SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Tuesday, May 20, 2025 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
Large-scale deportations of Afghans stand to increase terrorist recruitment pool (Washington Examiner – opinion)
Washington Examiner [5/19/2025 11:01 AM, Beth Bailey, 1934K]
As multiple countries begin deporting hundreds of thousands of Afghans to their homeland, economic difficulties and a lack of institutional support may provide fertile ground for recruitment for any of the two dozen terrorist groups utilizing Afghanistan as a base of operations.
On April 3, Pakistan began efforts to deport many of the 3.5 million Afghans who have taken up residence in the country during decades of conflict as part of its Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Program. A spokesperson from the United Nations International Organization for Migration told the Washington Examiner that between the outset of the program and May 12, Pakistan has deported 128,638 Afghans. The spokesperson said that an additional 1.5 million Afghans could be deported throughout the year.
In the neighboring Islamic Republic of Iran, Afghans have faced not just mass deportation, but also execution. In 2022, Iran executed 16 Afghans. The number rose to 25 in 2023 and 80 in 2024. Thus far in 2025, 25 Afghans have been executed.
The IOM spokesperson said that between January and April, nearly 310,000 Afghans were deported from Iran, 73% of whom were returned forcibly.
"Afghanistan’s limited resources and weakened infrastructure make it difficult to absorb the rising number of returnees," the spokesperson explained. "Continued funding shortfalls are further straining local systems, putting both returnees and host communities at risk of losing access to essential services.".
Returnees may soon include around 10,000 Afghans whose Temporary Protected Status is set to expire in July following the Department of Homeland Security’s May 13 determination that supposed improvements in security, economy, and tourism render Afghans ineligible for protection.
The decision highlights the U.S. government’s short memory. George Glezmann, whom the Trump administration saved from more than two years of Taliban custody in March, was arrested by the Taliban while traveling through Afghanistan as a tourist in 2022.
The U.S. Department of State Level 4 travel advisory for Afghanistan still notes that "multiple terrorist groups are active in Afghanistan and U.S. citizens are targets of kidnapping and hostage-taking," and adds that "even if you are registered with the appropriate authorities to conduct business, the risk of detention is high.".
"The Taliban do not regularly permit the United States to conduct welfare checks on U.S. citizens in detention, including by phone," the advisory continues. "Detention can be lengthy. While in detention, U.S. citizens have limited or no access to medical attention and may be subject to physical abuse.".
Jason Howk, Director of Global Friends of Afghanistan, told the Washington Examiner that the rationale provided for TPS removal shows that "whoever is doing the reporting these days on Afghanistan is flat-out lying to the administration." Howk explained that the sunny news about Afghanistan’s improvements "runs contradictory to all of the Afghan press I read every day" about the Taliban "still hunting down the [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces], hunting down women, raping, torturing, throwing bodies in the street, disappearing people. It’s still happening every day.".
Howk said, "We’re going to send our allies back to slaughter.".
Large numbers of deportations are also likely to harm any gains the Afghan economy has experienced. Independent researcher Hamayun Khan told the Washington Examiner that "exacerbated by poor governance, the Afghan economy continues to struggle with increased poverty, high-rate unemployment, stagnated per capita income and growing inflation.".
He said "unprecedented" numbers of returnees will lead to "limited livelihood options and challenging economic reintegration," thus "overburden[ing] the domestic labor market and sharply reduc[ing] remittance inflow … at a time when over 14.8 million people already face acute food insecurity.".
Khan said that "without significant international humanitarian assistance, Afghanistan will risk further economic destabilization.".
Deportations also stand to affect the U.S. Most concerning for those who have raised alarm bells over the resurgence of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups within the Taliban’s Afghanistan is the introduction of a new cadre of possible terrorist recruits.
Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of FDD’s Long War Journal, told the Washington Examiner that "the massive influx of Afghan refugees will be a boon for the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other allied terror groups operating in Afghanistan." Roggio said it "will provide these groups with a large pool of people to exploit and recruit. Some of the returnees may be disenchanted and angry with their former host nations and will be willing to exact revenge.".
Howk is concerned that if TPS removal leads to our allies being returned to Afghanistan, veterans will be negatively affected.
"I have no doubt there will be more suicides from this, because that moral injury is the top thing with veterans right now," Howk explained, citing how he has seen men "strong as an ox" succumb to the veteran suicide epidemic because of "the shame of wasting their lives as they see it, you know, 18 deployments [over] 20 years.". Pakistan
Russia, Pakistan and Houthi rebels all using the same US influencer — Jackson Hinkle — to spread misinformation to his 3 million followers (New York Post)
New York Post [5/19/2025 4:10 PM, Isabel Vincent, 49956K]
A US social media influencer who spoke at a conference organized by Yemen’s Houthi rebels and attended a Hezbollah leader’s funeral spreads pro-Russia and Islamist propaganda, The Post has learned.
Jackson Hinkle, 25, spreads anti-western conspiracies to his three million X followers and has been kicked off YouTube, Instagram and Twitch.
Hinkle also gives a platform to terror group Hamas and interviewed Basem Naim, an official for the organization who is a former Minister of Health for Gaza.
Hinkle is also allegedly helping Pakistani intelligence spread "false flag" narratives against India following a terrorist attack in the disputed territory of Kashmir last month that left 26 dead.
The revelations come from a new study by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a New Jersey-based non-profit that tracks social media-inspired violence and hate.
"Jackson Hinkle has engaged in activities that raise concerns regarding his affiliations and potential alignment with foreign interests," the NCRI study says.
"He has publicly stated that he has been vetted by Russian and Chinese intelligence and maintains close ties with both governments… His public statements and affiliations warrant further scrutiny to assess the extent of his alignment with foreign interests.".
A week following Hinkle’s interview with Pakistani High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit on his program "Legitimate Targets," he accused India of conducting a false flag operation against Pakistan in Kashmir. This was propaganda spread by Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s primary intelligence agency, the NCRI study claims.
"In the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack, inauthentic networks used generative AI [bots] to create and circulate provocative memes pushing the false flag narrative, featuring Indian symbols, political figures and inflammatory slogans," says the NCRI report.
Those "inauthentic" bots have been spreading Hinkle’s message to millions of social media users, according to NCRI.
In February, Hinkle attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, and gave interviews to Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar TV and Iran’s Channel 3.
He also participated in a Houthi conference in Sana’a where he met with Yahya Saree, the Houthi military spokesman, and gave a speech condemning US strikes on Yemen, according to NCRI.
In response to a comment request, Hinkle — whose number of followers are a fraction of those who read The Post daily — said: "If you wonder why independent journalists are amassing such large followings, it’s simple:
He also accused the media of "catering to wealthy global oligarchs" and "desperate to attack independent, truth-telling journalists like me.".
After graduating high school in 2019, Hinkle ran in a special election for city council in San Clemente, California, in a campaign that was endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America. Among his campaign promises were opposing the legalization of prostitution and ending nuclear waste.
Last year, Hinkle, who now calls himself a "MAGA communist," was appointed an official representative to the Russophile Congress at its second international meeting, according to the NCRI. The group was set up to gather international support for Russia after the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
The movement’s mission is to "dispel anti-Russia myths" and "weaken the West," according to reports. Members of the congress include Konstanin Malofeyev, an oligarch and key financier of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea in Ukraine according to the Department of Justice.
One NCRI analyst said that based on his joining the Russophile congress, Hinkle "could be considered an asset to Russian Intelligence.".
Hinkle told the New York Times in 2024 he did not accept any payments from foreign governments.
In 2022, the Department of Justice indicted Malofeyev with conspiracy to violate US sanctions in connection with his hiring of a US citizen to work for him to operate television networks in Russia and Greece. The case against him is sealed.
Hinkle has praised Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, a far-right nationalist and confidant of Russian leader Vladimir Putin who once called for Ukraine to be "vanished from the Earth and rebuilt from scratch.".
"The use of generative AI, diaspora targeting, and collaboration with Western influencers marks a dangerous evolution in narrative warfare," the NCRI study says.
"Left unchallenged, these operations risk fueling real-world violence and eroding trust in legitimate attribution on the global stage.". China moved satellites to help Pakistan shoot down Indian jets (The Telegraph)
The Telegraph [5/19/2025 12:46 PM, Samaan Lateef, 27190K]
China helped Pakistan to move satellites and recalibrate its air defence systems before it shot down Indian fighter jets earlier this month, it has been claimed.The countries worked together to reorganise Pakistan’s radar and air defence systems to track troop deployments and aerial movements by India, according to Ashok Kumar, the director general at the New Delhi-based Centre For Joint Warfare Studies.“It [China] helped them [Pakistan] to redeploy their air defence radar so that any actions which we [India] do from the aerial route is known to them,” he said.Mr Kumar, whose research group operates under the Indian ministry of defence, said the Chinese military advisers helped Pakistan to realign its satellite coverage over India following the April 22 terror attack in which 26 tourists were killed at Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir.India has blamed Pakistan and accused it of backing cross-border terrorism. Pakistan has denied any involvement and sought an international probe into the attack.On May 7, India’s military struck sites in Pakistan and claimed to have destroyed nine terrorist camps, but Pakistan said 31 civilians were killed and that residential houses, mosques, and a power plant were targeted.In retaliation, Pakistan said it shot down six Indian warplanes during the bombardment, including three French-made Rafales. India has not commented on the specific losses.It followed another round of strikes, which rapidly escalated into the most serious clash between the nuclear-armed neighbours in nearly five decades, involving supersonic missiles, drones, and cyber attacks.But hours after the initial Indian military strikes, Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s foreign minister, told parliament that Islamabad had used Chinese jets, including J-10C, against India, with Beijing’s ambassador called to his office over the deployment.“At 4am in the morning, the whole Chinese team, led by their ambassador, was present at the foreign office,” he said. “We apprised them about all the developments taken place until that time, and they were very happy,” he said.Pakistan also used a Chinese-made PL-15 missile, which has never been used in combat before. Its use has raised concerns among Beijing’s rivals, including in Taiwan. China’s government has not commented on the use of its equipment.Donald Trump, the US president, surprised many by announcing a “full and immediate ceasefire” on May 10, which appears to be holding.According to Mr Kumar, China’s help to Pakistan extended beyond logistics to strategic testing of its defence technologies in the Himalayan region.Mr Dar will arrive in Beijing on Monday on a three-day official visit to China, where he will hold “in-depth discussions” with Wang Yi, his Chinese counterpart, “on the evolving regional situation in South Asia and its implications for peace and stability”, his office said in a statement.“The two sides will also review the entire spectrum of Pakistan-China bilateral relations and exchange views on regional and global developments of mutual interest,” it added.Dozens of Indian government websites are yet to be restored as Pakistan launched a cyber attack on nearly 1.5 million Indian websites and power infrastructure. How conflict with India helped boost the Pakistan military’s domestic image (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [5/19/2025 4:14 PM, Abid Hussain, 17M]
On May 9, 2023, thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets across major cities, targeting both public and private properties, especially those affiliated with the powerful Pakistani military.
