – reiterated the group’s previous stance on public floggings and stonings, particularly against women.The audio statement, broadcast on Afghanistan’s state radio and television networks, appeared to be directed at the Western and democratic governments that frequently criticize Taliban policies. "You may call it a violation of women’s rights when we publicly stone or flog them for committing adultery because they conflict with your democratic principles... [But] I represent Allah, and you represent Satan," Akhundzada said.The statement raises two questions: Is there any basis for this interpretation of Islamic law?And does it indicate that the Taliban has been – or will begin – administering this consequence to adulterers, in particular women?A controversial topicThe call for stoning as punishment in Islam is controversial and contested by scholars, Sarah Eltantawi, associate professor of modern Islam in the Department of Theology at Fordham University, told NPR."It is not clear-cut," she says. "There are a lot of Muslim authorities that actually for all intents and purposes rule out stoning as a punishment altogether, because the Quran does not mention the stoning punishment at all. The only mention in the Quran is of symbolically stoning Satan," she explains.Eltantawi added that while stoning as a punishment is mentioned in the Hadiths — which are the records of the words and actions of the Prophet Mohammad that are believed to guide Islamic way of life — the conditions to prosecute for a moral crime like adultery requires "four sane Muslim male witnesses of actual penetration. And as the legal scholars put it, with the precision of a pen in an ink pot."As for the singling out of women in the Taliban message, Eltantawi says, "There is absolutely no way to justify that Islamically. There is no possible reading of the Quran, of Islamic law, of any school of law that singles out women for this punishment whatsoever."There are different perspectives on the history of stoning. "Stoning is an actual punishment for adultery. This is a historical fact," says Abdullah Ali, scholar of Islamic law at Zaytuna College, Berkeley, California. He says the words and actions of the prophet Mohammad — a body of work known as the Sunnah – show it was practiced within the prophet’s own lifetime.But like Eltantawi, he says, the burden of proving the act is almost impossible: four upright men witnessing the act of penetration. And if they did witness it, says Ali, "that means this had to be such a public event that that it was so egregious that something had to be had to be done about it."Ali says that the crime was so difficult to prove that most of the people punished for the crime of adultery during the time of the prophet, confessed to it themselves."In a society where there is not much public indecency, then there’s no reason to imagine that it would be possible for [stoning as a punishment for adultery] to occur unless people are spying on other people and that itself is haram," Ali says — a term that means forbidden by Islamic law. He also notes that Islam does not sanction the invasion of people’s privacy.Ali and Eltantawi both stress that since religious leaders believe it would be fairly difficult to make a conviction, the law has another purpose. "So [Islamic scholars] think that this punishment originated, as many things in Islamic law, as a deterrent to maintain public morality," she says.Ali says, "The fundamental goal of Islamic law is to manage society with balance to help the human being to form into a virtuous person. And of course, by extension, society becomes a virtuous society."Eltantawi urges Muslim countries to reprimand the Taliban for their interpretation, saying that their supreme commander’s comments represent an insult to Islamic law.Does stoning still take place?The Taliban is not the only governing body that has endorsed stoning. In recent years, some countries have in recent years endorsed stoning as a punishment — Iran, Sudan and Nigeria, for example. Nigeria and Sudan, which both have Islamic law as a component of their justice system, have prescribed stoning as punishment for adultery and homosexuality in the last two years, according to reports in Reuters and the Guardian.Has the Taliban in fact stoned women to death? And what does this March 24 statement portend?According to several reports in Afghan news websites like Etilaatroz as well as women’s media outlets like Rukhshana Media, the Taliban have frequently conducted stonings of men and women accused of adultery across Afghanistan.In a statement issued last year, the Taliban’s deputy of Supreme Court, Abdul Malik Haqqani, said that since taking over, the court has issued, among other punishments, 37 sentences of stoning, while four convicts were buried alive in a wall.What makes Akhundzada’s latest statement worrisome for activists watching Afghanistan is that he singled out women as future targets of these punishments. And they note that there no longer exists a functioning judiciary system where women can defend themselves."Just two and a half years ago, we diligently prosecuted thousands of cases each year involving violations of women’s rights," says Najia Mahmodi, who was a chief prosecutor on elimination of violence against women at the Attorney General’s Office of Afghanistan. "However, since the Taliban takeover, the entire legal system of Afghanistan has collapsed.""The absence of a functional legal framework in Afghanistan undermines the rule of law and access to justice for all individuals, but women in particular are at risk in this scenario, as the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law often leads to such discriminatory ways that can be used against women," she says.If someone were to falsely accuse a woman of, say, adultery, she explains, there isn’t any institution or body where she can seek justice — or any lawyers who can defend her since female lawyers are no longer permitted to work.Since taking over Afghanistan in August 2021, the fundamentalist group has not only introduced many restrictions on women’s rights and freedoms but also suspended the constitution, which has sections to protect women, as well as laws against gender-based violence.Samira Hamidi, a senior campaigner at Amnesty International, recalls that in the past, Afghan women who faced false accusations or were threatened by gender-based or domestic violence could appeal to a number of institutions: the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, Elimination of Violence against Women units in the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Justice, the office of the Attorney General."They were providing services and spaces to support and protect women from different forms of violence and discrimination. However, these services do not exist any more," she says.Currently, every Taliban judge makes his own interpretations of Islamic law for each case — although religious scholars regularly contest their rulings.In an article in the Euro News on April 3, Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al Issa, secretary general of the Muslim World League, wrote that the Taliban’s policies "that hinges on their purported adherence to Islamic law" are "based on a fundamentally flawed, selective and extreme interpretation of Islamic texts."Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary-General, criticized the statement as "disappointing" in a press briefing on March 25. Haq called for the Taliban to ease restrictions on women: "It’s extremely disheartening ... we have called for those edicts to be revoked and we will continue to pressure upon that to push for the equal rights of women in Afghanistan and indeed in all countries."NPR reached out to the Taliban for comment but they did not respond prior to publication.For one former judge in Afghanistan, the comments from the Taliban supreme leader had a very personal meaning.M.B. asked to be identified only by her initials, fearing a Taliban backlash. She recalls how as a girl she watched the public flogging of a woman under the last Taliban regime in the 1990s. That experience inspired her to pursue a career in law in the justice system built after the fall of that earlier Taliban regime.After the takeover, M.B., like her colleagues, lost her vocation when the Taliban suspended the constitution and forbade women from working in the judiciary. "I think about the stoning in the ‘90s and it feels now like nothing has changed," she tells NPR, the sadness evident in her voice.The Taliban’s interpretations of the Islamic law are "misogynist and baseless," says M.B. "Nevertheless, they have been implementing these punishments increasingly in the last two years" — referring to stonings, floggings, amputations and burying people alive. "This is the worst period, not only in the history of Afghanistan," she says, "but for all humanity." ‘One-Party Rule’: Taliban Wages Crackdown On Political Parties (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/8/2024 8:32 AM, Abubakar Siddique, 223K, Neutral]
The Taliban is widening its crackdown on dissent by targeting political parties in Afghanistan.The extremist group banned all political parties last year. But in recent months, the Taliban has clamped down on parties still deemed to be active.Among the high-profile targets is the Hezb-e Islami party led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of Afghanistan’s most notorious ex-warlords and a former militant leader.The move comes as the Taliban intensifies its efforts to stifle opposing voices in Afghanistan, where scores of journalists and activists have been jailed since the militants’ takeover in 2021.‘Bad Policies’Hekmatyar signed a peace deal with the former Afghan government in 2016, under which he was granted security and a government-funded residence in the capital, Kabul.The 76-year-old initially welcomed the Taliban’s resumption of control in Afghanistan. But he has grown increasingly critical of the group, which has monopolized power, severely curtailed women’s rights, and stamped out the free press.In March, the Taliban forced Hekmatyar out of his government-funded residence and barred him from holding his Friday sermons. Members of his party were then prevented from meeting with him in his new residence in the capital.In April, a TV station owned by Hezb-e Islami was shut down. Barya TV mainly aired Hekmatyar’s speeches and sermons.“Totalitarian regimes deeply believe in one-party rule,” said Obaidullah Baheer, a lecturer of politics at the American University of Afghanistan and Hekmatyar’s grandson.Hezb-e Islami and the Taliban are both hard-line Islamist groups that are mostly made up of Pashtuns.“Some Taliban followers revere Hekmatyar and agree with his criticism of the group’s bad policies, which the Taliban leader sees as a threat to his authority and the group’s unity,” Baheer said.In August 2023, the Taliban formally banned all political parties in Afghanistan in a decree issued by Justice Minister Abdul Hakim Sharai.Sharai, during a gathering in March, reiterated that “parties have no place in our political system.” He added that “even mentioning the name of a party is a crime."The minister also claimed that the Taliban had shown “full respect” to Hekmatyar.‘Sacred Duty’Hameed Hakimi, an Afghanistan expert at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank, said the ban on political parties is aimed at preventing any future political opposition.“The disenfranchisement and disarming of Hekmatyar sends a signal to those like him,” said Hakimi.Under the Taliban’s theocratic system, spiritual leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, who is the "Amir ul-Momineen," or the leader of the faithful, has the final say on all important matters.The Taliban sees “Afghans as subjects of Islamic law,” said Hakimi, adding that obedience to Akhundzada is seen as Afghans’ “sacred duty.”"It is detrimental to the future of Afghanistan," Hakimi said. "And detrimental to any sense of pluralism."Isa Ishaqzai, president of the Afghanistan National Congress party, said the Taliban is "terrified" at the prospect of Afghans raising their voices for “justice, human rights, and national interests.”
“Political parties can inform people,” Ishaqzai told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi. Iran Seeks To Tighten Crackdown On Afghan Refugees (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/8/2024 6:11 AM, Ardeshir Tayebi, 223K, Neutral]
Iran says it has expelled some 1.3 million foreigners over the past year, highlighting a significant crackdown by the government on unauthorized migrants, primarily Afghan refugees.Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi told a press briefing that the efforts to regulate foreign nationals needs to be bolstered with legislative reforms to tighten border controls and prevent any future influx of unauthorized migrants."To stop unauthorized nationals from entering Iran, it is necessary to amend the relevant laws in parliament," Vahidi said in an indication the government doesn’t plan to heed calls from human rights groups to ensure a fair immigration policy.Vahidi added that "effective” laws must be enacted to deal with expelled individuals who have managed to re-enter Iran after being deported. He did not elaborate.Iranian officials typically use the term "unauthorized nationals" to refer to Afghan refugees and Vahidi’s statement is seen as an indication that the government plans to continue with its efforts to deport those who have fled the Taliban regime.According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, Iran currently hosts around 3.4 million foreign refugees, with Afghans comprising the largest single group. The agency requested $114 million in aid for Iran last year to support refugee management, of which Tehran had received over $26 million by mid-2023.This year, the refugee agency has sought $110 million in aid for Iran, with commitments from several countries, including Italy, Japan, Bulgaria, and Germany, to cover part of the sum.Iran ranks alongside Turkey as one of the top host countries for refugees globally. The issue of Afghan migration has regained prominence following the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, leading to an increase in the number of refugees seeking safety outside their home country.Recent government estimates suggest significant discrepancies in the number of unauthorized Afghan nationals in Iran, with figures ranging from 500,000 to 1.2 million, according to last year’s assessment by the head of the National Immigration Organization. Pakistan
Pakistani security forces kill 6 militants in twin raids in volatile northwest near Afghanistan (AP)
AP [5/8/2024 11:44 AM, Staff, 22K, Negative]
Pakistani security forces killed six militants in twin raids Wednesday targeting their hideouts in the country’s volatile northwest region bordering Afghanistan, the military said.Five militants were killed in the first raid in Dera Ismail Khan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the military said in a statement. It did not provide further details about the slain insurgents, and only said the men were behind various previous attacks on the security forces.Another militant was killed in the second raid in a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban in the North Waziristan district in the northwest.The statement did not provide any further details about the identity of the slain men.Such operations often target the Pakistani Taliban, which has been emboldened by the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in 2021. Known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, it is a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban. Gunmen in Pakistan kill seven labourers near Gwadar port, say police (Reuters)
Reuters [5/9/2024 3:43 AM, Saleem Ahmed, 5.2M, Negative]
Gunmen shot and killed seven labourers near southwestern Pakistan’s Gwadar port early on Thursday, police said.
