SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Friday, January 17, 2025 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
‘I Just Want to See My Mom and Dad.’ An Afghan Teen in the U.S. Yearns For Reunion (Time)
Time [1/16/2025 3:11 PM, Jazzmin Jiwa, 12343K, Negative]
The story of Samir Ahmadi’s journey to America could have been written by Charles Dickens. But its author is the 14-year-old Afghan boy who, one week after the Taliban walked into Kabul, found himself walking away from it, jammed with his family and tens of thousands of others on the road leading to Hamid Karzai International Airport. The U.S. government, having pulled its troops out of Afghanistan, had announced that it would airlift two groups: Anyone holding a U.S. passport, and anyone who had worked for the Americans during the previous 20 years. But most of the throng was—like Samir, his parents, his older brother, his younger brother, and their 7-year-old sister—simply terrified of staying behind.
Then armed men in black turbans, as if to justify their fear, opened fire into the crowd. Samir was still with his parents when they saw a girl fall into a ditch, then a mass of people fall onto the same spot. When they climbed out, she lay dead. This was when, fearing for their own daughter, Samir’s parents decided to turn back.
Samir did not see them go. Only when he paused in the rush and scanned the faces surrounding him did Samir realize that his family was no longer in sight. He considered going back the way he had come, but someone said the Taliban was beating Afghans who came that way. When he finally reached the long line outside the airport gate, Samir approached an American soldier guarding it. He told the soldier’s interpreter that he could not find his family. They could be inside, he said. The soldier asked his age, and, hearing 14, moved him to another entrance. There, Samir began talking with an Afghan family with U.S. passports. When they went inside, so did he.
"Because Americans were taking their families, I made myself look like I was part of that family and I just kind of tagged along," Samir says.
He had left home with his family at 10 a.m. Now, at midnight, he unwrapped the clothes he had bundled around his phone, saw that his battery was dead, borrowed a charger, and dialed his family. That’s when they told him they had gone home.
The plane he boarded carried Samir from the place that produced the iconic images of the American withdrawal—desperate young men dropping to their deaths after clinging to departing airplanes; the suicide bombing that Donald Trump invoked in the Presidential campaign, for the death of 13 U.S. service members (179 Afghans also perished). But after the chaos at Kabul, the places Samir went next proved, if anything, too ordered.
Of the 122,000 people evacuated from Kabul over 16 days that August, about 1,400 were children without an adult relative. Most of those, 1,200, either were reunited with family in the U.S., or placed in foster care. The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement took the rest—200 children—to live at children’s shelters that had government contracts to house unaccompanied minors. Today, two years later, more than half of those 200 have been reunited with family or fostered. The rest have aged out of the program without family.
The process was not smooth. Though their physical needs were being met, many endured psychological distress. The trauma of their experience was aggravated, on the one hand, by frequent moves between shelters, and on the other, by the rules of those shelters—especially the severe restrictions limiting phone contact with the families they have left behind, according to the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
Samir’s flight out of Kabul landed in Qatar, the Persian Gulf kingdom where all evacuees were taken into U.S. government custody. After two months and 20 days, he was flown with other young people to Chicago. He remembers watching the snow fall from the window of bus that took him to Albion, Mich., and the 350-acres of Starr Commonwealth shelter.
At the Michigan shelter, Samir was taken to one of the residential cottages where 13 Afghan children were already staying. As soon as he walked in, the staff took his belongings and gave him new clothes to wear. "The clothes felt like clothes from jail. Like for prisoners," he says.
Starr Commonwealth was founded as a home for runaway boys in 1913. It later become a residential behavioral and treatment facility for children aged 12 to 18. In the spring of 2021, the federal government began leasing the campus to accommodate Central American children who were then crossing the border in large numbers. Starr shifted to housing Afghan children after the fall of Kabul. "In 2021, our campus served as an emergency intake site," Starr said in a statement to TIME, "but the Office of Refugee Resettlement ran the programming, including staffing, meals and direct care of the children. Starr only served as the landlord and had no role in or responsibility for the ORR program.".
Samir says that in his first week at Starr, staff prevented him from calling his family at all. After that, they allowed him two 10-minute calls and one 15-minute call a week. He focused on his emptiness without his family, as there was little stimulation. The children’s days consisted of breakfast, a Netflix movie, lunch, playing cards, then another movie. They were offered no schooling and allowed outside for just an hour a day.Samir was anxious to be with his family again. But his older brother, Najib, was the only one with a passport of any kind. Under U.S. policy, he could enter the U.S. because Samir was already living there, and Najib met the criteria of being 21 or younger and unmarried. The process involved four months of interviews with the Department of State. Najib had to propose a plan to support Samir in the U.S. as his legal guardian.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the Taliban was threatening to kill anyone who had worked for organizations linked to the U.S. or to the former government. Before it collapsed, Samir’s father had been employed at the Ministry of Interior Affairs. On one of Samir’s rare calls with his parents, wanting to know that his family was safe, Samir stayed on the call for three extra minutes beyond the allotted 10. For the rest of the week, Samir waited anxiously to speak to his parents again. When his turn finally came, the staff forbade him from calling because he had exceeded his allocation the last time.
To understand the rationale for the phone restrictions, the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights interviewed dozens of unaccompanied Afghan minors and shelter staff. What they found, according to Abena Hutchful, the center’s Policy and Litigation Attorney, was that children who had been placed in custody because the U.S. government had failed to ensure that evacuated families remained together, had, upon arrival in America, entered a culture of control and criminalization. "Punishing Trauma" was the title of Young Center report.
Policies for the children were made by former corrections officers or child welfare workers employed by the Office For Refugee Resettlement. "They have worked within cultures of punitive approaches to discipline," Hutchful said.
Harsh punishment for traumatized children took its toll. Samir and other boys would run away from Starr four or five times a week, sometimes twice a day. When Samir felt most scared about being separated from his family, he would abscond to a lake or hill where he could sit alone and think. His return hours later was usually prompted by a police officer questioning him.
In January 2022, Starr was shut down after abuse allegations. One case involved a 16-year-old who said two workers shoved and yelled at him. Another worker was accused of kicking a boy while he was praying. No charges were brought in either case.
Meanwhile, Samir had been moved to another shelter. In October, he arrived at Samaritas, in Grand Rapids, Mich., which had taken in 19 unaccompanied Afghan minors. Sad to leave the 13 boys at Starr who were his first friends after leaving Kabul, Samir felt reassured when the Samaritas staff told him that all the children there could talk to their families for 10 minutes each and every day.
To make the calls, the staff gave the boys two iPhone 7s. It wasn’t enough. Desperate to connect with their families, the boys fought over phones. "There were a lot of broken noses," Samir says. "Sometimes they would get mad and they would just take the phone, hit it on the floor and break it.".
The dynamic was understandable to Fatima Rahmati, a youth advocate for unaccompanied Afghan children in New York. She is among dozens of Afghan-Americans, most of whom fled Afghanistan in the 1980s, who have helped the Afghan children in the U.S. shelter system to feel more at home in the absence of their families. One teenager had been through seven different shelters in 10 months, Rahmati says.
"How can we ask a 15-year-old boy, who fled everything he knows, to ‘behave’ when he is angry? Control his anger to the point of docility and if he doesn’t comply, the clock resets on when he has the opportunity to be moved to a less restrictive setting?" she asks.
At Samaritas, Grand Rapids police responded nearly every other day to calls for incidents like missing persons, suicide threats, fights and assaults. Samir stayed for less than three months. After he left, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services began an investigation into reports of Afghan minors being mistreated. Samaritas also was cleared of any abuse allegations by the state and reopened the facility. Samaritas did not respond to requests for comment.
Samir’s third and final shelter was different. At David and Margaret Youth and Family Services in La Verne, Calif., he played football and volleyball, and swam. He cooked meals and walked outdoors.
He had been there six months when the State Department finally gave Najib a visa and a week’s notice to leave Afghanistan. It was July 2022. But during his own stop in Qatar, he tested positive for tuberculosis. The brothers waited another nine months to be reunited, when Najib finally tested negative and traveled onward to the U.S.
Two shelter staffers took Samir to LAX at 1 a.m. to meet Najib’s plane. Afterward, they returned Samir to David and Margaret, where he had to remain until his brother had a full-time job and had officially become Samir’s guardian. That would take another five months. But the minute Najib touched down, on April 4, 2023, Samir felt part of his emptiness disappear.
"I felt relief because finally there was somebody with me," Samir said. "All this time I was in the huge United States alone.".
Today their lives look American. Three years after the fall of Kabul, the brothers live in a one-bedroom apartment in Anaheim, home of Disneyland. Samir, now 17, attends Magnolia High School; his hair is cut close on the sides and bushy on the top in the fashion known as alpaca. Najib, 23, works nights filling boxes at Amazon.
But at home they speak Dari, and sit on the floor to eat. Every morning before school, Samir calls Afghanistan. Fear of the Taliban is only one of the reasons the first names of his parents and siblings are not in this article. Torpekai Momand, an Afghan immigrant who looks in on the boys, explained that there are thugs in Afghanistan who have kidnapped the relatives of someone who now lives in the U.S., and demanded ransom. His parents, after seeing Najib make his way, acquired passports of their own. But they no longer hear from U.S. officials.
The uncertainty is a new point of stress. One night, Samir cried out in his sleep. In a dream, his mother had died. Four in the morning in California is 3:30 p.m. in Afghanistan, and he reached for his phone. His mother picked right up.
"I just want to see my mom and dad," Samir says. "I don’t want anything more.". Appalling report lays bare humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan after Biden’s catastrophic withdrawal (Daily Mail)
Daily Mail [1/16/2025 3:24 PM, Cassidy Morrison, 63029K, Negative]
Nearly nine in 10 Afghans are starving and more than 80 percent have lost access to healthcare since America’s chaotic withdrawal allowed the Taliban to return to power in 2021.
American troops were hauled out of the country in September 2021 after the 20-year conflict in a move universally criticized as disastrous. Approval ratings for President Joe Biden sank and never recovered throughout his tenure.
The withdrawal saw a terror attack that killed 13 Americans, the fall of the Afghan government, and the resurgence of the fundamentalist Taliban, plunging the country into an economic and humanitarian crisis.
All of the aid the US and allies were giving to the country stopped, including development aid, which covered about 78 percent of the country’s expenses. This left the country in financial ruin.
Now, a recent survey by researchers at Lawrence Technical University in the US reported nearly 90 percent of Afghans are going hungry, 84 percent have no access to healthcare, and 85 percent receive threats of violence, more than three years after the withdrawal.
In the survey, participants’ comments emphasized limited access to humanitarian aid, restrictions on freedom of speech and women’s rights, widespread malnutrition, and significant levels of unemployment.
The researchers said: ‘The bleak conditions in the country have worsened in such a way that nearly everyone irrespective of their background appears to be negatively affected.’.
They added: ‘The aftermath of the US military withdrawal may have been so profound that structural factors like gender and age, which once allowed young men to thrive while women and other lower-status groups faced more difficulties, appear to have lost their previous significance.’.
The charts shows diminished quality of life factors, including poverty and loss of access to healthcare, following the resurgence of the Taliban in 2021.
President Joe Biden, shown while announcing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in April 2021, has since been criticized sharply for setting the stage for the resurgence of the Taliban and the ensuing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.
The survey included 800 Afghans. Almost half were 18 to 29 years old and 94 percent were men.
The survey included multiple choice questions pertaining to mental and social stress, quality of life and open-ended questions where people could elaborate on their answers.
In addition to the large majority experiencing food insecurity, limited or no access to healthcare, and threats of violence, 72 percent of people said one or more loved ones had been killed or displaced since the US withdrawal.
The researchers said: ‘This research validates many of the concerns of the humanitarian crisis on the ground, as well as provides insight into how political shifts have resulted in socio-economic hardships affecting Afghans who remained in country after the 2021 U.S. withdrawal.’.
Nearly 90 percent of Afghans are going hungry, 84 percent have no access to healthcare, and 85 percent receive threats of violence.
Eighty-four percent had infrequent contact with family and friends while 85 percent experienced threats of violence. Nearly 72 percent lost at least one or more family members (killed or displaced) since the American withdrawal.
Approximately nine in 10 Afghans maintain a diminished quality of life linked with high levels of social and psychological stress.
The authors said: ‘Adults often suffer emotional and physical pain caused by disruptions in facing chronic poverty and violence, particularly in conflicts.‘Diminished social life conditions causes a sense of hurting, which becomes part of one’s social experience’.
Stress levels are also high, with a score of 12.23 out of a possible 21. The main stressors cited were anxiety, hunger, and poor sleep as well as threats of violence.
One survey respondent said: ‘The current situation in Afghanistan is disastrous and economically unusual because there are no jobs, all government jobs are taken by the Taliban, and the private sector has no absorption capacity.‘The Taliban are armed in the city. They do not know whether they are thieves or responsible.’.
The report was published in the journal PLOS Mental Health.
While the UN estimates around half of Afghans live in poverty, another report says 85 percent of Afghans live on less than a dollar a day.
President Biden announced in April 2021 that his administration would be ending ‘America’s longest war’ by September 11, 2021 - nearly 20 years after the terror attacks that plunged the US into war in the first place - after reaching an agreement with the group in 2020.
This promised a full withdrawal in exchange for commitments to a ceasefire and preventing the country from being used by terror groups like al-Qaeda.
By August that year, the government in Kabul had collapsed. Taliban fighters overran the capital and took over the presidential palace hours after President Ghani left the country.
But according to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the agreement weakened Afghan forces.
He said: ‘We did not anticipate the snowball effect caused by the deals that Taliban commanders struck with local leaders in the wake of the Doha Agreement, that the Doha Agreement itself had a demoralizing effect on Afghan soldiers, and that we failed to fully grasp that there was only so much for which — and for whom — many of the Afghan forces would fight.’.
Further alienating President Biden from already wary voters, 13 American service members were killed and at least 18 were injured in an attack at a checkpoint outside of the Kabul airport, where thousands of people were being evacuated.
The United Nations said in 2022 that the governing Taliban, made up of factions of insurgents and hardliners, maintains a close relationship to the terrorist group al-Qaeda, which uses Taliban-controlled Afghanistan as a ‘friendly environment to raise money, recruit, and train.’. The Taliban might be running out of time in Afghanistan (Nikkei Asia – opinion)
Nikkei Asia [1/17/2025 2:05 AM, Chris Fitzgerald, 1.3M, Neutral]
The Taliban starts 2025 under significant pressure, facing threats to its rule after more than three years in power.
The militant group was riding high only last year, celebrating its comeback anniversary with a military parade showcasing weapons, vehicles and aircraft left behind when the U.S. and its allies hastily withdrew in 2021.
But looks can be deceiving, with the Taliban’s position far weaker than it appears.
The Taliban’s key military and political rival, the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) has become increasingly emboldened. Led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of anti-Soviet military leader and Afghan hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, the NRF has carried several recent attacks against Taliban forces.
This includes the targeting of the Taliban’s minister for energy and water in northern Kabul on Dec. 31 that killed one of the minister’s bodyguards, and came after a brazen daylight attack on the Interior Ministry in the capital just three days before, which the NRF claimed to have killed 10 Taliban fighters, including a commander.
The NRF is not alone, working with the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF) to fight and overthrow the Taliban. The AFF carried out an attack in Kunduz province on Dec. 27 that reportedly killed two Taliban fighters, followed by the bombing of a gate at Bagram Airfield near Kabul on New Year’s Eve.
These are the latest of a wave of AFF attacks on the Taliban, including 15 across seven provinces in October alone. On Oct. 20, the group hit the military section of Kabul’s airport with a rocket attack, just days after it too targeted the Interior Ministry, killing four Taliban fighters.
Targeting Taliban officials in the heart of Kabul lends significant weight to the AFF’s claim it was "shattering the false illusion of the Taliban’s security."
The Taliban has also failed to stop Afghanistan again becoming a haven for terror groups, particularly Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K), an extreme jihadist group seeking to create a caliphate across South and Central Asia.
IS-K claimed responsibility for the recent suicide bombing in Kabul that killed minister Khalil Haqqani in December, the highest-ranking Taliban official to be killed since the group retook power in 2021. This comes after IS-K killed the governor of Balkh province and acting governor of Badakhshan in 2023, as well as former Taliban police commander Safi Sameem and senior Taliban commander Hamidullah Noorzi.
Concerningly, IS-K’s reach has grown, witnessed by its attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall last March that killed at least 140 people and injured more than 500. The attack followed a suicide bombing in the Iranian city of Kerman in January 2024 that killed at least 84 people, and a church shooting in Istanbul that killed one person.
The Taliban previously claimed it had improved the security situation, but failing to reign in IS-K has made the Taliban look weak in the eyes of everyday Afghans, unable to provide the stability it promised when it returned to power.
The Taliban has also gotten into deadly and public spats, with Pakistan accusing the Taliban of supporting militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (or TTP), which operates out of Afghanistan and has carried out several deadly attacks in Pakistan.
This includes the targeting of a military outpost in South Waziristan on Dec. 21, which killed 16 soldiers, and comes after the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies reported the country had witnessed 785 terrorist attacks up to October 2024, leading to 951 deaths. Many of these attacks took place in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and most can be attributed to the TTP.
Pakistan’s response has been to conduct a number of airstrikes on TTP bases on Afghan soil, the latest on Dec. 24 which the Taliban says killed 46 people, mostly civilians. The most recent airstrike has led to a round of cross-border fighting, with the Taliban claiming to have targeted "several points" in Pakistan in response, although the Ministry of Defence could not specify when and where, or who was targeted.
Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, has also claimed the Taliban has demanded Islamabad pay 10 billion Pakistani rupees ($35.8 million) to remove the TTP from the border region between the two countries, a deal Islamabad had agreed to according to Asif. The Taliban quickly denied this claim, but it is an embarrassing moment for the group, making it look desperate and untrustworthy in equal measure.
The Taliban is playing a dangerous game creating an enemy out of Islamabad. Pakistan was once a key ally of the Taliban and has long influenced who rules Afghanistan through its regional power and influence. Because of the Taliban’s stubborn refusal to walk away from the TTP, Pakistan is now reportedly considering backing its opponents, with the aim of weakening the Taliban and forcing it to the negotiating table, or out of power.
