SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Thursday, October 24, 2024 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
World Opens to the Taliban Despite Their Shredding of Women’s Rights (New York Times)
New York Times [10/24/2024 2:19 AM, Christina Goldbaum, 831K, Neutral]
For most of the three years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, their erasure of women’s rights appeared to be setting them on course for near-total isolation in the world.
Western and Islamic countries alike condemned the group’s most extreme strictures, particularly on girls’ education. Messages by Taliban officials that their government was eager to engage with the world were ignored. To this day, no country officially recognizes the Taliban as the lawful authorities in Afghanistan.
But in recent months, the political winds have begun to shift in the Taliban’s favor.
Dozens of countries have welcomed Taliban diplomats. Some have sent high-ranking officials to Kabul to build diplomatic ties and secure trade and investment deals. Taliban officials have won temporary reprieves from travel bans. There has even been talk of removing the group from international terrorist lists.
The diplomatic activity reflects a subtle but significant shift toward normalizing the Taliban as political leaders and away from treating them as insurgents. It also reflects a growing consensus among world leaders that the Taliban government is here to stay.
Which countries are building ties with the Taliban?
In January, China became the first country to formally welcome a Taliban diplomat as Afghanistan’s ambassador — a title typically reserved for envoys whose countries are formally recognized on the world stage. The United Arab Emirates followed suit in August.Many experts saw the moves as paving the way for the Taliban’s government to earn formal recognition eventually from the two countries.
Also in August, Uzbekistan sent its prime minister to Kabul, the highest-level foreign visit to Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced this spring that the Kremlin was considering removing the Taliban from its list of designated terrorist organizations, which would make it the first country to do so.
Taliban officials have scored victories in another contested political battleground too: Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions around the globe. After the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed in 2021, its diplomats still ran the country’s embassies and consulates — and often lobbied their host countries for policies opposed by the Taliban.
But last month, the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that about 40 Afghan embassies and consulates now answered to its government. Control over those diplomatic missions signals the Taliban government’s authority in Afghanistan and gives the group a voice in countries where many top Taliban leaders cannot visit because of international travel bans.
What about the West?
Western countries have led the charge in denouncing the Taliban’s treatment of women, hoping to pressure the group into reversing some of its most contentious policies.
American officials have stuck to their hard and fast red lines on women’s rights, emphasizing that the United States will not lift sanctions or remove Taliban officials from its blacklists until the restrictions are eased.
But the United States has become an outlier. As Taliban officials have made clear that they will not bow to outside pressure, more European leaders and international organizations have appeared to accept the limits of their influence and engage on issues where they can find common ground.
In June, United Nations officials secured the Taliban’s attendance at a conference on Afghanistan by deferring talk of women’s rights. The Taliban had previously refused to attend two similar U.N. conferences.
In recent months, Afghan embassies and consulates across Europe have faced increased pressure from their host countries to answer to the Taliban government, according to three officials with knowledge of the deliberations.
The Afghan Embassies in Britain and Norway opted to close last month. The ambassador to Britain, who had been appointed by the old U.S.-backed Afghan government, said in a statement that the embassy was shutting down “at the official request of the host country.”
Leaders of European countries are motivated to engage with the Taliban by two fears: that waves of Afghan migrants will enter Europe if there is turmoil in Afghanistan, and that terrorism could emanate from Afghanistan and reach Europe.
What does this mean for Afghanistan?The growing diplomatic acceptance has created trade and investment opportunities — injections of cash that have been badly needed since the U.S.-backed government collapsed.
Over the past year, the Taliban have issued dozens of contracts to tap into the country’s mineral wealth. Private companies from the region have also scored deals to build infrastructure across Afghanistan — a link between Central and South Asian trade routes — that could help revive its economy and score points for the Taliban among the public.
The new diplomatic embrace has also eased the pressure to roll back the restrictions on women — a victory for the Taliban, but a major blow for many Afghan women. Is Afghanistan’s Most-Wanted Militant Now Its Best Hope for Change? (New York Times)
New York Times [10/24/2024 12:55 AM, Christina Goldbaum, 831K, Neutral]
For the better part of two decades, one name above all others inspired fear among ordinary Afghans: Sirajuddin Haqqani.
To many, Mr. Haqqani was a boogeyman, an angel of death with the power to determine who would live and who would die during the U.S.-led war. He deployed his ranks of Taliban suicide bombers, who rained carnage on American troops and Afghan civilians alike. A ghostlike kingpin of global jihad, with deep ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, he topped the United States’ most-wanted list in Afghanistan, with a $10 million bounty on his head.
But since the Americans’ frantic withdrawal in 2021 and the Taliban’s return to power, Mr. Haqqani has portrayed himself as something else altogether: A pragmatic statesman. A reliable diplomat. And a voice of relative moderation in a government steeped in religious extremism.
Mr. Haqqani’s makeover is part of a larger conflict that has roiled the Taliban over the past three years, even as the group works to present a united front. At the center is the Taliban’s emir and head of state, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, a hard-line cleric whose evisceration of women’s rights has isolated Afghanistan on the global stage.
As Sheikh Haibatullah has seized near total control over major policy, Mr. Haqqani has emerged as his most persistent challenger. Mr. Haqqani has privately lobbied for girls to be allowed to return to school beyond the sixth grade and for women to resume work in government offices, according to several Taliban and foreign officials. And as Sheikh Haibatullah has denounced Western ideals and dismissed Western demands, Mr. Haqqani has offered himself as a bridge.
He has gone on diplomatic tours and conducted back-channel conversations to espouse his more palatable vision and promote shared interests, like keeping terrorist groups on Afghan soil at bay. He has built relationships with some former enemies in Europe, as well as with Islamic countries, Russia and China, foreign officials said.“Twenty years of fighting jihad led us to victory,” Mr. Haqqani told me earlier this year in an interview in Kabul, his second ever with a Western journalist. “Now we have opened a new chapter of positive engagement with the world, and we have closed the chapter of violence and war.”
Many Western diplomats have been shocked by Mr. Haqqani’s transformation — and wonder if it can be believed. Mr. Haqqani is an enigma, at once a power-hungry political operator and a blood-soaked sworn jihadist; even the exact date and place of his birth are unclear. Promising the restoration of women’s rights may be less about personal reform and more a calculation to bring Western countries to his side as he challenges Sheikh Haibatullah.
Mr. Haqqani and his family have a long — and once secret — history of just that kind of outreach: At several points during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the Haqqanis sought rapprochement with the United States, a New York Times investigation revealed. But American officials mostly rebuffed the Haqqanis, viewing them as irredeemable and untrustworthy in light of the mass death they had wrought during the war.
Some diplomats now say that the Haqqanis’ bids for dialogue were missed opportunities, ones that illuminate how the American war on terrorism created the very enemies it sought to destroy — and help explain why the United States’ war in Afghanistan carried on for 20 years.
To continue to reject engagement with Mr. Haqqani may be to replay those missteps, some American officials and experts say. Faced with few alternatives, some see Mr. Haqqani as a potential force for change that could one day redefine life under Taliban rule and the country’s relations with the world.
The Insurgent
Around 10 one night earlier this year, I sat down with Mr. Haqqani in a two-story mansion just outside Kabul’s old fortified Green Zone. A stout man in his 40s with a coarse black beard, he has the grizzled look of an insurgent-turned-statesman.
Over three hours, Mr. Haqqani spoke about once unknown details of his upbringing, his ruthless calculations against American troops and previously secret interactions between his family and American officials. He also stressed his ambition for Afghanistan: finally ridding it of violence and war.
It’s a tantalizing — if hard to imagine — vision for a country that has been plagued by nearly half a dozen coups, a civil war and invasions by two superpowers within the past century.
It also came from a surprising messenger: a man responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
Born around the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Mr. Haqqani grew up in Miran Shah, a beige-earth, mud-brick enclave of Afghan refugees just over the border in Pakistan. His father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was a prominent commander of the mujahedeen — the Afghan insurgents fighting a holy war against Soviet forces — who forged relationships with powerful sponsors across South Asia and the Persian Gulf.
During the war against the Soviets, Jalaluddin Haqqani cultivated patrons among the Pakistani and Saudi intelligence agencies. He fostered close ties with the C.I.A., which sent him hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and weapons. He also grew close to Osama bin Laden, who would go on to establish Al Qaeda with the Haqqanis’ support.
All the while, Mr. Haqqani was grooming his son Sirajuddin to take over the sprawling jihadi network he was creating, sustained by a hugely lucrative criminal empire of drugs, kidnapping and extortion that spanned the Arab world. Even when Sirajuddin was a child, neighbors and relatives called him “khalifa,” a title in Islam that refers to a successor or leader.
The younger Mr. Haqqani said his earliest memories were of traveling to mujahedeen training camps in eastern Afghanistan to visit his father. The camps buzzed with the whistle of mortars from nearby fighting and stank of the sweat from mujahedeen fighters coming off the battlefield, Mr. Haqqani recalled.
When his father could not leave the battlefield, he and his brothers climbed atop nearby mountains and watched the fighting. “We said to ourselves that our father and uncles are down there, busy in the battle,” he recalled.
Mr. Haqqani and his brothers spent the rest of their childhood studying in a local madrasa, then with private tutors their father hired to teach them about global politics as well as religious texts. That gave Mr. Haqqani exposure to the outside world that was rare for a future Taliban leader.
When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Mr. Haqqani, then in his early 20s, was sitting in the madrasa his family ran in Khost Province, in the southeast. The news arrived through crackling static over an old mujahedeen radio: American missiles were raining down across Kabul.
A jolt of adrenaline shot through the room. “We were young and full of energy. We were physically and mentally prepared” to fight, he recalled.
While the Taliban regime fell quickly, by the summer of 2006 the movement had regrouped and roared back as an insurgency. By then, Mr. Haqqani was leading guerrilla operations in the east, before eventually being charged with overseeing Taliban military strategy nationwide as a deputy to the emir.
The fighters under his direct command grew into one of the most resilient and capable arms of the Taliban insurgency. Mr. Haqqani embraced suicide attacks in a way that few had before him, creating a high-ranking battalion that prospective bombers flocked to join, former militants told me.
Haqqani fighters carried out the war’s deadliest suicide attacks, including one in 2017 that killed more than 150 people, mostly civilians, with a single truck bomb. In 2011, they launched a 19-hour-long assault on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The last known American soldier to be held hostage in Afghanistan, Bowe Bergdahl, was in the Haqqanis’ hands for years after his capture in 2009.
The headline-grabbing attacks prompted the United States to designate the Haqqani network a foreign terrorist organization in 2012 — the only arm of the Taliban to be classified that way.
American forces hunted Mr. Haqqani, to no avail — a point in which he takes great pride. He told of changing locations sometimes 10 times a night and never using the same cars or bodyguards twice to outsmart American forces.“I ask you to ask our enemies how they could not kill me or arrest me with all the equipment they had,” he said, sitting in a beige leather armchair under fluorescent lights.
He described the happiness he felt after learning that American officials had put him on their blacklist. It was proof, he said, that his battlefield efforts had been “very effective” against the United States.
The Politician
When speaking about the war, Mr. Haqqani appeared at ease, a glint of nostalgia in his eyes. But when the interview turned to the Taliban’s internal politics and foreign policy, he was more calculated — after each question, he would pause, flip through a stack of talking points and then respond.
That caution betrays the Taliban’s delicate power dynamics and Mr. Haqqani’s uneasy place within them. While the movement has prioritized unity out of fear that any splintering could send the country back into war, a struggle has unfolded out of public view, pitting more pragmatic figures like Mr. Haqqani against the ultraconservative emir, Sheikh Haibatullah.
Within months of the Taliban’s takeover three years ago, Sheikh Haibatullah laid down an iron fist, establishing himself as the lone decision maker on all significant policies and government appointments.
In the spring of 2022, he reneged on a public promise made by other Taliban officials to allow girls to attend high school. He has gone on to cement the world’s harshest strictures on women and girls, measures that a majority of influential Taliban leaders disagree with, according to experts and officials.
Mr. Haqqani and other pragmatists made personal appeals to the emir to ease the most restrictive policies. Then, to signal their protest, he and some of his allies refused to attend meetings in Kandahar, Sheikh Haibatullah’s conservative southern stronghold, according to experts and foreign officials with knowledge of the efforts.
In a speech last year, Mr. Haqqani said the Taliban’s leadership was “monopolizing power” and “hurting the reputation” of the government — comments that many observers viewed as veiled criticism of the emir. Mr. Haqqani’s aides denied that characterization, saying that he was expressing a general desire for his government to establish a good relationship with its citizens.
The public objections seemed to violate the Taliban’s central code: total loyalty to the supreme leader.
And Sheikh Haibatullah responded with the full weight of his authority.
He reassigned the battalions of fighters loyal to the dissenting Taliban officials to his base in Kandahar and established his own private protection force. He replaced pragmatists in key government positions with his allies. He also, some analysts say, deliberately tried to undercut Mr. Haqqani’s overtures to the West by further restricting women’s rights.
The clampdown largely worked. “Many of those who tried to resist the emir now seem to be thinking that it’s not doable,” said Antonio Giustozzi, a leading scholar of the Taliban.
In the interview, Mr. Haqqani denied any rift in the government, saying the Taliban leadership had secured a major achievement by creating an “independent government with a single law and a single leader.”
But diplomats and analysts say he remains among the few still challenging the dominance of Sheikh Haibatullah, who less than a decade ago came to public prominence as a deputy, along with Mr. Haqqani, to the movement’s emir at the time.
Now, with most of his allies inside the Taliban cowed into silence, Mr. Haqqani has increasingly turned outside the country to help tip the power contest in his favor.
