epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Wednesday, September 4, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Islamic State group claims Kabul suicide attack that killed at least 6 (AP)
AP [9/3/2024 12:04 PM, Staff, 31638K, Negative]
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Tuesday for this week’s suicide bombing at a prosecutor’s office in Kabul that killed at least six people and injured 13.

The group said in a statement on its news outlet Amaq that the assailant detonated his explosive-laden vest Monday as investigators and other employees were leaving work, in an attack to avenge people detained in prisons run by the country’s Taliban government.

IS claimed the blast killed 45 people, a far higher number of victims than the death toll of six given Monday by Taliban officials following the blast in the capital’s southwestern Qala Bakhtiar neighborhood. Officials of the Taliban government were not immediately available for comment on the IS claim.

After the blast, Taliban security forces had cordoned off the area and prevented journalists and other people from approaching the site.

Extremists in Afghanistan have increased their assaults since the Taliban takeover of the country in 2021. Targets have included Taliban patrols and members of the country’s Shiite minority.

Six of the men injured in Monday’s blast were taken to a surgical center in Kabul run by the humanitarian group Emergency NGO, where two of them had to undergo major surgery, group director Dejan Panic said.
Islamic State claims Kabul blast citing Bagram base detentions (Reuters)
Reuters [9/3/2024 9:09 AM, Jana Choukeir and Mohammad Yunus Yawar, 37270K, Negative]
Islamic State on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul that killed six people a day earlier, saying it was in response to the revival by Taliban authorities of detention facilities at the high-security Bagram base.

The historic Soviet-built air strip was the main base for American forces in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks up until their 2021 withdrawal led to the takeover by the Islamist Taliban movement.

"The attack came in retaliation for Muslim prisoners in Taliban prisons, especially after their transfer to the notorious ‘Bagram’ prison, in a repeat of the American era and its practices against prisoners," Islamic State said in a post on its Telegram channel.

In the early years of the Afghan war under President George W. Bush, the CIA used Bagram as a "black site" detention centre for terrorism suspects, subjecting them to abuse that President Barack Obama would later acknowledge as torture.

The Acting Head of Prison Administration under the Taliban government, Mohammad Yusuf Mestari, said on Sunday that the prison at Bagram was being "reactivated" after it had not been in use for years.

He said the facility had been handed over the General Directorate of Intelligence and that some prisoners had been transferred there - but did not specify who they were.

Kabul police said all six killed on Monday were civilians and did not say what the target was. Islamic State, however, claimed 45 people including Taliban members had been killed when its bomber targeted people working with judicial services.

Reuters could not independently verify the casualty figures or the target. Afghanistan’s Taliban-run interior ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Islamic State-Khurasan, a local affiliate of the Middle East-based Islamic State, has waged an insurgency against the Taliban, who they see as their enemies.

Taliban authorities say they have mostly crushed the group, even as it continues to carry out attacks in Afghanistan. Islamic State has claimed a number of attacks abroad, including a stabbing rampage in Germany, a concert hall assault in Moscow and a memorial bombing in Iran.
House Republican Subpoenas Blinken Over Afghanistan Withdrawal (New York Times)
New York Times [9/3/2024 4:14 PM, Karoun Demirjian, 831K, Neutral]
The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday issued a subpoena for Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s testimony, threatening to hold him in contempt if he failed to address the panel later this month about the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In his letter subpoenaing Mr. Blinken, the chairman, Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, wrote that receiving the testimony was important for committee members as they prepared “potential legislation aimed at helping prevent the catastrophic mistakes of the withdrawal,” after the expected release of an investigative report into the subject next week.

“You served as the final decision maker for the department on the withdrawal and evacuation,” Mr. McCaul wrote in the letter, demanding that Mr. Blinken appear before the panel on Sept. 19 to speak about his role, and complaining that he had missed previous deadlines to comply.

In a statement, Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said Mr. Blinken would not be available on that date and criticized the committee’s refusal to accept what he called “reasonable alternatives to comply with Chairman McCaul’s request for a public hearing.”

“It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the department in good faith, the committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena,” Mr. Miller wrote, noting that Mr. Blinken had testified before Congress 14 times, including four appearances before Mr. McCaul’s panel.

The summons comes amid fresh political squabbling over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as the presidential race enters its final weeks. Democrats denounced former President Donald J. Trump for shooting video for his campaign last week at Arlington National Cemetery, where he appeared for a wreath-laying ceremony to honor service members killed during the evacuation. Mr. Trump has stepped up his attacks on President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, maintaining that they mismanaged the U.S. exit from Afghanistan and blaming them personally for failing to prevent the deaths of 13 Americans at Abbey Gate, outside the Kabul airport.

Mr. McCaul’s report, the culmination of nearly three years of investigative work, is expected to lay similar blame at the feet of Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris.

“It will serve as an indictment on the administration’s reckless refusal to properly prepare for the withdrawal,” Mr. McCaul said in a statement last week announcing the release of the report. “President Biden and Vice President Harris can no longer sweep their unmitigated disaster of epic proportions that they created under the rug.”

In a statement last week, Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, dismissed Mr. McCaul’s threats to subpoena Mr. Blinken as “political stunts that show the Republican Party’s desperation to score headlines during an election season.”

Tuesday’s subpoena is the third that Mr. McCaul has issued to Mr. Blinken in conjunction with the panel’s Afghanistan investigation. The previous two sought documents related to the inquiry.
US congressional committee subpoenas Blinken over Afghanistan (Reuters)
Reuters [9/3/2024 6:00 PM, Patricia Zengerle, 37270K, Negative]
The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee subpoenaed Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, saying he had refused to appear before the panel to testify on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

In a letter about the subpoena, Chairman Michael McCaul said Blinken must appear before the committee on Sept. 19 or face contempt charges, the committee said.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Blinken was not currently available to testify on the dates proposed by the committee, but has proposed "reasonable alternatives" to comply with McCaul’s request for a public hearing.

"It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the Department in good faith, the Committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena," Miller said in a statement.

He said Blinken had testified before Congress on Afghanistan more than 14 times, including four times before McCaul’s committee. He also said State has provided the committee with nearly 20,000 pages of department records, multiple high-level briefings and transcribed interviews.

McCaul asked Blinken in May to appear at a hearing in September on the committee’s report on its investigation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In his letter to Blinken, the Republican committee chairman said current and former State Department officials confirmed that Blinken was "the final decisionmaker" on the withdrawal and evacuation.

"You are therefore in a position to inform the Committee’s consideration of potential legislation aimed at helping prevent the catastrophic mistakes of the withdrawal, including potential reforms to the Department’s legislative authorization,” McCaul wrote.

The subpoena from McCaul’s committee, which has been investigating the deadly and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan for years, comes as events surrounding the pullback become an increasingly politicized issue ahead of the Nov. 5 elections.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, visited Arlington National Cemetery late last month and took part in a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the 13 servicemembers killed during the U.S. withdrawal.

He also visited Section 60 of the cemetery, where troops are buried and which is considered hallowed ground in the military.

Federal law and Pentagon policies do not allow political activities in that section of the cemetery, but videos were taken by Trump’s campaign and used in advertisements.

During a speech in Pennsylvania on Friday, Trump said families of service members who died in Afghanistan had asked him to go to the cemetery.
Pakistan
Two Years After Deadly Floods Hit Pakistan, It’s Happening Again (New York Times)
New York Times [9/4/2024 1:02 AM, Zia ur-Rehman, 831K, Negative]
One recent evening, as heavy monsoon rains pounded down, Fauzia and her extended family of 15 huddled under a makeshift tent, its top patched with large plastic sheets.

Two years ago, her home was damaged in some of the worst flooding to ever hit Pakistan, a catastrophe that left more than 1,700 people dead and affected 30 million. Her family rebuilt three rooms with borrowed money and the sale of livestock. But as torrential rains have returned this year, their home has been damaged yet again, forcing them into the tent during downpours. Their memories of 2022 fill them with fear.

“Our children are terrified of the rain now,” said Fauzia, who, like many women in rural Pakistan, goes by one name. “Whenever it rains or the wind picks up, they cling to us and cry, ‘We will drown.’”

As unusually heavy rains lash Pakistan during this monsoon season, Fauzia is one of millions across the country who had only just recovered from the devastating 2022 floods and are now bracing for the possibility of losing what they had rebuilt.

That prospect has stoked outrage among some Pakistanis, who say that the authorities have not adequately prepared for the latest deluges, which have killed at least 285 people since July 1, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.

Government officials say they have taken steps like implementing early warning systems and strengthening embankments along major rivers. But critics say that Pakistan’s political, economic and security instability has pushed flood recovery and climate-change mitigation measures to the bottom of the government’s priorities.

Environmental groups have criticized the government for what they called delayed and insufficient relief efforts; substandard infrastructure, especially in rural areas unprepared for large-scale disasters; and pervasive issues of corruption, mismanagement and lack of coordination among agencies.

In recent weeks, Pakistan has been afflicted both by heavy rains and unusually high temperatures that have accelerated snowmelt in its mountainous northern regions. The runoff has turned into roaring rivers, drenching the south.

The torrential rains are expected to continue for weeks, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department.

In the remote Upper Dir district of the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a mudslide set off by heavy monsoon rains struck a house late last week, killing 12 people, most of them children, rescue officials said.

The province of Balochistan, in the southwest, is also grappling with widespread flooding. Infrastructure has been damaged and vital services have been disrupted, including the gas supply to several districts, among them Quetta, the provincial capital.

Experts have linked Pakistan’s floods in recent years to climate change, with rains getting more intense during the monsoon season, which runs from July to September. The 2022 disaster caused an estimated $30 billion in damage, the equivalent of nearly 9 percent of the country’s annual economic output.

The floodwaters left deep scars in the villages of southern Sindh Province, where Fauzia lives with her family. Sindh, positioned downstream from Pakistan’s other provinces in the country’s southeast, bore the brunt of the 2022 floods. Nearly 1,100 people in the province were killed, and almost eight million were displaced.

Fauzia’s village is in the Dadu district, one of the hardest hit in the flooding two years ago. The village is called Allah Bachayo, which means “God saves.” The heavy rains that caused the 2022 flooding lasted for more than 24 hours, Fauzia said, inundating the entire region. The family survived by going to the top of a nearby canal embankment.

Recent torrential rains have only compounded the suffering. “The rainwater pooled outside our homes has been causing us immense anxiety and bringing back traumatic memories of the 2022 floods,” said Fauzia, her gaze fixed on the standing water.

Government reconstruction efforts have yet to fully repair the damage. Electricity remains scarce after the floods severely damaged the power infrastructure. Many people are living in makeshift tents near their destroyed houses, and children still lack access to education.

After the disaster, the Sindh government announced a plan to rebuild 2.1 million houses. But many villagers complain that only a fraction of the promised assistance has been delivered.

For those who have received the aid, the reconstruction payment — $1,078 in three installments — is insufficient to build even a single room measuring 16 by 18 feet without a kitchen.

Shahzadi, a woman in her 50s, had to supplement the government assistance by selling her goats and jewelry, raising an additional $450 for the construction.

On a recent afternoon, she and her daughter worked tirelessly alongside a mason, mixing cement and passing concrete blocks to save on labor costs. “We can’t afford to pay two helpers $22 a day each,” she said, her hands caked with mud. She said that the cost of construction materials had doubled since the 2022 floods.

Before the disaster, Shahzadi lived in a three-room house with her family. They have since spent two long years living in tents.

As for her new one-room house, “it’s not a home; it’s a compromise,” she said with a sigh, glancing at the half-finished structure. “But at least our children can live in a room instead of under the open sky.”

The crisis in the villages has been worsened by two consecutive years of poor crop yields, a result of damage to irrigation systems. Even though electric power has not been restored, villagers complain that they continue to receive electricity bills.

In Sindh, farmers typically grow two crops a year. They harvest rice and cotton in the fall and then start planting wheat around late October or November.

Maqbool Ahmed, a 55-year-old small landowner, was unable to plant wheat in 2022, as it took five months for the water to recede from his fields.

This year, Mr. Ahmed planted rice on only half of his land, fearing another flood. His fears were justified — the monsoon rains have once again inundated his crop.

“In this uncertain weather, landlords and farmers cannot cultivate anything,” he said. “It will only lead to more losses.” Mr. Ahmed, like many other farmers, has taken on crushing debt after their homes and farmland suffered damage.

Many families have still not returned after being displaced by the 2022 floods. Tens of thousands are living in precarious conditions in the slums of Karachi, an already overcrowded port city of more than 20 million people.

These displaced families, once rooted in rural life and farming, are struggling to adapt to unpredictable city life.

Masooda, a 35-year-old mother of three, is sharing a cramped rented house in Karachi with two other displaced families, paying $53 a month for rent and electricity. Her family’s home in Dadu, built of mud and straw, was swept away two years ago.

Despite the hardships, Masooda expressed gratitude for the livelihood, however tenuous, that Karachi offers. Her husband, whose eyesight has deteriorated, earns about $2 a day by cobbling shoes with the help of their 5-year-old son.

“At least here, my husband can work and we have a roof over our heads,” she said. “That’s more than we would have if we went back.”
Pakistan Working to Meet IMF Requirements, Says PM Sharif (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [9/3/2024 8:43 AM, Kamran Haider and Ismail Dilawar, 27782K, Positive]
Pakistan is working to meet all the conditions set by the International Monetary Fund for a new $7 billion loan program, according to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

The government will ensure all requirements set by the lender are completed on time, he said on Tuesday in a cabinet meeting without giving exact details. Pakistan’s finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb later said

they are in advanced stages of getting assurances for external financing.

The IMF program is crucial for the South Asian nation to meet debt payments of about $26 billion in the year started July. Pakistan secured a staff-level approval for the loan in July that needs a final approval from the IMF’s executive board. Pakistan’s finance minister expects a deal by the end of the month after an earlier self-imposed deadline for August lapsed.

The government has decided to add new taxes on retail traders, the finance minister said in a televised speech Tuesday. Pakistan has backtracked on similar tax increases after protests in the past. Sharif’s government has taken unpopular steps including adding record-high taxes and increasing energy prices to meet IMF conditions, often triggering a public backlash.
Baluch Leader Resigns From Pakistani Parliament (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [9/3/2024 8:31 AM, Staff, 1251K, Negative]
Sardar Akhtar Mengal, the chaiman of the Balochistan National Party (BNP) and a veteran politician, has resigned his seat in Pakistan’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly.

Balochistan in southwestern Pakistan borders Afghanistan and Iran and is home to Pakistan’s Baluch ethnic minority. It has been the scene of a low-level insurgency and brutal army crackdown for years.

"I have resigned as member of the National Assembly," Mengal wrote on X on September 3, according to Radio Mashaal.

Addressing a news conference in Islamabad later the same day, Mengal said he cannot serve his people as a member of the parliament and there was therefore no reason to stay in the seat.

A radical group known as the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has waged an insurgency there for decades against the Pakistani state, carrying out mostly small-scale attacks against government forces.

But the region was the scene in late August of the deadliest bombings and shootings in years, and the BLA appears to have gained strength.

Pakistani militant groups including the BLA are believed to have obtained U.S. weapons and military equipment since U.S. and international forces pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, leaving behind billions of dollars’ worth of military gear and weapons seized by the hard-line fundamentalist Taliban after it took power in Kabul.
Pakistan installs firewall in censorship drive, hitting businesses (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [9/3/2024 9:28 PM, Adnan Aamir, 2376K, Negative]
Sajida, a 23-year-old freelance digital content creator, first noticed that WhatsApp stopped working for her in the second week of August. She could not download media files and send voice notes.

"I rely on WhatsApp to send and receive data from my clients, which I then use for content creation," she told Nikkei Asia. "Disruption of this feature on WhatsApp meant I simply could not work."

She soon found out she wasn’t the only one suffering. The internet speed in Pakistan plummeted by 30% to 40% in mid-August, according to industry body Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association, creating chaos for businesses and individuals who rely heavily on fast and reliable connectivity.