Weak rulers do not last long in Afghanistan, swept aside by challengers more adept at the country’s complex politics or those with more powerful patrons. The Taliban should understand this, having been both the victim and beneficiary between 1996 and the present day.The solution is a simple one for the Taliban. On the one hand it needs to work closely with regional and global partners to defeat IS-K, and on the other stop funding terror groups trying to destabilize its neighbors. After years of war, Afghans and the wider region want stability, and they will either respect the Taliban for providing it, or look elsewhere if they cannot.
A decade ago, a Taliban commander famously told his American captors "you have watches, we have the time," referencing to the fragility of power in Afghanistan. After three years of ruling Afghanistan, challengers are circling, and it could now be the Taliban that is running out of time. Hearing Afghan women (Christian Science Monitor – opinion)
Christian Science Monitor [1/16/2025 4:39 PM, Editorial Board, 580K, Neutral]
The Taliban have imposed 127 restrictions on women since returning to power in Afghanistan in 2021, according to a running tally by the United States Institute of Peace. Public stoning of women is allowed. Their voices may not be heard in public.
That hard-line approach to governing may be getting harder to maintain. New overtures from neighboring countries offer the Taliban a potential break from international isolation (no country has recognized the group’s government). But in a region learning to embrace equality for women, engagement has conditions.
Earlier Thursday, Taliban representatives met with Qatari officials in Doha seeking more opportunities for Afghan migrant workers. The meeting was co-chaired by Sheikha Najwa bint Abdulrahman Al Thani. As the host country’s deputy minister of labor, she has been a strong advocate of empowering women in the workforce.
India signaled an even bigger opening when its foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, met with his Taliban counterpart in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, last week in the highest-level talks between the two sides in three years. For India, Afghanistan represents potential trade and security benefits as it competes with China for regional dominance and seeks to isolate Pakistan.
But in a sign of the potential risks for India in legitimizing the Taliban, the talks included softer issues such as cricket, visas for health care and education, and humanitarian aid for Afghan refugees.
"Some engagement with the international community might pressurise the government to improve its behaviour," Jayant Prasad, former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, told the BBC. The Taliban "know that will only happen after internal reforms" such as restoring rights to education and careers for women and girls.
The most important shift, however, may be coming from within the Taliban themselves. Amid worsening economic conditions, rifts are widening between the old guard and a younger generation. In one sign that the group sees a need to accommodate more voices, it issued a directive Thursday that no official could hold more than one government job at a time.
The Taliban are "feeling the pressure from the Afghan people, who are asking for services and jobs amid a collapsing economy and limited international assistance," wrote Lakshmi Venugopal Menon, then a doctoral student at Qatar University, in Al Jazeera last September. Yet atttempts by moderates to "seek engagement, more aid and investment are being undermined by [hard-liners] doubling down on policies like education bans on girls and women.".
A report released Thursday offered a rare insight into efforts by Afghan women to persist in seeking equality amid such harsh measures. "Women-led organizations [have] found new platforms for communication and outreach ... to actively participate in advocacy, establishing themselves as credible sources of support for women and girls," stated the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation, a Kabul-based organization.
They are being heard. The regional shifts opening a path for the Taliban out of isolation include a recognition that equality is an essential condition of shared security and economic prosperity. As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has noted, "We cannot achieve success if 50 per cent of our population being women are locked at home.". Pakistan
Pakistan’s Ex-PM Imran Khan Convicted in Corruption Case (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [1/17/2025 2:30 AM, Kamran Haider, 5.5M, Neutral]
A Pakistani court handed former Prime Minister Imran Khan a prison sentence after finding him guilty of misusing power while in office.
An anti—graft court ordered Khan to a maximum 14 years in jail for accepting land illegally from a real estate tycoon, said Muzafar Abbasi, a lawyer at the National Accountability Bureau. The anti-corruption agency had accused Khan of obtaining land from property developer Malik Riaz in return for legalizing equivalent to $239 million funds that were retrieved from the UK’s National Crime Agency.
The latest verdict is a setback for Khan, who had begun talks with Pakistan’s current government for the first time since being jailed. He had been working toward securing the release of some of his party workers who had been arrested after multiple protests. Pakistan’s benchmark KSE-100 Index rose 0.84% after the verdict.“The verdict means political stability will persist since the government will continue to work as usual,” said Adnan Khan, head of international sales at Intermarket Securities. “This is seen as a positive for the markets.”
This is Khan’s fifth sentence since his ouster from power in a 2022 parliamentary vote. He was found guilty in four different cases from corruption to misuse of power and violating the Islamic wedding rules. Khan has denied charges in each case. In the past year, higher courts have overturned three of his earlier convictions, while suspending a fourth one.
Khan has been in jail since 2023, with trials underway in several other cases. The former cricket star faces more than 150 cases, from corruption to inciting violence.
In the latest conviction, Khan was accused of using the money meant for Pakistan’s treasury to pay fines for businessman Riaz in another court case. In return, Riaz gave land to Khan and his wife.Since removed from power, Khan’s political party has led several protest movements, without success, demanding his release from jail and new elections. The candidates loyal to Khan won the most seats in national election in February but failed to form a government as rivals including Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif cobbled up a coalition government.
Khan’s party said it will appeal the Friday verdict in a higher court. Pakistan’s Imran Khan handed 14-year jail term in land graft case (Reuters)
Reuters [1/17/2025 3:34 AM, Staff, 5.2M, Neutral]
A Pakistani court sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan to 14 years imprisonment on Friday in a land corruption case, a setback to nascent talks between his party and the government aimed at cooling political instability in the south Asian nation.
The verdict in the case was delivered by an anti-graft court in a prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Khan has been jailed since August 2023.
Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi was also found guilty and sentenced to 7 years in prison. She was out on bail but was taken into custody after the judgment was pronounced, Geo News reported.
Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told reporters that Khan’s party could reach out to higher courts to appeal against the ruling, and that the former cricket star could also file a mercy petition to the president of Pakistan.
Omar Ayub, an aide of Khan, said the party will challenge the verdict in higher courts.
The former premier, 72, had been indicted on charges that he and his wife were gifted land by a real estate developer during his premiership from 2018 to 2022 in exchange for illegal favours.
Khan and Bibi had pleaded not guilty.
The case is linked to the Al-Qadir Trust, a non-government welfare body the couple set up when Khan was in office.
Prosecutors say the trust was a front for Khan to illegally receive land from a real estate developer. They said he was given 60 acres (24 hectares) near Islamabad and another large plot close to his hilltop mansion in the capital.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party says the land was not for personal gain and was for the spiritual and educational institution the former prime minister had set up.
"Whilst we wait for detailed decision, it’s important to note that the Al Qadir Trust case against Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi lacks any solid foundation and is bound to collapse," PTI’s foreign media wing said in a statement.
The announcement of the verdict was delayed three times, most recently on Monday, amid reconciliation talks between PTI and the government. The two sides have been at loggerheads since Khan was ousted from office in 2022.
The verdict is the biggest setback for Khan and his party since a surprisingly good showing in the 2024 general election when PTI’s candidates - who were forced to contest as independents - won the most seats, but fell short of the majority needed to form a government.
Jailed since August 2023, Khan has been facing dozens of casesranging from charges of graft and misuse of power, to inciting violence against the state after being removed from office in a parliamentary vote of confidence in April 2022.
He has either been acquitted or his sentences suspended in most cases, except for this one and another on charges of inciting supporters to rampage through military facilities to protest against his arrest on May 9, 2023.
His supporters have led several violent protest rallies since the May 9 incidents.
Khan’s cases have been tried inside prison on security grounds. Pakistan deports Afghans with UNHCR papers (VOA)
VOA [1/16/2025 12:52 PM, Sarah Zaman, 2717K, Negative]
As part of its drive to expel Afghan citizens from the nation’s capital, Pakistan has deported dozens bearing UNHCR-issued documents, the agency told VOA Thursday.
Authorities in Islamabad deported 285 Afghans between Jan. 1 and 15, according to the refugee agency. Its Pakistan representative, Philippa Candler, told VOA that 80 of those deported were in possession of preliminary documents the agency had given them.
Although initial documentation issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees does not give legal cover to Afghans, it can show the agency may be determining their refugee status, or that a person may be in the early stages of the resettlement process, Candler explained.
Candler said that in the past, Pakistani authorities generally refrained from deporting those possessing any agency-issued papers.
"We could by and large get Afghans with our documents released," Candler said, referring to actions against Afghans since Pakistan launched a nationwide drive in October 2023 to expel undocumented residents amid rising terrorism.
Candler attributed past leniency to goodwill.
Expulsion order
The tougher action comes after Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi announced in November that all Afghan citizens would require a no-objection certificate, or NOC, from the city administration to stay in the capital past the end of the year.
The minister alleged Afghan citizens took part in a protest that saw thousands of supporters of incarcerated former Prime Minister Imran Khan descend on Islamabad between Nov. 24 to 26. At least four security personnel were killed before authorities launched a crackdown that Khan’s party says killed at least 12 supporters.Raids
"It’s not a nice experience," said Enayatuallah Omid, who said he was detained for hours along with others at a police station in Islamabad after law enforcement authorities raided his neighborhood Jan. 5.
An Afghan journalist, Omid arrived in Pakistan in July 2022 on a medical visa to flee Taliban repression.
He said the constant fear of deportation is deeply hurting his family.
"My wife has attempted suicide three times. Every time the pressure builds up, she tries to kill herself." Quoting her, Omid said, ‘What kind of a life is this?’".
Amnesty International has decried the requirement of NOC for Afghan refugees as an "onerous obligation.".
Omid said, though, that the process of applying for a no-objection certificate was easy.
"They behaved nicely," he said, referring to the officials at Islamabad district commissioner’s office.
But Omid has only a receipt showing he has applied for the NOC. He said he did not know if he would receive any more documentation allowing him to stay in the capital.
International pressure
Candler told VOA that her office is working with Pakistani authorities to help Afghans who are registered with UNHCR. However, she said the Afghan Taliban’s claim that Pakistan detained more than 800 Afghans in the first week of the year could not be confirmed.
The Afghan Taliban’s envoy in Islamabad, Mawlawi Sardar Ahmad Shakib, met Wednesday with Candler to convey concerns about Pakistan’s detention and deportation of registered Afghan refugees from Islamabad and neighboring Rawalpindi.
Islamabad authorities deny targeting documented refugees and registered Afghan citizens, or those awaiting third country repatriation. Responding to reports of mistreatment, officials have said teams abide by the law during raids.
Recent press releases from Pakistan’s interior ministry show that envoys from Washington and London discussed the expulsion of Afghans from the capital with Naqvi. Thousands of Afghans in Islamabad are awaiting repatriation to the United States and Britain.
"Mohsin Naqvi stated that no illegal foreigner will be allowed to stay in Pakistan," according to a handout issued Thursday after the minister’s meeting with the outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Donald Blome.
"Minister highlighted that no action is being taken against any foreign national holding valid documents," said an interior ministry statement after Naqvi met Saturday with the British high commissioner to Pakistan, Jane Marriott.
Pakistan is home to 3.1 million Afghans. More than 800,000 are undocumented. This includes Afghans born in Pakistan, as well as those who fled their country after the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.
More than 813,000 Afghans have returned to their home country since September 2023, including about 300,000 last year. More than 38,000 have been deported in almost 15 months, according to the U.N. Pakistani-Afghan conflict fears grow as border clashes multiply (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [1/16/2025 4:00 PM, Adnan Aamir, 1286K, Negative]
In August 2021, Pakistan celebrated the takeover of Kabul by the Afghan Taliban. "Afghanistan has broken the shackles of slavery," said a jubilant Imran Khan, then prime minister of Pakistan.Things change fast in a part of the world that has long been a hotbed of political and military strife. Little more than three years on from the Taliban seizing power, Khan is in jail, charged with corruption, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are launching attacks on one another in an increasingly deadly escalation of what analysts say could be a long-term conflict as Islamabad strives to ensure it does not follow Afghanistan’s path.On Christmas Day, Pakistan carried out airstrikes in the Paktika province of Afghanistan, with anonymous security officials later saying hideouts of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani Taliban, were targeted. Afghan officials said that 46 civilians were killed in the strikes.Islamabad says thousands of TTP militants are waging a campaign to topple the Pakistani government and establish an Afghan Taliban-style regime from bases on the Afghan side of the border -- a line drawn across the territory by the British in the 19th century that Kabul questions as a "hypothetical" border.In retaliation, Afghan forces launched attacks on Pakistan territory, shelling several points with artillery. One Pakistani paramilitary soldier was killed and several wounded, local media reported."The Taliban considers foreign military operations on its soil as a red line, and the strikes killed civilians, which has angered the Taliban and further set back ties with Pakistan," Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at Wilson Center, told Nikkei Asia.Pakistan’s government made no official comment on the December airstrikes in Afghanistan. However, Pakistani security officials confirmed the attacks took place while talking to local media anonymously.Kabul confirmed its response. "Several points beyond the hypothetical line, serving as centers and hideouts for malicious elements and their supporters who organized and coordinated attacks in Afghanistan, were targeted in retaliation from the southeastern direction of the country," the Afghan Ministry of Defense said in a statement.Pakistan’s late December strikes came at the end of the deadliest year for Pakistan in a decade, mainly due to the TTP’s escalated attacks, Islamabad says. The year’s bloodshed claimed the lives of nearly 600 civilians and almost 750 security force members, while more than 2,050 suffered injuries, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a leading militant violence tracker.Pakistan has urged the Afghan Taliban regime several times to prevent militants from the TTP, an umbrella organization of Islamist factions formed in 2007, from infiltrating Pakistan, calling on Kabul to relocate them deep inside Afghanistan, away from border zones. Afghanistan has so far failed to take any such action against the TTP.Experts believe the inaction of the Kabul regime against the TTP is due to ideology.Khuram Iqbal, an Islamabad-based counterterrorism expert, said the Afghan government possesses the capacity to eliminate the TTP from its territory but simply lacks the will to do so."[Kabul’s] inaction against the TTP not only strains relations with Pakistan but also undermines their broader efforts to gain legitimacy on the global stage," he told Nikkei.Moreover, internal dynamics within Afghanistan give little impetus for Kabul to act against the TTP, according to Muhammad Israr Madani, President of The International Research Council for Religious Affairs (IRCRA), an Islamabad-based think tank,"The anti-Pakistan narrative is particularly strong in Kabul and across Afghan media, which continues to affect the current regime due to Pakistan’s perceived support for anti-Taliban groups in Afghanistan," Israr Madani told Nikkei.Another problem for Pakistan is Kabul’s reluctance to commit to accepting the 2,640-kilometer Durand Line, drawn up in 1893 as the international border between the countries. In a recent press statement, the Afghan Taliban described the border as a "hypothetical line.""The Taliban’s use of Afghan nationalist terminology concerning the Durand Line is a significant concern for Pakistan," Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador and currently a scholar at Washington’s Hudson Institute, told Nikkei. "This approach highlights an underlying issue of territorial and ideological differences that further complicate Pakistan’s relationship with the Taliban."Attacks from the TTP, Afghan forces and challenges to the legitimacy of the border mean Pakistan needs to deploy a significant number of its 560,000 active troops on its western frontier.This poses a challenge for Pakistan, a country of more than 240 million people whose armed forces are thinly stretched to also cover the eastern border with India, protect Chinese interests in the country that have come under attack and counter a Baloch separatist insurgency in the southwestern province of Balochistan. Pakistan has around 500,000 reserve troops, only called up when the country has declared war against another country.Chinese citizens have been the primary foreign target of Islamists as well as Baloch separatists calling for independence and control of resources in the southwestern region. Since 2021, 20 Chinese nationals have been killed and 34 have been injured in 14 attacks, according to Pakistan’s National Counter Terrorism Authority.There are more than 20,000 Chinese expatriates in the South Asian nation, including those working on projects linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $50 billion component of China’s globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative."Pakistan lacks the capacity to sustain prolonged involvement in Afghanistan due to resource constraints," Ayesha Siddiqa, a senior fellow with the Department of War Studies of King’s College London, told Nikkei.In the meantime, Pakistan has embarked on a mission to isolate the Kabul regime.In the last week of December, Pakistani spy chief Muhammad Asim Malik traveled to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, to meet the latter’s president, Emomali Rahmon, according to domestic and foreign media. Local media in Pakistan claimed the purpose of this meeting was to enlist support against the Taliban regime in Kabul since Tajikistan hosts leaders of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, an anti-Taliban group.There are more than 20,000 Chinese expatriates in the South Asian nation, including those working on projects linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $50 billion component of China’s globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative."Pakistan lacks the capacity to sustain prolonged involvement in Afghanistan due to resource constraints," Ayesha Siddiqa, a senior fellow with the Department of War Studies of King’s College London, told Nikkei.In the meantime, Pakistan has embarked on a mission to isolate the Kabul regime.In the last week of December, Pakistani spy chief Muhammad Asim Malik traveled to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, to meet the latter’s president, Emomali Rahmon, according to domestic and foreign media. Local media in Pakistan claimed the purpose of this meeting was to enlist support against the Taliban regime in Kabul since Tajikistan hosts leaders of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, an anti-Taliban group.But for Kings College London’s Siddiqa, Beijing is unlikely to intervene directly. "Pakistan has been unable to protect Chinese interests in Pakistan despite repeated demands by Beijing," she said. "Therefore, [Beijing] will not be too inclined to press Kabul on the TTP issue."Former Pakistani ambassador Haqqani, who is also a scholar at Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi, warns that any help from China on the issue could become a liability for Pakistan."From Pakistan’s perspective, it is essential to avoid signaling to the incoming (U.S.) Trump administration that Pakistan is leaning on China’s mediation efforts in Afghanistan," he told Nikkei.With all these factors at play, experts foresee no improvement in Pakistan’s ongoing conflict with Afghanistan."The expectation of a major shift in Afghanistan’s policy towards the TTP or significant developments at this stage seems unlikely," said Madani from the IRCRA think tank.Circling back to August 2021, the Taliban succeeded in taking over Kabul after two decades of covert support by Pakistan. Yet, the Taliban government has shown no inclination to protect Pakistan’s interests.Former ambassador Haqqani considers Pakistan misjudged the Taliban -- a strategic error."Pakistan might have gained more by pursuing a pragmatic deal with the [U.S.-backed] Afghan Republic, which preceded the Taliban’s rule," he said. "The Taliban’s ideological nature makes them more hardline, and they are likely to remain steadfast in their decisions." Pakistan’s bet on Taliban backfires as violence surges (Financial Times)
Financial Times [1/16/2025 7:38 PM, Humza Jilani, 14.8M, Negative]
When the Taliban took control of Kabul in 2021, Pakistan’s then-prime minister Imran Khan lauded Afghanistan for breaking “the shackles of slavery”. Khan’s spymaster Faiz Hameed was photographed drinking tea with leaders of the Islamist militant group in a Kabul hotel.