The Diplomat
Mr. Haqqani has sold his efforts to establish ties with other countries — currently, no other nation officially recognizes the Taliban government — as part of his vision for its leaders to be players on the international stage.
He has built strong working relationships with United Nations officials and European countries, foreign officials told me. He has signaled a green light for Chinese investment and developed close ties to Russia.
In pitching himself as a reliable, practical partner, he has tried to shake the almost mythological lore around him as a terrorist mastermind and sworn enemy of the United States — a reputation forged over 20 years of war.
But he is walking a fine line, trying to cultivate ties with the world — including the West — while not offering fodder to conservative Taliban clerics who view relationships with Western countries as a betrayal of Islamic values and, potentially, Afghan sovereignty.
So far, the United States has largely rebuffed efforts by Taliban officials to establish any formal ties with their administration, drawing a red line over women’s rights. But the United States still holds enormous sway. It is the largest donor of foreign aid to the country, its sanctions help dictate the flow of badly needed cash and humanitarian assistance, and it effectively controls billions in frozen assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank.
While his influence over restrictions on women is limited, Mr. Haqqani has tried in back-channel conversations with Western diplomats to leverage an issue where he does have influence: global terrorism.
The Haqqanis have pledged to contain the threat not just from the Islamic State, which has been carrying out attacks across Afghanistan, but also from Al Qaeda, with which the Haqqani network still maintains close ties, officials with knowledge of the discussions told me.
Some Western diplomats have questioned whether terrorism emanating from Afghanistan is truly a global threat, potentially reducing the incentive to deal with Mr. Haqqani.For others, distrust still hangs in the air, especially after the Haqqanis were found to be sheltering the head of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, in a Kabul safe house when he was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2022. Pakistani officials have also accused the Haqqanis of providing safe haven to the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group and ideological ally of the Afghan Taliban that has roared back in Pakistan since the Afghan Taliban regained power.“They are tactically very astute,” the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram, told me, referring to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Their relationship with militants is both about ideology and a strategy to “secure greater leverage over neighboring countries.”
In my conversation with Mr. Haqqani, he insisted that no terrorist groups were present in Afghanistan, saying that “the Islamic Emirate controls every corner of the country.” A more nuanced reading of the security environment under the Taliban might be that, while terrorist groups have a presence in Afghanistan, the fact that they have not attacked targets in the West over the past three years is a sign of Mr. Haqqani’s intent to engage internationally.
The question is what he might get in return.“It’s a dangerous idea, working with the Haqqanis,” said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a former coordinator of the United Nations’ monitoring group on the Islamic State, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. “You don’t know what side the Haqqanis will be standing on on the day you deal with them — your side or their own or the side of international terrorists.”
The Negotiator
For the United States, the distrust of Mr. Haqqani is etched in blood. But the Haqqanis’ reputation among American officials as radical ideologues and avowed enemies may be one of the many misconceptions that helped keep the United States in Afghanistan for two decades.“The U.S. was never central to their ideology, like it was to Osama bin Laden’s,” said Barnett Rubin, a former U.N. and U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan. “We thought that because they are fighting the U.S. they are anti-American, but in their view they are fighting invaders because they are anti-invader.”
Even during the war, the Haqqanis showed an openness to engagement with the United States that was broader than previously publicly known. For years, the family was involved in secret discussions with American officials seeking a détente, according to former officials and others with knowledge of the interactions.
Those efforts began in the early days of the American invasion. Rattled by the American bombing campaign, the elder Mr. Haqqani dispatched a convoy of dozens of relatives and allies to Kabul to show support for the U.S.-backed Hamid Karzai as president at his inauguration, according to former American and Afghan officials. An American airstrike hit the vehicles before they could reach the city, according to former Western officials.
Soon after, Mr. Haqqani’s father sent his brother Ibrahim Omari to Kabul in another attempt to engage with the Americans. U.S. forces arrested him, according to Taliban and former Western officials.“The Americans didn’t listen to us, and they forced their decision of war on us,” Sirajuddin Haqqani told me. “We wanted talks, negotiations and reconciliation — but everything went the other way.”
In 2004, the Haqqanis approached Mr. Karzai again in an attempt to reconcile, only to have the request effectively ignored. “There was a chance to stop the Haqqanis from becoming terrorists, but that’s when we ignored them,” said Umer Daudzai, who served as Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff at the time.
At the height of the war in 2010, the Haqqanis were still secretly seeking rapprochement. They exchanged letters unofficially with American officials proposing ways of easing hostilities and asked through other back channels to meet with the Americans, according to two people with knowledge of the interactions.
A year later, Mr. Haqqani’s uncle, Mr. Omari, met with American officials at a Raffles hotel in Dubai, accompanied by the head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, a patron of the Haqqanis that had helped broker the discussions, those people said.
Then, around 2015, the Haqqanis sat down with American officials alone for the first time in decades and discussed finding a path to ending the war, according to three people with knowledge of the encounter.
Sitting in a private lounge of an upscale European hotel, Mr. Omari told American officials that he had been sent by his family to deliver a message, those people said. Both the Haqqanis and the United States wanted peace in Afghanistan, he said. The Americans had toppled the Taliban government, killed bin Laden and established a democratic Afghan republic. So why, he asked, was the United States still fighting?
In response, Laurel Miller, the State Department’s acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, admitted that as conflicts drag on, their original rationale often becomes lost and they become self-perpetuating.“The United States has lost the ability to answer the question for itself,” Ms. Miller recalled telling Mr. Omari about why the United States remained at war. “Right now, we are in the middle of a process to try and figure it out.”
Looking back now, some former officials told me that the United States, thirsty for revenge after the deadliest attack ever on American soil, seemed to create the very enemies it sought to destroy.
In our conversation, Mr. Haqqani was coy about his family’s previous engagement with the West, a history that could complicate his relationship with other groups within the Taliban.
But even if it is the card he is most reluctant to advertise publicly, it may be the best one he has to play with foreign governments skeptical of his outreach now. That once-secret history lends a measure of credence to Mr. Haqqani’s recent overtures, some former officials say. Instead of a shocking transformation by Mr. Haqqani, his outreach, they suggest, may be a continuation of what his family has long sought: strategic partnership.
The Future
Earlier this summer, a photograph of Mr. Haqqani was splashed across social media: He was standing outside the Qasr Al Shati palace in Abu Dhabi, a slight smile on his face and his hand grasping that of the United Arab Emirates’ ruler, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The encounter was Mr. Haqqani’s first official meeting with a head of state — and seen by some as a signal that his lonely campaign to build an independent support base was alive and well.
He has spent months this year meeting with elders across northern and western Afghanistan, developing ties away from his stronghold in the east, according to several people who attended. His team has released videos of him that have helped maintain his celebrity following among young Taliban fighters. And he has continued to reach out to Western officials.
While not as outspoken as he once was, Mr. Haqqani appears to be “trying to build a political coalition for the long term,” Mr. Rubin, the former diplomat, said.
Even sitting down for an interview struck me as part of that political effort. In our conversation, he made his first public statement on women’s education in over a year, saying that the current situation “does not mean that girls are forever denied from going to schools and receiving an education.”
Such statements seem to reflect his belief that even an authoritarian government needs public support to last. “Unity is important for Afghanistan currently,” Mr. Haqqani told me, “so we can have a peaceful country.”
His efforts have begun to pay off. In June, the United Nations temporarily removed Mr. Haqqani from its travel blacklist. In addition to going to Abu Dhabi, he traveled to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to perform the hajj pilgrimage.
For now, though, the United States is keeping its distance. To insert itself in Afghan politics would be a gamble, one tainted by 20 years of war that cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars — only to end with the Taliban’s return. What We Learned Talking to the Taliban’s Most Fearsome Leader (New York Times)
New York Times [10/24/2024 1:45 AM, Christina Goldbaum, 831K, Neutral]
For three years, there was one powerful, elusive figure I wanted to speak with in Afghanistan: Sirajuddin Haqqani.
During the U.S.-led war there, he was known as one of the Taliban’s most ruthless military strategists, deploying hundreds of suicide bombers and raining carnage on the capital, Kabul. He developed ties with terrorist groups across the region and built a mafia-like empire of illicit businesses.
After the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, Mr. Haqqani became one of the most important figures in the government. But he remained a mystery; he had given only one interview to a Western journalist.
I had been trying for years to arrange an interview of my own. Earlier this year, Mr. Haqqani finally agreed to meet with me.
We spoke for three hours in a two-story mansion in Kabul, discussing his upbringing and the secret interactions between his family and American officials. I also spoke with more than 70 experts, diplomats, Afghan officials, Taliban soldiers and others, and reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, to glean insight into Mr. Haqqani’s life and politics within the Taliban’s government.
Here are the biggest takeaways from what I learned:
The Taliban have divisions below the surface
Since the Taliban returned to power, the group has tried to project an image of unity. But out of public view, Taliban officials have been at odds over their competing visions for the country. Those divisions have pitted the Taliban’s ultraconservative emir and head of state, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, against more pragmatic figures like Mr. Haqqani.
The majority of Taliban officials privately oppose Sheikh Haibatullah’s hard-line vision of Shariah law, according to experts and officials. But they are bound by a central pillar of the Taliban: total loyalty to their supreme leader. Those who have privately pushed for reform have been batted down by Sheikh Haibatullah, who has seized total control.
Today, Mr. Haqqani is a lone voice of dissent from behind the scenes. With most of his allies cowed into silence, he has increasingly looked for support outside the country to tip the contest in his favor. He has made diplomatic connections with some countries in Europe and the Persian Gulf, as well as Russia and China. The United States has been less eager to engage and still designates Mr. Haqqani as a wanted terrorist.
Women’s rights are a wedge
Under Sheikh Haibatullah, the Taliban’s evisceration of women’s rights has come to define his government on the world stage.
In the spring of 2022, Sheikh Haibatullah reneged on a public promise made by other Taliban officials to allow girls to attend high school. He has gone on to cement the world’s harshest strictures on women and girls, which some human rights monitors say amount to “gender apartheid.”
Behind the scenes, Mr. Haqqani and his allies have privately lobbied for girls to be allowed to return to school beyond the sixth grade and for women to resume work in government offices, according to several Taliban and foreign officials.
For Mr. Haqqani, his stance appears to be less about personal reform and more about pragmatic politics. Promising the restoration of women’s rights may help bring Western countries to his side. It could also help him gain the support of local leaders, particularly in urban areas that have been more resistant to the Taliban’s return.
The Haqqanis have been talking to the U.S. for years
Ties between the Haqqani family and the United States go back decades. Jalaluddin Haqqani, Sirajuddin’s father, cultivated close ties with the C.I.A., which sent him hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and weapons to fight the Soviets.
In the early days of the American invasion of Afghanistan, the Haqqanis tried to leverage those old ties to reconcile with American officials. Their efforts were rebuffed, and years of intense fighting ensued.
Around 2010, the Haqqanis secretly exchanged letters with American officials, and Sirajuddin Haqqani’s uncle, Ibrahim Omari, met with U.S. officials in 2011 in Dubai, according to two people with knowledge of the interactions.
Then, in a previously undisclosed meeting around four years later, Mr. Omari sat down with American officials in a European city in the hopes of finding a path to end the war, according to those people.
Seated in a private lounge of an upscale European hotel, Mr. Omari told American officials that he had been sent by his family to deliver a message. Both the Haqqanis and the United States wanted peace in Afghanistan, he said. The Americans had toppled the Taliban government, killed Osama bin Laden and established a democratic Afghan republic. So why, he asked, was the United States still fighting?
In response, a State Department official admitted that the United States did not have an answer to that question. The war would continue for many years. Explosion in a packed Kabul market injures 11 people, including children, humanitarian group says (AP)
AP [10/23/2024 1:41 PM, Staff, 31638K, Negative]
An explosion in a packed Kabul market on Wednesday injured 11 people, including children, a nongovernmental organization said.
The source of the blast was not immediately clear and nobody from the Taliban was available for comment.
The blast struck a second-hand clothes market in the Pamir Cinema district, said the humanitarian group Emergency NGO, which runs a surgical centre in the Afghan capital.
Emergency’s deputy country director in Afghanistan, Stefano Gennaro Smirnov, said a 3-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy were among the injured. A man is in critical condition.
"The explosion took place at a second-hand clothes market when it opened and people crowded to get in," said Smirnov. "This is the Pamir Cinema neighborhood, one of the most densely populated in Kabul. Many of those affected by this attack will be living in conditions of severe poverty."
While extremists in Afghanistan have increased their assaults since the Taliban takeover in 2021, their targets are normally the Taliban and members of the country’s Shiite minority. Pakistan
Dozens of US lawmakers call for release of former Pakistan PM Imran Khan (Reuters)
Reuters [10/23/2024 6:10 PM, Kanishka Singh, 37270K, Negative]
Over 60 Democratic lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives wrote to President Joe Biden on Wednesday, urging him to use Washington’s leverage with Pakistan to secure the release of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan.KEY QUOTE"We write today to urge you to use the United States’ substantial leverage with Pakistan’s government to secure the release of political prisoners including former Prime Minister Khan and curtail widespread human rights abuses," the lawmakers wrote in a letter.WHY IT’S IMPORTANTU.S. Representative Greg Casar, who led the letter, said it marked the first such collective call from multiple members of the U.S. Congress for the release of Khan, who otherwise has had testy relations with Washington as a long standing critic of U.S. foreign policy.Khan has been in jail since August 2023 and has faced dozens of cases since he was removed as prime minister in 2022 after which he launched a protest movement against a coalition of his rivals led by current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Khan says cases against him, which disqualified him from contesting the February elections, are politically motivated.He had a fallout with Pakistan’s powerful military and blamed his ousting on them. The military denies political interference.CONTEXTThe Democratic lawmakers also raised concerns about reported irregularities in Pakistan’s elections.Pakistan’s government denies being unfair in Khan’s treatment and its election commission denies the elections were rigged.Washington says the February vote could not be characterized as free and fair. Britain, the European Union and the United Nations also raised concerns.Khan did not run, but candidates he backed secured the highest number of seats. Still, his rivals formed a coalition government.A U.N. human rights working group said in July Khan’s detention violated international law. US lawmakers label Pakistan’s governance ‘military rule with civilian facade’ (VOA)
VOA [10/23/2024 9:06 PM, Ayaz Gul, 4566K, Negative]
More than 60 members of Congress wrote to President Joe Biden on Wednesday, urging his intervention "to secure the release of political prisoners" in Pakistan, including former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
The letter stated that in February, the Pakistani parliamentary elections saw a historic level of irregularities, including widespread electoral fraud, state-led efforts to disenfranchise voters, and the arrest and detention of political leaders, journalists and activists.
