SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Thursday, May 8, 2025 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
Many Afghans living in the U.S. fear being tortured or killed if they get deported (NPR)
NPR [5/7/2025 8:00 AM, Andrew Schneider, 37K]
Sayedyaqoob Qattali spent years aiding U.S. forces as a security commander for the Afghan Interior Ministry in Herat province. He was caught there when Afghanistan’s government fell to the Taliban in August 2021 and was unable to get U.S. help to evacuate.
"I went to Iran, and I applied for Brazil, [to get a] humanitarian visa. That was just the option that was left. Then, after one year, I got the visa, humanitarian visa," Qattali said.
What happened next was an odyssey. From Brazil, he and his family went to Peru, then to Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and finally Mexico. Most of the time, they walked.
"In all these countries, we got … the legal paper that [said] we can stay there," Qattali said.
When they arrived in Mexico in November of 2023, Qattali and his family used the CBP One app to apply for U.S. humanitarian parole.
"Some of [the] people … they were waiting one, two, three months," Qattali said. "And, fortunately, we received an appointment after two days.".
Qattali and his family entered the U.S. at the San Ysidro Port of Entry between Tijuana and San Diego. They came to Houston, getting relocation help from the Houston-based veterans organization Combined Arms.
Qattali speaks seven languages. He got a job as an apartment leasing agent, where his language skills enabled him to help fellow Afghans settle into the community. And he enrolled his two children in a charter school.
Everything was going well. Then, President Trump took office, and one of his first actions was to end the CBP One function for new applicants.
Initially, that wasn’t a problem for Qattali, as he and his family were already settled in the U.S. and had begun applying for asylum.
"Unfortunately," he said, "we got an email … that you have to leave. We have like seven days. After that, they’re going to charge … $900 per day.".
Qattali’s attorney told him not to worry, as he’s protected by the asylum application process, but he’s still frightened for his future.
"I have … a threatening letter," Qattali said. "If I go back, like, 100% they’re going to kill me and my family as well.".“We Don’t feel safe”
Even Afghans who have legal permanent residency in the U.S. worry what Trump’s policies mean for them.
Muhammad Amiri is a former pilot trainee with the Afghan air force who found himself stranded in the United Arab Emirates when the Taliban took Kabul.
Amiri managed to get to the United States on what’s known as a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV), a status for which individuals who fought and worked alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan are eligible and which can lead to permanent legal status.
Four months ago, Amiri received his green card.
"The words cannot express just my feeling," Amiri said. "It was out of my control. I started crying, and the tears were coming, just without any control. And just, I thanked God.".
Amiri has had several jobs since coming to the U.S. He’s currently a security supervisor at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and he’s taking IT courses with the goal of getting a job working as a computer help desk associate. He also recently got engaged.
But Amiri’s fiancée is still in Afghanistan, and until his legal situation is settled, he doesn’t dare leave the U.S. to see her, for fear he might not be allowed to return.
Indeed, he worries even his green card won’t protect him in the current political climate in the U.S.
"It doesn’t matter just how you got here," Amiri said. "We don’t feel safe, and we don’t feel good because now, we feel threatened, if they send us back to our country, it will be the same story. [We] feel threatened to be tortured, maybe be killed by [the] Taliban.".
Ali Zakaria, an immigration attorney based in West Houston, said people like Amiri are right to be worried.
"As unfortunate as it sounds," Zakaria said, "my first advice to all my clients — and my family and friends — is that, if you’re not a U.S. citizen, do not talk or post on your social media anything that’s negative about the current administration. Do not voice your opinion. Do not engage in any protest, because you will be targeted by this administration for revocation of your status.".
The end of Enduring Welcome and temporary protected status.
Roughly 200,000 Afghan immigrants and refugees came to the U.S. after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021. That includes about 10,000 in Greater Houston.
While some of them have since received green cards or even U.S. citizenship, many have more tenuous legal status, such as humanitarian parole or temporary protected status (TPS).
TPS is a program that allows individuals from countries where their lives might be in danger — due to wars or natural disasters — to legally live and work in the United States until it is safe for them to return home.
The current TPS for Afghans began in September 2023 and extends through May 20 of this year.
Afghans who are here on TPS got a shock in April when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that she would not be renewing the protection when it expires.
After that, any Afghans in the U.S. under the program will be at risk of deportation to Afghanistan.
"Everyone I speak to is concerned that if this protection is revoked, a lot of people’s lives are going to be in danger," said Khalil Yarzada, a former Afghan translator for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan who became a U.S. citizen in February. "A lot of people are going to see a target on their back.".
Soon after President Trump took office, the State Department shut down its Office of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts (CARE) and the program that CARE oversees, Operation Enduring Welcome.
U.S. Congressman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, is the former chair of both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee.
In March, he and two other Republican representatives sent a joint letter to President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Noem urging them not to end the Enduring Welcome program.
"Such a decision would abandon over 200,000 wartime allies and have lasting consequences for America’s global credibility, military operations, and veterans," McCaul and his House colleagues wrote. "The Taliban considers anyone who worked with the U.S. to be an enemy. They are being hunted, detained, and executed. Over 3,200 documented killings and disappearances of former Afghan military personnel, interpreters, and U.S. government partners has already occurred.".
The reasons for the policy change
Zakaria, the Houston immigration attorney, thinks the president’s motivation for ending programs like TPS for Afghans is because of his campaign pledge to enact mass deportations when he took office.
"What the Trump administration’s policy [is] at this moment is to create this mass group that can be deported," Zakaria said, "and one way is to cancel the existing legal protocols or legal protections that are in place, and thus making those people unlawfully here, and then deport them.".
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS,) issued the following statement explaining the decision to end TPS for Afghans:
"Secretary Noem made the decision to terminate TPS for individuals from Afghanistan because the country’s improved security situation and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country," McLaughlin wrote. "Additionally, the termination furthers the national interest and the statutory provision that TPS is in fact designed to be temporary. Additionally, DHS records indicate that there are Afghan nationals who are TPS recipients who have been the subject of administrative investigations for fraud, public safety, and national security.".
While Noem argues that the security outlook in Afghanistan has improved, the U.S. State Department’s website lists the travel advisory for Afghanistan at the highest risk, Level 4: "Do Not Travel, due to armed conflict, civil unrest, crime, terrorism, and kidnapping. Travel to all areas of Afghanistan is unsafe.".
NPR reached out to two of the staunchest critics of former President Joe Biden’s handling of Afghanistan, Congressman McCaul and Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, for their reactions to the approaching end of TPS for Afghans.