But with violence surging to a nine-year high, Islamabad’s hope that the new regime would prove a more co-operative ally than their US-backed predecessor has been replaced by concern about security.
More than 2,500 civilians, security personnel and militants were killed by terror attacks in Pakistan in 2024, a 66 per cent increase from 2023, according to the Islamabad-based Centre for Research and Security Studies, many of them killed by militant groups based in Afghanistan.
Asim Munir, Pakistan’s chief of army staff, called Afghanistan a “brotherly neighbour” on Tuesday in Peshawar, the capital of the border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but called on the Taliban to crack down on cross-border militancy.“Pakistan has always wanted better relations with Afghanistan,” he said, according to the state broadcaster. “The only difference . . . is the presence of [the Pakistani Taliban] and the spread of terrorism . . . and it will remain so until they remove this issue.”
Islamabad had hoped that supporting the Afghan Taliban through its two-decade insurgency — including with shelter, weapons, financing and medical aid — would buy it leverage and security along their shared 2,600km border after Nato-led forces departed.“Pakistan is losing patience with the Afghan Taliban which refuses to take action against” Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, said Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s former special representative for Afghanistan, who left the role in September.“They’ve done nothing but act like ostriches with their heads in the sand when we show them proof that terrorism is emanating from their borders.”The TTP has historic links to the regime in Kabul and al-Qaeda but operates independently.
Increasing attacks by the group, which seeks to impose its brand of hardline sharia law in Pakistan’s tribal borderlands, have shaken foreign investors’ faith in Islamabad. Chinese workers have also been targeted by separatist militants, drawing outrage from Chinese officials and threatening Beijing’s $60bn in Belt and Road Initiative projects in the country.
A UN Security Council report in July 2024 estimated that at least 6,000 TTP fighters currently operate out of Afghanistan. The group’s resurgence, fuelled in part by advanced weapons left behind by Nato’s withdrawal and the release of hundreds of fighters from Afghan prisons, has erased much of Pakistan’s hard-fought progress to defeat it before 2021, analysts said.
Pakistan has tried to pressure the Taliban to rein in the TTP, deporting more than 800,000 Afghan refugees, and instituted border closures, restricting the landlocked country’s access to Pakistan’s ports. Islamabad has also launched air strikes against hide-outs in Afghanistan that Pakistani security officials allege house TTP fighters. “[Pakistan has] adopted a military approach towards TTP, but that has not succeeded,” said Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesperson, who said the attacks were being carried out by groups based in tribal areas inside Pakistan. “It is up to [Islamabad] to reconsider their approach and adopt a more realistic approach aimed at resolving the issue internally.”
The regime in Kabul has relocated a small number of TTP fighters and their families to western Afghanistan, away from the Pakistan border.
But analysts worry that the Afghan Taliban is neither capable nor willing to go as far as Pakistan would like. For the TTP, the Taliban have “dug their heels”, said Ibraheem Bahiss, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. “The government does not want to risk sparking a war with a powerful group it shares deep ties with, especially with the risk that some TTP fighters may defect to IS-KP,” he added, referring to the Afghanistan-based Isis splinter group.
This comes as the Taliban is seeking to repair ties with India, diversifying its economic partners as relations with Pakistan have frayed.
Vikram Misri, India’s top foreign ministry bureaucrat, met Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, Afghanistan’s acting foreign minister, in Dubai last week and promised to deepen trade through an Iranian port.
Islamabad made a “strategic miscalculation” by betting that the Afghan Taliban would turn on the TTP, its ideological ally, said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the US and the UN.
Economic interdependence and religious and ethnic ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan mean “neither side can afford a breakdown in relations”, she said. “But this level of cross-border violence can’t go on.” Death toll rises to 5 in rocket and gun attack on an aid convoy in restive northwestern Pakistan (AP)
AP [1/17/2025 1:22 AM, Staff, 456K, Negative]
The death toll from a rocket and gun attack on an aid convoy in restive northwestern Pakistan has jumped to at least five, local authorities said Friday.
The attack happened Thursday when trucks carrying food, medicine and other relief supplies for hundreds of thousands of besieged residents were heading to Kurram, a district hit by sectarian violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Authorities initially said a security officer was killed in the attack, but Shaukat Ali, a district administrator in Kurram, said on Friday that another officer had died at a hospital and the bodies of three missing truck drivers had been found.
He said five drivers were still missing and their trucks had been burned by the attackers.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack in Kurram, which has been the scene of violence between Shiite and Sunni tribes since July 2024. The violence surged in November when attackers opened fire on vehicles carrying passengers, killing 52 people, mostly Shiites. Since then, at least 130 people have died in violence there.
Thursday’s attack came weeks after the government secured a ceasefire deal between tribal leaders.
Shiite Muslims dominate parts of Kurram, although they are a minority in the rest of Pakistan, which is majority Sunni. The area has a history of sectarian conflict, with militant Sunni groups previously targeting minority Shiites. Pakistan pulls closer to post-Hasina Bangladesh amid shared India concerns (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [1/16/2025 10:40 PM, Abid Hussain, 19588K, Neutral]
The flags of their nations planted on a table between them, Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, sat with Lieutenant General SM Kamrul Hassan, an officer in the Bangladesh military.It was the high point of Hassan’s trip to the Pakistani capital, where he also met other senior Pakistani military officials. Commenting on Tuesday’s meeting between Munir and Hassan, the Pakistani military’s media wing described the countries as “brotherly nations”.That’s not how Dhaka and Islamabad have viewed their relationship for much of the 54 years since Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan, winning independence after one of the 20th century’s bloodiest wars.The tension in their ties only deepened during the nearly 16-year rule of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted from power in August after mass protests and forced to flee to neighbouring India, which backed her government.But since Hasina’s departure, Pakistan and Bangladesh have edged closer to each other in an apparent reset at a time when politics in both countries have a general anti-India sentiment, overriding the historical animosity between Islamabad and Dhaka.Munir and Hassan “underscored the importance of strengthening military ties and reaffirmed their commitment to insulating this partnership from any external disruptions”, the Pakistani military said. And their meeting was one in a series of high-level exchanges between the nations.Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met Muhammad Yunus, head of Bangladesh’s interim government, during an international summit in Egypt’s capital, Cairo, last month after the two also met in September on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.And Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, is expected to visit Bangladesh next month, the first such trip since 2012, prompting analysts to suggest that the geopolitical ground in South Asia could be shifting.Settling issues ‘once and for all’The genesis of the historical animosity between Islamabad and Dhaka lies in Bangladesh’s war of liberation from Pakistan in 1971. Pakistan’s military and its allied militias fought Bengali rebels and massacred hundreds of thousands of people, according to independent estimates. Those estimates suggest that at least 200,000 women were raped.Backed by the Indian army, Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and his Awami League party led Bangladesh to independence. He became its founding president and earned himself the title of “Father of the Nation”.While Pakistan accepted Bangladesh’s independence in 1974 under a tripartite agreement with India, unresolved issues between Islamabad and Dhaka persisted. They included the lack of a formal apology from Pakistan for its atrocities, the repatriation of Urdu-speaking people from Bangladesh who identify as Pakistanis and the division of pre-1971 assets between the two nations.During his Cairo meeting with Sharif, Yunus urged Pakistan to resolve the longstanding matters.“The issues have come up time and again. Let’s settle them once and for all for future generations,” Yunus told Sharif, according to Bangladesh’s state news agency.Sharif replied that he would look into “outstanding issues”, the agency reported.Changed dynamicsAshraf Qureshi, a former Pakistani envoy to Bangladesh, told Al Jazeera that strained India-Bangladesh ties over New Delhi’s long support for Hasina’s “autocratic” government, may have prompted the new administration in Dhaka to recalibrate its moves.Last month, Yunus’s interim government demanded that New Delhi extradite Hasina for a “judicial process”. Hasina is accused of overseeing a series of human rights abuses during her rule, including during the crackdown on protesters in the weeks leading up to her ouster. The Indian government has not reacted to the request yet.India, for its part, has repeatedly expressed concerns over the fate of Hindus in Bangladesh, who constitute about 8 percent of Bangladesh’s 170 million people and have traditionally been strong supporters of the Awami League. New Delhi has suggested they have been persecuted.Bangladeshi authorities have strongly rejected the allegation, adding that disinformation from Indian media has fuelled the tension between the neighbours.“Certainly, if you are Bangladesh, you would weigh your options, and with the state of their relationship with India, Pakistan comes into the equation, leading to better ties than before,” Qureshi said.Qureshi said India too is faced with a dilemma over Hasina. “India cannot just hand Hasina over as it would signal that India is happy to abandon anybody who supported them,” he said.But Walter Ladwig, senior lecturer at King’s College London, cautioned against overstating the significance of recent diplomatic and military exchanges between Pakistan and Bangladesh.“I think this is a notable event given where bilateral relations have been for the past 15 years, but at the same time, I would be careful about reading too much into it. The two countries still have historical tensions and divergent interests,” Ladwig told Al Jazeera.Qureshi too cautioned that the region’s geographical realities mean that Bangladesh cannot afford to adopt an anti-India stance.“They share a long border with them. Their water source originates in India. At most, they may take a slightly independent policy stance compared with Sheikh Hasina’s time, but they would not take an anti-India stance,” he said.Ladwig agreed.“A range of political actors inside Bangladesh have been forthright in recognising the realities of geography and economics. These are trends worth watching, but they need to be accompanied by a range of substantial policy changes before we start reassessing regional geopolitics,” he said.India’s engagement with TalibanBangladesh’s growing relationship with Pakistan also comes amid broader geopolitical moves reshaping South Asia, including India’s dramatic engagement with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers in recent months.Even though New Delhi is yet to formally recognise the Taliban government, top Indian officials have recently met their Afghan counterparts. Last week, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met acting Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai in the highest-profile public engagement between New Delhi and the Taliban.India’s diplomatic engagements with the Taliban have irked Pakistan, which for decades patronised the armed group and offered refuge to its leaders as they fought against United States-led forces in the country.But Islamabad’s leverage over the Taliban was severely weakened last year when Pakistan saw a spike in deadly attacks, many of them blamed on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, which shares an ideological affinity with the Afghan Taliban.Pakistan alleges TTP fighters are provided shelter and training on Afghan soil – a charge the Taliban denies. The tensions between Islamabad and Kabul peaked last month when the two countries exchanged air strikes.Burhanul Islam, another former Pakistani diplomat, said the improvement in ties between Pakistan and Bangladesh could be seen as “a new beginning” after Hasina’s ouster.“Perhaps Bangladesh is seeking military support and a security umbrella from Pakistan. I am hopeful that the two countries are now moving in the right direction and their military leadership wants to improve relations with Pakistan,” Islam told Al Jazeera.‘Economic opening’Ladwig thinks that despite recent stumbles due to the mass uprising last summer, Bangladesh’s economy has been steadily growing – a factor that may be pushing Islamabad towards better ties.“Pakistan needs all the economic partners it can get, which is yet another incentive for Islamabad to try to enhance ties,” he said.With a growth rate of 6 percent since 2021, Bangladesh is one of South Asia’s fastest growing economies. Pakistan, on the other hand, lags behind considerably, managing growth of only 2.5 percent last year.Trade volumes between the two countries remain lopsided. Pakistan’s exports to Bangladesh were valued at $661m while imports stood at $57m, according to official figures. Bilateral trade stood at more than $700m last year.Ladwig believes trade is an area that could see major changes in the coming days.“After a period during which there were no direct flights between the two capitals, diplomatic engagement was minimal and people faced difficulties gaining visas, any relaxation will be notable,” he said.“I think the Pakistani government senses an opening and an opportunity to improve ties.” Pakistani airline says ad showing plane flying toward Eiffel Tower never meant to evoke 9/11 (AP)
AP [1/16/2025 2:27 PM, Munir Ahmed, 33392K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s national airline said Thursday that an advertisement showing a plane heading toward the Eiffel Tower was never intended to evoke the memories of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The illustration, not in video format, shows a plane superimposed over the French flag and tilted toward the Paris landmark, with the words "Paris, we’re coming today.".
The ad was posted on X by Pakistan International Airlines, or PIA, on Jan. 10, the day that the company resumed flights to European Union countries after a four-year ban by the bloc’s aviation safety agency.
Many social media users immediately decried the ad, and Pakistan’s prime minister called for an inquiry. On Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar described the ad as an act of "stupidity.".
PIA spokesman Abdullah Hafeez said Thursday that the ad, which hasn’t been deleted and has more than 21.2 million views, was only ever meant to celebrate that the airline was resuming flights to Europe, and never intended to harm 9/11 survivors or victims’ families.
Hafeez told The Associated Press that he was surprised over the criticism. But he said that "we apologize to those who feel the advertisement hurt them.
"We want to make it clear that we had no intention to hurt the feelings of anyone," Hafeez said.
He said that the Eifel Tower was shown in the ad because it’s one of the best places in the world.
Curbs on PIA had been imposed in 2020 after 97 people died when a PIA plane crashed in Karachi in southern Pakistan. Then Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said that an investigation into the crash found that nearly a third of Pakistani pilots had cheated on their pilot’s exams. A government investigation later concluded that the crash was caused by pilot error.
The ban caused a loss of nearly $150 million a year in revenue for PIA, officials say.
