SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Tuesday, April 1, 2025 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
Taliban’s former ambassador to Spain is detained by U.S. immigration officials (Politico)
Politico [3/31/2025 5:07 PM, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, 52868K]
The Taliban’s former ambassador to Spain remains detained by U.S. immigration officials at Dulles International Airport after a federal judge declined his petition for immediate release on Monday.
The Afghan diplomat, Mohammad Rahim Wahidi, is a lawful permanent U.S. resident living in Sterling, Virginia with his wife, Mary Shakeri-Wahidi, a U.S. citizen, according to a court filing by his lawyer, who expressed fears his client was caught up in a Trump administration crackdown on immigrants deemed to be at odds with U.S. foreign policy. He was detained at Dulles on Saturday after arriving on a flight from Turkey.
However, Wahidi’s case appears distinct from some of the other cases in which lawful residents and visa holders have been targeted for deportation over their political advocacy.
A petition filed Sunday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria links Wahidi’s detention to criminal charges his brother-in-law, Farhad Shakeri, faces in a New York federal court accusing him of involvement in a plot to assassinate a U.S.-based journalist critical of Iran’s government. Two men connected to the Russian mob were convicted on March 20 of a second Iran-backed attempt to assassinate that journalist, Masih Alinejad.
Wahidi’s petition says that after his arrival at Dulles "he has been interrogated by an unclear number of officers believed to be from the FBI regarding his brother in law." The petition indicates he was accompanied by his wife, who was eventually released from detention.
Further complicating the tale: Spain reportedly stripped Wahidi of his diplomatic immunity earlier this month following allegations of sexual assault. No criminal charges have been filed against Wahidi.
After Wahidi’s lawyer filed the petition Sunday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema immediately blocked authorities from moving Wahidi out of the judicial district, and she ordered Wahidi brought to court in Alexandria Monday morning for a hearing.
Following that hearing, Brinkema declined to order Wahidi’s release, but left in place the order prohibiting his transfer and reminded officials of their obligations to abide by U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s detention standards.
"At this point the Court cannot offer any relief," Brinkema, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, wrote in the order.
Wahidi’s lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, and a spokesperson for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Brinkema’s brush with Trump administration immigration emergencies doesn’t end there. The judge also last week ordered the release of a Venezuelan couple targeted for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after what she described as a woefully inadequate case that they had gang ties.
Wahidi’s lawyer, Ahmad, is also representing Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher who is fighting the Trump administration’s efforts to deport him over alleged links to Hamas. Suri denies any involvement with Hamas and suggests the government’s allegation stems from his U.S. citizen wife’s father, a former adviser to the Hamas-led government in Gaza.
Ahmad indicated that both Wahidi and his wife were questioned to an "unclear" extent.
"Eventually, Ms. Shakeri-Wahidi was released at approximately 12:15 A.M. (after being held for nearly 12 hours) and allowed to go home," Ahmad wrote. "However, Mr. Wahidi remained detained and locked in a room with a thin mattress overnight.".
Ahmad said he traveled to Dulles Sunday night to try to visit with Wahidi but was denied permission by an agent who cited "border search authority" and "standard operating procedures.".
"The serious nature of the allegations against Mr. Wahidi’s brother in law, the extensive detention … and lack of freedom to leave unquestionably renders the interrogation ‘custodial,’" Ahmad argued.
The court filing does not directly respond to the sexual assault allegations against Wahidi, although it attributes them to an activist in Spain who has campaigned for the closure of the Afghan embassy there. The embassy also reportedly issued a statement calling the claims baseless.
"No criminal charges were ever filed by the Spanish authorities, and Mr. Wahidi, though stripped of his title, was allowed to leave the country," the U.S. court filing says. Federal judge declines to release detained former Taliban ambassador (Axios)
Axios [3/31/2025 7:34 PM, Sareen Habeshian, 13163K]
A federal judge on Monday declined to allow the release of Taliban’s former ambassador to Spain after he was detained by U.S. immigration officials over the weekend.The big picture: The Trump administration is charging ahead with high-profile detentions and deportations, including of U.S. tourists and permanent residents, as part of an immigration crackdown.Driving the news: Mohammad Rahim Wahidi, a lawful permanent resident in the U.S., was detained at Washington’s Dulles International Airport on Saturday, according to a a petition for his release filed by his attorneys the next day.Wahidi’s attorneys said he’s being detained despite no charges having been filed against him, and alleged his Sixth and Fifth Amendment rights are being violated.The former Afghan diplomat, who is married to a U.S. citizen, was questioned by law enforcement about his brother-in-law, who was charged in New York with being a member of a plot to assassinate an Iranian journalist, per the petition.Zoom in: After the petition was filed, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema blocked Wahidi’s release and ordered him to appear in court Monday for a hearing.Brinkema then declined to order his release but left in place the order barring his transfer out of the district of Virginia.She ordered the government to comply with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s detention standards. Russian authorities move to lift the terrorist designation for the Taliban (AP)
AP [3/31/2025 12:31 PM, Staff, 126906K]
Russia’s Supreme Court on Monday said it received a petition from the prosecutor general’s office to lift a ban on Afghanistan’s Taliban, who were outlawed two decades ago as a terrorist group.
The court said in a statement it would hold a hearing on the petition, submitted by Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov, on April 17. Russia last year adopted a law stipulating that the official terrorist designation of an organization could be suspended by a court.
The Taliban were put on Russia’s list of terrorist organizations in 2003. Any contact with such groups is punishable under Russian law.
At the same time, Taliban delegations have attended various forums hosted by Moscow. Russian officials have shrugged off questions about the seeming contradiction by emphasizing the need to engage the Taliban to help stabilize Afghanistan, which the group rules.
The former Soviet Union fought a 10-year war in Afghanistan that ended with Moscow withdrawing its troops in 1989. Since then, Moscow has made a diplomatic comeback as a power broker, hosting talks on Afghanistan involving senior representatives of the Taliban and neighboring nations.
There is a deepening divide in the international community on how to deal with the Taliban, who have been in power for three years and face no real opposition. Afghanistan’s rulers have pursued bilateral ties with major regional powers.
In recent years, the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have removed the Taliban from their lists of terror groups.
There are U.N. sanctions on the Taliban. Russia: Supreme Court to consider suspending ban on Taliban (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [3/31/2025 10:43 AM, Dmytro Hubenko, 126906K]
Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has asked the country’s Supreme Court to suspend a ban on the Taliban, Russian news agencies reported Monday.
The Supreme Court is due to consider the move in a hearing behind closed doors on April 17.
Russia, which has included the Taliban on a list of banned terrorist organizations in 2003, has been gradually building relations with the Islamic movement that rules Afghanistan.
President Vladimir Putin said in July last year that the Taliban was now an ally in the fight against terrorism. The Taliban government has been fighting for years against the rival jihadist group of the Islamic State of Khorasan (IS-K) in Afghanistan. In March 2024, IS-K claimed responsibility for an attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 140 people.
Russia’s warming relations with the Taliban
Moscow, which has a complicated history with Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, has warmed relations with the Taliban since the US withdrawal from the country in 2021. But even before that, Taliban members visited Russia at the Kremlin’s invitation for talks on Afghanistan, despite the ban.
In December, the Russian parliament passed a law allowing the suspension of bans on groups that Moscow has designated as terrorist organizations. The law paved the way for Moscow to normalize relations with the Taliban.
Under the law, such a decision can be made by a court on the basis of a request from the Prosecutor General stating that the group has ceased "terrorist" activity. Russia’s FSB security service can then remove the group from the list.
The Supreme Court is almost certain to lift the ban on the Taliban in April. The expected move, however, would not amount to a formal recognition of the Taliban government and what it calls the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.".
World divided over Taliban isolation
No country currently recognizes the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which seized power in August 2021 as US-led forces staged a chaotic withdrawal after 20 years of war.
The international community is increasingly divided over how to deal with the Taliban, who face no internal or external opposition. Since taking power, the movement imposed an extreme form of Islamic law that effectively bans women from public life.
Afghanistan’s rulers have pursued bilateral relations with major regional powers. Russia’s allies in Central Asia are also developing better relations with the Taliban. Kazakhstan removed the Taliban from its own list of banned "terrorist" groups at the end of 2023.
Recent months have also seen increased engagement between the Taliban and the United States under President Donald Trump, mostly through prisoner exchanges and releases. Bridging the Gap: Karzai, the Taliban, and the US Dilemma in Afghanistan (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [4/1/2025 4:00 AM, Freshta Jalalzai, 777K]
As Afghanistan plunged into chaos in August 2021, with the collapse of its government and its leaders fleeing, former President Hamid Karzai made an unprecedented and unexpected decision: He stayed.Amid the panic, as thousands of Kabul residents rushed to the airport, terrified by the news of a complete U.S. withdrawal, Karzai issued a calm yet urgent video appeal to the Taliban to "protect the people.".In that fragile moment – when the government had vanished into the shadows and the Taliban had yet to seize full control – anything could have befallen the Karzais. They stood on the precipice of fate, their lives hanging in the balance. Kabul has not forgotten. The city still remembers the haunting image of Najibullah, the last pro-communist president, swaying from a traffic pole after the Taliban’s takeover in 1996.Appearing alongside Karzai in the video were his three daughters Malalai, Durkhani, and Nazo – blonde, pale, and playful, evoking in a strange way the image of the last Russian Tsar’s lost princesses.Yet, unlike the Romanovs, whose dynasty ended in exile and execution, Karzai was not a leader in retreat but one reemerging into a new phase of his political life.Once viewed as Washington’s own strongman, Karzai had become a symbol of foreign intervention. It damaged his credibility among Afghans who opposed U.S. involvement. But his 2021 decision to remain in Kabul amid the turmoil granted him a renewed legitimacy that his U.S.-backed presidency had not.Since the fall of the Afghan government, Karzai has remained engaged with Afghans, foreign diplomats, and Taliban leaders, actively using social media despite reported restrictions on his movement and public speaking. This has provided some sense of normalcy to the Afghan public, and the U.S. allies left behind.The abrupt and chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces under the Biden administration, the closure of the U.S. embassy – once the largest in the region – and the severing of diplomatic ties created a strategic vacuum that China, Russia, and Iran have been eager to exploit.However, a recent shift in Washington’s approach under anew administration has sparked some hope for greater stability in the region, particularly as Afghanistan faces resurgent militant threats, including al-Qaida and Islamic State-Khorasan.Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief peace negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, returned to Kabul for the first time since the Taliban took power in 2021, signaling a quiet recalibration under the second Trump administration. The new administration quietly lifted its $10 million bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani, Taliban’s acting minister of interior and the leader of the powerful Haqqani network.Signs of positive change are emerging in Kabul, too. The Taliban, in a gesture of goodwill, released a U.S. citizen and removed anti-American slogans and roadblocks around the abandoned U.S. embassy.Whether these steps represent a genuine opening remains uncertain, but Washington cannot afford to ignore them. Some Republican hawks, like National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, advocate for a limited U.S. presence to counter terrorism and curb Chinese influence, while others favor a more cautious, but engaged, economic-based approach.One thing is clear: disengagement is no longer a viable strategy.The billions of dollars in American weaponry left behind, combined with Bagram Airfield’s strategic importance, make gaining a diplomatic foothold in Afghanistan compelling. Washington could reopen diplomatic channels, even if only through a limited third-party mission in Kabul.Engagement does not mean recognizing the Taliban, but rather establishing a framework for dialogue — similar to the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba before formal relations were restored. Targeted economic incentives, like unlocking a fraction of the frozen Afghan assets in exchange for verifiable human rights improvements, could provide leverage without compromising U.S. interests.Without direct engagement, Washington risks becoming a passive observer in a region it once shaped. While Qatar and the UAE have served as intermediaries, the U.S. has leverage through Karzai, who first introduced American politics to the Afghan public. For millions of Afghans, he remains a symbol of a freer era when women could pursue education and work.Some critics argue that Karzai’s tenure, tainted by allegations of corruption and mismanagement, has eroded his credibility. Others question whether he holds real influence under Taliban rule or if engaging with him is merely symbolic. However, his deep ties across Afghanistan’s tribal and political spectrum provide him with leverage unmatched by any other Afghan leader or foreign intermediary. As a Pashtun leader, Karzai’s influence even extends to the predominantly Pashtun Taliban, positioning him as a key figure in any future peace process.Another major criticism of Karzai is his outspoken opposition to U.S. policies and his strained relationships with former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Karzai once invoked the image of an Afghan woman to argue against night raids, bombings, and civilian casualties. Yet, despite these tensions, engagement with the U.S. is essential for Afghanistan, given the country’s dire need for strong allies and long-term stability.Karzai has also faced criticism at home and abroad for referring to the Taliban as "brothers." While controversial, given the context, this stance was inevitable. The war was taking countless lives, and with the understanding that the United States wouldn’t stay indefinitely, common ground had to be found. By sidelining Karzai during the peace negotiations with the Taliban, the U.S. may have missed a crucial opportunity for a settlement between the former government and the Taliban. But that is now history.The path forward requires multi-track diplomacy. Karzai understands, and Karzai’s influence is not just historical; it lies in his ability to navigate Afghanistan’s current power struggles.The Taliban may control the country, but they remain deeply divided. Beneath their public unity, tensions persist, particularly between the Haqqanis, entrenched in Afghanistan’s war landscape, and the Kandahar-based leadership, represented by the supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, a relative newcomer consolidating power. While Washington debates its approach, Karzai is already navigating these fault lines. His alliance with the Haqqanis, forged during their shared resistance against the Soviets, provides a foundation of trust, and he remains rooted in Kandahar, the historical center of Afghan power. A midwife says of the aid cuts in Afghanistan: ‘No one prioritizes women’s lives.’ (NPR)
NPR [3/31/2025 5:26 PM, Diaa Hadid and Khwaga Ghani, 30M]
An Afghan midwife describes how a woman died in childbirth, along with her baby. She was snowed into her village and couldn’t reach a hospital. Just weeks before, the health clinic in her village had closed. If it was open, a midwife could have helped her.
Other midwives, based in hospitals, tell NPR that their facilities are seeing women rushed in from remote areas where clinics have closed too late: The mothers and babies often die, say the midwives.
These maternal and baby deaths, they say, is partly a consequence of a reeling blow to Afghanistan’s fragile health system: the abrupt shuttering of USAID by the Trump administration, which once supplied more than 40% of all aid to this deeply poor country of some 40 million people. The World Health Organization said in a statement that over 200 clinics in Afghanistan closed as a result of American funding cuts.
"USAID should not have left Afghanistan. We are devastated," says Fatima, a 27-year-old midwife, who has worked in maternal care for the past seven years.
Making matters worse, other major European donors have also announced cuts to their foreign aid programs.
"It seems to be that other donors are following the U.S. — what Trump has done is give everyone a license to give up on funding aid," says Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch. She has focused on Afghanistan closely for decades.
Already, the U.S. aid cuts have caused 206 health facilities to shut down in Afghanistan, according to a World Health Organization count in late March. The WHO report said without urgent intervention, around 200 more facilities would shut down by June, impacting around 2.4 million people.
To give a sense of the ramifications, by February 19 — just a month after Trump was inaugurated and announced a suspension of USAID funding — more than 320 health facilities had shuttered. By March 4, some 153 of the facilities managed to reopen as charities scratched together money, according to Ajyal Sultany, head of communications for WHO in Kabul. But within two weeks, another 39 health facilities had shuttered, according to WHO.