Among the targets were the army’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, the residence of a top military commander in Lahore, which was set ablaze, and several other installations and monuments.
The demonstrators, supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), were protesting the arrest of their leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was detained at the Islamabad High Court on corruption charges.
Though Khan was released in less than 48 hours, the protests marked an unprecedented challenge to the military’s dominance, which has long been regarded as the most powerful and influential entity in Pakistan, wielding its authority in most spheres.
Almost exactly two years later, on May 11, 2025, thousands once again took to the streets, but this time in celebration – and praise – of the military.
India and Pakistan have each claimed wins in their brief but intense military clashes last week, during which they launched attacks on each other’s facilities on a scale unseen since their 1971 war.
What is clearer is the domestic impact of the near-war in Pakistan: a sharp surge in support for the military, which is viewed as having defended the country against Indian aggression.
A Gallup Pakistan survey conducted between May 11 and 15 showed that 96 percent of more than 500 respondents believed Pakistan had won the conflict.
Initial data and survey trends shared exclusively with Al Jazeera showed 82 percent rated the military’s performance as “very good”, with fewer than 1 percent expressing disapproval. Most significantly, 92 percent said their opinion of the military improved as a result of the conflict.‘Black Day’ to ‘The Day of the Righteous Battle’
On May 11, a day after United States President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, cities across Pakistan were filled with people riding cars and motorbikes, honking horns and playing patriotic songs. They were waving the national flag and posters praising the military, particularly its chief, General Syed Asim Munir.
There was jubilation in the air, and relief. For four days before that, Pakistan had been locked in a tense military confrontation with archrival India, the latest chapter of a conflict that analysts say has long served as the principal raison d’être for the country’s military.
On May 7, more than two weeks after gunmen killed 26 civilians in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, India, blaming Islamabad for the attack, launched missiles at multiple sites in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan’s Punjab province, killing at least 51 people, including 11 soldiers and several children.
Over the following three days, the two nuclear-armed nations launched missiles, drones and artillery at each other, bringing 1.6 billion people in the subcontinent to the brink of a full-fledged war.
After the ceasefire was announced, Pakistan’s government declared May 10 as “The Day of Righteous Battle”. This was a stark contrast to May 9, 2023, which the government had described as a “Black Day”, because of the violence unleashed by Khan’s supporters against public and private infrastructure.
Six days after the ceasefire, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hailed the military’s actions as a “golden chapter in military history”.“This is a victory of the Armed Forces of Pakistan as well as the self-reliant, proud and dignified Pakistani nation. The entire nation is standing by the armed forces like a wall made of lead,” Sharif said in a statement, in a reference to the name of the operation against India, “Bunyan Marsoos”, an Arabic phrase meaning “a structure made of lead”.
Imprisoned ex-premier Khan, who has been in jail since August 2023, also issued a statement through his lawyers, saying the military needs public support more than ever.“The morale of the nation becomes the strength of the armed forces. That is why I’ve consistently emphasised that we must not isolate our people, and we must breathe life back into our justice system,” Khan said, according to a message posted on his account on X, the social media platform, on May 13.
Though released soon after his arrest in May 2023, Khan was arrested again in August 2023 and remains in custody, along with his wife, Bushra Bibi.‘Reverence turned to fear’
Since Pakistan’s independence from British colonial rule in August 1947, its military – especially the army – has remained the most dominant force in the country.
Maria Rashid, a lecturer in politics and international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, said the military has long portrayed itself as “the saviour and defender of Pakistan’s physical borders but also its ideological frontiers”.
This dominance has been cemented by four military coups and decades of direct and indirect rule. Before retiring after his six-year-long tenure, former Pakistani army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, in his farewell address, conceded in 2022 that Pakistan’s military had meddled in politics for decades. He also promised that in the future, the army would steer clear of interfering in Pakistan’s democratic sphere.
Yet the military’s stranglehold over the public’s goodwill has been tested in recent years.
When Imran Khan first became prime minister in 2018, the former cricket star turned-philanthropist-turned politician spoke of how his government and the army were “on one page”.
But like many of his predecessors, that relationship soured. In April 2022, Khan was ousted via a parliamentary vote of no confidence. Yet, unlike previous leaders, Khan fought back publicly, accusing the military and the US of directly engineering his removal. The military and the US have both vehemently and repeatedly denied those allegations.
His confrontations with the military escalated, including after General Munir assumed leadership in November 2022. Khan and the PTI launched a campaign of defiance, leading to dozens of criminal cases, including sedition against him and his colleagues.
The May 9 riots in 2023 triggered a sweeping crackdown against the PTI. Thousands of party workers were arrested by the police, with more than 100 subsequently tried in military courts, many receiving prison sentences.
While the military has faced allegations of domestic repression before, Rashid said that the backlash after Khan’s ouster was unprecedented.“It was a fall from grace, and it was vocal. It also coincided with the rise of social media, where the military found it difficult to control narratives,” she said.“If earlier, there was reverence for the military, lately, it has been just fear,” she added.‘Indispensable military’
The Pakistani military’s centrality has also been shaped by repeated wars with India – in 1948, 1965, 1971, and 1999 – primarily over Kashmir, which both nations claim in full but control only parts of.
For Muhammad Badar Alam, a political analyst, the sense of a perpetual threat posed by India is “one of the fundamental factors” that gave the military a prominent position in society, politics and governance.Since their last conventional war in 1999, India has accused Pakistan of fomenting violence and “terrorism” on its soil by supporting violent elements, particularly in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Pakistan denies the charges, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support for Kashmiris.
The last quarter of a century has seen multiple attacks inside India, especially the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which more than 160 people died, which India said was planned and executed by armed groups in Pakistan.
Islamabad acknowledged that the perpetrators of the attack might have been Pakistani, but rejected India’s allegations that its government or military had any role in the assault on Mumbai.
Ties between India and Pakistan nosedived further following the rise to power of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014.
Since then, India has responded to armed attacks on its soil by striking inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in 2016, 2019 and now, in 2025.
Lahore-based Alam told Al Jazeera that Modi’s hardened stance has helped the Pakistani military justify its power.“As long as the threat from the east exists, the military remains indispensable,” he said.‘War of perception?’
Both sides have made contradictory claims about the recent four-day conflict. Pakistan reported shooting down five Indian fighter jets and emphasised the significance of the US-led ceasefire. Trump urged a resolution of the Kashmir dispute, an issue India insists can only be resolved through bilateral negotiations between India and Pakistan, without third-party involvement.
India claimed deep strikes into Pakistani territory, targeting both alleged hideouts of armed groups and military installations.
Islamabad-based political commentator Arifa Noor said that a conflict with a “next-door neighbour” does rally the citizenry around the state and its armed forces, and this is as true of Pakistan as it is of any other country.
Noor added that while there is no doubt the military in Pakistan is enjoying a groundswell of goodwill, it might be too early to conclusively identify the impact of this on domestic politics.“Punjab, being on the border, saw the most visible support. But provinces like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan might view it differently,” she said.
Both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have seen sustained violence. Critics there accuse the military of human rights abuses and enforced disappearances – allegations the Pakistani military denies.
Alam, echoing Noor’s view, also says the outpouring of public support was primarily visible in Punjab, as well as other urban areas of the country.
Alam also said that with Imran Khan still in jail, it is unclear how much the military’s image has changed in the eyes of the former prime minister’s core supporters.
Will popularity surge last?
Analysts warn that despite the “rally around the flag” effect that becomes pronounced in times of international tension, public support for leaders and institutions is typically short-lived.
Niloufer Siddiqui, an associate professor of political science at the University of Albany in New York state, told Al Jazeera that it is unclear how long the military will receive an approval bump from the current crisis. Much, she said, could depend on “Indian rhetoric and whether it continues to be inflammatory”.
Siddiqui further added that it will also depend on the type of rhetoric in which the PTI, which previously was a harsh critic of the military, chooses to engage going forward.
London-based Rashid, who is also the author of Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army, said the big question for Pakistanis going forward would be whether they could draw a distinction between the military’s role at the borders and its involvement in domestic politics.“We need to be able to call out the involvement of Pakistan Army in politics, but, at the same time, acknowledge that their performance at the border is praiseworthy at this moment,” she said.
Alam, meanwhile, said that the military, too, had lessons to learn from the crisis with India.“The military must realise that success requires public support. We cannot remain in perpetual war with India,” he said. “We must fix our economy, or it will become an existential issue. It should be a sobering moment.” Car bomb in Pakistan’s restive southwest kills four people (Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera [5/19/2025 9:18 AM, Staff, 47007K]
A car bomb that has exploded near a market in Pakistan’s restive southwest has killed four people and wounded 20, according to a government official.
The attack was near a market in Qillah Abdullah, a city in the province of Balochistan, Deputy Commissioner Abdullah Riaz said on Monday. The province bordering Afghanistan is plagued by violence mounted by separatist groups.
The blast on Sunday night damaged several shops and the outer wall of a building housing paramilitary forces, the official said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.
A spokesperson for the Balochistan government condemned the attack and said an investigation is under way.
Local security official Ghulab Khan told the AFP news agency that an improvised explosive device (IED) had been planted in a parked car, suggesting that the target was the paramilitary site but the attack was bungled.
"It seems the IED exploded before reaching its intended destination," he said. "All those killed are civilian passers-by.".
Balochistan has long been plagued by violence with an array of separatist groups staging attacks, including the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which was designated as a "terrorist organisation" by the United States in 2019.
The local chapter of ISIL (ISIS) has also increased its activities in recent months.
The attack in Qillah Abdullah came days after four paramilitary officials were killed in the province.
Two weeks ago, seven army soldiers were killed when their vehicle was targeted by an IED. In March, BLA fighters killed 33 people, mostly soldiers, during an assault on a train carrying hundreds of passengers.
Pakistan has witnessed a sharp rise in violence in its regions bordering Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.
Islamabad has accused its western neighbour of allowing its territory to be used to launch attacks, a claim the Taliban has denied.
Pakistan has also often accused India of supporting the BLA and the Pakistani Taliban.
In a rare move this month, the BLA sought Indian support against Pakistan.
The appeal in a May 11 statement came amid heightened tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
"If we receive political, diplomatic and defense support from the world – especially from India – the Baloch nation can eliminate this terrorist state and lay the foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and independent Balochistan," the BLA said.
It assured New Delhi that its fighters, if backed, would open another front against Pakistan’s military near Afghanistan, where the Pakistani Taliban has strongholds.
