SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Monday, April 21, 2025 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
Meet the last female Afghan ambassador as she leads the resistance against the Taliban (The Independent)
The Independent [4/19/2025 7:03 AM, Arpan Rai, 44838K]
Manizha Bakhtari is on a mission to show that resisting the Taliban doesn’t mean "wanting a war" again in her home country. As the last serving female ambassador from Afghanistan anywhere in the world, she is at the forefront of efforts to deny the Islamist group the international recognition it badly craves.
The UN still refuses to recognise the legitimacy of the Taliban regime in Kabul, in place since Nato forces withdrew from the country and the last democratically elected government collapsed in August 2021. Individual countries are following the UN’s lead, but many now host Afghan diplomatic missions led by Taliban appointees, often out of practicality rather than ideology.
Austria, where Bakhtari leads the Afghan embassy, has held firm. And from there, Bakhtari is trying to spread the message across Europe that it would be a mistake to recognise or deal with a Taliban regime that fosters extremism and denies women many of the most fundamental rights.
Her story has started gaining attention, and is now the subject of an 80-minute documentary entitled The Last Ambassador that received a standing ovation at last month’s Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. It follows her journey from being first appointed as envoy to Austria by the previous Ashraf Ghani-led administration to her present status as head of a mission disowned by Kabul. It also shows her activities running secret classes for Afghan girls banned by the Taliban from attending school.
In an interview with The Independent at a conference on Afghanistan’s future hosted by Madrid earlier this year, Bakhtari explains what resistance means for her.
"Resisting the Taliban doesn’t mean that I want war in Afghanistan," she says. "That is how many politicians treat us in this world, believe me – they see [the word] resistance and they’re like ‘you are warlords and you want another war in your country’. It is very painful, you know, because resistance does not mean to take [up] arms again. It means to stand against injustice.".
The Taliban has done its best to get rid of critical voices from the previous administration and, like in many countries, it issued a diktat firing Bakhtari shortly after capturing Kabul. But Austria still recognises her accreditation, so she continues to represent the interests of Afghan nationals in the country.
"I am not taking orders from them – Taliban men," she says. "My legitimacy is not coming from the Taliban approval. Whatever they say, whatever their rule, it is their problem. Not mine. I don’t have to accept their words because they have not been recognised within and outside of Afghanistan. They do not even have legitimacy among our own people.".
Over the past four years, Taliban representatives have steadily taken over more and more missions around the world, with Norway the latest European nation to accept an appointee from the group last month. India held out until the tenure of the last Afghan ambassador reached its time limit, and then quietly ushered in an official agreeable to the Taliban in late 2023. And the Afghan embassy in the UK was closed in September 2024, at the request of the British government, after the Taliban sacked all its staff.
Asked whether it is inevitable that foreign governments will be forced to deal with the Taliban as Afghanistan’s de facto rulers, Bakhtari is adamant. "Let’s forget the fact that the Taliban have been a terrorist group and put it aside, because right now the international community wants everyone to forget this," she says,.
"What about their policies today? Not 20 years back – let’s concentrate on the past four years – forgetting their suicide attacks and atrocities. What have the Taliban done for the prosperity and welfare of Afghans? Jobs? Respected basic human rights? Forget about girls’ education for a second. What about boys’ education? What are our boys studying?" the ambassador asks.
"They do not have proper education or educated teachers. The Taliban have long altered the curriculum and are teaching regressive subjects to millions of Afghan boys who earlier studied under working Afghan women. So yeah, I am not taking orders from those who are yet to be recognised by even one authority," she says.
Though Bakhtari is the only female Afghan ambassador still standing, she is not alone as a woman working through diplomatic channels for the interests of the old Afghan republic. At the Herat Security Dialogue in Madrid, The Independent also met Nigara Mirdad, deputy head of mission at the now shut-down embassy of Afghanistan in Poland.
Mirdad was in hospital in September last year with her 11-year-old daughter, who has diabetes and needed insulin, when the ambassador informed her that their Warsaw mission was being closed. She says she tried to fight back but in vain, and without any funds coming in from Kabul, she appealed to the diplomatic missions in Canada, Germany and the UK to help her pay for gas in the bitter sub-zero Polish winter.
She recalls how it felt when she watched TV coverage of the Taliban sweeping Kabul in 2021. "I didn’t eat for days and the tears wouldn’t stop rolling down my face," she says.
Both Mirdad and Bakhtari knew what was coming for Afghan women under Taliban rule – the same horror they endured as young women in their early twenties.
In 1996, when she was just 12 years old, Mirdad recalls, Taliban militants entered the Panjshir valley and her neighbourhood prepared to fight. "People said girls and women should be killed and thrown in the rivers to prevent the Taliban from touching them, and the Afghan men should go and fight the Taliban. And from that time, it stayed in my mind – if the Taliban comes closer, me and the women of my family will be killed and thrown in the river," she says.
Like Bakhtari, she has received threats from the Taliban in recent years. "I received many messages from the Taliban supporters and even the spokesperson of the Taliban’s interior affairs ministry after they came to power. He said: ‘OK, you wait when we take all the embassies in Europe, we will see you’," she says.
Bakhtari says women like them are seen by the Taliban as a "threat to their control". "They hate women. [They] fear that educated and empowered women will confront them and the structures of oppression they have built. With education, with empowerment and with the ruling society, women will question them," she says.
She says women cannot afford to give up their country, or the idea that things can change. "We cannot afford to lose hope," she says. "That is the only thing keeping millions in Afghanistan alive.". As Afghan Christians face deportation, faith leaders urge Trump administration to reconsider (FOX News)
FOX News [4/18/2025 6:43 PM, Jasmine Baehr, 52868K]
Christian leaders say President Donald Trump has a chance to fix a Biden-era mistake by halting deportations of believers facing torture or death.
As thousands of Christians rallied during Holy Week, faith leaders across the U.S. urged Trump to intervene and stop the deportation of Afghan Christians who face near-certain persecution under the Taliban.
On April 10, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would terminate humanitarian parole for Afghan nationals, effectively ordering thousands to leave the U.S. within days.
Though early reporting referred to the change as ending temporary protected status (TPS), internal DHS notifications confirm the affected Afghans were in fact under humanitarian parole. The mislabeling was repeated by media outlets and DHS but has since been corrected in official memos from advocacy groups.
The policy shift affects about 9,000 Afghans living legally in the U.S. while awaiting special immigrant visa (SIV) or asylum adjudication.
Among them, according to documents obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital, are hundreds of Christians, many of whom converted after the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and now face life-threatening danger under Taliban rule.
Taliban forces take control of Hamid Karzai International Airport after the completion of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 31, 2021.
"We believe all 9,000 could face persecution upon return to the Taliban, but we are particularly concerned about a group of hundreds of Christians who we believe will face an immediate threat of torture or death," a coalition memo states.
The document sent to Trump and copied to Vice President JD Vance; DHS Secretary Kristi Noem; House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.; and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., asks for a 90-day pause on deportations to allow time for legal pathways or protections.
Their proposal includes a "vetted and qualified exemptions list," identifying Christians most at risk to help DHS reinstate humanitarian protections or expedite asylum or SIV review.
One individual on that list, using the pseudonym "Nashinas," is an Afghan Christian who was tortured by the Taliban in 2021, later resettled in Raleigh, North Carolina, and is now active in his local church. Despite having filed for asylum, he received a formal DHS notice ordering his departure.
The timing of the parole termination during Holy Week has energized Christian leaders in the U.S. and around the world.
"This isn’t just a legal issue; it’s a moral one," according to the Enduring Hope Alliance (EHA). "As Christians across the globe reflect on the sacrifice of Christ, we’re being asked to turn away fellow believers facing real persecution.".
The EHA, a coalition of churches, veterans, nonprofits and volunteers formed in the aftermath of the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, helped rescue and resettle over a thousand Christian converts and allies of the U.S. military. It reports spending millions in private donations and thousands of volunteer hours to bring persecuted individuals to safety.
"This is a moment for the administration to show compassion and leadership," a source close to the EHA told Fox News Digital. "We’re not asking for open borders. We’re asking for a narrow, temporary solution to protect lives that are clearly at risk.".
The Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing at Kabul’s Abbey Gate that killed 13 U.S. service members remains a defining failure of the U.S. withdrawal. Faith leaders argue this is a chance for the Trump administration to fix one of the most painful consequences of that Biden-era decision — abandoning persecuted Christians.
"The Afghanistan withdrawal was one of the darkest chapters in American foreign policy," said Mike Mannina, a former Bush White House official who helped lead the rescue alliance. He had never spoken publicly about it until now.
"What followed, though, was one of our finest hours — thousands of everyday Americans stepping up to save lives. I’d hate to see that work undone.".
An Afghan woman holds a baby on a bus after arriving at Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va., Aug. 31, 2021.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Rev. Franklin Graham, the president of Samaritan’s Purse, said he believes there may now be more time to resolve the crisis.
"No, it did not come up at the White House," Graham said. "But I understand from Kristi Noem — she said that I think it’s July, that the Afghans have till July, or the government will work with them till July to get this work solved. So, it looked like they’re going to be deported maybe as of today. That’s what I heard. But … now [it’s] July. So, they’ve got more time to work out this visa issue.".
DHS has not publicly confirmed any extension. Multiple Afghan Christians received notices giving them seven days to leave the country.
"The Department has nothing to announce at this time," a senior DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Independent groups, including the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and Human Rights Watch, confirm that Afghan Christians are specifically targeted under Taliban rule. Conversion from Islam is considered apostasy and is punishable by death.
President Donald Trump bows his head during a prayer at an Easter prayer service and dinner in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., Wednesday.
"Afghan Christians are in a more vulnerable position today under the Taliban than even Christians were under ISIS," an assessment from Help The Persecuted says.
Advocates say deporting these individuals would violate both U.S. values and international law, which prohibits returning people to countries where they face likely torture or death.
Josh Youssef, founder of Help The Persecuted, said Trump has a clear opportunity to right a grave wrong left by the Biden administration’s chaotic 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.
"We know Christians were beaten, imprisoned and even killed by the Taliban," Youssef told Fox News Digital. "Now, as some of those same people face deportation, President Trump can take a scalpel — not a hammer — and protect those at real risk of death for their faith.
"This is Good Friday," he added. "It’s unthinkable to send Christians back to a country where they could face their own crucifixion. We’re asking the president to fix this.". Pakistan
Pakistan’s deputy PM to visit Kabul amid ongoing expulsion of Afghans (AP)
AP [4/18/2025 12:08 PM, Munir Ahmed, 456K]
Pakistan’s deputy prime minister is traveling to Afghanistan on the weekend at the invitation of Kabul to discuss a range of issues, including boosting cooperation in areas of mutual interest, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.
Saturday’s visit by Ishaq Dar, who is also the country’s foreign minister, comes despite an ongoing campaign aimed at the expulsion of Afghans living in the country illegally. It is the first such high-level visit by Dar since the Afghan Taliban seized power.
More than 80,000 Afghans have returned to Afghanistan since April 1 after a deadline for voluntary return of foreigners expired, according to Pakistani officials.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan told a news conference that Dar’s visit is “part of our efforts to develop good, positive relations with Afghanistan”.
The announcement came hours after an Afghan delegation arrived in the capital Islamabad and met with the country’s deputy Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry.
The delegation was led the Afghan Commerce and Industry Minister Nooruddin Aziz, a government statement said. “During the meeting, both sides held detailed discussions on several important matters, including transit trade and the repatriation of Afghan nationals,” it said.
The statement quoted Chaudhry as telling the Afghan delegation that Afghan refugees who had obtained U.N. refugee status would be allowed to stay at least through June.
Earlier, Chaudhry said Pakistan would welcome Afghans if they get a visa and return to Pakistan on valid documents to do business.
He said Pakistan had no plans to extend the April 30 deadline for those Afghans who had applied for resettlement in third countries, but Islamabad could give concessions on a case-by-case basis.
Thousands of Afghans have been stuck in Pakistan since U.S. President Donald Trump suspended the U.S. refugee admission program. Some Afghans have been living in Pakistan while seeking relocation to other Western countries, including the U.K.
Many Afghans fled their country after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, fearing reprisals. Some had worked with the U.S. military, international organizations, aid agencies, media outlets or human rights groups.
Thousands already have relocated to the United States, with those who worked for the U.S. military given a priority by the U.S. government.
Pakistan in October 2023 launched an ongoing crackdown on foreigners living illegally in Pakistan. Chaudhry told reporters that since then, 903,791 Afghans had been repatriated. Pakistan expels over 80,000 Afghans in push ahead of April 30 deadline, adviser says (Reuters)
Reuters [4/18/2025 7:32 AM, Asif Shahzad, 5.2M]
Pakistan has expelled over 80,000 Afghan nationals since the end of March, a senior official said on Friday, as part of a repatriation drive ahead of the April 30 deadline.
Afghan nationals who have no legal documents to stay or those holding Afghan Citizen Cards had been warned by Islamabad to return home or face deportation by March 31, a deadline which was then extended to April 30.
The April 30 deadline is final, Talal Chaudhry, an interior ministry adviser told a press conference in Islamabad, underlining that only those Afghans who hold valid visas to be in Pakistan would be allowed to stay.
The repatriation drive is part of a campaign called the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan launched in late 2023.
Pakistan has in the past blamed militant attacks and crimes on Afghan citizens, who form the largest migrant group in the country. Afghanistan has rejected the accusations, and has termed the repatriation as forced deportation.
Chaudhry was speaking just a day before Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar is scheduled to lead a high-powered delegation for talks in Kabul.
"The talks will cover the entire gamut of the Pakistan-Afghan relationship, focusing on ways and means to deepen cooperation in all areas of mutual interests, including security, trade, connectivity, and people-to-people ties," a foreign office statement said.
Pakistani authorities say they have set up temporary centres in various cities to house the Afghan nationals before transporting them to the Torkham border crossing in northwest Pakistan. Pakistan expels tens of thousands of Afghans (BBC)
BBC [4/19/2025 10:15 AM, Yama Bariz, 69901K]
Pakistan has deported more than 19,500 Afghans this month, among more than 80,000 who have left ahead of a 30 April deadline, according to the UN.
Pakistan has accelerated its drive to expel undocumented Afghans and those who had temporary permission to stay, saying it can no longer cope.
Between 700 and 800 families are being deported daily, Taliban officials say, with up to two million people expected to follow in the coming months.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar flew to Kabul on Saturday for talks with Taliban officials. His counterpart Amir Khan Muttaqi expressed "deep concern" about deportations.
Some expelled Afghans at the border said they had been born in Pakistan after their families fled conflict.
