SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Monday, November 25, 2024 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
‘Don’t forget us’: Teenage refugee reminds Gen Z of silenced Afghan girls (BBC)
BBC [11/23/2024 9:06 PM, Flora Drury, 60726K, Neutral]
When Nila Ibrahimi set out to build a website telling the stories of Afghan girls, it wasn’t just to give them a voice.
The 17-year-old Afghan refugee was also determined to remind her fellow Gen Zs in her adopted country, Canada, that they were similar - they even listened to Taylor Swift just like other teenage girls around the world.
"I want to make them as real as possible so that other people, especially young people, Gen Z specifically, can put themselves in their shoes," she told the BBC.
Nila spoke to the BBC earlier this week, before picking up the International Children’s Peace Prize previously won by education campaigner Malala Yousafzai and climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Nila’s is, perhaps, not an easy task. The plight of Afghanistan’s women and girls can feel a world away to young people living in Canada, where Nila found a home after fleeing her home country as the Taliban took over three years ago.
In that time, the Taliban have banned teenage girls from education, banned women from travelling long distances without a male chaperone, and now ordered them to keep their voices down in public - effectively silencing half the population.
The Taliban have defended the rulings to the BBC previously by saying they align with religious texts.
"The differences [between Afghanistan and Canada] are vast, so it makes it hard for them to feel connected," acknowledges Nila.
That is why she helped set up HerStory - a place where she and others help share the stories of Afghan women and girls in their own words, both inside and out of the country.
"So many times we are lost in the differences that we don’t see the similarities and that’s our goal, to show that to the world."
Nila Ibrahim was chosen from 165 nominees as the 20th winner of the prestigious prize.
The award recognises not just the work done on HerStory, but also her passion for standing up for women’s rights in Afghanistan.
Nila’s first stand for women’s rights came in March 2021, when she joined other young Afghan girls in sharing a video of her singing online.
It was a small but powerful protest against a decree by thethen-director of education in the Afghan capital, Kabul, who tried to ban girls over 12 singing in public. The attempted order was never implemented.
"That was when I really understood the importance of performing, the importance of speaking up and talking about these issues," explains Nila, who was part of a group called Sound of Afghanistan.
But less than six months later, everything would change - and, aged 14, she would have to flee with her family as the Taliban arrived.
The family - who are part of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority - made the difficult journey to Pakistan, where they spent a year before being granted asylum in Canada.
It was, after 12 months without education, a "breath of fresh air", she says.
There, Nila was reunited with her friends from the singing group.
She was also invited to speak at events, about her experiences of Afghanistan, allowing her to advocate for all the girls left behind.
People, she says, were surprised at how eloquent she was. But Nila knew there were millions of women and girls in Afghanistan who were just as capable - although with less access to the opportunities she had.
"So I thought if my potential can surprise these people and they don’t know about how educated girls from Afghanistan can be, what if that information was accessible to them?"
HerStory - the website which grew out of this thought - started in 2023. It features interviews and first person accounts from both refugees and women inside Afghanistan.
The idea is to create a safe space where a group of people who "grew up with the stories of the first period of Taliban and how horrible the lives of women were at the time" share their stories - and their "shock and anger" at finding themselves in an increasingly similar situation.
The anger is a feeling Nila tries to keep separate from her work.
"When you see Afghanistan going back in time in 20 years, of course it makes you fear," she says.
"It’s a shared feeling. It’s a shared experience for girls anywhere."
The award, she says, is a chance for Afghan girls to once again remind the world about the restrictions they face on a daily basis - a reminder "not to forget Afghan girls".
Marc Dullaert, founder of the KidsRights Foundation, which runs the award, pointed out that a "staggering" number of young women were currently being excluded from education.
"Nila’s inspirational work to provide them with a voice that will be heard across the world makes her a truly worthy winner of this year’s 20th International Peace Prize," he added.
It is also a reminder that her generation - while young - can make a difference, Nila hopes.
"I think so many times when we talk about issues and different causes, we talk about it with the very adult like approach of oh, this is very serious," she says.
"The world is a very scary place, but there is an approach that is more Gen Z-like... and we can take little steps and... do whatever we can." Afghan women turn to entrepreneurship under Taliban (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [11/23/2024 10:01 PM, Staff, 88008K, Neutral]
When Zainab Ferozi saw Afghan women struggling to feed their families after Taliban authorities took power, she took matters into her own hands and poured her savings into starting a business.
Two-and-a-half years after putting 20,000 Afghanis ($300) earned from teaching sewing classes into a carpet weaving enterprise, she now employs around a dozen women who lost their jobs or who had to abandon their education due to Taliban government rules.
Through her business in the western province of Herat, the 39-year-old also "covers all the household expenses" of her family of six, she told AFP from her office where samples of brightly coloured and exquisitely woven rugs and bags are displayed.
Her husband, a labourer, cannot find work in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Ferozi is one of many women who have launched small businesses in the past three years to meet their own needs and support other Afghan women, whose employment sharply declined after the Taliban took power in 2021.
Before the Taliban takeover, women made up 26 percent of public sector workers, a figure that "has effectively decreased to zero", according to UN Women.
Girls and women have also been banned from secondary schools and universities under restrictions the UN has described as "gender apartheid".
Touba Zahid, a 28-year-old mother-of-one, started making jams and pickles in the small basement of her home in the capital Kabul after she was forced to stop her university education.
"I came into the world of business... to create job opportunities for women so they can have an income that at least covers their immediate needs," Zahid said.
Half a dozen of her employees, wearing long white coats, were busy jarring jams and pickles labelled "Mom’s delicious homecooking".- Growing number of businesses -
While women may be making the stock, running the shops in Afghanistan remains mostly a man’s job.
Saleswomen like Zahid "cannot go to the bazaar to promote and sell their products" themselves, said Fariba Noori, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AWCCI).
Another issue for Afghan businesswomen is the need for a "mahram" -- a male family member chaperone -- to accompany them to other cities or provinces to purchase raw materials, said Noori.
After 40 years of successive conflicts, many Afghan women have been widowed and lost many male relatives.
Despite these challenges, the number of businesses registered with AWCCI has increased since the Taliban takeover, according to Noori.
The number went "from 600 big companies to 10,000" mainly small, home-based businesses and a few bigger companies, said Noori, herself a businesswoman for 12 years.
Khadija Mohammadi, who launched her eponymous brand in 2022 after she lost her private school teaching job, now employs more than 200 women sewing dresses and weaving carpets.
"I am proud of every woman who is giving a hand to another woman to help her become independent," said the 26-year-old.
Though businesses like Mohammadi’s are a lifeline, the salaries ranging from 5,000 to 13,000 Afghanis, cannot cover all costs and many women are still stalked by economic hardship.
Qamar Qasimi, who lost her job as a beautician after the Taliban authorities banned beauty salons in 2023, said that even with her salary she and her husband struggle to pay rent and feed their family of eight.
"When I worked in the beauty salon, we could earn 3,000-7,000 Afghanis for styling one bride, but here we get 5,000 per month," said the 24-year-old.
"It’s not comparable but I have no other choice," she added, the room around her full of women chatting as they worked at 30 looms.- Women-only spaces -
The closure of beauty salons was not only a financial blow, but also removed key spaces for women to socialise.
Zohra Gonish decided to open a restaurant to create a women-only space in northeastern Badakhshan province.
"Women can come here and relax," said the 20-year-old entrepreneur.
"We wanted the staff to be women so that the women customers can feel comfortable here."
But starting her business in 2022, aged 18 was not easy in a country where the labour force participation for women is 10 times lower than the world average, according to the World Bank.
It took Gonish a week to convince her father to support her.
Aside from helping their families and having space to socialise, some women said work has given them a sense of purpose.
Sumaya Ahmadi, 15, joined Ferozi’s carpet company to help her parents after she had to leave school and became "very depressed".
"(Now) I’m very happy and I no longer have any mental health problems. I’m happier and I feel better."
The work has also given her a new goal: to help her two brothers build their futures.
"Because schools’ doors are closed to girls, I work instead of my brothers so they can study and do something with their lives." Freight Train Arrives In Afghanistan From China As Beijing Looks To Increase Ties (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [11/24/2024 12:17 PM, Staff, 1251K, Negative]
The first train carrying goods from China to Afghanistan arrived in Mazar-e Sharif on November 23 after crossing through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the de facto Taliban rulers said. The Taliban said 55 containers arrived in Afghanistan after a 22-day journey, marking the inauguration of the first direct train link between China and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The train is expected to take Afghan goods back to China for sale there. Since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, no country, including China, has formally recognized the extremist group -- which has been accused of massive rights violations -- but Beijing has attempted to increase ties as part of its economic push in the region, including its Belt and Road initiative. Senator freezes promotion of general who led in Afghanistan evacuation (Washington Post)
Washington Post [11/23/2024 1:24 PM, Dan Lamothe, 52865K, Neutral]
A Republican senator from Oklahoma has frozen the promotion of a three-star general who led U.S. forces during the evacuation of Afghanistan, after months of Donald Trump’s pledges that as president he would fire any senior officer associated with the chaotic and traumatic mission.Sen. Markwayne Mullin installed the hold against Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, according to a Senate official familiar with the matter and congressional correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post. The official, like some others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.President Joe Biden nominated Donahue, 55, this month for promotion to four-star general and to lead all U.S. Army forces in Europe. He has led troops in elite Special Operations units like the 75th Ranger Regiment and more recently commanded tens of thousands of conventional forces from a headquarters at Fort Liberty in North Carolina.Mullin’s office declined to comment. The move comes three years after Mullin, then a member of the House, twice tried to personally rescue people from Afghanistan during the evacuation, only to be rebuffed once by the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan and once by the Pentagon, The Post previously reported. At the time, Mullin wrote on Instagram that he was “extremely disappointed” in the United States not getting all Americans out of the country.The freeze comes as the Senate this week approved promotions for hundreds of other military officers. The move could mark an opening salvo in what Pentagon officials fear could become a war on generals who are not sufficiently loyal to Trump. Members of the president-elect’s transition team have for weeks discussed how to follow through on his vow, without clarifying how they will do so.The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, Gen. Mark A. Milley, and the top commander overseeing the region, Marine Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, have both retired since the evacuation. So has Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, a Navy SEAL officer who commanded forces in Kabul in the final months of U.S. operations in Afghanistan.Donahue is seen by many senior Pentagon officials as one of the Army’s brightest leaders and someone who has often sought to avoid Washington politics. In a post on X on Friday, retired Gen. Tony Thomas, a former commander of Special Operations Command, called the decision a “disgrace.”
“The finest officer I ever served with, Chris Donahue is a generational leader who is now being held up for political purposes,” Thomas wrote. “At the tip of the spear defending this country for over three decades he is now a political pawn.”Since March 2022, Donahue has commanded the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps, which oversees prominent units such as the 82nd Airborne Division, 101st Airborne Division, 10th Mountain Division and 3rd Infantry Division.It is Donahue’s previous assignment, as commanding general of the 82nd Airborne, that has drawn the attention of Republicans. After the U.S.-backed government in Kabul collapsed in August 2021 and the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, the Pentagon dispatched on short notice Donahue, then the two-star commander of the 82nd Airborne, to Kabul’s airport to establish security and evacuate as many people as possible.U.S. military officials said Donahue was the last American service member with his boots on the ground in Afghanistan, and released a night-vision photo of him stepping onto a C-17 cargo plane. The image went viral, capturing a moment of mourning for many of the roughly 800,000 U.S. service members who served there during 20 years of war.Republicans have for years sought to highlight the chaos of the evacuation, including in a lengthy investigation carried out by the House Foreign Affairs Committee that concluded in August. They have been reluctant, however, to acknowledge that both Trump and Biden took actions to end the nation’s longest war, with Trump approving peace negotiations with Taliban militants and signing an agreement in February 2020 that called for the full withdrawal of U.S. forces by May 2021.In a U.S. military investigation carried out in the aftermath of the evacuation, numerous senior officers voiced frustration with what they saw as insufficient planning for the possibility of a withdrawal. Senior White House and State Department officials failed to grasp the Taliban’s lightning advance across the Afghan countryside that summer and resisted efforts by military leaders to better prepare for an evacuation of embassy personnel and Afghan allies, placing U.S. troops in greater danger, the testimony said.Donahue told investigators after the evacuation that he learned he was being sent to assist in the evacuation on Aug. 16, 2021, one day after the government in Kabul fell. He grew agitated as he made initial rounds of the airport and realized that Taliban fighters were still inside the facility.“Later that night, around 0200, we met with the Taliban,” Donahue recalled, using military terminology to refer to 2 a.m. “We told them we would control the gates and they would push people out. We expressed that they will comply, because if they fight us, we will kill more of them than they could ever hope to kill of us. After that, their tone changed.”Attempts to reach Donahue were not successful. Other defense officials voiced exasperation to hear that he may be caught up in politics. Donahue, they noted, arrived in Kabul after the Taliban took charge.One senior military officer said leaders like Donahue have commanded combat units across multiple administrations, doing their best to keep the force ready while public policy has changed.“If you’re looking for a list of political generals, you’ve got the wrong guys,” the military officer said. “If you’re looking for a list of warfighters, you’ve nailed it.”James Adams, a Pentagon spokesman, sought to highlight Donahue’s qualifications, including 30 years of military service.“His appointment comes at an extremely critical time in the European region,” Adams said. “We urge the Senate to confirm all of our highly qualified nominees. Holds on our nominees undermine our military readiness.”Ezra Cohen, a Pentagon official during the first Trump administration, defended the hold on Friday night. In a post on X, he said that “putting aside my personal thoughts on Donahue,” he believes no generals or admirals should be approved by the Republican-led Senate during the presidential transition.“All positions,” he wrote, “should be held pending a MERIT based review.” Pakistan
Thousands of Imran Khan supporters defy tear gas, lockdown and arrest to head to Pakistani capital (AP)
AP [11/25/2024 4:18 AM, Munir Ahmed, 456K, Neutral]
Thousands of supporters of Pakistan’s imprisoned former premier Imran Khan have defied a lockdown and widespread arrests to head to the capital Monday to demand his release.
Khan, who has been in jail for over a year and faces more than 150 criminal cases, remains popular. His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI, says the cases are politically motivated.
The “long march” comes ahead of a visit by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to Islamabad.
The convoy of vehicles carrying protesters is expected to reach the capital later Monday. Security officials say they expect between 9,000-11,000 demonstrators, while the PTI claims the number will be much higher.
The lockdown, which has been in place for two days, has disrupted daily life. Travel between Islamabad and other cities has become nearly impossible. Ambulances and cars were seen turning back from areas along the key Grand Trunk Road highway in Punjab province, where shipping containers were used to block roads.
Footage circulating online showed some protesters, who had been traveling all night, operating heavy machinery to remove the containers.“We are determined and we will reach Islamabad, though police are using tear gas to stop our march,” Kamran Bangash, a PTI senior leader, told The Associated Press. “We will overcome all hurdles one by one, and our supporters are removing shipping containers from roads.”
Bangash also said Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, who was recently released on bail in a graft case, will lead the march along with Ali Amin Gandapur, the chief minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where Khan’s party remains in power.
Almost 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from Islamabad, Bibi, wearing a white head-to-toe burqa, addressed protesters while sitting in a truck, urging them to remain determined to “achieve their goal” and free Khan. She then chanted, “God is great” and left.
Khan’s main political opponent, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, heads the current government.
Sharif’s spokesman, Attaullah Tarar, said on Sunday that whenever any high-profile foreign delegation comes to Pakistan, the PTI “begins the politics of long marches and onslaught on Islamabad to harm the economy.”
Some economists say protests cause billions of rupees in damages to the country’s fragile economy.
Protesters on Sunday night burned trees as police fired tear gas to disperse crowds. Khan supporters retaliated by using slingshots and pelting security personnel with rocks.
In a bid to foil the protest, police have arrested more than 4,000 Khan supporters since Friday and suspended mobile and internet services “in areas with security concerns,” which the PTI said affected the efficacy of its call for protest on social media. On Thursday, a court prohibited rallies in the capital and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said anyone violating the ban would be arrested.
Authorities say only courts can order the release of Khan, who was ousted in 2022 through a no-confidence vote in Parliament. He has been imprisoned since his first conviction in a graft case, in August 2023.
Khan has also been sentenced in several cases, including to three years, 10 years, 14 years and seven years to be served concurrently under Pakistani law. His convictions were later overturned on appeal but he cannot be freed due to other pending cases against him. March demanding release of Pakistan’s Imran Khan nears capital (Reuters)
Reuters [11/25/2024 3:41 AM, Asif Shahzad, 5.2M, Neutral]
A march by hundreds of supporters to demand the release of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan reached the fringes of Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad on Monday, his party and officials said, amid reports of violence elsewhere.
Authorities have enforced a security lockdown for the last two days to block the protesters, whom Khan has called on to march on parliament for a sit-in demonstration, while highways into the city have been barricaded.
The government has used shipping containers to block major roads and streets in Islamabad, most of them patrolled by large contingents of police and paramilitary personnel in riot gear.