So far, India has not officially responded to the overture. What makes a ‘good’ madrassa? Pakistan’s Islamic boarding schools under scrutiny. (Christian Science Monitor)
Christian Science Monitor [5/19/2025 4:30 PM, Hasan Ali, 435K]
Students, teachers, and parents have gathered on the second floor of a large building in old Rawalpindi – Pakistan’s fourth-largest city by population – to celebrate Result Day. Graduation caps pulled snug over white headscarves, young girls approach the podium one by one to honor the academic achievements of their peers.
At first glance, the Al-Khalil Quran Complex looks like any other school. In fact, it is a madrassa, the Arabic name for a religious seminary where children, often from the poorest segments of society, are provided with room, board, and an education.
Yet some madrassas have also developed a reputation of being "nurseries of extremism," radicalizing young, disenfranchised men. The Pakistani madrassa system has been linked to high-profile members of the Taliban, and is blamed for bolstering the insurgency in India-occupied Kashmir by providing fighters and financial support.
As the India-Pakistan conflict brings these controversial Islamic boarding schools back into the spotlight, Pakistan is trying to improve the quality of madrassa education with new regulations.
After a recent attack on tourists in India-controlled Kashmir, Delhi conducted a series of airstrikes against what it described as "terrorist infrastructure" in Pakistan – including several madrassas. Pakistan officials say the schools have no connections to the attack.
Since madrassas have historically operated with minimal oversight, it is impossible to know how many of the country’s approximately 30,000 Islamic seminaries have actually been involved in spreading extremism. But, says Waqas Sajjad, an assistant professor at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore and expert in madrassa education, "There is a history of quite a few madrassas being involved in nefarious activities.".
For its part, the Pakistani government would like all madrassas to operate more like the Al-Khalil Quran Complex, which combines religious education with secular subjects like English and math. Late last year, Parliament passed a new set of laws seeking to improve the quality of madrassa education, both to uplift student outcomes and to help madrassas shed their tag as terrorist hotbeds.
On paper, the laws prohibit madrassas from teaching or publishing any material that "promotes militancy, or spreads sectarianism or religious hatred," and enjoins them to phase in more secular subjects of instruction. It’s a rare moment of consensus between the state and the clerics who run these seminaries.
"I think it’s become very clear that a good madrassa has to be a place ... where students are getting all kinds of knowledge," says Dr. Sajjad. "It’s not just religious knowledge, but there’s also secular knowledge.".
Why now?
For the proprietor of the Al-Khalil Quran Complex, Nasim Khalil, the decision to introduce "worldly" subjects was made years ago to boost graduates’ employment prospects.
His father, the madrassa’s founder, "wanted to ensure that our students weren’t left behind," he says. "He didn’t want them to end up hawking in the streets or, in the best case, to become imams or muezzins. He wanted them to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, and so forth.".
An added benefit of having madrassa graduates enter the workforce is that it might keep them away from extremist activities.
Though there were only about 250 madrassas in Pakistan when the country was created, that number is said to have proliferated in the 1980s during the Soviet-Afghan war. The Darul Uloom Haqqania in Akora Khattak, perhaps the most famous madrassa in Pakistan, is responsible for educating a significant number of the Taliban leaders who took control of Afghanistan in August 2021.
This might also explain the timing of the legislation. Some experts argue that the deteriorating relationship between Islamabad and Kabul has led the military-backed Parliament to try to sever the ideological connection between Pakistani madrassas and the Taliban who studied there. Pakistan, which has a history of providing clandestine support to the Taliban, has blamed the latter for providing a safe haven to terrorists who commit atrocities on Pakistani soil. The Taliban leadership of Afghanistan has continuously denied these accusations.
"Given the deep tension the establishment is having with the Taliban, there may be a bit of buyer’s remorse creeping in and a recognition that Pakistan’s close embrace of the Taliban ... has hurt the country more than it’s helped it," says Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington.
The legislation, which also requires madrassas to have their accounts formally audited, "appears to be an effort to make much-needed changes to the education system that reduce the risks of youth radicalization," he adds.
Step toward transparency
Critics say the law doesn’t go far enough to address the problem of sectarianism in madrassas, and human rights activist Farzana Bari argues that the entire debate around madrassas obscures a more central issue: the existence of parallel systems of education in a country already riven by disparate identities.
These parallel systems "create divisions in society," she says. "If you ask me, there should be one system of education, and every child should have equal opportunities" under that system.
In what is believed to be a concession to the Islamist political party the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F), the legislation rolls back a 2019 change that placed madrassas under the oversight of the Ministry of Education, allowing these seminaries to be registered under the Ministry of Industries instead. Critics say this ministry has neither the power nor the expertise to keep madrassas in check. The rollout of the new law, including the timeline for compliance and plans for enforcement, also remains a mystery.
Nevertheless, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) Sen. Kamran Murtaza says the law is a step in the right direction. "Previously it was said that [madrassa] funds were being used for terrorism," he says. "Now you’ll be able to see both where the money comes from and where it is sent to, so no one will be able to make this accusation.".
Mr. Khalil of the Al-Khalil Quran Complex agrees and hopes that this transparency will lead to greater trust between the schools and the government.
In practice, he feels that madrassas have been under strict oversight for more than 20 years.
Before the U.S.-led war on terror, when the Al-Khalil Quran Complex used to host more than 100 boarders from various parts of the country, "Intelligence agents would come here demanding to know everything about our students," Mr. Khalil explains, noting that there was a perception that students from the north might be associated with the Taliban. "These were poor children who came from underprivileged areas. Their parents often didn’t have identity cards. How were we supposed to investigate their backgrounds?".
As a result, Mr. Khalil changed his enrollment policy so that only children from the local neighborhood could join the madrassa. Today, it houses roughly 30 students. Pakistan’s actions should be called state-sponsored terrorism (The Hill – opinion)
The Hill [5/19/2025 3:00 PM, Jos Joseph, 47007K]
As a tenuous ceasefire settles after yet another outbreak of military actions between India and Pakistan, the U.S. finds itself in a curious position as peacemaker. Clearly, America’s leaders want (and need) to do everything to keep the calm between two nuclear nations with a long history of animosity toward each other and work toward a solution that ensures that violence doesn’t resume.
But there is something the U.S., and the world, need to come to terms with. Pakistan continually engages in state sponsored terrorism.
The investigation into the Pahalgam attacks will eventually reveal how much of a role, if any, that Pakistan had in funding, training and abetting the terrorists. Despite this, there is an uncomfortable truth that Pakistan and its allies (including the U.S.) fail to admit. There are many terrorist groups inside the Pakistani borders. And they aren’t exactly hiding from the Pakistani government.
The Pakistani government has been accused by not just India but Iran and Afghanistan of providing safe havens for terrorist groups. Also, ask any veteran of Afghanistan, and they will confirm that Pakistan’s Northwest tribal areas were a de facto safe haven for groups (including the Taliban) as they crossed into Afghanistan to fight and kill Americans. When Al Qaeda fled the U.S. assault in 2001, they fled into, you guessed it, Pakistan.
Most infamously, we all know that Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan. We also know that the Obama administration and the U.S. military did everything possible to not tell the Pakistani government or military about the operation to kill Bin Laden because they could not trust them with the information. That sentence alone should have been damning, but in this complex world of geopolitics, the U.S. decided the embarrassment of Pakistan harboring Bin Laden was enough. Except it wasn’t.
In the years since, the Taliban moved in and out of Afghanistan with such regularity that Obama had to increase the number of drone strikes inside Pakistan. Think about that for a second. We had to launch missile strikes on an ally because they had thousands of terrorists inside their borders.
The Pakistanis were among the first to call for talks with the new Taliban government after the U.S. exit, claiming the Taliban victory had "broken the shackles of slavery." There was a small problem. The Taliban’s origins in Pakistan means there are plenty of Pakistani Taliban supporters who want that type of government where they live.
These Pakistan Taliban militants are now carrying out terror attacks on Pakistanis. You read that right. The terror group that the Pakistani government supported is now killing Pakistani citizens while operating out of Pakistan.
The Inter-Service Intelligence, Pakistan’s intelligence service has long had a comfortable relationship with the Taliban, much to the chagrin of the United States and others. But they didn’t just help the Taliban. We know that the Inter-Service Intelligence has funded and trained groups with the intent of carrying out terror operations in India. Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terror group inside Pakistan, carried out the 2001 terror attack on India’s Parliament and the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The training, weapons, money and planning all originated in Pakistan. Here’s the thing. They are still in Pakistan. Its founder Hafiz Saeed, has a $10 million bounty on his head by the United States and yet he sits in a military protected residence with a private park in Pakistan.
Iran also claims that Pakistan has funded terrorists to conduct attacks within its borders and has itself launched attacks on terror sites in Pakistan. Iran said that Pakistan is funding Sunni separatists movements in eastern Iran. If that sounds familiar, it is the exact same playbook that India claims Pakistan is doing in Indian controlled Jammu and Kashmir.
Iran accusing Pakistan of terrorism might cause American readers some bemusement. After all, the U.S. has designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism because of "repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism." Cuba, North Korea and Syria are on that list too. But if you do that math, you might be left scratching your head.
Pakistani terror groups (including the Taliban) have killed more Americans than Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Syria combined. Pakistan has more known terror groups within its borders than these countries and has allowed those groups to conduct attacks on all its neighbors as well as its own citizens.
If India and Pakistan sit down to talk, President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio need to take a hard line on Pakistan. It was already worrying that Pakistan is using Chinese fighters in this current conflict, giving the Chinese valuable data on how their fighter does in combat. They should also be worried about Pakistan’s plan to let China build a port in Gwadar, which would be a massive threat to the U.S. and its access to the Persian Gulf.
But even more important is the worry that Pakistan and its Inter-Service Intelligence will continue to support and foster terrorist groups that will attack India, allowing them to plan attacks on targets much closer to home. India
India Expects Multi-Phase Trade Deal With US as Talks Proceed (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [5/19/2025 11:08 PM, Shruti Srivastava and Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 121822K]
India is discussing a US trade deal structured in three tranches and expects to reach an interim agreement before July, when President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs are set to kick in, according to officials in New Delhi familiar with the matter.
The interim deal will likely cover areas including market access for industrial goods, some farm products and addressing some non-tariff barriers, such as quality control requirements, the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private.
The talks are still ongoing and there’s no clarity if the Trump administration has agreed to a three-stage process for a trade deal. India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is currently in Washington on a four-day trip that ends Tuesday. In a post on X, Goyal said he had "good discussions" with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to advance the first tranche of the trade agreement. The Indian minister is also expected to meet US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer during the trip.
India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry and Ministry of External Affairs didn’t immediately respond to requests for further information. The USTR and Commerce Department also didn’t immediately respond to questions.