More than 3.5 million Afghans have been living in Pakistan, according to the UN’s refugee agency, including around 700,000 people who came after the Taliban takeover in 2021. The UN estimates that half are undocumented.
Pakistan has taken in Afghans through decades of war, but the government says the high number of refugees now poses risks to national security and causes pressure on public services.
There has been a recent spike in border clashes between the security forces of both sides. Pakistan blames them on militants based in Afghanistan, which the Taliban deny.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said the two sides had "discussed all issues of mutual interest" in Saturday’s meeting in Kabul.
Pakistan had extended a deadline for undocumented Afghans to leave the country by a month, to 30 April.
On the Torkham border crossing, some expelled Afghans told the BBC they left Afghanistan decades ago - or had never lived there.
"I lived my whole life in Pakistan," said Sayed Rahman, a second-generation refugee born and raised in Pakistan. "I got married there. What am I supposed to do now?".
Saleh, a father of three daughters, worried what life under Taliban rule will mean for them. His daughters attended school in Pakistan’s Punjab province, but in Afghanistan, girls over the age of 12 are barred from doing so.
"I want my children to study. I don’t want their years in school to go to waste," he said. "Everyone has the right to an education.".
Another man told the BBC: "Our children have never seen Afghanistan and even I don’t know what it looks like anymore. It might take us a year or more to settle in and find work. We feel helpless.".
At the border, men and women pass through separate gates, under the watch of armed Pakistani and Afghan guards. Some of those returning were elderly – one man was carried across on a stretcher, another in a bed.
Military trucks shuttled families from the border to temporary shelters. Those originally from distant provinces stay there for several days, waiting for transport to their home regions.
Families clustered under canvases to escape the 30C degree heat, as swirling dust caught in the eyes and mouth. Resources are stretched and fierce arguments often break out over access to shelter.
Returnees receive between 4,000 and 10,000 Afghanis (£41 to £104) from the Kabul authorities, according to Hedayatullah Yad Shinwari, a member of the camp’s Taliban-appointed finance committee.
The mass deportation is placing significant pressure on Afghanistan’s fragile infrastructure, with an economy in crisis and a population nearing 45 million people.
"We have resolved most issues, but the arrival of people in such large numbers naturally brings difficulties," said Bakht Jamal Gohar, the Taliban’s head of refugee affairs at the crossing. "These people left decades ago and left all their belongings behind. Some of their homes were destroyed during 20 years of war.".
Nearly every family told the BBC that Pakistani border guards restricted what they could bring – a complaint echoed by some human rights groups.
Chaudhry said in response that Pakistan did "not have any policy that prevents Afghan refugees from taking their household items with them".
One man, sitting on the roadside in the blistering sun, said his children had begged to stay in Pakistan, the country where they were born. They had been given temporary residency, but that expired in March.
"Now we’ll never go back. Not after how we were treated," he said. Afghan PM Condemns Pakistan’s ‘Unilateral’ Deportations (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [4/18/2025 9:12 PM, Aysha Safi and Shrouq Tariq, 1054K]
Afghanistan’s prime minister condemned on Saturday the "unilateral measures" taken by Pakistan to forcibly deport tens of thousands of Afghans since the start of April.Pakistan has launched a strict campaign to evict by the end of the month more than 800,000 Afghans who have had their residence permits cancelled, including some who were born in Pakistan or lived there for decades.Pakistan’s top diplomat Ishaq Dar flew to Kabul for a day-long visit on Saturday where he held discussions with Afghan Taliban officials, including Prime Minister Hasan Akhund and Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi."Rather than collaborating with the Islamic Emirate on the gradual repatriation process, Pakistan’s unilateral measures are intensifying the problem and hindering progress toward a solution," Akhund said during his meeting with Dar.He urged the Pakistani government to "facilitate the dignified return of Afghan refugees", according to a statement on X.Earlier, foreign minister Muttaqi "expressed his deep concern and disappointment over the situation and forced deportation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan", the ministry’s deputy spokesperson Zia Ahmad said on X.Ahmad added that Dar had reassured officials that Afghans "will not be mistreated".Afghans in Pakistan have reported weeks of arbitrary arrests, extortion and harassment by authorities.Islamabad has said nearly 85,000 have already crossed into Afghanistan, with convoys of Afghan families heading to border crossings each day fearing raids, arrests or separation from family members.
On Friday, Pakistan’s deputy interior minister Tallal Chaudhry told a news conference that "there will not be any sort of leniency and extension in the deadline".
The relationship between the two neighbours has soured as attacks in Pakistan’s border regions have soared following the return of the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2021.
Last year was the deadliest in Pakistan for a decade, with Islamabad accusing Kabul of allowing militants to take refuge in Afghanistan, from where they plan attacks.
The Taliban government denies the charge.
Chaudhry said on Friday that nearly 85,000 Afghans have crossed into Afghanistan since the start of April, the majority of them undocumented.
More than half of them were children, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
The women and girls among those crossing were entering a country where they are banned from education beyond secondary school and barred from many sectors of work.
Afghanistan’s refugees ministry spokesman told AFP on Saturday the Taliban authorities had recorded some 71,000 Afghan returnees through the two main border points with Pakistan between April 1 and 18.
In the first phase of returns in 2023, hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans were forced across the border in the space of a few weeks.
In the second phase announced in March, the Pakistan government cancelled the residence permits of more than 800,000 Afghans and warned thousands more awaiting relocation to other countries to leave by the end of April.
The move to expel Afghans is widely supported by Pakistanis.
"They are totally disrespectful towards our country. They have abused us, they have used us. One can’t live in a country if they don’t respect it," said Ahmad Waleed, standing in his shop on Friday in Rawalpindi, near the capital.
Pakistan begins 2nd anti-polio vaccination campaign of the year to protect millions of children (AP)
AP [4/21/2025 3:43 AM, Staff, 456K]
Pakistan began Monday a weeklong second nationwide vaccination campaign aimed at protecting 45 million children from polio, officials said.
According to the World Health Organization, Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only two countries where the potentially fatal, paralyzing virus hasn’t been stopped,Since January, Pakistan has reported only six polio cases. Last year, the South Asian country witnessed a surge in polio cases, which jumped to 74, though it reported only one polio case in 2021.
Pakistan’s Health Minister, Mustafa Kamal, has urged parents to cooperate with the medical staff, who visit door-to-door to vaccinate children.
Health workers are often attacked by militants who falsely claim that vaccination efforts are part of a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children.
Since the 1990s, more than 200 polio workers and the police assigned to protect them have been killed in attacks. Ahmadi community in Pakistan says one of their members is beaten to death by Islamists (AP)
AP [4/18/2025 3:39 PM, Staff, 456K]
A mob of Islamists allegedly beat to death a member of Pakistan’s minority Ahmadi community Friday while demonstrating near an Ahmadi place of worship in Karachi, a member of the community said. Police said they were investigating the killing.
The victim, identified as Laeeq Cheema, died before he could receive medical treatment at a hospital in the southern port city, said Amir Mahmood, a spokesman for the Ahmadi community. Government Civil Hospital spokesperson Summaiya Tariq confirmed the death of Cheema, saying he had multiple injuries.
Mahmood blamed the attack on a mob of people from the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, or TLP, a radical Islamist party, and said they had rallied outside the Ahmadi place of worship and tried to damage it.
Senior Karachi police official Asad Raza told local media outlets that they had deployed additional police to avoid any unrest in the city ahead of the TLP rally. He said Cheema was killed away from the Ahmadi worship site, and that police were still trying to confirm who attacked him.
Karachi police rescued community members from the worship site after it was surrounded by demonstrators, Mahmood said, but he also complained that police have been slow to take action against TLP protests nationwide.
There are about half a million of Ahmadis in Pakistan, which has a population of 250 million. The Ahmadi religion is an offshoot of Islam, but Pakistan declared Ahmadis non-Muslims in 1974. Ahmadi homes and places of worship are often targeted by Sunni militants who consider them heretical.
Video footage that Mahmood shared with The Associated Press showed crowds chanting anti-Ahmadi slogans outside the worship site. He said TLP supporters had been holding such protests every Friday and that police had not taken any action in previous weeks.
TLP has risen in prominence in recent years by organizing demonstrations, and is known for supporting Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws, which carry the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam. Islamabad’s green vistas turn gray as population boom brings concrete wave (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [4/18/2025 5:00 PM, Adnan Aamir, 1191K]
Quickfire urbanization and a population boom since Monal opened have taken hold of a city whose development from a small settlement was planned by Greek architect Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis in the early 1960s. A key concept was to maximize its then-lush green landscape for fewer than half a million residents.But the number of people living in metro Islamabad stood at 2.3 million in 2023, according to census data -- a more than 11-fold increase from about 200,000 five decades previously. By 2050, Islamabad could be home to 4.4 million people, according to government estimates."Like most cities in the developing world, Islamabad is facing insufficient public utilities, lack of affordable housing, commercial and office space, decaying public infrastructure, illegal and haphazard development and mushrooming slums," according to the authors of a Pakistan Institute of Development Economics report on the city."What was planned to be ‘a city of the future’ by its architect C. A. Doxiadis and named ‘Islamabad the Beautiful’ by its residents is turning into another case of urban decay."Environmental activists who spoke to Nikkei blame the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the body responsible for the management and development of Islamabad, for the damage to the green parts of the city. A CDA spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.As campaigners prepare to mark Earth Day on April 22, Islamabad’s pollution has accelerated dramatically. Last December was the most polluted month in Islamabad’s history, according to the World Air Quality Index, based on levels of PM2.5 particles that can enter the lungs: Islamabad’s index hit 250, a level classified as "very unhealthy" with a recommendation that outdoor exertion be avoided."A few years ago, when you drove into Islamabad, you could see lush green mountains and clear blue skies. Now, there’s a constant grey haze caused by emissions from vehicles and industries," Muhammad Hassan Dajana, a climate advocate based in Islamabad, told Nikkei.Islamabad replaced Karachi as the capital of Pakistan in 1967 under a "Master Plan" for a city based on a grid system developed by then-influential architect Doxiades. Spread over 906 square kilometers, the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) is larger than Singapore.It is the only planned city in the country and was once seen as an ideal urban model. But the city’s appeal, with relatively stable security, has continued to lure many Pakistanis, leading to the shrinkage of green cover due to ever-encroaching concrete.While Islamabad never had major ancient landmarks and cultural sites like Lahore or business centers like Karachi, the city did offer greenery and closeness to nature. Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP), the main green zone located on the northern fringe of Islamabad, is home to a wide variety of plant and animal life, including leopards, wild boars, monkeys and numerous bird species."Islamabad remains the only truly livable urban city in Pakistan, thanks to the MHNP," Nilofer Afridi Qazi, an environmental activist based in Islamabad, told Nikkei.It was on a MHNP hilltop that the restaurant Monal opened for business in 2006, initially with 100 seats at tables sprawled across the park setting. Monal quickly became one of the most popular restaurants in the city, spreading across an even larger structure and employing hundreds of people.That human encroachment ended last year, when the Supreme Court ruled Monal was in violation of wildlife protection laws, could no longer operate in the park and its location would have to be restored to its natural state.Conceived as a walkable city, perhaps the only one of its kind in Pakistan, Islamabad is becoming an increasingly car-centric city, residents say, with an expanding road network adding to the concrete infrastructure as well as traffic pollution."I hike and walk regularly, but since 2023, the poor air quality in Islamabad has frequently forced us to stay indoors in the evenings," environmental activist Qazi told Nikkei. "On a personal level, my allergies have worsened," she said.On the main highway into the city from its airport the view is no longer of green trees or open spaces, but of buildings under construction. Large billboards advertise real estate projects, and new housing schemes are rising on both sides of the road.Aftab Alam Khan, an Islamabad-based expert on climate change, explained that trees and plants act as natural air filters, absorbing pollutants like carbon dioxide and particulate matter. "A decline in Islamabad’s green cover has reduced this filtration, contributing to increased air pollution levels," he told Nikkei.The main reason for the increase in population is better living standards in Islamabad. According to Gallup Pakistan, the capital has an 84% literacy rate and 97% of households have electricity supply, the highest levels in the country.A sense of greater safety in the city has played its part. "Terrorist attacks in other cities of Pakistan caused more people to move to Islamabad after 9/11," Sahar Baloch, a former journalist who has lived in Islamabad in three different decades, told Nikkei.Data from WWF-Pakistan’s Richard Garstang Conservation GIS Laboratory show Islamabad’s overall built-up area has increased dramatically from 6,655 acres in 1990 to 45,638 acres in 2020. The built-up area increased by 1,300 acres per year over that period.A study conducted by scholars for Pakistan’s Karakoram International University estimated that the forest area of Islamabad halved over the period from 1989 to 2019."According to the original Master Plan, construction is strictly prohibited in green zones of Islamabad, said Zainab Naeem, head of Ecological Sustainability and Circular Economy at SDPI, an Islamabad-based think tank. "However, these rules are being blatantly ignored."Residents are concerned that by 2030, Islamabad -- located in an earthquake zone -- will be transformed from a green city to a concrete jungle."Unchecked construction is damaging the city’s weather and livability. Islamabad lies on a fault line and was never meant to become a dense metropolis," Baloch, the former journalist, told Nikkei.The reduction in green cover and the proliferation of concrete structures that absorb heat in the daytime and radiate it into the atmosphere at night has contributed to rising temperatures in the city.Temperature data from the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) for the years 2015 to 2024 show a subtle but consistent warming trend.With Islamabad temperatures already in the mid-30s C by mid-April, city resident Baloch is bracing for peak June temperatures to be once again well into the 40s."I can’t even sleep upstairs any more [in summers] due to the heat. I have to move to the basement at night," she said.But not everyone is against urban development in Islamabad. Some consider it essential to meet the evolving demands of the growing population."As the capital city, Islamabad attracts people from across the country. To accommodate this influx, the city must expand its infrastructure, housing and public services," Muhammad Ali Ahsan, business development manager at Capital Smart City, an under-construction housing project on the outskirts of Islamabad, told Nikkei.Some builders are now beginning to talk up a need to focus on sustainability."In Islamabad, the focus is shifting from building more to building smarter, where sustainability is embedded into the very foundation of urban growth in Islamabad," Abdullah Khan, a local builder, told Nikkei."Most of the latest real estate projects in Islamabad are incorporating solar panels, energy-efficient designs and rainwater harvesting systems because there is a realization about the importance of sustainable development," Khan said. Increasing numbers of Islamabad’s citizens are opting to install solar facilities on their rooftops in reaction to frequent power cuts and bloated electricity bills.Khan suggested that to protect further reduction of Islamabad’s green cover the government should focus on vertical housing, though the city’s proximity to quake zones presents a challenge."Government needs to encourage multistory apartment buildings to conserve space through policy decisions," he said.Ahsan, the real estate manager, added that balancing rapid population growth with livability has required some tough decisions by developers."In some cases, authorities have had to repurpose agricultural or forest land for housing or road expansion. To make room for new development, existing neighborhoods have also faced rezoning, which has disrupted community dynamics," he said.Still, activists remain optimistic about protecting what is left of Islamabad’s green cover.Qazi said the environmentally-conscious residents of Islamabad will continue to fight for their city. "Islamabad’s civil society has always defended its green character, and we will not stop now," she told Nikkei.As for Monal, it has found a new home 25 kilometers south of Islamabad’s city center -- occupying the rooftop of a new retail and leisure development that hosts what it says it Pakistan’s biggest mall. India