Police official Mohsin Ali said the gunmen stormed into a house some 25 km (15 miles) east of the port city and shot and killed the labourers in their sleep.
The port city is located in troubled southwestern Balochistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.
No one has claimed responsibility.
Baloch separatist militants have in the past targeted labourers from eastern Punjab province, like the ones in the latest shooting.
Last month, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed the killing of nine labourers from Punjab province, who were abducted and then shot at close range after gunmen stopped a bus.
The separatists have long been fighting the government to demand a greater share in the mineral-rich province’s natural resources.
Gwadar is the site of several Beijing-backed projects under the $65 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor investment as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. Human rights body calls 2023 a dismal year for Pakistan (VOA)
VOA [5/8/2024 3:21 PM, Sarah Zaman, 761K, Negative]
Human rights in Pakistan took a nosedive and civic spaces contracted to an extraordinary degree in 2023 in the wake of violent political protests, the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in a new report reviewing the past year.“This year was remarkable for the State’s blatant disregard for its own Constitution, adherence to a bare, notional democracy, and civic spaces having shrunk to an all-time low,” said the report released Wednesday.The document covers a wide range of human rights issues that weakened Pakistani democracy last year, from unelected caretaker governments exceeding their constitutionally mandated term to the parliament hastily passing laws including those granting more powers to security agencies.Political repressionThe commission said the human rights situation reached a new low on May 9, 2023, “a defining day” on which supporters of former prime minister Imran Khan stormed military and government installations to protest his arrest.“The state retaliated with a fierce crackdown and mass arrests of thousands of party workers and leaders, including women,” the report said. “Many [were] kept in military custody, not allowed to meet their families. Internet and social media shutdowns were imposed.”The report recorded at least 15 instances of internet services being shut down in the last year. Following the violence on May 9, government suspended internet services for nearly four days across much of Pakistan.The HRCP said the authorities repeatedly banned gatherings of more than four people in a bid to restrict political activities.Missing personsAccording to HRCP’s monitoring of media reports, 82 men and seven women were forcibly disappeared during 2023. The report said some of the disappearances were short-term, targeting political party members.Referring to data provided by the government’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, HRCP said nearly 2,300 cases of missing persons remained unresolved at the end of last year.A weekslong protest movement led by Baloch women seeking recovery of missing family members returned empty-handed from Islamabad after talks with caretaker government officials stalled. The protesters were brutally dispersed upon arrival in the capital.“Baloch women were not even given the dignity of a conversation,” said Munizae Jahangir, co-chairperson of the HRCP.Holding security agencies responsible for enforced disappearances, the commission’s chairperson, Asad Iqbal Butt, said the acts violated an array of civil rights.The security agencies “think they are friends of Pakistan, but whenever I have a meeting with them, I tell them, ‘You are not a friend of Pakistan. You are engaging in animosity with Pakistan,’” Butt said.He urged the courts to ask recovered victims of enforced disappearances to identify the agencies that detained them.“Unless those who pick people up are not brought to justice, unless they are punished, this problem cannot be resolved,” Butt said, adding that the issue of enforced disappearances was hurting the public’s trust in state institutions.Military’s responseIn a rare press conference a day earlier, military spokesperson Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry defended the crackdown on the Pakistan Tareek-e-Insaf Party, or PTI.“If, in any country, an attack is launched on its army, symbols of its martyrs are insulted, its founder’s house is set on fire, hatred is created between its army and public. And if the people behind it are not brought to justice, then there is a question mark on that country’s justice system,” Chaudhry told the media.The chief of Inter-Services Public Relations, Chaudhry supported PTI’s demand for a judicial commission to probe the events of May 9. However, he said the commission should investigate the party’s past attacks on government properties as well.Calling PTI a group of anarchists, the military spokesperson demanded the party “apologize publicly.”Speaking to reporters in court on Wednesday, Khan said he would not apologize.“I should be apologized to, as I have been arrested illegally,” said Khan, who has been in jail since Aug. 5, 2023, on multiple corruption charges that he has denied.While speaking to the media on Tuesday, Chaudhry said it was unfair to blame enforced disappearances on law enforcement agencies, since some allegedly missing persons are found to be involved in terrorism and other illegal activities or are in private jails run by local militias.He said the issue was serious and complex but rejected the debate surrounding it as propaganda by “certain political elements, media elements, NGOs and some with links overseas.”
“Here [in Pakistan] there is exaggerated propaganda on this issue,” Chaudhry said, arguing that the scope of the problem in Pakistan was smaller than in many other countries.Butt on Wednesday dismissed Chaudhry’s assertions as “foolish,” saying men in uniform were seen abducting people.Jahangir called for stronger legislation to determine the mandate of security agencies. She urged the government to ratify the United Nations’ International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Imran Khan supporters still reeling from crackdown one year on (BBC)
BBC [5/8/2024 9:39 PM, Saad Sohail and Kelly Ng, 13914K, Negative]
When former prime minister Imran Khan was dragged out of a court house by police on charges of corruption on 9 May 2023, the reaction was unlike anything seen in Pakistan before.Enraged supporters took to the streets in cities across the country and buildings belonging to Pakistan’s powerful military became the target - a shock to the institution widely known locally as the establishment."When he was arrested, our hearts sank. We were crying and didn’t know what to do," said Hasan, who cycled to a central market in Lahore where Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had often gathered.The residence of a lieutenant general in the city had already been set ablaze by then.On the streets of the capital Islamabad, where Khan was arrested, protesters pulled down street signs, lit fires and threw stones. Scores of military monuments were vandalised.The military, which has long held sway over governance in the Muslim majority country, swiftly labelled 9 May 2023 a "Black Day". They have also described the protests as an "attack on the army".One year on, many supporters of the former cricket star are still reeling from the physical and emotional wounds of the day’s events.Hasan was among hundreds arrested for their involvement in the protests. Many of them told BBC Urdu they took to the streets "peacefully" and were not involved in the violence, but were nevertheless held without due process and mistreated while in detention.Hasan said he joined the protests "because I felt that what happened to Imran Khan was wrong... We were telling the police, ‘Today, you have crossed the red line’, he said."Many Pakistanis have an emotional connection with Khan Sahib," he said, using a local term or respect. "He is like a brother, like a father, to us."Abrar, another supporter who took to the streets after Khan’s arrest, recalled that he left his house in Lahore "immediately" after seeing footage of Khan’s arrest last May, as he felt his "leader should not have been humiliated in this way".Khan is a cricketing icon in a country where the sport enjoys almost fanatical support. He brought glory to the country as captain when he led the national team to World Cup victory in 1992. Many Pakistanis have grown up idolising him.But critics argue that Mr Khan had the backing of the army during his rise to power, an allegation both sides reject. The military has heavily influenced Pakistan for most of its existence and is a crucial behind-the-scenes player in the country’s politics.He was elected PM in July 2018 but ousted in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence four years later. Shortly before general elections this February he was given several criminal convictions, barring him from standing. He is battling scores of legal cases, including charges for corruption and terrorism, but continues to be a powerful force dividing Pakistan.During the February elections, his party, which had been denied its election symbol and a united platform, was forced to run candidates as independents, who then emerged as the single largest bloc in a shock result. However, they fell short of the majority needed to form a government.At least 10 people were killed and hundreds wounded during the 9 May protests, which authorities also said resulted in losses of 2.5 billion rupees ($9m; £7.2m).The crackdown after was effective and harsh. Protesters who were jailed have spoken of abuse and despair."Sometimes the prison felt more like a graveyard. Like how we recite prayers at the graves of our loved ones, perhaps our families were reciting the same prayers when they came to meet us," said Abrar, who was released early this year after spending nine months in jail."My daughter would be crying and I could not wipe her tears,” he added.Intizar, a fellow protester who was detained, told BBC Urdu prison officials "treated us as if we were terrorists, not Pakistanis"."I told them I only protested and did not vandalise," he said.He turned himself into police after they went after his family and broke the gate of his house in an attempt to locate him."I don’t think we can ever describe what we and our families endured."Former interior minister Rana Sanaullah said the events of 9 May 2023 were but a continuation of the PTI’s protests in the past.“The atmosphere had been created because the PTI founder was determined to prove itself more powerful than the state,” he said, referring to Imran Khan."How can anyone say that ‘If I am arrested, it will be crossing a red line’? This is like a rebellion."While a year has passed, political watchers say Pakistan will not be able to move on until the grievances of the protesters are addressed."I feel the state has only been venting its anger on this matter, as if trying to take revenge, instead of investigating it," said journalist Benazir Shah, who reported on the protests.Ms Shah urged authorities to launch an investigation and make clear the roles of everyone involved."We will not be able to move forward until this is done. Until you answer the questions that have not been answered for the last one year, if the state remains silent, then we will not be able to move forward and we won’t be able to talk about the future,” she said.But the military remains firm in its determination to punish those responsible for the protests."Negotiations cannot be held with an anarchist group," army spokesman Maj Gen Ahmed Sharif told journalists, while referring to the PTI.“The only way forward is that such an anarchist group apologises to the nation and promises to leave the politics of hatred and participate in constructive politics.” Pakistan Declares Emergency To Enroll 26 Million Out-Of-School Kids (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/8/2024 12:53 PM, Staff, 223K, Neutral]
Pakistan declared an emergency on May 8 to enroll 26 million children of school-going age who are not registered to seek formal education, the highest number in the world. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced that his government was imposing the formal emergency declaration to tackle the daunting task of wooing back children to school. The declaration allows for the mobilization of funds and resources and puts the problem high on the government agenda. A combination of policy and administrative tools would be deployed, as well as incentives to encourage parents to send their kids to the classroom, Sharif said. Wife of former Pakistan PM Imran Khan moved to jail (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [5/8/2024 8:10 AM, Staff, 11975K, Negative]
The wife of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was moved Wednesday from house arrest to the same jail as her husband, lawyers said, where the pair will serve matching prison terms for illegal marriage.Khan’s party has been targeted with a sweeping crackdown since nationwide protests erupted over his arrest on May 9 last year, which saw unprecedented anger directed at the military.Bushra Bibi, 49, and Khan, 71, were both convicted of corruption and breaking Islamic marriage laws in the lead up to February’s general election, which saw military-backed parties come to power.Khan, who was also jailed for leaking state secrets, says the cases were designed to keep him from contesting."She has already been shifted to a female ward of the jail on her own request," Intazar Hussain Panjutha, a lawyer for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, told AFP.She had been held at the home she shared with Khan -- declared a sub-jail -- on the outskirts of the capital for the past three months.Khan is also serving a concurrent 10-year term for leaking state secrets.The divorced mother met Khan when he approached her for spiritual guidance and appear in public wearing a face-covering hijab.She had made repeated requests to be "treated as a commoner" and taken to the prison, a spokesman for the party said.The couple married just months before Khan was elected prime minister.He was booted from power in April 2022 by a no-confidence vote after analysts said he fell out with the country’s influential generals.He went on to wage a defiant campaign against the establishment which culminated in thousands of supporters pouring onto the streets on May 9 when he was first arrested.Army installations and government property were targeted in a public display of anger against the military that is rarely seen in Pakistan.Thousands of supporters were detained and dozens of party leaders rounded up, decimating Khan’s once unstoppable street power.PTI said the first anniversary of the mass arrests on Thursday would be marked by rallies.Just days before the national election, the pair were sentenced to seven years in prison for marrying too soon after her divorce in contradiction of Islamic law.They had already been jailed for 14 years for corruption involving gifts he received while premier. The sentence was later suspended but the conviction still stands.Despite the crackdown, PTI rattled the establishment by winning the most seats in February’s election but kept from power by a coalition of usually feuding parties. Exclusive: Pakistan’s PSO proposes swapping debt for stake in public sector companies (Reuters)
