SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Thursday, January 2, 2025 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
America, Afghanistan and the Price of Self-Delusion (New York Times – opinion)
New York Times [1/2/2025 1:00 AM, John F. Sopko, 831K, Neutral]
The collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, revealed what little American lives and money had purchased over 20 years there. It also laid bare a gaping disconnect between reality and what senior U.S. officials had been telling Americans for decades: that success was just around the corner.
As the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2012, my staff and I have audited and investigated U.S. programs and spending to rebuild Afghanistan — a mission that, it was hoped, would turn the theocratic, tribal-based “Graveyard of Empires” into a modern liberal democracy.
In hundreds of reports over the last 12 years, we have detailed a long list of systemic problems: The U.S. government struggled to carry out a coherent strategy, fostered overly ambitious expectations, started unsustainable projects and did not understand the country or its people. American agencies measured success not by what they accomplished, but by dollars spent or checklists of completed tasks.
As our own agency winds down and we prepare to release our final report this year, we raise a fundamental and too rarely asked question: Why did so many senior officials tell Congress and the public, year after year, that success was on the horizon when they knew otherwise? For two decades, officials publicly asserted that continuing the mission in Afghanistan was essential to national interests, until, eventually, two presidents — Donald Trump and Joe Biden — concluded it was not.
The incoming Trump administration, Congress and the long-suffering American taxpayer must ask how this happened so that the United States can avoid similar results in Ukraine, Gaza, Syria and other war zones.
We should start with what “success” in Afghanistan was ever supposed to mean. I believe many Americans who worked there over the years wanted to not only achieve important U.S. strategic interests — such as eliminating a haven for terrorists — but also secure a better future for the Afghan people.
But a perverse incentive drove our system. To win promotions and bigger salaries, military and civilian leaders felt they had to sell their tours of duty, deployments, programs and projects as successes — even when they were not. Leaders tended to report and highlight favorable information while obscuring that which pointed to failure. After all, failures do not lead to an ambassadorship or an elevation to general.
They also aren’t good business for the contractors on which the U.S. mission relied to manage and support programs and projects. For contractors, claiming success, whether real or imaginary, was vital to obtaining future business. So spending became the measure of success. (The same, of course, is true in Washington, where unspent allocations are tantamount to failure, leading to budget cuts.) Accountability for how money was spent was poor. One general told us that he faced a challenge: How to spend the remaining $1 billion from his annual budget in just over a month? Returning the money was not an option. Another official we spoke to said he refused to cancel a multimillion-dollar building project that field commanders did not want, because the funding had to be spent. The building was never used.
As one former U.S. military adviser told my office, the entire system became a self-licking ice cream cone: More money was always being spent to justify previous spending. Old staff departed, new staff arrived with “better” ideas, and new iterations of the same old solutions were repeated, for years. At the same time, many of the problems the U.S. programs faced were simply beyond our control. The sudden collapse of the Afghan government and rise of the Taliban showed that the United States could not buy favorable Afghan perceptions of the country’s corrupt leaders and government, or of America’s intentions.
Yet over two decades — and even as Afghan provinces fell like dominoes in the summer of 2021 — I do not recall any senior official telling Congress or the American people that failure was a real possibility.
Our final report will detail what many experts and senior government officials now say to us, with hindsight: that these entrenched, fundamental challenges doomed any real possibility of long-term success. Some argued that decisions made as early as 2002 — such as partnering with warlords and refusing to include the Taliban in discussions about Afghanistan’s future — set a course for inevitable failure. Others blamed poor interagency coordination, rampant Afghan corruption, ignorance of local culture and the distance between U.S. goals and Afghanistan’s realities.
There were key moments when American officials could have come clean. Before the United States began, in 2014, to transfer responsibility for security to the Afghans, a succession of U.S. generals and officials made optimistic claims that Afghan forces would be effective in fighting the Taliban, that corruption and human rights abuses were contained and that Afghan elections were democratic and fair — assessments that did not align with my agency’s reporting to Congress or basic reality. In 2013, one senior official even suggested that Afghanistan might prove to be the most successful reconstruction effort over the last quarter-century.
The fall of Kunduz in 2015 — which represented the first time since 2001 that the Taliban regained control of a major city — should have punctured the delusion that Afghan forces could hold their own. But building those forces had been the cornerstone of the U.S. reconstruction effort, whose success would pave the way for eventual U.S. withdrawal. The rosy narrative had to be maintained.
The reality was that Taliban fighters with Cold War-era rifles and dirt bikes often outperformed Afghan government forces with state-of-the-art equipment and backing from U.S. air power. The Taliban were religiously motivated to rid the country of foreign invaders and what they perceived as a puppet government installed by Washington. The members of the Afghan military — beset by low morale, chronic logistical problems and pervasive corruption — were often motivated solely by their salaries, though they, of course, also suffered hugely in the fight.
Official statements across successive U.S. presidential administrations were, in my view, often simply untrue. Just six days before the Afghan government collapsed, the Pentagon press secretary declared that Afghanistan had more than 300,000 soldiers and police officers, even though the special inspector general’s office had been warning for years that no one really knew how many soldiers and policemen were available, nor what their operational capabilities were. As early as 2015, I informed Congress that corrupt Afghan officials were listing “ghost” soldiers and police officers on rosters, and pocketing the salaries.
Important information for measuring the success of initiatives was — at times deliberately — hidden from Congress and the American public, including USAID-funded assessments that concluded Afghan ministries were incapable of managing direct U.S. financial assistance. Despite vigorous efforts by the U.S. bureaucracy to stop us, my office made such material public.
Special interests are a big part of the problem. President Dwight Eisenhower once warned of the growing influence of a “military-industrial complex.” Today, there are multiple complexes: development and humanitarian assistance, anti-corruption and transparency, protection for women and marginalized people, and many others. These are all good and noble causes, to be sure. But when it came to Afghanistan, organizations under these umbrellas, whether because of altruism or more selfish motivations, contributed to the overly optimistic assessments of the situation to keep the funds flowing. Self-serving delusion was America’s most formidable foe.
That delusion continues today. According to data provided to my office by the Treasury Department, since 2021 the United States has funneled $3.3 billion to Afghanistan through public international organizations, mainly United Nations offices, for humanitarian purposes. Some of this money helps the Afghan people, and some goes to the Taliban. In response to a congressional request, my office reported this year that between the American withdrawal in August 2021 and this past May, U.S.-funded partners paid at least $10.9 million in taxes and fees to Taliban authorities. In July, we reported that two out of five State Department bureaus were unable to show that their contractors working in Afghanistan in 2022 had been vetted sufficiently to ensure their work was not benefiting terrorist organizations.
Today, most aid to Afghanistan and other war-torn countries flows through United Nations offices that my agency has identified as having weak oversight. If we are to continue providing taxpayer dollars to these organizations, it must be made conditional on U.S. oversight agencies having full access to their projects and records to make sure funding reaches the people it is intended to help.
In Afghanistan, the office of the special inspector general was often the only government agency reliably reporting on the situation on the ground, and we faced stiff opposition from officials in the Departments of Defense and State, USAID and the organizations that supported their programs. We were able to do our work only because Congress granted us the freedom to operate independently. Inspectors general for the military, State Department and USAID, however, do not enjoy such autonomy. If we are going to fix a broken system that puts bureaucrats and special interests ahead of taxpayers, the first step is to make all federal inspectors general as fully independent as my office has been.
Ultimately, however, if we do not address the incentives in our government that impede truth-telling, we will keep pursuing projects both at home and overseas that do not work, rewarding those who rationalize failure while reporting success, and burning untold billions of dollars. American taxpayers deserve better. Pakistan
Tensions Escalate After Pakistan Pounds Afghanistan With Airstrikes (New York Times)
New York Times [1/1/2025 11:06 AM, Zia ur-Rehman, 6595K, Negative]
Airstrikes by Pakistani warplanes inside Afghanistan have intensified tensions in recent days in an already volatile region. Once-close ties between Pakistan’s leaders and the Afghan Taliban have frayed, and violent cross-border exchanges have become alarmingly frequent.
Officially, the Pakistani government has been tight-lipped about the strikes in Afghanistan on Dec. 24. But security officials privately said that the Pakistani military had targeted hide-outs of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant group also known as the TTP or the Pakistani Taliban that has carried out a series of terrorist attacks inside Pakistan.
The security officials said that several top militants from the Pakistani Taliban had died in the airstrikes, which came days after 16 Pakistani military personnel were ambushed and killed in a border district.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan said that dozens of civilians had died in the strikes, including Pakistani refugee families. The group condemned the strikes as a blatant violation of Afghan sovereignty and said it had retaliated by conducting attacks on "several points" inside Pakistan.
Officials in Pakistan have not officially commented on those attacks. But they reported that they had thwarted a cross-border incursion by militants they said had been facilitated by Taliban authorities.
The airstrikes were the Pakistani military’s third major operation on Afghan soil since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, and the second in 2024 alone.Pakistani officials accuse the Taliban of providing sanctuary to the TTP, a charge that Taliban leaders deny. Pakistani officials defend the incursions into Afghanistan as essential to curbing TTP attacks on Pakistani citizens and soldiers, as well as on Chinese nationals involved in projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s infrastructure investment program.
"This is a red line for us: If the TTP operates from there, it is not acceptable for us," Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan said Friday during a meeting with government ministers, referring to Afghanistan. "We will defend Pakistan’s sovereignty at every cost.".
The Pakistani and Afghan governments, facing deep challenges at home, have ample reason not to let the tensions spiral into broader conflict. But the surge in attacks by the Pakistani Taliban as they wage a bloody campaign against the Pakistani state has put immense pressure on leaders in both countries, said Syed Akhtar Ali Shah, a former senior police officer who served in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province bordering Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s government must show its people that it will respond to attacks, even as the country faces multiple crises that hinder its fight against terrorism, including weak governance and economic constraints.
After a Pakistani Taliban attack on a border post in September 2023, Pakistan launched a crackdown on Afghans living in the country illegally, deporting more than 800,000 people to Afghanistan. Pakistan also tightened trade restrictions on landlocked Afghanistan to pressure the Taliban.
For their part, the Taliban are caught between Pakistan’s demands to take action against the TTP and strong domestic incentives not to do so.
By resisting the entreaties of a more powerful neighbor, the Taliban stoke nationalist sentiments among Afghans, helping the group project an image as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers rather than as the insurgents they once were, Shah said.
The Taliban may also fear that a crackdown on the TTP -- with which they share jihadi beliefs and deeply rooted bonds -- could divide the militant group’s ranks. That could push fighters toward the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan, which poses a growing threat to the Taliban administration.
Pakistan’s frustrations with the Taliban represent a sharp turnabout. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan three years ago, Pakistan initially considered it a strategic victory.
The U.S. withdrawal precipitated the fall of Ashraf Ghani’s administration in Kabul, which the Pakistani government had seen as supportive of India, Pakistan’s archrival.
In addition, Pakistan was optimistic that the new Taliban regime would rein in the TTP. Those hopes rested on the notion that the Taliban would reward Pakistan for the covert support it provided during the U.S.-led war.
But the Taliban’s rise instead revitalized the militant group, which has about 6,000 fighters. The Pakistani Taliban capitalized on newfound resources, including advanced U.S.-made weapons seized during the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and the release of hundreds of fighters from Afghan prisons.
Emboldened, the group escalated its attacks inside Pakistan, targeting security and police forces in particular. The year that just ended was the deadliest in a decade for Pakistani civilians and security forces, with 1,612 fatalities in 444 terrorist attacks, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies, a research group in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
Experts said that Pakistan had made a strategic miscalculation with the Taliban.
"Expectation is not a strategy," said Abdul Basit, a senior associate fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. A clear, written agreement, Basit said, "should have been established with the Taliban regarding the TTP from the outset.".
The two countries have taken some steps to try to improve relations. On the same day as the latest airstrikes, a newly appointed Pakistani special envoy, Mohammad Sadiq, was meeting in Kabul with top Taliban officials, including Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani and Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.
The Taliban have also been addressing Pakistan’s concerns by resettling some TTP militants in central Afghanistan, distancing them from the border region.
In Pakistan, antipathy toward the Pakistani Taliban has run especially deep since 2014, when the group killed more than 145 people, mostly children, in an attack on a military-run school in northwestern Pakistan.
A military crackdown that Pakistan intensified after the school attack drove many Pakistani Taliban leaders and members, along with ordinary displaced families, into Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan. That province is where the Pakistani military focused its airstrikes last week.
Pakistan has been linked to several operations in Paktika and neighboring Afghan provinces in recent years in which key TTP militants were killed. Among them was Omar Khalid Khorasani, a top commander, who died in a roadside bombing in 2022.
The Pakistani Taliban attacks have provided fuel to the political infighting that has racked Pakistan in recent years.
The Pakistani military has sharply criticized a key decision during the tenure of Imran Khan, the former prime minister who was ousted in April 2022 after falling out with the military and now is in prison.
In 2021, Pakistani officials engaged in peace talks with the TTP that were facilitated by the Taliban after their return to power. The yearlong negotiations, which included a brief ceasefire, ultimately failed.
Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, a military spokesperson, condemned the initiative as a "misguided approach" that allowed Pakistani Taliban fighters to resettle and regroup in Pakistan. "Our soldiers are now paying the price of that wrong decision with their blood," Chaudhry told reporters Friday.
