SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS

epubdos : Afghanistan

Prepared for the U.S. Department of State

Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs

By TechMIS
www.TechMIS.com

Mobile User Copy

TO:	SCA & Staff
DATE:	Thursday, September 5, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan

With new Taliban manifesto, Afghan women fear the worst (New York Times)

New York Times [9/4/2024 2:42 PM, Christina Goldbaum and Najim Rahim, 6765K, Neutral]
No education beyond the sixth grade. No employment in most workplaces and no access to public spaces like parks, gyms and salons. No long-distance travel if unaccompanied by a male relative. No leaving home if not covered from head to toe.

And now, the sound of a woman’s voice outside the home has been outlawed in Afghanistan, according to a 114-page manifesto released late last month that codifies all of the Taliban government’s decrees restricting women’s rights.

A large majority of the prohibitions have been in place for much of the Taliban’s three years in power, slowly squeezing Afghan women out of public life. But for many women across the country, the release of the document feels like a nail in the coffin for their dreams and aspirations.

Some had clung to the hope that the authorities might still reverse the most severe limitations, after Taliban officials suggested that high schools and universities would eventually reopen for women after they were shuttered. For many women, that hope is now dashed.

“We are going back to the first reign of the Taliban, when women did not have the right to leave the house,” said Musarat Faramarz, 23, a woman in Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan, referring to the movement’s rule from 1996 to 2001. “I thought that the Taliban had changed, but we are experiencing the previous dark times again.”

Since the Taliban regained power in August 2021, the authorities have systematically rolled back the rights that women — particularly those in less conservative urban centers — had won during the 20-year U.S. occupation. Today, Afghanistan is the most restrictive country in the world for women, and the only one that bans high school education for girls, experts say.

The publication of the regulations has ignited fears of a coming crackdown by emboldened officers of the so-called vice and virtue police, the government officials who don white robes and are stationed on street corners to ensure that the country’s morality laws are observed.

The manifesto defines for the first time the enforcement mechanisms that can be used by these officers. While they have frequently issued verbal warnings, those officers are now empowered to damage people’s property or detain them for up to three days if they repeatedly violate the vice and virtue laws.

Before the announcement of the laws, Freshta Nasimi, 20, who lives in Badakhshan Province in northeastern Afghanistan, had held on to any shred of hope she could find.

For a while, she was sustained by a rumor she heard from classmates that the government would broadcast girls’ schooling over the television — a concession that would allow girls to learn while keeping them in their homes. But that dream was snuffed out after the authorities in Khost Province, in the country’s east, banned such programs from the airwaves earlier this year. That signaled that other parts of the country could implement similar bans.

Now, Ms. Nasimi says, she is trapped at home. The new law barring women’s voices — they are considered an intimate part of a woman that must be covered — effectively ensures that she cannot leave the house without a male relative. She worries that no taxi driver will speak with her, for fear of being reprimanded by the Taliban, she said, and no shopkeeper will entertain her requests.

She has accepted that her aspirations of becoming an engineer — with the steady income and freedom it would bring — are finished.

“My future?” she asked, resigned. “I don’t have a future except being a housewife and raising children.”

The publication of the vice and virtue laws, analysts say, is part of a governmentwide effort to codify the workings of every ministry to ensure they adhere to the extreme vision of Shariah law institutionalized by the Taliban’s leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada. The document is also, analysts say, intended to stamp out any Western principles of the U.S.-backed government that ran Afghanistan before the Taliban’s return to power.

The Taliban have forcefully rejected outside pressure to ease the restrictions on women, even as the policies have isolated Afghanistan from much of the West. Taliban officials defend the laws as rooted in the Islamic teachings that govern the country. “Afghanistan is an Islamic nation; Islamic laws are inherently applicable within its society,” the spokesman for the government, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in a statement.

But the regulations have drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and the United Nations mission in Afghanistan. The mission’s head, Roza Otunbayeva, called them “a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future” that extends the “already intolerable restrictions” on women’s rights.

Even visual cues of womanhood have been slowly scrubbed from the public realm.

Over the past three years, women’s faces have been torn from advertisements on billboards, painted over in murals on school walls and scratched off posters lining city streets. The heads of female mannequins, dressed in all-black, all-concealing abayas, are covered in tinfoil.

Even before the new manifesto, the threat of being reprimanded by the vice and virtue police lingered in the air as women were barred from more and more public places.

“I live at home like a prisoner,” said Ms. Faramarz, the woman from Baghlan. “I haven’t left the house in three months,” she added.

The reversal of rights has been perhaps the hardest for the girls who came of age in an era of opportunity for women during the U.S. occupation.

Some girls, determined to plow ahead with their education, have found ad hoc ways to do so. Underground schools for girls, often little more than a few dozen students and a tutor tucked away in people’s private homes, have cropped up across the country. Others have turned to online classes, even as the internet cuts in and out.

Mohadisa Hasani, 18, began studying again about a year after the Taliban seized power. She had talked to two former classmates who were evacuated to the United States and Canada. Hearing about what they were studying in school stoked jealousy in her at first. But then she saw opportunity, she said.

She asked those friends to spend an hour each week teaching her the lessons they were learning in physics and chemistry. She woke up for the calls at 6 a.m. and spent the days in between poring over photos of textbooks sent by the friends, Mina and Mursad.

“Some of my friends are painting, they are writing, they are doing underground taekwondo classes,” Ms. Hasani said. “Our depression is always there, but we have to be brave.”

“I love Afghanistan, I love my country. I just don’t love the government and people forcing their beliefs onto others,” she added.

The classes and artistic outlets, while informal, have given girls, especially in more progressive cities, a dose of hope and purpose. But the reach of those programs goes only so far.

Rahmani, 43, who preferred to go by only her surname for fear of retribution, said that she began taking sleeping pills every night to dampen the anxiety she feels over providing for her family.

A widow, Ms. Rahmani worked for nonprofit groups for nearly 20 years before the Taliban seized power, earning more than enough to provide for her four children. Now, she says, she not only cannot provide for them after women were barred from working for such groups — but she has also lost her sense of self.

“I miss the days when I used to be somebody, when I could work and earn a living and serve my country,” Ms. Rahmani explained. “They have erased our presence from society.”

House GOP subpoenas Blinken to testify on U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan (AP)

AP [9/4/2024 11:21 AM, Farnoush Amiri, 12468K, Negative]
House Republicans have issued a subpoena demanding testimony from Secretary of State Antony Blinken as they wrap up a sprawling yearslong investigation into the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a subpoena letter late Tuesday ordering Blinken to appear before the committee by Sept. 19 or face a contempt of Congress charge.

"You served as the final decision maker for the department on the withdrawal and evacuation," McCaul wrote.

He added that three years later, Blinken is "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."

Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said Blinken is unable to testify on the dates proposed by the committee as he will be traveling for diplomatic work the majority of September. He claimed the committee denied "reasonable alternatives" to the subpoena date.

"The Secretary has testified before the Congress on Afghanistan more than 14 times - more than any other Cabinet-level official," Miller said, adding that four of those times were directly before the Foreign Affairs committee at the request of McCaul. "It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the Department in good faith, the Committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena."

The subpoena for Blinken’s testimony is the latest in a series of moves by McCaul and other House Republicans over the last 18 months to hold the Biden administration accountable for what they have called a "stunning failure of leadership" after Taliban forces seized the Afghan capital of Kabul, far more rapidly than U.S. intelligence had foreseen as American forces pulled out.

The committee is expected to summarize its work in an investigative report to be released Monday, amid the contentious presidential election where Republican nominee Donald Trump has tried to elevate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as a campaign issue.

While the GOP report is expected to place blame on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now the Democratic nominee for president, independent watchdog reports over the last three years have documented a much more nuanced and bipartisan case for which administration was at fault.

A 2022 report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, concluded it was decisions made by both President Donald Trump and Biden to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan that were key factors in the collapse of that nation’s military.

That report mirrors assertions made by senior Pentagon and military leaders in the aftermath of the withdrawal. Military leaders have made clear that their recommendation was to leave about 2,500 U.S. troops in the country, but that plan was not approved.

Blinken Subpoenaed for Testimony on Afghanistan Withdrawal (Newsweek)

Newsweek [9/4/2024 1:19 PM, Matthew Impelli, 49093K, Neutral]
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken received a subpoena this week for an investigation into the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

On Tuesday, Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced the subpoena for Blinken’s "refusal to appear before the committee to testify on the Biden-Harris administration’s deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan."

"The Committee is holding this hearing because the Department of State was central to the Afghanistan withdrawal and served as the senior authority during the August non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO)," McCaul wrote in a statement announcing the subpoena. "As Secretary of State throughout the withdrawal and NEO, you were entrusted to lead these efforts and to secure the safe evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies. In testimony before the Committee, current and former State Department officials have confirmed that you served as the final decisionmaker for the Department on the withdrawal and evacuation."

McCaul added, "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."

In a statement obtained by The Associated Press (AP), State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that Blinken is currently unable to appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the dates they proposed because he will be traveling for work most of September. Miller also reportedly said that the Committee refused to hear "reasonable alternatives" to the subpoena date.

"The Secretary has testified before the Congress on Afghanistan more than 14 times-more than any other Cabinet-level official," Miller said. "It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the Department in good faith, the Committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena."

The subpoena for Blinken’s testimony marks the latest effort by McCaul and House Republicans to hold the Biden administration accountable for what they have called a "stunning failure of leadership" following the swift fall of Kabul to Taliban forces-an outcome U.S. intelligence had not predicted as American troops withdrew.

The committee is expected to release its findings in an investigative report on Monday, as the withdrawal from Afghanistan has become a key campaign issue in the contentious presidential race with Republican nominee Donald Trump pushing it to the forefront.

A 2022 report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) concluded that decisions by both Trump and President Joe Biden to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan were key factors in the collapse of the country’s military.

To aid Afghan women, the world must define and address gender apartheid (The Hill – opinion)

The Hill [9/4/2024 8:30 AM, Annamarie Bena, 19591K, Negative]
Three years ago, the U.S. and its allies evacuated thousands of Afghans who had worked with them during the war against the Taliban. But the women and girls who remain in Afghanistan now live under a gender apartheid system.

Gender apartheid is not defined in international law, nor is it considered as part of U.S. asylum and refugee law: But it should be.

In Afghanistan today women live under a barbaric system of repression. The Taliban have stripped women of their human rights, freedom and dignity. They use intimidation, violence and the methodical issuance of edicts to keep women in their homes, invisible and with no opportunity to live a full life.

Taliban restrictions affect every aspect of women’s lives — from basic participation in society to education, employment and access to justice. The Taliban most recently banned women’s voices and bare faces in public. Outside of the home, women must cover their faces and bodies entirely and be accompanied by male relatives.

Shortly after taking power in Afghanistan, the Taliban banned girls from attending secondary school. Directives about education have worsened over time. The Taliban ordered gender-segregated classrooms, then limited the subject areas women could study and finally excluded female students from universities.

In the workforce, the Taliban have forbidden women from holding decision-making and managerial positions. Women are also prohibited from running certain businesses and cannot serve as lawyers, judges or in other positions in the justice system.

Since taking over Afghanistan, the Taliban have stopped institutional and legal support for women facing gender-based violence. As a result, more women and girls suffer domestic violence, exploitation and abuse, including forced marriages and child marriages.

The Taliban have issued more than 80 edicts, directives and statements that target and segregate women, restrict their rights and discriminate against them. If women violate these rules, they can be flogged, stoned, arrested or killed.

The situation for women in Afghanistan mirrors the situation of Black South Africans under apartheid — institutionalized regimes of systematic oppression and domination. And the elements of a gender apartheid definition would approximate the elements of apartheid in the Apartheid Convention — if “gender” were substituted for “race” and “Afghanistan” for “South Africa.”

In October, the United Nations’ Sixth Committee is scheduled to consider draft articles for a Crimes Against Humanity Convention. As part of its deliberation, it should add language to the treaty to include gender apartheid. We must join with Afghan women, international legal practitioners and human rights activists to advocate for United Nations member states to act and codify gender apartheid in international law.

Codifying gender apartheid in international law would not move the Taliban to end its gender apartheid system. But it should move countries to take increased, collaborative action, as they did in the 1990s with South Africa.

The collaborative effort should include increased diplomatic and economic sanctions, criminal sanctions for violations of international law and support for Afghan women, thus layering and compounding the alienation of the Taliban, and inhibiting its evasion of accountability.

In support of Afghan women, countries must offer more protection for those who seek safety outside of Afghanistan.

In January 2023, the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) issued guidance that women are in general at risk of persecution in Afghanistan, and thus are eligible for refugee status. Several European countries now recognize all Afghan women and girls outside the country as refugees.

Under current U.S. immigration law, which has traditionally focused on individual status determinations for refugees and asylees, the guidance could not be easily replicated.

However, Congress could accelerate and simplify refugee or asylum recognition for Afghan women and girls. Congress could amend the definition of a refugee as it did in 1996 for victims of China’s One Child Policy.

It could deem any woman who has lived under the Taliban’s gender apartheid system or who fears returning there as having been persecuted or having a well-founded fear of persecution, and meeting the refugee definition based on membership in a particular social group.

Congress could also amend the eligibility for a special immigrant visa. It could not only include eligible Afghans who were employed by the U.S. government but also women living under the Taliban’s gender apartheid system.

Aside from changes in U.S. law, which would face political and legal challenges, the U.S. government could modify policy. Afghan women and girls could be given priority consideration for refugee status.

As a group of special humanitarian concern, Afghan women should have access to the U.S. refugee system by virtue of their circumstances and need for resettlement. Although the U.S. government has prioritized Afghans who assisted with the war against the Taliban, Afghan women as a group need protection.

Gender apartheid is an all-encompassing violation of human rights. It should be codified in international law to activate governments to hold the Taliban regime to account and to offer support for the determination that any woman living under the Taliban’s gender apartheid system or in fear of being returned there is a prima facie refugee in need of protection.

Pakistan

Arrest of Pakistan’s ex-spy chief raises heat on Imran Khan (Reuters)

Reuters [9/5/2024 3:12 AM, Asif Shahzad, 5.2M, Neutral]
Pakistan’s unprecedented arrest of a former spy chief raises the heat on Imran Khan and could be the precursor to prosecuting the jailed former prime minister on charges of treason and attempting to incite a mutiny in the military, according to government officials and analysts.

Khan has been feuding with Pakistan’s all-powerful military after a falling out with then-army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa in 2022, following which he was ousted from office in a parliamentary vote that he said was orchestrated by the generals.

The military has denied any involvement in his ouster. Khan has been public about the clash, which has led to the worst political turmoil in the South Asian nation in decades. The 71-year-old former cricket star has a devoted following, and any further military action against him could result in more unrest, analysts say.