Who bears the brunt
The shrinking availability of health care "threatens the most vulnerable — women, children, the elderly and displaced populations — who now face heightened risks of disease, malnutrition and preventable deaths," Sultany told NPR via email.
Midwives spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because they were critical of the Taliban and worried for their personal safety. They were also not authorized to speak to the media by the foreign-funded charities that employ them.
Most institutions impacted by the USAID cuts, from U.N. organizations to small charities, have repeatedly declined to comment on the record about the effects of the cuts on their work. Three aid workers told NPR, on condition of anonymity, that representatives of various Afghan charities are worried that if they speak out publicly, they’ll draw the ire of the Trump administration even as they try to negotiate the resumption of some aid.
Complications and deaths
As yet there is no available and relevant data on deaths and serious complications related to pregnancy and childbirth since health facilities began closing in February — and there may never be. But the five midwives with whom NPR spoke offered anecdotal accounts of women showing up at regional hospitals in labor and with complications that are sometimes deadly for the mother and the baby. The midwives believe that some of those complications could have been addressed if the women had accessed maternal care earlier in their labor.
Faezeh, 25, is a midwife who had worked in a clinic in an isolated, mountainous district of the western province of Herat. She says villagers had been so happy to have a clinic in their locality because the next nearest health facility was four hours away on treacherous, unpaved roads.
"The clinic was active day and night. There were lots of people coming and going," says Faezeh, who adds that the clinic –- like many other similar facilities that were recently shuttered –- offered nutrition to malnourished children and their mothers as well as vaccines.
So a few weeks ago, "when the clinic was closed," she recalls, "people were really upset." She says village elders begged the public health officer to reopen the clinic, but "there was no donor" to fund its reopening.
Faezeh says since the clinic closed, she got word that a mother and her baby died in childbirth. She says it was "snowing and raining, the roads were blocked," and there was no way to reach the nearest health clinic. Faezeh says she believes that they would not have died if they had accessed health care. She noted that there had not been a single maternal death when she worked at the village clinic.
A doctor who worked at the clinic that was shuttered told NPR that even if roads were open, his patients had no means to get to the city. Even to the village clinic, he said, "families used to walk or ride animals like donkeys."
Other women have arrived at distant health clinics — only to die along with their babies.
One woman, Karima, who has worked in maternal care for decades in a regional hospital, tells NPR that she’s seeing deaths because maternal care services "previously managed by foreign NGOs — are no longer operational."
She cited one pregnant woman who bled to death on the way to the hospital. Karima believes the woman likely could have been saved if she’d had a clinic closer to home. Another woman needed an emergency caesarean but arrived too late — her baby had died.
Another midwife in the western province of Herat, Somaya, told NPR that one of her rural patients was past her due date for delivery. The clinic in her area had shuttered, so the woman traveled into the city to give birth – but her baby had defecated in her womb, causing it to die. That is known as meconium aspiration syndrome – a potentially fatal condition that occurs in 5% to 10% of births but is treatable if diagnosed in time. In the midwife’s view, "the woman lost her baby because there was no one to provide her professional care in the community."
Fatima, the midwife who works in the deeply impoverished province of Farah, says she is seeing harrowing cases of women arriving too late to hospital.
"They arrive in critical condition: babies stuck halfway – heads out, but legs trapped, or legs out, while heads remain [inside the birth canal]." In those cases, Fatima says the babies died.
Fatima says she believes she’s only seeing a minority of cases. She says in her experience of working in poor, conservative communities, "most women give birth at home," – and if they die, she says, their deaths are not recorded. She says some women give birth at home because families can’t afford a taxi to hospital — many Afghans do not own their own vehicles.
Fatima says there are cultural issues as well — which are getting worse under the rule of the Taliban, which has severely restricted the freedoms of women and girls. Some families, she says, "refuse to let women leave home" even when they are in labor. Instead, she says, they task elderly female relatives to assist in deliveries. And when those birthing women or their babies die, family members "dismiss these deaths as ‘God’s will.’"
Another blow
In that context, Fatima and other midwives say, the USAID cuts were a blow to women who already face so much hardship.
Even before these 2025 cuts, health care in Afghanistan has always been tenuous, especially for women. It worsened after the Taliban seized power over three years ago from a Western-backed government. International aid dropped off, even as the Taliban began ratcheting up rules that now prevent most women from leaving their homes without a male guardian, that bar women from most professions and ban most women and girls from studying after the sixth grade.
Even a pilot program to train young women to work as community nurses and midwives, greenlit by the Taliban government in February last year was shuttered in December, apparently on the orders of the group’s spiritual leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada.
More and more countries make cuts
And the Trump administration’s cuts have triggered a domino effect of sorts: soon after those cuts were announced. On February 25, British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer announced his country would nearly halve its budget for foreign aid. He said that decision was made to divert resources to defense spending in response to the Trump administration’s call for NATO allies to contribute more money for defense.
Other major international aid donors followed suit. France said it planned to cut its foreign aid by up to 40%; the Netherlands announced foreign cuts as well. Belgium announced a cut of 25% in foreign aid. Switzerland announced smaller cuts — moves that the Norwegian Relief Committee described in a statement as "foreshadowing a significant drop in the assistance available to the world’s most vulnerable." The statement followed news in December that the world’s second largest aid donor at the time, Germany, would cut over $2 billion for foreign aid as its economy contracted.
Fatima, the Afghan midwife, described the cuts in foreign aid this way: "No one prioritizes women’s lives." Pakistan
U.S. arrests B.C. man, says he smuggled goods to Pakistan’s atomic bomb program (Vancouver Sun)
Vancouver Sun [3/31/2025 3:21 PM, Chuck Chiang, 6372K]
U.S. authorities have arrested a 67-year-old man from Surrey, and accused him of smuggling banned goods to Pakistan’s military and its nuclear weapons program for more than 15 years.The U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release that Mohammad Jawaid Aziz was arrested trying to cross into the U.S. from B.C. on March 21.The department said Aziz, also known as Jawaid Aziz Siddiqui and Jay Siddiqui, smuggled “millions of dollars” worth of export-controlled items from the United States to Pakistan, including industrial computer workstations, a thermal conductivity unit and a centrifugal pump.“From as early as 2003 through approximately March 2019, Siddiqui operated an illicit procurement network through his Canada-based company Diversified Technology Services,” the news release from the department said.“The purpose of the network was to obtain U.S.-origin goods on behalf of prohibited entities in Pakistan that were associated with the country’s nuclear, missile, and unmanned aerial vehicle programs.”None of the allegations have been proven in court.A young man answered the door Monday at the grey, multi-storey home in Surrey that U.S. authorities list as Aziz’s residence and the address of Diversified Technology Services.He declined to comment.The man, who did not identify himself, said “no” when asked if Aziz had legal representation who could comment on the case or confirm any details.The Department of Justice said Aziz, a dual citizen of Pakistan and Canada, remained in custody in Seattle on Monday, and will be transferred to Minnesota where the investigation is largely based.The indictment says Pakistan first tested a nuclear bomb in 1998, and the United States has imposed export and re-export restrictions on the country and entities linked to the Pakistani military programs since then.The partially unsealed indictment said Aziz owned and operated Diversified Technology Services and used the firm as part of a system to “willfully export … goods from the United States to entities in Pakistan that were designated on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List without first having obtained the required licenses.”
“Through Diversified Technology Services, along with other businesses he used for similar purposes, (Aziz) would approach U.S. companies about procuring the goods requested by the restricted Pakistani entities,” the indictment said.The court document said those involved in the alleged scheme would then “submit quotes” to the restricted Pakistani entities based on U.S. pricing information and add an “upcharge” to profit from the transaction.“If the restricted Pakistani entity accepted the co-conspirators’ offer, the defendants and their co-conspirators would effectuate payment for the goods and … cause the needed goods to be either exported directly to Pakistan, or transshipped to Pakistan through a third country,” the indictment said.U.S. authorities say that the defendant would “at no time” reveal to companies in the United States that the goods they were selling would ultimately end up in the hands of a prohibited end-user in Pakistan.Those end-users allegedly included Pakistan’s space agency, which the U.S. says develops the country’s ballistic missiles, and companies associated with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.The indictment said some of the goods would be received by Aziz at his Surrey home, from where the products would be shipped to Pakistan.Among the items listed as having been allegedly illegally exported between 2013 and 2018 were close to US$800,000 of goods, including a laser interferometer worth more than US$200,000 used for measuring optical components.Aziz faces charges of violating U.S. export laws and conspiracy. The export violations carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.The indictment says part of the operation that ensnared Aziz involved an undercover government agent posing as a representative of one of the U.S. companies. Uncertainty Torments Afghan Refugees Facing Deportation from Pakistan (New York Times)
New York Times [3/31/2025 4:14 PM, Zia ur-Rehman, 831K]
In a refugee settlement on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan, Afghan families gathered on Sunday to observe the festival of Eid al-Fitr — not in joyous celebration, but in quiet apprehension. On Monday, thousands who have called Pakistan home for generations face a deportation deadline and an uncertain, possibly dangerous future.
Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, millions of Afghans have sought refuge in neighboring Pakistan, fleeing waves of violence and instability. Over the decades, many have returned home, but conflict and political upheaval continue to send hundreds of thousands back.
The latest wave of displacement followed the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, after the collapse of Ashraf Ghani’s U.S.-backed government. They included refugees who were promised resettlement in the United States.
Many now face mandatory repatriation, with a March 31 deadline — a decision that was announced only last month, sparking widespread fear.“As a fellow Muslim nation and a neighbor, Pakistan should show compassion and grant refugees more time to prepare,” said Haji Abdullah Bukhari, a community leader in Karachi. “Uprooting their lives in just a few days is impossible. Many have spent decades here, and now they are being forced to return to a country they barely know.”
Pakistan’s ongoing deportation of Afghan refugees stems from growing frustration with the Taliban administration, which it accuses of sheltering Pakistani militants, particularly Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or T.T.P., responsible for deadly attacks inside Pakistan. The Taliban deny these allegations, but tensions continue to rise.
In 2023, Pakistan expelled hundreds of thousands of Afghans — both documented and undocumented. However, most refugees awaiting resettlement in Western countries were largely spared thanks to diplomatic interventions.
Their fate, however, became increasingly uncertain in January when President Trump issued an executive order suspending all refugee admissions to the United States. This decision left thousands of Afghans stranded in Pakistan.
In February, Pakistan announced its plans to repatriate Afghans awaiting resettlement by March 31, along with 800,000 Pakistan-issued Afghan Citizenship Card holders and an unknown number of undocumented Afghan migrants.
The decision has caused widespread unease, particularly among those most vulnerable to Taliban persecution, including former Afghan government and security officials, women’s rights activists and journalists.“Many have told us they fear prison, torture, or even execution if Pakistan forcibly sends them back to Afghanistan,” said Moniza Kakar, a lawyer with the Joint Action Committee for Refugees, a Pakistani civil society network that advocates for international intervention and support to safeguard lives.
Avaaz, a global campaign that is currently working to support a group of 60 Afghan women’s rights activists stuck in Pakistan, has also voiced deep concern over the deportation drive.
Among those affected is Samia Hamza, a women’s rights activist and former law and international relations student under the U.S.-funded Denton Program. After the Taliban seized power, she protested against the ban on girls’ education, further endangering herself.
As conditions worsened in late 2021, she fled to Pakistan. However, she has since faced severe discrimination and economic hardship while awaiting U.S. resettlement through the special immigration visas for Afghans program.
Like many Afghans, she was devastated by the Trump administration’s decision to halt new immigrants. “We have heard nothing about our case since then,” said Hamza, who lives with her husband and four children in Islamabad. “With the threat of deportation, returning to Afghanistan means facing grave danger.”
The Pakistani government has ruled out extending the deportation deadline despite appeals from international organizations and the Taliban administration. Justifying its crackdown on Afghans, the government has drawn parallels to ongoing deportation efforts in the United States and various European countries.
Meanwhile, Philippa Candler, the Pakistan representative at the United Nations refugee agency, urged Pakistan and Afghanistan to ensure voluntary, safe returns. “Forced returns help no one and aren’t sustainable — many deported in 2023 have already returned.”
Many Afghans remember terrifying scenes of the 2023 expulsions, dreading the moment when police contingents might arrive — knocking on doors, rounding up families into trucks and transferring them to detention centers before forcing them into Afghanistan.“We are all praying for a miracle that Pakistan will stop the deportations to a country my children have never seen,” said Naik Bakht, an Afghan refugee who arrived in Karachi in 1996. A father of three, all born in Pakistan, he said he fears for their future.“I am terrified. What will we do in Afghanistan? Where will we go? How will we survive?” Afghan musicians face peril as refugees forced out of Pakistan (Reuters)
Reuters [3/31/2025 1:24 PM, Zofeen T. Ebrahim, 62527K]
Ustad Nadeem Baksh, a classical singer from Afghanistan, paid Pakistani police a bribe to avoid deportation after law enforcement raided his home in the city of Rawalpindi.But he worries the bribe of 50,000 rupees, or about $175, has only bought the family of 14 a limited amount of time."I don’t know how long we will be safe here before we are forced to move to another city - or back to Afghanistan," Baksh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from his rented two-room home in Peshawar, near the Afghan border, where his family relocated after the raid last month.Baksh is one of thousands of Afghan refugees in Pakistan who have gone into hiding or are preparing to leave after the Pakistani government on March 7 ordered Afghans without official permission to stay to leave the country by the end of the month.The deportation order comes amid a period of tensions between the neighbours, with Islamabad accusing the Taliban of allowing an extremist group to use Afghan territory to carry out attacks on Pakistani targets.Afghan musicians have faced the ire of the Taliban, which follows a hardline interpretation of Islam, since it seized power in 2021. Music has been banned, and the authorities have destroyed instruments, closed music schools and assaulted musicians. They now fear imprisonment or violence if sent back.Since the start of this year, more than 1,000 Afghans have been detained and more than 20,000 forced to leave Pakistan, according to Moniza Kakar, a Karachi-based human rights lawyer and head of the Joint Action Committee on Afghan Refugees.Pakistan treats Afghan refugees like a "political football" to pressure the Afghan government, Kakar said."Their stay in Pakistan depends on the political climate," she said. "When relations are good, Pakistan extends kindness, even allowing refugees to open bank accounts, regardless of documentation."But when tensions rise between the two countries, they’re mercilessly used as pawns."About 3 million Afghans, half of whom are officially designated as refugees, now live in Pakistan, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR. That figure also includes 800,000 Afghan Citizens Cardholders, who have temporary residency in Pakistan, while the remaining 700,000 people are undocumented migrants.An estimated 600,000 Afghans arrived in Pakistan since 2021, the UNHCR has said, citing Pakistani government data.Some 850,000 Afghans have left Pakistan since the government introduced the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Programme in 2023, said Qaiser Khan Afridi, a UNHCR spokesman based in Islamabad. Most of the returnees lacked the documentation to reside in Pakistan, he added.The UNHCR has said it is "seeking clarity" on the latest deportation programme, while rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said refugees will face persecution if they are forced back to Afghanistan.‘HUMILIATING’The Interior Ministry and the Information Ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the repatriation programme.For Baksh, 52, returning home would mean quitting a generations-old tradition of music. He belongs to the Patiala gharana style of Hindustani singing that was founded by one of his forebears, Ali Baksh Khan, in the 19th century."Music is in our blood," he said.In 2022, the Taliban raided Baksh’s home and destroyed his instruments, then jailed and beat him and his sons."It was humiliating," Baksh said. "We were told to abandon music and sell vegetables on a pushcart instead."The Taliban’s prohibition of music and art stems from its claim they cause moral corruption.After fleeing Afghanistan, Baksh and his family lived without visas, which would have cost the family more than $1,000, including the fees demanded by agents, said Nazim Baksh, Nadeem’s 24-year-old son and a tabla drum player."We don’t even have enough for our rent and food, let alone money for our visas," said Nazim.Since the crackdown on Afghan refugees, Nadeem Baksh said he no longer is able to make music. "I need peace to do that," he said.FEAR FOR LIFEMohammad Yaser Howayda, 26, and his family of four fled to Pakistan in 2022 after he was jailed and assaulted for being at a party where friends were playing music.His family’s sole breadwinner, Howayda had already lost his income as a teacher at his small music school when the Taliban destroyed its instruments in 2021.Howayda fears he could be killed if he returns to Afghanistan."They despise me because I’m Hazara, a Shia minority known for our art, music, and dance - everything the Taliban considers haram," or forbidden, he said.Hazaras have faced persecution in Afghanistan for more than a century, including by the Taliban when it was in power in the 1990s. Since its return, more than 700 Hazaras have been killed in attacks claimed by an Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch has said.Mohammad Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban, said Hazaras had no reason to fear the administration.Hazaras "can live normal lives like other Afghans," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.But he reiterated the Taliban position that "music is prohibited in Islam" and suggested musicians "pursue other occupations to contribute to the country."Once in Islamabad, Howayda began teaching lessons in guitar and dombra, the long-necked stringed instrument played by Hazaras. That has all but come to end, save for a few online classes he continues to give.His students, most of them fellow Afghans, have abandoned their lessons since Pakistan began its crackdown on migrants, with many either deported or detained or afraid to come out of hiding, Howayda said.Howayda has also struggled to secure the paperwork necessary to remain in Pakistan, but in the current climate in Pakistan, he questioned if a visa is still a guarantee of protection."You cannot even imagine what it’s like to be living in constant fear of being deported," he said."If you take away music from me, it will be like taking my soul away." Who Is Mahrang Baloch, The Rights Advocate Arrested By Pakistan On Terrorism Charges? (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [3/31/2025 10:09 PM, Abubakar Siddique, 968K]
A physician from Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan Province is among the hundreds of individuals and organizations nominated for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize this year.