Mr. Khan’s party, however, argues that the talks were initiated by the military chief at the time, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, not the civilian government.
As the fight against the Pakistani Taliban becomes fodder for political squabbling, residents in conflict-ridden border areas in Pakistan express frustration about the escalating insecurity.
"These airstrikes and border skirmishes distract from the real issue -- the failure of both Pakistan and the Taliban to provide basic security and relief," said Azam Mehsud, a 31-year-old student from South Waziristan, a border district.
"Instead of addressing the root causes of violence, both sides are covering up their failures, leaving civilians to suffer," Mehsud added. Afghan Refugees Suffer ‘Like Prisoners’ In Pakistan Crackdown (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [1/2/2025 1:00 AM, Staff, 1.4M, Negative]
The space in which refugee Shaharzad has to live has shrunk to the small courtyard of a guesthouse in Pakistan’s capital, reminiscent of her life under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
She fears being swept up in a wave of anti-Afghan sentiment, including reports of harassment, extortion and arrests by Pakistan authorities who have cracked down on mainly undocumented families living there.
"For Afghans, the situation here is terrible and the behaviour of the Pakistani police is like that of the Taliban," said Shaharzad, who lives in constant fear of being deported with her children.
Her son was recently detained while walking in a park, when "the police asked him for money instead of documents", she said.
The government cited spiking militant attacks claimed by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, for a campaign last summer that evicted some 750,000 Afghans, mostly undocumented.
In recent months, however, Islamabad and the police have also started alleging Afghan involvement in opposition unrest over the imprisonment of former prime minister Imran Khan.
Afghans who are waiting to be relocated to Western nations say they are being caught up in the political tensions.
"After coming here, we feel like we are out of the frying pan and into the fire," said Afghan Mustafa, who is waiting with his family for visas to the United States.
The 31-year-old said his family cannot go out freely to buy groceries and medicine for fear of arrest.
"If they know you are an Afghan, whether you have the visa or not, they will arrest you or will extort you," he said.
More than three years after the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul, the United States and European countries have yet to reopen their embassies there, forcing Afghans to complete their applications from within Pakistan.
Shaharzad was told to travel to Pakistan by a European nation that said it would process her onward visa from the capital Islamabad.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry called on Western nations in July to expedite the relocation of more than 44,000 Afghans living in Pakistan and awaiting relocation to the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany and Britain.
Millions of Afghans have travelled to Pakistan over the past four decades, fleeing successive conflicts including the Soviet invasion, a civil war and the post-9/11 US-led occupation.
Some 600,000 Afghans have fled to Pakistan since the Taliban government took over again in August 2021 and implemented their austere version of Islamic law.
According to UNHCR, Pakistan currently hosts some 1.5 million Afghan refugees and asylum-seekers, alongside more than 1.5 million Afghans of different legal statuses.
A campaign to deport undocumented Afghans was launched as political ties between the neighbouring governments frayed and Pakistan’s economic and security woes worsened.
A wave of political protests in the capital in support of jailed former premier Khan last month saw a new spike of about 30 arrests of Afghans, according to officials.
Khan’s heartland is in the ethnic Pashtun belt of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which shares close cultural and linguistic ties with Afghan Pashtuns.
Muhammad Khan, an Afghan community leader in Islamabad, said the protests were used as a cover to intimidate Afghans.
Clashing with the official account, he claimed close to 200 Afghans were arrested over several days, including during raids on guesthouses.
"Afghan refugees are the sacrificial lambs for Pakistan’s domestic problems and the tensions between the governments in Islamabad and Kabul," Khan said, denying the involvement of Afghans in Pakistani political activities.
Pakistan’s interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Imaan Mazari, a human rights lawyer who defends arrested Afghans in Islamabad courts, said the protests have led to a spike in "racial profiling (of Afghans) in Islamabad and Rawalpindi", just south of the capital.
The police have been given "a completely free license to pick up whoever they want, extort them (and) exploit them".
The provincial Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur, who led the recent protests, said hostility towards Afghans has spread to Pakistani Pashtuns.
In a letter to Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, he accused the police of the "arbitrary rounding up" of "Pashtun labourers in Islamabad" and warned that "such actions risk fostering a sense of alienation and exclusion among communities".
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said it was "deeply concerned by the alleged ethnic profiling of ordinary Pashtun citizens" and called on Islamabad police to refrain from actions "that create divisions among various communities living in the country".
The Afghan embassy in Islamabad has denied any involvement by Afghans in political activities in Pakistan.
"This policy (of blaming the Afghans) brings no benefit to Pakistan and will only deepen the mistrust between the two neighbouring countries," it said in a statement.
For Afghans in limbo as they wait to be relocated, life has become similar to what they left behind in Afghanistan.
"We have become like prisoners, we go out very rarely and only when we really have to," Mustafa said. Elders in Pakistan broker a peace deal between Sunni and Shiite tribes after deadly clashes (AP)
AP [1/1/2025 11:38 AM, Riaz Khan, 63029K, Negative]
Tribal elders backed by local authorities in restive northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday brokered a peace deal between minority Shiites and majority Sunni tribes, weeks after deadly clashes that killed at least 130 people, officials said.The violence had flared on Nov. 21, when gunmen ambushed a convoy of vehicles and killed 52 people, mostly Shiite Muslims. The argument was said to be over a land disute, at least initially.No group claimed responsibility for the assault, which triggered retaliatory attacks by rival groups in Kurram, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan.The violence left at least 130 people dead over the past two months. Though the two sides later agreed to a ceasefire, tension have persisted and all roads leading to Kurram have remained closed. The closures disrupted the local population’s access to medicine, food, fuel, education and work. Mohammed Ali Saif, a provincial government spokesman, told The Associated Press that a push to negotiate a peace deal in Kurram succeeded on Wednesday. He said the deal, brokered by the tribal elders and facilitated by local authorities, would allow the roads to Kurram to reopen soon. According to local elders, shortages of medicines at local hospitals in Kurram caused the deaths of at least 100 patients, mostly children, since November. The AP was not able to independently confirm the claim. Authorities in recent weeks have dispatched life-saving medicines to Kurram by helicopters.Saif said that under the deal, the two sides agreed to dismantle their bunkers in the district and hand over their weapons to the government. Anyone in violation of the deal would be detained with the help of the elders, who also signed the agreement.Tribal elder Sawab Khan confirmed the deal and its details to the AP.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 secures peace deal in violence-torn district bordering Afghanistan (VOA)
VOA [1/1/2025 6:35 PM, Ayaz Gul, 2717K, Negative]
Authorities in northwestern Pakistan announced Wednesday that heavily armed rival Sunni and Shiite Muslim tribes in a conflict-prone district bordering Afghanistan have reached a peace deal following recent deadly clashes.
A traditional grand assembly of tribal elders mediated the agreement between the warring sides in the Kurram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where years-old land disputes have often led to deadly districtwide sectarian clashes, a provincial government spokesperson said in a late-night statement.
"Both sides have agreed to demolish their bunkers and surrender their heavy weapons to authorities," Muhammad Ali Saif said in a post on X. He stated that anyone found guilty of violating the pact’s terms would be apprehended and punished in line with local traditions.
Saif congratulated the nearly 800,000 residents of Kurram on the signing of the pact, assuring them the deal would "soon restore calm and security" and lead to "peace and development" in the district.
The most recent round of violence erupted in the district on November 21, when gunmen ambushed a convoy of vehicles mainly carrying Shiite community members, killing 52 of them.
Although no one claimed responsibility for the massacre, it led to retaliatory attacks by Shiite fighters against the Sunni village where the convoy was ambushed, raising the overall death toll to more than 130.
The provincial government’s intervention had led to a ceasefire and peace talks between the warring sides, but the persistent tensions compelled authorities to halt all Pakistan traffic to and from the district, disrupting the local population’s access to food, fuel, medicine, work and trade.
Saif said the peace deal would allow the roads to the district to reopen, noting that stranded convoys of passengers and supplies were scheduled to resume their journeys on Saturday.
Pakistani authorities have been ferrying essential commodities such as food and medicine to Kurram by helicopter, citing the insecurity of travel in overland convoys. Residents complained, however, that the air missions were insufficient in addressing the district border crisis. They have also been staging street protests to press the government to reopen the road links to help overcome the shortages.
Kurram is the only Pakistani district where Shiites, not Sunnis, make up the majority of the population.
Pakistan’s bilateral and transit trade with landlocked Afghanistan through the Kurram district’s Kharlachi border crossing has also been halted because of recent sectarian tensions. Pakistani Shi’ite, Sunni Leaders Reach Peace Deal To End Regional Clashes (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [1/1/2025 1:53 PM, Staff, 1089K, Negative]
Shi’ite and Sunni leaders in northwestern Pakistan on January 1 signed a peace agreement to end tensions and establish a permanent cease-fire after clashes believed to be linked to a tribal land dispute killed more than 100 people in the past 90 days.
A traditional gathering of ethnic, religious, and political leaders known as a Loya Jirga concluded in the regional capital, Quetta, after the parties signed the agreement. The meeting had taken place over the previous three weeks with the support of the provincial government.
The agreement comes after an attack on November 21, 2024, on a passenger convoy in the Kurram district killed around 46 Shi’ites and four Sunnis. Fighting between Shi’ite and Sunni groups subsequently broke out, killing around 130 people and injuring more than 200, including the initial attack on November 21.
An earlier attack on October 12, 2024, initially injured three people traveling to Kunj Alizu mountain before the gunmen attacked a convoy of passenger vehicles in the same area, killing 17.
Malik Abdul Wali Khan, a participant in the Loya Jirga, told RFE/RL on January 1 that Shi’ite leaders had first signed the agreement. Twenty leaders representing Sunnis then added their signatures on January 1. Some of the remaining leaders would sign the agreement soon, Khan said.
He added that after the peace agreement is signed by all the leaders attending the Loya Jirga, roads in the Kurram district of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province that have been closed for nearly three months will be reopened and the government will be responsible for protecting them.
Roads in Kurram have remained closed despite repeated calls from the public for them to be reopened. Though the two sides reached a cease-fire brokered by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on December 1, 2024, key public roads have not reopened, according to local residents.
The road closures have led to severe shortages of essential goods, including food, medicine, fuel, firewood, and gas.
The provincial government had previously decided to deploy about 400 special police officers to secure the Parachinar road in Kurram by setting up checkpoints every few kilometers.
According to the agreement signed at the Loya Jirga, a strategy is to be developed within 15 days for the handover of weapons to the government. In return, the bunkers built by both sides in the area will be dismantled, and all people displaced by the unrest will be resettled back home.
The agreement also says that future land disputes will be resolved through oral and written documents and says the government will take action against those who spread hate on social media. Pakistan’s Inflation Cools, Giving Room to Trim Policy Rates (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [1/1/2025 7:32 AM, Kamran Haider, 21617K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s inflation cooled last month, providing further space for policymakers to trim interest rates to bolster weak growth.
Consumer price index rose 4.07% in December from a year ago, according to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. That compares with a median estimate for a 4.5% gain in a Bloomberg survey and a 4.86% increase seen in November. This is the lowest inflation reading since April 2018.Easing price gains and slower-than-expected expansion may prompt the central bank for further loosen its monetary policy to support growth. The State Bank of Pakistan has lowered its benchmark rate by 900 basis points since June and some economists expect the key rate to be cut to 12% in the first quarter of 2025. Contained demand and improved food supplies will lead to a decline in inflation in the next few months, the central bank had said.Food costs climbed 0.27% last month from a year ago after a contraction of 0.24% in November. While housing and energy costs jumped 3.38% in December compared with 7.89% increase in the previous month. US sanctions on Pakistan will only push it closer to China (South China Morning Post – opinion)
South China Morning Post [1/1/2025 7:30 AM, Abdul Moiz Khan and Syeda Saba Batool, 9355K, Neutral]
On December 18, the United States imposed sanctions on Pakistan’s ballistic missile programme under executive order 13382, which targets proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery. Sanctions were imposed on four Pakistani entities, including the state-owned National Development Complex. This round of sanctions is the fourth of its kind in 14 months.
In October 2023, the US sanctioned three Chinese entities for allegedly supplying Pakistan with materials that could be used in its missile programme. Similarly, in April last year, the US sanctioned three Chinese companies and a Belarusian firm, and in September, it sanctioned four Chinese firms and a Chinese individual for working with Pakistan on its missile programme.The latest round of sanctions, however, stands out as it is the first time in recent history that the US has openly sanctioned a state-owned company.
US Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer, speaking at an event organised by the Arms Control Association and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, spelled out the rationale for the sanctions, alleging that Pakistan is developing large rocket motors that could eventually provide it with the ability to strike targets well beyond South Asia, including in the United States.
Pakistan’s foreign office, in response, termed the sanctions unfortunate and biased. In a statement, it said: "Pakistan has also made it abundantly clear that our strategic programme and allied capabilities are solely meant to deter and thwart a clear and visible existential threat from our neighbourhood and should not be perceived as a threat to any other country. Hence, any irrational assumption of a hostile intent from Pakistan by any other country including the US is perplexing as well as illogical.".