Supporters of Khan went on the rampage on May 9 last year after he was briefly arrested, vandalising military installations across the country. It was the most serious challenge to the power of the military in Pakistan’s 75-year history.

Khan is on trial in a civil court for allegedly abetting the violence, a charge he has denied. But he can face more serious charges of treason and mutiny after last month’s arrest of Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, a Khan ally who is a former chief of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, officials and analysts said.

Treason and mutiny are tried by a military court, which is not open to the public, and the charges carry a maximum punishment of death.

"I think the arrest will be used to put pressure on Faiz Hameed to provide information that helps implicate Khan in the May 9 violence which the army chief sees as mutiny and an act of treason," said author and defence analyst Ayesha Siddiqa, calling Hameed’s arrest a "political bombshell".

Government officials have repeatedly said Hameed worked with Khan to plan the riots. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told Geo TV last month that Khan provided the manpower while Hameed "masterminded the conspiracy".

The military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Current army chief General Asim Munir said in May that there could be "no compromise or deal with the planners and architects of this dark chapter in our history". He did not name anybody.

HANDPICKED ALLY

Khan has said Hameed’s arrest was meant to ultimately target him as other cases against him were falling part.

"It is a drama to try my case in a military court," he was quoted as saying by his lawyer Naeem Panjutha during a recent hearing in jail.

Hameed faces a closed-door court-martial on charges of corruption, misuse of power in service and violation of the Army Act after his 2022 retirement, the military says. He is in custody and could not be reached for comment. The charges are punishable by a jail sentence of up to 14 years.

The military has also announced it has arrested three other retired officers linked to Hameed and that it was investigating others too for "fomenting instability" in collusion with "vested political interests".

Khan handpicked Hameed in 2019 as ISI chief, one of the most powerful positions in Pakistan, at the intersection of domestic politics, the military and Pakistan’s foreign relations.

Hameed’s transfer from the ISI to a corps command two years later, which Khan initially opposed, highlighted the first public signs of divisions between Khan and Bajwa, the then army chief.

Khan has acknowledged in interviews to local media that he wanted Hameed to remain as the head of the ISI in 2021, when he said the opposition was planning to oust him.

Hameed’s arrest came after a string of legal victories for Khan in civilian courts, despite allegations by several senior judges, in a letter to the chief justice that was published in local media, of pressure to decide cases against the former premier.

While the military denies pressurising judges, the allegations have put the two institutions at loggerheads, analysts say.

It would be in the interest of the army’s top brass to hold a trial under military law since that would "forestall any judicial intervention" in support of Khan, said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the U.S. and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Khan’s trials have dominated local headlines for months, and even limited media access to proceedings in jail has allowed a spotlight on the process while also providing a platform for Khan.

Media are not allowed at military trials, and verdicts are announced in short statements from the military without details of evidence.

"By their very nature, military courts are secretive and their procedures arcane," said Shuja Nawaz, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center in Washington.

Nawaz said linking Hameed to charges against Khan would be "speculative" but said previous trials linked to the May 9 violence have lacked transparency, which was concerning.

A former minister in Khan’s cabinet, Fawad Chaudhry, said a military trial of Khan would present problems.

"It wouldn’t go down well in the West and in Washington," Chaudhry said. "This is a cost they (the military) cannot afford."

But Siddiqa, Haqqani and other analysts said they believed the army, by trying one of its own, was demonstrating it was not ready to provide any space to Khan, who won the most seats in a national election earlier this year despite being in jail.

"Imran Khan’s trial by a military court would signal the army leadership’s resolve to eliminate Khan from the political scene no matter how high the cost," said Yousuf Nazar, a political analyst and author of "Pakistan: The Gathering Storm".

India

India Inks Chip Deal With Singapore as Modi Pushes Tech Ambition (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [9/4/2024 11:12 PM, Yuan Gao and Philip Heijmans, 27782K, Positive]
India and Singapore agreed to ramp up collaboration in semiconductors and digital technologies, seeking a bigger role in a global chip supply chain being reshaped by tensions between the US and China.

During a two-day visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the city-state, the countries signed agreements to cultivate talent in chip design and manufacturing and facilitate Singaporean tech investment in India, according to a statement from the Indian government on Thursday. The nations will also work more closely together in cybersecurity, fifth-generation mobile networks, super-computing and artificial intelligence.

Singapore, India and Malaysia are among Asian economies that have emerged as beneficiaries of the prolonged US-China chip war that has rattled the global chip market, which is on track to hit $588 billion in sales this year. Both China and western countries are racing to establish stand-alone supply chains to avoid geopolitical risks, creating business opportunities for the industry.

While India’s semiconductor industry is in its infancy, Singapore has played a significant role in the sector for decades. The city-state is home to some of the largest chip manufacturing plants in Southeast Asia, hosting international names from NXP Semiconductors NV to Micron Technology Inc. The island nation boasts a legion of chip research and engineering talent as well as abundant venture capital for chip startups.

The tie-up also showcases Modi’s ambition to turn the world’s most populated country into a technology superpower, in which a strong semiconductor ecosystem is crucial. During his trip to Singapore he met with Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and is expected to meet with other key officials in the city-state. The two nations also signed deals in the areas of health, medicine and skills development.

Closer ties with India in semiconductors would help Singaporean companies to tap into the rapidly growing market in South Asia, Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan told reporters last month. “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.

Modi’s government has set up a $21 billion plan to beef up semiconductor capabilities across the country, with a total of $15 billion worth of investment in chipmaking plants announced earlier this year. Singapore’s expertise in memory chips and matured logic processors, which are widely used in electronic devices and automobiles, could help India grow its chip industry at a faster pace.

China, India and Brazil could mediate Russia-Ukraine talks, Russia’s Putin says (Reuters)

Reuters [9/5/2024 3:42 AM, Vladimir Soldatkin, 5.2M, Neutral]
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that China, India and Brazil could act as mediators in potential peace talks over Ukraine.

Putin said a preliminary agreement reached between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the first weeks of the war at talks in Istanbul, which was never implemented, could serve as the basis for talks.

India Receives Russian Warship Boost Amid China Tensions (Newsweek)

Newsweek [9/4/2024 6:22 AM, Ryan Chan, 49093K, Neutral]
Russia will provide four warships—the first scheduled for delivery this month—armed with supersonic missiles to India, a competitor of its quasi-ally China, according to a new report.

The future warships of India are Project 11356 frigates, designed by Russia for the Indian Navy. The two countries signed contracts in 2018, which involved two vessels "made in Russia," while the rest will be built in India, Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported.

These warships will be equipped with BrahMos missiles that were developed and manufactured by India and Russia. The BrahMos is a cruise missile with anti-ship and land-attack capabilities. It has a range of 180 miles and is able to fly at supersonic speed, about 768 miles per hour at sea level.

The Philippines, which is involved in maritime disputes in the South China Sea with China, received the first batch of BrahMos missiles from India in April. Manila has hailed this weapon as a "game-changer" that will significantly beef up the country’s coastal defenses amid tensions with Beijing.

The Project 11356 frigate has a displacement of over 3,800 tons and is capable of conducting strikes at enemy surface ships and submarines, as well as combating aerial threats. It is armed with a naval artillery gun, anti-ship and air-defense missile systems, and torpedoes, according to the report.

The first of the four frigates is set for transferring this month, while the second frigate will be delivered by February next year. The third and fourth ships, which are "made in India" unlike the previous two ships, will be handed over in 2026 and six months after that, respectively.

Russia has been a major supplier of arms to India. The South Asian country accounted for 36 percent of the Kremlin’s arms between 2019 and 2023. However, unconfirmed reports said India has begun to minimize its use of outdated Russian arsenal and halted large weaponry orders from Moscow.

Following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, India continued to buy oil from Russia, providing a lifeline for its economy and war machine, which were both targeted by sanctions from the Western countries. India is one of the countries designated "friendly" by Russia.

Meanwhile, Russia has a comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation with China as they enjoy a relationship at an "unprecedentedly high level" amid tensions with the United States. The Kremlin has said that Moscow and Beijing have close approaches on key international issues.

India and China, both nuclear-armed and sharing a 2,100-mile de facto border known as the Line of Actual Control, have seen multiple military standoffs and skirmishes over the years. A melee involving two militaries in mid-2020 led to 20 Indian casualties and at least four Chinese deaths.

The rapid expansion of Beijing’s fleet of warships has also worried New Delhi. The Chinese Navy has been operating in the Indian Ocean, an area that India views as its backyard, more frequently.

China’s navy is the biggest in the world with 370 ships in service, including three aircraft carriers. India demonstrated the capability of two aircraft carriers—the Russian-origin INS Vikramaditya and the locally built INS Vikrant—operating together during the end of February and into March.

Swiss submits India free trade agreement to parliament (Reuters)

Reuters [9/5/2024 2:35 PM, John Revill, 5.2M, Neutral]
The Swiss government has submitted its proposed free trade agreement with India to parliament, it said on Thursday, moving closer to a deal that could open up the world’s most populous country to Swiss exports.

The agreement between India and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) - which has also has Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein as members - is a "significant milestone" in Swiss trade policy, the government said.

Under the agreement, India will lift import tariffs on industrial products from the four countries in return for investment of $100 billion over 15 years.

The deal, which was signed in March, requires parliamentary approval before becoming effective. The Swiss parliament is expected to debate the treaty in the upcoming spring and winter sessions, the government said.

The treaty, which has followed 16 years of negotiation, will reduce tariffs on nearly 95% of Swiss products that are exported to India.

"India is now the world’s most populous country. In particular, the growing middle class means that there is significant potential for growth," the government said.

"When the agreement comes into force... This will strengthen the competitiveness of Swiss exports in India," it added.

Although the Indian market is potentially huge, Swiss exports to the country are currently tiny - making up only 0.7% of Swiss sales abroad in 2023, according to information from the Federal Customs Office.

India tops list of plastic waste producers, study reveals (The Hill)

The Hill [9/4/2024 3:09 PM, Zack Budryk, 19591K, Positive]
Worldwide plastic waste totals more than 57 million tons a year, with India creating more than any other country, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Researchers found that India generates some 10.2 million tons per year of plastic waste, defined as that which ends up in the open environment rather than landfills. This is equivalent to nearly 20 percent of the global output. Researchers, led by Costas Velis of the University of Leeds’s School of Civil Engineering, determined that India has a 10-1 ratio of plastic dump sites, or disposal sites directly into the environment, to sanitary landfills.

Moreover, the authors wrote that this is likely an undercount, citing evidence that the official statistics for India exclude numbers for disposal in rural regions and open burning of uncollected plastic.

Nigeria generates the second most plastic pollution of any country, but the amount, 3.9 million tons, is less than half that of India. Although earlier studies have estimated that China is the number one source of plastic waste, the researchers ranked it only fourth, citing more recent data that it says indicates significant progress on waste disposal.

While researchers found much of the plastic waste comes from the global south, they also found countries across income brackets among the biggest plastic polluters. Just under 70 percent of annual plastic waste comes from 20 countries, of which four are low-income, nine are medium-income and seven are upper-middle-income.

Although high-income countries are major generators of plastic waste, most of them have reliable controlled disposal services, keeping any of them from making the top 90 countries in the study.

The U.S. ranked relatively low among nations for plastic waste, generating about 52,500 tons a year, the 90th most of any country.

Beyond the country-by-country breakdown, an April study published in the journal Science Advances estimated that five companies comprise a quarter of global plastic pollution. A February study by the group Beyond Plastics, meanwhile, estimated that a large majority of plastics are consigned to landfills rather than fully recycled.

Indian state set to toughen rape laws after brutal assault (VOA)

VOA [9/4/2024 12:51 PM, Anjana Pasricha, 4566K, Negative]
An Indian state that was rocked by the gruesome rape and murder of a trainee doctor last month is set to introduce tougher penalties for rape that include life imprisonment and death sentences.

But activists question whether stringent laws alone can help stem cases of sexual assault against women, whose numbers have remained high, although India has ramped up punishments for rape over the last decade.

The Aparjita Woman and Child Bill, unanimously passed by the West Bengal state assembly on Tuesday, raises prison terms for people convicted of rape — from 10 years that the federal law presently stipulates to either life imprisonment or execution. It also includes measures to accelerate rape investigations.

The bill still must be approved by the president before becoming law. It was passed amid outrage over the violent assault of a 31-year-old doctor at a hospital in the city last month. Three weeks on, enraged doctors in the state capital, Kolkata, continue to hold protests demanding safety for medics and justice for the victim. A police volunteer working at the hospital has been arrested and charged with the crime.

The West Bengal government said the bill aims to enhance protection for women and children and create a safer environment for them.

But stiffer punishment will do little to deter offenders in a country with a slow-moving justice system, according to lawyers and women rights activists.

“There is little fear of the law. That is because trials seldom result in convictions — the conviction rate in rape cases is only about 28%,” pointed out Abha Singh, a lawyer and social activist.

She said police investigations often face hurdles. “We have too few forensic laboratories, and the police are sometimes short staffed. Then, witness protection is not effective, so witnesses often turn hostile. So, we first need to first fix the justice system if we want women and girls to be safe.”

Women’s rights activists point out that the federal government brought in sweeping changes to criminal laws in 2013 following the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in New Delhi. Five years later, the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl led to even stiffer punishments — the government enhanced minimum prison terms from 10 to 20 years for the rape of a girl younger than 16 and from seven to 10 years for older women.

But statistics show those changes had little impact on cases of sexual violence against women. About 25,000 cases were recorded in 2012. Ten years later, in 2022, that number stood at more than 31,000, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau.

In a country where executions are rare, some also oppose the bill’s provision for giving a death sentence for rape in cases where the victim dies or enters a vegetative state. India has capital punishment for only the most serious cases, or what are called the “rarest of rare cases,” such as gruesome murders and terror attacks.

The Supreme Court imposed the death penalty on four men convicted of the 2012 rape of the 23-year-old woman after calling it the “most brutal, barbaric and diabolical” crime.

“I think stiffer punishments, particularly the death penalty, is not the way to go. Such laws come in response to the public outcry when there is a particularly horrific case,” according to Mary John, a former director at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in New Delhi. “The death penalty is not a demand that has come from women’s groups.”

Women’s rights activists also say that rather than harsher punishments, the major challenge is to change attitudes and patriarchal mindsets that are blamed for the continuing tide of sexual violence against women.

“The need of the hour is to empower women and create safer workplaces for them. This rape in Kolkata, for example, happened inside the hospital premises,” according to Ranjana Kumari, director for Center for Social Research in New Delhi. “And what is failing women is not the existing laws but their implementation.”

In the wake of the rape of the trainee doctor, India’s Supreme Court has set up a national task force of doctors who will make recommendations on the safety of health care workers at their workplace.