Yet Mahrang Baloch, 32, a rights campaigner, is languishing in prison on charges of terrorism, murder, and sedition in the provincial capital, Quetta.
On March 22, she was arrested after leading a demonstration to demand the release of a leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), a civil rights group she leads.
Her arrest has been widely condemned and has sparked a series of protests and strikes.
Since March 28, the Balochistan National Party, an ethnonationalist group, has embarked on a "long march" protest rally. It has mobilized thousands of supporters from across the vast region, and protesters celebrated Eid al-Fitar, the festival marking the end of Ramadan, near Quetta to press for her release.
Experts and activists in Balochistan say the protests and sympathy for Mahrang Baloch are a sign of her growing popularity and leadership stature in a region that has been reeling from a Pakistani military crackdown against Baluch separatists for a quarter-century.
Since the early 2000s, thousands have been killed and injured in attacks by Baluch separatist militants and Pakistani security forces. The BYC claims thousands of Baluch men have been forcefully disappeared or extrajudicially killed by Pakistani security forces. Islamabad, in return, says it is fighting terrorists in Balochistan.
In recent years, disgruntled members of Pakistan’s ethnic Baluch minority have come to view Mahrang Baloch as their authentic voice because of her committed campaign for ending forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and the exploitation of the region’s vast natural resources.
Balochistan’s ‘Most Important Political Figure’.
"She is the most important political figure in Balochistan because she has an unblemished record of standing up for its rights," Ali Talpur, a writer and commentator who has followed the region’s politics for decades.
Talpur, now in his 70s, knew Mahrang Baloch’s late father, Abdul Ghaffar Langove. The political activist was killed nearly two years after he had been forcefully disappeared in December 2009.
Mahrang Baloch has blamed Pakistan’s powerful military for the killing, but Islamabad denies killing political activists.
"After his extrajudicial killing by the state, her natural response was to see that others don’t suffer the same fate," Talpur said of what motivates her campaigning.
Mahrang Baloch is the eldest of six children, five girls and a boy. She was only 16 when her father disappeared.
Kiyya Baloch, an exiled journalist covering Balochistan, has tracked Mahrang Baloch’s struggle since she led a nearly yearlong successful campaign to secure the release of her brother after he disappeared in 2017.
"This strengthened her resolve to speak up for others as well," he said.
Mahrang Baloch became a household name in Pakistan when she led a protest march over 1,000 kilometers after a Baluch man was killed while in the custody of counterterrorism police in November 2023.
She faced constant harassment, road closures, and other obstacles as she led hundreds of protesters from the remote town of Turbat to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.Kiyya Baloch says the government’s brutal treatment of protesters, most of whom were relatives of the Baluch victims of forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, attracted attention to their plight in Pakistan and abroad.
During their stay in Islamabad for several weeks, protesters were arrested and beaten. Authorities attempted to deny them food, heating, and medical treatment. Their camp was ransacked, and police used water cannons to disperse them.
"All kinds of pressure were used to wear her down, but she did not break," Kiyya Baloch said.
Celebrated Abroad, Persecuted At Home
"The march brought unprecedented attention to the Baloch struggle," Time Magazine noted in its citation after including Mahrang Baloch among its 100 emerging leaders last year. The BBC also included her in its 100 Women 2024 list.
"She is a woman leading a massive civil rights movement, which attracts international attention," said Kiyya Baloch.
But at home, her persecution continued.
She was harassed after attending a conference in Norway last July. She was placed on a counterterrorism list and prevented from traveling to New York to participate in the Time Magazine event in October.
"All these measures brought more attention to her struggle," said Kiyya Baloch.
International human rights watchdogs have condemned Mahrang Baloch’s arrest.
"We urge the Pakistani authorities to refrain from abusing counterterrorism or public safety measures," United Nations special rapporteurs and human rights experts said a statement on March 26.
In a March 27 statement, Amnesty International said the arrest of Mahrang Baloch and other BYC leaders and activists "shows wanton disregard by the law enforcement agencies for the rights of Baloch people under Pakistan’s Constitution and the country’s obligations under international human rights law.".
Islamabad, however, rejects such criticism.
In a sharp rebuke to the UN, a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman said such statements need to "adhere to principles of objectivity, avoid selective criticism, reflect factual accuracy, and acknowledge the full context of the situation.".
Mahrang Baloch’s sister, Nadia, has vowed to continue their peaceful campaign in Quetta.
"No amount of violence and oppression was able to break us two decades ago, and it will not break us now," she told journalists on March 26. Pakistan saw the highest number of militant attacks during Ramadan for a decade (AP)
AP [3/31/2025 9:36 AM, Riazat Butt, 777K]
Pakistan saw the highest number of militant attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in a decade, a think tank reported Monday.Some militant groups previously paused hostilities for Ramadan, but the country has seen an overall increase in violence in recent years.The Pak Institute for Peace Studies reported at least 84 attacks during Ramadan, which ended Sunday in Pakistan. It reported 26 attacks during last year’s Ramadan.The Pakistani Taliban unilaterally ended a ceasefire with the government in November 2022, while the Baloch Liberation Army has developed its capabilities to stage elaborate attacks. Both have contributed to the rise in violence.The outlawed BLA was behind a train hijacking on March 11 in the southwest province of Balochistan that killed at least 25 people.Another think tank, the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, recorded 61 attacks in the first three weeks of Ramadan. There were 60 total attacks in the previous Ramadan, it said.It also said this was the deadliest Ramadan in a decade for security personnel, with 56 killed between March 2 and March 20.Abdullah Khan, managing director of the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, cited an overall escalation in militant activity.“There has been a unification of different groups,” Khan said. “Baloch factions are joining hands. In some areas (of the northwest), the Hafiz Gul Bahadur faction is more lethal than the Pakistani Taliban, it is competing with them.”He said there was also a revival of banned organizations like Lashkar-e-Islam, which operates from the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.Pakistan accuses the Taliban government in neighboring Afghanistan of giving haven to such groups, saying militants have thrived since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Kabul rejects that.Khan also pointed to intelligence failures, including those that led to the train hijack in Balochistan, and the widening trust gap between the state and the population: “It’s important to get back public support. The public is the first line of defense.” Charity-seekers from all over Pakistan flock to Karachi at Ramadan to collect alms (NPR)
NPR [3/31/2025 8:54 AM, Betsy Joles, 30M]
On a recent Monday afternoon, 61-year-old Sayani Soomar, a widow, sits on a curb in a busy Karachi commercial area with a paper sign asking for help. She holds in her lap packages with pills for high blood pressure, her husband’s death certificate and an electricity bill — evidence of her need. Since quitting her job as a housekeeper in Karachi around five years ago because of knee pain, Soomar says she has often resorted to begging to cover her expenses.
This month, Soomar says she’s come to the streets to ask for zakat, an obligatory form of charity in Islam for people with wealth above a certain threshold. It’s earmarked for the poor and needy and often given out during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. During this time of year, Soomar says people can be generous, but getting donations depends on being in the right place at the right time. "Many people are giving charity," she says. "We may try our luck."
Sitting with Soomar on the curb is her young granddaughter, whom Soomar went by bus to pick up from Qazi Ahmed, a town around 170 miles away, to join her for Ramadan. The two plan to return to Qazi Ahmed after Eid, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, which begins in Pakistan today.
Islam’s holiest month is known for increased generosity. And in Pakistan’s largest city and financial hub, the spirit of Ramadan has also fueled a migration trend among those seeking charity. It’s estimated that tens of thousands converge on this port megacity during Ramadan to collect alms.
Faisal Edhi, chairman of the Edhi Foundation, Pakistan’s best-known charity organization, says there are entire communities of what he calls "habitual" beggars who travel to Karachi during Ramadan and return to their hometowns soon after. "They [stay] here, they make money and they go back," he says.
The annual influx of charity-seekers to Karachi is not a new phenomenon, but it has gained increased government attention this year as Pakistan steps up efforts to curb begging. A bill passed by Pakistan’s Senate last month expands the definition of trafficking to include organized begging and includes a prison term of up to 10 years for anyone who lures or forces others into begging. In Karachi, police are advised to move children found begging to child protection centers, to be looked after by the Sindh provincial social welfare department.
The national government is also taking steps to stop begging by its citizens abroad, after recent complaints from Gulf nations including Saudi Arabia. The kingdom says beggars arrive under the guise of religious pilgrimage, prompting Pakistan last year to block more than 4,000 from traveling there. Last week, Pakistani authorities also arrested the alleged head of a criminal network it accuses of trafficking women to Saudi Arabia. The Federal Investigative Agency says the women were forced into begging after being promised free passage for the Umrah pilgrimage.
Around 25% of Pakistan’s population lived below the poverty line last year, according to the World Bank, and economists say major structural challenges are contributing to this.
The country is slowly recovering from a years-long economic crisis and is still struggling to create opportunities for unskilled workers, says Karachi-based economist Ammar Khan. "We do not have any significant or serious growth happening in either the modernization of agriculture or industrialization of the country," he says.
Laws against begging are loosely enforcedPhilanthropy is especially evident during Ramadan, as charity organizations in Karachi provide food rations to the needy and free meals before and after the day-long fast.
Near one public iftar meal to break the fast, next to a well-known Sufi shrine, a group of longtime beggars mixes with newcomers. Some have arrived from as far away as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the other side of the country. They disagree about the generosity of Karachi residents: Some regulars insist it’s minimal, but a boy from Chiniot, a city in Punjab province to the north, says he saw another child earn 5,000 Pakistani rupees, around $18, in one outing during Ramadan — a large sum compared to what unskilled laborers earn in a day.
It’s hard to pinpoint how many people come to Karachi to seek charity during Ramadan, says the city’s Mayor Murtaza Wahab. He says there are no official figures for these seasonal migrants. But he suggests that the number who come to beg during Ramadan could be even more than the 10,000 people who he estimates come to Karachi per day for any reason in a normal month. Karachi’s police were unable to provide a number of charity seekers who come from outside the city during this time or any other time of year.
Begging has been illegal in Pakistan since 1958 and can carry a jail sentence of up to three years. The practice remains common — and authorities say those involved are often part of criminal networks that force children into begging by trafficking them. Over the years, Pakistan’s provinces have tried to crack down on criminal groups targeting minors by tightening child protection laws. The provincial government in Karachi also vowed this year to take action against so-called professional beggars — those who make a living by begging — and has arrested 220 people so far during this Ramadan.
In general, laws related to begging are loosely enforced, and people arrested in Karachi are often released by courts after a verbal warning or a minor fine, says Asad Raza, deputy inspector general of police for the city’s affluent South Zone. "The law enforcement agencies as well as the courts, they are not very strict about [laws’] implementation," he says.
Some come to Karachi seeking work at Ramadan, but end up begging instead
Although some Karachi residents frown on the practice of begging, many are still happy to give to those who ask for money, especially during Ramadan. Outside a bakery in the upscale Defense Housing Authority neighborhood, 24-year-old Naveed Ali hands a bill out the window of his car to a a young woman seeking alms. "Leaders have made things expensive," he says. "Every person is poor and can’t earn or is unemployed. Because of this, they are compelled to do this. If they ask in the name of Allah, I give it."
Several men say they came to Karachi during this Ramadan not to beg, but in hopes of finding daily wage work. Muhammad Younus, 28, arrived from the city of Tando Adam, around 130 miles away. He’s among dozens of people gathered under a tent for iftar, while workers from a charity organization serve heaping plates of biryani from a big metal pot.
He says he makes this trip annually because working odd jobs in Karachi can fetch two to three times the 500 rupees, about $2 a day, he earns at home. He uses the extra cash to buy gifts for his children for Eid.
But after failing to find work in Karachi this year, he has resorted to staying in the streets and living off charity. He reluctantly admits he is accepting money from people passing by.
"I am not a beggar," he says, "but circumstances have overwhelmed me. I only ask people to help me." India
US Slams High India Duties on Farm Goods Before April 2 Tariffs (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [4/1/2025 4:11 AM, Shruti Srivastava, 5.5M]
The Donald Trump administration highlighted India’s high tariffs on American farm goods just days before reciprocal duties kick in, putting further pressure on the South Asian nation to reduce curbs in its politically-sensitive agriculture sector.“You have 100% tariff from India on American agricultural products,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday. Trump’s spokeswoman also pointed to examples of tariff rates from the European Union, Japan and Canada, signaling those entities are likely among the targets of the president’s new levies. “This makes it virtually impossible for American products to be imported into these markets,” she said.
Her comments come just before Washington unveils Trump’s reciprocal tariffs on April 2, which has kept policymakers around the world on edge. While New Delhi has recently rolled out sweeping cuts to duties on American goods ranging from textiles to motorcycles, the US had asked India to make greater concessions across sectors, including farm.
A US Trade Representative report on foreign trade barriers released Monday underscored India’s high levies structure, including 39% tariffs on agricultural products, eight times what the US charges. The country maintains high applied tariffs on a wide range of goods, including vegetable oils, apples, corn, coffee, raisins and walnuts, it said, using data from 2023.
The report, which is released annually, also said that India has non-tariff barriers such as import bans and licensing requirements in certain some sectors.
While agriculture is a politically-sensitive sector for the South Asian nation, where protesting farmers have earlier demanded suspension of all free trade deals, New Delhi has been been reviewing some US demands. Among the proposals, India is considering lower duties on pecans, pulses and non-genetically modified soybeans, as well as dried distilled grains soluble — a by-product of ethanol production used in animal feed, Bloomberg reported last week.
