SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS

epubdos : Afghanistan

Prepared for the U.S. Department of State

Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs

By TechMIS
www.TechMIS.com

Mobile User Copy

TO:	SCA & Staff
DATE:	Wednesday, October 30, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan

Taliban publicly flog Afghan woman, 3 men amid UN outcry (VOA)

VOA [10/29/2024 10:38 AM, Ayaz Gul, 4566K, Negative]
Taliban judicial officials said Tuesday that four people, including a woman, were publicly flogged in eastern Afghanistan for allegedly committing offenses such as "illicit relations" and "running away from home."

The United Nations has condemned such punishment being increasingly inflicted on Afghans under Taliban rule.

The Supreme Court of the de facto radical Afghan rulers announced the latest punishments Tuesday, saying they were done in Nangarhar province after a local court sentenced the four "criminals" to 39 lashes each.

The Taliban’s top court reported earlier this week that five Afghans, including a woman, were flogged in public 39 times each in Parwan and Faryab provinces for committing acts that are considered crimes in Afghanistan, including adultery and homosexuality. It stated that the individuals were also sentenced to jail terms ranging from six months to one year.

Since regaining power in 2021, Taliban leaders have imposed a criminal justice system in line with their strict interpretation of the Islamic law of Sharia, leading to the public flogging of hundreds of Afghan men and women. This has drawn persistent outrage and calls from the U.N. to halt the practice for being in breach of international laws and human rights.

Richard Bennett, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, has stated in his latest report, released Tuesday, that the use of corporal punishment by the Taliban amounts to "torture and other ill-treatment."

Bennett documented an "alarming increase" in such punishment since the beginning of 2024. He quoted the Taliban’s Supreme Court as reporting that 276 Afghans, including 46 women, were publicly punished between January and August.

"While the vast majority reported in the 80 official announcements were for crimes such as theft and adultery, individuals were also punished for ‘crimes’ such as sodomy, homosexuality, running away from home, and aiding a woman’s escape from home - underscoring the specific risks faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other gender-diverse persons and cisgender women," the U.N. envoy reported.

Bennet said that the Taliban publicly flogged 63 people, including 15 women, in a single day in June, saying each person was lashed 15 to 39 times.

He questioned the enforcement of the criminal justice system by the Taliban, saying that the situation is worsened by the absence of legal protections, including access to lawyers and denying other due process rights. "There are credible reports of courts in several provinces denying defendants, including children, access to their lawyers," Bennett said.

The report also detailed an alarming rise in cases of sexual violence against Afghan women in Taliban custody.

The Taliban defend their policies, including restrictions on Afghan women’s access to employment and work, saying their governance is in line with the Sharia. They reject international criticism of the Taliban government as an interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan.

No country has officially recognized the Taliban as the legitimate ruler of the war-torn, impoverished South Asian nation, citing human rights concerns and the treatment of Afghan women.

Taliban ‘bars Afghan women from hearing each other’s voices’ in yet another brutal crackdown (Daily Mail)

Daily Mail [10/29/2024 1:00 PM, Perkin Amalaraj, 88008K, Negative]
The Taliban has banned women from hearing other women’s voices, in its latest bid to control and subjugate an entire gender in Afghanistan.

Announced on Monday, the new rule is feared to mean that women will now no longer be able to talk to each other.

Afghanistan’s minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, Khalid Hanafi said: ‘Even when an adult female prays and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear.’

‘How could they be allowed to sing if they aren’t even permitted to hear [each other’s] voices while praying, let alone for anything else.’

He said these are ‘new rules and will be gradually implemented, and God will be helping us in each step we take.’

Any woman who dares to break the new rules will be arrested and sent to prison, the terror group said.

Since the terror group took control of the nation in August 2021, after the US’ heavily criticised exit, the Taliban has worked to strip away women’s rights. According to the UN, more than 70 decrees, directives, statements, and systemised practices have targeted what women can and can’t do.

Women have already been banned from speaking loudly in their own homes, and are not allowed to be heard outside.

Women are also ordered to cover their faces ‘to avoid temptation and tempting others’, and are banned from speaking if unfamiliar men who aren’t husbands or close relatives, are present.

‘If it is necessary for women to leave their homes, they must cover their faces and voices from men’ and be accompanied by a ‘male guardian’, according to the rules approved by the Taliban’s supreme leader.

One former Afghan civil servant told the Telegraph of her despondency.

‘They [the Taliban] are waging an all-out war against us, and we have no one in the world to hear our voices.

‘The world has abandoned us. They left us to the Taliban, and whatever happens to us now is a result of Western government policies.

‘I feel depressed. The world is advancing in technology and having fun with their lives, but here we cannot even hear each other’s voice.’

Another woman told the newspaper: ‘They want us not to exist at all, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

‘They may succeed at some point, as many are taking their lives due to the pressure.

‘They think ruling Afghanistan is only about suppressing women- we didn’t commit a crime by being born as women.’

The UN reported that just 1% of women believe they have influence in their communities, and that just nearly one in 10 women knows another who has tried to commit suicide since the Taliban took over.

On top of this, nearly one in five women said they hadn’t spoken to another woman outside of their immediate family in three months.

A human is not designed to see what I saw (BBC)

BBC [10/29/2024 6:53 PM, Rosie Mercer, 67197K, Neutral]
A former Welsh Guard has described having a "catastrophic breakdown" after witnessing untold horrors in Afghanistan.

Steven Peters was deployed to Helmand Province in 2009, during a period which became known as the British Army’s bloodiest summer in more than 50 years.

During one patrol, he witnessed an interpreter with whom he had a close personal relationship step on an improvised explosive device (IED).

"What I saw that morning - a human being is not designed to see," said Sgt Peters, 42, from Anglesey.

He is one of 10 former soldiers who have spoken to the BBC as part of Helmand: Tour of Duty, a new documentary marking ten years since the withdrawal of British combat troops from Afghanistan.

Article contains details some readers may find distressing

In September 2009, Sgt Peters’ platoon had less than a month of their tour remaining when they were chosen to lead an assault on a Taliban-held compound.

"I had built a strong relationship with one of the interpreters, Ahmed Popal," Sgt Peters told the BBC.

"He was telling me that he was looking forward to the end of the week because it was time for him to go home to see his young children, his family."

The assault began in darkness.

"We were patrolling through a high populated Taliban area. Knowing it’s the most dangerous kilometre square area in the world, that was reported at the time, we called it IED central," he said.

Suddenly, straight ahead of Sgt Peters, Interpreter Popal stepped on an IED.

‘There was nothing left of that human’

Sgt Peters said all he could remember of the moments immediately afterwards was "dust, pitch black, the smell of smoke, the smell of burnt flesh, and screaming".

"I was sat down with my legs in this massive crater," he said.

"I could see a dark object at the bottom of that crater, so I got my torch out and started looking.

"What I saw that morning – a human being is not designed to see. It was Popal.

"I realised that his body was cut in half – there was nothing left from his belly button down. So I’m thinking, how can I... how can I save this person?"

Sgt Peters gave Interpreter Popal mouth-to-mouth, but he died soon afterwards.

"There was nothing left of that human, of Ahmed [Popal]," said Sgt Peters.

"And all he wanted to do was to go home and see his family the next day.

"Because of the bond that I had with this interpreter and what we had been through, and the conversations that we had, it hit me really hard. And it’s affected me a lot.

"I walked straight into my little compound where I was living, dropped to my knees and I just started crying and crying. And I was there for a good 45 minutes – I wanted to punch, I wanted to scream."

Ten men lost their lives whilst serving in the Welsh Guards battlegroup during the summer of 2009.

Sgt Peters said his platoon was in a "very bad place" by the end of the tour.

"In the years following that tour, everything came to a head," he said.

"I had a catastrophic breakdown. The therapy lasted nine months, I’m glad it happened – because if it did, that breakdown would still be chasing me to this day."

Over 20 years of deployment in Afghanistan, there were 457 deaths of UK armed forces personnel.

The number of deaths and casualties peaked during 2009 and 2010.

In August 2021, seven years after the withdrawal of British troops and 20 years since the war began, the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, including Helmand Province.

"I remember the day Kabul fell," said Sgt Peters, who left the British Army last year.

"What was it all for? All those lives that were lost. It was all taken away."

Sgt Peters said despite this, he felt proud of his service in Afghanistan.

"We went there following the mission, the political mission, and we did our part in 2009.

"And I’m proud of what I did during my time in Afghanistan."

Pakistan

Five killed in attack on dam construction site in Pakistan’s Balochistan (Reuters)

Reuters [10/29/2024 2:15 PM, Saleem Ahmed, 37270K, Negative]
Five people were killed in an attack by armed men on the construction site of a small dam in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, officials said on Tuesday, underscoring a worsening security situation in the mineral-rich area.

The province has seen an increase in strikes by separatist ethnic militants. This month, 21 miners working at privately run coal mines were killed in an attack.

"We accept responsibility for killing seven informers and instrumentalists in Panjgur, Kech and Quetta," said separatist militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) in a statement emailed to journalists.

A decades-long insurgency in Balochistan by separatists has led to frequent attacks against the government, army and Chinese interests in the region to press their demands for a share in regional resources.

China runs a strategic deepwater port as well as a gold and copper mine in the province and has been working with Islamabad to improve infrastructure in the underdeveloped province. Several attacks have targeted migrant workers employed by smaller, privately operated mines.

The five dead, and two wounded, all worked at the construction site in Panjgur, spokesperson for the Balochistan government Shahid Rind said in a statement, saying the attack took place late at night.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said close to a dozen assailants were involved in the attack and that the victims were watching over equipment at the dam construction site on behalf of a private contractor.

"Such cowardly attacks will not deter the government’s resolve to develop Balochistan," Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement.

Besides the separatists, the region is also home to Islamist militants, who have become resurgent since 2022 after revoking a ceasefire with the government.

Gunmen kill 5 workers at southwest Pakistan dam (VOA)

VOA [10/29/2024 10:08 AM, Ayaz Gul, 4566K, Negative]
Officials in Pakistan’s violence-stricken Balochistan province said Tuesday that gunmen attacked workers at the site of a dam, killing five and wounding two others.

The deadly shooting occurred in the Panjgur district of the sparsely populated Pakistani province renowned for its abundant natural resources. Residents reported that the assailants fled the scene on motorcycles immediately after the attack.

A provincial government spokesperson, Shahid Rind, confirmed casualties, saying district authorities launched an investigation into the attack. The two injured men and bodies have been transferred to a local hospital, he said.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the violence in Balochistan, where several separatist groups are active and routinely target Pakistani security forces as well as government installations.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned Tuesday’s attack. "Those who attacked the personnel working on the dam are enemies of the development in Pakistan and Balochistan," Sharif’s office in Islamabad quoted him as saying.

Earlier this month, heavily armed assailants stormed a coal mine in the impoverished province’s Duki district and killed 21 coal workers.

The Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, claimed responsibility for the Panjgur shooting, asserting that the slain men were members of pro-government armed militias and informers. The insurgent group, listed as a global terrorist organization by the United States, claims to be fighting for the province’s independence.

The BLA also took credit for a suicide car bombing in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi in early October that officials said resulted in the deaths of two Chinese engineers and several local security personnel.

Separately, gunmen killed a police officer Tuesday in an attack targeting a health office in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where polio vaccination teams had gathered as part of an ongoing national immunization campaign.