Pakistan has some connections to the Sept. 11 attacks. One of the 9/11 masterminds, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was detained in the country in 2003. In 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. special forces raid in Pakistan. China-Pakistan relations are souring, but will muddle along (Nikkei Asia – opinion)
Nikkei Asia [1/16/2025 3:05 PM, Derek Grossman, 1286K, Neutral]
For decades, China and Pakistan have maintained an "all-weather" strategic partnership designed to endure any hardship. This relationship was borne out of a mutual desire to counter India within South Asia and, more recently, to help Beijing manage the challenge of rising Islamic extremism and to offer Islamabad an alternative economic and defense partner in the face of its rockier ties with the U.S.But Beijing and Islamabad have lately been at loggerheads over two key issues that threaten bilateral harmony.First is the lack of security for Chinese citizens who are working on Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure projects in Pakistan, particularly in the restive southwestern province of Balochistan. Chinese engineers and other personnel are in the country to build and maintain infrastructure for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the BRI’s flagship project that is worth around $50 billion.In response to the numerous lethal attacks on Chinese engineers and other personnel in Pakistan, Islamabad’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, strongly insinuated that Beijing could tolerate the situation. Dar claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping told Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, "Your country is the only exception" to China placing the security of its personnel above profit.Dar’s comment apparently struck a raw nerve with the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, Jiang Zaidong, who quite uncharacteristically broke with diplomatic niceties and replied: "It is unacceptable for us to be attacked twice in only six months. President Xi cares about Chinese people’s security and puts people’s lives first." He further noted that "Pakistan should severely punish the perpetrators and crack down on all anti-China terrorist groups" and that the lack of security was the biggest constraint on CPEC cooperation.It appears that Beijing has already been holding out on some additional investments as a result of Islamabad’s security lapses. The ML-1 railway project connecting Karachi in the south to Peshawar in the north, for example, has been delayed for months. However, China and Pakistan are also trying to finalize a deal that would allow Chinese security personnel to enter the country to provide protection, and would include the use of armored vehicles to protect Chinese citizens from terrorist attacks.Another sore point for Beijing and Islamabad is the future of Pakistan’s Gwadar Port. For years, China has helped develop the port into a commercial hub. Yet there has always been speculation that Beijing might one day deploy military forces to Gwadar as part of its "string of pearls" strategy to hem in India along the Indian Ocean.According to one recent report, bilateral negotiations broke down last year when Islamabad, in response to Beijing’s request to establish a military presence at Gwadar, demanded that China share second-strike nuclear capabilities with Pakistan to help it better deter India’s nuclear upgrades.Beijing was reportedly incensed and outright rejected the demand because it would certainly be revealed and open China up to potential sanctions under its obligations as a nuclear member of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. China was likewise angered by Pakistan’s decision to deny the Chinese navy from making a port call at Gwadar during a joint naval Sea Guardians III exercise, allegedly due to American pressure.The China-Pakistan strategic partnership more broadly appears to be under some unusual duress. According to the same recent report, internal Pakistani documents from 2023 show officials describing the relationship as having experienced a "gradual erosion" in the last year, which had resulted in "particularly cold" ties. Notably, this assessment took place prior to the latest disagreement over Gwadar and spate of terrorist attacks on Chinese citizens in the country, suggesting that the relationship may be even worse today.But not all is bad in China-Pakistan relations, and indeed, the strategic partnership is more likely than not to continue to muddle along. Islamabad, for example, is poised to become the first foreign purchaser of China’s stealth J-35 multi-role jet fighters. Other areas of economic and defense cooperation remain robust as well.Nevertheless, if the downturn is sustained, then it could hold significant geopolitical consequences. Pakistan could eventually determine that it must prioritize its strategic partnership with the U.S. over China. To be sure, Washington has been Pakistan’s preferred partner for some time, but Islamabad has not correspondingly downgraded its Chinese ties to appease the U.S. Now, it may, though that could also be complicated by the incoming Trump administration. During his first administration as U.S. president, for instance, Donald Trump suspended most security assistance to Islamabad.Worsening China-Pakistan relations might also prompt Islamabad to strive for better India ties, given that Pakistan would have less support from China to deter New Delhi. This would still be tempered, however, by longstanding and deep disagreements between Pakistan and India over the sovereignty status of Kashmir.Alternatively, Pakistan could increasingly turn to Russia to compensate for a lack of Chinese support. Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who still has a high level of popular support in the country, visited Moscow in February 2022 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Khan sought to lay the groundwork for a stronger bilateral partnership, and since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Islamabad has remained neutral, suggesting that it has tried to preserve ties.In the future, it is worth continuing to observe the status of China-Pakistan relations. The geostrategic implications of a sustained downturn could be seismic. But such a souring is also likely to be quiet and incremental, as demonstrated over the last couple of years, and thus will require close attention and analysis. For decades, China and Pakistan have maintained an "all-weather" strategic partnership designed to endure any hardship. This relationship was borne out of a mutual desire to counter India within South Asia and, more recently, to help Beijing manage the challenge of rising Islamic extremism and to offer Islamabad an alternative economic and defense partner in the face of its rockier ties with the U.S.But Beijing and Islamabad have lately been at loggerheads over two key issues that threaten bilateral harmony.First is the lack of security for Chinese citizens who are working on Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure projects in Pakistan, particularly in the restive southwestern province of Balochistan. Chinese engineers and other personnel are in the country to build and maintain infrastructure for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the BRI’s flagship project that is worth around $50 billion.In response to the numerous lethal attacks on Chinese engineers and other personnel in Pakistan, Islamabad’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, strongly insinuated that Beijing could tolerate the situation. Dar claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping told Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, "Your country is the only exception" to China placing the security of its personnel above profit.Dar’s comment apparently struck a raw nerve with the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, Jiang Zaidong, who quite uncharacteristically broke with diplomatic niceties and replied: "It is unacceptable for us to be attacked twice in only six months. President Xi cares about Chinese people’s security and puts people’s lives first." He further noted that "Pakistan should severely punish the perpetrators and crack down on all anti-China terrorist groups" and that the lack of security was the biggest constraint on CPEC cooperation.It appears that Beijing has already been holding out on some additional investments as a result of Islamabad’s security lapses. The ML-1 railway project connecting Karachi in the south to Peshawar in the north, for example, has been delayed for months. However, China and Pakistan are also trying to finalize a deal that would allow Chinese security personnel to enter the country to provide protection, and would include the use of armored vehicles to protect Chinese citizens from terrorist attacks.Another sore point for Beijing and Islamabad is the future of Pakistan’s Gwadar Port. For years, China has helped develop the port into a commercial hub. Yet there has always been speculation that Beijing might one day deploy military forces to Gwadar as part of its "string of pearls" strategy to hem in India along the Indian Ocean.According to one recent report, bilateral negotiations broke down last year when Islamabad, in response to Beijing’s request to establish a military presence at Gwadar, demanded that China share second-strike nuclear capabilities with Pakistan to help it better deter India’s nuclear upgrades.Beijing was reportedly incensed and outright rejected the demand because it would certainly be revealed and open China up to potential sanctions under its obligations as a nuclear member of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. China was likewise angered by Pakistan’s decision to deny the Chinese navy from making a port call at Gwadar during a joint naval Sea Guardians III exercise, allegedly due to American pressure.The China-Pakistan strategic partnership more broadly appears to be under some unusual duress. According to the same recent report, internal Pakistani documents from 2023 show officials describing the relationship as having experienced a "gradual erosion" in the last year, which had resulted in "particularly cold" ties. Notably, this assessment took place prior to the latest disagreement over Gwadar and spate of terrorist attacks on Chinese citizens in the country, suggesting that the relationship may be even worse today.But not all is bad in China-Pakistan relations, and indeed, the strategic partnership is more likely than not to continue to muddle along. Islamabad, for example, is poised to become the first foreign purchaser of China’s stealth J-35 multi-role jet fighters. Other areas of economic and defense cooperation remain robust as well.Nevertheless, if the downturn is sustained, then it could hold significant geopolitical consequences. Pakistan could eventually determine that it must prioritize its strategic partnership with the U.S. over China. To be sure, Washington has been Pakistan’s preferred partner for some time, but Islamabad has not correspondingly downgraded its Chinese ties to appease the U.S. Now, it may, though that could also be complicated by the incoming Trump administration. During his first administration as U.S. president, for instance, Donald Trump suspended most security assistance to Islamabad.Worsening China-Pakistan relations might also prompt Islamabad to strive for better India ties, given that Pakistan would have less support from China to deter New Delhi. This would still be tempered, however, by longstanding and deep disagreements between Pakistan and India over the sovereignty status of Kashmir.Alternatively, Pakistan could increasingly turn to Russia to compensate for a lack of Chinese support. Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who still has a high level of popular support in the country, visited Moscow in February 2022 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Khan sought to lay the groundwork for a stronger bilateral partnership, and since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Islamabad has remained neutral, suggesting that it has tried to preserve ties.In the future, it is worth continuing to observe the status of China-Pakistan relations. The geostrategic implications of a sustained downturn could be seismic. But such a souring is also likely to be quiet and incremental, as demonstrated over the last couple of years, and thus will require close attention and analysis. India
India Must Cut Tariffs to Stay Competitive, US Ambassador Says (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [1/17/2025 2:48 AM, Dan Strumpf and Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 5.5M, Neutral]
There’s “no question” India needs to cut its high tariffs in order to compete with more business-friendly rivals in Southeast Asia if it wants to win from Donald Trump’s looming trade war with China, the outgoing US ambassador to India said.
While Indian manufacturers stand to benefit if Trump’s tariffs force US firms to reduce trade with China, India needs to do much more to improve its domestic business environment to lure investment, Ambassador Eric Garcetti said in an interview in New Delhi on Thursday. Reducing high tariffs is a key step, he said.“American companies don’t need India,” he said Thursday. “There’s a great market here if they want to be in the marketplace, but for their international exports, they don’t have to be in India. It’s oftentimes easier in Southeast Asia and Mexico.”
Trump returns to office next week with threats to slap universal tariffs on imports into the US, including at least 60% duties on Chinese goods. Even though India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has warm personal ties with Trump, the US president-elect has still warned the South Asian nation of reciprocal action if it keeps levies on American goods high.
The US has strengthened trade and diplomatic links with New Delhi in recent years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, as it sees India as a regional bulwark against a more assertive China.‘Indispensable’ India
Despite Trump’s complaints about India’s trade barriers, Garcetti said he expects the US and India to continue to draw closer, noting that key figures such as incoming National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio have long been proponents of friendlier ties with New Delhi.“You couldn’t get two more India-focused friends and China hawks,” the ambassador said. “A generation ago, the relationship we now have between the US and India would have been unimaginable, and I think a generation from now it’s going to be seen globally as absolutely indispensable.”
Garcetti, a former mayor of Los Angeles, wraps up an almost two-year stint as ambassador to India with Trump’s arrival in the White House next week. The president-elect has yet to announce his choice for a successor in New Delhi.
Under President Joe Biden, the US has pushed for greater cooperation in defense, technology sharing and business investment in India, with companies such as Apple Inc. boosting production in the country as they seek to diversify away from China. Others like chipmaker Micron Technology Inc. have also pledged increased investment.
Despite some wins under Modi’s signature “Make In India” campaign, the share of manufacturing in the country’s gross domestic product has slumped over the last decade. India faces stiff competition for foreign investment from Asian rivals such as Vietnam, which companies say provide a more business-friendly environment.
Murder Plot
A sticking point in the US-India relationship has been allegations made by US prosecutors in 2023 that an Indian government agent was involved in a foiled plot to assassinate a Sikh activist in America. India’s government set up a committee to investigate the claims, and earlier this week the panel recommended legal action against an unidentified individual.
Garcetti said the committee’s recommendation was “a welcome first step,” but said it should not be “the end destination” of New Delhi’s investigation.“There needs to be systemic reform and there needs to be accountability,” he said. “Countries who are friends” cannot take “unlawful actions against others, let alone a murder for hire.” India Edges Closer to Acknowledging Role in Plot to Kill American (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [1/16/2025 11:32 AM, Tripti Lahiri, 810K, Neutral]
India inched closer to acknowledging a role in a murder-for-hire plot aimed at an American citizen, with a government panel calling for legal action against a person involved in the matter.
Relations between Washington and New Delhi were strained when federal prosecutors revealed in November 2023 an audacious plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American lawyer who has advocated for carving out a Sikh homeland from India. Prosecutors last year brought murder-for-hire charges against Vikash Yadav, a former official with India’s overseas intelligence service. He remains at large in India.
India didn’t name the person who would face legal action in the statement issued Wednesday, though it noted the person had “earlier criminal links.” A government inquiry panel set up after the American charges were unveiled last year recommended “legal action must be completed expeditiously.”
Before Wednesday’s statement, Indian officials have consistently denied any link to violence directed against American and Canadian citizens. A violent movement to create a Sikh homeland called Khalistan from the Indian state of Punjab once raged in India in the 1980s and 1990s, but was eventually brutally suppressed by Indian police forces. Many Sikhs migrated from Punjab to the U.S. and Canada, where some continued to campaign for the idea of Sikh sovereignty, something the Indian government views as an existential threat.“This is the closest New Delhi has come to acknowledging some degree of complicity in the alleged plot, even though it didn’t publicly disclose the nature of its findings about the individual in question,” said Michael Kugelman, the director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett called the statement a “constructive first step.” U.S. officials, he said, “look forward to seeing legal action taken in the Indian system.”
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to deepen a strategic partnership between New Delhi and Washington over the last decade. Both countries see China as their chief rival.
The timing of the Indian statement appeared aimed at clearing the air ahead of the inauguration of the administration of incoming President Donald Trump, political experts said.“Governments around the world are taking steps to pre-emptively position themselves in a favorable light vis-à-vis the incoming U.S. president,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a U.S. think tank. “I don’t think this timing is a coincidence. This looks like a deliberate attempt to get on the right side of a new U.S. administration.”
Neither U.S. prosecutors nor the statement from the Indian panel have addressed who ordered the plot against Pannun.
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said authorities were investigating “credible allegations” of Indian government involvement in the killing of Sikh temple leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot dead in June 2023. Nijjar was a friend of Pannun’s and also advocated for a Sikh homeland.
In October, the Canadian government alleged that Indian home minister Amit Shah had authorized intelligence gathering and attacks against Sikh separatists living in Canada, worsening already acrimonious relations between the two countries. India has called all of Canada’s allegations “absurd.”
The Nijjar case has blown open a rift in Canada-India relations, with both expelling high-level diplomats. India has sought to contain the damage with the U.S.
The U.S. allegations indicate the foiled plot against Pannun was unfolding in the weeks before the White House hosted Modi for a state visit in June 2023. White House officials have pressed the Modi government for accountability.India’s statement emphasizes cooperation with American authorities and seeks to signal that New Delhi has addressed the departing Biden administration’s key ask.
The committee “conducted its own investigations, and also pursued leads provided by the U.S. side,” India’s home ministry said. “It received full cooperation from U.S. authorities and the two sides also exchanged visits.” The panel has submitted a report to the Indian government.
The home ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
India is hoping the issue won’t be the kind of minefield for bilateral relations it became in the latter part of President Biden’s term, said Kugelman, but it is too soon to tell how the Trump administration will approach it. Trump has picked a well-known Sikh rights advocate to lead the Justice Department’s civil-rights division, he said.“There will likely be strong pushes in the U.S. to keep moving this investigation along,” he said. India is staring at an ‘oil shock’ as U.S. sanctions on Russian crude loom (CNBC)
CNBC [1/17/2025 1:06 AM, Lee Ying Shan, 36.5M, Neutral]
India’s days of buying cheap Russian oil could be over.
Sweeping sanctions by the U.S. against Russia’s energy companies and operators of vessels that transport oil will complicate Indian efforts to keep importing cheap Russian crude and could push up inflation in Asia’s third-largest economy, analysts said.
The country could be looking at a potential oil shock, said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group.“India will be more affected than China by sanctions, since India imports much greater amount of its oil from Russia than China,” he told CNBC.
Last Friday, the U.S. Treasury announced sanctions on two Russian oil producers, along with 183 vessels which are primarily oil tankers that have been shipping barrels of Russian crude. At present, tankers sanctioned by the U.S. are still permitted to offload crude oil until March 12.
The South Asian nation imported a significant 88% of its oil needs between April and November 2024, little changed from a year earlier, according to government data. Around 40% of those imports came from Russia, data from trade intelligence firm Kpler showed.
Out of the newly sanctioned 183 tankers, 75 of them have transported Russian oil to India in the past, according to data provided by Kpler. Just last year alone, the 183 sanctioned tankers transported around 687 million barrels of crude, of which 30% were shipped to India.“Most of these barrels went to Indian refiners and, hence, the impact will likely be largest there,” BNP Paribas’ senior commodities strategist Aldo Spanier said in a research note following the sanctions.
The new U.S. sanctions were deeper and broader than foreseen by markets, and the disruptions are expected to amplify, Spanier added.
India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.
The sanctions are also coming at a time when India is tipped to surpass China as the number one oil consumer in the world in 2025, accounting for 25% of total oil consumption growth globally.
Increasing demand for transportation fuels and home cooking fuels is set to spur this growth of 330,000 barrels per day this year — the most of any country, forecasts by the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed.
India consumed 5.3 million barrels per day in 2023, EIA’s most recent data showed. This consumption is expected to have increased by 220,000 barrels per day last year.
India wasn’t always this dependent on Russian oil.
As recently as 2021, Russian oil accounted for just 12% of India’s oil imports by volume. By 2024, that share had spiked to 37.6%, Muyu Xu, senior oil analyst at Kpler told CNBC.
The catalyst for increased oil imports was the Ukraine war, which prompted some Western countries to impose sanctions against Russia and curtail their purchases of Russian crude. As prices of Russian oil fell, India was able to hoover up supplies cheaply from companies that were not under sanctions.
The discount of Russia’s crude, Urals, to the global benchmark Brent has averaged around $12 per barrel from last August to October, according to S&P Global’s most recently published data last November. In 2024, Russia’s Urals were also cheaper by $4 per barrel compared to oil from Iraq, one of India’s main sources of crude oil imports, data from Kpler showed.“If India were to fully comply with U.S. sanctions, we could see a sharp decline in Russian crude arrivals in February and potentially March,” Xu added.
Supply disruptions to India could be as high as 500,000 barrels per day, Rystad Energy’s senior analyst Viktor Kurilov shared via email.
No more cheap alternatives?
While the impact may eventually be mitigated as affected importers scramble to source alternative suppliers in the Middle East, some industry watchers say that the relief might still take a few weeks to months to materialize.
Even then, the price of oil from these alternative sources will not be as cheap. The world’s crude benchmark Brent recently advanced to a five-month high to around $80 per barrel following the announcement of the sanctions, after a year of languishing from oversupply and weak demand.
Prices of Middle Eastern crude, which are amongst India’s alternatives, have also surged this week, data provided by Kpler suggested.“Depending on how quickly Russia resolves its logistical challenges and how cooperative India and China remain with the sanctions, oil prices could spike for a few weeks,” Kpler’s Xu said.
Additionally, as Donald Trump’s inauguration draws closer, the world’s supply of cheap Iranian crude, is also facing the risk of tighter sanctions. Iran made up 4% of the world’s oil production in 2023, according to an EIA report released last year.“It is [also] a bit of a double whammy for the key importer [India] as Iran will likely face new sanctions pressure with the incoming Trump administration,” Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told CNBC.
If the new sanctions are coupled with a potential curb on Iranian crude, Brent prices could rise even higher to $90 per barrel, Goldman Sachs wrote in a note published after the announcement of the sanctions.
An Indian economy pain point
The Indian economy is “significantly vulnerable” to fluctuations in oil prices, a research paper published in 2023 established. Domestic retail prices of gasoline and diesel surge “like rockets” in response to rising crude oil prices, Abdhut Deheri, assistant economics professor at the Vellore Institute of Technology and M. Ramachandran from Pondicherry University’s department of economics said in the research paper.
Analysis from the Reserve Bank of India in 2019 found that every $10 per barrel rise in oil prices could lead to a 0.4% increase in headline inflation. “High oil prices, if passed to consumers, could further hurt their purchasing power at a time when income and GDP growth have slowed,” Dhiraj Nim, an economist at ANZ.
However, weak consumer demand could deter producers from passing on the cost burden to consumers, which means it could dent companies’ profits instead, Nim added. Although if the government chooses to shoulder the additional costs, it would strain its finances.
Not only will China and India have to pay more for the oil they consume, they will need to pay more to have it delivered to their shores because oil tanker rates have also risen, said Andy Lipow, president of energy consultancy Lipow Oil Associates.
Combined with a stronger U.S. dollar and weaker rupee, the impact on the India economy will be magnified, said Lipow.
India’s rupee recently plunged to a record low as a result of pressure from a strong greenback and selling by foreign portfolio investors.
The country is no stranger to protests over high fuel prices. In 2018, widespread protests across the country against record-high petrol and diesel prices led to the closure of businesses and schools in several regions. First Indian space startups picked for Indo-US defence programme (Reuters)
Reuters [1/17/2025 12:58 AM, Nivedita Bhattacharjee, 5.2M, Neutral]
Seven Indian private companies have been chosen for a first-of-its-kind India-U.S. space and defence collaboration programme, unlocking a lucrative and strategic market for Indian firms, said three sources with knowledge of the matter.
Under the programme, the companies - which the sources said included space imaging company KaleidEO and rocket makers EtherealX and Aadyah Space - will work with the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit, the Department of Defense and other government agencies on satellite observation and emerging space and defence technologies.
In return, they get access to the world’s biggest defence and space market, mentorship and paid clientele as they also work with U.S. defence industry leaders such as Northrop Grumman (NOC.N), RTX (RTX.N), and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), two of the sources said.
That could give them an edge against the competition as they compete for U.S. business in their niches worth about $1.5 billion annually, the first source said.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because a public announcement had not yet been made.
The government bodies did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment. The development and details of the programme have not been made public before, and Reuters was unable to verify the names of all the selected companies.