Reuters [5/9/2024 4:16 AM, Ariba Shahid, 2.1M, Neutral]
Pakistan State Oil (PSO.PSX), the country’s largest oil marketer, says it is in talks with the government on a plan to acquire stakes in public sector energy companies and offset mounting debt it is owed by firms such as the national airline.Stopping the pile-up of unresolved debt across Pakistan’s power sector, and ultimately settling it, is a top concern of the International Monetary Fund, with which Islamabad begin talks this month for a new long-term loan deal."Everything will be done through competitive bidding and we will participate and if we win, the stakes will be offset against (PSO’s receivables)," said Syed Muhammad Taha, the managing director and chief executive of state-backed PSO."That is our proposal and this is under consideration, so we are working with the government," Taha said in an interview on Wednesday with Reuters, which is the first to report the plan.Pakistan’s government, with a stake of about 25%, is the biggest shareholder of PSO, but private shareholders own the rest.Government officials, including the petroleum minister and the information minister, did not reply to a Reuters request for comment.Total circular debt in Pakistan’s power and gas sectors stood at 4.6 trillion rupees ($17 billion), or about 5% of GDP by June 2023, the IMF says.Circular debt is a form of public debt that stems in part from failure to pay dues along the power sector chain, starting with consumers and moving to distribution companies, which owe power plants, which then have to pay fuel supplier PSO.The government is either the biggest shareholder, or outright owner of most these companies, making it tough to resolve debt as fiscal tightening leaves it strapped for cash.Among other steps sought by the IMF, Pakistan has raised energy prices to stop the build-up of debt. But the accumulated amount still has to be resolved.Taha said the IMF reforms helped the sector by boosting creditors’ ability to pay, which will continue to improve.PSO’s aggregate receivables from government agencies and autonomous bodies stood at 499 billion rupees ($1.8 billion), the largest share owed by gas provider Sui Northern Gas (SUIN.PSX), whose largest shareholder is the government.PSO’s annual report last year said the crisis of owed debt was a serious issue for it.Taha said PSO had initially floated the idea of acquiring stakes or complete ownership of assets such as power plants in Nandipur in the northern Punjab province and Guddu in southern Sindh, as well as the government-owned holding entity for power generation companies.It also discussed equity stakes in profitable public sector companies such as the Oil and Gas Development Co (OGDC.PSX), he added.PIA DEALTaha said PSO was also a part of the broader settlement framework for the privatisation of Pakistan International Airlines, which would potentially include a "clean asset swap" and a stake in the airline’s non-core assets, such as property.The government is putting on the block a stake ranging from 51% to 100% in debt-ridden PIA as part of the public-sector reforms sought by the IMF.In March, media said the principal alone that PIA owed PSO for fuel supply amounted to roughly 15.8 billion rupees ($57 million).Taha added that he expected modest growth in demand for petroleum products as the economy opens up, thanks to lower interest rates and higher disposable income.As economic conditions improve, he added, PSO is working with big strategic investors from China and the Middle East to upgrade and expand its refinery arm, Pakistan Refinery Ltd (PKRF.PSX).PSO has a network of 3,528 retail outlets in addition to 19 depots, 14 airport refuelling facilities, operations at two seaports, and Pakistan’s largest storage capacity of 1.14 million tonnes. India
Former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti returns from India for Milken conference (Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles Times [5/8/2024 6:00 AM, Julia Wick, Positive]
A little more than a year after leaving Southern California for New Delhi, former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti returned home for a packed schedule of panels at the Milken Institute Global Conference.This is Garcetti’s second trip back to Los Angeles since he was confirmed to serve as U.S. ambassador to India in March 2023, 20 months after he was first nominated to the post. The former mayor’s appointment was dogged by questions about whether he knew, or should have known, about a former top aide’s alleged sexual harassment of colleagues.The ambassadorship has given the close Biden ally the opportunity to relaunch his political career thousands of miles from the lingering scandal at L.A. City Hall.Garcetti was a frequent participant at the luminary-packed annual Beverly Hilton conference while he was mayor, but his focus this year was on India, rather than the City of Angels. He participated in an opening fireside chat Sunday and three panels Tuesday, two of which were livestreamed.“It’s such an incredible convening,” Garcetti said of the Milken conference, praising its importance to the city and the heft of its attendees. “I always found it to be such an amazing place to connect L.A. with the world and vice versa. And now I’m a part of that world, connecting with L.A. this time.”During a Tuesday morning panel with several business leaders focused on investment in India, Garcetti described the country as “a place where the dynamism of the economy, the youth and the optimism of the population, and the raw opportunities and energy is almost unmatched in the world.” He described himself as a “bridge between the two largest democracies in the world” and said part of his mission as ambassador was to help Americans get to know India as well as Indians know America, “because India and Indians know America and Americans so much better because of decades of immigration, contributions [and] engagement.”The former mayor, who was a powerful booster for Los Angeles while in City Hall, at one point lapsed into a familiar riff about where to go to see the future, except this time, India — and not Los Angeles — was the destination in question.His second panel on Tuesday, titled “The U.S.-India Relationship: Possibilities and Perspectives from Investors and Indian Business Leaders,” was closed to the public. He appeared on a third panel Tuesday afternoon about the future of statecraft and diplomacy alongside ambassadors to the U.S. from Panama and Australia and a State Department official.During the panel, Garcetti spoke about how he had studied international relations and always thought he would go into human rights, international development or diplomacy work, surprising people when he first ran for Los Angeles City Council in 2001.While in Los Angeles Garcetti visited his parents, former L.A. Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and Sukey Garcetti, his sister and brother-in-law and his former foster kids, he said. His wife, Amy Wakeland, and young daughter remained in India because of her school schedule, he said.The stop in the Los Angeles was part of a five-city trip that included a military event in Honolulu and a talk Monday at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Garcetti also met with Indian American tech leaders in Silicon Valley and Indian students at Stanford. He will also attend a series of White House and State Department meetings in Washington, where he will give a Council on Foreign Relations keynote address, followed by a stop in New York before departing for India on Saturday.Garcetti said that he and Mayor Karen Bass “talk all the time.” He spoke to The Times while driving his mother’s Subaru down Wilshire Boulevard toward Getty House, the mayoral residence, to visit with his successor.“It’s funny, I’m driving myself to the house I used to live to meet the mayor,” Garcetti said with a hearty laugh. He marveled at the progress on the D Line subway extension along Wilshire, on which he had broken ground as mayor.His new job is “extraordinary,” he said, though he does miss taco trucks and bagels, both of which are hard to come by in India. India’s Modi skips election in Kashmir as critics dispute integration claims (Reuters)
Reuters [5/8/2024 11:14 PM, Krishn Kaushik and Fayaz Bukhari, 5239K, Neutral]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is criss-crossing India in a marathon election campaign but, for the first time since 1996, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not contesting in Kashmir, where a 35-year uprising against Indian rule has killed tens of thousands of people.Instead, the main contenders for the three seats in the Muslim-majority region are powerful local parties, the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). They will contest against each other but both say they are opposed to the Hindu nationalist BJP and will align with the Congress party-led opposition alliance.Analysts and opposition parties say the BJP decided to skip contesting the election because the outcome is likely to contradict Modi’s narrative of a peaceful, more integrated Kashmir since he removed the region’s semi-autonomous status in 2019 and brought it under New Delhi’s control.The BJP, along with allies, is contesting in every other part of India and is tipped to win a majority of parliament’s 543 seats on the back of its Hindu-first image."Why are they absent from the election?" asked Omar Abdullah, a leader of the National Conference and a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir state."Clearly there is a gap between what the BJP claims to have done and the reality on the ground," he said, speaking in his home in Kashmir’s main city, Srinagar.Modi says his 2019 decision brought normalcy to Kashmir after decades of bloodshed and that he will bring investments and jobs soon. The federal Home (Interior) Minister Amit Shah backs up the government’s position by claiming that youths now hold laptops in their hands instead of stones that they used to throw at security forces in the past.As part of the move, Jammu and Kashmir state was split into two federally ruled areas - the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley with the Hindu-dominated Jammu plains, and mountainous, Buddhist-dominated Ladakh.The government slapped a harsh lockdown on Kashmir at the time and Abdullah and almost all other local leaders were held in custody for months.Ravinder Raina, the chief of the Kashmir unit of the BJP, said the party’s decision to skip the election was part of a broader strategy, although he declined to give specifics."The BJP will not fight, but support a candidate who will work for peace, happiness, brotherhood and democracy," in each of the three seats, he said. The BJP has not yet announced which of the many small parties in the fray it will support.ALIENATION, DISCONTENTInterviews with over a dozen residents, political leaders, security officials and analysts in Kashmir and New Delhi indicate that discontent and alienation continue to simmer in the heavily militarised Himalayan region.Besides the three-decade insurgency, Kashmir is divided into India-controlled and Pakistan-controlled sectors and claimed in full by both nations. The nuclear-armed enemies have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir.India claims that Islamic Pakistan has supported the insurgency in Kashmir, while Islamabad says it only provides moral support to the people there.Abdul Hameed, a 50-year-old garment store owner in Pulwama town near Srinagar, said the federal government had kept the lid on Kashmir since 2019, masking the true situation."But it is like a spring. Right now they have crushed it. But who knows when will it burst open again," he said.Although there are fewer restrictions on people’s movements compared to five years ago, there are still tens of thousands of troops in the valley to enforce the peace.For decades, residents and human rights groups have accused Indian security forces of atrocities against the mainly Muslim population. The government says cases of abuse are isolated acts and it prosecutes any soldier found guilty of human rights violations.Indian military data shows there are over 100 active militants in the region, who allegedly target security forces and workers from other parts of India. Militants killed an air force soldier in an attack on a military convoy on Saturday, officials said."The absence of an elected system over here is an indication of the fact that things are not as they are portrayed," said Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a retired law professor in Srinagar. "They (the BJP) should have treated (this election) as a referendum in their favour. But they seem to be scared."In the May 2019 general election, the BJP contested all three seats in Kashmir, losing them to Abdullah’s National Conference. This year, BJP is contesting the two seats in Jammu and one in Ladakh, all of which it had won in 2019.Mehbooba Mufti, the chief of the PDP, is contesting from the Anantnag-Rajouri constituency, which many believed might have been the BJP’s best bet to enter Kashmir in this election.GERRYMANDERINGIn 2022, a federal government-appointed commission changed the borders of constituencies in Kashmir and Jammu.To Kashmir’s Anantnag, which had around 1.6 million largely Muslim votes in 2019, it added around 1 million mostly Hindu voters from Jammu’s Poonch and Rajouri districts.Mufti told Reuters that by clubbing them, the Modi administration was "changing the balance of the voters". The BJP, she said, wants to "disempower and they want to divest, dispossess Muslims, especially the Kashmiris."National Conference’s Abdullah also claimed that the redrawing of the district was done to give BJP an "advantage".But they still didn’t field a candidate, which "tells you just how bad things must be for the BJP", Abdullah said.However, BJP’s Raina said that the redrawing has made the constituencies more representative of the region. ‘My vote snatched’: India election clouded by mysterious candidate pullouts (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [5/9/2024 12:00 AM, Yashraj Sharma, 2.1M, Neutral]
Prince Patel cancelled his vacation plans after the dates were announced for India’s ongoing weeks-long elections. The 61-year-old retired engineer said he had waited patiently for five years to cast his vote in Surat, India’s diamond hub in the western Indian state of Gujarat, “to give my referendum against the policy failures of [Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s] government”.