Currently, Pakistan’s medium-range ballistic missile, the Shaheen-III, is the longest-range missile in its arsenal. It can travel 2,750km and has a motor with a diameter of 1.4m. For Pakistan to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the US, the range would need to be about 12,000km.
The United States sanctioning Pakistani companies on the basis of unproven assumptions will strain relations between the two countries. Pakistan has, on multiple occasions, reiterated its stance that its nuclear capabilities are only to deter India.The US does not seem to understand the strategic realities of South Asia, where the Indo-US partnership is already aggravating Pakistan’s anxieties. India’s recent missile developments – including its Agni-5 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile, hypersonic glide vehicle and K4 submarine-launch ballistic missile – have ramifications for regional stability which the US has ignored.Instead, Washington is further strengthening its defence and security partnership with New Delhi through agreements like the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies, which covers collaboration on cybersecurity, chip manufacturing, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, space and other sectors.Moreover, India recently signed a deal to procure 31 MQ-9B unmanned aerial vehicles from the US and both states also entered into a security of supply arrangement, committing to “to provide reciprocal priority support for goods and services that promote national defence”.India’s improvements in its missile capabilities and other military equipment is already destabilising the South Asian region.Pakistan has a history of good relations with the US, although there have been ups and downs. Islamabad has played a major role in the US’ “war on terror” and has enjoyed the status of a major non-Nato ally. However, the recent US sanctions will only push Pakistan closer to China, with which it has a strong strategic partnership.On the global geopolitical chessboard, US-China great power rivalry is growing. To counter China’s peaceful rise, the US has been strengthening its partnership with India at the expense of its relationship with Pakistan.Islamabad has always maintained strong relations with both Beijing and Washington and even played an important role in the rapprochement between the two countries in 1972. However, after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, relations between Islamabad and Washington have been on a downward spiral.The latest US sanctions do not bode well for India-Pakistan risk-reduction measures. The ongoing modernisation of the Indian military threatens to reignite an arms race between the neighbours. Washington’s favouring of New Delhi would further increase the gap between the capabilities of India and Pakistan.In the past, the US has played an important third-party role in reducing tensions between the two countries. Increasing mistrust between Pakistan and the US on strategic issues will reduce Washington’s ability to play the role of neutral party in any future crisis. This development does not augur well for overall regional stability. How Pakistan changed in 2024 (Al Jazeera – opinion)
Al Jazeera [12/31/2024 4:14 PM, Abid Hussain, 19.6M, Neutral]
Some 15 years ago, famous Pakistani pop singer Shehzad Roy released a song, titled Laga Reh (Keep at it), which started with the singer recalling what he saw on TV in his childhood.“When I was 10 years old, I heard on 9 o’clock news that Pakistan is passing through a critical juncture in its history,” Roy intones. A short, sharp guitar riff and a drum solo follow, after which Roy adds: “When I turned 20, I again heard on the 9 o’clock news that Pakistan is passing through a critical juncture in its history.”
The song was released in 2008, the year Pakistan saw its first election after the end of the nine-year military rule of General Pervez Musharraf. Many observers at the time felt it was arguably the most crucial poll in the country’s six decades of existence, as it faced existential challenges on political, economic, and security fronts.
As I began to write this piece reflecting on how Pakistan fared in 2024, which began with analysts dubbing it the most critical year for the country of 250 million people, I could not help but recall Roy’s song.
I began my journalism career two years after its release, and I often wonder: while so much has changed in the country since 2008, has anything really, truly changed?
Violence; a volatile political landscape; censorship; military ingress; a precariously placed economy; politicians benefitting from the largesse of the security establishment only to turn against it later – it is a pattern that repeats itself without fail.
The country held its general elections in February this year, originally scheduled for late last year.Global bodies, independent observers and critics panned the vote, many accusing authorities of manipulating the counting — a charge that the government rejected. The election led to the formation of a coalition government that kept out of power former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, even though its candidates — forced to contest as independents after the party was disqualified — won the most seats.
A violent year
Pakistan also saw a vicious escalation in violence, particularly in its northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Balochistan, targeting hundreds of law enforcement personnel and civilians. With at least 685 members of security forces losing their lives amid a total of 444 terror attacks, 2024 turned out to be the deadliest year for Pakistan’s civil and military forces in a decade. Nearly 1,000 civilians were also killed.
Overall, the deaths in violent attacks recorded this year were at a nine-year high, 66 percent more than in 2023, according to data compiled by the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), an Islamabad-based think tank.
The country managed to suppress attacks by outlawed armed groups like the Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, and Baloch separatist groups between 2015 and 2021.
But the frequency of attacks surged after the Taliban in Afghanistan took over Kabul in August 2021.
In December, at least 16 soldiers were killed in an attack by the TTP. Pakistan countered by launching air raids inside the territory of Afghanistan, its western neighbour. The country’s hawkish stance against Afghanistan, accusing it of harbouring TTP fighters, has only complicated diplomatic affairs.
Meanwhile, activists from the impoverished Balochistan province rallied in late July to demand the release of missing people, only to face complete state apathy. Mobile and internet services were switched off for more than a month.
Similarly, in the volatile Kurram region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where sectarian conflict erupted between Sunni and Shia tribes over land disputes, the government’s inability to intervene allowed the conflict to escalate, say many analysts, killing more than 150 people.
Economic respite
While the country managed to stave off an economic catastrophe by averting default, its stability remained on a delicate footing, with economic managers struggling to develop sustainable means for growth.
Under Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, Pakistan managed to secure a 37-month, $7bn tranche programme from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), providing a lifeline to the country’s ailing economy.
Tight fiscal policies also saw foreign currency reserves rise from just more than $3bn in May 2023 to above $12bn. Inflation, which peaked at 38 percent last year, plummeted to 5 percent this month.
Yet, the government appears to have struggled to win over the public’s economic trust. More than 700,000 Pakistanis legally emigrated this year for better opportunities, while 3,000 others risked the dangerous “Dunki” route, ignoring the tragedy of the Adriana sinking that left more than 260 Pakistanis dead in 2023. Another similar incident in December killed more than 40 people.
Experts – seasoned politicians, political economists, social scientists, and veteran journalists – all agree on one core issue: Pakistan’s quagmire stems from a lack of political stability. Specifically, the instability that began on the night of April 9, 2022, when Khan, the charismatic founder of the PTI, was ousted as prime minister through a parliamentary vote of no confidence.
The Khan conundrum
Since then, Khan’s supporters have launched several long marches towards the capital, Islamabad; hurled accusations at the United States for orchestrating his removal; and challenged the authority of the military, previously seen as his primary patron.
He survived an assassination attempt and faced hundreds of legal cases, including charges of sedition, terrorism, and incitement against the military. Khan’s supporters went on to wreak havoc across the country, targeting public buildings, military headquarters, and other installations after his brief detention in May 2023, and more than 100 were subsequently punished through draconian military courts.
He evaded arrests, until he could not, in August 2023. He was convicted earlier this year in cases related to allegedly leaking state secrets, selling state gifts, and an illegal marriage which violated Islamic laws.
Yet, despite all this – his imprisonment, PTI’s iconic cricket bat symbol being outlawed, senior party leaders being jailed, and candidates forced to campaign independently using guerrilla tactics and social media – Khan regained public support in an unprecedented manner, culminating in the PTI’s stunning wins in the February elections.
Pakistan’s ‘great firewall’
Meanwhile, Pakistan wrote the latest chapter in its long history of attempted censorship.
While the PTI government under Khan had procured an online surveillance system in 2018, defence sources revealed to Al Jazeera this year that the country has now acquired Chinese technology to install a China-like firewall to oversee internet usage.
Early signs emerged after the February elections when the social media platform X was blocked as a “security risk”.
Unannounced internet shutdowns followed, restricting access to virtual private networks (VPNs), and severely impeding the country’s internet landscape, a sector that earned Pakistan $3.5bn in 2023.
The coalition government, led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, issued contradictory statements, often blaming undersea cable damage, global internet outages, or outright denying any problems.
The golden boy
In a year of grim realities, one spark of positivity lit up the nation on the night of August 8 at the Stade de France in Paris.
Arshad Nadeem, a 27-year-old javelin thrower, broke the Olympic record with a 92.97-metre throw to win Pakistan’s first individual gold medal at the games.
When I met Nadeem at a Lahore gymnasium six weeks before that night, he told me humbly, “I compete against myself.”
For athletes, it might be a good way to rouse themselves and prepare for the competition. But thinking back to that conversation with Nadeem, I tried to put that in the context of Pakistan, its political and military elite, and the perpetual state of instability that afflicts the country.
The famous proverb, “may you live in interesting times”, which is often erroneously referred to as a Chinese proverb, is seen as a curse. Pakistan, somehow, has chosen to be the living, breathing illustration of this.
I, for one, would not mind a slightly different 2025, as a reporter in Pakistan. May we see less “interesting” times in the next 12 months. India
Toxic waste from India’s 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy site moved for disposal after 40 years (Reuters)
Reuters [1/2/2025 1:30 AM, Jatindra Dash, 48.1M, Neutral]
Indian authorities said on Thursday they had completed moving toxic waste from the site of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster, which killed more than 5,000 people, to a disposal facility where it will take three to nine months to incinerate.
In the early hours of Dec. 3, 1984, methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide factory owned by American Union Carbide Corporation poisoning more than half a million people in Bhopal, capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Twelve leak-free containers carrying 337 metric tons of toxic waste for incineration reached the Pithampur plant 230 kms (142 miles) from Bhopal on Thursday amid heavy security, Swatantra Kumar Singh, the director of Bhopal gas tragedy relief and rehabilitation department, told Reuters.
A trial run for the disposal of 10 metric tons of waste was conducted in 2015 and the disposal of the remaining 337 metric tons will be completed within three to nine months, the state government said in a statement.
Singh said the trial run for the disposal of waste conducted by the federal pollution control agency found emission standards to be in accordance with prescribed national standards.
Singh said the process of disposal is environmentally safe and will be done in a manner which cannot harm the environment of the local ecosystem.
However, Rachna Dhingra, a Bhopal-based activist who has worked with survivors of the tragedy, said the solid waste after incineration would be buried in a landfill and will cause water contamination and result in environmental concerns.
"Why is the polluter Union Carbide and Dow Chemical not being compelled to clean up its toxic waste in Bhopal," Dhingra said.
Built in 1969, the Union Carbide plant, which is now owned by Dow Chemical, was seen as a symbol of industrialisation in India, generating thousands of jobs for the poor and, at the same time, manufacturing cheap pesticides for millions of farmers. Toxic waste from Bhopal gas leak factory removed after 40 years (BBC)
BBC [1/2/2025 3:53 AM, Nikita Yadav, 76.2M, Neutral]
Authorities in India have removed hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste from an Indian chemical factory that witnessed one of the world’s deadliest gas leaks 40 years ago.
A court in December had set a four-week deadline for the waste to be disposed.
On Wednesday, the toxic waste - around 337 tonnes - was taken from the Union Carbide factory in the central Indian city of Bhopal to an incinerator facility around 230km (143 miles) away.
It will take between three and nine months to treat and destroy the waste.
Thousands of people died in December 1984 after breathing a poisonous gas leaked from the factory.
Since then, the toxic material had been lying in the mothballed factory, polluting groundwater in the surrounding areas.
The toxic waste cleared from the factory this week included five types of hazardous materials - including pesticide residue and "forever chemicals" left from its manufacturing process. These chemicals get the name because they retain their toxic properties indefinitely.
Over decades, these chemicals at the abandoned factory site had been slowly seeping into the surrounding environment, creating a persistent health hazard for people who live in nearby areas.
A 2018 study by the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research revealed that high concentrations of metals and chemicals have contaminated groundwater across 42 residential areas near the factory.After decades of inaction, the Madhya Pradesh state High Court on 3 December set a four-week deadline for authorities to dispose the toxic waste material from the site.
The court said that authorities were "still in a state of inertia despite 40 years".
The process of moving the waste began on Sunday when officials started packing it in leak-proof bags. These bags were then loaded onto 12 sealed trucks on Wednesday.
Officials said the waste was transported under tight security.
There were police escorts, ambulances, fire brigades and a quick response team with the convoy of trucks carrying the waste, the Indian Express newspaper reported.
Swatantra Kumar Singh, the head of Bhopal gas tragedy relief and rehabilitation department, told the PTI news agency that initially, some of the waste would be burnt at the disposal unit in Pithampur and its residue examined for toxic remains.
He said that special arrangements have been made to ensure that fumes from the incinerator or the ash left after do not pollute the air and water.
However, activists and people living near the disposal site have been protesting against the move.
They said that a small amount of waste from the Carbide factory was destroyed at the plant on a trial basis in 2015, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported.
It ended up polluting the soil, underground water as well as fresh water bodies in the nearby villages, they said.
But Mr Singh has denied these claims.
He said that incineration of toxic waste would not have "any adverse impact" on nearby villages.
Over the years, officials have made several attempts to dispose the waste from the Bhopal factory but dropped their plans after facing resistance from activists.
In 2015, India’s pollution control board said that the toxic waste would be incinerated in Gujarat but the plan was dropped after protests.
The board later identified sites in Hyderabad and Maharashtra states as well, but faced similar resistance.
The Bhopal gas tragedy is the one of the world’s largest industrial disasters.
According to government estimates, around 3,500 people died within days of the gas leak and more than 15,000 in the years since.