Cornyn did not respond to repeated requests for comment. McCaul sent the following statement:
"From the Houthis in Yemen to the cartels on our coasts, the Trump administration is taking decisive action to root out terrorism and make our world safer," McCaul wrote. "The Taliban, however, have made their thirst for retribution against those who helped the United States clear. Until they demonstrate clear behavioral changes, I urge the administration to continue prioritizing the safety of the Afghan men and women who risked their lives to help our troops.".
The last two Congresses have taken up a bill called the Afghan Adjustment Act, aimed at speeding up the path to permanent legal status for Afghans who aided U.S. forces during the war and expanding the eligibility for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs).
The measure died at the end of 2022 and 2024, and the current Congress has yet to refile the bill."Personally, I would like to see that happen yesterday," said Yarzada, who heads the SIVs and Allies Program at Combined Arms. "The SIVs have given so much of their life, of their livelihood, to be in a place where they are, and I think it is our duty as Americans to support them, to give them a fair shot, a fair chance to be able to build a life here in the United States, because this is the most American thing that we can do.". Pakistan
US Consulate General in Pakistan’s Lahore directs staff to shelter in place (Reuters)
Reuters [5/8/2025 5:41 AM, Gursimran Kaur, 24727K]
The U.S. Consulate General in Lahore, Pakistan, has directed its staff to shelter in place amid reports of drone explosions, downed drones and possible airspace incursions, the country’s State Department said on Thursday. US Issues Pakistan Travel Warning After India Drone Attack (Newsweek)
Newsweek [5/8/2025 5:49 AM, Shane Croucher, 24727K]
The U.S. State Department issued a fresh travel warning for Pakistan after an Indian drone attack hit a target in Lahore, warning U.S. citizens to leave areas of active conflict if it is safe or to shelter-in-place.India said it had targeted Pakistani air defense and radar systems in retaliation against attempted strikes on its military facilities. Pakistan said it had downed Indian drones in various locations, but one had hit a military site near Lahore, wounding four soldiers."Due to reports of drone explosions, downed drones, and possible airspace incursions in and near Lahore, the U.S. Consulate General in Lahore has directed all consulate personnel to shelter-in-place," the State Department said in a post on X, formerly Twitter."The Consulate has also received initial reports that authorities may be evacuating some areas adjacent to Lahore’s main airport."U.S. citizens who find themselves in an area of active conflict should leave if they can do so safely. If it is not safe to leave, they should shelter-in-place."The U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Pakistan gave a list of actions for U.S. citizens to take in its security alert. They are:Seek secure shelter. Have evacuation plans that do not rely on U.S. government assistance.
Have travel documents up to date and easily accessible.
Monitor local media for updates.
Carry proper identification and cooperate with authorities.
Indian Drone Attack
Pakistan’s army spokesman accused India of wounding its soldiers in the drone attack near Lahore, an incident he described as a "serious, serious provocation" and one that "is further escalating" the unfolding conflict.
India sent drones to "multiple locations" in Pakistan and 12 were shot down, said Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, spokesperson for the Pakistan Armed Forces, in a briefing on Thursday.
But he said one drone broke through and "managed to engage a military target near Lahore, partially," leading to the soldiers’ injuries. He also said one civilian had been killed and another hurt by falling debris in the southern Sindh province.
It is "yet another blatant act of military aggression by India," Chaudhry said.
The Indian government accused Pakistan of attempting to engage military targets with drones and missiles, prompting this latest response, which it said was focused on Pakistani air defense radars and systems.
"It has been reliably learnt that an air defense system at Lahore has been neutralized," the Indian government said in its statement, adding: "Indian Armed Forces reiterate their commitment to non-escalation, provided it is respected by the Pakistani military."
Fears of India-Pakistan War
The two nuclear-armed powers are clashing in the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre, in which 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, were killed by gunmen attacking a popular beauty spot in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
India called it a terror attack and accused the Pakistanis of having a hand in the incident, but Pakistan has denied any involvement.
There is a serious risk of escalation that leads to all-out war between the neighbors, and global powers such as the U.S. and China are urging restraint.
US Embassy in Pakistan advises Americans to leave conflict areas (The Hill)
The Hill [5/7/2025 9:58 AM, Lauren Irwin, 52868K]
The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan has issued a security alert for Americans to leave conflict areas after India struck Pakistani-controlled territory earlier Wednesday.
"We advise U.S. citizens to depart areas of active conflict if they can safely do so, or to shelter in place," the embassy said in a Wednesday statement.
The embassy said it was aware of the military strikes in Pakistan and that it continues to be an "evolving situation.".
They reminded citizens of the "Do Not Travel" advisory in areas in the vicinity of the India-Pakistan border and the Line of Control due to "terrorism and the potential for armed conflict.".
The State Department also has a "Reconsider Travel" advisory in place for Pakistan.The embassy said it was aware that airspace has been closed and that many flights have been canceled due to the attack. It will continue to send alerts and updates as needed through the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program messaging system, the embassy said.
India struck Pakistan early Wednesday in response to a massacre of tourists in an Indian-controlled territory last month. India’s missile attack killed nine people, including one child, and wounded several others.
The Indian government said it was striking infrastructure used by militants where attacks against India have been "planned and directed.".
The U.S. Embassy of India said no Pakistani civilian, economic or military targets were hit and only "known terror camps" were targeted.
The Pakistani Foreign Affairs Office said the attack was "unprovoked" and other Pakistani officials claimed the strike was on "innocent civilians and mosques.".
Tensions rose after a militant attack last month killed 26 people in the Indian-controlled part of the Kashmir region, which has long been a disputed area of land between the two countries. Pakistan has denied India’s claim that it was behind the April attack.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was monitoring the situation "closely" and would engage with both country’s leadership to work "towards a peaceful resolution.". Pakistan’s Defense Minister Welcomes U.S. Help to Ease Tensions With India (New York Times)
New York Times [5/7/2025 4:14 PM, Julian E. Barnes, 831K]
Pakistan’s defense minister said on Wednesday that he would welcome further U.S. efforts to help defuse his country’s crisis with India and praised President Trump for calling for a quick end to the conflict.
India said early Wednesday that its forces had struck nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir in response to a terrorist attack in Kashmir last month. Pakistani officials said at least 20 people were killed in the airstrikes.
While Pakistani officials have said that Pakistan reserves the right to retaliate, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, the defense minister, struck a different tone, suggesting that Pakistan had already responded by shooting down Indian planes and drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles or U.A.V.s.
He said his country would refrain from further action if India took no additional steps to attack and agreed to an independent investigation.