Officials and witnesses said all public transport between cities and terminals has also been shut down in the eastern province of Punjab to keep away the protesters, led by members of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
"We wouldn’t let them storm the capital," said provincial Information Minister Uzma Bukhari, adding that about 80 of Khan’s supporters had been arrested.
Several police officials were injured in clashes and rioting at some places in the province, she told a news conference.
The capital added an extra layer of security ahead of a visit by the president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, set to arrive on Monday.
Khan’s party accused the government of using violent tactics to block the protesters, saying it had arrested hundreds of workers and leaders.
"They are even firing live bullets," one of Khan’s aides, Shaukat Yousafzai, told broadcaster Geo News TV.
Gatherings of any sort in Islamabad have been banned, police said in a statement. Authorities closed all schools in Islamabad and the adjacent garrison city of Rawalpindi, while the internet and WhatsApp messaging services also slowed.
The protest march, which Khan has described as the "final call", is one of many his party had held to seek his release since he was jailed in August last year. The party’s most recent protest in Islamabad, early in October, turned violent.
Khan’s third wife, Bushra Bibi, and a key aide, Ali Amin Gandapur, who is the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, are leading a rally that arrived just outside Islamabad on Sunday night, his party said.
Voted out of power by parliament in 2022 after falling out with Pakistan’s powerful military, Khan faces charges ranging from corruption to instigation of violence, all of which he and his party deny.
The military has an outsized role in politics, and mostly decides who will rule the South Asian nation of 241 million. Sectarian Violence Kills at Least 25 in Northwest Pakistan (New York Times)
New York Times [11/23/2024 4:14 PM, Zia ur-Rehman, 831K, Negative]
Violent clashes erupted overnight between Sunni and Shiite tribes in northwestern Pakistan, leaving at least 25 people dead and markets, homes and government properties in flames, officials and residents said on Saturday.
The violence occurred in Kurram, a scenic mountainous district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, which borders Afghanistan. It took place in the same area where gunmen ambushed convoys of vehicles on Thursday, killing 42 people, all Shia, despite the protection of security forces.
Pakistan is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, but Kurram’s population of 800,000 is nearly half Shiite Muslim, a dynamic that contributes to tribal and sectarian tensions. Officials and residents said that the violence started on Friday afternoon in parts of the district where Sunni and Shiite groups live close to each other.Muhammad Shoaib, a resident of a Sunni-populated town where the Shiite convoys came under attack on Thursday, said that hundreds of heavily armed people from the rival sect had attacked the main market on Friday night and set fire to dozens of shops and houses.“For hours on that night, heavy gunfire was exchanged between both sides, with large weapons being used freely,” said Mr. Shoaib, who on Friday morning had moved his family to stay with relatives in a neighboring district out of fear for their safety.“We knew that there would be a retaliatory attack,” he said. “It’s a cycle of violence that we have been witnessing and suffering for years now.”
The authorities were still working to restore order and prevent further bloodshed.
Javed ullah Mehsud, a senior district administration official, said that at least 25 people had been killed in the violence. He said clashes were continuing in at least three locations.“Efforts to restore peace are underway through the deployment of security forces and engagement with local tribal councils,” Mr. Mehsud said. A curfew has been imposed on the main road, and the markets remain closed, with all traffic suspended.
Friday at midday, the victims of Thursday’s deadly attacks were laid to rest as thousands of mourners gathered to pay their respects.“It is not new for us to bury such a large number of people in one day,” said Mukhtar Hussain, a mourner from Parachinar, a Shia-majority town in Kurram where most of the victims were from. “As Shiites, we are being killed everywhere — in markets, mosques, on roads — everywhere,” he said.
Shiite groups in Pakistan have announced a three-day mourning period for Thursday’s killings and have organized protests in all of Pakistan’s major cities.
Allama Ahmed Iqbal Rizvi, a Shiite leader, said that various militant groups, such as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the local affiliate Islamic State affiliate — called Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K — had been targeting the Shiite population in Kurram for a long time.“It is the incompetence of the government and state institutions,” said Mr. Rizvi, addressing a protest after Friday prayers in the port city of Karachi. He complained that they could not protect citizens traveling on the 155-mile road that links Kurram with Peshawar, the provincial capital.
That road, which is where the convoys came under attack, is a lifeline for the district. It had reopened only recently after being closed for three weeks following an ambush on Oct. 12 that left at least 16 dead.
During the closure, Parachinar residents were cut off from essential supplies like food and fuel.
This month, thousands of people from Parachinar staged a peaceful 10-mile march to demand the road’s reopening and security guarantees. The authorities responded by temporarily restoring access and promising government-protected convoys three times a week.
It has been a particularly deadly year in Kurram. In late July, a weeklong clash between Sunni and Shiite communities left 46 dead and hundreds injured. Another bout of violence in September claimed 45 lives and wounded dozens.
Experts attribute the escalation in sectarian conflicts to a complex interplay of factors rooted in the area’s socio-economic and historical context.
Among them are “close proximity to Afghanistan, a significant Shiite population, tensions over land ownership and decades of weak governance under colonial tribal laws,” said Tahmeed Jan, an Islamabad-based researcher who has worked in the area.“Socio-economic disparities, with Shiite-majority areas often better developed than Sunni-majority regions, which struggle with inadequate infrastructure and lower literacy rates, further exacerbate these tensions,” Mr. Jan said. Pakistan strikes seven-day ceasefire deal between warring sectarian groups (Reuters)
Reuters [11/24/2024 12:02 PM, Mushtaq Ali, 88008K, Negative]
A Pakistani government team mediated a seven-day ceasefire deal between rival sectarian groups on Sunday, halting days of clashes that have killed at least 68 people and injured dozens in the northwest of the country, one of the mediators said.
The violence began when gunmen attacked convoys of civilian vehicles on Thursday, killing at least 40 people, mostly Shi’ite Muslims. That sparked retaliatory attacks against Sunni Muslim residents and there have been pitched battles between armed groups from both sides.
Armed Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims have engaged in tribal and sectarian rivalry for decades over a land dispute in Kurram district near the Afghanistan border.
"Both sides have agreed to a week-long ceasefire which is expected to be extended," Muhammad Ali Saif, a member of the mediation team, told Reuters by phone, adding that major clashes had already stopped.
Saif, who is also the information minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Kurram is located, said both sides had also agreed to exchange prisoners, including women, and the bodies of those killed in the clashes.
The prisoners and bodies will be exchanged with assistance from Pakistani paramilitary forces.
The team flew into Parachinar, Kurram’s main city, on Saturday and met Shi’ite and Sunni tribal leaders with the entire district under virtual curfew and armed groups roaming the streets in many villages.
Saif said news of the ceasefire should also halt smaller skirmishes that had been reported in remote areas of the district.
Another member of the mediation team, Akhtar Hayat Gandapur, the police chief of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said Shi’ite leaders were demanding the immediate arrest of those involved in attacking passenger vehicles, as well as compensation for the victims and safety assurances for travellers.
The government is yet to identify or publicly name who the attackers were and no one has claimed responsibility.
Two government sources, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the death toll from retaliatory violence since Thursday’s bus attacks had risen to at least 28, putting the overall toll at 68.
Armed groups stormed into settlements inhabited by members of rival sects. Many homes have been evacuated, while markets and schools remain closed and several petrol stations were set alight, the officials said.
They said they feared the death toll could rise as communications in the area are down, making information difficult to obtain. Sectarian clashes claim nearly 80 lives in Pakistan (VOA)
VOA [11/23/2024 6:11 PM, Ayaz Gul, 4566K, Negative]
Officials in northwestern Pakistan reported on Saturday that a government delegation has begun efforts to negotiate a ceasefire between rival Sunni and Shiite Muslim tribes following armed clashes that resulted in nearly 80 deaths this week.
The sectarian conflict in Kurram district, which borders Afghanistan, flared up Thursday when heavily armed men from the Sunni tribe ambushed multiple passenger vehicles and killed at least 45 Shi’ites, including men, women, and children.
On Friday, Shi’ite community members conducted revenge attacks against the Sunni-dominated village where the ambush had taken place, killing at least 33 people and wounding dozens of others. The attackers set petrol stations on fire and damaged markets as well as homes.
A spokesman for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Kurram is located, announced Saturday that a high-powered government delegation had flown into the turbulent district center, Parachinar, and met with Shi’ite community leaders there.
Muhammad Ali Saif said in a late-night video statement that the meetings were "positive" and efforts were being made to "resolve all disputes amicably to end the tension." He added that the delegation plans to talk with Sunni community leaders in the next stage.
"Our top priority is to broker a cease-fire and establish a lasting peace in the district," said Saif, also part of the government delegation.
The Pakistani border district is known for deadly Shi’ite-Sunni sectarian violence, which stems from long-running land disputes.
A land dispute sparked weeks of clashes in Kurram earlier this year, killing more than 100 people between August and October this year. The fighting had compelled provincial authorities to halt all traffic to and from the district until earlier this month when tribal elders brokered a temporary cease-fire between the opposing factions.
Violence stops traffic
This week’s clashes have once again halted traffic on the sole road connecting the district - which has a population of approximately 800,000 - to the provincial capital of Peshawar.
The violence in Kurram comes amid a marked increase in militant attacks against Pakistani security forces in multiple districts near or along the Afghan border.
Officials say the violence this month in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Balochistan province, which borders Afghanistan, has resulted in the deaths of dozens of security personnel, including troops. India
Adani Charges to Test Trump’s Desire to Keep India in US Orbit (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [11/24/2024 11:02 PM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 27782K, Neutral]
In 2018, the arrest of an executive with Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co. for breaching US laws shocked President Xi Jinping’s inner circle and raised questions over whether Donald Trump would intervene in the case.
Trump now faces a similar dilemma after US prosecutors charged Gautam Adani — India’s most powerful businessman and a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi — in a $250 million bribery scheme. While Modi’s party called it a private matter, and Adani’s company denied the allegations, the case threatens to roil US-India diplomatic ties.Although Trump didn’t intervene in the Huawei case, which was eventually settled in 2021 after he left office, on its face he’ll have more incentive to make this case go away. Beyond Trump’s personal connection with Modi, the incoming US president has packed his team with China hawks who want to see stronger ties with India to counterbalance Beijing’s power in the region. Yet even if Trump does a favor for Adani, who praised the president-elect’s “unbreakable tenacity” after his election win, the case is yet another reminder of the long reach of US law — one that can affect both friends and foes around the world. A proliferation of American sanctions targeting Russia, China and even India, although it’s mostly gotten waivers, has accelerated the expansion of the BRICS grouping as nations seek an alternative to the US dominance of the financial system.For India in particular, the charges against Adani only reinforces its strategy to keep a foot in both major camps, staying friendly with the US while also keeping up good ties with Russia, China and other major economies in what’s known as the Global South. India remains reliant on Russian weapons and energy, and soon plans to host Vladimir Putin for the first time since the war began.“The indictment of Adani is seen in New Delhi as politically driven and will have a bearing on US-India collaboration and mutual trust unless the incoming Trump administration drops the prosecution,” said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “Much will be depend on how the next US administration seeks to chart the relationship with India.”India’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment when contacted for further information. Trump’s team didn’t respond to requests for further information.For the moment, it remains unclear if Modi will look to distance himself from Adani. He’s facing a more vocal opposition, who have more than doubled their support in the parliament after elections earlier this year, and are now pushing for federal investigators to probe Adani. Modi’s party suffered a setback in the polls that forced him to govern with coalition partners for the first time.Even so, if India has a national champion, it’s the Adani Group. Modi and the billionaire share deep links going back decades in their home state of Gujarat, and Adani was instrumental in helping revive the prime minister’s reputation when he came under attack over religious riots in 2002. After the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, the Communist Party eventually portrayed it as an attack on China and celebrated her return, even saying Xi personally gave instructions on the case. Modi may take a different approach, possibly using his personal ties with Trump and the US’s strategic need for India’s support in the region as leverage. And while Trump shares a mutual admiration with Modi, he’s long called out India for taking advantage of the US on trade.“I have no doubt that feelers have already been sent out to the Trump team,” said Milan Vaishnav, director and senior fellow of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Certainly, the Trump administration could decide not to pursue them or to settle them quickly and with little fanfare. The question, of course, is what will the famously transactional Trump want in return?”Trump’s TeamMuch will depend on who will run the Department of Justice. Trump personally has been prosecuted in a number of cases he says are politically motivated. His initial nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general and his subsequent pick of longtime ally Pam Bondi suggests there will be fewer guardrails on intervening in politically sensitive cases.Trump has already nominated several key people to his team who are pro-India supporters. Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, introduced a bill to the US Senate in July to boost defense ties with India and treat the South Asian nation as a NATO ally like Japan. Mike Waltz, who Trump has chosen as his national security adviser, was a guest of Modi at India’s Republic Day celebrations last year.The US government will have its own balancing act to manage. It gave Adani an endorsement last year when the US International Development Finance Corp. announced it would provide $553 million in financing to one of his business units for a port terminal in Sri Lanka’s capital, marking the government agency’s largest infrastructure investment in Asia. It’s unclear whether that project will still go forward.“We continue to conduct due diligence to ensure that all aspects of the project meet our rigorous standards before any loan disbursements are made,” an official from the US International Development Finance Corp. said in response to emailed questions. “The project has not reached financial close or signed a loan agreement.”For India, which has leaned closer to the US in recent years, the Adani case only underscores the risks of jumping too far into the American camp. Tensions had already been high after US prosecutors accused an Indian government employee of directing a foiled plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist with US citizenship in New York.India’s top diplomat, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, once described the nation’s foreign policy in terms of “hedging.” That approach has allowed it to maintain friendly ties with the US and its allies while also remaining on good terms with Putin, who is a key supplier of oil and weapons.“India might be more cautious in diversifying its economic and strategic interests but the Modi government recognizes that the US is the most powerful country in the world and India can’t take it head on,” said Sushant Singh, a lecturer of South Asian studies at Yale University. SEC issues summons for Gautam Adani, nephew on bribery allegations (Reuters)
Reuters [11/24/2024 9:28 AM, Kanjyik Ghosh, 5.2M, Neutral]
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a summons to Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, indicted on U.S. bribery allegations related to a bombshell federal indictment against him, a court filing showed.
The SEC is suing the head of the Adani Group and his nephew Sagar Adani, alleging they engaged in hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to help an Adani company while "falsely touting the company’s compliance with antibribery principles and laws in connection with a $750 million bond offering."
The summons requires an answer within 21 days, according to the filing dated Wednesday in federal court in the Eastern District of New York. The SEC suit seeks unspecified monetary penalties and restrictions on the Adanis from serving as officers of listed companies.
Adani Group representatives did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Sunday.
The group has denied the criminal charges as "baseless". The group CFO said the indictment is linked to one contract of Adani Green Energy that makes up some 10% of its business, and that no other firms in the conglomerate were accused of wrongdoing.
Federal prosecutors issued arrest warrants for Gautam and Sagar Adani, alleging they participated in a $265 million scheme to bribe Indian officials to secure power-supply deals.
Authorities said Adani and seven other defendants, including his nephew Sagar, agreed to bribe Indian government officials to obtain contracts expected to yield $2 billion of profit over 20 years, and develop India’s largest solar power plant project.
The crisis is the second in two years to hit the ports-to-power conglomerate founded by Adani, 62, one of the world’s richest people. The fallout was felt immediately, as billions of dollars were wiped off the market value of Adani Group companies and Kenya’s president canceled a massive airport project with the group. Ottawa denies it has evidence linking India PM Modi to violence in Canada (Reuters)
Reuters [11/22/2024 9:55 AM, David Ljunggren, 5.2M, Neutral]
Canada, which expelled six Indian diplomats over allegations they were involved in a plot against Sikh separatists, denied it had evidence Prime Minister Narendra Modi was linked to violence on Canadian soil.
The Canadian foreign ministry last month alleged Amit Shah, considered the number two in Modi’s government, was behind a campaign of intimidation in Canada. Ottawa says it has evidence linking Indian government agents to the 2023 murder of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.
This week, the Globe and Mail newspaper said Canadian security agencies believed Modi knew about the violent plots and said Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and national security adviser Ajit Doval were also in the loop.
Nathalie Drouin, intelligence adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, posted a statement of denial on a government website late on Thursday night.
"The Government of Canada has not stated, nor is it aware of evidence, linking Prime Minister Modi, Minister Jaishankar, or NSA Doval to the serious criminal activity within Canada. Any suggestion to the contrary is both speculative and inaccurate," she said.
Four Indian nationals have been charged in Nijjar’s killing. India flatly rejects any suggestion its agents were involved in violence against Sikh separatists on Canadian soil.
Canada is home to the highest population of Sikhs outside their home state of Punjab and demonstrations in favor of a separate homeland carved out of India have irked New Delhi.
India calls the separatists "terrorists" who it says are threats to its security. Cash, Kidnappings and Luxury Resorts: A Formula for Power in Modi’s India (New York Times)
New York Times [11/23/2024 4:14 PM, Mujib Mashal, 831K, Neutral]
The lawmakers had finished a routine assembly vote and were scattering into the Mumbai night.