The U.S. lawmakers echoed calls for Khan’s immediate release and an end to the widespread arbitrary detention of supporters of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party.
"At a minimum, we ask your administration to urgently secure the guarantees from the Pakistani government for Khan’s safety and well-being and urge U.S. Embassy officials to visit him in prison," the letter to Biden read.
The American lawmakers expressed their concern about what they denounced as the "ongoing widespread human rights violations" in Pakistan following the country’s parliamentary elections.
"More broadly, developments since the February vote point to a clear turn towards authoritarianism in the country," the letter said. "… Simply put, Pakistan’s current system amounts to ‘military rule with civilian facade.’ "
The representatives noted that the Pakistani government also has intensified its crackdown on social media and the internet as part of a broader effort to suppress political activism and pressure journalists.
The letter was written by Representative Greg Casar; Representatives Jim McGovern and Summer Lee are co-leaders of the group. The letter describes Khan, 72, as a political leader in Pakistan "with widespread support in the country."
There was no immediate reaction to the letter from the White House, nor have Pakistani officials commented on it.
Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023 on multiple allegations, including corruption and inciting violence against military facilities. He denies any wrongdoing.
In June, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 368-7 to urge "the full and independent investigation of claims of interference or irregularities" in the February polls in Pakistan.
Islamabad strongly objected to the resolution, saying it "stems from an incomplete understanding of the political situation and electoral process" in the South Asian nation.
Khan, the cricket star-turned-prime minister, was ousted from power in 2022 through an opposition parliamentary vote of no confidence. The move, which the deposed leader rejected as illegal, led to unprecedented political turmoil in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a country of more than 240 million people. The deposed leader accused the military of orchestrating his removal and initiated numerous lawsuits subsequently.
The legal challenges, which Khan rejects as politically motivated, have prevented him from pursuing public office. His party was also subjected to a state crackdown and eventually prohibited from participating in the February election. Khan and independent critics maintain the vote was rigged to allow pro-military parties to secure victory, allegations Sharif and military officials denied. Pakistani court grants bail, orders release of ex-leader’s wife (VOA)
VOA [10/23/2024 11:32 AM, Ayaz Gul, 4566K, Negative]
A federal high court in Pakistan on Wednesday approved the bail application of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s wife, ordering her release after months of imprisonment related to corruption allegations.
The lawsuit against former first lady Bushra Bibi involves the alleged sale of state gifts worth half a million dollars during Khan’s time in office from 2018 to 2022, charges Bibi and Khan rejected as unfounded and politically motivated.
It remained uncertain whether Bibi would be allowed to leave prison anytime soon, given the many other legal challenges the couple has faced since a parliamentary no-confidence vote ousted Khan’s government 18 months ago.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, Party of the deposed prime minister praised Wednesday’s court ruling but accused the authorities of employing delaying tactics to continue Bibi’s "unlawful incarceration."
The statement reiterated that Bibi is a housewife and that the case against her arose from a nontransparent investigation, labeling the charges as baseless.
Khan, who has been imprisoned since August 2023, and his wife are in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, a garrison city next to Islamabad. Bibi has been detained since January after being sentenced, along with Khan, to 14 years in a separate graft case, although an appeals court suspended the sentence weeks later for a lack of evidence.
Subsequently, appeals courts overturned or suspended other convictions and sentences, but Pakistani authorities refused to release the couple, instead announcing new charges against them in July related to the alleged sale of state gifts.
Khan, 72, faces numerous charges, including corruption and violence against state institutions, all of which the former prime minister says are orchestrated at the behest of the powerful Pakistani military to keep him from returning to national politics, charges his successors and military officials denied.
The legal challenges have prevented the former cricket star-turned-politician from pursuing public office. His party was banned from participating in the national election in February. Khan maintains that the election was rigged to allow pro-military parties to secure victory.
In June, a panel of independent United Nations experts urged Pakistan to end Khan’s incarceration, saying his detention had "no legal basis."
New chief justice
Meanwhile, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday approved the selection of the country’s next chief justice, who was recommended under newly enacted constitutional amendments that critics decried as detrimental to judicial independence.
Justice Yahya Afridi, the third-most senior judge after the outgoing chief justice, was picked by a government-dominated parliamentary committee on Tuesday, a day after a ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hastily amended the constitution.
Previously, the judge who was second in seniority would automatically take over as the country’s chief justice when the top judge retired at 65.
Law Minister Azam Tarar said that Afridi will replace the outgoing Supreme Court chief justice, who retires on Friday, for a three-year term in line with the new constitutional amendments.
Khan’s PTI denounced the legislation as an assault on Pakistan’s judicial independence, saying judges handpicked by the Sharif government would decide everything.
U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk said he was concerned about the constitutional amendments. In a brief statement that his office posted on X, he noted that the changes "were adopted hastily, without broad consultation and debate."
Turk warned that these changes "will seriously undermine the independence of the judiciary" and emphasized the importance of aligning constitutional reforms with international human rights law.
The Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, or ICJ, described the new legislation as "a blow to judicial independence, the rule of law and human rights protection" in Pakistan.
"These changes bring an extraordinary level of political influence over the process of judicial appointments and the judiciary’s own administration," said Santiago Canton, ICJ’s secretary general. "They erode the judiciary’s capacity to independently and effectively function as a check against excesses by other branches of the state and protect human rights," Canton said.
Sharif and his Cabinet ministers have defended the constitutional changes, claiming they would prevent alleged judicial interference in governance matters that led to the dismissal of successive governments in Pakistan. Pakistan’s weapons programs face scrutiny after US curbs (VOA)
VOA [10/23/2024 7:06 PM, Aurangzeb Khan and Iftikhar Hussain, 4566K, Neutral]
The latest U.S.-imposed restrictions on entities supporting Pakistan’s defense programs may hinder Islamabad’s future efforts to acquire sensitive defense technologies and its collaboration with China but are unlikely to affect Pakistan’s weapons development for now, experts say.
Sixteen Pakistani firms were among 26 international companies added this week to a U.S, "entities list," making them ineligible to acquire U.S. items and technology without government authorization.
Companies or individuals can be placed on the list if they are "involved or pose a significant risk of being or becoming involved in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States," according to a U.S. Commerce Department statement.
Nine of the 16 Pakistani companies added to the blacklist this week were accused of being front companies for a previously sanctioned company, Advanced Engineering Research Organization, deemed responsible for the country’s cruise missile and strategic drone programs.
The remaining seven entities were added for contributions to Pakistan’s ballistic missile program, the Commerce Department statement said. Other companies added to the list this week were accused of procuring U.S.-made items with military applications for China, Iran, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
Defense analysts told VOA that addition to the list is unlikely to slow Pakistan’s missile program, which has continued despite multiple rounds of U.S. curbs on entities supporting it.
"It will not make a difference to Pakistan," said Pakistani defense analyst Salman Javed, who acknowledged that the country relies on the United States for other defense technology needs. "I believe Pakistan’s missile program is in an advanced stage, and U.S. restrictions will have no impact on it."
Former Pakistani army General Talat Masood said Pakistan has looked more to China than the United States for "the expertise and technology" needed to advance its drone program. But he said the new curbs might affect Pakistan’s future collaboration with China in the field of drones and their sale to other countries.
Pakistan has not officially responded to the latest restrictions but objected last month when Washington blacklisted four companies, three Chinese and one Pakistani, for "knowingly" transferring prohibited equipment to Pakistan. Islamabad said the sanctions were imposed "without any evidence whatsoever."
Syed Irfan Ashraf, an assistant professor at the University of Peshawar in Pakistan, said the United States has long prevented arms technology sales in black markets to protect its interests. "However, the timing and scrutiny of entities supporting Pakistan right now is crucial" because of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
In September, the U.S. State Department acted against five entities and one individual - all but one Chinese - that were involved in the proliferation of ballistic missiles and controlled missile equipment and technology to Pakistan.
Salman Ali, a Pakistani scholar at the School of Politics at the Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad, said the recent wave of U.S. sanctions represents a distinct shift from the usual regulatory measures observed since Pakistan’s de facto nuclearization and are aimed more at pressuring China."Over the past six rounds of U.S. curbs, it’s clear that the focus has been on the technical exchanges between China and Pakistan. These sanctions are not only intended to curb the rapid advancement of missile and drone programs but are also seen as a strategy to pressure China," Ali told VOA.
Pakistan and Iran are both members of the China-led regional alliance Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which opposed the unilateral sanctions in its recently concluded summit October 16 in Islamabad. Pakistani security forces kill 9 militants in a raid in the restive northwest near Afghanistan (AP)
AP [10/24/2024 2:31 AM, Staff, 456K, Neutral]
Pakistani security forces killed nine insurgents in a shootout overnight in a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban in the volatile northwestern region that borders Afghanistan, the military said Thursday.
Troops also seized weapons and ammunition from the insurgents’ hideout after the shootout in Bajur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The military’s statement provided no details about the slain militants, including their affiliation.
However, such operations often target the Pakistani Taliban, who are known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. Bajur was a base for the militants until many were killed or forced out in multiple operations by security forces.
The TTP are a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in 2021. The Taliban takeover next door has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban who have stepped up attacks on Pakistani forces. In Pakistan, polio workers persist despite perils (VOA)
VOA [10/23/2024 10:37 PM, Sarah Zaman, 4566K, Negative]
Pakistan’s fight to eradicate polio is marked with hopeful highs and disappointing lows. As the global community marks World Polio Day on October 24, the nuclear-armed nation faces a staggering 39 cases so far this year, compared to six in 2023 and 20 the year before. In 2021, the South Asian nation briefly seemed on track to eradicating the paralytic virus, with just one reported case the entire year.
Going door to door to vaccinate children 5 years old and younger against the poliovirus is a perilous task in Pakistan.
Fozia Kalwar became a vaccinator three years ago. A resident of Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, the 35-year-old widow took the part-time job because she needed the money.
Kalwar makes less than $50 for a week of grueling work during vaccination drives. It is not nearly enough to feed her four children. And the reward is small, she said, for a job that comes with serious security risks.
"I feel very scared, but then I wonder how I will feed my children if I don’t work," Kalwar told VOA.
She works in a dangerous part of Sindh, where armed bandits rob people in broad daylight.
Still, it was the report of a sexual assault on a fellow polio worker last month that deeply disturbed her, she said. The victim, who lived a few streets away from Kalwar, was allegedly gang-raped by three men while in the field.
Attacks on polio workers in Pakistan are largely limited to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Militants in the northern province often target polio teams, accusing them of partaking in a "Western conspiracy" to render children infertile through the vaccine. They also claim the vaccine has pork-based ingredients that are forbidden for Muslims to consume.
This year in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, at least two vaccinators were killed and four wounded, while seven policemen providing security to polio teams died and 30 suffered injuries in four attacks.
However, news of the alleged sexual assault in Sindh shocked many.
After the incident, Kalwar said, many people in her area suggested shutting down the polio program.
"They said, ‘It is saving our children, but what about our women?’" Kalwar told VOA.
Lack of trust
Despite years of expensive awareness campaigns, many Pakistanis believe anti-vaccine propaganda and refuse the oral vaccine for their children.
Lack of trust in the health care system drives others to shut the door on vaccinators.
"In posh areas where there are educated people with more awareness, they don’t trust us much," said Fiza Bibi, a supervisor for community health workers.
"They are very sensitive about their kids. They refuse the vaccine more often for their children," said Bibi, who works in Karachi, the capital of Sindh. "Even if they vaccinate their kids later, for us, the child is counted among refusals."
Sindh, Pakistan’s southern and second most populated province, detected 12 polio cases this year, behind Balochistan, where 20 cases emerged.
Karachi is home to eight districts considered high risk for the spread of the poliovirus. Experts blame overpopulation, poor hygiene and migration from across the country to the economic hub.
Health officials say the challenging demographic landscape of Karachi complicates eradicating polio in the province.
Sindh fared worse this year in case tally than Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the north, which shares a long, busy border with Afghanistan.Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries still grappling with the naturally occurring wild poliovirus. Afghanistan has detected 18 cases this year.
Future outlook
A nation of over 240 million people, Pakistan is gearing to launch a countrywide polio campaign from October 28. The drive will target 45 million children.
According to Pakistan’s polio eradication program, cases of the paralytic disease may rise.
"Given the widespread virus presence and its intensity of circulation, more cases are expected to emerge alongside environmental detections during next couple of months," a program document explains.
There is also some good news. The variants of the virus present in Pakistan have dropped from 11 in 2019 to two in 2024, according to the official report.
"This decline underscores the impact of targeted vaccination efforts and enhanced surveillance," the document said.