Mr. Asif said Pakistan’s Air Force had shot down five Indian planes and two drones. In addition, Pakistani jamming devices and electronic warfare equipment stopped some Indian missile launches and forced other planes to make emergency landings, he said.
Indian officials and Western diplomats, as well as witnesses and local media, have said that two or three Indian planes went down on the Indian side of the border.“We could have taken down 10 planes yesterday,” Mr. Asif said. “We had the opportunity, but we restricted it to five planes and two U.A.V.s because we didn’t want to expand this situation.”
Mr. Trump’s comments on Tuesday that he hopes the conflict “ends very quickly” were helpful, Mr. Asif said. He added that he would welcome further U.S. efforts to bring “down the temperature in the region.”
Tensions between India and Pakistan have been spiraling since the terrorist attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir, in which gunmen killed 26 people, almost all Hindus.
American diplomats have been in contact with Pakistani and Indian officials. And Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has been in frequent contact with Indian officials to defuse the situation, American officials said.
Immediately after the attack, India said the attackers had “cross-border linkages.” Pakistan disputed the charge and called for an international investigation.
Indian officials said the strikes early Wednesday in Pakistan-controlled territory were aimed at destroying terrorist training camps. The Pakistani government has denied the sites had any connection with terrorist groups.
Around midnight local time, India launched 78 planes to attack sites in Kashmir and Punjab, Mr. Asif said. The planes did not cross into Pakistan’s territory, he added.
Mr. Asif said the Pakistani armed services reserved the right to strike at India if they detected the Indians were preparing for a further attack, but he also said Pakistan was ready to de-escalate.“Restraint is still being applied,” Mr. Asif said. “But if the same situation arises tonight, the situation could flare up very easily.”
The defense minister reiterated his call for an international investigation and said he hoped U.S. officials would push India to accept such an inquiry.“The administration could suggest a commission of two or three other countries,” he said. “A credible body could be set up. We don’t want this to hang in limbo.”
Both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons, something that has increased American officials’ concerns. But Mr. Asif said he did not “foresee any risk, at the moment” of the dispute escalating to a nuclear conflict.
The nuclear capabilities of the two countries, he said, were a stabilizing factor preventing disputes from escalating too much, but, he added, “the risk is always there. You can’t deny that.” Pakistan says it shot down 12 Indian drones and 1 attacked military target (AP)
AP [5/8/2025 3:14 AM, Babar Dogar, 456K]
Pakistan’s air defense system shot down a dozen Indian drones overnight, as one attacked a military target near the eastern city of Lahore, causing damage and wounding soldiers, officials said Thursday.
It follows Indian missile strikes on Pakistani locations that killed 31 civilians a day earlier, including women and children, according to officials.
Meanwhile, India evacuated thousands of people from villages near the two countries’ highly militarized frontier in the disputed region of Kashmir.
Tensions between the two countries have spiked since April 22, when gunmen killed 26 people, mostly Indian Hindu tourists, in India-controlled Kashmir. India accused Pakistan of backing the militants who carried out the attack, something Islamabad has denied.
Drones shot down in Pakistan
Pakistan’s army spokesman, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Sharif, said an Indian drone wounded four soldiers and partially damaged a military target near Lahore overnight, while the country’s air defense system intercepted and shot down 12 Indian drones that entered Pakistani airspace at various locations. He gave no further details about the attack.
He added that in southern Sindh province, one civilian was killed and another wounded when debris from downed drones fell in a populated area.
The incidents could not be independently verified, and Indian officials did not immediately comment.
In Lahore, local police official Mohammad Rizwan said a drone was downed near Walton Airport, an airfield in a residential area about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the border with India that also contains military installations.
Local media reported that two additional drones were shot down in other cities of Punjab province, of which Lahore is the capital.
In Punjab’s Chakwal district, a drone cashed into farmland. No casualties were reported. District police chief Ghulam Mohiuddin did not say whose drone it was. Authorities have secured the wreckage and are investigating the drone’s origin and purpose.
India said its strikes Wednesday targeted at least nine sites in Pakistan linked to planning terrorist attacks against India. Some of these targets were in Punjab and most of Wednesday’s casualties were in this province.
Fears of escalating conflict
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed overnight to avenge the killings but gave no details, raising fears of a broader conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
Across the de-facto border in Indian-controlled Kashmir, tens of thousands of people slept in shelters overnight, officials and residents said Thursday.
Indian authorities evacuated civilians from dozens of villages living close to the highly militarized Line of Control overnight, while some living in border towns like Uri and Poonch left their homes voluntarily, three police and civil officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with departmental regulations.
India’s foreign ministry said that 13 civilians were killed and 59 wounded the previous day during exchanges of fire across the de facto border. An Indian soldier was also killed by shelling Wednesday, according to the Indian army.
Iranian foreign minister will meet Indian officials
Meanwhile, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in India’s capital on Wednesday night for a pre-scheduled visit. He was scheduled to meet his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar later Thursday and the duo will co-chair a joint forum on economic cooperation.
Iran has offered to mediate between India and Pakistan, and Araghchi was in Pakistan on Monday to meet top leaders as part of that effort. Pakistan Warns Will ‘Avenge’ Deaths From Indian Strikes (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [5/7/2025 5:27 PM, Sajjad Qayyum and Bhuvan Bagga, 1054K]
Pakistan has warned it will "avenge" those killed by Indian air strikes that New Delhi said were in response to an attack in Kashmir, signalling an imminent escalation in the worst violence in decades between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
At least 43 deaths have been reported so far, with Islamabad saying 31 civilians were killed by the Indian strikes and firing along the border, and New Delhi adding at least 12 dead from Pakistani shelling.
"We make this pledge, that we will avenge each drop of the blood of these martyrs," Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in an address to the nation late Wednesday.
India’s army said it destroyed nine "terrorist camps" in Pakistan in the early hours of Wednesday, two weeks after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing an attack on tourists in the Indian-administered side of disputed Kashmir -- a charge Pakistan denies.
Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said five Indian jets had been downed across the border.
An Indian senior security source, who asked not to be named, said three of its fighter jets had crashed on home territory.
The two sides have exchanged heavy artillery fire along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir, which both countries claim in full but administer separately.
The South Asian neighbours have fought two full-scale wars over the divided territory since they were carved out of the sub-continent after gaining independence from British rule in 1947."There were terrible sounds during the night, there was panic among everyone," said Muhammad Salman, who lives close to a mosque in Pakistan-administered Kashmir that was hit by an Indian strike.
"We are moving to a safer place... we are homeless now," added 24-year-old Tariq Mir, who was hit in the leg by shrapnel.