Vance to visit an India that welcomes closer ties with Trump (Washington Post)
Washington Post [4/20/2025 5:10 AM, Karishma Mehrotra, 31735K]
Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, are set to arrive in New Delhi on Monday as U.S.-India relations enjoy a period of relative calm.The Trump administration has so far appeared less concerned than its predecessors about India’s close ties with Russia, allegations of Indian involvement in an assassination plot on American soil or accusations of fraud against billionaire Gautam Adani, a close ally to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.As the country prepares to receive an American vice president for the first time in more than a decade, the mood in New Delhi has been markedly optimistic.“On the larger ideological plan, we are closer than we were with the previous administration,” said Harsh Shringla, a former Indian foreign secretary. “There is a fair amount of confidence.”Vance is set to meet with Modi and other Indian leaders. Some in New Delhi, like Shringla, have noted that Usha Vance, whose parents are from India, is making the effort to come to the country, while Vice President Kamala Harris — who had an Indian mother — never visited.Discussions are expected to focus on trade liberalization, defense cooperation, civil nuclear agreements and boosting Indian investment in the United States — priorities the Trump administration has stressed in its engagement with New Delhi.“The vice presidency has become more significant than in the recent past,” Shringla said. “It is critical we establish a separate and close line of engagement with him. He is able to articulate the vision and the point of view of the administration very well.”A bygone bear hugThe Biden administration tried to strengthen relations with New Delhi, largely as a counterweight to China. But several incidents complicated the effort.As NATO leaders were to gather in Europe in July to mark the alliance’s 75th anniversary, senior Biden administration officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, scrambled to dissuade Modi from visiting Moscow the same week.The Indians didn’t listen.Modi’s trip, which included a warm embrace with Russian President Vladimir Putin hours after Russian missiles struck a children’s hospital in Kyiv, was viewed in Washington as an affront. India had already been reluctant to side with Ukraine and was increasingly purchasing Russian oil at discounted prices because of U.S. sanctions.“It was a slap in the face,” said a former senior Biden administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive discussion.But those concerns have little relevance in Washington today.“India can now inject some warmth into their relationship with Russia,” said Nandan Unnikrishnan, who studies Indian-Russian relations at the Observer Research Foundation.Some Indians argue that New Delhi’s ties to Moscow help keep the Kremlin at a distance from Beijing.“The Biden administration did not buy into that argument,” Unnikrishnan said. “Life was becoming difficult. But luckily, because of [President Donald] Trump, there is a certain buy-in to that argument now.”Sanctions that targeted the flow of technology to Russia under the Biden administration also ensnared some Indian entities.But Trump announced in February plans to “pave the way” for India to acquire F-35 stealth fighters. Previous administrations hesitated to share such technology, citing the risk that it could be exposed to adversaries. India already uses Russian-made S-400 missile systems.The breathing room could allow India to continue some long-standing collaborations with Russia, including on civilian nuclear energy. “It is better to have a bird in hand than a pie in the sky,” Unnikrishnan said.But some warn that inattention to India’s ties with Russia could have consequences. “We invariably lose an opportunity to bring India closer into the fold of like-minded countries,” said Siddharth Iyer, a former Defense Department director for South Asia policy and special adviser to Harris for Indo-Pacific affairs in the Biden administration.From espionage charges to economicsIn 2023, the Justice Department charged an Indian government official with orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot on American soil against a U.S. citizen and Sikh man. The plot was foiled, but the incident became the most serious test of relations between the Biden and Modi administrations.“We should assume the public attention around that caused some hard thinking in their system,” Iyer said.In a sign of the lingering sensitivity, Indian national security adviser Ajit Doval, who frequently travels with Modi, was absent from the prime minister’s visit with Biden in Washington in September. In a civil case, the Sikh man has accused Doval directly.The Washington Post reported last April that U.S. spy agencies tentatively assessed that Doval was probably aware of the attempted murder, but they had found no proof.After Trump’s election, Doval joined Modi on his February visit to Washington. Attempts to serve him with a legal summons in the civil case on that trip were unsuccessful, court records show.In another hit to relations under Biden, Adani was indicted in November on charges of fraud and bribery, drawing scrutiny to a tycoon whose financial rise has paralleled Modi’s political ascent.The charges briefly cast a shadow over U.S.-Indian relations — Adani withdrew a loan request from the U.S. government for a port terminal in Sri Lanka — but it was short-lived. Adani’s firms are now preparing to invest heavily in American infrastructure.“The issue is not a top priority for this administration and is unlikely to be discussed in any conversations,” said Aparna Pande, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute. “It will not, however, disappear completely as it will stay in a file and may come up, when the administration changes or some incident occurs.”Once sensitive issues under Trump have also withered away for now. Indians are the third-largest group of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., the Pew Research Center estimated for 2022.The Trump administration’s deportation flights carrying shackled Indian citizens drew some anger in India, but they have not caused significant friction between the administrations. Many of the foreign students whose visas are now being revoked are Indian, but the Modi administration has chosen to remain silent.Meanwhile, Trump and his allies’ commercial links to the country are steadily growing. Trump Towers has announced at least two new real estate projects. Companies run by top Trump aide Elon Musk, including Tesla and Starlink, are making inroads into sales and government permissions in the country. After a phone call with Modi, Musk announced on Saturday a trip to India later in the year.Some former Biden officials and analysts stress his administration’s effort to keep frictions from getting in the way of the broader strategic convergence against China. But despite that effort, they acknowledge, Indian officials have displayed greater comfort with Republican administrations.Now some worry that strategic concerns are being overshadowed by a more transactional relationship.“The center of gravity in the relationship has moved to trade, which has never really been a strong suit in the U.S.-India relationship,” said Anthony Renzulli, a former director for India at the National Security Council. “You have moved from defense technology to something that is on thinner ice.”Indian officials appear unfazed. From immigration enforcement to energy purchases, New Delhi has signaled a proactive compliance with the Trump administration’s demands.“There is no alternative for India’s development project without the United States,” Unnikrishnan said. “And at the highest levels, we determined that if this means there are some unpleasant compromises, they will be made.”That posture has led to greater confidence. “I know, today, a lot of countries are nervous about the U.S.,” Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar told reporters after Trump defeated Harris in November. “Let’s be honest about it: We are not one of them.” Trump’s global trade war hangs over Vance’s India visit (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [4/20/2025 6:00 PM, Dan Strumpf and Akayla Gardner, 3973K]
JD Vance’s visit to India beginning Monday takes place against the backdrop of a global trade war that President Donald Trump sparked, but the cross-country tour also offers both political and personal significance for the vice president.
Vance arrives Monday as the U.S. is threatening to increase the 10% tariffs on Indian exports to 26% if no deal is reached by the end of the 90-day pause Trump put in place earlier this month.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is slated to host Vance for a bilateral meeting, the White House said. The talks are consequential for the Indian leader, who has sought to position his country as a leader of the Global South - a group of emerging economies - in hopes of gaining influence on the world stage.
Trump administration officials have named India as one of several countries the U.S. is prioritizing negotiations with during the 90-day pause on higher duties that stretches until July. Vance’s visit comes as hopes are running high in New Delhi that the country can secure a quick deal and a reprieve from weightier levies, while a 10% baseline tariff is in place.
A New Delhi official told Bloomberg News that sector-specific trade discussions will take place this week, with a goal of wrapping those talks by the end of May. India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will also attend the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington, and is expected to discuss trade with senior US officials while there.Modi is also hoping to lure investment from White House adviser Elon Musk.
The Tesla Inc. chief executive indicated he’d visit India later this year after speaking last week with Modi, signaling potential progress in the electric-car maker’s long-pending push into the world’s most populous country.
Softer Diplomacy
Vance’s visit will also include a bit of softer diplomacy that has yet to be exerted by the Trump administration, with Vance and his young family set to make stops at cultural sites in Jaipur and Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.
Interest in the Vance family within India already runs high. Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, is the first Indian-American second lady. In the lead-up to the visit, attention from Indian media on Usha Vance has run high, with some running lengthy accounts of her family heritage that traces to the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
The Vance family visit is likely to showcase the importance of India-U.S. ties at a time when the U.S. is embracing a more assertive stance on the world stage, said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"There is a feeling of pride in India of the Indian-American diaspora," Vaishnav said. "There will be a feeling of homecoming.".
He added that the visit could also serve to soften the image of the vice president, who has played the attack dog role in chastising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, criticizing European allies at the Munich Security Conference and referring to Chinese manufacturing workers as "peasants.".
The attention paid to Usha Vance is similar to that given to former Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also Indian-American and received widespread attention in India, particularly in her ancestral village in Tamil Nadu. She did not visit the country during the four years of her vice presidency.
Trade Ties
The U.S. has long sought to cultivate a deeper partnership with India, in large part as a bulwark against China. India, for its part, has sought greater U.S. investment and deeper cooperation in technology-sharing and defense.
India’s close ties to Russia caused tension with the U.S. under President Joe Biden over Modi’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and India’s continued purchasing of Russian oil despite allies placing sanctions on the country following its invasion of Ukraine.
Despite Trump’s high proposed duties on India, Trump and Modi have long enjoyed warm ties, and the Indian leader has cast his country as a cooperative partner when it comes to key aspects of Trump’s policy platform.Months before Trump announced the reciprocal duties, India moved quickly to slash its own levies on American products, including Kentucky bourbon and Harley-Davidson Inc. motorcycles. Those efforts were aimed at shaking off India’s reputation as the "tariff king," a label Trump has embraced to describe the country’s protectionist policies that he says hurt American businesses.
Following the Trump-Modi summit meeting in February, India agreed to buy more American goods, including crude oil, liquefied natural gas and high-tech weapons platforms, in order to chip away at its $47.7 billion trade surplus with the U.S. Modi has also embraced Trump’s efforts to deport undocumented migrants, accepting planeloads of its own citizens from the U.S. in recent months.
During a visit by Modi to the White House in February, the two leaders said they planned to conclude the first tranche of a bilateral trade by the fall.
"The mindset, and this comes from the prime minister on down, is we need to make a deal" with the Trump administration, said Vaishnav. "We need to make a deal because the rest of the bilateral relationship, and all that it entails, can only be unlocked once a deal is in place.". Vance and Modi are likely to discuss a potential US-India trade deal. Here’s what to know (AP)
AP [4/21/2025 1:33 AM, Sheikh Saaliq, 456K]
U.S. Vice President JD Vance began a four-day visit to India on Monday as the two countries seek to unlock economic opportunities and negotiate a bilateral trade deal.
Vance will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi for talks on the economy, trade and geopolitical ties. Vance’s visit is seen as an important diplomatic mission by President Donald Trump’s administration, and it coincides with a rapidly intensifying trade war between Washington and Beijing, which is New Delhi’s main rival in the region.
A trade deal between India and the U.S. could significantly enhance economic ties between the two countries and potentially strengthen diplomatic ties.
The U.S. is also India’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade valued at $190 billion until recently.
India’s Foreign Ministry has said the visit will “provide an opportunity for both sides to review the progress in bilateral relations” and the two leaders will “exchange views on regional and global developments of mutual interest.”
Here’s what to know about Vance’s visit:
Bilateral trade agreement
Vance’s arrival in India comes weeks after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was in India for a geopolitical conference and two months after Modi met Trump in Washington.
Modi was among the first leaders to visit the U.S. and hold talks with Trump after he returned to the White House. During his visit, Modi hailed a “mega partnership” with the U.S. and kickstarted a negotiation process to minimize the possible fallout of Trump’s tariffs after it had already cut tariffs on a range of U.S. goods.
Regardless, Trump targeted India with a 26% levy as part of his now-paused tariff program, which has provided temporary relief for Indian exporters.
During his visit, Modi sought to soften impending trade barriers by saying he was open to reducing more tariffs on U.S. goods, repatriating undocumented Indian nationals and buying military gear. The two countries also agreed to start talks toward clinching the bilateral trade agreement.
Modi on Friday said he spoke with Elon Musk, noting that he and the SpaceX CEO “discussed the immense potential for collaboration in the areas of technology and innovation,” adding “India remains committed to advancing our partnerships with the U.S. in these domains.”
India’s deep ties to US business
India is a close partner of the U.S. for bilateral trade, foreign direct investments, defense cooperation and an important strategic ally in combating the rising influence of China in the Indo-Pacific region.
It is also part of the Quad, which is made up of the United States, India, Japan and Australia and is seen as a counterbalance to China’s expansion in the region.
Leading U.S. companies such as Apple Inc. and Google have expanded operations in India in recent years. Last month, Musk’s Starlink entered into agreements with two of India’s top telecom operators to provide satellite-based internet services.
To further boost trade ties, the U.S. and India have set an ambitious target of more than doubling their bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030 under the expected trade deal agreement.
The negotiations are especially urgent for New Delhi as it could be hit hard by Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, particularly in the agriculture, processed food, auto components, high-end machinery, medical equipment and jewelry sectors. This poses a significant challenge for Modi’s government as it hopes to improve the country’s economy and generate jobs with an export-led recovery.
Modi and Trump already share rapport
Modi established a good working relationship with Trump during his first term in office. It now appears that the two leaders are likely to further boost cooperation between their countries, particularly in trade. Chinese President Xi Jinping is aiming to position Beijing as a reliable trade partner in the Asia-Pacific region amid rising tensions with Washington.
India has also already taken a number of steps to win over Trump. It will purchase more oil, energy and defense equipment, including the fifth-generation stealth fighter jets, from the U.S.The U.S., however, wants greater market access for its agricultural and dairy products in India, but New Delhi has been reluctant so far as the farm sector employs the bulk of the country’s workforce.
Family trip for Vance
Vance’s visit to India marks his first official trip to the country, which has added significance for the second family. His wife Usha Vance — a practicing Hindu — is the daughter of immigrants from South India.