While WhatsApp has resumed service as normal, overall internet speed is still slow. A Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) spokesperson told Nikkei Asia, "The ongoing internet slowdown across the country is mainly due to a fault in two of the seven international submarine cables connecting Pakistan internationally."

In late August, the cabinet told Parliament that it had installed a web management system (WMS), which allows the local authority to block content, monitor and control internet traffic at a gateway level on national security grounds.

The government has allocated more than $108 million for the acquisition and installation of this filtering system, according to local media reports.

Digital rights activists and industry and government sources called the installation a form of censorship.

"The old method to block websites in Pakistan was primitive and not scalable to block a large number of websites," a representative of the broadband sector told Nikkei on condition of anonymity. "That’s why the government has installed [WMS] to block websites and services en masse."

Some say Pakistan is following in China’s footsteps. Beijing has deployed a firewall -- dubbed the ‘Great Firewall’ by critics, a play on what is arguably China’s most famous structure -- since 1998 to prevent residents from accessing information it regards as detrimental or potentially destabilizing.

"Pakistani [internet service providers] are using DPI (deep pocket inspection) technology, similar to China’s Great Firewall, which allows them to analyze and control network traffic based on its content," said Shahzad Ahmad, country director of Bytes for All, a think tank that focuses on information and communication technologies.

Media reports said Pakistan has already installed the firewall and conducted two trial runs.

"The term ‘firewall’ is being used in Pakistan by taking inspiration from China. However, Pakistan’s filtering system will be in no way near that of China," a businessperson involved in cybersecurity services who did not want to be named told Nikkei.

PTA did not respond to specific requests for comment about the firewall.

A government official involved in information technology told Nikkei on condition of anonymity that criticism of the government has been blown out of proportion. "[The firewall] will defend Pakistan’s critical digital infrastructure against cyberattacks," the official said.

The official declined to comment on whether China helped in setting up the firewall.

The disruption is hitting the already-struggling economy. IT industry body Pakistan Software Houses Association estimated that the Pakistani economy’s losses could reach $300 million as a result of the loss of internet speed, including recent disruptions.

Mutaher Khan, co-founder of Data Darbar, a startup on private-market intelligence, said telecommunications companies face losing vast sums from internet disruptions. They "will suffer with an estimated average of $5.4 million in the case of a full-day shutdown," he said.

Khan pointed also to the more than 100,000 gig workers who depend on the internet for jobs.

For a time, many resorted to using virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent internet censorship. In response, the government made VPN registrations mandatory from August, requiring users to sign in to an online portal developed by the PTA.

Experts believe that the crackdown on VPNs will make it harder for individuals and organizations to bypass censorship.

"This [VPN] registration process involves submitting identification and justifying the use of a VPN, which will significantly impact internet usage in Pakistan by reducing privacy and increasing surveillance," said Ahmad of Bytes for All.

Digital rights activists believe the usage of WMS and crackdown on VPNs is part of the government’s effort to control dissent on social media. X, formerly known as Twitter, has been blocked since February on what the government said were national security grounds.

"It seems that the purpose of Pakistani firewall is to limit the dissemination in online spaces, particularly curbing political expression," Ahmad said.

The installation of the alleged firewall and internet suspensions have also given journalists a hard time.

Ghazala Yousafzai, founder of Factcheckly, an independent fact-checking organization based in Islamabad, said her work has been restricted by the censorship.

"Journalists rely on unrestricted access to information to uncover stories and present a balanced perspective and fact-checking operations rely on quick access to online content," she said. "Firewalls delay this process, limit the sources I can consult and sometimes block access to critical information altogether. This affects the timeliness and comprehensiveness of my reporting."
Why is Pakistan planning to ban rallies and public gatherings in Islamabad? (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [9/4/2024 3:15 AM, Abid Hussain, 25.8M, Neutral]
Legislators belonging to Pakistan’s ruling party have introduced a bill seeking to empower officials in the capital, Islamabad, to regulate and even ban public rallies and gatherings.

The introduction of the Pea­ceful Assembly and Public Order Bill 2024 in the Senate, the upper house of Pakistan’s parliament, on Monday came a week before the main opposition group, led by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, had planned a rally in the city.

If Khan’s party is denied permission to hold its demonstration, Pakistan could see another showdown between the political rivals, months after national elections that the PTI alleges were rigged.

PTI founder Khan has been in prison for a year after his conviction in several cases ahead of the February vote. He is on trial from jail in other cases, despite rights groups calling his detention “arbitrary”.

What does the bill propose?

The bill, proposed by Irfan-ul-Haque Siddiqui of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), would give Islamabad city officials the authority to assess the prevailing law and order situation before granting permission for public gatherings.

The bill also would allow the government to designate areas within Islamabad as “red zones” or “high-security zones”, which would ban all assemblies in those regions.

Additionally, the eight-page bill would mandate that public gatherings occur only in designated areas and adhere to specified times and routes.

It emphasises that the right to peaceful assembly, while fundamental, is subject to “reasonable restrictions” in the interests of “public order, morality and state security”.

The proposed legislation argues that regulating assemblies is necessary to protect the rights of all citizens, including their safety, security and free movement, and says similar regulations exist in other countries.

The bill has triggered strong opposition from the PTI, which alleged it specifically targets the party.

The protest by the opposition forced Senate Chairman Yousuf Raza Gilani to refer the bill to a parliamentary committee. The committee, however, approved the bill late on Tuesday, setting the stage for it to be voted on.

Is the bill targeted at the PTI?

The PTI was scheduled to hold a mass rally in Islamabad on August 22, but it cancelled the event, citing safety concerns.

The rally was mainly called to protest the Supreme Court’s delay in issuing its detailed judgement in a case related to reserved seats in parliament.

Pakistan’s 336-member lower house of parliament, called the National Assembly, has 70 reserved seats – 60 for women and 10 for members from minority communities. These seats are distributed to parties based on their performance in national elections. A total of 169 seats is required for a party or coalition to form the government.

In the elections this year, candidates backed by the PTI won the most seats, but no party was able to secure a majority. Khan’s rivals – the PML-N and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) – joined hands and formed a coalition government.

But the PTI insisted the polls were rigged and the results tampered with, saying it won more than 93 seats officially allocated to it. The government has insisted that the election wasn’t manipulated.

The tussle between the PTI and the government worsened after the main opposition party was denied its share of reserved seats, prompting it to move the court. Last month, in a major victory for the PTI, the top court said the Khan-led party was eligible for its share of reserved seats in national and provincial assemblies.

But the court is yet to pronounce its detailed judgement in the case, which, along with Khan’s release from jail, is the main agenda of the PTI’s planned rally in Islamabad on Sunday.

The government denied the proposed bill targets the PTI.

Saleem Mandviwalla of the PPP, one of the legislators behind the bill, told Al Jazeera the PTI will “complain about anything the government brings to parliament regardless of its merits”.

Mandviwalla said some recent protests in Islamabad, including the ones organised by a far-right religious party and traders protesting inflation, were proof that the city’s public gatherings have “become a nuisance”.

“The White House [in the United States] has a designated place for protests. The Norwegian assembly has a designated spot for holding rallies. But here in Islamabad, everybody wants to protest in the red zone and blocks main avenues, making it difficult for everybody,” he said.

The red zone in Islamabad refers to the area around the city’s Constitution Avenue, on which the parliament, offices of the president and the prime minister, and other key government buildings are located. The diplomatic enclave, which houses most embassies, is also a part of the red zone.

Pakistan is also scheduled to host the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s summit next month in Islamabad, its most high-profile gathering of global leaders since 2012 when it hosted leaders of several developing nations.

But PTI Senator Ali Zafar, who was in parliament on Monday when the bill was introduced, said it specifically targets the party. He said even if an approval for a rally is granted, it could be revoked at any time and the organiser would be subject to three years in prison.

He said the PTI was given a no-objection certificate (NOC) by the authorities several times in the past to conduct a rally, but the notification was withdrawn just before the event.

“While we have received the NOC for the September 8 demonstration, it appears they want to repeat the same trick by withdrawing it, and through this bill, they can give it a legal cover,” he told Al Jazeera.

Rising safety and security concerns

In recent months, Pakistan has seen escalating violence by armed groups, particularly in its northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan in the southwest, both bordering Afghanistan.

According to a report by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, 59 such incidents occurred nationwide in August with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan being the most affected, including attacks on August 26 that killed more than 70 people.

Mandviwalla said diplomats from several countries living in Islamabad have expressed concerns about frequent road closures due to protests, questioning the government’s ability to secure its capital.

“Many of these diplomats have approached me and asked me that if the government cannot control the 10-mile [16km] radius here, how is it expected to control Balochistan. It shows there is no writ and no system in place,” he said.

However, political analyst Benazir Shah said Islamabad officials were already under scrutiny for allegedly being used by the government against the opposition parties, mainly the PTI.

“With this bill, it appears that the government is seeking to further expand the powers of the city officials by allowing them to place a ban on gatherings and punish the violators with up to three years of imprisonment,” she told Al Jazeera.

The Lahore-based analyst said the regulation of public gatherings comes at a time when the government has been facing protests not just from political opponents, but civil society groups as well.

“There have been multiple protests by even government servants, trade unions and religious groups. This move may potentially be an effort to curb all such gatherings,” Shah said.
India
Russia built covert trade channel with India, leaks reveal (Financial Times)
Financial Times [9/3/2024 11:34 PM, John Reed, Max Seddon, Chris Cook, and John Paul Rathbone, 14.2M, Neutral]
Russia has been secretly acquiring sensitive goods in India and explored building facilities in the country to secure components for its war effort, according to Russian state correspondence seen by the Financial Times.

Moscow’s industry and trade ministry, which oversees defence production to support Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, drew up confidential plans in October 2022 to spend about Rs82bn ($1bn at the time) on securing critical electronics through channels hidden from western governments.

The plan, revealed in letters to a shadowy trade promotion body with strong links to the Russian security services, aimed to use “significant reserves” of rupees amassed by Russian banks from booming oil sales to India. It saw India as an alternative market to source crucial goods “previously supplied from unfriendly countries”.

Russia and its Indian partners targeted dual-use technologies — goods with both civilian and military applications — that are subject to western export controls, according to the documents, as well as western officials and two businessmen formerly involved in the trade. Moscow even envisaged pumping investment into Russo-Indian electronics development and production facilities, according to the leaked files.

The correspondence shows how Russia turned to New Delhi, even as Narendra Modi, the prime minister, brought the world’s most populous country closer than ever into the US orbit. During a state visit to Washington last year Modi signed a series of Indo-American co-operation agreements in areas ranging from advanced jet engines to artificial intelligence.

While the extent to which Moscow enacted its plan is unclear, detailed trade flow data suggest the relationship with India has grown deeper in the specific categories of goods identified in the Russian correspondence.

India’s ties with Moscow have been a growing source of friction with Washington. Wally Adeyemo, the US deputy treasury secretary, wrote in July to three of India’s top business organisations warning them that “any foreign financial institution that does business with Russia’s military industrial base risks being sanctioned itself”.

Adeyemo added: “This heightened sanctions risk exists regardless of the currency used in a transaction.”

While Modi has bemoaned the impact on developing economies of the invasion of Ukraine and urged the two sides to make peace, Delhi extended an economic lifeline to Russia after it was hit by western sanctions.

India has been a major buyer of Russian crude oil and the two countries’ total trade reached an all-time high of $66bn in the 2023-24 financial year, a fivefold increase on the past year before the invasion. Some of the trade has been transacted in rupees, leaving Russia with a surplus of the currency.

The Kremlin has admitted difficulties in repatriating Russia’s oil profits because of US sanctions and currency restrictions. Russian groups have used rupees to trade gold and purchase goods to evade the sanctions, according to people involved in the trade and western officials.

The Russian central government official involved in the leaked correspondence, Alexander Gaponov, is deputy head of the ministry’s “radio-electronics” division. It is an area of particular sensitivity because Russia is reliant on foreign-produced electronics for use in missiles, drones and electronic warfare.

Gaponov in October 2022 asked an opaque Moscow-based organisation with ties to Russian security services — the Consortium for Foreign Economic Activity and International Interstate Cooperation in Industry — to present plans for acquiring critical components from India.

Vadim Poida, the consortium’s president, replied that it had developed “specific plans” with the Russian electronics industry and “representatives of the relevant Indian state and private businesses” that had “high potential” for making use of the Kremlin’s rupees.

Poida outlined a five-stage plan to help Russia spend its rupees and establish a steady supply of dual-use components. Russia would set up a “closed payment system between Russian and Indian companies” beyond the oversight of western countries, “including by using digital financial assets”, Poida wrote.

Poida’s consortium estimated Russia could purchase up to Rbs100bn of components, including parts for “telecommunication, server, and other complex electronic equipment” previously bought through western countries.

Its members, Poida wrote, had begun pilot projects for producing Russian-designed components in India and conducted “detailed work on the issue of hiding information about the participation of Russian individuals and corporate entities, as well as the logistics of supply via third countries”.

Additional funds could be spent on backing joint ventures in India for electronics factories needed “to meet the needs of Russian critical information infrastructure”.

The consortium’s legal entity was set up in 2013, nominally as a vehicle for app development. Poida took it over and renamed it in March of 2022, less than a month after Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. One western official confirmed the group, which mentions meetings involving the security services in the leaked correspondence, is a front for Russian intelligence.

The leaked exchange of letters mentions paying for two specific customs categories of goods, types of electronics and machinery, in rupees. Russian filings show that trade in these categories has soared from negligible volumes in mid-2022.

Customs filings also reveal specific items that potentially match the project’s activities. Innovio Ventures, an Indian company, was listed in trade declarations as the supplier of at least $4.9mn of electronic equipment, including drones, to Russia as well as $600,000 of goods shipped to Kyrgyzstan. The transactions were listed in Russian filings as settled in rupees.

The shipments to Russia include $568,000 of electronic equipment for use in radio-electronic systems to a Russian company called Testkomplekt, which has been hit by US and EU sanctions for being at the heart of Moscow’s military procurement system.

An Indian businessman familiar with Russia’s trade with India said Moscow had also done scoping work to establish facilities in India.

“Part of this [rupee pile] was to be deployed in India for coming up with the necessary manufacturing of dual-use items,” the Indian businessman said. “It could be low-value electronics items like the ones found in washing machines or refrigerators.”

“You could either export these items, or take the electronics out and send them to Russia,” he added.
India supports policy of development, not expansionism, PM Modi says (Reuters)
Reuters [9/4/2024 3:29 AM, YP Rajesh and Tanvi Mehta, 5.2M, Neutral]
India supports a policy of development and not expansionism, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Brunei on Wednesday, though he did not name any country.

Brunei is located south of the South China Sea, which is claimed almost entirely by Beijing. Ties between India and China have been strained since 20 Indian and four Chinese troops were killed in a border clash on their Himalayan frontier in 2020.

Modi also said India supports freedom of navigation and overflight under international laws similar to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which provides a framework for global maritime navigation and regulates use of marine resources.
India’s Modi expected to usher in new era of bilateral agreements in Singapore visit (CNBC)
CNBC [9/3/2024 9:48 PM, Charmaine Jacob, 48828K, Positive]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to meet his Singapore counterpart Lawrence Wong this week marking his first trip to the city-state since he won a historic third term in office in June.

Modi will also be meeting Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister and former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, and Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong during his two-day visit.

“Singapore has consistently been a friend of India in the region, and has advocated for partnering with India,” Anit Mukherjee, a senior lecturer at King’s College London, told CNBC. “India would want to emulate this exemplary bilateral partnership with other countries in the region.”

The country is India’s sixth largest trading partner, with 3.2% share of India’s overall trade. Imports from Singapore in financial year 2024 amounted to $21.2 billion, while exports totaled $14.4 billion.

Asia’s biggest financial hub is also the largest source of foreign direct investments into India. Cumulative FDI inflows from Singapore to India stood at almost $160 billion from April 2000 to March 2024, amounting to almost a quarter of total FDI inflows to the South Asian nation.

Mukherjee also added that after Modi’s trips to other continents this year, he wants to “drive home the point that he is not ignoring Southeast Asia.”