But activists say that the death toll is much higher. Victims continue to suffer from the side-effects of being poisoned even today.
In 2010, an Indian court convicted seven former managers at the plant, handing down minor fines and brief prison sentences. But many victims and campaigners say that justice has still not been served, given the magnitude of the tragedy.
Union Carbide was a US company which Dow Chemicals bought in 1999. Can India become the world’s third superpower? It faces huge challenges in 2025 (The Independent)
The Independent [1/1/2025 12:53 AM, Shweta Sharma, 57769K, Neutral]
In an exclusive interview with The Independent in September, Tony Blair made a bold claim – that India will rise to become a global superpower by 2050. "By the middle of this century, you’re going to have three superpowers – America, China, and you’re going to have India. All other countries are going to be small in comparison," the former prime minister said.
India’s own prime minister, Narendra Modi, has set out similar aspirations, saying India will achieve "developed" status by 2047. He also vowed to make his country "the third largest economic superpower" by the end of his third term, though he made that pledge before a disappointing set of election results that saw him lose his outright majority in June 2024.
Most projections for India’s future strength are based on two simple facts – that it has now surpassed China to become the most populous country in the world, and its $3 trillion economy, already the fifth-largest, is growing at a faster rate than any other major nation.
Beyond simple economics, India’s importance has also risen geopolitically; courted by the US as a counterweight to China in the Asia-Pacific yet able to maintain strong ties to Russia at the same time, it has carved out a niche that could prove a model for other Global South nations. But does diplomatic independence equate to superpower status – or is it the ability to project power abroad that defines American and Chinese dominance?
India surpassed the UK as the world’s fifth-largest economy in 2023, and analysts at Morgan Stanley agree with Modi in predicting it will overtake Japan and Germany to reach third position by 2027.
Yet in a test to Modi’s ambitious plans, India’s economy is experiencing its slowest growth in the last two years, dampening the economic outlook for the full financial year. GDP grew at just 5.4 per cent in the July-September quarter, well below the Reserve Bank of India’s forecast of 7 per cent. Economists say there are signs that the expansion of the Indian economy is losing momentum.
These high GDP growth figures also appear inconsistent with other economic indicators such as employment rates, private consumption and export performance. Consumer expenditure accounts for about 60 per cent of India’s GDP but has been badly affected by a slowdown in urban spending due to food inflation and sluggish real wage growth.
India’s goods exports, typically the main driver of a country’s economic growth, are also flatlining. In the 12 months leading up to August 2024, India’s total goods trade was valued at $1.1 trillion – the same level as it was two years ago.
And then there is the question of whether GDP growth really translates to improved outcomes for the population as a whole. It will be hard for India to claim superpower status for as long as it remains classified as a lower-middle-income country, a designation it has held since 2007, based on its per capita income of around $2,400 (£1,885). The World Bank estimates that it would take another 75 years for India’s average to reach even a quarter of the US.
In its 2024 report World Inequality Lab found that the current golden age of Indian billionaires has led to a dramatic surge in income inequality, placing India among the most unequal countries globally, surpassing the US, Brazil, and South Africa.
According to the economists behind the study, including renowned French economist Thomas Piketty, the income gap between India’s rich and poor has grown so vast that, by some metrics, income distribution in India was more equitable during British colonial rule than it is today.
Piketty, who was in Delhi for a conference in December, said India "should be active in taxing the rich" in order to distribute wealth better. But there are no signs that the eradication of economic inequality is a policy objective for Modi, who has been accused of maintaining close ties with the country’s billionaires and favouring the biggest business magnates with lucrative infrastructure projects, an allegation denied by the ruling BJP.
Former diplomat Shyam Saran, at a recent Chatham House discussion, argued that India undoubtedly has great potential based on its population, economic scale, and significant pool of scientific and technical talent.
"As far as India’s macro impact over the global landscape is concerned, it is certainly expanding, but in terms of the domestic metrics of development, I think those are changing very slowly. So, on the one hand, India is, in terms of GDP, today the fifth largest economy. But its ranking in the Human Development Index is abysmal, at 122 out of 191 countries, and progress has been very slow." He says these contradictions have to be taken into account when looking at the possibility of India being the next superpower.
China’s economy, once a growth powerhouse, has struggled to regain its pre-pandemic momentum following three years of strict lockdowns. In the last quarter, China’s economy grew at 4.7 per cent, just below its government’s target of 5 per cent, reflecting broader challenges in sustaining its pre-pandemic pace.
Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific at investment bank Natixis in Hong Kong, tells The Independent that India’s economy needs to grow around 6 per cent each year to become as large as China by 2050 while China’s growth rate will be decelerating up to 1 per cent from 2035 onwards.
"India will [then] be the size of China by 2050. But is this feasible?" she asks, highlighting the "slightly more worrisome" fall in Indian growth in the third quarter. "The forecast of 7 per cent growth for 2024 already seems quite impossible for India," she adds.
Garcia-Herrero says it is now clear that India will outpace China in terms of growth for many years to come.
"However, the challenges of becoming a superpower are significant. Technology and infrastructure are the main areas, but it’s broader than just that – it involves building a mature society with well-functioning institutions that are not overly influenced by the political party in power.".
Perhaps the clearest indicator of the inconsistency in India’s growth story is the deepening jobs crisis for educated young people, seen as one of the reasons many voters turned away from the BJP in the last election.
The share of educated youths among all unemployed people increased from 54.2 per cent in 2000 to 65.7 per cent in 2022 according to the latest figures by the International Labour Organization. It points to a situation where India, a country with an average age of just 29 years, is failing to utilise what is often described as its demographic dividend.
And there has been no significant rise in real wages in India since 2014, according to numbers computed by noted developmental economist Jean Dreze.
It’s not just the economy where India sees China as its closest competitor. Beijing has emerged as one of the major challenges for India under Modi, with security concerns outweighing economic considerations with its biggest trade partner.
Brutal hand-to-hand combat and high-altitude skirmishes between the armies of the two countries in their shared Himalayan border region since 2020 have led to deaths and injuries on both sides. The two nuclear powers have since mobilised tens of thousands of troops, backed by artillery, tanks, and fighter jets, along their de facto border.
A significant breakthrough came after almost three years of stalemate in October when Beijing and Delhi announced they had reached a deal to disengage from the friction points in the Himalayan border, suggesting a thaw in relations. Two days later, Modi and Xi Jinping were pictured shaking hands and exchanging smiles following their first bilateral meeting in five years. Yet the latest reports suggest there has still been no withdrawal of troops in the region by either side.
India’s refusal to back down in the years-long standoff reflects a general growth in confidence, one that has also seen New Delhi emboldened to tackle individuals who it sees as its enemies – even if they are based abroad. This approach was exemplified when defence minister Rajnath Singh, asked about extrajudicial killings in Pakistan that India had previously denied involvement in, finally declared: "We will go to Pakistan and kill" those who threaten India’s peace.
The Indian government is also accused of orchestrating targeted killings of those involved in a Sikh separatist movement abroad, in both the US and Canada. While the government has denied these allegations, it has vowed to defeat the pro-Khalistan movement internationally, having effectively quashed it at home.
"India has emerged more confident and more present under Modi’s leadership on the global stage, as Delhi has led itself with confidence and assertiveness that I think has really stood out and that has led to a number of favourable outcomes for India’s interests", says Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Centre’s South Asia Institute.
"And that entails strengthened relations with the US as well as partnership with a number of regions and countries on unprecedented levels," he adds.
In 2023, India became the chair of the G20 summit and hosted the biggest diplomatic event in the country in years. Modi presented India as the "Vishwaguru" or global teacher, and the government was accused of making a meal out of what was merely a rotating G20 presidency.
"India’s star shines a bit brighter on the global stage due to its relatively successful leadership of the G20. India’s ability to get leaders to agree on a statement that included a reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the issue being very divisive globally, was a notable achievement," says Rick Rossow, director of US-India policy studies at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
"However, these achievements may not translate into tangible benefits like increased investment or development aid for India. The focus on global leadership under Modi’s tenure, while notable, is perceived by some as flashy rather than substantive.".
"So, at the end of the day, leadership in the G20 makes it feel like India is taking its role as a major power, but when you think about what other countries actually want from a major power, India still doesn’t have a lot of capacity to deliver, whether it’s aid, outbound investment, trade, that kind of thing.".
To solidify India’s status as a net security provider, Rossow says India needs to continue building out its power projection capabilities, accelerate the production of its second domestic carrier, and get more fourth-generation, maybe even fifth-generation fighter aircraft inducted into the air force and navy.
"I think there’s still a lot more that India can do and will do as the country continues to grow economically and in population," says Rossow. Horror as mother and four daughters killed in a hotel room on NYE; son arrested as he posts video justifying ‘honour killings he carried out with his father’ (Daily Mail)
Daily Mail [1/1/2025 6:48 AM, Perkin Amalaraj, 63029K, Negative]
Police have found the bodies of a mother and her four daughters who sere murdered in an apparent honour killing in a hotel room in India.
Police fear they were murdered by her son, a 24-year-old man named only as Arshad, on New Year’s Eve in Lucknow, in India’s north.
The son was arrested after the bodies were found soaked in blood. Local media reported that Arshad fed his family laced food and drink before strangling some of them and killing the others with a knife.
His father Badar, who is still on the run, is also suspected to have been involved in the tragedy.
The victims have been named as Alia, nine, Alshia, 19, Aksa, 16, Rahmeen 18, and their mum Asma.
The family had travelled from Agra to Lucknow to celebrate the new year.
In a twisted video circulating social media made after the alleged killings, Arshad claimed he had killed his family to ‘protect’ them from his family’s neighbours, who he claimed were planning on selling his sisters in Hyderabad.‘Our neighbours were trying to take over our property and planned to sell my sisters in Hyderabad. I couldn’t let that happen,’ he said.
Arshad also claimed that relentless pressure and harassment from his community in Agra drove him to commit the heinous act. He also alleged that his father, Badar, assisted him in the murders, the report added.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Raveena Tyagi said: ‘Today, the bodies of five people were found in a room of Hotel Sharan Jeet.‘The local police reached the spot, and a person named Arshad, around 24 years old, a resident of Agra, was detained.’.‘In the preliminary interrogation itself, he said that due to a family dispute, he had killed his four sisters and mother. Further interrogation is being done.’.
Forensic officers are now combing the scene to collect evidence.
Joint Commissioner of Police Babloo Kumar said: ‘(The) bodies of five people have been found – four girls and their mother.‘The hotel staff said they had come here on December 30, and their brother and father were also there. The matter is being further investigated.’.‘Inquiry is also being conducted with nearby hotel staff, and any findings will be shared with the media as soon as they come to light,’ PTI quoted Babloo Kumar as saying.‘Regarding the bodies recovered, some show signs of injuries -- on the wrist of one, on the neck of another. Based on these marks, statements from witnesses and the post-mortem report, we are conducting a detailed investigation into the matter,’ he added. India Is Shooting Itself in the Foot on Trade — Again (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [1/1/2025 5:00 PM, Mihir Sharma, 21617K, Neutral]
President-elect Donald Trump has renewed his threat to impose a tariff wall on Indian imports to the US. One of the few recognizable threads knitting together the tangle that is Trump’s long tenure in public life is a disdain for "unfair" tariffs. India is often singled out for failing to reciprocate America’s generally low import taxes. If India charges us 100 per cent tariffs, Trump asked, do we charge them nothing for the same goods?
Trump was, however, barking up the wrong tree. The real problem with India’s trade policy lies in a seemingly innocent administrative procedure that doesn’t sound half as dangerous as tariffs. Most people operating in India today don’t complain about import taxes so much as they do about non-tariff barriers to trade. In particular, companies are flummoxed by a new weapon in the bureaucrats’ arsenal they call "Quality Control Orders.".QCOs are apparently innocuous demands that imports into India satisfy quality standards. In practice, however, they have become over the past two years an instrument to restrict imports and minimize competition. India’s commerce minister said in October that more than 700 have already been issued; he’s aiming for 2,500. They cover multiple goods — shoes, toys, steel, honey, chemicals. In private, officials say that something of the sort is vital to protect consumers from low-quality Chinese imports.In practice, however, the QCOs actually target imports from everyone else as well. And they are completely unpredictable: Companies complain that new varieties and specifications are often arbitrarily added to the list. Nor are the certifying authorities — usually the sleepy Bureau of Indian Standards — in any way ready to deal with a deluge of applications from domestic and foreign companies. They simply don’t have the capacity to keep up.If India actually wanted to protect consumers, then it would — like many other nations — simply exempt goods from this requirement that had cleared regulatory and quality barriers in tightly monitored markets such as the European Union. It would be hard for any official to claim with a straight face that India has higher and more rigorously applied standards than the EU. The absence of exemptions of this sort reveals that the real aim of QCOs is to control imports without doing anything as provocative (to Trump and others) as raising tariffs.Indian officials should know better. This country has had decades of experience with such import restrictions before liberalization took hold three decades ago. The inevitable consequences include inflation, the growth of monopolies, failing small businesses, and a collapse in productivity and competitiveness.Domestic industries are already beginning to point this out. Garment makers, for example, may be forced to use only local sources for their raw yarn or the chemicals with which they treat it. In effect, that would give some companies a monopoly and allow them to raise input prices limitlessly. The costs of complying with a QCO are so high, other sectors worry, that only the largest companies will be able to use imported goods in their value chain.And yet others point out that their supply chain has now been fragmented — engineering goods exporters, for example, no longer know whether the specialty steels they might need will be imported or held at the border for failing to comply with QCOs. “Thousands of containers” of imported steel, some from China, are stuck at Indian ports — each one representing a contract that a local manufacturer has failed to fulfil.QCOs are a classic example of an Indian specialty: self-harming policy, often produced with the best of intentions. The government knows that creating new jobs, particularly in manufacturing, must be its priority. That means nurturing small companies in the sectors that create a lot of jobs for every rupee spent. But the policies it chooses instead hurt labor-intensive sectors like garment and leather to protect big, capital-intensive firms such as steelmakers. Officials state that they know most new Indian jobs are created in petite firms; but they put into place policy that hurt them in order to protect larger ones.And finally, they wind up causing companies to limit their ambitions, and thus the size of their factories, to match the Indian market and not the entire world — after all, who can risk signing an export deal when the imports you need to fulfil that contract might get held up by some officious port administrator?Donald Trump needn’t worry that India’s trade policies are designed to benefit New Delhi at the expense of others. In fact, they’re set up to hurt us most of all. NSB
Thousands march in Bangladesh calling for the ousted prime minister’s prosecution (AP)
AP [12/31/2024 12:12 PM, Abdur Rahman Jahangir, 456K, Neutral]
Thousands of people led by students rallied in Bangladesh’s capital on Tuesday, calling for the prosecution of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and those responsible for hundreds of deaths in a mass uprising against her government in July.