India’s ‘jobs budget’ won’t create enough formal jobs (Nikkei Asia – opinion)

Nikkei Asia [9/4/2024 4:05 PM, Trinh Nguyen, 2376K, Neutral]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in July unveiled a crowd-pleasing "jobs budget" for the fiscal year ending March 2025. This move aims to address the poorer performance of Modi’s party in this year’s general election compared to the previous two polls.

Fiscal positions are getting consolidated, with spending having a greater emphasis on women, youth employment and training. Investor interest in India’s economy has surged, driven by stronger macroeconomic fundamentals. India’s current account deficit has narrowed, and capital allocation has become more efficient -- albeit primarily driven by higher government spending on infrastructure.

India’s external balance has shifted from being fragile to robust, driven by the current account deficit narrowing and strong investor appetite for assets. This in turn has allowed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to accumulate reserves amounting to one year of imports. Nominal GDP grew 80% over a decade to around $3.5 trillion by 2022, and the country’s weighting on the MSCI index of emerging market stocks is closing in on that of China.

But while the positives are felt acutely in India’s financial assets and major urban centers, they are not filtering through to rural areas and the younger demographic. Many Indians feel a disconnect between this macroeconomic expansion and a labor market that struggles with low female participation rates and limited formalization of jobs.

The number of jobs has increased by 112 million since Modi came to power in 2014, according to research by Natixis, but about 45% of Indians are still toiling away in the agriculture sector, with most earning below the minimum wage. Beyond agriculture, which employs 247 million people, construction is the largest source of employment, employing 68 million people, but it also suffers from meager pay and limited benefits. Out of 1.4 billion people, only 545 million were in the labor force in 2023, according to the International Labor Organization. Of these, only about 10% have formal jobs.

India needs to create 115 million jobs by 2030 to absorb both underutilized workers and the incoming labor force, according to research by Natixis. To achieve this herculean task, India’s growth engine needs to fire on all cylinders, from manufacturing to services, over the next five years.

Services alone will not allow India to tap into its demographic dividend for two simple reasons -- the sector already punches above its weight in India, and its absorption scope is limited in terms of head count and quality of labor. India service exports are now the seventh-largest globally, and its telecommunications, computer and information technology (ICT) services are second in the world, behind only Ireland, according to RBI Investment Research.

While there is still room to grow services, the sector is highly skill-intensive and absorbs a limited number of jobs. For example, the entire IT sector employs only 5 million people. The International Labour Organization’s 2024 employment report shows that the entire ICT, financial and business service sector employs about 23 million people, versus 63 million for manufacturing. This means that even if India manages to continue to push for growth of service exports, the absorption ability in terms of both quantity and quality (high-skilled) is limited.

The country’s merchandise trade deficit suggests that it is not only underachieving in goods exports, but it also doesn’t even produce enough for its own consumption and relies on ever-increasing imports from China. India has the largest working-age population in the world but ranks 19th for manufacturing exports. Its 1.6% share of the global market lags the 2% for Vietnam, a much smaller nation. Even in labor-intensive manufacturing, India has only a 2.7% market share, behind Vietnam’s 5.2%.

Is the budget enough to address these shortcomings? The simple answer is not yet, and more emphasis on manufacturing is needed in future budgets. Take for instance that the fiscal 2025 budget for production-linked incentives (PLI) is just $1.5 billion, or 0.04% of GDP. While this is an increase from the $800 million in the previous budget, it mainly only supports the three sectors of electronics and IT, pharmaceuticals and autos. Other areas not in the high-tech sector did not receive much of an allocation, showing how labor-intensive manufacturing was not prioritized.

Beyond PLI, IT and telecommunications alone received $14 billion in allocations -- again showing that the budget remains supportive of high-tech sectors while labor-intensive sectors miss out. While this has helped boost mobile phone exports, it has not yet led to meaningful manufacturing growth and formalization of jobs, especially for low-skilled people.

Beyond production, the New Employment Generation Scheme was introduced in the fiscal 2025 budget to help with jobs training, internship and formalization, but closer analysis shows the allocation is only $1.2 billion, of which much will likely subsidize existing employment practices of large firms rather than impart meaningful changes to technical vocational training. By comparison, the largest jobs program is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGP), which got $10.3 billion, providing a 100-day pay guarantee for each household at a minimum prescribed rate, but it has existed since 2005 for unskilled labor.

In other words, despite being hailed as a "jobs budget," the new allocation by itself is unlikely to move the needle on the structural weakness of the Indian labor market even if it heads in the right direction. Weak formal employment can only be solved by creating formal jobs in manufacturing, especially labor-intensive positions.

Continued support for rural and agricultural activities will placate some of the discontent outside urban areas, but it will not generate opportunities to motivate Indian farmers to move into factories. In other words, India continues to make headway in macroeconomic issues such as fiscal consolidation and infrastructure building, but will need to be bolder in upcoming budgets to pave the way to create a higher formal head count to enable the country to be an industrialized nation by 2047.

To do so, India must include more support for manufacturing, especially labor-intensive manufacturing.

NSB

Anti-India Backlash Sweeps Bangladesh in New Challenge for Modi (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [9/4/2024 8:00 PM, Dan Strumpf, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, and Kai Shultz, 27782K, Negative]
In the weeks since a student-led protest movement in Bangladesh swept out the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, discontent against her biggest ally in the region, India, has come bubbling to the surface.

On the streets of Dhaka, alongside triumphant protest slogans and colorful anti-Hasina murals, graffiti can be spotted mocking the ex-regime’s close ties to New Delhi. In Hasina’s burned-out family home, spray-painted messages cover the walls mocking the former prime minister for her closeness with India’s Narendra Modi.

And among ordinary Bangladeshis, resentment is palpable that Modi’s government has continued to shelter Hasina outside New Delhi for a month since she fled Dhaka in the face of deadly protests.

While Hasina’s ouster is a victory for Bangladesh’s student-led protest movement, it is a setback for India, South Asia’s dominant power, and marks the loss of a painstakingly cultivated regional ally. Under Hasina, Bangladesh rooted out Islamic terrorist groups, and anti-India militants. As trade links between the two countries blossomed, India ignored Hasina’s authoritarian turn — calling her crackdown on protesters an “internal matter”— and tried to shield her government from international criticism.

“India is extremely unpopular in Bangladesh. All the unpopularity against Hasina is now being transferred to India,” said Sushant Singh, a lecturer at Yale University. The new regime in Bangladesh, he said, “will have to be significantly different in their approach and outreach to India because otherwise they will be pilloried.”

The collapse of Hasina’s government now adds to a growing list of security worries for Modi in India’s backyard. They include a new pro-China government in the Maldives, a spike in militant attacks in Pakistan and a long-running border standoff with China.

There are signs, meanwhile, of growing weariness with India’s heavy-handed policies toward its neighbors — manifesting most recently in an open letter published in August by a group of five prominent citizens from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. They urged India from interfering in the domestic politics of their countries.

India’s friendly links to Bangladesh stretch back to 1971, when India intervened to assist in its war of independence from Pakistan. Under Hasina, Bangladesh and India forged strong economic and defense ties, with Hasina cracking down on Islamic militants in the country and banning the country’s main right-wing Islamic political party from participating in national elections — a ban since reversed.

Hasina also advanced the key Indian security goal of flushing out separatist groups fighting in India’s northeastern states and hiding out in Bangladesh. India’s isolated northeast is joined to the rest of the country by a narrow strip of land encircling Bangladesh known as India’s “chicken’s neck,” and a friendly government in Dhaka helped Indian ensure security in the vulnerable region. This year, Hasina canceled the Bangladesh military’s first-ever planned exercise with China with New Delhi’s sensitivities in mind.

India’s support for Hasina in turn made Bangladesh into an important strategic counterweight to New Delhi’s two biggest regional rivals: Pakistan and China. It also took a load off India’s military, which is already stretched patrolling disputed territory on multiple borders with both rivals.

India’s military had 195,000 vacancies in 2022, with another 60,000 arising every year due to early retirements and other reasons, according to government figures. Those deployed remain tied up guarding India’s numerous border disputes — from Kashmir on its frontier with Pakistan, to multiple disputed borders in its mountainous north with China.

The interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has so far avoided criticism of Bangladesh’s ties with India under Hasina. However, analysts and officials say that whatever government succeeds Yunus will face little choice but to reassess ties.

“India has to rethink its politics,” said Rizwana Hasan, an adviser to Bangladesh’s interim government. “It’s for India to think about what went wrong for the people of Bangladesh to react so sharply against them.”

With Hasina’s fall, risks for New Delhi include the extent that the next government in Bangladesh pushes back, and whether it continues to draw closer to China. Another worry is the prospect of deeper instability in Bangladesh that gives militant groups room to maneuver, or that sends refugees pouring into India.

Yunus told Indian broadcaster NDTV last month that deeper instability could lead to a “volcanic eruption” that puts several regions at risk, including in India’s northeast, in its border state of West Bengal, and on Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar. India’s Border Security Force has been on high alert since Hasina’s government collapsed and turned away hundreds of Bangladeshi citizens trying to cross into the country.

“We do not know how India and Bangladesh will manage the boundary dispute, how they will manage migration,” said Harsh Pant, vice president of studies and foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “If you do not have a mature partner it becomes difficult to navigate these issues.”

Students in Bangladesh forced out the country’s leader a month ago. Where do things stand now? (AP)

AP [9/4/2024 11:23 PM, Julhas Alam, 88008K, Neutral]
A month ago, a student-led movement ousted Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, after weeks of protests and clashes that killed over 600 people and pushed the country to the brink of chaos.

What began as student protests over government jobs became a large-scale revolt against the country’s longest-serving prime minister.

Hasina, 76, fled to India on Aug. 5 as anger against her government swelled. But the ouster triggered more violence. Police went on strike and mobs rampaged across the country until a new interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus was sworn in.

Here is where things stand now, a month after the country was roiled by its worst bloodshed in decades:

What is the interim government focused on?

Since he was sworn in, Yunus declared that his key tasks would be to restore peace and law and order, fight corruption, and prepare for new elections.

His Cabinet, which includes two student leaders who spearheaded the protests, has fixed its sights on overhauling and reforming Bangladesh’s institutions, from its courts and police to the Election Commission. To do this, it’s also seeking support from the United Nations Development Program.

Reforms have been a key priority as demonstrations against Hasina quickly escalated into anger against her increasingly autocratic rule. Her government had jailed opposition members, curbed independent media and curtailed civil society.

Protesters also accused Hasina’s Awami League of corruption and said that public institutions, including the Election Commission, had been eroded under her 15-year rule.

What Yunus needs is time.

The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who pioneered microcredit to help impoverished people, especially women, asked for patience in an address to the nation. He said his Cabinet has worked hard to curb the violence and lawlessness that set in after Hasina was ousted.

“I request everyone to be patient,” he said. “It is one of our objectives that public institutions regain public trust.”

What is the mood in Bangladesh?

Unrest persists. Garment workers demanding better wages have forced about 100 factories to shut down and tensions are simmering, with lingering but widespread anger against Hasina and her Awami League.

Hasina, now in self-imposed exile, is facing murder charges in more than 100 cases. Key officials perceived as close to her resigned after mass protests.

Many cases have also been registered against those associated with Hasina, her party or her government — from former ministers and judges to journalists and even a prominent cricket player. They’ve been attacked, stopped from leaving the country and even jailed. Rights groups have also condemned these lump charges.

Most of the cases are legally weak and politically driven, said Zillur Rahman, executive director of the Center for Governance Studies, a Dhaka-based think tank.

This form of “vigilante justice” has sparked fears that “the system that Hasina perpetuated is still alive, just the victims have changed,” Rahman said.

What about the students?

Within a week of unseating Hasina, the students who drove her out were directing traffic in the capital, Dhaka.

Some schools and universities have since reopened, including Dhaka University, which became the epicenter for the protests against Hasina. But things are not back to normal yet.

Many heads of educational institutions have been forced to resign and in some cases, even though classes have formally restarted, few students are attending them.

Still, many students remain optimistic about the interim government’s potential to bring about real change.

Sneha Akter, a student at Dhaka University, believes the removal of those who were previously in power is the first step.

“By replacing them, we are correcting past mistakes,” she said. “It is not possible to change the entire country in one month. … We need to give the government some time.”

There are those who say the Yunus-led temporary government should remain in power until meaningful reforms are enacted, “whether that takes three months, three years or even six years,” said Hafizur Rahman, another Dhaka University student.

What’s next?

There is a sense that normalcy is slowly returning — Dhaka’s streets are no longer a battleground between security forces and students. Internet is back on and a nationwide curfew with a shoot-on-sight order has been lifted.

With much of the violence eased, there is hope for a new chapter. Shops, banks, hotels and restaurants are open, and police — who went on strike over fears for their own safety — are back at work.

However, their morale is low. Officers are less visible on the streets and seemingly unwilling to tackle disturbances as their crackdown against the students remains fresh in the minds of many Bangladeshis.

Dozens of police were killed during the uprising, their stations torched and looted.

Another challenge is restoring the economy, which was disrupted by the weekslong shutdown during the uprising, sending prices of food and commodities soaring.

The biggest question is: When will the new elections be held?

Some experts say the interim government doesn’t have the mandate to enact major reforms and that it should focus on building consensus among political parties on reforms — and schedule the polls.

Hasina’s Awami League has remained under the radar so far.

Yunus is banking on the support he enjoys among the country’s youth, but Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute, says that support may have an expiration date.

“If security continues to be a problem and economic relief is slow to come … young people could grow impatient and anxious,” Kugelman said.

Hasina’s chief opposition — the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP — is seen as having the greatest chance of winning the polls and has been pushing for the elections to happen soon.

“That raises an unsettling question: What happens if the BNP, which has no formal role in the interim government, doesn’t get the elections it wants to see soon?” Kugelman said. “Will it launch a movement? Will it trigger unrest?”

“That could pose new risks to law and order and deepen political uncertainty and volatility,” he said.

Bangladesh’s Protests Have Been Decades in the Making (Time)

Time [9/4/2024 9:00 AM, Tithi Bhattacharya, 15975K, Negative]
In early July, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Bangladesh after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s proposed 30% reservation, or quotas, in the public sector jobs for descendants of muktijoddhas (freedom fighters), or veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence. Previously, the government had reserved a certain number of jobs for minority and oppressed groups, including disabled people, women, and people from underdeveloped districts. The largest number of seats, 30%, however, was controversially reserved for children of 1971 veterans, and the new law now expanded to include grandchildren of muktijoddhas.

The connection between Hasina and the 1971 war of independence was personal. She was the daughter of the legendary Sheikh Mujibar Rahman-who led the country to liberation from Pakistan in 1971, becoming its first Prime Minister, only to be assassinated in 1975 in a military coup. Hasina first came to office in 1996, serving until 2001, and then again in 2008, serving until her recent ouster.