India has already lowered import taxes on a range of goods, including bourbon whiskey and high-end motorcycles, such as those made by Harley Davidson Inc. The two countries aim to seal a trade deal around around October or November. Trump’s Russian Oil Threat Pushes India to Seek Alternatives (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [3/31/2025 11:40 PM, Serene Cheong and Yongchang Chin, 5.5M]
Indian refiners have rushed back to the market to seek crude supply after President Donald Trump’s threat of more penalties against Russia raised concerns over potential disruptions to oil flows.
State-owned Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. are seeking additional supplies for May arrival from regions such as the Middle East, North Sea and Mediterranean, said people familiar with the matter. The trading cycle for barrels delivered next month is typically concluded in early March.
On Sunday, Trump raised the prospect of so-called secondary tariffs on buyers of Russian oil if President Vladimir Putin refused a ceasefire with Ukraine. The comments drove benchmark futures higher, with West Texas Intermediate surging 3.1% on Monday, the biggest gain in almost 11 weeks.
The Indian refiners are seeking non-Russian supplies from the spot market to reduce their reliance on the OPEC+ member following Trump’s threat, said traders who received the tender notifications, asking not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
Spokespeople for BPCL and HPCL didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
India has been highly reliant on cheaper Russian supplies since the war in Ukraine after Moscow began slashing offer prices to entice buyers following the rollout of western sanctions. Last month, both state and private refiners were confident in their ability to get all the Russian crude they had sought, after a brief hiatus caused by harsher sanctions from Washington.
Russia-to-India flows made up almost 40% of imports by the Asian nation in 2024, with Urals from western ports forming the bulk of purchases. India has reduced its reliance on Middle Eastern as well as African supplies in recent years due to its access to the cheaper Russian grades. India trains thousands of medics to promote vaccine in huge push to end cervical cancer (The Guardian)
The Guardian [4/1/2025 1:00 AM, Kat Lay, 78.9M]
Tens of thousands of doctors across India are being trained to promote the HPV vaccine, in a push to eliminate cervical cancer in the country.
They will check with mothers attending medical appointments that they intend to vaccinate their daughters, and visit schools and community centres armed with facts and slideshows to counter vaccine disinformation.
One in five cervical cancer cases worldwide occur in India – and the overwhelming majority of those are caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV.
HPV vaccination has become routine practice in many countries and has been available in India privately since 2008, but with low take-up.
Sutapa Biswas, co-founder of the Cancer Foundation of India, said imported vaccines were expensive and people were reluctant to spend money on prevention. Misinformation surrounding deaths during, but unrelated to, an HPV vaccine trial in the country had left it with “baggage”, she said.However, India has recently started manufacturing its own cervical cancer vaccine, and the government is expected to make it part of the national vaccination programme later this year or early next year.
Biswas said it had been frustrating to know a vaccine was available but was not being used. “So many times [we would hear] all kinds of excuses – ‘the cost is so high, we cannot vaccinate’. But the cost of treating cancer is way higher.”
Now, she said: “Everything is kind of converging and we want to make the most of this opportunity. We are also keeping the pressure on the government so that we don’t miss this chance.”
Last year about 11,000 members of the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (Fogsi) underwent virtual training. About 100 of those trainees have now become the National HPV Faculty and will each train 500 general physicians from the Indian Medical Association over the next six months.
The idea, Biswas said, “is to build confidence”. Training includes practical information on dosages, details of the World Health Organization’s push to eliminate cervical cancer, and advice on how to answer common questions.
The implementation of India’s cervical screening programme had been sluggish, she said. Most cancers are diagnosed late, and most people’s experiences of the disease relate to death.
Many non-specialist doctors “didn’t even know that a cancer could be eliminated and vaccination could be such a gamechanger”, Biswas said.
After the training, doctors are asked to approach their community in their local language to give short presentations.
The Covid-19 pandemic, and associated vaccination campaigns, had helped, Biswas said – even in less-educated rural communities people now understood the link between viruses and vaccines. “Now, when we are talking in the community, we can [explain] there’s a virus causing cervical cancer – that’s why we are here, we have a vaccine.”
Training was also offered separately to local civil society organisations, she said “on how to understand this and talk about it so there is no backlash”.
Dr Priya Ganeshkumar, the gynaecologist and cancer specialist leading the project within Fogsi, said gynaecologists were well placed to do advocacy work.
Families often returned to the doctor who had delivered their baby when their daughters started having periods, or in subsequent pregnancies “so we have a lot of scope for talking about this vaccine”, she said. It might be “the daughter is sitting with the mother, and [we can] proactively ask the question ‘hey, girl – what’s your age?’ [and ask the parent] ‘Did you vaccinate your child?’”.
While many gynaecologists were already aware of the HPV vaccine, she asked: “Did they emphasise it?” The training, she said, helped them to understand the importance of raising it with patients and to not assume that vaccination was the job of a paediatrician. The HPV vaccine is typically given to preteens, later than most childhood vaccinations.
The potential was vast, Ganeshkumar said. “We all know about cervical cancer – India is a hub of it. Every seven to eight minutes, a lady in India is dying due to cervical cancer, when it is preventable.”
Cancer Research UK is providing about a quarter of the project’s funding. Its chief executive, Michelle Mitchell, said it was part of efforts towards “a future where almost nobody develops cervical cancer”. India Forecasters Warn Abnormally Hot Summer Looms (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [4/1/2025 1:53 AM, Staff, 931K]
India can expect hotter-than-usual temperatures this summer with more heatwave days taking a toll on lives and livelihoods, the weather office warned.
The country is no stranger to scorching summers but years of scientific research has found climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
Summer in India lasts from April to June, when temperatures often soar past 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) at the season’s peak.
This year, the hot weather season will see "above-normal" maximum temperatures over most parts of the country, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said in a forecast late Monday.
The number of heatwave days, when abnormally high temperatures several degrees above the long-term average are recorded, will also increase.
"Up to 10 heatwave days or even more can be expected, especially over east India", leading to heat stress, weather bureau boss Mrutyunjay Mohapatra told reporters.
India usually experiences four to seven heatwave days between April and June.
Infants, the elderly, people with health problems and outdoor workers are particularly vulnerable to hotter temperatures.
The resulting heat stress can cause symptoms ranging from dizziness and headaches to organ failure and death.
City dwellers surrounded by concrete, brick and other heat-absorbing surfaces also face an elevated risk.
Prolonged periods of extreme heat can also strain infrastructure such as power grids and transportation systems.
The IMD said heat action plans must be devised to address those challenges.
"This includes providing access to cooling centres, issuing heat advisories, and implementing strategies to alleviate urban heat island effects in affected areas," it said.
India sweltered through its longest-ever heatwave last year, with temperatures regularly passing 45 degrees Celsius.
The World Health Organization has calculated that heat kills a minimum of half a million people every year, but warns the real figure could be up to 30 times higher. Will US Tariffs Lift the Veil on India’s Drug Safety Problem? (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [3/31/2025 4:00 PM, Mihir Sharma, 5.5M]
India’s exporters are bracing for President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Some are confident that whatever is announced on Wednesday will not hurt them; others are genuinely uncertain how to manage if they can’t export to the US.The pharmaceutical industry — which is well known globally for churning out generic drugs that are the backbone of many countries’ health systems — should be particularly worried. Over 30% of Indian pharma exports go to the US, and it provides an even larger proportion of earnings.Trump has promised, in the past, that levies on pharma imports would begin at 25%, similar to what he imposed on cars recently. But the president seems to have walked that back more recently, perhaps because the administration is uncertain of the consequences of a sharp rise in the price of off-patent drugs.A spike of that sort might well cause even more of an uproar than an increase in the price of cars in a nation where health care is already unaffordable and out of reach for many citizens. By some estimates, generic and biosimilar drugs account for 90% of prescriptions filled in the US, although they represent barely over a percentage point of total health care spending. Indian-made medicines satisfy about 40% of US demand for off-patent formulations. This is one of the few ways in which American patients get a good deal. It’s possible, therefore, that pharma might be excluded from the first batch of tariffs entirely.But Indian pharma should view that only as a temporary reprieve. Trump will eventually get around to the sector. Worse, the US — and then the world — might be driven by new trade barriers to discover alternatives to India’s pill factories. As a consequence, they may also recognize the poor quality of the products these factories have been selling them.India’s generics manufacturers have been coasting for far too long. Their reputation has survived mainly because patients, and their doctors, haven’t been taking a close look at these medicines’ records.Every now and then a horrifying story cuts through the noise. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered that a mysterious outbreak of blindness was caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria in over-the-counter eyedrops exported from India. And outside America, more than 150 children died in countries as far apart as Uzbekistan and Gambia after they were given cough syrup imported from an Indian factory. The medicine was contaminated with diethylene glycol, which causes kidney failure.The Indian Pharmaceutical Association is defensive of its members’ reputations. It responded swiftly, for example, to a study published a few weeks ago in an academic journal that concluded Indian-made generic medicines were associated with a 54% greater risk of “serious adverse events” than their domestic equivalents.Yet we have had evidence for a long while that quality standards and corporate governance in the pharmaceutical sector simply aren’t up to par. Leaks and whistleblowers over the past two decades have made that clear. One of those whistleblowers, Dinesh Thakur, even had his story turned into a TV show last year.The Indian drugs regulator is understaffed and inefficient. Responsibility for ensuring that the sector’s export-oriented factories meet high standards devolves upon the US Food and Drug Administration. But the FDA was already behind on its inspections in 2019 — and, since the pandemic hit, seems to have given up on filling its backlog. More than 340 plants in India and China that export to the US have not been inspected by the FDA in more than five years. And, as Thakur has chronicled, sometimes companies set out to deliberately deceive the inspectors.Easy money in the US and elsewhere has kept Indian generics factories in business. But it has also meant that the industry has few incentives to clean up its act. The combination of uninformed patients, apathetic medical professionals, and overwhelmed regulators has proved toxic.Some in the industry are already calling for targeted tax breaks or subsidies to help them deal with any new duties. But that would only paper over the cracks. Indian pharma’s business model is already broken; tariffs would only emphasize how much it needs reform.Generics producers need to start demonstrating that they are truly irreplaceable for the world — and they can begin by focusing on quality, not shortcuts to profit. New Delhi should invest in more and better regulation so that these improvements can be demonstrated to the world. Indians — who, after all, depend upon these factories more than anyone — will thank them for it. NSB
As Bangladesh Reinvents Itself, Islamist Hard-Liners See an Opening (New York Times)
New York Times [4/1/2025 2:22 AM, Mujib Mashal and Saif Hasnat, 831K]
The extremists began by asserting control over women’s bodies.
In the political vacuum that has emerged after the overthrow of Bangladesh’s authoritarian leader, religious fundamentalists in one town declared that young women could no longer play soccer. In another, they forced the police to free a man who had harassed a woman for not covering her hair in public, then draped him in garlands of flowers.
More brazen calls followed. Demonstrators at a rally in Dhaka, the capital, warned that if the government did not give the death penalty to anyone who disrespected Islam, they would carry out executions with their own hands. Days later, an outlawed group held a large march demanding an Islamic caliphate.
As Bangladesh tries to rebuild its democracy and chart a new future for its 175 million people, a streak of Islamist extremism that had long lurked beneath the country’s secular facade is bubbling to the surface.
In interviews, representatives of several Islamist parties and organizations — some of which had previously been banned — made clear that they were working to push Bangladesh in a more fundamentalist direction, a shift that has been little noticed outside the country.
The Islamist leaders are insisting that Bangladesh erect an “Islamic government” that punishes those who disrespect Islam and enforces “modesty” — vague concepts that in other places have given way to vigilantism or theocratic rule.
Officials across the political spectrum who are drafting a new Constitution acknowledged that the document was likely to drop secularism as a defining characteristic of Bangladesh, replacing it with pluralism and redrawing the country along more religious lines.
The fundamentalist turn has been especially distressing for female students who helped oust the country’s repressive prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.
They had hoped to replace her one-party rule with a democratic openness that accommodates the country’s diversity. But now they find themselves competing against a religious populism that leaves women and religious minorities, including Hindus and adherents of small sects of Islam, particularly vulnerable.“We were at the forefront of the protests. We protected our brothers on the street,” said Sheikh Tasnim Afroz Emi, 29, a sociology graduate from Dhaka University. “Now after five, six months, the whole thing turned around.”
Critics say the country’s interim government, led by the 84-year-old Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, has not pushed back hard enough against extremist forces. They accuse Mr. Yunus of being soft, lost in the weeds of democratic reforms, conflict-averse and unable to articulate a clear vision as extremists take up more public space.
His lieutenants describe a delicate balancing act: They must protect the right to free speech and protest after years of authoritarianism, but doing so provides an opening for extremist demands.
The police, who largely deserted after Ms. Hasina’s fall and remain demoralized, can no longer hold the line. The military, which has taken up some policing duties, is increasingly at odds with the interim government and the student movement, which wants to hold officers accountable for past atrocities.
What is beginning to happen in Bangladesh mirrors a wave of fundamentalism that has consumed the region.
Afghanistan has become an extreme ethno-religious state, depriving women of the most basic liberties. In Pakistan, Islamist extremists have exerted their will through violence for years. In India, an entrenched Hindu right wing has undermined the country’s traditions of secular democracy. Myanmar is gripped by Buddhist extremists overseeing a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Nahid Islam, a student leader who was a government minister in Bangladesh’s interim administration before stepping away recently to lead a new political party, acknowledged “the fear is there” that the country will slip toward extremism.
But he is hopeful that despite changes in the Constitution, values like democracy, cultural diversity and an aversion to religious extremism can hold. “I don’t think a state can be built in Bangladesh that goes against those fundamental values,” he said.
Some point to a Bengali culture with a deep tradition of art and intellectual debate. Others find hope in the shape of the country’s economy.
Women are so integrated in Bangladesh’s economy — 37 percent are in the formal labor force, one of the highest rates in South Asia — that any efforts to force them back into the home could result in a backlash.
Extremist forces are trying to push their way into the picture after 15 years in which Ms. Hasina both suppressed and appeased them.
She ran a police state that cracked down on Islamist elements, including those closer to the mainstream that could pose a political challenge. At the same time, she tried to win over Islamist parties’ religiously conservative base by allowing thousands of unregulated Islamic religious seminaries and putting $1 billion toward building hundreds of mosques.
With Ms. Hasina gone, smaller extremist outfits that want to upend the system entirely, and more mainstream Islamist parties that want to work within the democratic system, appear to be converging on a shared goal of a more conservative Bangladesh.
The largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, sees a big opportunity. The party, which has significant business investments, is playing a long-term game, analysts and diplomats said. While it is unlikely to win an election expected at the end of the year, the party hopes to capitalize on the discrediting of mainstream secular parties.
Mia Golam Parwar, Jamaat’s general secretary, said the party wanted an Islamic welfare state. The closest model, in its mix of religion and politics, is Turkey, he said.“Islam provides moral guidelines for both men and women in terms of behavior and ethics,” Mr. Parwar said. “Within these guidelines, women can take part in any profession — sports, singing, theater, judiciary, military and bureaucracy.”
In the current vacuum, however, men at the local level have been coming up with their own interpretations of Islamic governance.
In the farming town of Taraganj, a group of organizers decided last month to hold a soccer match between two teams of young women. The goal was to provide entertainment and inspire local girls.
But as preparations got underway, a town mosque leader, Ashraf Ali, proclaimed that women and girls should not be allowed to play soccer.