The deadly shooting in the Orakzai district prompted authorities to suspend the anti-polio drive in the area. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but provincial authorities suspected Islamist insurgents could be behind it.

Militants active in the area have previously targeted polio teams and their police escorts, suspecting them of spying for the government.

The attack on polio workers comes as the number of active paralytic poliovirus cases in Pakistan surged drastically to 41 this year, up from only six in 2023.

Meanwhile, Russia’s embassy in Islamabad said on its social media platform X that it was "verifying reports about the alleged abduction of a Russian citizen" in the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

A report in The Moscow Times has identified the missing man as a tourist cyclist and a resident of the city of St. Petersburg. Pakistani officials have not commented on the reported abduction being claimed by militants loyal to the banned Pakistani Taliban outfit.

Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, both sit on the border with Afghanistan, have experienced almost daily militant attacks. The violence has killed more than 1,000 Pakistani civilians and security forces this year alone, according to the Islamabad-based independent Center for Research and Security Studies.

Pakistan’s Textile Firms Struggle With Energy, Borrowing Costs (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [10/29/2024 9:09 AM, Ismail Dilawar, 27782K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s smaller textile companies are curtailing production or selling assets to pay debt after high energy and borrowing costs hurt businesses.

Ghazi Fabrics International Ltd. on Tuesday said it would partially curtail the production of its weaving unit because of the prevailing economic conditions, increase in the cost of electricity and non-availability of quality cotton at affordable price. Nazir Cotton Mills Ltd. has decided to sell obsolete machinery to pay its debt, said the company in a separate filing to Pakistan Stock Exchange.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government has raised energy prices to comply with conditions set by the International Monetary Fund for the current $7 billion loan program. Now, electricity prices are higher than house rents for some.

The nation’s economy grew by 3.1% in the year ended July but the industrial sector contracted. Business people and consumers have protested high costs across the nation in recent months.

Consistent high inflation adversely impacted the purchasing power of consumers, which resulted in loss of business, Bata Pakistan Ltd. said in its quarterly report. The company’s quarterly net income dropped to the lowest in almost two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nazir Cotton’s losses almost doubled in the quarter-ended September.

Pakistan Gets One Bid From Shortlist for Airline Stake Sale (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [10/29/2024 11:29 AM, Kamran Haider, 27782K, Positive]
Pakistan received just one bid for a stake in the national carrier as five other consortiums stayed away from one of the country’s major privatization attempts.

The bidder deposited “earnest money” for the transaction with the nation’s Privatisation Commission by Tuesday’s deadline, Ahsan Ishaq, spokesman for the Privatisation Ministry, said by phone, without disclosing the name of the interested party.

A total of six groups were shortlisted to bid for shares in loss-making Pakistan International Airlines including private airline Airblue Ltd., Arif Habib Corporation Ltd., Air Arabia’s Fly Jinnah, Y.B. Holdings Pvt., Pak Ethanol Pvt. and real estate consortium Blue World City.

This transaction is a part of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s pledge to the International Monetary Fund to privatize the government’s loss-making entities to reduce the financial burden on the country’s economy.

India

Top Modi Minister Authorized Crimes in Canada, Official Alleges (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [10/29/2024 4:04 PM, Brian Platt, 27782K, Negative]
Indian Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah authorized a wave of violence across Canada that included extortion and homicides, said a senior Canadian government official.

David Morrison, Canada’s deputy foreign minister, told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that he had confirmed the identity of Shah in a newspaper report earlier this month.

The Washington Post reported that Canadian security agencies

had collected evidence that “a senior official in India” had “authorized the intelligence-gathering missions and attacks on Sikh separatists” in Canada. The story went on to say that a Canadian source identified Shah as being the Indian official in question.

“The journalist called me and asked me if it was that person,” Morrison said. “I confirmed it was that person.”

Morrison was appearing at the committee alongside other Canadian police and government officials about the escalation of a diplomatic dispute two weeks ago. Canada ejected India’s high commissioner and five other diplomats from the country, and India then responded with a similar action.

A year earlier, India expelled 41 Canadian diplomats after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were “credible” allegations that Narendra Modi’s government helped orchestrate the killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. But instead of the matter ending there, Canadian officials allege India continued a violent campaign against activists in Canada.

India has rejected Canada’s allegations as “preposterous,” even as the US has charged an Indian national and an Indian government employee with attempting to kill a Sikh activist on American soil. Modi’s government launched an internal probe of the allegations that concluded rogue agents were behind the plot, Bloomberg News has reported.

Nathalie Drouin, Trudeau’s national security adviser, told the parliamentary committee Tuesday that she had personally attended a meeting where evidence was presented connecting Indian agents and diplomats to the crime wave in Canada.

Drouin flew to Singapore for an Oct. 12 meeting with her Indian counterpart, during which both sides agreed to keep the matter quiet while they worked on addressing it, she said.

“Instead, the government of India chose to not respect our agreement and go public

the next day, Sunday, Oct. 13, and use again their false narrative that Canada has not shown any evidence,” Drouin said during testimony to a Canadian parliamentary committee.

In response, Canadian police held an extraordinary news conference the following day to outline their evidence, and the government announced it was ejecting six Indian diplomats — including High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma.

Drouin said Canadian officials also decided at that point to brief international media on the evidence Canada held, selecting the Washington Post.

In Singapore, Canadian officials provided evidence that Indian government agents in Canada had been collecting information on certain Canadians, primarily Sikh activists, and then passing that information to an organized crime outfit to carry out extortion, assassination plots and killings, she said.

“Given how alarming the evidence was, we knew we had to act and act quickly,” Drouin testified. “We needed the agents of the government of India to stop their illegal activities in Canada, and sought a collaborative approach with Indian officials.”

Drouin said Canadian officials gave multiple options to India on how to proceed, including Canada’s preferred option of India publicly opening an investigation into the matter, similar to the approach India has taken with the US assassination case.

But she said India quickly made it clear they weren’t interested in that course of action.

“By going public, the government of India clearly signaled that they were not going to be accountable or take the necessary actions we needed to ensure public safety,” Drouin said.

Drouin ended her testimony by stressing that Canada did not act lightly, and does not want to ruin its relationship with India especially in the broader context of having to counteract China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

“Canada remains open to cooperation with India, but we need to have a meaningful engagement from India on our grounded and serious concerns,” she said.

Canada alleges Indian Home Minister Amit Shah ordered campaign targeting Sikh separatists (AP)

AP [10/29/2024 11:01 PM, Staff, 31638K, Negative]
A Canadian official alleged Tuesday that Indian Home Minister Amit Shah ordered a campaign of violence, intimidation and intelligence-gathering targeting Sikh separatists inside Canada.

Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison told Parliament members of the national security committee that he had confirmed Shah’s name to The Washington Post, which first reported the allegations.

"The journalist called me and asked if it was that person. I confirmed it was that person," Morrison told the committee.

Morrison did not say how Canada knew of Shah’s alleged involvement.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said a year ago that Canada had credible evidence agents of the Indian government were involved in the murder of Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia in June 2023.

Canadian authorities have repeatedly said they have shared evidence of that with Indian authorities.

Indian government officials have repeatedly denied Canada has provided evidence and have called the allegations absurd. India’s embassy in Ottawa didn’t immediately respond to messages for a request for comment on the allegation against Shah.

On Oct. 14, Canada expelled the Indian high commissioner and five other diplomats, alleging they were persons of interest in multiple cases of coercion, intimidation and violence aimed at quieting a campaign for an independent Sikh state known as Khalistan.

Canada is not the only country that has accused Indian officials of plotting an assassination on foreign soil. The United States Justice Department announced criminal charges in mid-October against an Indian government employee in connection with an alleged foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.

In the case announced by the Justice Department, Vikash Yadav, who authorities say directed the New York plot from India, faces murder-for-hire charges in a planned killing that prosecutors have previously said was meant to precede a string of other politically motivated murders in the United States and Canada.

Nathalie Drouin, Trudeau’s national security adviser, told the committee Tuesday that Canada has evidence the Indian government first gathered information on Indian nationals and Canadian citizens in Canada through diplomatic channels and proxies.

She said the information was then passed to the government in New Delhi, which allegedly works with a criminal network affiliated with Lawrence Bishnoi.

Bishnoi is currently in prison in India, but Drouin said his vast criminal network has been linked to homicides, assassination plots, coercion and other violent crimes in Canada.

Before the Royal Canadian Mounted Police went public with allegations that Indian diplomats were persons of interest in criminal investigations, Drouin said there was an effort to work with the Indian government to ensure accountability.

Drouin said a meeting was held with Modi’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, in Singapore two days earlier.

She said the decision was made to go public when it became evident the Indian government would not cooperate with Canada on proposed accountability measures.

That included asking India to waive diplomatic immunity for the persons of interest, including the high commissioner in Ottawa. Drouin said this was not seen as likely.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said it took the extraordinary step of talking publicly about ongoing investigations because of threats to public safety.

The Indian government denies the allegations and has expelled six Canadian diplomats in return.

Nijjar, 45, was fatally shot in his pickup truck after he left the Sikh temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia. An Indian-born citizen of Canada, he owned a plumbing business and was a leader in what remains of a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland.

Four Indian nationals living in Canada were charged with Niijar’s murder and are awaiting trial.

Drouin and Morrison were called as witnesses at the committee alongside Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Mike Duheme, as well as the director of Canada’s spy service.

Canada alleges Indian minister Amit Shah behind plot to target Sikh separatists (Reuters)

Reuters [10/30/2024 3:28 AM, Kanishka Singh and Sarita Chaganti Singh, 37270K, Negative]
The Canadian government alleged on Tuesday that Indian Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah, a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was behind the plots to target Sikh separatists on Canadian soil.

The Indian government did not immediately respond but has dismissed Canada’s prior accusations as baseless, denying any involvement.

The Washington Post newspaper first reported that Canadian officials alleged Shah, considered the number two in the Modi government, was behind a campaign of violence and intimidation targeting Sikh separatists in Canada.

Canadian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison said to a parliamentary panel on Tuesday that he told the U.S.-based newspaper that Shah was behind the plots.

"The journalist called me and asked if it (Shah) was that person. I confirmed it was that person," Morrison told the committee, without providing further details or evidence. The High Commission of India in Ottawa and the Indian foreign ministry had no immediate comment.

The Indian home ministry directed queries to the foreign ministry.

Canada told India about Shah’s alleged role in the plots around October 2023, one Indian government source told Reuters in New Delhi on Wednesday.

But New Delhi thinks the information is very weak, flimsy and does not expect it to cause any trouble for Shah or the government, the source and another government source said.

Both spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorised to speak to the media.

India has called Sikh separatists "terrorists" and threats to its security. Sikh separatists demand an independent homeland known as Khalistan to be carved out of India. An insurgency in India during the 1980s and 1990s killed tens of thousands.

That period included the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that left thousands dead following the assassination of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards after she ordered security forces to storm the holiest Sikh temple to flush out Sikh separatists.

Canada in mid-October expelled Indian diplomats, linking them to the 2023 murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil. India also ordered the expulsion of Canadian diplomats.

The Canadian case is not the only instance of India’s alleged targeting of Sikh separatists on foreign soil.

Washington has charged a former Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, for allegedly directing a foiled plot to murder Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen and Indian critic in New York City.

The FBI warned against such a retaliation aimed at a U.S. resident. India has said little publicly since announcing in November 2023 it would formally investigate the U.S. allegations.