Earlier this week, the Indian prime minister made his inaugural trip to Brunei where he met Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. Modi is India’s first prime minister that has made a bilateral visit to the oil-rich country.

During his visit, Modi inaugurated the new Chancery premises of the High Commission of India in Brunei and paid a visit to the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque in Bandar Seri Begawan.

The Indian prime minister had also visited Italy for the G7 summit, Russia, Ukraine and Poland in the last three months since his reelection.

On the agenda

It has been nearly six years since Modi visited Singapore, and political watchers are expecting a number of agreements to be signed between the two countries — particularly in finance and manufacturing.

“The India-Singapore relationship has always been stable and strong. It is now expected to move to the next phase of collaboration which will be both an economic and strategic collaboration based on areas of long-term interest,” Amitendu Palit, a senior research fellow and research lead of trade and economics at the Institute of South Asian Studies, told CNBC.

Late last month, four Indian ministers including Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar attended a ministerial roundtable in the Lion City with Singapore ministers such as Wong and Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan.

The ministers discussed ways to increase bilateral cooperation in areas like advanced manufacturing, trade, investment and digitalization, among others.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Balakrishnan said that semiconductor manufacturing is an important area of focus.

“They know that although Singapore is very small, we have a disproportionate share of global semiconductor manufacturing capability, and they are carefully studying our system in terms of its ecosystem,” he said.

Political analysts told CNBC that any outcomes from that meeting will likely be presented during Modi’s visit.

“There are going to be some further steps announced in the areas of mutual collaboration. I expect quite a few of them to come in the field of finance, technology and business. They have been the cornerstones of the India-Singapore operation,” said Palit.

For example, the payments linkage between Singapore’s PayNow and India’s Unified Payments Interface since 2023 has allowed people from both countries to send and receive funds between bank accounts in real-time.

“More schemes similar to this could be announced. And even if they are not, the first step of that cooperation will be firmly embedded in the upcoming meeting,” Palit predicted.

He added that there will unlikely be major announcements relating to trade between the two countries.

“The trade relationship is already very stable. Singapore has not just been an important bilateral partner for India trade, but has also acted as a gateway for India into Asia-Pacific and Southeast Asia.”
Indian state passes law seeking death penalty for rapists after rape and murder of doctor (CBS News)
CBS News [9/3/2024 1:13 PM, Arshad R. Zargar, 59828K, Negative]
An Indian state, shaken by weeks of protests demanding justice after the rape and murder of a doctor, passed a law on Tuesday that could lead to the execution of rapists.

Protests erupted in West Bengal last month to demand justice for a doctor who was brutally raped and killed at a state-run hospital in the local capital of Kolkata, and to call for an end to violence against women in India.

The 31-year-old doctor’s body was found with multiple injuries on Aug. 9 in a lecture hall at the city’s R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, where the woman had gone to rest during a night shift when she was attacked. An autopsy confirmed sexual assault and multiple injuries sustained before she died. It also suggested she resisted and may have been tortured before being murdered.

The Kolkata Police arrested a volunteer member of the police force the next day and charged him with rape and murder, as the case drew national outcry. Medics across the country demanded safer workplaces while citizens demanded safety for women in a country with a shameful record of rape.

India reported an average of nearly 90 rapes per day in 2022, according to the most recent data from the National Crime Records Bureau, although experts believe the real number could be much higher, since many rapes go unreported due to prevailing stigmas around sexual violence and a lack of faith in police investigations. Conviction rates remain low.

The new West Bengal law, passed Tuesday by the state assembly but yet to be approved by the president, expresses outrage at the chronic issue of violence against women. It is largely symbolic because India’s criminal code applies uniformly across the country.

However, presidential approval could make an exception and see it become state law.

The law raises punishment for rape from the current sentences of at least 10 years to either life imprisonment or execution.

The doctor’s murder sparked strikes by medics and rallies backed by thousands of ordinary citizens across India, although many doctors have since returned to work.

Protests in West Bengal have since transformed into clashes between rival political party loyalists, including the ruling All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Hindu-nationalist BJP holds power nationally but sits in opposition in West Bengal. It and the AITC both backed the new state law.

The gruesome nature of the attack has invoked comparisons with the horrific 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in the capital Delhi.

The 2012 incident became a major political issue and was seen as one factor in the BJP’s subsequent success in elections.

Death penalties in India are often stalled by years of appeals. Executions are usually carried out by hanging.
West Bengal Assembly in India passes bill mandating life in prison or death penalty for rape convictions (ABC News)
ABC News [9/3/2024 8:25 AM, Trisha Mukherjee, 31638K, Neutral]
After the rape and murder of a junior doctor in a Kolkata hospital led to widespread protests, the West Bengal Assembly has unanimously passed a bill ordering life imprisonment for convicted rapists and the death penalty for rape which results in the death or vegetative state of the victim.

Several other proposals will also be enacted through the Aparajita Woman and Child Bill, including a special task force led by a female officer to accelerate investigations into rape cases, dedicated fast track courts, penalties for delays in investigations and a time limit of 21 days -- with a potential 15-day extension -- to issue a decision.

The bill will now go to the governor of West Bengal who is expected to sign it into law.

The new law was inspired following the death of a trainee doctor at R.G. Kar Medical College, wo was found dead with injuries indicating rape and strangulation in a seminar room in the hospital on Aug. 9. The murder sparked protests and rallies, drawing tens of thousands of people calling for justice. The suspect in custody, Sanjay Roy, stated he is innocent and is being framed.

Many in India see the bill as a step towards justice and assembly members from the opposition BJP party have lent their full support to its passage.

Sujata, a 55 year old protester who did not want to be identified by her last name, supported the bill. "You have to put some examples before the people so they will be aware of the punishment," she said.

But others saw the bill as a knee-jerk reaction that precludes sustainable change.

"We need to look at not only the act, but what precedes the act," said Piya Chakraborty, 39, a mental health rights activist. She believes India needs to focus on larger systemic reforms addressing rape culture and victim blaming.

The current proposal "is an easy way out for the state to say, ‘We’ve got a law,’" said Jhuma Sen, an Advocate practicing at the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court. She says parts of the bill are unconstitutional as Indian law forbids the mandatory minimum punishment for any crime as being the death penalty.

Advocates who oppose the death penalty bill say that capital punishment policies do not deter crime. Instead, innocent people are framed and sentenced to death as government bodies rush to reach a verdict and appease the public.

Maitreyi Misra, the director of death penalty mitigation at the pro bono legal aid and research center Project 39A, stated that 95% of all Indian death row cases from 2000 to 2015 either ended in acquittals or commutations.

"Procedural safeguards are not being insured," she said, pointing to flawed interrogations, improper collection of evidence, and lack of representation from lawyers -- all common during rushed investigations and trials. "What kind of justice are we aiming to have?"

At the rally that Chakraborty attended soon after she spoke to ABC News, a large blue banner condemned the bill, calling for transparent investigation and justice.

"Justice cannot be reduced to revenge," she said.
India launches flood warning systems at Himalayan glacial lakes (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [9/3/2024 8:21 AM, Parvaiz Bukhari, 88008K, Negative]
India is setting up high-tech warning systems at nearly 200 Himalayan glacial lakes at risk of bursting their banks, a deadly threat exacerbated by climate change, disaster officials said Tuesday.

India’s Himalayas contain at least 7,500 glacial lakes, many of which pose risks of dangerous flash floods.

Teams from India’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) are targeting 190 high-altitude lakes deemed to be the most dangerous in a mission slated to take three years.

"We have already made significant strides in mitigating risks", Safi Ahsan Rizvi, a senior NDMA official directing the mission, told AFP.

A glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) is the sudden release of water that has collected in former glacier beds.

These lakes are formed by the retreat of glaciers, a naturally occurring phenomenon turbocharged by the warmer temperatures of human-caused climate change.

One expedition is currently working to install early warning systems around six high-risk lakes in the northeastern state of Sikkim, where at least 77 people died in such a flood in October 2023.

"We have done 20 lakes so far, and will complete 40 this summer," Rizvi said.

The project will also include "lowering lake levels" of accumulated water and ice slush in lakes.

Teams include experts from the army and multiple government agencies, including the Indian Space Research Organisation, geologists, hydrologists, computing engineers and weather specialists.

India’s air force is also expected to join the mission later, flying heavy equipment into remote sites.

The mission will cover the Himalayan regions in India, from Kashmir and Ladakh in the north to Arunachal Pradesh in the northeast, many in areas bordering China.

Climate change is driving the disappearance of glaciers, with half the Earth’s 215,000 glaciers projected to melt by the end of the century, even if warming can be capped at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The volume of glacial lakes has jumped by 50 percent in 30 years, according to a 2020 study based on satellite data.

A study, published in Nature Communications, found that 15 million people live within 50 kilometres (31 miles) of a glacial lake and within one kilometre of potential flooding from a breach.

The risk was greatest in the "High Mountains Asia" region across 12 countries, including India, Pakistan, China and Nepal.

That is partly because more people live closer to glacial lakes in the region than in other parts of the world, making warning times even shorter.

Last month a glacial lake outburst in neighbouring Nepal’s Everest region sent a devastating flood of frigid water through the village of Thame, sweeping away buildings.

However, residents were forewarned and there were no casualties.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) said it was a clear example of the "catastrophic impacts" increasing global temperatures were having on people who had done the least to contribute to the greenhouse gases driving it.
India Needs More Lending — But Not to Everyone (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [9/3/2024 5:00 PM, Mihir Sharma, 27782K, Positive]
Indians are justifiably proud of how easy it has become for them to pay for stuff. If you have an Indian phone number and bank account, instant digital transactions are fairly seamless. Now, the Reserve Bank of India wants to expand the country’s unified payments interface, or UPI, to lending: The central bank’s governor has repeatedly promised that a “unified lending interface” will soon be rolled out. That carries great potential — and not a little risk.

India’s model for financial interconnectedness is based around what it calls “digital public infrastructure.” The idea is simple: The government, or a closely regulated quasi-public entity, invests in, manages, and pays for the system through which digital transactions take place. Businesses can create apps that use this infrastructure; interoperability is built in, so those apps must compete on cost and quality rather than on the size of their network.

Consumers can decide how much of their information they are willing to share with specific apps or for specific transactions, and theoretically the seller’s access to private data is neither permanent nor very deep. The Indian IT whizzes who designed the system insist it avoids the worst of the US model (which is fragmented, insecure, and expensive), European systems (which are overregulated, lecture to business, and stifle innovation) and the Chinese network (which does not privilege privacy or allow for accountability to civil society).

Quite a bit of information has been put on India’s UPI, from educational certificates and medical history, to land records. Now that instant payments linked to bank accounts have been in use for years, there’s also a lot of financial data that could be put to work.

At least, that’s what the RBI hopes. Its governor argued that the availability of granular transfer data — as well as tax payments and land records — should make it easier for financial institutions to lend to farmers and small businesses that had previously struggled to access credit.

That task has been a constant headache for India’s financial policymakers. The formal banking system is dominated by the public sector, which lacks much of a profit motive and thus has deeply conservative lending practices.

When the government wants to juice lending, it creates schemes that target specific groups. Then the system switches to the other extreme, handing out cash to anyone and everyone without much discrimination.

That’s risky. Meanwhile, the private sector naturally doesn’t want to make the effort to enter a lending market dominated by borrowers with little access to collateral, minimal documentation, and few formal records.

Now those same borrowers have a paper trail on the various digital platforms that the government secures. Even the amount of milk sold to various cooperatives by individual dairy farmers is on there somewhere.

Getting that information to lenders in a way that incentivizes them to create a business model for small borrowers, while also protecting citizens’ data, is the problem the central bank claims to have solved.

The payoff could be vast. Indian small businesses typically do not grow larger — partly because of constraining regulation, but also because of differential access to credit. India’s unproductive agricultural sector, in particular, is short of capital investment and heavily dependent on public finance; it is both credit-hungry and lacks avenues to access cash on demand.

So, what’s the worry? Simply this: the potential impact on Indian household behavior.

Throughout India’s modern economic history, household debt has been pretty low. That’s slowly begun to change. According to the RBI, net household savings are at a 47-year low. In fact, they fell by two whole percentage points of GDP just between 2022 and 2023.

Indian households are stressed and borrowing more. The new system might make it much easier to take out collateral-free loans. The potential for this structural shift to become a macro risk is easy to see.

That isn’t enough of a reason to hold back financial innovation, especially if it might pay dividends in the longer term. But the government needs to be very watchful indeed for unintended consequences.

India has long boasted that its growth model has been led by demand and consumption. If increased consumer spending winds up leading to unsustainable household borrowing patterns, the economy will be in real trouble.
NSB
Thousands of Rohingya flee to Bangladesh from violence in Myanmar, official says (Reuters)
Reuters [9/4/2024 2:06 AM, Ruma Paul, 5.2M, Negative]
Around 8,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh in recent months, escaping escalating violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, according to Bangladeshi officials.

The violence has intensified as fighting between Myanmar’s ruling junta and the Arakan Army, a powerful ethnic militia drawn from the Buddhist majority, continues to worsen.

"We have information that around 8,000 Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh recently, mostly over the last two months," said Mohammad Shamsud Douza, a senior official in charge of refugees for the Bangladeshi government.

"Bangladesh is already over-burdened and unable to accommodate any more Rohingya," he told Reuters on Wednesday.

The Bangladesh government has not previously provided any estimate of how many Rohingya have crossed over in the last few months.

The government will hold a "serious discussion at the cabinet" within the next two to three days to address the crisis, Bangladesh’s de-facto foreign minister, Mohammad Touhid Hossain, told reporters late on Tuesday.

While expressing sympathy for the Rohingya, Hossain said that the country no longer has the capacity to provide humanitarian shelter to additional refugees.

"It is not possible to fully seal the border," he said, adding that efforts will be made to prevent further infiltration.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh held rallies in camps on August 25, marking the seventh anniversary of the 2017 military crackdown that forced them to flee Myanmar, demanding an end to violence and safe return to their homeland.

Over one million Rohingya currently live in overcrowded camps in southern Bangladesh, with little hope of returning to Myanmar, where they are largely denied citizenship and other basic rights.

The recent surge in violence is the worst the Rohingya have faced since the 2017 Myanmar military-led campaign, which the United Nations described as having genocidal intent.

Rohingya who recently fled to Bangladesh have urged the government to provide them with shelter.

"How long can we stay with relatives in such a cramped space?" said a Rohingya refugee who fled to Bangladesh last month with his wife and parents.

"We appeal to the government to provide us with shelter and ensure we receive food and other essential assistance."

Last month, Hossain told Reuters Bangladesh cannot accept more Rohingya refugees and called on India and other countries to take greater action.

He also urged the international community to apply more pressure on the Arakan Army to cease attacks on the Rohingya in Rakhine state.
Bangladesh floods leave 71 dead, fears of waterborne disease rise (Reuters)
Reuters [9/3/2024 7:02 AM, Ruma Paul, 37270K, Negative]
The death toll from floods in Bangladesh rose to 71 on Tuesday with millions of people still stranded in devastated areas and increasing concern about outbreaks of waterborne disease as the inundation recedes.

The floods, triggered by relentless monsoon rains and runoff from upstream waterways, have wreaked havoc over the past two weeks, causing widespread destruction and affecting around five million people.

More than 580,000 families are still marooned in 11 flood-hit districts, and in urgent need of food, clean water, medicine and dry clothing. Nearly 500 medical teams were helping provide treatment, with the army, air force, navy, and the border guard assisting in relief efforts.

Authorities are now focusing on preventing the spread of waterborne diseases, a common aftermath of such disasters, and ensuring the availability of clean drinking water.

The Directorate General of Health Services said nearly 5,000 people had been hospitalised over the past 24 hours for cases of diarrhoea, skin infections and snake bites.

Heavy rain in the capital Dhaka on Tuesday swamped many districts, submerging roads in knee-deep to waist-high water, causing massive traffic jams as vehicles struggled through waterlogged streets.