Sports organizers usually announce details of a game by sending loudspeakers tied to rickshaws around town. Mr. Ali matched them by sending his own speakers, warning people not to attend.
On Feb. 6, as the players were changing into their jerseys in classrooms turned into dressing rooms, local officials were holding a meeting about the game. Mr. Ali declared that he “would rather become a martyr than allow the match,” said Sirajul Islam, one of the organizers.
The local administration caved in, announcing the game’s cancellation and putting the area under curfew.
Taslima Aktar, 22, who had traveled four hours by bus to play in the match, said she had seen “a lot of cars, army and police,” who told the players that the match was off.
Ms. Aktar said that in her decade playing soccer, this was the first time she had faced such opposition.“I am a bit afraid now of what could happen,” she said.
The organizers managed to carry out a women’s match a couple of weeks later, in the presence of dozens of security forces. But as a precaution, they asked the young women to wear stockings under their shorts.
With the preacher’s unrelenting threats, the organizers said they were not sure they would take the risk again.
During an interview, Mr. Ali, the mosque leader, beamed with pride: He had turned something mundane into something disputed. In a rural area like Taraganj, he said, women’s soccer contributes to “indecency.”
Women’s sports was just his latest cause. For years, he has preached and petitioned against the Ahmadiyya, a long-persecuted minority Muslim community, trying to drive its 500 members out of his area.
The Ahmadiyya’s place of worship was attacked by a mob on the night that Ms. Hasina’s government collapsed, part of a national wave of anarchy that targeted minority religious sites, particularly those of Hindus. The Ahmadiyya community continues to live in fear; attendance at their prayer hall has shrunk by nearly half.
They are not allowed to rebuild the hall’s destroyed sign or to broadcast their call to prayer from loudspeakers. Mr. Ali shrugged off any responsibility for the violence. But the sermons of preachers like him, declaring the Ahmadiyya heretics who need to be expelled, continue to blare.“The public is respectful,” said A.K.M. Shafiqul Islam, the president of the local Ahmadiyya chapter. “But these religious leaders are against us.” There’s No Party Like an Iftar Party for Bangladesh’s Aspiring Leaders (New York Times)
New York Times [4/1/2025 1:54 AM, Mujib Mashal, 831K]
Around sunset during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, something remarkable happens in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka. The streets in this city of more than 10 million people, known for its hectic bustle and choking traffic, turn quiet and empty.
But for political parties, which know well the persuasive powers of full bellies, sunset is their high time.
Iftar parties, where the faithful break their fast, were closely watched through the end of Ramadan last week for what direction Bangladesh could take after the overthrow of its authoritarian leader last summer.
Who was attending which party? Who was seated next to whom? In Bangladesh’s political vacuum, the answers to those questions offered clues to how new alliances could form and even the direction of changing geopolitical winds.
To gauge the political temperature, we got ourselves invited to one.
It was hosted at a rooftop restaurant by Gono Odhikar Parishad, a small party born of an earlier wave of student protests in 2018, before the one last year that toppled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The party had made arrangements for 600 people, and 900 showed up. Plates of fried snacks and sweets were passed around. Waiters kept the yogurt drinks flowing.
There was one thing no one seemed to have thought about: How do you get hundreds of people who have not eaten or hydrated for 15 hours to the top floor? Definitely not by climbing eight flights of stairs.
The crowd, teeming in the tiny lobby painted like van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” tried to squeeze into one elevator with a capacity of 18 people.
The elevator’s operator — which remains a thing in this part of the world — had a difficult job. A gentle man with a beard dyed red, he sat on a plastic stool by the buttons. He loaded every trip with the precision of a shopkeeper weighing grapes, offloading bodies one by one until the elevator was no longer over capacity.
At the top, the restaurant heaved with people.
Dozens of tables were marked RESERVED FOR POLITICAL PARTIES or RESERVED FOR JOURNALISTS. It was mostly men, with a sprinkling of women.
Sangeeta Huq, a leader of the young party’s youth division, said she had attended five iftar parties in the first two weeks of Ramadan.“Each wing, each division of our own party has an iftar party — youth wing, labor wing, human rights wing,” she said.
From the podium in front of her, speech after speech was directed less at the fasting guests and more at the couple dozen cameras. The theme was clear: The country needed an election.
The timing of that election is at the heart of a political divide. Some want it right away. Others want reforms first, to avoid a repeat of past rigged votes.
Dominating the news, and naturally the chatter at iftar parties, was the unease between Bangladesh’s military and the student-driven interim government.
The students are increasingly suspicious of the army chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman. Some think that the general, a relative of Ms. Hasina, the ousted prime minister, is trying to open space for a revival of her deposed party.
Others suspect that the army chief is pressing for early elections because he has cut a deal with Ms. Hasina’s longtime opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or B.N.P.
Leaders of that party, on the other hand, suspect that the students are using their sway over the government, and on the streets, to delay the election in order to buy time and organize as a political force themselves.
Another big topic in Dhaka was where India — the giant neighbor that long supported Ms. Hasina and has now given her shelter — stood in all the political jostling.
New Delhi seemed to broadly pin Ms. Hasina’s downfall on what it called a conspiracy between the B.N.P. and Jamaat-e-Islami, the main Islamist party, painting them both as extremist.
But in a sign of changing times, Indian diplomats showed up at iftar gatherings for both parties.“Very busy time,” said Mia Golam Parwar, Jamaat’s general secretary, whose schedule during Ramadan revolved around iftar parties. “We feel like this is our high time.”
He boasted that 39 diplomatic missions had been represented at Jamaat’s iftar party.
Just around the corner from Gono Odhikar’s rooftop event, a local branch of the B.N.P. was hosting its own iftar party under a tent in a schoolyard.
People sat at round tables as biryani boxes and soda cans were unloaded from a truck. A loudspeaker on the main road blared the names of the dozens of dignitaries in attendance.
When the local B.N.P. leader, Ariful Islam Arif, took his turn at the mic on a crowded stage decked out in flowers, he got emotional.“I missed this for seven years because I was in jail,” he said. As Bangladesh builds ties with China, India looks on (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [3/31/2025 4:14 PM, Arafatul Islam, 13.3M]
After meeting last week with the leader of Bangladesh’s interim government, Muhammad Yunus, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing is "willing to work with Bangladesh to push bilateral cooperation to a new level."
Yunus, an economist and Nobel laureate, became the chief adviser to Bangladesh’s interim government after former leader Sheikh Hasina was forced to step down amid a popular student-led uprising in August 2024.
Yunus’ press secretary Shafiqul Alam quickly labelled the chief adviser’s first foreign tour as a "grand success."
Yunus came home from China having secured $2.1 billion (€1.94 billion) in Chinese investments, loans and grants, his office said.
A major part of this is establishing a Chinese Industrial Economic Zone (CIEZ) in Bangladesh, with nearly 30 Chinese companies having pledged $1 billion for the project, coming after Yunus urged more private Chinese investment in Bangladesh’s manufacturing sector.
China also plans to lend $400 million to modernize Bangladesh’s second-largest port at Mongla. Beijing is considering enhanced cooperation in water resource management. And China again pledged to support Bangladesh in its effort to repatriate over a million Rohingya refugees currently living in crowded refugee camps after fleeing persecution in neighboring Myanmar.
Former diplomat Munshi Faiz Ahmad said Yunus’s meeting with Xi was a positive sign for the interim government.
"Some countries hesitate to commit large-scale corporations with an interim government. But China didn’t hesitate to deal with Muhammad Yunus. It resumed the ties that were stagnant after the fall of the previous government," Ahmed, the former Bangladesh ambassador to China, told DW.
Benefits and risks for Bangladesh
Jasmin Lorch, a senior researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), told DW that the visit harbors both benefits and risks for Bangladesh from a geostrategic perspective.
"On the one hand, it contributes to further diversifying Bangladesh’s international alliances, thereby reducing its reliance on India, with which relations have begun to deteriorate, as well as its reliance on the US, whose foreign policy has become more unreliable under President Donald Trump," she said.
However, the expert added that Bangladesh increasing ties with China is "bound to anger India," as it brings Beijing’s influence closer to its border.
"Deepening cooperation with China in areas such as the modernization of Mongla port or, potentially, the Teesta River project, will strengthen Bangladesh’s integration into China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an integration India rejects," she added.
Trade deficits are another issue on the table, as Bangladesh’s exports, mostly textiles, to China amount to a fraction of the more than $23 billion in bilateral trade. China has offered a zero-tariff market access, which could open the door to more Bangladeshi products.
"China can be a big market for our leather products. Mangos and jackfruits will be exported to the country soon. We can also try to export other agricultural products as China is the biggest market for them," Al Mamun Mirdha, secretary general of the Bangladesh-China Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCCI), told DW.
However, analyst Lorch pointed out that from an economic and development perspective, enhancing ties with China is a "double-edged sword."
"Chinese investment and economic engagement usually come with almost no requirements regarding social and environmental standards," she said, adding that the extent to which Bangladeshi laborers and the Bangladeshi population at large will benefit remains unclear.
"Moreover, the related infrastructure projects may entail serious environmental risks," she said.
Bangladesh-India ties sour after Hasina ouster
Yunus took charge of Bangladesh after Hasina fled to India following her ouster.
India had been the biggest benefactor of Hasina’s government, and her departure sent cross-border relations into a tailspin, culminating in Yunus deciding to make his first state visit to China, rather than India.
Yunus had reportedly wanted to visit India before traveling to China.
"We showed our interest and asked the Indian side as early as in December last year for a bilateral visit of Chief Adviser Professor Yunus to India. This was done weeks before his visit to China was finalized. Unfortunately, we didn’t receive a positive response," Yunus’ Press Secretary Alam told Indian newspaper The Hindu the last week. Alam added that Yunus was keen to maintain warm ties with India.
Analyst Lorch said that Bangladesh’s interim government seems to be very aware that it needs good neighborly ties with India.
Although India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has yet to meet Yunus, the Indian leader did recently send a letter to Bangladesh’s leadership marking the country’s Independence Day, lauding bilateral ties.
"This day stands as a testament to our shared history and sacrifices, that have laid the foundation of our bilateral partnership," Modi wrote to Yunus. "We remain committed to advancing this partnership, driven by our common aspirations for peace, stability, and prosperity, and based on mutual sensitivity to each other’s interests and concerns."However, ties remain strained over Hasina’s continued presence in India.
"Anti-Indian sentiment has been rising in Bangladesh, owing to the Modi government’s close relations with the former autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina and because the Modi government has not responded to Bangladesh’s requests to extradite her for trial," said analyst Lorch.
"Given the strong historical and cultural ties between the two countries, an easing of diplomatic relations would be essential, and Modi’s recent letter to Yunus is hopefully an indication of that," she added.
However, Dhaka-based political commentator Zahid Ur Rahman doubts India will normalize relations with interim leader Yunus, whose government has said it is laying the groundwork for elections, for which a date has yet to be set.
"India wants to have a monopoly over Bangladesh, which was possible during former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s era. Bangladesh has adopted an independent foreign policy under Yunus, which is not influenced by New Delhi, and the Modi government doesn’t like it," Rahman told DW.
Meanwhile, Yunus has again sought a meeting with Modi in a bid to reset relations, with both leaders expected to be at an Asian economic summit in Bangkok later this week.
Yunus’ government has yet to receive a response, with Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar saying the request was "under review." Battery Boom Drives Bangladesh Lead Poisoning Epidemic (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [4/1/2025 12:42 AM, Phillippe Alfroy, 931K]
Bangladeshi Junayed Akter is 12 years old but the toxic lead coursing through his veins has left him with the diminutive stature of someone several years younger.
Akter is one of 35 million children -- around 60 percent of all children in the South Asian nation -- who have dangerously high levels of lead exposure.
The causes are varied, but his mother blames his maladies on a since-shuttered factory that hastily scrapped and recycled old vehicle batteries for profit, in the process poisoning the air and the earth of his small village.
"It would start at night, and the whole area would be filled with smoke. You could smell this particular odour when you breathed," Bithi Akter told AFP.
"The fruit no longer grew during the season. One day, we even found two dead cows at my aunt’s house."
Medical tests showed Junayed’s blood had twice the level of lead deemed by the World Health Organization to cause serious, and likely irreversible, mental impairment in young children.
"From the second grade onward, he didn’t want to listen to us anymore, he didn’t want to go to school," Bithi said, as her son sat next to her while gazing blankly out at the courtyard of their home.
"He cried all the time too."
Lead poisoning is not a new phenomenon in Bangladesh, and the causes are manifold.
They include the heavy metal’s widespread and continued use in paint, in defiance of a government ban, and its use as an adulterant in turmeric spice powder to improve its colour and perceived quality.
A great many cases are blamed on informal battery recycling factories that have proliferated around the country in response to rising demand.
Children exposed to dangerous levels of lead risk decreased intelligence and cognitive performance, anaemia, stunted growth and lifelong neurological disorders.
The factory in the Akter family’s village closed after sustained complaints from the community.
But environmental watchdog Pure Earth believes there could be 265 such sites elsewhere in the country.
"They break down old batteries, remove the lead and melt it down to make new ones," Pure Earth’s Mitali Das told AFP.
"They do all this in the open air," she added. "The toxic fumes and acidic water produced during the operation pollute the air, soil and water."
In Fulbaria, a village that sits a few hours’ drive north of the capital Dhaka, operations at another battery recycling factory owned by a Chinese company are in full swing.
On one side are verdant paddy fields. On the other, a pipe spews murky water into a brackish pool bordered by dead lands, caked with thick orange mud.
"As a child, I used to bring food to my father when he was in the fields. The landscape was magnificent, green, the water was clear," engineer and local resident Rakib Hasan, 34, told AFP.
"You see what it looks like now. It’s dead, forever," he added. "They’ve killed our village."
Hasan complained about the factory’s pollution, prompting a judge to declare it illegal and order the power be shut off -- a decision later reversed by the country’s supreme court.
"The factory bought off the local authorities," Hasan said. "Our country is poor, many people are corrupt."
Neither the company nor the Chinese embassy in Dhaka responded to AFP’s requests for comment on the factory’s operations.Syeda Rizwana Hasan, who helms Bangladesh’s environment ministry, declined to comment on the case because it was still before the courts.
"We regularly conduct operations against the illegal production and recycling of electric batteries," she said.
"But these efforts are often insufficient given the scale of the phenomenon."
Informal battery recycling is a booming business in Bangladesh.
It is driven largely by the mass electrification of rickshaws -- a formerly pedal-powered means of conveyance popular in both big cities and rural towns.
More than four million rickshaws are found on Bangladeshi roads and authorities estimate the market for fitting them all with electric motors and batteries at around $870 million.
"It’s the downside of going all-electric," said Maya Vandenant of the UN children’s agency, which is pushing a strategy to clean up the industry with tighter regulations and tax incentives.
"Most people are unaware of the dangers," she said, adding that the public health impacts are forecast to be a 6.9 percent dent to the national economy.
Muhammad Anwar Sadat of Bangladesh’s health ministry warned that the country could not afford to ignore the scale of the problem.
"If we do nothing," he told AFP, "the number of people affected will multiply three or fourfold in the next two years." Designate Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami as a foreign terrorist organization (Washington Examiner – opinion)
Washington Examiner [3/31/2025 9:45 AM, Michael Rubin, 2296K]
Violent protesters in Bangladesh on Aug. 5 forced the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, the country’s longtime prime minister, Awami League politician, and daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father. After Sheikh Hasina fled for her life (she never technically resigned), the protesters appointed Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus to act as Bangladesh’s interim administrator.