India said that its actions "have been focused, measured and non-escalatory".
Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of launching the strikes to "shore up" his domestic popularity, adding that Islamabad "won’t take long to settle the score".
On Wednesday night, the Pakistani military spokesman said firing was "ongoing" at the Line of Control and that Islamabad would take retaliatory action against the air strikes.
Chaudhry reiterated Pakistan’s "right to respond, in self-defence, at time, place, and manner of its choosing," adding that the armed forces had been "authorised" to do so by the government.
The largest Indian strike was on an Islamic seminary near the Punjab city of Bahawalpur, killing 13 people, according to the Pakistan military.
A government health and education complex in Muridke, 30 kilometres (20 miles) from Lahore, was blown apart, along with the mosque in Muzaffarabad -- the main city of Pakistan-administered Kashmir -- killing its caretaker.
Four children were among those killed in Wednesday’s attacks, according to the Pakistan military.
Pakistan also said a hydropower plant in Kashmir was targeted by India, damaging a dam structure, after India threatened to stop the flow of water on its side of the border.
India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said the operation was New Delhi’s "right to respond" following the attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Kashmir last month.
Pakistan has denied any involvement in that assault, which killed 26 people, mainly Hindu men, on April 22.
In Muzaffarabad, United Nations military observers arrived to inspect the mosque that Islamabad said was struck by India.
Residents collected damaged copies of the Koran from among concrete, wood, and iron debris.
In Indian-administered Kashmir, residents fled in panic from the Pakistani shelling.
"There was firing from Pakistan, which damaged the houses and injured many," said Wasim Ahmed, 29, from Salamabad village. "People are fleeing.".India had been widely expected to respond militarily to the Pahalgam attack, which it blamed on Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terrorist organisation.
The two nations had traded days of threats and tit-for-tat diplomatic measures, and Pakistan conducted two missile tests.
The Indian army has reported nightly gunfire along the heavily militarised Line of Control since April 24.
Diplomats and world leaders have piled pressure on both countries to step back from the brink.
"The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan," the spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres said.
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump called for a halt to the fighting, adding: "If I can do anything to help, I will be there.".
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was expected in New Delhi late on Wednesday, two days after a visit to Islamabad, as Tehran seeks to mediate.
Rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir have waged an insurgency since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan.
India regularly blames Pakistan for backing armed groups fighting its forces in Kashmir, a charge that Islamabad denies. India
How India Is Trying to Squeeze Pakistan Far From the Battlefield (New York Times)
New York Times [5/8/2025 4:43 AM, Alex Travelli, 831K]
Even as India was gearing up to use its military to strike at Pakistan this week, calling it revenge for a terrorist strike in Kashmir last month, the government was pursuing other forms of power projection as well: bloodless and more refined, and mostly aimed at Pakistan’s economic vulnerability.
On Friday, May 9, the executive board of the International Monetary Fund is scheduled to meet three blocks from the White House. Indian officials have suggested that they will make a new case there: that the Fund should refuse the extension of a $7 billion loan to Pakistan described as crucial to getting the country on more solid footing financially and to fund desperately needed services for its people. And though Indian officials will not confirm it, other potential sources of Pakistani aid may also be in India’s sights, according to domestic media reports.
In two weeks before its strikes against Pakistan on Wednesday, India was already testing new ways to aggrieve its old enemy.
On April 23, India pulled out of a river-sharing treaty that has safeguarded Pakistan’s vulnerable water supply since 1960. Pakistan called it an act of war.
India turned to its softer power, as well. As tensions rose after the terrorist attack in Kashmir, India tinkered with its internet controls to cut off Pakistani musicians and cricketers from their audiences on Indian social media, much as it blocked Indians from using Chinese-owned TikTok after a clash with China in 2020.
India also announced that it would sever all trade between the two countries. In practice, there wasn’t much to begin with. India exports mainly sugar, medicines and some other chemicals to Pakistan. Some Indian exporters said they never got a legal notice from the government — so they are still fulfilling contracts.
But Pakistan was only shipping a paltry $2 million in goods to India before this flare-up. The economic asymmetry between these unhappy neighbors is more striking than ever.
The more financial forms of pressure happen mostly behind closed doors. Local news outlets reported that Indian officials have been saying they are working to persuade the Fund and similar institutions to punish Pakistan.“It would be surprising if India did not take a stance” against loans to Pakistan, said Sudipto Mundle, who served as the Asian Development Bank’s chief economist in New Delhi.“These institutions have the appearance of corporate banks, but they’re basically very political institutions,” said Mr. Mundle, now the chairman of India’s Center for Development Studies. Loans are supposed to be approved on the merits of a particular project, he said, but “at the end of the day, the things get decided by which side the various members of the board are aligned with.”
Mr. Mundle remembers how the Asian Development Bank bank canceled a loan to India that had already been approved in 1998, in response to India’s test of a nuclear bomb. The United States and most other countries that mattered were angry at India for starting a nuclear rivalry with Pakistan, as they saw it.
The same countries are more sympathetic to India these days, and not only as a victim of terrorism. Its economy has grown to 10 times the size of Pakistan’s, and its workers and consumers appeal to strategists who yearn for an alternative to China.
Earlier on the very night of India’s strikes against Pakistani targets, India and Britain announced a free-trade agreement that had been in the works for three years. India is working to seal deals with the United States and the European Union, too.
But there are also reasons for financial organizations based in Washington to hesitate to indulge India in its effort to cut Pakistan off. Those institutions, recognizing Pakistan’s economic vulnerability, may be reluctant to plunge the country into deeper instability after years of loans and programs aimed at improving its debt and currency stability.
India has contradicted a report that its finance ministry was lobbying the Asian Development Bank itself to reconsider lending to Pakistan. But it did not deny similar reports that it will try having Pakistan put back on a “gray list” maintained by a global anti-money-laundering and antiterrorism task force. The listing would threaten Pakistan’s ability to get financial assistance, and the country had spent years struggling to get off it before finally succeeding in 2022.
T.C.A. Raghavan, who served as India’s high commissioner to Pakistan from 2013 to 2015, said the “gray list” is powerful, but that India’s sharpest nonmilitary tools in this conflict are its relationships with other countries.“There the equations have changed very, very dramatically.” In particular, India’s relationships with the Gulf monarchies, in Europe and with the United States, “those relationships have changed a lot in the last 10 or 15 years,” Mr. Raghavan said.