Lockheed and Northrop declined to comment, while RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The Indian firms did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem was launched in 2023 to create an innovation bridge between the two nations. The initiative comes as India pushes to expand its defence and space private industries while reducing its reliance on Russia, its traditional partner.
Indian investor IndusBridge Ventures and U.S.-based FedTech, which established a launchpad in September 2024 under the broader government initiative, selected the seven successful Indian companies and talks are underway about specific projects, the first source said.
Access to the U.S. defence and space market, the largest globally, could be transformative for Indian private players, generating annual revenues between $500 million and $1 billion, the source added.
The second source said the main objective was for companies domiciled in India to be able to work with the U.S. Department of Defence and private industry leaders, as well to gain a foothold into the U.S. commercial space launch market.
Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval this month met with his U.S. counterpart Jake Sullivan in New Delhi to discuss space technology collaboration and the "deepening cooperation between the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit and India’s Innovations for Defense Excellence to accelerate the adoption of cutting-edge commercial technologies for military solutions," among other topics. India PM Modi invites investments in mobility sector, vows govt support (Reuters)
Reuters [1/17/2025 3:33 AM, Sakshi Dayal, 5.2M, Neutral]
India Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday invited investments from all sectors that see their "future in mobility", promising government support "at every level" in the world’s third largest car market.
India’s auto industry, which grew by about 12% last year, will expand further as a result of factors including its large youth population, increasing middle class, and rapid urbanisation, Modi said.
He was speaking at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo in New Delhi, to an audience of global and Indian executives, including Toshihiro Suzuki, president of Suzuki Motor Corp (7269.T) and Anish Shah, managing director of Mahindra and Mahindra (MAHM.NS).
"The intent and commitment of the federal government are completely clear. Whether a new policy has to be made, or reforms needed, our efforts are continuously underway. Now you have to take these forward, take advantage of them," Modi said.
Pointing to work being done in India regarding solar power, he said this would fuel demand for battery storage systems.
"This is the right time for you for a large investment in this sector. I also invite as many youth as possible for startups in the energy storage sector," he said.
India has been courting foreign investors like Elon Musk’s Tesla, whose entry into Indian markets, analysts say, could spur more investments in electric vehicles and also benefit local car part manufacturers.
The country’s EV market made up about 2% of its total car sales of 4 million in 2023. Indians lured to Russia are dying on the front lines in Ukraine (Washington Post)
Washington Post [1/16/2025 7:32 AM, Anant Gupta, 40736K, Negative]
The death of an Indian man working for the Russian army in Ukraine has brought renewed focus to the Kremlin’s use of foreign nationals on the front lines — from North Koreans to Cubans — and revived a thorny issue in the otherwise thriving relationship between New Delhi and Moscow.Nearly 100 Indians have been lured to Russia by offers of jobs or education, only to find themselves forced into service by the army, according to Indian government statements and interviews with families of men sent to fight in Ukraine. This month, Binil Babu, a 32-year-old electrician from the southern state of Kerala, became at least the 10th Indian to die in the war, drawing a sharp response from officials here.“The matter has been strongly taken up with the Russian authorities in Moscow as well as with the Russian Embassy in New Delhi today,” a spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement Tuesday. “We have also reiterated our demand for the early discharge of the remaining Indian nationals.”Moscow has consistently denied any wrongdoing and has promised to release Indians from its armed forces. “The Russian Government has at no point of time been engaged in any public or obscure campaigns, more so in fraudulent schemes to recruit the Indian nationals for military service in Russia,” the Russian Embassy in New Delhi said in an Aug. 10 statement.Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in July that he would not comment on this topic “in any way,” and there have been no other official Russian statements about it, though Russian media reported that it was discussed in meetings between the countries’ leaders.Despite the close coordination between the two governments, Indian recruits like Babu are unable to escape the fighting, reportedly because the Russian military is unwilling to let them go. The allegedly fraudulent recruitment has emerged over the past year as a recurring point of tension between India and Russia, even as the two countries have expanded their economic and military ties.“It is very painful to see innocent Indians still getting caught up in the conflict there,” said Ashwin Mangukiya, whose 23-year-old son, Hemil, was the first Indian to be killed in the war last year. “The Indian government has failed to stop this by arresting the agents who take advantage of people’s ignorance to lure them into dangerous jobs.”Families say most of the unwitting recruits were duped by an international network of employment agents and social media influencers, who promised them high wages for low-skilled jobs such as driving, cooking, plumbing and electrical repairs.Two Indian men reached by phone in Ukraine last year told The Washington Post that upon arriving in the war zone, they were made to sign Russian documents they could not read and saw their passports confiscated. They said they were later forced to fight alongside Russian soldiers with very little military training.After several Indian citizens were killed on the front lines last year, Indian officials took up the issue with their Russian counterparts and secured the release of dozens of men pressed into military service. In a July meeting with President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin, Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanded the early release of those who had been “misled.”Yet some remain entangled in the conflict. Last month, responding to a question in Parliament, an Indian government official confirmed that 19 Indian citizens were still serving in the Russian army.The lingering issue has been a rare sore spot in a relationship that has grown considerably in recent years. Trade between India and Russia has increased since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, helping to blunt the impact of Western sanctions on Moscow. India is now the second-largest importer of Russian crude oil, after China, with purchases amounting to $46 billion in the last fiscal year, according to statistics released by India’s Commerce Ministry.Before his death, Babu had been pleading for months with the Indian Embassy in Moscow to secure his release from the Russian army, the Indian Express newspaper reported.His brother-in-law, Saneesh Scaria, told The Post by telephone from Kerala that “the Indian Embassy in Moscow asked Binil to tell his commander that Prime Minister Modi had canceled all their agreements. But the commander told him he could only go after their one-year contract was complete.”Nearly a year ago, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation launched a human-trafficking probe against at least 19 individuals and private companies accused of luring workers to Russia, according to the official complaint.In addition to preying on those seeking employment, agents targeted Indian students “for admission in dubious private universities in Russia,” investigators said in their complaint.Four arrests were made in May, on charges of fraud, human trafficking and criminal conspiracy, but the suspects have since been released on bail, and there has been no reported movement in the case since.“We have lost what was written in our fate,” said the father of Hemil Mangukiya, who was recruited for a support role but then was killed on the battlefield. “The government must do something.” Video Shows India Firing Game-Changing Cruise Missile (Newsweek)
Newsweek [1/16/2025 11:45 AM, Ryan Chan, 56005K, Neutral]
The Indian military released a video on Wednesday showing two "game-changing" cruise missiles, which can strike enemy targets precisely, that were fired in rapid succession.Why It MattersIn last April, India, which has a disputed border with China, delivered the supersonic anti-ship and land-attack missile BrahMos to the Philippines, a South China Sea country that has clashed with China over maritime features claimed by both sides. Manila described the acquisition as a "significant game-changer."What To KnowThe BrahMos is capable of flying at nearly three times the speed of sound and launching from ships, land, and aircraft, according to its manufacturer, BrahMos Aerospace, which is a joint venture between India and Russia.In the video provided by the Western Command of the Indian army, the BrahMos missiles were fired from a land-based launcher at an undisclosed location, flying toward the ocean one after another. The Indian army said that it was a "perfect salvo launch" of missiles.The multimedia digital platform The New Indian said a salvo launch is designed to overwhelm enemy defenses, ensuring higher mission success rates. The launch served as a deterrent, signaling India’s readiness to neutralize threats with precision strikes, it added.The daytime launch validated the missile’s "capability of the formation" to engage targets deep into enemy territory with what it called "clinical precision," the Indian army wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter), which also came with a tag, "No Target Too Deep."The BrahMos has a stated range of 290 kilometers (180 miles) for its baseline version, while its extended variant has an estimated range between 450 and 500 kilometers (279 to 310 miles).The Indian navy launched two warships and one submarine on the same day, highlighting New Delhi’s strategic focus in the Indian Ocean, an area that it views as its backyard, amid China’s expanding naval presence far away from the country’s shores.Besides the Philippines, Vietnam is poised to become the second country to acquire the BrahMos. Hanoi has protested over China’s actions in the Gulf of Tonkin, located between two nations, and over reported assaults on Vietnamese fishermen in the South China Sea.The Chinese Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.What People Are SayingBrahMos Aerospace said in a post on X: "Congratulations to [the Western Command] of [the Indian Army] for the spectacular #SalvoLaunch of #BRAHMOS Supersonic Cruise #Missile, showcasing weapon’s unparalleled firepower, infused with indigenous technologies to precisely hit targets deep into enemy territory."Indian news channel Republic TV reported: "This successful launch reaffirms the Indian Army’s readiness and ability to respond decisively to any potential threats, strengthening its position as a formidable force in the region."What Happens NextIndia is likely to conduct further tests of the BrahMos to demonstrate its long-range strike capabilities as China has expanded its ballistic missile force, which can hit targets in India. At least 12 Maoist rebels killed by India’s security forces (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [1/17/2025 12:00 AM, Staff, 19.6M, Negative]
At least 12 Maoist rebels have been killed by Indian security forces as New Delhi steps up efforts to quell the long-running rebellion.
Police said on Friday that the operation broke out on Thursday in the forested areas of Bijapur district in the state of Chhattisgarh, known as the heartland of the rebellion.“We have received information of the killing of 12 Maoists in encounters with the security forces,” senior police official Sundarraj P told the AFP news agency. India’s Hindustan Times news outlet placed the death toll at 17, adding that at least 3,000 police personnel were involved in the operation since Wednesday night.
Last week, police in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district also killed at least three Maoist rebels, including a reported explosive expert suspected of being responsible for the deaths of several security personnel, according to The Indian Express newspaper.
Last year, India’s Interior Minister Amit Shah said the government expected to crush the rebellion by 2026.
A crackdown by security forces has killed more than 200 rebels in the past year, an overwhelming majority in Chhattisgarh, according to government data.
More than 10,000 people have died in the decades-long rebellion, where the rebels say they are fighting for the rights of marginalised, Indigenous people.
The conflict has seen a number of deadly attacks on government forces over the years.
Earlier this month, a roadside bomb killed at least nine Indian security forces. A week after that, Indian troops killed at least five fighters while a separate bomb blast wounded two police officers.
In 2021, 22 police and paramilitary members were killed in a gun battle with the far-left rebel fighters.
In 2019, at least 16 commandos were also killed in the western state of Maharashtra in a bomb attack that was blamed on the Maoists in the lead-up to national elections. Saif Ali Khan, Famed Bollywood Actor, Is Stabbed at Home in Mumbai (New York Times)
New York Times [1/16/2025 4:14 PM, Pragati K.B., 831K, Negative]
The star Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan was stabbed multiple times in his house in an affluent neighborhood in Mumbai on Thursday, Indian police officials said.
Mr. Khan, a prolific actor from a family of prominent celebrities, was injured in the pre-dawn hours in the neighborhood of Bandra by an intruder who managed to flee, according to the police. He was taken to a hospital, where doctors reported that he was recovering and in stable condition.
The police were investigating the attack, and believe the stabbing was part of a burglary attempt, said Dixit Gedam, a deputy commissioner with the Mumbai police. The police were looking for one suspect who had been identified, he said. “We know that the intruder used the fire escape to enter the house,” Mr. Gedam said.
Mr. Khan sustained a major injury to his spinal cord, as well as deep wounds on his arm and neck, according to Dr. Nitin Dange of Lilavati Hospital, where he was being treated. He had undergone an operation to remove a knife and repair leaking spinal fluid.
Mr. Khan, 54, has acted in more than 70 films in a career spanning three decades, with roles ranging from fun, romantic heroes to dark, gritty villains. His mother, Sharmila Tagore, was a celebrated actress, and his father, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, who had royal lineage, was the captain of India’s cricket team. Mr. Khan is also married to another prominent actor, Kareena Kapoor Khan, and his daughter, Sara Ali Khan, is also an actress.The actor’s representatives released a statement requesting fans and the news media to remain patient while the police investigate.
As news of the stabbing spread, opposition politicians in Maharashtra, the state in which Mumbai is the capital, were quick to criticize the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party over what they said was a deteriorating law enforcement situation.“If celebrities are not safe then who in Mumbai is?” Priyanka Chaturvedi, a member of Parliament from Maharashta, wrote on social media.
The actor and filmmaker Pooja Bhatt called for a greater police presence in the neighborhood, writing on social media, “The city & especially the queen of the suburbs, have never felt so unsafe before.”
Last July, two gunmen opened fire outside the star actor Salman Khan’s house, also in Bandra. The police arrested two men in that shooting, and said the suspects were connected to the imprisoned gang leader Lawrence Bishnoi.
In October, a former Maharashtra state minister, Baba Siddique, was fatally shot by three gunmen near the office of his son, also a politician, in Bandra. Mr. Siddique had close ties to Bollywood stars. NSB
Bangladesh’s Revolutionary Women Have Disappeared (Foreign Policy)
Foreign Policy [1/16/2025 10:00 AM, Muktadir Rashid and Maher Satter, 1436K, Negative]
The turning point came at midnight, when women hit the streets.
By mid-July, Bangladeshi university students had been protesting for more than a month for the reform of government job quotas, which they said created a nepotistic patronage system that rewarded supporters of the ruling Awami League. But few predicted they would bring down Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled Bangladesh for 15 years with an iron fist.
Then, on July 14, Hasina called the protesters razakars—a term for an anti-independence paramilitary force that has become synonymous with "traitor." Women students, who broadly supported the anti-quota movement, took the remark personally.
That midnight, thousands of residents of the women’s dorms in Dhaka University flooded out of their halls, defiantly shouting, "Who are you? Who am I? Razakar! Razakar!".
Residents of the men’s dorms joined them, and within 48 hours, the uprising had spread throughout the country. In less than a month, Hasina was on a helicopter, fleeing to India.
"It’s because of women that this movement became a people’s revolution," Maliha Namla, an organizer at Jahangirnagar University, located just outside the capital Dhaka, said in an interview last month. "Without them, it would not have become one so quickly.".From July 15 to Aug. 5, the largely Gen Z-driven revolution that led to the fall of Hasina saw the most widespread participation of women in street protests in Bangladesh’s history. Women armed with sticks and stones clashing with police and Awami League enforcers became iconic images of the protests. They led marches, blockaded key intersections, and were heavily involved in organizing and decision-making as student coordinators.
After Hasina fled in early August and the country briefly plunged into a state of anarchy, with police on strike, women students stayed out on the streets alongside the men as they guided traffic and conducted night patrols.
"It was unprecedented, and so invigorating and so inspiring," said Shireen Huq, the chair of the Bangladeshi interim government’s Women’s Affairs Reform Commission. "The disappointing part is that once it was all over, the women [students] disappeared. They were not to be seen in any serious decision-making.".
The student movement itself did not disappear. Three students have been appointed as advisors in the interim government—all three are men. Students have continued to stage protests and campaign against Hasina loyalists, most notably forcing the chief justice to resign. They continue to conduct a grassroots outreach program to raise awareness about the July uprising, and there are widespread rumors that they have plans to start their own political party.
But the movement has splintered in the aftermath of its success.
"Bit by bit, our group became many groups," Namla said. "Everyone had a different ideology or approach about how to move forward. The atmosphere became very toxic. And as the movement became divided, women’s participation began to drop.".
When the protests first started in early June, the number of women taking part was fairly low. Umama Fatema, a molecular biology student at Dhaka University, remembers brainstorming with the other women she met at the protests about how to get more involved. They set up a WhatsApp group, and then a Messenger group, and started trying to drum up support for their cause. Soon, they were turning out hundreds, and eventually thousands, of women.
"I’d post things that were meant to create a sense of indignation in the girls," Fatema said recently, laughing. "Like: ‘How can we live with this kind of insult?’ I’d write all these cliché posts.".
Fatema recalls a deep sense of unity within the movement while Hasina was in power, as well as in its immediate aftermath. Roles and decision-making were shared and decentralized, and she said that women played particularly critical roles in the "Bangla Blockade," when students shut down major roads and railways throughout the country. Fatema herself became the movement’s official spokesperson.
"After the revolution, women as a community became sidelined. There’s a sense of anger among many women as a result of this," Fatema said. "Say I make an important political point—no one pays any attention. But if a man says the same thing, people fall over themselves with applause.".
The organizers who spoke to the Fuller Project and Foreign Policy say that women have suffered as a result of their desire to keep the movement unified. As infighting grew among the students, women became more likely to take a step back in the hope of keeping the peace. One consequence has been that women have been elbowed out by men vying for leadership positions. Their public visibility has fallen sharply as the men take center stage, and many of those who are included say they feel their purpose is to serve as the token woman.
"Women aren’t afraid of participating in student movements, being involved in politics, or standing in front of the camera," said Nusrat Tabassum, a student leader at Dhaka University. "What women fear is that their voices, in general, are not truly heard anywhere. We have to fight men at every step, and that makes it tough.".
Last October, as criticism grew over this lack of representation, the interim government added a Women’s Affairs Reform Commission to its roster of reform committees. They placed Huq, a veteran activist and one of the founders of Naripokkho, the country’s most prominent women’s rights organization, in charge.
Formed much later than most of the other commissions, Huq and her colleagues are now scrambling to get their work done in time to be able to influence the others. They see gender as a cross-cutting issue, and they believe that their recommendations will only work if they are integrated into the recommendations of the other committees.
"We are trying to buy time," Huq said.
Unfortunately for Huq and her commission, time is not something that the interim government can offer easily. Internally, the government is under pressure to hold elections in a timely manner. Meanwhile, they’ve been bombarded from the outside by a disinformation campaign led by the Awami League and their allies, especially in India, which have stoked fears of Islamist violence in the country. Hasina had presented herself as a secular leader who was the only one capable of holding fundamentalist Islam at bay, even as the religious right grew in power during her dictatorship.
"My task is going to be very, very challenging for these reasons as well," Huq said. "Especially expat Bangladeshis are going paranoid almost—’Islamists are taking over,’ you know?".
Huq added, "One of the most beautiful images I carry with me now is, the women are coming out of the student dorms, and there’s a woman in a T-shirt and blue jeans holding hands with a woman in a complete niqab. This is something my generation has not learned to come to terms with. This image made me, for the first time, come to terms with it and deal with my own prejudices about all these things.".