Crops worth 33.5 billion taka ($282 million) have been damaged, affecting more than 1.4 million farmers, according to a preliminary assessment by the agriculture ministry.

A 2015 analysis by the World Bank Institute estimated that 3.5 million people in the South Asian country were at risk of annual river flooding, which has only increased in recent years due to climate change.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said two million children are at risk from Bangladesh’s most severe flooding in three decades. UNICEF has launched an urgent appeal for $35 million to provide essential supplies to those affected.

“Year after year, the lives of millions of children in Bangladesh are being devastated by floods, heatwaves and cyclones. Climate change is clearly altering children’s lives,” said Emma Brigham, Deputy Representative of UNICEF Bangladesh.
Maldives President Accuses National Bank of Attempted Coup (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [9/2/2024 11:32 PM, Ahmed Naish, 1198K, Negative]
President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu has accused the Bank of Maldives of plotting to overthrow his government by suspending foreign transactions from local currency accounts.

On August 25, the national bank abruptly blocked international payments with debit cards linked to Maldivian rufiyaa accounts, sparking a public outcry and triggering panic among Maldivians overseas. The move prompted a government intervention that forced the bank to reverse the restrictions six hours later.

The bank’s announcement was tantamount to "an attempted coup," Muizzu alleged at a ruling party rally the following day, shortly after the police launched an investigation.

The grounds for suspecting a coup attempt included the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) holding a press briefing on deteriorating public finances "to coincide with the moment when a bank where the government is the majority shareholder made a decision against the government’s advice that shocked most citizens," the police said in a statement. "Hundreds of social media bot accounts" were deployed to call for street protests to unlawfully topple the government, police claimed.

Underscoring the purported attempts to incite unrest, Muizzu alleged a "planned out" coup and suggested that "all these dots are connected." According to the president, the government did not have a voting majority on the bank’s board of directors when the decision was approved. Procedures have yet to be completed to appoint two of the government’s six directors, he noted. But the government was able to prevail with the support of two private shareholders, tourism magnates Hussain Afeef and Ahmed Moosa, Muizzu revealed at the rally.

Speaking before the president, Fisheries Minister Ahmed Shiyam accused the bank’s top officials of colluding with the opposition in "a financial coup" and demanded the resignation of CEO Karl Stumke. Other ministers later doubled down on the allegations.

But a week later, police have yet to make any arrests. It is unclear if any suspects have been questioned.

The opposition MDP has dismissed the allegations as laughable and "shameful," accusing the Muizzu administration of undermining investor confidence and damaging the credibility of the country’s financial system. Reflecting skepticism among the public, some media reports suggested that the government pushed a false narrative to deflect public outrage.

But much of the anger was directed at the nine-month-old government. Questions were raised about the purchase of drones from Turkey for a reported $37 million and the repayment of a $50 million bond to India despite a previous understanding with the MDP government to roll over the debt. The president and ministers came under fire over unrealistic campaign promises to eventually scrap the foreign transaction limits and alleviate a dollar shortage that has persisted for over a decade.

In the wake of the bank’s decision to severely curtail U.S. dollar support, the black market rate soared above 18 Maldivian rufiyaa and the bank’s call center was overwhelmed. Maldivian students overseas worried about paying rent, small business owners were left unable to pay for software or online advertisements, and people abroad for medical treatment wondered how they would cover hospital bills.

The vast majority of Maldivians depend on cards issued by the Bank of Maldives to shop online, pay for subscriptions or use while traveling abroad. During the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the bank imposed limits of $250 a month for using Visa or Mastercard debit cards linked to rufiyaa accounts. The limit for Maldivians residing overseas was $750 per month with exemptions for students to pay tuition fees.

As part of the reversed changes, the bank had also intended to slash the monthly limit for credit cards linked to rufiyaa accounts to $100 a month. Only the fortunate few with cards linked to U.S. dollar accounts would have been unaffected. "Customers that have recurring international payments are recommended to have USD accounts as their debit cards’ primary account to process overseas purchases," the bank advised.

But in order to do that, most people would have had to buy dollars from the black market at prices significantly higher than the exchange rate of 15.42 rufiyaa. Since their card would be linked to the new account, this would have also entailed paying in U.S. dollars for groceries or other daily expenses.

The Bank of Maldives’ aborted move came amid a deepening economic crisis. On August 29, credit ratings agency Fitch downgraded the Maldives for the second time in two months, casting doubt on the country’s ability to continue servicing its $3.4 billion external debt. Rising debt payments have depleted the country’s usable foreign currency reserves, which fell to a record low of $44 million in July, a dire situation for a country reliant on imports for staple foods, fuel and medicine.

The unavailability of dollars was the main reason cited by the Bank of Maldives for imposing the restrictions.

"This year we have purchased approximately $60 million in foreign currency from our customers, but card usage is threefold higher than that. The card usage impacts our ability to provide foreign currency support to our business customers and we have this anomaly where the bank provides 75 percent less foreign currency to the economic sector than we do for discretionary spend on cards dominated by travel and online shopping," CEO Karl Stumke explained.

"We have to get the mix correct and ensure we are not squandering a scarce resource. We have an obligation to protect our depositors and therefore cannot continue to sell more than we are able to purchase."
Nepal’s gains on gender equality in politics are in peril (Nikkei Asia – opinion)
Nikkei Asia [9/4/2024 5:05 AM, Kushal Pokharel, 831K, Neutral]
Once celebrated for its progressive strides towards gender equality in politics, Nepal is now witnessing a troubling regression. Despite constitutional guarantees, the representation of women in key political positions is declining, exposing the persistent grip of patriarchal norms and the superficial commitment of political parties to genuine gender inclusivity.

Nepal now needs to ensure that it sustains earlier gains. The percentage of women in its parliament remains above the global average of 25%, and over the past decade, women have held the positions of president, chief justice and speaker of the House of Representatives.

Compared with its South Asian counterparts, Nepal has progressive constitutional provisions for promoting gender equality. The Constitution of Nepal guarantees 33% participation of women at every level, and the local level election act mandates a minimum of 36.71% female participation.

The World Bank Women, Business and Law Index 2024 gives Nepal the highest score in the region for closing the gender gap. More broadly in the South Asia region, the picture is grim. Pakistan has reserved only 17% of its parliamentary seats for women; in Sri Lanka the figure is just 5.33%.

Across the globe, only 13% of countries apply effective gender quotas, according to the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report 2024. The study states that if the current trend continues, it will take 134 years to achieve full gender parity.

But recent statistics show a worrying trend in Nepal. Only two of Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s 22-person council of ministers are women, down from four in the previous cabinet. The number of women in politics is also falling at the local level, with 226 elected as deputy mayors in 2022, down from 276 in 2017. And in rural municipalities, the number of female vice chairs dropped to 335 from 424.

Although female representation in Nepalese politics has been increasing, a lack of policies, legislation and investment in capacity-building for women and girls’ effective participation and influence are stumbling blocks for gender parity. Equally pertinent is the question of whether or not the represented women have a strong say in the decision-making process.

The misuse of the proportional representation (PR) system has also raised questions about the intentions of political parties to ensure inclusive female participation and representation. Instead of ensuring the representation of women from disadvantaged and marginalized communities, per the spirit of the Constitution under the PR system, many of the women on the PR list are wives or family members of influential male politicians.

The matter has also drawn the attention of the Supreme Court, which recently issued an order for the federal parliament and other relevant authorities to review laws governing elections at all levels and ensure inclusion, in accordance with the constitution.

Sustaining the gains achieved in the direction of women’s political representation appears challenging, given male-dominated political party structures, as well as a lack of election funding and adequate training for women.

It is therefore crucial to conduct independent research on where women currently stand in terms of political representation, as well as how interventions can be made within political parties and state structures.

There is a great need for collaboration among donors, civil society and political parties to improve women’s access to the knowledge, skills and information needed to perform their tasks. And as global evidence suggests, a party-level gender action plan can help to promote women as leaders and as political candidates

Empowering women’s associations among Nepal’s political parties to organize women and build their capacities can yield better outcomes. Sensitizing male leaders working in political parties to the importance of women’s leadership should be a priority.
Election campaign energizes Sri Lankans weary of economic turmoil (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [9/3/2024 5:00 PM, Marwaan Macan-Markar, 2376K, Neutral]
Lately, a whole day can pass at Kusum Fernando’s small pharmacy in the southern Sri Lankan coastal town of Matara without a single customer coming in.

"[This] was never the case before," said the bespectacled 66-year-old, leaning over a glass counter. "The patients who come to buy medicines have dropped by half for every month. ... Even when some patients come with prescriptions for three days, they only buy medicines for one day because they do not have money for the full dose."

Chandrasiri Wickremeratne, who has run another Matara pharmacy for 30 years, is seeing fewer customers too. "Some patients with diabetes have stopped buying their medicines because they have no cash," he said. "They say they might as well die."

Many small retail businesses outside Sri Lanka’s urban hubs and tourist enclaves are feeling squeezed by depressed consumption. Most households are struggling to recover from five years of devastating economic and political turmoil that has sent the ranks of the poor soaring to 7 million from 3.04 million and kept real wage growth stagnant.

This volatile backdrop has voters, long accustomed to partisan campaigning exploiting ethnic and religious fault lines, now focusing on economic issues as they prepare to go to the polls on Sept. 21 for the first time since 2020, this time to elect a new president.

To be sure, the economic outlook is better in Colombo and other key centers due to the taming of inflation, the return of foreign tourists and the resurgent Sri Lankan rupee. Adventurous investors are seeking opportunities, with local stocks regaining most of the ground lost since 2022 when Sri Lanka became the first Asian nation to default on its debts in more than 20 years.

The Aragalaya protest movement that ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa shortly after the default inspired Wanni Arachige Supun, a resident of Embilipitiya, an inland southern town that is the poorest in the country. He has recently been posting YouTube videos on economic topics.

"The Aragalaya and what has happened since have changed the conversation," said the 22-year-old.

According to Jayadeva Uyangoda, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Colombo, voters like Supun embody a broad trend.

"The absence of the previous political ideology is the new factor in this election, with economics having taken primacy," Uyangoda said, adding that the crisis "has transformed the Sri Lankan public to become active citizens, not passive voters like before."

While the public is keen to vent its frustrations, it remains to be seen whether sentiment will congeal decisively around a particular candidate.

Frontier Research, a Colombo-based economic analysis company, suggested in a note to clients last month that this election could be the first in Sri Lanka in which the winning presidential candidate does not receive majority support.

"Since this is not something Sri Lankans are used to, the scenario of a president being elected with a mere 30-35% of the overall votes cast is then something to prepare for, as well as the questions of legitimacy and credibility that such a victory might bring up," wrote Chayu Damsinghe and Arshad Ismail.

This will be key as the election winner will inherit the remaining two and half years of a contentious, four-year International Monetary Fund economic support program. Many Sri Lankans believe the IMF has prolonged their plight by increasing their tax burden and living costs while others credit the fund’s $3 billion program with putting the country on the road to recovery.

It is incontestable that Sri Lanka was in desperate need of rescue in 2022 when Colombo sought help from the IMF for the 17th time, more times than any other Asian country except Pakistan. With Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves almost depleted and the rupee plummeting, fuel, medicine and food were tough to find, and residents were lining up for charity meals. Inflation soared to 69.8%. Power cuts were frequent.

"Sri Lanka’s crash was impressive, because no country I know has run out of money as Sri Lanka did," said a European emerging markets investor who holds defaulted government bonds.

Nearly half of respondents in an August 2023 government survey said they had taken a pay cut or had their working hours reduced since March 2022. Around three-quarters reported having had to change their diet due to the financial squeeze. One in seven said they had lost their main job.

Since early 2023, the IMF has guided the restructuring of the government’s finances, focusing on reining in public spending and increasing tax revenue. This has enabled the government to rebuild its reserves to $5.65 billion from a low of $1.71 billion. By August, inflation was down to 0.5%, far below the central bank’s 5% target. The rupee, which had fallen as low as 368 to the dollar, is back to 300, though still far from its 200 level as of 2021.

"The economic reform program implemented by the Sri Lankan authorities is yielding commendable outcomes," said IMF Senior Mission Chief Peter Breuer at the end of a visit last month, noting the country had escaped recession with three straight quarters of real growth.

"The authorities have made commendable progress with putting debt on a path towards sustainability," he said. "With Sri Lanka’s knife-edged recovery at a critical juncture, sustaining the reform momentum and ensuring timely implementation of all program commitments are critical to cement the hard-won economic progress to date and put the economy on a firm footing."

The tourist sector exemplifies the rebound. Through Aug. 25, Sri Lanka had received 1.34 million visitors, putting it on course to approach the 2.3 million the country received in 2018. Over the first half of the year, Sri Lanka earned $1.56 billion from foreign tourists, according to central bank figures, compared to $2.19 billion in the same period six years ago.

At Mirissa, a popular beach town in southern Sri Lanka, bars and restaurants along the shore are bursting with young holidaymakers from Europe and elsewhere.

"We have been open throughout the year so far, unlike last year when we shut down after April for three months," said restaurant manager Sameera Shrimal. "Some tourists are first-timers and some are returning after being to Mirissa last year."

Forward bookings with hotel and tour operators suggest arrivals could hit a record high in December, according to Trisha Peries, head of research at local investment bank Capital Alliance Holdings, who said in a client note last week that the country is benefiting from political tensions that have soured Indian tourists on the Maldives.

The tourism rebound is helping revive the construction industry. In April, ITC Hotels opened a $500 million luxury hotel on a waterfront site in Colombo, creating the Indian company’s first overseas outpost; its restaurants are packed with foreign tourists and wealthy locals, particularly a sky lounge with high tea and panoramic views. Local conglomerate John Keells Holdings is developing the country’s first large casino resort nearby, the $1 billion City of Dreams Sri Lanka, in cooperation with Macao’s Melco Resorts & Entertainment.

"We expect tourism to be a strong driver for economic growth," international research company BMI said in a July report on Sri Lanka. "Given that 25% of the population worked for the tourism sector in 2020 (latest data), growth in arrivals has resulted in higher domestic consumption from both tourism and locals thereby driving up growth."

Yet misgivings about the IMF program are widespread among Sri Lankans. Grumbling is particularly intense around value-added taxes, as the base rate has climbed from 8% in 2021 to 18% this year and exemptions for necessities such as fuel, cooking gas and school supplies have been eliminated.

Under the pressure of IMF-backed austerity measures, job growth, which even in 2022 remained positive, has reversed, with total employment last year falling by 137,815 or 1.7%.

"Outside of Colombo, people have not benefited much from the macroeconomic stability," said Thilina Panduwawala, a senior macroeconomist at Frontier Research. "There is not much thought of how the [IMF] program benefits Sri Lankan people."

For better or worse, President Ranil Wickremesinghe is the Sri Lankan face of the IMF program.

Parliament chose the 75-year-old as president after Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled. Wickremesinghe was not an obvious choice as he had lost his seat in the legislative election two years earlier, when his party retained just one seat.

Yet the six-time prime minister proved his worth by securing the aid of the IMF. "The president was the only one who could have done it from among those in the government’s ranks, and he has got international support," said a Colombo-based diplomat involved in Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring talks.

In recent months, the Wickremesinghe administration has sought to tackle cost-of-living concerns by pushing through a 22.5% cut in electricity rates, raising the national minimum wage by 40% and seeking an understanding with the IMF about cutting income taxes.

In August, officials approved an increase in fertilizer subsidies for small farmers and a 24% increase in the base pay of public employees. Meanwhile, with inflation dwindling the Central Bank of Sri Lanka has been easing back on interest rates, in turn giving a lift to commercial lending.

Yet ill feelings generated by the IMF program and Wickremesinghe’s association with the Rajapaksa clan have left him running well behind the front-runners in preelection public opinion surveys on the 38 registered presidential candidates.

Among the last to file before the Aug. 15 deadline was 38-year-old Namal Rajapaksa, the eldest son of clan head Mahinda Rajapaksa, who previously served as president and prime minister.

