epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Friday, February 7, 2025 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Turkey ends Afghan diplomats’ mission, paving way for Taliban to appoint their own team (AP)
AP [2/7/2025 4:49 AM, Suzan Fraser, 456K, Neutral]
Turkey has terminated the mission of Afghan diplomats who were appointed by Afghanistan’s former, pro-Western government, the outgoing diplomatic team said, in a move that paves the way for the Taliban to appoint their own envoys.

The departing team said on X that it had handed over the embassy in Ankara to the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Thursday. The unusually strongly-worded statement said that the decision by Turkey’s government to end the mission was the result of pressure by the Taliban on the diplomats and Turkish officials.

There was no immediate statement from officials in Ankara.

It’s another diplomatic success for the Taliban, which have moved to take control of the country’s embassies and consulates overseas after more than three years in power. Their takeover of diplomatic missions in Turkey pushes that number to more than 40.

“Due to the failed attempts of the Taliban to gain control of the embassy and the continuous pressure on the diplomats and employees of this embassy, as well as their pressure on the Turkish government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey has recently decided to terminate the mission of the ambassador and diplomats of this embassy,” the departing team said.

The statement maintained that Turkey had made the decision to be able to keep open the country’s embassy in Kabul, and consulates in Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat.

In Kabul, the Taliban-led Foreign Ministry said that “a change in the diplomatic staff in the diplomatic missions of countries is a normal practice.”

“The Embassy of Afghanistan in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, continues its activities as usual and is at the service of its citizens and other clients,” Zakir Jalali, a senior ministry official, said in a statement.

Last July, the Taliban said they no longer recognized diplomatic missions set up by the former, Western-backed government. Most countries still haven’t accepted the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers.

Despite the Taliban and the West being at loggerheads, mostly because of the sweeping restrictions on women and girls, Afghan authorities have established ties with major regional powers including the Chinese government, Russia, and wealthy Gulf nations.
Afghan journalist barred from U.S. under Trump refugee ban says he has ‘no plan left’ (San Francisco Chronicle)
San Francisco Chronicle [2/6/2025 7:00 AM, Ko Lyn Cheang, 4368K, Neutral]
On the morning of Jan. 21, in a dimly lit house in Islamabad, Pakistan, Abdul, a 30-year-old Afghan journalist, opened his laptop to see that President Donald Trump had indefinitely suspended refugee admissions.

Trump’s executive order, made on the grounds of national interests, has upended the lives of more than 10,000 people approved to leave war and disaster for the U.S., and ended a decades-old commitment to international law.

For the second time in his life, Abdul said he felt "the door of hope" slammed in his face. The first time was when the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, leaving people like him — journalists, ethnic minorities and allies of the U.S. government — vulnerable to the resurgent Taliban. Abdul and his family had been undergoing their final medical screenings, the last stage in what had been a three-and-a-half-year vetting process.

"We feel betrayal," said Abdul, whom the Chronicle is identifying by his first name because he has been targeted by the Taliban.

A U.S. Department of State spokesperson declined to share how many approved and pending refugee cases were affected by the suspension. Just two of the 10 organizations designated by the U.S. to work with refugees told the Chronicle they had been expecting 7,170 approved refugees now barred from entry.

"Decimating the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is not putting America first. It is weakening us as a country," said Naomi Steinberg, vice president for U.S. policy and advocacy at resettlement organization HIAS, originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. "What refugee resettlement does is serve as a significant tool in our foreign policy. It helps our allies. … It makes us more secure.".

From its inception in 1980, the U.S. refugee admissions program has generally seen bipartisan support, with President George H.W. Bush admitting more than 100,000 people annually during his one term in office and even his son, President George W. Bush, underscoring the importance of helping Afghan women even as he significantly reduced admissions.

In his first term, Trump sent refugee admissions crashing to historic lows. Resettlement agencies saw their funding plunge as a result. It took four years to rebuild and meet the higher admission caps set by President Joe Biden, which resulted in just over 100,000 admissions in his final year.

Resettlement agencies received work stoppage orders on Jan. 24 from the State Department, which directed them to freeze federally-funded services such as arranging housing, health care, job aid and English classes, which the agencies are contracted to provide for 90 days after refugees’ arrival.

Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver exempting "life-saving humanitarian assistance" from Trump’s directive to suspend U.S. foreign aid. But resettlement agencies said they are still determining whether they’re covered.

"What the U.S. is saying is no support for refugees and forcibly displaced people anywhere," Steinberg said. "The people who were forced to flee their homes are going to be left high and dry and used as political pawns.".

Working as an investigative television journalist in Afghanistan, Abdul interviewed top Taliban leaders, many of whom now control the government.

Abdul said he asked pointed questions about human rights, women’s rights and religious minorities. Twice, officials walked out mid-interview.

"They said, ‘Your mind has become infidel, in these 20 years. Your mind is full of American views,’" Abdul recalled. "I said, ‘Human rights is not an American view. Going to school is a right. It has nothing to do with American views.’".

In February 2020, Trump administration officials brokered a deal with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, agreeing to withdraw troops after 19 years. As the U.S. and NATO began exiting Afghanistan, Abdul’s news outlet was struck by three explosions, he said. Province after province was seized by the Taliban as they edged closer to Kabul. On Aug. 14, 2021, while Abdul was at work, the office alarm went off. The Taliban was nearing the city.

"It was total chaos," Abdul said. "The darkest day for us.".

The next morning, Taliban forces breached the city. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani left the country. The Taliban was back in control. Abdul’s station broadcast news of the regime change with video shot on their phones.

The Taliban declared Abdul’s news outlet an enemy target. The Chronicle is not naming the outlet as it could identify him.

Abdul resolved to leave the country and burned his documents.

Carrying his mother, partially paralyzed from a stroke, Abdul and his sister headed for Kandahar, then across the Pakistan border. The rest of his family escaped Afghanistan later.

To conceal his Hazara identity and get past police checkpoints, Abdul donned a burqa. Hazara people, a Farsi-speaking ethnic minority whose observance of Islam differs from the Taliban’s, have long been subject to regional persecution, from a 19th century genocide to Taliban bomb attacks in recent years.

In Pakistan, Abdul scraped together cash working under-the-table jobs in delivery, construction and at a juice factory. The U.S. embassies in Kabul and Islamabad referred him to apply for refugee status. Reporters Without Borders sent him $1,500 Euros to help, he said.

A former editor, inquiring whether he was safe, got Abdul a job at a news organization operating in Pakistan.

In late 2023, Pakistan said it would start deporting the estimated 1.7 million undocumented Afghans in the country. During police raids in their neighborhood, Abdul slept in his office. His family hid in a forest behind their house for weeks. They waited to hear that they had passed their medical screenings and received approval to come to the U.S.

"I have no plan left," he said. "There is nothing. I’m just laughing to myself. This is the only way I have.".

He and his wife, a fellow Afghan refugee who also fled in 2021, move every few months to avoid detection. On the week Trump’s refugee ban took effect, Abdul was reporting on Pakistan’s crackdown on Afghan refugees, posting videos of women and children being loaded into trucks. Despite his hopelessness, Abdul said, "I am still reporting. I am still a journalist.".

Do refugees contribute to the U.S.?

The Trump administration has justified the refugee ban by arguing that "the United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants and, in particular, refugees" without jeopardizing resources or security for U.S. citizens.

Donald Kerwin, a migration policy expert and vice president of advocacy, research and partnerships at the Washington D.C-based nonprofit Jesuit Refugee Services/USA, said the Trump administration misunderstands the way the U.S. refugee program works, which was designed to encourage self-sufficiency through early employment.

For example, refugees are given interest-free loans for the airfare to the U.S. and must pay them back within 42 months.

Kerwin authored a 2018 study examining refugee integration into American society. He found that the 1.1 million refugees who arrived in the United States between 1987 and 2016 had higher employment rates than that of the total population, at 64% to 60% and the same median personal income, $20,000, as the rest of the population.

"You basically have groups coming in with nothing, no income, just the clothes on their back," Kerwin said, "that end up being highly successful based on the exertions and pure willpower and skills and gifts of these populations.".

In 2015, more than 181,000 refugee entrepreneurs in the U.S. generated $4.6 billion, according to the bipartisan research group, New American Economy. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that refugees and asylees paid almost $124 billion in taxes from 2005 to 2019.

"This means that refugees and asylees contributed more revenue than they cost in expenditures to the government," the 2024 report stated.

Given the record number of displaced people worldwide, more than 120 million as of May 2024, Kerwin said it is important that the U.S. set an example.

"I think it’s very important the U.S. step up and do what it has done historically, which is lead, because if it doesn’t the results will be quite disastrous," he said.

Durana Saydee came to the U.S. with her parents and sister as Afghan refugees in 2000 from Pakistan.

"I have stories from my parents, who grew up in Afghanistan in the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, thinking about how there has not been a single day of peace since the ‘60s," Saydee said.

Now 25, Saydee is a graduate sociology student at UCLA studying the forced migration of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers. Saydee said she thinks the U.S. ought to take responsibility for the exodus from Afghanistan following its 2021 withdrawal and decades-long war.

"It’s very unfortunate," she said. "I hate that this is the reality.".
Taliban suspends Afghanistan’s only radio station run by women (The Independent)
The Independent [2/6/2025 6:59 AM, Arpan Rai, 57769K, Neutral]
The Taliban has suspended Afghanistan’s women’s only radio channel after raiding it on Tuesday, its information and culture ministry said.

The hardline Islamist group has accused the channel of "unauthorised provision" of content and programming to an overseas TV channel, further cracking down on the last few pockets of employed Afghan women which are already under scrutiny and pressure to operate under Taliban rule.

Radio Begum, a broadcast station based in Kabul, launched five months before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, confirmed the raid and said the Taliban’s officials from the information and culture ministry searched the premises of the office and restrained the staff.

The Taliban officials "seized computers, hard drives, files and phones from Begum staff, including Begum female journalists, and took into custody two male employees of the organisation who do not hold any senior management position", it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Radio Begum’s content is produced entirely by a team of Afghan women. While the Taliban did not mention which foreign TV channel, Radio Begum’s sister satellite channel Begum TV operates from France and broadcasts educational programmes on Afghan school curriculum from seventh to 12th grade.

In Kabul, Radio Begum broadcasted at least six hours of lessons a day, including topics of health, psychology and spiritual programmes tailored for women across parts of Afghanistan before its shutdown on Tuesday.

According to the Taliban’s claims, Radio Begum was violating broadcasting policy and improperly used its license.

"This decision comes after several violations, including the unauthorised provision of content and programming to a foreign-based television channel," the Taliban’s information and broadcast ministry said without disclosing when the radio station will be allowed to function normally.

The ministry said it will review all necessary documents to determine the station’s future.

Radio Begum has denied being involved in any political activity and said it was "committed to serving the Afghan people and more specifically the Afghan women".

This is the second time the Taliban has shuttered an outlet by accusing them of working with a foreign media. In May last year, the Taliban warned journalists and experts in Afghanistan to end their collaboration with Afghanistan International TV, an independent broadcast service in exile reporting on the war-hit country.

Human rights groups have called on the Taliban to revoke the radio station’s suspension. Afghanistan ranks 178 out of 180 countries, according to the 2024 press freedom index from Reporters without Borders, a further slip from 2023 when it ranked 152.
Pakistan
Gunfight kills Pakistani soldier, 12 militants near Afghan border (VOA)
VOA [2/6/2025 8:25 PM, Ayaz Gul, 2717K, Negative]
Pakistan reported Thursday that one soldier and 12 insurgents were killed in intense predawn clashes in a volatile northwestern district bordering Afghanistan.

A military statement said the deadly shootout in North Waziristan occurred after security forces conducted an "intelligence-based" raid against a "khawarij" hideout, a term officially used to describe militants affiliated with the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.

Insurgent attacks targeting security forces and government functionaries occur nearly daily in several districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, including the Waziristan region. The violence has killed hundreds of people in recent months, with TTP claiming responsibility for most of the attacks.

Pakistan maintains that the TTP, recognized as a global terrorist group by the United Nations, conducts attacks from its sanctuaries in Afghanistan, allegedly with the backing of the Taliban authorities in that country.

"We have been emphasizing to Kabul authorities to address the question of sanctuaries on the Afghan territory," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Shafqat Khan told a weekly news conference in Islamabad earlier Thursday. The violence caused by the TTP is a "core problem" that is straining relations between the two countries, he said.