Fatema, whose father was once a student activist with an Islamist group before abandoning politics, said that she worries both about a growing Islamist presence in the halls of Dhaka University and about people looking to politicize the lack of representation of women for Islamophobic purposes.
"If you’re raising this as a political tool, I don’t support that," Fatema said. "But it is not immaterial. Statecraft is not something that’s only for the boys to learn.". Bangladeshi and British politics collided to bring down Tulip Siddiq (The Guardian – opinion)
The Guardian [1/16/2025 10:00 AM, Salil Tripathi, 82995K, Negative]
It was unusual to see Muhammad Yunus, a widely respected Nobel laureate and the chief adviser of the unelected interim government of Bangladesh, taking aim at a British minister, accusing Tulip Siddiq of benefiting from "plain robbery" in his home country and calling for her to apologise. But once that happened, things moved swiftly: accusations against the beleaguered treasury minister swirled, she pulled out of an official delegation going to China, she referred herself to Laurie Magnus, the government’s adviser on ministerial standards, and finally this week she resigned from her post. (Siddiq "totally refutes" allegations of corruption.).
This month, the Financial Times reported that Siddiq was given a two-bedroom central London flat by a developer closely associated with her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, the recently ousted longtime leader of Bangladesh. Siddiq had claimed she received the property from her parents, and told Magnus that she had only recently discovered it was a gift from a Bangladeshi businessman. Until 2018, she had lived in a Hampstead flat given to her sister by another businessman with connections to Hasina’s government. She lives at present in a rented property owned by a businessman linked to the British wing of the Awami League, Hasina’s political party. Siddiq was first elected to parliament in 2015, and speaking to supporters after one victory, she singled out Bangladeshi British members of the Awami League for their steadfast backing.
Meanwhile, there was that photograph from 2013, in which she was seen with her aunt and the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, at the signing of an agreement to build a $12bn (£9.8bn) nuclear plant in Bangladesh. Magnus accepted her explanation that she was on a social visit and a tourist, but Siddiq now faces a corruption probe in Bangladesh over that deal.
Magnus did not conclude that Siddiq had broken any rules over her homes in London, and did not question the legitimacy of the transactions. However, he did say he had limited information to go on, and that she could have been "more alive" to the reputational risks arising from her family’s ties to Bangladesh. He also suggested that the prime minister would want to consider her responsibilities. Her position now untenable, she had little choice but to step aside.
Things would have been different if Hasina were still in power. But she fled in disgrace in August last year after protests against her increasingly unpopular rule grew. Students were marching through the streets of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, demanding an end to the generous quotas that gave government jobs to freedom fighters and their progeny. A nepotistic exercise, it was a privilege granted in perpetuity, which gave roles to political supporters. Hasina had ordered the police to use force, and about 1,000 students and other demonstrators were killed, many of them unarmed, sometimes shot at point-blank range. Instead of listening to the students, Hasina called them "Razakars", a deeply pejorative term by which Bangladeshis who had supported Pakistani troops during Bangladesh’s war of liberation in 1971 are described.
Bangladesh’s freedom struggle was bloody. The country was once part of Pakistan, forming the eastern wing of the state that was carved out of India in 1947 when British colonial rule ended. Urdu became the national language of Pakistan, the home of the subcontinent’s Muslims, with the Punjabi-dominated western wing and the Bengali-speaking eastern wing separated by more than 1,000 miles of the Hindu-dominated secular republic of India. East Pakistanis wanted Bengali to be a national language, but west Pakistan resisted. Unrest grew in the 1960s. In the 1970 election, Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and his Awami League party swept the polls, winning enough seats to govern all of Pakistan. Leaders of west Pakistan, including generals, were alarmed.
In March 1971, Pakistani troops unleashed Operation Searchlight, killing thousands of east Pakistanis and jailing leaders (including Mujib, as he was popularly known). In the nine-month war that followed, hundreds of thousands of Bengali-speaking and other east Pakistani civilians were killed and many women raped; 10 million refugees made their way to India. The Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi, offered moral and diplomatic support at first, as well as training to the Bangladeshi guerrilla forces. But in December that year, Pakistan attacked India, which retaliated and liberated Bangladesh within two weeks. Most refugees returned to Bangladesh. Released from jail, Mujib won a thumping majority in Bangladesh’s first election.
But Mujib’s popularity unravelled after 1974, when law and order deteriorated and a famine affected many parts of Bangladesh. To reassert control, he created a one-party state and ruled by decree. In August 1975, junior officers launched a coup, and Mujib and most of his family were assassinated. Hasina and her sister Rehana (Siddiq’s mother) escaped because they were abroad.
Hasina returned from exile in 1981, and led a spirited movement to restore democracy in Bangladesh. She won the election in 1996 and became leader of a coalition government. She returned to power in 2008 – the last truly free and fair election in Bangladesh – and gradually turned authoritarian herself. While the Awami League has won three successive elections since, the principal opposition parties sat out two of those and boycotted the third soon after polls opened, once they realised the scale of intimidation and rigging.
Hasina’s rule saw a rise in disappearances and extrajudicial executions, a crackdown on the media and the internet, and arrests of dissidents, human rights defenders and journalists. While Hasina did much to rehabilitate Mujib’s reputation, her rule enraged so many that after her removal, Mujib’s historic home was attacked and burned, his statues toppled and his name erased from legacy. Attempts were made to rewrite history.
For Mujib’s denigration, Hasina bears much blame. To the rest of the world, she had presented herself as standing firm against rising religious fundamentalism, and in India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, she found a formidable ally. While Siddiq has been vocal and active in supporting human rights causes in many parts of the world, including Syria and Gaza, she has been strangely silent on the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in Bangladesh, insisting she is "a British MP".
Ultimately, it was her ties with Bangladesh that undid Siddiq’s career. Under Hasina, corruption had grown on a massive scale. Bangladesh’s central bank chief, Ahsan Mansur, a former International Monetary Fund official, said as much as 2tn taka (£13.5bn) had been taken out of the country by businesses close to the Awami League, through forced bank mergers, inflated import invoices and other questionable practices. Reports say Bangladesh’s Financial Intelligence Unit has asked local banks to provide transaction details for all accounts linked to Siddiq and her family.
Political rivals have always used any change of regime in Bangladesh to settle scores by seeking revenge against their predecessors through unending lawsuits and inquiries, but the charges against Hasina (and the questions about Siddiq) are not politically motivated. Regardless of the motives of politicians making allegations, the fact is that the World Bank cancelled a loan of $1.2bn to build a bridge across the river Padma because of credible corruption allegations. And UN human rights experts strongly criticised Bangladesh over enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings to silence human rights defenders, all during Hasina’s rule.
Politics is a ruthless business. Siddiq became part of two worlds that played by different rules. Now her family’s legacy lies tarnished in Bangladesh and Britain, and she can find comfort in neither place. Inside Bhutan’s Plan to Boost Its Economy With ‘Mindful Capitalism’ (Time)
Time [1/16/2025 7:12 AM, Charlie Campbell, 57114K, Neutral]
The drive up to Phulari viewpoint snakes for three miles along dirt tracks flanked by flowering pyoli plants and murals of flaming phalluses, a traditional good-luck symbol here in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. At the summit, the 1,000-sq.-mi. expanse of what will be Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC) materializes through fluttering prayer flags. To the east, a strip of palm forest has been cleared to extend the domestic airport’s stunted runway for international flights. To the west, smoke billows from the chimney of an army-run distillery. Over the horizon lies the Indian state of Assam, where much of the labor and materials to construct the $100 billion new special administrative region will come from.
"Activity at the site is just beginning," says Dr. Lotay Tshering, a urologist who served as Bhutan’s Prime Minister from 2018 to 2023 and is now governor of the GMC. "But progress in the designing phase—planning, negotiations, discussions, exchange of ideas—is happening beyond our expectations.".
Those expectations are nothing less than putting a smile back on the self-styled "happiest place on earth." In December 2023, Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck announced the GMC as part of "wholesale" reforms of the nation’s economy to combat challenges such as 29% youth unemployment and a resultant brain drain of talent overseas. In 2023, some 1.5% of the population moved to work and study in Australia alone. Meanwhile, the birth rate has dipped to just 1.4 children per woman, portending a shrinking, aging populace. Compounding matters, tourism, one of the principal revenue sources in this nation of 785,000, was brought to a standstill by the pandemic and still hasn’t fully recovered, with just a third as many foreign arrivals in 2023 compared with 2019. One in 8 Bhutanese lives in poverty.
It’s a crisis that has sparked sweeping changes to uplift the world’s literally loftiest country. In 2023, Bhutan’s government halved its daily tourist levy to just $100 to boost flagging arrivals. One-year national service has been introduced to ensure all 18-year-olds receive military and vocational training—including, in a nod to the brain drain, for Bhutanese youth based overseas. Special funds have been introduced to spur innovation and entrepreneurship. But the Land of the Thunder Dragon—so named for the vicious storms that crash through its furrowed highlands—aims not to simply embrace capitalism but to redefine it for the modern, sustainability-focused era.
To wit: the GMC. Three times as large as Singapore, with a projected cost equivalent to 30 times national GDP, it aims to attract foreign companies willing to engage in "mindful capitalism"—focusing not just on pure profit but also on ecological harmony and spiritual contentment. Artists’ renderings depict a low-rise metropolis built around a network of inhabitable timber bridges, each boasting key features: a university, a hospital, a hydroponic greenhouse, a cultural center, a spiritual center, an organic market. The site will be sprinkled with pristine wildlife sanctuaries, farms, rice terraces, and temples. All vehicles will be electric, single-use plastics banished. Green power would be provided by a hydroelectric dam complete with an elevated temple in its mosaic facade. Applicants will be carefully vetted and permitted to set up only by special invitation.
"Happiness and well-being of people must be the purpose of capitalism," Bhutan Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay tells TIME. "We are talking about creating a new paradigm, an entirely new system of urban development.".
It’s an undeniably utopian vision for a landlocked nation half the size of South Carolina whose economy ranks 177th in the world (between Curaçao and Burundi). But Bhutan has long played by its own rules. It was an absolute monarchy until 2006, when King Jigme Singye, father to the current monarch, unilaterally chose to devolve power to a parliamentary democracy. (Elections were held two years later.) It is fiercely protective of its unique culture, allowing only local films in cinemas, insisting on national dress in government offices and schools, and having diplomatic relations with just 54 nations. While most developing nations focus on GDP growth, in the late 1970s Bhutan’s ruling monarch decided "gross national happiness [GNH] is more important"—championing a holistic approach toward development that placed equal weight on sustainability, spirituality, and ecological harmony. The GMC, says Tobgay, is "gross national happiness 2.0. We’ve applied GNH throughout the country. It has worked. But how do we apply GNH in a modern urban environment?".
Despite the nation’s meager economy, all Bhutanese receive free education and health care. Over 70% of territory is forested with a constitutional mandate to never be below 60%. It’s the world’s first carbon-negative country, and Tobgay insists the GMC will be the first carbon-negative city. But melding such salutary principles with capitalism risks their being deleteriously diluted.
"Given that South Asia so lacks even the most basic forms of infrastructure, for Bhutan to be launching this massive project beggars belief that it could really be as successful as they would like it to be," says Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center.
Such a transformative influx of foreign cash also risks seeding new power centers and patronage networks that could drastically shift the political equilibrium in one of the world’s youngest democracies—not least given that Bhutan sits sandwiched between Asian super-powers India and China. But at a more fundamental level, will large multi-nationals and their employees want to move to a patch of the Himalayan foothills with scant regional connections?
"The first phase is about bringing the common minimum infrastructure for investors to gain confidence," says Lotay, speaking to TIME over momo dumplings and ema datshi, Bhutan’s national dish of chilies cooked in melted cheese. "We really need not rush.".
If anywhere can rip up capitalism’s shibboleths, it’s Bhutan. This Shangri-la hidden in the folds of the Himalayas was a pugilistic hodgepodge of Buddhist fiefs until unification as a nation in the 17th century. Since then, Bhutan has thrived by shunning outside influence. This is a country where belief in yetis is so pervasive that a national park has been dedicated for their protection. The patron saint is a 15th century monk called Drukpa Kunley, better known as the Divine Madman, who marauded the countryside with his bow and faithful hunting dog, while drinking copiously, seducing thousands of women—including his own mother—and subduing demons with his penis, which he dubbed the Flaming Sword of Wisdom. (Hence the murals.) The nation deftly eluded European colonization and managed to sit out both the Industrial Revolution and two World Wars.
Measuring just 200 miles from east to west and half that from north to south, Bhutan rooted survival in keeping at once low and aloof in an unruly neighborhood.
But Red China’s conquest of neighboring Tibet shifted that calculus. "Great Helmsman" Mao Zedong considered Tibet a palm whose "five fingers" of Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and the British Raj’s North-East Frontier Agency (today India’s Arunachal Pradesh province) also fell under Chinese suzerainty. Against this backdrop, Bhutan moved closer to New Delhi under Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who sought a bulwark against creeping communism by offering his tiny neighbor security guarantees.
Still, internally, things barely budged. In 1961, the same year that the USSR sent the first human into space, Bhutan got its first paved road. It remained closed to tourists for another decade and officially had no television until 1999 (though bootlegged satellite dishes and videos showing Bollywood movies and soap operas were already commonplace).
Today, India remains the dominant influence. As Bhutan declines to have diplomatic relations with any U.N. Security Council member, it has no official ties with regional superpower China, nor the U.S. Bhutan’s ngultrum currency is pegged to Indian rupees and used interchangeably. Bhutan is the single largest recipient of Indian aid, pocketing $240 million in 2024. Some 85% of goods sold in the country are imported by the Indian Tata trucks adorned with jaunty faces that hurtle down twisting mountain roads to remote villages.
While the rest of the globe frantically fetishized growth targets, Bhutan shunned opportunities to monetize its considerable natural resources—including lumber, coal, and minerals—that would have come at the expense of the environment. The guiding philosophy melds the Buddhist principles of karma—cause and effect; that bad deeds will be repaid in kind—with Bon animism, which teaches respect for all sentient beings. The combination venerates the natural world more than arguably any other culture.
But Bhutan’s skepticism regarding industry doesn’t extend to technology. Today, most urban areas enjoy decent 5G coverage. At Pochu Dumra Buddhist School in Bhutan’s ancient capital of Punakha, dozens of novice monks lounge on a manicured lawn, playing bamboo flutes, chanting sutras, and weaving tantric ornaments from brightly hued string. On the second floor sits an IT study where saffron-robed students ages 13 to 17 spend an hour each day glued to Dell desktops and Samsung tablets to learn word processing, spreadsheets, and how to conduct research discerningly via the Internet. "When they become teachers, lamas, and administer their own monastery, they need to keep records of their administrations," says English and IT teacher Thinley Jamtsho, 31. "It’s important for the development of the country.".
The recent explosion of green technology means Bhutan no longer has to sacrifice its karmic principles to get ahead. Today, Bhutan has 2.5 GW of installed hydropower, half of which is sold to India. Instead of creating huge reservoirs to dam the rivers and compromise their delicate ecology, Bhutanese turbines harness their natural flow, meaning a glut of power during the sodden summers and a dearth during the parched winters. To equalize this, excess summer hydropower is harnessed to mine green bitcoins that are cashed in to buy back electricity from India when rivers are driest. "Bitcoin functions strategically as a battery," says Ujjwal Deep Dahal, CEO of Druk Investments and Holdings, Bhutan’s $4 billion sovereign wealth fund, whose stated goal is to grow tenfold by 2030. "And every bitcoin in Bhutan offsets that much mined globally through a coal plant.".
Abundant hydropower is clearly one of the GMC’s core strengths. Bhutan has total hydropower potential of around 35 GW with the aim to harness 15 GW by 2040, making the hosting of energy-hungry AI data centers a real possibility. Another perk Bhutan enjoys is a comparatively well-educated, English-speaking population—in turn, a key driver of the brain drain. "We are the victims of our own success," says Togbay. "All our youth have been to school and can get jobs anywhere in the English-speaking world.".
It’s clear the GMC is meant to provide incentive to stay. Lotay says it will be "second to none." Famed Danish architect Bjarke Ingels has been tapped to draw up the master plan, the airport extension is being designed by a renowned Dutch firm, the economic plan overseen by an Australian consultancy, the environmental-impact assessment by a top multinational. The GMC will also be uniquely self-governing. Judicial, legislative, and executive authority have all been devolved to a board chaired by King Jigme but composed of "the best of the best" in their fields regardless of nationality, says Lotay. "We can have our own tax regimes, tourism policy, visas, startup ecosystem. It’s almost like the GMC is a country but governed by people from around the world.".
It will also have its own digital currency, the ter, which will be secured by blockchain and backed by gold, as well as Asia’s first (and one of only a handful anywhere in the world) full reserve digital bank, dubbed Oro Bank. While most banks keep a tiny fraction of deposits in reserve and invest or lend out the bulk to earn a profit, this risks default and potential bankruptcy should creditors withdraw en masse. (A total of 568 American banks failed from 2001 through 2024, including most notoriously Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023.) By contrast, Oro Bank will keep all its customers’ deposits in reserve, rendering failure virtually impossible, and instead earn money via premium services and dedicated investment accounts. "It’s a digital vault," says Oro Bank CEO Mike Kayamori. "We don’t need to pursue capitalism at its extreme. But if it’s done well, and it’s going to take time, I believe we can become the largest bank in the world.".
Oro Bank, like the GMC writ large, is betting on investors putting long-term stability above short-term gain. For one thing, because GMC was established by royal decree, it’s effectively immune to the vicissitudes of party politics. "Here your business partner is His Majesty the King," says Lotay. "Once you start doing business, you have no worries for the next 30, 40, 50 years.".
Still, critics say royal patronage comes with a darker side. The GMC is set to occupy 2.5% of Bhutan’s total landmass, which is currently inhabited by some 10,000 people, mostly farmers, who already rate the lowest in Bhutan’s GNH surveys, with only 33% classified as happy in 2015. Residents fear they could be evicted with little compensation, says Ram Karki, an exiled Bhutanese human-rights activist based in the Netherlands. (Tobgay insists "forcing people to leave does not cross our minds. We need people to live there.") Karki also says that royal backing of the GMC means any criticism could be considered seditious. "To speak anything against GMC is going against the King," he says. "So people cannot speak.".