In his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance described his wife as a “supersmart daughter of Indian immigrants” whom he met at Yale Law School. Usha’s parents moved to the U.S. in the late 1970s.
Vance will be accompanied by Usha, their children and other senior members of the U.S. administration, and the couple will visit the Indian cities of Jaipur and Agra and participate in engagements at cultural sites, a readout from the White House said. Vance arrives in India, to hold talks with Modi under US tariffs shadow (Reuters)
Reuters [4/21/2025 1:03 AM, Shivam Patel, 5.2M]
U.S. Vice President JD Vance began a four-day visit to India on Monday and will hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as New Delhi rushes to avoid steep U.S. tariffs with an early trade deal and boost ties with the Trump administration.
Their discussions will cover the first day of Vance’s largely personal visit to the country with his family, which includes visiting the Taj Mahal and attending a wedding in the city of Jaipur, people familiar with the matter said.
Vance’s wife, Usha, is the daughter of Indian immigrants.
Vance landed at New Delhi’s Palam airport on Monday following a visit to Rome, where he held a private meeting with Pope Francis on Easter Sunday.
Modi and Vance are expected to review progress made on the bilateral agenda outlined in February when the Indian leader met President Donald Trump in Washington. It includes "fairness" in their two-way trade and growing their defence partnership.
The Indian prime minister was one of the first world leaders to meet Trump after he took office, and Reuters has reported that his government is open to cutting tariffs on more than half of its imports from the U.S., which were worth a total $41.8 billion in 2024, as part of a trade deal.
However, the U.S. president has continued to call India a "tariff abuser" and "tariff king".
"We are very positive that the visit will give a further boost to our bilateral ties," Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters on Thursday, speaking about Vance’s engagements in India.
The U.S. is India’s largest trading partner and their two-way bilateral trade reached $129 billion in 2024, with a $45.7 billion surplus in favour of India, U.S. government trade data show.
Officials in New Delhi are expecting to clinch a trade deal with the U.S. within the 90-day pause on tariff hikes announced by Trump on April 9 for major trading partners, including Delhi.
Vance’s tour in India is also seen as laying the ground for Trump’s visit to the country later in the year for the summit of leaders of the Quad grouping that includes India, Australia, Japan and the U.S.
Harsh Pant, foreign policy head at the Observer Research Foundation think tank in Delhi, said the timing of Vance’s visit was critical in the backdrop of trade talks.
"The fact that the US-China tensions are ramping up, and Vance in particular seems to have taken a very high profile role in American diplomacy, also means that the visit assumes an added layer of significance," he said.
Vance is accompanied by U.S. administration officials, but the two sides are unlikely to sign any deals during the visit, people familiar with the matter said.
India and the U.S. expect to ink a framework for defence partnership this year, while New Delhi also plans to procure and co-produce arms including Javelin anti-tank guided missiles and Stryker infantry combat vehicles, according to a joint statement issued after the February meeting.
Discussions on such procurements would be taken forward during U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s expected visit to India in the next couple of months, people familiar with the matter said. India Finance Chief to Meet Bessent This Week Amid Trade Talks (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [4/21/2025 2:50 AM, Ruchi Bhatia, 5.5M]
India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will meet US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Washington this week, as the two nations inch closer to sealing a trade pact later this year.
Sitharaman, a close aide of Indian leader Narendra Modi, is in the US for a nearly week-long trip to participate in the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Her trip coincides with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to India, where he is slated to meet the prime minister.
These travels come at a time when New Delhi is rushing to finalize the broad contours of the bilateral trade deal during the 90-day pause on higher duties.“We are one of the countries that actively engaged with the new administration to see how best we can have a bilateral trade agreement done,” Sitharaman said on Sunday during her interaction with Indian diaspora in San Francisco.
The finance minister said that India is engaging with the US to seek reprieve from reciprocal tariffs and bolster trade ties. “The keenness with which we are engaging with the US administration” makes India “hopeful” that the first tranche of a pact will be achieved by fall this year, she said.
India’s chief negotiator for the trade talks will also visit the US this week to hold in-person meetings. Virtual talks on the trade deal started earlier this month.
India and the US have a “special relationship,” the minister said, adding the South Asian country’s policies will help the two nation’s build deeper defense ties. It is “an action-related relationship.”
Even though Modi and Trump share close personal ties, the US President is threatening to increase the 10% tariffs on Indian exports to 26% if no deal is reached by the end of the 90-day pause.
In the last few months, India has slashed import duties on American products like Harley-Davidson Inc. motorbikes and bourbon whiskey. It has also pledged to tear down its trade barriers and buy more American energy and defense goods.
Global Headwinds
Sitharaman on Sunday said that Asia’s third-largest economy can withstand global uncertainties because of its strong growth and good governance.“Uncertainty has existed in the past but not at this scale, this frequency and intensity,” she said. However, reforms taken in the last decade under Modi will give India the ability to face the coming challenges.
While India’s central bank expects the economy to expand at 6.5% for the current fiscal year that started April 1, banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group have pruned the growth forecast to 6.1%, citing the impact of trade shifts on external demand. India hopes to conclude trade pact with US this year, finance minister says (Reuters)
Reuters [4/21/2025 2:40 AM, Shivangi Acharya, Sarita Chaganti Singh, and Manoj Kumar, 5.2M]
India hopes to "positively conclude" the first part of a trade pact with the United States by this autumn, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday as she started on a trip packed with engagements between the two nations.
"The long and short of engaging with the U.S. is not just for this reciprocal tariff related matter, but in the interest of... our largest trading partner with whom we need to have an agreement," Sitharaman said in an address to the Indian diaspora in San Francisco.
Sitharaman is on a five-day trip to the United States, where she will join the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors, according to an Indian government statement.
She is also scheduled to meet the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and is expected to speak to officials at the United States Trade Representative’s office.Her visit comes in a week of multiple engagements between the United States and India that will focus on trade, as New Delhi rushes to avoid steep U.S. tariffs with an early trade deal and boost ties with the Donald Trump administration.
Officials in New Delhi are hoping to firm up an agreement with Washington within the 90-day pause on tariff increases announced by Trump on April 9 for major trading partners, including India.
India’s chief negotiator for the deal, Rajesh Agrawal, is expected to make a three-day trip to the United States starting Wednesday, an Indian official said.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance also began a four-day visit to India on Monday and will hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi and Vance are expected to review progress made on the bilateral agenda outlined in February when the Indian leader met President Donald Trump in Washington.
India is open to cutting tariffs on more than half of its imports from the U.S., which were worth a total $41.8 billion in 2024, as part of a trade deal, Reuters has reported.
The U.S. is India’s largest trading partner and their two-way bilateral trade reached $129 billion in 2024, with a $45.7 billion surplus in favour of India, U.S. government trade data show. India edges closer to China, hedging against Trump’s unpredictability (Washington Post)
Washington Post [4/18/2025 4:14 PM, Karishma Mehrotra, 6.9M]
Longtime adversaries India and China, concerned by President Donald Trump’s disorienting early moves in trade and diplomacy, are testing a fragile thaw in relations.
For most of the past century, a dispute over their 2,000-mile Himalayan border has kept the world’s two largest countries deadlocked in distrust. But as Trump disrupts decades-old alliances, upends regional balances of power, and taxes imports from friend and foe alike, India has become increasingly receptive to overtures from China. Those overtures have grown in intensity as Trump has ratcheted up tariffs on goods from China.
Analysts say New Delhi sees an opportunity to hedge its bets with an American president who in his first term surprised India by striking a trade deal with Beijing. The slow and tactical shift is by no means a realignment from fundamentally adversarial positions, they say, but it could expand India’s diplomatic options.“It gives us more room for strategic maneuverability and flexibility in dealing with the U.S. administration, rather than getting boxed into a corner,” said Pankaj Saran, a former deputy national security adviser. “We want to restore peace in the region, and the calculation is that this might be a good time to do it.”
Neither India’s External Affairs Ministry nor the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to requests for comment.
An ‘elephant-dragon dance’Relations between Asia’s largest powers reached a nadir in 2020, when their troops clashed at the border with nail-studded clubs; at least four Chinese and 20 Indian soldiers were killed. It was the deadliest exchange since a month-long war in 1962, which ended in a Chinese victory but not a settled border.
Long before the summer 2020 skirmish, Prime Minister Narendra Modi courted Chinese President Xi Jinping, even in his previous role as chief minister of the state of Gujarat, hosting high-profile visits and welcoming Chinese investments while many Western governments banned Modi from visiting.“Modi has always been fascinated with China,” said Sushant Singh, who teaches South Asian studies at Yale.
But after the 2020 clash, the mood quickly soured. India banned hundreds of Chinese apps, including TikTok, began scrutinizing Chinese investments and insisted that economic normalization would depend on peace on the border.
In October, after almost two dozen rounds of talks, the sides agreed on new buffer zones, allowing Indian troops to patrol in some areas that had been blocked since the 2020 clash. Later that month, Modi and Xi met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia for their first formal talks in five years.“When two neighboring countries exist, occasional disagreements are bound to happen,” Modi told podcaster Lex Fridman in March. “But our focus is to ensure that these differences don’t turn into disputes.”
The remarks were quickly picked up by Chinese state media and officials, who called for an “elephant-dragon dance.”
The sides, which often lean on their overlapping civilizational histories to project common ground, have since agreed to allow exchanges of scholars and journalists, cooperate on transborder rivers, resume direct flights, and reopen Indian access to the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, a pilgrimage sacred in Hinduism, Buddhism and other faiths.
This month, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri cut a cake with Chinese Ambassador Xu Feihong to celebrate 75 years of the two countries’ bilateral ties.
Analysts say the shift has been driven in part by events in Washington.“The gap in national power between India and China is not just huge, it is unbridgeable,” said former army officer Pravin Sawhney, author of “The Last War: How AI Will Shape India’s Final Showdown With China” and a roving editor of the national security magazine Force.“Given the capabilities China has,” he said, “the Indian government believes it should have a tactical truce with China until Trump makes up his mind about what he wants to do with China.”
Some say Trump’s actions are simply adding fuel to the main driver of the détente: the economy. Indian and Chinese businesses are teaming for joint ventures on smartphone components and apparel retail.
Economists and business leaders say India can’t wean itself from its dependence on Chinese components without Chinese investment. After persistent complaints from industry, New Delhi has eased visa restrictions for Chinese technicians.
Now, as Trump slaps tariffs of 145 percent on goods from China, Beijing’s approach has been far more cordial.“In India, China sees a potential partner in advocating for a more stable and predictable international order, which Trump is trying to sabotage,” said Lin Minwang, deputy director of the Center for South Asian Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
But Lin said his “expectations remain low.” “Working closer with China will now inevitably be interpreted as anti-American,” he said. “Is India ready to take that risk? I’m not so sure.”
A cautious shift
Lin has reason to be wary.
Singh said the government’s “PR campaign” on the border-patrolling agreement suggested the crisis was solved. But Indian troops are still barred from some areas to which they used to have access, leaving the deal on shaky ground, he said.
S. Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, told Parliament in December that steps at some friction points were “temporary and limited.”
Roughly 50,000 troops from both sides are still stationed on the border, according to Indian news reports — a particular strain on a tight defense budget for commanders who would prefer to focus on conflicts elsewhere. Chinese development along the border continues to outpace India’s, solidifying Beijing’s strategic edge.
And while New Delhi has allowed some more Chinese investments, it has also drawn some red lines, including barring the Chinese electric-vehicle company BYD and telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE. Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has been particularly strident against encouraging more Chinese investments.
Officials here are also concerned that the loss of the U.S. market and China’s overcapacity could lead China to flood India with cheap goods.
Beijing has slowed India’s campaign to make itself an alternative manufacturing destination by stopping some Chinese technicians from visiting, and by halting shipments of machinery and components for solar wafers, smartphones and electric vehicles, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.
The strains have fueled support here for Trump’s escalating tariffs on China, especially as Washington and New Delhi negotiate a trade deal.“If you hear voices in Delhi who are more, let’s say, enthusiastic about Trump, that’s precisely because Trump is refocusing on where we need to focus: China,” Saran said. “In that sense, Trump’s worldview and the Delhi worldview are to that extent quite similar.”
Yet others are skeptical. After the Trump administration slapped major tariffs on China, it reversed itself with exceptions for smartphones and other technology. “Indians don’t trust Trump at all, even though they may flatter him,” Singh said. “I don’t see any Indian administration that sees him as a reliable partner.”
The skeptics are closely watching Trump advisers, including Elon Musk, who have strong business ties to China. There is concern that a transactional White House could dampen U.S. enthusiasm for the Quad alliance — a regional bulwark against Beijing that includes India, Japan, Australia and the United States.“The Biden administration needed India as a strategic partner and a military bulwark against China,” Sawhney said. “But today, India needs America more, because India is worried about China.”
Indian officials are watching more than U.S. actions toward China, said Ashley Tellis, a former senior State Department official.“Part of the question is: Is the U.S. showing signs of withdrawing from critical areas of the world?” Tellis said. “This is the central issue that preoccupies Indian policymakers.”“India is going to diversify its portfolio of friends,” he said, but “this will manifest in shades of gray.” India Has a Golden Opportunity to Capture U.S. Business From China (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [4/19/2025 12:00 AM, Tripti Lahiri, 810K]
When President Trump opened his first trade war on China in 2018, a company called Zetwerk was just beginning to connect global customers with Indian suppliers of things like sheet metal and precision parts.
Today, it has a network of more than 10,000 suppliers and seven of its own electronics factories. Its latest facility, making parts for washing machines and other appliances, opened in March.
The first trade war helped India rise—and Trump’s second one could be transformative, said Josh Foulger, the head of Zetwerk’s electronics business.“Is this India’s moment?” said Foulger. “Yes.”
With most Chinese exporters cut off for now from U.S. consumers by high tariffs, companies are looking for alternative places to produce and export to the U.S.—adding up to a golden opportunity for India.
That doesn’t mean India will take its chance. The world’s most populous nation has long trailed not just China but also smaller countries with nimbler governments. The number of people working in agriculture dwarfs the number employed in manufacturing.
Global high-tech firms and retailers say India is a harder place to do business than China or Vietnam, owing to government red tape, restive labor groups and an often-punitive approach to compliance and taxation. Vietnam, a country of 100 million people, exports $50 billion more in goods to the U.S. than India, whose population is 1.4 billion.
Indian officials in New Delhi are signaling they plan to be more open to Western businesses and are moving for a quick trade deal with the U.S. The country wants to emulate what has made China the world’s unparalleled manufacturing powerhouse by offering not just manual assembly of goods but also design, parts and other knowhow.“We are looking at building the entire value chain in India itself,” said Ekroop Caur, the secretary for electronics and information technology in the southern state of Karnataka.