Khan also confirmed that Islamabad had returned to Kabul on Wednesday the remains of an Afghan combatant killed in a counterterrorism operation against TTP in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa earlier this week. The slain man was identified as the son of the deputy Taliban governor of Badghis, a northwestern province of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, China joined Pakistan in renewing a call Thursday for the Taliban to uphold their counterterrorism pledges and prevent militants from using Afghan territory as a sanctuary. The statement was part of a joint declaration issued after a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, in Beijing.

"They called on the [Taliban] government to take visible and verifiable actions to dismantle and eliminate all terrorist groups based in Afghanistan, which continue to pose a serious threat to regional and global security," the statement said.

Taliban officials did not immediately respond to the allegations. They have previously denied the presence of foreign militants on Afghan soil, asserting that no one is allowed to threaten neighboring countries from their territory.
Islamabad, Beijing pledge counterterrorism cooperation for security of Chinese workers in Pakistan (VOA)
VOA [2/6/2025 9:59 AM, Sarah Zaman, 2717K, Neutral]
Pakistan has assured China it will ensure the safety of Chinese personnel working on infrastructure and development projects in the South Asian country while seeking greater security and economic cooperation during President Asif Ali Zardari’s visit to Beijing.

Zardari is in China on a five-day visit from February 4 to 8 along with Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, and other senior officials.

Pakistani leaders met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang. Zardari also held delegation level talks with the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China, Zhao Leji.

The Pakistani leadership "reaffirmed that ensuring the safety and security of Chinese personnel, projects and institutions in Pakistan is the foremost responsibility of Pakistani government as China’s All-weather Strategic Cooperative partner and the host country," according to a joint communique issued Thursday.

Thousands of Chinese nationals are in Pakistan, working primarily on projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. At least 21 Chinese citizens, however, have been killed in targeted attacks since 2017. This has put pressure on bilateral ties and hurt the progress of the massive infrastructure and development project that has seen more than $25 billion in Chinese investment come to Pakistan.

An October 2024 attack in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi killed two Chinese citizens. The incident came a few months after a March attack on a convoy killed five Chinese nationals in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

While calling for increased cooperation on counterterrorism, the statement said Pakistan will bring to justice those responsible for attacking Chinese personnel.

Pakistan also committed to "further increase input into security, and take targeted and enhanced measures to effectively ensure the safety and security of Chinese personnel, projects and institutions in Pakistan, and create a safe environment for cooperation between the two countries," according to the communique.

In the latest high-level meetings, Chinese officials offered counterterrorism cooperation to Pakistan.

"The Chinese side…expressed its willingness to provide necessary support for Pakistan’s counter terrorism capacity building," the lengthy 24-point communique read.

Official statements issued by the Pakistani side earlier show security remained a central part of discussions.

In his opening statement Wednesday at the start of talks with Xi, Zardari said the friendship between the two countries had "gone through ups and downs" but would not be broken down by militant attacks that have killed Chinese citizens.

"No matter how many terrors, how many issues crop up in the world, I will stand, Pakistani people will stand, with the people of China," the Pakistan head of state said.

Both sides discussed enhancing intelligence sharing, border security, and the transfer of technology to strengthen the Pakistani police’s capability to secure Chinese interests.

"Mohsin Naqvi said that Pakistan will purchase modern technology and equipment for the police from China," a statement from the Pakistani interior minister’s office said after a meeting with Qi Yanjun, one of China’s top security officials.

Naqvi also informed Xi about efforts to beef up security of the Chinese and boost counter terrorism operations in Pakistan.

Pakistan is grappling with a deadly wave of militant attacks primarily targeting Pakistani security personnel since late 2021.

On Saturday, militants allegedly affiliated with the Baloch Liberation Army killed 18 soldiers in the southwestern Balochistan province, home to the China-funded Gwadar deep sea port and the country’s largest airport.

In January, the country saw 74 militant attacks resulting in 91 deaths, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies. Thirty-five of those killed were security personnel while 36 militants died in the incidents.

In 2024, close to 1,200 people including almost 1000 civilians and security personnel were killed in militant attacks – a 40% increase in militant attacks compared to 2023.

Much of the violence is concentrated in the two provinces bordering Afghanistan. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has a strong foothold while the banned Baloch Liberation Army is behind much of the violence in Balochistan.

Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of taking insufficient measures to reign in anti-Pakistan militants present on Afghan soil, a charge the de facto rulers in Kabul reject.

In Thursday’s joint communique, Pakistan and China again pressed Afghan authorities to take stronger counter-terrorism action.

"They called on the Interim Afghan Government to take visible and verifiable actions to dismantle and eliminate all terrorist groups based in Afghanistan which continue to pose a serious threat to regional and global security, and to prevent the use of Afghan territory against other countries," the statement said.

Despite Pakistan’s poor security situation that Beijing has publicly complained about, the joint statement said China would encourage its businesses to invest in Pakistan. Both sides signed more than a dozen Memoranda of Understanding to enhance cooperation in agriculture, technology, and trade, etc.

After his first stop in Beijing, Zardari heads to the northeastern city of Harbin to attend the opening ceremony of the 9th Asian Winter Games, taking place from Feb. 7-14.
Pakistan to renegotiate Qatar LNG deal amid high costs, paper says (Reuters)
Reuters [2/7/2025 3:36 AM, Ariba Shahid, 5.2M, Neutral]
Pakistan will renegotiate a liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply pact with Qatar, seeking better terms, The News newspaper said on Friday, citing the petroleum minister.

An economic crisis has slashed power use in Pakistan, which gets more than a third of its electricity from natural gas, saddling it with excess capacity it still needs to pay for, under decade-old contracts with independent power producers.

"The Qatar agreement is costly, and we will negotiate better terms next year," Musadik Malik told a parliamentary committee on energy, the paper added.

Pakistan deferred for year a deal to buy liquefied natural gas from Qatar and will now receive the contracted LNG cargoes in 2026 instead of 2025, Malik said in December, citing a surplus in LNG.

At the time he said deferring the deal brought no financial penalties, adding that Pakistan deferred five LNG cargoes from Qatar and was negotiating to defer five more with other markets, without disclosing the names of the sellers.

The petroleum ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Pakistan begins burials for 13 migrants drowned off Africa (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [2/6/2025 7:59 AM, Staff, 63029K, Negative]
A Pakistani who drowned along with 12 compatriots when a boat carrying dozens of migrants capsized off northwest Africa was buried in his hometown on Thursday.

Each year thousands of Pakistanis pay large sums to traffickers to launch risky and illegal journeys to Europe, where they hope to find work and send funds to support families back home.

Pakistanis are frequently among those drowned on crammed boats which sink on the Mediterranean Sea separating North Africa from Europe -- the world’s deadliest migrant route.

Islamabad’s foreign ministry this week said 13 of its citizens were among the dead recovered from a boat which went down in the Atlantic.

Around 80 passengers were aboard the vessel, which left Mauritania and sailed north towards Spain’s Canary Islands before it capsized near the Western Sahara port of Dakhla, the ministry said on January 16.

On Thursday the village of Mirza Virkan in eastern Punjab province buried Arslan Khan -- one of four bodies from the shipwreck repatriated a day earlier.

"We sent Arslan to build a better future, and the trafficker assured us that he would send him legally," his 34-year-old brother Adnan Khan told AFP.

"We sold our property and animals for Arslan’s future, but the trafficker betrayed us -- he sent back our brother’s dead body."

Pakistan has one of the highest rates of emigration in the world, according to the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration.

Many migrants depart from Punjab and the northeastern region of Pakistan administered Kashmir because their communities have historic ties to the country’s diaspora in Europe.

An official from the Federal Investigation Agency, speaking anonymously to AFP in 2023, estimated Pakistanis attempt 40,000 illegal trips every year.

In June that year the Mediterranean witnessed one of its worst migrant shipwrecks when a rusty and overloaded trawler sank overnight.

It was carrying more than 750 people -- up to 350 of them Pakistanis according to Islamabad -- but only 82 bodies were ever recovered.
Imran Khan’s call for protests highlights Pakistan’s woes (Nikkei Asia – opinion)
Nikkei Asia [2/7/2025 3:05 AM, Farhan Bokhari, 1.3M, Neutral]
Imran Khan, the jailed former prime minister of Pakistan, has called for an upsurge in protests to mark the first anniversary of the country’s controversial elections on Feb. 8.

The anniversary is a powerful reminder of political divisions in the nuclear-armed nation that are undermining its prospects for a badly needed economic revival and future stability.

Calling the occasion a "black day," Khan, 74, who shot to fame as a cricket star and philanthropist before becoming Pakistan’s prime minister in 2018, is leading the charge from his prison cell. He has rejected last years’ election results as rigged, an accusation Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his government have denied.

Jailed in the summer of 2023, Khan was last month sentenced to 14 years in prison in a land corruption case. He denies the charges and calls them politically motivated. His wife was also sentenced to prison last month in the same case.

Meanwhile, Sharif’s government faces growing dissent on other fronts. Journalists and their professional bodies have promised to resist recent curbs on social media across the country of 245 million.

The protests from the media follow Sharif’s backing of an extension to existing laws that subject social media offenders to as much as three years’ imprisonment or fines of up to 2 million Pakistani rupees (around $7,000). Critics say the new curbs are the harshest of their kind in the country’s history.

At the same time, questions over human rights conditions in Pakistan have mounted globally, with the European Union recently sharing its concerns in public. In statement after a weeklong visit by Olof Skoog, EU Special Representative for Human Rights, Skoog said he highlighted concerns about "freedoms of expression, religion or belief, independence of the media, impunity for rights violations, due process and the right to a fair trial, civic space, and the death penalty" in his meetings with Pakistani officials.

Pakistan relies on the EU’s Generalized System of Preferences Plus (GSP+) for preferential access of its exports to the bloc, and gives central importance to ties with EU for its own economy.

The country’s increasingly troubled environment has coincided with mounting security challenges, from separatists in the southwestern Balochistan province to Afghanistan-based Taliban militants who routinely attack targets in Pakistan. This month, at least 18 Pakistani soldiers were killed in Balochistan in an armed clashes with separatists.

Political, economic and security challenges place Pakistan in a precarious position, notably in three areas.

First, it is apparent that the use of force to crush political dissent has not worked to restore overall stability in Pakistan. The crackdown on Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) political party since 2023 has led to the arrest of many of his followers.

Yet, as recently as in November, the party mounted a protest in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and promised more of the same. At the same time, talks between PTI leaders and politicians loyal to Sharif to resolve the dispute peacefully have failed to break fresh ground.

Second, as security conditions deteriorate, Pakistan needs to forge a tight national consensus to create a comprehensive national response to militancy. Going forward, Islamabad needs to reform key institutions responsible for tackling issues that have hampered stability, such as reforming the police and parts of government at the center of its anti-militancy campaign.

Finally, Pakistan’s economy remains beset by a number of pressing issues. These range from the revival of investor confidence over the medium to long term and overseeing a robust recovery, to tackling the poverty that has ensnared almost 40% of the population.

Pakistan last year secured a $7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund for the next three years, an essential lifeline to avert a default on the country’s foreign debt payments.

But avoiding default with the IMF’s backing will only be a partial step toward stability unless Pakistan can address its political, security, and economic challenges.

With Khan in jail, the PTI will use tomorrow’s anniversary to underscore that Pakistan’s future will remain uncertain unless their leader is freed and allowed to return to active politics.
India
U.S. Military Deportation to India Creates Headache for Trump Ally (New York Times)
New York Times [2/6/2025 4:14 PM, Hari Kumar, Suhasini Raj, and Mujib Mashal, 831K, Neutral]
The Indian Parliament was in an uproar on Thursday over reports that migrants who were in the United States illegally were mistreated while being deported on an American military plane, including being shackled during the long intercontinental journey.

More than 100 undocumented immigrants were returned to India on Wednesday. While deportations are nothing new — India is a big source of unauthorized migration to the United States — most have relied on commercial flights.

The use of a military aircraft, along with the claims of mistreatment, appears to have hit a nerve, creating a political headache for Prime Minister Narendra Modi days before he is expected to visit President Trump in Washington.

Mr. Modi has described the president as a “dear friend.” Officials in India had hoped their declared willingness to work with the United States on taking back migrants would avoid the embarrassment and back-and-forths seen in countries like Brazil and Colombia.

In India, much of the outrage on Thursday was in response to reports in local media, citing accounts of deportees, that they were shackled for over 40 hours and that their access to toilets was restricted.