He was working on Pakistani affairs before 2008, when Pakistan-sponsored terrorists raided Mumbai and killed 166 people. After that incident, Mr. Raghavan said, “most countries understood very clearly” the nature of India’s problem. The Symbolism Behind India’s ‘Operation Sindoor’ (New York Times)
New York Times [5/7/2025 4:14 PM, Pragati K.B. and Anupreeta Das, 831K]
Himanshi Narwal was first a symbol of tragedy, then a target of hate.
Last month, Ms. Narwal was captured in an image sitting beside her slain husband, who was among 26 people killed in a terrorist attack on the Indian side of Kashmir. As India struck Pakistan on Wednesday in retaliation, Ms. Narwal became shorthand for why India picked the name “Operation Sindoor” for its military action.
Sindoor, or vermilion powder, is a traditional marker of the marital status of Hindu women. Married women wear it either in the parting of their hair or on their foreheads, and they wipe it off if they become widowed. During the April 22 terrorist attack, many women lost their husbands, who were targeted because they were Hindu. But few received the media attention that Ms. Narwal has after the image of her by her husband’s side went viral.
The Indian government’s choice of the name Operation Sindoor signaled its intention to avenge the widowed women. On social media, the Indian Army announced the strikes with a stark image that included a jar of spilled sindoor, which resembled spattered blood.“Operation Sindoor” also signals to right-wing Hindu groups — many of which favor more traditionally defined gender roles — that the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is listening to their demands for vengeance.
But some feminists have criticized the use of the word sindoor.
Hindu nationalism is predominantly driven by a male view of the world, said V. Geetha, a feminist historian who writes about gender, caste and class. “Women figure in it as objects to be protected or as mother figures goading their men to prove their heroism,” Ms. Geetha said.
In the April 22 terrorist attack, which India has linked to Pakistan, all but one of the 26 people killed were tourists visiting a scenic meadow near the town of Pahalgam in Muslim-majority Kashmir. Pakistan has denied involvement.Of the 25 tourists, most were Hindu men, according to local reports. Women and children were spared, and some survivors reported that the attackers had told them they spared their lives so they could tell their government about what had happened.
In the chaos of that afternoon, the image of Ms. Narwal sitting by her dead husband, her wrists still adorned with the bangles worn by many Hindu brides, went viral. To many, she was a symbol of the shock and sadness accompanying the brutal attack, in which gunmen opened fire while civilians sipped tea, traveled down a zip line or rode on ponies.
Nine days later, as Ms. Narwal was still grieving the loss of her husband, Vinay Narwal, the naval officer she had been married to for less than a week, she said she wanted “peace, and only peace.” The perpetrators should be brought to justice, she told reporters at a blood donation camp on the birthday of her husband.
But she said that she did not want to see “people going against Muslims or Kashmiris.” Right-wing Hindu trolls pounced on that comment, vilifying her online and calling for revenge against Muslims for the terrorist attack.
Ms. Geetha, the historian, said that Ms. Narwal stopped becoming a symbol the moment she expressed her thoughts.
A woman, “once she speaks, the people take offense, because she ceases to be a symbol,” Ms. Geetha said. “She becomes a person who doesn’t think as you want her to think.” India strikes alleged headquarters of militant groups in Pakistan’s heartland (Reuters)
Reuters [5/7/2025 11:09 PM, Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam and Mubasher Bukhari, 41523K]
Video footage from the early hours of Wednesday shows a bright flash from the residential Islamic seminary outside Bahawalpur in central Pakistan as India attacked its neighbour in response to the killing of Indian tourists in Kashmir.
The seminary was emptied of its students in recent days as speculation grew that it would be targeted by India, but the family of Masood Azhar, founder of the Jaish-e-Mohammed Islamist militant group, was still there, according to the group.
Ten of Azhar’s relatives were among 13 people killed in the strike, including women and children, the Pakistani military said. Thousands of people turned out for their funerals at a sports stadium later in the day, shouting "Allah Akbar", or God is Great, and other religious chants.
"(Indian Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s brutality has broken all norms," the group said in a statement. "The grief and shock are indescribable". It said that five of those killed were children and the others included Azhar’s sister and her husband. It did not respond to a request for comment on why the family was still at the site.
Azhar, who has not been seen for years, and his brother, Abdul Rauf Asghar, deputy head of the group, did not appear to have attended the funeral prayers. The road to the site was cordoned off after the strike.
Further north, around half an hour after midnight, four Indian missiles hit a sprawling complex in Muridke over six minutes, a local government official said.
The attack demolished a mosque and adjacent administration building and buried three people in the rubble.
A sign outside describes the site as a government health and educational complex, but India says it is associated with militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Delhi and Washington blame LeT for the 2008 attack on the Indian city of Mumbai that killed more than 160 people. LeT, which has has denied responsibility for that attack, is banned.
The attack left other buildings in the complex untouched. A local official said that normally there were up to 3,500 staff and students at the site, but almost everyone had been evacuated in recent days as they feared it would become a target.
Hafiz Saeed, leader of LeT and its successor organizations, is in a Pakistani jail since being convicted in 2020, on terror financing charges. He says his network, which spans 300 seminaries and schools, hospitals, a publishing house and ambulance services, has no ties to militant groups.
Delhi said it had conducted pinpoint strikes on the two headquarters of its militant adversaries, part of what it said were nine "terrorist camps" targeted.
"Over the last three decades Pakistan has systematically built terror infrastructure," it said in a briefing on the attacks.
Pakistan said India had hit six sites, killing 26 people and wounding 46, all "innocent civilians".
Officials and experts said India’s attack on its neighbour, its most significant in decades, fulfilled a long-cherished goal, but Islamabad warned that it would hit back.
The conflict between India and Pakistan has been confined in recent decades mostly to the disputed mountainous region of Kashmir. But the air strikes in the towns of Bahawalpur and Muridke were seen in Islamabad as a major escalation.
India said seven of its targets were used by Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, both Islamist groups designated "terrorist" organisations by the U.N. Security Council. India launched the attacks in response to the killing of 26 people, mostly tourists in Indian Kashmir last month.
Jaish says that it carries out educational and charity work in Pakistan and its militant activities are only in India. Delhi says that it runs training camps in Pakistan, as well as indoctrination schools, and that it launches militants into India.
For decades Hindu-majority India has accused Pakistan of supporting Islamist militants in attacks on Indian interests, especially in Kashmir. Pakistan denies such support and in turn accuses India of supporting separatist rebels in Pakistan, which New Delhi denies. NSB
Bhutan partners with Binance to launch first tourism crypto payments (TheStreet)
TheStreet [5/7/2025 7:57 AM, Anand Sinha, 11.1M]
Bhutan, the South Asian country located in the Himalayan region, has partnered with Binance Pay and the country’s fully digital DK Bank to launch a national-level crypto payment system for tourism.