"We should not be demoralized by the rising case numbers. We must keep up our efforts," said Bibi. The 21-year-old was among three health workers chosen from across Pakistan to meet Bill Gates in June. The co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation visited Pakistan to discuss polio, among other issues, with top officials.
Working in Sindh near Jacobabad, one of the hottest cities on the planet in the summer, Kalwar has a strategy to make sure no child misses the vaccine in the upcoming drive.
"In our areas, we now keep a register with every child’s name in it so that no one is left out," she said. "When we visit, we ask about each child by name." India
A Modi-Xi Meeting Could Signal a Thaw Between India and China (New York Times)
New York Times [10/23/2024 4:14 PM, David Pierson, Valerie Hopkins, and Alex Travelli, 831K, Neutral]
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India met officially for the first time in more than five years on Wednesday at a summit of emerging market countries in Russia, raising the prospect of a potential thaw between the two Asian powers.
The session came two days after China and India reached a deal on patrolling their shared Himalayan border, the site of a deadly clash between Chinese and Indian forces in 2020. Relations between Beijing and New Delhi have been frosty ever since, with India drawing closer to the United States through a regional security grouping called the Quad.
In separate statements, both Mr. Xi and Mr. Modi highlighted the need for the neighboring countries to address their differences peacefully.
Mr. Xi told Mr. Modi a rapprochement was “in the fundamental interests of both countries,” according to Chinese state media, adding that China and India should “set an example for developing countries.”
Mr. Modi called for “stable, predictable and amicable” relations between the two nations, the world’s most populous, saying it would have “a positive impact on regional and global peace and prosperity,” according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs.
Both leaders underscored their desire for a more “multipolar” world, an inference to the current global order, where the United States dominates, wielding what China and India regard as unfair influence.
The meeting between Mr. Xi and Mr. Modi took place at the 16th annual BRICS summit, a group of non-Western countries whose acronym stems from its earliest members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It expanded this year to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, growing to represent almost half the world’s population.
Established as a counterweight to U.S.-led forums like the Group of 7 and intended to give developing countries more influence, BRICS has struggled to speak with a unified voice. That, in no small part, is because of the competing interests of its two biggest members.
China wants to use the grouping to weaken the dominance of the United States and burnish its credentials as a leader of the so-called Global South. India also claims leadership of the Global South, but unlike China, remains firmly nonaligned and does not want BRICS to develop into an explicitly anti-Western body.
Experts said little would change within BRICS as a result of China and India’s moving to ease tensions. Beijing has ambitions to be the pre-eminent power in Asia.“The thaw between India and China will not fundamentally alter the dynamics of BRICS because while the détente between the two Asian giants is in the interest of both players, their long-term geopolitical rivalry will remain,” said Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
India “has no desire to replace U.S. hegemony for Chinese hegemony,” Mr. Patrick continued, “and it is disinclined to have BRICS become an anti-Western bloc.”
During a round table session earlier on Wednesday, leaders of the BRICS conference discussed a range of issues, including creating financial platforms outside the reach of the U.S. dollar. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia offered a proposal to create a BRICS grain exchange that could evolve into a commodities exchange. Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter, and its war in Ukraine, another top grain exporter, sent prices soaring in 2022.
While improved ties between China and India could make BRICS a more cohesive group, a lasting thaw is anything but assured. Analysts warned that the border deal struck this week could fall apart, as details remained murky about how the two sides would patrol the disputed area, considered some of the least habitable terrain in Asia.
For China, easing tensions with India would help drive a wedge between New Delhi and Washington. It would also provide Beijing with one less headache at a time when it is struggling to turn around its sputtering economy, which has been battered by a property crisis.
As for India, a lasting border deal would come as a relief for Mr. Modi’s government, which took the largely symbolic step of banning dozens of Chinese apps, including TikTok, after the clash in 2020. Since then, Mr. Modi has tried to deflect attention from the conflict. He refused to take questions about it in Parliament.
Smoother relations with China will leave India in a position straddling geopolitical forces within Asia. Washington has been courting New Delhi as a strategic counterweight to China, as it seeks to corral various states, most of them democracies, into a ring of defensive arrangements around Asia.
Indian foreign policy has long been defined by its overlapping and sometimes contradictory set of friends. It is the only country that sits inside both the Quad — the loose, defense-oriented club where it joins the United States, Japan and Australia — and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is dominated by China and Russia. The Shanghai group also includes Pakistan, India’s fiercest foe.
The United States has been working to tighten its ties with India for about 25 years. That has accelerated under both the Trump and Biden administrations, as India has been drawn into greater and greater economic, technological and military coordination with Washington. In the latest example, India signed a $3.5 billion deal last week to buy American Predator drones. With Pressures at Home and Abroad, China’s Xi and India’s Modi Thaw Ties (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [10/23/2024 5:15 AM, Austin Ramzy and Tripti Lahiri, 810K, Neutral]
For the past four years, relations between China and India—two nuclear-armed neighbors that are the world’s most populous nations—have been in a deep freeze following a deadly clash between their forces high in the Himalayas.
Now, the two Asian giants are showing signs of a thaw, as both countries look to ease tensions on one front to focus on other geopolitical and economic challenges.
On Wednesday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held their first formal meeting in five years. That followed an announcement earlier this week that the two countries had reached an understanding over how to manage military patrols along key parts of their de facto border, which has for decades been subject to violence and disputes.
For China, which faces a stagnant economy and fraught relationships with the U.S., Europe and several of its neighbors, improved ties with India are the latest in a series of small advances in its tense relations with other nations.
Meanwhile for India, which has been drawing closer to the U.S. in recent years and has benefited from Washington’s rivalry with China, easing the standoff on the Himalayan border would reduce pressure on its defense budget and allow it to focus more attention on other arenas of geopolitical competition with its neighbor—such as the Indian Ocean. It also needs to redouble its efforts to build an industrial economy.“It’s a truce in a long contest,” said Sreeram Chaulia, dean at O.P. Jindal Global University’s School of International Affairs in Sonipat, India, who said that the underlying equation of long-term rivalry between the two countries is likely to remain.
Still, both leaders struck a warm note after their meeting in Kazan, Russia, on the sidelines of the Brics summit, a growing bloc of emerging nations where India and China have competed to exert leadership of the global South. Both nations say the current global order doesn’t fairly represent the developing world.
Modi tweeted that “mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual sensitivity” would guide India-China relations, which he said are important for global peace and stability.
Xi told Modi that their countries are both large, developing nations in key periods of their modernization. “The two sides should strengthen communication and cooperation, resolve conflicts and differences” and help each other achieve their “development dreams,” Xi said, according to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency.
The warming ties with India come as China has seen some contentious relationships ease in recent weeks. U.K. Foreign Minister David Lammy traveled to Beijing last week, a low-key trip that was intended to emphasize a “stable, consistent and pragmatic approach” to China under the new Labour government.
Relations with Australia have buoyed too after deteriorating under previous Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who angered Beijing by calling for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19. Over the past year, China has eased curbs on Australian coal, barley, wine, beef and rock lobsters.
Beijing and the Vatican also unveiled on Tuesday a renewal of their agreement on the appointment of Catholic bishops. Relations between China and the Catholic church have long been tenuous because of the Communist Party’s controls on religion, but under Pope Francis the Vatican has sought to deepen its engagement with China. The new deal will last for four years, unlike previous agreements that were approved every two years.
None of these advances in ties represents a transformation. But Beijing would still welcome the modest improvements at a time when its economy is stagnating, tensions are flaring with other neighbors such as the Philippines, and relations with the U.S. are likely to remain poor regardless of who wins the U.S. elections next month.“If you look at the world from Beijing’s perspective, it’s quite a difficult and hostile world,” said Manoj Kewalramani, head of China studies at the Takshashila Institution, an Indian think tank. “It makes sense to have some of these tactical adjustments, because you can’t have hostilities consistently all around.”
Wang Dehua, a South Asia expert at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, described the improvement in ties as the result of a shift by New Delhi, not Beijing. “India has had a bit of an awakening,” he said. “They understand that if you want to rise you need to have cooperation with China.”
Indian industry has pointed to hurdles to efforts to boost Indian manufacturing and exports since ties deteriorated.
India has made it nearly impossible for Chinese companies to bring foreign direct investment into the country. Companies in recent months also have flagged long delays for visas for Chinese technical workers needed to help set up production lines in new industries, such as renewable energy.
China and India have tried to improve ties previously, only to see them deteriorate again over border issues. After a 2017 standoff over China’s construction of a road in an area claimed by both China and Bhutan, Xi and Modi held informal summits in 2018 and 2019. But a 2020 Himalayan clash, which resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian troops and at least four Chinese soldiers, led to a downward spiral.
Nirupama Menon Rao, a former Indian ambassador to China and the U.S., said that patrolling protocols could reduce the risk of a close confrontation like the one in 2020, but that this week’s developments, though significant, are just a first step. “There are lots of steps that lie ahead,” cautioned Rao.
Over the past four years, India has drawn far closer to the U.S. amid shared concerns over China’s economic and military might, with American companies backing Indian efforts to build a manufacturing hub. India has also engaged more actively in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, a U.S.-led strategic grouping that includes Australia and Japan.
India has had to balance its growing partnership with the U.S. against its longstanding ties with Russia, its key defense supplier. India also began buying vast quantities of discounted Russian oil after the Russia-Ukraine war began in 2022. Modi’s trip to Kazan for the Brics meeting is his second to Russia this year, after the Indian leader made a trip to Moscow in July, soon after taking office for a third term.
Xi’s meeting with Modi was preceded by talks on Tuesday with his closest international partner, Russian President Vladimir Putin. The summit of the Brics, a grouping of nations named for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has given Putin an opportunity to break out of the relative isolation that has followed an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
Putin and Xi highlighted their personal friendship and the growing closeness of their countries amid efforts by the West to ostracize the Russian leader for his invasion of Ukraine.
Russia and China have led a push to expand the Brics grouping, while India has remained cautious over concerns that the organization could be seen as confrontational with the West. This year the group added Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.“For the Chinese government it’s quite useful to have more and more countries join the Brics, especially as China and also Russia want to use the Brics as a platform to show they’re not isolated internationally,” said Eva Seiwert, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. BRICS summit: China and India should manage differences, Xi tells Modi (Reuters)
Reuters [10/23/2024 11:46 AM, Krishn Kaushik and Ethan Wang, 88008K, Negative]
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed on Wednesday to boost communication and cooperation between their countries and resolve conflicts to help improve ties that were damaged by a deadly military clash in 2020.The two leaders met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia for their first formal talks in five years, signalling that ties between the Asian giants have begun to recover from the diplomatic rift caused by the clash along their disputed Himalayan frontier.India and China, two of the world’s biggest economies, have maintained strong trade ties despite the military and diplomatic tensions. The rapprochement is expected to boost Chinese investment in India.India said the two leaders have directed their officials to take further steps to stabilise all aspects of bilateral ties.The Xi-Modi meeting in the city of Kazan came two days after New Delhi said it had reached a deal with Beijing to resolve the four-year military stand-off in the Himalayan region of Ladakh, although neither side has shared details of the pact.The two sides should strengthen communication and cooperation, resolve conflicts and differences, and realize each other’s development dreams, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported Xi as telling Modi.Modi put forward ideas for improving and developing bilateral relations, to which Xi agreed in principle, CCTV added without elaborating.In response, Modi told Xi that peace, stability, mutual trust and respect were crucial for relations."We welcome the agreement on the issues that had come up over the last four years," Modi told Xi in comments aired on India’s state broadcaster Doordarshan."It should be our priority to maintain peace and tranquillity on the border. Mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual sensitivity should be the basis of our relationship," Modi said.PATH TO IMPROVING TIESRelations between the world’s two most populous nations - both nuclear powers - have been strained since a clash between their troops on the largely undemarcated frontier in the western Himalayas left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead in 2020.The neighbours have added tens of thousands of troops and weapons along the icy frontier over the last four years.Modi and Xi had not held formal bilateral talks since then, although both participated in multilateral events. Their last bilateral summit talks were held in October 2019 in the southern Indian town of Mamallapuram.The two spoke briefly on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali in November 2022. They spoke again on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in August 2023 but released different versions of the conversation, suggesting they didn’t see eye to eye.Xi skipped the G20 summit hosted by New Delhi the following month, a decision seen as another setback to relations.Diplomatic efforts gained momentum in recent months after the two countries’ foreign ministers met in July and agreed to step up talks to ease the border tensions.India had made improving the wider political and damaged business ties contingent upon finding a solution to the border stand-off.New Delhi had increased the scrutiny of investments coming from China, blocked direct flights between the two countries and had practically barred issuing any visas to Chinese nationals since the Ladakh clashes.Speaking in Kazan, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said there was hope for better India-China relations."As we have maintained during the last four years, the restoration of peace and tranquillity on the border areas will create space for ... normalisation of our bilateral relations." Modi Says BRICS Must Avoid Being an Anti-West Group as It Grows (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [10/24/2024 2:51 AM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 5.5M, Neutral]
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said BRICS shouldn’t project itself as an alternative to global organizations, even as founding members like Russia and China try to expand the group to challenge the US-led global order.“We must be careful to ensure that this organization does not acquire the image of one that is trying to replace global institutions,” Modi said at closed plenary session of the BRICS leaders’ summit in Kazan, Russia on Wednesday. The group should work to reform institutions like the United Nations Security Council and multilateral lenders, he said.
The comments underscore Modi’s challenge in trying to balance ties with Russia, which India relies on for cheap oil, and the US, which is providing access to cutting-edge technology to ramp up manufacturing and add jobs in the South Asian nation. China and India are also on a path to normalizing relations after a four-year border standoff, with Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping holding their first bilateral talks in two years on Wednesday.