A video put out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed the deportees boarding the plane in shackles. A spokesman for the United States Embassy in New Delhi declined to comment on reports that women and children were shackled.

Sukhpal Singh, a 35-year-old chef from the Indian state of Punjab, who had been arrested upon entering the United States through Mexico in January, was among the deportees, according to his father.

“He told me that he was handcuffed, as were the other adults,” his father, Prempal Singh, said in a telephone interview. “His feet were also shackled.”

“Everyone around him was tied — adults, both male and female were chained,” Mr. Singh said.

On Thursday, opposition lawmakers staged a protest in Parliament, some wearing handcuffs and carrying signs that read “humans, not prisoners.” They demanded to know how many Indians in the United States were facing imminent deportation.

“Why did we not send our own planes to bring back the Indians, with dignity and respect, instead of a military plane landing on our soil?” Mallikarjun Kharge, the president of the Indian National Congress, said.

In a scramble to control the damage, India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, told Parliament that deportation procedures “provide for the use of restraints,” and he said American officials had confirmed to them that women and children were not shackled.

“We are, of course, engaging the U.S. government to ensure that the returning deportees are not mistreated in any manner during the flight,” Mr. Jaishankar said after the protest.

He told Parliament that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement looks after the needs of the deportees, including food and medical requirements.

“During toilet breaks, deportees are temporarily unrestrained if needed in that regard,” he said.

But his response revealed the delicate balance that his government needs to walk — between containing the domestic uproar and demonstrating its strictness on illegal immigration to the Trump administration.

“Our focus,” he said, should be on a “strong crackdown on the illegal migration industry.”
India Pledges ‘Crackdown’ on Illegal Migration to the US (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/6/2025 10:35 PM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen and Swati Gupta, 21617K, Neutral]
India vowed on Thursday to curb illegal immigration to the US, as President Donald Trump and his administration carry out an unprecedented drive to deport undocumented migrants.

Over 100 Indian citizens were sent back home on a US military aircraft on Wednesday. Their deportation comes just days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to meet with Trump in Washington next week. Thousands of other undocumented Indians in the US are expected to be sent back in the coming months.

“Our focus should be on a strong crackdown,” Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in parliament on Thursday.

In an effort to avoid a trade war with the US, the Modi government has delivered a series of concessions to the White House on issues core to Trump’s agenda, including illegal migration.

Opposition lawmakers disrupted parliament Thursday protesting the mistreatment of Indian nationals during the journey from the US. Lawmakers also held placards outside the parliament and raised slogans against the mistreatment.

Inside the parliament, Randeep Singh Surjewala of Congress party, the main opposition, said the deportees, including 19 women, were shackled for 40 hours and had limited access to toilet during their transportation. “Is this indicative of how one behaves with terrorists or militants or is this a humane way to deal with Indians,” he said.

“We are engaging the US government to ensure that the returning deportees are not mistreated in any manner during the flight,” Jaishankar said after the uproar in the parliament.

“It is in our collective interest to encourage legal mobility and discourage illegal movement,” Jaishankar added, noting that Indian enforcement agencies would take “preventive and exemplary actions” against a network of “agents” facilitating illegal migration from the South Asian country.
‘Dreams shattered’ as Trump deports Indians ahead of Modi trip (Reuters)
Reuters [2/6/2025 8:19 AM, Aftab Ahmed, 63029K, Neutral]
It took Daler Singh six months and $45,000 to reach the United States last month without paperwork. Within three weeks of his arrival, he was sent back to his native India on a military plane, his hands and legs cuffed throughout the journey.

Singh, 37, was among 104 Indians deported by U.S. authorities on Wednesday in a much-publicised transfer that fulfils a key election pledge of President Donald Trump but is an embarrassment for India, a close partner, whose Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to visit Washington next week.

"I have lost my entire life earnings. My dreams are shattered," Singh said at his home in the village of Salempura in Punjab state, bordering Pakistan.

"Nobody should take the illegal route and buy promises made by agents. People should go through the visa route."

Singh said he had to mortgage family jewellery and land to raise about 4 million rupees ($45,700) to pay the agent. He said his journey had involved flying to Dubai in early August, where he stayed for several months before being made to trek for days in Mexico on the way to the United States.

U.S. authorities detained him on Jan. 15 and then moved him and others onto a C-17 Globemaster aircraft this week for the journey back home. In a social media post, U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) chief Michael W. Banks posted a video showing some men being led into a military plane in handcuffs and legs in chains.

"USBP and partners successfully returned illegal aliens to India, marking the farthest deportation flight yet using military transport," Banks said on X. "This mission underscores our commitment to enforcing immigration laws and ensuring swift removals. If you cross illegally, you will be removed."

The return of the Indians, aged from 4 to 46, and including 25 females, has given the country’s opposition parties a chance to hit back at the government of Modi, who has spoken about boosting ties with the United States. The deportees were from five Indian states, including Modi’s home state of Gujarat, and the federal territory of Chandigarh.

HANDCUFFED

"Our hands and legs were cuffed throughout," said Singh, looking tired after the long journey as reporters fired questions at him, his wife and two children milling around in the courtyard of their one-storey house by a wheat field.

"They did not unlock our cuffs even when we ate."

India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, told parliament that it was standard practice for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities to restrain deportees but that it was not done with the women and children on the plane to India.

"We are, of course, engaging with the U.S. government to ensure that returning deportees are not mistreated in any manner during the flight," he said.

"At the same time, the House will appreciate that our focus should be on the crackdown, strong crackdown on the illegal migration industry, while taking steps to ease visas for the legitimate traveller."

He said Indian law enforcement agencies would act against agents who organise such immigration based on information from the returnees. Jaishankar said that in the past 16 years, more than 15,000 Indians had been deported to India from the U.S.

One of them was Akashdeep Singh, 23, who reached the U.S. only last month having failed to secure a job in India. His farming family sold two tractors and some land and took loans to raise more than 6 million rupees for his illegal trip.

"Why would we send our children outside? There are no jobs here," Singh’s father Swaran Singh said. "We demand jobs for our children, so we never have to send them away."
Fury in India over U.S. allegedly flying deportees halfway around the world in handcuffs and leg chains (CBS News)
CBS News [2/6/2025 12:44 PM, Arshad R. Zargar, 52225K, Negative]
Proceedings in India’s parliament were disrupted Thursday as opposition lawmakers protested against the Trump administration’s alleged mistreatment of over 100 Indian migrants who were deported on a U.S. military plane back to the country — apparently in handcuffs and ankle chain.

A U.S. military plane carrying 104 deported Indian migrants arrived in the northern Indian city of Amritsar Wednesday, the first such flight to the country as part of a crackdown on undocumented migrants ordered by the Trump administration.

The U.S. Department of Defense confirmed that an Air Force C-17 plane was used for the flight.

Multiple Indian lawmakers alleged Thursday in parliament that the deportees’ arms and legs were shackled during the entire journey, and the legislature was forced to adjourn proceedings as they disrupted the chamber with their chants.

"We are protesting precisely this issue — that the manner in which the U.S. did what they did was really unacceptable," Shashi Tharoor, a member of parliament with the Indian National Congress, told reporters Thursday. "We believe they have a legal right to deport people who are illegally in their country. And if they are proven to be Indian nationals, we have a legal obligation to admit them, to accept them in our country. But the manner in which it was done, in handcuffs, squeezed into a military aircraft, in such an abrupt manner, is not acceptable.".

Daler Singh, one of the deported migrants, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying: "Our hands and legs were cuffed throughout… They did not unlock our cuffs even when we ate.".

U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael W. Banks shared a 24-second video Wednesday on social media that appears to show a line of the deportees being led onto a military plane with their legs in chains.

"USBP and partners successfully returned illegal aliens to India, marking the farthest deportation flight yet using military transport," Banks said in the post, referring to a flight that would likely have been 18 hours long, at the very least. "This mission underscores our commitment to enforcing immigration laws and ensuring swift removals. If you cross illegally, you will be removed.".

Another opposition lawmaker with the Congress party shared a video on social media of a man identified as deportee Harvinder Singh, who said: "For 40 hours, we were handcuffed, our feet tied with chains and we were not allowed to move an inch from our seats. It was worse than hell.".

"Listen to this man’s pain," Gandhi urged India’s leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his post. "Indians deserve Dignity and Humanity, NOT Handcuffs.".

Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar told parliament on Thursday that he had been told by U.S. officials that protocols had long permitted restraints for deportees, but that it was not done with the women and children on the plane to India this week.

"We are, of course, engaging with the U.S. government to ensure that returning deportees are not mistreated in any manner during the flight," Jaishankar said.

The U.S. deported more than 1,000 Indian migrants last year, but on commercial flights and without any reports of alleged mistreatment. It is standard practice for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to restrain adult deportees on flights out of the country, which the agency argues is to protect inflight security and the migrants themselves, by preventing riots and other safety issues.

At the request of certain countries, ICE agents will remove the restraints after deportees arrive in their home countries, and before they deplane.

The Indian foreign minister also highlighted the need for a "strong crackdown" on the human trafficking industry that fuels illegal immigration, and he promised action against people involved in the illicit trade.

Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the deportation flights were an effective way to stem the flow of undocumented migrants arriving on American soil. The State Department said such deportations send a message of deterrence to people who might be considering coming to the U.S. without permission.

The deportation flight came just days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to visit to Washington, where he’s expected to discuss the issue with President Trump next week.
India ‘engaging with US’ after shackled deportees spark anger (BBC)
BBC [2/6/2025 5:22 AM, Cherylann Mollan, 57114K, Neutral]
India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar has told parliament the government is working with the US to ensure Indian citizens are not mistreated while being deported.

His statement came a day after a US military flight brought back 104 Indians accused of entering the US illegally.

One of the deportees told the BBC they had been handcuffed throughout the 40-hour flight, sparking criticism.

But Jaishankar said he had been told by the US that women and children were not restrained. Deportation flights to India had been taking place for several years and US procedures allowed for the use of restraints, he added.

Deportation in the US is organised and executed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

"We have been informed by ICE that women and children are not restrained," Jaishankar said.

He added that according to ICE, the needs of deportees during transit, including for food and medical attention, were attended to and deportees could be unrestrained during bathroom breaks.

"There has been no change from past procedure," he added.

However Jaspal Singh, one of the deportees on the flight that landed in Amritsar city in the state of Punjab on Wednesday, told BBC Punjabi that he was shackled throughout the flight.

"We were tortured in many ways. My hands and feet were tied after we were put on the plane. The plane stopped at several places," he said, adding that he was unshackled only after the plane landed in Amritsar.

The US has not given further details of how deportees were treated on the flight. Officials have said that enforcing immigration laws is "critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States" and it was US policy to "faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens".

The US border patrol chief posted video showing deportees in shackles, saying the deportation flight to India was the "farthest deportation flight yet using military transport".

President Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy. The US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.

Trump has said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would "do what’s right" in accepting US deportations.

In his statement on Thursday, Jaishankar said all countries had an obligation to take back their nationals who had entered other countries illegally. They often faced dangerous journeys and inhumane working conditions once they had reached their destinations, he said.

Fraudulent Indian travel agencies are known to take huge sums of money from people desperate to travel abroad for work, and then make them undertake dangerous journeys to avoid being caught by immigration officials.

Jaspal said he had taken a loan of 4m rupees ($46,000; £37,000] to travel to the US, a dangerous journey that took months and during which he saw bodies in the jungle of other migrants who had died on the route.

Opposition leaders have condemned the manner in which migrants were brought back to the country and have asked the government what action it plans to take over the treatment meted out to its citizens.

Congress MP Manickam Tagore called it "shocking and shameful".

"The way the US is deporting Indians - chained like criminals - is inhumane and unacceptable," he posted on X.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said the US had the right to deport people who had entered the country illegally but criticised the manner in which they were deported.

"To send them like this abruptly in a military aircraft and in handcuffs is an insult to India, it’s an insult to the dignity of Indians," he said.

This isn’t the first time that the US has faced the ire of politicians for allegedly mistreating migrants from their countries.

Last month, Brazil’s government expressed outrage after about 88 of its nationals arrived in their homeland handcuffed. The government said that it would demand an explanation from Washington over the "degrading treatment of passengers on the flight".

Meanwhile, Colombia sent its own planes to collect deportees after Colombian President Gustavo Petro barred US military aircraft from landing, arguing that those on board were being treated like criminals.