The partnership marks the first time a tourism product has accepted cryptocurrency at a national level.
Tourists can avail a range of tourism services, including flight and hotel tickets, visa and Sustainable Development Fee (SDF) fees, monument entry fees, and local shopping, using Binance Pay via static and dynamic QR code payments.
More than 100 merchants in Bhutan are now live with Binance Pay and DK Bank. The service supports more than 100 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, BNB, and USDC.
The pioneering crypto payments system lets tourists avail themselves of a seamless and fully integrated travel experience system across immigration, stay, and shopping while in Bhutan.
Binance CEO Richard Teng said, "We are excited to partner with Bhutan as we are not only advancing the use of cryptocurrencies in travel but also setting a precedent for how technology can bridge cultures and economies."“This is more than a payment solution — it’s a commitment to innovation, inclusion, and convenience,” said Damcho Rinzin, Director of the Department of Tourism, Bhutan. “It enables a seamless experience for travellers and empowers even small vendors in remote villages to participate in the tourism economy.”
Bhutan is a picturesque nation located amidst the Himalayas that offers tourists an opportunity to experience its rich natural beauty and unique cultural traditions.
The country is also well-known for its dynamic crypto mining industry. It holds 12,062 BTC worth $1.17 billion at the time of writing. Sri Lanka Gets $1 Billion From World Bank, Jobs in Focus (Reuters)
Reuters [5/7/2025 11:40 AM, Rodrigo Campos, 24727K]
The World Bank said on Wednesday it has earmarked more than $1 billion to support job creation and private sector growth in Sri Lanka over three years.
"The initiative aims to expand economic opportunity, strengthen local industry, and attract private capital to support long-term growth," the bank said in a statement.
The World Bank estimates a shortage of some 700,000 jobs in the island nation over the next decade with a million young people entering the workforce. World Bank Grants Cash-strapped Sri Lanka $1.0bn Loan (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [5/7/2025 10:43 AM, Staff, 931K]
Sri Lanka has been granted a billion-dollar loan to boost its agriculture, tourism and energy sectors, the World Bank said on Wednesday, as the country emerges from an unprecedented economic crisis.
Sri Lanka’s economy collapsed in 2022 when it ran out of foreign exchange to finance even the most essential imports such as food, fuel, and medicines.
The loan aims to strengthen local industries and attract private capital for growth, the World Bank said in a statement after its President Ajay Banga met with Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Colombo.“With progress underway to stabilise the economy and restart growth, core elements for job creation are in place,” Banga said in the statement.
The loan will be spread over three years, it added.
The economic crisis led to months of street protests that forced then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down. His successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, negotiated a $2.9 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund.
The four-year bailout loan from the IMF helped shore up the country’s revenues and cleared the way for the government to reschedule foreign debt after a sovereign default on $46 billion of external borrowings in April 2022.“Now is the time to accelerate reforms and create the conditions for private enterprise to thrive — particularly in sectors that can create jobs at scale,” Banga said.
The World Bank warned last month that Sri Lanka’s population was living in poverty despite the economy making a “remarkable recovery” from its worst financial crisis.
The South Asian nation’s growth surpassed the Bank’s forecast of 4.4 percent, recording 5.0 percent in 2024 — the first economic expansion since the 2022 crisis.
The IMF warned earlier this month that Sri Lanka’s recovery could be undermined if punishing US tariffs were reinstated.
The United States is Sri Lanka’s largest single market, accounting for almost a quarter of its $12 billion in merchandise exports. The trade balance is heavily in favour of the small South Asian nation.
Washington imposed a 44 percent “reciprocal tariff” on the island nation before putting it on hold for 90 days.
Sri Lanka has not retaliated but has instead appealed for negotiations with Washington. Sri Lanka ruling party wins local elections (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [5/7/2025 12:35 AM, Staff, 62527K]
Sri Lanka’s leftist government headed for victory at local council elections but with reduced margins, in its first test since sweeping national polls last year, early results showed on Wednesday.President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s coalition was leading in a majority of councils declared in Tuesday’s local government elections, but fell short of an outright majority in many of them.Out of 258 declared of the 339 councils by Wednesday morning, Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) was the largest single party in 200. It had an absolute majority in 99.The leftist NPP would need the support of other parties to control the remaining 101 councils where it fell short of an absolute majority.The NPP’s overall vote share fell to 43.5 percent, down from the 61 percent it secured at the November parliamentary election. The main opposition SJB made a marginal gain, reaching 20.6 percent, up from 17.7 percent.Dissanayake, who upset more established political parties to win the September presidential election, built on his popularity to secure the parliamentary vote held two months later.Since coming to power Dissanayake, 56, has made a U-turn on his pledge to renegotiate the terms of an unpopular IMF bailout agreed by his predecessor, and has maintained high tariffs.He had turned the local elections into a referendum on his six-month-old administration, saying it was essential for his party to secure local councils so that all layers of government were "free of corruption and endemic waste".About 60 percent of the 17.1 million electorate turned out to vote on Tuesday, down from nearly 70 percent in November and 80 percent in the September presidential vote.The campaign was lacklustre, with no high-profile figures in the running. Central Asia
Migrants Beaten In Moscow Cafe As Crackdown On Central Asians Intensifies (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/7/2025 6:26 PM, Staff, 968K]
Staff and customers at a Moscow cafe that employs Central Asians say they were badly beaten by police during a raid, part of what they say is an intensifying campaign against migrants from the region.
The crackdowns, which have escalated in recent weeks, are reportedly occurring even in cases where no documentation violations are found among migrant workers.
For decades, Russia has been the main destination for workers from Central Asia, who send tens of millions of dollars back home each year.
But the war in Ukraine and recent terrorist attacks like one in March 2024 on the Crocus City Hall entertainment complex in a Moscow suburb have led to unprecedented pressure on migrant workers.
Four Tajik men were arrested in connection with the deadly incident that left more than 140 people dead and more than 550 injured in the worst such attack -- the Islamic State extremist group claimed responsibility -- in Russia in years.
Migrants say they are being targeted in a variety of public spaces, including transportation hubs, hotels, and restaurants in a concerted effort that follows legislation amended last year to give Russian police more powers to expel migrants without court orders.
Last month, Kyrgyz migrants say they were beaten, forced to crawl, and humiliated during a Moscow police raid on a bathhouse complex, a place popular among Kyrgyz migrants living in the Russian capital.
Some local media reports say that as many as three-quarters of the cafes and restaurants that cater to the Central Asian community have closed because of the frequent raids.