Protesters rightly understood this new law as a way to secure even larger number of jobs for those connected with the ruling party, the Awami League. The protests began largely with students and young people. Sheikh Hasina’s administration responded with violence. Police shot down unarmed students in the street.

But such strong-arm tactics only bolstered the protests, which then spread to almost the entire nation. Hasina fled the country and is now in exile, and the ruling party, Awami League has been driven from government.

Such a dramatic turn of events may be shocking, but it is not surprising. For over 40 years, a dark history of austerity in the global south, orchestrated in part by institutions based in the global north, has targeted a generation of workers, whose lives have been devastated by successive regimes of government. The resentments that surfaced in recent months were decades in the making.

Bangladesh’s rapid rise on the development ladder over the past four decades has obscured a sharp decline in living standards and conditions for the vast majority of citizens, especially workers and peasants. In 1986 Bangladesh was one of the first countries to come under the Structural Adjustment Facility set up by the IMF. For decades the country’s economy was subordinated to the guidelines and targets laid down by the IMF and the World Bank. "Garments" and "microfinance," both of which fueled Bangladesh’s rapid economic growth, were projected as magic bullets to poverty.

Structural Adjustment programs demanded public expenditure be redirected from the welfare sector to export-oriented trade. While health and education sectors were deregulated, export-oriented textile factories- "garments"-mushroomed, employing close to 4 million workers, mostly women.

Low wages, unsafe working conditions, and rampant sexism defined workplace culture in these factories, reminiscent of textile factories of 19th-century New York. Wages for Bangladesh’s garment workers, now 12,500 BDT ($113) per month, are still among the lowest in the world. It’s less than wages in neighboring Pakistan and India, and less than Cambodia and Indonesia.

In 2013, more than 500 workers died and 2,500 were injured in the collapse of a building at Rana Plaza in Dhaka. The building had housed five garment factories that made clothes for leading global north retailers. In response, Hasina commented: "Accidents happen." They certainly did. But some of the leading industry bosses, including the owner of Rana Plaza, had links with the Awami League, some had even served as MPs for the party.

Much like the garment industry, the push to strengthen the economy through microfinance also had negative outcomes for the most vulnerable, especially women. Microfinance became a global buzzword when, in 1983, U.S.-trained entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus established his Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. It provided loans to the rural poor with no collateral requirement. Advocates argued that such loans gave women control over their lives and allowed them to start small businesses independent of patriarchal pressures.

Soon however, economists began to raise alarm bells, drawing attention to the limitations of these market-based empowerment strategies which often pushed women into a debt spiral. Qazi Kholikuzzaman Ahmad, Director of Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF), a monitoring body in Bangladesh, went as far as describing microcredit as a "death trap" for the poor in which interest on loan repayments could be anything between 40% and 100%."

Further, the privatization of energy hurt working people in both urban and rural areas, putting energy security out of reach for most. Land grabs and deforestation, encouraged by successive cycles of profit-minded government regimes, uprooted people from their homes and forced many to leave the country altogether. In an extraordinary development, more people worked abroad than in the country’s factories, thus leading to a rapid feminization of the labor force. The GDP grew, but people’s livelihoods and ecosystems were destroyed.

The protests of today are deeply rooted in this history, and the decades of political and economic insecurities it has produced. Hasina has ruled with an iron fist, arresting opposition leaders, sanctioning widespread extrajudicial killings and muzzling the press. According to Amnesty International, her reign saw over 600 cases of enforced disappearances along with an alarming rise in custody deaths and torture. Following the lead of other populists on the global stage, the Awami League rigged elections and used force to determine electoral outcomes.

In 2023, garment factory workers, most of whom are women, started a campaign to raise their poverty-level wages. The government retaliated against them, with the tacit support of the international clothing brands, with arrests, terminations, and killings. According to the international labor rights group Worker Rights Consortium, more than 40 popular brands supported the baseless criminal charges local suppliers brought against these workers.

While students and youth today rightly see the new law of quotas as a way of garnering and institutionalizing support for the Awami League and its affiliates, the government thought it could try its time-honored repression measures on the movement. This time they were wrong.

There are many challenges for the movement ahead. Among them is the anointing of Muhammad Yunus, of microcredit fame and a corporate favorite, to lead the nation. Any new government will also have to contend with a past history of army coup d’etats. And yet, be it in their toppling of an autocrat or in their forming national committees to protect minorities, the students and youth have given the world a glimpse of what real democracy looks like.

Bangladesh was ready to explode. I was there with the students. (Washington Post – opinion)

Washington Post [9/4/2024 6:15 AM, Shahidul Alam, 52865K, Neutral]
We had violated curfew to join the protest at Shahbag, the Bangladeshi equivalent of Tahrir Square. Injured friends we left behind bade tearful goodbyes, not knowing whether it would be the last time we’d meet. Police opened fire on our group of 20-some students, teachers and journalists. Three were hit, and as they were taken to the hospital, my partner and I happened upon a brave rickshaw driver who agreed to take us on to Shahbag. As we wound our way through the narrow back streets of Dhaka, news of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation reached the square. Soldiers stowed their guns and jubilant youth clambered aboard their armored vehicles, leading the crowds in triumphant cheers. It was Aug. 5. Just days before, these very soldiers had been firing at us.

For a long time there have been two Bangladeshes. The first offered an improbable rags-to-riches tale of a country marked by one of the fastest rates of gross domestic product growth in the world. That Bangladesh was led by Hasina, the world’s longest-serving female head of government. The other comprised a long-suffering populace, squirming under the yoke of that ostensibly visionary leader, who was also a ruthless autocrat who jailed, disappeared and killed anyone who stood in her way. Under her rule, Bangladesh had become a land of dangerous binaries. You were either with her ruling Awami League, or you were declared a razakar, a collaborator, and therefore an enemy of the state.

Bangladesh the development miracle was a creation of the ruling party elite and the business community that it served. A coterie of intellectuals, cultural players and other white-collar professionals orbited around it, offering their stamp of approval in exchange for perks. Narendra Modi’s India was its chief patron and corruption was the norm. From 2010 to 2019, Bangladesh led the world in wealth growth among the ultrarich. Our country, the world’s second-largest exporter of clothing, had become a land of high rises and shiny shopping centers.

The other Bangladesh was made up of the unlucky working classes — the garment workers, migrant laborers and millions of others who toil in low-paid jobs, often under subhuman conditions, lining the pockets of the wealthy. Many live in slums with poor sanitation. Most take home a monthly salary roughly equivalent to about $113. This is hardly enough to feed a family. It is no wonder that in markets that serve garment workers, 10-15 families regularly pool together to buy rotten vegetables in bulk.

The gap between these two Bangladeshes was tearing the nation apart.

A controversy over a quota system for government jobs supplied the spark for student protests that rocked the country in July. The system, originally intended as a gesture to liberation warfighters at the time of Bangladesh’s founding, 50 years later had morphed into a discriminatory policy favoring government loyalists, denying much sought-after jobs to legitimate applicants. Students had protested the quota system in 2018, and having failed to quell the protests with violence, Hasina had scrapped it altogether. A court decision on June 5 to reinstate the system enraged students. They peacefully took to the streets. The government responded violently, this time with guns. Security forces killed six students in the days that followed.

Before long, demand for fair government job opportunities transformed into a broad movement for dignity and basic rights. Fear and repression might have worked for Hasina for the past 15 years, but when people are prepared to brave bullets in the streets, you know there’s no going back. The students’ foremost demand was that Hasina apologize. That simple act might have saved her. Her hubris, it turns out, would spell her doom.

But it was the public that paid the steepest price. Internet and mobile networks were cut and hundreds died in the violent repression that ensued. Many thousands were injured. The image of 25-year-old Abu Sayed, a student of English literature, arms outstretched, seconds before he crumpled under a barrage of bullets, has been etched into Bangladesh’s collective memory. The video of his death on July 16 went viral. Students began calling for Hasina’s ouster.

Sayed was the son of working-class parents. A gifted student, he was attending one of the country’s public universities while working as a tutor to support his family. People like Sayed, for whom civil service jobs are one of the few routes available to move up the social ladder, were on the front lines of the protests. More well-to-do students went to private universities and had other options: going abroad, working plush corporate jobs, joining family businesses or even becoming entrepreneurs. And yet many of these more privileged students also joined the protests. Bangladeshis had had enough.

Having spent time in the streets throughout my career as a journalist, and having reported on the student movements since 2018, I had some street cred. I had met some of the students when I was jailed in 2018 for the crime of “instigating the ongoing movement.” I had sheltered some of them this summer during the most intense violence and visited others, many of whom had been tortured by security forces, in the hospital, I had become a mentor of sorts.

Yes, I was expecting the government to fall, but I never thought it would happen this quickly. In the vacuum left after the prime minister’s departure, the students who had earlier been persecuted by the police took to policing the streets themselves. They steered the formation of the interim government, inviting Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh’s celebrated Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to lead. Yunus accepted, and following some backdoor negotiations with the military, two students joined the interim government. If there was any worry that their newfound power might go to their heads, the students themselves formed a watchdog body to oversee the new government.

Less than a month old, Bangladesh’s new cabinet is made up of respected citizens with zero preparation. They are sailing in uncharted waters. Few have either the political or administrative experience needed to steer us. The problems ahead are enormous. Even a more experienced cabinet would have had problems meeting Bangladeshis’ extremely high expectations. Welcome to the youthquake known as the Monsoon Revolution.

We are living day-to-day. As we rejoice at the arrest of each fleeing general or minister, we agonize over the possibility that they will be denied basic due process — that we will recreate the crimes of the former regime. We must shed this leftover culture quickly.

We watch. We wait. There are hopeful signs. The country was hit by devastating floods last month, and the extraordinary outpouring of support for student-organized relief campaigns is encouraging. The interim government has also taken steps to bring an end to the culture of enforced disappearances — primarily against governmental critics — that characterized Hasina’s rule.

Only time will determine whether the blood spilled on Bangladeshi streets this summer will result in lasting change or whether it will simply be a seasonal shift, a monsoon that disappears with the movement of the sun.

Fast fashion drove Bangladesh - now its troubled economy needs more (BBC)

BBC [9/4/2024 5:58 PM, Nikhil Inamdar, 67197K, Neutral]
Bangladesh is the beating heart of the global fast fashion business.

The clothes its factories export stock the shelves at H&M, Gap and Zara. Over three decades, this has transformed the country from one of the world’s poorest to a lower-middle income nation.

But its garment industry, worth $55bn (£42bn) a year, is now facing an unsettled future after weeks of protests toppled the government of Sheikh Hasina in August. Hundreds of people were killed in the unrest.

At least four factories were set alight, while manufacturers struggled to operate under a nationwide internet blackout. Already, three big brands, including Disney and US supermarket chain Walmart, have looked elsewhere for next season’s clothes.

The disruption is continuing. From Thursday, some 60 factories outside Dhaka are expected to be closed because of worker unrest. Staff have been protesting with various demands, including for better wages.

Recent events “will impact the confidence level of brands”, says Mohiuddin Rubel, a director at the country’s garments manufacturers and exporters association.

“And probably they might think - should we put all our eggs in one basket?” he says, noting rival garment-producing countries like Vietnam.

Indeed, Kyaw Sein Thai, who has sourcing offices in both Bangladesh and the US, suggests the recent political unrest could result in a "10-20% drop in exports this year”. That’s no small amount when fast fashion exports account for 80% of Bangladesh’s export earnings.

Even before the events of the past few months, Bangladesh’s garment industry – and its economy – were not in good health. Child labour scandals, deadly accidents and the Covid-19 shutdown had all taken their toll.

Soaring prices had made manufacturing more expensive - but slowing demand meant you couldn’t sell for as much. This was especially bad for Bangladesh, which relies heavily on exports. As profits from exports shrank, so did foreign currency reserves.

There were other problems too: excessive spending on showpiece infrastructure projects had drained the government’s coffers. And rampant cronyism weakened its banks, as powerful businessmen with links to former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party failed to repay loans.

“It wasn’t benign neglect but a designed robbery of the financial system,” the country’s new central bank governor, Dr Ahsan Mansur, told the BBC in an recent exclusive interview.

Fixing this, Dr Mansur said, was his top priority, but he warned it would take years and the country would need more financial support, including another IMF bailout.

“We are in a difficult spot and we want to remain fully compliant in terms of servicing our foreign obligations, every penny of it. But we need some additional cushion for now,” said Dr Mansur.

Mahaburbur Rahman, whose family founded clothing manufacturing firm Sonia Group two decades ago, points out that the country’s falling reserves of foreign currencies alone are enough to dent confidence.

“They are concerned about how we will pay for imports of yarn from India and China if we don’t have enough dollars. Many of them are not even able to come to Bangladesh anymore to place new orders because they aren’t getting travel insurance,” Mr Rahman says.

But Bangladesh has a bigger problem at hand – the protests that ousted Ms Hasina were driven by students who were frustrated over the lack of well-paying jobs and opportunities.

While the clothing factories may have created millions of jobs, they don’t pay well. Some factory workers who spoke to the BBC said they struggled to survive on pay that was barely half the national minimum wage, which meant they were forced to take out loans to feed their children.

Many of them joined the student-led protests in recent months to demand better pay and conditions.

“We will settle for nothing less than a doubling,” union leader Maria said. “Wages have to reflect the increase in cost of living.”

The student protesters, though, are calling for a more radical shake-up of the jobs market.

Abu Tahir, Mohammad Zaman, Mohammad Zaidul and Sardar Armaan were all part of the demonstrations.

All unemployed for between two and five years, they tell the BBC that they are keen to work for the private sector but don’t feel as if they are qualified for the jobs that are available.

“[My parents] hardly understand how competitive the job market is. To be unemployed is a major source of pressure in my family. I feel belittled,” Mr Zaman says.

“We just get a degree, we are not getting the right skills,” says Mr Zaidul.

“The new adviser is an entrepreneur himself though, so we all feel more hopeful he’ll do something about this,” he adds, referring to the country’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus. Mr Yunus won a Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in micro loans.

Dr Fahmida Khatun of the Centre for Policy Dialogue think tank points out that diversifying the economy will be critical to meet the aspirations of educated youth - arguing that that would be no bad thing for the economy.

“No country can survive for a long time based on only one sector,” she says. “It will take you so far, but no further. There have been [diversification] attempts, but so far it’s only been in the books.”

A disused technology park outside the capital Dhaka offers evidence of this. Inaugurated in 2015, it was meant to be part of a nationwide initiative to create higher paid jobs and cut Bangladesh’s reliance on garment production.

It now sits abandoned – a reminder of the previous administration’s economic failures.

“This is the perfect example of the gap between what industry needs and what the government has provided,” says Russel T Ahmed, a software entrepreneur.