But when the May 7 date arrived for the city to vote along with 92 other constituencies in the third phase of India’s election, there were no polling booths set up in Surat.
Two weeks earlier, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had already called the seat in favour of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after cancelling the nominations of the opposition Congress party’s candidate and five others. The eight remaining candidates all withdrew.Patel said he was devastated. He had voted for the BJP in 2014, lifted by Modi’s promises of “acche din” (good days). But by 2019, disenchantment had set in. Unemployment and price rise are some of his biggest worries, he said – sentiments that mirror recent opinion polls.“I would rather vote for a pigeon than choose the BJP,” he said. “My children have graduated but there are no jobs.”
Yet, Surat is only the most extreme example of a peculiar phenomenon that is playing out in multiple constituencies across India: opposition candidates dropping out, joining the ruling BJP or alleging threats to their lives. Even as the BJP has denied any foul play, opposition candidates claim these instances are evidence of an uneven political playing field.“The government is their [BJP’s] own, and the election commission cancelled several nominations on one point or another,” said Vijay Lohar, who was the candidate of a regional party, the Bahujan Republican Socialist Party, before his nomination was rejected by election authorities. “The BJP is the referee of this game. Where should I complain?”‘Show of dominance’
More than 400km (250 miles) miles away from Surat, the city of Indore in the central state of Madhya Pradesh is also preparing for what is shaping up, effectively, as a non-contest.
The city’s vote is scheduled for May 13. But Akshay Kanti Bam, the candidate for the Congress, withdrew his nomination on April 29, the last date for withdrawal of candidatures – after the deadline for filing nominations had passed. In essence, that has meant that the Congress cannot contest against sitting BJP member of parliament Shankar Lalwani, who is also the party’s nominee this time around. Bam, meanwhile, has also quit the Congress and joined the BJP on election eve, claiming that the party that nominated him for the constituency did not support his campaign on the ground.
The Congress party has called on voters in Indore to pick the ‘None of the Above’, or NOTA, option on electoral voting machines – which allows them to show displeasure with all candidates who are contesting – even as it accuses the BJP of pressuring Bam to switch sides on election eve. Bam did not respond to repeated requests from Al Jazeera for an interview.
Prince Patel cancelled his vacation plans after the dates were announced for India’s ongoing weeks-long elections. The 61-year-old retired engineer said he had waited patiently for five years to cast his vote in Surat, India’s diamond hub in the western Indian state of Gujarat, “to give my referendum against the policy failures of [Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s] government”.
But when the May 7 date arrived for the city to vote along with 92 other constituencies in the third phase of India’s election, there were no polling booths set up in Surat.
Two weeks earlier, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had already called the seat in favour of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after cancelling the nominations of the opposition Congress party’s candidate and five others. The eight remaining candidates all withdrew.
Patel said he was devastated. He had voted for the BJP in 2014, lifted by Modi’s promises of “acche din” (good days). But by 2019, disenchantment had set in. Unemployment and price rise are some of his biggest worries, he said – sentiments that mirror recent opinion polls.“I would rather vote for a pigeon than choose the BJP,” he said. “My children have graduated but there are no jobs.”
Yet, Surat is only the most extreme example of a peculiar phenomenon that is playing out in multiple constituencies across India: opposition candidates dropping out, joining the ruling BJP or alleging threats to their lives. Even as the BJP has denied any foul play, opposition candidates claim these instances are evidence of an uneven political playing field.“The government is their [BJP’s] own, and the election commission cancelled several nominations on one point or another,” said Vijay Lohar, who was the candidate of a regional party, the Bahujan Republican Socialist Party, before his nomination was rejected by election authorities. “The BJP is the referee of this game. Where should I complain?”‘Show of dominance’
More than 400km (250 miles) miles away from Surat, the city of Indore in the central state of Madhya Pradesh is also preparing for what is shaping up, effectively, as a non-contest.
The city’s vote is scheduled for May 13. But Akshay Kanti Bam, the candidate for the Congress, withdrew his nomination on April 29, the last date for withdrawal of candidatures – after the deadline for filing nominations had passed. In essence, that has meant that the Congress cannot contest against sitting BJP member of parliament Shankar Lalwani, who is also the party’s nominee this time around. Bam, meanwhile, has also quit the Congress and joined the BJP on election eve, claiming that the party that nominated him for the constituency did not support his campaign on the ground.
The Congress party has called on voters in Indore to pick the ‘None of the Above’, or NOTA, option on electoral voting machines – which allows them to show displeasure with all candidates who are contesting – even as it accuses the BJP of pressuring Bam to switch sides on election eve. Bam did not respond to repeated requests from Al Jazeera for an interview.
The BJP insists it has had no role in the decisions of opposition candidates who have withdrawn their nominations.“People have withdrawn as per their discretion and these are absolutely baseless allegations,” said Zafar Islam, a national spokesperson for the BJP. “Thousands of candidates are fighting in this election across hundreds of seats peacefully – these allegations are only aimed at maligning the BJP’s image.”
But some analysts see a pattern in the constituencies affected by candidate withdrawals. Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are both bastions of the BJP: The party won all 26 of Gujarat’s seats in the Lok Sabha – the lower house of India’s parliament – in 2014 and 2019. It won 27 out of Madhya Pradesh’s 29 seats in 2014 and improved that to 28 wins in 2019.
In the public eye, the pull-out of opposition candidates from key contests in these states is akin to “booth capturing”, said Neelanjan Sircar, a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research (CPR), referring to the illegal practice of seizing control of a polling station during elections, which used to be common in parts of India until a few decades ago.“At a level of the booth, you capture the booth you are strongest at, and that is done to demonstrate dominance,” said Sircar. The idea, he said, is to “signal to the opposition that we can win elections whenever we want”.
And however the ruling party wants, if Jitendra Chauhan, a candidate who withdrew his nomination from the Gandhinagar seat in Gujarat, is to be believed.‘Threat to our lives’
Chauhan’s name was supposed to be among the options on the voting machine on May 7, when Gandhinagar voted.
But the 39-year-old painter, who was contesting as an independent candidate, pulled out of the election against India’s powerful Home Minister Amit Shah, who is widely seen as Modi’s deputy.“There has been extreme pressure upon me, and I have been mentally tortured to the point where I gave up,” Chauhan told Al Jazeera. He claimed that “BJP people” approached his extended family to pressure him to quit. If they could reach his family, they could hurt them too, he feared.“So I backed off and withdrew my nomination,” he said.
Father to three daughters, Chauhan released a video on April 21, sobbing and alluding to a threat that he received of consequences – including for his very life – if he did not back down. Many other candidates also pulled out from the contest against Shah.“I have a responsibility to raise my daughters,” he said, adding that he moved his children to safety outside Gujarat, which is ruled by the BJP, before coming back to vote on May 7. “I’m not financially well-off and I cannot afford to resist the BJP because anything can happen to our lives.”
The BJP has not lost the Gandhinagar seat since 1984. In the 2019 elections, Shah won the seat by a margin of 550,000 votes, and there is little evidence that he would have faced any risk of a loss even if all candidates had contested as they had planned to. But his campaign has set its eyes on doubling Shah’s 2019 victory margin, and fewer contestants could help.
In the 2014 and 2019 elections, “there was a booming turnout for anticorruption promises and nationalism”, but the BJP has lost that wave, said Sircar of the CPR. “The BJP is certainly the most popular party in India, but you have to manufacture some ways of keeping these markers of dominance,” he said.
A Gujarat-based political analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears over their safety, said these incidents pointed to holes in India’s claims to be the world’s largest democracy simply because of the scale of the election it holds. “The worst of democracies also have elections – you cannot do away with elections,” they said. “But the question is about the fairness of the electoral process, and that seems compromised in India.”
It is a sentiment that Chauhan echoed. He said he had thought of contesting because, as a common man who had grown up in poverty, he felt politics was the only vehicle for change.“But it will always be like a hole in my heart that I was forced into withdrawing,” said Chauhan, his voice cracking, as he spoke on May 7 after voting. “When I voted today, I did not feel like an independent citizen. I felt like a subject of King Modi.”‘Future in darkness’
In India, a walkover is rare for candidates. An uncontested win has only been recorded 23 times since the country gained independence in 1947.
But for a little more than a decade, Indian elections have also offered the NOTA option. That’s what the Congress is pushing voters in Indore to pick on May 13.
Anuj, a 60-year-old from Indore, who wished to be identified by his first name, was first drawn to the Congress when he drove the campaign jeep of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as a young man more than three decades ago. Since then, he has been loyal to the party, he said, and has campaigned for the Congress this time too.“We all will vote NOTA. My party candidate is not there, and the other option is the BJP,” he said. “It may not change anything, but it will give comfort to my heart that I resisted.”
Meanwhile, a group of lawyers working with civil society activists are also planning to take India’s election commission to court for calling the result of the Surat election without allowing people to vote on NOTA.“Is NOTA not seen as an independent candidate on the machine?” one of the lawyers said in a conversation with Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity, citing fears of pressure aimed at pre-empting the petition.