Eyewitness accounts detail tactics involving violence, humiliation, and property damage during these operations.
In some instances, members of the nationalist group "Russian Community," have been accused of operating as self-described "citizen patrols," where they reportedly participate alongside police, filming assaults and verbally and physically abusing migrants.
Official data reveals a significant surge in deportations from Moscow, with 4,800 migrants, primarily from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, expelled in the first three months of 2025 -- an increase of around 30 percent compared to the previous year. Saudi Arabia Goes Whistling Past the Kazakh Oil Graveyard (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [5/8/2025 12:00 AM, Javier Blas, 5.5M]
The four most dangerous words in finance are “this time is different.” History suggests that when Saudi Arabia launches a price war against one of its OPEC+ allies, it ultimately succeeds — but this time really will be different1.
Saudi efforts to bludgeon Kazakhstan into compliance with its OPEC+ oil production quota are doomed to fail. Ostensibly, Riyadh is trying to reestablish discipline among rogue producers; Kazakhstan and several others are cheating on their output targets. To force them to relent, the kingdom is voting at OPEC+ meetings to raise group production faster than previously expected, hoping that the ensuing price decline forces the troublemakers into line. In OPEC+ parlance, the Saudis are trying to give the Kazakhs a sweating.
To be sure, the kingdom isn’t only focused on Kazakhstan. Its oil policy is multidimensional: It appears to be trying to recoup market share, probably from US shale producers, and is simultaneously using cheap crude as a tool in diplomatic talks with US President Donald Trump.In the market, the strategy of pumping more oil — two consecutive monthly increases of 411,000 barrels a day for the eight main OPEC+ nations — is working as one would expect, particularly at a time when demand growth is slowing. Brent crude earlier this week touched a four-year low of just above $60 a barrel. Brent is down 15% this year, and many observers anticipate further declines as Saudi production, currently just above 9 million barrels a day, heads higher.
Kazakhstan, though, isn’t cutting production to meet its OPEC+ quota. It has two strong motivations to keep pumping; it needs the revenue, and it’s in negotiations with international oil companies about investment plans that will determine the country’s economic development from now until the middle of the century.
First, the math. Thanks to the $48-billion expansion of its Tengiz mega-oilfield, Kazakhstan will pump on average 300,000 barrels a day more in 2025 than in 2024, with annual crude output averaging 1.8 million barrels a day this year. Those extra barrels can offset a large price decline. Put it simply, Kazakhstan isn’t sweating.
According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, if Brent remains around its current level of $62 a barrel for the remainder of the year, Kazakhstan’s gross oil revenue would decline just 2% compared with last year; a drop to $60 would trim it by 4%. Even if Brent traded at $50 until December, the accompanying 12% decline in annual revenue isn’t enough to persuade the government in Astana to change course. Kazakhstan has already banked the proceeds of higher prices earlier this year: Brent crude averaged around $75 during the first quarter.
Much lower crude prices of, say, $40 through the end of this year may inflict enough of a hit to prompt Kazakhstan to reconsider its production policy — but that would put extraordinary pressure on the Saudi budget, too. So far, there’s little indication that the kingdom, which was taking on increased debt even before the recent decline in crude prices, is prepared to crash the market sufficiently to bring Kazakhstan to heel.
The second reason why Kazakhstan isn’t budging is its relationship with Big Oil. The nation has relied on Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell Plc, TotalEnergies SE and ENI SpA to build the three mega oilfields that are the backbone of its petroleum industry. The foreign companies have invested dozens of billions of dollars; if Astana forced them to pump less, they would probably balk at further investments. But Kazakhstan needs that spending to further expand production.
Beyond those Western oil companies, the rest of the Kazakh industry is dominated by state-owned KazMunayGas, along with Chinese, Russian and domestic privately owned groups. They mostly operate smaller fields that are significantly older. Cutting production there is complicated by vested local interests and the fact that output cuts may be impossible to reverse due to the age of the oilfields; they never recovered from shutdowns imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic, for example.
The pressure from Saudi Arabia comes at a delicate moment for Astana and the foreign oil companies operating there. The contracts that govern the three megaprojects will come up for renewal relatively soon — Tengiz is valid until 2033, Karachaganak until 2038 and Kashagan until 2041 — and both sides have started to explore extensions. Oil majors typically prefer to try to prolong agreements long before expiry, often as many as five years before the deadline is reached.
Tengiz is at the center of the current dispute between the Saudis and the Kazakhs. Forcing project leader Chevron and the other international oil companies involved to reduce production now would further complicate those extension talks.
So the most Kazakhstan is likely to do is to pay lip service to the OPEC+ targets. Expect more platitudes from Astana, reiterating in public its disposition to cooperate with the cartel while privately doing the opposite by pumping way more than its quota. For the Saudis, this time may truly turn out differently. Saudi Arabia Suspends E-Visas for Citizens of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [5/7/2025 8:03 AM, Kulobiddin Norov, 777K]
Saudi Arabia has temporarily suspended the issuance of electronic visas (e-visas) for citizens of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
The suspension, effective from April 23 to June 9, 2025, coincides with the annual Muslim pilgrimage season known as hajj. During this period, travelers from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan must apply for visas through Saudi embassies or authorized visa centers in their respective countries. The Saudi Ministry of Tourism has not formally announced the suspension, but the measure is confirmed on the ministry’s website and aligns with the Kingdom’s broader efforts to manage the influx of pilgrims from Central Asia during the hajj season, ensuring proper vetting and adherence to regulations.
Residents of the European Union, the United Kingdom, or the United States, as well as travelers holding valid visas to those countries, can still obtain visas upon arrival at Saudi entry points.
In Uzbekistan, the suspension coincides with ongoing challenges in regulating privately organized Muslim pilgrimage tours. Recent incidents have highlighted issues such as fraudulent hajj services and unlicensed travel agencies. In one case, a man in Tashkent was detained for allegedly accepting $23,600 to illegally send four individuals on the hajj. To address these concerns, Uzbek authorities plan to launch a single portal for hajj and umrah by September 2025, aiming to streamline the process and reduce bureaucratic obstacles.
Tajik citizens, meanwhile, are facing increasing visa restrictions more widely.
In August 2024, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) stopped issuing visas to male citizens of Tajikistan, citing security concerns. Tajik men applying individually for UAE visas have faced steady rejections, while women and family groups continue to receive approvals without issue. Some speculate that the policy shift may be linked to concerns over illegal labor migration and the potential for extremist and religious radicalization of male Central Asian migrants. As of now, the UAE has not issued an official statement regarding the change in visa issuance practices. The cost of a UAE visa for Tajik citizens remains at approximately $100, roughly the average monthly salary in Tajikistan.