The accusations have tested Washington and Ottawa’s relations with India, often viewed by the West as a counterbalance to China.

Will the West Isolate New Delhi Amid the India-Canada Row? (The Diplomat)

The Diplomat [10/29/2024 3:05 AM, Rushali Saha, 1198K, Neutral]
When Canadian President Justin Trudeau first accused New Delhi of involvement in the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in 2023, the response from the Five Eyes - an intelligence-sharing alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States - was fairly muted. A year later, the picture is somewhat different.

In a serious diplomatic escalation, on October 13, Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, including Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Verma, due to their alleged involvement in "activities which threaten public safety in Canada… including murder" - a covert reference to Nijjar. Dismissing these allegations as "preposterous imputations… centered around vote bank politics," India, in a tit-for-tat move, promptly expelled six Canadian diplomats, including the acting high commissioner.

This time around, although short of full-throated support for member Canada, the response from the Five Eyes is much more visible.

In going public first, Trudeau ensured that this dispute does not remain confined to the bilateral level. The Canadian government has repeatedly made references to ongoing cooperation among the Five Eyes members on the ongoing investigation into the murder of Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh separatist, in a suburb of Surrey, Canada on June 18, 2023, even indicating coordinated action on possible sanctions against India.

The U.S. and U.K. have come out strongly in support of Canada, with Washington openly accusing India of not cooperating with Canada’s investigations and London calling on New Delhi to cooperate with Canada’s legal process as it was "the right next step." The response from the other members was relatively neutral, with Australia calling for respect for sovereignty and rule of law "of all countries" while New Zealand said the "alleged criminal conduct… if proven, would be concerning" without naming India.

This raises the important question: how will Canada’s allegation affect New Delhi’s relations with other Western countries, specifically the Five Eyes?

First, despite the Five Eyes grouping being one of the oldest and most integrated partnerships born from spying arrangements dating back to World War II, it is still an ad-hoc arrangement, rather than an alliance between nations. This means that unlike a NATO-type agreement where members are legally bound to take collective action, there is no legal imperative for Five Eyes members to act collectively. Neither are they concerned with aligning their policy positions, as is seen often within the EU member states. Moreover, for a group whose existence was publicly disclosed only in 1999, and gained international attention after the 2013 Snowden leaks, some members remainreticent about publicly sharing information regarding security briefings.

Second, India’s ties with the other members have only grown since Canada publicly came out with its allegations against New Delhi. Australia-India trade has grown, and free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations that are in full swing are expected to conclude in the next two months. Similar FTA negotiations with the U.K. have continued, with the deal now reportedly within "finger-touching distance," and the next round expected to resume next month. Despite the ups and downs in India-U.S. relations under President Joe Biden, hesaid Washington’s partnership with New Delhi is "stronger, closer, and more dynamic than any time in history" when he met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Quad summit last month. In recent years, bipartisan support for deepening ties with New Delhi has grown in New Zealand, paralleling the increased frequency of high-level diplomatic visits. Given such deep linkages in multifaceted directions, derailment of ties would require realignment of geopolitical alignments, which at this stage seems unlikely.

Finally, Canada’s allegations have failed to derail India’s ties with other European countries. Germany is clearly eager to advance relations with India, evinced from the recently released "Focus on India" strategic document, which describes New Delhi as "a democratic partner of Germany for stability and security." During German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s recent visit to New Delhi, both sides signed several agreements, including a mutual legal assistance treaty for criminal matters, a pact for the exchange and protection of classified information, and a joint declaration focused on employment and labor. Additionally, Modi announced the launch of a green hydrogen roadmap, designed to enhance cooperation in renewable energy between the two countries.

During his recent visit to India, the first by a Spanish premier in 17 years, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez signed several MoUs covering rail transport, culture and tourism. He and Modi inaugurated India’s first private military aircraft plant in Vadodara. The plant will manufacture the Airbus C295 aircraft, the first of which is expected in 2026. Under an agreement signed in 2021, Airbus Defense and Space and India’s Tata Group will manufacture 56 cargo and troop-carrying C295 aircraft, of which 16 will be assembled in Seville and 40 in India. These examples are emblematic of how New Delhi’s ties with Europe are only growing and unlikely to get derailed by external developments.

For New Delhi, Khalistani activism overseas remains a challenge, not just in Canada but in the U.S., Australia, and across Europe. Both Germany and the U.S. have prosecuted Indian intelligence agents in the past, which does raise thorny questions about India’s position on transnational killings. In light of growing concerns about New Delhi’s human rights abuses, it is a challenge for the Modi government to be fully transparent on its position on transnational killings.

However, as it currently stands, the onus is on Ottawa to prove its hefty allegations against India. With all eyes watching, it remains to be seen if Canada’s hardline approach proves counterproductive or forces other countries to rethink ties with India. As it currently stands, India has been able to steer the international current in a manner that does not undermine New Delhi’s interests, as it did when Western countries raised concerns about India’s "neutral" position on Russia.

Indian election panel rejects opposition Congress party’s complaint on voting (Reuters)

Reuters [10/30/2024 4:12 AM, Staff, 16637K, Neutral]
India’s election panel has rejected a complaint by Congress, the largest opposition party, regarding vote counting in recent state elections that dashed its expectations, warning that the "frivolous" doubts expressed could provoke turbulence.

The Election Commission dismissed the party’s concerns about the functioning of electronic voting machines as completely unfounded and criticised it for questioning the process.

"Such frivolous and unfounded doubts have the potential of creating turbulence," it said in a statement on Tuesday.

A spokesman for the Congress party did not immediately comment on the matter.

The Congress, which has ruled India for 54 of the 77 years since independence from Britain, is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s biggest opponent.

It had been widely projected to win this month’s state elections in northern Haryana, bordering New Delhi, the capital, but results showed that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party had the majority.

Immediately afterwards, the party said it would not accept the "totally unexpected, completely surprising and counter-intuitive" result and complained this month to the election panel about the counting of votes.

Indian law allows candidates to complain to the election commission about counting issues and seek redress. If unsatisfied by its response, they may appeal to the courts.

India Begins to Examine Curbs on Most Potent Greenhouse Gas (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [10/29/2024 11:28 PM, Rajesh Kumar Singh, 5.5M, Neutral]
India’s government and the power industry are exploring a possible phase down of what’s considered to be the most potent greenhouse gas, although high costs of alternatives stand in the way of a regulation.

Sulfur hexafluoride gas, or SF6, which is used as an insulator in power transmission equipment, has a warming potential that’s 23,500 times that of carbon dioxide. It’s found in circuit breakers and switchgears, the demand for which is surging due to the government’s push for more electrification.

The stable nature that makes SF6 an excellent insulator also aggravates its impacts on the climate. The gas can linger in the atmosphere for more than 1,000 years and has high heat-trapping properties. Fluorinated gases, including SF6, accounted for just 2.3% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, but their use has increased rapidly over the past three decades, a trend that is now causing global concerns.

“There’s a need to regulate it and a discussion has started,” Ghanshyam Prasad, chair at the government’s Central Electricity Authority said in an interview. “We’ll need to do it at some point, but for that to happen, costs of alternative technologies need to become affordable.”

Substitutes would require changes in the design and building of equipment that could end up inflating the cost by two to three times, according to Reshu Madan, chief executive officer for global products and services at Sterlite Power.

That’s a big red flag for India’s competitive power market, where the government is already concerned with supply constraints increasing the cost of transmission equipment.

Economies of scale can break the impasse, according to Vikram Gandotra, president-elect at Indian Electrical and Electronics Manufacturers’ Association. “Demand needs to be aggregated from utilities,” which in turn will drive down costs, he said.

Meanwhile, new regulations in some parts of the world have thrust manufacturers into action. The EU has passed norms for a staggered phase-out of SF6-containing switchgears starting from 2026, while US states such as California and Massachusetts have also set rules for either ending their use or limiting leakages.

The equipment employing SF6 is designed to be tightly insulated, but leaks can develop throughout its life cycle, from manufacturing and installation to decommissioning, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Significant leakages can occur from aging gear, the agency warned, adding that about 67% of all SF6 emissions in the US in 2022 came from power utilities.

The energy capital powering India and poisoning its residents (Reuters)

Reuters [10/29/2024 10:53 AM, Bhasker Tripathi, 88008K, Neutral]
Social worker Manonit Ravi says it has been "living hell" enduring the pollution in his village in India’s Singrauli region, where residents regularly battle the effects of toxic ash from nearby coal-fired power plants.

The village of Chilika Daad lies only 4 km from Vindhyachal coal power plant run by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC Vindhyachal), one of the world’s top "super polluter" power plants.

Chilika Daad’s 25,000 people have been displaced twice as India has pushed to mine more coal in recent decades to power its growing economy.

Some 900 km southeast of Delhi, the Singrauli region provides up to 15% of India’s power generation, thanks to its abundant coal reserves and water supplies.

"For years we have lived with all kinds of poisons around us," said Ravi, 34, pointing to a mountain of debris from a nearby coal mine.

NTPC Vindhyachal is India’s biggest power plant and has a capacity of 4.76 gigawatts (GW). It released about 25 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022, placing it in the top 10 of global polluters, according to satellite data from Climate Trace, an organisation that uses technology to track greenhouse gas emissions.

Arsenic, mercury and fluoride poisoning in the Singrauli region are widespread because of the heavy metals released by the coal power production, multiple government and non-profit investigations have shown over the years.

NTPC Vindhyachal has sought to address the concerns by trial ling carbon capture and utilisation and storage (CCUS) technology to curb greenhouse gases.

But critics say it does not go far enough to curb pollution and the money could be better spent on renewable energy.

A BET ON CARBON CAPTURE

NTPC Vindhyachal began trials of the CCUS technology at one of its 13 coal-burning units in 2022.

The plant successfully captured 20 tons of carbon dioxide per day between August 2022 and January 2023, and NTPC said it was now constructing a unit that can use the captured carbon to produce methanol, a cleaner biofuel alternative to gasoline and diesel.

NTPC said the unit trialling carbon capture was "running successfully" in reply to a request for a comment using India’s Right to Information Act.

Given that India has no immediate plans to phase out coal, efforts like NTPC Vindhyachal’s carbon capture trial are better than nothing, said Sandeep Pai, research director at the Swaniti Initiative, a policy think tank.

"Whether India deploys the technology in all its plants or not is a question for the future, but there is no harm in piloting a new technology," he said.

But Mark Jacobson, who has studied the use of carbon capture in the United States, the world’s largest user of the technology, was more downbeat.

Given how much energy and materials it uses to function, it can end up increasing CO2 emissions, said Jacobson, a researcher at Stanford University.

When trying to transition to green energy, some analysts also say it would be better to invest in more widely used renewable energy than CCUS, which is more expensive.

Renewable energy installations with storage are becoming increasingly cheap, which could end up making CCUS a bad investment over the long-term, said Vibhuti Garg, a director at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a think tank.

"Developers and investors both are betting their money on cleaner and less riskier renewable energy projects with storage capacity," she said.

Asked to address the criticisms, NTPC Vindhyachal said its CCUS unit was cheaper than those being trialled in other countries and that its decision to carry out the CCUS trial was well-informed and based on a decade of research.

COAL INVESTMENT

Even though India only gets about 12% of its electricity from solar, wind and hydro power, it has the capacity to generate more than 40% of its power from renewable energy. The government wants this share to rise to 50% by 2030 to meet its net zero target by 2070.