The junior Rajapaksa, a legislator who served in the cabinet of uncle Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is the nominee of the family’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party, which remains by far the largest in Parliament. Few think Namal stands much chance given raw feelings about the economic collapse overseen by his uncle, but some believe his candidacy could help keep the SLPP relevant through the next parliamentary election.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the presidency in 2019 on a majoritarian campaign that played on tensions between the country’s Buddhist Sinhalese majority and minority Hindu Tamils and Muslims. While the Rajapaksa dynasty is credited with vanquishing the 30-year separatist insurgency of the Tamil Tigers, the brothers’ presidencies are also associated with rampant corruption, crony capitalism and political repression.

Under Gotabaya, ill-judged financial decisions, particularly huge tax cuts and widened tax exemptions, pushed the country’s indebted economy over the edge against the backdrop of vanished tourists and rocketing commodity prices due to the COVID pandemic and Ukraine war.

Gotabaya was finally driven out of the country when tens of thousands of enraged citizens besieged the streets of the capital under the banner of Aragalaya, the Sinhala word for struggle, to express their fury with the country’s economic misery and shortages of living essentials.

"The legacy of the Aragalaya will be felt with the presidential election because it showed that people want something different and not the politics of the old guard," said Swasthika Arulingam, a lawyer and trade union advocate who was heavily involved in the protests.

Such sentiments have lifted the fortunes of legislator Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the 55-year-old nominee of the left-leaning National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, which currently holds three of parliament’s 225 seats.

Dissanayake and his coalition have toned down previous Marxist rhetoric to focus on a campaign message of cleaning up government and corruption, positioning their past exclusion from power as a virtue. Dissanayake has argued for restoring VAT exemptions and revisiting other IMF-directed reforms to reduce burdens on the public while also seeking to curb presidential powers.

"We are tapping into the desire for change that voters want after the 2022 crisis," said Harini Amarasuriya, a sociologist and another NPP parliamentarian. "Our campaign is about transformation against an out-of-touch old order, and the voters’ economic concerns are a key issue this time."

Vying with Dissanayake at the top of opinion polls is Sajith Premadasa, nominee of the center-left Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and leader of the parliamentary opposition.

The 57-year-old has drawn from the grassroots-centered political legacy of his late father, who was assassinated while president, in seeking to tap into economic discontent by making pledges to improve social welfare, lower the VAT and soften the edges of IMF-linked austerity measures while also promising action on corruption and presidential authority.

The election, said SJB parliamentarian and economist Harsha de Silva, will center on "who has the ability to grasp this economic problem, like the unprecedented poverty numbers, and to help families to get to a better place."

With no major candidate seeking to tear up the loan agreements with the IMF, fund-directed reforms seem likely to remain largely intact whoever wins.

"Given the economic balance and geopolitical interests in Sri Lanka, any political party that comes to power in the upcoming election does not have room to deviate significantly from the reform path the country has taken," wrote Ruchir Desai, co-manager of the Hong Kong-based AFC Asia Frontier Fund, in a recent client note.

Added Desai, whose fund is an investor in John Keells and rival conglomerate Sunshine Holdings, "Any major deviation from the reform path will be extremely detrimental, not only to Sri Lanka’s IMF program, but also to the country’s economic and geopolitical prospects."

Still, the prospect of more difficult years ahead has many Sri Lankans looking to take their chances elsewhere. Around 300,000 islanders left the country in both 2022 and 2023 to seek work overseas. Long lines remain outside passport offices. The outflow has included senior managers and professionals, including doctors.

Lenaduwa Dilshan, a 28-year-old hotel waiter in the southern town of Galle, is looking for a better-paying job in Japan. "I need to earn money to pay for my mother’s health bills," he said. "She is a heart patient."

Meanwhile, back in Matara, a retired school principal suggests Sri Lankans remain angry enough to take to the streets again.

"We are sitting on an economic volcano," he said. "We don’t know when it will erupt."
Why Sri Lanka Election Puts IMF Bailout Deal in Spotlight (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [9/4/2024 1:00 AM, Anusha Ondaatjie and Dan Strumpf, 5.5M, Neutral]
Two years after an economic meltdown almost doubled the rate of poverty in Sri Lanka, the island nation is holding an election to choose a new president. The Sept. 21 vote is shaping up to be a referendum on painful austerity measures that were imposed under a $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund. The race could be tight, with incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe facing off against two rivals who want to open fresh talks with the IMF.

What triggered Sri Lanka’s crisis?

In late 2019, newly elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa carried out tax cuts that slashed state revenues just months before the pandemic devastated the economy, with international flights grounded and successive lockdowns ordered. Remittances from Sri Lankans working overseas dried up as many lost their jobs.

The result was a historic debt default, a sharp economic contraction and runaway inflation that reached 70%. The crisis spawned a protest movement aimed at curbing the powers of the presidency, eradicating graft and bringing Rajapaksa’s family to task for its role in bankrupting the country. Wickremesinghe took power in 2022 after the protests forced Rajapaksa’s resignation.

What is Wickremesinghe’s legacy?

Wickremesinghe’s government agreed in 2023 to the IMF bailout, with the funds to be disbursed in tranches over 48 months. As part of the program, the government raised taxes, hiked utility bills and put some state enterprises up for sale. The measures have helped to slow inflation to a low single-digit percentage rate this year. Borrowing costs have fallen, the economy has been growing faster than expected and progress on a debt restructuring has helped to unlock further funding from the IMF and other lenders.

Who are the contenders in Sri Lanka’s presidential vote?

Nominations for a record 39 candidates were accepted by the country’s Elections Commission, but four candidates have emerged as the front runners.

The incumbent Wickremesinghe represents policy stability, but victory for him is far from assured as the austerity measures have been deeply unpopular. He has defended the policies and is seeking a mandate to maintain the IMF program and keep the economic recovery on track.

Sajith Premadasa is the main opposition leader in parliament and heads a breakaway group that splintered from Wickremesinghe’s party in 2020. He wants to lower taxes from the rate agreed to with the IMF to ease the economic pain for households.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake, known by his initials AKD, is the only major candidate who doesn’t belong to an established party. His Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna party — known for violent uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s — has drawn in new supporters from the nationwide protest movement that coalesced in 2022. He is campaigning on a platform of clean governance and eliminating corruption and has vowed to reopen the IMF negotiations. His party opposes the debt restructuring framework agreed with the multilateral lender.

Namal Rajapaksa, nephew of the deposed president and son of former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, is running as the scion of Sri Lanka’s most powerful political family in what analysts see as an attempt to rebuild its brand with voters. He is wooing young people worried about a lack of jobs and high living costs.

What are the international stakes?

The region’s two main powers, India and China, will be watching the election outcome closely.

Since 2009, when Sri Lanka ended a brutal civil war with the separatist Tamil minority, the South Asian island nation has cultivated ties with Beijing. China has poured billions of dollars into the country, investing in ports, roads and a “lotus tower” that looms over the capital Colombo.

The Chinese money helped to develop Sri Lanka’s infrastructure, and saddled the country with debts that partly contributed to the 2022 crisis. Dissanayake’s leftist backers have called for more scrutiny of investment deals with foreign countries to avoid a repeat of the debt troubles.

China’s growing economic influence over Sri Lanka has caused unease in India. In February, Dissanayake held a high-profile meeting with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in a sign of his growing recognition overseas. The top presidential candidates have all said they would pursue a balanced approach to international relations. None have proposed pivoting away from China.

Who is expected to win?

There are no credible opinion polls in Sri Lanka, but local media and analysts have suggested it will be a tight contest between Wickremesinghe, Premadasa and Dissanayake. Some said it may go to a run-off for the first time since 1982.

Premadasa enjoys support from many poorer Sri Lankans and members of the Tamil minority. Dissanayake is seen as the key challenger to the political elite, drawing support for his pledge to fulfill the demands of the 2022 protest movement that swept Rajapaksa from power.

How will Sri Lanka’s election work?

Polling is set to begin at 8 a.m. local time. Some 17 million eligible voters will rank candidates by order of preference. If none secures 50% of first-place votes, the election goes to a run-off in which voters’ second and third preferences are counted. The candidate with the highest number of total votes will then be declared the winner.

If a victor emerges in the first round, then vote-counting is likely to be wrapped up within 24 hours. A run-off would cause a delay in the final result, and if a winner is determined by a narrow margin, it could prompt calls for recounts and allegations of vote rigging. A smooth transition of power is not guaranteed.
Central Asia
Kazakhstan To Spend Over $32 Million On Controversial Referendum About Nuclear Power Station (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [9/3/2024 9:46 AM, Staff, 1251K, Neutral]
The chairwoman of Kazakhstan’s Central Commission on Referendums (ORK), Sabila Mustafina, said on September 3 that 15.5 billion tenges (more than $32 million) has been requested for a nationwide referendum on the construction of a nuclear power station in the Central Asian country next month.

The announcement came a day after President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev announced the referendum and signed a decree setting October 6 as the date of the vote.

According to Mustafina, 71 percent of the requested sum would cover compensation for the work of more than 70,000 ORK members, while 29 percent would be used for communication activities, bulletins, and advertisements.

"The government will decide on the allocation of the mentioned sum for the referendum, after our estimations are approved by the Finance Ministry, the National Economy Ministry, and the Justice Ministry," Mustafina said.

Mustafina’s deputy Konstantin Petrov said more than 12 million Kazakh citizens are eligible to vote at more than 10,000 voting sites across the country and 78 stations will be set up in different countries for Kazakh citizens residing abroad.

Only one question will be asked in the referendum: "Do you agree that Kazakhstan needs to construct a nuclear power station?"

Many in Kazakhstan expect that the answer will be "yes," considering the country’s tightly controlled political environment.

But the push to build a nuclear power plant has been met by significant opposition despite apparent efforts to silence dissent on the issue. In recent weeks, several activists known for their stance against the nuclear power station’s construction have been prevented from attending public debates on the matter.

Nuclear-power-related projects have been a controversial issue in Kazakhstan, where the environment was severely impacted by operations at the Soviet-era Semipalatinsk nuclear test site from 1949 to 1991 and the Baikonur spaceport, which is still being operated by Moscow.

Hours before his decree was made public on September 2, President Toqaev reiterated his support for the plan to build a nuclear power station.

There was no official information about the site of the future nuclear station, but a public debate was held last year in the village of Ulken on the shore of the Lake Balkhash in the southeastern region of Almaty about the possibility of constructing a nuclear power station there.

The idea to build a nuclear power station in Kazakhstan has been circulating in the country for years, leading to questions regarding what countries would be involved in the project.

Kazakh officials have tried to avoid answering the question, saying the decision would be made after a referendum.

Shortly before launching its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia proposed its Rosatom nuclear agency to be Kazakhstan’s major partner in the project.

Kazakh Internet users mostly rejected the idea of Rosatom’s involvement, citing the legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and Russia’s gaining control over the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine as examples of Russia’s attitude toward nuclear safety.
Kazakhstan Sets Date for Nuclear Power Plant Referendum (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [9/3/2024 12:07 PM, Catherine Putz, 1198K, Neutral]
On October 6, Kazakhstan will hold a referendum on the construction of a nuclear power plant, an initiative the government of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is strongly in favor of despite Kazakhstan’s deep nuclear scars.

From 1949 to 1989, the Soviet Union conducted some 456 nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan’s northeastern Abai Region.

Amid an extensive address delivered on September 2 opening the new parliament session, Tokayev announced the referendum date, and the next day the necessary presidential decree was issued. In his speech, Tokayev said, "Given the growing global energy deficit, we are in dire need of reliable and environmentally friendly energy sources."

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as of 2021, 48.8 percent of Kazakhstan’s total energy supply (TES) is provided by coal, followed by oil at 24.9 percent and natural gas as 24.7 percent. Hydropower accounts for only 1.2 percent and just 0.4 percent comes from other renewables like solar and wind.

As per the IEA, "TES includes all the energy produced in or imported to a country, minus that which is exported or stored… Some of these energy sources are used directly while most are transformed into fuels or electricity for final consumption."

In Kazakhstan, for example, coal-fired power plants provide most electricity.

In his speech, Tokayev stated that "in my opinion, it is necessary to pay the closest attention to the development of nuclear energy" as nuclear power is "capable of largely satisfying the rapidly growing needs of our economy."

Debate over the construction of nuclear power plants is as old as Kazakhstan. One hurdle for other states in contemplating nuclear power plant construction is not an issue for the country: uranium supply. Kazakhstan is believed to possess 12 percent of global uranium reserves and as of 2022, produced 43 percent of the world’s uranium.

The Kazakh president stressed that the possibility of a referendum has "been on the public agenda for a year." He said that the upcoming referendum was a clear manifestation of his "listening state" concept.

Tokayev has long been in favor of nuclear power plant construction, but for a time appeared mindful of the controversial nature of such a project in Kazakhstan.

In June 2019, three months after ascending to the presidency following Nursultan Nazarbayev’s resignation and a day after being elected in a snap election on June 9, Tokayev said, "The construction of a nuclear power plant is not planned yet. If necessary, we will definitely discuss this issue with the people. If necessary, we will hold a referendum."

By May 2021, Tokayev commented that "phobias" regarding the dangers of nuclear power were "inappropriate." Speaking via video at the Eastern Economic Forum, Tokayev reiterated his belief that "the time has come to consider this issue in detail, since Kazakhstan needs a nuclear power plant." He seemed at the time to be moving away from a referendum, but the January 2022 Qandy Qantar events were a shocking reminder of the power of the public. Talk of a referendum began to emerge in earnest last year.

The question - "Do you agree with the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan?" - will be put to voters on October 6.

Chairwoman of Kazakhstan’s Central Commission on Referendums (ORK) Sabila Mustafina said that 15.5 billion tenge (more than $32 million) is being requested to fund the referendum, in which more than 12 million Kazakh citizens will be eligible to vote.

Given Kazakhstan’s constrained political environment, the ultimate vote may not adequately reflect the complexity of public opinion on the issue. Referendums in Kazakhstan don’t fail: Constitutional referendums in 1995 and 2022 passed easily, and a 1995 referendum on extending Nazarbayev’s first post-independence term passed with 96 percent in favor.

As has happened before various referendums and elections, activists in opposition to the proposals have found themselves under pressure.

Last month, Meiirkhan Abdimanapov, an anti-nuclear activist, was detained in Almaty. He had boarded a bus to Astana, where he planned to participate in public debates about the nuclear power plant, when police forcibly removed him. He was reportedly held for more than 9 hours and charged under Article 488 (a violation of the law on peaceful assemblies) for participation in protests of the arrest of journalist Duman Mukhammedkarim last year. Abdimanapov was fined 129,000 tenge.

According to RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, activists said that a public discussion of the nuclear power plant proposal in Almaty earlier in August resembled "propaganda… not a discussion."

In January 2024, three Oyan, Kazakhstan ("Wake up, Kazakhstan") activists were arrested in Almaty for an "illegal" picket near the Independence Monument on Republic Square.

Beyond the political question of the will of the people regarding nuclear power, even if the referendum passes the way forward is not necessarily easy. Moscow stands as the most likely partner for nuclear power plant construction in Kazakhstan. Russia is partnering with neighboring Uzbekistan on the construction of small nuclear power plants, and Kyrgyz officials have floated similar ideas.

Finally, nuclear power plants make people nervous for good reason. Accidents like the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan and the epitome of all nuclear diasters, the 1996 Chernobyl disaster, highlight the difficulties of nuclear risk management.

As Nazira Kozhanova wrote for The Diplomat in 2021, "Additional key problems that make ensuring the safety of nuclear energy difficult in Kazakhstan are accountability and transparency, problems that are quite common in Kazakhstan."

Kozhanova went on to note that "problems with both the legislation and the practice of environmental affairs in Kazakhstan may impede the implementation of an accountability system for any future nuclear power plant. The systematic repression of civil society impedes the meaningful participation of citizens, and the participation that is still possible is curtailed by legal restrictions. Much of this is not taken into consideration by Tokayev’s ‘listening state.’"