The second stage of an India-US deal may be a broader and more detailed agreement timed for around September to November, Indian officials familiar with the matter said, likely covering the 19 areas outlined in the terms of reference agreed by the two sides in April. The timing for this part of the deal may be aligned with an expected visit by Trump to India for the Quad leaders’ summit, one of the people said.
The final leg of the deal will likely be a comprehensive agreement that would follow once there’s approval from the US Congress, possibly concluded only next year, Indian officials familiar with the matter said.
India was one of the first countries to begin trade negotiations with the US following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the White House in February shortly after Trump took office. Both leaders agreed to boost trade and work toward concluding the first tranche of the bilateral deal by fall of this year. Since then, New Delhi has signaled the possibility of "early mutual wins" before the fall deadline.
While Indian officials say talks remain on track, there have been signs of tension in recent days. New Delhi appears to be adopting a tougher stance in negotiations, threatening retaliatory tariffs on US goods last week. Trump has also claimed that India offered to slash tariffs on US goods to zero, while downplaying any sense of urgency to reach a trade deal.
The US leader’s comments about his involvement in negotiating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan have also been a source of frustration in New Delhi. Trump has repeatedly said he used trade as a bargaining tool to secure a truce between India and Pakistan after four days of military conflict that had brought the two South Asian rivals close to an all-out war. Indian officials have denied Trump’s assertions. US imposes visa bans on India travel agents for facilitating illegal migration (Reuters)
Reuters [5/19/2025 11:29 AM, Simon Lewis, 32092K]
The U.S. State Department said on Monday that it was imposing visa restrictions on owners and other staff at India-based travel agencies that it says knowingly facilitate illegal migration to the United States.
An unspecified number of unnamed people linked to travel agencies in India were being hit with visa bans under the Immigration and Nationality Act based on information gathered by the U.S. mission to India, department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
Washington often issues visa bans without publishing the names of those targeted.
"We will continue to take steps to impose visa restrictions against owners, executives, and senior officials of travel agencies to cut off alien smuggling networks," Bruce said, without detailing how the travel agents had facilitated illegal migration.
The move comes amid President Donald Trump’s broad crackdown on migration to the United States and efforts to deport undocumented immigrants in the country.
The U.S. embassy in New Delhi has repeatedly posted on its social media sites warning for Indian nationals visiting the United States not to overstay their authorized period of stay in the country, warning they will face deportation and a permanent ban from entering the country for doing so. U.S. Placing Visa Restrictions on India’s Travel Agency Owners (Newsweek)
Newsweek [5/19/2025 1:18 PM, Jenna Sundel, 1025K]
The U.S. State Department announced on Monday it will be placing visa restrictions on owners, executives and senior officials of travel agencies in India.
Why It Matters
The State Department said the Indian agencies are "knowingly facilitating illegal immigration" to the United States and that it is imposing the visa restrictions in an attempt to cut off "alien smuggling networks.".
The actions are being taken pursuant to section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which denies admission to any immigrants the secretary of state "has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.".
What To Know
The visa restrictions apply to all owners, executives and senior officials of India-based travel agencies, even individuals who qualify for the Visa Waiver Program.
Mission India’s Consular Affairs and Diplomatic Security Service is working to identify and target individuals facilitating illegal immigration, trafficking and human smuggling.
On Saturday, the U.S. Embassy in India warned those traveling from India to the U.S. not to stay beyond the authorized return date.
"If you remain in the United States beyond your authorized period of stay, you could be deported and could face a permanent ban on traveling to the United States in the future," the embassy wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The embassy announced on Wednesday that the U.S. government is launching an interagency effort to combat fraud and illegal immigration.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio began discussing irregular migration with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term. Rubio and Jaishankar met on January 21 to discuss migration, U.S.-India relations and other topics.
What People Are Saying
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, in a statement: "Our immigration policy aims not only to inform foreign nationals about the dangers of illegal immigration to the United States but also to hold accountable individuals who violate our laws, including facilitators of illegal immigration. Enforcing U.S. immigration laws and policies is critical to upholding the rule of law and protecting Americans.".
U.S. Embassy in India, on X: "Those found guilty of visa fraud will face permanent bans from entering the United States. New visa restriction policies apply to individuals and foreign governments who facilitate illegal immigration.".
What Happens Next
The visa restrictions are the latest development in the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to reduce illegal immigration into the U.S. US bans India agencies ‘facilitating illegal immigration’ (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [5/19/2025 6:33 PM, Rana Taha, 656K]
The State Department has announced a visa ban on owners, executives and senior officials of -based travel agencies it accused of "knowingly facilitating illegal immigration to the United States.".
The Monday statement by department spokesperson Tammy Bruce did not mention any details on those hit by the visa restrictions, including their names or the names of the travel agencies they represent.
The statement also did not mention how "illegal immigration" to the US was being facilitated.
What do we know about the ban?The State Department said its Consular Affairs and Diplomatic Security Service mission in India has identified those "engaged in facilitating illegal immigration and human smuggling and trafficking operations.".
It vowed to continue Imposing visa restrictions on representatives of travel agencies in order to "cut off alien smuggling networks.".
The visa restriction would even apply to individuals who would otherwise qualify for a Visa Waiver Program, the State Department said, in reference to those exempt from needing a tourist visa to visit the US for up to 90 days.
"Enforcing US immigration laws and policies is critical to upholding the rule of law and protecting Americans," Bruce said in the statement.
Since US President returned to the White House this year, his administration has on , deporting thousands of migrants,.
Social media outfits of US embassies worldwide have been warning US visa holders not to overstay the duration of their visas, and stressing that they would otherwise risk deportation and a permanent ban. Indians still pray at ‘visa temples’ after the U.S. deported migrants in chains (NPR)
NPR [5/19/2025 5:00 AM, Diaa Hadid and Omkar Khandekar, 26K]
A man gives his passport to a Hindu priest at a temple in this western Indian city. For a fee of about $2, the priest prays to the monkey god Hanuman for the man’s visa application to the United States to be accepted. The prayer quickly ends, and another supplicant hands over his passport.
The Chamatkarik Shree Hanumanji Mandir is one of many "visa temples," as they’re known across India, that boast of answering the prayers of Indians seeking to migrate abroad.
There are more than 5 million Indian Americans, one of the largest immigrant groups in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center.
But not all got their visa prayers answered. The U.S. has deported more than 600 Indian nationals who entered without legal status since President Trump took office in January, according to India’s Foreign Ministry.
The migrants, along with new U.S. tariffs, have become thorny issues for India as it navigates a fast-moving second Trump administration.
For better opportunities
Pew estimates 725,000 Indian nationals are in the U.S. without legal status.
One woman in Ahmedabad, selling clay pots on the side of the road, says her daughter is among them. The woman gives only her first name, Maribehn, because she says she is worried about her daughter being identified and then deported.
"There were no jobs here," Maribehn says. So, her daughter and son-in-law sold their home and farmland, and borrowed money, to pay traffickers to sneak them and their two children into the U.S.
Maribehn says her daughter now works in a hair salon. She isn’t sure where her daughter lives, but knows she’s happy.
Deported in shackles
Barely two weeks after President Trump’s inauguration in January, the U.S. began deporting more than 100 Indian nationals on military flights, according to Indian news outlets. They were shackled and chained, and footage of them was shared on X on April 4 by Michael W. Banks, chief of U.S. Border Patrol.
"If you cross illegally, you will be removed," he warned.
Deportees told local media when they landed that they had been shackled for the whole journey, including stopovers — for about 40 hours.
The deportations — of mostly men, but also women and children — shocked many in India.
"It was degrading, inhumane and a violation of human rights," Sushant Singh, consulting editor at The Caravan magazine, wrote of the way the deportations happened.
India and the U.S. are major defense partners. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls President Trump "my friend." During the first Trump administration, the two men held political-style rallies in each other’s countries.
Modi did not comment publicly on the deportations — not while in India, nor when he visited Trump just days after the first military flight landed in February.
But an Indian government news website cited the foreign minister as saying officials had discussed the matter during Modi’s U.S. visit. "India has strongly registered its concerns with the US authorities on the treatment meted out to deportees on the flight that landed on [Feb. 5] in Amritsar, particularly with respect to the use of shackles, especially on women," the website said.
The Indian government did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment; nor did Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Yet India’s many pro-government outlets quickly rallied to Modi’s defense, like the fiery broadcaster, Arnab Goswami, who said the deported Indian nationals deserved what they got.
"How do you want criminals to be treated?" he asked. Perhaps, he mocked, "these people must be brought back first class, with a glass of champagne in their hands.".
Friends with tariffs
Analysts say India has bigger problems: like finalizing a trade deal they hope will eliminate the 26% tariffs Trump announced on most Indian goods in April. The administration then suspended the tariffs for 90 days.
"There are so many ways in which India is kind of coming alive to the reality that it is quite vulnerable to a Trump-led America," says Daniel Markey, senior fellow at the John Hopkins University SAIS Foreign Policy Institute.
India also appears to be trying to sidestep statements by the Trump administration encouraging India to resolve its long-standing grievances with its neighbor Pakistan. It comes after President Trump announced a ceasefire between the two countries on Saturday, after days of the most serious fighting in South Asia in decades. It was triggered after India blamed Pakistan for a militant attack that killed 26 people, mostly Hindu men, in Indian-held Kashmir.
But as Modi steers India through this Trump administration, political headaches caused by migration may keep erupting — because Indians may keep trying to reach America.
Many come from Gujarat, Prime Minister Modi’s home state.
On a recent NPR visit to the sleepy village of Dingucha, elderly men sat under a tree in the square. Kids whacked a ball with sticks and rode bikes. The village’s population is tiny for India: just 3,000 people, and many of them live in the U.S. Their largesse is evident: They’ve paid for nearly every bit of infrastructure here, from the Hindu temple to the municipal building. Inside the municipal building, administrator Jayesh Chaudhary says the donations are a signal to folks here, that "the people who’ve gone to America have made a lot of money, and so it also draws them to try to take that route as well.".
The journey can be treacherous. Three years ago, a mother, father and their two kids froze to death as they crossed into the U.S. from Canada during a blizzard. Indian media recently reported that a related Dingucha family was deported on one of the Trump administration’s military flights.
"Even if it’s just a 1% chance of success, people will keep trying," Chaudhary says.
At least one woman wishes it wasn’t so. In the nearby village of Vaghpur, dairy farmer Chetna Rabari says she last heard from her husband two years ago, when he was in the Dominican Republic, on a convoluted route to North America that cost the family $24,000. He sold some of their cows, used the family’s savings and borrowed more from their neighbors.
Rabari says her husband wanted to transform the lives of their three children. "What will they become here?" she recalls him saying, "just cow herders like us.".