But the intermittent nature of renewables and high costs of battery storage mean the country is still heavily dependent on coal, with devastating health implications for local populations.

India relies on coal for 70% of its electricity. The government has said it will use coal for power generation until at least 2040, and has not yet given an official timeline for phasing out its use.

According to a flagship climate science report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global coal use has to fall by 80% from 2010 levels by 2030 to meet the global aim to hold warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Sarita Kewat, 40, said her family was feeling the fallout from the coal mining in the region.

Her home in Muher village, which has been in the family for three generations, is on land that has been marked for clearance to expand one of the coal mines that feeds NTPC Vindhyachal.

When land is marked for coal digging, residents are required by law to vacate the premises and be compensated.

Kewat says her family has been struggling to survive on their land for years because of coal mining.

"We were poor when we used to forage forests for livelihoods but life was better," said Kewat, the walls of her house cracked from coal blasting in adjacent mines. "Nobody listens to our concerns."

Jagat Narayan Vishwakarma, a local social worker, filed a case in India’s top environmental court, the National Green Tribunal, against local polluting industries and government bodies in the Singrauli region in 2014.

The case led to coal mines and power plants installing anti-pollution measures and NTPC Vindhyachal told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it was taking steps to make sure ash from the power plants does not contaminate the region’s water supplies.

The court also ordered plants and mining companies to provide drinking water to communities.

But Vishwakarma was not fully satisfied with the outcome and filed a new case with a group of activists with the National Green Tribunal in February demanding coal plants compensate local populations for the health burden they cause.

"Why should people in Singrauli be expected to live terrible lives filled with pollution to fuel India’s growth?" he asked.

JUST ENERGY TRANSITION

Despite the lack of green energy plans in Singrauli, current coal mines are expected to exhaust their reserves over the next 15 to 20 years, meaning the local population may soon have to start to transition out of a coal economy anyway, said Pai from the Swaniti Initiative.

NTPC Vindhyachal and other coal plants and mines provide hundreds of thousands of jobs in the region so a lot of people would be affected.

The industry employs people directly, such as coal machine operators and truck drivers, but also helps sustain the regional economy, providing jobs to people in services, such as in restaurants and grocery shops.

"It is important to study people’s skills, their aspirations and what new sectors can come in, to provide alternate jobs to people employed by coal," said Pai, who is researching future employment opportunities in the Singrauli region.

Pai said Singrauli was unlikely to benefit from job opportunities in green energy any time soon.

More than 70% of India’s solar capacity, for example, is concentrated in the south and west of the country, far away from coal-bearing areas such as Singrauli, and that is where green energy jobs are typically located, he said.

The uncertainty of future job opportunities is particularly worrying as some in the region are already struggling to make ends meet.

Vikas Kumar Tomar, Kewat’s neighbour in Muher village, has been unable to find a job in the local coal economy for the past couple of years. He gave up his house to the coal industry to receive compensation and is now living in a tent.

"I don’t know what to do," said 22-year old Tomar.

Diwali fireworks could worsen air in Indian capital, despite fewer farm fires (Reuters)

Reuters [10/29/2024 7:25 AM, Sakshi Dayal, 37270K, Negative]
Fireworks set off during celebrations for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, could further worsen air quality in the Indian capital this week, officials said on Tuesday, offsetting a reduction in burning of farm waste in nearby states.

Rated the world’s most polluted capital by Swiss group IQAir for four years in a row, New Delhi was the world’s second most polluted city on Tuesday, the group’s live rankings showed, after Lahore in neighbouring Pakistan.

"The incidents of stubble burning are decreasing, but ... the smoke created by firecrackers needs to be controlled," Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai told news agency ANI, calling for further monitoring of the burning of farm waste.

The annual practice of burning crop stubble left after harvesting paddy to clear fields for wheat planting is widely blamed for toxic pollution in the region before winter, causing disruptions such as school closures and construction curbs.

But people often flout Delhi’s ban on smoke-emitting firecrackers, usually burnt in celebration of the festival which runs from Wednesday to Friday this year, worsening pollution.

Delhi’s air quality was 273 on Tuesday, the Central Pollution Control Board’s index showed, far exceeding a rating below 50 that is considered to be ‘good’.

From Wednesday to Friday, the index is expected to be in ‘very poor’ territory from 301 to 400, but may drop to ‘severe’ in the index range of 401 to 500, fed by fumes from burning firecrackers and waste fires, the earth sciences ministry said.

Air quality is likely to be in the very poor to severe category for six days from Saturday, the ministry added.

Farm fire incidents have fallen this year, however, the agriculture ministry said, to stand down 35% in Punjab and 21% in Haryana - both breadbasket states - compared to the corresponding period in 2023.

Data from the earth sciences ministry showed that stubble burning’s contribution to pollution dropped in the last week, to reach barely 3% on Monday from 16% on Wednesday, with greater contributions from other sources, such as vehicles.

Last week, the Supreme Court urged authorities in Delhi and adjoining states to tackle the toxic air, saying living in a pollution-free environment was a "fundamental right".

Delhi air turns ‘very poor’ and set to worsen over Diwali holiday (The Independent)

The Independent [10/29/2024 7:27 AM, Alisha Rahaman Sarkar, 53826K, Negative]
Poor quality air continued to choke people inDelhi as the Indian capital braced for worsening air pollution during the Diwali festival this week, and beyond.

Delhi was the most polluted city in the country for the second consecutive day on Monday, recording an average Air Quality Index reading of 304 according to the Central Pollution Control Board. In several places around the city, the AQI was 20 times the WHO safe limit to render the air quality "very poor".

Prolonged exposure to "very poor" air can cause discomfort and respiratory problems. It can also provoke skin and eye irritation, and contribute to serious health conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bronchitis, emphysema, and cancer.

Although the air quality in some areas of the capital city improved to "poor" on Tuesday afternoon, with an average AQI of 252, it is expected to deteriorate to "severe" during the Diwali holiday on 31 October due to additional emissions from firecrackers as well as stubble burning in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana. The Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology forecast the air quality to oscillate between "severe" and "very poor" over the next six days.

People are shopping in the illuminated markets of the city wearing face masks to escape the pollution. "We got one more air purifier for our house just to be safe," Lekha Singh, 57, out for Diwali shopping, told The Independent.

"It is increasingly getting difficult to breathe these days and the air feels heavy but we do not have an option to leave this city."

The pollution is a serious health hazard for Delhi’s 35 million people who are forced to breathe the toxic air for longer periods.

Hospitals are reporting a 30 to 40 per cent spike in patients complaining of breathing difficulties, mostly children and the elderly.

"We are seeing a sharp increase in respiratory cases," Dr Arunesh Kumar, a senior consultant in respiratory medicine at a hospital in Gurugram in the National Capital Region, told the Deccan Herald newspaper.

"This surge is largely driven by worsening air pollution, with pollutants such as PM2.5, PM10 and NO2 getting trapped due to the colder weather and stagnant air."

Dr Dhiren Gupta, a senior paediatric consultant, said even people without any diseases were facing issues such as nasal blockage and irritability.

In an attempt to stop the air quality from deteriorating further, the Delhi government earlier this month imposed a complete ban on the manufacture, sale, storage and use of all types of firecrackers in the capital until the new year. The ban is far from effective as fireworks have been lighting the sky every night since the Dussehra, a Hindu festival celebrated since 12 October.

Delhi has been banning fireworks to curb air pollution for years now, starting in 2017 following a Supreme Court inquiry into the impact of such practices on air quality.

In 2018, the top court prohibited conventional firecrackers in the region, allowing only "green" alternatives. In 2023, Delhi’s AQI was between 445 and 520 the day after Diwali, placing it firmly in the "severe" category.

The state government has also set in place a Graded Response Action Plan to address the pollution.

Delhi chief minister Atishi announced on Monday that the state will reinstate 10,000 civil volunteers to work with the transport department to mitigate air pollution. She said the government has noted 13 pollution hotspots and 27 additional locations in the capital with elevated pollution levels that require monitoring.

State environment minister Gopal Rai said last week that due to a "change in weather there is a possibility of a rise in air pollution" over the next 15 days.

"How are we expected to function in air 16x more toxic than global health standards," X user Bhanu asked.

"Again October, Diwali time, pollution, respiratory problems, and the same politicians. Same story year after year. Delhi is not the same anymore. Sad reality," said another X user.

Delhi has battled hazardous air quality during the winter months for years, prompting the authorities to frequently implement early school closures to safeguard children. The city grapples with high pollution levels from various sources, including vehicle emissions and dust, throughout the year.

But conditions worsen in winter when farmers in neighbouring states engage in crop stubble burning and low wind speeds trap pollutants, such as those emitted by firecrackers, significantly degrading air quality.

Air pollution has caused some 135 million premature deaths worldwide in the past four decades, according to a study based on data from 1980 to 2020.

It has also cut life short for tens of millions of people by causing preventable or treatable diseases or stroke, as per the study by Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.

Asia saw the "highest number of premature deaths attributable to PM 2.5 pollution", at over 98 million people, with China and India accounting for the bulk of the fatalities.

The WHO has warned that the "combined effects of ambient air pollution and household air pollution" are associated with 6.7 million premature deaths worldwide every year.

India is key to rescuing Joe Biden’s troubled foreign policy legacy (The Hill – opinion)

The Hill [10/29/2024 2:30 PM, Brahma Chellaney, 19591K, Neutral]
History will likely remember President Joe Biden for his disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which helped make the Taliban great again, and for involving the U.S. deeply in the Ukraine war, only to see Russia incrementally expand its territorial gains.

But his most troubling legacy, which threatens to unravel America’s global preeminence, has been to drive China and Russia, historical rivals, into a de facto strategic alliance. This unholy partnership is the result of Biden’s failure to play China against Russia, despite investing in personal diplomacy with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Driving a wedge between Moscow and Beijing had long been at the heart of American grand strategy. It helped the U.S. win the Cold War, not militarily, but geopolitically. By co-opting China from the 1970s onward in an informal alliance geared toward containing and rolling back Soviet influence and power, the U.S. established a two-against-one competition that contributed to the Soviet Union’s imperial overstretch and, ultimately, to the West’s triumph in the Cold War without direct armed conflict.

But now the U.S. has become the bridge that unites China and Russia. Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin portray America as an aggressive hegemon with a Cold War mindset. They share a vision to reshape the world by ending the era of Western dominance. Putin and Xi also seem to be providing cover to each other’s expansionism.

Simply put, a two-against-one geopolitical contest is returning, but with America on the receiving end. Consequently, an overextended U.S. seriously risks accelerating its relative decline through strategic overreach.

The Sino-Russian entente has raised the strategic imperative for America to forge an informal alliance with another nuclear-armed giant: India.

India’s decades-old rivalry with Beijing goes back to China’s 1951 annexation of the buffer Tibet and the resultant Sino-Indian border war of 1962. In more recent years, China and India have been locked in a tense military standoff along their long Himalayan frontier.

India, now the world’s fastest-growing major economy, has a huge market that has become increasingly important for American exporters given China’s sputtering economic-growth engine and deepening demographic crisis. The U.S. needs India as an economic and geopolitical ally, especially if it is to avert strategic overstretch and prevail in its sharpening rivalries with China and Russia.