Nitin Deshmukh, who represented a district 350 miles away, planned to take an overnight train. But first came an invitation to have dinner in the suburbs with a senior official from their party in the Indian state of Maharashtra. They would share a car ride, and Mr. Deshmukh could catch the train from there.
It was all a ruse.As the car approached its destination, it kept speeding along, and eventually joined a caravan of other vehicles. That, Mr. Deshmukh said, is when he realized he was being kidnapped. The car was heading across state lines, where he would be held in a hotel behind locked gates and later restrained and drugged after trying to flee.
Mr. Deshmukh had become a pawn in what is known as “resort politics,” a longstanding practice unique to India’s rough-and-tumble democracy.
The senior party official in the car with Mr. Deshmukh that night in June 2022 had secretly recruited a group of governing-party lawmakers to try to bring down the state government in Maharashtra. To ensure that they would stick to the plan, the lawmakers were moved to other states and isolated in luxury resorts.
Mr. Deshmukh and at least two other Maharashtra lawmakers, according to their own accounts, were taken against their will. The leaders of the insurrection wanted to make certain that their breakaway faction had a sufficient number of lawmakers to deprive the government of a majority and force it to collapse.
The hidden hand behind the maneuvering, according to several lawmakers with knowledge of the events, was the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a series of closely contested states, his Bharatiya Janata Party, after failing to win power through elections, has gained effective control through similar episodes in which lawmakers were sent to resort hotels until their government fell.
In Maharashtra, several lawmakers said, some of the defectors had been paid to switch loyalties. Other lawmakers who sided with the B.J.P. had publicly spoken beforehand of coming under withering pressure from investigating agencies controlled by Mr. Modi’s party.
The takeover of state governments is an extreme example of the no-holds-barred quest for total power by the B.J.P. under Mr. Modi. As the country’s most dominant leader in a generation, he is working to entrench a new vision of India, one where the B.J.P. and its Hindu-nationalist ideology reign supreme for decades to come. Deep footholds at the state level are crucial to his mission.
In Maharashtra, the prize for the B.J.P. was as big as any in India: a state of 130 million people that is the country’s financial and entertainment powerhouse.
The machinations caused two of Maharashtra’s important parties to each split in two, pitting family members against one another, and scrambled the state’s political landscape, leaving an opening for a B.J.P.-led coalition to take control. Residents have a favored term for this confusing new state of affairs: kichdi, a mush of a dish in which the rice can’t be told apart from the lentils.
On Saturday, early results of the state’s first election since the breakaway insurrection appeared to reinforce the B.J.P.’s anything-goes approach. A coalition led by the party was on track to win a strong majority to form the new government. Analysts said that two years in charge of government agencies and the state’s rich coffers, in which it expanded welfare programs and infrastructure projects, had put the coalition in such a dominant position in the election that it blew away its opposition.“Don’t ask about ideology in Maharashtra — the entire politics of the state has changed,” Ajit Pawar, one of the politicians the B.J.P. brought to its side by pressing him to split from his family, acknowledged to an interviewer before the state election. “Everyone wants power here. Ideology has been sidelined for power.”
Once power became everything, Mr. Deshmukh found himself trapped.
By Any Means
Resort politics is such a feared practice that mere rumors can send rival parties running to protect themselves.
In the southern state of Karnataka, home to the cash-rich tech hub of Bengaluru, Mr. Modi’s party brought down the government in 2019 by getting a dozen governing-party lawmakers to flee to a hotel in Mumbai, then controlled by the B.J.P. The defectors remained there until their party leader resigned and the government fell.
In Madhya Pradesh, in central India, the B.J.P. coaxed an opposing senior political leader into resigning from the government in 2020. He brought with him about 20 lawmakers, many of whom decamped to a resort in Bengaluru, a city run by the B.J.P. Madhya Pradesh is now a B.J.P. fortress.
The practice of resort politics goes back decades, to the time when the Congress party, run by the Nehru-Gandhi family, started losing its long dominance of Indian politics and an era of coalition politics began. Often, it was used not to bring down a government, but to keep one intact.
More recently, on at least two occasions, whispers that the B.J.P. was on a poaching hunt led other parties to lock up their own lawmakers in resorts for days, until the threat had dissipated.
The B.J.P. uses its deep pockets to win allies and keep them on board. Equally important is the party’s control over feared national investigating agencies, determining who remains in politics, who profits from its vast riches and who winds up sidelined in a jail cell.
In states like Jharkhand and the capital region, Delhi, where the B.J.P.’s attempts to break smaller parties have not worked, elected leaders have ended up in jail, paralyzing local governance.
Suhas Palshikar, a veteran political scientist based in Pune, said the B.J.P.’s orchestrated fragmentation of politics in Maharashtra fit a pattern in its push for hegemonic control.“They want to establish state-level governments by whatever means,” he said, “because they know that their overall social and political dominance can sustain only if they have control over the state governments.”
Desperate to EscapeThe car ride that delivered Mr. Deshmukh into a weeklong ordeal landed him first at a resort in Gujarat, Mr. Modi’s home state, where the prime minister has close to absolute power.
Two dozen rebel members of his party, the Shiv Sena, gathered at a hotel named the Orange Megastructure, a favorite of the B.J.P. official who ran Gujarat.
Thirty-five rooms were booked (some lawmakers had come with their assistants, and at least one with her husband). More than 200 police officers were called in to lock down the hotel. Racks of clothes were wheeled in.
The defecting lawmakers had set off from Mumbai with Mr. Deshmukh and at least two other lawmakers they hoped to bring to their side.
Both of the others tried to escape before they reached the hotel in the diamond-trading city of Surat. One bolted from a car during a traffic jam. After walking for miles, he persuaded a truck driver headed to Mumbai to give him a ride.“I was sweating, it was raining, I was getting wet,” said the lawmaker, Kailas Patil.
Mr. Deshmukh, 50 — a colorful first-time lawmaker who during an interview with The New York Times took off his shirt and asked a reporter to feel his flexing pecs (“Like a rock,” an aide said) — became a headache to the mutineers only after the group had reached the hotel.
Inside the resort, the breakaway lawmakers issued demands to the Shiv Sena leaders back in Mumbai: They would not return until Uddhav Thackeray, leader of both the party and the state, dissolved his coalition and stepped aside for a new governing coalition with the B.J.P.
Mr. Deshmukh was in touch with Mr. Thackeray, according to his own account, and wanted to leave right away. But the hotel gates were locked, and outside was a wall of police officers. Eknath Shinde, the Shiv Sena leader who had lured Mr. Deshmukh to Surat, showed his temper when Mr. Deshmukh said he would break the window and jump out.“Shinde got mad and shouted at someone, ‘Bring me the pistol; I will finish myself here,’” Mr. Deshmukh recalled. “I said, ‘Sir, even if you kill me and kill yourself, I am still not staying.’” Mr. Shinde did not answer requests for an interview.
The two men had been brought to this point by months of maneuvering by the B.J.P., propelled by cash and coercion.
The B.J.P. was once an ally of Mr. Thackeray’s father, a cigar-in-hand political cartoonist who had founded the Shiv Sena with an army of Hindu vigilantes.
Mr. Shinde, a onetime auto-rickshaw driver who dresses in immaculate whites, was being groomed as an alternative to Mr. Thackeray, who had been painted as soft and inaccessible by the B.J.P. as he tried to move the Shiv Sena toward the mainstream.
When the B.J.P. began courting Shiv Sena lawmakers, according to several with knowledge of the discussions, some were paid millions of dollars to switch their allegiance. “In cash,” said Arvind Sawant, a Shiv Sena lawmaker in Maharashtra. The figures could not be independently verified.
Many had another powerful incentive to align with the B.J.P.: They were under investigation by the B.J.P.-controlled central government. Before the rebellion, Shiv Sena lawmakers had publicly urged Mr. Thackeray to “patch up” with the B.J.P. so “the harassment” would stop.
B.J.P. leaders, as well as the security officials involved in the Surat episode, declined to discuss details of the case, including allegations of cash payments. C.R. Patil, the B.J.P.’s chief in Gujarat, played down his own role in the episode but acknowledged the party’s contribution. “It wasn’t my doing — it was the party’s,” he said.
Mr. Shinde’s associates denied that Mr. Deshmukh and other lawmakers had been kidnapped. “They weren’t children that we could have thrown in a car and taken by force,” said Bharat Gogawale, a lawmaker and Shinde lieutenant during the coup.
Political Fractures
On the night of the uprising, when Mr. Deshmukh was finally allowed to leave the hotel in the predawn hours, dozens of police officers broke away from a security cordon and followed him in the rain-slicked dark.
But as he waited for a ride promised by leaders of his party trying to save their government, he said, the police tossed him into a vehicle and took him to a government hospital.“I kept telling the doctors, ‘I am not sick; I am a lawmaker,’” Mr. Deshmukh recalled.
Around 5:30, before the sun came up, Mr. Deshmukh was pinned to the hospital bed, he said, and injected with sedatives.“Some tears came out of my eyes,” Mr. Deshmukh said. “Then I passed out.”
The next day in the local newspapers, the police in Gujarat — a dry state — were quoted as saying that the lawmaker had been found so drunk and unruly that he had to be taken to the hospital for treatment.
Eventually, he asked Mr. Shinde to let him travel home and calm his wife, who had lodged a missing-person complaint with the police, as well as supporters who were angered by his treatment. If Mr. Shinde let him go, Mr. Deshmukh said, he would rejoin the rebels afterward. But as the plane chartered for him landed, and Mr. Deshmukh saw hundreds of his supporters, he told Mr. Shinde’s men they could either take a hike or get beaten up, according to his own account.
A week into the uprising, after the mutinous faction had hopped from one resort to another across three B.J.P.-run states, Mr. Thackeray finally resigned. He was replaced by Mr. Shinde.“I don’t want to play these games,” Mr. Thackeray said in a televised statement. The insurgents danced on the tables at a Goa resort.
Not long after, the B.J.P. went after another Maharashtra party, the secular Nationalist Congress Party, getting its No. 2, Ajit Pawar, to split from his aging uncle, who had built the party over decades.
An early verdict on the Maharashtra chaos came this spring, in national parliamentary elections. The B.J.P. lost more than half of its seats in the state. Mr. Pawar, the party’s new ally, fared even worse in the face of a wave of sympathy for his 83-year-old uncle.
But for Mr. Shinde, the chief benefactor of the 2022 rebellion, the results in the general election were promising. His faction won enough seats to keep him as the face of the governing coalition for the state election this week, where he improved in his showing.
Numbers from the campaigning period show how much money and muscle govern Maharashtra’s politics. The country’s election commission said it had conducted seizures worth nearly $80 million during the campaigning — ostensibly meant as bribes for votes. One study found that 60 percent of sitting state lawmakers faced criminal cases.
Through the frenzy of both the national and state elections, Mr. Modi carried out nearly two dozen rallies in Maharashtra, swooping in to pitch himself as the undisputed guarantor of stability and continuity — and the ultimate gatekeeper for government benefits.
Mr. Shinde, in return, bet often and openly on Mr. Modi because he, of all people, knows that the powerful prime minister can turn a loss into a win.“Modi makes the impossible possible,” Mr. Shinde said at one election rally with Mr. Modi seated onstage. Modi’s Party Wins Maharashtra State Polls, Loses Jharkhand (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [11/23/2024 7:56 AM, Swati Gupta, 27782K, Positive]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling alliance won an election in Maharashtra by a wide margin, signaling policy continuity in a state which houses most of India’s billionaires and is home to some of the country’s biggest investments.
The Mahayuti coalition, led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, is ahead with 228 seats of the 288-member legislative assembly, according to the Election Commission of India. The Indian National Congress-led alliance has the advantage in just 47 seats, halting a momentum they built during national elections.The margins are wide enough for the elections to be called even as the final stages of counting are in progress.“Development wins! Good governance wins! United we will soar even higher!” Modi said in a post on X on Saturday.A separate Congress alliance in Jharkhand is leading in 50 seats of the 81-member legislative assembly, according to the Election Commission. Modi has conceded in the state.Exit polls released Wednesday predicted a tight contest in both states, with a slight edge forecast for the BJP alliance in Maharashtra. Mahayuti is now expected to win by a landslide with the main opposition and other smaller regional parties barely scraping by. BJP candidates are in the lead in 90 seats and have had a win declared for 42 more.“This is the voice of the people, it is the government of the people and it is a government for the best of the people,” Chief Minister Eknath Shinde told reporters Saturday afternoon.A victory in Maharashtra, which houses the financial capital of Mumbai, is expected to give a boost to stock markets which had already made gains on Friday in anticipation of the results. It suggests Modi remains popular, even though his party lost an outright majority in national polls.In those elections, more than 20 different parties worked together, shedding ideological differences and pooling resources to take on Modi’s electoral prowess. Since the results in June, four state polls were conducted with the BJP picking up two significant ones.“The BJP has a reasonably fixed vote share which it will get,” said Neelanjan Sircar, an associate professor at Ahmedabad University. Also, “we are seeing local seat level factions taking on an importance.”Maharashtra contributes over 10% of India’s gross domestic product, with Mumbai home to companies such as Reliance Industries Ltd. and Tata Group, the country’s two main stock markets, and the Hindi film industry. The state’s economic reputation, however, is at risk of being tarnished by growing farmer distress and high unemployment.Modi and his party have introduced a series of social welfare programs, including cash handouts to women and have promised further subsidies.The state is also one of the biggest recipients of foreign investment and BJP’s win will calm investors and allow ambitious development projects already in the works to continue.Billionaire Gautam Adani aims to revamp one of Asia’s biggest slums, but his $3 billion plan to convert 620 acres (251 hectares) of Dharavi into a glitzy urban hub had become a political hot potato. The opposition has repeatedly vowed to cancel the project during campaigning.Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who won both parliamentary seats he contested in June, chose to vacate his seat in Wayanad, Kerala. His sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra ran in the by-election there in her first political match for the Congress party, winning the seat with a margin of more than 410,000 votes. To Challenge China, India Needs to Get Out of the Way of Its Factory Owners (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [11/24/2024 12:01 AM, Shan Li and Megha Mandavia, 810K, Neutral]
Boosting manufacturing is critical to India becoming an economic powerhouse. It now has a fresh shot at that with the election of Donald Trump, whose promise to levy sky-high import tariffs on Chinese goods could send more manufacturers to the South Asian nation.
But first India has to get out of the way of its factory owners.
In the southern city of Bengaluru, A. Dhananjaya, who has run a garment manufacturing company for nearly three decades, says he grapples with high labor costs and hundreds of labor-compliance rules. He wouldn’t dare grow beyond about 100 workers, because that would mean more forms to fill out, more licenses to apply for, and more expenses.
Before the pandemic, he lost business to China. In the past two years, larger and cheaper Bangladesh factories have wooed away many customers.“The collapse is real,” said Dhananjaya, who has laid off half his workers in recent years. “Five years down the line, I’m not sure if the garment industry will survive.”
India has generated splashy headlines under Prime Minister Narendra Modi by wooing high-profile companies such as Apple that have sought to diversify production away from China since the pandemic. But economists say that the country has done little to clear away hurdles for labor-intensive manufacturing, the foundation for economic growth from China to South Korea.
In India, manufacturing’s contribution to its gross domestic product has fallen from around 17% two decades ago to 13% in 2023, according to World Bank data. The country has about 65 million manufacturing jobs, while four times as many people work in agriculture. Millions of young people join the workforce every year in the world’s most populous nation.
That failure is especially visible in its apparel exports, where India, with its history of skilled textile work and vast labor supply, should have an edge. Instead, its annual apparel exports have declined more than 11% compared with a decade ago, clocking in at $15 billion in 2023, according to the World Trade Organization. Over the same period, Bangladesh saw its garment exports grow by more than 50% to $38 billion, while Vietnam’s exports crossed $30 billion.
The two countries top the list of nations that have been able to seize an advantage from China’s declining share in global exports of low-skill manufacturing, according to the World Bank. India doesn’t even figure in the top five.“India is punching below its weight for labor-intensive manufacturing,” said Trinh Nguyen, emerging market economist with Natixis. “It is an unsexy part of industrialization, but a country that large cannot completely ignore it.”
India’s apparel exports have faced friction from some factors beyond its control—such as global trade policies meant to help the poorest countries. Bangladesh’s clothing exports enjoy duty-free access to the world’s biggest apparel buyers, the U.S. and Europe, an advantage that it has used to become the world’s biggest apparel exporter after China.
But economists and manufacturers say that countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam have also done a far better job of smoothing the way for firms than India where regulations, especially around labor, discourage companies from expanding.
Factories in India with over 100 employees require government permission to fire workers. Those with at least 50 female workers must set up an on-site nursery. Adding a second shift to turnaround large orders quickly also requires prior government approval.
Dhananjaya said he has kept his full-time workforce small to avoid regulations that require going in person to the local labor department to obtain an updated labor license every time a factory wants to expand. They require proof that the facility has staff trained in first aid and bathroom facilities to handle the extra workers.