Now Rabari is raising their kids alone, and repaying her husband’s debts. She is also tending to her eight cows. It’s all they have now, and it’s just her, doing it all, until he comes back — something she says she still believes might happen. "I still wait for him to call," she says. Modi’s Government Cracks Down on Dissent Over Pakistan Conflict (New York Times)
New York Times [5/19/2025 10:55 AM, Alex Travelli and Suhasini Raj, 58908K]
India’s government is taking legal action against academics, journalists and private companies seen as critical of its recent military campaign against Pakistan, including arresting one professor who had admonished Indians “who are baying for war.”During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade in power, his government has routinely punished critics with criminal charges, legal investigations and travel bans. The latest crackdown on dissent shows Indian leaders’ sensitivity to the political fallout from a four-day conflict that ended under outside mediation with no clear victor.The academic who was arrested, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, had cheered on his country’s armed forces during the military face-off, as had millions of other Indians. But he also criticized “those who are mindlessly advocating for a war.”India struck Pakistan after a massacre of 26 people, all but one of them Hindu tourists, on April 22 in the Indian-controlled side of the Kashmir region. On Instagram and on Facebook, Mr. Mahmudabad said that as India hungered to avenge the Hindu tourists’ deaths, it should not forget the deepening persecution of the country’s minority Muslim population.Three days after his initial post, Mr. Mahmudabad, a professor of political science at Ashoka University and a scion of Indian Muslim nobility, wrote another one, scolding “the blind bloodlust for war” even after a cease-fire had been declared the evening before.Around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, Mr. Mahmudabad, 42, was arrested at his residence in Delhi on charges that included threatening India’s sovereignty. A formal complaint against the professor had been lodged the previous night by a resident of Haryana, the neighboring state where Ashoka University is based, according to his lawyer, Mohammed Nizamuddin Pasha.Mr. Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is in power in Haryana. Mr. Mahmudabad, whose legal name is Mohammad Ali Ahmad Khan, faces three years to life in prison.Mr. Pasha said that there were errors and irregularities in the complaint, which confused Instagram and Facebook posts with those on X. The police, Mr. Pasha said, had told the court that they needed to hold his client for seven days, “so they could drive him to his hometown to retrieve his laptop. But I pointed out that hardly anybody makes social media posts from their laptops.”As India’s government has moved to restrict what can be said about the confrontation with Pakistan, a welter of Indians have come under pressure.The social media platform X complained after the first night of the conflict that Mr. Modi’s government had asked it to block more than 8,000 accounts based in India. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry defended the request by saying it was blocking Pakistani content under the wide banner of “content which affects the sovereignty and integrity of India.”On Sunday, Nitasha Kaul, a British Indian academic based in London, announced that the Indian authorities had barred her from returning to visit India, where she was born and where her mother still lives.Ms. Kaul’s academic work concerns feminism, nationalism, Kashmir and other sensitive issues. The official notification she received said that she had been “found indulging in anti-India activities, motivated by malice and complete disregard for facts or history.”
“There is a link between what is happening in India and what is happening abroad to academics,” Ms. Kaul said in a telephone interview. “If I write about Islamophobia and India, which I have, they don’t like that, and in order to suppress that, they make examples of people like me and him because they want to send a signal that if you do this we will punish you.”Last week, an owner of Gujarat Samachar, a newspaper that has been covering the career of Mr. Modi with a critical eye for more than 20 years, was arrested by tax-enforcement authorities.Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in Parliament, said on X that the arrest was part of a “conspiracy to suppress the voice of the entire democracy.”The newspaper’s account on that platform was among those that were blocked by the Indian government while the fighting raged.Businesses are also being penalized for appearing to be close to Mr. Modi’s critics.They include Celebi Airport Services, a private company based in Istanbul that runs ground handling operations at airports in India. Its license in India was revoked on grounds of national security — after the government of Turkey stood by Pakistan in the recent hostilities with India.While Mr. Modi’s government has long punished critics, some analysts had detected a loosening of repression since he lost his parliamentary majority in last year’s election.Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog, now ranks India as 151st for press freedoms among 180 countries — an improvement from 159th place the year before. India’s steel expansion threatens climate goals and global efforts to clean up industry: report (AP)
AP [5/19/2025 8:52 PM, Sibi Arasu, 58908K]
India’s plans to double steel production by the end of the decade could jeopardize its national climate goals and a key global target to reduce planet-heating gas emissions from the steel industry, according to a report released Tuesday.The report by Global Energy Monitor, an organization that tracks energy projects around the globe, said efforts to decarbonize steelmaking are gaining traction around the world. However, in India, which is the world’s second largest steel-producing nation, overwhelming reliance on coal-based technologies presents a big challenge.“India is now the bellwether of global steel decarbonization,” said Astrid Grigsby-Schulte, project manager of the Global Iron and Steel Tracker at GEM and report co-author. “If the country does not increase its plans for green steel production, the entire sector will miss an important milestone. So goes India, so goes the world.”Currently, up to 12% of India’s greenhouse gas emissions, which go into the atmosphere and heat the planet, come from steelmaking. That number could double in five years if steel is produced in line with the government’s plans, according to the report.At the same time, India wants to produce 500 gigawatts of clean power — enough to power nearly 300 million Indian homes — by the end of this decade. The South Asian nation recently crossed the milestone of installing 100 gigawatts of solar power, most of which was installed in the last 10 years.By 2070, India also aims to go net zero, that is, it will either eliminate all carbon dioxide pollution it emits or cancel it out by using other methods, such as planting trees that absorb carbon.Steel production is one of the most carbon polluting industries, responsible for nearly 9% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The International Energy Agency has set a target for 37% of global steelmaking capacity to rely on lower-emission electric arc furnaces by 2030. Current projections by GEM show the world reaching just 36% — a shortfall largely due to India’s coal-heavy pipeline.India plans to expand its steel production capacity from 200 million to over 330 million tonnes per year by 2030. According to the new data, over 40% of global capacity in development — about 352 million tonnes per annum — is in India, with more than half of that using coal-based capacity.“India is the only major steel-producing nation that has so much coal-based capacity in the pipeline,” said Henna Khadeeja, a research analyst with GEM who also worked on the report.India’s steel sector releases approximately 2.6 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of steel, roughly 25% more than the global average. China, the world’s largest steelmaker, has managed to keep its emissions lower per ton by producing more scrap-based steel and retiring older coal-based plants.India’s heavy dependence on coal for steelmaking is driven by a combination of factors: low-cost domestic coal, a relatively young fleet of blast furnaces that still have 20–25 years of operational life left, and a lack of natural gas and steel scrap. The country’s scrap recycling ecosystem remains informal, and high-quality iron ore is scarce.“There is potential for India to change course,” said Khadeeja of GEM. “Much of the planned capacity is still on paper. Only 8% of it has actually broken ground. This means there is still a window to shift toward lower-emission technologies.”The consequences of producing carbon polluting steel may go beyond climate goals. While India’s steel exports are only a small share of its overall production, they could suffer as major markets like the European Union begin enforcing carbon border taxes next year.“India may be better off tolerating some short-term pain of technological upgrading to make its steel cleaner for long-term competitiveness gain,” said Easwaran Narassimhan of the New Delhi-based think tank Sustainable Futures Collaborative. India plans stricter rules for companies with foreign ownership, sources say (Reuters)
Reuters [5/19/2025 6:29 AM, Shubham Batra and Sarita Chaganti Singh, 58908K]
India is planning to tighten foreign ownership rules, two sources said, in a move that may have significant implications for businesses ranging from e-commerce to pharmaceuticals.The changes would redefine how India views foreign-owned companies, whether directly or indirectly, making them subject to foreign direct investment (FDI) regulations when it comes to share transfers or restructurings.The discussions are close to being finalised, the sources, both government officials said. They declined to be identified as the discussion was not public.The Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India, which issues the final rules, did not respond to requests for comment.India is reviewing its foreign investment laws to simplify them and plug any loopholes.New Delhi plans to create a new category of "foreign-owned and controlled entities" (FOCE), which will also include Indian firms with "indirect foreign investment", the first source said."What cannot be done directly should not be allowed indirectly either. That will now be clearly reflected in the rules," the source said."Even a domestic restructuring or internal transfer could trigger FDI obligations for foreign-owned firms if the rule change is implemented," the source said.An FOCE will be defined as an Indian company or investment fund that is controlled by persons resident outside India. As well as covering indirect ownership, it will also make directly owned foreign firms subject to FDI rules when it comes to changes in structure or ownership.In particular, any transfer of the indirect shareholding will need to be reported and will have to comply with sectoral foreign investment caps.These transactions will also be subject to rules stating they be made at fair market value.The proposed revision in the rules aims to ensure foreign investors cannot bypass the intent of India’s FDI policy, sources said.The central bank is in agreement on the matter, the second official said.Since 2020, India has required prior government approval for investments from nations sharing its land borders, including China, after clashes between the two neighbours in the remote Himalayan border.The new FOCE definition will make it harder for Chinese or other foreign investors to use indirect structures such as offshore investment funds or layered Indian entities to enter regulated sectors through the back door, the second source said. Breakthrough in India manhunt for suspect in 24-year-old woman’s East London murder (The Independent)
The Independent [5/20/2025 4:36 AM, Shweta Sharma, 58908K]
A man wanted for the murder of his wife in east London has reportedly been spotted withdrawing a large sum of cash at a bank in India.Harshita Brella, 24, originally from Delhi, was found dead in a silver Vauxhall Corsa on Brisbane Road in Ilford on 14 November 2024. Her husband, Pankaj Lamba, 23, fled the UK for India soon after.After issuing a Look Out Circular to prevent Mr Lamba from leaving the country, the Delhi police declared him a proclaimed offender on 1 May for evading authorities.According to local media accounts, however, he had been sighted at a bank in Gurugram, a satellite city south of the national capital Delhi, on 4 March.Mr Lamba, wearing a face mask, withdrew Rs 430,000 (£3,760) from the bank where he was picked up by CCTV cameras, an unnamed police source told The Indian Express.“CCTV footage from the bank showed he was alone. Before this he had withdrawn Rs 21,000 (£184) from another bank on the same day,” the source told the newspaper. “But we don’t have footage, so we can’t confirm if he had gone himself or sent someone in his stead.”Brella was strangled in Corby on the evening of 10 November before her body was driven some 160km south to Ilford the next day, according to the UK police.The body reached her family home in Delhi’s Palam area on 3 December and a police case against Mr Lamba was filed soon after. The case was registered on the basis of a complaint by Brella’s parents alleging cruelty by her husband and breach of trust. Their daughter’s was a “dowry death”, the parents alleged, implying she had been killed for not bringing enough dowry.Mr Lamba’s parents were arrested on 14 March under India’s "dowry death" law. While the mother was later released on bail, the father was still in jail as of 20 May.Mr Lamba married Brella in March 2024, in a match arranged by their families and flew to the UK soon after. Brella joined him a month later.In August, the Northamptonshire police filed a case of domestic abuse against Mr Lamba and he was arrested before being released on bail.In Delhi, the Palam police station’s head told The Independent he was aware of the report about Mr Lamba being sighted in Gurugram but declined to comment further.The police earlier announced a reward of Rs 50,000 (£437) for information leading to Mr Lamba’s arrest. NSB
Starlink launches in Bangladesh to boost reliable internet access (Reuters)
Reuters [5/20/2025 1:47 AM, Ruma Paul, 5.2M]
Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX-owned satellite internet service Starlink launched in Bangladesh on Tuesday, as the South Asian nation steps up efforts to ensure reliable, uninterrupted access to the internet.