This explains why there is bipartisan support in Washington for closer ties with India. Indeed, successive presidents since Bill Clinton cultivated closer ties with New Delhi, with every administration leaving the relationship in stronger shape than what it inherited.

However, under Biden, the relationship between the world’s two most populous democracies has come under increasing strain, leading to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent meeting with Xi. The meeting, coinciding with an India-China agreement on border patrolling to ease their military standoff, has signaled a thaw in the icy hostility marking relations between the Asian giants.

The U.S.-India strategic partnership holds the key to counterbalancing China’s hegemonic ambitions and maintaining the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region, the world’s emerging economic and geopolitical hub. So, by impelling India to seek a thaw with Beijing as a hedge against American unpredictability, Biden has compounded his blunder in helping to build a Sino-Russian axis.

Tensions with New Delhi have arisen over a series of issues, starting with Biden’s surrender of Afghanistan to a Pakistan-reared terrorist militia. Tensions grew with India’s neutral stance on the Ukraine war. In an ungainly attempt to bully New Delhi into submission, the White House in 2022 threatened that “the costs and consequences” for India would be “significant and long-term” if it refused to take sides in Ukraine.

The Biden administration’s hectoring tone has struck a raw nerve in India, including when it recently demanded that it “won’t be fully satisfied until there is meaningful accountability” from New Delhi over what the U.S. alleges was a failed 2023 plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a New York-based Sikh separatist who is on India’s most wanted list. But the U.S. has taken no action against Pannun for making terrorist threats against India, including warning passengers not to fly Air India between Nov. 1 and 19 — a notice that has coincided with a spate of hoax bomb threats against Indian carriers that have disrupted air travel.

In fact, the increasing role of terrorism-glorifying Sikh separatists based in the U.S. and Canada is reopening old Indian wounds from the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight that two separate Canadian inquiries found was the handiwork of Canadian Sikh terrorists. The mid-Atlantic bombing killed all 329 people on board.

But at the root of U.S.-India tensions are American policies in South Asia that New Delhi sees as detrimental to its core interests. The Biden administration has been coddling military-backed governments in Pakistan and Bangladesh (where a recent U.S.-supported regime change was seen by many in India as a “color revolution”), while seeking to overthrow Myanmar’s military junta, including through stringent sanctions and “nonlethal” military aid to rebels, despite the spillover effects on Indian border regions.

Restoring mutual respect and trust in the relationship with India, which Biden has acknowledged is “among the most consequential in the world,” should be a priority for the next American administration. Fortuitously, there will be an India connection either way — whether the U.S. elects its first Indian American president in Kamala Harris or its first Indian American second lady in Usha Vance, wife of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

No less pressing is the imperative for the next president to forestall a formal China-Russia alliance, including by taking advantage of the historical Sino-Russian mistrust to play one against the other. If Beijing and Moscow cement a military and strategic alliance against America, Washington’s worst geopolitical nightmare would come true.

India’s growing influence means trouble for China’s alliance (The Hill – opinion)

The Hill [10/29/2024 12:30 PM, Gordan C. Chang, 19591K, Neutral]
China and India unexpectedly concluded a border agreement last week at the 16th annual summit for its BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping.

Analysts labeled the deal historic.

“Himalayan Thaw Sends Shockwaves Across the World,” wrote Zorawar Daulet Singh, author of “Powershift: India-China Relations in a Multipolar World,” in India Today.

But not everyone is so optimistic. And the doubters are right to be cautious: President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not fundamentally alter China-India ties with their interim pact.

In short, both countries agreed to pull back troops at two points in Ladakh, in the western Himalayas. Previously, they were “eyeball-to-eyeball,” at Depsang and Demchok. In June 2020, China launched a surprise attack in Ladakh, killing 20 Indian troopers. Relations between the two giants have been tense since.

Indian analyst Brahma Chellaney has expressed skepticism as to what the two sides actually accomplished at the BRICS summit. “Despite the latest developments raising the prospect of a thaw, India and China, as their statements show, differ on what the problem is at the border and even on what they have agreed upon in recent days,” he wrote on Oct. 24.

It’s clear the two sides did not deal with the underlying issue: conflicting territorial claims in Ladakh and other areas. China claims large portions of India, especially India’s state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Some observers have said the disengagement agreement has far broader geopolitical significance. As Tom Porter and Hannah Abraham argued in Business Insider, “The deal is a snub to the U.S., that’s been building an alliance of powers to counter China.”

The implication is that the U.S. has been selfishly trying to contain China. In reality, for years the U.S. had tried its best to engage the Communist Party, integrate it into the international community and entice it into responsible behavior. That effort has failed, and now a once-reluctant Washington is reacting to pleas in the region to show leadership.

Washington reacted by forming new groupings dedicated to integrated defense, such as the trilateral agreement comprised of Japan, the Philippines and the U.S. There is also a similar arrangement which includes the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

AUKUS is the security partnership formed in 2021 by Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. And then there is the Quad, which is the group of Australia, Japan, the U.S. and India.

Analysts are saying the border pact with China will affect the cohesiveness of these partners.

“The thaw in India-China relations is a boon to both countries,” Zhiqun Zhu of Bucknell University told Voice of America. “This is particularly significant for China because India may now be less inclined to confront Beijing as part of Quad. In this sense, the effectiveness of Quad would be diluted with a less enthusiastic India.”

Zhu is amplifying a misleading Chinese narrative. India needs the Quad more than the three other Quad members need India. And it’s unlikely India will be drawn anywhere near the Chinese orbit, because New Delhi knows that the Communist Party of China believes it cannot coexist with a strong, unified Indian state.

That Indian perception means the BRICS grouping will never be effective as long as India is part of it.

“India is deeply uncomfortable with the idea of China hijacking BRICS to advance an anti-Western agenda,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Sadanand Dhume told me. “India needs Western capital, know-how and markets for its economic modernization. It cannot afford to pick a fight with the West that may help Beijing but would only hurt New Delhi’s long-term interests.”

India does not see itself as part of the West, of course, but it does not want to be perceived as anti-Western. This means China will never be able to use BRICS against the West as long as India is a member. So far, New Delhi has stymied Chinese efforts to use the group to reorder the world as Beijing would like.

India is becoming more important, something not good for China.

“As a rising geoeconomic power, India is becoming too big for BRICS, especially now that many lesser powers have joined the grouping,” said Kamran Bokhari of the New Line Institute for Strategy and Policy.

BRICS, which started with four members and now has nine, is becoming too big and too diverse to be effective, and these problems will only get worse as China arranges for new members to join.

Soon, BRICS will suffer the same ills as the ineffective G20 and even the United Nations. In contrast, the Japan-South Korea-U.S. agreement and AUKUS are all small, with all members perceiving their interests to be closely aligned.

In any event, irreconcilable differences between China and India remain and are bound to worsen as China weakens and India grows stronger. A decade ago, Chinese analysts thought they had to break up India while Beijing still had the power to do it.

Under Xi Jinping’s rule, China has expanded its sovereignty claims to cover more Indian territory, an indication he believes he must go hard against New Delhi. That view suggests any Sino-Indian thaw will not last long.

NSB

UN Rights Chief Urges Bangladesh To ‘Protect’ Democracy After Revolution (Agence France-Presse)

Agence France-Presse [10/29/2024 8:36 AM, Sheikh Sabiha Alam, 502K, Neutral]
UN rights chief Volker Turk on Tuesday urged students at Bangladesh’s Dhaka University, the heart of the uprising that toppled autocratic leader Sheikh Hasina, to "protect" democracy to end cycles of revenge.

"Democracy is one of the most powerful ideas ever dreamed up by humanity... but it is also fragile -- something that we must nurture and protect -- particularly in its earliest stages," Turk said in an address.

"I know you are aware of the pitfalls that led other pro-democracy movements into a dead end."

Tens of thousands demonstrated on campus and in the surrounding neighbourhood as protests against job quotas morphed into a nationwide struggle to end Hasina’s 15 years of iron-fisted rule.

More than 700 people were killed, many in a brutal police crackdown, before Hasina fled to India by helicopter on August 5.

Several of the top student protest leaders were enrolled at the university, some of whom are now part of the cabinet of the interim government which is led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.

Hasina’s rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents. A Bangladeshi court this month issued an arrest warrant for the ousted leader.

Turk told students they had "shown great courage in standing up for justice and equality", and that he was honoured to address them "at a pivotal time, and in a symbolic place".

But he also warned them of the risks as they support the huge challenge of restoring democratic institutions.

"Beware of the idea that the ends justify the means," Turk added.

"The process through which you seek change is just as crucial as the outcome. Strengthening institutions can be more important in the long term than tearing them down."

Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, is on a two-day visit to Dhaka to meet with Yunus, the chief justice, army chief and other leaders, his office said.

"Inequality, cycles of revenge and retribution, marginalisation, corruption, and gross human rights violations must be consigned to the past. There must be no repetition, no going back. The present and future belong to equality, to justice."

Dozens of Hasina’s allies have been arrested, while the last known whereabouts of the 77-year-old fugitive was a military airbase near India’s capital New Delhi.

Her government’s appointees were purged from courts and the central bank.

"We cannot allow a vicious new cycle of reprisals and revenge to repeat itself", Turk added.

"The pursuit of justice must also go beyond trials of those responsible, and address the root causes to achieve the broader social transformation to which you aspire".

Asif Nazrul, a student protest leader now serving in Yunus’s government, said Turk had questioned government officials about Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which is spearheading prosecutions against the former regime.

Turk had probed "the law under which it operates", and asked if there was scope "to abolish the death penalty", Nazrul said.

"I told him that... we can’t simply abolish it with the trials of fascists who killed hundreds of students still pending," Nazrul told reporters.

The Many Obstacles in the Way of Sheikh Hasina’s Conviction (The Diplomat)

The Diplomat [10/29/2024 5:16 AM, Saqlain Rizve, 1198K, Negative]
On October 17, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) of Bangladesh issued arrest warrants for former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, alleging involvement in mass killings during the July-August mass protests. The Hasina government’s brutal suppression of the protests led to the death of more than 800 people, including students. Under pressure, Hasina fled to India, where she remains.

Following Hasina’s ouster from power after an unbroken 15 years at the helm, calls for her prosecution have gained momentum. With so many youth losing their lives under her watch, especially during the student-led protests, the demand for accountability from leaders who brazenly abused their authority has mounted.

However, putting Hasina on trial and convicting her will not be easy and is fraught with political, institutional, and societal challenges.

In theory, Bangladesh’s legal framework allows high-ranking officials, including a former prime minister, to be tried on various offenses that include corruption, human rights abuses, and abuse of power. The Penal Code and the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) Act provide mechanisms for prosecuting public servants. However, the implementation of these mechanisms is often problematic, leading to challenges in effectively prosecuting these cases.

So, although there are laws to prosecute top leaders, the judiciary in Bangladesh, which has often been perceived to be politicized, has undermined their efficacy. Besides, during Hasina’s regime, the courts often functioned as a tool of political vendetta in the hands of the ruling party to prosecute opposition leaders.

When Bangladesh was under neutral caretaker rule between 2006 to 2008, Hasina, who was in opposition then, was charged with corruption. But these charges were droppped after she returned to power, laying bare how political control influences what cases will be tried and what dropped.

In the context of the recent charges, many legal experts have also pointed out that it may be difficult to prove that Hasina did in fact order law enforcement agencies to open fire on students during the protests. Documented evidence will be needed to prove this.