Back in Surat, Patel, the retired engineer, was more blunt about his frustration.“My right to vote has been snatched,” he said. India and ASEAN rise in supply chain priority, global survey shows (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [5/8/2024 10:11 PM, Dylan Loh, 293K, Neutral]
Global business leaders are increasingly looking to India and Southeast Asia as alternative supply chain destinations while trade relations between China and the U.S. deteriorate, a poll by PwC published Thursday shows.At the same time, these leaders will not disengage from the two major powers in the coming years, the survey, targeting 150 senior executives across Asia, Europe and North America, shows.The poll, commissioned by asset manager Eastspring Investments and conducted in December and January, found that over the next decade, India will become the third most important link in companies’ supply chains, up from fourth. Southeast Asia will also move up one place in the supply chain pecking order, to fifth.In contrast, Germany will move back one place, to fourth, as will Japan, to sixth."Southeast Asia will benefit most from the rebalancing in the electronics manufacturing sector," the study says, "while India stands to gain in the electronics manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals and medical equipment sectors."Even as talk persists of "de-risking" from China, or diversifying away from Asia’s largest market amid its weakened economy and trade spat with the U.S., respondents indicated that both countries remain vital, with their companies in the near future neither deprioritizing nor ramping up focus on the two."The cooling of relations between the two nations has been one of the driving forces of rebalancing," the study says. "Nevertheless, our global survey of business leaders shows that China is likely to retain an important role in global supply chains."The poll also shows that while companies "rebalance" their operations to enhance their supply chain resilience and avoid becoming overly dependent on a single market, executives expect the U.S. and China to remain the top two supply chain hosts for "the foreseeable future."With companies looking for alternative hosts, locations in the 10-member ASEAN region and India are set to gain.South Asia and ASEAN are home to massive populations and growing economies that could provide lucrative opportunities to multinationals that tap into them. India has over 1.4 billion people, while Southeast Asia has over 650 million.According to the study, 47% of the business leaders who responded say boosting supply chain resilience is a key business priority, with 75% believing that rebalancing would cost less than the potential profits that would be put at risk by not rebalancing.Respondents estimate that failing to rebalance their supply chains would put 19% to 24% of their profits at risk during the next 10 years, depending on the sector.In addition, 29% of those surveyed say rebalancing will provide opportunities to benefit from access to lower costs."Business leaders are clearly prioritizing the need for rebalancing their supply chains and making their companies more resilient to external pressures," said Sidharta Sircar, a PwC Singapore partner focusing on international growth. "This also provides a significant growth opportunity for key markets to capitalize on by attracting investments and increasing their participation in global value chains." India’s Economy Isn’t the New China (Yet) (Wall Street Journal – opinion)
Wall Street Journal [5/8/2024 12:32 PM, Sadanand Dhume, 810K, Neutral]
Is India on the cusp of a long-awaited economic takeoff? America’s corporate titans appear to think so. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for having “done an unbelievable job.” Tim Cook, on whose watch Apple began making iPhones in India, called the country “an incredibly exciting market.” Warren Buffett said India holds “unexplored” opportunities for Berkshire Hathaway. Elon Musk said he looks forward to visiting India later this year.
How justified is the hype? First, the glass-half-full story: The International Monetary Fund estimates that India’s economy grew a robust 7.8% in the fiscal year that ended March 31. When Mr. Modi first took office in 2014, India was the world’s 10th-largest economy by gross domestic product at market exchange rates. It’s now the fifth-largest economy, behind only the U.S., China, Germany and Japan. The IMF estimates that by 2027 India will become the world’s third-largest economy, after the U.S. and China.
India has also dramatically reduced poverty over the past two decades. At a conference on the Indian economy at George Washington University last month, Oxford economist Sabina Alkire estimated that 415 million people in India exited poverty between 2005 and 2021. In 2015-16, 27.7% of Indians were poor, according to the United Nations Development Program’s Multidimensional Poverty Index, which measures health, education and living standards. By 2019-21 this had fallen to 16.4% of the population.
The World Bank takes an even more optimistic view of poverty reduction, estimating that in 2021, despite the pandemic, only 12.9% of India’s population was living on $2.15 or less a day, the global benchmark for extreme poverty. Indian economists Surjit Bhalla and Karan Bhasin wrote this year that “India has eliminated extreme poverty.” Regardless of whom you believe, there’s no doubt that the extreme deprivation with which India was once synonymous has diminished greatly and is on track to disappear entirely.
There are other reasons for optimism. The Modi government has presided over a large infrastructure buildout. Economists Arvind Subramanian and Josh Felman estimate that India has built 34,000 miles of national highway since 2014, and that India’s infrastructure—including ports and airports—”has been transformed.” A combination of widespread internet access, the proliferation of cellphones, and a massive rollout of bank accounts has also improved the government’s ability to deliver welfare payments to the needy.
India’s service exports have continued to boom. Messrs. Subramanian and Felman estimate that India’s share of global highly skilled services nearly doubled, from around 3% in 2005 to 5.8% in 2022. JPMorgan Chase now employs about 60,000 people in India. Toss in a youthful workforce—the median Indian is 28—and a surge in companies seeking alternative investment destinations to China, and the case for India’s impending takeoff is complete. In a speech at George Washington University, India’s chief economic adviser, V. Anantha Nageswaran, described achieving a near-term 10% annual growth rate in dollar terms as “not particularly daunting.”
Despite this progress, India still faces many challenges. Here’s the glass-half-empty version of the story: India’s economic performance looks much less impressive when contrasted with that of other countries. India’s per capita GDP ($2,730) is about 1/30th of America’s ($85,370) and about one-fifth of China’s ($13,140). Indermit Gill, chief economist at the World Bank, estimates that at current growth rates it will take 75 years before per capita GDP in India reaches a quarter of the U.S. figure.
And there’s no guarantee this will happen. According to World Bank research, most poor countries hit a wall at 10% of U.S. per capita GDP. At current growth rates, it could take decades for India simply to catch up with Indonesia, which has a per capita GDP of $5,270.
China benefited during a period of Western openness to trade. The global environment is much less benign now, and India has made it harder for its companies to become part of global supply chains by choosing to remain outside large trade blocs such as the 15-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Nimbler Asian rivals such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore are part of both. Mr. Modi has failed to solve India’s central economic challenge: moving tens of millions of subsistence farmers to more productive factory jobs.
Mr. Modi says he wants India to be a developed economy by 2047, when the country will celebrate 100 years of independence. Is it possible? The jury remains out on that question. It’s Time for India to Get Off the Fence on Ukraine (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [5/8/2024 5:00 PM, Mihir Sharma, 5543K, Neutral]
The news from Ukraine is not good. Russia is once again bombing Kyiv and the western city of Lviv, while its soldiers are threatening to break through the front line in the east. The latest package of US aid might arrive too late to stave off the onslaught.India’s leaders may see this as vindication. They have long taken a relatively gloomy view of Ukraine’s prospects in this war and have publicly and privately urged that efforts be made to bring it to a close. That any negotiations at this point would leave some Ukrainian territory in Russia’s hands is a natural corollary. Seen from India, that was always going to be the case — and the sooner it is recognized, the better for all concerned.Even if India’s doubts have been retrospectively justified, however, that’s no cause for celebration. Instead, this is the time for the country to act. If the war is to conclude through negotiation rather than a battlefield victory, as New Delhi has said all along, then Indian leaders must take some risks to achieve that peace.The fact that Putin may think he’s gaining the upper hand makes pushing him toward negotiations particularly urgent. Emboldened, the Russian leader might expand his ambitions in the war — and thereby aggravate the disruptions to food and fuel supply chains that have caused so many problems for India and the rest of the developing world.Even more important, with every month that Russia expends itself on war, Putin grows more dependent on China. India rightly fears a world in which Russia has resigned itself to playing a junior partner to its more powerful neighbor. That would multiply China’s reach and give it additional purchase in the Global South — which India has ambitions to lead — besides carrying very real economic benefits for Beijing. The longer the war goes on, the more likely such a scenario becomes.For that reason and others, China is in no mood to rein in Russia. Meanwhile, obviously, neither Europe nor the US is in a position to talk sense to Putin. Only India has both the clout and the incentive to do so. Some in New Delhi might be tempted to wait for the US elections in the fall, then see if conditions are ripe for negotiation. That might not be a good idea. The situation could well have turned even more adverse for Kyiv by then. And, although Congress recently voted to confirm aid, Ukraine has become a partisan issue in Washington. The US cannot be expected to mediate an issue when it is at odds over the war internally.For decades, India has sought to avoid such diplomatic entanglements. It now has few other options. Indian officials have long argued that they needed to maintain ties to Moscow if they wanted to retain any influence with Putin. That diplomatic relationship — and regular oil purchases — have bought India a certain amount of political capital with the isolated Russian establishment.But that capital is increasingly valueless to New Delhi: Russia cannot supply weapons to India if it depletes its arsenal on the front, and eventually China will expect a larger and larger share of its fuel exports. Political capital is meant to be spent. Pushing for an end to hostilities is the best use for it right now.We don’t know yet what the warring parties could imagine as a reasonable endgame. Had Ukraine’s military successes of 2022 endured, we might have hoped for a settlement in which it did not lose too much territory. As it stands, India will have to rely on the US and Europe to convince Kyiv to accept that some Ukrainian land will not be swiftly regained.India, in turn, will have to convince Russia that its broader strategic aims — a sense that its frontier is invulnerable and all Russian-speakers secure — simply cannot be attained through military force.In February, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told the German newspaper Handelsblatt that while India was “open” to mediating between Russia and Ukraine, it would “not initiate anything on its own.” India’s reluctance to put itself forward as a mediator is both understandable and, given its interests at stake, baffling.The aspiring superpower ought to think bigger. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Putin, this is not an era for war. India needs to do its part to make that statement incontrovertibly true. How India’s navy changed tack (Financial Times – opinion)
Financial Times [5/8/2024 8:25 PM, John Reed, 1.9M, Neutral]
India, a rising military power that proudly shuns alliances, last month deployed a frigate to the Arabian Sea and demonstrated just how much its view of the world is changing.
With little fanfare, and after decades of touting India’s “strategic autonomy”, New Delhi sent the INS Talwar on a mission to provide direct support to a US-led maritime coalition.
The frigate’s main role was helping to intercept a drug-running dhow trafficking 940kg of methamphetamines, hashish and heroin in the Arabian Sea — working in a task force of the Bahrain-headquartered Combined Maritime Forces.
But far from being a routine drug bust, this marked a strategic sea change for a country that until now has only joined international military missions under the UN flag.“India has quietly, formally, entered a coalition,” said one western official in New Delhi. “They haven’t been sounding the megaphone and we are not trying to overly publicise this and spook the herd, but it’s a significant moment.”
The operation came as India is aligning more closely with the US on military and economic matters, in large part because of shared concerns about China.
There are naturally still limits to co-operation. India declined to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, the US-led coalition formed last year to fend off attacks by Yemen-based Houthis in the Red Sea.
But since November it has been working with the 43-nation CMF, which polices the high seas along some of the world’s main shipping lanes in the western Indian Ocean and is under the command of the US Fifth Fleet.
India’s navy — acting independently — has also been increasing patrols in the high seas around the Red Sea in recent months, escorting ships at a time of war, and in a few cases rescuing crews from pirate attack. India has skin in this game: it supplies many of the sailors on the world’s merchant vessels, 17 of whom were temporarily taken captive last month near the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian troops.“The fact that we are part of the CMF is not just a statement of India’s closeness to the US, but also a statement of our own interest,” said Indrani Bagchi of the Ananta Aspen Centre, a New Delhi think-tank. “Our interest is not only to put our flag out there, but to make our statement that we are a net security provider in this region.”
India’s diplomatic and military independence is a cornerstone of its foreign policy, but a tilt towards the west has been long in coming.
Jawaharlal Nehru was among the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. India’s scepticism of the west has a firm foundation from the cold war, when it was rankled by Washington’s arming of Pakistan — an ongoing irritant — and found the Soviet Union (more recently Russia) a more reliable friend.
But Indian officials and analysts say China is now India’s foremost strategic threat, not Pakistan. So while Modi government officials continue to disavow the word “alliance”, New Delhi does have burgeoning defence and technology partnerships with countries such as the US, France and Israel.
India has also been retooling its military and redeployed some of the troops it had along the Pakistan border to its long, disputed frontier with China after deadly clashes there in 2020.