The Anti-Discrimination Student Movement organized the “March for Unity” at the Central Shaheed Minar, a national monument in Dhaka. Protesters chanted slogans calling for Hasina’s trial and the banning of her Awami League party.
Hasina fled to India on Aug. 5 after weeks of violence in which authorities say hundreds of people were killed and thousands more injured on orders of her government. The uprising ended the 15-year-rule of the country’s longest-serving prime minister, who began a fourth consecutive term in January following an election boycotted by the major opposition parties.
Last week, Bangladesh sent a formal request to India to extradite Hasina. She faces many court cases over the deaths of protesters, including some on charges of crimes against humanity.“Since August 5, we have no more enemies in Bangladesh. Our only enemy is the Awami League,” Hasnat Abdullah, convener of the student movement, said while addressing the crowd.
Protesters also urged the interim government headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to issue a formal proclamation by Jan. 15 detailing the events of the uprising.
The student leaders want the proclamation to include two key demands: a new constitution after the 1972 charter, which was enacted under Hasina’s father, has been abolished, and a ban on the Awami League party.
Hasina’s Awami League had ruled Bangladesh for 15 years, since 2009.
The Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal has already issued arrest warrants for Hasina and her close aides, and the government has sought help from the international police organization Interpol in seeking her arrest.
Speaking from the U.S., Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed, has questioned credibility of the tribunal and called charges against her a “political witch hunt.”
Meanwhile, the interim government has promised to try Hasina and others in her administration for alleged crimes involving the deaths of protesters and has invited the United Nations to help investigate the killings.
Hasina also has called for an investigation, saying many deaths may have involved others beyond security agencies. Bangladesh court again rejects bail for Hindu leader who led rallies (AP)
AP [1/2/2025 3:25 AM, Julhas Alam, 456K, Neutral]
A court in southeastern Bangladesh on Thursday rejected a plea for bail by a jailed Hindu leader who led large rallies in the Muslim-majority country demanding better security for minority groups.
Krishna Das Prabhu, 39, faces sedition charges after he led huge rallies in the southeastern city of Chattogram. Hindu groups say there have been thousands of attacks against Hindus since early August, when the secular government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was overthrown.
Prabhu didn’t appear at the hearing, during which Chattogram Metropolitan Sessions Judge Saiful Islam rejected the bail plea, according to Public Prosecutor Mofizul Haque Bhuiyan. Security was tight, with police and soldiers guarding the court.“He faces serious charges like sedition and others involving the security and sovereignty of our country,” Bhuiyan told The Associated Press by phone. “We argued in the court that if he gets bail it could create anarchy as we saw in the past that he triggered violence on the court premises by calling thousands of his supporters to protest.“So, we moved against his bail plea as we believed that he could misuse his bail.”
Apurba Kumar Bhattacharjee, a lawyer representing Prabhu, said that they would appeal the decision.
The court rejected an earlier request for bail made while Prabhu didn’t have lawyers. Lawyers who sought to represent him at that hearing said they were threatened or intimidated, and many of them are facing charges related to the death of a Muslim lawyer during clashes outside the court when Prabhu appeared there shortly after being arrested in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, in November.
For Thursday’s hearing, 11 lawyers traveled from Dhaka, arriving and leaving with a security escort.
Hindu groups and other minority groups in Bangladesh and abroad have criticized the interim government led by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus for undermining their security. Yunus and his supporters said that reports of attacks on Hindus and other groups since August have been exaggerated.
Prabhu’s arrest came as tensions spiked following reports of the desecration of the Indian flag in Bangladesh, with some burning it and others laying it on the floor for people to step on. Protesters in India responded in kind.
Prabhu is a spokesman for the Bangladesh Sammilito Sanatan Jagaran Jote group. He was also associated with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, widely known as the Hare Krishna movement.
Radharamn Das, vice president and spokesman of the group in Kolkata, the capital of India’s West Bengal state, told the television station India Today that Prabhu’s health is deteriorating.
Das said that the jailed Hindu leader “has become a face of minorities in Bangladesh. The minorities see him as a ray of hope. He represents their voice.” Bangladesh Saw Surge Of Mob Killings In 2024: Rights Groups (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [1/1/2025 5:42 AM, Staff, 660K, Negative]
Mob killings in Bangladesh surged after the August revolution last year that toppled the iron-fisted rule of ex-leader Sheikh Hasina, three rights groups said Wednesday.
Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), a leading Bangladeshi human rights organisation, said it had recorded at least 128 people killed by mobs in 2024.
Of those, 96 took place from August onwards -- meaning roughly three-quarters of the killings occurred after Hasina fled the country.
"Lynchings and mob beatings reflect the growing intolerance and radicalism in society," said senior ASK member Abu Ahmed Faijul Kabir.
Two other human rights organisations reported similar numbers -- around three times more than the average of the previous five years.
The Manabadhikar Songskriti Foundation said it had documented 146 people killed by mobs in 2024, while the Human Rights Support Society recorded 173 deaths.
While the reasons for the mob killings were not given, revenge attacks surged after Hasina’s fall, targeting members of her former ruling Awami League party.
"We urge citizens to seek help from the police, instead of taking the law into their own hands," said Inamul Haque Sagar, a police spokesman.
Beauty Ara described how her husband Abdullah Al Masud -- a former leader of the student wing of Hasina’s Awami League -- was beaten to death on September 7.
"I had just given birth, but I rushed to the morgue to see my husband," Ara said.
Masud had already been beaten in a previous attack, when he lost a leg."We filed a police case, but there has been no progress so far," Ara added.
ASK also said it had recorded 21 extrajudicial killings in 2024 -- a trademark tactic used by security forces during Hasina’s leadership, when hundreds of her political opponents disappeared.
Twelve killings happened after Hasina was deposed.
"We cannot say the human rights situation has improved", said Noor Khan Liton, adviser to HRSS, and a member of the government-appointed commission examining enforced disappearances.
All three groups also condemned the brutal crackdown by security forces under Hasina’s command -- killing hundreds of people -- in a failed bid to crush the student-led uprising.
Sara Hossain, a human rights activist and Supreme Court advocate, said Bangladesh urgently needs a commission to "steer the process of ensuring justice" for those wounded by the crackdown under Hasina’s tenure.
Hossain also said the interim government must also investigate the "disturbing allegations" made by the rights groups. The Role of Bangladesh’s Military in the July Revolution and Its Historical Legacy (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [1/1/2025 9:36 AM, Shafi Md Mostofa, 857K, Neutral]
The military has been a central force in Bangladesh’s history, particularly in its tumultuous political landscape from independence in 1971 until the 1990s. This period was marked by coups, counter-coups, assassinations, and direct military rule. However, since the 1990s, the military’s overt role in politics has diminished, largely due to two factors: its participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions and its economic engagement through civilian and institutional roles. These dynamics have played a critical role in transforming the military’s function in state affairs, as evidenced by its restrained role during the July Revolution of 2024.
In the early years of Bangladesh, the military emerged as a powerful actor amid political instability. The assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in August 1975 was a watershed moment, marking the first successful military coup in the country. The coup was followed by a counter-coup led by Major General Khaled Musharraf in November 1975, which briefly attempted to restore discipline within the military. However, Musharraf’s reign lasted only four days, as he was overthrown and killed in a subsequent counter-coup led by soldiers loyal to Major General Ziaur Rahman, who was under house arrest during this time.
Zia’s rise to power as the country’s military ruler set the stage for a period of military dominance. However, his presidency ended in 1981 when he was assassinated in a failed coup orchestrated by Major General Abul Manzoor. This assassination exposed the deep factionalism within the military, as officers vied for control amid competing loyalties and visions for the country’s future. The era of Lieutenant General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who seized power in 1982, further entrenched military rule.Ershad’s regime, lasting until 1990, represented the peak of military dominance in Bangladeshi politics. However, growing popular resistance and international pressure eventually forced his resignation, ushering in a return to parliamentary democracy.
The year 1988 marked a pivotal moment for the Bangladesh military, as it began contributing to United Nations peacekeeping operations. The South Asian nation’s first deployment of uniformed personnel was to monitor the armistice between Iran and Iraq, signaling the start of a long-standing commitment to global peacekeeping. Over the subsequent decades, Bangladeshi peacekeepers have played critical roles in missions worldwide, serving in diverse capacities such as providing security, offering medical assistance, and constructing infrastructure. By December 2017, Bangladesh had become one of the largest contributors to U.N. peacekeeping operations, with 7,246 troops and police personnel deployed in 10 missions across the globe. Even today, it remains the third-largest source of U.N. peacekeepers.
This participation in U.N. missions not only bolstered the military’s professional standards but also brought significant financial and institutional benefits. The missions provided individual soldiers with stable income and international exposure, while enhancing the military’s global reputation and operational expertise.
Beyond the financial and professional gains, peacekeeping operations fundamentally reshaped the military’s priorities. The consistent engagement in these missions reduced the institution’s dependence on political intervention as a source of influence or resources. Instead, the military found prestige and stability through its role under the U.N.’s blue flag, fostering a focus on professionalism and global cooperation rather than domestic power struggles.
This transformation marked a departure from earlier decades when the military was heavily involved in Bangladesh’s volatile political landscape, punctuated by coups and counter-coups. Peacekeeping operations offered the armed forces a new identity, one centered on contributing to international stability and distancing themselves from the factionalism and instability of domestic politics.
Simultaneously, the government integrated the military into Bangladesh’s economic fabric. Military-run institutions, businesses, and projects – ranging from infrastructure development to educational institutions – provided new avenues for economic engagement. Organizations like the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) also allowed the military to maintain a degree of influence in civil administration without overtly dominating politics. These dual incentives – international peacekeeping roles and domestic economic opportunities – created a vested interest for the military in maintaining stability and avoiding direct political involvement.
The military’s brief intervention during 2007–2008 reflected its evolving role. Unlike earlier periods, the military did not assume direct control but backed a caretaker government during a time of political deadlock. This intervention was shaped by both domestic factors and international geopolitics. The post-9/11 context saw increased scrutiny of Islamist movements, and – with the tacit approval of the United States, United Kingdom, and India – the caretaker government dismantled the Islamist political alliance led by Khaleda Zia. This intervention ultimately paved the way for Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League to return to power and establish a long period of political dominance.During the July Revolution of 2024, the military faced significant pressure to intervene as protests against the government escalated. While the military was deployed to maintain order, its actions were restrained. Reports indicate that the military initially used very limited force but seemed to withdraw under pressure from international media and human rights organizations. It appears that the fear of jeopardizing their U.N. peacekeeping opportunities – critical for both institutional prestige and personal financial benefits – served as a powerful deterrent.
Another crucial factor was the leadership of General Waker Uz Zaman, who refrained from seizing power despite public calls for military intervention. His decision reflected a recognition of the long-term costs of direct rule in a politically volatile and economically fragile country. Unlike previous leaders, who saw coups as a means to assert control, Zaman prioritized the military’s international reputation and economic interests over short-term political gains.
That said, the evolution of the military’s role in Bangladesh – from a dominant political actor to a professional and economically engaged institution – has its roots in the lessons of history. The assassinations of Mujib, Zia, Manzoor, and Musharraf, along with the cycles of coups and counter-coups, highlighted the dangers of internal factionalism and the instability of direct military rule. These experiences, combined with the opportunities provided by peacekeeping missions and economic integration, have fundamentally reshaped the military’s priorities.
Today, the military remains a significant actor in Bangladesh’s statecraft, but its role is defined more by economic and professional interests than by political dominance. The July Revolution underscored this transformation, demonstrating that the military’s restraint was not merely a matter of individual leadership but a reflection of broader institutional changes. The dual incentives of international accountability and domestic economic integration have created a framework that discourages direct political intervention, ensuring that the military operates within the boundaries of a professional and globally connected institution.