While the protesters described their actions as organic, foreign interests and political parties that enjoy external support appear to have co-opted, if not crafted, the protests that snowballed across the country.
At issue is Jamaat-e-Islami, a hard-line Islamist group intricately tied to terrorism. The roots of Jamaat-e-Islami date to 1941. The Muslim Brotherhood inspired its founder, Syed Abul Ala Maududi, to reject both the West and liberal democracy in favor of a far more conservative Islamist approach.
Just as the Muslim Brotherhood spawned terrorist groups such as Hamas, Gama’a Islamiyya (which killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat), and al Qaeda, Jamaat-e-Islami also spun off terrorist groups across South Asia such as Jaysh-i-Muhammad, Harkat-ul-Mujahidin, and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.Within Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami was particularly brutal. It was intimately involved in the 1971 Bangladesh genocide that killed up to 3 million. For this reason, many Bangladeshis consider Jamaat-e-Islami members to be war criminals. Indeed, Jamaat-e-Islami became just the second political party after Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party to face an international tribunal for its crimes. Nevertheless, Jamaat-e-Islami still receives active support from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the same group that helped hide al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and sponsored the Taliban insurgency.Since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, figurehead leader Yunus has been on the warpath, imprisoning more than 1,000 journalists, including Farzana Rupa and Shakil Ahmed, to ensure he can operate absent accountability. Whether due to his own rivalry with Sheikh Hasina or ideology, he has unleashed Jamaat-e-Islami terrorism across Bangladesh and sprung local al Qaeda affiliates from prison. Minorities are terrified. Yunus and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami now conspire to outlaw the Awami League. True, Sheikh Hasina strayed toward the autocratic in recent years, but outlawing the strongest and most popular secular party in the country shows disdain for democracy.Too often, American policymakers and diplomats understand terrorism through the lens of grievance. They assume occupation, poverty, or a lack of education motivates terrorism. This can be comforting to diplomats because it means diplomats can assemble a magic formula of incentives to resolve problems. What Jamaat-e-Islami represents, however, is the rise of ideologically driven terrorism. Jamaat-e-Islami activists support the 2008 Mumbai bombers, the murder of minorities, and al Qaeda offshoots because the extremist group’s ideology demands it.The United States, the Western world, and South Asia must calibrate their diplomacy and policy to reality rather than wishful thinking. Jamaat-e-Islami may hide its true self in the effeteness of the 84-year-old Yunus, but the reality of its vision has much more to do with the Taliban, cave-dwelling al Qaeda terrorists, and the Islamic State.To judge Jamaat-e-Islami by both its friends and its actions is to come to a singular conclusion: In both Pakistan and Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami is a terrorist organization. The State Department should designate it as a foreign terrorist organization. The secretary of the treasury should also designate the group’s assets and property under Executive Order 13224, which President George W. Bush signed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.Terrorism left to fester snowballs. In Bangladesh, it has found fertile ground. Rather than normalize a group guilty of genocide and empowering al Qaeda, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should reverse the neglect and ideological naivete of President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and designate Jamaat-e-Islami for what it is: a terrorist group as deadly and ideologically driven as Hamas or al Qaeda. Nepal’s girls face new child marriage fears amid debate to change law (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [4/1/2025 4:14 PM, Gordon Cole-Schmidt, 18.2M]
Bali*, unlike most girls around her, never liked to sing and dance. She loved cars and dreamed of how it would feel to wrap her fingers around the wheel and leave her village behind in the rear-view mirror.
But her dream was cut short on her sixth birthday when she was sold into servitude by her parents.
For five years, she scrubbed dishes, cleaned floors and worked the fields for a family from a privileged caste than hers. The caste system, prevalent across South Asia, is a centuries-old social hierarchy that continues to shape society: people from castes at the lower rung of the ladder often continue to face entrenched discrimination, despite modern laws against prejudice.
In return, Bali’s parents were allowed to rent a patch of land in Bardiya district, 540km (336 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu, where they could grow and sell their produce, splitting profits 50-50 with their landlord.
At 13, Bali was married to a man, an electrician six years older than her. She was pregnant with her only daughter one year later.
Outside her one-room home in Bardiya, Bali, now 32, told Al Jazeera that her biggest wish was for her 17-year-old daughter to stay in school.“I cannot watch her get trapped in an early marriage like I did,” she said.
Bali’s daughter is among millions of adolescent girls in Nepal who women’s rights activists fear could be at an increased risk of harm if a new law being discussed by the government to reduce the legal marriage age from 20 to 18 is passed.
In support of its goal to end child marriage by 2030, the Nepalese government officially raised the minimum age for marriage from 18 to 20 in 2017. Though Nepalese citizens can vote at the age of 18, the idea behind raising the marriage age to 20 was to ensure that young women complete school and can make relatively more informed choices. For the first time, those found violating the law could face up to three years in prison and fines of up to 10,000 Nepalese rupees ($73).
In a country where legal enforcement is weak, the aim behind increasing the minimum age for marriage was also to send a broader signal to a conservative society — that women, in particular, benefit if they are not forced into early marriage.
However, on January 15, 2025, in a move prompting national debate, a parliamentary subcommittee within the House of Representatives recommended lowering the legal age back to 18.
The recommendation concluded that, based on “ground realities, we believe that lowering the marriage age to 18 will reduce legal complexities and reflect the social realities of rural Nepal”.
Supporters of the law to lower the age argue it would stop innocent men from being imprisoned for marrying out of love. Others, including human rights groups, women advocacy collectives, and teenage girls interviewed by Al Jazeera, say the recommendation is designed to protect men rather than promote gender equality in Nepal.
Though illegal since 1963, child marriage has been practised widely for generations in Nepal, especially in rural communities where 78 percent of the Himalayan nation’s population lives. According to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, there are more than five million child brides in Nepal, where 37 percent of women below the age of 30 are married before their 18th birthday.
Around the world, the causes of child marriage are multifaceted. In South Asia – the region with the highest number of child brides – it remains deeply embedded in traditional customs and social norms.
While the prevalence of child marriage in Nepal has fallen over the past decade, the slide has been much slower (7 percent) than in the region of South Asia (15 percent) as a whole, according to the Child Marriage Data Portal, an initiative backed by the governments of Belgium, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States, and the European Union. Nonprofits and campaigners say their efforts to eliminate child marriage in Nepal have been thwarted by economic and social problems specific to the country.
A generation of suffering began in 1996, when the 10-year-long Nepalese civil war fractured communities across the country. An earthquake in 2015 killed almost 9,000 people — most of them in Nepal — and made hundreds of thousands homeless. Six months later, a blockade from India put three million Nepalese children below the age of five at risk of death due to a shortage of fuel, food and medicine. The COVID-19 pandemic affected nearly one million jobs in tourism in Nepal, which derives 6.7 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) from the industry.
Lifeline for young girls
Child marriage in Nepal typically sees girls hand over complete control of their future to the family of their husband. It often cuts off education and employment, and increases the likelihood of physical and psychological abuse.
Bali is reminded of one of the most painful effects of being married so young every time she looks at her daughter.
When Bali gave birth, her “daughter was yellow and weighed just 4 pounds [1.8kg],” she told Al Jazeera. “I found out later that my body wasn’t producing enough haemoglobin when I was pregnant. Like me, my daughter tires very easily now and needs daily medication.”
Mina Kumari Parajuli, the regional manager of Plan International, an NGO that has been working on child rights in Nepal since 1978, said child brides are “at a much higher risk” of getting pregnant at an early age, which can lead to complications like malnutrition, anaemia and higher rates of maternal and infant deaths.
One afternoon in 2021, a vocational training programme offered by Plan International caught Bali’s attention. If selected, she would be given driving lessons. After passing her test, she would progress to training for driving and operating heavy goods vehicles (HGVs).“I was nervous but excited because I knew I could do it,” she told Al Jazeera.
It took 45 days for her HGV licence to arrive. Bali was ecstatic. At the hauling company where she now works, which helps fund her daughter’s medication, she transports tonnes of boulders for construction every day.“I am the only woman who has ever worked as a driver at the company, and I’m so proud of it. I get to drive for a living now!”
Suffering in silence
Other women, such as 18-year-old Khima, who lives close to the Indian border in Bardiya with her 36-year-old mother, still suffer in silence.“Every morning, she was always dressed and ready to go to school far before her brothers,” recalled Khima’s mother with tears in her eyes. “She really enjoyed learning.”
Dressed in a bright, orange fleece jacket, decorated with paw prints, Khima’s hands are clasped in front of her. Her gaze is still as she describes watching her father, often drunk, beating her mother, who was forced to marry him when she was 14.
In January this year, at the request of her mother, Khima, then 17, married a man she had met just once before. He is 27. “I thought she would have a better chance in life if she married,” said her mother. “So I told Khima to do it.”
Khima said she wants to finish her education but does not know if her “husband’s family will allow it”.
Khima’s marriage, like many others from the most disadvantaged families, was negotiated by her relatives. It means one less mouth to feed for the girl’s family, and often, an extra pair of hands to work and contribute to the household for her new in-laws.
Parajuli, whose NGO offers support and tailored care to victims of child marriage, said it was challenging to reach “girls [who are married early] as they are increasingly socially isolated from their peers”.
Like 22-year-old Anjali, she was 14 when she entered into a “love marriage” – a term used across South Asia to define marriages not arranged by the couple’s families. Anjali married her husband in secret because he was from a privileged caste.
Being a Dalit – the community at the bottom of the complex Hindu caste hierarchy – meant Anjali was effectively imprisoned by her in-laws for five years after her marriage. Anjali was forced to work in their fields and forbidden to meet friends or go back to school.
So strong was the caste prejudice against her that despite living on her husband’s family’s grounds, she and her daughter were not allowed to enter their family home. “They made me and their own granddaughter sleep in a hut in the field for five years,” she said.
During monsoon season, she recalled “how water gushed through the roofless shelter, often causing her to shiver and shake until morning”.
Since their marriage, her husband has worked abroad in India and rarely visits. Bound to servitude for her in-laws and without access to education or employment, Anjali was desperate.
Last year, she took a loan of 50,000 rupees ($362) from a local women’s collective to build a small stone house with two rooms, “close enough” to her in-laws for them to deem it acceptable. There is no access to running water, and a broken hole covered by a fading newspaper is her only window.“This house is my palace,” Anjali told Al Jazeera. “After not seeing my husband for two years, and enduring everything myself, I have peace here.”
A new generation with hope
In some rural parts of Nepal, there are indicators that young girls and boys are striving for change.
Together with Plan International, a grassroots organisation called Banke Unesco (unrelated to the UN’s UNESCO) has been training local authorities, law enforcement officials, religious leaders, schools and youth groups to identify and prevent child marriages, as well as supporting at-risk girls and adolescents.
Mahesh Nepali, the project lead in Bardiya, told Al Jazeera that since 2015, the rates of child marriage have dropped from as high as 58 percent to 22 percent in many districts in the region.
On the potential law change, Nepali said reducing the legal marriage age by two years would be “wrong”.“It would undermine all the work we have been doing to raise awareness about how dangerous young marriage is,” he said.
Swostika, 17, is a member of Champions of Change, a campaign group initiated by Plan International in 41 countries to combat gender-based violence and abuse in marginalised and often hard-to-access communities.
Despite facing threats that the members of the group would be beaten or kidnapped for their advocacy, Swostika and her team remain defiant. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she initiated a social media campaign, inviting hundreds of young girls to an online group where each was asked to sign a declaration against the practice.
The “network grew and grew” during the lockdown, she says, and now they meet every Saturday for two hours to discuss if “anybody [has] been affected and what needs to be done to help eliminate it [child marriage] completely”.“At first, even my parents told me to stop campaigning, because they were worried for my safety,” Swostika told Al Jazeera.But she would not listen.“Real change is happening,” she said. “I believe the next generation of girls and boys won’t have the same problems we faced. We just need to carry on fighting.” Central Asia
EU-Central Asia: Preparing for first-of-its-kind summit meeting aimed at bolstering trade (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [3/31/2025 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K]
The upcoming European Union-Central Asia summit, to be held April 3-4 in the Uzbek city of Samarkand, is seen by some European observers as a potential watershed moment that can establish Brussels’ Global Gateway strategy as a genuine competitor to China’s Belt & Road initiative for regional influence. Initial responses to a pre-summit Central Asian tour by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, however, indicate that Central Asian leaders are cautious about the EU’s bid to raise its regional profile.
Kallas made a lightning visit to Central Asia on March 27-28, first stopping in Turkmenistan for a meeting with the foreign ministers of all five Central Asian states, followed by quick stops in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan for talks with those countries’ respective presidents, Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
A major aim of Kallas’ tour was to lay the groundwork for a successful summit. But judging by the desultory, diplomatic jargon used in the bevy of official statements about the discussions, the chances that the Samarkand meeting will turn out to be a momentous occasion seem slim.
A 23-point joint communique issued following the foreign ministerial meeting in Ashgabat contained lots of pro-forma provisions focusing mainly on promoting trade and addressing global warming-related issues, but also including one on preventing sanctions circumvention and another on “the importance of advancing the rule of law, democracy, good governance and accountability, gender equality and universal human rights.”
An EU statement did little to raise expectations, noting dryly that Kallas explored possibilities to expand trade and economic cooperation under the auspices of the Global Gateway program, adding that the upcoming summit “will confirm the political resolve for closer strategic cooperation between the two regions at the highest political level.”
Statements issued by Mirziyoyev and Tokayev about their discussions with Kallas were similarly restrained in their assessments.
The Uzbek president’s office merely offered that “issues of further deepening of Uzbekistan’s relations with EU institutions have been considered.” It went on to express hope that the EU could provide a boost for Uzbekistan’s effort to gain membership in the World Trade Organization, adding that cooperation should focus on “unlocking the potential of the Trans-Caspian transport corridor.”
Tokayev, meanwhile, said Kazakhstan’s signing of an Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Brussels had opened “broad opportunities for strengthening interpersonal contacts and business ties” with the EU. But he also indicated that Astana would tread carefully, given the existing global geopolitical uncertainty, including the Ukraine war and the Trump administration’s impulsive policymaking.“The President of Kazakhstan highlighted the importance of demonstrating caution and responsibility in assessing the challenging situations in the world,” stated a presidential communique.
Central Asia was long a diplomatic backwater for the EU, but Brussels’ interest in developing trade relations with regional states spiked following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The EU’s heightened interest is driven in large part by its need to diversify its energy supplies.
Since the start of the Ukraine war, the EU and Central Asian states have adopted a road map for expanding relations in 2023, followed by a groundbreaking investors forum in early 2024, during which the EU pledged a 10-billion euro investment to develop the Trans-Caspian trade network. Brussels has also offered Central Asian states the prospect of signing enhanced partnership deals. The upcoming Samarkand summit aims to inject fresh momentum into trade relations.
Some regional analysts say the hard part for Brussels in expanding its economic and diplomatic footprint in Central Asia is yet to come. “The EU will have to compete for influence not in a vacuum, but in the context of the already established presence of Russia and China – players that clearly do not intend to give up their positions in this historically key region,” wrote regional analyst Merkhat Sharipzhanov in a commentary published by RFE/RL. Europe Looks East to Central Asia (The National Interest)
The National Interest [3/31/2025 5:33 PM, Wilder Alejandro Snachez, 126906K]
The European Union and Central Asia must continue moving engagement to the next level, from discussions and statements to actions across a broader spectrum.