While analysts say the northern border is the Indian military’s rightful focus, India is also taking steps to upgrade its navy and assert its presence at sea.
Its highest-profile effort in this area is membership in the so-called Quad, where security issues are co-ordinated with the US, Australia and Japan.
India and France have also carried out joint naval patrols from the French overseas territory Réunion. India and the Seychelles held joint military exercises in March. “Growing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean is a canker for US presence and objectives, and a canker for everybody else, and a canker for India, given the lack of transparency in China’s motives and intentions,” said Sujan Chinoy of the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.
India is projecting soft power in the broader Indian Ocean basin, too — a task helped by the presence of diaspora populations across the region. IIT Madras, the southernmost of India’s network of elite technology universities, recently chose Zanzibar as the site of its first overseas campus.
But India’s overtures to its island neighbours have been snubbed in some cases. The Maldives, which alternates between pro-India and pro-China politicians in power, is in the process of replacing a small contingent of Indian troops there with civilian officials after Mohamed Muizzu won the presidency last year on an “India Out” platform. For India, this is likely to be a long game. NSB
Bangladesh Introduces Crawling Peg for Taka as Rates Raised (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [5/8/2024 8:17 PM, Arun Devnath, 5543K, Positive]
Bangladesh’s central bank introduced a crawling peg system for the local currency in efforts to keep the taka stable and raised its key interest rate to tame inflationary pressures.The central bank introduced a crawling peg exchange rate system for spot purchases and sales of the dollars and set the mid rate at 117 takas per dollar with immediate effect, Bangladesh Bank said in a statement Wednesday. The interbank exchange rate stood at 110 takas per dollar on Wednesday.“Scheduled banks may purchase and sell US dollars freely around the crawling peg mid rate with their customers and in interbank deals,” it said.The step would serve as a transitional arrangement paving the way toward a fully flexible exchange-rate regime in the future and slow the erosion of its dollar reserves. The nation’s foreign exchange stockpile slipped to about $20 billion as of April, less than half their historic peak in 2021.Bangladesh has made use of a series of fixed exchange rates to manage volatility since its independence in 1971. In June, Bangladesh pledged to allow the currency to float freely for the first time in the country’s history, a key demand from the International Monetary Fund to keep its $4.7 billion loan program on track.The Bangladesh taka fell about 6% last year, one of the worst performers among emerging Asia, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Price PressuresThe central bank also increased the overnight repurchase agreement rate for the second straight meeting by 50 basis points to 8.50%. The standing lending facility rate was raised to 10% from 9.50% earlier, while the standing deposit facility rate was hiked to 7% to “help banks better manage liquidity,” the central bank said.The policy decision comes as authorities are looking to curb price gains, which have inched up due to a rise in energy and food costs. Inflation has held above 9% since March last year and authorities have taken a raft of measures, including import controls to reduce price pressures. Inflation climbed 9.81% in March compared with 9.67% the previous month.Higher interest rates will slow demand and help reduce price gains, which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government aims to bring down to 6% in the year ending June.The International Monetary Fund welcomed the crawling peg, the lift to interest rates and other reforms to help restore external resilience. They were part of the staff-level agreementon the policies needed to complete the second review of a loan program for the country to receive $1.1b subject to approval by the lender’s board, according to a statement.“The macroeconomic outlook is expected to gradually stabilize as policy actions start to take hold,” Chris Papageorgiou, who led the IMF team during the staff visit between April 24 and May 8, said in the statement. “Nevertheless, uncertainties surrounding the outlook remain high, with risks predominantly leaning towards the downside.” Myanmar insurgents accused of recruiting Rohingya in Bangladesh camps (Radio Free Asia)
Radio Free Asia [5/8/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 435K, Neutral]
Myanmar Muslim insurgents have pressed about 500 Rohingya refugees in camps in Bangladesh to join the war in their homeland where fighting between rival factions has intensified sharply in recent weeks, refugees told Radio Free Asia.
Members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and the smaller Rohingya Solidarity Organization have taken their fellow Muslim Rohingya refugees from the camps for military training, said people living in the world’s largest camp in southeast Bangladesh.
RFA could not reach either of the insurgent groups for comment nor authorities responsible for the camps in Bangladesh.
The reports, if confirmed, could herald intensifying conflict in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State where residents say the Myanmar junta has been pressing members of the persecuted Rohingya minority to help battle one of Myanmar most powerful insurgent forces, the Arakan Army, which draws it support from the state’s majority ethnic Rakhine Buddhist community.“Everyone is running from the camp,” said one Rohingya refugee who declined to be identified fearing for his safety.“Children under the age of 18 are being caught and sold to those groups … it’s said they are being sent to the Burma side to reinforce in the battles but I don’t know who they’re fighting against.”
The refugees had been detained in the camps between April 29 and May 8, most of them between the ages of 14 and 30, said the refugee, who complained that Bangladesh authorities were doing nothing to stop the abductions, which averaged at about one young man per household.
ARSA fighters attacked a string of Myanmar government border posts in 2017, triggering a sweeping crackdown by the Myanmar army that sent some one million Rohingya villagers fleeing to safety in Bangladesh.
The rebel force, which is seeking self-determination in the state, surged in strength in the wake of that violence and is now one of Myanmar’s main groups fighting junta forces to end military rule.
“These are terrorist organizations,” another refugee said of the two groups whose members he said came at night to press-gang people. “Even 12 or 14-year-old children were among those arrested.”
Rohingya villagers still living in Myanmar appear increasingly at risk as the junta army and the Arakan insurgents battle it out.
Since the Arakan Army stepped up its attacks on the military in November, both sides have been accused of recruiting or killing Rohingya from camps for internally displaced people in Rakhine State.
The ARSA has in the past been accused of violence against its own members living in Bangladesh and of faith-based massacres on Hindu villagers.
Nearly one million refugees live in the camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, according to the latest U.N. figures. Tamils Faced Torture in Sri Lanka Long After War, Rights Group Says (Reuters)
Reuters [5/8/2024 9:22 AM, Uditha Jayasinghe, 33671K, Negative]
Sri Lanka’s security forces abducted men and women from the ethnic Tamil minority and tortured them in custody long after the end of a bloody civil war in the South Asian island nation, a human rights group said in a new report.The 26-year civil war between separatist Tamil insurgents and government forces ended in 2009. Rights groups accuse both sides of abuses during the conflict in which 80,000-100,000 people died, according to United Nations estimates.In its report, the London-based International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) which has been documenting alleged abuses in Sri Lanka, cited details of 123 Tamils who said they were beaten, burnt, suffocated and sexually assaulted by Sri Lankan authorities between 2015-2022.Sri Lanka rejects the ITJP allegations, a government minister said on Wednesday.The report, titled ‘Disappearance, Torture and Sexual violence of Tamils, 2015-2022’, which will be published on Thursday, said 11 of the 123 were allegedly detained after Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as Sri Lanka’s president in July 2022.Wickremesinghe was appointed after large-scale protests triggered by a spiralling financial crisis forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and later resign from his post."The analysis in the current report confirms ... arbitrary and unlawful detentions between 2009 and 2015 were systemic and structurally entrenched, (and) could just as well have been written about the seven-year period between 2015 to 2022," the report said, adding that the alleged victims were seeking asylum in Britain.PRESSURE"It is unlikely to stop unless the international community exerts greater pressure on Sri Lanka to deal with security sector reform and to root out those officials responsible for this culture of violence directed against Tamils," said Yasmin Sooka, ITJP’s executive director.Asked by Reuters about the report, Tharaka Balasuriya, state minister of foreign affairs, said Sri Lanka had taken multiple steps since the end of the war to address human rights concerns and promote reconciliation including releasing land to Tamil owners, limiting the military to camps in the north and east of the country, and appointing officials to look into cases of people reported missing."We look at human rights as a continuous process... and we are committed to engaging with international partners including non-governmental organisations to take the reconciliation process forward," Balasuriya added.Sri Lanka is also working towards appointing a commission for truth, unity and reconciliation, as outlined before the United Nations Human Rights Commission, he said. Sri Lanka turns to India as counterbalance to Chinese presence (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [5/8/2024 9:24 PM, Munza Mushtaq, 293K, Neutral]
Apparently moving to counter China’s formidable presence across Sri Lanka, President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s administration is increasingly engaging Indian companies for vital projects.On Tuesday, the Sri Lankan government said it had approved a 20-year power purchase agreement with India’s Adani Green Energy, which will invest $442 million to develop two wind power stations in Mannar and Pooneryn in the north, totaling 484 megawatts. The announcement comes just weeks after the island nation awarded an Indian-Russian joint venture control of the once-dormant Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport (MRIA), built with Chinese funding, and sets the tone for geopolitical maneuvering.The power stations are not the only project that Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s group has secured in Sri Lanka. In 2021, an Adani company was awarded a $700 million port terminal project in Colombo, after reportedly being nominated as a contractor by the Indian government. In 2023, the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. announced a $553 million investment in a container terminal project in Colombo led by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone.As India’s influence on important Sri Lankan infrastructure increases, many believe the Indian government has been systematically trying to counter China’s influence across South Asia in recent years.Mattala Rajapaksa International, dubbed the world’s emptiest airport, lies in Hambantota, 240 kilometers southeast of Colombo, and was funded by the Export-Import Bank of China at a cost of $209 million. It opened in 2013 during the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa and has been at the center of controversy due to it having no flights, resulting in massive losses for over a decade.Sri Lankan government spokesman Bandula Gunawardena told reporters in Colombo that the joint venture of India’s Shaurya Aeronautics and Airports of Regions Management Company of Russia will manage the Mattala airport as the country tries to extricate itself from its worst-ever economic crisis. Gunawardena said the joint venture was selected after the government put out a call for expressions of interest early this year.Analysts believe that the airport takeover highlights deeper geopolitical ramifications, especially amid China’s increasing influence in Sri Lanka until recently and India’s continuous attempts to assert its presence there. The airport lies less than 30 kilometers from the Hambantota Port, which was also built with Chinese funds and is now managed by China.A diplomatic historian in Sri Lanka, George I.H. Cooke, said: "India’s foreign policy is geared towards getting India ahead of the rest. It is working effectively in general, but more needs to be done with regard to Sri Lanka." He added: "The projects at present do not put India into the driving seat. Sri Lanka needs investment partners who will contribute towards technology transfers, and this will put India ahead of the rest."The former diplomat added, "I don’t think it’s good to play one country against the other, but when it comes to a place like Mattala, which has huge potential, it has got to be used, and if we can bring the Indians and Russians and help us take it get off the ground, then it is good." He emphasized that the government needs to ensure that it maximizes the benefits from its investments like this.A spokesperson from the Indian High Commission in Colombo explained that the joint venture that won the airport contract was selected through a competitive process. "The government of India was not involved in the said process," the spokesperson told Nikkei Asia, but added that it encourages Indian companies to view Sri Lanka as a potential investment destination.Rohan Masakorala, a Colombo-based maritime expert and founder of the Shipper’s Academy International, said that India, as an emerging global power, plays a key role in geopolitics. It has good relations with both the U.S. and Russia, while Russia has come to develop a strong partnership with China -- current geopolitics are very complex and intertwined. The Indian Ocean is a new area of focus for China and India, the two giants of Asia, which are major players in global business as well as militarily strong."The role of Sri Lanka and its strategic ports should be only to support and enable trade and ensure that the Indian Ocean remains for peaceful activities," Masakorala said. "Sri Lanka should avoid any involvement in taking sides, but it must work with all partners. The best possible thing is to build bridges between the global giants so that trade takes place instead of conflicts."Commenting on the region’s geopolitical landscape, Harsh Vardhan, a veteran aviation expert based in Delhi and chairman of Starair Consulting, noted that Sri Lanka’s strategic location attracts competing attention from not only India and China, but also other major players like the U.S. and NATO countries. He pointed out Sri Lanka’s vulnerability to the Chinese "debt trap" and likened the challenges of navigating this situation to tightrope walking. However, he added that while the airport development is noteworthy, it may not hold significant weight in the overarching geopolitical dynamics of the region. Central Asia