This legacy, while not devoid of challenges, represents a significant shift from the turbulent years of coups and assassinations, marking a new chapter in the military’s role in Bangladesh’s governance and development. New leader’s promises will be tricky to keep in crisis-hit Sri Lanka (BBC)
BBC [12/31/2024 11:23 PM, Anbarasan Ethirajan, 57114K, Neutral]
Stunning election wins by a new left-leaning president and his party have changed Sri Lanka’s political landscape - but the cash-strapped island’s new rulers are quickly realising that campaign promises are easier to make than to keep.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s remarkable victory in the presidential election in September was swiftly followed by a landslide for his National People’s Power (NPP) alliance in parliamentary elections.
As a new year starts, he and his supporters want this to be a turning point for the country, which is trying to recover from devastating economic crisis and years of misrule.
However, they have limited room for manoeuvre to make good on pledges to voters, whose expectations from the new government are high.Since the financial meltdown of 2022, economic recovery has been fragile and Sri Lanka is far from out of the woods.
The NPP won 159 seats in the 225-member assembly in November - an unprecedented two-thirds majority – giving Dissanayake a sweeping mandate to push through major economic and constitutional reforms.
However, even as the results were coming in, the new president had to gear up for a meeting with a visiting delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with which the outgoing government had negotiated a $2.9bn (£2.31bn) bailout package.
The IMF deal became controversial as it led to severe austerity measures, tax rises and cuts in energy subsidies - hitting common people hard.
During the campaign Dissanayake and his alliance promised that they would re-negotiate parts of the IMF agreement.
But in his address to the new parliament, he performed a U-turn.
"The economy is in such a state that it cannot take the slightest shock… There’s no room to make mistakes," Dissanayake said.
"This is not the time to discuss if the terms [of the IMF loan] are good or bad, if the agreement is favourable to us or not... The process had taken about two years, and we cannot start all over again.".
The voters’ overwhelming verdict for the NPP is seen as the culmination of a people’s uprising triggered by the economic crisis. The uprising toppled president Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the summer of 2022, when Sri Lanka ran out of foreign currency and struggled to import food and fuel.
The country had earlier declared bankruptcy after defaulting on its external debt of about $46bn. India, China and Japan are among those who have loaned billions of dollars.
The recent election results also reflected people’s anger towards established political parties - of former presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe and others - for failing to handle the economic meltdown.
"One of the priorities for Dissanayake will be to give some economic relief to the people due to excessive taxation and the cost-of-living crisis. Debt management is another big challenge," veteran political analyst Prof Jayadeva Uyangoda told the BBC.
So far the massive political changes don’t seem to have had any impact on people like Niluka Dilrukshi, a mother-of-four who lives in a suburb of the capital Colombo. Her husband is a daily-wage labourer and the family still find it hard to get by.
The BBC spoke to her about the soaring cost of living in January 2022, months before mass protests erupted.
At that time, she said her family was eating only two meals a day, instead of three, and they were giving only vegetables and rice to their children due to the high cost of fish and meat.
"We are still struggling to make ends meet and nothing has changed. The price of rice, which is the staple food, has increased further. We are not getting any relief from the government," Mrs Dilrukshi says.
People like her want the new government to take immediate steps to bring down the cost of essentials. Sri Lanka is an import-dependent nation, and it needs foreign currency to bring in items like food and medicine.
For now, Colombo is able to hold on to its currency reserves as it has suspended its debt repayments.
The real struggle, experts point out, will start probably in the next three or four years when it starts repaying its debt.
People’s perception of President Dissanayake and his new government could change if there’s no visible change in their standard of living in the next two or three years.
"People have given him a huge mandate. The IMF should respect that by allowing him to give some relief to the people through social welfare programmes," says Prof Uyangoda.
Dissanayake must also contend with India and China, which are jostling for influence in Sri Lanka, where both have invested heavily in recent years.
"Both India and China will try to bring Colombo under their sphere of influence. I think the new government’s foreign policy will be very pragmatic without aligning with anyone," says Prof Uyangoda.
In a careful diplomatic manoeuvre, Dissanayake chose Delhi as his first official overseas destination in mid-December. During the visit, India promised to supply liquefied natural gas for Sri Lankan power plants and work on connecting the power grids of the two countries in the long run.
China’s increasing foothold in Sri Lanka, especially calls by Chinese "research" vessels to the island’s ports - so close to India’s southern tip - has triggered concern in Delhi.
"I have given an assurance to the prime minister of India that we will not allow our land to be used in any way in a manner that is detrimental to the interest of India," Dissanayake said after talks with Narendra Modi.
Delhi will no doubt be pleased with the assurance, but Dissanayake will find out what Beijing expects when he visits China in mid-January. ‘Treat us like humans’: Fishing wars trap Indians in Sri Lankan waters (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [1/1/2025 2:19 AM, Namrata Acharya, 19588K, Negative]
When Ashoka* heard boots approaching, he began to shiver in fear. The 23-year-old was in the engine room of his boat, as three Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) men boarded the vessel. When Ashoka, an Indian fisherman from Pamban Island at the southernmost tip of India, came out on the deck, he saw the officers beating and pushing the eight fishermen on his boat, using guns, iron rods and wooden logs.The ordeal continued for an hour, with one of the uniformed men yelling, “Beat them hard, harder”, recalls Ashoka, who was beaten too.The fishermen — all Indians — were later handcuffed and chained, the steel edges cutting into their skin and causing itching. Chained together, none of them could move; otherwise, they would all fall. The fishermen were taken to a navy camp in Karainagar, north of Sri Lanka. Fifteen days later, two men — whom the fishermen would later learn were from the Indian embassy in Colombo — visited and gave them towels and soap. The men were finally released a month after they were arrested.That was 2019, and the fishermen had been arrested off Katchatheevu, an uninhabited island that comes under Sri Lanka’s territory, for fishing in that country’s waters. Yet horrors of Ashoka’s experience have only become more and more commonplace since then — peaking in 2024, with a spike in the number of Indian fishermen arrested by Sri Lanka, amid mounting tensions over allegations that military authorities mistreat them in custody.A record 535 Indian fishermen were arrested by Sri Lanka in 2024 — nearly double the previous year — according to Indian government data. As of November 29, 141 Indian fishermen remained in Sri Lankan jails, with 198 trawlers confiscated.In September, five fishermen who had crossed into Sri Lankan waters returned to Pamban with tonsured heads after they were arrested, and — according to the fishermen — were treated like convicts. They had to pay fines of 50,000 Sri Lankan rupees ($170) each to secure their release.Protests erupted within the fishing community in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where Pamban falls, against their government over frustrations that New Delhi has not been able to ensure their security. Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, three other Indian fishermen were sentenced to six months of imprisonment along with fines.The SLN and the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs have not responded to Al Jazeera’s emails requesting comments on the allegations that Sri Lankan officers mistreat arrested fishermen.“I wish they would treat us like humans,” says Ashoka.‘That’s our fishing ground’The Gulf of Mannar, an inlet of the Indian Ocean connecting India and Sri Lanka, is rich in biodiversity and a source of livelihood for both countries’ fishermen. Kachchatheevu, a tiny island in the Palk Strait, a stretch of ocean that divides the two countries, was historically a common fishing ground for Indians and Sri Lankans. The fishing rights of Indians in the region were scrapped in 1976 after the island was ceded to Sri Lanka by India in 1974. Today, Kachchatheevu is a site of frequent arrests of Indian fishermen.For Indian fishermen in Pamban, crossing the maritime border into Sri Lankan waters is a matter of survival.The catch on the Indian side has been declining amid climate change, increasing plastic pollution in the sea and the rampant use of mechanised trawlers over decades. Trawlers, which scrape the seabed in their search for fish, destroy the seafloor habitat, including coral reefs. This in turn disrupts breeding cycles. Marine experts also blame trawlers for sea pollution from abandoned nets and fuel spills.The seabed on the Indian side is rocky, and the international border near fishing sites like Rameswaram in Pamban starts at a distance of only 12 nautical miles (about 22km) from the shore, reducing the fishing area for Indian fishermen. To these fishers, the waters just across the maritime border are legitimate territory to sail into.“That’s our fishing ground. Fishermen cross the border knowing well that they might get arrested or even die. If fishermen return without any fish, they cannot survive,” says P Jesuraja, president of an association of fishermen with mechanised boats in Ramanathapuram district in Tamil Nadu.Often, though, fisherfolk enter Sri Lankan waters without intending to go there, he added.“Almost half the time fishermen drift into the Sri Lankan side due to water currents or if it is very dark or raining,” Jesuraja says.‘Fight between the fishermen’In many ways, experts and fishers accept that India has contributed to this crisis through policies it first pushed seven decades earlier.Starting in the 1950s, backed by international funding, India encouraged the use of trawlers. The result was a spike in the incomes of Indian fishermen but at the cost of destroying coral reef formations. On the other hand, the Sri Lankan side has a relatively rich fish population: the waters are shallower, and the country has a wider continental shelf that is more conducive to fishing. Sri Lanka’s marine ecosystem is richer than India’s also because it does not allow trawling.Sri Lankan fishermen fear that Indian trawlers in their waters will eventually lead to declining marine populations — just as it happened in Indian waters.“This seems like a fight between the fishermen of both countries,” adds Jesuraja.While the Indian government engages in diplomatic talks with Sri Lanka to secure the release of fishermen, it is not able to bring back their boats — a lifetime investment gone for good, said Jesuraja.Adding to their problems, in 2019, the United States imposed a ban on Indian wild-caught shrimp because the country’s vessels often do not deploy what are known as turtle excluder devices. These devices allow turtles caught accidentally during fishing to escape. India has no regulations requiring the use of these devices, so fishermen avoid their use.India’s Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) estimates that the country has lost $500m worth of revenue in shrimp exports since the US ban came into place. That ban in turn has meant that other countries are able to bargain for lower prices while seeking to buy Indian shrimp, says Jesuraja.The rising cost of diesel has also hit Indian fishermen. “Earlier, diesel was 50 rupees [about $0.6 at the current rate] a litre, and a kilogramme of prawn would sell at 700 rupees [$8]. Now the diesel rate is almost Rs 100 a litre and per kilogramme of prawn sells for 400-500 rupees [$4.6-5.8],” says Jesuraja.‘Less fish, more plastic’Yet Jesuraja argues that climate change and rising sea pollution represent the biggest challenges facing Indian fisherfolk.“The problem in India is plastic waste and not the trawlers,” he says. “Reducing plastic waste will solve half of our problems.”
“About 10 years ago, when we put a fishing net in the sea, we would catch only fish. Nowadays, the amount of fish is less than the plastic waste,” says Marivel, a fisherman from Pamban Island, Tamil Nadu.Earlier, the rainy season would be good for fishers, including those catching sardines. Now, due to erratic rain patterns, the supply of fresh water has reduced, leading to a sharp decline in sardines, said Marivel. Due to the increasing frequency of cyclones between November and February, fishermen are also unable to go to sea for several days.As fishermen face falling incomes, women are forced to venture into the deep sea to collect seaweed as an alternative source of income. But that practice too has been affected by climate change.About a decade ago, women from Pamban Island started collecting seaweed as incomes from fishing began to fall. Marie, a seaweed collector on Pamban, says this year she could collect only about 3kg of seaweed a day, while about 10 years ago, she used to collect 20-25kg a day.Women are often required to dive up to 3.5 metres (12 feet) under the sea without any protective gear to collect seaweed.Rising phytoplankton blooms in the sea due to erratic rains and rising sea temperatures are causing seaweed and coral erosion. As a result, small fish are unable to breathe and die on the shore, says Gayatri Usman, station head of Kadal Osai, a community radio station in the region.The radio station, run by fisherfolk in Rameswaram, helps raise awareness about climate change through local traditions, folk tales, and songs. It recently offered 1,000 rupees ($11.6) for every fisherman who saved a turtle.“Our intention [is] to make people aware about climate change. We can’t change climate change, but the idea is to make them aware. Our motto is: think globally and act locally. Only if we think of local solutions to climate change, we can fight it globally,” says Usman.But for many fisher families, it’s already too late. The spate of arrests they and their comrades have faced in recent months means that many want their future generations to stay away from fishing. “We would never want our children to be fishermen or marry a fisherman,” says Marivel. Central Asia
Recent deals show value of Trans-Caspian route in turbulent times (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [1/2/2025 3:33 AM, Joe Luc Barnes, 1.3M, Neutral]
Recent intergovernmental talks and deals over the Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor highlight the importance of the trade route at a time of increased geopolitical tensions, with Central Asian countries being courted by Europe and China.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was welcomed to France in a state visit in November, pointing to the country’s importance to the European Union’s trade policy. This was followed weeks later by a meeting in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana between the French ambassador to the country and the head of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route Association, where the two discussed progress on the Middle Corridor and its integration into the European railway system.
Chinese investment is also flowing into the route, highlighted by an agreement formed at November’s COP29 climate change conference between China, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to build a new cargo terminal at Azerbaijan’s Port of Baku that can handle 11 million tonnes annually by 2030.
Comprising more than 4,000 kilometers of railways, a 500-km sea crossing and spanning four countries, the Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor’s aim to connect Europe and China is an ambitious undertaking.
But Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey -- as well as outside investors -- are increasingly bullish about its prospects, even though they face challenges of long journey times, tight capacity and higher costs. They see the Middle Corridor as a ticket to grow their economies, offering a land route for the flow of goods from East to West that is insulated from flaring geopolitical tensions.
The Northern Corridor over Russia is still the main route plowed by trans-Eurasian freight. Goods leave China on packed trains, traveling across Russia, through Belarus and into Poland, before being distributed across Euope. The journey along this route generally takes around 13 days -- less than half the shipping time."It’s an extremely popular route," said Anna Matveeva, senior research fellow at King’s College London. "The only problem with it is politics."
Politics are an intractable problem. Western companies and governments have cut exposure to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The need for diversification became even more acute after Houthi rebels began attacking ships in the Red Sea.
This has led to renewed interest in the Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor, which has emerged as an eye-of-the-needle thread stitching together Europe and Asia while avoiding Russia.
But issues remain. Journeys generally take a week longer than the Northern Corridor route, with the sheer number of countries involved making transport along the route more vulnerable to delays.
Capacity is another problem. The Russian route has an annual capacity of over 100 million tonnes, while the Middle Corridor offers just 6 million.
"The primary challenge with the Middle Corridor lies in its rapid emergence as a critical route driven by urgent demand, rather than through a gradual, organic development process," said Amangeldy Mussayev, a strategy and transactions partner at consulting firm EY.
As such, feverish work is underway to improve capacity and cut red tape. Azerbaijan alone has increased capacity on its railways to 13.3 million tonnes from 8.8 million over the past three years.
Improvements to the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad -- connecting Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey -- were completed in May this year, ensuring a five-fold increase in capacity, according to local press. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan announced in August the creation of four new railway lines at a cost of $2.9 billion.
But the main bottleneck is the Caspian Sea, which is notorious for its windy conditions. In calm weather, it takes 18 hours to cross the lake -- the world’s largest inland body of water and comparable to the size of Japan -- from Kuryk in Kazakhstan to Baku, while the larger port of Aktau to Baku takes 23 hours.
One solution to this is larger boats, which are less affected by inclement weather. Another is to expand port capacity. Aktau is set to receive a $3.7 billion upgrade to create a container hub, according to trade media. Dredging work to deepen the navigational channels to accommodate larger ships at Kuryk was completed ahead of schedule in late November.
Governments are investing in this infrastructure because they see an opportunity to improve trade ties and boost their economies. Tokayev’s state visit to Paris saw Kazakhstan’s state railway company ink a deal to purchase 117 electric locomotives from French manufacturer Alstom.
Kazakhstan provides 40% of the uranium for France’s fleet of nuclear power stations. French officials hope that France’s electric utility company EDF will be chosen to construct Kazakhstan’s newly approved power plant.
Yet, as countries become more indebted to Europe and China, there are worries that the Trans-Caspian route could grow obsolete if ties between the West and Russia improve. Transport along the Russian route has already experienced an uptick since trouble began in the Red Sea.
EY’s Mussayev is unconcerned. "The Middle Corridor is not intended to compete with or diminish the capacity of the existing routes," he said. "Rather, it should generate new demand, thereby, contributing to the overall expansion and diversification of trade networks." After A Plane Crash, Putin’s Partial Apology Speaks Volumes (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [1/1/2025 3:47 AM, Steve Gutterman, 1089K, Negative]
When Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to his Azerbaijani counterpart over the crash of a passenger jet that was damaged in the sky above Chechnya, it was an extremely rare if not unprecedented occurrence in his 25 years in power.
It was also incomplete: Putin apologized for "the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace," the Kremlin said in a readout of a phone call with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on December 28 -- three days after the Embraer-190 crashed in Kazakhstan, across the Caspian Sea from Chechnya, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.
Putin did not accept Russia’s responsibility for the crash and stopped short of stating what multiple pieces of evidence suggest: that a Russian missile fired amid what Moscow said was a Ukrainian drone attack on Grozny may have led to the disaster.
The rare apology and its limited nature point to a struggle by the Kremlin to avoid major damage to relations with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and other countries in the region while at the same time refusing to say Russia was responsible.
"On one hand, this is perhaps the first time Putin has apologized to a foreign state for Russia’s actions in real time, not for some historical guilt of previous authorities -- a watershed moment in Russian foreign policy," Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, wrote in a thread on X, formerly Twitter.
"On the other hand, the wording avoids direct acknowledgment of responsibility. What we see is recognition of the incident without admission of guilt, which seems to have left Baku and its allies dissatisfied," Baunov wrote. "For Azerbaijan, the lack of accountability in the Kremlin’s statement remains a sticking point.".
Whatever he and Putin said in private, Aliyev’s public comments were pointed. In an interview aired on December 29, he said the plane’s tail section was severely damaged "by fire from the ground," accused Russia of trying to "cover up" the cause, and suggested the apology should have come sooner. He made no mention of the conversation with Putin.
Aliyev said that attributing the crash to a bird strike or the explosion of a gas canister on board, versions put forward by Russian media and officials, was "both stupid and dishonest." He alluded to speculation that Russian authorities may have redirected the damaged jet to Aqtau, Kazakhstan, in the hope that it would crash into the Caspian, hiding evidence of an external blast.
Declining Regional Clout
He also said Azerbaijan had "categorically" rejected Russia’s proposal that the Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee investigate the crash. "The reason is clear: because it is no secret that this organization consists mostly of Russian officials and is headed by Russian citizens. The factors of objectivity could not be fully ensured here.".
From Putin’s partial, belated, apology to the tone and content of Aliyev’s remarks, the back-and-forth seems to underscore Russia’s declining regional clout.
"Inside Russia’s ‘near abroad’ -- the states on territory formerly part of/occupied by the U.S.S.R., which Russia has thought of as its sphere of interest since 1992 --– things are not looking good" for Moscow, Ruth Deyermond, senior lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, wrote in an end-of-year thread on the social media site Bluesky.
"A telling-off from the president of Azerbaijan would be bad enough in itself, but the tragedy has also drawn international attention to the embarrassing reason for the incident -- Russia having to defend itself from Ukrainian drones over Chechnya," Deyermond wrote.
Putin’s focus on the war against Ukraine -- his effort to subjugate the country by force -- is one of the factors that has dented Moscow’s influence in the South Caucasus and in Central Asia. Russia’s neighbors are not enthusiastic about the war, but it has handed some of them levers over Moscow.
"Azerbaijan is a crucial partner in ‘laundering’ Russian gas -- buying north of £30 million ($38 million) worth a month to re-export it to Europe as its own. It is also allied to Turkey, whom Putin hopes will help him keep his bases in Syria," London-based analyst Mark Galeotti wrote in The Times on December 28. "Kazakhstan, likewise, is one of the countries most heavily engaged in importing goods covered by sanctions then quietly re-exporting them to Russia.".
The air disaster came weeks after the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which has diminished Russia’s reputation as a powerful player abroad and threatens to shrink its footprint in the Middle East.
In addition to harming Russia’s image in the region and beyond, the plane crash and its aftermath have exposed a vulnerability that the Kremlin works hard to hide, Galeotti suggested.
"Vladimir Putin notoriously never apologizes. Yet following the accidental shooting down of an Azerbaijani Airlines passenger plane on Christmas Day, he has come as close as he ever could. He stopped short of admitting that it was a Russian missile that was to blame, but recognized…that ‘the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace," he wrote. "His unusual candor reflects the way Putin’s position, while strong, is brittle, and can be threatened by unexpected crises.". Tajik Migrants Being ‘Held As Slaves’ On Remote Russian Farm (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [1/1/2025 3:55 AM, Staff, 1089K, Negative]
A group of Tajik nationals claim they are being forced to "work as slaves" on a remote cattle farm in Russia’s Far Eastern Magadan region for an employer who has taken away their passports to prevent them from leaving.
Two of the migrants who contacted RFE/RL said they don’t know the exact name of the location where they work, describing it only as a "farm in a forest, far from the city.".
Their situation brings to light the wider vulnerabilities of Central Asian migrants in Russia, many of whom rely on unofficial agreements and are exploited and abused.
"We are forced to work here during the nights. We come to the farm at 7 p.m., when darkness falls, and [then] work here until the morning," said one of the men, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals. "We have been working here for three months but we don’t get paid, and when we ask for money, the employer scolds us.".
Basic Facilities
The two men shared a video of what they described as their workplace -- an old cow barn in an area covered by snow. More footage they provided to RFE/RL shows what seems to be a dilapidated kitchen-dining room, sparsely furnished with a few benches and a table covered with a plastic tablecloth.
Speaking to RFE/RL by phone on December 12, one of the migrants said the group of 10 men from the southern Tajik district of Hamadoni traveled to Magadan after an "acquaintance" from their home village promised them well-paid work there.
"He brought us here and introduced us to the employer, telling us we will get free food and free accommodation and that we will be paid 20,000 rubles (around $190) each in the first month and 30,000 rubles (around $290) starting the second month," the migrant said. "But, so far, during these three months, we have only been paid once -- 20,000 rubles each.".
According to the migrants, the owner of the farm took their passports on the day they arrived, saying he would apply for work and residency permits on their behalf. They said he has not returned their documents.
Only two of the men had valid work permits before coming to the farm, the men said, adding their right to a 90-day visa-free stay in Russia was about to expire.
Exact numbers are hard to ascertain, but at least 1 million Tajik migrants work in Russia, many of them engaged in physically demanding jobs in factories, construction sites, and the agriculture sector.‘No Food’
RFE/RL contacted the farm owner, whose name and phone number the migrants provided, for comment but did not receive any response. Authorities in Magadan Province did not answer phone calls from RFE/RL.
It is not clear whether the men signed work contracts with their employer. It is not uncommon for Tajik migrants, especially those who come to Russia for the first time, to find work through acquaintances and relatives who have already been living and working in the country.
Some Central Asian migrants in Russia, particularly those who work for private individuals, often reach a verbal agreement with employers instead of signing a legal contract, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
Some migrants prefer informal agreements so they can avoid taxes and paperwork; others end up without legal contracts because they don’t understand the Russian language, the country’s laws, or their own rights.
The two men who spoke to RFE/RL said they had had no food for the past three days and are "stuck in this small, cold place," where the temperatures, at this time of year, hover around minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit).
"We are working like slaves here. We want [the Tajik authorities] to help free us," the migrants said. "We haven’t eaten any food for the past three days. We survive on tea and sugar only.".
The men said they have no money to buy food and cannot get their passports back from the owner to leave the farm.
Contacted by RFE/RL, Valentina Chupik, a prominent advocate for migrant rights in Russia, said the migrants’ only real chance to get help quickly lies with the Tajik authorities.
"It is the duty of Russia’s Investigative Committee to probe forced labor and slavery, but, in reality, it is very difficult to get the committee to deal with such cases unless somebody puts pressure on them. We know it from our experience with similar cases," Chupik told RFE/RL.
The Investigative Committee is Russia’s main federal investigating authority.
"The only thing we can do is to appeal to the Tajik Embassy in Moscow...to ask the embassy to send its representatives to Magadan to get the Investigative Committee to do its job," Chupik said.
In the meantime, the migrants in Magadan said their acquittance who brought them to the farm has gone back to Tajikistan to bring more workers to Russia. Indo-Pacific
Pakistan and India conduct annual exchange of lists of nuclear assets under bilateral pact (AP)
AP [1/1/2025 6:21 AM, Staff, 33392K, Negative]
Pakistan and India on Wednesday exchanged lists of their nuclear assets as part of a bilateral pact that bars them from attacking each other’s nuclear facilities.
The two sides exchange such lists on the first day of January every year.In a statement on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the lists were simultaneously handed over through their respective diplomats in Islamabad and New Delhi.
The exchange is part of the Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations and Facilities pact, which was signed by the two countries in December 1988. It was implemented in January 1991.
Pakistan and India have had strained relations since their independence from colonial British rule in 1947 over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. They have fought three wars, built up their armies and developed nuclear weapons.
India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974, with Pakistan carrying out its first test in 1988. How Bangladesh-Pakistan reconciliation impacts India (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [12/31/2024 4:14 PM, Murali Krishnan, 13.4M, Neutral]
Since the appointment of Muhammad Yunus as Bangladesh’s interim leader in August after a student-led movement toppled Sheikh Hasina’s government, Dhaka and Islamabad appear to be on the path to rapprochement.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Yunus agreed to deepen bilateral cooperation in all areas of mutual interest after the two leaders met on the sidelines of a conference in Cairo in December.
Sea links and military ties
The establishment of direct sea links, strained since the 1971 independence war when Bangladeshi nationalists broke away from West Pakistan, has marked a historic thawing of relations.
Bangladesh’s interim government also removed previous restrictions that mandated physical inspections of cargo from Pakistan.
Some media reports claim that Pakistan will begin training the Bangladesh Army in February 2025, strengthening military ties between the two nations. Bangladesh will also reportedly join Pakistan in the "Aman 2025" joint naval exercises at Karachi port.
As Pakistan bolsters ties with Bangladesh, there are concerns about potential security threats in the region, with India closely monitoring developments that have the potential to reshape the power dynamics in South Asia.
Strategic implications for India
Dhaka’s ties with New Delhi have frayed since the ousting of Hasina, who had India’s backing and now lives in exile there.