His manager devotes a large portion of time to keeping books and updating dozens of different labor registries, including overtime, accidents and salaries. He pays his workers about 45% more than the prevailing minimum wage in neighboring Bangladesh.“Labor is just a headache,” he said. “It adds costs that make us less competitive.”
Many states bar or restrict women from working in factories after 7 p.m., while male workers increasingly favor gig work or making deliveries over factory shifts. That limits manufacturing facilities to only one shift a day.
Sameer Yadav, the 42-year-old owner of a garment factory in Bengaluru, said his costs would have been far lower if he could add a late shift to an existing factory. Instead, he set up a second factory in 2016 to meet deadlines for large orders.
That doubled his expenses for machinery, supervisors, security guards and permits. Over the past decade, he has lost about 60% of his business to rival countries that can produce shirts for half the cost.“All the business has gone to Bangladesh,” Yadav said.
Economists and policymakers say it is a pattern that is repeated across many parts of India’s economy that have the best chance of employing lots of workers, from furniture to shoes.
In contrast, Bangladesh has streamlined its permitting process by handing over some regulatory powers to the country’s main trade group, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
The trade group issues a same-day permit to factories for hiring additional staff and handles labor department paperwork on behalf of companies, said Shovon Islam, a director of the association. Some permits for importing fabric duty-free are also issued by the group, which acts as a middleman with customs officials.
Nearly 60% of Bangladesh factories have 3,000 workers or more, compared with an average of 150 workers per factory in India.
Islam, who used to operate out of India, said the streamlined regulatory process was partly what pushed him and his Indian business partner to gradually move their factories over the past decade from the southern Indian city of Chennai to Bangladesh.
Now his four factories in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka have an average workforce of 5,000 people, more than tripling the capacity of his Indian factories, he said. Overhead costs have been slashed 30% by boosting production while eliminating the need for duplicate support staff, storage facilities and transport.“When you have large factories, the economies of scale are very high,” he said.
Bangladesh’s factories saw several disasters in the rush to grow, but after a factory collapse that killed more than 1,000 people, the industry worked with brands to improve safety.
It takes factories in Bangladesh two or three weeks to produce and ship an order, compared with twice as long in India, according to industry sources.
An overhaul of the labor code by Modi’s government aimed to loosen labor laws, including allowing firms of up to 300 to fire workers without government permission. But they have yet to be widely implemented after facing pushback from labor unions, which organized marches this year calling for the repeal of the laws.
Manufacturing firms in India said they are wary of operating large factories because of the power of organized labor. In September, a strike paralyzed the operations at a Samsung Electronics factory in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu for over a month as workers demanded better pay, improved working facilities and recognition of a newly formed union. Apple suppliers including Foxconn and Wistron have also dealt with protests and strikes.“No manufacturer wants to set up a 10,000 person factory because it really makes them a target,” said Rahul Ahluwalia, founding director of Foundation of Economic Development, a New Delhi think tank. “The politicians will round up your labor and try to extract rents from the businessmen through that.”
India’s failure to sign free-trade agreements with other countries that would slash tariffs on its exports has also made Indian garments increasingly too expensive for global retail companies. At the same time, the country levies high duties on the types of synthetic fabric that factories need to fill fast-fashion orders.
India’s own retailers and manufacturers catering to the domestic market are shifting more production and sourcing to Bangladesh, leading to a sharp jump in India’s apparel imports.
Some firms have managed to grow despite the odds. Garment maker Radnik Exports Global, based in New Delhi, has protected itself by manufacturing high-value garments for buyers such as Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren, and diversifying into technical fabrics for automobiles and accessories, said Anurag Kapur, a director and member of the founding family.
Kapur expects Trump’s election—and political unrest in Bangladesh which ousted its prime minister in August—to provide opportunities to larger apparel makers like his firm.
But it hasn’t been easy. His family had to scramble in 2019 after Trump canceled India’s special trade status, which allowed for duty-free imports of some garments, and accused India of shutting out American businesses. Trump repeatedly railed over what he saw as India’s protectionist policies, including a 50% import duty on Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Kapur said some of his garment export orders in production for the U.S. suddenly attracted high single-digit duties. The firm trimmed costs by laying off supervisors and support staff and beseeching suppliers to swallow some of the extra expenses.“We are like clusters fending for ourselves,” he said. “The government has not looked out for us as an industry.”
If the company had stuck to only manufacturing simple garments, he said, they would be struggling just like 80% of the industry.“You reinvent yourself, that is the only mode of survival,” Kapur said. “If you haven’t, it’s already too late.” India Aiming to Finalize Carbon Deals With Japan, Singapore (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [11/24/2024 10:16 PM, Shruti Srivastava, 27782K, Neutral]
India is aiming to finalize a potential carbon credit deal with Japan early in 2025 and then advance similar negotiations with nations including South Korea and SingaporeThe world’s third-largest carbon dioxide emitter wants to attract investment and technology to be deployed on projects that would mitigate pollution and generate credits, according to people familiar with the discussions, who asked not to be identified as the deliberations are private. A bilateral agreement with Japan is likely to be signed early next year and India will seek to complete pacts with South Korea and Singapore before the end of the fiscal year ending in March 2026, one of the people said. Talks over prospective future deals also are taking place with Germany and Sweden.A spokesperson for India’s ministry of environment, forest and climate change didn’t respond to a request for comment.Pacts are being discussed under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, which is intended to facilitate nation-to-nation trading and allow countries to use credits against their climate targets. Negotiators at the COP29 talks in Azerbaijan on Saturday approved rules to guide the market after almost a decade of deliberations.Countries including Singapore and Switzerland have been striking pacts in advance of guidelines being finalized. Agreements between governments to trade emission reductions topped$1 billion at COP29, according to BloombergNEF.Japan has been in talks with India for a bilateral carbon-credit agreement, the nation’s trade ministry said, without specifying any timeline. The two countries signed an agreement in 2023 to work on building a joint crediting mechanism.Singapore is in discussions with India on a bilateral implementation agreement aligned with Article 6.2, said the country’s National Climate Change Secretariat. South Korea’s environment ministry confirmed discussions on a potential memorandum of understanding over collaboration on carbon credits.Germany’s economy ministry is also in talks with India on agreeing a memorandum of understanding, a spokesperson said. “Sweden is in dialogue with many countries” on potential bilateral partnerships, Ola Westberg, spokesman for Sweden’s Energy Agency said, without specifying if talks are talking place with India.In some of the talks, India has proposed a joint carbon-crediting mechanism under which partnering nations would provide finance and technology to set up projects. The credits generated would then be shared and the split would vary between developments, the people said.Officials in India previously identified 13 types of activities to be considered for bilateral carbon trading, including green hydrogen, sustainable-aviation fuel and high-voltage direct current electricity transmission. Why Indians are risking it all to chase the American Dream (BBC)
BBC [11/24/2024 7:11 PM, Soutik Biswas, 67197K, Neutral]
In October, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) sent a chartered flight carrying Indian nationals back home, marking a growing trend in deportations to India.
This was no ordinary flight - it was one of multiple large-scale "removal flights" carried out this year, each typically carrying more than 100 passengers. The flights were returning groups of Indian migrants who "did not establish a legal basis to remain in the US".
According to US officials, the latest flight carrying adult men and women was routed to Punjab, close to many deportees’ places of origin. No precise breakdown of hometowns was provided.
In the US fiscal year 2024 which ended in September, more than 1,000 Indian nationals had been repatriated by charter and commercial flights, according to Royce Bernstein Murray, assistant secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security.
"That has been part of a steady increase in removals from the US of Indian nationals over the past few years, which corresponds with a general increase in encounters that we have seen with Indian nationals in the last few years as well," Ms Murray told a media briefing. (Encounters refer to instances where non-citizens are stopped by US authorities while attempting to cross the country’s borders with Mexico or Canada.).
As the US ramps up repatriations of Indian nationals, concerns grow about how President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration policies will affect them. Trump has already promised the biggest deportation of migrants in history.
Since October 2020, US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) officials have detained nearly 170,000 Indian migrants attempting unauthorised crossings at both the northern and southern land borders.
"Though smaller than the numbers from Latin America and the Caribbean, Indian nationals represent the largest group of migrants from outside the Western Hemisphere encountered by the CPB in the past four years," say Gil Guerra and Sneha Puri, immigration analysts at Niskanen Center, a Washington-based think tank.
As of 2022, an estimated 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants were in the US, making them the third-largest group after those from Mexico and El Salvador, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. Unauthorised immigrants in all make up 3% of US’s total population and 22% of the foreign-born population.
Looking at the data, Mr Guerra and Ms Puri have identified notable trends in the spike in Indians attempting illegal border crossings.
For one, the migrants are not from the lowest economic strata. But they cannot secure tourist or student visas to the US, often due to lower education or English proficiency.
Instead, they rely on agencies charging up to $100,000 (£79,000), sometimes using long and arduous routes designed to dodge border controls. To afford this, many sell farms or take out loans. Not surprisingly, data from the US immigration courts in 2024 reveals that the majority of Indian migrants were male, aged 18-34.
Second, Canada on the northern border has become a more accessible entry point for Indians, with a visitor visa processing time of 76 days (compared to up to a year for a US visa in India).
The Swanton Sector - covering the states of Vermont and counties in New York and New Hampshire - has experienced a sudden surge in encounters with Indian nationals since early this year, peaking at 2,715 in June, the researchers found.
Earlier, most irregular Indian migrants entered the Americas through the busier southern border with Mexico via El Salvador or Nicaragua, both of which facilitated migration. Until November last year, Indian nationals enjoyed visa-free travel to El Salvador.
"The US-Canada border is also longer and less guarded than the US-Mexico border. And while it is not necessarily safer, criminal groups do not have the same presence there as they do along the route from South and Central America," Mr Guerra and Ms Puri say.
Thirdly, much of the migration appears to originate from the Sikh-dominated Indian state of Punjab and neighbouring Haryana, which has traditionally seen people migrating overseas. The other source of origin is Gujarat, the home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Punjab, which accounts for a large share of irregular Indian migrants, is facing economic hardships, including high unemployment, farming distress and a looming drug crisis.
Migration has also long been common among Punjabis, with rural youth still eager to move abroad.
A recent study of 120 respondents in Punjab by Navjot Kaur, Gaganpreet Kaur and Lavjit Kaur found that 56% emigrated between ages 18-28, often after secondary education. Many funded their move through non-institutional loans, later sending remittances to their families.
Then there has been a rise in tensions over the separatist Khalistan movement, which seeks to establish an independent homeland for Sikhs. "This has caused fear from some Sikhs in India about being unfairly targeted by authorities or politicians. These fears may also provide a credible basis for claims of persecution that allows them to seek asylum, whether or not true," says Ms Puri.
But pinning down the exact triggers for migration is challenging.
"While motivations vary, economic opportunity remains the primary driver, reinforced by social networks and a sense of pride in having family members ‘settled’ in the US," says Ms Puri.
Fourth, researchers found a shift in the family demographics of Indian nationals at the borders.
More families are trying to cross the border. In 2021, single adults were overwhelmingly detained at both borders. Now, family units make up 16-18% of the detentions at both borders.
This has sometimes led to tragic consequences. In January 2022, an Indian family of four - part of a group of 11 people from Gujarat - froze to death just 12m (39ft) from the border in Canada while attempting to enter the US.
Pablo Bose, a migration and urban studies scholar at the University of Vermont, says Indians are trying to cross into the US in larger numbers because of more economic opportunities and "more ability to enter the informal economies in the US cities", especially the large ones like New York or Boston.
"From everything I know and interviews I have conducted, most of the Indians are not staying in the more rural locations like Vermont or upstate New York but rather heading to the cities as soon as they can," Mr Bose told the BBC. There, he says, they are entering mostly informal jobs like domestic labour and restaurant work.
Things are likely to become more difficult soon. Veteran immigration official Tom Homan, who will be in charge of the country’s borders following Trump’s inauguration in January, has said that the northern border with Canada is a priority because illegal migration in the area is a "huge national security issue".
What happens next is unclear. "It remains to be seen if Canada would impose similar policies to prevent people migrating into the US from its borders. If that happens, we can expect a decline in detentions of Indians nationals at the border," says Ms Puri.
Whatever the case, the dreams driving thousands of desperate Indians to seek a better life in the US are unlikely to fade, even as the road ahead becomes more perilous. India opposes COP29 finance deal after it is adopted (Reuters)
Reuters [11/23/2024 6:14 PM, Staff, 88008K, Negative]
India strongly objected to a climate finance deal agreed at the United Nations COP29 summit on Sunday, but their objection was raised after the deal was formally adopted by consensus.
"I regret to say that this document is nothing more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face. Therefore, we oppose the adoption of this document," Indian delegation representative Chandni Raina told the closing plenary session of the summit. Stabbing renews debate over India hospital safety months after rape and murder of trainee doctor (CNN)
CNN [11/22/2024 8:09 PM, Esha Mitra, 1032K, Negative]
A knife attack on a doctor in India has renewed an impassioned debate about whether enough is being done to protect medical staff in the world’s most populous nation’s often crowded and overstretched hospital wards.
Last week, thousands of doctors went on strike, shutting down private hospitals and clinics after a doctor was stabbed while on duty in the southern city of Chennai.
Oncologist Balaji Jaganathan was allegedly attacked by the relative of a patient who was unhappy with his mother’s treatment, local police said. The doctor survived the attack and remains in stable condition.
"How are we supposed to treat patients if we don’t know if we ourselves will make it out safely," K. M. Abdul Hasan, president of the Indian Medical Association in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, told CNN, adding that more than 40,000 doctors went on strike on November 14 to demand safety in the workplace for health care workers.
Earlier this summer, thousands of doctors across the country took industrial action – and also spent weeks protesting – after a trainee medic was raped and murdered in the eastern city of Kolkata in July.
Their main demand then was a federal law, known as the Central Protection Act (CPA), to protect doctors and medical staff at their workplace. The stabbing in Tamil Nadu has once again emphasized the need for such a law, and stricter security measures to protect health care workers, doctors say.
Violence is ‘expected’
In recent weeks, CNN has spoken to nearly a dozen doctors who all reported a hostile work environment and lack of security. Several doctors work in the capital New Delhi, but they say things are much worse at remote health care centers.
A survey published in August in the wake of the trainee medic’s killing showed 78% of health care workers reported being threatened while on duty.
Another 63% said they felt unsafe while working a night shift, while those at government-run hospitals or community health centers felt more unsafe than those working in private hospitals. The survey had 1,566 responses from doctors, nurses and other medical staff across the country.
"Every doctor can tell you many incidents where they have been verbally abused or worse, it is expected for us," said a doctor in a Delhi hospital who asked to conceal her name, fearing repercussions at work for speaking to the media.In July, while the doctor was on duty in a Delhi government hospital, what was supposed to be a simple baby delivery turned into a complicated procedure, and the mother was imperiled.
As monitors beeped and a doctor rushed to resuscitate her, an older female relative began screaming. What happened next left staff traumatized, said the Delhi-based doctor.
Dozens of armed men barged into the delivery area reserved for patients and their female relatives as many women lay uncovered to give birth.
The men, claiming to be the patient’s relatives, began yelling, destroying equipment and assaulting the doctors. Despite the attacks, the team continued to try to revive the patient, until there was nothing more they could do.
"The doctors ran and hid in the duty room but they even broke into there," said the Delhi-based doctor.
Doctors at the hospital subsequently asked for more security personnel and metal detectors, but their pleas have gone unanswered, said the doctor.‘It could have been any one of us’
The Kolkata trainee medic’s murder took place while she was working a night shift and had shut her eyes for a short while in a seminar room at the R. G. Kar medical college and hospital.
A civic volunteer at the hospital has been charged with rape and murder and his trial in ongoing.
Indian laws require the identity of a rape victim to be protected. She has been given the moniker "Abhaya," meaning without fear, and her case has become the latest to fuel surging anger in India over endemic violence against women.
But it also galvanized doctors to call for better protections.
"It could have been any one of us, we have no choice but to protest because if we don’t speak up now then when; it can’t get any worse," said Anwesha Banerjee, a doctor from the same class of medical students as Abhaya, who also asked to use a pseudonym.
This incident brought doctors from all parts of the country to the street, united in their demand for stronger laws to protect doctors.
The Supreme Court of India opened a case on the Kolkata trainee doctor’s rape and murder and formed a national task force to recommend measures to improve security at hospitals.
However, the task force has disagreed with the doctors’ key demand for a new law, arguing India’s criminal code already has adequate legislation.
In the aftermath of the doctors’ strike in August, India’s Health Ministry set up a sub-committee to help the task force "suggest all such possible measures for ensuring the safety of health care professionals.".
The task force outlined measures to improve safety, such as installing more CCTV cameras, providing transport at night and better duty rooms for staff. But doctors say they want concrete action now.
"We need measures to actually be implemented, we need both state and central governments to act … guidelines cannot help until put into practice," said Hasan in Tamil Nadu.
CNN has reached out to the Indian Ministry of Health for comment.
Hospitals ‘used to be ours’
Following the murder in Kolkata, the local West Bengal government issued a notification saying female doctors should avoid night duty.