Rights groups have urged countries to ensure deportees are treated humanely.
‘Inhuman’: As Modi visits Trump, outrage over shackled Indian deportees (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [2/7/2025 12:00 AM, Yashraj Sharma, 19.6M, Negative]
Kulvinder Kaur had tried and tried again to call her husband in the United States. After two weeks of the connection not going through, she was consumed by anxiety, she said from her home in Hoshiarpur, in the northern Indian state of Punjab.

“I was really afraid about what might have happened to him – if he was robbed or killed there. He is father of my children and I was afraid if I would ever see him again,” Kaur said.

Then, she saw a news telecast: President Donald Trump’s administration was deporting batches of illegal Indian immigrants.

Her husband, Harvinder Singh, 40, was among the 104 Indians who had entered the US illegally over the last few years, who were deported by the authorities on Wednesday as Trump doubled down on a key election pledge that drove him back into power in January.

Singh had made a desperate journey through jungles, crossing rivers and seas, to the US, in search of a better life for his family back in Punjab. This week, like many other detainees, including women, Singh had his hands and legs cuffed during the 40-hour journey to Amritsar, a city in northern India.

The visuals of Indian citizens – shackled in chains – parading towards a US military aircraft, for its farthest-ever journey as a deportation flight, have prompted anger in India. On Thursday, hours after the deportees landed, opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party, staged a protest wearing handcuffs outside the parliament in New Delhi.

Days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled visit to the White House on February 13, the outrage over the treatment of Indian nationals by US authorities is also laced with a question about Modi’s bromance with Trump. If Trump is indeed Modi’s friend, as both leaders claim, why isn’t New Delhi able to stop him from steps that could complicate ties?

The answer, say experts, is a difficult balancing act that the Modi government believes it must manage.

“The issue with the Trump administration is there are a number of issues on the table, including tariffs,” said Harsh Pant, a geopolitics analyst at New Delhi-based think tank, Observer Research Foundation, referring to Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Indian imports. “So, where do you give in and where do you negotiate?

“In order to make Trump happy, who is transactional by nature, India does not want to raise the stakes too much [on the immigration issue] and is absorbing the costs,” Pant told Al Jazeera. “There are other challenges as well to face.”

‘Crass side of America’

After Trump declared a national emergency on immigration, his administration started military flights to deport undocumented migrants. The US authorities have sent at least six planeloads of immigrants to Latin America, prompting tensions with Colombia and Brazil. The government of Brazil protested against the “degrading treatment of passengers on the flight”, after it emerged that its nationals were chained and handcuffed while being deported.

India though, has not said it has protested similar treatment meted out to its nationals. Of the 104 Indians on the plane that landed on Wednesday, several were children – they, however, are not known to have been shackled.

As of 2022, India ranked third, after Mexico and El Salvador, among countries with the largest number of undocumented immigrants – 725,000 – living in the US.

US Border Patrol chief, Michael Banks, wrote on X that the authorities “successfully returned illegal aliens to India”, captioning a video showing shackled men being led into the military plane: “If you cross illegally, you will be removed.”

Anil Trigunayat, a former Indian diplomat who has served in the US, told Al Jazeera that the “treatment with Indian nationals, dragging them like criminals like this is unprecedented” in his experience.

“Handcuffing and those kinds of things are inhuman essentially. They have shown a very crass side of the American establishment,” said Trigunayat. “This is crass language. And absolutely unjustified and unnecessary.”

‘She was shackled in chains’

After an uproar by opposition leaders in both houses of parliament on Thursday, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told parliament that the government was working with the Trump administration to ensure that Indian citizens are not mistreated while being deported.

Jaishankar also noted in the address that the US’s operating procedure had allowed the “use of restraints” while deporting since 2012 and added “there has been no change from past procedure.”

He also shared government data from 2009 on the deportees, touching a high of 2042 in 2019, before falling marginally again. Last year, 1368 undocumented Indian immigrants were deported by the US authorities.

He added that New Delhi was told by the US that women and children were not restrained and their demands during transit, including food, medical attention, and toilet breaks, were attended to.

That wasn’t the experience of Khusboo Patel, a 35-year-old from Modi’s home state in Gujarat, on the 40-hour journey back home, her family said.

“She was shackled in chains her whole journey, strictly restricted to her seat,” her elder brother, Varun Patel, told Al Jazeera from his home in Vadodara, a city in eastern Gujarat.

Khusboo had been in the US barely for a month when she was detained by the authorities. “We were not aware of her whereabouts and it made us anxious,” Patel, the brother, said. The family learned about Khusboo’s return when local media reached out inquiring about their home.

“She told us that they were brought in like prisoners and criminals,” he said. “Nobody harmed her but it was a horrifying experience.”

Patel said he was disappointed in the Modi government’s failure to “secure a dignified return of our citizens”.

“What can they do for us now? That time is gone. Our government enabled this mistreatment.”

Shattered dreams

Back at home in Hoshiarpur, Singh and Kaur are now worried about how they’ll recover the debt of more than $55,000 owed to friends, a local bank and small-time lenders that they incurred to pay off agents in a bid to get Singh into the US. The couple, parents to two children, sold their farmland – but it wasn’t enough. Not by a distance.

“We were cheated by our agent who left my husband going from one place to another,” Kaur, 35, told Al Jazeera.

Talking in a muffled voice, Kaur said she felt gutted when she saw the immigrants shackled in cuffs. “I’m satisfied that my husband is at home with me now,” she said. “But now we are worried about the huge debt we are under. How will we ever recover that money?”

Vinod Kumar, head of the sociology department at Panjab University, Chandigarh, said thousands of youth continue to sell their belongings and take up risky, so-called dunki routes in search of a better life. “With deportation, they have finished their career at both, home and abroad,” he said, adding that a majority of deportees come from lower-income families.

“Earlier, this trend was limited to Punjab, Gujarat, or to some states in [southern India],” said Kumar, who specialises in diaspora politics. Now it’s expanding to other parts of India.

Singh and the others on the plane with him are back where they left.

“They need to restart from scratch now,” said Kumar.
India deportation flight likely cost US more than $1 mn (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [2/6/2025 4:41 PM, Corin Faife, 63029K, Neutral]
The Trump administration has begun using military aircraft to underscore its determination to deport undocumented migrants.

But while the optics make for good political theatre, the flights are expensive -- as much as $1 million in the case of a recent deportation to India, according to an AFP analysis.

In fact military flights can end up costing more than three times as much as a civilian trip, data shows.

President Donald Trump was elected on a promise to carry out the biggest deportation "in the history of America." While most of the migrants being targeted for expulsion come from Latin America, some are also being sent back much further across the globe.

On Wednesday, a US Air Force cargo plane landed in Amritsar, India, carrying 104 Indian nationals who had entered the United States illegally, according to a US government statement.

The flight is believed to be the first use of a military aircraft to deport people to India.

Images captured by an AFP photographer show that the plane used is a C-17A Globemaster III, a large military aircraft capable of transporting troops, vehicles and supplies.

The Globemaster is a workhorse of the US Air Force, and has been used in military theatres worldwide since it was first added to the fleet in 1995.

But military flights are much more costly to operate than the charter flights that are also used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportations.

According to information released by ICE in 2021, the cost of a charter flight is $8,577 per flight hour, although flights transporting high-risk migrants may cost more.

The use of C-17 aircraft in transport operations is charged at $28,562 per hour, according to documents published by US Air Mobility Command.

Military flights also take flight paths that are different to commercial aircraft, due to the sensitivity of operating in the airspace of another sovereign nation.

They also generally refuel at military air bases instead of commercial hubs.

Data from flight tracking site Flightradar24 shows that the deportation flight took off from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California, at around 1330 GMT on Monday.

It then flew west to Hawaii, crossed the Pacific to the Luzon Strait near the Philippines, flew between Indonesia and Malaysia, then took a large detour south into the Indian Ocean where there is a US air base located on the tiny island of Diego Garcia.

From there it flew thousands of miles (kilometers) north to India, landing at an airport in the northwestern Indian state of Punjab on Wednesday afternoon local time -- more than 43 hours after takeoff from California.

Accounting for the return journey to a US air base, the flight cost is likely to be more than $1 million even by the most conservative estimates of time spent airborne, equating to more than $10,000 per detainee.

By comparison, a one-way ticket from San Francisco to New Delhi on an American commercial airline can be bought for around $500, or $4,000 in business class.
India Pledges More Tariff Cuts Ahead of Modi’s Trump Meeting (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/6/2025 11:23 PM, Shruti Srivastava and Ruchi Bhatia, 21617K, Neutral]
India will continue to bring down tariffs and phase out additional levies on imports as domestic manufacturing improves, a top finance ministry official said, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US.

“We will soon start stakeholder consultations with ministries on whether rates can be lowered further without impacting the industry,” Sanjay Agarwal, chairman of the country’s Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, told Bloomberg News in an interview Thursday. “As value chains get deeper, custom duties must be reduced otherwise inefficiencies set in,” he said, without specifying when the levies will be reduced.

The South Asian nation made significant cuts to import tariffs in its budget on a range of products, including motorcycles made by Harley-Davidson Inc., to shake off the “tariff king” label it earned from US President Donald Trump.

For instance, effective tax charged on cars priced above $40,000 stood at 110% before the federal budget last week. While the government has slashed basic custom duty on such cars to 70% from 125%, additional levies have been imposed to maintain the effective tax at 110%. Tesla had earlier asked India to lower taxes and remove additional levies.

Agarwal said the levies are “temporary in nature and would eventually be phased out.”

Traditionally, India has protected domestic industries such as automobiles and pharmaceuticals through government incentives and high import tariffs.

Follow Bloomberg India on WhatsApp for exclusive content and analysis on what billionaires, businesses and markets are doing. Sign up here.

The Modi government has delivered a series of concessions to the White House on issues core to Trump’s agenda ahead of the two leaders’ meeting in Washington next week. New Delhi also pledged to accept thousands of unlawful migrants from the US and maintain the dollar as its trading currency.

“India wants to be seen doing things that matter for Trump and is trying to be preemptive before explicit demands are made,” said Harsh Pant, a professor of International Relations at King’s College London, on Friday. Relations between India and the US have been friendly in the last few years and the recent moves “will help mitigate any dramatic change in approach in the near future,” he said.
Can India and China Turn the Corner? (Foreign Policy)
Foreign Policy [2/6/2025 5:01 PM, Fahad Shah, 1436K, Neutral]
This year, India and China will mark the 75th anniversary of their diplomatic relationship, which is characterized by a mix of collaboration and disputes. Since the 1962 Sino-Indian war, New Delhi and Beijing have developed a sense of mistrust that has worsened in recent years.

In 2019, tensions deepened after India revoked the special autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, including the Ladakh region, which borders China in the east; Beijing sharply objected. In 2020, military clashes along the countries’ disputed border in the Galwan Valley resulted in the deaths of more than 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers. As border skirmishes continued that year, India responded by restricting Chinese investments; banning several Chinese mobile apps, including TikTok; and preventing the resumption of passenger flights to China following COVID-19 pandemic pauses.

Nearly five years since the Galwan clash, India and China are seemingly open to reconciliation.

Last October, the Indian Army announced that it had successfully completed its disengagement with China in eastern Ladakh. At a bilateral meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia last October, both countries emphasized the importance of "mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual sensitivity" and agreed to bolster communication and cooperation.

Despite the recent thaw, the India-China relationship is poised to remain tumultuous in 2025 due to their competing geopolitical interests and the shift in regional power dynamics.

Given the history of deep-seated mistrust and China’s assertive foreign policy, the question remains as to whether New Delhi can collaborate with Beijing—and what this evolving recalibration means for smaller countries in South Asia.

The oldest unresolved issue between India and China is their ongoing border dispute.

The two countries share a frontier of more than 2,000 miles, demarcated by the Line of Actual Control, which is the site of frequent skirmishes and incidents. The Doklam clash in 2017, the Galwan Valley clash in 2020, and continuing friction in the northeastern Indian states of Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh have underscored the fragility of peace. Despite multiple rounds of talks last year, tensions have persisted. (Most recently, India voiced its concerns over China’s plan to build the world’s largest hydropower dam in Tibet.).

Meanwhile, both countries have constructed an extensive network of roads, railways, and airstrips to facilitate rapid troop mobilization near the border.

Since Modi came to power in 2014, India has strengthened its border infrastructure in Ladakh; boosted defense ties with European countries such as France, Germany, and Spain; and expanded its naval alliances in Southeast Asia. Though these measures have enhanced India’s deterrence capabilities, they have also fueled competition and increased China’s concerns about free passage in the ocean.