Russia is this week hosting the first summit since BRICS — comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — expanded to nine members with the addition of the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday the larger group represents a “multipolar world” that was more representative of the international community.
Modi said that as BRICS evolves, it should set an “example to the world” by uniting in calls to reform global organizations. “We have to give the world the message that BRICS is not a divisive organization but one that works in the interest of humanity,” he added.
As other nations line up to seek membership of BRICS, Modi signaled willingness for them to join as “partner countries” rather than full members.
Separately, the Kazan declaration from the BRICS leaders summit prominently mentioned its concerns over the unfolding conflict in the Middle East.
The member countries reiterated their “grave concern” over the humanitarian crisis in the occupied Palestinian territory, citing the escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank because of the “Israeli military offensive.” That’s led to “mass killing and injury of civilians, forced displacement and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure,” according to the declaration. A ‘Gangster’ Is Blowing Up India-Canada Relations—From Behind Bars (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [10/23/2024 11:00 PM, Vipal Monga, Vibhuti Agarwal, and Rajesh Roy, 810K, Neutral]
Lawrence Bishnoi, a 31-year-old vegetarian with a handlebar mustache who authorities say controls a violent gang from his high-security prison cell in India, is at the center of a diplomatic brawl between Canada and India.
To Indian law-enforcement officials, Bishnoi is a “dreaded gangster” who over the past decade has made a daring prison break, threatened a Bollywood star, and found his gang accused of killing a rapper considered a rival. The notoriety has made him a hero in the Punjabi village where he grew up.
But in Canada, he is accused of being an Indian-government enforcer, whose criminal network violently punishes political dissidents and critics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Canada says Bishnoi’s group has helped Modi’s government contract criminal groups to attack and kill Canadian Sikh separatists considered by India as terrorists.
India calls the allegations preposterous, and both countries expelled top diplomats this month, exchanging fiery condemnations.
All of the attention has only bolstered Bishnoi’s emergence as an object of pop-culture fascination in India. A coming web series, “Lawrence—a Gangster Story,” will chronicle his life.
Authorities say his gang’s spread into Canada is part of his ambition to be a global player in the underworld. His network—dubbed this year by India’s counterterrorism force as “the dreaded gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s organized terror-crime syndicate”—is also active in Australia, Italy and Dubai, police and security officials said. “Bishnoi’s idea is to become a notorious don,” said a senior Indian police official.
The son of a wealthy landowner, Bishnoi comes from a Hindu sect—called the Bishnoi—that reveres nature and adheres to strict vegetarianism. Bishnoi forgoes even tea to avoid getting addicted to caffeine, says his cousin.
He was first charged in 2010 for allegedly rioting with a deadly weapon as a rowdy university student organizer, according to court records.
Public records show little about Bishnoi’s life after his student arrest, but in 2015, he made a brazen escape from authorities. He was being taken back to prison after a court appearance and when his police detail stopped for dinner at a roadside restaurant, Bishnoi ran and jumped into a waiting white car driven by a fellow gang member. An accomplice driving another car tried to run over the police officers, according to court filings. Bishnoi was recaptured two months later.
He has since remained in jail, law-enforcement officials said, charged with arson, murder, extortion, drug smuggling and terrorism—all of which he has denied. He is awaiting trial in the city of Ahmedabad in the high-security wing of India’s Sabarmati Central Jail—a prison that once held Mahatma Gandhi.
His cousin Ramesh Bishnoi says Bishnoi is under constant surveillance in a small cell in solitary confinement. He wakes up before dawn every morning, practices yoga and meditates.
Despite such restrictions on Bishnoi, his gang has grown in size and ambition. Indian criminals can often get access to cellphones in jail by bribing guards and officials, and it is likely Bishnoi is using the same tactics to communicate with and control his gang, said police and security officials.
Indian officials have denied that Bishnoi has access to cellphones. “He doesn’t have a lavish lifestyle in jail,” said Sweta Shrimali, deputy inspector general of police at the Ahmedabad jail.
But Bishnoi has been able to get his hands on a phone in the past. He participated in an interview that was broadcast on Indian television in 2023 while he was in another prison, in which he said people would throw phones to him over the prison wall.
Canadian law-enforcement officials and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this month thrust the Bishnoi group’s presence there into the open. Canadian police said Indian government officials hired Bishnoi gang members to commit several attacks in Canada, including recent murders. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said three murders between 2022 and 2024 were connected to Indian-government involvement.
India has long complained that Canada is allowing extremism to germinate in the local Sikh community, as activists agitate for the creation of an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan centered in the Indian state of Punjab. India has outlawed the movement at home, and feels Canada isn’t doing enough to tamp it down.
Bishnoi in the Indian television interview said he considered himself an Indian nationalist and was opposed to Khalistan. “I don’t think our country should be broken into pieces,” he said.
India denied Canada’s claim that Indian authorities worked with Bishnoi. A spokesman for India’s Foreign Ministry said that India has over several years warned Canada about infiltration by members of Bishnoi’s group in Canada, but Canadian law-enforcement officials didn’t act.
Canada has alleged the involvement of Indian government agents in the 2023 murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Canada has charged four Indians with Nijjar’s killing, all of whom were on student visas. Another Sikh, Sukhdool Singh Gill, was murdered in his home in the Canadian city of Winnipeg in September 2023—a day after he appeared on India’s most-wanted list.
Bishnoi’s connections to Canada can be traced to 2022. That year, one of Bishnoi’s closest associates who had moved to Canada—Satinderjit Singh, known as Goldy Brar—took credit for killing Sidhu Moose Wala, a popular Punjabi rapper who lived in Canada and whose death was mourned by Canadian hip-hop superstar Drake. Eight attackers allegedly chased Moose Wala in Punjab and shot him in his jeep.
Brar, who is wanted in India, has strong ties to Canada. He moved to Brampton, a city just outside of Toronto, in 2017 on a student visa. Brar couldn’t be reached for comment.
Earlier this year, an alleged member of Bishnoi’s group claimed to be behind a shooting at the Canadian home of popular Punjabi singer AP Dhillon. The shooter filmed himself firing a gun at Dhillon’s home, and posted the video on social media.
Such is Bishnoi’s notoriety that it is becoming difficult to separate fact from myth. In a 2020 court filing, Bishnoi claimed he wasn’t involved in many of the crimes being attributed to him. “He was already behind bars and could not have participated in any manner and the commission of the offences alleged therein,” said the filing.
Bishnoi comes from a village in the Indian state of Punjab and played cricket and volleyball and rode horses, said friends of his family and neighbors. The head of the village council, Surinder Kumar Bagria, recalls Bishnoi as a “disciplined, well-behaved, God-fearing boy and a bright student.”
Things changed after he went to college to study law in the state capital of Chandigarh, said Bagria. He entered a violent world of student politics, where rival factions routinely used violence to intimidate members. From there, authorities allege, his life of crime began.
In his childhood village, Bishnoi is revered. “He’s our hero,” said Praveen Kumar, a resident. “Hero of our village, hero of society.” Pollution-free environment a ‘fundamental right’, India’s top court says (Reuters)
Reuters [10/23/2024 2:01 PM, Sakshi Dayal, 37270K, Neutral]
Living in a pollution-free environment is a fundamental right, India’s Supreme Court said on Wednesday as it urged authorities to address deteriorating air quality in the north of the country.India’s capital Delhi recorded a "very poor" air quality index of 364 on Wednesday, according to the Central Pollution Control Board, which considers readings below 50 to be good. Swiss group IQAir rated Delhi the world’s most polluted city in its live rankings.The city battles toxic air every winter and authorities say much of the smoke comes from farmers illegally burning paddy stubble to clear their fields in the neighbouring breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana.The Supreme Court pulled up the governments of both states for taking "selective action" against stubble burning, saying penal provisions were not being properly implemented."These are not the matters only of implementing the existing laws, these are the matters of blatant violation of fundamental rights...the governments will have to address...how they are going to protect the right of citizens to live with dignity," the court said.It directed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s federal government to look into a proposal submitted by Punjab seeking extra funds to provide tractors and diesel to farmers with land holdings of "less than 10 acres".Delhi is enveloped by a hazy, toxic blanket as temperatures drop each year and cold, heavy air traps vehicle emissions, construction dust, and smoke.The top court has taken up the matter on several previous occasions but experts say its directives have not been properly implemented on the ground.Recognising this, the court on Wednesday directed the federal government and the governments of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and the western state of Rajasthan to submit compliance reports.Lives of citizens in several parts of South Asia are disrupted by air pollution every winter and a study has found that toxic air can cut life expectancy by more than five years.In Pakistan’s most populous province of Punjab, authorities have changed school timings and suspended outdoor activities because of pollution.IQAir rated provincial capital Lahore the world’s second most polluted city on Wednesday."All these steps are being taken to protect children from smog," said Marriyam Aurangzeb, a senior minister in Pakistan’s Punjab. Germany and India seek closer ties with high-level talks (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [10/23/2024 4:14 PM, Dharvi Vaid, 16.6M, Neutral]
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will arrive in New Delhi late on Thursday to co-chair — along with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — the 7th Intergovernmental Consultations (IGC) between India and Germany.
There is anticipation that this year’s IGC could herald a new era in Indo-German ties as it comes on the heels of Germany adopting the "Focus on India" paper last week.
"The German government wants to raise the strategic partnership that has underpinned our relationship with India since 2000 to a new level. The first steps towards implementation are to be agreed at the next Indo-German intergovernmental consultations," Germany’s Foreign Office said.
Germany’s ambassador to India, Philipp Ackermann, said Germany has not issued such a paper with any other country.
"It is a clear signal that ahead of this intergovernmental consultations, the German government sat together and agreed upon a holistic approach on their India policy," Ackermann told reporters on Tuesday.
The two-day consultations will begin on Friday.
"Both leaders will hold bilateral talks to discuss enhanced security and defense cooperation, greater opportunities for mobility of talent, deeper economic cooperation, green and sustainable development partnership and collaboration in the area of emerging and strategic technologies," India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a press release on Monday.
German ministers arrive for key business conference
The IGC also coincides with the Asia Pacific Conference of German Business, which is scheduled to launch on Thursday evening.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who will co-chair the conference, arrived in New Delhi in the early hours of Thursday along with Labor Minister Hubertus Heil and a vast business delegation.
On Thursday, Heil is expected to visit a school in New Delhi that prepares young Indians for a three-year vocational training program in Germany.
Meanwhile, Chancellor Scholz and Prime Minister Modi will address the conference on Friday.
Nearly 650 top business leaders and CEOs from Germany, India, and other countries are expected to participate in the conference, according to the Indian foreign ministry.
A ‘turning point’ for Indo-German relations?
The IGC, which was launched in 2011, is a whole-of-government framework under which ministers from both countries hold discussions in their respective fields of responsibility and report on the outcome of their ruminations to the Prime Minister and Chancellor.
India is among a select few countries with which Germany has such a high-level dialogue apparatus.
New Delhi and Berlin say that the format allows for a comprehensive review of cooperation and identification of new areas of engagement.
India and Germany are now looking at their relationship through the lens of the shifting geopolitical landscape around them.
Some political observers have opined that there is somewhat of a "Zeitenwende" or turning point in Indo-German ties.
"I think the changing political shifts with the war in Ukraine and another war in the Middle East has brought a focus on how do you transform your partnerships," Ummu Salma Bava, a political scientist at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told DW’s Delhi bureau chief Sandra Petersmann.
"I think we could then use the term Zeitenwende over here," Bava added. "But then we’ll have to do a lot of hard work to live up to that idea that it is a Zeitenwende." The India-Canada Breakdown (Wall Street Journal – opinion)
Wall Street Journal [10/23/2024 6:11 PM, Sadanand Dhume, 810K, Neutral]
Could an obscure separatist movement that aims to carve out a Sikh homeland in northern India derail New Delhi’s relations with the West? Probably not, but the recent meltdown in India-Canada relations underscores the perils of crude identity politics and clumsy statecraft in an era of large-scale immigration.
Last week Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, including the high commissioner—accusing them of working with a criminal network in a campaign of violent intimidation against dissident Sikhs in Canada. The latest accusations come roughly a year after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly blamed the Indian government for alleged links to the June 2023 gangland-style murder in British Columbia of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a 45-year-old Sikh separatist designated a terrorist by India in 2020.
In response to this latest escalation, India has expelled an equal number of Canadian diplomats. In an unusually blunt statement, the Indian Foreign Ministry said it “strongly rejects these preposterous imputations and ascribes them to the political agenda of the Trudeau Government that is centered around vote bank politics,” a reference to the widely held view in India that Mr. Trudeau’s policies are driven by his need for political support from Canadian Sikhs.
The crisis stems from a movement to carve out a separate Sikh homeland called Khalistan from the Sikh-majority state of Punjab and adjoining areas in India. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Khalistan movement, backed by Pakistan, claimed more than 20,000 lives, the majority of them Sikh. The lowlights of that period include the 1984 Indian army storming of Amritsar’s Golden Temple, the assassination that same year of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, the anti-Sikh pogrom that followed, which killed nearly 3,000, and the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight from Montreal to London by Khalistani extremists, which killed more than 300.
In India’s telling, Mr. Trudeau endangers Indian security by pandering to radicals among Canada’s nearly 800,000-strong Sikh population, the largest Sikh diaspora in the world. In a phone interview, Terry Milewski, a Canadian journalist who has written extensively about the Khalistan movement, says Mr. Trudeau has conflated a small minority of radicals with Canada’s overwhelmingly peaceful Sikh community. “At its core it’s a matter of naiveté and just plain dumbness on the part of politicians in Canada,” says Mr. Milewski. The well-organized Sikh vote, influenced by the leadership of local Sikh temples, can tip the balance in several parliamentary constituencies in British Columbia and Ontario. This gives Sikhs, who account for roughly 2% of Canada’s population, an outsize voice in Canadian politics.