But that sparked a rebuke from one of India’s top judges, who cited the country’s equality laws, and triggered fresh anger among doctors.
"Instead of protecting us and creating a safer work environment, if you restrict our ability to work, that only disadvantages us further, it goes against the very principle of what we want," said Banerjee in Kolkata.
The Delhi-based doctor said while she lives not too far from her hospital, it is located in an area which is unsafe, especially at night.
"We don’t have transport provided for getting to the hospital and the hostels aren’t well maintained so we don’t prefer staying on campus," she said.
The doctor to population ratio in India stands at one to 834, India’s health minister told parliament in February, citing the Health Ministry. That exceeds the World Health Organization standard of one to 1,000.
However, doctors say the problem is a shortfall of hospitals across rural India and second-tier cities. As a result, people end up having to travel long distances for treatment, and those hospitals bear the brunt of treating those with serious illnesses.
Those stresses were particularly acute during the coronavirus pandemic, when India was hit by a particularly devastating second wave.
The latest attacks on doctors have only added to that feeling that not enough is being done to protect them.
"With everything that’s happened, we have lost our sense of security, the hospital used to be ours, we owned it, that’s no longer the case," said the Delhi-based doctor. NSB
Bangladesh panel seeks global legal firm for power deals probe, including Adani (Reuters)
Reuters [11/25/2024 2:23 AM, Ruma Paul, 5.2M, Neutral]
A Bangladesh government-appointed committee examining power generation contracts, including one with India’s Adani Power (ADAN.NS), has urged the interim government to hire a global legal firm to ensure a thorough and transparent investigation into deals under former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime.
The committee, led by Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury, needs more time to analyse both solicited and unsolicited contracts from 2009 to 2024, a senior official with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Monday.
"External expertise will be crucial for conducting a comprehensive investigation that could potentially lead to the renegotiation or cancellation of certain agreements in line with international arbitration standards," said the official.
Many of the reviewed contracts have sparked controversy due to their financial terms, environmental concerns, and doubts about long-term sustainability.
Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, the chairman of the Adani Group, has been indicted by U.S. prosecutors for his alleged involvement in a $265 million bribery scheme aimed at influencing Indian officials. The charges have sent shockwaves through his global business empire, valued at $142 billion and spanning industries from ports to soybeans.
Other than the Adani power deal, the committee is also reviewing a joint-venture deal with a Chinese company that built a 1,320 MW coal-fired plant in Bangladesh, and six other agreements with local business groups.
Last month, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that Bangladesh was scrutinising its contract with Adani Power, as it was charging Bangladesh a rate nearly 27% higher than those of India’s other private producers.
Adani Power recently reduced the electricity supply to Bangladesh over an unpaid $800 million power bill.
A Bangladesh Power Development Board official said that while paying such a large sum all at once is not feasible, the government plans to significantly increase its monthly payments to Adani Power, starting with up to $100 million per month.
Adani Power, which operates a dedicated 1,600-megawatt (MW) Godda plant in Jharkhand, India, has been supplying electricity to Bangladesh since 2022.
Bangladesh has been struggling to pay its bills due to costly fuel and goods imports since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The political turmoil that led to the ouster of Hasina in August has also compounded its troubles. Wounded Bangladesh protesters receive robotic helping hand (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [11/24/2024 12:16 AM, Staff, 88008K, Negative]
Squeezing rubber-covered robotic prosthetic hands, Bangladesh protesters wounded during the deadly revolution to topple autocratic leader Sheikh Hasina test out replacement arms for their lost limbs.
"I’ll be able to do some everyday tasks with this artificial hand," said student Hafeez Mohammad Hossain, 19, whose right hand was ripped off in gunfire on August 5.
It was the same day protesters stormed Hasina’s palace as she fled to India by helicopter.
In the middle of the chaos, Hossain said a police officer levelled a shotgun at him and fired. He described searing pain as gun pellets lacerated his back and leg.
Surgeons picked out the gunshot, but were unable to save his hand.
"I can’t write anymore," Hossain said. "I’m struggling to learn how to write with my left hand."
On Thursday he was fitted with a prosthetic limb, alongside four other students who also lost their hands during the months-long protests in which at least 700 people were killed during a police crackdown.
Robolife Technologies, a Bangladeshi organisation manufacturing artificial hands, said the prosthetic limbs use sensors connected to the nerves to move.
The company says it allows users to grasp objects, to type and use a phone.
"If you ask me whether they work like organic hands, I’d say no," said Antu Karim, who is working on the government-backed project to fit the limbs.
"But these hands allow the boys to hold a glass if thirsty, or a spoon to eat," he added. "At least, they won’t be looked down upon for not having hands."- ‘Rely on others’ -
Hasina’s 15-year tenure saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.
Limbless protesters held a rally earlier this month demanding the interim government who took over after Hasina’s fall support those injured in the protests.
Many say they have not received the aid they need.
The four other former protesters who had arms fitted on Thursday included Mohammad Mamun Mia, 32, a father of two, whose hand was hacked off by a gang he said was loyal to Hasina’s Awami League party.
The new arm is far from perfect, but it has made a huge difference.
"I’ll be able to do some regular tasks with this hand," he said, saying that while he cannot work driving a tractor in the fields again, he hopes now to open a small business.
Arif Hossain Sagar, 19, had his hand amputated after it failed to heal from an injury he sustained during the protests, and doctors worried about gangrene.
"I can’t do any regular activities now," Sagar told AFP. "I rely on others for eating or bathing."
The new hand will return a degree of normality to his life, he said.
Nayeem Hasan, wounded when attackers pounced on him as he went to donate blood to help those injured after a fire, broke into tears.
The new arm would help him fulfil his simple dream.
"I have a one-year-old daughter who wants me to hold her," Hasan said. US Agency Conducting Due Diligence on Adani’s Sri Lanka Project (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [11/24/2024 8:45 AM, Dan Strumpf, 27782K, Neutral]
A US agency that agreed to lend more than $500 million to an Adani Group-backed port development in Sri Lanka said it’s still conducting due diligence on the project, following bribery allegations against the conglomerate’s billionaire founder and other top executives.
The US International Development Finance Corp. hasn’t reached a final agreement on the loan, an official said in an emailed response to questions.“We continue to conduct due diligence to ensure that all aspects of the project meet our rigorous standards before any loan disbursements are made,” the official said. “The project has not reached financial close or signed a loan agreement.”The agency announced last year that it would help finance the port terminal in Sri Lanka’s capital that’s being developed by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd. It would’ve been the US agency’s largest infrastructure investment in Asia and was meant to boost America’s presence in the region to counter China’s dominance.US prosecutors indicted Gautam Adani and other defendants last week on charges of helping drive a more than $250 million bribery scheme to win Indian solar energy contracts, and concealing the scheme from US investors from whom they sought to raise money. The company has denied the allegations and said it’s seeking legal recourse.The DFC official said the bribery allegations don’t implicate the Adani subsidiary involved in the Sri Lanka project.“We are committed to ensuring that our projects and partners uphold the highest standards of integrity and compliance,” the official said.Separately, Sri Lanka is reviewing the Adani Group’s planned wind power projects in the country, with the cabinet expected to discuss the proposal in coming weeks, The Sunday Morning reported, citing a spokesman for the Ceylon Electricity Board. The government is currently evaluating all aspects of the project, including its financial feasability and environmental impact, the spokesman told the newspaper. US development agency ‘assessing ramifications’ on Adani’s Sri Lanka project (Reuters)
Reuters [11/24/2024 4:06 PM, Gursimran Kaur and Disha Mishra, 5.2M, Neutral]
A U.S. agency said on Sunday that it is reviewing the impact of Department of Justice bribery allegations against the founder of India’s Adani Group on the agency’s prior agreement to lend more than $550 million to a Sri Lankan port development backed by the group.
The U.S. International Development Finance Corp last November said it would provide $553 million in financing for the port terminal project in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. The project is partly owned by the Adani Group.
Federal prosecutors in New York on Wednesday announced that Gautam Adani, the billionaire founder of the Adani Group, and seven other individuals had been indicted on charges of paying about $265 billion in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain contracts expected to yield $2 billion of profit over 20 years, and develop India’s largest solar power plant project.
"DFC is aware of the recent allegations related to Adani and is actively assessing the ramifications in light of the recent DOJ announcement," an official with the development agency said in a statement.
"We are committed to ensuring that our projects and partners uphold the highest standards of integrity and compliance," the official said.
The agency said that no funds have yet been disbursed under the loan commitment.
Bloomberg News first reported the news on the DFC on Sunday.
The Adani Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours on Sunday.
The Adani Group has said the Justice Department accusations as well as those leveled by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a parallel civil case are "baseless and denied" and said it will seek "all possible legal recourse." IMF to release $333 million to crisis-hit Sri Lanka (Reuters)
Reuters [11/23/2024 5:00 AM, Uditha Jayasinghe, 37270K, Neutral]
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved the third review of Sri Lanka’s $2.9 billion bailout on Saturday but warned that the South Asian economy remains vulnerable.
In a statement, the global lender said it would release about $333 million, bringing total funding to around $1.3 billion, to the crisis-hit nation. It said signs of an economic recovery were emerging.
The country still needs to complete a $12.5 billion bondholder debt restructuring and a $10 billion debt rework with bilateral creditors including Japan, China and India to take the programme forward, the IMF said.
The IMF bailout secured in March last year helped stabilise economic conditions after cash-strapped Sri Lanka plunged into its worst financial crisis in more than seven decades in 2022.
Staying in line with tax revenue requirements and continuing reforms of state-owned enterprises will remain crucial to hitting a primary surplus target of 2.3% of gross domestic product next year, said IMF Senior Mission Chief Peter Breuer, wrapping up a delegation visit to the capital Colombo.
"The authorities have committed to staying within the guardrails of the programme," Breuer said. "We have agreed on a package for them to achieve their priorities and objectives and as soon as that is submitted to parliament it will then be possible to go ahead with the fourth review process.".
An interim budget is expected to be presented to parliament in December, Sri Lanka’s new president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, said this week. He hopes to complete the debt restructuring by the end of December.
During Sri Lanka’s crisis, a severe dollar shortage sent inflation soaring to 70%, its currency to record lows and its economy contracting by 7.3% during the worst of the fallout and by 2.3% last year. In recent months, the rupee has risen 11.3% and inflation disappeared, with prices falling 0.8% last month.
The island nation’s economy is expected to grow 4.4% this year, the first increase in three years, according to the World Bank. Central Asia
How Kazakhstan’s Booming Oil Business Led To The End Of One Kazakh Village (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [11/23/2024 3:12 AM, Nicole Sadek, 1251K, Neutral]
This investigation is part of Caspian Cabals, a project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with more than 20 media partners, including RFE/RL.
Every few months, Alina Qusmanghalieva faints. The cosmetologist once fainted in front of a client. She fell out of a chair during class when she was a college student. Another time she passed out on an airplane.
The first time it happened was a fall day a decade ago. On that morning on November 28, 2014, the 14-year-old Qusmanghalieva walked, as always, to the only school in Beryozovka (Berezovka in Russian), a village tucked into the rolling feather grass of northwestern Kazakhstan. The smell of rotten eggs hung in the air, but she was used to it; she had grown up with the stench of emissions from a nearby oil and gas field.
"For us, it was a normal phenomenon," said Qusmanghalieva, who is now 24 years old.After the first class of the day, she helped a student who was feeling sick to the first aid station. Then Qusmanghalieva herself began to feel ill and fainted.
By morning’s end, about 20 other kids and a handful of teachers had become dizzy, lost consciousness, and suffered seizures. Some of the students were foaming at the mouth. News quickly spread through the village as sirens blared and ambulances blew past houses, with distraught parents running through the streets shouting that schoolchildren were fainting.
The next few hours brought more frenzy. Doctors strapped the sick to stretchers and rolled them onto ambulances en route to a hospital nearly 30 kilometers away. Hundreds of adults gathered outside the school, demanding answers from local authorities but hearing nothing that made sense.
Qusmanghalieva regained consciousness that evening, lying disoriented in a hospital bed. A week later she was able to return home, but she continued fainting every day with no plausible explanations from doctors.
"We were told that, ‘You are in adolescence. Something is wrong with your head,’" Qusmanghalieva said.
In the weeks that followed, doctors and local officials at public meetings offered a slew of dubious explanations for the mysterious, synchronous illness: The parents were feeding the kids too much junk food. The girls’ periods were causing them to collapse. There was a gas leak in the school’s boiler room. The kids were faking being sick.
But the residents were confident that the children were being harmed by a massive presence in their lives that left the village smelling foul and brightly lit from gas flares even at night. They were confident that, some five kilometers away, Karachaganak, a gargantuan oil- and gas-condensate field, had released toxic emissions into their community.
In 1998, Agip (now Eni S.p.A.), British Gas Group (now Shell PLC), Texaco (now Chevron Corp.), and Russia’s LUKoil began to develop an underground reservoir containing natural gas and oil in western Kazakhstan -- the consortium was called Karachaganak Petroleum Operating (KPO).
At the time, they promised locals "paradise," said Sergei Solyanik, an environmentalist who worked as a consultant for Crude Accountability, an American nongovernmental organization that advocates on behalf of Caspian and Black Sea communities affected by oil and gas development. Those promises included financing the construction of a gas line in Beryozovka, funding repairs of the school and the cultural center, and buying musical instruments and gifts such as backpacks for children, according to a 2010 legal appeal filed on behalf of village residents.
In addition to those projects -- some of which were more effective than others, activists say -- locals came to believe they also received something far grimmer over time.
"Poisoned land, poisoned air, poisoned water, no jobs, no good quality for local people," Solyanik told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Within a few years of the reservoir’s development, agriculture and wildlife started to suffer, and residents began to experience high blood pressure, headaches, and memory loss, according to residents and activists.
These mounting environmental and health problems led to a multiyear public campaign to have the village’s residents relocated and provided with compensation. Kazakh authorities eventually announced in 2015 that Beryozovka residents would be moved and KPO would foot the bill. The relocation process took place over the following years.
Berdibek Saparbaev, who was Kazakhstan’s deputy prime minister at the time, stated during the relocation announcement that according to the Kazakh government’s assessment, the Karachaganak oil and gas field was not the cause of the health and environmental issues.
KPO said that its operations did not contribute to the health conditions of the people of Beryozovka.
"KPO’s environmental monitoring has consistently found no exceedance of harmful pollutant levels at the Karachaganak site," a company spokesperson wrote in response to questions from ICIJ, noting that Kazakh authorities "excluded any involvement of the KPO consortium into the intoxications of children and adults in the former Berezovka village." The spokesperson did not point to other potential causes of the mass fainting in 2014.
But problems did not just come to Beryozovka after the development of Karachaganak. People living near the Kashagan and Tengiz oil fields, more than 644 kilometers and 966 kilometers south of Beryozovka, respectively, complain of unbreathable air, oily water, and damage to their agricultural lifestyle. Oil production at Kashagan is managed by the North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC), a joint venture that includes, among others, Eni, Shell, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies (a French company), each of which holds a 16.8 percent interest. Tengiz’s production is managed by Tengizchevroil, which includes Chevron (50 percent) and an ExxonMobil affiliate (25 percent).
Though these joint ventures operate in different regions of Kazakhstan and go by different names, they are made up of many of the same energy giants that have profited from the country’s most valuable resources. Some of these Western companies also share an interest in a critical 1,511-kilometer Caspian pipeline that transports Kazakh oil through Russia and to European markets.
The Caspian Cabals project, led by the ICIJ and more than 20 media partners, including RFE/RL, explores the rise of the pipeline and the Kazakh oil fields that feed it. The two-year investigation is based on tens of thousands of pages of confidential e-mails, company presentations and other oil industry records, audits, court documents, regulatory filings, as well as hundreds of interviews, including with former oil company employees and insiders at Shell, Chevron, and Exxon.
But while the companies made deals with authoritarian leaders, frontline communities were left devastated or, like Beryozovka, uninhabitable."People lost their homeland," Solyanik said.
ICIJ has for two years been exploring whether the Western energy companies that came to Kazakhstan left a trail of ruin, as residents believe, or if there are other plausible explanations for what has affected their health, their livestock, and their land. What is clear is that what happened here could serve as a warning for the next country the oil companies pursue in search of new resources and profits.‘We Had Everything…Then We Became No One’.
Roughly the size of Western Europe, Kazakhstan is Central Asia’s wealthiest country, but the extent of its natural resources was largely unknown until 1979, when it was still part of the Soviet Union and Soviet geologists discovered two immense oil and gas fields: Karachaganak, roughly the size of Salt Lake City, and then some 966 kilometers to the south, Tengiz, more than four times the size of Paris. The country’s other giant field, Kashagan, was discovered in 2000.
When the Soviet Union fell, several parties saw opportunity in the oil and gas fields.
Kazakhstan, hoping to capitalize on its natural resources, needed modern, Western technology to develop the fields. Energy companies were eager to take advantage of these underdeveloped reservoirs. And Western governments believed there were possibilities beyond oil itself.