In recent years, India has also tilted toward the United States, strengthening its position within the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad, which also includes Australia and Japan. The group has pledged to keep China’s influence at bay and stop smaller countries from falling into Beijing’s "debt trap." Though China views the Quad’s influence as a tool to perpetuate U.S. hegemony, it hasn’t stopped India from strengthening its position within the group.

India is increasingly prioritizing maritime security. It has expanded its naval capabilities and strengthened its defense ties with countries such as Japan and the United States to safeguard its strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific.

To counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), India has also joined alternative infrastructure projects, such as the G-20’s Global Infrastructure Facility and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.

However, India-China relations have begun to improve, driven by trade and potential Chinese investments in India’s key industries. In December, special representatives from both countries met to discuss how to maintain peace at the border and strengthen the bilateral relationship.

And at the end of January, the Indian foreign secretary visited Beijing and met with several Chinese officials. The two sides agreed to improve ties by resuming access to a holy Hindu site in Tibet, restoring direct flights between Beijing and New Delhi, issuing visas for journalists and think tank employees, and working toward sharing transborder river data.

However, the talks failed to address how the two countries will reduce investment and troops at the border, which remains heavily fortified.

The other issue that complicates the India-China relationship is the dilemma of achieving economic interdependence versus strategic decoupling. Despite their tense relationship, China overtook the United States in 2024 to once again become India’s largest trading partner, with India importing more than $100 billion worth of goods from China that year alone. Ahead of the December talks, a report from India’s chief economic advisor called for even more foreign direct investment from China.

Though India represents a crucial and large consumer market for China, a rise in anti-China sentiment driven by the border tensions in 2020 and 2021 has led to heightened scrutiny over Chinese investments. Since then, India has worked to reduce its reliance on Chinese goods, particularly in strategic sectors such as electronics and renewable energy, by boosting manufacturing and diversifying its supply chains. One such example is India’s telecommunications ministry leaving out Chinese equipment makers Huawei and ZTE from trials to set up the country’s 5G network in 2021.

While India’s efforts at decoupling are politically desirable, the reality is more complicated. India has sought to attract Taiwanese investment, especially in the semiconductor sector, but the scale of China’s economic influence and the gaps in India’s domestic capabilities mean that full decoupling remains a long-term challenge.

In 2025, India’s economic ties with China are likely to remain uneasy, despite recent diplomatic progress, as New Delhi’s growing closeness with the Trump administration has reshaped its strategic calculus.

Modi’s upcoming visit to the United States underscores this shift, with Washington’s rivalry with Beijing further complicating the situation.

By prioritizing the United States, India risks achieving limited returns while losing access to China’s economic and technological opportunities—highlighting the challenges of balancing competing partnerships in an increasingly polarized global order.

In addition to detangling their military and economic interests, India and China also need to address their competing geopolitical ambitions. China’s growing influence in South Asia is a significant challenge for India. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is part of the BRI, has become a cornerstone of relations between Beijing and Islamabad. Considering India’s territorial dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir, India has reiterated that it is against the corridor project, arguing that it goes against its "territorial integrity and sovereignty.".

In Sri Lanka, Hambantota Port—leased to a Chinese firm—has been a focal point of China’s strategic influence, leading to concerns in New Delhi about Beijing’s growing presence in its backyard. India has accused China of using the port to dock research vessels that are being used for spying purposes. Last month, Sri Lanka also signed an agreement with Sinopec, the Chinese energy giant, to fast-track a proposed $3.7 billion oil refinery in Hambantota.

In Nepal, which joined the BRI in December, Beijing has sought to invest in infrastructure as part of its broader strategy to integrate the Himalayan nation into its economic circle. For example, Beijing invested more than $200 million into the construction and opening of an international airport in Pokhara, Nepal. However, the project has threatened New Delhi, which is concerned about China potentially using the airport for military purposes. India has countered this strategy through offering development assistance, agricultural exports, increased purchases of hydropower, plans to build a dry port, and strengthening cultural exchanges with Nepal.

Similarly, Bangladesh has become a focal point for China’s growing regional influence since the fall of longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024. Last month, China verbally agreed to lower loan interest rates and extend repayment terms for Bangladesh under the BRI, signaling increased engagement with Dhaka’s interim government.

The situation in Myanmar, which borders both India and China, is another point of contention four years after the country’s military seized power in a coup. While China has engaged with both the ruling junta and rebel groups, offering weapons and mediation, India has maintained a noninterference policy in Myanmar. China’s deepening ties with Myanmar, including the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, have expanded its influence in India’s backyard and strengthened its presence in the Indian Ocean. For New Delhi, this raises strategic and security concerns, complicating its Act East policy and regional connectivity efforts.

On other diplomatic stages, India and China continue to adopt contrasting strategies. While China seeks to strengthen its Eurasian influence and challenge Western dominance through BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, India has focused on cementing its "multialignment strategy" by fostering parallel partnerships with its allies from around the world to enhance its security and economic interests.

As India and China navigate their complex relationship in 2025, their rivalry will remain the dominant feature of their interactions. It is not easy for India to trust China, but at the same time, New Delhi needs to maintain cordial relations with Beijing to protect its economic interests. As the epicenter of this rivalry, South Asia will be shaped by India’s regional leadership and China’s growing influence, with smaller nations caught in the fray.
NSB
Turbulence in Bangladesh as new government grapples with aftermath of Sheikh Hasina’s ouster (AP)
AP [2/6/2025 12:00 PM, Julhas Alam, 33392K, Negative]
Bangladesh’s new government is struggling to deal with a host of issues, including a stumbling economy and human rights violations, left behind by the ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina six months ago.

Hasina fled to India in August after a student-led uprising ended her 15-year rule, and an interim government led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus took the helm, backed by the influential military.

Hasina’s Awami League recently announced plans for protests in February, including a general strike. This infuriated student activists and anti-Hasina groups, who on Wednesday stormed and demolished the historic home of her father, Bangladesh’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Yunus’ office said in a statement Thursday that “the inflammatory statements made by fugitive Sheikh Hasina from India against the July uprising have created deep anger among the people.”

Hasina, in turn, accused Yunus of failing to prevent the attacks on the house. On Thursday, Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned an Indian diplomat in Dhaka over Hasina’s recent statements, calling them “false and provocative”.

Bangladesh’s Foreign Advisor Touhid Hossain said a protest letter was handed to the acting Indian high commissioner asking the neighboring country to stop Hasina from making further comments.

Here’s what to know about Bangladesh six months after its former leader was removed from power.

Will Sheikh Hasina make a comeback?

Hasina, whose 15-year regime is blamed for widespread corruption and human rights violations, faces criminal charges over the deaths of hundreds of protesters in the uprising in July and August last year. In speeches posted online from exile and in leaked recordings of telephone conversations, she has said she will come back.

The Yunus-led interim government has sought her extradition from India, but New Delhi has not responded. A special tribunal dealing with charges of crimes against humanity has asked Interpol to arrest Hasina.

Her family members are staying out of Bangladesh, along with many party leaders and former ministers. Others are either in prison or hiding. Her Awami League party said more than 100 of its supporters have been killed in attacks since Hasina’s ouster in August. The Associated Press could not verify the claim independently.

The interim government has arrested thousands of Hasina’s supporters and has banned the student wing of her party, the Bangladesh Chhatra League. In late January, New York-based Human Rights Watch cited “a disturbing pattern of security force abuses” that reemerged after Hasina’s ouster, this time targeting supporters of her party, including journalists.

Uncertainty surrounds the reforms pledged by the Yunus government

The interim government established six commissions to reform sectors including the electoral system, the rule of law and public administration. The government is now scrutinizing their reports and will share them with the public in coming weeks.

But major political players like the Bangladesh Nationalist Party led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia have called for an initial set of reforms, followed by an urgent election. The BNP says long-term reforms should be carried out under an elected government.

Concern over human rights

Human Rights Watch urged the interim government to establish legal detention practices and repeal laws used to target critics. The Yunus-led government scrapped the abusive Cyber Security Act, used to crush freedom of speech, but replaced it with an ordinance that contains many of the same harmful provisions, HRW said.

An association of editors and rights groups has accused the new government of systematically suppressing independent media. Two media freedom groups, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, have urged the government to ensure fair trials and uphold procedural rights for journalists. Authorities say there has been no intimidation.

The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council has accused the interim government of failing to protect religious and ethnic minorities from attacks and harassment. The government denies the allegation, saying most of the killings and other attacks were for “political reasons” and not related to any communal violence.

Islamists on the rise

Since the fall of Hasina, Islamist groups have become increasingly visible. Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah, political analyst and chairman of the Dhaka-based National Election Monitoring Council, says hardline religious groups and Islamist political parties could take further advantage of the anarchic situation in the country.

Around 700 prison inmates were still on the run after mass jailbreaks during the student-led uprising, including at least 70 who were either Islamic radicals or death row convicts, a top prison official said in December.

When is the next election?

Hasina’s main rival— the Bangladesh Nationalist Party — has asked the government to hold an election this year, otherwise it will hold street protests.

The student group that spearheaded the anti-Hasina uprising and an Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, have both said they want to give the government enough time for vital reforms before an election.

Yunus has pledged to hold an election either in December or by June next year.
Bangladesh’s government warns of stern action after house where independence was declared is razed (AP)
AP [2/7/2025 3:56 AM, Julhas Alam, 456K, Neutral]
Bangladesh’s interim government headed by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus said Friday it will contain vandalism and arson taking place across the country amid concern from a major Bangladeshi opposition political party and neighboring India over attacks on a historic house linked to ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Mobs targeting supporters of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have vandalized homes and businesses in various parts of the country since Wednesday night. Many of the establishments belonging to former lawmakers, Cabinet members and the leaders of Hasina’s Awami League party were set on fire, apparently as part of a coordinated campaign involving the former home of Bangladesh’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman — Hasina’s father — in Dhaka, the capital.

Hasina fled the country to India on Aug. 5 amid a student-led mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule.

Early Friday, the Press Wing of Yunus in a brief statement warned that stern actions would be taken against such acts of violence.

“The interim government notes with deep concern that some individuals and groups are attempting to vandalize and torch various institutions and establishments across the country. The government will strongly contain such acts,” the statement said.

It said the government was ready to protect the safety of life and property of the people.

The statement came more than 24 hours after the attack on the building from where Rahman declared Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. The Wednesday night attack followed a daylong campaign on social media by Hasina critics and student leaders. They declared a “bulldozer procession” toward Rahman’s house, which was turned into a museum by Hasina. As the protesters stormed the building, police stood by. A team of military soldiers later attempted to stop them but then left.

An intelligence official in Dhaka told The Associated Press that there were reports of some 70 attacks across Bangladesh since Wednesday following the vandalism and arson in Rahman’s home. The country’s leading English-language Daily Star reported Friday that acts of violence targeting Hasina’s supporters took place in at least 20 districts. Channel 24 TV station in Dhaka reported violence in at least 35 districts across the country. The station said the village home of a veteran politician from Hasina’s party and former Bangladesh president, Abdul Hamid, was one of the targets.

In a statement early Friday, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party headed by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, Hasina’s main political rival, urged the Yunus-led government to “bring the situation under control.”

“Otherwise, anarchy will spread across the country. It is a timely demand for us to urge the stringent implementation of law and order and to make the state’s and government’s role more visible,” the statement said.

India, which aided Bangladesh to gain independence from Pakistan in a bloody war in 1971, in a statemen on Thursday condemned the demolition of Rahman’s house, calling the site a symbol of a “heroic resistance.”

It highlighted the role of Rahman’s residence in the formation of Bangladesh’s national identity.

“All those who value the freedom struggle that nurtured Bangla identity and pride are aware of the importance of this residence for the national consciousness of Bangladesh. This act of vandalism should be strongly condemned,” the statement reads.

Bangladeshi political analyst Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah said Thursday that such violence could pose a serious threat to the aspiration of a democratic transition through an election.

“The overlook by the state in preventing such acts of vandalism and anarchy from happening could ignite further chaos. These should not be ignored,” he said.

Yunus has said a new election will be held either in December or by June 2026.
Why a Bangladesh mob burned down home of independence icon Mujibur Rahman (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [2/6/2025 11:10 PM, Moudud Ahmmed Sujan, 19588K, Negative]
Six months after a mass uprising toppled former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, a mob set the house of her late father and the country’s independence hero, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, on fire on Wednesday night.

Along with Rahman’s Dhanmondi 32 residence, protesters also set the homes of exiled leaders of Hasina’s party, the Awami League, on fire.