“Nobody asked us if we needed these parks. Bangladesh has been investing in physical infrastructure, but how much have we invested in human infrastructure? That is the raw material this industry needs.”

What the new government needs to do, says Dr Khatun, is remove bottlenecks like corruption and red tape to encourage foreign and private investment.

Mr Yunus has vowed to bring comprehensive reforms to the country’s economy and fix institutions that have, as Dr Khatun says, been “systematically destroyed” over the past few years.

He has a formidable task ahead – steadying the economy, delivering free and fair elections, and preventing government policymaking from being controlled by vested interests.

All of this has to be done as the country faces a raft of other problems: slowing global demand for the goods it makes, deteriorating relations with its giant neighbour and trading partner India, which is harbouring Ms Hasina, and climate change causing more intense cyclones in the flood-prone nation.

These challenges are as vast as the hopes many people have heaped on Mr Yunus’ shoulders.

Nepal’s Blockade-era Foreign Minister Details Closed-door Diplomacy With India (The Diplomat)

The Diplomat [9/4/2024 9:41 AM, Birat Anupam, 1198K, Negative]
When India imposed a 6-month economic blockade on Nepal in 2015, the frontline diplomats from both countries were their ambassadors to Delhi and Kathmandu as well as their foreign ministers. In the nine years since, some of these figures have put information on that trying time into the public record.

India’s external affairs minister during that period, Sushma Swaraj, passed away in 2019 and never went public with her insights and experiences during the Indian blockade. However, the then-India ambassador to Nepal, Ranjit Rae, detailed his opinion on the blockade in a book titled "Kathmandu Dilemma."

From the Nepali side, the blockade-era Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Nepal Kamal Thapa has just published a book in the Nepali language titled "Nakabandhi and Bhurajniti," which roughly translates as "Blockade and Geopolitics." It is his third book but the first on diplomacy and geopolitics. In this 303-page book, Thapa has elaborated at length about behind-the-scenes and closed-door diplomacy to unlock the Indian blockade of 2015 - including high-level in-person talks during the economic embargo.

India’s economic blockade of 2015 was the fourth it had inflicted on Nepal. The previous one occurred in 1989, when Thapa was the minister of communication. He thus had a firsthand understanding of two Indian blockades from a perspective within the Nepal government.

In Thapa’s understanding, the core cause of India’s economic blockades of Nepal are differing views on geopolitics, security, and strategic issues. However, he identified four immediate causes of the Indian blockade in 2015: Nepal’s reluctance to delay the constitutional promulgation; Nepal’s lack of response to demands of India-backed Madhesh-centric parties; the growing Chinese footprint in Nepal; and broken promises from Nepali leaders.

During the blockade era, Thapa made five visits to India, some formal, some informal. From October 17, 2015 to June 10, 2016, he traveled twice informally at the invitation of the Indian spiritual Guru Ravi Shankar, made two formal visits, and once made the trip to attend the convocation ceremony of South Asian University as the chair of SAARC.

In his book, Thapa details Nepal’s track-two diplomacy to unlock the blockade of 2015. First was spiritual diplomacy. Ravi Shankar, a guru from southern India who had helped Thapa meet Modi when he was chief minister of Gujarat, helped Thapa raise the issue of the blockade with the Indian prime minister. Another spiritual guru to support Thapa was Acharya Balkrishna. These two spiritual figures helped raise the issue with ruling Hindu nationalist leaders of India, which Thapa believes helped to end the unofficial economic embargo.

Thapa also talked about military diplomacy. Nepal and India have a tradition of conferring honorary rank on each other’s armies. Nepali Major General Himalaya Thapa made a visit to India during the blockade period and talked to the military leadership of India. Later on, Chief of the Army Staff Rajendra Chhetri also made an India visit to discuss the issue.

There was also plenty of formal diplomacy between the governments during this period. India’s then foreign secretary, S. Jaishankar, visited Nepal in September 2015 as a special envoy of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was a pivotal time: India was deeply displeased over Nepal’s new constitution, which it felt inadequately addressed the demands of Madhesi groups living near the border with India. Less than a week after Jaishankar’s visit, the blockade began.

In his book, Thapa said that Nepal’s former prime minister and chair of the Maoist party, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, along with his then-deputy and former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai, were badly scolded by Jaishankar during a meeting at Dahal’s residence. Based on a conversation with Dahal, Thapa wrote that Jaishankar threatened the Maoist leader: "Had we not supported you, you would have been either in the jungle or king’s jail."

Dahal expressed his displeasure at Jaishankar’s bad-mouthing to Thapa by asking, "How long should we tolerate their highhandedness? Are we their slaves?"

Thapa was not happy after his own interaction with Jaishankar at New Delhi’s Oberoi Hotel on October 28, 2015, He wrote, "Jaishnkar had a gloomy face and gave the cold shoulder. There was no excitement in his body language."

Thapa also described a scolding he personally received from India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Thapa had met Modi in 2013, while he was the chief minister of Gujarat state. This earlier rapport didn’t prevent Modi from being angry in their in-person interaction as India’s prime minister and Nepal’s deputy prime minister

Thapa said Modi was angry for two reasons: for making him a "villain" in Nepal and for "internationalizing" the blockade, which India consistently denied responsibility for. Modi angrily asked Thapa, "Do you know what it means to be a blockade?"

Similarly, Modi also accused Nepali leaders of making one commitment while in Delhi and doing just the opposite upon returning to Kathmandu. At an all-party meeting in Kathmandu, former prime ministers Sher Bahadur Deuba and Dahal said Modi was talking about the desire to see Nepal become a Hindu state.

Thapa quoted Dahal as saying, "Not Modi himself but his assistants had talked about the Hindu state. I had said that I would try my best. But, it wasn’t my commitment. It wasn’t possible because Baburam Bhattarai and his team disagreed."

Deuba added, "They had talked about the Hindu state. I did try. But, I couldn’t [make it happen]. What can I do?"

Thapa said all Indian diplomats and leaders spoke with the same tone and same phrases when discussing the issues of 2015, telling Nepali leaders they could have delayed constitutional promulgation and could have addressed the issues of Madhesi protesters. The Indian side would take a tough stand in the formal delegation-level talks.

However, during private talks, two leaders had a more positive approach in Thapa’s telling. One was Sushma Swaraj. Thapa said the late Indian external affairs minister was opposed to the blockade on Nepal. In private talks, Sushma urged Thapa to talk in detail with Modi.

Thapa also had a positive impression of Ajit Doval, India’s national security advisor. While talking to Doval for around an hour, Thapa was optimistic upon hearing the Indian NSA say, "I am also from hills. I do understand the pains of hill folks."

These snapshots of India-Nepal diplomacy from nearly a decade ago have continued relevance for the relationship today. Many of the same figures are still in place: Modi and Doval hold the same offices, and Jaishankar has been elevated to India’s external affairs minister. And on Nepal’s side, Dahal and Deuba still lead their parties and frequently rotate into the premiership based on Nepal’s fractious coalition politics. The personal dynamics forged between these figures will thus continue to play into India-Nepal relations today.

Sri Lanka’s tourism industry looks to new president to rebuild fortunes (Reuters)

Reuters [9/5/2024 4:46 AM, Uditha Jayasinghe, 5.2M, Neutral]
Tourists were busy spooning up ice-cream on the verandah of Tariq Nassim’s home at the picturesque Galle Fort in Sri Lanka, the centre of a boom in tourism during the island nation’s nascent recovery from its worst economic crisis in decades.

Nassim’s ‘Dairy King’, which sells 22 flavours of homemade ice-cream, was just one of thousands of businesses crushed by the crisis that erupted after foreign exchange fell to critical lows, squeezing imports of essentials from fuel to fertiliser.

"That was the biggest hit we faced," said Nassim, 62, whose 13-year-old business was pummelled by the double whammy of the 2022 financial crisis and the earlier COVID-19 pandemic.

"We haven’t been able to get back the pre-COVID business," he added. "I don’t know when it will come back."

The route to a firmer rebound for the Indian Ocean island hangs on the reforms and policies that will be adopted by the winner of this month’s presidential election, the first since the economy crumbled.

"The new president must be capable and able to appoint the right people and run the country competently, because we cannot afford any hiccups," said M. Shanthikumar, president of industry body the Hotels Association of Sri Lanka.

Tourism in the country of 22 million, famed for its pristine beaches, ancient temples and aromatic tea, was crushed as the crisis drove inflation to 70%, power tariffs jumped 65% and the currency depreciated by 45%.

Protests in Colombo by thousands angered at hours of power cuts, queues at fuel stations and hospitals with scarce medicine forced then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee Sri Lanka, though he has since returned.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, elected by parliament to serve out the rest of Rajapaksa’s five-year term, has led a tentative recovery underpinned by a $2.9-billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and restructuring of $25 billion in foreign debt.

Now inflation and interest rates are down to single digits, while growth of 3% is expected in 2024, for the first time since the economy shrank 7.8% during the crisis.

LIST OF DEMANDS

A key contributor to foreign exchange earnings that directly employs 205,000 people, tourism made up 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023. This year, Sri Lanka hopes to earn $3 billion from 2 million tourist arrivals, on par with 2019.

Visitors on Galle Fort’s cobbled streets haggled for silver jewellery with vendors, walked the ramparts and posed for pictures outside colonial buildings.

Although pleased at the rebound, Nassim says his income is still half that before the crisis, as few locals have returned to sample his ice-cream.

He wants the new president to strengthen regulations and make the island a more compelling destination to lure longer-staying big spenders.

Topping industry’s wish list are better facilities, stronger marketing, and streamlined issue of visas.

"Sri Lanka needs foreign exchange and 85% of tourism earnings remain in the country," said Hiran Cooray, chairman of Jetwing Symphony (JETW.CM), which runs about 35 hotels and villas.

"Without doubt safety and stability are most important. If that is lost, then tourism will be a victim."

The main candidates in the fray, from Wickremesinghe to opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and Marxist-leaning parliamentarian Anura Kumara Dissanayake, have all promised to fix the economy, but take different approaches.

Dissanayake has also promised a new agency to govern and grow tourism, as well as direct flights with countries sending the most tourists and support for mid-level businesses.

Wickremesinghe targets infrastructure upgrades to double arrivals to 5 million within five years.

Premadasa has promised to cut red tape, spur investment, and boost safety for travellers.

"We need growth," said Shiran Fernando, of business group the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. "We can restructure debt, we can improve reserves ... but it only keeps the stability going, it doesn’t drive growth."

Central Asia

CPJ Expresses Concerns Over Kazakhstan’s New Media Accreditation Rules (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [9/4/2024 8:14 AM, Staff, 1251K, Neutral]
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued a statement on September 3 expressing concerns over recently introduced changes to Kazakhstan’s domestic-media accreditation regulations and proposed changes to foreign-media accreditation, saying they could be used to muzzle independent media.

"New and proposed amendments to Kazakhstan’s accreditation regulations are excessive and open too many doors to censorship. Instead of the greater openness promised by President [Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev’s] ‘New Kazakhstan,’ what journalists are really getting is ever more creeping state control," CPJ Europe and Central Asia program coordinator Gulnoza Said said.

"Kazakh authorities should heed journalists’ legitimate complaints and revise the media accreditation rules.”

The changes regulating domestic media in the Central Asian country that came into force last month allow a journalist’s accreditation to be withdrawn for six months if they twice fail to comply with rules at news events, which could potentially include asking off-topic questions.

Also last month, the Kazakh government proposed regulations for foreign media outlets that allow the Foreign Ministry to deny or revoke accreditation for any violation of Kazakh law, including minor "administrative" offenses.

A media law that came into force in June already bans foreign media from unaccredited journalistic activity.

Domestic and international rights groups and media experts have expressed concerns over that law, saying it will compromise independent journalism and lead to self-censorship in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic.

Another provision in the law that Toqaev signed on June 20 says that all Internet resources are to be considered media outlets.

Among other things, the law introduces a three-year period to file lawsuits over materials published in the media.

In 2024, Kazakhstan slipped from 134th place to 142nd in the press index of Reporters Without Borders, which monitors media freedom around the world.

October referendum will decide future of nuclear energy in Kazakhstan (EurasiaNet)

EurasiaNet [9/4/2024 4:14 PM, Almaz Kumenov, 57.6K, Neutral]
Kazakhstan is scheduling a referendum in just over a month to determine whether the country should build a nuclear plant to meet growing electricity needs.

Characterizing nuclear energy as “reliable and environmentally friendly,” President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev set the referendum date for October 6. The wording of the referendum question is straightforward: “Do you agree with the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan?”. What isn’t clear is who will build the reactor, if a majority votes in favor.

Nuclear energy “is capable of largely satisfying the rapidly growing needs of our economy,” Tokayev announced during his state-of-the-nation address in parliament on September 2. He framed the referendum as an important milestone in Kazakhstan’s political evolution.

“The upcoming referendum will be another manifestation of a broad national dialogue and a vivid example of the implementation of the concept of a ‘listening state,’” he said. “In essence, with such steps we are forming a new socio-political culture, laying down new standards for making key state decisions.”

Rights watchdogs groups challenge the notion of Kazakhstan as an emerging ‘listening state.’ For example, in its most recent report on individual rights and political freedom globally, Freedom House ranked Kazakhstan’s governing system as “not free.”

“The dominant media outlets are either in state hands or owned by government-friendly businessmen,” the Freedom House assessment for 2024 noted. “Freedoms of speech and assembly remain restricted and punished.”

According to the Central Election Commission, the government plans to allocate 15.5 billion tenge (about $32 million) for the October referendum, less than what was spent on a referendum on constitutional reform in June 2022.

Facing a growing need for power generation, the government has been mulling an embrace of nuclear energy in recent years. That need has grown significantly in recent months, given Kazakhstan’s plans to join with Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan in an initiative to export electricity to Western markets.

Kazakhstan’s legacy as a nuclear weapons proving ground, as well as memories of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, foster concerns among many Kazakhs about nuclear power plants. Some also worry that a nuclear power plant, which would likely be built near Lake Balkhash, could cause environmental harm to that body of water, fanning fears about a water shortage in the country.

Polling data indicates that a majority of Kazakhs favors nuclear power. What firm would be awarded the contract to build a nuclear plant is another topic of interest. Kazakh authorities reportedly have four proposals to choose from, developed by four countries – Russia, China, France and South Korea. Local observers widely suspect that the choice has allegedly already been made in favor of Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear entity.

Memoir: Dethroning the “King of Kazakhstan” (EurasiaNet – opinion)

EurasiaNet [9/4/2024 4:14 PM, Larry C. Napper, 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 Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. We publish these with special thanks to Nargis Kassenova, director of Davis’s Program on Central Asia.