Foreign policy experts and diplomats highlight that India must navigate a complex geopolitical environment marked by instability and security threats in its northeastern states.While New Delhi closely monitors these developments, it is also ramping up security along its border with Bangladesh.
"There is no doubt that relations between Bangladesh and Pakistan have improved overall. This shift has security implications for India’s northeastern states," Shanthie Mariet D’Souza, founder of the Mantraya Institute of Strategic Studies, told DW.
New Delhi has long been concerned about human trafficking, infiltration and militant insurgencies along the frontier, particularly as Bangladesh borders the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, which are prone to violent outbreaks.
"The important questions to consider are whether these strengthening ties are simply a reaction to India’s tactical pressure, or if they are part of a larger design to destabilize India. If we assume the latter is true, can the present regime in Dhaka afford to pursue such a policy? The answer is no," said D’Souza.
Pakistan’s growing influence in Bangladesh
According to D’Souza, it remains unclear whether Yunus’ policies will resonate with Bangladesh’s bureaucracy, for whom the interim government is a stop-gap arrangement.
"New Delhi needs to have its eyes and ears on the ground to craft policies to deal with the rapidly changing internal and external dynamics in the region," she added.
Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, told DW that India’s longstanding relation with its neighbors, particularly Bangladesh, focuses on fostering prosperity in exchange for addressing India’s security concerns.
"This understanding is being challenged by the new regime in Dhaka," said Bisara, who added that Pakistan’s efforts to rebuild security ties with Bangladesh and counter Indian influence could destabilize the regional security balance.
"While India will closely monitor this evolving dynamic, it may also need to check Pakistan’s growing influence in the eastern periphery through proactive military postures and security measures," Bisara noted.
Weapon transfers raise concerns
Specifically, the new alliance between Pakistan and Bangladesh poses a significant threat to India’s strategic interests, particularly to the Siliguri corridor, often referred to as the Chicken Neck.
The geopolitically sensitive passage connects northeastern Indian states to the rest of India through a narrow strip of Indian territory measuring 20-22 kilometers (12-14 miles) at its narrowest section.
India fears China might aim to establish its presence near the corridor under the guise of development work with Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, India has ramped up security along its border with Bangladesh, deploying technological solutions and conducting high-level Border Security Force inspections to address vulnerabilities and curb infiltration and smuggling along unfenced border areas.
"India would have security concerns about transfer of weapons and explosives to Bangladesh for use by Islamic terrorists who have been set free by the Yunus-led interim government," Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, a former high commissioner to Bangladesh, told DW.
Chakravarty claimed that the transfer of these weapons to insurgent groups in India could create significant security issues.
However, Sreeradha Datta, a Bangladesh expert from the Jindal School of International Affairs, told DW that though Indo-Bangladesh ties are presently going through a difficult period, tempers will settle down once an elected government is established in Bangladesh.
"Though Bangladesh and Pakistan are showing signs of engagement, it is India that holds a more vital position for the former," said Datta.
"Both sides need to overcome the present rhetoric and get down to business. Once the bilateral engagement resumes, Indian security concerns will certainly be taken into cognition and this will happen only when the neighbors choose to engage and not raise unnecessary issues," Datta concluded. Twitter
Afghanistan
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[1/1/2025 2:37 AM, 247.2K followers, 83 retweets, 465 likes]
From ancient caravans to empires, Afghanistan has witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations. It will break free from Taliban tyranny and reclaim its place as a nation of resilience and glory. Here’s to a brighter 2025!
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[12/31/2024 4:37 PM, 247.2K followers, 236 retweets, 583 likes]
For 1,202 days, Afghan teenage girls have been banned from school, as the Taliban continues to make depriving women and girls of education the new normal in Afghanistan. #LetHerLearn
Jahanzeb Wesa@jahanzeb_Wesa
[1/2/2025 2:26 AM, 5.2K followers, 10 retweets, 26 likes]
Yalbano women rights activist Afghan women enter new year 2025, with heavy heart and no hope. As The Taliban are increasing restrictions and international community are silent with no actions. We need to stand up With Afghan women! https://x.com/i/status/1874718854410334390 Jahanzeb Wesa@jahanzeb_Wesa
[1/1/2025 11:09 PM, 5.2K followers, 27 retweets, 57 likes]
Afghanistan might not be at war today, but Afghan women are far from peace. They are denied the right to work to support their families, receive an education, walk freely in public, pray together, look out of a window, and seek justice. This isn’t peace—it’s gender apartheid! Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[1/1/2025 10:50 PM, 6.7M followers, 163 retweets, 497 likes]
Pakistan has proudly assumed its seat at the United Nations Security Council for the term 2025-26. We remain fully committed to the UN Charter and its principles. During its term, Pakistan looks forward to playing a constructive role at the UNSC and work closely with other members of the Security Council to contribute to global peace and security.
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[12/31/2024 1:57 PM, 6.7M followers, 607 retweets, 2K likes]
2024 was a remarkable year for Pakistan, as we marched from default to development, overcoming economic challenges with resilience and determination. We made difficult but necessary decisions that rescued our economy from collapse, restored macroeconomic stability, controlled fiscal deficits, and strengthened our reserves. As a result, inflation has come down to single digits, and the prospects for economic growth have been revived. Amidst other challenges, Pakistan also faced a renewed surge in terrorism this year. However, our valiant armed forces, through their blood and sweat, remain steadfast in their commitment to securing a peaceful future for the motherland. The nation continues to extend unwavering support to its armed forces in the fight against the remnants of militants and terrorists, who stand in stark opposition to the very idea of Pakistan. On New Year’s Eve, we officially launched our homegrown economic transformation plan: Uraan Pakistan—my government’s vision for building on stability to achieve sustained growth. We step into 2025 with renewed determination to achieve economic self-reliance and chart a brighter, more prosperous future for our nation.
Imran Khan@ImranKhanPTI
[12/31/2024 2:51 PM, 21M followers, 13K retweets, 25K likes]
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s New Year Message - January 1st, 2025
Happy New Year to the nation! I have the utmost faith that 2025 will be the year of our genuine freedom. I want to thank my nation for refusing to bow before the tyrants of this era, despite facing fascism. On February 8, the people gave a decisive verdict and voted for a party that had been practically banned by stripping it of its election symbol.
The Pakistani nation stood as a symbol of resilience and courage, remaining steadfast throughout the year. God willing, your sacrifices will not go in vain. The regime change experiment has proven disastrous not only for the national economy but for the entire system of the country. An economy growing at 6% has been destroyed, resulting in losses of $42 billion so far. The growth rate has shrunk from 6.1% to just 0.17%. Institutions and the justice system have been rendered ineffective.
Absurd decision to sentence civilians in military courts have provided global community with yet another opportunity to criticize the country. The fascist regime imposed on the nation has tried every kind of oppressive and authoritarian tactic to instill fear, however, fear has its limits. In the new year, I also want to thank those responsible for this blatant fascism and cruelty, as they inadvertently played a pivotal role in helping the nation break the shackles of fear. The entire (authoritarian) system is now on its knees. While it may delay its inevitable defeat with various tactics, such efforts are futile. God willing, victory will belong to the people and is imminent.
Madiha Afzal@MadihaAfzal
[1/1/2025 2:28 PM, 43K followers, 2 retweets, 10 likes]
A growing, multi-front security threat, foreign policy strains, zero-sum politics, and more — my thoughts on the five key challenges Pakistan confronts in 2025: https://www.dawn.com/news/1882255
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[1/2/2025 2:36 AM, 75.1K followers, 4 retweets, 16 likes]
Gwadar port is a commercial port developed with the help of the Chinese government. Pakistan is not giving Gwadar port or any other place to any foreign entities, says outgoing spox @Mumtazzb in her last briefing at @ForeignOfficePk in response.
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[1/1/2025 2:39 AM, 75.1K followers, 5 retweets, 71 likes]
Ambassador @shafqatAmbPak to be the new Spokesperson of Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. #Pakistan India
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[1/1/2025 6:05 AM, 104.4M followers, 2.6K retweets, 13K likes]
The Cabinet decision on extending the One-time Special Package on Di-Ammonium Phosphate will help our farmers by ensuring DAP at affordable prices. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2089258
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[1/1/2025 6:03 AM, 104.4M followers, 4.1K retweets, 27K likes]
Ours is a Government fully committed to furthering welfare of farmers. We are proud of all our farmer sisters and brothers who work hard to feed our nation. The first Cabinet of 2025 is dedicated to enhancing prosperity for our farmers. I am glad that key decisions have been taken in this regard.
President of India@rashtrapatibhvn[1/2/2025 1:34 AM, 26.2M followers, 200 retweets, 2.2K likes]
Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar, Vice President of India called on President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan and exchanged New Year greetings.
President of India@rashtrapatibhvn
[12/31/2024 9:34 PM, 26.2M followers, 1.1K retweets, 7.2K likes]
Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year! May the year 2025 bring joy, harmony and prosperity to all! On this occasion, let us renew our commitment to work together for creating a brighter, more inclusive and sustainable future for India and the world.
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[1/1/2025 7:24 AM, 3.3M followers, 1.1K retweets, 5.9K likes]
2024 saw a foreign policy that positioned Bharat as a #Vishwabandhu. Here’s to another year of new opportunities, deepening partnerships and a steadfast commitment to Bharat First and Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam! #HappyNewYear2025
Richard Rossow@RichardRossow
[12/31/2024 10:21 AM, 29.7K followers, 1 retweet, 5 likes]
The team at @NITIAayog looks at how to help "Make in India" through the creation of better, near-site worker accommodations. Improve zoning regs, building regs, and bring "hostels" out from grey zone. Reg reforms alone could drop housing cost by 20%. https://niti.gov.in/whats-new/safe-accommodation-worker-housing-manufacturing-growth NSB
Chief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[1/2/2025 3:05 AM, 73.4K followers, 9 retweets, 90 likes]
Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus inaugurated the Walkathon and Social Service Conference, organized by the Department of Social Services, on the occasion of National Social Service Day 2025, on Thursday.
Chief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[1/1/2025 9:27 AM, 73.4K followers, 35 retweets, 458 likes]
Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus has inaugurated the Health Ministry’s Health Card distribution programme to provide free medical services for injured fighters of the July uprising at all government hospitals across the country. #Bangladesh #ChiefAdviser
Chief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[1/1/2025 2:43 AM, 73.4K followers, 14 retweets, 237 likes]
Chief Adviser Prof. Muhammad Yunus visited the Dhaka International Trade Fair today, delivering a speech. Also present: FBCCI Admin Hafizur Rahman, Commerce Sec. Selim Uddin, and Adviser Sheikh Bashir Uddin. #DITF2025 #Bangladesh #ChiefAdviserChief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[12/31/2024 7:53 AM, 73.4K followers, 30 retweets, 553 likes]
The investigation committee submitted its preliminary report on the 26 December Secretariat fire to Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus. He met the committee’s delegation at 5:30 PM today at the State Guest House Jamuna. #Bangladesh #ChiefAdviser
Anura Kumara Dissanayake@anuradisanayake
[12/31/2024 4:33 PM, 143.6K followers, 86 retweets, 979 likes]
Wishing everyone a New Year filled with prosperity, unity, and renewed hope as we work together toward our shared vision of national renaissance.
Namal Rajapaksa@RajapaksaNamal
[12/31/2024 1:54 PM, 436.8K followers, 10 retweets, 76 likes]
Happy New Year 2025! Let’s rise above challenges with resilience and hope. Wishing good health, happiness, and prosperity to everyone in Sri Lanka and around the world. May this year bring unity and progress for all.
Karu Jayasuriya@KaruOnline
[1/2/2025 1:54 AM, 53.7K followers, 2 retweets, 3 likes]
The NPP, with a commanding 2/3 majority in Parliament, can do away with the executive presidency as promised during presidential and parliamentary election campaigns in 2024. Central Asia
MFA Kazakhstan@MFA_KZ
[12/31/2024 5:06 AM, 62.5K followers, 2 retweets, 4 likes]
Issues of Ecological Safety and the Alignment of Human Rights Indicators and SDGs were Discussed at the Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan https://gov.kz/memleket/entities/mfa/press/news/details/912539?lang=en
Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[12/31/2024 12:12 PM, 23.9K followers, 2 likes]
Uzbekistan: Chongara (aka Chungara) is an UZ exclave in Kyrgyzstan. About 1,700 people live there. Some 75 km from central Ferghana, Chongara officially belongs to Rishton district of the Ferghana region. Young population, mostly migrants and farmers, as I found out this summer.
Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[12/31/2024 12:18 PM, 23.9K followers, 3 likes]
Chongara, Uzbekistan’s exclave in Kyrgyzstan. Locals describe themselves as the “beautiful mix of Kyrgyz and Uzbek.” Almost everyone I talked with there comes from such a family. Farming community, knowing for its unique rice. School is old but functional.Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[12/31/2024 12:33 PM, 23.9K followers, 6 likes]
Chongara is smaller than Uzbekistan’s other exclaves in Kyrgyzstan, such as Sokh and Shohimardon and is closer to Rishton, Ferghana, its admin center. Easier access and commute. More here from this summer: Part 1 https://youtu.be/KBrdz8BIkwo; Part 2 https://youtu.be/kPfuWhjnMXc {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.