For the moment, most Indian goods face only the 10% tariff Trump has imposed globally, and certain exempted electronics such as iPhones have no tariff. The tariff on most Chinese goods is 145% while those electronics items are subject to a 20% rate.
Apple is already moving to export more iPhones to the U.S. from India, and the country currently accounts for about 20% of iPhone final production, according to market research estimates.
India’s election last year, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party lost its outright majority, sent a clear message that many voters were dissatisfied with job prospects and low wages.
India now has a critical window for opening up with no national election and only one state election on the horizon for about a year, said Tanvi Madan, an expert on India at the Brookings Institution.
The moment could be as important for India as the end of the Cold War, when it fell into a financial crisis caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, then India’s largest trading partner. In response, India opened up to foreign investment and cut a plethora of rules and regulations known as the “license raj,” sparking faster growth.“India has always worried about what opening up to the world will do to it,” said Madan. “It should be thinking about what the world can do for it.”
India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, said this month that the upending of global trade had “focused our own minds on the need for correcting what I would call a certain skewed nature of our openness to the global economy.”
Still, companies find India remains prone to regulatory flip-flops and head-scratching interpretations of tax laws, leading to penalties or lengthy legal disputes.
India has demanded $1.4 billion for back taxes going back 12 years from a unit of German automaker Volkswagen, and an equivalent amount as a penalty, alleging it misclassified shipments imported into India to evade customs duties. The company denies wrongdoing, and has challenged the order in court.“You think about China 30 years ago and Vietnam now, you have government officials in their localities waking up every day thinking, ‘How can I make it easier for companies to come here and invest?’” said an executive with a U.S. firm long active in India.
Yet smartphones offer an example of what India can do when it puts its mind to it. A decade ago, when India started focusing on building phones, its annual mobile-phone exports were only about $250 million. Now the figure is more than $22 billion, with Apple accounting for about three-quarters of that.
A factory in Karnataka operated by Taiwan’s Foxconn is coming on line this year and will eventually add annual production of 20 million phones, rivaling Foxconn’s flagship plant in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu.
Officials say a network of suppliers is growing up to feed the final assembly. New York state-based Corning, which has long made scratchproof glass for Apple phones, plans to start production in Tamil Nadu this year.
Companies say smartphones are benefiting from the government’s attention and support, including manufacturing subsidies. India said this month it would extend the subsidies to phone components it now largely imports, and it has upgraded the freight terminal at Tamil Nadu’s main airport to address bottlenecks that sometimes left vehicles carrying products waiting on the highway.
Foulger, the executive who connects global companies with Indian suppliers, was the country head for Foxconn in India before joining Zetwerk last year. He said the country still needed improvement on the most important quality for a global supply chain: consistency.
His mantra is to plan ahead, which he said he often repeats when he hears a supplier citing a string of public holidays as the reason for a delay or a worker blaming Bangalore’s notorious traffic for being late.“All of these things have to be like this 128-piece orchestra working in sync to make this happen,” said Foulger. “It’s going to be a journey, it’s going to take some time, but because of India’s inherent strengths I think we will prevail.” India’s Modi to Visit Saudi Arabia Next Week to Strengthen Ties (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [4/19/2025 4:00 AM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 16228K]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a two-day visit to Saudi Arabia from Tuesday, his first trip to the kingdom after six years amid a tumultuous period for the global economy.Modi will be meeting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, “to further deepen and strengthen” ties between the two nations, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement Saturday.The visit comes at a time when sweeping tariffs by the US has forced countries to energize trade relations with with allies and neighbors for alternate markets.Trade between the two nations was about $43 billion for the year 2023-24 with exports to the Gulf kingdom comprising mainly petrochemical and petroleum products, according to India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry.Modi is also visiting Saudi Arabia at a time when India is facing protests over changes to a decades-old law governing Muslim-owned properties donated for religious and charitable purposes within the country. Musk Revives Plan to Visit India After Talking With Modi (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [4/19/2025 7:16 AM, Sidhartha Shukla, 16228K]
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk indicated he’ll visit India later this year after speaking yesterday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, signaling potential progress in the electric-car maker’s long-pending push into the world’s most populous country.He flagged the travel plans in a post on his social media platform X on Saturday. The billionaire entrepreneur had been due to visit India a year ago, but postponed that trip at the last minute, citing pressing issues at Tesla at the time.A trip this year would come at a pivotal moment for the billionaire entrepreneur, whose companies Tesla, Starlink Inc. and X face mounting challenges, globally and in India.Tesla has been losing market share to rivals, due in part to aggressive pricing by the likes of Chinese EV powerhouse BYD Co. and Musk’s closeness to US President Donald Trump, which has alienated certain customer segments and made Tesla a more polarizing brand.The US company has also taken a hit from an escalating tariff war, which has prompted it to stop taking orders in China for Model S sedans and Model X sport utility vehicles — both of which are imported from the US.As the EV landscape becomes more competitive, Tesla is in urgent need of new markets, and India — with its burgeoning middle class and a government pushing clean mobility — is an obvious target. Tesla has long wanted to enter India, but disagreements over import duties and local manufacturing commitments have stalled progress.Meanwhile, Musk is advancing his other ventures in India. Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet business, recently announced partnerships with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio. The partnerships could help bring satellite-based broadband to underserved rural areas, aligning with the Indian government’s broader digital inclusion agenda.Still, Musk’s relationship with Indian authorities remains complicated. X, formerly known as Twitter, is locked in a dispute with the Indian government over content moderation. NSB
Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees in limbo after deportation from US (The Guardian)
The Guardian [4/21/2025 2:00 AM, Gaurav Pokharel, 78.9M]
When Narayan Kumar Subedi received a call from his daughter in the United States three weeks ago, he expected to hear news of his two children’s life abroad, perhaps even plans for a long-awaited reunion. Instead, he was told his 36-year-old son Ashish, a Bhutanese refugee resettled in the US, was being deported.
Ashish had been caught in a domestic dispute that led to police involvement. After several days in detention without proper legal support, he was caught up in Donald Trump’s migration crackdown and deported to Bhutan.
But what followed was a surreal sequence of events that left Ashish and nine other Bhutanese refugees stateless: abandoned by the country they once fled, expelled by the one they tried to call home, and detained by the one they sought refuge in.
Narayan was one of 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese who fled the country in the early 1990s to escape persecution. Many saw emigration as the only hope for a future. Narayan’s children were granted refugee status in the US, but Narayan himself was disqualified over paperwork errors and he still lives in the Beldangi refugee camp in eastern Nepal.
Now, decades later, his son is back – but not welcomed by Bhutan, nor recognized in Nepal.
According to Nepal’s director general of immigration, Govinda Prasad Rijal, four of the 10 deported Bhutanese refugees, including Ashish, were taken into custody for entering Nepal illegally via India.“They were taken from the refugee camp on 28 March because they had entered Nepal without valid visas,” he said. “Since the matter is still under investigation, we have not decided whether they will be deported to India, returned to Bhutan, or what other action might be taken.”
However, after the family filed a habeas corpus petition in Nepal’s supreme court, the court issued an order to produce them before the court on 24 April and not to deport them until then.
Ashish and nine others were first flown from the US to Delhi, where they were reportedly treated well and even put up in a hotel during transit. The following day, they were flown to Paro international airport in Bhutan.
There, according to Ashish’s father, the Bhutanese government welcomed them courteously but didn’t allow them to stay long. After routine questioning, the group was handed 30,000 Indian rupees each and transported to the Indian border town of Phuentsholing. Within 24 hours, they were out of Bhutan again.“The fact that Bhutan accepted them from the United States shows an acknowledgment of their citizenship. But deporting them to the Indian border within a day reveals a deceptive character,” said Dr Gopal Krishna Shiwakoti, former chair of the Asia Pacific Rights Network. “It’s strange in itself to send them to a country that had earlier refused to recognize them as its citizens, leading the US to resettle them in a third country.”
From Phuentsholing, the group made its way to Nepal through Indian intermediaries. Later, Ashish and his friends Santosh Darji, Roshan Tamang and Ashok Gurung were detained by Nepalese authorities.“I was shocked,” Narayan says. “To be treated like a criminal in your own refugee camp, after all these years … it breaks you.”
Nepal has no comprehensive legal framework addressing refugee protection or statelessness. That leaves people like Ashish in legal limbo – neither welcomed back by Bhutan nor recognized as refugees in Nepal.
Tulsi Bhattarai, the immigration officer leading the investigation, confirmed that four of the 10 individuals are in custody. “Their statements confirm they entered Nepal from Bhutan via India,” he said. “We’ve collected documents from their time in the refugee camps and submitted a full report.”
Activists argue the situation echoes the early days of the 1990s refugee crisis.“We’ve come full circle,” says Shiwakoti. “This is a 360-degree repeat of history. Nepal must urgently initiate diplomatic engagement with Bhutan to resolve this issue.”
From 2007 to 2018, more than 113,000 Bhutanese refugees were resettled in third countries, mainly the US, according to the UNHCR. But around 6,500 still remain in camps in Nepal, caught in a state of indefinite limbo. Now, for deportees like Ashish, a new crisis is unfolding.
International rights groups are raising alarm. In a joint statement, Bhutanese political and civil society leaders have appealed to the United Nations, the US and Indian embassies, and the government of Nepal for intervention. Their core demand is that the 10 deported individuals be recognized as Bhutanese nationals and protected under international refugee law.“These people are not just numbers. They have histories, identities, and rights,” says Ram Karki, coordinator of the Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan (GCRPPB).
Back in Beldangi, Narayan waits. His son remains in custody, with uncertain future.“I just want my son to be free,” he adds. “We lost our country once. Must we lose it again?” China-Built Airport in Nepal Was Littered With Corruption, Inquiry Finds (New York Times)
New York Times [4/18/2025 4:14 PM, Bhadra Sharma and Daisuke Wakabayashi, 831K]
A government inquiry into a new $216 million international airport in Nepal’s second-biggest city found that “irregularities and corruption” by officials and lawmakers had allowed a Chinese state-owned contractor to ignore its obligations and charge for work it never completed.
In a 36-page report released Thursday, a parliamentary committee’s investigation into the airport in Pokhara found that China CAMC Engineering, the construction arm of a state-owned conglomerate, Sinomach, had failed to pay taxes, had not finished the project to specification and had used poor-quality construction, all because of corruption and a lack of oversight.
In 2023, The New York Times reported that CAMC had inflated the project’s cost and undermined Nepal’s efforts to maintain quality control, prioritizing its own business interests. Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority, the agency overseeing the airport’s construction, was reluctant to upset Beijing on an important project for both countries, The Times found.
Shortly afterward, an 11-member parliamentary committee started investigating the airport’s construction.
The international airport in Pokhara, a tourist destination at the foothills of the Himalayas, has become a financial albatross for the impoverished country, serving as a cautionary tale about the consequences of borrowing heavily from China for major infrastructure projects.
The airport was built with a 20-year loan from the Export-Import Bank of China, a state-owned lender that finances Beijing’s overseas development work. Nepal must soon start repaying the loan using the profits generated by the airport, which opened in 2023. The airport has fallen well short of its projections for international passengers. There is only one weekly international route landing in Pokhara.
China celebrated the airport’s construction as a “flagship project” of its Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi Jinping’s signature infrastructure campaign, which has doled out an estimated $1 trillion in loans and grants to other countries.
But Nepal has quietly rejected that designation, because it has complicated diplomatic ties with India, its neighbor and rival to China for influence in the region. India, a major destination for Nepali travelers, has not approved any international routes to Pokhara.
In August, Nepal’s communist government, led by K.P. Sharma Oli, who has close ties to Beijing, formally requested that China convert the $216 million airport loan into a grant. Nepali officials have expressed optimism about the request, but there was no formal announcement about an agreement when Mr. Oli met Mr. Xi in November.
The parliamentary committee’s report found that CAMC had failed to complete the work of digging, refilling and adding gravel to the runway, as well as other key components of the airport, despite a contract requiring it to do so. It also found that the construction firm had received payment for aspects of the project that were never built, including a fuel supply facility and a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system. In some of those cases, Nepal’s civil aviation authority was forced to pay for items that CAMC failed to deliver as promised.
The report also stated that Nepali authorities had waived $16 million in taxes for CAMC, even though the contract stated that the company was obligated to pay customs duties and value-added tax on equipment imported from China.
The contract called for two runways for takeoff and landing. However, the airport effectively has only one operating runway, because the second runway is closed for safety reasons, the report said.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and CAMC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.“It’s a massive scale of corruption,” said Rajendra Lingden, who led the inquiry. “The corrupt bureaucrats and politicians involved in this scam must be punished.”
The parliamentary committee called for the suspension of the top officials at the aviation agency, including its current director general, citing the risk that they may destroy documents related to the airport’s construction.
A spokesman for Nepal’s aviation agency declined to comment on the investigation’s findings. Gunman Fires At Sri Lanka Church Ahead Of Easter Bombings Anniversary (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [4/19/2025 1:57 AM, Staff, 931K]
A gunman fired at a church in Sri Lanka, police said Saturday, with the country on high alert six years since Easter Sunday bombings killed hundreds.
The gunman opened fire Friday at a church in Manampitiya, 160 kilometres (100 miles) northeast of the capital Colombo, a police statement said.
The shooting damaged windows and no one was hurt, while a suspect has been arrested, police said.
"Initial investigations suggest that the suspect had targeted the church due to a personal enmity with the pastor," the statement said.
Armed police and troops have been deployed to nearly all churches nationwide during Easter celebrations, with security heightened following the 2019 attack.
Suicide bombers in 2019 killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners, at three churches and three hotels.
More than 500 people were wounded in the attack, which officials blamed on a home-grown Islamist group.
The Catholic Church will commemorate the victims on Monday, by declaring them "Heroes of the Faith".
Sri Lanka’s Catholic minority has maintained a campaign for justice since the bombings, saying that prior investigations failed to answer outstanding questions.
The Church has accused successive governments of protecting those behind the attack and several high-level investigations have identified links between military intelligence units and the bombers. Sri Lanka Catholics Protest On Easter Bombing Anniversary (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [4/21/2025 3:00 AM, Staff, 931K]
Sri Lanka’s Catholics marked on Monday the sixth anniversary of the Easter bombings that killed 279 people with a silent march and demands for justice.
Several investigations into the April 21, 2019, bombings, which targeted three churches and three hotels, concluded that the attacks were carried out by homegrown jihadists who claimed affiliation with the Islamic State group.
However, the island’s Catholic Church has accused successive governments of protecting those behind the attack and several high-level investigations have identified links between military intelligence units and the bombers.