The mob gathered after Hasina delivered a fiery online speech on Wednesday evening from exile in India, in which she called on her supporters to stand against the interim government led by Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunus.

The Dhanmondi 32 house was also attacked during the July-August protests against Hasina that culminated in her ousting after 15 years of rule. The protests, led largely by students and young people, began over a controversial government job quota system and transformed into nationwide unrest following a harsh crackdown by authorities, where at least 834 people were killed and 20,000 were injured in clashes with the police.

Who was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and what does the Dhanmondi 32 residence signify?

Hasina’s late father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – widely known as “Bangabandhu” (Friend of Bengal) and “Mujib” – led the nation’s liberation struggle against Pakistan that led to its independence in 1971.

As the new nation’s first president and later prime minister, Rahman’s leadership shaped the country’s early years. On January 24, 1975, he introduced a controversial one-party state system, known as Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (BaKSAL), which eliminated political opposition. This system gave the state complete control over the media; merged state, government, and party functions; and required military personnel, police, judges and civil servants to become party members.

On August 15, 1975, Mujib and all other members of his family, except Hasina and her younger sister, Sheikh Rehana, were assassinated during a military coup at his residence on the Dhanmondi 32 road in Dhaka.

At the time, Hasina and her sister, Rehana, were in Germany. They took refuge in India and stayed there until Hasina’s return to Bangladesh in May 1981. Upon her return, she announced the conversion of the residence to a museum as a memorial of the country’s freedom on June 10, 1981. The museum was inaugurated on August 14, 1994, by which time, Bangladesh had a democratically-elected government after a series of four military or military-backed governments until 1990.

Hasina’s Awami League eventually came to power, defeating the incumbent Bangladesh Nationalist Party government of Begum Khaleda Zia.

The house held great significance within Bangladesh’s independence movement, and many global leaders met with Rahman in this house until his assassination.

What triggered the recent attacks?

Protesters view Rahman’s house and other Awami League member properties as symbols of what they describe as years of authoritarian rule, corruption and suppression of opposition voices.

A campaign on social media to demolish the Dhanmondi 32 house had been mounting since Hasina was ousted from power last year.

On Tuesday, after BBC Bangla reported that the deposed prime minister would deliver an address in a virtual event on Wednesday night, leaders of the Students Against Discrimination movement, a group at the forefront of the campaign against Hasina last year, accused India of “waging war” against the people of Bangladesh.

At 6:30pm local time (12:30 GMT) on Wednesday, the student group’s leader, Hasnat Abdullah, wrote on Facebook: “Tonight, Bangladesh will be freed from the shrine of fascism.”

In response, police heightened security in the Dhanmondi 32 area.

What happened to Hasina’s family’s house?

By early evening on Wednesday, protesters had gathered in front of the police barricade at the Dhanmondi 32 intersection in Dhaka. A group of army soldiers briefly joined the police to maintain security but withdrew following a brief altercation with the protesters.

During Sheikh Hasina’s live speech on the Awami League’s official Facebook page and on X, she accused the interim government of unlawfully seizing power and called for resistance.

Protesters, many affiliated with the Students Against Discrimination movement, reacted with fury, with protesters carrying sticks, hammers and other tools and storming the house before setting it alight. Others brought a crane and excavator to demolish the building.

As soon as the excavator began demolishing, thousands of protesters erupted in cheers. They were also chanting slogans: “Smash the fascist stronghold, tear it down! Delhi or Dhaka? Dhaka, Dhaka! In Abu Sayeed’s Bengal, there’s no place for Hindutva.”

Abu Sayeed was an anti-Hasina protester killed in the security crackdown last July. Hindutva is the Hindu majoritarian ideology of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

“This house is a symbol of fascism, and the fascist Hasina is trying to destabilise our country from exile. We will not leave any trace of fascism intact,” Sayed Ahmed, one of the protesters, told Al Jazeera.

There was a mixed reaction from onlookers.

“No doubt Hasina is guilty; people have suffered because of her. But this house holds historical significance. I don’t think this is the right move,” Iqbal, a businessman who had travelled by motorbike from the old part of the city with a friend, told Al Jazeera.

His friend, however, said he saw the move as “quite OK”.

Some people were seen taking bricks from the building as tokens, while others rushed in to collect books, furniture, iron, broken grills, wood and anything else they could find.

Asked by reporters on Thursday what steps police had taken to prevent the attack on Rahman’s home, Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sheikh Md Sazzat Ali said: “We tried. I was there myself late into the night.”

Yet, so far, no one has been arrested.

Which other buildings were targeted?

Similar incidents have taken place in at least 19 other cities across the country since Wednesday night, according to a report by the Prothom Alo newspaper.

Those include the demolition of the Awami League offices in the eastern district of Cumilla and the central district of Tangail, the residences of several key exiled leaders in Khulna, Noakhali and Kushtia districts, and the destruction of murals of Rahman in various public establishments in Sylhet and Rangpur.

No casualties have been reported as a result of these incidents so far.

Awami League leaders told Prothom Alo that two party members – one of them a woman – had also been assaulted, but Al Jazeera could not independently verify these claims.
How have the government and political figures responded?

In a statement to the media, the interim government called the vandalism at the house “regrettable” but attributed it to “public outrage” over Hasina’s speech from India about the July uprising.

It accused Hasina of insulting the uprising’s “martyrs” and inciting instability.

“Her words have reopened the wounds of the July massacre, leading to the backlash” at Dhanmondi 32, read a statement issued on Thursday afternoon by the office of the interim leader, Yunus.

“The government urges India not to allow its territory to be used for destabilising Bangladesh,” it said.

“Law enforcement is taking all necessary steps to restore order,” it said, adding: “Legal actions will also be considered against those engaging in incitement.”

Stating that the prosecution of those responsible for the July killings is progressing, the government reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring justice for the July killings.

Shafiqur Rahman, the leader of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party, which opposed Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, said in a Facebook post that he held Sheikh Hasina responsible for the situation for her “incitement” through her speech.

Meanwhile, Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, a senior leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, arguably the country’s most powerful political party at the moment, said in an event on Thursday: “We believe that some people may have created this chaos to obstruct the path of democracy in the coming days. In particular, we must investigate whether our neighbouring country [India] has any involvement in it.”

What does this mean for the future of the Awami League?

Once Bangladesh’s most powerful political force, the Awami League now faces widespread hostility.

Analysts said the vandalism of Rahman’s residence signals a strong rejection of the party’s legacy by sections of the population, particularly by the students and young people who largely led last year’s mass protests.

Rezaul Karim Rony, analyst and editor of Joban magazine, told Al Jazeera: “The house was supposed to be completely destroyed immediately after the fall of the [Awami League] regime on August 5, but it remained mostly intact despite partial vandalism. Now, as Sheikh Hasina denies the uprising and shows no remorse for the genocide while inciting her supporters, the people have reacted by finishing what was left.”

He added: “Many of us are critical of this step. But they should understand that fascism in Bangladesh began with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and reached its peak under Hasina. The Awami League’s tribal, muscle-based politics will no longer prevail, as demonstrated by the July uprising.”

Rony said he could see no future for the Awami League. “After their tarnished legacy, even leadership change won’t make the Awami League relevant.”
Bangladesh asks India to stop former PM Hasina from making ‘false statements’ (Reuters)
Reuters [2/7/2025 12:01 AM, Staff, 5.2M, Neutral]
Bangladesh has asked India to stop ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from making "false and fabricated" comments while she is in the country, its foreign ministry said.

Hasina fled to India last year following violent protests that killed more than 1,000 people.

In an online address on Wednesday, she called on her supporters to stand against the interim government in Bangladesh, accusing it of seizing power in an unconstitutional manner.

Thousands of protesters gathered in Dhaka before Hasina’s address and, an in effort to disrupt it, demolished and set fire to the home of Mujibur Rahman, her father and Bangladesh’s founding leader. The violence continued after Hasina spoke.

Bangladesh’s foreign ministry handed over a protest note to India’s acting high commissioner in Dhaka, conveying "deep concern, disappointment and serious reservation" over her comments, it said in a statement on its Facebook page.

"The ministry ... requested ... India to immediately take appropriate measures, in the spirit of mutual respect and understanding, to stop her from making such false, fabricated and incendiary statements ... while she is in India," it said.

Hasina could not be contacted for comment.

Although India did not comment on the communication received from Bangladesh, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal condemned the destruction of Rahman’s home as an "act of vandalism".

"It is regrettable ... All those who value the freedom struggle that nurtured Bangla identity and pride are aware of the importance of this residence for the national consciousness of Bangladesh," he said.

It was in the same house that Rahman declared Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971, and he and most of his family were assassinated within its walls in 1975.

Hasina had transformed the building into a museum dedicated to her father’s legacy.

The press office of the chief adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government, Muhammad Yunus, had said on Thursday that the attack on Rahman’s residence was a response to Hasina’s "violent behaviour".

"The government hopes that India will not allow its territory to be used for destabilising purposes in Bangladesh and will not allow Sheikh Hasina to speak," it said.

Bangladesh has been grappling with political strife since Hasina fled to India in August, with its interim government struggling to maintain law and order amid continuing protests and unrest.

India and Bangladesh, which share a 4,000 kilometre (2,500 miles) border and maritime boundaries in the Bay of Bengal, have longstanding cultural and business ties.

India also played a key role in the 1971 war with Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh.
China Promises Support to Bangladesh’s Interim Government (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [2/6/2025 4:13 AM, Sudha Ramachandran, 857K, Neutral]
The Chinese government has responded positively to several requests made by Bangladesh during the visit of the interim government’s adviser on foreign affairs, Touhid Hossain, to China from January 20 to 24.

Bangladesh requested China to lower the interest rate on both Preferential Buyer’s Credit (PBC) and Government Concessional Loans (GCL) from 2-3 percent to 1 percent, waive the commitment fee, and extend the loan repayment period from 20 to 30 years. It also requested Beijing to improve access of Bangladeshi patients to medical treatment.

On returning to Dhaka after the visit, Hossain told the media that China "agreed in principle" to extend the loan repayment period and promised to look into the request to lower the interest rate. It also agreed to construct a 1,000-bed hospital in Dhaka and designate three to four hospitals in Kunming for medical treatment of Bangladeshi patients.

During Hossain’s visit, Bangladesh and China signed a Memorandum of Understanding on sharing hydrological data on the Yarlung Tsangpo-Brahmaputra-Jamuna river. A mega dam that China plans to build on this river is of concern to Bangladesh.

The two sides also reaffirmed commitment to their comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership and cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative.

It was just a little over seven months before Hossain’s trip to China that Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited Beijing, where she was accorded a grand welcome. During that visit, which came weeks before she was ousted from power by a student-led mass uprising, China and Bangladesh elevated their "strategic partnership" to a "comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership" and signed 21 agreements.

During Hossain’s visit, the Chinese signaled that they are moving on, and are set to work with the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government.

With its "positive response" to Bangladesh’s request relating to loans, "even if only in the form of verbal assurances at this point, China has indicated that Beijing is backing the interim government," a former Bangladeshi diplomat said. This is in contrast to India, which is "yet to show support for the Yunus government," he told The Diplomat.

China’s show of support to the Yunus government comes at a time when Delhi-Dhaka relations are strained. India continues to shelter Hasina and has not responded to the Yunus government’s repeated calls for her extradition to Bangladesh to face trial for alleged war crimes. The Indian government has accused Dhaka of not doing enough to protect Hindus in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has objected to India’s fencing of the border, and anti-India sentiment is running high in Bangladesh.

Against this backdrop, China’s positive gestures, like its "yes" to setting up hospitals in Dhaka and Kunming for Bangladeshis, are striking a chord with Bangladeshis.

For decades, Bangladeshis traveled to India to receive medical treatment there. However, with bilateral tensions surging since August 2024, such travel has become difficult, if not impossible. In retaliation to anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh, some Indian hospitals refused treatment for Bangladeshi patients. India also significantly scaled down the number of visas for Bangladeshis seeking to travel to India. This has led to a further fall in public goodwill for India among Bangladeshis.

"By agreeing to improve Bangladeshi access to medical treatment, China has swiftly stepped in to fill the space left open by India," the Bangladeshi diplomat said.

Sino-Bangladesh cooperation is not new. Although Beijing was slow to establish diplomatic relations with independent Bangladesh, ties deepened rapidly.