"Promoting Kazakhstan’s stability and independence are critical to U.S. and Western access to its energy resources," stated a document put together ahead of then-first lady Hillary Clinton’s 1997 trip to Kazakhstan. "The Kazakhstanis, in turn, recognize that greater foreign investment and access to Western technology will be key to developing the resources that fuel economic and social growth, and promote political stability.".
Steve LeVine, a former foreign correspondent in the Soviet Union for The Wall Street Journal and the author of The Oil And The Glory: The Pursuit Of Empire And Fortune On The Caspian Sea, told ICIJ that the United States had another geopolitical motivation for encouraging foreign investment in Kazakhstan: It wanted to keep Russia in check.
"How do we ensure that Russia — now back behind its original borders and not expanded into Eastern Europe and not into its south, the Caucasus and Central Asia — how do we make sure that Russia stays there and doesn’t go back?" he said.
Largely due to foreign investment in the oil and gas sector, Kazakhstan’s gross domestic product skyrocketed in the 1990s and 2000s, figures from the World Bank show. Oil and gas are the country’s top exports and the biggest source of government revenue, according to the International Energy Agency.
That oil boom has created new jobs and corresponds with a period of economic growth and rising quality of life, especially in the larger urban centers of Almaty and Astana, as the Central Asian country climbed the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index to 67th place in 2024, far outpacing its neighbors and narrowly trailing Serbia and Thailand.
But the tremendous wealth generated from the oil industry hasn’t fully trickled down.
Multinational audit and consulting firm KPMG, using Credit Suisse data, reported that roughly 160 people owned half the country’s wealth in 2018.
Karachaganak is located in the backyard of Beryozovka, a village in Kazakhstan’s expansive steppe named after its many "berezy," or birch trees. For many decades, Beryozovka was a vibrant agricultural community home to generations of Kazakh and Slavic people. It had a cultural center, a medical clinic, and a tractor-repair station; a modest grocery store, a fish-filled river, and cemeteries for both Christians and Muslims. Houses were painted bright blues and yellows to match Kazakhstan’s flag.
Locals raised cattle and horses and tended their vegetable gardens. As Soviet-era infrastructure crumbled, residents say it was an honest living though not easy: The roads were mainly dirt, there was no indoor plumbing, and the closest town was some 24 kilometers away.
"We had everything," said Svetlana Anosova, a music teacher who lived in Beryozovka. "Then we became no one.".
In 1997, LUKoil and its Western counterparts signed a 40-year agreement with the government of Kazakhstan to develop Karachaganak under the KPO joint venture.
KPO is now operated by Shell and the Italian energy company Eni, each of which holds a nearly 30 percent stake in the company. Chevron (18 percent), LUKoil (13.5 percent) and Kazakhstan’s state oil and gas company KazMunayGas (10 percent) also hold shares in KPO.
The development of the oil and gas field brought villagers hope that the company would build up scrappy Beryozovka.
Kate Kopischke, a former dispute resolution specialist for the ombudsman’s office at the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group, said that in many developing countries, "governments don’t work for people," so residents turn to foreign companies to provide the basic services they need.
Former librarian Damilya Mursalimova, 69, who was born and raised in Beryozovka, first lauded the infrastructural improvements, saying the company "took care of our village," bringing gas and light to people’s homes, free of charge. Soon, though, some residents began observing alarming changes: smoke snaking into the village, the disappearance of fish from the river, vegetables quickly rotting, and animals born malformed or dying mysteriously.
Yet in a routine environmental impact assessment KPO conducted in 2002, it found no "obvious impacts by the field on flora and fauna.".
That explanation rang false to many villagers.
Vera Voskoboi and her husband lived above the river. One morning, when the 68-year-old went out to milk her cow she noticed "pink fog" floating over the water. Soon her chickens were dropping to the ground. Her cat, too, collapsed and died. She thinks her animals had inhaled hydrogen sulfide.
A KPO spokesperson told ICIJ that the company conducts regular assessments on surrounding crop, soil, and water quality and works "to minimize negative impact on the environment, to reduce environmental pollution levels, [and] to ensure protection of environment and environmental safety.".
Throughout Kazakhstan, oil and gas fields produce hydrocarbons with dangerously high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, called "sour gas." Inhaling hydrogen sulfide reduces oxygen flow to the brain, which may cause dizziness or more serious neurological issues. Extreme exposure can cause a person to collapse or even die.
In 2000, a Kazakh government commission found that 64 workers on the Tengiz oil field and 5 percent of residents, or 189 people, in the nearby village of Saryqamys, had died since the beginning of the field’s production. According to local media, the majority of worker deaths occurred at home and were caused by cardiovascular issues. A company executive said there was no link between those deaths and the oil field, news reports at the time stated, but environmentalists say that short- and long-term exposure to toxic fumes like hydrogen sulfide were at least partly to blame.
Back then, the late Muftah Diarov, a prominent Kazakh ecologist, wrote in an environmental magazine that 90 percent of the village population was sick. He attributed the illnesses and deaths to the "local environmental disaster" that he said was a result of the "influence of the Tengiz complex." He signaled that other nearby communities would soon experience similar effects.
Just as people living near Tengiz worried about those risks, so, too did the citizens of Beryozovka living near Karachaganak.
"Everyone was afraid of being poisoned one day, of not getting up, not waking up," said Mursalimova.
Anosova, the music teacher, conducted a door-to-door health survey of 400 households in 2002 and 2003. Of those she interviewed, she found that more than 75 percent of adults had experienced memory loss and the same percentage of high school students had suffered fainting spells.
"My head never stopped hurting," said Svetlana Voskoboi, a former villager who moved to Beryozovka at the age of 24 when she married Vera Voskoboi’s son. "The pain made me to want to climb up the wall and scream.".
Soon after, 110 high schoolers signed a letter appealing to the national government and the global community to address their medical concerns.
"Many of us have fainted in the last one to two years and, according to our teachers, we have become less capable during our lessons," the letter read.
Over the next several years, KPO responded to the villagers’ growing concerns by republishing articles from regional media that stated the residents’ "concern for their health seems to be theatrical" and calling Crude Accountability, the environmental organization that advocated on behalf of residents, "altruistic." The oil company maintained that diminished health in the community was a result of waning socioeconomic conditions in Kazakhstan after the fall of the Soviet Union, including the deterioration of Soviet-era infrastructure, like water and sewage systems.
The regional health authorities in 2004 conducted medical interviews and examinations of more than 840 residents. Doctors, local press reported, found no diseases "connected with the harmful impact of hydrogen sulfide." The details of the report, however, were not made available to the villagers.
"They had been tested and tested by the Kazakhstani authorities, and then they never got the results," said Kate Watters, executive director of Crude Accountability. "It was another moment where they were like, ‘Are we just guinea pigs for you?’".
A few months later, Crude Accountability organized an independent medical study, bringing 60 Beryozovites to a clinic in a nearby town to fill out a questionnaire and get blood drawn for testing. As villagers exited the clinic, unidentified men in black leather jackets tried to shove some of them into police cars.
"They were having these pushing-pulling contests," said Watters, who witnessed the skirmishes. "The police are trying to drag women away into police cars and, when they resist, they’re physically harming them.".
In an effort to calm the chaos, Watters accompanied the men to the district government office, where she was questioned for about an hour about Crude Accountability’s work in the village. Later, a local newspaper published her passport information, saying she had violated the rules of her tourist visa.
The results of the medical study were ultimately inconclusive. Russian doctors who analyzed the villagers’ questionnaires and blood tests wrote in a report shared with ICIJ that the symptoms patients described were "characteristic of chronic exposure to irritating gases" and "directly related to production activities at Karachaganak.".
But the doctors also wrote that the sample size of residents examined had to be increased before they could make more determinations.
The community members who participated -- most of whom were children, women, or elderly -- had been frightened by the ordeal, Watters said, so they thought, "‘Let’s just keep our heads down.’".
The incident dissuaded many of them from speaking out against KPO again.
The Burden Of Proof
When KPO first took over the development of Karachaganak in 1998, part of Beryozovka was located within a government-designated, sanitary-protection zone, a nearly five-kilometer stretch deemed unsafe due to Karachaganak pollutants.
State law dictated a sanitary-protection zone of five kilometers for any field with hydrogen sulfide concentrations greater than 2 percent. Karachaganak’s concentrations ranged from 4 to 4.3 percent, according to a report by the International Finance Corporation, which invests in the private sector in developing countries. People living inside this designated danger zone were entitled to relocation that was to be carried out by the government.
KPO argued, however, that the sanitary protection zone was an outdated Soviet concept and instead used a process of reducing pollutants at their source. In KPO’s 2002 environmental-impact report, the company said Beryozovka would not be considered within the sanitary-protection zone "provided that new drilling does not occur in the territory.".
In 2003, the chief sanitary doctor of Kazakhstan confirmed that sentiment, saying that the introduction of new technology reduced threats from the natural-gas field. The doctor signed a letter allowing for the reduction of the zone in 2004 from 5 to 3.1 kilometers. (This change was suspended in 2006 and was ruled illegal and officially reversed in 2010.).
Still, Anosova and other villagers believed they should have been relocated as per the original sanitary-protection zone. Another village, Tungush, which was even closer to Karachaganak, had been relocated in 2003. This time, however, the government showed no signs of yielding.
"They never paid attention to us even though we talked and complained," said Mursalimova, who blamed the local administration for its inaction.
It wasn’t until the mass fainting incident in 2014 that the government made a surprising statement: It would expand Karachaganak’s sanitary-protection zone to accommodate future expansion of the field, and KPO would finance the relocation of Beryozovka -- which a KPO spokesperson confirmed was paid by the company as an expense reimbursable by the Kazakh government.
This stirred up mixed emotions among the villagers. Some were glad to finally move their children away from Karachaganak, even though they felt it was too little, too late. Others were disappointed to be leaving their homes and cherished gardens.
This didn’t mean that KPO took responsibility for what was happening to the villagers.
In its 2014 annual report to shareholders, the oil consortium wrote: "there is no evidence that the emissions from KPO’s operations were the cause of the faintness which has affected the children living in the village of [Beryozovka]." In response to questions from ICIJ, KPO stated that "medical diagnosis and treatment of the citizens is the responsibility of Kazakh state authorities." But many Beryozovites did not trust the local doctors.
"Here in Kazakhstan they simply refused to make a diagnosis," said Svetlana Voskoboi, whose daughter became ill a few months after the mass fainting. "All the children, we were told, are pretending.".
Other parents who sought treatment for their kids at medical centers around Kazakhstan received questionable diagnoses that included neurosis, epilepsy, and diarrhea, according to Crude Accountability.
Steve Wright, then the manager of KPO’s Health and Safety Department, told villagers that there had been no excess emissions from the oil and gas field on the day of the school calamity.
Baskut Tuncak, former UN special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, said that KPO’s assurances that the natural-gas field did not cause the kids’ illnesses fell short with the villagers.
"The burden should be on the companies to demonstrate beyond the reasonable doubt that they did not cause the alleged harm," Tuncak said. "And unfortunately, here, the burden of proof really does sit with the victims to figure out who exposed them to what for how long, and it’s an insurmountable burden; and in and of itself, having that burden is an injustice.".
Gunnar Schade, who teaches in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University, wrote in an e-mail to ICIJ that, based on the weather patterns of November 28, 2014, the day of the mass fainting, "an ongoing or new release" of hydrogen sulfide or hydrocarbons from Karachaganak may have drifted into the village, "exposing people in the lowest terrain areas, and causing the health effects observed.".
The school was located at the lowest point in the village. Schade added that Beryozovites’ symptoms over the years "were consistent with [hydrogen sulfide] and hydrocarbon exposure.".
KPO disagreed with the assessment, writing to ICIJ that "the data collected from the environmental monitoring stations located in and near [Beryozovka] show no exceedances of the relevant standards and no emissions that could be associated with the symptoms that developed.".
In 2015, three children from Beryozovka were diagnosed by doctors outside Kazakhstan with toxic encephalopathy, a brain disorder caused by exposure to toxic substances that can manifest in memory loss, lethargy, and loss of consciousness. Left untreated, the disorder can lead to permanent brain damage.
Three years later, Crude Accountability crowdfunded trips to a Moscow medical center for two of the students who had passed out that day at the school and were still severely ill. One of them was Alina Qusmangaliyeva.
"We were examined there and it was discovered that there was poisoning with a toxic substance," she said. Qusmanghalieva and some of her classmates were prescribed yearslong treatment plans that included expensive medication and observation.
"I’m still treating my children," Svetlana Voskoboi said. Their illness "still comes back to haunt us to this day.".‘Nobody Understands’
Since the beginning, KPO has publicized its community engagement to the irritation of many residents. In 1997, when the companies comprising KPO signed the contract to develop Karachaganak, they agreed to pay $10 million per year to the regional government for social projects. In 2010, under an agreement with the Kazakh government, KPO’s social payments doubled to $20 million per year. That money has gone toward the reconstruction of the region’s main airport, road repairs, school construction, and more. In 2021, KPO even won the government’s highest honor for corporate social responsibility.
But these types of social projects are often used for "corporate publicity, a smokescreen or ploy to build reputational value, behind which the dirty business of extraction continues business as usual," Dinah Rajak, an anthropologist at the University of Sussex, told ICIJ.
KPO acknowledges that its role in carrying out these social projects is limited, turning to the government when residents complain. According to the company, the regional government is in charge of pulling together a list of social projects each year, and KPO is responsible for funding and managing their construction. Local contractors do the manual labor and, once the projects are completed, the government is in charge of maintaining them. That system has allowed KPO to avoid accountability for poorly executed or inconsequential projects.
In response to questions, a KPO spokesperson wrote: "KPO’s social investments are aligned with the community’s expressed needs.".
Some residents believe more attention should be focused on Karachaganak’s frontline communities rather than large investments in faraway cities, such as a $24 million concert hall in the city of Oral, roughly three hours from the oil and gas field.
This has infuriated some people who live near Kazakhstan’s oil and gas fields.
Zhanatalap, for example, is a settlement just north of Beryozovka. The community has a small network of dirt roads and it can be nearly impossible to drive out of the village on rainy days. When the roads are too muddy, Zhanatalap residents sometimes have to walk six kilometers to Karachaganak to get to their work in the field, pensioner Sergei Keldybaev said. He added that even ambulances can’t enter the village during severe rains.
When Keldybaev asked KPO employees why the company doesn’t allocate money to road repairs in Zhanatalap, they told him they provide millions of dollars each year but the money goes to the region, he said.
Kopischke, in her former role as a dispute resolution specialist for the International Finance Corporation, spoke to many companies operating in developing countries. She said some balked at the suggestion that they should provide more social and infrastructural services to local communities. But people "want something in return," Kopischke said, "especially if you’re going to come in and have such a huge environmental and social impact.".
Elderly residents in Kazakhstan’s oil-producing regions say they’ve witnessed environmental changes since the arrival of the foreign oil companies.
In Zhanatalap, Keldybaev said his water --- which he gets from a well about 20 meters deep -- feels oily and has a metallic aftertaste. Sometimes emissions from Karachaganak trail into his village and render him, his wife, and their cattle short of breath, he said. He added that he and his wife also suffer from high blood pressure, but the local clinic prescribes them outdated medicine.
"There is no compensation, nothing," Keldybaev said about the price locals have to pay for living near Karachaganak. "Only once a year [does KPO] provide sanatorium vouchers.".
KPO offers to send residents each year to Soviet-era medical centers. In 2022, the company reported giving vouchers to 150 people in the district that Karachaganak is in.
A company spokesperson told ICIJ that the program is "very popular with local elderly residents, but Keldybaev said he and his wife never take the company up on the offer because they can’t afford to leave their cattle. Instead, they’ve learned to live with the problems.
"Where are we going to go?" Keldybaev asked. "We don’t earn enough money to buy a house or an apartment on our pensions of 100,000 [tenge] (about $200).".
During a public hearing in March 2024, people in small towns in northwestern Kazakhstan said they’d been asking to be relocated for six years, calling the air they breathe "poisoned.".
Taskesken and Iskine are just outside the sanitary-protection zone of an oil processing facility run by NCOC -- the joint venture that includes Eni, Shell, Exxon, and TotalEnergies. NCOC, one resident said, treats locals like "guinea pigs," adding that the construction of a railway and a gas pipeline close to the town has destroyed grazing pastures, forcing people to stop breeding animals. Other residents complained that NCOC equipment uses a lot of electricity, leaving them without enough power to run their washing machines.
In response to questions about the company’s impact on the community, NCOC wrote in an e-mail that the location of its facilities are "in line with applicable expertise and impact assessment requirements of Republic of Kazakhstan legislation." The company stated that "no grazing pastures are located in new projects and railway station areas" and that its "production facilities are self-sufficient in electricity, heat, and steam.".
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For some communities, though, pinpointing the source of their grievances isn’t always easy.
Damba, a small settlement with unpaved roads, is one of the closest to the Kashaghan offshore oil field operated by NCOC. Residents such as Erbolat Qairov, a former veterinarian who has lived there for more than half a century, have noticed the air quality deteriorate in the last several years. Damba and other towns and cities in the same region are polluted from a combination of Western-operated oil fields and state-owned refineries and evaporation ponds. But information distinguishing the effects of each of these facilities is sparse.