The first-ever European Union (EU)-Central Asia (CA) summit will take place between April 3–4 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Josef Sikela, the European Union’s Commissioner for International Partnerships, recently highlighted the importance of this region, as "Central Asia is a €340 billion [$368 billion] economy that’s growing fast." Indeed, Central Asia has great potential, and the upcoming summit will be a diplomatic milestone that could cement inter-regional trade and investment.
Trade relations between Europe and Central Asia are already strong. However, diversification is necessary. European countries and companies are primarily interested in Central Asia’s vast energy and mineral resources, namely oil, gas, minerals, and critical minerals. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Trans-Caspian International Trade Route, or Middle Corridor, has grown in importance as an alternative route for moving goods from Central Asia, across the Caspian Sea, through the Caucasus, to the Black Sea and Türkiye, and eventually to the European market. The Middle Corridor can "cut transport times between Europe and Asia to just fifteen days, giving us a crucial alternative to traditional routes," Sikela explained. The future of the corridor and further reduction of transport times will depend on the continued duration of the war in Ukraine and whether Russia’s relations with Europe will improve.
Given the diverse foreign policy priorities and ideologies of governments across Europe and Central Asia, it is doubtful that a diplomatic alliance will be formed in Samarkand. Moreover, it is wrong to assume that the five Central Asian countries have a similar eagerness to engage with Europe. Dictatorial Turkmenistan continues to focus on its neutral foreign policy, while Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have strengthened ties with China in recent years. On the other hand, Uzbekistan, the summit’s host, wants to improve relations with Europe.
Similarly, Kazakhstan is particularly interested in engaging with Europe. Leading up to the summit, Astana has carried out significant initiatives to build commercial relations and increase investment: the Kazakhstani investment agency Kazakh Invest and the embassy in Germany launched a new publication in March aimed at the German business community to introduce Kazakhstan’s investment potential.
Moreover, on March 18, the Benelux Chamber of Commerce co-organized the Benelux-Kazakhstan Trade Talks at Maqsut Narikbayev University in Astana. More than twenty Kazakhstani companies, government representatives, and representatives from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (the Benelux nations) reportedly met in the Kazakhstani capital. The meeting was itself a prelude to the Third Belgian-Kazakh Business Council Meeting in Brussels, scheduled for early June.
Areas of particular interest for the EU regarding Kazakhstan include strengthening supply chains for raw critical minerals, expanding renewable energy and green technologies, developing faster trade routes via the Middle Corridor, and improving digital connectivity.
At a National Kurultai (or national council) in mid-March, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev discussed the regionalization of global politics and the struggle for spheres of influence. The country is already known for its multi-vector foreign policy, and the head of state further argued that "to protect our national interests, we must continue to act pragmatically and rationally." Engaging Europe without disturbing Eurasia’s complex geopolitics will require pragmatism and rational expectations when President Tokayev travels to Samarkand.
The upcoming EU-Central Asia summit will likely end with a generic diplomatic statement calling for more cooperation and integration. Turkmenistan will not want mentions of human rights in any final declaration. At the same time, Central Asia’s unavoidable close relations with Russia mean that Ukraine will not be mentioned either.
Hence, the areas where more development can occur revolve around commerce and investment, as well as other projects Europe is particularly interested in, such as green energy and environmental protection. There will likely be agreements, or the start of negotiations, on green projects at Samarkand. For example, Kazakhstan is seeking investments to construct small hydropower and nuclear plants, which match Europe’s green goals. On the other hand, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan want to diversify their economy and attract investors to other industries, like agriculture, pharmaceuticals, IT, and manufacturing.
EU-CA relations are robust nowadays. Brussels has signed enhanced partnership and cooperation agreements with Kazakhstan (2020) and Kyrgyzstan (2024), while negotiations are underway with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, not to mention memoranda of understanding for critical raw minerals with Kazakhstan (2022) and Uzbekistan (2024). The EU has also heavily invested in the Middle Corridor, including €30 million ($32 million) for connectivity and €28.4 million ($30.6 million) for economic development.
High-level bilateral engagement also occurs, like French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2023 tour of Central Asia or the Central Asia-Germany summit held in 2024 in Astana. In other words, diplomatic engagement between Central Asia and Europe (the Union and individual states) is constant and strong. The goal now is to continue moving engagement to the next level, from discussions and statements to more actions across a broader spectrum.
The upcoming European Union-Central Asia summit is a monumental event, as it demonstrates that Brussels and European governments regard Central Asia as a vital partner. Samarkand will soon see the arrival of senior policymakers from Central Asia and Europe: the Presidents of the European Council and European Commission are expected to attend, in addition to the five Central Asian leaders.
From a diplomatic perspective, the EU-CA summit occurs at a time of global tensions and the transformation of global geopolitics. Europe and Central Asia are geographically distant from each other, and the foreign policy priorities of some countries, not to mention the problematic internal situation of others, indicate obstacles for closer integration. However, if things go well, Samarkand will be the next stage of a win-win relationship, like between Kazakhstan and its European partners. Q&A: We have a historic chance to make our region prosperous, Uzbekistan president tells Euronews (Euronews)
Euronews [4/1/2025 4:57 AM, Staff, 20.9M]
The upcoming summit in Samarkand will be truly historic as it will bring together for the first time the leaders of the five Central Asian countries and the EU in one place, Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said in a Euronews exclusive.
The Central Asia-EU summit in the historic Uzbekistan city of Samarkand marks a significant development in the relationship between Central Asia and the European Union.
This meeting comes at a time of global geopolitical instability, economic risks and climate challenges, which in turn means there is a need for new forms of international cooperation.
The summit aims to strengthen economic partnerships: with trade between Central Asia and the EU quadrupling over the past seven years, the summit seeks to build on this momentum and look for greater interregional cooperation while addressing joint challenges.
Euronews spoke to Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev about the summit’s goals and expectations, and the historical ties and shared interests between the two regions.
Euronews: In recent years, the world has been changing rapidly: geopolitical instability, growing economic risks, climate challenges - all this requires new formats of international cooperation. In this context, the Central Asia-EU summit in Samarkand looks like a turning point in the relations between the two. Why is it now that interaction is reaching a new level?
Shavkat Mirziyoyev: Our regions are linked by deep historical roots, coinciding interests, and a common desire for close partnership. We have a clear vision of the agenda of interaction with the European Union, based on almost thirty years of cooperation.
Our partnership with the European Union is a two-way relationship from which both sides should benefit.
The Central Asia-European Union format of cooperation is a unique platform of interaction and is unparalleled in its scale and institutional scope. The European Union, which unites 27 states, including the three G7 countries (Germany, France and Italy), is the largest integration association building systemic interaction with Central Asia at the interregional level.
Cooperation with the EU covers a wide range of areas - from the economy and investment to sustainable development, security and digital transformation - and is based on long-term strategic priorities.
We regularly meet with our European colleagues. Visits to the region by leaders of the world’s leading countries have become noticeably more frequent. Uzbekistan has established a strategic partnership with Italy and France. Germany and the Central Asian countries have become regional strategic partners.
Today, the EU is consistently developing trade and investment ties with the Central Asian states.
Over the past seven years, the trade turnover between Central Asian countries and the EU has quadrupled, amounting to 54 billion euros.
We are pleased to see the growing interest of European businesses in the opportunities for trade and investment interaction with Uzbekistan and other countries of the region.
The positive processes observed in the region are increasing interest in Central Asia, turning the region into an important partner of world powers and leading states at the geopolitically important crossroads of the main routes between East and West, North and South. This is reflected in the “CA Plus” formats, which allow maintaining an open dialogue, creating favorable conditions for mutually beneficial cooperation of all stakeholders.
Under these conditions, the establishment of a strategic partnership between the countries of our region and the European Union during the summit in Samarkand will open new areas in the development of interregional cooperation and interconnectivity.
Euronews: Could you tell us more about the choice of Samarkand for holding the summit? What kind of symbolic value does it have in terms of dialogue and opportunities?
Mirziyoyev: Samarkand is a city that has been a centre of trade, science and diplomacy for centuries. Its glory was built on its ability to unite cultures, peoples and ideas. Today, it is once again becoming a platform where Europe and Central Asia can discuss the key challenges of our time.
Samarkand occupies a special place in the centuries-old history of international relations of the peoples living in the vast area of Central and South Asia and the Middle East. It was from here that Amir Temur, the ruler of Maverannahr more than six centuries ago, was in active contact with European monarchs to ensure free and safe trade.
At present, Samarkand is restoring its special role in international life, preserving and multiplying the historical political and diplomatic heritage of the country in a new, broader format.
Historically, the world from Samarkand is seen as one and indivisible, not divided. This is the essence of a unique phenomenon - the “Samarkand spirit”, based on which a fundamentally new format of international interaction is being constructed.
Euronews: How would you characterise the key changes that took place in the region in the past years, and what priorities do you set during the period of Uzbekistan’s chairmanship in the Central Asian Five?
Mirziyoyev: First of all, I would like to emphasise that Central Asia is the top priority in Uzbekistan’s foreign policy due to a number of factors. First, if we look at the political map of the modern world, it will become obvious that the overwhelming majority of armed conflicts, confrontations and outbreaks of violence take place between neighboring states. This applies to the Middle East, the post-Soviet space, South Asia, Africa and other regions of the world.
Unfortunately, Central Asia has not become an exception.
In different periods there have been armed clashes, the situation has been complicated by unresolved territorial disputes, water and energy problems, transportation and communication issues, as well as security challenges.
All this could not continue indefinitely. Contradictions were escalating, disagreements were deepening, and the emerging uneasy situation posed a serious threat to the security of the region.
Realising this situation, we made a strategic decision to build constructive, good-neighbourly and mutually beneficial relations with neighbouring states step by step in Central Asia. This approach is based on mutual trust and respect, consideration and recognition of common interests.
Central Asia has undergone a profound transformation in recent years and has acquired a new identity as a space of constructive dialogue, trust and comprehensive cooperation. This has become possible due to the common political will of the leaders of our countries, and today we can confidently speak about the irreversibility of this process.
When in 2017 at the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly Uzbekistan came up with the initiative to hold consultative meetings, we proceeded from a simple but important idea: no external partners would be able to help us build peace, stability and prosperity in the region if we ourselves do not start with a trusting and candid dialogue.This process has proven to be effective. Today we are resolving the most complex issues at the negotiating table, coordinating joint initiatives and moving forward confidently.
This year, the 7th Consultative Meeting will be held in Tashkent. At such meetings we do not just discuss the agenda and “reconcile our clocks”, but make concrete decisions that change the face of the region. One of the brightest recent examples is the complete settlement of the issue of delimitation of the state border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. This is a breakthrough that the parties have been working towards for many years.
To stimulate trade, border trade zones are being created, joint investment funds are being launched, and major infrastructure and industrial projects are being implemented.
Central Asia is becoming an important link in global transportation chains. We are actively developing the Trans-Caspian and Trans-Afghan transport corridors, which will allow our countries to expand access to key global markets.
Thus, Central Asia is no longer on the margins of history, but is turning into a dynamically developing region that is shaping its own strategic agenda. Political consolidation, the achieved high level of trust and joint economic initiatives in the region have created new opportunities for sustainable development.
During its chairmanship of the Central Asian Five, Uzbekistan will pay special attention to three key areas: strengthening regional security, deepening economic integration and environmental sustainability.
We are facing a historic chance to make our region not only sustainable but also prosperous. I am convinced that by joint efforts we will be able to realise this potential.
Euronews: What reforms carried out in Uzbekistan stimulate the strengthening of economic partnership with the European Union, and what measures on the EU side can bring the links with Central Asia to a new level?
Mirziyoyev: In Uzbekistan, we are consistently creating a favourable business environment, developing market institutions, and improving the investment climate. Key steps in this direction include the introduction of a "one-stop-shop" system for foreign investors, the liberalisation of the foreign exchange market, and the reduction of the tax burden on businesses.
As a result, our country’s economic cooperation with the European Union has shown positive dynamics. In 2024, Uzbekistan’s trade turnover with EU countries reached $6.4 billion, increasing by 5.2% compared to the previous year.
More than 1,000 enterprises with European capital now operate in Uzbekistan, and the total volume of investment projects amounts to €30 billion. We anticipate that the signing of the Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (EPCA) with the EU will open new opportunities for strengthening trade and investment ties.
We are ready to supply the EU market with a greater volume of high-quality, environmentally friendly products that meet the highest European standards. In the modern world, the development of efficient transport and logistics corridors is becoming increasingly important, and Central Asia can serve not only as a “bridge” between Europe and Asia but also as an active participant in global economic processes.
In this context, we propose aligning the EU’s Global Gateway strategy with key transport projects in our region, as well as jointly developing an Action Plan to advance the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor. This will drive investment growth, infrastructure development, and the introduction of innovative technologies.
To elevate economic interconnectedness to a qualitatively new level, it is essential to further simplify trade procedures, improve access for Central Asian goods to European markets, and harmonise technical standards and certification processes. A crucial role is played by attracting European businesses to participate in infrastructure projects, developing the digital economy, and fostering innovation-driven cooperation.
We also support the activation of financial assistance mechanisms, including through the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, and other international financial institutions. Creating favourable conditions for the growth of small and medium-sized businesses in the region, with the participation of European partners, will help strengthen economic resilience and improve the standard of living for the population.
Euronews: Central Asia is one of the few regions with significant reserves of energy resources and vast potential for the development of renewable energy. What role can your region play in ensuring Europe’s energy stability, especially considering recent trends toward renewable energy sources?
Mirziyoyev: Central Asia can become a reliable partner, capable not only of ensuring stable energy supply but also of making a significant contribution to global decarbonisation.
A major area of cooperation lies in the ongoing project, involving Central Asian countries, to create a Green Strategic Corridor through the Caspian and Black Seas to Europe. The implementation of this initiative will lay a solid foundation for our mutually beneficial energy connectivity.
An important institutional platform for cooperation in renewable energy could be the establishment of a Central Asia-EU Clean Energy Partnership. This initiative would facilitate collaboration on the production of green hydrogen, ammonia, and biofuels as sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels.
Currently, Uzbekistan and other countries in the region are actively expanding their renewable energy capacity. The implementation of green energy and climate projects will also support the development of a carbon credit market in Central Asia.
This mechanism will enable enterprises to attract investment in clean technologies while serving as a platform for international cooperation in carbon trading.
In addition to the 14 newly commissioned solar and wind power plants, we plan to implement more than 50 similar projects with a total capacity of 24,000 megawatts.
Over the next five years, we aim to increase the share of renewable energy sources to 54%. This will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 16 million tons and contribute to Uzbekistan’s early fulfilment of its commitment to cut emissions by 35% under the Paris Agreement.
Another important focus is the modernisation of energy systems, which will enhance efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint.
Euronews: How do you assess the prospects of discussing security issues at the upcoming summit? What cooperation areas between Central Asia and the EU are of particular interest to you?
Mirziyoyev: We are witnessing a profound transformation of the international relations system. The world is undergoing large-scale changes, the consequences of which remain difficult to predict.
Ensuring regional security has always been and remains one of the highest priorities for the countries of Central Asia. That is why, in 2023, we set the goal of bringing a new agenda for Central Asia-EU cooperation in this field to expert discussions.
We recognise that our region and the European Union face common security threats and challenges, including the fight against terrorism, extremism, and transnational crime, such as drug trafficking. In this regard, cooperation with the European Union in the field of security is one of the key areas of our partnership.
Given current realities, we believe it is essential not only to continue collaboration within existing programs but also to develop new initiatives aimed at countering cyber threats and extremism.