The head of the Church in Sri Lanka, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, led the march in the capital Colombo, where he presided over a multi-religious ceremony for the victims, who included 45 foreigners.
Hundreds of relatives of the victims marched from St Lucia’s Cathedral to the nearby St Anthony’s Church, where the first suicide attack took place.
All radio and television channels across the country muted their broadcasts for two minutes as a mark of respect.
Ranjith announced that the Vatican had recognised 167 Catholics killed as "Witnesses of the Faith", placing them on a path to possible sainthood.
"The purpose of this is to propagate and preserve the memory of the witness in perpetuity," Ranjith said.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on the eve of the anniversary there would be a review of the final report of the 2021 presidential commission of inquiry.
Dissanayake’s office said the report had been handed to the police for action against those linked to the attacks.
Church leaders have alleged that military intelligence officers orchestrated the bombings to bolster the political prospects of retired army officer Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was campaigning on a platform of national security.
He won the presidency seven months later.
Rajapaksa was forced out of office in July 2022 following months of protests over an unprecedented economic crisis that led to shortages of food, fuel, and medicine. Central Asia
Kazakhstan plans to send delegation to United States for trade talks (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [4/18/2025 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K]
Kazakhstan is adopting a non-confrontational stance as it finesses trade relations with the United States, seeking engagement rather than retaliation over the imposition of US tariffs.
Deputy Trade Minister Zhanel Kushukova told journalists on April 17 that the government intended to send a delegation to Washington to hold talks on a variety of trade issues, including tariffs. The Trump administration initially hit Kazakh goods with a 27-percent tariff rate, but subsequently scaled the rate back provisionally to 10 percent. In addition, the Trump administration has placed a 90-day pause on the imposition of tariffs.“All countries are now interested in holding consultations with the USA about duties, and we are no exception,” the InBusiness.kz news agency quoted Kushkova as saying. “We are currently working on this issue within the government and are preparing for consultations.” She provided no timeframe for when the Kazakh delegation would depart for the United States.
As the tariff and other trade issues play out, Kazakh officials are embracing a do-no-harm approach in response to the constant zigs and zags of US policymaking. Kushkova emphasized that Kazakhstan had no intention of imposing reciprocal tariffs on US goods, citing the country’s membership in the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) trade bloc as a factor in Astana’s policy of restraint. “A single customs tariff applies to five [EAEU member] states. That is, if any duties are to be changed on imported goods, then it can only be by a decision of the five,” Kushkova said. “But today, such an issue is not even considered.” Russia, the EAEU’s dominant member, has so far been exempted from US tariffs, even though it is subjected to extensive sanctions imposed by the US and European Union.
Kazakhstan in 2024 had the highest overall trade turnover with the United States of all Central Asian states, totaling $3.4 billion, of which more than two-thirds comprised US-bound Kazakh exports, mainly carbon resources and other commodities. Kazakh officials have noted that energy and other raw-material exports would be exempt from tariffs under the present US framework.
The planned Kazakh delegation would have plenty to discuss with US officials in Washington beyond tariffs. Since taking power, the Trump administration has repeatedly expressed interest to striking trade deals concerning Kazakhstan’s abundant reserves of rare earths. US interest in securing an increase in Kazakh mineral supplies is only intensifying in the wake of a Chinese ban on rare earth exports.
The top US diplomat in Kazakhstan, Deborah Robinson, earlier in April reaffirmed US support “for private and public sector cooperation in the critical minerals sector.”
Meanwhile, data published by Kazakhstan’s State Statistics Agency provides fresh evidence that Russia is having an increasingly difficult time using the Central Asian nation as a back door for sanctions-busting trade.
Kazakh authorities insist that they are enforcing US and EU sanctions. Nevertheless, the country has long been suspected as an enabler of illicit transit in dual-use technology and goods that can help maintain Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. A variety of Kazakh-based entities have been added to the US sanctions list since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022.
Of late, however, Russian business representatives in Kazakhstan have complained about tightening financial regulations that hinder their ability to operate, according to reports distributed by state-controlled Russian media.
The data published by QazStat supports the notion that Kazakhstan’s is becoming a less hospitable environment for sanctions-busting activity. The number of Russian companies operating in Kazakhstan has been gradually declining for a year now, following a long period of explosive growth, the official statistics show.
In January 2022, the month before the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, roughly 7,900 Russian entities operated in Kazakhstan. By the end of that year, the number nearly doubled to 15,700.
The number of actively operating Russian entities in Kazakhstan peaked during the first quarter of 2024, totaling 19,735. Since then, the numbers have declined by a few hundred each quarter, and stood at 18,366 as of April 1 of this year, a 7 percent drop over the four-quarter period. Less Soviet, More Inspiring: Kyrgyzstan Seeks New Anthem (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [4/20/2025 4:33 AM, Adina Zhorobekova, 1054K]
Kyrgyzstan is getting rid of its Soviet-inspired national anthem and has launched an unprecedented public contest to find an alternative.
The mountainous Central Asian country adopted a new anthem in 1992 after independence from the USSR but it is largely based on the Soviet-era one.
The government says the anthem fails to accurately represent the young nation descending from the ancient history of the nomadic Kyrgyz people.
The Kyrgyz were incorporated into first then Tsarist and then the Soviet empires and the country still retains a strong Russian influence.
"Winning this competition would be a huge success," said Balasaguyn Musayev, a 36-year-old composer and one of hundreds who have submitted entries for a new national anthem.
Speaking during a rehearsal at the music conservatory in the capital Bishkek, Musayev said it took him a month to find inspiration and then he "wrote the music in two days".
A poet friend wrote the text.
"The new anthem must be better than the previous one in every way. Otherwise people will wonder why we changed it," Musayev told AFP.
The winner of the contest was due to have been announced in April but the contest rules were modified and it is now unclear when an announcement could be expected.Soliciting ideas from the public is a rarity in Central Asia, where Kyrgyzstan’s more competitive political system is an exception among its authoritarian neighbours.
On a global scale, a complete change of the national anthem without a radical change of the political regime is also exceptional.
In recent years, Australia, Austria and Canada have replaced some words in their anthems to promote greater gender and ethnic inclusivity.
Kyrgyzstan’s unusual decision is part of a series of measures to overhaul state symbols taken by President Sadyr Japarov, who has been in power since 2021.
Following a constitutional reform in 2021 that strengthened his powers, Japarov changed the sun on the Kyrgyz flag at the end of 2023 so that it no longer resembled a sunflower, arguing that this would strengthen national sovereignty.
He has achieved a number of successes in his time in office including boosting economic growth and fighting corruption but rights groups are concerned about growing pressures on civil society.
Japarov has said that the anthem’s lyrics about the Kyrgyz people being "on the road to freedom" does not reflect the country’s historic reality after more than three decades of independence.
"Are we going to sing for another hundred years that we have just become independent? We have a state in our own right now, and we need to write an anthem that will inspire young people and future generations," he said last year.
Officials have also been critical of the current anthem for other reasons.
Parliament speaker Nurlanbek Shakiyev said it was so bad that "birds fly away" when they hear it.
He said the next one should "stimulate the country towards development" and be "easy to sing".
But Nurzhyguit Moldoyar, a 25-year-old composer and vocalist who has also submitted an entry, said the current one was already "a masterpiece".
"The bar is very high," he said, adding that he would not have wanted to change the anthem.
He said he hoped the winner would be selected based on "the feelings felt when listening to it, the musical novelties and sincerity". Turkmenistan adopts law to allow electronic visas and make it easier for foreigners to enter (AP)
AP [4/18/2025 12:12 PM, Staff, 456K]
Turkmenistan, long one of the world’s most closed countries, on Friday adopted a law that will bring in electronic visas and make it easier for foreigners to enter.
Since it became independent after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, the gas-rich Central Asian nation has placed strict entry requirements on would-be visitors. All foreign nationals have needed to obtain a visa in advance, and supply a formal “letter of invitation.” Even so, many have been turned down for unclear reasons.
Under the new law, foreign nationals will be able to fill in a simplified online form. Visa support letters will no longer be needed, allowing for smoother business visits and potentially boosting foreign tourism.
President Serdar Berdymukhamedov will now decide what types of electronic visas will be available, how they will be issued, and how long they will be valid for, according to the Neutral Turkmenistan state newspaper.
The country, which has remained under autocratic rule since independence and heavily relies on its vast natural gas reserves for revenue, has recently signalled a willingness to integrate into expanding regional trade networks.
In March, it began implementing a long-negotiated gas swap deal with Turkey, marking a significant step in energy cooperation between the two nations and the first time Ashgabat has shipped gas westward through a route that bypasses Russia. Uzbekistan: Reform drive will soon face critical hump – expert (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [4/18/2025 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K]
Uzbekistan is surpassing Kazakhstan as Central Asia’s most dynamic economy. But to maintain momentum, Tashkent will soon need to negotiate a thicket of challenges relating to the state’s heavy role in the economy, according to an expert who has worked closely with Uzbek officials on economic restructuring projects.
Uzbekistan has placed a big fiscal bet on retooling its economy, running up large deficits to promote a green energy transition, as well as an expansion of the mining and manufacturing sectors. Speaking at a recent event hosted by Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, Louis Skyner, a partner in the UK law firm Dentons’ energy practice, indicated Uzbekistan’s progress comes with a caveat that officials must soon confront.“Green energy requires liberalization,” he said.
Deregulation and privatization will be big steps for the Uzbek government, which has long maintained tight control over economic activity. Implementing the necessary measures to ensure the renewables sector operates efficiently could cause significant economic pain for Uzbek consumers. The state owns much of the existing power infrastructure, which is outdated. Electricity costs are also heavily subsidized at present, Skyner said. Modernization likely means significant cost increases.
In addition, Uzbekistan has set ambitious near-term climate targets. Officials have stated they want to generate at least 40 percent of the country’s electricity needs via renewable sources by 2030, while “reducing specific greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP by 35 percent below 2010 levels.”
Another factor exerting liberalization pressure on Tashkent is the government’s desire to join the World Trade Organization, Skyner said.
Private-sector funds will be needed to bridge the gap between government goals and its financial capabilities. “Given the scale of resources required and limitations within government finances, the private sector must be the primary investor for the green transition,” Skyner wrote in an analysis in early 2025 and published by the Bourse and Bazaar Foundation.
Skyner noted during the Harriman Institute event that Russia currently enjoys a controlling interest over Uzbekistan’s natural gas supplies, creating a major obstacle for reforming the country’s energy and electricity sectors.“Russian ownership has stunted productivity and undermines continued development,” he said, adding that while Uzbekistan wants to move away from Russian gas, “there is no viable route yet.” Indo-Pacific
Jailed for fishing: India-Pakistan tensions trap families in debt, poverty (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [4/21/2025 12:00 AM, Tarushi Aswani, 18.2M]
Boxes of sweets are being passed around as cheers and joy surround Rajeshwari Rama’s brick house, insulated with tin sheets, in the Vanakbara village of Diu, a federally-controlled island along the India-Pakistan coastline near Gujarat state in western India.
Rama’s relatives and friends are talking at the top of their voices as they celebrate the release of her husband, fisherman Mahesh Rama, from the Landhi jail in neighbouring Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi, in February this year.
Among the attendees is Laxmiben Solanki, 36, standing quietly in one corner. She does not taste the sweets. She is only marking her presence there, but remains preoccupied with thoughts of her husband, Premji Solanki.
Premji, 40, has also been in Pakistan’s Landhi jail since December 2022, along with several other Indian fishermen. Their crime: crossing a disputed border in the Arabian Sea, which divides the South Asian nuclear powers and sworn enemies, for fishing.
In February, Pakistan released 22 Indian fishermen who had been imprisoned by Pakistan’s Maritime Security Agency between April 2021 and December 2022, while they were fishing off the coast of Gujarat – also the home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Three of those released are from Diu, 18 from Gujarat, and the remaining one person from the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Though India and Pakistan share a heavily militarised land border, their International Maritime Boundary Line in the Arabian Sea is also largely disputed, especially in a zone called Sir Creek, a 96km (60-mile) tidal estuary that separates India’s Gujarat and Pakistan’s Sindh provinces.
It is in this patch that fishermen from both India and Pakistan wander into deeper waters, often without realising they have entered foreign territory. Due to the terrain of the disputed territory, there is no border fencing, with a marshland acting as a natural boundary between the two nations.
Several years and rounds of diplomatic talks between India and Pakistan have not been able to resolve the dispute, which has even seen military tensions between them. In 1999, India shot down a Pakistani aircraft carrying 16 naval officers over the alleged violation of Indian airspace near their maritime border. The incident occurred just a month after the two countries fought a war in Kargil, a snowy district in Indian-administered Kashmir.
On March 17, India’s Ministry of External Affairs revealed that out of 194 Indian fishermen currently imprisoned in Pakistan, 123 are from Gujarat. According to the Indian government, it has 81 Pakistani fishermen in its custody. Families on both sides say their loved ones have been jailed for a crime they committed “unknowingly” – because they did not know they had ventured inside waters claimed by another country.
Trapped in debt
Pakistan released Mauji Nathubhai Bamaniya, 55, in February because his osteoporosis had gotten worse. “I still can’t believe that I am sitting in my house, in my country, with my family. My decaying bones brought me back to my homeland,” Bamaniya tells Al Jazeera in Vanakbar village.
Another fisherman, Ashok Kumar Solanki, is also back at home in Ghoghla village in Diu. He has hearing and speaking impairments and was among the 22 fishermen released on health grounds.
But it is the families of those still imprisoned in Pakistan that find themselves caught in a cycle of recurring debt and debilitating anxiety.
In another house, hidden amid palm trees in Vanakbara, Kantaben Chunilal, 60, looks with tired eyes at the dusty path leading to her home. She has been waiting for her son, Jashvant, since December 2022.
Jashvant was barely 17 when he was arrested by Pakistani forces. He was the family’s sole breadwinner.
Kantaben says she feels too ashamed to ask her relatives for more loans to fill the empty grain jars in her kitchen. She has borrowed nearly 500,000 rupees ($5,855) from several relatives for sustenance. “The government offers us a financial aid of $3 per day. It is not even half of what our men would earn,” she tells Al Jazeera.
Out of desperation, Kantaben says she sometimes randomly visits relatives during mealtimes, hoping they will accommodate her as a guest and she may save some money that day.
In the same village, Aratiben Chavda married fisherman Alpesh Chavda in 2020. Less than a year later, Alpesh was arrested by Pakistani forces while he was out fishing in the Sir Creek area.
Aratiben tells Al Jazeera their 3-year-old son Kriansh, born about four months after Alpesh’s arrest, has never seen his father. “We make him see his father’s photos, so that one day, when Alpesh comes back, my child can recognise him,” she says, sobbing.