Defense cooperation provides the bedrock of the bilateral relationship; China is the only country with which Bangladesh has a defense cooperation agreement and Chinese weapons make up 82 percent of the total inventory of the Bangladesh Armed Forces. Economic cooperation has surged over the decades too. In 2006, China replaced India as Bangladesh’s leading trade partner. It has also played a major role in funding and building connectivity infrastructure.

Like India, China too, had close ties with the Hasina government. Indeed, of the two it was China that extended Hasina more financial support. Yet, six months after her exit, it is India, not China, that faces public opprobrium in Bangladesh. Beijing wields more influence in Dhaka today than does India.

China’s nimble diplomacy has seen it making tactical shifts in pursuit of its interests. Although Hasina’s fall from power was a setback for Beijing, it moved swiftly to reach out to the new dispensation. It welcomed the interim government a day after its swearing-in and stressed that it "strictly follows the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs." Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Yunus on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York in September last year.

Simultaneously, Beijing is engaging with other Bangladeshi political actors. Its ambassador in Dhaka visited the central office of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party. The Chinese Communist Party then hosted visits of a delegation of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders followed by a delegation of Islamic parties, including the JI. This is not a new approach. For decades, Beijing’s policy in Bangladesh has been to engage with not only all governments — democratic and military, elected or not — but also all political parties. China was in touch with the BNP even during Hasina’s rule; President Xi Jinping, for example, met BNP chief Khaleda Zia during his visit to Dhaka in 2016.

Contrast this with India’s AL-centric policy toward Bangladesh. By putting all its eggs in the AL basket, Delhi has left itself with no friends in Dhaka after Hasina’s fall. While it is said to have opened talks with the BNP, it is reportedly unlikely to engage with the JI. "Who it [India] considers a friend and foe in Bangladesh is set in stone," the Bangladeshi diplomat said.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi could have met Yunus in New York but did not. Importantly, the Modi government has allowed domestic political and electoral considerations to cloud its dealing with Dhaka. Politicians of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and fraternal organizations actively stoked anger in India during the communal tensions in Bangladesh. The Modi government did nothing to rein them in. It sullied India’s image further in Bangladesh.

It is not just the space opened up by India’s diplomatic failures that China will be looking to fill in Bangladesh. U.S. President Donald Trump’s suspension of aid to all foreign countries will impact Bangladesh’s health, education and sustainable development sectors. In 2023, the United States directed $401 million to Bangladesh via USAID. The funding freeze could deepen economic and other challenges that the interim government is already grappling with.

Bangladesh’s appreciation of China’s helping hand will therefore deepen.
Police investigate woman’s death at Sri Lankan hostel (BBC)
BBC [2/6/2025 9:40 AM, Isaac Ashe, 76163K, Negative]
The sudden death of a 24-year-old British woman staying in a hostel in Sri Lanka is being investigated by police.

Ebony McIntosh, a digital marketing and social media manager from Derby, was taken to hospital in the capital Colombo on Saturday after reportedly suffering from vomiting, nausea and breathing difficulties, Sri Lanka Police said.

Ms McIntosh and German national Nadine Raguse, 26, who was also staying at the Miracle Colombo City Hostel, both died, according to the force.

Sri Lanka Police spokesman Buddhika Manatunga said a room in the hostel had been fumigated to treat bed bugs before they fell ill.

Mr Manatunga said officers were investigating the possibility the women were poisoned by noxious pesticides.

A post-mortem examination will take place after Ms McIntosh’s family arrive in Sri Lanka on 10 February, the force spokesman said.

The hostel has been closed until this takes place.

A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: "We are supporting the family of a British woman who died in Sri Lanka, and are in contact with the local authorities.".
Central Asia
Kazakhstan: Village-to-city migration reaches record high in 2024 (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/6/2025 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
Rural areas of Kazakhstan are emptying at an alarming rate, according to fresh data published by the country’s Bureau of National Statistics.

Authorities recorded the rural population deficit (arrivals minus departures) at over 111,000 in 2024, the highest number since the government started keeping track of such data in 2000, the official KazTAG news agency reported. Kazakhstan has an overall population of 20 million.

The Bureau reported that the exodus from villages to cities is prevalent across the country. The rural population in only two of the country’s 17 regions recorded slight growth, Almaty (+7,600 overall), which surrounds the country’s commercial capital of the same name, and Atyrau (+275), which is an energy extraction hub.

The natural increase in population couldn’t fully offset the rural out-migration deficit, as births in rural areas outpaced deaths by 98,000, the statistics agency added.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan’s urban population expanded by 267,000, and now accounts for 63 percent of the Kazakh population.

The methodology for measuring internal migration in Kazakhstan has come under scrutiny in the past. The statistics generally lacked a detailed demographic breakdown, including the age and gender of those moving around internally.

But a 2024 report issued by the International Organization for Migration noted that governmental agencies in Kazakhstan were making improvements. “There are significant attempts at using Big Data technologies, such as its use to track internal migration from anonymized data from phone operator Kazakhtelecom,” the IOM report notes. “The Kazkah government [is]] making significant attempts at creating a unified governmental platform, Smart Data Ukimet, [which] will synthesize all administrative and governmental data.”
Former Kyrgyz Natural Resources Minister Sentenced to 8 Years (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [2/6/2025 2:26 PM, Catherine Putz, 857K, Negative]
On February 5, a court in Bishkek sentenced former Minister of Natural Resources Dinara Kutmanova to eight years in prison following a conviction on abuse of office charges. Kutmanova’s son, Kemelbek Kutmanov, was also sentenced to eight years on a large-scale fraud charge. The pair were detained back in 2023, accused of massive corruption linked to the country’s most lucrative asset: the Kumtor Gold Mine.

Kutmanova was tapped to head the State Committee for Ecology and Climate in May 2021. The committee was upgraded to the Ministry of Natural Resources, Environment and Technical Supervision in October of that year. When Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov reshuffled his Cabinet in October 2021, Kutmanova was the only female minister named. She ran the Natural Resources Ministry until March 2023 and was arrested in July of that year.

Among the ministry’s responsibilities was oversight of the Kumtor Gold Mine, which Bishkek seized control of in May 2021.

Kutmanova, and her son, have a long history with the mine. Much like Japarov, she rose to prominence by campaigning against foreign ownership of the mine. Kutmanov, in fact, was one of the plaintiffs in a May 2021 lawsuit against Kumtor alleging environmental damages that served, in part, as the trigger for the government takeover of the lucrative gold mine.

On July 20, 2023, State Committee for National Security (SCNS) head Kamshybek Tashiev accused Kutmanova of massive corruption in remarks during a Cabinet meeting. "The officials who robbed the country will be punished in any case, even after their dismissal," he said ominously. "Everyone will be punished. Therefore, do not think that dark deeds can be hidden by leaving the post.".

The following day Kutmanova gave an interview to RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, Radio Azattyk, in which the former minister rejected the security chief’s accusations.

The next day, Kutmanova made news again when she alleged that in late June her son had been kidnapped in Istanbul and held for ransom – she said she’d been instructed not to report this to the media, lest her son be hurt.

The SCNS put out a statement the same day outlining the massive corruption case Tashiev had indicated was in the works, with Kutmanova at its center. (The son, Kutmanov, was extradited from Turkiye to Kyrgyzstan in October 2023.) The charges centered on allegations that Kutmanova had misused funds from Kumtor’s then-owner that were supposed to go toward environmental protection.

The SCNS statement claimed that from 2021 to 2023 the Kumtor Gold Company funded the Nature Development Fund, situated inside the ministry, to the tune of 325 million soms ($3.7 million) annually. The SCNS said that the total funding over three years was more than 969 million soms and that more than 789 million soms had been allocated to individuals and organizations for 110 projects.

This model, in which Kumtor’s commercial overlords fed money into the fund for environmental protection initiatives, was established in 2017 between Kyrgyzstan and Canada’s Centerra Gold. The Canadian company long owned and operated the mine, much to the frustration of Kyrgyz nationalists.

The Nature Development Fund’s director was detained on corruption charges in June 2023.

Kutmanova herself was arrested on July 25, 2023, with Kyrgyz authorities laying out a case that she used her position within the ministry and her authority over the fund to funnel money to friends and family. One specific instance outlined by the SCNS involved the purchase of 1,000 sets of "special clothing" for a total of 34 million soms from a family friend in an agreement made without a tender process.

"According to the expert opinion of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Kyrgyz Republic," the SCNS said in its July 22, 2023 statement, "the cost of special clothing does not exceed 11 million soms in the country’s markets, the difference in the amount of 23 million soms was appropriated by the family of Dinara Kutmanova.".

The SCNS further claimed that it had "checked" on 22 of the 110 funded projects and found "most… do not correspond to their intended purpose.".

The SCNS characterized Kutmanova as "the key ideological inspirer and main organizer" of corruption within the ministry.

Both Kutmanova and her son were sentenced to eight years each, with the confiscation of their property as well as a a three year ban on holding public office for her and a three year ban on individual entrepreneurial activity for him.

In October 2024, the Kumtor Gold Company announced declining output, through the authorities characterized the decline as temporary. In 2023, the company reported that it had extracted and sold 13.5 tonnes of gold, below a 14 ton target. The company expressed aims to extract 17-18 tons annually in the near future.
Uzbekistan: The poverty rate continues to plunge (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/6/2025 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
The Uzbek government reports continuing progress in reducing poverty in the country. But the official baseline for calculating the poverty line may be contributing to an undercount.

The Ministry of Employment announced February 4 that Uzbekistan’s poverty rate in 2024 experienced a 2.1 percent decline, falling to 8.9, comparted with an 11 percent rate the previous year. Overall, almost 720,000 Uzbeks climbed above the poverty line last year, while 3.3 million Uzbeks continue to grapple with hunger and uncertainty.

The Employment Ministry statement noted that four regions – Bukhara, Samarkand, Namangan and the autonomous region of Karakalpakstan – experienced the biggest rate declines in 2024.

Officials attributed progress in combatting poverty to government programs to foster “entrepreneurship, and increase the efficiency of using land allocated for homesteading and farming.” Average per capita monthly income experienced a 10.7 percent increase over the year, reaching 2.1 million Uzbek soum per month, about US $161.

World Bank experts have praised Uzbekistan’s poverty reduction efforts, noting that the government has instituted changes in the way it measures poverty rates, harmonizing its standards with globally accepted norms. “Until spring 2024, Uzbekistan was one of the few countries in the world that lacked internationally comparable poverty estimates,” an item posted on the World Bank’s website stated. “For decades, the country had measured poverty in a way that could not be directly compared with the rest of the world.”

The government introduce a new methodology in 2021 and announced a goal of lowering the poverty rate by half within five years. Since then, the poverty rate has gone from 17 percent in 2022 to today’s 8.9 percent.

The baseline used to establish the poverty line, however, appears to be low. The current standard is 669,000 soum, or about $51, a month. Some observers contend the actual income level needed to escape poverty is higher than the official figure.

“Sustaining Uzbekistan’s rapid pace of poverty reduction will necessitate additional efforts from the government to enhance the productive capacity of poor households,” the World Bank item stated.