Mr. Milewski doesn’t believe that Mr. Trudeau alone is to blame for courting support among Sikh radicals, but he says the prime minister’s Liberal Party “has gone further than any other party in pandering to Khalistanis.” On Mr. Trudeau’s watch, these radicals stepped up activities viewed with alarm by India. They put up “wanted” posters of Indian diplomats, demanded that Canadian Hindus leave the country, glorified the architect of the 1985 Air India bombing, and paraded a tableau celebrating Indira Gandhi’s assassination. They also organized a series of public referendums among Sikhs in other countries—including the U.S., Australia and the U.K.—to demand the creation of Khalistan.
America is dealing with the problem differently. In a separate case, a murder plot against a Sikh separatist in New York, the U.S. has filed charges against two Indian nationals, including a former employee of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external-intelligence agency. But the U.S. has pressed India quietly and in a spirit of cooperation while seeking to insulate the broader relationship from the fallout. “The Americans have approached this seriously,” Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian high commissioner to Canada, said in a phone interview. “With Trudeau we got political theater.”
The current disturbance offers lessons to both India and the West. For the U.S., which has spent over two decades cultivating closer ties with India, Mr. Trudeau’s showboating approach to a sensitive issue is a textbook case of how not to handle an important partner. For the Indian government, the stakes could scarcely be higher. India is in the midst of a partial rapprochement with China, but anyone who thinks New Delhi can afford to alienate the West is delusional. If India is seen as seeking to undermine freedom of speech and rule of law in the West, it risks being clubbed together with such adversaries as China, Russia and Iran.
Nobody can blame ordinary Indians—including Sikhs, the vast majority of whom rejected the Khalistan movement decades ago—for finding overseas Khalistani antics revolting. But this doesn’t change the fact that free speech is a fundamental value in the West. “We are not going to stop being free speech countries,” Mr. Mileswki says. “India can’t go around sending hit squads to the West.” NSB
Bangladesh bans student wing of ousted Sheikh Hasina’s party (Reuters)
Reuters [10/23/2024 10:05 PM, Ruma Paul, 37270K, Negative]
Bangladesh’s interim government has officially banned the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party, declaring it a "terrorist organisation".This move comes in response to escalating demands from the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, which outlined five key demands, including the abolishment of the current constitution, the removal of President Mohammed Shahabuddin, and the dissolution of the BCL.The Ministry of Home Affairs cited the BCL’s history of serious misconduct over the past 15 years, including violence, harassment, and exploitation of public resources. The ban under the Anti-Terrorism Act takes effect immediately, it said in a gazette notification issued late on Wednesday.The country has seen rising tensions and protests in recent months, after violent protests forced Hasina to flee to India on Aug. 5 and an interim government led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge.The protests, which began as a student-led movement against public sector job quotas in July, escalated into some of the deadliest unrest since the country’s independence in 1971, resulting in over 700 deaths and numerous injuries.During the unrest, BCL leaders and activists attacked protesting students and the general public with arms, killing hundreds of innocent people and endangering the lives of many more people, the statement added.There was no comments from the party while many senior Awami League leaders have either been arrested on accusations of having roles in the unrest or have gone into hiding.Founded in 1948, the BCL has historically been a significant faction within the Awami League.Previously, Hasina’s government had banned the country’s main Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, and its affiliated groups under the anti-terrorism law, blaming it for stoking deadly violence during student-led protests and involvement in alleged terrorist activities linked to their actions against the country during the 1971 independence war.However, the interim government has since lifted this ban following the fall of Hasina’s government. Sri Lanka Boosts Security as US, Israel Warn of Terrorist Attack (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [10/24/2024 3:34 AM, Anusha Ondaatjie and Asantha Sirimanne, 19591K, Neutral]
Sri Lanka beefed up security in tourism hot spots after the US and Israel warned citizens to leave popular beach resort areas because of possible attacks on visitors.The US Embassy in Sri Lanka told citizens on Wednesday to avoid Arugam Bay, a surf resort in Sri Lanka’s southeast coast, after “credible information warning of an attack targeting popular tourist locations.” Israel’s National Security Council asked its citizens to immediately leave Arugam Bay and the south and west coastal areas of Sri Lanka, adding that it has raised the travel alert level for the South Asian island nation “due to credible terrorism threats.”Sri Lanka’s acting inspector general of police Priyantha Weerasooriya said intelligence had been received around Oct. 7, which was the first anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel, of a threat to a “specific nationality of tourists.” Police and military presence has been beefed up over the past few days as that information was confirmed, he added.In 2019, an Easter Sunday bombing attack on hotels in the capital Colombo and churches killed scores of people, including nearly 50 foreign nationals. The attacks were blamed on a local jihadi group. Sri Lanka’s tourism has gradually recovered since then and the Covid pandemic, and authorities had been counting on a strong winter tourist season to help bolster the economy’s recovery after its worst crisis and debt default in 2022.Two suspects were taken into custody on suspicion over the alleged threats, police spokesman Nihal Thalduwa said by phone Thursday. He declined to give further details, including whether those arrested were foreigners or locals.Sri Lanka’s Derana TV showed images of military checkpoints and armored vehicles in Arugam Bay and in the hill resort of Ella and south coast of Weligama, also a popular surf spot. Local media reported that the initial intelligence about an attack had been received via India. Israel issues travel warning to parts of Sri Lanka over terrorism threat (Reuters)
Reuters [10/23/2024 11:32 AM, Ari Rabinovitch, 37270K, Negative]
Israel’s national security council called on Israelis on Wednesday to immediately leave some tourist areas in southern Sri Lanka over the threat of a possible terrorist attack.The agency said the warning pertained to the area of Arugam Bay and beaches in the south and west of Sri Lanka, and stemmed from "current information about a terrorist threat focused on tourist areas and beaches".The security council did not specify the exact nature of the threat and called on Israelis in the rest of Sri Lanka to be cautious and refrain from holding large gatherings in public areas."The Israeli security establishment ... is in close contact with the security authorities in Sri Lanka and is following the developments," it said.The U.S. embassy in Sri Lanka also released a security alert stating it had received "credible information warning of an attack targeting popular tourist locations in the Arugam Bay area"."U.S. citizens are strongly urged to avoid the Arugam Bay area until further notice," it added but did not give details.Germany’s Foreign Ministry also urged travellers to avoid the area or to leave it as soon as possible, citing "indications of possible attacks on tourist destinations".Police security has been beefed up in the area and officials are on high alert, police spokesperson Nihal Thalduwa said in a video statement released in Colombo."This area is a popular spot for surfing and this has attracted a large number of Israeli tourists. We are working to ensure they remain safe," Thalduwa said.Sri Lanka, famed for its pristine beaches, tea plantations and historic temples, is seeing a resurgence in tourists as the island nation recovers from a severe financial crisis.In the first eight months of this year, 1.5 million tourists arrived in Sri Lanka, including a total of 20,515 from Israel, government data showed. Troops deployed to Jewish community center in Sri Lanka surfing town after U.S. warns of possible attack in area (CBS News)
CBS News [10/23/2024 3:28 PM, Staff, 59828K, Neutral]
Sri Lanka deployed troops and increased police patrols around a Jewish community center in a popular surfing town on Wednesday after the U.S. embassy warned American citizens of a possible attack on popular tourist sites in the area.
The stepped-up security and warning came after social media posts called for a boycott of Israeli-owned businesses in eastern Arugam Bay.
"The information was that a place called ‘Chabad House’ run by Israelis could be a target and we have taken measures to strengthen security," said police spokesman Nihal Thalduwa.
He said there had recently been tensions between the Jewish tourists visiting Chabad House and the bay’s Muslim-majority population.
The army and the navy along with police commandos were deployed in the area to step up patrols and man roadblocks, he said.
Protests by local Muslim groups against Israel’s fighting of Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have drawn support from the wider community in the predominantly Buddhist South Asian nation.
Israelis accounted for less than 1.5% of the 1.5 million tourists who visited the island in the first nine months of this year - or around 20,000 people altogether.
But Arugam Bay, a hotspot for surfing around 250 miles east of Colombo by road, is a popular destination for Israeli tourists.
In a rare notice of an imminent threat, the U.S. embassy in Colombo said Wednesday that it had "received credible information warning of an attack targeting popular tourist locations" in eastern Arugam Bay.
"Due to the serious risk posed by this threat, the Embassy imposed a travel restriction on Embassy personnel for Arugam Bay effective immediately and until further notice," the embassy said, adding that "U.S. citizens are strongly urged to avoid the Arugam Bay area."
Britain and Canada shared the U.S. warning on their own websites, while the Russian embassy advised its nationals to avoid crowded places while visiting the island.
Israel’s National Security Council meanwhile "raised the travel alert level for Sri Lanka due to credible terrorism threats at the tourist and coastal areas."
Israel urged its citizens in Arugam Bay and other southern and western coastal areas to "leave the country or at least to the capital Colombo, where there is a high presence of local security forces." The Level 4 travel alert included the Sri Lankan cities Ahangame, Galle, Hikkaduwa and Weligama.
Along with Arugum Bay and the other coastal regions, Israel’s National Security Council raised the travel risk for the rest of Sri Lanka to Level 3. The National Security Council ranks travel warnings on a scale of 1 to 4, with warnings assigned Level 4 indicating a "high threat level" and warnings assigned Level 3 indicating a "moderate threat." A place given the latter ranking means Israeli security recommends avoiding unnecessary travel to the destination.
"In addition, the NSC stresses that Israelis in Sri Lanka must exercise increased precaution," the travel notice said. It urged citizens currently in Sri Lanka to "avoid openly exhibiting anything that could identify you as Israeli, such as t-shirts with Hebrew writing, or any symbol that discloses your religion or nationality."
Security officials also cautioned against "gatherings of Israeli citizens in public places where there is no security."
New hotline
There have been no attacks in Sri Lanka since the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which killed 279 people, including 45 foreign nationals.
The coordinated attack against three luxury hotels and three churches was blamed on a local jihadist group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
Tourism numbers fell sharply afterward, and took another hit during a 2022 economic meltdown that precipitated widespread civil unrest.
But foreign visitor numbers have picked up after an International Monetary Fund bailout last year helped stabilize the economy.
Following the U.S. embassy warning, police said they were unveiling a new security plan to protect tourists island-wide.
"In view of the war situation in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the police, together with intelligence agencies, are working on a plan to protect tourists and resorts," said a statement issued by the Sri Lanka Police.
It did not give details, but said a hotline had been established for tourists to alert authorities of any safety concerns. NPP Poised for Victory in Sri Lanka’s Parliamentary Election (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [10/23/2024 8:13 AM, Rathindra Kuruwita, 1198K, Neutral]
Less than two months after Sri Lankans elected a new president, they are set to vote in parliamentary elections on November 14. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) seems poised for victory.
The NPP’s rivals are warning voters against voting for the NPP, drawing attention to the risks of giving the coalition too much power. They are calling on voters to ensure a strong opposition. For example, former President Ranil Wickremesinghe has urged voters to elect experienced politicians from other parties. He warned that the NPP could dismantle the economy.
Based on the presidential election result, some are predicting that the general election will throw up a hung parliament. Dissanayake secured 43 percent of the vote in the presidential election. If the NPP gets a similar percentage of votes in the parliamentary election, it could fall short of the 113 seats needed for a simple majority in the 225-member parliament.
However, it seems almost certain that the NPP will secure more votes in the upcoming election than in the presidential election.
Several politicians and experts said that the presidential election was primarily about the economy.
But Dissanayake’s win was also a reflection of widespread anger toward the entrenched political establishment. Those prioritizing economic stability likely voted for Wickremesinghe or Sajith Premadasa, as both their parties, the United National Party (UNP) and the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), ran campaigns focused on fearmongering.
During the campaign, fake videos misrepresenting the words of NPP members and warning voters that the NPP would confiscate their bank deposits, land, and extra vehicles circulated on social media. There was also an organized effort to convince the public that Dissanayake would be rejected by the international community, without whose support Sri Lanka could not finalize debt restructuring or attract foreign direct investment. These tactics particularly influenced middle-aged and senior voters, who refrained from voting for the NPP due to these fears.
The fact that 4.3 million Sri Lankans voted for Dissanayake shows that a large portion of the population was exhausted by the existing political culture in Sri Lanka. Wickremesinghe may have stabilized the economy, albeit at the cost of future growth and a decline in living standards, but he failed to address the broader demand for political reform - a key issue raised by protesters who ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022. Instead of responding to calls for greater checks and balances, reduced corruption, and increased transparency, Wickremesinghe’s administration oversaw a rise in corruption and crime, with important agreements being signed with foreign companies behind closed doors. His MPs also shielded corrupt colleagues, engaging in practices previously unheard of in Sri Lankan politics, such as the import of substandard medicines under the emergency procurement system.
Like Rajapaksa before him, Wickremesinghe failed to gauge the public mood, and as a result, those opposed to Dissanayake were left with only fearmongering as their strategy.
A month has now passed since Dissanayake assumed office, and the dire predictions by their political opponents mentioned above have not materialized. The average Sri Lankan is satisfied with the steps the NPP government has taken so far. Farmers and fishermen have received fuel and fertilizer subsidies, pensioners have seen a modest pay rise, and underutilized land has been distributed to farmers who will work it under the guidance of the Department of Agriculture. There have been no shortages of goods, and many believe that corrupt individuals will soon be brought to justice. As promised, the NPP has continued with the IMF program, and diplomatic relations with Sri Lanka’s key partners remain cordial.