Aratiben’s house is shaded by palm and coconut trees, insulating her and her son from India’s scorching heat. But there is no escaping the poverty that has gripped the household. Selling the refrigerator her parents had given her as a wedding gift supported her for about two months during the winter of 2023.
Aratiben and her mother-in-law, Jayaben, also sell vegetables at the local market, making about $5 to $7 on good days. But she says there are too many days in between when they are unable to afford two meals.
Indian activists and fishermen’s unions have been campaigning for the release of all the fishermen imprisoned by Pakistan.
Chhaganbhai Bamania, a social worker in Diu, points out that under Pakistani law, fishermen who stray into that country’s waters should not be sentenced for more than six months.“But due to the hostility between India and Pakistan, citizens are caught in a crossfire for no fault of theirs. Their jail time is increased without them knowing or understanding it,” he says, adding that some Indian fishermen end up spending years behind bars.
Bamania says families of jailed fishermen have been writing to top Indian officials to plead for their release, but accuses the government of moving at a “snail’s pace” to try and address their concerns.‘As if we were terrorists’
This pattern of arrests followed by a long wait for release is not new. Some, like 50-year-old Shyamjibhai Ramji, are repeat visitors to Pakistani jails.
Ramji was arrested three times between 2000 and 2014. When he was released for a third time from a Karachi jail, his son made him swear he would never venture into the sea, “not even in his dreams or rather, nightmares”.“Catching fish is all I know,” he says. “We follow the stars’ movements while casting nets into the sea at night. Once, I wandered away from Okha Port, once from Porbandar Port. There are many like me who have been jailed more than once,” he tells Al Jazeera, referring to two prominent seaports in Gujarat.
Ramji says he now prefers looking at the sea from a distance to avoid revisiting the “horrors” he faced in Pakistani custody. “They would keep us separately, away from Pakistani prisoners, and kept asking us the same questions, as if we were terrorists or like we were hiding something. When we said we are vegetarians, they gave us grass and boiled water for food. It was a nightmare every day,” he says.
Shekhar Sinha, a retired Indian Navy officer, says the “greed of a larger catch drives fishermen to go beyond that imaginary line on water, often losing track of their exact position”.“Even Pakistani fishermen are arrested in similar circumstances. Generally, they are exchanged, except for those who fail during interrogations and are unable to answer questions properly,” he tells Al Jazeera.
As efforts to free civilians on both sides of the border continue, women like Laxmiben hold onto hope, making a new promise to their children every day. Her eyes glisten with tears as she and her three teenage children – a son aged 18 and daughters who are 14 and 13 – await Premji’s release.“I keep telling my children that, ‘Your father will return tomorrow’. But that tomorrow has not happened for four years now. My tongue is tired of lying,” she says as she holds the hands of her elder daughter, Jigna, both looking at the waves hitting the Diu port.
Beyond the waters lies Pakistan. And Premji. Trump Administration Draft Order Calls for Drastic Overhaul of State Department (New York Times)
New York Times [4/20/2025 4:14 PM, Edward Wong, 831K]
A draft of a Trump administration executive order proposes a drastic restructuring of the State Department that includes eliminating almost all of its Africa operations and shutting down embassies and consulates across the continent, according to American officials and a copy of the document.
The draft also calls for cutting offices at State Department headquarters that address climate change and refugee issues, as well as democracy and human rights concerns.
It was not immediately clear who had compiled the document or what stage of internal debates over a restructuring of the State Department it reflected. It is one of several recent documents proposing changes to the department, and internal administration conversations take place daily on possible actions.
Some of the ideas have been debated among U.S. officials in recent weeks, though it is unclear to what degree they would be adopted or how active the draft is, officials said.
Elements of the draft executive order could change before final White House review or before President Trump signs it, if he decides to do so.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote a short comment on social media after this article was published, calling it “fake news.” There are no indications that Mr. Rubio or his top aides have signed off on the document, though they have been working on a reorganization of the State Department.
Neither the State Department nor the White House National Security Council replied to requests for comment early Sunday before this article was published, including a question asking whether Mr. Trump would sign such an executive order.
The purpose of the executive order is to impose “a disciplined reorganization” of the State Department and “streamline mission delivery” while cutting “waste, fraud and abuse,” according to a copy of the draft order obtained by The New York Times. The order says the department is supposed to make the changes by Oct. 1.
Some of the proposed changes outlined in the draft document would require congressional notification and no doubt be challenged by lawmakers, including mass closures of diplomatic missions and headquarters bureaus, as well as an overhaul of the diplomatic corps. Substantial parts, if officials tried to enact them, would likely face lawsuits.
On Sunday afternoon, Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a social media post: “Whether parts of this draft EO ever reach Trump’s desk, it’s already clear this administration is determined to gut the @StateDept and run American diplomacy and development capabilities into the ground.”
A White House official said the same afternoon that the proposals were not true and that the White House was not considering them.
The document began circulating among current and former U.S. diplomats and other officials on Saturday.
Major structural changes to the State Department would be accompanied by efforts to lay off both career diplomats, known as foreign service officers, and civil service employees, who usually work in the department’s headquarters in Washington, said current and former U.S. officials familiar with the plans. The department would begin putting large numbers of workers on paid leave and sending out notices of termination, they said.
The draft executive order calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats, and it lays out new hiring criteria that includes “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision.”
The draft says the department must greatly expand its use of artificial intelligence to help draft documents, and to undertake “policy development and review” and “operational planning.”
The proposed reorganization would get rid of regional bureaus that help make and enact policy in large parts of the globe.
Instead, the draft says, those functions would fall under four “corps”: Eurasia Corps, consisting of Europe, Russia and Central Asia; Mid-East Corps, consisting of Arab nations, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan; Latin America Corps, consisting of Central America, South America and the Caribbean; and Indo-Pacific Corps, consisting of East Asia, Southeast Asia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives.
One of the most drastic proposed changes is to eliminate the bureau of African affairs, which oversees policy in sub-Saharan Africa. It would be replaced by a much smaller special envoy office for African affairs that would report to the National Security Council. The office would focus on a handful of issues, including “coordinated counterterrorism operations” and “strategic extraction and trade of critical natural resources.”
The draft also said all “nonessential” embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa would be closed by Oct. 1. Diplomats would be sent to Africa on “targeted, mission-driven deployments,” the document said.
Canadian operations would be put into a new North American affairs office under Mr. Rubio’s authority, and it would be run by a “significantly reduced team,” the draft said. The department would also severely shrink the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.
The department would eliminate a bureau overseeing democracy and human rights issues; one that handles refugees and migration; and another that works with international organizations. The under secretary position overseeing the first two bureaus would be cut. So would the office of the under secretary of public diplomacy and public affairs.
The department would also get rid of the position of the special envoy for climate.
The department would establish a new senior position, the under secretary for transnational threat elimination, to oversee counternarcotics policy and other issues, the draft memo said.
The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance would absorb the remnants of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has been gutted over the last two months by Mr. Rubio and other members of the Trump administration.
As for personnel, the memo said, the department needs to move from its “current outdated and disorganized generalist global rotation model to a smarter, strategic, regionally specialized career service framework to maximize expertise.”
That means people trying to get into the Foreign Service would choose during the application process which regional corps they want to work in.
The department would offer buyouts to foreign service and civil service officers until Sept. 30, the draft said.
The State Department has about 80,000 employees, with 50,000 of those being local citizens abroad. Of the rest, about 14,000 are trained diplomats who rotate overseas, called foreign service officers and specialists, and 13,000 are members of the civil service who work mostly out of Washington.
The draft order also calls for narrowing Fulbright scholarships so that they are given only to students doing master’s level studies in national security matters.
And it says the department will end its contract with Howard University, a historically Black institution, to recruit candidates for the Rangel and Pickering fellowships, which are to be terminated. The goal of those fellowships has been to help students from underrepresented groups get a chance at entering the Foreign Service soon after graduation.
The draft executive order is one of several internal documents that have circulated in the administration in recent days laying out proposed changes to the State Department. Another memo outlines a proposed cut of nearly 50 percent to the agency’s budget in the next fiscal year. Yet another internal memo proposes cutting 10 embassies and 17 consulates. Twitter
Afghanistan
Shawn VanDiver@shawnjvandiver
[4/20/2025 8:56 AM, 33.1K followers, 87 retweets, 209 likes]
The State Dept just told OMB they plan to shut down Enduring Welcome—the program that relocates our Afghan allies. Thousands already vetted. U.S. troops’ family members. Even American citizens. We cannot let this happen. Take action: https://afghanevac.org/letter-to-reps #AfghanEvac
Zalmay Khalilzad@realZalmayMK
[4/19/2025 2:51 AM, 261K followers, 67 retweets, 309 likes]
Diplomacy is the best option for dealing with challenges confronting #Afghanistan #Pakistan relations.
Bilal Sarwary@bsarwary
[4/19/2025 5:42 PM, 255.2K followers, 33 retweets, 65 likes]
ICE arresting Afghans have sparked a major media celebration by Afghan Taliban saying those who support US will punished in this life and in the after Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[4/20/2025 11:57 PM, 6.7M followers, 81 retweets, 280 likes]
I warmly welcome the resumption of PIA’s direct flights between Lahore and Baku after a hiatus of two years — a significant milestone for tourism and regional connectivity between our brotherly countries. The inaugural flight, captained by Ms. Shahida Ismail, is a proud reminder that Pakistani women continue to excel in all fields, including aviation. We remain committed to achieving greater milestones in the fraternal ties between PK and AZ as we deepen our cooperation across sectors. I commend Minister Khawaja Asif @KhawajaMAsif and his entire team for their efforts in advancing our aviation linkages. #PIAtoBaku
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[4/20/2025 2:47 AM, 6.7M followers, 171 retweets, 640 likes]
Warm Easter greetings to our Christian brothers and sisters in Pakistan and across the world. May this blessed occasion, strengthen the values of compassion, unity, and peaceful coexistence.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[4/20/2025 1:07 PM, 481.6K followers, 16 retweets, 33 likes]
Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar @MIshaqDar50, held telephone conversation with the Foreign Minister of Iran, Seyed Abbas Araghchi @araghchi. They discussed bilateral relations, reaffirming resolve to deepen cooperation. Regional & global developments of mutual interest were also discussed. DPM expressed the hope that mediation efforts between the USA & Iran will lead to peace, security & development.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[4/20/2025 10:59 AM, 481.6K followers, 22 retweets, 83 likes]
Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar @MIshaqDar50 today spoke with Acting Afghan Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi. DPM/FM thanked him for the warm welcome and sumptuous hospitality extended to him and accompanying delegation during his yesterday’s visit to Kabul. Both leaders expressed satisfaction at the outcome of the discussions held during the visit and agreed to expeditiously implement the decisions taken for the mutual benefit of the people of the two countries . DPM/FM extended an invitation to Acting Afghan Foreign Minister to visit Pakistan, which he happily accepted.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[4/19/2025 7:43 AM, 481.6K followers, 40 retweets, 103 likes]
DPM/FM, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar @MIshaqDar50, met with the Acting Afghan DPM, Mullah Abdul Salam Hanafi. The two leaders discussed all issues of mutual interest, including peace and security, and people-to-people contacts. They agreed to enhance bilateral trade, transit and economic cooperation, to the mutual benefit of the people of both countries. They agreed to remain engaged to achieve the full potential of regional economic development, including through realization of trans-regional connectivity projects.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[4/19/2025 5:45 AM, 481.6K followers, 52 retweets, 217 likes]
Deputy Prime Minister / Foreign Minister, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar @MIshaqDar50, called on the acting Afghan Prime Minister, Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund. Both sides exchanged views on key issues of mutual interest, including security, trade and transit cooperation, and explored ways to enhance people-to-people contacts. Reaffirming the commitment to continued engagement, both sides agreed to maintain high-level exchanges to further strengthen the relations between the two brotherly countries.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[4/18/2025 5:33 AM, 481.6K followers, 38 retweets, 142 likes]
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar @MIshaqDar50, engaged in extensive discussions with Acting Afghan Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi. The discussions encompassed a comprehensive range of topics pertaining to bilateral relations, underscoring the need to devise strategies for enhancing cooperation across diverse areas of mutual interest, including security, trade, transit, connectivity, and people to people contacts. The Deputy Prime Minister emphasised the paramount importance of addressing all pertinent issues, particularly those related to security and border management, in order to fully realise the potential for regional trade and connectivity. Both parties reaffirmed their commitment to fostering mutually beneficial relations and agreed on the importance of maintaining high-level engagement.Hamid Mir@HamidMirPAK
[4/19/2025 6:19 AM, 8.6M followers, 90 retweets, 532 likes]
KFC invested more than $100 million in Pakistan and such international food chains pay 100 per cent tax. Talal Chaudhry said with regret that our other [local] restaurants and food chains evade tax but these [chains] do not.” https://www.dawn.com/news/1905260
Hamid Mir@HamidMirPAK
[4/19/2025 12:33 AM, 8.6M followers, 21 retweets, 78 likes]
PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari minced no words on Friday as he threatened the ruling PML-N against continuing down the path of confrontation with Sindh over the issue of new canals on the Indus River. He said that Lion always preyed on people’s blood. https://www.dawn.com/news/1905150 India
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[4/21/2025 2:07 AM, 107.6M followers, 656 retweets, 2.1K likes]
Addressing a programme on Civil Services Day… https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1yoKMornXqRJQ
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[4/20/2025 11:10 PM, 107.6M followers, 12K retweets, 105K likes]
Wishing everyone a blessed and joyous Easter. This Easter is special because world over, the Jubilee Year is being observed with immense fervour. May this sacred occasion inspire hope, renewal and compassion in every person. May there be joy and harmony all around.
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[4/20/2025 11:00 PM, 3.4M followers, 130 retweets, 984 likes]
Extend my best wishes to all civil servants and their families on #CivilServicesDay. Their dedication and hard work in ensuring IN’s development and progress is deeply valued.