Euronews: Afghanistan remains a key focus of Uzbekistan’s foreign policy. While many countries refrain from engaging with the interim government and integrating Afghanistan into regional and international cooperation, Uzbekistan actively interacts with its southern neighbour.
What drives Uzbekistan’s approach to Afghanistan, and what are the prospects for maintaining the high intensity of cooperation between our countries on this issue?
Mirziyoyev: Uzbekistan’s approach to Afghanistan has always been pragmatic and strategically oriented toward the long term. We have never isolated or turned away from our neighbour.
We have always believed that Afghanistan’s development is impossible without constructive engagement with neighbouring countries, including Uzbekistan as its closest and most important partner.
It must be acknowledged that many who initially disagreed with our policy on Afghanistan are now compelled to recognise its correctness and inevitability.
We were convinced that the previous regime in Afghanistan would not be able to maintain power due to several factors — its inability to establish full control over the country’s territory, its unwillingness to engage in dialogue with the opposition, its lack of intent to form an inclusive government, and widespread corruption that permeated all levels of the former administration.
The current leadership has managed to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan and redirect its resources toward infrastructure development, including airports, domestic railway networks, and water and energy facilities, as well as toward reducing opium cultivation.
According to UN data, following the Taliban’s 2023 ban on drug sales, opium cultivation in Afghanistan has decreased by 95%. Efforts are also being made to support rural communities and promote alternative agriculture to build a future for Afghanistan free from opium dependency.
In today’s context, Afghanistan should be viewed through the lens of emerging strategic opportunities. It is critically important to integrate Afghanistan into global economic processes, including through the implementation of infrastructure projects on its territory.
In this context, we are ready to work together with the European Union and other international partners to jointly promote a positive agenda and initiatives that will help Afghanistan not only to overcome the current crises but also to develop in the long term. The primary task at this stage, in our view, is to continue to provide assistance to Afghanistan in the field of education.
I am convinced that stabilising the situation in Afghanistan and its reconstruction are in the common interests of the Central Asian countries and the European Union.
Euronews: How can Central Asia and the EU jointly address climate threats and what are the opportunities for partnership?
Mirziyoyev: Climate change is a challenge that can no longer be ignored. Central Asia faces droughts, glacier melt, and water shortages, while Europe is experiencing extreme heat, wildfires, and ecosystem changes.
As one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change, Central Asia recognises its responsibility and is ready to work with Europe on long-term solutions.
A key priority for us is advancing the green agenda in Central Asia. At the upcoming Samarkand Summit, we plan to present the Regional Green Development Concept, which aims to lay a solid foundation for effective regional partnerships in sustainable natural resource management and the adoption of green technologies.
We propose developing a Green Partnership between the EU and Central Asia, where we can join efforts to finance projects on renewable energy, ecosystem restoration, and digital climate monitoring.
Water conservation is another critical area where we see significant opportunities for partnership with the European Union, from modernising irrigation infrastructure to joint glacier monitoring and the introduction of advanced water-saving technologies. We also look forward to expanding cooperation with the EU, including through the adoption of European best practices in public-private partnerships.
Ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation are also key priorities. We have already launched the Green Belt of Central Asia - a large-scale afforestation program aimed at restoring degraded lands, including in the Aral Sea region. We see great potential for collaboration with the EU in this field.
Additionally, we are committed to improving environmental education and advancing scientific research. Last year, we established the region’s first Green University, which can serve as an effective platform for joint research and the implementation of innovative solutions.
Euronews: Could you please share your expectations of the upcoming meeting at the highest level? What results would you like to see at the summit’s end?
Mirziyoyev: The upcoming summit will be truly historic as it will bring together for the first time the leaders of the five Central Asian countries and the EU in one place.
We expect that the upcoming summit will be an important milestone in the development of relations between Central Asia and the EU. In recent years, our interaction has reached a qualitatively new level.
We are counting on the deepening of political dialogue and the development of new mechanisms of interaction, which will make our cooperation more systematic and oriented towards long-term goals.
An important item on the agenda will be the discussion of interregional cooperation, especially in such areas as economy, trade, energy and transportation.
One of the key results of the summit will be the signing of the Samarkand Declaration, which will reflect the common aspiration of the parties to establish a strategic partnership.
This declaration will not only consolidate the agreements reached, but will also lay the foundation for deepening ties between our regions. We hope to reach concrete agreements on expanding investment cooperation, implementing joint infrastructure projects, supporting innovation and digital solutions.
Of course, many questions will be answered following the results of the summit. However, we can already say that this meeting will be a step towards creating a sustainable, mutually beneficial partnership between the European Union and Central Asia, based on common interests, trust and the desire for joint development.
Euronews: If you had an opportunity to send one message to the European leaders and their citizens, what would it be?
Mirziyoyev: I would like to take this opportunity to address our European partners.
Central Asia is open for dialogue and increased interaction. We advocate constructive cooperation based on the principles of mutual benefit and trust in the interests of sustainable development and improving the well-being of our people.
We highly appreciate the European Union’s support for our aspirations for the region’s openness, prosperity and strengthening of its subjectivity. It is particularly important that the EU shares our goal of transforming Central Asia into a united and dynamic region, ready for open and equal partnership with all stakeholders.
The upcoming summit will be an important milestone in our relations. We are convinced that the outcomes of the meeting in Samarkand will open up new prospects for further cooperation. Three dead in gas explosion at Uzbekistan mosque, authorities say (Reuters)
Reuters [3/31/2025 9:35 AM, Felix Light, 126906K]
Three people were killed and ten more injured on Monday after a gas explosion at a mosque in Uzbekistan, the country’s emergencies ministry said.In a statement published on Telegram, the ministry said that the blast had struck the bathroom of a mosque in Uzbekistan’s eastern Andijan region.It said that an investigation was ongoing into the blast, which came during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Twitter
Afghanistan
Beth W. Bailey@BWBailey85
[3/31/2025 7:47 AM, 8.2K followers, 5 retweets, 27 likes]
Shahir, an Afghan student in the U.S., talks about experiencing peace for the first time when leaving his homeland and about his father’s special immigrant visa case in The Afghanistan Project Podcast. This conversation touched me deeply. Please listen, share, and subscribe: https://youtu.be/hOk1URVEXDA?si=JNK-S2689lSR8qLt
Beth W. Bailey@BWBailey85
[3/31/2025 6:54 AM, 8.2K followers, 14 retweets, 26 likes]
Deportations begin in Pakistan for Afghans starting tomorrow, with undocumented Afghans and those with ACC among the first to be removed. Afghans with PoR card will be removed starting in June. Those awaiting third country relocation will be removed in an undefined final phase. https://aljazeera.com/features/2025/3/31/this-is-our-home-d-day-arrives-for-afghans-facing-pakistan-deportation
Jahanzeb Wesa@Jahanzeb_Wesa
[3/31/2025 6:01 AM, 5.7K followers, 20 retweets, 38 likes]
Some Afghan women protesters in Pakistan say they could not celebrate Eid this year due to the threat of forced deportation and an uncertain future. Human rights organizations call on the Pakistani government to reconsider its new immigration policy. Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[3/31/2025 9:09 AM, 6.7M followers, 77 retweets, 261 likes]
Held a cordial telephone conversation with my brother His Excellency President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran on Eid-ul-Fitr. Conveyed my greetings and best wishes to him, the Supreme Leader of Iran and the brotherly people of Iran. Discussed the need to continue close cooperation on all areas of mutual interest, in particular, trade and border security. Reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to further strengthen its ties with Iran. @drpezeshkian
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[3/31/2025 8:43 AM, 6.7M followers, 97 retweets, 355 likes]
Today, I held a telephone conversation with my dear brother H.E. Mr. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, President of Kazakhstan to exchange Eid greetings. We reviewed bilateral relations and exchanged views on upcoming engagements. I look forward to welcoming my brother to Islamabad, preceded by a high level Kazakh delegation. These visits would help both sides to expand the scope of our bilateral cooperation especially in the areas of agriculture, economy, trade, investment, IT and connectivity.
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[3/31/2025 8:34 AM, 6.7M followers, 61 retweets, 270 likes]
Had a pleasant telephone conversation with President of Turkmenistan, H.E. Serdar Berdimuhamedov. Exchanged Eid-ul-Fitr greetings and conveyed our best wishes to the Turkmen National Leader H.E. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov as well as the brotherly Turkmen people on this blessed occasion. Expressed satisfaction at the positive momentum in our bilateral ties. Reiterated my most cordial invitation to the Turkmen President as well as the Turkmen National Leader to visit Pakistan.
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[3/31/2025 3:51 AM, 6.7M followers, 316 retweets, 2K likes]
Had a pleasant telephone conversation with H.E. Prof. Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Chief Adviser of Bangladesh @ChiefAdviserGoB. Exchanged Eid ul Fitr greetings and reaffirmed our shared commitment to further strengthen Pakistan-Bangladesh ties. Looking forward to DPM/FM’s visit to Dhaka on 22 April accompanied by a trade delegation. Reiterated my cordial invitation to Dr. Yunus to visit Pakistan at his convenience and invited a cultural troupe from Bangladesh to come to Pakistan, with the legendary Ms. Runa Laila. The future looks bright for Pakistan-Bangladesh ties, Inshallah.
Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office@amnestysasia
[3/31/2025 3:30 AM, 100K followers, 747 retweets, 1.1K likes]
PAKISTAN: This Eid-ul-Fitr in Pakistan sees many activists, journalists, minorities and refugees spending the day under unlawful detention for simply exercising their human rights.
Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office@amnestysasia
[3/31/2025 3:30 AM, 100K followers, 48 retweets, 85 likes]
Amnesty International calls on the Pakistani authorities to release all those arbitrarily detained, protect minorities and journalists, and extend today’s deadline for relocation and deportation of Afghan refugees. This Eid, let human rights prevail. India
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[3/31/2025 11:01 PM, 107.2M followers, 1.3K retweets, 7.9K likes]
Warm wishes on Utkala Dibasa! This day is a fitting tribute to Odisha’s glorious culture. India takes pride in Odisha’s history, literature and music. Odisha’s people are hardworking and have excelled in diverse fields. Over the last year, the Centre and Odisha Governments are working extensively to further the state’s progress.
President of India@rashtrapatibhvn
[4/1/2025 1:02 AM, 26.6M followers, 92 retweets, 244 likes]
LIVE: President Droupadi Murmu’s address at the closing ceremony of the commemoration of the 90th year of the Reserve Bank of India https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1rmxPyBmVybKN
President of India@rashtrapatibhvn
[3/31/2025 9:35 AM, 26.6M followers, 318 retweets, 2.8K likes]
Governor of Maharashtra Shri C.P. Radhakrishnan and Deputy Chief Minister Shri Eknath Shinde received President Droupadi Murmu on her arrival in Mumbai. NSB
Ashok Swain@ashoswai
[3/31/2025 5:30 AM, 622K followers, 14 retweets, 55 likes]
For elections to be feasible, Bangladesh’s interim government must focus on stabilising law enforcement, engaging in dialogue with opposition parties, and ensuring a neutral election administration as soon as possible. My interview with The Sun: https://www.daily-sun.com/printversion/details/798368Sabria Chowdhury Balland@sabriaballand
[4/1/2025 1:16 AM, 7.9K followers, 3 likes]
The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) and Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) have signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Thursday (27 March) in a "landmark move" to strengthen regional capital market cooperation. #BangladeshUNICEF Nepal@unicef_nepal
[4/1/2025 2:16 AM, 95.1K followers]
Reliable power, life-saving care! In Nepal’s remote health facilities, a new initiative — led by UNICEF and made possible through support from the Government of Canada and Gavi — is keeping the lights on, vaccines cold, and medical equipment running. https://unicef.org/nepal/stories/bringing-light-and-life
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[3/31/2025 12:54 PM, 146.8K followers, 7 retweets, 91 likes]
Today, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who participated in the ‘Outcome is clear - Victory is ours!’ public rally in Buttala. Your presence and support have been vital in uniting our community and reinforcing our collective journey toward progress and renewal. Together, we stand for a brighter future!
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[3/31/2025 5:31 AM, 146.8K followers, 3 retweets, 30 likes]
Buttala Public Rally | 31.03.2025 https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1OwxWXDnAgRKQ
Namal Rajapaksa@RajapaksaNamal
[3/31/2025 1:11 PM, 436.7K followers, 7 likes]
The meeting of candidates contesting from the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna for the 2025 Local Government Election in the Kegalle District was held today. #SLPP #LGE2025 #NRWayForward Central Asia
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[3/31/2025 3:14 PM, 215K followers, 2 retweets, 12 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev’s working visit to #Tajikistan has concluded. He was seen off at the airport by the President of Tajikistan @EmomaliRahmonTJ and departed for the city of Tashkent.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[3/31/2025 2:22 PM, 215K followers, 5 retweets, 19 likes]
Presidents Shavkat #Mirziyoyev, @EmomaliRahmonTJ and Sadyr #Zhaparov took part in a joint concert of culture and arts’ masters of the three countries. Today agreements were reached to foster business and cultural exchanges, including more frequent direct flights and new bus routes between border cities. Regular cultural events, creative festivals, youth forums, and sports competitions are also prioritized.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[3/31/2025 1:37 PM, 215K followers, 2 retweets, 18 likes]
During the summit in #Khujand, the Presidents of #Uzbekistan, #Tajikistan and #Kyrgyzstan visited the Khujand Fortress and explored its history. The site features a complex with five exhibition halls showcasing Tajik culture and history. In its eight courtyards, artisans practice calligraphy, painting, adras-making, suzane embroidery, stone carving, blacksmithing, and pottery.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[3/31/2025 10:57 AM, 215K followers, 5 retweets, 21 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev and President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr #Zhaparov met on the margins of the trilateral summit in #Khujand. They discussed accelerating major regional energy and transport projects, such as the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railroad, as well as upcoming summit events.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[3/31/2025 8:19 AM, 215K followers, 15 retweets, 46 likes]
Continuing the program in #Khujand, Presidents Shavkat #Mirziyoyev, @EmomaliRahmonTJ and Sadyr #Zhaparov inaugurated the Friendship Stele at the border junction of their three countries. The monument aims to symbolize the strengthened friendship, trust, and strategic partnership among the nations.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[3/31/2025 7:03 AM, 215K followers, 11 retweets, 29 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev participated in a trilateral meeting with Presidents of Tajikistan @EmomaliRahmonTJ and President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr #Zhaparov in #Khujand.The meeting resulted in the signing of a historic treaty on the border junction between #Uzbekistan, #Tajikistan, and #Kyrgyzstan, along with a joint declaration by the three leaders.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[3/31/2025 6:30 AM, 215K followers, 5 retweets, 18 likes]
Following the talks, in the presence of President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev and President of Tajikistan @EmomaliRahmonTJ, a Protocol was signed and ratification certificates on the entry into force of the Treaty on Allied Relations between #Uzbekistan and #Tajikistan were exchanged. The Treaty was signed during the bilateral summit in #Dushanbe in April last year and comes into force from the day of exchange of ratification certificates.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[3/31/2025 3:11 AM, 215K followers, 8 retweets, 46 likes]
Upon arrival in #Khujand, Presidents of #Uzbekistan and #Tajikistan held a meeting to discuss deepening bilateral relations, strategic partnership and alliance. They emphasized the importance of accelerating joint projects and discussed regional agenda, including upcoming multilateral summits in our country.{End of Report} To subscribe to the SCA Morning Press Clips, please email SCA-PressOfficers@state.gov. Please do not reply directly to this email.