From 2009 onward, the consolidation of power in Bangladesh’s key institutions - the judiciary, law enforcement, and the ACC - ultimately rendered these bodies vulnerable to political interference. The ACC pursued cases against opposition figures with great vigor, while toning down allegations against Hasina’s close associates. These indicate that a conviction, even when evidence is adequate, could be thwarted by political obstacles.

Although public sentiment dramatically turned against Hasina during the protests, especially amongst the youth, Hasina retains a formidable base of support within the Awami League (AL) that she led for decades. One must not underestimate such political support because her prosecution could be projected by her supporters as a personal attack on Hasina and her legacy, triggering violence and unrest among them.

After Hasina’s ouster, AL supporters organized numerous rallies across the country, particularly in Gopalganj, Hasina’s hometown. In some instances, they even attacked soldiers. Post-Hasina, AL activists are slowly becoming more visibly active on the streets and in social media. On the night of October 19, for example, a group of around 15-25 men took out a procession and chanted slogans in support of the AL in Chittagong.

Given the AL’s ground support and influence, convicting Hasina, the most popular figure in the party and its leading face, will deepen the already serious political polarization in the country. This could in turn tear Bangladesh’s fragile democratic fabric.

There is also concern over Hasina’s conviction setting a bad precedent.

If Hasina is convicted, other leaders who pursue an authoritarian style of politics may be even more unwilling to relinquish their grip on power, aware that if they do, they do will be brought to trial for their crimes.

This could create an environment where incumbents cling to power, using all means available to avoid the fate of prosecution. In a country like Bangladesh, with its history of volatile political transitions, this fear alone might dissuade new leaders from pursuing legal action against Hasina.

International dynamics could further deter Hasina’s conviction. As prime minister, Hasina maintained a good balance between regional rivals India and China by utilizing their strategic interests in Bangladesh to her advantage. China was investing billions of dollars in infrastructural projects, while India had strengthened cooperation with Bangladesh, particularly in areas of security and regional influence. Anything that might make Hasina face prosecution will upset these relationships, possibly viewed by her international friends as destabilizing the region.

India has long been a safe haven for Hasina. It was India that sheltered her during the turbulent years after the 1975 assassination of her father, then Bangladesh’s President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and now after she was ousted in mass protests. India is unlikely to hand her over to Bangladesh for trial due to its strong bond with her family and the fact that she did act to protect India’s security interests. Additionally, there is the question of how India’s neighbors will view India handing her over to the Bangladeshi government. Other leaders in the region would lose trust in India.

Western powers, most notably the United States were critical of Hasina’s record on human rights and democratic processes. The Biden Administration even imposed sanctions on top leaders of Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), citing various human rights abuses.

But if Hasina were to be taken to court, international pressure from human rights groups and even governments could escalate. There could also be backlash at home. Some in Bangladesh are already raising concern over foreign interference and their deepening of divisions within Bangladesh’s already polarized political environment.

The role of civil society and the formation of public opinion are probably the most unpredictable elements in this equation. The protests in July showed that grassroots movements, particularly those led by students and the younger generation, redraw political discourses for the country. It sent ripples across the nation as the demand for transparency, accountability, and justice resonated in a public outcry for reforms. Civil society, media and activists could push for Hasina’s accountability. It is tough, however, to sustain such movements over time, as scenarios change and other issues come to the fore.

While the conviction of Hasina may be legally possible legally, the path to justice is far from straightforward as Bangladesh’s institutions are deeply intertwined with political agendas and international ties, creating significant obstacles in the pursuit of accountability.

Without real judicial independence, military support, and sustained public pressure, any move to prosecute her will stall or boomerang. As Bangladesh charts a transition towards its post-Hasina future, the question of legal accountability for her thus remains open, like an unresolved chapter in this complex political history of the nation.

Gautam Adani Vies for Projects in Bhutan’s ‘Mindfulness City’ in Overseas Push (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [10/30/2024 4:33 AM, Saritha Rai, 1198K, Negative]
Billionaire Gautam Adani is among those in discussions for infrastructure projects in Bhutan’s new ‘Gelephu Mindfulness City’ as the tiny Himalayan kingdom seeks investment to build a mega township along its southern border with India.

The Adani Group, controlled by Asia’s second-richest person, is one of the business houses in talks with the government “at the highest levels” to set up solar and hydroelectric plants in Bhutan’s 1,000-square-kilometer (386 square miles) flatlands where the new city is being built, Lotay Tshering, Gelephu’s newly-appointed governor, said in an interview.

While the mountainous country has a population of less than 800,000, its mission to revamp its infrastructure creates another opportunity for the ports-to-power conglomerate that has been investing billions in its green energy initiatives.

Bhutan has been a strategic and long-time ally for India, which is keen to curb China’s influence in its neighborhood.

The foray, if it materializes, fits with the broader strategy of Adani’s sprawling empire of expanding its international footprint. The Indian conglomerate is already developing infrastructure projects or vying for them in Israel, Kenya, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Vietnam.

A few hundred sites have been identified for renewable energy projects that are expected to add 20 gigawatts in capacity, said Tshering, who used to be the country’s Prime Minister until 2023. Contracts for roads and bridges will also come up later as part of Gelephu’s development plan.

Airport, Dry Port

Discussions are also underway for building a large international airport that is still in the design stage and a “dry port” — an inland port connected by rail or road to a seaport — he said, outlining projects which have drawn interest from Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd. The province currently has a tiny airstrip servicing a single turboprop aircraft.

A representative for the Adani Group declined to comment on their interest in projects coming up in Bhutan.

The conglomerate has often dovetailed its corporate strategy to the Indian government’s policy priorities, which include countering the sway China has in many developing countries through its massive investments.

The talks are underway with multiple investors and nothing has been finalized, Tshering said, adding that construction in Gelephu will likely start in the April to June quarter.

A smaller business group led by Anil Ambani, has already announced a tie-up to develop solar and hydro energy plants in the country.

The under-development Gelephu region will deploy artificial intelligence technologies and rely on non-fossil fuel energy as Bhutan’s monarch, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk, seeks to transform this sleepy southern province into an economic hub.

Hobeng Lim, a digital financial assets and regulatory veteran from Singapore, has been named managing director of finance at the Gelephu Mindfulness City.

What happened to Bhutan’s ‘kingdom of happiness’? (The Guardian)

The Guardian [10/30/2024 12:45 AM, Helen Sullivan, 92.4M, Neutral]
Bhutan is a tiny country of mountains and clouds nestled between giants: it shares borders with China and India. Known as “the kingdom of happiness” because of its focus on measuring gross national happiness (GNH), its approach to development is based on the Buddhist idea of the “middle way”, or the pursuit of balance, rather than extremes. But lately, the balance has been off.

GNH, first measured by Bhutan in 2008, is calculated using surveys of 148 questions, conducted in person every few years. The most recent survey from 2022 sampled 1.4% of the population and gave the country an average happiness score of 0.781 out of one, a score that defines the Bhutanese as precisely 3.3% happier than they were in 2015.

But despite Bhutan’s cheerful reputation, the country is experiencing “unprecedented” levels of emigration, according to the ruling People’s Democratic party’s 2023 manifesto. Last year, 1.5% of the population moved to Australia to work and study. In 2019 an independent measure of happiness, the Oxford World Happiness report – itself inspired by Bhutan’s pioneering GNH – ranked the country 95 out of 156 countries, up from 97th in 2018, and down from 84th in 2014. It hasn’t been measured since.

Rising unemployment, rising migration

Bhutan is a little bigger than Belgium, is home to fewer than 800,000 people, and 85% of its land is forest. Its democracy is fairly young: Bhutan held its first elections in 2007, a year after its king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the fifth “Dragon King”, came to power, after his father, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, voluntarily gave up the throne.

Tourism, one of the country’s main sources of income, was brought to a standstill by the pandemic and has yet to fully recover: 2023 saw just a third of the number of visitors in 2019. Its tourist levy – or sustainable development fee – jumped to US$200 per person a day in 2022, before being halved in 2023.

Opportunities in the job market have declined, with the most recent figure showing just over half of women work, down from 61.2% in 2019, while youth unemployment – which has been steadily rising since 2004 – stood at 28.6% in 2022. One in eight Bhutanese lives in poverty.

Recently, the government invested millions of dollars in equipment for cryptocurrency mining, according to the World Bank. Cryptocurrency, which is extremely energy-intensive to mine, is very much at odds with the idea of Bhutan that the country promotes to the rest of the world: a place focused on sustainability in the environment and development, and the first carbon-negative nation.

This year the prime minister, Tshering Tobgay, also floated the idea of gross national happiness 2.0 – a model that places more emphasis on the economy – saying the government had “failed economically”.

But it isn’t just the economy: Bhutan ranks 90th in the world in terms of press freedom, down from 33rd, according to the 2023 World Press Freedom index. Almost a fifth of respondents to the 2022 GNH survey said they did not feel they had a right to join a political party of their choice.

Approached by the Guardian, one young Bhutanese person says he does not want to be interviewed for fear that he or those he worked with could get into trouble with the government.

Om Dhungel, a Bhutanese refugee who lives in Australia and has written a book about his experience, Bhutan to Blacktown: Losing Everything and Finding Australia, says the GNH concept is good but doesn’t reflect the government’s approach to the happiness – and human rights – of all Bhutanese. Formerly a senior telecommunications engineer in Bhutan, he remembers using GNH as an approach to putting phone towers in without disrupting the landscape.

“But at the same time, now we can see the hollowness of it,” he says. “Why would people leave a land of gross national happiness?”

‘A huge concern for the international community’

As it looks to stem migration and attract tourism and investment, Bhutan is betting big on its reputation for mindfulness. In December last year, the Dragon King announced plans to build Gelephu Mindfulness City in the country’s south – an area with a history of displacement and what Human Rights Watch calls ethnic cleansing.

Taking up 2.5% of the country’s land, it will be made up of nine bridges, on which people can live and work

No dates have been announced, and it is unclear who, if anyone, is prepared to foot the bill: the contact page on the city’s website is aimed at people who “would like to join us in the co-creation of this exciting endeavour”.

The city is set to be built over an area in which 10,000 people, many of them farmers, already live. (Farmers rate the lowest in Bhutan’s GNH surveys, with only 33% classified as happy, according to the Asian Development Bank).

Residents fear they could be displaced or forced off their land with no, or unfair, compensation, says Ram Karki, a Bhutanese refugee human rights activist who lives in the Netherlands. Dhungel echoed this.

The government placed a moratorium on selling land in Gelephu in July 2023, months before the project was announced. It “should be a huge concern for the international community”, Karki says.

“In Bhutan people cannot speak against anything that goes against the wishes of the king or the government,” he says. “And that is the king’s project.”

Karki is among the Bhutanese who fled the country in the 1980s and 90s, after a census that sought to determine who was ethnically Bhutanese. Those deemed to be ethnically Nepali – most of whom lived in southern Bhutan – were pressured into leaving, says Susan Banki, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, who has written a book about Bhutanese refugees.

A sixth of the population left the country and, more than 30 years later, 108,000 Bhutanese are still living in refugee camps in Nepal. Some of those who organised protests, refused to leave or, claims Dhungel, were simply prominent members of their communities were arrested and tortured. Today, Bhutan still has 34 political prisoners. Human Rights Watch has for years appealed for their release and says most were “convicted of political offences following unfair trials”.