Muhammad Yunus, who has led the government since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh following weeks of violent protest last year, has said the deal provided a service that could not be disrupted by any future political upheaval.
"Starlink’s high-speed, low-latency internet is now available in Bangladesh," the company posted on X.
Monthly packages start at 4,200 taka ($35) for the service now available nationwide, said Yunus aide Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, with a one-time payment of 47,000 taka required for setup equipment.
"This has created a sustainable alternative for premium customers to get high-quality and high-speed internet services," he added in a Facebook post.
Nobel peace laureate Yunus took the helm of the interim government in August after Hasina fled to neighbouring India. Authorities had suspended internet and text messaging services as protests spread nationwide last July.
Starlink has expanded rapidly worldwide to operate in more than 70 countries, with a strong focus on further growth in emerging markets such as India. UN Raises Concern At Maldives Sacking Judges (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [5/19/2025 9:54 AM, Sibi Arasu, 58908K]
The top UN rights body raised concerns on Monday over the impeachment of two Supreme Court judges in the Maldives, which effectively stalled the review of a new law banning defections by parliamentarians.The United Nations Human Rights Office said the sacking by Male’s parliament of two justices raised questions about the independence of the judiciary in the Indian Ocean archipelago."We remind the authorities of their commitment to maintain and protect an independent judiciary, in line with the Maldives’ constitution and international human rights obligations," spokesperson Jeremy Laurence said in Geneva.The two judges, Azmiralda Zahir and Mahaz Ali Zahir, were suspended in February and dismissed this month.Another judge, Husnu Al Suood, who was also accused of misconduct, resigned.With the unrelated retirement of another judge, the seven-member Supreme Court has been reduced to just three judges, leaving the superior court in limbo."Checks and balances between the different branches of the state, including a strong and independent judiciary, play a vital role in ensuring fidelity to the rule of law by all branches of government and the effective protection of human rights," Laurence said.The Maldivian government denied it was interfering with the judiciary."The government remains fully committed to maintaining the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law," Foreign Minister Abdulla Khaleel said on social media.President Mohamed Muizzu’s party, the People’s National Congress, enjoys an overwhelming majority in parliament, but has proposed constitutional amendments to prevent its members from defecting to the opposition.An opposition parliamentarian challenged the constitutionality of last year’s anti-defection law, and the Supreme Court decided to take it up despite objections from the government.The Maldives is known for its upmarket tourism, but is also facing a severe shortage of foreign exchange, partly due to heavy borrowings from China and India.It has refused to seek an International Monetary Fund bailout and instead signed a deal with a Dubai-based company this month for an $8.8 billion investment to set up a financial free zone. Indian, Romanian Climbers Die On Nepal’s Lhotse (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [5/19/2025 7:27 AM, Staff, 58908K]
Two climbers from Romania and India have died on Nepal’s Mount Lhotse, the world’s fourth highest peak, officials said Monday, taking the number of fatalities this season to at least nine.Romania’s Barna Zsolt Vago, 48, died on Sunday as he was ascending the 8,516-metre (27,940-foot) mountain, Liladhar Awasthi of Nepal’s tourism department told AFP.He was not using supplemental oxygen.On the same day an Indian climber, Rakesh Kumar, 39, died between Camp 3 and Camp 4 as he was descending after a successful summit."Our guides are trying to bring his body back," Prakash Acharya of Makalu Adventure, his expedition organiser, told AFP.Nepal has issued over 1,100 permits to mountaineers this season, including 107 for Lhotse.Climbers attempting Lhotse use the same base camp as those aiming for Everest’s summit.They follow the same route up the mountain, scaling the sheer Lhotse Face -- a 1,125-metre wall of ice -- before the path to the neighbouring summits divides.The incident comes after two people -- a Filipino and an Indian climber -- died on neighbouring Everest last week.At least five others, including one French, one American, an Austrian and two Nepali climbers, have died on Himalayan mountains since the spring climbing season began.Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 10 highest peaks and welcomes hundreds of climbers each spring, when temperatures are warmer and winds typically calmer. Elephant killed by train in Sri Lanka despite safety measures introduced after recent deadly crash (CBS News)
CBS News [5/20/2025 3:23 AM, Staff, 51.9M]
A Sri Lankan express train killed an elephant and was derailed on Tuesday despite safety measures introduced after the country’s worst wildlife railway accident three months ago on the same route. Local officials said the young wild elephant crossing the track near Habarana was run over by the same train involved in the February 20 accident that killed seven elephants. After that crash, officials imposed speed limits on trains passing through elephant habitats.
No passengers were injured in the accident, which occurred some 110 miles by road east of the capital Colombo.
Railway authorities said an investigation was underway, and engineers were trying to put the Colombo-Batticaloa train back on the track after the pre-dawn crash.
The authorities had earlier announced changes to train timetables and efforts to clear shrubs from either side of the track to improve visibility for drivers, to give them more time to avoid hitting elephants.
Wildlife officials have said that 139 elephants have been killed by trains over the past 17 years, since authorities began collecting such data.
The government has also announced that 1,195 people and 3,484 elephants have been killed in the past decade due to the worsening human-elephant conflict on the island.
Killing or harming elephants is a criminal offense in Sri Lanka, which has an estimated 7,000 wild elephants — considered a national treasure, partly due to their significance in Buddhist culture.
However, the killings continue, as desperate farmers struggle with elephants raiding their crops and destroying livelihoods.
Many elephants have been electrocuted, shot, or poisoned. Sometimes, explosive-laden fruits are used to maim the animals, often resulting in painful deaths.
India, which has a wild elephant population more than twice as large as Sri Lanka, also deals with regular train-pachyderm collisions. India has lost about 200 elephants over the last decade to train accidents alone, and that’s in addition to high number of deaths from poaching and accidental electrocutions. The Indian government has introduced measures to limit train speeds in dedicated elephant corridors, but campaigners say the rules are often poorly enforced.
Earlier this year the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu became the first to launch an artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled surveillance system to help prevent elephant deaths on railways. Central Asia
China filling void left by USAID’s dismantling (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [5/19/2025 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K]
China is striving to expand its footprint in Central Asia, hoping to take advantage of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development and the broader cuts in American foreign assistance.
To date, China’s outreach in Central Asia has been largely limited to grand infrastructure projects undertaken within the framework of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But now, China is going small, launching limited programs at the grass-roots level in cooperation with international organizations.
The first such initiative debuted on May 16, a joint project between China’s International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) and the United Nations’ World Food Programme to provide school meals to over 100,000 students in southern Kyrgyzstan. A WFP statement characterized the project as CIDCA’s “first multilateral initiative” in Central Asia under the auspices of the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund.“WFP is grateful for this new contribution from the Government of China,” the statement quoted Kojiro Nakai, the WFP representative and country director, as saying during a launch event at a primary school in the southern Kyrgyz capital Osh. “This support will help address the serious micronutrient deficiencies affecting primary school children.”
By the end of the year, China is slated to deliver roughly 1,700 metric tons of fortified wheat flour, vegetable oil, rice and lentils to 300 schools in three southern Kyrgyz provinces, Osh, Jalal-Abad and Batken.
The Kyrgyz initiative is one of what CIDCA characterizes as “small and beautiful” (S&B) projects that Beijing hopes will foster goodwill among residents of the Global South. A recent CIDCA report casts S&B as a second phase of BRI, designed to “demonstrate the humanistic care and kindness of China’s foreign aid and international development cooperation.”
The document states that China will ‘scale up’ S&B initiatives in the coming months and coordinate them with ongoing BRI-related infrastructure development “to help recipient countries consolidate the foundation of development while effectively solving livelihood problems.” Indo-Pacific
China’s Fighter Jets and Missiles Get a Boost From the India-Pakistan Clash (New York Times)
New York Times [5/20/2025 3:29 AM, Vivan Wang, 831K]
When Pakistan said it had shot down multiple Indian fighter jets earlier this month, ripples from that claim stretched all the way to the South China Sea, to Taiwan.
The Pakistani forces were flying Chinese-made J-10C fighters during the four-day conflict with India, and officials said Chinese missiles had brought down Indian planes.
The J-10 jets, which Chinese media have dubbed the “fighter of national pride,” have often been used in Chinese military exercises to menace Taiwan, the self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its own. But they had not been battle-tested, leaving open the question of how well they would perform in actual combat.
In China, commentators declared that question now answered.“Taiwanese experts say the Taiwanese military has no chance against the J-10C,” The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid, crowed on Monday.
The Chinese government has not directly confirmed the Pakistani claims, and India has not publicly confirmed losing any aircraft. But on Saturday, China’s state broadcaster declared on social media that J-10C jets had recently “achieved combat results for the first time,” with the post including a hashtag related to the India-Pakistan conflict.
Zhou Bo, a retired senior colonel in the Chinese military, wrote in an op-ed article that the jets’ success would boost Chinese confidence in future territorial disputes over Taiwan and the South China Sea.“The real effect is actually for the world, including Taiwanese authorities, to see how China’s defense industry has developed by leaps and bounds,” Mr. Zhou said in an interview. “This is for them to think about.”
Further stoking Chinese pride were reports that some of the Indian jets that Pakistan said it had downed were manufactured by France. Some analysts have cast the conflict as a proxy showdown between Western and Chinese arms capabilities, since India has been stepping up its purchases from the West, while Pakistan has drastically increased its military purchases from China.
In addition to jets, Pakistan also used Chinese-made air-defense systems and long-range air-to-air PL-15 missiles in the clash with India, according to security officials and Syed Muhammad Ali, a senior Pakistani defense analyst. Pakistan claimed that the PL-15 missiles hit their targets, though India has said that they did not.
The Chinese military’s lack of real-world combat experience — it has not fought a war in more than 40 years — is a longstanding source of concern for some in Beijing. But China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has made modernizing the military a priority. China has increased its defense spending even as economic growth has slowed, and it is now the fourth-largest arms exporter globally.