As is often the case, the simple referendum question belies the myriad issues at play under the surface.
Memoir: US-Kazakhstan diplomacy during the 9/11 crisis (EurasiaNet – opinion)
EurasiaNet [9/3/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
This essay is part of a series by American diplomats sharing their impressions of the dramatic early years of Central Asia’s independence from the Soviet Union. These memoirs were written at the invitation of the DavisCenter for Russian and Eurasian Studies at HarvardUniversity. We publish these with special thanks to Nargis Kassenova, director of Davis’s Program on Central Asia.

“A plane just flew into the WorldTrade Center.” My wife Mary greeted me with the chilling news as I returned to the Ambassador’s residence in Almaty, Kazakhstan, at the end of one of my first workdays at the U.S. embassy.

When the second airliner impacted the SouthTower, it became clear that this was not a horrific accident but a terrorist attack on the United States. My diplomatic assignment changed in an instant. Most Americans would have been hard-pressed to locate Kazakhstan on a map, and since the U.S. diplomatic withdrawal from Afghanistan in the 1990s, the United States had relegated Central Asia to a peripheral diplomatic priority. But as the Bush Administration developed its war plan to overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Central Asia overnight became vital strategic real estate.

Mary and I were still grappling with jet lag from the 24-hour trip from Washington to Almaty when 9/11 overtook us just days into our assignment in Kazakhstan. In the overnight hours of September 5-6 we arrived in Almaty, the commercial and cultural capital, but not the political capital and seat of government. Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev had moved the capital to Astana, 800 miles to the north on the Kazakh steppe, forcing government ministries and offices to relocate and leaving behind foreign embassies in Almaty. With the embassy’s buildings, secure communications, and personnel located a two-hour flight away from the capital, this was a major impediment to doing business with the president and Government of Kazakhstan (GOK) as the events of a frenetic autumn accelerated.

A former factory worker who rose to become first secretary of the communist party of Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev had been president of Kazakhstan since its independence. When Secretary of State James Baker visited Kazakhstan in September 1991 as the Soviet Union was unraveling, I joined his party in Almaty as Baker met with Nazarbayev. Among both Americans and Kazakhstanis there was widespread pessimism that an independent Kazakhstan could emerge, let alone survive. But Nazarbayev conveyed supreme confidence in his, and Kazakhstan’s, ability to make independence work. Nazarbayev’s confidence was rooted in his embrace of a heroic Kazakh history and his own impressive self-confidence.

Dealing with Nazarbayev after 9/11: Back-slapping and wire-brushing

The 9/11 attacks transformed the U.S-Kazakhstan relationship. It soon became clear that the American offensive against the Taliban would not be limited to an air campaign as had been the case during the war against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999. But if the Bush Administration intended to mount a combined air/ground campaign to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, it needed ground access to Afghanistan. Pakistan and Central Asia were the only feasible options. But to offer their territory and airspace to American operations in Afghanistan, Central Asian leaders would need at least a tacit nod from Russia. Vladimir Putin, in office as Russian president for some 18 months, had his own reasons for welcoming the demise of Taliban rule in Kabul. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan had exported narcotics, Islamic extremism, and political instability that threatened Moscow, as well as the Central Asian states. In retrospect, the months immediately following 9/11 were a high point in U.S.-Russia cooperation symbolized by Putin’s visit to the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, in November 2001.

In our conversations after 9/11, Nazarbayev credibly projected empathy with the American people, sincerity in his rejection of terrorism from any quarter, and readiness to work with the United States where we could find common ground. Nazarbayev could elicit back-slapping laughter at his jokes from American presidents and cabinet secretaries, but he also needled the same Americans with dexterity when it suited his purposes. With a succession of American ambassadors, including me, Nazarbayev could be affable, funny, and cooperative, but, if the conversation turned to Kazakhstan’s democracy deficit or human rights violations, he could administer a wire-brushing that left even the most experienced diplomat exhausted. Nazarbayev was the most formidable counterpart that I engaged in a diplomatic career, including encounters with the Soviets, Cubans, apartheid-era South Africans, Serbians, and Romania’s megalomaniac dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Our immediate priority was to do our best to secure the American embassy in Almaty. The chancery was located downtown, surrounded by city streets and high-rise buildings, with no setback that could mitigate a terrorist attack on foot or by truck bomb. My staff, led by DCM Dan Russell, and later Mark Asquino, did everything humanly possible to harden our perimeter and raise our alert status to war footing. Nazarbayev suspended diplomatic protocol by visiting the chancery to sign our condolence book. Prior to his visit, ordinary Kazakhstanis inundated the street in front of the embassy with flowers in sympathy with the Americans lost on 9/11. During his brief visit, Nazarbayev was gracious, expressing full solidarity with the United States in the fight against terrorism. He and I agreed that we would need to work closely to turn mutual empathy into concrete cooperation. As a first step, he agreed to receive my credentials quickly so that I could get to work officially. It was a good start.

I worked with Nazarbayev and his foreign minister, Erlan Idrissov, to secure overflight rights for U.S. and coalition aircraft essential to success of the invasion of Afghanistan. Idrissov was a Soviet-educated diplomatic technician, who spoke English and saw his job as implementing Nazarbayev’s instructions in dealing with foreign leaders and ambassadors. However, Idrissov was not among the close circle of family and old comrades who had been with Nazarbayev during his rise to power.

The issue of overflight rights proved a tough nut to crack, in part because the number of these around the clock flights increased exponentially as the ramp up to military operations in Afghanistan accelerated. I worked directly with Idrissov to obtain clearances, but the process did not move fast enough in part because I was in Almaty and he in Astana. I convinced Idrissov that the only solution was a blanket overflight authorization together with my commitment to keep him informed of the flights. We tried a dedicated phone line from the embassy to the Foreign Ministry (MFA), but the link was plagued by constant technical glitches and my calls often went unanswered on the MFA side. We resorted to cell phone calls about migrating steppe eagles, hardly likely to convince Russian monitors that the Kazakh foreign minister and American ambassador shared a devotion to ornithology. We eventually worked out a process between the embassy’s defense attache (DATT) office and Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Defense (MOD) that allowed flights to regularly transit Kazakhstan’s airspace without mishap.

The American military campaign that toppled the Taliban regime greatly impressed Nazarbayev and helped solidify Kazakhstan’s cooperation. I was delighted to learn that Secretary of State Colin Powell intended to visit in early December bringing an invitation to Nazarbayev to visit Washington for a meeting with President Bush later that month. This was exactly the recognition that Nazarbayev had been seeking and anticipating. In my view, we needed to use these meetings to set a broad-bottomed agenda with Kazakhstan that would extend beyond security and counterterrorism to include non-proliferation, economic, commercial and energy cooperation, and democracy and human rights. Secretary Powell proved to be an indispensable ally in that process.

Secretary Powell arrived in Kazakhstan on December 9 in the middle of a grueling itinerary that would take him to a series of countries essential to the effort to consolidate the gains of the overthrow of the Taliban. As I went over the schedule with the Secretary in the car on the way to the meeting with Nazarbayev, he asked about the lunch the Kazakh side had proposed, even though the visit took place during Ramadan in a majority Muslim country. As I had expected, Nazarbayev had hardly completed his welcoming remarks when he suggested that the delegations repair to lunch. The doors behind him opened to reveal tables groaning with a feast complete with an impressive array of spirits of all kinds. The luncheon was a rousing success, even after Secretary Powell and Nazarbayev, joined by Idrissov and me, took our leave for an extended private conversation.

The secretary thanked Nazarbayev for Kazakhstan’s cooperation with the Afghanistan campaign and assured him that President Bush looked forward to their meeting in Washington later that month. Nazarbayev beamed with anticipation and asked the secretary to convey to President Bush his commitment to continued cooperation in the effort to stabilize Afghanistan and combat international terrorism. Nazarbayev assured the secretary that Kazakhstan would continue cooperation with the U.S. on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and development of commercial and energy ties. Tellingly, he made no commitments on democracy and human rights, despite Powell’s efforts to engage him. With the meeting and lunch concluded, some members of the American delegation left feeling a bit wobbly from Kazakh hospitality.

Nazarbayev began his December visit to the United States with a stop in Houston for meetings with former President George H.W. Bush and with executives of major American energy investors in Kazakhstan, including Exxon/Mobil and Chevron/Texaco. On December 21, 2001, Nazarbayev opened his oval office meeting with President Bush with a bold gambit asserting that the elder Bush had asked him to convey that “41” intended to kick the current President’s backside at the Bush family bowling competition over the holidays. After a brief hesitation, President Bush erupted in laughter, joined by the entire Bush foreign policy team. The President replied that, after the oval office meeting, he and Nazarbayev would together call 41 to let him know that the current incumbent of the oval office intended to do the backside kicking, setting off another round of convivial laughter.

Nazarbayev deftly pocketed Bush’s appreciation for Kazakhstan’s support for the “war on terror” and renunciation of nuclear weapons to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear state. Nazarbayev was justly proud of his decision in 1993-94 to return to Russia Soviet-era nuclear warheads orphaned in Kazakhstan by the break-up of the Soviet Union, but it was almost impossible to satisfy his desire for recognition as a champion of nuclear non-proliferation. Nazarbayev asked the President to create a U.S.-Kazakhstan enterprise fund to invest in Kazakh private sector firms, along the lines of the highly successful Polish/American Enterprise Fund (PAEF) established in 1989. Having overseen the operation and wind-down of PAEF in a previous assignment as Coordinator of U.S. assistance programs in Eastern Europe, I was convinced that this was not a good fit for Kazakhstan, a view reinforced by a negative head shake from Secretary Powell. I said that Kazakhstan had implemented market reforms beyond the point where an enterprise fund was needed, but that we would work with Nazarbayev to promote Kazakhstan’s reform agenda and integration into global economic institutions.

Nazarbayev returned to economics and trade later at a lunch hosted by Vice President Dick Cheney at his residence and attended by Secretary of Commerce Don Evans and other senior Bush Administration leaders. Nazarbayev made clear that he was nettled because Kazakhstan remained subject to the Cold-War era Jackson-Vanik Amendment which required a Presidential determination that the GOK was not impeding emigration to receive most-favored-nation (normal) trade relations with the United States. Why should Kazakhstan be subject to legislation originally designed to leverage emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union, which no longer existed? Nazarbayev insisted: “I have allowed all Jews to leave Kazakhstan if they wish, and a million Russians to boot!”

Nazarbayev drew laughter from the American side, but no commitment to graduate Kazakhstan from Jackson-Vanik, in part because many in Congress believed that graduation should be conditioned on overall improvement of Kazakhstan’s democracy and human rights record. Cheney and Evans agreed to continue to work the issue and, after considerable bureaucratic heavy lifting, the Commerce Department in March 2002 designated Kazakhstan a “market economy,” a major milestone toward graduation from Jackson-Vanik and Kazakhstan’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). The GOK completed accession to the WTO in 2015 but, as of this writing, Congress has not passed legislation to graduate Kazakhstan from Jackson-Vanik and extend Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to Kazakhstan.

Nazarbayev’s visit established a broad-based agenda for U.S.-Kazakhstan relations. The two Presidents issued a joint statement that called for “cooperation on counterterrorism and non-proliferation, democratic political and free-market economic reform and market-based investment and development of energy resources.” But the U.S.-Kazakhstan “strategic partnership” was not self-sustaining. It would take determined diplomacy on both sides as new challenges emerged in virtually every arena of U.S.-Kazakhstan relations.

The GOK’s understanding of the “war on terror” shifted in 2002 as it became evident that the U.S. had pivoted from Afghanistan to plans for the invasion of Iraq. Nazarbayev had no use for Saddam Hussein, especially since the Iraqi dictator’s refusal to verifiably end his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction contrasted so sharply with Kazakhstan’s transparent renunciation of nuclear weapons in the 1990s. But Nazarbayev and his ministers worried that an invasion of Iraq might divert American attention away from Afghanistan and Central Asia. During a 2002 visit by USCENTCOM Commander Gen. Tommy Franks, Nazarbayev needled Franks about the timetable of his war plan for the Iraq invasion. As Nazarbayev repeatedly pressed Franks on the date for the invasion, I watched the red creep up the general’s neck. Finally, Franks slamming the table replied: “Mr. President, you can be sure that we will not invade Iraq today because I am in Kazakhstan.” Nazarbayev laughed and agreed.

The invasion of Iraq presented Kazakhstan with an opportunity to underscore its commitment to partnership with the United States. Given the history of Central Asian involvement in the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, direct engagement on the ground against the Taliban was a bridge too far for Nazarbayev and the other Central Asian Presidents. However, Iraq proved to be different as Kazakhstan deployed a small group of combat engineers to Iraq to assist with demining and explosive ordnance demolition. While Kazakhstan’s contribution to the coalition in Iraq was minimal and short-term, it proved to be a useful way for Kazakhstan to demonstrate its commitment to U.S. and coalition counterterrorism operations. That commitment was more substantially demonstrated by Kazakhstan’s later central role in the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) which provided essential logistical support in the transport of non-lethal supplies to U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan until Russia shut NDN down in 2015.

Advancing non-proliferation: Nunn-Lugar, loose nukes and bio pathogens

Since the inception of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) initiative championed by Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, Kazakhstan had been one of the most responsible and successful partners of the U.S. in reducing the possibility that unsecured nuclear material, infrastructure and know-how might leak into the hands of terrorists or other malign actors. As the primary test site for Soviet nuclear weapons programs, Kazakhstan had a concrete interest in reducing the proliferation risk and the threat to its own people from residual nuclear material and infrastructure. However, the GOK also wanted to preserve the option of nuclear electric power generation and maintained research reactors that were still powered by weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU). During 2001-04, we began a dialogue with the GOK about a swap of the HEU for non-weapons grade low enriched uranium (LEU) that would support Kazakhstan’s peaceful nuclear industry while greatly reducing the proliferation risk. That dialogue eventually bore fruit with agreement during the Obama Administration to down-blend the HEU at Kazakhstan’s nuclear reactors and remove spent HEU from those facilities.

Two decades before the COVID 19 pandemic, the U.S. and Kazakhstan began joint work to reduce the hazard of biological toxins that had been key to Soviet-era biological weapons research and facilities in Kazakhstan. Following independence in 1991, Kazakhstan had never pursued biological weapons and, in August 2007, formally joined the Biological Weapons Convention. However, Kazakhstan maintained one of the world’s largest collections of pathogenic strains, including plague, anthrax and tularemia, to support research and production of vaccines to contain outbreaks of naturally occurring human and animal diseases. These highly dangerous toxins were maintained in research facilities and agricultural extension stations across Kazakhstan lacking even rudimentary safety and security standards. Some of these toxins were stored in ordinary kitchen refrigerators at remote locations.

Washington proposed that Kazakhstan transfer its collection of pathogens to the U.S. in return for appropriate financial compensation, but the GOK was clearly determined to retain the collection. The U.S. strategy then shifted to support for Kazakhstan’s efforts to enhance the safety, security, and research value of the strains. During an August 2003 visit to Kazakhstan, Senator Lugar announced a CTR grant of $40 million to begin this process. In December 2004, the U.S. and Kazakhstan signed an agreement to build a secure, state-of-the-art laboratory for study of plague and other infectious diseases and for development of vaccines. During 2001-04, the U.S. and Kazakhstan launched a cooperative process that eventually resulted in construction of the Central Reference Laboratory (CRL), officially opened in 2020, that has greatly reduced the threat associated with these biotoxins, while enabling Kazakhstan to conduct research in a facility built to modern safety and security standards.

End of Part 1
Kyrgyz President Returns Bill On Exonerating Victims Of Soviet-Era Repressions To Lawmakers (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [9/3/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Neutral]
Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov has refused to sign a bill into law that would exonerate victims of Soviet-era repressions. The Kyrgyz parliament’s website says Japarov returned the bill to lawmakers for additional debate, saying that the state will be unable to pay monthly allowances called for in the bill for some 18,000 Kyrgyz victims of Soviet terror from 1918 to 1953 and their descendants. Lawmakers approved the bill in late June. According to the Memorial rights group in Russia, at least 12 million men and women were persecuted during Josef Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930s alone, of whom more than 1 million people were executed.
Kyrgyzstan’s Kloop Denied on Final Appeal, Liquidation Order Stands (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [9/3/2024 4:14 PM, Catherine Putz, 1198K, Negative]
On July 16, Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court decided to leave unchanged a lower court’s ruling that the Kloop Media Foundation, the nonprofit behind investigative news website Kloop, be liquidated. According to Kloop, the foundation’s lawyers learned of the decision on August 22 and they have yet to receive a copy of the decision.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Kloop case brings an end to its appeals efforts, but Kloop co-founder Rinat Tukhvatshin vowed to continue publishing.