Dhungel, himself a Bhutanese of Nepali ancestry, claims some of the land earmarked for the mindfulness city has already been illegally required. He used to have land there, for example, which he says was taken by the government when his father and brother were imprisoned and tortured. And people he speaks to back home have legitimate fears of further displacement.

“I think the international community has to take a hard look at how they have actually done damage by supporting the government,” says Dhungel.

Average national happiness

Chimmi Dorji is the president of the Association of Bhutanese in Perth, Australia. Reports of an exodus from Bhutan are overblown, he thinks – it is just part of modern life that people travel and study or work in different countries. In his experience, the Bhutanese who come to Australia – he moved here with his wife, who is doing a master’s in community development – plan to return home.

“It’s paradise on earth,” he says.

But the large number of Bhutanese who left in the 1980s and 90s is also among the reasons the economy is struggling today, says Dhungel. “A significant number of people with skills had to flee the country. That was a big brain drain.”

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, professor of economics and behavioural science at Oxford and one of the authors of the annual World Happiness Report, says that without a certain level of economic development, people don’t tend to rate themselves as happy. Bhutan’s own figures show this – those its surveys find happiest are those who are wealthiest, according to the Asia Development Bank.

“We can’t get around economic development,” says De Neve. It is an important part of people’s wellbeing, and Bhutan is “quite right” to focus more on per capita GDP, he says.

The idea people have of gross national happiness, Banki says, leads to the “Shangri-La-zation” of the country. That Bhutan is a particularly happy place is just that – a fiction. The Land of the Thunder Dragon is, at the end of the day, just a country.

It is a country that Dhungel – who, like all Bhutanese refugees, is forbidden from returning to – wishes he was allowed to visit. Even more so, he hopes that some day he will be allowed to show it to his children.

Coders in a Himalayan Dorm Built Bhutan’s First AI Bot (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [10/29/2024 7:04 AM, Saritha Rai, 27782K, Neutral]
Ugyen Dendup, 23, and Jamphel Yigzin Samdrup, 19, are computer science engineering students at Thimphu’s Royal University of Bhutan. They won’t graduate until 2026, but they’ve already co-founded the tiny kingdom’s sole AI business: NoMindBhutan.

Their venture is the product of a hackathon they won, with the duo using the prize money as seed capital to initiate a business building and deploying chatbots. Their headquarters are a college dorm room and their employees — five, so far — are fellow students. It took some effort for such a young group to earn credibility, but they secured the Bhutan National Bank as their first big customer and have added more since.

It’s an encouraging, if tiny, step away from the total centralization of AI services in a few places of intensive investment. Data from Stanford’s 2024 AI Index show the US and China have poured in the largest sums of private money into AI over the past decade, dwarfing all other nations. Places like Bhutan don’t even make the list, of course, but it still feels essential for them to build their own tools.

Silicon Valley investor and OpenAI backer Vinod Khosla recently warned that tech CEOs could hold unprecedented sway over global economic factors by virtue of their control of essential AI technologies. “Their platforms might become the primary mediators of work, education, and social interaction, potentially surpassing the role of traditional governments in many aspects of daily life,” Khosla wrote in a note titled AI Dystopia or Utopia.

The Bhutan students built atop existing large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o, Anthropic’s Claude and Alphabet Inc.’s Google Gemini, offering customized chatbots to the likes of Drukair and the Bank of Bhutan. The startup’s offer to local companies is to solve each of their customer service pain points using their own data.

The kingdom, nestled between India and China, has just a handful of consumer commerce startups. The Bhutanese can hail a ride on their Uber equivalent, called DrukRide, or use a platform called ZheyGo to get meals delivered from local restaurants. Samuh Bhutan is the country’s Netflix.

There’s plenty of imported tech, though, especially with social networks. The TikTok and Instagram of Bhutan are TikTok and Instagram. And LinkedIn is the means by which I reached Dendup and Samdrup.

Building bots tailored for Bhutan may not immediately seem like a booming business idea, given the population of less than a million people. And it’s certainly not been easy. You won’t find Bhutan on Microsoft Corp.’s list of countries with access to its Azure cloud, while payments provider Stripe Inc. also doesn’t operate in the country. So, NoMindBhutan hosts its tools on Amazon.com Inc.’s AWS cloud in Singapore, and the founders wire funds to friends in Australia, who in turn pay the Amazon server fees via Stripe.

Customer expectations are only going to keep rising, after the startup built the bots for Bhutan’s airline and banks, letting users check flight timings, fares and interest rates. The student startup is now working on AI agents that can collaborate with humans in real time. The founders admit they feel the burden of also carrying the hopes of other young Bhutanese who may one day aspire to build AI tools themselves.

Another hurdle they’ll need to overcome is the absence of large language data sets for the Bhutanese language, called Dzongkha. The founders plan to add voice eventually, once they get their hands on suitably large audio data in Dzongkha.

But hope is also stirring because of an ambitious, AI-centric project in southern Bhutan, a green mega city called Gelephu Mindfulness City. It’s conceived and being built with the backing of the country’s influential monarch, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. The GMC, bordering India’s Assam state, is to be an economic and financial hub modeled along the lines of Singapore and is to be powered by artificial intelligence technologies and data centers. NoMindBhutan can expect, and probably will welcome, some homegrown competition before too long.

Central Asia

Ancient Central Asian Language Dying Off As Villagers Leave For Better Life (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [10/30/2024 6:08 AM, Farangis Najibullah, 235K, Neutral]
The picturesque Yaghnob Valley, which lies just north of Dushanbe, is home to about 500 people living scattered in the remote area’s semi-deserted villages.

Once home to about 4,000 people, Yaghnob lost most of its inhabitants in 1970 when they were forcibly relocated by Soviet officials to the farming district of Zafarobod to grow cotton.

Many returned to Yaghnob in the 1990s, only to leave it again because of a lack of jobs and the hardships of daily life in the isolated, mountainous location.

As their community shrinks, the villagers fear that their ancient mother tongue -- Yaghnobi, an Eastern Iranian language -- will die out if the government and native speakers themselves don’t take action to preserve it.

The Yaghnobi people want their language to be added to the school curriculum for local children.

But there are no schools in the Yaghnob Valley. The children are taken to a state boarding school, some 40 kilometers away in the town of Anzob, where they study in Tajik, the state language.

Many children almost forget their mother tongue as they spend the entire school year away from their home villages often cut off by heavy snowfall during the winter.

“In the 1990s, the primary school [for the Yaghnobi children] began teaching this language and textbooks were written for it,” says Rustam Ramazoni, a linguist who studies Yaghnobi. “Teaching the language was crucial as the number of native speakers has declined.”

But the program was abandoned by the state in the early 2000s, depriving the Yaghnobi children from the already limited education they received in their mother tongue.

The villagers, who are bilingual, use their native language for daily communication among themselves while relying on Tajik for education and business. Their children grow up speaking Yaghnobi only until they go to school, locals told RFE/RL.

Young People’s Dilemma

The older generation of people in Yaghnob recall how they returned from Zafarobod to their deserted villages when the government stopped its relocation program to cotton-producing areas.

Safarali Boqiev, a resident of the Piskon village, was in his early 20s when he decided he would never leave his ancestral region.

“I returned to Yaghnob after completing the army service in 1988. I got married here. We have seven children,” Boqiev said. “We get by and I don’t want to leave because our language will disappear [if we all leave.]

But many others are not willing to stay in the valley, which has no proper roads, hospital, or leisure facilities.

There are no professional jobs in Yaghnob, where people are mostly engaged in farming, growing potatoes, and raising livestock.

During the winter -- when the valley gets cut off by snow and ice for up to seven months -- people rely on donkeys for emergency trips, such as taking the sick to hospital.

Firuza Muharramova, a resident of the village of Kyorte, told RFE/RL that she gave birth to all of her three children at home. There was no doctor or a midwife to help her.

Yaghnob is off the electrical power network. In recent years, the residents have built their own small, electricity-generating plants using the area’s abandoned water resources.

There are projects to turn the valley into a unique tourism hub -- even with several Western volunteers helping to develop the budding sector. Locals hope such projects could create jobs and bring investment to the valley.

But that hasn’t stopped people, especially the young, from relocating to cities.

“We want our young people to stay in Yaghnob, because our language will be lost if they leave. Our language will go extinct, it’s obvious,” Boqiev said. “But our children don’t want to live here.”

The villages in Yaghnob offer a scenic blend of mud-brick houses and old, abandoned ruins, with a handful of modern dwellings built by those determined to stay.

Those who left the valley admit they are finding it difficult to keep their language alive away from home.

Members of the Yaghnobi community in Zafarobod say they’re witnessing their language and the entire culture dying out.

“When you go to our weddings here, up to 95-98 percent of the songs are Tajik songs,” said Mirzo Ramazonov, a Zafarobod resident.

“We lost most of our traditions since moving to Zafarobod,” said Yaghnobi poet Saidmurod Kholov. “Even those who speak Yaghnobi, they mix it with Tajik words and phrases.”

Sharofat Sharifova lives in the capital, Dushanbe, after moving out of Yaghnob with her family several years ago.

Sharifova says members of the small Yaghnobi community in Dushanbe still speak their mother tongue, but she believes it will die out when the older generation is gone.

Kazakhstan: Wheat exports experience a big dip (EurasiaNet)

EurasiaNet [10/29/2024 4:14 PM, Almaz Kumenov, 57.6K, Neutral]
Exports of Kazakhstan’s key agricultural product – wheat – have plunged by almost 40 percent during the first eight months of 2024 over the previous year’s total for the same period. The price of Kazakh wheat is being undercut by Russia.

Kazakh farmers exported just over 3 million tons of wheat during the January-August timeframe, Vice Minister of Trade and Integration Kairat Torebayev announced at a government meeting. The lower export volume is due in part to a comparatively modest harvest. But Torebayev added that traditional buyers, including neighboring Central Asian states, Afghanistan, and Italy, have reduced their consumption of Kazakh wheat due to price dumping by Russia.

According to the first deputy chairman of the Auyl agrarian party, Toleutai Rakhimbekov, Kazakh grain cannot compete with Russian grain, which is 1.5 times cheaper. “The quality of Russian grain is much higher, because Russian farmers use fertilizers, pesticides, update seeds and equipment more than ours,” the agricultural news site APK Novosti quoted Rakhimbekov as saying.

Rakhimbekov said an increase in government subsidies would be needed to enable Kazakh farmers to regain wheat markets. Russia has added to the challenges by imposing a ban on imports of wheat and other products from Kazakhstan as of October 17, citing “phytosanitary safety.” Russian regulators did not specify how long the ban would remain in place.

Kazakh MPs say the ban is unjustified and are pressing the government to take up the matter with Russian authorities.

Carving out new markets is proving challenging for Kazakhstan. Farmers had pinned their hopes on China, as wheat exports grew more than five-fold in 2023 over the previous year’s total, reaching about 1.5 million tons. But in August, Beijing unilaterally imposed a sharp increase in duties on Kazakh wheat, effectively slowing exports to a trickle. The Kazakh government is working to troubleshoot the tariff issue.

Kazakhstan currently has plans to resume grain supplies to Iran and explore exports to Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil and Malaysia.