Given these developments, it is likely that many who did not vote for Dissanayake in September, particularly Wickremesinghe’s supporters, will now vote for the NPP in November.
Wickremesinghe, along with many senior political figures, has announced that he will not contest the general election. The Rajapaksa family has similarly opted out. This leaves Sajith Premadasa’s SJB as the main challenger to the NPP.
However, the SJB’s position heading into the November 14 election is significantly weaker than it was during the presidential race for two reasons. First, the party, which remained united during the presidential campaign due to a belief that Premadasa had a chance of winning, has begun to fracture since his defeat. In mid-October, Hirunika Premachandra, leader of the SJB women’s wing, resigned following an argument with Premadasa’s wife.
SJB MP Ajith Mannapperuma also announced that he would not contest the general election, despite figuring on the Gampaha District Nomination List. Mannapperuma explained that his decision was prompted by his removal as Gampaha District Organizer without prior consultation, just 24 hours after signing his nomination papers.
Earlier, popular actress Damitha Abeyratne, who played a key role in Premadasa’s presidential campaign, was denied a nomination due to a dispute with SJB Ratnapura District leader Hesha Vithanage. These internal rifts have disillusioned SJB supporters.
More crucially, the SJB leadership has not fully grasped why they lost the presidential election. Many within the party believe they were defeated because Wickremesinghe took a significant portion of their votes. They point to the fact that Dissanayake’s margin of victory over Premadasa was 1.3 million votes, while Wickremesinghe secured 2.2 million. SJB MPs believe that had Wickremesinghe not contested, those votes would have gone to Premadasa. Now that Wickremesinghe is not running in the general election, they are convinced they will attract those 2.2 million votes and potentially match or even surpass the NPP’s vote count on November 14.
However, analysts who have studied voting patterns suggest that this simplistic arithmetic is unlikely to hold.
Uditha Devapriya, chief international relations analyst at Factum, an Asia-Pacific-focused foreign policy think tank based in Colombo, told The Diplomat that Wickremesinghe’s voters are unlikely to support Premadasa this time.
"Many Sri Lankan politicians mistakenly believe that public sentiment can be reduced to simple arithmetic. During the run-up to the presidential election, many SJB members insisted that it would be impossible for the NPP, which secured only 3 percent of the vote in the 2019 presidential election, to surpass them, given that they had received over five million votes. But we all saw what happened," he said.
"We must also remember that Premadasa received significant support from the North and East in September - those were not SJB votes but Tamil National Alliance (TNA) votes. The TNA will contest separately in this election. It’s likely that the NPP will see a substantial increase in its share of the Northern and Eastern vote in November," Devapriya added.
The inability of the NPP’s opponents to understand the public’s desire for change has severely undermined their chances. By continuing to view elections through outdated frameworks, they have failed to address the electorate’s demand for new political practices, leaving them ill-prepared to compete against the NPP in the upcoming election. Central Asia
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan Resist Russia’s Coalition-Building In ‘Sovereignty Test’ (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [10/24/2024 4:14 AM, Chris Rickleton, 235K, Neutral]
It seems ironic that just as Russian President Vladimir Putin was working to counter perceptions of his country’s diplomatic isolation, Moscow would face two setbacks in a region where it was once confident of loyalty: Central Asia.
In the space of a few days -- and within a week of the 16th annual BRICS summit that has taken on particular geopolitical importance for Putin -- both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan rejected opportunities to join multilateral groups close to the Kremlin’s heart.
In the case of Kazakhstan, that group was BRICS itself, which Astana said it would not apply to become a full member of, preferring to retain its observer status.
For Uzbekistan, it was the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a troubled, five-member trade bloc whose emergence played a foundational role in Russia’s decade-long rift with Ukraine.
Both countries remain close to Moscow and, as such, this can hardly be classed as a mutiny.
But it highlights the tricky position the region has found itself in since 2022 of trying to distance itself from the threat of secondary sanctions relating to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine while also attempting not to incur Moscow’s wrath.
But analysts say these latest shows of independence by Astana and Tashkent have already led to great displeasure in the Kremlin.
Kazakhstan Says Better Off Without BRICS
Four countries -- Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates -- attended the summit in Kazan on October 22 as new members of BRICS, whose name comes from the first five members of the organization: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
Several other countries have either applied for membership or are mulling accession.
In an interview with RFE/RL, Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Russia is hopeful the expanding organization "will be a vehicle to challenge the Western-dominated international order and particularly the dominance of the United States."
Kazakhstan, however, is watching the bandwagon rather than jumping on it.
In an October 16 interview with the private media outlet Tengri News, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev’s spokesman, Berik Uali, said that while Kazakhstan had been sounded out over membership in the organization, it would not be applying for such "in the foreseeable future."
He added the decision was made based on, among other things, "issues related to the development prospects of this association."
Uali also stressed that Kazakhstan viewed the United Nations as "the sole platform for addressing crucial global issues" but noted the global body and its Security Council are "not free of shortcomings" and need reforms.
Kazakhstan has been credited with skillfully navigating the darkening geopolitical skies since 2022 -- a remit well suited to Toqaev, a former foreign minister and onetime UN deputy secretary-general.
Astana is formally a Russian ally, insofar as it is still a member of the Moscow-headquartered Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), as well as one of the founding members of the Russian-dominated EEU, where Armenia, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan are also members.
When German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Astana last month for talks with leaders of the five Central Asian countries, Toqaev raised eyebrows by calling Russia "militarily undefeatable" and urging Scholz and other world leaders to consider a China-Brazil peace plan to end the Ukraine war.
That proposal is strongly opposed by Kyiv, while Putin has named China, Brazil, and India as potential mediators in any peace talks over Ukraine.
But the question of actually joining BRICS became "an exercise in asserting sovereignty," according to Nargis Kassenova, director of the program on Central Asia at Harvard University.
Kassenova argues that both Russia and China -- Kazakhstan’s other big partner -- would have strongly encouraged Astana to be part of the group.
"Having Kazakhstan, an aspiring middle power, join [BRICS] would increase the gravitas of the organization. [But] it would also reposition Kazakhstan further from the West and closer to the proponents of the ‘multipolar’ world to this or that degree challenging U.S. hegemony," she told RFE/RL.
And that move might have been too confrontational for a country that likes to maintain strong ties with the West and "does not yet have the weight and security of countries like Brazil, India, South Africa or Turkey," Kassenova added, naming yet another country considering joining BRICS.
Uzbekistan’s EU Flirtation Ends
For Kassenova, Kazakhstan’s repeated references to the UN system serve as a "normative foundation of its [diplomatic] balancing act."
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov showed his bemusement with the reasoning in Moscow’s first official response to Kazakhstan’s position on October 21, where he stressed BRICS’ role as a force for good for Central Asian countries.
Lavrov pointed out that Kazakhstan’s cooperation with the UN had not been hindered by the other organizations that it is currently a member of, such as the CSTO, the EEU, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that Russia and China also belong to.
Nor does its membership in the five-country Organization of Turkic States (OTS), which "at the initiative of Turkey, is now strengthening ties and is on the rise," Lavrov said.
The OTS was a symbolic organization before 2022. Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, the OTS has indeed been "on the rise."
Russia-centered groupings, meanwhile, have become more toxic, arguably none more so in the context of the sanctions affecting Russia and loyal ally Belarus than the EEU, whose provisions make the movement of goods more difficult to track once they enter a member state like Kazakhstan.
The decision of whether to join this trade group was once facing Ukraine, with then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to choose closer ties with Russia over an EU Association Agreement sowing the seeds for the Euromaidan protest movement that led to his overthrow.
Ukraine’s nonmembership in the bloc diminished its potential, and for a long time it has looked like the EEU’S sixth member would be Uzbekistan.
Pro-business President Shavkat Mirziyoev initially took a much fonder view of the organization than predecessor Islam Karimov, who obliquely condemned it as an attempt to reform the Soviet Union.
But Mirziyoev was adamant Uzbekistan needed time to prepare for the full removal of trade barriers, and top Russian official Valentina Matviyenko embarrassed Tashkent into silence when she announced after a visit to the country that "the president of Uzbekistan has made a decision…the approval process will not be delayed."
It now appears the decision is a negative one, with the deputy speaker of the Uzbek parliament, Akmal Saidov, announcing Tashkent’s decision to remain an observer state had come after a study of more than 1,000 EEU documents.
"Regarding our Kazakh colleagues, their country has received very few benefits from joining the [EEU]," Saidov added pointedly.
The timing for that observation could hardly have been better, coming just as Moscow’s agricultural safety regulator Rosselkhoznadzor announced a ban on the import of a range of foodstuffs -- including tomatoes, melons, and wheat -- from Kazakhstan.
While Rosselkhoznadzor cited Kazakhstan’s failure to correct faults in "phytosanitary safety," foreign media covering the ban linked the measure to Kazakhstan’s nonentry into BRICS.
Alisher Ilkhamov, an Uzbek political analyst and founder of the Central Asia Due Diligence research company, argues that Uzbekistan has similarly faced Russian pressure for its decision not to join the EEU, which he said has probably been known to the Kremlin for some time.
One manifestation of this pressure might have been Russia’s decision to wade into an Uzbek school classroom incident involving the Russian language last month, he said.
Another might have been the more recent call of a Russian lawmaker to impose a visa regime on Uzbek citizens, potentially affecting millions of labor migrants.
"Uzbekistan is still very much economically dependent on Russia, but with Ukraine, and sanctions, the EEU has become much less attractive," Ilkhamov told RFE/RL.
"If before Russia was the best logistical route to the EU, now this route has some problems and [Tashkent] is seeking new trade corridors," he said. US and Turkmenistan discuss joint methane emission reduction initiatives (News.Az)
News.Az [10/23/2024 1:11 PM, Staff, 20K, Positive]
The US and Turkmenistan have pinpointed climate change, especially cooperation on reducing methane emissions, as a key partnership focus, News.Az reports.
Turkmenistan’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Akhmet Gurbanov, and Director of the Central Asian Department of the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs of the US Department of State Mark Cameron discussed the issue in a meeting.
Both parties shared insights on the current status and future potential of their bilateral relations during the discussions. They identified key areas for partnership, including political cooperation, trade and economic connections, climate change, and humanitarian efforts.
To conclude the meeting, participants highlighted the significance of strengthening mutually beneficial and constructive dialogue. Ancient Cities Unearthed in Mountains of Central Asia (New York Times)
New York Times [10/23/2024 4:14 PM, Alexander Nazaryan, 831K, Neutral]
Michael Frachetti was on an archaeological dig high in the mountains of southeastern Uzbekistan in 2015 when a forestry official approached him. “You know, I’ve seen some of those kinds of ceramics in my backyard,” the official said, referring to the artifacts emerging from the dirt. “Come see.”
The casual tip would lead Dr. Frachetti, an archaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis, to Tugunbulak, an enormous fortified city dating back to a medieval empire. He and his team would spend nearly a decade trying to map out the site, as well as the one he’d originally come to Uzbekistan to explore, known as Tashbulak.
The results of their research, published on Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, describe the two sites as “the largest and most comprehensive urban plans of any medieval city” in Central Asia situated at high altitude (defined here as about 6,500 feet above sea level).“I can’t tell you how exciting this study is,” said Peter Frankopan, a Silk Road expert at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study.
The findings complicate the prevailing image of the Silk Road, which facilitated the exchange of goods and ideas between people from China to Venice between the second century B.C. and the 15th century A.D. Many experts had previously thought that the famous trade route passed only through the lowlands.
But in fact, “they were dragging the caravans to the mountains,” said Farhod Maksudov, an archaeologist at the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences. Because the surrounding Malguzar Mountains were rich in iron ore, Tashbulak and Tugunbulak may have been centers of weapons manufacturing. Dr. Maksudov said that excavations at the two mountain sites had yielded pottery, coins and jewelry, which may have been traded for weapons and other objects.“These sites hint at the significance of ores and metals,” Dr. Frankopan said.
The willingness of medieval merchants to detour up the mountains suggests a complexity of trade routes absent from popular conceptions of the Silk Road. “Stereotypically, we think that it’s like a highway,” Dr. Maksudov said. “No — it’s very highly networked.”
Initiated by the Chinese explorer Zhang Qian, who went in search of “heavenly horses” for the Han dynasty, the Silk Road eventually connected people living thousands of miles apart, in ways both predictable and not.
Because of their position between East and West Asia, the Central Asian cities of Samarkand and Bukhara served as important Silk Road hubs. Much later, they became cities in the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. Dr. Maksudov explained that the U.S.S.R. imposed a Marxist version of history on the region, celebrating large urban developments while downplaying the contributions of medieval nomadic peoples, like those who possibly settled Tashbulak and Tugunbulak.“Scholars used to think about nomadic and sedentary societies as separate and distinct,” Dr. Frankopan said. “These sites show clearly that reality was much more complicated, with mobile communities not only creating settlements but large ones, too.”
When Dr. Frachetti arrived in Uzbekistan in 2010, the high plateau where Tashbulak and Tugunbulak had been situated had long reverted into “grassy, undulating fields with large, pyramidical mounds,” the new paper noted.
Still, Tugunbulak, an area of 390 acres, proved difficult to study because of its sprawling size. Uzbekistan has strict rules against drones, making the most obvious means of exploring the sites potentially unfeasible. Drs. Frachetti and Maksudov worked for months with officials at the Uzbek embassy in Washington, D.C., to secure permission for aerial surveys.“It’s very difficult to bring equipment into Uzbekistan,” said Zach Silvia, an archaeologist at Brown University. “It’s quite the feat that he’s able to do this work.”