Randhir Jaiswal@MEAIndia
[4/21/2025 1:15 AM, 2.3M followers, 149 retweets, 828 likes]
A very warm welcome to @VP JD Vance, @SLOTUS Mrs. Usha Vance, & the U.S. delegation to IN! Received by Minister of Railways and I&B @AshwiniVaishnaw at the airport. The Official Visit (21–24 Apr) spanning Delhi, Jaipur & Agra is expected to further deepen the India–U.S. Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[4/21/2025 12:52 AM, 219K followers, 8 retweets, 66 likes]
US VP Vance and family have arrived in India. Vance has been front and center on the Trump administration’s foreign policy messaging, so what he says on this trip will be closely watched. Trade talks & tariff issues will likely top the agenda during his meeting w/Modi on Monday.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[4/19/2025 10:02 AM, 219K followers, 27 retweets, 151 likes]
The Trump-Modi joint statement in Feb vowed “decisive action” against those that threaten the territorial integrity or sovereignty of the US or India-suggesting a more robust US approach on the Khalistan issue. The FBI arrest of Harpreet Singh may be an indication of this shift. NSB
Chief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[4/20/2025 11:05 AM, 145.6K followers, 77 retweets, 834 likes]
Chief Adviser calls on Chinese Ambassador to review progress of China Visit, outline next steps for bilateral cooperation DHAKA, April 20, 2025:
Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus met with the Chinese Ambassador Mr Yao Wen at the State Guest House Jamuna on Saturday to review the outcomes of his recent visit to China and outline next steps for accelerating Bangladesh-China cooperation. During the meeting, both sides expressed a shared commitment to transforming discussions into actionable projects across a range of sectors—including infrastructure, trade, healthcare, education, and culture. “Our top priority now is to move forward with the plans we discussed during the China visit,” said the Chief Adviser. “We want to make sure momentum is not lost.”
The Chinese Ambassador echoed the Chief Adviser’s sentiment, saying, “This is also our top priority. We had one of the highest-level agenda meetings in China, and we do not want to wait another two to three years just to sign agreements—we want to implement them quickly.” One of the topics discussed was the development of the Mongla and Anowara economic zones. BIDA Executive Chairman Chowdhury Ashik Mahmud Bin Harun informed that preparations are underway and, once completed, the zones will be handed over to developers to begin implementation. The two sides also discussed a plan to procure four new vessels from China, with the Chinese side assuring that the process would be completed by June this year.
Chinese Ambassador also confirmed that China’s Commerce Minister will visit Bangladesh soon, accompanied by a 100-member delegation of investors aiming to explore new investment opportunities. “We will organise a mini investment summit focused on Chinese investors to strengthen sector-specific collaboration,” said BIDA Chairman Ashik. Healthcare cooperation featured prominently in the discussion. The Chinese side reaffirmed their commitment to building a 1,000-bed hospital in Bangladesh, as initially proposed during the China visit. They also highlighted ongoing support in establishing a specialised burn unit in Chittagong. The Chinese Ambassador informed that progress is being made to launch a direct Kunming–Chittagong flight, and efforts are underway to expedite medical visas for Bangladeshi patients. The Chief Adviser stressed the importance of cultural exchange, proposing the establishment of a Chinese Cultural Centre and Language Institute to allow young Bangladeshis to engage more closely with Chinese language and culture. Both sides reaffirmed their commitment to launching a long-term, 50-year master plan on water management, including work on the Teesta River system.
The Chief Adviser also raised the possibility of expanding jute exports to China and urged greater Chinese investment in the locomotive sector. He proposed setting up locomotive manufacturing and maintenance hubs in both Chattogram and Syedpur, alongside capacity-building workshops and training programmes. Agricultural trade was another area of progress. Bangladesh will begin exporting mangoes to China this season, with jackfruit exports scheduled for next year. “I’ll send a basket of fresh mangoes to President Xi myself,” said Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus. The meeting was also attended by the Foreign Adviser Md Touhid Hossain, National Security adviser Dr Khalliur Rahman, BIDA Chiarman Ashik Mahmud Bin Harun, Special Assistant Faiz Taieb, Cabinet Secretary Sirajuddin Mia, SDG coordinator Lamiya Morshed.
Chief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[4/20/2025 10:34 AM, 145.6K followers, 24 retweets, 188 likes]
Chief Adviser receives final report from Local Government Reform Commission DHAKA, April 20 – The Local Government Reform Commission officially handed over its final report to Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus at the State Guest House Jamuna on Sunday. Receiving the report, the Chief Adviser expressed his strong commitment to transparency and public engagement with the reform process. “We will make the full report public so that citizens, experts, and stakeholders can access and understand the reforms that are being proposed,” Professor Yunus said. “In fact, I believe these reforms should be studied in schools to build civic awareness from a young age.”
Professor Yunus added, “Let us not delay. These reforms must move from paper to practice as soon as possible.” The Local Government Reform Commission, headed by Professor Tofail Ahmed, submitted the report after months of consultation, research, and fieldwork. “We are recommending that the Consensus Commission review and reflect on the report,” said Professor Ahmed. “In the first section, we focused on structural reforms, and in the latter part, we offer what we call ‘a single idea to implement a thousand others’ — a framework that ensures practical and scalable change.”
He added that the goal is to make local governments smarter and more efficient in delivering public services. “We’ve dedicated an entire chapter to the role of resource management and suggested that the Local Government Division take on a supervisory role to ensure accountability,” said Professor Ahmed .The commission’s report also identifies critical challenges facing urban local bodies, particularly the Dhaka City Corporation. “Departmental inefficiencies and rampant bribery remain persistent issues,” Professor Ahmed said. “From large infrastructure projects to everyday services, corruption flows through multiple layers — project-level, service-level, and inter-departmental. Unless we address these, effective governance will remain a dream.”
This meeting was also attended by members of the Local Government Reform Commission, including Professor Dr Tofail Ahmed, Professor Dr Ferdous Arfina Osman, Abdur Rahman, Dr Mahfuz Kabir, Mahshuda Khatun Shefali, Professor Dr Mohammad Tarikul Islam, Elira Dewan, Professor Dr Kazi Maruful Islam, Mr. A.K.M. Tarikul Alam, Helena Parveen, and Mojbah Uddin Khan.
Chief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[4/20/2025 6:25 AM, 145.6K followers, 37 retweets, 413 likes] Chief Adviser urges UN to hire more Bangladeshi women peacekeepers Dhaka, April 20, 2025: Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus on Sunday urged the United Nations to hire more woman peacekeepers from Bangladesh as he reaffirmed Bangladesh’s unwavering commitment to international peace keeping and security efforts. The Chief Adviser made the call when UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix met him at the State Guest House Jamuna. “One thing that I encourage is the participation of more Bangladeshi women in peacekeeping missions,” said the Chief Adviser during the meeting when issues with regard to UN peacekeeping were discussed elaborately.
Bangladesh consistently ranks among the top three troop/police-contributing countries (TPCCs), with 5,677 peacekeepers across 10 of the 11 active missions. The UN Under-Secretary-General highlighted the UN policy of engaging more women in peacekeeping. “We don’t want to confine women in specific roles,” he said, adding UN would support recruiting women in all aspects of peacekeeping. The Chief Adviser expressed Bangladesh’s readiness to deploy additional troops and police when required, underscoring Bangladesh’s pledge of five units at the Rapid Deployment Level in the Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System (PCRS).
Professor Yunus also advocated for increased Bangladeshi representation in UN peacekeeping leadership at both headquarters and field levels. The UN official said they would also support Bangladesh in this regard. The Chief Adviser affirmed that Bangladesh strictly complies with the UN vetting for peacekeepers and welcomed further collaboration with the UN and other bodies on training and accountability to strengthen human rights compliance. The Chief Adviser was told that a Bangladeshi delegation led by the foreign advisor would join the UN peacekeeping ministerial conference to be held in Berlin, Germany, from 13 to 14 May 2025.
The Chief Adviser also expressed concern over ongoing conflict in Myanmar and cross-border firing incidents, civilian casualties, and livelihood disruptions near the Naf River, which acts as a border between Bangladesh and Myanmar. He warned that continued instability could escalate, creating instability and security risks. He urging concerted international engagement to resolve the Rohingya crisis. The Chief Adviser recalled the recent visit of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Rohingya camps in Southeast Bangladesh, saying that his visit gave Rohingyas renewed hope for a safe and dignified repatriation to Myanmar.
Chief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[4/20/2025 3:03 AM, 145.6K followers, 48 retweets, 644 likes]
Chief Adviser thanks officials for hassle-free Eid Dhaka: 20 April, 2025 Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus held a meeting on Sunday with officials from Ministries of Power, Energy and, Road Transport and Bridges and Railways at the State Guest House Jamuna in Dhaka. Professor Muhammad Yunus congratulated the officials on gifting the people of Bangladesh a hassle-free Eid, with no highway congestion and bare minimum power cuts during the nine-day long festival. The Chief Adviser said: “Even till now, I have been hearing nothing but good things about this Eid al Fitr. Everybody keeps praising how everything was well organised.” Professor Yunus also added that now a norm has been set and it’s time to carry it forward throughout the year. The team of officials were led my Fouzul Kabir Khan, Adviser of the Ministries of Road Transport and Bridges, Railways, and Power and Energy. He briefed the Chief Adviser on how they had prepared for the Eid. “Rather than working as individual ministries we worked as a whole unit,” said Adviser Khan.
Citing the example of how Saidabad Bus Terminal was cleaned up and readied for the biggest annual exodus for villages, he said other ministries and even private sectors were involved in the planning and execution process. “When we went to Saidabad Bus Terminal, it was dirty and disorganised. It looked like a giant urinal. So we contacted the environmental ministry and had that sorted out," he said. The adviser also emphasised the fact that none of the officials went to their home town during the Eid holidays and were on the field to make sure everything was in order. He also said if everything goes right there will be minimum load shedding and no transport congestion during the upcoming Eid al Adha festival. "Inshallah, the Eid al Adha will also be a smooth ride logistically". Sheikh Mohinuddin, Special Assistant to Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges, Ms Farzana Momtaz, Secretary, Electricity Division, Muhammad Saiful Islam, secretary Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, Siraj Syathi, Principal Secretary to the Chief Adviser of Bangladesh were, among other officials, present in the meeting.
Chief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[4/19/2025 7:23 AM, 145.6K followers, 69 retweets, 904 likes]
Women’s Affairs Reform Commission submitted its report to Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus at the State Guest House Jamuna on Saturday.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[4/20/2025 12:03 PM, 219K followers, 22 retweets, 171 likes]
Recent Pakistan-Bangladesh diplomacy highlights the potential for bettering ties after years of standstill-especially in terms of people to people ties and trade (some potential for BD to import materials for its RMGs). But it may also show the potential limits of improved ties.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[4/20/2025 12:03 PM, 219K followers, 11 likes]
Dhaka has reiterated a demand made by previous BD govts that Pakistan formally & publicly apologize for 1971 genocide. Pakistan has never given an apology that meets BD’s expectations, and this has held back relations. Would be a major step, but unlikely, for Pak to do so now.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[4/20/2025 12:03 PM, 219K followers, 14 likes]
It’s worth watching how this is impacted by elections in BD, whenever they happen. The elected govt will likely be led by BNP, which clashed w/India when previously in power, but has recently ended its alliance w/Jamaat & softened its tone on India. May not bode well for BD-Pak.
The President’s Office, Maldives@presidencymv
[4/19/2025 9:00 AM, 112.7K followers, 175 retweets, 179 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu and First Lady Madam @sajidhaamohamed inspect the military parade and display by the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) to commemorate MNDF’s 133rd anniversary. The ceremony commenced with a presidential salute, followed by the MNDF military band’s performance.
MOFA of Nepal@MofaNepal
[4/21/2025 2:03 AM, 263.1K followers, 5 retweets, 15 likes]
Hon. Foreign Minister Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba has been elected as the Chair of the 81st session of ESCAP today. After assuming this esteemed position, she chaired the inaugural session of the Commission and the first segment of the general debate this morning.@Arzuranadeuba @amritrai555 @krishnadhakal07
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[4/20/2025 4:41 AM, 149.8K followers, 30 retweets, 181 likes]
Today, the final report and accompanying documents of the Presidential Investigation Commission on the Easter Sunday attacks were handed over to the CID, as per my directive. Under my leadership, we’ve renewed our commitment to an independent investigation, ensuring justice for the victims will not be forgotten.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[4/18/2025 11:35 AM, 149.8K followers, 22 retweets, 261 likes]
Today marks a momentous occasion as the ‘Siri Dalada Vandanawa’ ceremony resumes after 16 years, allowing us to venerate the Sacred Tooth Relic. I had the honour of making the first floral offering, and I invite all devotees to join us at the Temple of the Tooth until April 27.
Namal Rajapaksa@RajapaksaNamal
[4/21/2025 12:28 AM, 436.4K followers, 7 likes]
Public meetings were held by #SLPP candidates contesting the 2025 local government elections from the local council electoral areas of Welikanda, Dimbulagala, Polonnaruwa, Medirigiriya, Hingurakgoda & Elahera in the Polonnaruwa District. #LGE2025 #Polonnaruwa #NRWayForward #NRGaminGamata
Namal Rajapaksa@RajapaksaNamal
[4/20/2025 11:22 AM, 436.4K followers, 18 retweets, 46 likes]
The Final Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), chaired by Justice Janak de Silva, was formally submitted to Parliament on 23rd February 2021, pursuant to the directives of the then-President. Subsequently, the PCoI report was tabled in Parliament on or around 25th February 2021. The report remains publicly accessible via the official website of Parliament. The Honourable Attorney General is already in possession of—and fully apprised of—the contents of this report. Regrettably, the current Government appears to be exploiting the national tragedy of the “Easter Attacks” as a political instrument, wielding it to evoke emotional responses and manipulate public sentiment amidst the ongoing local government election process. Such conduct marks a disheartening descent into cheap and manipulative political opportunism.
A legitimate criminal investigation must be conducted with objectivity and impartiality. To first identify a target and then seek evidence to support a preconceived accusation is not an investigation—it is a deliberate orchestration aimed at persecuting individuals, particularly those with dissenting political views. I strongly urge this Government—replete with performative displays of moral superiority—to cease using this sorrowful national tragedy as a tool for political gain. Such actions are not only disingenuous but also deeply disrespectful to the memory of the victims. It is, by every measure, unbecoming, cynical, and shameful. Central Asia
Javlon Vakhabov@JavlonVakhabov
[4/19/2025 12:05 PM, 6.2K followers, 2 likes]
This roundtable will take place ahead of the second Central Asia – GCC Summit scheduled for May 5 in Samarkand and serves as an expert-level platform to support regional dialogue. Over 40 participants from key diplomatic, academic, and research institutions in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain will join it. Interregional connectivity, energy, food and climate security, stability, and education will be key topics for addressing at the roundtable.
Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[4/19/2025 8:17 PM, 24.2K followers, 2 retweets, 6 likes]
#Unemployment in Central Asia and beyond. % according to the governments. @worldbank’s most recent data from Tajikistan, for example, is from 2009. Turkmenistan’s from 2010, while Uzbekistan’s from 2020. So much for the World Bank’s constant bragging about how closely it works with these regimes. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.NE.ZS {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.