Congressman: US needs counterterrorism partners in Central Asia (VOA)
VOA [5/8/2024 6:21 PM, Navbahor Imamova, 761K, Neutral]
In a rare discussion of Central Asia policy on Capitol Hill, a senior legislator told VOA that the United States needs to look past the abysmal human rights records of the countries in the region to confront terrorism and Russian and Chinese influence."If we want their help somehow, we need to be able to help them," Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said in a one-on-one interview.The 27-year House lawmaker was part of the most recent congressional delegation to visit Uzbekistan, along with Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers, Salud Carbajal and Veronica Escobar.The message they carried to the region was clear: Washington wants to enhance security cooperation while backing political and economic reforms.The Uzbek leadership, in turn, conveyed enthusiasm for broadening the strategic partnership, which dates to the early 2000s.During the March 26-27 visit to Tashkent, the delegation met with Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov and Minister of Defense Major General Bakhodir Kurbanov. According to Smith, these discussions underscored Uzbekistan’s pivotal role in "keeping an eye on what’s going on in Afghanistan."He sees the Islamic State extremist group, or ISIS, and radicalization in general, as the most prominent terrorism threats.“Uzbekistan is close and could potentially be a partner in tracking ISIS or other extremist elements,” he said. “So, having a partner in the region that we can work with to identify potential threats and counter radicalization, to make sure that the ideologies don’t take hold or produce terrorists, like the ones that struck in Moscow.”Several Central Asian citizens were arrested in connection with an attack on a Moscow concert hall in March that killed 144 people. Responsibility was claimed by Islamic State-Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K or IS-K, a regional offshoot of Islamic State.Despite the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Smith said the United States still has interests in that country and that Tashkent, which maintains a tight relationship with the Taliban, can help in that regard."Al-Qaida is still in the region. ISIS, obviously. The Taliban are fighting ISIS-K," the congressman said. "We are still very interested in the region. The difference is we’re not there. We don’t have a good ability to monitor it and act. So, we are looking for partners."In Smith’s view, the U.S. must be more strategic in competing with Russia and China as they try to advance their own influence in the region.Unlike Moscow and Beijing, Washington does not build infrastructure. Instead, it offers technical assistance and works through international financial institutions — endeavors that Smith describes as substantial.One way the United States could help Uzbekistan, he said, is by helping to find a way to advance the landlocked country’s goal of establishing a rail link through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.Security relationships with countries in the region “have not significantly increased” since the U.S. left Afghanistan, Smith acknowledged, but “we’re trying to build some of those relationships with Uzbekistan."In 2021, Congress appropriated $10 million under the Foreign Military Financing program to enhance Central Asia’s border security and counterterrorism capabilities, supplying vehicles, communications equipment and training.Brushing off Russian speculation that the U.S. is seeking to open a military base in Central Asia, Smith said there are no such efforts.“We’re seeking partners. We’re not seeking a presence," he said while emphasizing the importance of overflight agreements and intelligence collaboration.Smith and other lawmakers, including those in the congressional Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan caucuses, concede that Central Asia has some of the world’s most authoritarian regimes, which suppress dissent and independent media. State Department reports describe the countries as prominent human rights violators.In Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov ruled for 15 years before passing the presidency to his son, Serdar Berdimuhamedov, in 2022.In Tajikistan, President Emomali Rahmon has been in power since 1992 and is expected to follow Berdimuhamedov’s path.In Uzbekistan, a government-engineered constitutional referendum in 2023 allowed Mirziyoyev, president since 2016, to continue for two seven-year terms.Nursultan Nazarbayev governed Kazakhstan for 30 years before stepping down in 2019. His hand-picked successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, also changed the constitution but promised to leave at the end of his term in 2029.For years, Kyrgyzstan stood out as having the most democratic potential in the region. However, its current president, Sadyr Japarov, has jailed critics and recently adopted a Russian-style “foreign agents” law.Smith says the U.S. does not ignore reality, yet he favors pragmatism over preaching."If you simply say, ‘We don’t think your elections were as free and fair. We’re out, we’re not working with you,’ those countries can very, very easily turn to China, Russia, Iran and who knows, maybe someday, North Korea. So, we have to understand what’s doable and realistic."Having met the Uzbek president in Tashkent, Smith calls Mirziyoyev "a smart guy" who is moving Uzbekistan "in the right direction.""I think they are genuinely trying to improve their economy, deal with terrorism but they’ve got a long way to go," he said.As on many issues, Democrats and Republicans differ on Central Asia. But Smith stresses that "most members of Congress don’t pay attention to that part of the world. There is not a well thought-out approach.""If you were to poll 435 [representatives] over their two-year term, how many times have they thought about Uzbekistan? Very few. I’d say probably 400 of them never thought about it," Smith said. "So, we are working on that." Opportunities Grow in South Korea for Uzbek Workers (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [5/8/2024 2:09 PM, Catherine Putz, 201K, Positive]
This week, Uzbek Minister of Employment and Poverty Reduction Behzod Musaev was in Seoul for a series of meetings that underscored a deepening of labor relations between the two countries. Bahzod met with his counterpart, Korean Minister of Labor and Employment Lee Jung-sik, on May 7. On Telegram, the Uzbek ministry noted a planned expansion of sectors in which Uzbek citizens will be eligible for work.Uzbekistan is among the 16 countries eligible for South Korea’s E-9 “Non-Professional Employment” visa. In April, the South Korea government started accepting applications from business owners operating in the restaurant, hospitality, forestry, and mining sectors to hire foreign workers under the E-9 scheme. As the Korean Herald noted, “Previously, E-9 visa holders could only work in the agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing, and construction sectors.”E-9 visas can be issued to citizens of Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.The total number of visas issued under the program has grown considerably since President Yoon Suk-yeol took office. In 2023, the South Korean government capped E-9 visas at 110,000 – the largest quota since the visa’s introduction in 2004. In previous years it was generally in the 50,000-60,000 range. In the latter part of 2023, media reports suggested that the quota would jump to 165,000 for 2024, along with the expansion of eligible businesses.There are also other visa categories that Uzbeks may be eligible for, such as the E-7 “Foreign National of Special Ability” visa.Musaev also met with the chairman of the Automotive Industry Association of the Republic of Korea Kwak Young-cheol, who said the industry needs around 3,000 additional workers annually (these appear to be E-7 skilled worker positions). Although no specific agreement was announced, the Uzbek ministry stated in its Telegram channel: “The Koreans said that there is a demand for 3,000 more workers per year in this industry, and they want to cooperate with Uzbekistan in this regard.”Earlier this year, Uzbek media reported that Tashkent “plans to send 100,000 Uzbek citizens to work in South Korea,” linking to a Telegram post on the Minister of Employment and Poverty Reduction’s channel that actually states that 100,000 Uzbek citizens will be able to enter competitive processes for E-9 visa jobs, specifically in the areas of agriculture, hospitality, and construction. On February 16, the ministry’s Agency for External Labor Migration put out a notice urging Uzbek citizens staying illegally in South Korea to leave before February 29, saying those who voluntarily departed, following the appropriate procedure, would not be deported and would retain eligibility to return to South Korea. It’s unclear how many took advantage of that opening. South Korea has one of the world’s lowest total fertility rates at 0.9 births per woman and a quickly aging population. According to the United Nations Population Fund, in 2024 19 percent of the South Korea population is over the age of 65. Only 8 percent of Uzbekistan’s population is. Uzbekistan also has a strong fertility rate of 2.7 per woman, and a large younger population. The 10-24 age category makes up 24 percent of the Uzbek population; in South Korea only 14 percent of the population is in the 10-24 age category.According to one analysis, focused on migrant worker status and well-being in South Korea, “As of October 2023, approximately 2.49 million migrants… were estimated to reside in South Korea, which is a large and steady increase from the number of approximately 1.45 million in 2012.” The analysis went on to note: The main industry sectors for the migrant workers included mining/manufacturing (43.9%), wholesale/accommodation/food services (18.7%), business/personal and public services (16.7%), construction (12.2%), and agriculture/fishery (5.4%), and the nationalities included China (33.3%), Vietnam (17.2%), Nepal (4.4), Uzbekistan (4.0%), and Cambodia (4.0%).There is more to labor migration than merely matching one side’s deficits to another’s surpluses. Uzbek citizens have to compete against other pools of migrant workers, some with more established networks in the country. That said, it’s not like there is no history whatsoever between South Korea and Uzbekistan. (And I know from direct experience that there are several Uzbek restaurants in Seoul; the best in my opinion is near the city’s only mosque in iconic Itaewon).Language, in particular, poses a barrier for Uzbeks aiming for skilled or semi-skilled work in South Korea. That said, there are efforts underway to address this issue, for example via government-run King Sejong Institutes, which aim to teach Korean language and culture abroad. There are seven such institutes in Uzbekistan, the most in any Central Asian state (Kyrgyzstan comes in second with five).In September 2023, South Korean President Yoon and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev met on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. At the time, Mirziyoyev invited Yoon to make a state visit. Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, visited Central Asia – stopping in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan – in April 2019. It appears that a visit is in the works. One Korean report on Musaev’s meeting with automotive industry figures quoted the Uzbek minister as saying that Yoon would travel to Uzbekistan in June. Musaev told his South Korean interlocutors that the issue of foreign workers would surely be on the agenda. Twitter
Afghanistan
Hafiz Zia Ahmad@HafizZiaAhmad
[5/9/2024 2:56 AM, 91.1K followers, 1 retweet, 11 likes]
The decision to release of 42 Afghan Nationals, incarcerated in UAE, have been made. As a result of the continued efforts of the Embassy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan & close coordination of IEA-MoFA, 42 Afghan nationals, who were incarcerated in different prisons of UAE,
Hafiz Zia Ahmad@HafizZiaAhmad
[5/9/2024 2:56 AM, 91.1K followers, 3 likes] have been conferred amnesty by the leadership of the UAE government. So far, several of among them have been released & the remaining will be set free in near future. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan affirms its commitment to keeping itself informed about the conditions
Hafiz Zia Ahmad@HafizZiaAhmad
[5/9/2024 2:56 AM, 91.1K followers, 1 like]of its citizens everywhere across world, & will take concerted measures to address their problems if Allah almighty willing. Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[5/8/2024 11:13 PM, 6.7M followers, 265 retweets, 563 likes]
Let not the shadows of lies, hide the light of truth One year ago today, not only were symbols of our national pride and honor attacked, but the sanctity of our sacred homeland was also assaulted. There can absolutely be no soft-pedaling of what happened on #May9 and there can be no absolution for those who orchestrated, supported, and assisted the attempt to damage the foundations of our nation Love of our country demands nothing less, #May9NeverAgain
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[5/8/2024 12:03 PM, 6.7M followers, 317 retweets, 1.3K likes]
Heartiest felicitations to H.E. Vladimir Putin for taking on the responsibility of leading Russia for the fifth time as President. I look forward to working closely with him for enhancing Pakistan-Russia cooperation for the mutual benefit of our two peoples.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[5/8/2024 8:18 AM, 476.7K followers, 21 retweets, 85 likes]
A delegation of senior Bangladeshi journalists, currently on a visit to Pakistan, visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today. Additional Foreign Secretary (Asia Pacific), Ambassador Imran Ahmed Siddiqui, briefed the delegation on Pakistan’s foreign policy priorities and challenges. He also discussed important dimensions of Pakistan - Bangladesh relations.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[5/8/2024 4:44 AM, 476.7K followers, 39 retweets, 109 likes]
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar @MIshaqDar50 held comprehensive talks with Uzbek Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov @FM_Saidov on all aspects of a range of bilateral relations with a focus on trade, investment, security, people-to-people contacts and connectivity projects. They also resolved to expedite efforts for early implementation of the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan Railway Project.