Chinese and Taiwanese analysts alike said the recent conflict suggested that Chinese weapons were now on par with Western ones.“This is the most convincing appearance of the Chinese weapon system on the world stage “ Hu Xijin, former editor in chief of The Global Times, wrote in a blog post.
Mr. Hu added that the United States, having seen proof of China’s prowess, would be less likely to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.
Some in Taiwan have expressed similar concerns. Li Cheng-chieh, a retired major general in the Taiwanese military, said in an interview that the Pakistani air force’s experience suggested that Taiwanese planes would have “little chance of survival” against Chinese ones.“Whether our fighter jets would even have the opportunity to take off is a question mark,” he said.
Notably, amid the online nationalism, the Chinese government itself has been more reserved, focusing more on touting Chinese military advances in general. State media did not confirm the use of the Chinese jets in the conflict until more than a week after Pakistan said it had successfully deployed them.
Beijing’s restraint may stem partly from wanting to avoid imperiling a recent diplomatic thaw with India. The two giants have in recent months agreed to resume direct flights and cooperate on trade issues, after their relations fell apart with a deadly clash over a disputed land border in 2020.
This month’s conflict may also have raised questions about other Chinese equipment even as it seemed to show off the strength of its fighter jets. The Indian government said in a statement last week that its air force had “bypassed and jammed Pakistan’s Chinese-supplied air defense systems” in “just 23 minutes, demonstrating India’s technological edge.”
On Monday, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry declined to address Indian claims that China had also provided Pakistan with active air-defense and satellite support during the clash.“Both India and Pakistan are important neighbors of China,” the spokeswoman, Mao Ning, said.
Ou Si-fu, a research fellow at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that Taiwan should not overreact to the recent incident. He noted that it was not yet verified that Chinese-made PL-15 missiles had actually shot down the planes.
Still, he acknowledged that the recent developments should be closely studied.“It’s like an alarm clock, reminding everyone not to be careless,” he said. “Taiwan has no capital to be careless." Uneasy India-Pakistan ceasefire holds but is a return to war inevitable? (The Guardian)
The Guardian [5/20/2025 3:30 AM, Hannah Ellis-Petersen, 83M]
Against the odds, the ceasefire that followed Indian and Pakistan’s almost-war has held; fragile, uneasy but still unbroken. Yet in the aftermath of four days of cross-border drones and missile strikes – the most technologically advanced conflict either side have ever engaged in – the question remains: what now?
While both India and Pakistan have claimed victory, some experts fear that a return to hostilities is almost inevitable.
There is a sense among analysts and diplomats that New Delhi has not emerged from the conflict as triumphant it had hoped, leaving little room for further de-escalation or political engagement. In a speech last week, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, insisted that the military offensive against Pakistani terror groups, named Operation Sindhoor, was still ongoing and that the ceasefire was simply a “pause”.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s army, after going through a period of reputational decline, is once again the country’s most revered institution – proving that nothing works better for the fortunes of Pakistan’s generals than an altercation with India.“India has made it clear they are still on a state of alert,” said Chietigj Bajpaee, a senior research fellow for south Asia at the Chatham House thinktank. He was sceptical that India’s missile strikes into Pakistan had done much to deter any future militant attacks, which India’s defence minister said would now be taken as an “act of war”.“With the hyper-nationalist rhetoric we are still seeing from both sides, it seems like there’s limited space for any lasting rapprochement,” said Bajpaee.‘The India-Pakistan hyphenation’
While India is seen to have achieved some tactical victories – successfully targeting known militant bases in Pakistan, firing targeted missiles into Rawalpindi, the beating heart of Pakistan’s military and largely rebuffing Pakistani missiles – the strategic wins have been more elusive.
Instead, India is now grappling with some more uncomfortable outcomes. As noted by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an Indian political scientist, in his India Express column: “an armed conflict with no decisive victory and no clear political end simply reinstates the India-Pakistan hyphenation” – a reference to an age-old tendency to lump the two countries together as a singular quarrelling entity on the international stage. In recent years, as India soared ahead of Pakistan and positioned itself as a global economic and geopolitical superpower, there was a feeling in the corridors of New Delhi that they had broken free of the hyphenation burden. However, recent events showed that perceptions, particularly in the US, had not changed all that much.
Among diplomats and observers, the view was that India had been left on the back foot in the critical battle over narrative. The deep-rooted instinct of the Modi government to tightly control the flow of information (Modi himself has not done a press conference in 10 years) meant that as Operation Sindhoor was launched, their accounts of the operation were limited to a few brief, highly choreographed press conferences led by civil servants.
In Pakistan meanwhile, government ministers were at the end of the phone and on TV news shows non-stop, briefing the world constantly on the Pakistani version of events, such as claims that Pakistan had downed five Indian military jets. The Modi government has still not publicly responded to the allegation, but instead put pressure on Indian news outlets to avoid any mention of the alleged downed planes.
Amid vast information gaps left by the Indian government an unprecedented amount of misinformation and disinformation proliferated. False claims fuelled an insatiable appetite for war among the Indian public.
As a result, on the 10 May, when Donald Trump abruptly announced a ceasefire before India or Pakistan had a chance, it was met with a widespread reaction of betrayal and anger in India. Many could not understand why the government would agree to a ceasefire, let alone one that seemed to have been imposed by the US. The fury among the hyper-nationalist far-right – Modi’s political base and where much of the disinformation originated – was particularly potent and the clamour for a return to war has still not entirely dissipated.
Trump interventions add insult to injury
Trump’s boastful claims of brokering the ceasefire have also been a source of frustration to New Delhi. While he joins a long line of US presidents who have been drawn into disputes between the neighbours, it is historically done far more discreetly and largely on terms favourable to India.
This time, India was left so infuriated at Trump’s version of events, including that coercion over trade led both sides to lay down arms, that it openly repudiated several of the president’s statements.
Trump’s involvement has also resulted in another strategic upset for India; the re-internationalisation of the Kashmir issue. India’s immovable position is that its dispute with Pakistan over the region, which dates back to 1947, is a purely internal issue that should have no outside interference or third-party negotiation. But in flagrant disregard for this, Trump offered, post-ceasefire, to mediate between the two countries to find a “solution”. Pakistan leapt at the offer; in India it was met with stony silence.
The Indian political strategist Brahma Chellaney accused Trump of “playing right into the hands of Pakistan which has long weaponised the Kashmir issue to justify its export of terror”.
Much still remains up in the air between the two sides. The land border between the countries is still closed, both sides are still denying visas and perhaps most critically, the Indus River treaty, which ensures Pakistan gets a vital supply of river water from India, remains suspended by New Delhi.
But while among the political class in Islamabad there is optimistic chatter of post-ceasefire talks in the Gulf or London – where even Kashmir could be on the table – New Delhi has avoided the subject. “The dilemma is that this war does not compel negotiations. Nor is it likely to build even a modicum of trust that can allow a political negotiation,” wrote Mehta.
On a deeper existential level, analysts say there remains little incentive on either side to de-escalate. In India, anti-Pakistan fervour has only driven up support for Modi and helped his strongman Hindu nationalist government win elections. In Pakistan, the ever-present threat of India has long been used to justify the over-dominating role of the military in the running of the country.
Bajpaee is among those who has a pessimistic view of any suggestion of post-conflict political dialogue between the two countries, calling them a “dead end”, when both sides are “essentially talking past each other”.“It seems very unlikely that we’re going to see any sort of credible peace process,” he said. “Frankly, at this point, I would say it’s not a question of if, but when we will see a resumption of some sort of military hostilities between both countries.” Another barrier to nuclear war between India and Pakistan has fallen (The Hill – opinion)
The Hill [5/19/2025 1:30 PM, Andrew Latham, 32092K]
India’s recent military strikes inside Pakistani territory are not just another tit-for-tat reprisal in a long-standing regional dispute. They signal something far more consequential: the end of New Delhi’s strategic patience and the beginning of a far riskier approach to cross-border conflict.
The strikes were calibrated and limited in scope. But they were also unmistakably a gamble. India now believes it can respond militarily to Pakistani-backed attacks without triggering full-scale war. That’s quite a wager.
But escalation in the nuclear age is not a policy. It’s a risk calculation with millions of lives on the table.
The immediate trigger was a deadly ambush in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 civilians. India blamed Pakistan-based militant groups. Pakistan, of course, denied involvement.
But this time, India launched a military operation that struck a number of targets across the Line of Control and in Pakistani territory — sites identified by New Delhi as linked to the terrorist groups responsible. The strikes were brief but pointed, carried out with precision-guided munitions launched from India’s Rafale fighter jets.
This isn’t unprecedented. India launched "surgical strikes" in 2016 after the Uri attack and conducted an airstrike in Balakot in 2019 following the Pulwama bombing. But the strategic environment has shifted. The region is more brittle and great power attention is scattered. The expectations of restraint that once loosely governed Indo-Pakistani crises, always fragile, are now barely holding.
Something fundamental has changed. India has set a new threshold: It will no longer absorb attacks without a kinetic response. That shift is real — and dangerous.
It means the subcontinent now depends more than ever on crisis management rather than deterrence. And South Asia is ill-equipped for that. There is a hotline between the two militaries, but its use has been sporadic. There are no institutionalized arms-control frameworks, no strategic dialogue with teeth and no mutual confidence-building measures that function under pressure. For decades, nuclear deterrence in the region has relied more on shared fear than structured restraint. That may no longer be enough.
The worst-case scenario for a future conflict easy to imagine. Pakistan retaliates — either through proxies or directly. India hits back again. The ladder of escalation gets steeper, faster. Political leadership on both sides becomes trapped by domestic expectations. And both militaries are trained to move quickly once hostilities begin.
Then there’s the nuclear question. Pakistan has always refused to adopt a "no first use" doctrine. India maintains one in principle, but it has come under increasing rhetorical strain in recent years. The entire structure of nuclear deterrence on the subcontinent rests on ambiguity, improvisation and the hope that cooler heads will prevail in time. That’s not a doctrine — it’s a risk, renewed with every fresh crisis.
This moment also fits a broader pattern. The use of limited, cross-border force is becoming normalized. Israel strikes Syria and Lebanon routinely. Turkey operates in northern Iraq. The U.S. continues armed drone operations from Africa to the Middle East. India, too, has now clearly decided that its security requires periodic demonstrations of resolve.
But South Asia isn’t like these other arenas. This is not a peripheral battlefield — it is a nuclear flashpoint.
If war breaks out in earnest, it won’t stay local. It would convulse the global energy market, destabilize already fragile Muslim-majority states and force the U.S. into an impossible strategic corner. China would not sit idle. Whether as a mediator or opportunist, Beijing would use the chaos to assert its influence in a region it already sees as a key frontier.