The conclusion of a 2-part series. [Consult source link] to see Part 1

U.S.-Kazakhstan relations were severely strained by the gap between Washington and Astana on democracy and human rights. In March 2002, Galymzhan Zhakiyanov, a former governor of Pavlodar Oblast (province) and Nazarbayev protégé, broke with the President and joined with other opposition figures to form a new political party, Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, to press for free and fair elections and an array of democratic reforms. Nazarbayev directed an indictment of Zhakiyanov on corruption charges arising from his governorship of Pavlodar and launched a manhunt for him. On March 29, Zhakiyanov was visiting the French Ambassador in the building that jointly housed the embassies of France, the UK, and Germany in downtown Almaty. Kazakhstan’s security forces and police surrounded the building and demanded that the French Ambassador turn over Zhakiyanov. My French colleague telephoned me to request that I come to the chancery to confer with the three ambassadors.

American leaders had often pressed Nazarbayev to permit loyal opposition and allow free and fair elections for regional governors and members of Parliament. I had met with Zhakiyanov and other opposition leaders as part of the normal embassy efforts to maintain contacts with a wide range of political forces in Kazakhstan. I concluded that consultation with the allied ambassadors was consistent with the Bush Administration’s “freedom agenda” and so decided to visit my embattled European colleagues. As my car arrived at the joint chancery, I had to fly the American flag to navigate through the siege that was growing more ominous by the minute. The GOK made it clear that Zhakiyanov had no chance to exit the building except into custody of the security forces. The three ambassadors and I discussed their predicament and the pressure they were under from their governments to resolve the standoff before it could damage relations with the GOK. I suggested that the three ambassadors contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to see if an agreement could be reached to ensure Zhakiyanov’s safety and his right to a fair trial.

Signaling that the GOK might also be looking for a way to peacefully resolve the standoff, Foreign Minister Idrissov agreed to negotiations. While I did not participate directly, I advised the three ambassadors as they worked out a confidential memorandum with Idrissov containing the following provisions:

Zhakiyanov would depart the chancery voluntarily and the GOK would guarantee that he would not be harmed.

Zhakiyanov would enter house arrest at his residence in Almaty and his family and attorneys would have free access to him in the run-up to an open and transparent trial that would take place in Almaty, not Pavlodar.

Officers of the French, British, and German embassies would have access to Zhakiyanov in house arrest and during the trial.

With the memorandum signed by Idrissov and the three ambassadors on April 3, my colleagues asked that I talk with Zhakiyanov. While he clearly did not want to depart the embassy, Zhakiyanov and I agreed that the chancery was surrounded by hundreds of security officers in an increasingly confrontational mood. There was clearly no option for physical escape, and the three ambassadors were already far out on a limb with their own governments and the GOK. I assured Zhakiyanov that the ambassadors had done their best to secure an agreement that would protect him from immediate injury or death and buy time for additional diplomacy to help secure him a fair trial. Zhakiyanov agreed to leave the embassy, and the security forces allowed him to depart the chancery safely for his residence in Almaty.

While the three European ambassadors and I had no illusions that Nazarbayev would necessarily stand by the agreement, we were pleased that Zhakiyanov safely transitioned to house arrest. The GOK did initially allow visits by his family and officers of the three embassies. But in the early hours of April 10, 2002, the GOK without warning moved Zhakiyanov from house arrest in Almaty to Pavlodar to stand trial after interrogation using abusive tactics. I flew immediately to Astana and tracked down Idrissov in the hallway of the Presidential Administration building. We had it out in a heated confrontation that had Presidential staffers poking their heads out of offices like prairie dogs. Idrissov claimed that I had no grounds for outrage since the U.S. was not a party to the agreement. I replied that there would be serious and enduring consequences if the GOK reneged on an agreement negotiated in good faith. If the GOK did not return to compliance, I would ensure that the American side raised the Zhakiyanov case forcefully at the outset of every diplomatic encounter between the U.S. and GOK with serious complications for the relationship. Idrissov stepped down as Foreign Minister in June, and Nazarbayev replaced him with a long-time associate, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who had served as Prime Minister until early 2002.

The GOK put Zhakiyanov on trial on July 15 after he suffered a heart attack under interrogation. On August 2, 2002, the court in Pavlodar convicted Zhakiyanov in an unfair and non-transparent trial and sentenced him to seven years in a labor camp. The Zhakiyanov case headed the American agenda for every diplomatic encounter with the GOK, including at Ministerial level and in several head-butting private conversations in Russian between Nazarbayev and me. I also successfully pressed the GOK to allow a visit by an embassy officer to Zhakiyanov at the prison camp, one of the few instances of access allowed during his incarceration. On April 11, 2004, Zhakiyanov was released from labor camp into house arrest, and on January 14, 2006, he was released from detention. The GOK allowed Zhakiyanov to leave Kazakhstan for resettlement in the U.S., reportedly after his agreement to stay out of politics.

The Zhakiyanov case was neither the first nor the last dispute over democracy and human rights. In the spring of 2004, the embassy’s Regional Security Officer (RSO) asked me to pay a call on the GOK’s Minister for Emergency Situations (rough equivalent of FEMA) Zamanbek Nurkadilov, who had asked the RSO to convey an invitation to visit his operations center in Almaty. The RSO oversaw a modest program of anti-terrorism assistance for Nurkadilov’s ministry, so I reluctantly agreed. Nurkadilov, formerly mayor of Almaty, who had a reputation as one of Nazarbayev’s closest cronies, met me alone and took me to his operations center full of TV monitors, computer stations, and (I was sure) recording devices. Nurkadilov launched a scathing, hour-long diatribe against Nazarbayev, accusing him of corruption and abuse of power. Assuming that recording devices were spinning, I heard Nurkadilov out and took my leave. Nazarbayev later fired Nurkadilov and their rift became public before my tour as ambassador concluded in the summer of 2004. On November 12, 2005, Nurkadilov was found dead in his private office shot twice in the chest and once in the head. The GOK investigation ruled the death a suicide without explaining how Nurkadilov managed all three fatal shots.

During roughly the same timeframe, Kazakhstan’s former ambassador to Russia and Minister of Information, Altynbek Sarsenbayev, asked to see me at a restaurant with his wife and two children. Sarsenbayev told me that he intended to break publicly with Nazarbayev to organize an opposition political party. He clearly knew the risks he was running, and we agreed to stay in close touch. I last saw him at a British Embassy reception for the Queen’s birthday in June 2004, just before my departure from Kazakhstan. I wished him well and assured him that my successor would want to meet with him. On February 13, 2006, the bodies of Sarsenbayev, his bodyguard, and driver were found in the hills above Almaty, shot with their hands tied behind their backs in a mafia-style execution. Nazarbayev announced an investigation which rounded up alleged rogue agents from the security forces and one low-level GOK official. They were convicted in a hasty trial, concluding the GOK investigation, but a retrial reduced the sentence without providing any genuine transparency. Despite the U.S. embassy’s efforts to show solidarity with courageous figures like Sarsenbayev, crossing Nazarbayev was a very risky business.

Keeping expansion of the Tenghiz oil field on track

A vital underpinning of the emerging U.S.-Kazakhstan relationship since the 1990s was investment in Kazakhstan’s energy sector. Kazakhstan is among world leaders in oil and gas reserves, but the Soviet-era energy industry was in a state of collapse as the Soviet Union itself lurched toward dissolution in December 1991. Nazarbayev realized that Kazakhstan needed investment and technical expertise to develop oil fields, especially the onshore supergiant Tenghiz field, and a way to get Kazakh oil to international markets that would not be dominated by the Soviet-era pipeline system controlled by Russia. His solution was to put out the welcome mat for international oil companies that could help him achieve both objectives. The result was a wild scramble for access, influence, and power in the energy sector around the Caspian Sea, including in Kazakhstan. As one astute analyst of the period puts it: “In the early 1990s, one could not identify the new players flooding into the oil industry: there was no scorecard, no track record, no credit ratings, no better business bureau.” In Kazakhstan, all the players knew you had to deal with Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Task number one was to sort out the investment structure at Tenghiz. There ensued a protracted, multi-player negotiation best described as a “battle of wills” involving major international companies, including Chevron, the GOK, several colorful individual middlemen, and Russian oil players like Lukoil. The result was an ownership structure at Tenghiz that was in place when I became ambassador to Kazakhstan in 2001: Chevron/Texaco 50 percent; Exxon/Mobil 25 percent; KazMunayGas (Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil/gas company) 20 percent, and Lukoil 5 percent. Chevron also held an 18% stake in the gas and condensate field at Karachaganak, while Exxon/Mobil later in 2008 secured a 16.8% stake in Kashagan, the massive shallow-water field discovered off Kazakhstan’s Caspian Sea coast. Together these investments totaled more than $6 billion, representing a substantial American stake in the future of Kazakhstan.

The most straight-forward approach to getting Kazakh energy exports to international markets was a trans-Caspian pipeline system linking Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, with their massive oil and gas reserves, to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline across the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, and then on to markets in Turkey and Europe. This was the option favored by Washington as well as Kazakhstan. But the trans-Caspian pipeline was blocked by Russia and Iran, so Kazakhstan and its partners turned to an alternative pipeline project from northern Kazakhstan across southern Russia to the port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, from which tankers could move the oil through the Turkish straits to the Mediterranean. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which built and operates the pipeline, has a complex management structure giving the Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft a 24% stake while Chevron holds 15%, Mobil 7.5% and KazMunayGas 19%. Chevron, Mobil, and KazMunayGas relied on their stakes in CPC to give them a better break than the Soviet-era pipeline system, with its rigged pricing, aging infrastructure, and Russian monopoly control.

By 2001, planning was well underway for a $3.5 billion expansion at Tenghiz. When completed, the expansion would raise daily production to 600,000 barrels of crude oil and 22 million cubic meters of natural gas. The expansion was clearly in the interest of both the GOK and its international partners, but, by the fall of 2002, negotiations reached an impasse over disagreements on financing the project and taxes. In meetings with me following rounds of negotiations with the GOK, executives of Chevon/Texaco and Exxon/Mobil complained that they were unable to get direct access to Nazarbayev who had delegated negotiations on the GOK side to the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (MENR) and KazMunayGas. The American executives insisted that their positions on financing and taxes were consistent with the original contract governing Tenghiz signed in 1993, but they did not believe that GOK negotiators were able or willing to close the deal without Nazarbayev’s direct involvement. The deadlock escalated further when the principal sub-contractor for the project, Parker Drilling, announced that it was suspending its operations until the impasse was resolved. By November 2002, it appeared that the expansion at Tenghiz could collapse.

The companies did not want direct U.S. government involvement in the negotiations, nor did I believe this was an appropriate role for either Washington or the embassy. But I did undertake to ensure that the GOK, including Nazarbayev personally, understood the stakes of a breakdown in negotiations. The impasse took place against a backdrop of rising economic nationalism as the GOK increasingly sought to put the squeeze on foreign investors in major projects like Tenghiz. Still, I did not believe that Nazarbayev would risk failure of the project, if we could find a way to engage him directly. The next step was not an easy call. On the one hand, Nazarbayev’s inclination to move away from micro-managing energy deals was promising. But in this case, we were on the verge of losing a major project that could create an estimated 7,000 jobs for Kazakhstanis, and substantial economic benefits for both the American investors and the GOK.

I decided to ask for a letter from Commerce Secretary Don Evans to Nazarbayev underscoring Washington’s interest in the success of the expansion at Tenghiz. The letter did not make proposals on financing or tax issues, but stressed the sanctity of the contract. I delivered the letter to Nazarbayev through his personal energy advisor and separately his scheduler to guard against spin from MERN and KazMunayGas. I reasoned that the letter stood a chance of moving Nazarbayev given his respect for Secretary Evans. The precise impact of any intervention in a negotiation of this complexity is unknowable, but Nazarbayev did reengage personally. The GOK and the American investors resolved their dispute in January 2003. The expansion was completed in 2008 and remains the basis of operations at Tenghiz more than two decades later.

Dethroning the “King of Kazakhstan”

On March 31, 2003, the FBI arrested an American businessman and energy advisor to Nazarbayev, James Henry (Jim) Giffen, as he tried to board a flight to Paris and on to Kazakhstan. The arrest and subsequent issuance of a 55-count federal indictment of Giffen under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) touched off a crisis that threatened to undermine U.S-Kazakhstan relations. The indictment accused Giffen of illicit payments to Swiss bank accounts held by leading GOK figures, including Nazarbayev, to grease the skids of deals between major international oil companies and the GOK involving Kazakhstan’s most important oil fields, including Tenghiz and the offshore giant Kashagan.

Giffen had long been a swash-buckling player in Kazakhstan’s energy sector, forging personal ties with Nazarbayev and his officials before the break-up of the Soviet Union. With lavish residences in New York and Almaty and a reputation for high-living and unparalleled access to Nazarbayev, Giffen became widely known as the “King of Kazakhstan”. While both international energy executives and Kazakhstan’s elite looked for ways to cut Giffen down to size, he successfully made himself indispensable as the gate keeper to Nazarbayev on energy deals. Giffen also protected his position by meeting regularly with USG officials in Washington, Moscow, and Kazakhstan, ostensibly to keep them informed of developments in Kazakhstan, but also to burnish his reputation as a backchannel to Nazarbayev.

While the indictment did not directly target Nazarbayev, it was clear that Nazarbayev and former Prime Minister Nurlan Balgimbayev were the recipients of Giffen’s alleged bribes involving $84 million and lavish gifts. Foreign Minister Tokayev assured me that the GOK had no interest in the fate of Giffen, but did not want to see the President of Kazakhstan accused of accepting bribes during proceedings in a U.S. federal court. I replied that neither the White House nor any other executive branch office would influence the handling of the Giffen case in federal court. Tokayev took this on board, but made clear privately that Nazarbayev expected President Bush to make the case go away. After all, that is what Nazarbayev would have done in similar circumstances. I stressed to Tokayev that this request was a total non-starter and that the Giffen case would have to run its course in a fair and transparent trial that would allow Giffen a full and robust defense. I stressed that we needed to work together to keep U.S.-Kazakhstan relations on track whatever occurred in the Giffen case. Tokayev made clear that this would be a tall order with the President of Kazakhstan accused of taking bribes in a U.S. federal court.

The standoff deepened further as the U.S. Department of Justice obtained an order from the Swiss Government freezing bank accounts held by Nazarbayev and Balgimbayev pending the outcome of the Giffen case. This raised the possibility that the $84 million in the accounts might be confiscated if Giffen were convicted. Tokayev expressed outrage that sovereign assets of the GOK had been frozen at U.S. request. I replied that freezing of the accounts was perfectly legal under the FCPA, but that confiscation would not come into play unless Giffen were convicted. I suggested to Tokayev that we begin to explore how we might negotiate a transparent and jointly managed mechanism to use the $84 million for programs of direct benefit to the most disadvantaged people of Kazakhstan. It took until 2007, but the USG and GOK reached an agreement that released the money for use by a foundation funding NGOs to support programs for mothers and children in Kazakhstan.