Madiha Afzal@MadihaAfzal
[5/8/2024 2:16 PM, 42.7K followers, 6 retweets, 68 likes]
MBS to visit Pakistan this month -- reportedly in the next few days -- to sign investment deals being negotiated between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Will be useful for this new government as it attempts to steer Pakistan out of its economic crisis.
Madiha Afzal@MadihaAfzal
[5/8/2024 2:20 PM, 42.7K followers, 3 likes]
Ultimately, though, Pakistan’s deals with Saudi Arabia are likely to be a bandaid and not fundamentally game-changing. Remember MBS’s Feb 2019 visit with all its pomp and show and signed MOUs. India
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/9/2024 12:06 AM, 97.6M followers, 7.2K retweets, 25K likes]
I thank the people of Vijayawada for blessing the NDA! Highlights from the exceptional roadshow yesterday… https://twitter.com/i/status/1788435266593546247 Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/9/2024 12:04 AM, 97.6M followers, 1K retweets, 6.4K likes]
I am pained by the passing away of the Metropolitan of Believers Eastern Church, Moran Mor Athanasius Yohan. He will be remembered for his service to society and emphasis on improving the quality of life of the downtrodden. My thoughts are with his family and all devotees of the Believers Church. May his soul rest in peace.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/8/2024 12:28 PM, 97.6M followers, 3K retweets, 23K likes]
Shri Moosa Raza Ji was a veteran bureaucrat who served in various positions at the state and Centre. I used to interact with him and found his perspectives on various issues to be insightful. Post retirement, he worked extensively on education and learning. Pained by his demise. May his soul rest in peace.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/8/2024 11:56 AM, 97.6M followers, 4.7K retweets, 24K likes]
Thank you Rajampet. Andhra Pradesh is witnessing a great wave in favour of @BJP4Andhra, @JaiTDP and @JanaSenaParty. Our agenda of good governance is liked by people. A big defeat awaits YSRCP.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/8/2024 11:09 AM, 97.6M followers, 10K retweets, 50K likes]
A memorable roadshow in Vijayawada with @ncbn Garu and @PawanKalyan. After travelling across AP over the last few days, I am convinced that people are voting for NDA in large numbers. Women and young voters are propelling this surge in support. @BJP4Andhra @JaiTDP @JanaSenaParty
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/8/2024 11:09 AM, 97.6M followers, 942 retweets, 2.5K likes]
The @BJP4Andhra and @JaiTDP have worked together in the past. Ours is a strong alliance, committed to futuristic development. The active participation of @JanaSenaParty has made our alliance even stronger. The people see this alliance as one capable of fulfilling aspirations.Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/8/2024 11:09 AM, 97.6M followers, 584 retweets, 1.6K likes]
We want to improve agricultural productivity, boost industrial growth and ensure AP makes a mark in the services sector too. We want to give wings to the entrepreneurial energy the people of this state are blessed with.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/8/2024 11:09 AM, 97.6M followers, 547 retweets, 1.4K likes]
NDA will leverage the coastline of AP for the progress of the state. We will work to ensure port-led development in the state. At the same time, fisheries sector will get great encouragement.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/8/2024 11:09 AM, 97.6M followers, 1.1K retweets, 2.9K likes]
Our emphasis on infrastructure and that too next-generation infrastructure will continue. There is much to be done on improving the roads network, railway network and air connectivity. We also want to build strong digital infrastructure.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/8/2024 11:09 AM, 97.6M followers, 1.5K retweets, 4.1K likes]
Due to its strong link with Congress culture, YSRCP has only furthered corruption, cronyism and Mafia Raj. Andhra Pradesh is totally fed up of the YSRCP. Come 4th June, their government will be a thing of the past.
Rajnath Singh@rajnathsingh
[5/8/2024 7:31 AM, 24.1M followers, 707 retweets, 1.3K likes]
Addressed public meetings at Kalahandi and Raigada in Odisha. The BJD and Congress lack vision for development. They have only looted and betrayed this wonderful State of Odisha. People are seeing the BJP as the only ray of hope. There is a massive surge in favour of the BJP.
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[5/8/2024 12:28 PM, 3.1M followers, 227 retweets, 1.4K likes]
Pleasure to interact with the youth at Gargi College, New Delhi. Shared my views on the topic of Vishwabandhu Bharat. A balanced, contributive and farsighted foreign policy has influenced the world and won us many friends. #OperationGanga, #VandeBharat, #VaccineMaitri and support to our neighbors are examples of how a Viswabandhu has emerged. The enthusiasm in the auditorium gives me every confidence that the coming generations will take this forward and make us proud! NSB
Awami League@albd1971
[5/8/2024 9:48 AM, 637.5K followers, 30 retweets, 83 likes] FM @DrHasanMahmud62 said he is interested to know what the @usembassydhaka has to say regarding the police brutality on the students who were protesting the #IsraeliCrimes in #Gaza. He expressed his shock to see how the protesters are being suppressed. https://unb.com.bd/category/Bangladesh/surprised-to-see-how-protesters-in-us-being-brutally-suppressed-hasan-mahmud/135229
Awami League@albd1971
[5/8/2024 7:25 AM, 637.5K followers, 35 retweets, 84 likes]
Prime Minister #SheikhHasina has highlighted the remarkable progress of #Bangladesh towards becoming a #DigitalBangladesh, noting how this advancement has revolutionised the process of #Hajj pilgrimage for its citizens. https://en.somoynews.tv/news/2024-05-0
The President’s Office, Maldives@presidencymv
[5/8/2024 2:59 PM, 108.1K followers, 100 retweets, 113 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu and First Lady Sajidha Mohamed officiate the ceremony to commemorate World Thalassaemia Day 2024. This year’s theme focuses on "Empowering Lives, Embracing Progress: Equitable and Accessible Thalassemia Treatment for All"
M U M Ali Sabry@alisabrypc
[5/8/2024 4:58 AM, 5.3K followers, 5 retweets, 33 likes]
Had an interactive session with members of #parliament representing all parties in connection with the #TRC. Central Asia
Joanna Lillis@joannalillis
[5/9/2024 12:21 AM, 28.9K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
All the presidents of #CentralAsia are in Moscow today to attend the 9th May Victory Day parade with Putin. Tune in to Monocle Radio shortly (1110 in #Kazakhstan/0710 in London) to hear about the geopolitical implications of the visit https://monocle.com/radio/
Bakhtiyor Saidov@FM_Saidov
[5/8/2024 2:46 PM, 3.4K followers, 5 retweets, 16 likes]
Pleased to meet H.E. @jam_kamal (@mincompk), H.E. @abdul_aleemkhan (@PrivComPakistan), H.E. @RTanveerPMLN (@FoodSecurityPK), H.E. @mazharkcl (@RailwayGovPk). Developing economic diplomacy, facilitating interregional partnerships, and boosting cooperation in transport, logistics, investment, agriculture, and AG were of a particular focus on our agenda. Underscored the participation of large Pakistan companies and fruitful B2B meetings at last week’s #Tashkent International Investment Forum.
Bakhtiyor Saidov@FM_Saidov
[5/8/2024 2:14 PM, 3.4K followers, 7 retweets, 22 likes]
Grateful to the Senator, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Pakistan H.E. Mohammad Ishaq Dar (@MIshaqDar50) for the warm welcome of our delegation today in #Islamabad. Had a detailed discussion regarding boosting political and economic dialogue, expansion of cooperation in all spheres. We both expressed our readiness to advance our ties across all areas with an open and trustworthy approach. It is worth to underscore that today’s visit to #Pakistan is especially meaningful as it occurs on the eve of the 32nd anniversary of diplomatic relations between our two nations.
Bakhtiyor Saidov@FM_Saidov
[5/8/2024 2:14 PM, 3.4K followers, 4 retweets, 9 likes]
We also planted a tree as a symbol of our desire to further strengthen friendship and partnership between our countries and peoples.
Bakhtiyor Saidov@FM_Saidov
[5/8/2024 12:42 PM, 3.4K followers, 7 retweets, 23 likes]
Pleased to be received by H.E. @CMShehbaz, Prime Minister of Pakistan (@PakPMO). Extended the warmest greetings of @president_uz H.E. Shavkat Mirziyoyev. During the conversation, we focused on elevating #Uzbekistan and #Pakistan relations to new heights, explored grand prospects of bilateral and regional cooperation, and exchanged views on interaction within international organizations. We stand ready to deepen our comprehensive cooperation with Pakistan aimed at enhancing our economic, investment, inter-parliamentary, cultural, and people-to-people ties.
Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[5/8/2024 9:51 PM, 23K followers, 5 retweets, 8 likes]
In a rare discussion of Central Asia policy on Capitol Hill, a senior legislator told VOA that the United States needs to look past the abysmal human rights records of the countries in the region to confront terrorism and Russian and Chinese influence. https://www.voanews.com/a/congressman-us-needs-counterterrorism-partners-in-central-asia/7603493.html
Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[5/8/2024 6:08 PM, 23K followers, 2 retweets, 2 likes]
Moscow, May 8, 2024: Uzbekistan, Russia leaders discuss strategic partnership, political and economic alliance, according @president_uz. President Mirziyoyev attended the Eurasian Economic Union summit today. Uzbekistan holds observer status within the bloc.
Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[5/8/2024 4:19 PM, 23K followers, 3 retweets, 8 likes]
World Bank: "Uzbekistan, a lower-middle income economy, has successfully reduced its poverty rate – the share of the population living below the poverty line – to 5 percent by 2022 at the lower-middle income poverty line ($3.65 per person per day in 2017 PPP)." @WorldBankECA https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/charting-uzbekistan-s-path-to-poverty-reduction--insights-from-i
Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[5/8/2024 2:03 PM, 23K followers, 1 retweet, 4 likes]
Congressman Adam Smith, serving since 1997, is the top Democrat in the US House on security/defense. He wants to see Uzbekistan as America’s strong counterterrorism partner. US-UZ #StrategicPartnership is not doing it yet. Interesting discussion, testing Central Asia knowledge in Congress. https://youtu.be/CTuMlBRHRtk
Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[5/8/2024 12:05 PM, 23K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
Tajikistan: A new monument in Dushanbe commemorating the ‘Great Patriotic War’ aka World War II, was erected today by President Emomali Rahmon and his son Rustam Emomali.{End of Report} To subscribe to the SCA Morning Press Clips, please email SCA-PressOfficers@state.gov. Please do not reply directly to this email.