Twitter

Afghanistan

Zalmay Khalilzad
@realZalmayMK
[10/29/2024 2:30 PM, 214.7K followers, 253 retweets, 858 likes]
The Afghan Republic leaders and their flunkies blame #USA (and me personally) for their loss of power. The Afghan republic collapsed because, with very few exceptions, its leaders were bad in governing, bad in negotiating, and bad in fighting. They destroyed Afghanistan’s golden opportunity. Instead of blaming others, they should look in the mirror, and they will see the culprits. #Afghanistan

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[10/30/2024 1:40 AM, 239.4K followers, 7 retweets, 53 likes]
As resistance attacks against the Taliban rise, a Taliban minister rode through Kabul on a motorbike, attempting to project stability. Senior officials during the Republic would use similar public stunts to project calm in uncertain times. Things are going south for the Taliban.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[10/29/2024 9:16 PM, 239.4K followers, 126 retweets, 231 likes]
Shagufa Barakzai, a Pashtun woman formerly jailed by the Taliban, says that the Taliban rape and torture women in prisons. Other women have previously shared horrific accounts of sexual abuse by the group, who use it as a weapon to silence women.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[10/30/2024 6:19 AM, 239.4K followers, 20 retweets, 73 likes]
Resistance attacks against the Taliban are growing as the regime tightens its restrictions. In Kapisa, Afghanistan Freedom Front targeted a Taliban vehicle near Gulbahar Textile Company, resulting in one Taliban fatality and two injuries.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[10/29/2024 1:10 PM, 239.4K followers, 375 retweets, 719 likes]
The UN special rapporteur’s report reveals a shocking rise in sexual violence against women detained by the Taliban, alongside the disturbing resurgence of bacha bazi, the exploitation of young boys, deepening human rights crisis in Afghanistan.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[10/29/2024 1:13 PM, 239.4K followers, 13 retweets, 57 likes]
Women have been arrested for wearing what the Taliban deem “inappropriate” hijab, leading to shocking accounts of physical and sexual assault in police stations, illustrating the regime’s oppressive enforcement of its strict dress codes.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[10/29/2024 1:14 PM, 239.4K followers, 10 retweets, 52 likes]
Disturbing accounts from survivors reveal that detainees endure not only physical violence but also sexual abuse, with one survivor recalling, “They tore my hijab and touched my private parts.” These testimonies expose the brutal reality many women face.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[10/29/2024 1:19 PM, 239.4K followers, 18 retweets, 80 likes]
The report reveals the exploitation of young boys through bacha bazi under Taliban rule, revealing a rise in sexual violence and child abuse. It also points to a culture of silence that hinders victims from seeking justice.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[10/29/2024 1:23 PM, 239.4K followers, 16 retweets, 78 likes]
The Taliban’s rule is marked by systemic sexual violence and the horrific practice of bacha bazi, rooted in a culture of misogyny and exploitation. This demands urgent action from the international community to hold the Taliban accountable.

Pakistan

Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[10/29/2024 12:03 AM, 6.7M followers, 243 retweets, 663 likes]
Strongly condemn Israel’s actions aimed at obstructing UNRWA’s operations inside the Occupied Palestinian Territory. By preventing critical relief assistance from reaching millions of helpless Palestinians, Israel is committing yet another blatant violation of international humanitarian law and the @UN Charter for which it must be held accountable by the international community.

Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[10/29/2024 10:58 AM, 6.7M followers, 406 retweets, 1.2K likes]
Honored to address the @FIIKSA in Riyadh on the theme ‘Infinite Horizons: Investing Today, Shaping Tomorrow.’ Emphasized Pakistan’s commitment to leveraging investments in Artificial Intelligence, Education, and Health to drive human advancement. By investing in AI, we aim to enhance productivity; in education, to empower future generations; and in health, to shape a future that’s inclusive, innovative, and sustainable. #FII8

Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan
@ForeignOfficePk
[10/29/2024 9:14 AM, 479.9K followers, 19 retweets, 57 likes]
A group of 95 participants of the 26th National Security Workshop, conducted by the National Defence University (NDU), today visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar @MIshaqDar50 and Foreign Secretary Ambassador Amna Baloch @amnabaloch4 briefed them on the dimensions, strengths, challenges and considerations of the foreign policy of Pakistan. The participants were also briefed on the working of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Pakistani Missions abroad. At the conclusion of the session, the Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister and the Foreign Secretary entertained questions from the audience and held a thought-provoking discussion with the course participants.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[10/29/2024 3:54 AM, 8.5M followers, 921 retweets, 2.3K likes]
This court order is telling the truth about democracy in Pakistan.Islamabad police wanted 30 days physical remand of @ImaanZHazir and @HadiAli115 who only removed a barrier on the road because both lawyers wanted to reach in court on time.Judge gave 3 days remand.

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[10/30/2024 1:33 AM, 92.8K followers, 172 retweets, 302 likes]
PAKISTAN: The arrest and continued detention of human rights lawyers Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and Hadi Ali under anti-terrorism laws is a violation of their rights to due process and yet another example of the abuse of the Anti-Terrorism Act. Charges of terrorism are not commensurate with any offenses the lawyers are alleged to have committed. Such action by the authorities is excessive, disproportionate and in violation of Pakistan’s obligations under international law. Imaan and Hadi were detained on 28 October and informed of the charges 24 hours after being arrested. Imaan was also previously arrested and charged for her participation and speech at a PTM rally in August 2023. The disproportionate charges, particularly related to terrorism, must be dropped immediately, and the authorities must ensure their right to a fair trial under international human rights law, including unrestricted access to legal counsel.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[10/29/2024 9:15 AM, 42.9K followers, 6 retweets, 18 likes]
60 members of Congress write to Joe Biden, urging him "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." https://casar.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/casar.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Letter_Human%20Rights%20Pakistan%20_Oct%2023%202024.pdf

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[10/29/2024 10:00 AM, 42.9K followers, 1 retweet, 4 likes]
They write: "developments since the February vote point to a clear turn towards authoritarianism in the country. The government has intensified its crackdown on social media and the internet as part of a broader effort to suppress political activism."

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[10/29/2024 11:31 AM, 42.9K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
The letter ends with questions for Biden: "How has U.S. policy toward Pakistan changed in response to the undemocratic actions and human rights abuses committed by the Pakistani government? What specific actions has your administration taken in response to these developments?"

India

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[10/29/2024 8:42 AM, 26M followers, 197 retweets, 1.2K likes]
The probationers of Indian Trade Service and Indian Cost Accounts Service called on President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The President said that Indian Trade Service officers would play an important role in powering India’s growth and making an impact on the lives of people at large. She also told Indian Cost Accounts Service officers that their decisions and actions would be key to safeguarding public finances and boosting efficiency and effectiveness in government procurement systems.

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[10/29/2024 4:29 AM, 26M followers, 246 retweets, 1.4K likes]
President Droupadi Murmu visited the exhibition showcasing the paintings made by tribal artists at Rashtrapati Bhavan Cultural Centre. The President appreciated the artworks created by the artists belonging to various parts of the country. She said that the eternal relationship between human beings and nature is reflected in their paintings. She urged all to appreciate and promote the rich art and culture of tribal communities. The artists have made these paintings during their week-long stay at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Vice-President of India
@VPIndia
[10/29/2024 11:44 AM, 1.5M followers, 18 retweets, 112 likes]
Deeply pained by the loss of lives in a tragic road accident in Laxmangarh, Sikar. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family members in this hour of grief. May the injured recover soon.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[10/29/2024 4:20 AM, 3.3M followers, 523 retweets, 3.8K likes]
Pleased to address the Army Commanders Conference in Delhi today. Discussed the intricacies of current geopolitics, as well as its challenges, possibilities and opportunities. Urged that a more ‘whole of the Government’ approach is needed to effectively advance national security.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[10/30/2024 3:07 AM, 267.8K followers, 14 retweets, 46 likes]
The increasing role of terrorism-glorifying Sikh separatists based in the U.S. and Canada is reopening old Indian wounds from the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight that Canada found was the handiwork of Canadian Sikh terrorists. The bombing killed 329.

NSB

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[10/30/2024 1:43 AM, 7.3K followers, 2 retweets, 1 like]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has said citizens must be able to participate in democratic governance&have a real say in decision-making.#Bangladesh Volker Türk @DU: ‘No repetition, no going back. You must draw a clear line in the stand’ https://unb.com.bd/category/Bangladesh/volker-turk-at-du-no-repetition-no-going-back-you-must-draw-a-clear-line-in-the-stand/145941#google_vignette

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[10/30/2024 1:40 AM, 7.3K followers, 2 retweets, 4 likes]
#Bangladesh’s interim gov welcomed a US delegation and signed a $200 million development agreement with USAID on September 15. This funding aims to bolster development, strengthen governance and expand opportunities for Bangladeshis. https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/foreign-affairs/363599/usaid-bangladesh-cannot-afford-to-leave-anyone

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[10/29/2024 9:39 PM, 267.8K followers, 97 retweets, 224 likes]
In Bangladesh, Islamists now have free rein to violently push their revisionist agenda. Risk is growing that the world’s most densely populated country, excluding microstates and mini-states, could slide into jihadist chaos.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[10/29/2024 10:19 AM, 110.6K followers, 129 retweets, 128 likes]
First Lady advocates for stronger healthcare and social equity initiatives at Merck Foundation Conference

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[10/29/2024 5:05 AM, 110.6K followers, 172 retweets, 177 likes]
First Lady Madam Sajidha Mohamed attends the inauguration session of the 11th Edition of the @MerckFoundation Africa Asia Luminary Annual Conference. The First Lady is attending the conference as the Guest of Honour.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake
@anuradisanayake
[10/30/2024 12:21 AM, 133.6K followers, 9 retweets, 64 likes]
I held meetings with the Chamber of Commerce, Banks’ Association, and Export Development Board and discussed full digitalization of the economy in three years. My government also aims to improve efficiency of state institutions, lower energy costs, promote FDIs and restructure the diplomatic services to expand market access. I also emphasized that the government is free of vested interests and highlighted our commitment to economic independence and objective decision-making for national growth.

Karu Jayasuriya
@KaruOnline
[10/29/2024 5:18 AM, 53.7K followers, 1 retweet, 5 likes]
News reports on neglect of imported rice for six years, and abandoned government vehicles for decades show a troubling lack of rapid response and policy clarity. Effective governance starts by cutting down on waste.

Eran Wickramaratne
@EranWick
[10/29/2024 6:05 AM, 69.8K followers, 5 retweets, 58 likes]
I was not planning to contest this General Election. I wanted to make way for new faces, female politicians and young politicians. But @sjbsrilanka demanded that I contest, so I entered the race with preferential number 5 from the Colombo District. It was a last minute decision, so my campaign started late. But now it is on track.

Central Asia

Emomali Rahmon
@EmomaliRahmonTJ
[10/30/2024 2:44 AM, 3.2K followers, 1 retweet, 4 likes]
On October 29, the President of the Republic of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon, and the Mayor of Dushanbe, Honorable Rustam Emomali, opened in Dushanbe a number of facilities in the fields of education and science, transport, industry and law enforcement.

Bakhtiyor Saidov
@FM_Saidov
[10/29/2024 12:11 PM, 15.1K followers, 1 retweet, 11 likes]
Together with foreign ambassadors to #Uzbekistan visited the #Surkhandarya region and discussed the big economic potential there. The #Termez International Trade Center, located at the border area between #Uzbekistan and #Afghanistan, serves as a unique hub for entrepreneurs not only within Central Asia, but all across the world towards enhancing trade.

{End of Report}

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