It’s clear that Bhutan’s economic opening threatens India’s influence. Asked about the prospect of Chinese investment, Lotay replies that "the GMC will have absolutely no exclusion criteria." Indeed, Beijing has repeatedly voiced its intent to normalize relations, and the prospect of a growing Chinese footprint in Bhutan has New Delhi "crapping themselves," one former top Bhutanese official tells TIME. Lotay, however, sees things differently. "I absolutely don’t see any issues," he says. "While India and China have their differences, they leave us undisturbed.".
The big challenge for Bhutan will be to nod in both directions. For years, nearby Nepal has found itself similarly squeezed and has exploited the situation with varying success. In 2015, India triggered an economic and humanitarian crisis in Nepal by imposing an unofficial six-month blockade, partly sparked by Kathmandu’s warming ties with Beijing, including its purchase of Chinese weaponry. Since then, Nepal has eked concessions from both sides, and today India and China vie to be its top source of foreign direct investment.
Bhutan has not been immune to similar pressure. In 2013, prices of kerosene and cooking gas doubled in Bhutan after New Delhi withdrew subsidized supplies. The spark was then Prime Minister Jigme Thinley’s meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of a U.N. sustainability summit in Rio de Janeiro, along with Bhutan’s purchase of 20 buses from China. "China has been really growing its presence and building more influence across the entire region, including in spaces where India has traditionally been not only the main but the only external actor," says Kugelman.
Improved ties with China certainly have the support of Bhutan’s youth, given the bevy of scholarships Beijing doles out to nations in its orbit, including Nepal, as part of its soft-power push. Kuendhen Wangyel, 20, from Thimphu, is about to travel to Brisbane, Australia, to study architecture at the Queensland University of Technology, which is set to cost more than $65,000 for the three-year tuition. He estimates that around a third of his graduating class are going overseas for college and that many would jump at the chance to attend Chinese universities. "China would be a great opportunity," he says. "You could learn Mandarin, and nearly all trade comes from China.".
Already, China has built gleaming roads to its shared border with Bhutan, and Lotay insists the eventual normalization of relations is inevitable. But uncertainty remains about how Bhutan can insulate itself from any costs incurred given how dependent its economy is on Indian largesse. Perched on India’s border, the GMC is seen as both an opportunity and warning to New Delhi that if it won’t help Bhutan develop, there are others that will. "You can’t see the city primarily from the angle of Bhutan," says Rishi Gupta, assistant director at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New Delhi. "It also needs a prism of India benefiting.".
But it’s unclear what industries will be suited. Lotay shrugs that "no sector has already been clearly identified," though he admits a "conventional manufacturing-based economy does not make sense," given the tremendous competitive advantage held by Bhutan’s northern and southern neighbors. Bhutan’s main exports include fruit, betel nut, and boulders for construction.Agribusiness is one possibility. A wedge that begins at snow-capped 7,500 m (around 25,000 ft.) but descends to a smidgen above sea level, Bhutan boasts every conceivable climate, from northern glacial peaks to temperate, fruit-growing valleys and a subtropical south. Within these three physiographical zones are 5,603 plant species, including 369 varieties of orchid and 46 of rhododendron, and more than 480 varieties of edible mushrooms. Of the recorded plant species, 105 are found nowhere else, leading Tibetans to dub Bhutan Lho Menjong, or the Southland of Medicinal Herbs.
But in these digital times, geography need not be a factor at all. Plans are under way for a GMC e-residence program mirroring a scheme pioneered by Estonia in 2014 and now offered by more than 10 legal jurisdictions worldwide. "If you’re a startup in Argentina or India, we will love these businesses to register in GMC and open an account with us," says Kayamori of Oro Bank.
One year on from the GMC’s unveiling, expectation is being clouded by impatience. Today, the only major building work under way is for a campus to house recruits for the new national-service scheme. Hundreds of workers from the Indian city of Cooch Behar lug steel girders into the concrete shells of what will be dormitories, as a leaf blower removes detritus from an artificial-turf soccer pitch. But construction was already under way before the GMC was announced, only for the government to pause the work, thinking the premises could be repurposed for something grander. When no firm alternatives emerged, and with the site growing mildewed and dilapidated, the original construction resumed.
"By now," Lotay says, his constituents "are expecting a lot of noise, dust, a few thousand trucks and excavators, and international flights. That’s coming, but it cannot happen overnight.".
Still, ambition is infectious, and despite glacial progress the GMC serves as a beacon to convince young Bhutanese that there are opportunities to prosper at home. Dhechen Chodron set up D-Chens Atelier after graduating in fashion design and marketing in Malaysia. The 32-year-old has developed a wide following by marrying traditional Bhutanese materials with contemporary couture design, dressing everyone from Miss Bhutan to the royal princesses as well as tourists from North America and Europe. She currently occupies a government startup incubator in the capital, Thumphu, where walls are garlanded with sketches and fabric scraps and her subsidized rent is just $50 per month.
"I get most of my customers from Instagram," Dhechen says, fiddling with an embroidered silky gown that a Bollywood star ordered for the premiere of her latest film. "I’m also very excited for the GMC. Maybe we can get a chance to showcase our designs and collaborate with outside designers.".
On Jan. 24, Ed Sheeran will become the first Western pop star to hold a concert in Bhutan at Thimphu’s Changlimithang Stadium. Prime Minister Togbay says the hope is not only to attract a stream of pop stars but also "more artists, more Nobel laureates, and more thought leaders and business leaders, leaders in social work, philanthropists.".
But however careful the planning, cash has a way of forging its own reality. Although Bhutan officially banned plastic bags in 1999, they’re ubiquitous at Thimphu’s weekend market, containing everything from foraged tea leaves to dried persimmon slices. Meanwhile, roadside trash is a worsening blight. Tourists in the historic city of Paro increasingly complain of price gouging by local taxi drivers. Dahal of Druk Investments and Holdings admits Bhutan will need to build reservoir dams to maximize its hydropower potential, alarming environmentalists already worried about how the GMC will affect Bhutan’s endangered monkeys, tigers, rhinoceros, blue sheep, and snow leopards.
That development begets compromises is no surprise; the question is how negative corollaries can be mitigated. On the roof of the world, an enchanted kingdom of yetis and mystics is preparing to meet the modern world. But can Bhutan really remake capitalism? Or will capitalism break Bhutan? Ceasefire kindles hope of hostage son’s return to Nepal (BBC)
BBC [1/16/2025 11:27 AM, Joel Gunter and Hikmat Bahdur Rawal, 57114K, Neutral]
In a remote village in western Nepal, thousands of miles from Israel, Mahananda Joshi was sitting restlessly at home on Thursday, his phone in his hand.
The phone is never far from his hand now. And never on silent. He is waiting for news of his son, Bipin Joshi, a 23-year-old Nepalese agriculture student who was kidnapped by Hamas and taken to Gaza.
Any time the phone rings, Mahananda, a local schoolteacher, thinks it might bring news of Bipin, or even - his deepest hope - his son’s voice on the line.
"Sadly, it is always someone else," Mahananda said.
Bipin was one of dozens of foreign workers kidnapped alongside Israelis when Hamas attacked on 7 October 2023.
Twenty-four were subsequently released - 23 from Thailand and one from the Philippines - but Bipin and nine others remained.
It was never clear why.
The last time Bipin’s mother Padma spoke to him was 6 October, she said, the day before he was kidnapped.
He assured her he was eating well, and showed off the clothes he was wearing.
The next time the family saw him was on video footage taken from the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, shown to them by Israeli officials, who asked them to identify him.
It was the confirmation that he had been taken alive.
The BBC now understands that Bipin is believed to still be alive, but Nepal’s ambassador to Israel, Dhan Prasad Pandit, said he had "no concrete information" yet about Bipin’s condition or whereabouts.
Mahananda, Bipin’s mother Padma and 18-year-old sister Puspa live in a small white, one-storey home in the village of Bispuri Mahendranagar, close to the border with India.
As of Thursday, they had not heard anything from officials, they said, only the headlines announcing a ceasefire agreement.
The news had given them all renewed hope.
"I feel like he will message me today or tomorrow saying mummy, I am free now and I will return home immediately," Padma said.
But the Joshi family’s relief, if it comes, will not be that fast.‘Everything could fall apart’.
Along with the nine other foreign workers who remain hostages, Bipin is not expected to be released in the first phase of the ceasefire, which will prioritise the release of elderly men, women and children.
The fear for the family is that, while they wait, everything can change.
"Everything could fall apart," Padma said, with tears in her eyes.
The family’s ordeal began on the day of the attack.
Bipin was one of several Nepalese students in Kibbutzim in southern Israel that day, and Mahananda, a teacher at a local school, got a call from one of them to say that Bipin had been kidnapped.
At that point, Mahananda did not know anything of Hamas’s attack nor the situation unfolding in Israel, and he struggled to make sense of what he was hearing.
He would later learn that 10 Nepalese students had been killed in the attack, and that one - his son - appeared to have been taken hostage.
That feeling of disconnection has persisted for 15 agonising months, Mahananda and Padma said on Thursday.
Every hostage family’s pain has been great, but for some of those far away from Israel there has been an added sense of isolation.
"It has been a very lonely experience," Mahananda said.
Mr Pandit, Nepal’s ambassador to Israel, told the BBC that he had been in regular contact with the family and visited the village.
Mahananda painted a slightly different picture, saying that early on in the war the family did receive many visits from officials, but as it dragged on they were increasingly left alone.
"Since the new ceasefire agreement, no-one has come to see us or communicated with us at all," he said.
"Everything we know comes from the news.".
A spokesperson for the office of the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, who has been working with hostage families over the past 15 months, said that it treated all hostages the same, either Israeli or from abroad, and was working diligently to get them all freed.
For some of the families, the ceasefire news brings hope that their 15-month ordeal is coming to a close and they will see their loved ones again within weeks.
For others, like the Joshis, any hope must be tempered.
The longer they have to wait, the more likely the ceasefire deal could fall apart.
At home in Bispuri Mahendranagar on Thursday, Bipin’s sister Puspa was holding a photo of her brother as she spoke.
Tears filled her eyes when she talked about him coming home. She was confident he would.
"And when I see him again, I’m going to hug him," she said. "And cry.". China and Sri Lanka eye new phase of BRI with $3.7bn investment (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [1/17/2025 2:00 AM, Marwaan Macan-Markar, 1.3M, Neutral]
Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake will wrap up his inaugural visit to China Friday after securing a landmark investment deal that can help his country’s struggling economy, while adding value to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative projects in the strategically-located island.
Sinopec, China’s state-owned and largest oil refiner, signed an agreement with Sri Lanka’s energy ministry to invest $3.7 billion in a state-of-the-art oil refinery with a capacity of 200,000 barrels, Dissanayake’s office announced Thursday.
The new refinery will be built in southern Sri Lanka near Hambantota Port, which was constructed with a $1.5 billion Chinese loan as a part of BRI projects, according to sources familiar with the southern port. Most of the oil refined there is meant for export, the president’s office said, to enhance foreign exchange earnings.
The Sinopec deal is a big help for the newly elected Dissanayake, as it will be Sri Lanka’s highest single investment to date by a foreign country, surpassing another BRI investment of $1.4 billion to build the Port City Colombo that was secured by one of his pro-China predecessors.
Hambantota Port also entered into the foreign direct investment ledger subsequently after a previous Sri Lankan government secured $1.1 billion investment from China Merchant Port Holdings in a debt-for-equity swap that prompted Western governments to accuse Beijing of exerting "debt-trap" diplomacy.Xi said that China will actively support Sri Lanka in focusing on economic development in areas including modern agriculture, digital economy and the marine economy, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua. Both leaders highlighted the BRI upgrade in a joint statement released late Thursday. "The two sides agreed to advance all major signature projects including the Port City Colombo and Hambantota Port integrated development," the statement said.
Dissanayake’s visit to China comes at a critical juncture as Sri Lanka tries to rebuild its economy after its meltdown in 2022, when it ran out of foreign reserves and declared bankruptcy. The country defaulted on its foreign and domestic debt, which stood at $88 billion. Dissanayake inherited the broken economy from his pro-Western predecessor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who salvaged the country by securing macro-economic stability in two years under an International Monetary Fund bailout program.
China is on the top list of Sri Lanka’s bilateral lenders. It is estimated to account for 10% of all foreign loans Sri Lanka owes, with lending varies from building of highways, power stations, a port terminal and an airport.
After initial reluctance to join other bilateral lenders to shape a common debt restructuring arrangement, China raced ahead of other foreign creditors to announce in mid-2024 that it would first restructure the $4.3 billion Sri Lanka owed to the Export Import Bank of China, helping to move debt restructuring talks forward.
Observers say the island nation welcomes Beijing’s offer of new foreign direct investment (FDI) instead of more loans. "Sri Lanka is not in a position to increase its debt from China by securing loans for new infrastructure projects, so securing Chinese investment on this visit is an achievement," said George Cooke, executive director of the Regional Center for Strategic Studies, a Colombo-based think tank.
Sri Lanka’s dependency on China as an all-weather-friend is not lost on the Dissanakayke administration either. "In the multilateral arena, China has supported Sri Lanka irrespective of which government was in power," said a veteran South Asian diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "China and Sri Lanka are on the same page when it comes to external pressure on sovereign issues."
But Dissanayake’s initial success with Beijing will have to be balanced against how he fares with India, where he traveled on his first foreign visit in December, as both Asian powers jockey for influence in the South Asian nation. India has enjoyed the edge since Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown after it rushed a $4 billion financial lifeline, triumphing over China who had been on the ascendency hitherto.
A key test of the new government’s foreign policy balancing act will be what to do with the decision by the Wickremesignhe administration, which was under Indian pressure to issue a one-year moratorium through 2024 on Chinese research vessels docking in Sri Lankan ports. New Delhi suspected the vessels -- two of which made port visits in 2022 and 2023 -- of being "spy ships," according to Colombo-based diplomatic sources.
The testy maritime issue has exposed Sri Lanka’s own short comings. "Sri Lanka is an island and cannot live without marine scientific research," Y. Nandana Jayarathna, retired rear admiral of the Sri Lanka navy, told Nikkei Asia. "If Sri Lanka doesn’t develop it locally, it has to depend on external maritime science research."
A "rules based order" is the way out to strike diplomatic balance, he added, "not a pressure driven policy." Central Asia
Kazakhstan to Sell Dollars Alongside Gold Purchases to Aid Tenge (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [1/17/2025 3:12 AM, Nariman Gizitdinov, 5.5M, Neutral]
Kazakhstan’s central bank will start selling dollars in a way that mirrors the regulator’s gold purchases from domestic producers after the national currency hit a record low this week.“These measures will create additional supply on the foreign exchange market, which will also contribute to balance in the domestic currency market,” National Bank of Kazakhstan Governor Timur Suleimenov told reporters in Astana. He said the measures would also reduce excess money in the economy and help achieve the bank’s inflation target of 5%.
The currency dropped to a record low this week against the greenback, battered by global dollar appreciation, US sanctions against Russia and growth in consumer demand for foreign currency that nearly doubled from previous years, according to the central bank.
The Kazakh central bank has snapped up all the gold mined in the former Soviet republic, paying for the precious metal in tenge, since 2011, when the government granted it the right to buy bullion designated for export amid record prices. As of December, gold constituted a little more than half of the nation’s total reserves, or $23.8 billion, according to the data from the bank.
Despite the weakened tenge, the central bank kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 15.25% on Friday. Policymakers in the central Asian state had opted for a rate increase in November and spent more than $1 billion to prop up the national currency at the time. Before November, the last time the bank sold dollars to support the tenge was in March 2022.
This month, the central bank plans as much as $850 million in dollar sales for the oil fund. It sold $900 million from the fund and $308 million from its own reserves in December. The central bank has suspended purchases of dollars for the unified pension fund since October.
The bank said earlier this week it will intensify its monitoring of conversion operations by foreigners and will reintroduce limits on the difference between cash dollar sales and purchases, which were canceled in 2023.
State-run companies were already ordered in November to sell half of their foreign-currency revenue to support the tenge. Those sales are expected to come in at $500 million a month, according to Halyk Finance. Uzbekistan: Natural resources generating the bulk of state revenue (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [1/16/2025 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
State-connected energy and mining companies dominate the list of top tax-paying enterprises in Uzbekistan, according to data released January 15 by the country’s State Tax Committee. Overall, the government collected roughly 123.3 trillion Uzbek soums (about $9.5 billion) in corporate tax revenue from 949 major taxpayers in 2024, the committee reported.
The top 10 highest paying entities contributed roughly 57 percent of the corporate tax revenue collected by the state. The top three tax-payers were the Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Plant, the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Plant, and uranium producer and exporter Navoiyuran. Ranking fourth, fifth and sixth on the list were the oil and gas company Uzbekneftegaz, gas distribution company Khududgastaminot, and the state gas import-export firm UzGasTrade. The automaker UzAuto Motors, which produces cars under the licensed Chevrolet brand, ranked seventh.
Among privately held enterprises, tobacco concerns, UZBAT and Tashkent Tobacco, were the top two contributors in terms of tax payments. The fact that tobacco companies generate a significant amount of revenue for the state may help explain why the Uzbek parliament recently initiated a legislative drive to ban e-cigarettes in the country.
The Uzbek government has been running a budget deficit. During the first six months of 2024, the Ministry of Economy and Finance reported that state expenditures totaled 149.8 trillion soums (about $11.6 billion), of which roughly 50 percent went to social spending. The ministry added that state budget revenue rose over 18 percent during the first half of 2024 compared with the same period the previous year. Twitter
Afghanistan
Madiha Afzal@MadihaAfzal
[1/16/2025 2:09 PM, 43K followers, 1 retweet, 3 likes]
On US policy toward Afghanistan since 2021 -- neither economic nor diplomatic tools have in any way moved the hardline Taliban leadership in Kandahar: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ghb88x8acAIQ_po?format=png&name=900x900
Madiha Afzal@MadihaAfzal
[1/16/2025 12:12 PM, 43K followers, 3 retweets, 5 likes]
How the Trump administration will deal with Afghanistan is uncertain. Some statements from the incoming cabinet suggest a harder stance toward the Taliban may be in the offing -- even if it doesn’t accomplish much or "moderate" their behavior. The latter may not even be the goal.