"We basically didn’t expect anything else. Despite everything, Kloop will continue to operate," he said. "During the liquidation trials, the number of users of our social networks has grown. And as long as at least one Kyrgyzstani reads us, we will continue to publish the most in-depth investigations, the most balanced news, and the most incisive columns."

In August 2023, prosecutors in Bishkek applied to the court to close down the Kloop Media Foundation, alleging that it was "carrying out activities that go beyond the framework provided for by [its] charter." The charter, prosecutors said in a statement, did not include "dissemination of information." They also complained that Kloop was not listed in the state register of media outlets.

Kloop noted at the time that its charter did include "providing young people and other representatives of civil society with an information platform for freely expressing their opinions on socio-political and economic processes." It also highlighted the fact that the bulk of the complaint focused on the tone of Kloop’s coverage.

In February 2024, the Oktyabrsky District Court in Bishkek sided with the government and ordered Kloop to close.

Metin Kazama, writing shortly after the decision for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, with which Kloop has published several significant investigations, highlighted the "experts" called before the court to testify:

According to Jenishbek Aralbaev, a psychiatrist whom prosecutors invited to testify during a previous hearing on February 5, people with sleep disorders, irritability, and a short temper have been admitted to the hospital to be treated for neurosis - all because of Kloop.

Aralbaev explained to the court that Kloop had provided details in their stories that had upset his patients but that he himself would not know the specifics as he read the articles only superficially.

The psychiatrist was not able to answer the questions Kloop’s attorneys asked, such as to give concrete examples of whose mental breakdown the outlet had caused or perhaps show the court some medical records. In the end, the doctor agreed that his conclusion was unsubstantiated and did not meet the methodological requirements.

The lack of concrete details goes all the way to the top.

In an interview with state news agency Kabar, President Sadyr Japarov responded to a question about Kloop’s investigations by saying, "Haven’t you seen many times that one-sided slanderous and false materials were distributed."

He denied that the closure of the media outlet would have a negative effect on the freedom of speech. "For 30 years, we have replaced anarchy with democracy and gossip with freedom of speech," he said. "Now the community is recovering from those diseases."

He went on to sat that "anarchy, spreading rumors, and false information is not freedom of speech."

Japarov did not specify what "false information" Kloop had spread, but in September 2023 Kloop’s website was blocked in Kyrgyzstan following a complaint that had been filed under Kyrgyzstan’s regressive "false information" law. Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Culture, Information, Sport, and Youth Policy demanded that the outlet remove an article which cited then-jailed politician Ravshan Jeenbekov’s allegations (which he had posted on Facebook) that he had been tortured in pretrial detention. Kloop’s brief article cited his comments, provided the necessary context, and included a rebuttal from the penitentiary service. It was a basic news article.

Kloop did not (and has not) removed the article.

In an August 29 statement, Gulnoza Said, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said, "The forced shuttering of international award-winning investigative outlet Kloop is a shameful episode in the history of modern Kyrgyzstan - a country long viewed as a haven for press freedom in Central Asia - and is a clear indication that under President Japarov this reputation no longer holds."

She urged Kyrgyz authorities to "immediately reverse their repressive course against the media and allow Kloop and all other independent outlets to work freely."

In a February interview with The Diplomat, just ahead of the liquidation decision, Kloop’s Tuhvatshin explained the media organization’s work and the impact of increasing government pressure. The month before, 11 journalists had been jailed and the editorial offices of several outlets raided.

Tukhvatshin noted that legal proceedings against media outlets in Kyrgyzstan often target articles that are not actually the ones that irritated the authorities.

"Kyrgyz security services often start legal proceedings against a media outlet not based on the publication that actually drew their ire, but on based on some other older article that makes prosecution easier," he said.

"That is the problem that the media in Kyrgyzstan currently face," Tukhvatshin continued. "It is impossible to predict what will trigger the country’s authorities. It will probably lead to cases of severe self censorship in some media. We will try to do our best to avoid that."

When asked what the diminishment of independent media in Kyrgyzstan would mean for the country, Tukhvatshin noted that it was average people who suffered more: "Independent media are actually the least vulnerable of government critics. More and more common social media users get jailed for criticizing authorities online. Recently several akyns (traditional poets) who used to criticize the government started praising it instead.

"There is an atmosphere of fear prevalent in the country."
Finding Home in Bishkek: Kyrgyzstan’s South Asian Expats (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [9/3/2024 7:21 AM, Jessica Sims and Haley Zehrung, 1198K, Neutral]
Kyrgyzstan made international headlines on May 18, 2024, when an angry mob of over 700 people gathered and attacked students from India and Pakistan in a racially motivated assault. The number of medical students from South Asia in Bishkek has steadily increased over the past several years. Many students from India and Pakistan are attracted to Kyrgyzstan’s affordable university fees, low cost of living, and the ability to transfer their medical degrees back to their home countries relatively easily.

While racism has always been present, the violence in May was the first large-scale attack targeting students from India and Pakistan and was deeply shocking and traumatizing to many in the community.

While some students decided to return to their home countries following the attacks, many community members are still dedicated to building their lives in Bishkek because of the friendships they have forged and their deep appreciation for Kyrgyz culture.

Some expats who initially came to Kyrgyzstan for medical school, intending to return to their home countries, have instead stayed and put down roots. Sandeep Bijawat, the owner of Somewhere Bistro in Bishkek, moved to Kyrgyzstan more than 13 years ago for medical school. After finishing his degree and living in India for a year, Bijawat returned to Bishkek to open Somewhere Bistro, which features Indian cuisine and hosts events that celebrate Indian culture, such as the annual Holi Festival and New Year’s celebrations with Bollywood-techno house-style music. People from India and Pakistan come to big celebrations like these at Somewhere Bistro, as well as many locals and other expats.

"Bishkek now and 13 years ago are very different," Bijawat said. After living in Bishkek for eight months at just 17 years old, Bijawat returned to India due to struggles with language and cultural barriers. As a student, he felt uncomfortable going to places in Bishkek because of how people watched him. "Every seventh or eighth man would stare at me in a bad way when I’m not at all guilty for anything."

But Bijawat moved back to Bishkek shortly after to finish his medical degree. He found welcoming places, made local friends, and improved his Russian language skills. The attacks in May were the first time he has considered leaving.

The night before the attacks at the student residences, two men in masks came to Somewhere Bistro demanding to speak with Bijawat outside in a threatening manner. One of the bartenders, a local Kyrgyz woman, spoke with them in Kyrgyz and convinced them to leave. Bijawat believes the men came because they knew the bar is owned by an Indian man, but did not find much of their target group because of the multicultural space Bijawat has built.

For three days, he was upset because of the unfairness of what people from India and Pakistan lived through. But even when thinking about his long-term future, Bijawat says he continues to live in Bishkek not because of his businesses, but because of the friendships he has built with people in Kyrgyzstan.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, his local friends came in more frequently and accompanied him to and from the bar to make sure he was safe. Just two days after the attacks, Bijawat was comforted when walking in the street. A local man he did not know stopped him to say, "Don’t worry, everything will be fine."

Bijawat is unsure if things have improved since the attacks, but he feels comfortable in Bishkek and thinks that most people understand the economic value of having a bustling international student population. In the past ten years, his confrontations with racism have become less frequent. If someone exhibits racist tendencies toward him, Bijawat attributes it to a lack of exposure to the Indian community.

Somewhere Bistro hosts regular musical performances and other types of events featuring artists from Kyrgyzstan and abroad. Bijawat himself has a band, Frunze Streets, that plays indie rock and reggae music influenced by Bijawat’s favorite Sufi music. Their music has songs that include mantras in Sanskrit set to rock music, as well as lyrics in Russian and English. The band was formed in 2014 and is now made up of musicians from Kyrgyzstan along with Bijawat.

With Bijawat, Nitin Rao runs a company, Bollywood CIS, that manages line production of Bollywood movies in Central Asia. Rao moved to Kyrgyzstan more than nine years ago for medical school. After finishing his studies, Rao decided to stay after finding his passion for business and falling in love with Kyrgyzstan and the people and culture around him.

For Rao, the decision to settle in Bishkek was a gradual process. As he learned Russian, he was able to learn more about Kyrgyz culture and travel around Kyrgyzstan, motivating him to want to continue his language studies. "If you are familiar with the culture and language, it is easy to be friends with locals and love the people around you," he said.

Rao learned to adapt to the culture - he presented himself more calmly and spoke more quietly.

"The first time I traveled in public transport here, I was with a group of friends and we were talking so loudly. They [Kyrgyz passengers] started to say something and I didn’t know Russian, so I thought they wanted to harass us, but I learned they don’t like it when we are loud in public." Learning more about the cultural nuances of Kyrgyzstan helped Rao feel more at home in Kyrgyzstan, something that continues to be a challenge for any expat.

Many of the Indian community expats whom Bijawat and Rao studied with have left Kyrgyzstan. Those who come for non-academic reasons, like to start or grow their businesses, are not a large or deeply connected community in Kyrgyzstan, but they are familiar with each other through encounters at restaurants and festivals like the ones hosted at Somewhere Bistro.

Bijawat and Rao have both built vibrant communities in Bishkek and characterize the attacks against their community as an anomaly. They noted that it is hard for local people to understand Indian artists and culture and that lack of exposure is the main issue in Kyrgyzstan for South Asians. Rao recently became a DJ and primarily plays Indian music, but says it is sometimes difficult to attract local audiences because not everyone is familiar with music from India.

Gazi Parwez, who finished medical university in Kyrgyzstan and is an aspiring entrepreneur, recommends studying in Kyrgyzstan to other Indians. Parwez has been in Kyrgyzstan for seven years and has stayed through personal economic hardship. He largely attributes his decision to stay to the community he built in Bishkek. But Parwez, who has ethnic Turkish roots, is considering moving back to India because of the attack in May. As a Turkish-Indian man, he says his desire to move back is not because he feels endangered on account of his appearance or background, but rather because he is saddened by the treatment of his community.

Rao and Parwez said that the medical students they know plan on returning, although both note that the May events were significantly more frightening for the students and their families since they are less familiar with the country. Bijawat is unsure if the students he knows will return or not.

A professor from Kyrgyzstan at a medical university in Bishkek who has been working with students from India and Pakistan for around five years is still waiting to see how many of her students will return. (The professor requested that her name not be printed.) For a week after the attacks, she and her colleagues took turns watching the students’ dormitories 24/7 and bought them groceries with their own money. They switched to online instruction for the remainder of the semester. Although there were no additional attacks during that time, the professor and her colleagues continued to provide this support because they wanted the students to feel safe and calm.

Many locals have a negative opinion of foreign workers who move to Kyrgyzstan to provide manual labor, and some narratives push the perspective that workers from India and Pakistan take jobs away from locals, which contributes to a broader anti-migrant sentiment in Kyrgyzstan. Despite some of the negative perceptions of the Indian and Pakistani communities in Kyrgyzstan, there is hope that the situation will improve in the future. Many students are set to return to university in the fall semester to continue their studies, and the government of Kyrgyzstan has continued to work closely with representatives of Pakistan and India to ensure the safety of students in Bishkek.

When Bijawat completed university, he returned to India and continued to think about his experience in Bishkek. He felt it was necessary to return to Bishkek and create a place like Somewhere Bistro where a person, no matter their attire, race, appearance, or culture, can feel comfortable and enjoy listening to music. He also wanted to change the mindset people have about Indians, specifically by challenging old Bollywood stereotypes that Indians are dirty and poor.

"They have no idea about what is the new India, how Indians behave, or how they talk and live, and through our culture, we can change that," he said.

While the attacks in May were deeply jarring to many residents of Bishkek, Bijawat, Rao, and Parwez are part of a thriving Indian expat community in the city. They have built businesses, relationships, and families in the country they now call home, and they are hopeful about the trajectory of Kyrgyz-Indian relations and the further growth of their community.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[9/3/2024 1:41 PM, 235.6K followers, 301 retweets, 404 likes]
The Taliban have resumed public lashings of women for what they consider morality crimes. In this video, Taliban members whip a woman in public, then shout "Allahu Akbar," celebrating their jihad against Afghan women.

Freshta Razbaan
@RazbaanFreshta
[9/3/2024 3:16 PM, 5K followers, 5 likes]
The Taliban’s return to power has not only marked a regression into the shadows of oppression but has explicitly targeted the heart of Afghan society—its women. In acts that can only be described as crimes against humanity, the Taliban have reinstated public lashings, a brutal practice where the dignity of women is stripped away under the guise of morality. Each lash echoes not just through the streets of Afghanistan but resonates as a global affront to human rights. This video, where the cries of a woman are drowned by shouts of "Allahu Akbar," symbolizes a perversion of faith used to justify the subjugation and terrorization of half the population. It is not merely an attack on individuals but an assault on the collective conscience of humanity. The celebration of such acts as a form of jihad is a tragic misrepresentation of any religious or moral code, turning sacred terms into tools of oppression. The world watches, not in silence, but often in inaction, as Afghan women face daily reminders of their erased freedoms. These acts are not just violations of human rights; they are deliberate attempts to erase women’s presence, voices, and very existence from the public sphere. This is indeed a crime against humanity, where the victims are punished for the mere fact of being women, seeking to live with the freedoms they rightfully deserve. The international community must recognize these actions for what they are: systematic, institutionalized gender apartheid. The Taliban’s policies are not just a setback for Afghan women but a dark beacon signaling the erosion of human values. It’s imperative for global leaders, organizations, and every individual who believes in the fundamental rights of all humans to stand against this tyranny. The fight against such egregious human rights violations is not just for the freedom of Afghan women but for the soul of our global society.

Freshta Razbaan
@RazbaanFreshta
[9/3/2024 10:53 AM, 5K followers, 3 retweets, 12 likes]
I have no idea why employees of collapsed government in Afghanistan would even consider cooperating with the terrorist Tali-ban regime. If they’ve bought into this so-called general amnesty and the empty promises about security and protection, they’re living in a delusion. A group that spent 20 years branding you as western puppets, infidels, apostates, and traitors, and sees your murder as not just acceptable but essential, will never protect you. It’s completely absurd!

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[9/3/2024 11:22 AM, 92.4K followers, 33 retweets, 79 likes]
For @The_NewArab, I write that the recent Taliban decrees represent one of the most severe restrictions on women’s freedoms in modern history. And it will get worse. The world must act by making sweeping changes to asylum processes for Afghan women and girls: https://www.newarab.com/opinion/taliban-havent-changed-open-borders-afghan-women-now

Heather Barr
@heatherbarr1
[9/4/2024 12:08 AM, 63K followers, 8 retweets, 23 likes]
Grateful for a chance to talk with @FRANCE24 about how countries that have pledged to uphold women’s rights—including @franceonu—must do more to hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes against Afghan women and girls. https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/perspective/20240903-oppression-of-afghan-women-the-world-seems-to-be-responding-with-a-shrug-hrw-says
Pakistan
Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[9/3/2024 7:50 AM, 3.1M followers, 17 retweets, 90 likes]
Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif chairs a meeting of the Federal Cabinet, today in Islamabad.

Imran Khan
@ImranKhanPTI
[9/3/2024 6:00 AM, 20.8M followers, 8.1K retweets, 14K likes]
Former Prime Minister and Chairman PTI’s Statements from Adiala Jail September 2, 2024
If it’s a question of who’s spoken against the armed forces, well, nobody has spoken against the military as much as Khwaja Asif. Of all the speeches against the military, Khwaja Asif tops the list. Ahsan Iqbal was the first to speak about the Hamood Ur Rahman Commission Report. He said that the military is a state within the state. Ahsan Iqbal has been saying that Pakistan will become the next Myanmar.