The Giffen affair continued to roil U.S.-Kazakhstan relations, including during a February 2004 visit by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. I counseled Tokayev and other contacts throughout the GOK not to raise the Giffen case with Rumsfeld. He would not intervene in the case, and raising the issue would be an unwelcome distraction. I was somewhat reassured that Nazarbayev would be on one of his periodic trips to Europe during Rumsfeld’s visit. In the car on the way to the Prime Minister’s office, I warned the secretary of defense that the Giffen case could come up. The welcoming pleasantries had hardly been concluded when Prime Minister Daniyal Akhmetov raised the Giffen case urging that Rumsfeld and President Bush remove this threat to U.S.-Kazakhstan relations. To his credit, Rumsfeld pivoted immediately to his own efforts to deal with corruption in the DOD’s contracts with the defense industry and argued that the best solution for the Giffen affair was complete transparency from the GOK. The meeting quickly moved on to a good discussion of cooperation on counterterrorism and security issues.

Rumsfeld held a successful follow-up meeting with Minister of Defense Mukhtar Altynbayev. The meeting concluded with the ceremonial gift of a traditional knee length Kazakh coat and hat which the Secretary tried on to the delight of his hosts. It appeared that Rumsfeld’s visit might conclude as an unqualified success. However, as we departed the ministry, I noticed that the right trouser leg of the secretary’s suit had unraveled alarmingly, especially problematic since we would have to negotiate a hotel lobby full of media and Kazakh and American admirers to reach the secretary’s suite. I immediately thought of the ceremonial Kazakh coat in the truck of my car. Rumsfeld donned the coat admirably covering the “wardrobe malfunction” and setting up a triumphant entry to the hotel to the delight of the crowd and my profound relief.

The Giffen case dragged on for seven years. A Mobil Oil executive indicted along with Giffen served half of his 46-month sentence for tax evasion. Giffen’s attorneys alleged that the State Department and CIA had known of and approved his activities. Giffen’s defense demanded access to State Department and CIA files, but both agencies refused. In 2010, a frustrated federal judge dismissed the FCPA charges and Giffen pled guilty to one charge of tax evasion with a small fine. The Giffen case thus ended with a whimper rather than a bang. But it was clear that the reign of the “King of Kazakhstan” had come to an end to the benefit of both countries.

Diplomacy on the Silk Road: No miracles, but substantial achievements

The United States and Kazakhstan navigated the new geopolitical landscape after 9/11 with diplomatic skill and a substantial dose of luck. Neither side got everything it wanted, but each got enough to weather challenges that might have led to a messy divorce, as happened in the U.S.-Uzbekistan relationship. The fundamentals of the U.S.-Kazakhstan agenda – security and counterterrorism, non-proliferation of WMD; energy and economics; and democracy and human rights – have proven remarkably durable over the ensuing 20 years. Kazakhstan weathered the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic battered, but with its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity intact. Nazarbayev stepped down from the presidency on March 19, 2019, while trying to retain at least some of his once unchecked power as chairman of the National Security Council. His successor as president and old comrade, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, with whom I had negotiated as foreign minister, proclaimed a reformist agenda, but also adopted many of the troubling tactics of his mentor, including manipulation of elections and jailing of political opponents.

The violent unrest that engulfed Kazakhstan in January 2022 cast a dark shadow over the country’s future, as security forces committed widespread abuses, hundreds of Kazakhstanis lost their lives, and Tokayev invited the brief deployment of a Russian-led security detachment ostensibly representing the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The unrest began in the western city of Zhanaozen in Kazakhstan’s Caspian oil patch as protests against the removal of a government subsidy on fuel, but quickly morphed into nation-wide demonstrations, including in Almaty and Astana. Demonstrators protested corruption, income inequality, and ossified leadership, especially Nazarbayev. On January 6, 2022, President Tokayev removed Nazarbayev from the National Security Council ending his 30-year dominance of political life in Kazakhstan. On January 8, Tokayev ordered the arrest of former Prime Minster Karim Massimov, who headed Kazakhstan’s security service, the KNB, during the January turmoil. Massimov was sentenced to 18 years in prison on charges of treason and attempting to seize power. His pardon request was denied, despite international appeals for Massimov’s release due to his deteriorating health.

Energy issues remain at the center of the economy and politics. Kazakhstan continues to struggle with the complex issues that beset developing economies dependent upon energy exports: the boom and bust cycle of international energy prices; exchange rate instability of the tenge (Kazakhstan’s currency); dramatic and growing income disparities between the few with access to energy rents and the left-out majority; official corruption at all levels of the GOK; and a grandiose and wasteful building boom, especially in Astana. On the plus side, per capita income is rising and the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty is down. The GOK and Kazakhstan’s national bank have implemented some market-based reforms including establishment of a national rainy-day fund to soak up some of the GOK’s oil revenues. The climate for foreign investment remains a complex mix of openness tempered with growing economic nationalism insisting on a bigger slice of the pie for the GOK in deals with international investors.

Yet another major expansion at Tenghiz is in the works. After a rocky start, oil production at the supergiant offshore field at Kashagan is beginning to ramp up. Tensions between the GOK and foreign investors continue to simmer as Astana has initiated arbitration proceedings against investors over production delays at Kashagan.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, unexplained disruptions of oil loading at Novorossiysk cut into exports of oil via the CPC, but exports are projected to rebound in 2024. Critics of CPC have pointed out that Russian firms under U.S. and EU sanctions continue their vital role in financing and operating the pipeline. Kazakhstan has begun modest oil exports to China via a direct pipeline linking Kazakhstan’s Caspian oil fields to refineries in Xinjiang, but the China pipeline currently functions at 50% capacity, leaving the GOK dependent on CPC to get its oil to international markets. Kazakhstan also exports relatively modest amounts of natural gas to China via the Turkmenistan-China pipeline system that transits Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. There is also renewed regional interest in trans-Caspian energy pipelines despite ongoing opposition from Russia and Iran.

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, China’s increasing economic dominance of Central Asia and Putin’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine have created profound challenges for Kazakhstan’s statecraft. The U.S. and Kazakhstan have every reason to coordinate their policies toward the Taliban regime, to share insight and intelligence, and to do what they can to ameliorate the worst excesses of Taliban rule. On Ukraine, Kazakhstan has not forthrightly condemned Putin’s assault, abstaining from UN General Assembly resolutions critical of the invasion. Tokayev continues to meet with Putin, but, with an eye on its own ethnic Russian minority concentrated in five oblasts along the Russian border, Kazakhstan has withheld recognition of Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory, including the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the 2023 illegal annexation of four oblasts in eastern and southern Ukraine. Involvement of Kazakhstani firms in laundering transfers of dual-use technology from China to Russia led to U.S. sanctions against commercial firms in Kazakhstan and prompted tough diplomatic exchanges. It remains to be seen whether the GOK will have the will and the capacity to curb this trade before it does serious damage to relations with Washington.

In his book, The Art of Diplomacy, the American scholar and practitioner Stuart Eizenstat rightly observes: “Diplomacy can achieve great things…but it cannot work miracles.” Eizenstat’s insight certainly applies to the relationship between the U.S. and Kazakhstan. For Kazakhstan, the United States is an essential partner in its “multi-vector” statecraft, but diplomacy cannot overcome the geostrategic reality of long borders with a rising China and revanchist Russia.

For the United States, Kazakhstan’s democratic deficit, human rights abuses and official corruption will continue to be sources of frustration. But both the U.S. and Kazakhstan have avenues for productive diplomacy. The last three American administrations have pursued multilateral discussions with leaders of the five Central Asian countries in the C5+1 format. On September 19, 2023, the C5+1 elevated their dialogue to summit level when President Biden hosted the five Central Asian Presidents in New York on the margins of the UNGA. On May 31, 2024, the U.S. hosted the 6th annual session of the United States-Kazakhstan Enhanced Strategic Partnership Dialogue in Washington at Deputy Foreign Minister level. Patient, sustained, and comprehensive diplomacy, from summit to working level, cannot work miracles, but it can and should aspire to substantial achievements. The United States and Kazakhstan should make this the shared objective of their diplomacy in the 21st century.

Ossetian Wife Of Notorious Tajik Islamic State Recruiter Gets 11 Years In Prison (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [9/4/2024 9:53 AM, Staff, 1251K, Negative]
A court in Russia in early August sentenced Madina Bondarenko, the Ossetian wife of a notorious recruiter for the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in Tajikistan, to 11 years in prison on a charge of being a member of a terrorist group, one of her relatives told RFE/RL on September 3.

Bondarenko, who was accused by Russia of cooperating with and belonging to IS, was extradited from Tajikistan in May 2023.

She is the wife of Parviz Saidrahmonov (aka Abu Dovud), who was sentenced to 21 years in prison in November on terrorism charges in Dushanbe.

Bondarenko’s relative said she rejected the charge, saying that her husband tricked her when he brought her to Syria via Turkey several years ago as she was unaware that their final destination would be Syria. However, the court took into account Saidrahmonov’s testimony to Russian investigators in which he said his wife went to Syria voluntarily, knowing that the couple planned to join IS there.

The couple and their children were extradited to Tajikistan from Turkey in 2022.

Saidrahmonov was accused of recruiting more than 200 people to fight in Syria and Iraq and was alleged to be behind multiple terrorist activities in Tajikistan, Russia, and Sweden.

He was sentenced on charges of organizing a terrorist group, extremism, and recruiting mercenaries to fight in a foreign country. Saidrahmonov was a migrant worker in Russia when he left in 2014 for Iraq and Syria, where he joined the ranks of IS.

Swedish investigators say Saidrahmonov was an accomplice of Rakhmat Akilov, an Uzbek man who was convicted of murder and terrorism for driving a hijacked truck down a busy pedestrian street in Stockholm on April 7, 2017, killing five people and injuring 14 others.

Akilov, a rejected asylum seeker in Sweden before the attack who was in contact with alleged IS militants from Tajikistan, was sentenced to life in prison in June 2018.

Saidrahmonov was later captured by Syrian authorities and in mid-2020 disappeared from a prison in the Syrian town of Afrin when Tajikistan was working on his extradition to Dushanbe.

Tajik authorities, who took Saidrahmonov into custody in September 2022, consider him to be "one of the most dangerous recruiters of Islamic State."

Dushanbe estimates that about 2,000 Tajik citizens joined IS in Iraq and Syria in 2013-15. Hundreds of them were killed in clashes in the Middle East. Some of those who returned to Tajikistan were either sentenced to lengthy prison terms or received amnesty.

Uzbekistan: Woman’s Sentence Upheld for Sharing Decades-Old Video (Human Rights Watch)

Human Rights Watch [9/4/2024 4:21 AM, Staff, 2M, Neutral]
A Tashkent regional appeals court on August 21, 2024, upheld a woman’s 30-month restricted freedom sentence for alleged anti-constitutional activity in gross violation of her right to freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said today. Sevara Shaydullaeva, 31, had sent her mother a video clip of Uzbekistan’s late President Islam Karimov speaking to Islamists in 1991, which she had downloaded from YouTube.

On April 30, a lower court had found Shaydullaeva guilty of “intentionally storing and distributing materials containing an open call to overthrow the constitutional order of Uzbekistan.” As part of her sentence, she is required to observe a curfew and not travel outside Tashkent region without permission, nor take part in any public events.

“Uzbek authorities should never have put Sevara Shaydullaeva on trial for sharing a video of the former president,” said Mihra Rittmann, senior Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “However disagreeable its contents may be to Uzbek authorities, the speech captured in the 33-year-old video is a matter of historical record.”

Shaydullaeva’s conviction rests on the conclusions of the State Committee for Religious Affairs of Uzbekistan, which the government had commissioned to analyze the contents of the video. The appeals court ruling indicates that there was no evidence that Shaydullaeva said or did anything to incite violence or overthrow the Uzbek government.

The video Shaydullaeva shared was filmed in 1991 and shows then-President Karimov addressing a crowd of Islamists in the eastern town of Namangan. Karimov can be seen standing next to Tokhir Yuldash, a man who several years later became the political leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), an armed militant group that the government held responsible for the 1999 bombings in Tashkent as well as armed incursions in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in 1999 and 2000.

About nine minutes into the 13-minute video, Yuldash passes the microphone to Karimov, who addresses the crowd. He says he will consider their call for Uzbekistan to be governed “according to the rules of Islam,” and that he will ask parliament to consider declaring Uzbekistan an Islamic state.

The views Karimov espouses in the 1991 video stand in stark contrast to the abusive anti-Muslim policies that his administration enacted starting in the late 1990s, which continued until his death in 2016. President Karimov and his administration oversaw a prolonged and ruthless campaign against all Muslims who practiced their faith outside state controls, Human Rights Watch said.

Significant restrictions on freedom of religion and freedom of expression remain in effect under the administration of current President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch has long documented the Uzbek government’s misuse of criminal charges to prosecute individuals for exercising their fundamental rights, including freedom of speech and expression. Article 159 of the Criminal Code—”attempting to overthrow the constitutional order of Uzbekistan”—contains provisions so vague and overbroad that they are wholly incompatible with international human rights norms.

Uzbekistan’s partners should urge President Mirziyoyev not to imitate the rights-violating practices of his predecessor and instead to fulfill his own reform promises, including his pledge to make human rights central to reforms.

Consideration of a new draft criminal code has stalled since March 2021.

“Sharing a video documenting events that took place over 30 years ago shouldn’t be a crime,” Rittmann said. “Uzbek authorities should immediately quash Shaydullaeva’s conviction and lift all restrictions on her liberty.”

Rights Watchdog Slams Uzbek Woman’s Sentence Over Decades-Old Video (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [9/4/2024 10:58 AM, Staff, 1251K, Negative]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has condemned a parole-like sentence handed to an Uzbek woman in April over her sharing of a 1991 video showing the late President Islam Karimov speaking to Islamists.

The move on September 4 comes two weeks after the Tashkent regional court upheld Sevara Shaidullaeva’s 30-month parole-like sentence, which she was handed on a charge of "intentionally storing and distributing materials containing an open call to overthrow the constitutional order of Uzbekistan."

Shaidullaeva, who shared the video clip with her mother, was ordered to observe a curfew, stay away from public events, and not to leave the Tashkent region without permission.

"Uzbek authorities should never have put Sevara [Shaidullaeva] on trial for sharing a video of the former president," HRW’s Central Asia researcher Mihra Rittmann said in a statement. "However disagreeable its contents may be to Uzbek authorities, the speech captured in the 33-year-old video is a matter of historical record."