"We are not ecologists, not specialists," Qairov said. "We don’t know if the emissions are above or below the limits. Our air quality is bad, but we don’t know if it comes from Kashagan, Qarabatan, Tengiz. You can’t tell the influence of the separate projects on the environment.".
Mansia Esenamanova, an ecology professor at Kazakhstan’s Atyrau University, tried to investigate the biggest sources of air pollution using an app called AirKZ, which collects data from various monitoring stations in Atyrau, the "oil capital" of Kazakhstan. She found that after NCOC monitors measured high emissions, their data stopped appearing on the app, she told ICIJ’s Dutch partner, NRC.
"NCOC is not able to switch off the online transmission from Air Quality Monitoring Stations on its own initiative," the company told ICIJ. The AirKZ data, NCOC said, is owned by the state meteorological agency.
In June of this year, the NRC attended an NCOC public hearing held in a Damba municipal building, with paintings of fishermen and agricultural workers lining the walls. As NCOC employees discussed an offshore-drilling installation, they shared a highly technical presentation filled with complicated diagrams. For the locals, it was one more case of poor community engagement that has fostered a sense of distrust of both the oil companies and the local government.
At one point during the presentation one attendee interjected: "Nobody understands.".
Where Children Can Breathe
Vera Voskoboi, a former social worker, often visits her husband’s grave in the Beryozovka cemetery — one of the few remaining structures after KPO began bulldozing the village following the residents’ resettlement, which began in 2015. She said she looks back at her time in the village fondly. After all, it’s where she gave birth to her five children, where she planted her apple trees, where she kept horses, sheep, and geese.
Though Araltal, the small town to which Voskoboi was relocated, is near her former village, it’s a far cry from the vibrant Beryozovka she remembers. She lives on a street with dozens of identical red-brick houses built by KPO for the former villagers. Down the road is a school, also built by KPO, which has a one-room museum dedicated to Beryozovka. Black-and-white photos of the village’s earliest graduating classes are displayed along one wall, and crafts such as felt pillows with traditional Kazakh designs adorn another.After the Beryozovites’ resettlement, Shell, one of KPO’s largest shareholders, issued a release stating that each family received a moving allowance and was compensated for property that couldn’t be moved during the relocation. It also stated that Araltal had good access to shops and hospitals.The reality, locals said, wasn’t so rosy. “It was very difficult for us -- very difficult -- coming to a place like this,” Voskoboi said.The roof of her new home -- made of profiled sheet -- had large gaps and water leaked from the ceiling into the kitchen when it snowed. When she was 61 years old, Voskoboi climbed onto the roof herself to patch up the holes. And after she complained to KPO about the rickety construction of the steps leading up to the house, the company sent her seven bags of cement.Nearly halfway across the country is the main Kazakh office of Eni, one of KPO’s joint operators. The office is in one of the tallest tower complexes in Astana, the nation’s capital, famous for its glass buildings. The complex is also home to a Ritz-Carlton hotel and a shopping mall with luxury stores like Dolce & Gabbana and Tiffany & Co. As of 2023, Eni had proven reserves worth roughly $29 billion.In 2023, Karachaganak produced more than 142 million barrels of oil equivalent, enough to meet the world’s demand for energy for half a day. The field’s production accounts for 15 percent of the Caspian pipeline’s intake.While images of pumpjacks and oil droplets line the streets of oil-rich regions, the wealth the oil industry has generated is primarily visible in Astana. There, Nursultan Nazarbaev, the country’s first president who held the office for nearly 30 years, poured billions of dollars of public money into grand construction projects, including a mammoth mall with an indoor beach and a pyramid-shaped spiritual center. Astana has a growing middle class, but the city’s outskirts are marked by unpaved roads and ramshackle homes despite the promise of wealth stemming from Kazakhstan’s vast natural resources.Although the United States believed -- or hoped -- that foreign investment in Kazakhstan would promote Western business practices and bolster the country’s Russia-dependent economy, researchers say that those investments helped fuel a “resource curse,” the idea that countries rich in natural resources experience slow economic growth and, often, higher rates of authoritarianism.Maria Lobachyova, program director of the Kazakh human rights organization Echo and a board member for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, said the resource curse in Kazakhstan has been manifested in the uneven growth of the country’s regions, where money generated from the oil and gas sector disproportionately benefits Kazakhstan’s cultural and economic hubs and not the people living in ecologically sensitive areas.“It’s also because people in these centers, they have more access to social media, they are more politically active, and that’s why the head of the region maybe invests more money in these centers,” Lobachyova said. Meanwhile, “voices of the people in small districts and small towns and small villages” are rarely heard.The country’s public finances are largely still dependent on oil profits. A 2023 World Bank report found that Astana’s state budget is “heavily reliant on oil revenue” and that “over the last 20 years, Kazakhstan’s non-oil revenues have remained stagnant as a percentage of GDP.”As KPO expands production and gas flows out of Karachaganak, some members of Beryozovka’s now-fragmented community continue to believe that their living conditions are dangerous. In Araltal, Vera Voskoboi still smells the rotten stench of hydrogen sulfide in the air and said that cancer is a common cause of death for both young and old Beryozovites.Svetlana Voskoboi, who was relocated to the city of Aqsai, said the conditions there weren’t any better.“We were like outcasts there,” she said. Her daughter struggled to adapt to her new school, where she continued fainting. “There were breakdowns. And the children had terrible depression.”Eventually she sold her house and moved several hours west, far from Karachaganak. “Children breathe better here,” she said. They “live better.” OPEC+ Faces an Internal Foe in 2025 — Kazakhstan (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [11/25/2024 12:00 AM, Javier Blas, 5.5M, Neutral]
OPEC+ faces many enemies in 2025 — weak oil demand growth, rising production from its rivals and the arrival of Donald Trump at the White House chanting “drill, baby, drill.” Those are the external threats. But there are internal foes, too.
Every few years, the cartel faces a recurring challenge: One of its members has spent lots of money on new oilfields and is ready, eager, and aching to turn that investment into barrels of crude. In the early 2000s, Algeria was that impatient member wishing to boost output; in the 2010s, it was Iraq. More recently, the United Arab Emirates played the role. Next year, it will be Kazakhstan.
The central Asian nation joined forces with OPEC in 2016 when the oil cartel created an alliance with several other big petrostates, with the expanded group dubbed OPEC+. For nearly a decade, Kazakhstan has been an uneasy partner for the cartel, more often than not pumping above its quota. The challenge will increase next year when a $45 billion project to expand the country’s largest oilfield will be ready.
If allowed to pump at full throttle, the expansion of the Tengiz oilfield, almost a decade in the making, could produce about 260,000 barrels a day from mid-2025. That may not sound like a lot, but it equals about a quarter of the expected increase in global oil demand next year. The expansion, alongside stronger-than-expected output from existing facilities at the field, would allow Kazakhstan to lift its oil production, including a form of light oil called condensates, to a record above 2 million barrels a day next year1.
The central Asian nation had hoped that by the time the expansion of Tengiz comes on stream, its quota would be somewhat higher, giving it room to boost output without violating the limits too obviously. Back in June, OPEC+ approved a plan to slowly increase its quotas through the final months of 2024 and then into 2025. The monthly hikes should have started in September, but falling oil prices prompted delays until January. The cartel is scheduled to meet on Sunday to discuss whether it should pause again. OPEC+ delegates tell me another delay is likely, although formal conversations haven’t started yet.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, has traded around $75 a barrel for several weeks despite significant tension in the Middle East, including Iranian and Israeli bombings. The potential for internal dissidence within OPEC+ could further weaken the market.
If the cartel agrees to a further delay, it would be a significant setback for Kazakhstan. If the country adheres to its OPEC+ output limits, it won’t be able to produce that extra oil despite heavy investments – or it would need to reduce output elsewhere to offset the Tengiz increase. If driven purely by economics, Kazakhstan would do the latter, as Tengiz has the lowest cost of production and therefore is very profitable for the government and its foreign partners. The Tengiz field, operated by American energy giant Chevron Corp., is part of a trio of super-giant oil fields in Kazakhstan that include Karachaganak and Kashagan.State-owned company KazMunayGas along with Chinese, Russian and domestic privately-owned groups operate other much smaller fields with higher production costs. In the past, the government has instructed KazMunayGas to reduce output on those fields, which often require prices above $50 a barrel to make a profit.
Alternatively, Kazakhstan may ignore the limits set by OPEC+, joining the UAE and Iraq in pumping well above the cartel’s quotas. The country has already done so in recent months, prompting a tense showdown with the cartel, including a trip by Haitham Al Ghais, the cartel’s secretary general, to Astana, the capital, for meetings with the country’s leadership in August. Further output increases would only exacerbate the problem.
The key is how long OPEC+ delays the quota increases. Chevron recently assured investors that the expansion of Tengiz will start pumping in the first half of next year, putting a deadline for the new oil by the end of June. Reading between the lines, it appears that Chevron is trying to under promise and over deliver, so the barrels may flow earlier. If the group just announces a three-month delay, until the end of the first quarter, it may not cause much trouble to Kazakhstan. But if increases are deferred until the second quarter, as many in the oil market expect, it may put the Asian country and OPEC+ on a collision course.
Similar confrontations have caused significant infighting inside the group. In 2021, for example, the UAE blocked an OPEC+ deal for several days after it clashed with Saudi Arabia over quotas. Although Riyadh won the battle at the time, it ultimately lost the war, allowing Abu Dhabi to win significant quota concessions over the following months. And when the cartel attempted to reduce Angola’s quota in 2023, the country fought back and, ultimately, left the group. The risk is that Kazakhstan follows suit. OPEC+ faces struggles on many fronts in 2025. Kyrgyz Rape Victim Unable To Rebuild Her Life, Disabled Teen’s Family Says (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [11/25/2024 6:19 AM, Kunduz Kyzylzharova and Farangis Najibullah, 235K, Negative]
Born with a severe form of cerebral palsy and epilepsy, life has always been difficult for Meerim Aliaskarova.
But everything in her life took a turn for the worse when Meerim was raped at the age of 16 by her neighbor in the northeastern Kyrgyz village of Kurmenty two-and-half years ago.
She gave birth to the stillborn child fathered by the rapist with a Caesarean section, a traumatic experience that left the teenager suffering more frequent seizures, high blood pressure, and anxiety, her family says.“Before the incident, Meerim would go without any [epileptic] seizure for up to six months, but now she gets seizures two to four times a month,” her sister, Jypar Jigitekova, says.“The seizures have also become more severe. After each one she doesn’t eat and becomes bedridden for 10-15 days. Before she would get better within a week,” Jigitekova told RFE/RL. “She has become withdrawn and doesn’t like talking and interacting with people.”
The neighbor, 66-year-old Duishenaly Adykov, has been sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison for the crime. Adykov lost his latest court appeal on October 30. Adykov’s relatives claim he is innocent.
Aliaskarova’s case is among several similar incidents in Kyrgyzstan that led the authorities to introduce tougher punishments for sexual assault and other crimes against minors that remain prevalent in the Central Asian country.
Separately, they’re also planning stricter punitive measures for those convicted of sexual assault against the disabled.
Sexual violence against children is punishable by life imprisonment.
In May, Kyrgyzstan abolished a regulation that spared defendants who were aged 60 and older at the time of the crime from facing the maximum penalty for sexually assaulting minors.
Earlier, Kyrgyzstan eliminated the statute of limitations for pedophilia and prohibited granting an amnesty and parole for convicted pedophiles.
In January, the country adopted a law that bans law enforcement agencies from closing criminal cases involving rape, even if the parties reach an agreement outside court, a relatively common practice in Central Asia.
Supporters of that law argued that such practices lead to victims being denied justice.
Speaking Up
Sexual violence and other crimes against minors, including handicapped children, are commonplace in Kyrgyzstan, according to official statistics.
The Prosecutor-General’s Office recorded 406 serious and particularly serious crimes against minors in 2023, including at least 160 rapes.
In June, police in Jalal-Abad Province detained a 35-year-old man on suspicion of raping a four-year-old girl in the courtyard of a high-rise residential building.
In August, a man was detained in the southern region of Osh on suspicion of sexually assaulting a minor. The 14-year-old victim gave birth after a rape-related pregnancy, police said.
One month later, police in the northeastern Tyup district -- Aliaskarova’s home region -- reported that another disabled girl had been raped. A criminal probe is under way.
Nazgul Turdubekova, the head of the Child Rights Defenders’ League, said the attackers of disabled children in Kyrgyzstan often “believe that handicapped children are weak, unable to defend themselves, and unlikely to be believed due to their limited ability to communicate effectively.”
Turdubekova also pointed to a lack of specialized social workers to regularly visit the homes of the handicapped minors, assess their living conditions, and “educate parents on the importance of vigilance in caring for their disabled children.”
Many Kyrgyz believe the real number of sexual violence cases against minors is much higher than the official figures, because many children are too afraid to complain or simply don’t understand they’re being abused.
In many cases, the families prefer not to report the crime, fearing a lifetime of perceived “disgrace” in the conservative country.
But Aliaskarova’s family has decided to speak up and seek justice for her. However, despite the perpetrator being behind bars, the family fears Aliaskarova will never be able to rebuild her life.
Her father, Aliaskar Jigitekov, who is blind, blames himself for not being able to protect his vulnerable daughter.“I wonder if it wasn’t for this tragedy, that perhaps my daughter would have met someone and gotten married,” he said. “The [rapist] just destroyed my daughter’s life.” Turkmen Journalist Prevented From Receiving Award In Geneva (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [11/24/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Negative]
Soltan Achilova, a veteran journalist and former RFE/RL correspondent in Turkmenistan, was forcibly hospitalized in Ashgabat on November 20 in what appears to be a move by the government to prevent her from flying to Geneva to receive an international award.
According to the Chronicle of Turkmenistan website, four men in medical gowns arrived at the 75-year-old’s apartment early that morning, claiming she was suspected of carrying an infectious disease and needed an "urgent" examination.
Achilova, who showed no signs of illness, was forcibly taken to the Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases in Ashgabat’s Choganly district.
Her family was not allowed to accompany her and her apartment keys were confiscated. One family member said one of the men told Achilova, "Why do you need keys in the afterlife?"
Doctors have not disclosed when she will be released.
Turkmenistan is consistently ranked by media watchdogs, such as Reporters Without Borders (RSF), among the worst countries in the world for press freedom.
Independent media are nonexistent in the authoritarian Central Asian state, where journalism "amounts only to praise for the regime," according to RSF.
The government continues a relentless clampdown on dissent -- with critics being harassed, beaten, tortured, jailed, and even killed. Many others have been forced abroad into exile.
Human rights groups, including the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights and the International Partnership for Human Rights, immediately condemned Achilova’s forced detention, calling it a stark escalation in Turkmenistan’s crackdown on free speech.
They demanded her immediate release and an end to the persecution of journalists.
Achilova, the only journalist in Turkmenistan who openly criticizes the authoritarian government, has faced repeated harassment, threats, and attacks.
In November 2023, border guards at the Ashgabat airport destroyed her passport to prevent her from traveling to Switzerland, where she was scheduled to attend the Martin Ennals Award human rights ceremony.
Achilova has faced verbal threats and physical attacks, which the journalist and her supporters describe as government retaliation for her work. Many of her relatives have also been threatened.