Impoverished Uzbeks, especially in rural areas, are “less likely to be employed, more likely to have lower levels of education, and have more dependents,” the item added. “Reducing gaps in these dimensions between households will be critical for tempering the rise in inequality and further reducing poverty.”
Twitter
Afghanistan
Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 57 retweets, 236 likes]
It’s time for an update on the situation for our wartime allies. In this #AfghanEvac I’m going to give a quick rundown of where we are, whether or not progress has been made, and what can be done to help.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 5 retweets, 27 likes]
Current state — All refugees, including Afghans in the USRAP P-1, P-2, P-3, and P-4 categories, have been paused due to USRAP Executive Order. This means there is no intake of new cases, no processing of existing cases, and no movement for approved cases.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 5 retweets, 29 likes]
SIVs can technically process, but the support services that enable success have been shut down by the implementing guidance of the Foreign Aid EO. So cases can be established, chief of mission approval can be adjudicated, and visas can be printed, they still can’t move at scale.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 4 retweets, 24 likes]
Which support services have been shut down due to the Foreign Aid EO?
- Non-food item procurement and distribution on intermediate processing platforms
- Booking services and flight loans for flights to the U.S.
- Resettlement services upon arrival in the United States
- More

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 3 retweets, 21 likes]
There have been some self-funded SIV arrivals and also some SIVs have been stopped mid-flight due to confusion related to implementation of the Eos

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 5 retweets, 24 likes]
Exceptions — Many Afghans are in DMs making the case to me why their case deserves special consideration. @SecNoem and @SecRubio can grant exemptions for refugees on a case-by-case basis (which hasn’t yet been promulgated.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 4 retweets, 27 likes]
Secretary @marcorubio has the authority to reopen SIV support services. We’re asking for both Secretaries to push for an exemption to both Executive Orders for all Enduring Welcome eligible cases.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 4 retweets, 20 likes]
All of this has led to scrambling by the State Department, volunteers across the entire #AfghanEvac movement, and Afghans themselves to get real answers and understand what it all means.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 4 retweets, 27 likes]
Volunteers across the ecosystem are pushing their friends in the new administration to remember our allies. And to remember the positions they took when @JoeBiden was President, overseeing the withdrawal. Honor is honor, no matter who sits behind the resolute desk.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 5 retweets, 25 likes]
We all remain in limbo. Unsure of the next step. Because the White House and State Department leadership refuse to communicate. We HAVE heard that there are folks in Congress and in the Administration who are pushing for Enduring Welcome to be exempt from the EOs

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 6 retweets, 23 likes]
But we aren’t hearing anything official yet. So we wait. And if you’re an Afghan, you wait even longer. While you’re hiding and holing out hope that the country you believed in won’t betray you further.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 5 retweets, 26 likes]
If you’re a veteran or frontline civilian who made a promise to an Afghan, you’re waiting. Holding out hope that your country doesn’t make you a liar.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 6 retweets, 32 likes]
If you’re an Afghan in Pakistan, you wait. There are about 15-20,000 Afghans in Pakistan who will be subject to deportation starting in March, because of how Pakistan is interpreting the EOs. Including an Afghan who served as an interpreter for someone we lost at Abbey Gate.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 5 retweets, 30 likes]
So what do we need? We need @StateDept, @WhiteHouse, & @DHSgov to ensure Enduring Welcome is exempt from policies meant to protect our border and prevent illegal immigration, because relocation of our wartime allies has nothing to do with either. This is safe, legal immigration.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 4 retweets, 28 likes]
We need Congress to speak up. There is clear bipartisan support for our Wartime Allies. They’ve very recently authorized an increase to the cap on SIVs and the existence and operation of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 5 retweets, 26 likes]
If they keep Enduring Welcome moving, all of our wartime allies could be out and starting their American Dream by the end of @POTUS term. He would be a hero to our allies and our veterans.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 4 retweets, 30 likes]
But for now, his Executive Orders have ground everything to a halt. And we still believe that was unintentional. We need to see it fixed, and fast. It cannot wait 90 days. This infrastructure will whither and die. Taxpayers are spending money on this and it’s a good investment.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 9 retweets, 32 likes]
In fact, it’s the cost of war. We spent twenty years in Afghanistan and we owe it to our veterans to close out the war as strong as we started it. Which means funding services for those who fought the war, including our veterans, frontline civilians, and wartime allies.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:00 AM, 30.3K followers, 11 retweets, 49 likes]
If we don’t exempt Enduring Welcome relocations from these executive orders, we will leave our allies stranded indefinitely.

Shawn VanDiver
@shawnjvandiver
[2/6/2025 8:03 AM, 30.3K followers, 20 retweets, 83 likes]
What can you do?
1. Contact your representatives — http://afghanevac.org/elected-officials
2. Donate — http://afghanevac.org/donate
3. Share our social media!
We need everyone in this fight. Don’t be caught sitting on the sidelines, especially if you were noisy in August 2021. We need you back in it.

Jahanzeb Wesa
@Jahanzeb_Wesa
[2/6/2025 1:54 PM, 5.5K followers, 3 retweets, 9 likes]
Once again, Afghanistan is ranked as the saddest country in the world. The greatest victims of this suffering are women and girls, who have not only been deprived of their right to education and freedom but are also subjected to relentless oppression & injustice every single day.

Jahanzeb Wesa
@Jahanzeb_Wesa
[2/6/2025 1:50 PM, 5.5K followers, 68 retweets, 89 likes]
Reports from Afghanistan International TV confirm that the Taliban’s recent wave of arbitrary detentions targets brave women protesters—those who dared to rise against their brutal regime and its gender apartheid policies. #Afghanistan #WomenFreedomLife #HRW
Pakistan
Imran Khan
@ImranKhanPTI
[2/6/2025 5:30 AM, 21.1M followers, 8.5K retweets, 17K likes]
I offer my heartfelt condolences to the Ismaili community and to the family of HH Prince Karim Aga Khan following his passing. He was a great friend of Pakistan, and his contributions in the fields of health, education, architecture, welfare, and socio-economic development in Pakistan and around the world will be his lasting legacy. We stand with the Ismaili community of Pakistan in this time of mourning.

Imran Khan
@ImranKhanPTI
[2/6/2025 11:01 AM, 21.1M followers, 227 retweets, 866 likes]
Spoke to Prince Rahim Aga Khan to express my deepest condolences on the passing of His Highness the Aga Khan IV. A true friend of Pakistan, he illuminated many lives with his visionary leadership, and his contributions to global development, education, health and humanitarian efforts will always be remembered.

Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
[2/6/2025 5:26 PM, 621.5K followers, 1.7K retweets, 4K likes]
Rep. Joe Wilson of the USwrites to not only the PM and President but also to the Army Chief of Pakistan to release Imran Khan from jail - Everyone knows, in Pakistan, it is the Army Chief who has kept Imran Khan in jail. President and PM are rubber stamps only.
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/6/2025 5:32 AM, 105.1M followers, 6.5K retweets, 29K likes]
Speaking in the Rajya Sabha. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1YqKDZPlzgVJV

Rahul Gandhi
@RahulGandhi
[2/7/2025 2:33 AM, 27.5M followers, 763 retweets, 1.6K likes]
Our questions to the Election Commission on the Maharashtra elections:
- Why did EC add more voters in Maharashtra in 5 months than it did in 5 years?
- Why were there more registered voters in VS 2024 than the entire adult population of Maharashtra?- One example among many is Kamthi constituency, where the BJP’s margin
of victory is nearly equal to the number of new voters added
The EC must answer these questions and provide us with the electoral rolls of Maharashtra of both LS 2024 & VS 2024.

Rahul Gandhi
@RahulGandhi
[2/6/2025 5:07 AM, 27.5M followers, 3.6K retweets, 10K likes]
As I said in my Lok Sabha speech, the future of mobility will change everything. I delved a little deeper into how vehicles will change in this new revolution with a group of enthusiastic students from Nagaland. It’s imperative our education system adapts to the paradigm shift happening in the world and equips young Indians with the skills and knowledge needed to thrive and take our country forward.

Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
[2/6/2025 5:11 PM, 621.5K followers, 148 retweets, 559 likes]
Trump has not deported a single illegal immigrant from China, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nepal, but already has sent back 205 of them handcuffed and chained to India. Trump is bullying Modi like no one else.

Tanvi Madan
@tanvi_madan
[2/6/2025 12:14 PM, 90.7K followers, 461 retweets, 1.8K likes]
I wonder if all the "gotcha" folks in India know that USAID funded things include:
- IIT Kanpur (whose alums include the current IT minister & the CEO of IBM) & many regional eng colleges
- Serum Institute of India
- estb’ing agricultural universities
- helping launch muni bonds

Tanvi Madan
@tanvi_madan
[2/6/2025 1:07 PM, 90.7K followers, 37 retweets, 220 likes]
Do India tweeps conspiracy theorizing about people the State Dept has funded factor in that those include the following who visited the US under IVLP:
- Narendra Modi (1990s) + others in leadership
- Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1960s)
- Morarji Desai (1960s)
- Indira Gandhi (1960s)

Tanvi Madan
@tanvi_madan
[2/6/2025 10:10 PM, 90.7K followers, 25 retweets, 136 likes]
Y’all can keep yelling at me, but you can just search through http://pib.gov.in to see how much the Indian govt has collaborated -- including over the last decade -- with USAID…
NSB
Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
[2/6/2025 4:33 PM, 621.5K followers, 16 likes]
Bangladeshi student protesters have unleashed a mob rule in the country in the name of democracy. They are not only pushing the country to instability and chaos but also proving Hasina right that her dictatorial rule was needed to keep peace and order in the country.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/6/2025 3:25 PM, 111.9K followers, 67 retweets, 67 likes]
First Lady Madam Sajidha Mohamed attends the ceremony to mark the 15th Anniversary of the Maldives Autism Association. At the ceremony, the First Lady presented commemorative plaques to long serving employees of the Maldives Autism Association.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake
@anuradisanayake
[2/6/2025 10:49 AM, 145.2K followers, 10 retweets, 122 likes]
Today (06), I engaged in a productive discussion with the IMF delegation at the Presidential Secretariat regarding the progress of our Extended Fund Facility (EFF) agreement. We’ve made significant strides, and I’m optimistic about the upcoming presentation to the IMF Board. Together, we’re committed to strengthening Sri Lanka’s economic recovery!

Anura Kumara Dissanayake
@anuradisanayake
[2/6/2025 10:48 AM, 145.2K followers, 10 retweets, 136 likes]
Today (06), I had a meeting with our newly appointed Tri-Forces Commanders at the Presidential Secretariat. Appreciate the commitment of Lieutenant General Lasantha Rodrigo, Vice Admiral Kanchana Banagoda, and Air Marshal Vasu Bandu Edirisinghe as we work together for a stronger future.

Namal Rajapaksa
@RajapaksaNamal
[2/6/2025 7:27 AM, 436.8K followers, 15 retweets, 87 likes]
In 2015, USAID allocated funds to Sri Lanka for ‘strengthening democratic governance’. Back then when we had raised how these funds were utilized, the Yahapalanaya govt. remained silent with no transparency on its accounts. Now USAID funding has been challenged by its own Trump administration. Very recently USAID partnered with the previous govt to support Sri Lanka end AIDS by 2025. Millions were granted to local NGOs. However local media reports have reported that HIV cases in SL have risen in 2024 when compared to 2023, raising concerns what these ‘NGOs’ did with the funds. It is also surprising to note that some activists have admitted to using those funds for funding court cases and making employees write to local websites in a move to influence the society. Yesterday when I raised this is Parliament, the NPP remained silent. They are repeating the silence of the Yahapalanaya govt. Although these funds are not Sri Lankan tax payers money, both the Sri Lankan public and US tax payers have a right to know what these funds were utilized for. When USAID has disappeared overnight, it is only right to probe what happened to the billions funded into the country over the years and for whose benefit. @elonmusk @RapidResponse47
Central Asia
Yerzhan Ashikbayev
@KZAmbUS
[2/6/2025 8:42 PM, 2.7K followers, 2 retweets, 5 likes]
Special thanks to @Robert_Aderholt, @RepCarolMiller, @RepTomSuozzi, @DarinLaHoodIL, @RepBera, @repdinatitus, @RepBethVanDuyne, and @RepTenney for cosponsoring H.R. 1024. Your support showcases the bipartisan commitment to advancing Kazakhstan’s case

Yerzhan Ashikbayev
@KZAmbUS
[2/6/2025 8:39 PM, 2.7K followers, 1 retweet, 6 likes]
A heartfelt thank you to @JimmyPanetta and his amazing team for reintroducing H.R. 1024 – the U.S.-Kazakhstan Trade Modernization Act. Your unwavering support for Kazakhstan is shaping a future of stronger ties between our nation. The new marathon has begun, stronger than ever.

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[2/6/2025 7:51 AM, 5.2K followers, 1 like]
Meeting of the Minister with the new Head of International Organization for Migration Office in Tajikistan https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/16573/meeting-of-the-minister-with-the-head-of-international-organization-for-migration-office-in-tajikistan

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[2/6/2025 4:40 AM, 5.2K followers, 1 like]
Participation in the 11th Coordination Committee meeting of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/16572/participation-in-the-11th-coordination-committee-meeting-of-the-united-nations-global-counter-terrorism-coordination-compact

Javlon Vakhabov
@JavlonVakhabov
[2/7/2025 12:17 AM, 6.2K followers, 1 retweet, 3 likes]
The round table “The International Year of Peace and Trust: Turkmenistan’s Contribution to Global and Regional Cooperation" is about to begin at The International Institute for Central Asia (@IICAinTashkent).

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[2/6/2025 11:37 AM, 211.7K followers, 1 retweet, 17 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev held a meeting on the chemical industry’s plans for the current year. To address key challenges and maximize the potential, advanced technologies will be implemented to boost added value of enterprises. Officials were tasked with adopting digital technologies, optimizing production capacities, improving energy efficiency and reducing costs.

{End of Report}
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