The video in question was taken in December 1991 in the eastern city of Namangan where Karimov was made to sit down in a hall and listen to Tohir Yuldash, the future leader of the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), who lectured Karimov on government and Islam. The video, which Shaidullaeva downloaded from YouTube, has been in circulation for decades.

Karimov met later with a group of people in the Namangan region who had seized local government offices to demand that Uzbekistan be declared an Islamic state, which Karimov on the video promises to do.

However, starting in the late 1990s, Karimov’s government launched a massive crackdown on practicing Muslims, which lasted until his death in 2016.

"Significant restrictions on freedom of religion and freedom of expression remain in effect under the administration of current President Shavkat [Mirziyoev]," the HRW statement stresses.

"Sharing a video documenting events that took place over 30 years ago shouldn’t be a crime," Rittmann said. "Uzbek authorities should immediately quash [Shaidullaeva’s] conviction and lift all restrictions on her liberty."

Twitter

Afghanistan

Abdul Qahar Balkhi
@QaharBalkhi
[9/5/2024 3:50 AM, 246.5K followers, 5 likes]
Remarks Regarding the Removal of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s Name from the list of Proscribed Groups by the Republic of Kyrgyzstan

UNAMA News
@UNAMAnews
[9/4/2024 11:05 AM, 310.3K followers, 6 retweets, 20 likes]
UNAMA condemns Monday’s reprehensible attack in Kabul, which caused loss of life and injuries to civilians. Violence in #Afghanistan only prolongs the agony of decades of war. We stand in solidarity with victims and call for respect for human rights.

Freshta Razbaan
@RazbaanFreshta
[9/4/2024 1:39 PM, 5K followers, 5 retweets, 9 likes]
Absolutely, this is America’s moment to shine. When your Afghan allies stood with you, they embraced the American spirit of freedom and courage. Now, it’s your chance to show the world what America truly stands for: loyalty, gratitude, and an unwavering commitment to those who share your values. By passing the Afghan Adjustment Act, you’re not just fulfilling a promise; you’re showcasing the heart of America — a nation that honors its friends, stands by its word, and leads by example. Let’s get this done and prove once again that America is a beacon of hope and a land of honor. @JennieMurrayK

Freshta Razbaan
@RazbaanFreshta
[9/4/2024 4:57 AM, 5K followers, 5 retweets, 7 likes]
The Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan marks not just a regression to medieval governance but a stark betrayal of human rights, particularly those of women and girls, whose voices and faces are now banned, rendering them invisible in their own land. This oppressive regime, under the guise of religious morality, has systematically dismantled the progress of two decades, turning Afghanistan into a global pariah where education, freedom, and basic human dignity are sacrificed at the altar of extremist ideology. The world watches as a nation is stripped of its color, its laughter, and its future, all in the name of a twisted interpretation of faith. The Taliban’s rule is not just a local tragedy but a global shame, a reminder that in the 21st century, darkness can still descend if the international community fails to act decisively against the oppression of half its population. This is not governance; it’s a systematic erasure of identity, a crime against humanity cloaked in religious fervor, demanding not just condemnation but active, sustained resistance from every corner of the globe.

Pakistan

Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[9/5/2024 2:12 AM, 3.1M followers, 3 retweets, 4 likes]
On this International Day of Charity, the Government of Pakistan reaffirms its commitment to fostering a culture of compassion and giving. Together, let’s empower a brighter, more resilient future for all.#InternationalDayofCharity

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[9/4/2024 5:56 AM, 8.5M followers, 146 retweets, 521 likes]
Fact-check: False claims link Balochistan woman suicide bomber to missing person. https://www.geo.tv/latest/562544-fact-check-false-claims-link-balochistan-woman-suicide-bomber-to-missing-person

India

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[9/5/2024 2:10 AM, 101.6M followers, 750 retweets, 2.2K likes]
My remarks during the First International Solar Festival. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1RDGlypEAkEJL

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[9/5/2024 2:03 AM, 101.6M followers, 730 retweets, 3.9K likes]
It was wonderful to interact with interns from Odisha’s World Skill Center who are visiting Singapore and interns from Singapore who have been to India as a part of the CII-Enterprise Singapore India Ready Talent Programme. I also met a team of Indian engineers working at AEM Holdings. Such cooperation is indeed special and celebrates human talent as well as innovation. @LawrenceWongST

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[9/4/2024 4:36 AM, 101.6M followers, 3.2K retweets, 21K likes]
Landed in Singapore. Looking forward to the various meetings aimed at boosting the India-Singapore friendship. India’s reforms and the talent of our Yuva Shakti makes our nation an ideal investment destination. We also look forward to closer cultural ties.

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[9/4/2024 9:23 AM, 25.6M followers, 168 retweets, 1.1K likes]
After paying obeisance at the Takhat Sachkhand Sri Hazur Sahib, Nanded, President Droupadi Murmu stopped to interact with two street vendors on her way to the airport. The President asked them about their life journeys, their families and their livelihoods. During the interaction, the street vendors shared how central government schemes for socio-economic welfare, are helping the underprivileged.

President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[9/4/2024 6:01 AM, 25.6M followers, 96 retweets, 573 likes]
President Droupadi Murmu addressed a gathering of beneficiaries of ‘Shasan Aplya Dari’ and ‘Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojna’ of the Government of Maharashtra at Udgir. The President said that any obstacle in the progress of women also slows down the pace of development of society and the country.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[9/4/2024 11:58 PM, 3.2M followers, 119 retweets, 863 likes]
On Teachers’ day, thank our educators who inspire, nurture and build a nation. Pay my tributes to Dr. S. Radhakrishnan on his birth anniversary.

Rahul Gandhi
@RahulGandhi
[9/4/2024 4:10 AM, 26.8M followers, 3.9K retweets, 12K likes]
Our brothers and sisters in Wayanad have endured a devastating tragedy, and they need our support to recover from the unimaginable losses they have faced. I have donated my entire month’s salary to aid in the relief and rehabilitation efforts for those affected. I sincerely urge all fellow Indians to contribute whatever they can—every little bit makes a difference. Wayanad is a beautiful part of our country, and together, we can help rebuild the lives of its people who have lost so much. You can safely contribute to the @INCKerala fund through the Stand With Wayanad - INC app. https://apps.apple.com/in/app/stand-with-wayanad-inc/id6642654530 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spine.kpccRelief

Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
[9/4/2024 11:48 AM, 614.5K followers, 37 retweets, 325 likes]
Rahul Gandhi’s US visit is getting more attention these days than Modi’s US visit - Time has changed!

Richard Rossow
@RichardRossow
[9/4/2024 10:19 AM, 29.6K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
Aquifers in India’s northwest are depleting at double rate of other arid / semi-arid parts of world. World Bank looks at impact of MGNREGA on groundwater. Whether building recharge projects helps, net increased farm use. Answer- Yes. #RRKeyRead https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099309309032424317/pdf/IDU1f4b7c2021587b14a3f1b6d0150af75c5dc10.pdf?_gl=1*dqsafb*_gcl_au*MTkzOTA3NTExMC4xNzIzNDYyNzkx

NSB

Awami League
@albd1971
[9/4/2024 7:36 AM, 645.4K followers, 38 retweets, 87 likes]
A group of #Bangladeshi expatriates in #Europe submitted a memorandum to the @EU_Commission , demanding that it should put pressure on the interim government to stop alleged #HumanRights violations and killings in #Bangladesh. An EU official received the memorandum at the European Union headquarters in the Belgian capital Brussels on Monday (September 2, 2024) afternoon, according to a press release. Read More @NewAgeBDcom https://newagebd.net/post/foreign-affairs/244368/some-expats-urge-eu-to-stop-rights-violation-in-bangladesh #BangladeshCrisis

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[9/4/2024 11:14 PM, 7K followers, 1 retweet, 3 likes]
USAID Mission Director Reed Aeschliman and his team had "productive discussions" with Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus on Wednesday and pledged to contribute to #Bangladesh’s democratic and economic growth more fully. They explored ways that USAID can maximize their investments to support the interim government and reach their shared vision of helping Bangladeshis build brighter and more prosperous futures for themselves. https://unb.com.bd/category/Bangladesh/usaid-to-contribute-to-bangladeshs-democratic-economic-growth/142263

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[9/4/2024 6:59 AM, 7K followers, 4 retweets, 15 likes]
The #Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) has ordered the suspension of bank accounts belonging to Lieutenant General Md Saiful Alam, the former Director General of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI). This directive also applies to the bank accounts of his wife, children, and any business entities they own. Issued on Tuesday, the BFIU instructed all banks and financial institutions to freeze these accounts, halting any transactions for the next 30 days, with a possible extension if necessary. The suspension falls under anti-money laundering regulations and includes detailed information about Lt. Gen. Md Saiful Alam’s family members. Additionally, banks and financial institutions have been ordered to submit all relevant account documentation, including account opening forms, KYC details, and transaction records, within five business days.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maldives
@MoFAmv
[9/4/2024 5:09 AM, 54.6K followers, 45 retweets, 55 likes]
Maldives signs the BBNJ Agreement Press Release | https://t.ly/qDuzy

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[9/5/2024 2:02 AM, 6.4K followers, 1 retweet, 11 likes]
Sri Lanka to get new Regional Centre for Maritime Studies https://newswire.lk/vno4 Friendship to all ! Enmity to none ! https://www.newswire.lk/2024/09/05/sri-lanka-to-get-new-regional-centre-for-maritime-studies/

Namal Rajapaksa
@RajapaksaNamal
[9/4/2024 9:48 AM, 436.3K followers, 3 retweets, 15 likes]
#NamalVision: double our GDP to $180B in 10 years. We’ll achieve this by digitalizing government, reforming procurement, and eradicating corruption within 3 years. A stronger, transparent future awaits. #SLPP #ඔබවෙනුවෙන්දියුණුරටක් #Namal2024 #JayaJayaSriLanka

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_SRILANKA
[9/4/2024 5:55 AM, 322.7K followers, 12 retweets, 136 likes]
I’m honoured to have the full support of four major transport unions in the upcoming presidential election: the All Ceylon Three-Wheel Drivers’ Union, National Taxi App Union, United Passenger Transport Service Professionals Association, and the Western Province Three-Wheeler Drivers & Owners Association. I assured them that state & private banks will assist drivers facing economic hardships by restructuring their loan repayments. Together, we can drive positive change and uplift our nation.#VoteRanil #GasCylinder

Eran Wickramaratne
@EranWick
[9/5/2024 1:19 AM, 69.1K followers, 14 retweets, 45 likes]
The biggest problem in Sri Lanka is not the economy. The economy is so small, it can be put right. The biggest problem is the absence of the rule of law. If the rule of law is upheld and every citizen feels that the law applies equally to everybody, irrespective of status, power or wealth, every citizen can live with dignity. Foreign investors will gain confidence about investing in this country, knowing that the law works. Speaking at the unveiling of the SJB blueprint, I reiterated that an SJB govt will uphold and promote the rule of law, to take the economy towards a real recovery, and rapid growth.

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[9/5/2024 12:53 AM, 356.5K followers, 16 retweets, 70 likes]
Last night @sajithpremadasa @KabirHashim4 and @EranWick and I presented our @sjbsrilanka updated #Blueprint 3.0. It’s more than a plan. It’s a promise to the people of #SriLanka. Please read and share. https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/667c056ef89cca890b53adad/66d85713402b3b63e3ac7205_SJS_Blueprint_3.0-english-2-compressed.pdf

Central Asia

Peter Leonard
@Peter__Leonard
[9/5/2024 3:14 AM, 22.5K followers, 1 retweet, 4 likes]
Kazakhstan angling for a larger cut from customs duties raised by Russia-dominated Eurasian Union trading bloc; a reflection of its growing importance as a trade hub due to sanctions

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[9/4/2024 11:56 PM, 4.9K followers]
Meeting of the Minister of Foreign Affairs with the Head of the National Office UNHCR in Tajikistan https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/15642/meeting-of-the-minister-of-foreign-affairs-with-the-head-of-the-national-office-unhcr-in-tajikistan

Uzbekistan MFA
@uzbekmfa
[9/4/2024 1:54 PM, 7.8K followers, 3 retweets, 10 likes]
On September 4, 2024, Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan @FM_Saidov met with the Deputy Foreign Minister of Turkiye @nuhyilmaz, who arrived in Tashkent. Another round of political consultations also took place between MFAs chaired by Deputy Foreign Ministers.

Bakhtiyor Saidov
@FM_Saidov
[9/4/2024 12:11 PM, 4.4K followers, 8 retweets, 17 likes]
Met with the Special Representative of the @UN Secretary-General for #CentralAsia, Head of @UNRCCA H.E. @KahaImnadze. We appreciate the continued support of the #UN and its missions of all #CentralAsian states to consolidate their efforts for common prosperity, including in #Afghanistan. There has not been a better time to stand together and move forward, tackle all the challenges in the region, and create the most favorable conditions so that future generations can enjoy the outcomes of what we are doing today.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[9/4/2024 2:01 PM, 198.5K followers, 1 retweet, 4 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev was briefed on measures to enhance the primary #healthcare system and introduce medical insurance mechanisms. Starting on October 1st of this year, state medical insurance will be implemented in pilot regions such as Tashkent and Syrdarya, with plans to expand nationwide by the end of 2026. Key innovations include the digitalization of the sector, including the launch of electronic information systems, as well as the training of medical workers.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[9/4/2024 1:03 PM, 198.5K followers, 3 retweets, 10 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev reviewed proposals for the development of preschool #education and initiatives for supporting talented youth. Over the past seven years, preschool education coverage has grown from 27% to 74.6%, with plans to increase it further to 80%. Additionally, measures to enhance the training of participants in international Olympiads and to reward their achievements were discussed.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[9/4/2024 11:50 AM, 198.5K followers, 1 retweet, 22 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev visited the construction site of the Tashkent-Eastern Airport to assess its progress. The new airport will feature modern equipment and is set to become a key component of the country’s transportation network. The design incorporates national architectural elements and includes all necessary amenities for welcoming distinguished guests and hosting meetings.

Furqat Sidiqov
@FurqatSidiq
[9/4/2024 5:11 PM, 1.4K followers, 2 likes]
Together with our Uzbek compatriots, we celebrated the 33rd anniversary of Uzbekistan’s independence in Virginia, 🇺🇸. We were pleased to have the delegation from the ‘Vatandosh’ public foundation and renowned artists from Uzbekistan join us. 🇺🇿 #UzbekIndependence #Vatandosh

UNODC Central Asia
@UNODC_ROCA
[9/5/2024 1:14 AM, 2.5K followers, 1 like]
As the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Uzbekistan marks its 30th Anniversary, UNODC remains committed to continuing its cooperation in strengthening the quality of policing, advancing crime prevention, promoting human rights, and upholding the rule of law.

{End of Report}

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