Ashgabat doesn’t tolerate any dissent, and the government has stifled independent media, forced opposition activists into exile, and blocked access to all major social media and messaging apps to virtually cut its citizens off from the rest of the world. Uzbek President Fires Top Officials Amid Assassination Attempt Scandal (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [11/23/2024 11:58 AM, Staff, 1251K, Neutral]
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev has fired several top officials in the State Security Service (SSS) and Interior Ministry in a sweeping reshuffle following an assassination attempt last month on a close ally of his eldest daughter.Abdusalom Azizov, the head of the State Security Service (SSS) and Alijon Ashurov, the head of the Presidential Personal Security Department, were among those dismissed by Mirziyoev on November 22, several law enforcement sources told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service.Meanwhile, Otabek Umarov, the deputy head of the SSS and the husband of Mirziyoev’s youngest daughter, left the country on November 23, the sources said. It is unclear whether he fled or intends to come back, they added said.The upheaval is the biggest in the security services since the authoritarian Mirziyoev took office eight years ago. It comes amid a back-door power struggle among Uzbekistan’s political elite that was thrust into the spotlight following an assassination attempt on Komiljon Allamjonov, a former high-ranking official in the presidential administration.Alisher Ilkhamov, an analyst at U.K.-based political risk firm Central Asia Due Diligence, said Mirziyoev needed to take action to show that no one was above the law and demonstrate his control over the country."Impunity for such actions is a sign that the group that committed this is given carte blanche. And this will create a certain mood in society - an atmosphere of fear," he said.Allamjonov was traveling in a car on October 26, one day before parliamentary elections, when it was sprayed with bullets. Allamjonov survived, but the incident -- the first assassination attempt on a current or former member of Mirziyoev’s administration -- sent shockwaves through the country.Earlier this month, South Korean authorities detained Uzbek citizen Javlon Yunusov on suspicion of involvement in the attempted murder of Allamjonov.An RFE/RL investigation also linked another man, Shokhrukh Ahmedov, along with Yunusov and other suspects to organized crime, prior assassination attempts in Turkey, and high-level officials within Uzbekistan’s administration, including Umarov.The 40-year-old Allamjonov left his government post in September allegedly to focus on a private business venture. Meanwhile, Umarov had been accused of allegedly establishing a "deep state," controlling the country’s security services and major businesses through his proxies.Sources close to the investigation have suggested that the organizers of the attack may have sought to curb Allamjonov’s growing influence and connections within the administration.Prior to the assassination attempt, Allamjonov received the personal backing of 39-year-old Saida Mirziyoeva, the president’s eldest daughter who is widely seen as his potential successor. Twitter
Afghanistan
Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office@amnestysasia
[11/25/2024 4:24 AM, 94K followers, 13 retweets, 17 likes]
Afghanistan: The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an annual international campaign that starts on 25 November – the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women – and runs until 10 December, Human Rights Day.However, for the fourth consecutive year, Afghan women and girls are exposed to the most serious forms of systemic discrimination and abuse by the Taliban de -facto authorities. This year @amnesty, during the #16daysofactivism campaign, will highlight ongoing women’s rights abuses in Afghanistan, bring voices from Afghan women and girls and human rights defenders and promote our global petition targeting international community to hold the Taliban accountable. Join us in our #16DaysofActivism campaign and show your support and solidarity to women and girls in Afghanistan. #Endgenderpersecution
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[11/24/2024 5:06 PM, 244.8K followers, 140 retweets, 335 likes]
On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Afghan activist Mursal Osmani calls for action, urging people not to remain silent in the face of violence, not to be indifferent, and to reject any form of violence against women.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[11/22/2024 8:45 PM, 244.8K followers, 377 retweets, 2.5K likes]
Glad to see Meghan Markle hosting Afghan women for a Holiday Dinner. The women of Afghanistan need strong global allies like her in their fight against the Taliban’s misogynist regime.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[11/23/2024 5:57 AM, 244.8K followers, 11 retweets, 51 likes]
Afghanistan’s Freedom Front says its forces attacked a guard post at Bagram Airport’s fourth entrance, killing three Taliban members, including deputy guard Mullah Zakir. Pakistan
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[11/24/2024 4:04 PM, 215.6K followers, 3.2K retweets, 8.9K likes]
Khan gambled calling for this protest-given the obstacles of mobilization & his raising of the stakes by labeling it the "final call." And yet the people came. He can leverage this by signaling to those in power: "This is what I have the power to do. Now, what’s your next move."
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[11/24/2024 12:04 PM, 215.6K followers, 6.1K retweets, 13K likes]
Court rulings, road shutdowns, Internet restrictions, threats of arrest-none of this stopped PTI from heeding Khan’s call and converging on Islamabad. That says a lot about the figure that Khan is, and the power that he continues to wield over his base-even from his jail cell.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[11/23/2024 1:21 PM, 244.8K followers, 59 retweets, 225 likes]
When there are no infidels left to kill, Muslim extremists turn on each other. The recent massacre of Pashtuns in Kurram by Sunni and Shia extremists is a grim example—over 100 killed, including many children and women. For decades, Pakistan has fueled this madness.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[11/22/2024 10:26 PM, 244.8K followers, 71 retweets, 227 likes]
Over 100 people were killed in sectarian violence in Pakhtunkhwa. A convoy of Shia Pashtuns was attacked, and a Sunni Pashtun town was set on fire. Pashtuns blame Pakistan for the war in Pashtun land and demand Pakistani military withdrawal.
Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office@amnestysasia
[11/22/2024 9:33 AM, 94K followers, 974 retweets, 1.6K likes]
The Peaceful Assembly and Public Order Ordinance 2024 places onerous and unlawful restrictions on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Amnesty International urges the authorities to uphold their obligations to protect and facilitate peaceful assemblies by repealing the Ordinance and refrain from extending its application beyond 4 months. All those detained solely for exercising their right to peaceful assembly should be released.
Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office@amnestysasia
[11/22/2024 9:33 AM, 94K followers, 66 retweets, 114 likes]
@amnesty previously warned that the Peaceful Assembly and Public Order Act 2024, passed in September this year and applicable to Islamabad Capital Territory, set a bad precedent for the rest of the country. The same law being replicated in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir raises alarm for implications in the region and other provinces: https://amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/09/pakistan-the-new-peaceful-assembly-and-public-order-act-threatens-the-right-to-protest/. India
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[11/24/2024 11:59 PM, 103.8M followers, 3K retweets, 13K likes]
As the Winter Session of the Parliament commences, I hope it is productive and filled with constructive debates and discussions. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1zqJVYOQjeaGB
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[11/24/2024 7:52 AM, 103.8M followers, 3.3K retweets, 16K likes]
Delighted to take part in the Odisha Parba in Delhi. The state plays a pivotal role in India’s growth and is blessed with cultural heritage admired across the country and the world.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[11/23/2024 6:15 AM, 103.8M followers, 7K retweets, 57K likes]
I thank the people of Jharkhand for their support towards us. We will always be at the forefront of raising people’s issues and working for the state. I also congratulate the JMM-led alliance for their performance in the state. @HemantSorenJMM
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[11/23/2024 6:12 AM, 103.8M followers, 18K retweets, 114K likes]
Development wins! Good governance wins! United we will soar even higher! Heartfelt gratitude to my sisters and brothers of Maharashtra, especially the youth and women of the state, for a historic mandate to the NDA. This affection and warmth is unparalleled. I assure the people that our Alliance will keep working for Maharashtra’s progress. Jai Maharashtra!
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[11/23/2024 6:13 AM, 103.8M followers, 5.8K retweets, 35K likes]
NDA’s pro-people efforts resonate all over! I thank people across various states for blessing NDA candidates in the various by-polls held. We will leave no stone unturned in fulfilling their dreams and aspirations.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[11/23/2024 4:14 AM, 103.8M followers, 11K retweets, 80K likes]
I am proud of every NDA Karyakarta for their efforts on the ground. They worked hard, went among people and elaborated on our good governance agenda.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[11/22/2024 10:37 PM, 103.8M followers, 3.6K retweets, 19K likes]
Strengthening the bond with our diaspora! Urge Indian community abroad and friends from other countries to take part in the #BharatKoJaniye Quiz! https://bkjquiz.com This quiz deepens the connect between India and its diaspora worldwide. It’s also a wonderful way to rediscover our rich heritage and vibrant culture. The winners will get an opportunity to experience the wonders of #IncredibleIndia.
Rahul Gandhi@RahulGandhi
[11/23/2024 7:49 AM, 27.3M followers, 5.1K retweets, 31K likes]
I feel immense pride as my family in Wayanad has placed its trust in Priyanka. I know she will lead with courage, compassion, and unwavering dedication to transform our cherished Wayanad into a beacon of progress and prosperity.
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[11/24/2024 9:36 AM, 3.3M followers, 207 retweets, 1.7K likes]
Pleased to join virtually at the India Foundation’s Ideas Conclave on #BuildingBrandBharat. Brand Bharat reflects our civilizational character. It is a statement of authenticity, be it in representation, articulation or beliefs. Brand IN is equally a message that we are now more ambitious, drawing on our own past, fashioning our own lexicon, advancing our own ideas and engaging the world more on our terms. #IIC2024 @indfoundation
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[11/24/2024 9:29 AM, 3.3M followers, 1.1K retweets, 10K likes]
People of Maharashtra reaffirm their faith in the double-engine Sarkar. Congratulate PM @narendramodi, BJP President @JPNadda, @BJP4Maharashtra and NDA for this decisive victory. Confident that the Mahayuti government will continue to deliver on people’s aspirations. NSB
Tarique Rahman@trahmanbnp
[11/24/2024 7:16 AM, 68.8K followers, 112 retweets, 649 likes]
The more we delay democratic elections taking place in Bangladesh, the more the broken systems instilled by Awami League for their own gains will be exacerbated. We cannot move forward in building a better Bangladesh when society wide issues in public healthcare, education system, difficulties faced by farmers, challenges for businesses, political biases in the judiciary and civil service exist. Only an elected government, chosen by the people of Bangladesh through the exercising of their voting rights, can begin rebuilding the nation. The public’s choice of representatives will be respected and the representatives in turn must serve the public. Both sides must be involved actively in governance so that Bangladesh can ensure equality, inclusivity, and development for all.Tshering Tobgay@tsheringtobgay
[11/25/2024 2:04 AM, 100.1K followers, 2 retweets, 32 likes]
I had an insightful interaction with Mr. K. Krithivasan, the CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services. We discussed a wide range of topics, including the transformative role of technology, human resource development, and data services.
Tshering Tobgay@tsheringtobgay
[11/25/2024 2:04 AM, 100.1K followers, 2 likes]
I shared Bhutan’s aspirations to leverage innovative solutions to enhance governance, build capacity, and create opportunities for our people, and I am grateful to Mr. Krithivasan for highlighting TCS’s expertise and their willingness to support Bhutan’s efforts in these areas.
Tshering Tobgay@tsheringtobgay
[11/25/2024 12:29 AM, 100.1K followers, 7 retweets, 128 likes]
Delighted to meet H.E. @PiyushGoyal, India’s Minister for Commerce and Industry. We reflected on India’s remarkable progress under Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji’s leadership and how Bhutan continues to benefit from India’s growth and success.
Tshering Tobgay@tsheringtobgay
[11/25/2024 12:29 AM, 100.1K followers, 6 likes]
I expressed my appreciation for PM Modi’s goodwill and support for Bhutan, and stressed that we should continue to nurture our special friendship. Also discussed opportunities in connectivity, energy cooperation, & trade, & the vision and potential of Gelephu Mindfulness City.
Tshering Tobgay@tsheringtobgay
[11/25/2024 12:29 AM, 100.1K followers, 6 likes]
Our conversation reaffirmed the deep and enduring bond between Bhutan and India, rooted in trust, respect, and shared aspirations for mutual prosperity.
Tshering Tobgay@tsheringtobgay
[11/24/2024 10:03 AM, 100.1K followers, 37 retweets, 334 likes]
This afternoon at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, I had the pleasure of meeting @drSaimaWazed, @WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia, who was on her way to Bhutan for the Annual Mental Health Symposium.
Tshering Tobgay@tsheringtobgay
[11/24/2024 10:03 AM, 100.1K followers, 1 retweet, 16 likes]
We discussed the importance of building resilient communities and Bhutan’s shared commitment to addressing our mental health concerns. I thanked WHO for their continued support and partnership, and I look forward to the symposium’s meaningful outcomes.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives@MoFAmv
[11/25/2024 2:35 AM, 55K followers, 10 retweets, 13 likes]
On Int. Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women, an interactive discussion on addressing VAW in the workplace was led by Dr. Mariya Ali. It was a valuable opportunity to raise awareness & promote a more supportive workspace for women #EndVAW #NoExcuses
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives@MoFAmv
[11/25/2024 2:39 AM, 55K followers, 2 retweets, 5 likes]
Day 1: Violence against women is never acceptable, in any form, anywhere. There are #NoExcuses We must all mobilise our collective will and determination to #EndVAW. #16DaysOfActivism.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[11/24/2024 2:43 AM, 138.3K followers, 29 retweets, 429 likes]
This morning (24), I had the solemn honour of attending the Armed Forces Remembrance Day 2024 ceremony and Poppy Flower Ceremony at the War Heroes Memorial, Vihara Mahadevi Park. As we remembered our fallen heroes, I pledged to uphold their legacy with gratitude and respect.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[11/22/2024 11:05 AM, 138.3K followers, 26 retweets, 306 likes]
Today (22), I assumed duties as Minister of Finance, Planning & Economic Development. Meeting the people’s expectations is critical for a prosperous future. Together, we must rebuild trust, foster accountability, and create positive change for Sri Lanka. Let’s work as one.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[11/24/2024 8:48 AM, 138.3K followers, 37 retweets, 398 likes]
As I take on the responsibility of Defence Minister, I call upon all public officials to work together with one shared purpose: building a better nation. Restoring trust in public service is key to delivering the change our people demanded with their 80% mandate. Let us lead with integrity and purpose.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[11/24/2024 5:44 AM, 138.3K followers, 57 retweets, 712 likes]
I appointed Professor Gomika Udugamasooriya as my Senior Advisor on Science and Technology. With his expertise in the science field, he will play a pivotal role in advancing Sri Lanka’s scientific progress. Being a holder of numerous patents, Professor Udugamasooriya’s decision to transition from his role in U.S. public service to take up this honorary position is a significant development for Sri Lanka. Central Asia
Asel Doolotkeldieva@ADoolotkeldieva
[11/24/2024 11:14 PM, 14.1K followers, 2 retweets, 8 likes]
To migration specialists: Although labor migration from Kyrgyzstan to Russia has been declining (war, anti-migration policies, other destinations opening), remittances from Russia increased in 2024. Would it be safe to suggest, it’s due to wage growth due to the shrinking labor?
Leila Nazgul Seiitbek@l_seiitbek
[11/24/2024 5:10 PM, 4K followers, 3 likes]
President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov has arrived to Austria.He’s meeting with the Federal President of Austria, Alexander Van der Bellen, Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer, President of National Council Walter Rosenkranz.@Freedom4Eurasia published a statement to call on Austria and other EU states to prioritise issues of human rights+corruption.@HBrandstaetter @steffi_krisper https://freedomforeurasia.org/freedom-for-eurasia-calls-on-the-eu-states-to-prioritize-human-rights-and-anti-corruption-in-kyrgyzstan/
Leila Nazgul Seiitbek@l_seiitbek
[11/24/2024 5:10 PM, 4K followers, 2 likes]
Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian countries are important for Russia, they make Russia stronger. They help, directly or indirectly, Russia to survive under sanctions. However, this should not be a reason to avoid questions about human rights violations, rasing numbers of femicide cases, the unprecedented number of political prisoners and politically motivated cases that the current authorities, led by Sadyr Zhaparov, have opened against opponents of the authorities. This has led, among other things, to a large number of activists forced into exile from persecution by the Kyrgyz authorities. The fear of pushing a nascent dictatorship closer to Russia is unjustified. The dictatorships are already in a close bind. Fear of raising direct questions about human rights violations/corruption only makes dictatorships more brazen.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[11/24/2024 5:47 AM, 206.1K followers, 1 retweet, 17 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev also visited the #Khushnudmahalla in #Yangikhayot district to review local living conditions and development progress. As a key component of the national governance system, mahallas are entrusted with substantial authority to implement state programs, drive community development, and improve residents’ quality of life. Once neglected, the Khushnud mahalla has undergone significant transformation since 2018, with the development of modern housing, the installation of playgrounds, and the creation of landscaped public areas.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[11/24/2024 4:48 AM, 206.1K followers, 4 retweets, 22 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev paid a visit to the "Yangikhayot" industrial technopark in #Tashkent. The technopark is a hub for the manufacturing of furniture, textiles, construction profiles, solar panels, and various other products. Upcoming projects are set to focus on the development of building materials, electrical engineering, logistics, textiles, and the food industry, with plans to implement dual training programs to enhance workforce skills.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[11/23/2024 5:10 AM, 206.1K followers, 3 retweets, 28 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev visited the “Yangi Avlod” special industrial zone being created in #Yangikhayot district. Such companies as #CAMCEngineering, @jacmotorsglobal, #AceJapan, #DPWorld and others will develop projects in the zone to manufacture in-demand products. Main focus will be placed on developing innovative high value-added export-oriented goods, digitalization and energy efficiency.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[11/23/2024 4:13 AM, 206.1K followers, 10 retweets, 66 likes]
Today, President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev participated in a tree-planting ceremony in a newly established garden as part of the "#YashilMakon" initiative. This nationwide project, launched at the President’s initiative three years ago, continues to advance its mission. The event was attended by representatives of the public and members of the diplomatic corps.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[11/22/2024 1:46 PM, 206.1K followers, 2 retweets, 18 likes]
Another important meeting, chaired by President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev, was held to review proposals for the socio-economic development of the #Surkhandarya region, with a particular focus on improving the investment climate and enhancing the business environment. Discussions centered on supporting entrepreneurial initiatives, increasing the production of value-added goods, expanding trade and service sectors.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[11/22/2024 12:06 PM, 206.1K followers, 1 retweet, 22 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev chaired a meeting dedicated to advancing the socio-economic development of the #Khorezm region. He emphasized the importance of converting existing opportunities into concrete results. Plans include establishing new enterprises across various sectors, expanding agricultural activities, and developing modern medical centers and educational institutions.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[11/22/2024 11:21 AM, 206.1K followers, 3 retweets, 29 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev reviewed proposals aimed at the development of #culture and the arts, highlighting the importance of supporting theaters and their vital role in society. The key priorities include creating an integrated system for fostering young talent and harmonizing educational programs across relevant institutions.{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.