Still, there were challenges. High winds blew one drone away. And many of the images that drones did capture were “subpar,” Dr. Frachetti said. Exploring a site as large as Tugunbulak with ground-penetrating radar was unrealistic in those initial stages of the project.
In 2022, Dr. Frachetti returned to Uzbekistan with a high-end drone outfitted with a lidar camera. Lidar, which stands for “light detection and ranging,” creates topographical images by measuring how long it takes a laser beam to travel between the camera and a surface. Attaching the camera to a drone allowed Dr. Frachetti to explore difficult-to-access mountain sites. He and his team conducted one flight over Tashbulak, capturing 43 million surface data points. Tugunbulak required 22 flights, netting 421 million data points.
The lidar images were superior to standard drone photography but still lacked clarity in places. Dr. Frachetti turned to his Washington University colleague Tao Ju, a computer scientist who used a custom algorithm to parse the lidar data, ultimately finding evidence of walls, roads and buildings.
Just a small fraction of Tugunbulak has been unearthed, work that no algorithm can do.“You really don’t fully understand what you’re dealing with until you just go back to the old methods,” Dr. Silvia said. “You go back to the spade at the end of the day.” Short of planes, Russia asks Central Asian airlines to run domestic flights (Reuters)
Reuters [10/23/2024 9:02 AM, Gleb Stolyarov, 37270K, Neutral]
Facing a shortage of planes due to Western sanctions, Russia is in talks with some Central Asian countries for their airlines to run domestic flights and help meet a pick up in travel demand.Russian airlines, which use many Western aircraft delivered before the war in Ukraine, are struggling to meet growing demand for air travel as sanctions hinder access to parts and domestic production takes time to ramp up.Transport Minister Roman Starovoit said last week Russia was in talks with so-called "friendly" countries, including Kazakhstan, about foreign airlines operating domestic flights, Russian news agencies reported. Russia has also approached Uzbekistan, which is considering the proposal, an Uzbek government source told Reuters.
"To date, there has been no official request from the Russian side on the issue," Kazakhstan’s transport ministry said. Tajik and Krygyz authorities also said they had not received any official requests. Uzbekistan’s transport ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SANCTIONS RISK
Artem Zhavoronkov, a partner at Russian law firm Nordic Star, said Central Asian airlines were unlikely to want to risk running Russian domestic flights as that might lead to them in turn facing Western sanctions.
"This is a serious risk and hardly any large companies from neighbouring countries will be prepared to accept it," Zhavoronkov said.
Russian airlines saw passenger numbers drop 14.7% to 94.7 million in 2022 as the Western sanctions hit and much of Europe closed its airspace to them.
After a 11.3% rebound in 2023, passenger numbers are on track to jump again this year, according to data from Rosaviatsia, Russia’s civil aviation watchdog.
Moscow plans to supply Russian airlines with up to 1,000 domestically-made aircraft by 2030, but production launches are being constantly postponed.
Sergei Chemezov, head of state conglomerate Rostec, on Wednesday told parliament that mass production of the MS-21 aircraft and the Superjet New would start in 2025 and 2026, respectively.
Russian rules currently only allow foreign airlines to fly between Russian cities and airports abroad. An airline industry source said foreign airlines may struggle to secure approval from lessors and insurers even if the rules are updated.
Kazakhstan’s transport ministry said it was focused on meeting rising demand at home, where passenger traffic is up about 15% from last year.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Sara Wahedi@SaraWahedi
[10/23/2024 7:53 AM, 98K followers, 4.7K retweets, 22K likes]
My friend in Kabul told me she was chatting with her sister while walking home today. She shared a joke - they both laughed. A Talib was passing them, and told them to stop walking. He asked why he was hearing their voices. “It’s illegal for strangers to hear you. Keep quiet.”
Sara Wahedi@SaraWahedi
[10/23/2024 7:57 AM, 98K followers, 1.1K retweets, 9K likes]
I must implore the women of the world that the surveillance, control and erasure of Afghan women will not be contained in Afghanistan. It will spread. This implicates all of us. Because if laughing, chatting is illegal in Afghanistan, it can be anywhere else.
Sara Wahedi@SaraWahedi
[10/23/2024 12:51 PM, 98K followers, 626 retweets, 4.4K likes]
The law isn’t new. It’s been in effect for months. The world simply does not hear from Afghan women enough: https://amp.dw.com/en/how-talibans-new-rules-further-silence-women-in-afghanistan/a-70054470
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[10/23/2024 7:03 PM, 238.3K followers, 89 retweets, 184 likes]
This is crazy. TV channels in Afghanistan are now down to audio-only broadcasts because the Taliban banned showing any living beings. Just when you think it couldn’t get worse, it does.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[10/23/2024 4:10 PM, 238.3K followers, 69 retweets, 201 likes]
The Taliban sought to attend the BRICS summit but were denied entry. Instead, all the BRICS countries called them out to reopen girls’ schools. The Taliban is a pariah state, isolated and shunned by the international community.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[10/23/2024 12:01 PM, 238.3K followers, 48 retweets, 163 likes]
Another bombing in Kabul. The one thing the Taliban promised was security, but they have failed to deliver. Attacks occur almost daily, and the war in Afghanistan will only get bloodier if they don’t form an inclusive and legitimate government. Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[10/24/2024 12:34 AM, 6.7M followers, 95 retweets, 239 likes]
The 79th anniversary of the United Nations today is an occasion to recommit to the principles and objectives of the @UN Charter, which provides the basis for a peaceful, and prosperous world. The growing number of international conflicts including unconventional crises such as climate change, heightened geo-political tensions, major power rivalry and deepening economic woes of Global South are a strong evidence of world order being in massive disarray. At the heart of this global crisis is the United Nations’ inability to enforce its Charter in an equitable manner, especially when the matter involves the question of the right to self-determination for peoples under foreign occupation such as in Palestine and Jammu and Kashmir. As long as the provisions of the UN’s founding document are ignored, the crises will continue to deepen. On this UN Day, I reiterate Pakistan’s commitment to multilateralism. We will continue to work with the UN to make this world a better place for all where rights of all peoples especially those struggling for their just, legitimate and inalienable rights are realized.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[10/23/2024 11:27 PM, 214.1K followers, 3 retweets, 10 likes]
ICYMI: Here is the video of our event earlier today with Pakistan’s finance minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/microsite/4/node/124246
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[10/23/2024 1:14 PM, 238.3K followers, 9 retweets, 43 likes]
Pakistan’s raked in over $30 billion from the U.S. for its so-called war on terror, all while playing both sides and backing Taliban. Now, with TTP gaining ground, Pakistan will likely seek more U.S. aid. Let’s hope the U.S. doesn’t fall into the same trap again.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[10/23/2024 5:18 PM, 238.3K followers, 12 retweets, 26 likes]
Pakistani forces violently disrupted a peaceful Baloch protest, once again showing their disregard for the voices demanding justice for the ongoing plight and disappearances of their people. #FreeBalochistan India
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[10/23/2024 11:58 PM, 103.1K followers, 3.5K retweets, 21K likes]
Raising Day greetings to ITBP Himveers and their families. This Force stands tall as a symbol of valour and dedication. They protect us, including in some of the most challenging terrains and tough climatic conditions. Additionally, their efforts during natural disasters and rescue operations inspire immense pride among the people. @ITBP_officia
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[10/23/2024 11:59 AM, 103.1K followers, 6.5K retweets, 29K likes]
The BRICS Summit in Kazan was very productive. Had the opportunity to discuss diverse issues and meet various world leaders. I thank President Putin, the Russian people and Government for their hospitality. Here are the highlights.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[10/23/2024 10:06 AM, 103.1K followers, 4.6K retweets, 34K likes]
Had a wonderful meeting with President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in Kazan. Discussed ways to boost bilateral cooperation between India and Uzbekistan including trade and cultural linkages. @president_uz
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[10/23/2024 9:51 AM, 103.1K followers, 13K retweets, 85K likes]
With fellow BRICS leaders at the Summit in Kazan, Russia. This Summit is special because we welcomed the new BRICS members. This forum has immense potential to make our planet better and more sustainable.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[10/23/2024 9:07 AM, 103.1K followers, 11K retweets, 73K likes]
Met President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Kazan BRICS Summit. India-China relations are important for the people of our countries, and for regional and global peace and stability. Mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual sensitivity will guide bilateral relations.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[10/23/2024 6:38 AM, 103.1K followers, 7.3K retweets, 36K likes]
My remarks during the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1dRJZdPbVXQKB
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[10/23/2024 3:04 PM, 3.3M followers, 714 retweets, 8.1K likes]
Good to meet so many counterparts at the BRICS dinner tonight.
Madiha Afzal@MadihaAfzal
[10/23/2024 9:33 AM, 42.9K followers, 9 retweets, 45 likes]
If these reports are true, this would mark a significant shift for India https://tribune.com.pk/story/2504576/india-likely-to-support-pakistans-brics-membership-bid-at-kazan-summit
Derek J. Grossman@DerekJGrossman
[10/23/2024 11:47 PM, 94.1K followers, 24 retweets, 195 likes]
Bear hugs matter in geopolitics. Putin to Modi: "Our relations are so tight that I thought you would understand me without translation." The remark drew a chuckle from PM Modi, whom Putin has called his "good friend" on several occasions. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/pm-modi-putin-bilateral-meeting-india-russia-relations-translation-brics-summit-2621217-2024-10-22 NSB
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladesh@BDMOFA
[10/23/2024 4:20 PM, 54K followers, 19 retweets, 99 likes]
On #UNDay2024, @ChiefAdviserGoB Prof Yunus reaffirms Bangladesh’s commitment to peace, justice & equity and calls for reforming @UN to be more inclusive, transparent and responsive to deliver to aspirations of all people, from the #Rohingya to the people of #Gaza and #Lebanon.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[10/23/2024 11:22 PM, 214.1K followers, 19 retweets, 202 likes]
I’d always thought, when BRICS decided to expand last year, that Bangladesh would’ve been a solid candidate to join (given its regional economic heft). BRICS may expand some more, but now Bangladesh is at more of a disadvantage, w/an economic slowdown and unsettled ties w/India.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[10/23/2024 10:02 AM, 133.2K followers, 21 retweets, 192 likes]
We extend our sincere gratitude to the thousands who demonstrated their unwavering support for Malima’s victory by attending the victorious rally (‘Building the Nation Together—We are for Malimawa!’) held this evening (23) in Polonnaruwa.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[10/23/2024 4:11 AM, 133.2K followers, 16 retweets, 171 likes]
A heartfelt gratitude to the thousands who attended the inaugural victorious public rally series (‘Building the Nation Together—We are for Malimawa!’) held this morning (23) in Trincomalee. Your unwavering support is truly appreciated.
Karu Jayasuriya@KaruOnline
[10/23/2024 8:27 AM, 53.7K followers, 1 retweet, 6 likes]
The President’s intervention to protect consumers is much needed. Whether it’s rice, sugar, or eggs, huge margins are kept by importers & middlemen. Indicative prices must be announced as one of the policy instruments to ensure that essential goods are affordable to all. Central Asia
MFA Kazakhstan@MFA_KZ
[10/24/2024 3:15 AM, 58.9K followers, 2 retweets, 3 likes]
On October 24, Kazakhstan joins the international community in celebrating #UnitedNationsDay. We stand with @UN to advance shared agenda & reaffirm our strong dedication to the UN Charter that has been uniting global efforts since its establishment in 1945.
MFA Tajikistan@MOFA_Tajikistan
[10/23/2024 11:36 AM, 5K followers, 3 retweets, 4 likes]
Start of working visit to the city of Kazan, Russian Federation https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/16020/start-of-working-visit-to-the-city-of-kazan-russian-federation
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[10/23/2024 7:12 PM, 202.3K followers, 4 retweets, 20 likes]
Closing the first day of the visit, President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev was solemnly awarded with the Order of “Duslyk” of the Republic of #Tatarstan for a significant contribution to the development of cooperation between Uzbekistan and Tatarstan, strengthening friendship and mutual understanding between the nations.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[10/23/2024 6:21 PM, 202.3K followers, 3 retweets, 24 likes]
Continuing the visit to #Kazan, President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev held a meeting with the Head (Rais) of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov. Current issues of further expansion of multifaceted cooperation between the regions of #Uzbekistan and #Tatarstan were discussed.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[10/23/2024 5:40 PM, 202.3K followers, 3 retweets, 18 likes]President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev participated in the welcoming ceremony for the heads of delegations at the #BRICS summit in #Kazan. The President of #Uzbekistan was welcomed by the President of the #Russian_Federation Vladimir #Putin. Tomorrow President Shavkat Mirziyoyev will address the plenary session of the “BRICS Plus” summit.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[10/23/2024 3:24 PM, 202.3K followers, 4 retweets, 35 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev also met with President of the #BRICS New Development Bank @dilmabr Promising areas of partnership include developing joint projects and programs in education and technological development, social sector support, modernization of industry, infrastructure and logistics, digitalization, energy and utility networks. A joint working expert group will prepare a package of projects.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[10/23/2024 11:58 AM, 202.3K followers, 47 retweets, 391 likes]
On the sidelines of the “#BRICS” summit, President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev held a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Republic of #India @narendramodi Special attention was paid to the implementation of programs and projects in the sphere of high technologies, AI, industry, energy, pharmaceuticals and transport communications. It was agreed to adopt a medium-term Program of industrial cooperation.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[10/23/2024 9:37 AM, 202.3K followers, 14 retweets, 71 likes]
President of #Uzbekistan Shavkat #Mirziyoyev arrived on a working visit to the city of #Kazan to participate in the events of “#BRICS plus” summit. In the airport he was greeted by the Head (Rais) of the Republic of #Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov, governor of Kazan city Ilsur Mersin and other officials.{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.