Madiha Afzal@MadihaAfzal
[1/16/2025 3:36 PM, 43K followers, 9 retweets, 58 likes]
I don’t think the International Cricket Council (ICC) banning the Afghanistan men’s cricket team can or will convince the Taliban to move the needle on women’s rights. It will, however, rob all Afghans — men, women, & children — of a source of shared national pride & some joy.Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[1/16/2025 11:05 AM, 247.4K followers, 774 retweets, 2.4K likes]
Afghanistan’s cricket team cozying up to the Taliban’s foreign minister, with the captain openly stating, “We are trying to present a good image of the regime to the world,” confirms what I’ve said: the team has become a propaganda tool for the Taliban.
Jahanzeb Wesa@Jahanzeb_Wesa
[1/16/2025 7:36 AM, 5.5K followers, 9 retweets, 20 likes]
1,215 days since the Taliban banned girls from school, 755 days since they banned women from universities, and now they’ve banned women from training as midwives. The oppression continues. Afghan women deserve education, and freedom. #LetAfghanGirlsLearn #FreeAfghanWomen Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[1/16/2025 11:49 AM, 6.7M followers, 257 retweets, 814 likes]
Deeply disturbing news of a boat capsizing off the coast of Morocco, carrying over 80 passengers including several Pakistanis, has come as a shock to me and to the entire nation. I have directed our Foreign Ministry to instruct its staff in Morocco to urgently ascertain the facts and coordinate with local authorities to locate the missing, rescue the survivors and bring back the remains of those who lost their lives in this tragedy. We will continue to crack down hard on human traffickers and agents in Pakistan who lure innocent citizens into this dangerous trap.
Imran Khan@ImranKhanPTI
[1/17/2025 12:28 AM, 21M followers, 6.6K retweets, 10K likes]
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Conversation with Lawyers and Journalists in Adiala Jail – January 16th, 2025
"By convicting me in the baseless Al-Qadir (University) Trust case they [installed regime] will make a mockery of themselves all over the world and cause themselves deep embarrassment. My sentencing is being sought in a case where neither have I derived a single penny of personal gain, nor the government has suffered a single penny of financial loss.
If anyone should be punished in this case, it is Nawaz Sharif, who received nine billion rupees in bribes. There are countless (corruption) cases, like the Mayfair Apartments case, against Nawaz Sharif and Zardari. They are the ones who illegally acquired expensive luxury vehicles from the Tosha Khana (state gift repository). All the charges against them are open-and-shut cases, but they were pardoned, and all cases closed only because they accepted a deal. Nawaz Sharif should be held accountable for nine billion rupees in this case, too.
Bushra Bibi is entirely innocent in the Al-Qadir Trust case. The only purpose for including her in the case was to increase pressure on me. Even before this, Bushra Bibi was unjustly jailed for nine months.Anyone anywhere in the world who is being dishonest would not want neutral umpires to be appointed. I introduced the concept of neutral umpires in cricket, and even today, I still demand that a judicial commission be formed to investigate the incidents of May 9th (2023) and November 26th (2024) that should be completely neutral and transparent in its decision-making. The (illegitimate) government is trying to avoid this because they are dishonest.
We will be writing a letter to Justice Aminuddin Khan [the head of the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Bench] to hear our petition about human rights violations. Our innocent people were subjected to brutal mental and physical torture while in military custody. Hearings on our petitions must be made a top priority. As we are not getting justice from any court in Pakistan, we have completed preparations for sending letters to international human rights organizations and to the United Nations in this regard. Qazi Faez Isa and Aamir Farooq have consistently acted as the establishment’s opening batsmen, and the newly formed constitutional bench is merely an extension of this.
There is no pardon for human rights violations anywhere in the world. General Pinochet, a powerful general in the West, was severely punished for his involvement in human rights violations and torture. Our political workers were abducted and tortured, and whoever agreed to forsake Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was acquitted of all charges related to the events of May 9th.
On February 8th (2024), the rights of Pakistanis were shamelessly stolen and they [installed regime] made themselves a laughingstock all over the world. Since that blatant mandate theft, Pakistan has been suffering from instability in every area. On February 8th (2025), the nation will observe a ‘Black Day,’ as the day that democracy and the will of the people were strangled in Pakistan, and an illegitimate government was installed through Form 47 fraud. Since then, neither political stability nor economic stability could be achieved in the country.
Our negotiations are not for personal gain but for the broader national interest. Resolving political crises is essential to addressing Pakistan’s political and economic challenges, tackling terrorism, and finding solutions to other serious national issues."
Imran Khan@ImranKhanPTI
[1/16/2025 6:12 AM, 21M followers, 11K retweets, 17K likes]
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Conversation with Journalists and His Lawyers at Adiala Jail - January 15, 2025
"I direct the entire party to observe ‘Black Day’ on February 8th. Preparations for this should start right away. The individual who tried to snatch the ‘bat’ symbol and the elections from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is now lost in the dark obscurity of history. The tenure of Chief Election Commissioner, Sikandar Sultan Raja, also ends tomorrow. If there is one person who should have Article 6 [treason] invoked upon in this country, it is Sikandar Sultan Raja, who stole the people’s mandate, while Justice Qazi Faez Isa provided protection to this electoral fraud.
Our goal is to restore transparent elections, the Constitution, and democracy in Pakistan. We want democracy to be reinstated in the country, rule of law to be revived, and suspended basic human rights to be restored.
The non-issuance of production orders for Senator Ejaz Chaudhry is highly condemnable. If the House does not act on this, I am fully justified in stating that democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law have been completely obliterated in Pakistan. The judiciary, police, (intelligence and security) agencies, and FIA have been sidetracked from their actual responsibilities to crush PTI. It feels as though the orders of a dictator are the law of the land, with no regard for the Constitution or elected representatives.
Justice is a fundamental requirement for the functioning of any state. However, with the 26th Constitutional Amendment, the judiciary’s hands have been tied. The Supreme Court has been targeted, and court-packing is underway. Judges are being rewarded for sentencing me, and appointments to the Islamabad High Court disregard merit.
Justice Qazi Faez Isa has butchered justice in the Supreme Court, leaving no expectations of fairness from the judiciary. We demand that the Supreme Court protect basic civil and human rights. Military trials of civilians have no place in international or domestic laws. Our second demand is for an independent judicial commission to investigate the incidents of November 26th (2024) and May 9th (2023). I know who masterminded these events—they are the same people who made CCTV footage of the May 9th (incident) disappear.
The government’s resistance towards the formation of a judicial commission makes no sense unless it is complicit in these incidents. I have instructed Asad Qaiser and Omar Ayub to reach out to opposition parties to take them into confidence regarding the negotiation process and PTI’s political stance.
A government formed under Form 47 [electoral fraud] cannot alleviate the suffering of the people. The Balochistan model has been imposed across Pakistan. Until a government of elected representatives is established in Balochistan, the situation will remain unstable. The state’s oppression in Balochistan is condemnable. Guns and military solutions can never resolve public issues, as is now evident in the rest of the country as well.
False cases like the Al-Qadir (University) Trust case have been filed to pressure me. Those who have looted billions in Pakistan have become rulers simply because they struck deals. Nawaz Sharif’s son sold a Rs. 9 billion flat to Malik Riaz for Rs. 18 billion. The question is: where did Nawaz Sharif’s son get Rs. 9 billion? They never provided receipts when asked during the Panama Papers investigation. With Justice Qazi Faez Isa’s collaboration, billions of Rupees in money laundering were pardoned in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case. NAB amendments were restored, and Justice Qazi Faez Isa nullified the legal standing of Mutual Legal Assistance because he was himself a beneficiary. He has not accounted for his London properties. We demand accountability for Nawaz Sharif’s Rs. 9 billion. This mafia always unites to protect each other’s corruption. That is the difference between Pakistan’s status quo and PTI. 1/2
Imran Khan@ImranKhanPTI
[1/16/2025 6:12 AM, 21M followers, 3.6K retweets, 5.3K likes]
I was also offered a deal, but since I have not committed any corruption, why should I compromise? I will not make any deal, even till my last breath." 2/2Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[1/17/2025 2:32 AM, 75.4K followers, 7 retweets, 35 likes]
Imran Khan says he would not seek any "relief" and would face his cases after speaking to the press following his 14year conviction on corrupt practices in the AlQadir trust case. #Pakistan
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[1/16/2025 9:49 AM, 75.4K followers, 6 retweets, 29 likes]
A boat carrying 80 passengers, including several Pakistani nationals, setting off from Mauritania, has capsized near the Moroccan port of Dakhla. Several survivors, including Pakistanis, are lodged in a camp near Dakhla, says @ForeignOfficePk in it’s statement.
Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office@amnestysasia
[1/17/2025 1:35 AM, 95.6K followers, 49 retweets, 81 likes]
PAKISTAN: New year for Afghan refugees in Islamabad has been underscored with fear and anxiety as the police launched night raids, harassment and arbitrary detention of hundreds of Afghan refugees.
@amnesty calls on Pakistani authorities to immediately release the detained refugees and revoke its new policy of requiring additional documents like the No Objection Certificate (NOC) to stay in the capital, which places additional onerous requirement on an already at-risk group.
Hamid Mir@HamidMirPAK
[1/17/2025 2:39 AM, 8.5M followers, 742 retweets, 1.9K likes]
Former Prime Minister @ImranKhanPTI convicted for 14 years and his wife convicted for 7 years. @meherbokhari disclosed these convictions yesterday. Now the question is that will the @GovtofPakistan demand extradition of main beneficiary @MalikRiaz_ from UAE?
Hamid Mir@HamidMirPAK
[1/16/2025 1:23 PM, 8.5M followers, 75 retweets, 238 likes]
Will the government and opposition discuss in parliament that why Pakistan have been included in the countries that have a “high” security risk (one below an “extreme” security risk) include: Mali, Ethiopia, Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo,Myanmar https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/dangerous-countries-2025-syria-ukraine-travel-advice-b2681295.html India
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[1/17/2025 1:21 AM, 104.7M followers, 1.4K retweets, 6.4K likes]
Speaking at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo 2025. Driven by the aspirations of the people, India’s automobile sector is witnessing an unprecedented transformation. @bharat_mobility
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[1/16/2025 9:05 AM, 104.7M followers, 3.2K retweets, 21K likes]
Today’s Cabinet decision on establishing the Third Launch Pad at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh will strengthen our space sector and encourage our scientists. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2093358
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[1/16/2025 9:06 AM, 104.7M followers, 5.8K retweets, 32K likes]
We are all proud of the efforts of all Government employees, who work to build a Viksit Bharat. The Cabinet’s decision on the 8th Pay Commission will improve quality of life and give a boost to consumption.
President of India@rashtrapatibhvn
[1/17/2025 12:31 AM, 26.3M followers, 392 retweets, 2.3K likes]
LIVE: President Droupadi Murmu presents National Sports and Adventure Awards 2024 at Rashtrapati Bhavan https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1ynJODyBjgzxR
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[1/17/2025 1:34 AM, 3.3M followers, 112 retweets, 829 likes]
Pleased to join the opening ceremony of the US Consulate in Bengaluru. Congratulate @USAmbIndia Eric Garcetti and his team. The IN-US partnership is driven by strong people to people ties. This is expressed in domains like technology, innovation, space, defence and education. Today’s opening of the new US Consulate in Bengaluru will go a long way in strengthening these collaborations, fostering exchanges of ideas and facilitating mobility of talent.
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[1/16/2025 11:34 PM, 3.3M followers, 356 retweets, 2.1K likes]
My remarks at the opening of US Consulate in Bengaluru. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1lPJqObXYawKb Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[1/16/2025 10:20 AM, 217.3K followers, 1 retweet, 27 likes]
This week in @ForeignPolicy’s South Asia Brief, I look at the dynamics shaping two of South Asia’s most surprising diplomatic developments: Deepening engagement between India and the Taliban, and a slowly growing Bangladesh-Pakistan relationship. https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/15/south-asia-india-taliban-pakistan-bangladesh-unexpected-diplomacy/
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[1/16/2025 10:26 AM, 217.3K followers, 1 retweet, 7 likes]
I spoke to @soutikBBC on what’s driving Delhi’s engagement w/Taliban: "India has an important legacy as a development & humanitarian aid donor in Afghanistan, which has translated into public goodwill from the Afghan public that Delhi is keen not to lose." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8ke9e27dxoMichael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[1/16/2025 10:26 AM, 217.3K followers, 2 likes]
"While Pakistan isn’t the only factor driving India’s intensifying outreach to the Taliban, it’s true that Delhi does get a big win in its evergreen competition with Pakistan by moving closer to a critical long-time Pakistani asset that has now turned on its former patron."
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[1/16/2025 10:26 AM, 217.3K followers, 1 like]
"The main risk of strengthening ties with the Taliban is the Taliban itself. We’re talking about a violent and brutal actor with close ties to international - including Pakistani - terror groups that has done little to reform itself from what it was in the 1990s." NSB
Tshering Tobgay@tsheringtobgay
[1/17/2025 4:30 AM, 100.6K followers, 2 likes]
Bid farewell to Ms. Andrea James, the outgoing Representative @UNICEFBhutan. I expressed heartfelt gratitude to UNICEF for being one of our most valued development partners and thanked Ms. James for her remarkable contributions during her tenure of barely two years in Bhutan.
Tshering Tobgay@tsheringtobgay
[1/17/2025 4:30 AM, 100.6K followers]
Wishing her the very best in all her future endeavors, and she will always have a warm welcome awaiting her in Bhutan.
Ibrahim Mohamed Solih@ibusolih
[1/16/2025 9:51 AM, 149.2K followers, 90 retweets, 194 likes]
Had a very warm and cordial afternoon meeting with President Mahinda Rajapaksa (@PresRajapaksa)and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (@GotabayaR) in Colombo. Our discussions touched on the special relations between Maldives and Sri Lanka as well as challenges and opportunities we collectively face in the Indian Ocean region.
Embassy of Nepal, Washington, D.C.@nepalembassyusa
[1/16/2025 4:36 PM, 3.5K followers, 3 retweets, 28 likes]
Pleased to welcome the students from William and Mary University and brief on Nepal-USA relations, foreign policy and other issues of national interest.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[1/16/2025 1:05 PM, 144.5K followers, 15 retweets, 111 likes]
Honored to meet Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing today (16). Grateful for China’s strong support for Sri Lanka’s vision of ‘A Thriving Nation – A Beautiful Life’ & efforts to build a corruption-free nation. Discussed enhancing ties, investments, digitalization & poverty eradication.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[1/16/2025 7:44 AM, 144.5K followers, 28 retweets, 221 likes]
Met with Mr. Zhao Leji, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China, today (16). His reaffirmation of China’s commitment to Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence is deeply appreciated. Strengthening ties remains our shared priority.
M U M Ali Sabry@alisabrypc
[1/16/2025 8:28 PM, 7.8K followers]
The Biggest Global Risks for 2025 | TED Explains the World with Ian Bremmer https://youtu.be/U509hHthip8?si=pA574H27_9SoYohC via @YouTube
M U M Ali Sabry@alisabrypc
[1/16/2025 4:41 AM, 7.8K followers, 3 retweets, 32 likes]
Respectful Criticism and Constructive Engagement in Democracy
In any democratic society, respect and civility form the foundation of meaningful dialogue. Derogatory remarks about the President, or any elected leader, are not only unacceptable but also counterproductive. While every citizen has the right to critique policies, decisions, and governance, such criticism must be grounded in merit, supported by facts, and focused on deliverables, not on irrelevant or personal attacks.
The President of a country holds a position of immense responsibility, entrusted to them by the collective will of the people. Citizens, aware of their leader’s background, qualifications, and values, have made their choice. This decision deserves respect, even as we hold the government accountable for its actions.
It is particularly commendable to see the President communicate in a language he is comfortable with, prioritizing clarity and authenticity over appeasement. Confidence and a genuine connection with the people matter more than superficial attempts to conform, which often invite unnecessary ridicule.
As a nation, we may hold differing political ideologies and preferences, but our shared commitment must always be to the betterment of the country. Constructive criticism is vital to progress, but it should aim to inspire solutions, foster unity, and build trust in institutions. Instead of resorting to demeaning rhetoric, let us engage in dialogue that elevates our democratic processes and strengthens our national identity.I have severe criticism regarding what the NPP did while in opposition and what it is currently doing in government. However, this is our country, and the nation is bigger than any political differences. I sincerely hope Sri Lanka progresses from here onwards and does not regress. Central Asia
Javlon Vakhabov@JavlonVakhabov
[1/16/2025 9:54 AM, 6.1K followers, 2 retweets, 8 likes]
This is worth watching US Senator Steve Daines and Secretary of State (@StateDept) nominee Marco Rubio Call for Increased U.S. Engagement in Central Asia- Senator Steve Daines (@SteveDaines) highlighted the strategic importance of Central Asia as a key geopolitical region and stressed that it has been neglected. One key point was that Turkmenistan and Tajikistan had not been visited by a U.S. senators in the last 13 years.- Daines called for improving trade relations with Central Asia and repealing the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which limits economic engagement with countries like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.- In response, Marco Rubio (@SenMarcoRubio) supported the repeal of the amendment, calling it an “absurd relic of the past,” and emphasized the need for the U.S. to work with new leadership in Central Asia to support them.- Daines also pointed out that the U.S. needs "more friends in Central Asia." Senator Daines stressed the importance of the C5+1 format, which includes the U.S. and the five Central Asian countries.- Daines also called for President Trump’s involvement in Central Asia and suggested to host a summit to demonstrate the U.S.’s commitment to strengthening ties with the region, especially after withdrawing from Afghanistan. https://x.com/i/status/1879905170567331995{End of Report} To subscribe to the SCA Morning Press Clips, please email SCA-PressOfficers@state.gov. Please do not reply directly to this email.