May 9th (2023 event) is their (illegitimate government) insurance policy. Once the May 9th narrative ends, both their government as well as their politics will topple. Whenever there’s talk of negotiations, they make a hue and cry about May 9th (False Flag Operation). I would like to tell the nation once again that May 9th was orchestrated by those who had me abducted and made the CCTV footage disappear. A judicial commission must be formed for the events of May 9th to be investigated.

We are always ready to negotiate, but talks will only be held with those who are able to make decisions. Holding talks with the Form 47 Government (illegitimate government formed as a result of electoral fraud) would be granting them legitimacy. Mehmood Khan Achakzai has the authority to negotiate.

Our rally on September 8 has three objectives. The first is to ensure the return of our stolen mandate. The second is to gain independence from the elite capture of this country. And the third objective is to ensure an independent judiciary in the country. An attack is being launched on the judiciary just to grant Qazi Faez Isa an extension.

If I become the chancellor of Oxford University, it would be an honour for Pakistan. No other alumni of Oxford University has ever attained the place and stature in history of cricket that I did. I have founded and run major charitable institutions in Pakistan like the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospitals and Namal University. We have established two cancer hospitals, two universities and a third (hospital) is being built. I am the first politician in Pakistan who started a political party from scratch and have brought it to where it is today (as the largest and only federal party in the country).

I only leave my cell for meals twice in a 24-hour hour period, which is a total of two hours. They (the regime and controlled media) repeatedly try to give the impression that I live in some 5-star hotel. When Nawaz Sharif, Asif Ali Zardari, and Shahbaz Sharif went to prison, they were kept in palatial rooms with en-suite bathrooms, air conditioning, and many such facilities. I am being kept in a small cell which shares a wall with a cell assigned to prisoners on death row. I only have a single fan in my cell. My cell gets heated like an oven on particularly hot days. I am not complaining, but I want my nation to know the conditions in which I live.

Security personnel has been scared into staying away from my cell. They think that I spend my time chit-chatting with the security personnel. I have so much reading material that I don’t need to talk to anyone. I feel like I have once again enrolled in a university. The Almighty has given me this opportunity to catch up on the reading that I couldn’t do due to competing priorities in life. I couldn’t even imagine how much God has helped me learn in jail by being able to read. But they think they can use these tactics to isolate me in prison.

Having faith in the Almighty makes one stop being fearful. God states in the Holy Quran that when we have complete faith, He removes our fears. I believe that life and death are in the hands of the Almighty, and with this faith I will stand firm against the mafia to the very end. 1/2

Imran Khan
@ImranKhanPTI
[9/3/2024 6:00 AM, 20.8M followers, 1.7K retweets, 2.7K likes]
There will be two new entries in the Guiness Book of world records. One entry would be about building a narrative to honour the vote while actually being compliant to the boot. For two and a half years, Nawaz Sharif maintained a stance about respecting people’s democratic rights, while criticizing the army and martial law. Only to then turn around and keep up with his tradition of making deals with the army, violating the sanctity of the vote and the public mandate. The second entry to the Guiness Book will be about how Nawaz Sharif played with all four umpires on his side, that is, with the support of the four Chiefs, but still lost. The other party (PTI) wasn’t even allowed to play (contest the election). Those who pretended to champion democracy, surrendered to the boot! According to the PATTAN (independent election monitor) report, 74,000 fake votes were cast in Nawaz Sharif’s favour to enable his “victory” against Dr. Yasmin Rashid. 2/2

Anas Mallick
@AnasMallick
[9/3/2024 11:57 AM, 73.5K followers, 36 retweets, 274 likes]
Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang to make a bilateral visit to Pakistan in Oct, day before his multilateral visit to Islamabad for SCO Heads of Governments meeting which is to be held on 15th and 16th of October -- This will be the first visit by any Chinese PM to Pak in 11years.

Anas Mallick
@AnasMallick
[9/3/2024 8:27 AM, 73.5K followers, 4 likes]
The President has appointed incumbent Foreign Secretary @syrusqazi aspirant a member of the Federal Public Service Commission(FPSC) with effect from 11th September, the date of his retirement from service as a Foreign Service Officer. #Pakistan
India
President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[9/3/2024 10:02 AM, 25.6M followers, 181 retweets, 973 likes]
President Droupadi Murmu graced the centenary year function of the Maharashtra Legislative Council in Mumbai. The President said that from its inception, the Maharashtra Legislative Council has given expression to the hopes and aspirations of the people of Maharashtra.

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[9/3/2024 5:38 AM, 25.6M followers, 927 retweets, 5.8K likes]
President Droupadi Murmu paid respects to Babasaheb Dr. B. R. Ambedkar at Chaitya Bhoomi in Mumbai. The values and ideals of the architect of Indian Constitution will continue to guide our nation.

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[9/3/2024 5:35 AM, 25.6M followers, 239 retweets, 1.5K likes]
President Droupadi Murmu graced the 21st convocation of Symbiosis International (Deemed) University at Pune, Maharashtra. The President said that providing value-based education to the younger generation along with knowledge of the latest technology should be the aim of all educational institutions.

Richard Rossow
@RichardRossow
[9/3/2024 7:52 AM, 29.6K followers, 3 likes]
India pulls in $3b in foreign portfolio investment in August. $23b net FPI over the last 12 months.

Richard Rossow
@RichardRossow
[9/3/2024 8:39 AM, 29.6K followers, 2 likes]
India’s Cabinet OK’s a fourth semiconductor fab; this from India’s own Kaynes Semicon. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2050859
NSB
Jon Danilowicz
@JonFDanilowicz
[9/3/2024 4:32 PM, 7.7K followers, 15 retweets, 58 likes]
As more Hasina stalwarts face justice in #Bangladesh, here is a reminder that she chose to save her own skin while leaving others behind. It is hard to see how she would command anyone’s loyalty going forward. Many she abandoned will gladly share the regime’s inside story.

Jon Danilowicz
@JonFDanilowicz
[9/3/2024 2:29 PM, 7.7K followers, 6 retweets, 19 likes]
Here is an interesting take on how China may react to recent developments in #Bangladesh. I don’t agree with all the analysis, but there are some interesting perspectives in this discussion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=QStXBy_dbBJBNk8-&v=t2UhgG2dLC0&feature=youtu.be

Jon Danilowicz
@JonFDanilowicz
[9/3/2024 9:14 AM, 7.7K followers, 7 likes]
Realizing that it is only speculative at this point, I would counsel my former colleagues @StateDept not to include a senior @DeptofDefense official in the reported upcoming delegation to #Bangladesh being led by @State_SCA A/S Lu. Discussions of security cooperation can wait for later.

In my view, an overemphasis on regional security is what led to the U.S. deemphasizing support for democracy and human rights in the period immediately before and after the January 7 election. My sense is that voices from DoD and IndoPacom were the ones arguing most loudly at the NSC that the U.S. should defer to Indian concerns vis a vis Bangladesh.

On a related note, I would argue strongly that A/S Lu and team should not meet with senior officials of the Bangladesh military during this visit. I know there will be a strong temptation to do so. The optics of such a meeting would be counterproductive. This visit should be focused on the interim government’s civilian leadership and members of civil society who fought against the dictatorship. To do otherwise risks giving the impression that there are dual sources of authority.

Future engagements with the Bangladesh military can take place as part of normal mil-mil and security sector engagement, for example during the bilateral security dialogue. DoD and @INDOPACOM officials can participate in these meetings.

The press reports thus far on the visit have not included a name for a senior @USAID official on the U.S. delegation. I hope this is not the case. A delegation led by State to include @USTreasury and USAID (and possibly @TheJusticeDept) would be more appropriate at this moment.

Jon Danilowicz
@JonFDanilowicz
[9/3/2024 7:48 AM, 7.7K followers, 15 retweets, 106 likes]
It is good news that a senior U.S. delegation is traveling to Dhaka to meet with @ChiefAdviserGoB and his government to discuss future cooperation. With so many issues on the bilateral agenda, it will be important to focus this engagement on the “big picture” and not get bogged down in minutiae. Detailed discussions can take place later. If I were @usembassydhaka and helping to arrange the visit, here would be my priorities:
1). The U.S. should publicly and privately welcome the August 5 change and congratulate the people of #Bangladesh on their victory over the dictatorship. In so doing, the U.S. should acknowledge that it could and should have done more to oppose the country’s past march towards authoritarianism.
2). The U.S. should pledge full support for the interim government’s efforts to reform the state, provide justice and accountability to victims of the dictatorship, and create conditions for free and fair elections. These need to take place on Bangladesh’s timetable.
3). The U.S. should emphasize that a democratic Bangladesh will be a stronger partner for its neighbors and the countries in the Indo-Pacific region. It will also provide a model for those seeking to fight authoritarianism around the world.
I hope @State_SCA A/S Lu meets with victims of the dictatorship and hears from them first hand about their experiences. In general, my advice for the visitors from Washington is that they should primarily be in listening mode on this visit. Fortunately there are mechanisms available to hash out the details, to include a bilateral partnership dialogue, a security dialogue and an economic dialogue. These structures should be reactivated. Finally, the U.S. side should convey an invitation for Chief Advisor Yunus to meet with a senior official at UNGA to highlight this new chapter in the U.S.-Bangladesh relationship.

Awami League
@albd1971
[9/3/2024 11:49 PM, 645.5K followers, 18 retweets, 56 likes]
We welcome the joint operation to recover weapons and ammunition. As criminals are wreaking havoc across the country, it is imperative to arrest them in the interest of the people. No innocent people should be harassed during this operation and recommended paying special attention to it. Those involved in hundreds of police station robberies in Bangladesh - members of some political parties, their video footage, various news have already been published. They must be arrested by due process of law. If the members of those political parties act as the source of the joint forces, then the main aim and purpose of this campaign will be questioned. Because they will target leaders and workers of opposing political parties, even their own party opponents. Make sure that no innocent people are arrested. We want drugs and illegal weapons free #Bangladesh.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[9/4/2024 12:48 AM, 265.5K followers, 83 retweets, 196 likes]
My column: U.S. has long been accused of – and sometimes admitted to – helping to topple or prop up foreign regimes. More recently, it has been accused of playing a role (which it denies) in the overthrow of Bangladesh’s Hasina and Pakistan’s Imran Khan. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/western-powers-encourage-or-accept-regime-change-regardless-of-democratic-credentials-by-brahma-chellaney-2024-09?

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[9/4/2024 12:12 AM, 109.7K followers, 107 retweets, 115 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu and First Lady Madam Sajidha Mohamed attend the official function commemorating this year’s National Day.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[9/3/2024 10:09 PM, 109.7K followers, 100 retweets, 112 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu and First Lady Madam Sajidha Mohamed attend the flag-hoisting ceremony at Republic Square to commemorate this year’s National Day. Senior officials from government offices and institutions accompanied them.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[9/3/2024 3:52 PM, 109.7K followers, 122 retweets, 124 likes]
First Lady and Chief Guide, Madam Sajidha Mohamed, attends and observes activities showcased by the Asia Pacific Region’s Young Women in Governance Workshop participants at their international night event. The First Lady hosts a banquet in honour of the Asia Pacific Region’s Young Women in Governance Workshop participants.

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[9/4/2024 12:57 AM, 13.8K followers, 16 retweets, 27 likes]
Today, the Maldives signed the #BBNJ Agreement as its 92nd signatory. The signing of the Agreement is a testament to President Dr @MMuizzu’s commitment to protect our most cherished resources - the ocean and its biodiversity. The people of #Maldives heavily rely on the protection and conservation of the ocean. The BBNJ Agreement will galvanise efforts to protect marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, which in turn would boost our tourism and fisheries industries. The Agreement is a representation of the promise of multilateral cooperation and a collaborative approach to protect our ocean. The #Maldives stands ready to do our part!

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[9/3/2024 10:01 AM, 13.8K followers, 34 retweets, 78 likes]
Had the pleasure of meeting former High Commissioner of India to the Maldives, Sanjay Sudhir today. Conveyed appreciation for his active role in strengthening #Maldives-#India relations during his tenure. @sunjaysudhir

Eran Wickramaratne
@EranWick
[9/4/2024 2:08 AM, 69K followers, 6 retweets, 11 likes]
A new UN report shows that Sri Lanka has become more and more authoritarian over the last two years. Yesterday we saw another example. The Provincial Councils Elections (Amendment) Bill, which was scheduled to be taken up in parliament, was not permitted to by the government. One government member even said that the PC system was forced upon SL by India. Absolute rubbish. Are we saying that the parliamentary system was forced upon us by the British? No, because these systems are components of democracy, which is a global development. If the govt feels the PC system is not suitable they must hold a referendum. But that referendum should ask the people in each province whether they need PCs or not. Without such a consultative process, we are absolutely opposed to postponing the PC election, which is part of the democratic framework.

Eran Wickramaratne
@EranWick
[9/3/2024 7:59 AM, 69K followers, 4 retweets, 18 likes]
Small-scale female entrepreneurs and self-employed women in the North expressed their grievances and the debt burden they face due to high-interest microfinance loans. Was shocked to learn that some women who are unable to settle the loans have even been pressurized to compensate through sexual favours. Listened to their harrowing ordeals with SJB Leader Sajith Premadasa on Sunday. We assured them that an SJB government will empower small-scale female entrepreneurs with concessional loans, technical support and security.

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_SRILANKA
[9/3/2024 10:39 PM, 322.6K followers, 21 retweets, 93 likes]
My #FiveYearMission for civil servants: Increased public servants’ salaries by 24% to 50%, with a minimum basic salary raised to Rs. 30,000 and raise the Cost-of-Living allowance to Rs. 25,000, resulting in a minimum salary of Rs. 55,000 for all public servants. (Which is approved by cabinet to be implemented in 2025)
Offer a year’s leave with scholarships for employees under 40 to improve service efficiency.
Implement a merit-based promotion system for better career opportunities.
Digitize public services and provide subsidized laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Prioritize housing for employees without homes under a new scheme.
Allow remote work for suitable roles. https://ranil2024.lk/news-posts/pay-rise Don’t risk going back to 2022 chaos. Make the right choice. http://ranil2024.lk/manifesto
#SriLanka #forthewin #5YearPlan #wayforward #පුළුවන්SriLanka #இயலும்ஸ்ரீலங்கா #SriLankaCan #PuluwanSriLanka #Ranil2024 #RW2024 #RanilWickremesinghe

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_SRILANKA
[9/3/2024 6:49 AM, 322.6K followers, 29 retweets, 173 likes]
Due to the hard work we’ve completed together, Sri Lanka’s journey is progressing, and we can increase the salaries of government workers, including healthcare benefits. A strong economy and strong leadership have enabled us to do this. https://news.lk/news/political-current-affairs/item/36847-government-employees-basic-salary-will-increase-by-24-to-over-50-from-next-january
Central Asia
Asel Doolotkeldieva
@ADoolotkeldieva
[9/4/2024 2:45 AM, 14.3K followers, 1 retweet, 8 likes]
MP Iskhak Masaliev (ex communist) urged to show support to Russia in the war against Ukraine, which breaches Kyrgyzstan’s official neutral status. He justifies his call by the presence of Kyrgyz migrants in Ru territory which came under Ukr attack ½

Asel Doolotkeldieva
@ADoolotkeldieva
[9/4/2024 2:45 AM, 14.3K followers, 1 retweet, 5 likes]
This is alarming. One thing is to hear such calls from propagandists, but entirely different when they come from official politicians & state institutions. It’s also so revolting: instead of creating jobs for migrants at home, politicians only simulate caring about them 2/2

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[9/3/2024 7:26 AM, 4.9K followers, 1 retweet, 3 likes]
The Representative of Tajikistan was elected as the Assistant Director General of the Islamic Food Safety Organization https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/15640/the-representative-of-tajikistan-was-elected-as-the-assistant-director-general-of-the-islamic-food-safety-organization

{End of Report}
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