A ceasefire imposed by the U.S. has stopped the conflict for now, with many in Pakistan claiming victory and celebrating the military. But the real test is whether either side understands that the illusion of controlled escalation is the most dangerous illusion of all. Once violence begins, it has its own momentum. Political leaders and military planners may think they can channel it, but history is merciless with those who mistake proximity to war for mastery of it.
We should not mistake the quick end to this crisis for stability. Both sides have learned they can go further next time. And if they do, it won’t take much — a single misreading, a single overreaction — for everything to unravel in a catastrophic nuclear exchange. Twitter
Afghanistan
Beth W. Bailey@BWBailey85
[5/19/2025 1:35 PM, 8.5K followers, 4 retweets, 10 likes]
Mass deportations and the end of temporary protected status for Afghans stand to create economic harm and lead to increased terror recruitment in a country already wracked by chaos. Latest in the @dcexaminer with @jason_c_howk @billroggio and Hamayun khan https://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/3415428/deportations-afghan-refugees-terrorist-recruitment/
Beth W. Bailey@BWBailey85
[5/19/2025 6:09 PM, 8.5K followers, 7 retweets, 14 likes]
From my latest, a very telling oversight: "The U.S. Department of State Level 4 travel advisory for Afghanistan still notes that ‘multiple terrorist groups are active in Afghanistan and U.S. citizens are targets of kidnapping and hostage-taking,’ and adds that ‘even if you are registered with the appropriate authorities to conduct business, the risk of detention is high.’ ‘The Taliban do not regularly permit the United States to conduct welfare checks on U.S. citizens in detention, including by phone,’ the advisory continues. ‘Detention can be lengthy. While in detention, U.S. citizens have limited or no access to medical attention and may be subject to physical abuse.’“
Lina Rozbih@LinaRozbih
[5/19/2025 2:29 PM, 429K followers, 1 retweet, 13 likes]
Thank you, @SR_Afghanistan, for standing in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan and their resistance movement. In a time that seems the world is too busy to pay attention to the women of Afghanistan; your support exemplifies the bravery and integrity needed to challenge injustice. True courage lies in standing with those whose voices are being silenced.
Lina Rozbih@LinaRozbih
[5/19/2025 2:18 PM, 429K followers, 1 retweet, 11 likes]
The Taliban confirmed that World Bank has opened its office in Kabul @WorldBank Pakistan
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[5/19/2025 11:28 PM, 496.3K followers, 30 retweets, 96 likes]
Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar @MIshaqDar50 met with the Minister of International Department of the Communist Party of China (IDCPC), Liu Jianchao, in Beijing today. The DPM/FM appreciated China’s firm support to Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and issues of its core interest. Mr. Liu reiterated that as All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partner and ironclad friend, China would continue to prioritise its relations with Pakistan. Both leaders also agreed to deepen linkages between the political parties of Pakistan and CPC.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[5/19/2025 8:03 AM, 496.3K followers, 26 retweets, 38 likes]
Statement by the Spokesperson in Response to Indian Media’s Baseless Claims Regarding Pakistan’s Use of Shaheen Missile in Operation Bunyanun Marsoos (BM). https://mofa.gov.pk/press-releases/statement-by-the-spokesperson-in-response-to-indian-medias-baseless-claims-regarding-pakistans-use-of-shaheen-missile-in-operation-bunyanun-marsoos-bm
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[5/20/2025 2:47 AM, 80.6K followers, 8 retweets, 35 likes]
#Pakistan’s @ForeignOfficePk has categorically REJECTED the allegations by a Senior Indian Army officer that Pakistan attempted to target the Golden Temple, the most revered place in the Sikh faith. "We hold all places of worship in the highest esteem and cannot think of targeting a holy site like the Golden Temple".
Brahma Chellaney@Chellaney
[5/19/2025 8:58 AM, 291.5K followers, 196 retweets, 790 likes]
During the recent India-Pakistan military crisis, both China and the U.S. — like during the Cold War — came to Pakistan’s aid. Now, on a thank-you visit to Beijing, the Pakistani deputy PM-cum-foreign minister will pay obeisance bearing gifts that signify submission and respect.
Brahma Chellaney@Chellaney
[5/19/2025 3:35 AM, 291.5K followers, 227 retweets, 758 likes]
Trump has turned his sights toward Kashmir as a geopolitical bargaining chip, while keeping mum on Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism. He’s playing right into the hands of Pakistan which has long weaponized the Kashmir issue to justify its export of terror. https://apple.news/A9xWYetZHRZ6Q1h1RKCfgtg Mariam Solaimankhil@Mariamistan
[5/19/2025 3:23 PM, 101.1K followers, 153 retweets, 613 likes]
Pakistan takes billions from the world in the name of Afghan refugees- then taxes them, profits from them, and strips them of dignity during forced deportations by robbing them of their money and personal belongings. India, despite no obligation, sent food to those Pakistan robbed and deported. That’s the difference: one exploits, one stands.
Mariam Solaimankhil@Mariamistan
[5/19/2025 11:18 AM, 101.1K followers, 113 retweets, 255 likes]
Pakistan’s military establishment won’t touch real terrorists. Only the poor, the voiceless, the unarmed. These were the children of #MirAli North Waziristan. Killed by a Pakistani military drone today. ISPR called them terrorists. The same ISPR that protected Osama bin Laden. The same army that lets militants roam free- until it’s time to murder women and children. They can send drones into India but never to kill actual terrorists. India
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[5/19/2025 3:57 AM, 108.7M followers, 9.4K retweets, 103K likes]
Deeply concerned to hear about @JoeBiden’s health. Extend our best wishes to him for a quick and full recovery. Our thoughts are with Dr. Jill Biden and the family.
Narendra Modi@narendramodi[5/19/2025 10:19 AM, 108.7M followers, 6.7K retweets, 43K likes]
With enhanced features and improved functionality, the new OCI Portal marks a major step forward in boosting citizen friendly digital governance.
Brahma Chellaney@Chellaney
[5/19/2025 11:22 AM, 291.5K followers, 589 retweets, 1.8K likes]
By focusing narrowly on shaping the domestic narrative, successive Indian governments have ceded the international narrative by default. Operation Sindoor is merely the latest example. What purpose will be served by sending lawmakers abroad now after the global narrative has already hardened? To shape international opinion on issues vital to national security, a country must act swiftly — issuing timely statements and rebuttals to counter disinformation and influence public perception. In public diplomacy, time is of the essence. Yet, true to its bureaucratic culture, India often responds too slowly, allowing others to define the global conversation first.
Hamid Mir@HamidMirPAK
[5/19/2025 11:09 PM, 8.7M followers, 89 retweets, 353 likes]
India is following Isreal by using water as weapon against Pakistan.India violating international law by blocking river waters. Pakistan have the right to blow up the dams used to block river waters. Bengali translation of my Urdu column published by Jang.
Hamid Mir@HamidMirPAK
[5/19/2025 10:00 PM, 8.7M followers, 61 retweets, 333 likes]
Trade war started. Authorities in the US rejected at least 15 shipments of the Indian Mangoes sent by air upon arrival, attributing it to lapses in documentation. They instructed the exporters to either destroy the cargo in the US or re-export it to India. https://www.outlookbusiness.com/news/why-us-turned-away-500000-worth-of-indian-mangoes-explained NSB
Chief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[5/19/2025 5:32 AM, 163.6K followers, 32 retweets, 499 likes]
Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus presides over a meeting on anti money laundering issues at the State Guest House Jamuna on Monday.
The President’s Office, Maldives@presidencymv
[5/20/2025 2:09 AM, 113.2K followers, 62 retweets, 66 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu arrives in M. Muli Island to officially inaugurate the Muli Airport - a key pledge of his presidency. Upon arrival the President and his delegation was warmly welcomed by the island’s community.
The President’s Office, Maldives@presidencymv[5/19/2025 10:47 PM, 113.2K followers, 78 retweets, 75 likes]
Maldives joins the Blue Planet Alliance https://presidency.gov.mv/Press/Article/33755
The President’s Office, Maldives@presidencymv
[5/19/2025 10:45 PM, 113.2K followers, 81 retweets, 82 likes]
The Government of Maldives and the Blue Planet Alliance (BPA) signs a non-binding agreement on Monday. The signing ceremony took place during the opening of the Blue Planet Alliance Fellowship Program in Honolulu, Hawaii. His Excellency Vice President Uz @HucenSembe, currently on an official visit to Hawaii, United States of America, following a special invitation from the Blue Planet Alliance, signed the agreement on behalf of the Maldives.
Harsha de Silva@HarshadeSilvaMP
[5/20/2025 12:40 AM, 360.3K followers, 12 retweets, 31 likes]
Electricity tariff hike for Jun-Dec 2025 need NOT be 18%. It CAN be held at 9%. The JVP/NPP government of Pres @anuradisanayake need to discuss with @IMFNews and stick to agreed formula in EFF based on the Electricity Act 2009 and @CEB_lk Act 1969. Central Asia
Yerzhan Ashikbayev@KZAmbUS
[5/19/2025 10:50 PM, 2.8K followers]
#Kazakhstan powers up Central Asia’s first AI supercomputer built on cutting-edge @nvidia H200 chips (~2 exaflops). Housed in a Tier III data center, it’s duty/VAT-free and open to startups, universities, and industry, driving a new era of digital innovation.
Yerzhan Ashikbayev@KZAmbUS
[5/19/2025 10:44 PM, 2.8K followers, 2 likes]
As part of our joint efforts with the US to combat illegal migration, a Kazakh delegation has arrived in Washington, D.C. for the @StateDept @StateIVLP program, aimed at enhancing border management, information exchange, and bilateral cooperation.
Yerzhan Ashikbayev@KZAmbUS
[5/19/2025 6:39 PM, 2.8K followers, 3 retweets, 13 likes]
Productive conversation with @GraceBaskaran on advancing KZ-US cooperation in critical minerals, uranium& rare earths, as well as broader energy & trade issues. Appreciate the candid dialogue and mutual interest in identifying low-hanging wins and building strategic partnerships.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[5/19/2025 9:25 AM, 216.7K followers, 1 retweet, 13 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev was briefed on Tashkent metro development projects. Plans include extending the metro to the Tashkent Tractor Plant area in two stages: building an above-ground line from Pushkin station on the Chilanzar line to the Feruz area in Mirzo-Ulugbek district, followed by an extension to the bus station near the Tractor Plant.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[5/19/2025 6:32 AM, 216.7K followers, 2 retweets, 12 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev reviewed the construction materials industry, stressing quality, cost and competitiveness. He called for adopting modern technologies, supplying high-value products to both local and global markets, and applying scientific methods. Energy-intensive areas will be analyzed to implement innovations.{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.