In April 2024, Turkiye also revoked its visa-free travel arrangement for Tajik citizens. Under a policy that had been in place since 2018, Tajik nationals had been allowed enter Turkiye without a visa for up to 90 days. The decision came in the wake of heightened security concerns following the March 22 terrorist attack at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, where over 140 people were killed. The Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) claimed responsibility for the attack, and the four suspects arrested were identified by Russian authorities as nationals of Tajikistan.
While Turkish authorities did not explicitly link the visa policy change to the Moscow attack and promised that the decision was temporary, the proximity of the events led to speculation about a connection. Dushanbe responded with reciprocal visa requirements on Turkish citizens, thus excluding Turkiye from the visa-free travel arrangement to Tajikistan that has been available for nationals of 52 countries since January 1, 2022.
Citizens of Tajikistan can now travel visa-free only to 22 countries, half of which are fellow former Soviet republics – although Russia, the main travel destination for millions of Tajiks looking for employment abroad, has similarly tightened its immigration rules for Central Asian migrants this year. The new regulations shortened visa-free stay in Russia from six to three months, broadened hiring restrictions, and created a registry of undocumented migrants. These growing visa restrictions seem to respond to the ever-present (if sometimes overblown) threats from extremist groups in and around Central Asia and reflect the authoritarian local governments’ willingness to accept such restrictions to further limit the freedom of movement of their citizens. Indo-Pacific
Trump says he hopes India and Pakistan stop now after going ‘tit-for-tat’ (Reuters)
Reuters [5/7/2025 9:08 PM, Kanishka Singh, 24727K]
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday Washington’s partner India and U.S. ally Pakistan have "gone tit-for-tat," and that he hoped the two nuclear-armed Asian neighbors could stop further escalations.U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio separately discussed efforts to de-escalate tensions between India and Pakistan with his Saudi Arabian counterpart in a Wednesday call, the State Department said.KEY QUOTES"They’ve gone tit-for-tat, so hopefully they can stop now," Trump said at the White House on Wednesday, adding he knew both sides "very well" and wanted "to see them work it out."He added: "And if I can do anything to help, I will be there."Trump has termed the rising tensions a shame.WHY IT’S IMPORTANTIndia hit Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir with missiles on Wednesday and Pakistan said it shot down some Indian aircraft and vowed to retaliate, in their worst clash in over two decades.India is an important U.S. partner for Washington, which aims to counter China’s rising influence, while Pakistan remains an ally despite its diminished importance after Washington’s withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan in 2021.U.S. TALKSIn recent days, Washington has been in touch with both nations. Rubio has held calls with both, including after India’s Wednesday strikes.CONTEXTIndia said it struck "terrorist infrastructure" sites, some linked to an April 22 attack by Islamist militants who killed 26 people in India-administered Kashmir. India blamed April’s attack on Pakistan, which dismissed the accusations and called for a neutral probe. Washington expressed support for India at the time but did not directly criticize Pakistan.Pakistan said over 30 people were killed in India’s strikes on Wednesday.Analysts say U.S. involvement to achieve diplomatic goals in Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza may make Washington leave India and Pakistan on their own in the early days of the tensions. Trump offers to ‘help’ relieve conflict between India and Pakistan (CNBC)
CNBC [5/7/2025 4:21 PM, Laya Neelakandan, 889K]
President Donald Trump on Wednesday offered to help dial back tensions between India and Pakistan, which has escalated as a result of a recent Islamist terror attack in the region of Kashmir.
Trump commented on the situation hours after India said its armed forces conducted strikes against Pakistan early Wednesday morning.
"It’s terrible," Trump said of the conflict.
"My position is I get along with both," Trump said in the Oval Office after swearing in former Sen. David Perdue of Georgia as U.S. ambassador to China.
"I know both very well, and I want to see them work it out," the president said. "I want to see them stop, and hopefully they can stop now.".
He added that the U.S. has good relations with both countries and wants to see the "tit-for-tat" stop.
"If I can do anything to help, I will be there," Trump said.
Trump on Tuesday night told reporters at the White House that India and Pakistan have been fighting for "a long time" and implied the rising tensions may have been foreseen "based on a little bit of the past.".
India has blamed Pakistan for the April 22 massacre of 26 civilians in the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir, a Himalayan region.
Both India and Pakistan claim that all of Kashmir is rightfully part of their country. Trump offers to help India, Pakistan amid growing conflict: ‘I want to see them stop’ (FOX News)
FOX News [5/7/2025 2:52 PM, Diana Stancy, 52868K]
President Donald Trump wants India and Pakistan to cease fighting and is open to helping both countries broker a peace agreement, following strikes from India against Pakistan early Wednesday.
India launched missiles against at least nine sites "where terrorist attacks against India have been planned," according to India’s Defense Ministry. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s military reported that the strikes killed at least 26 people — including women and children — and claimed the strikes amounted to an "act of war.".
"Oh, it’s so terrible. My position is, I get along with both," Trump told reporters Wednesday. "I know both very well, and I want to see them work it out. I want to see them stop. And hopefully they can stop now. They’ve got a tit-for-tat, so hopefully they can stop now. But I know both. We get along with both countries very well. Good relationships with both. And I want to see it stop. And if I can do anything to help I will. I will be there as well.".
Tension between India and Pakistan escalated in April after a gunman killed 26 people who were primarily Indian Hindu tourists in the India-controlled portion of Kashmir. India pinned the blame on Pakistan, and a militant group India claims is affiliated with a Pakistani militant group ultimately claimed responsibility for the attack.
After India’s Wednesday strikes, Pakistan said it shot down five Indian fighter jets, claiming that the move was justified given India’s actions.
"Pakistan has every right to give a robust response to this act of war imposed by India, and a strong response is indeed being given," Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said. India and Pakistan Face Off but Seek to Contain Fallout (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [5/7/2025 4:45 PM, Tripti Lahiri, Waqar Gillani, and Aakash Hassan, 126906K]
India and Pakistan faced off militarily after a militant attack on tourists that New Delhi blamed on Islamabad, but the nuclear-armed neighbors appeared to be calibrating their responses to avoid full-blown conflict after decades of relative peace.Pakistan threatened to hit back after retaliatory strikes by India on nine locations across Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir overnight Wednesday. Islamabad said its response would correspond to actions taken by New Delhi, which had described its attacks as non-escalatory. Despite the violence, including cross-border shelling Wednesday, both sides sought to display a measured approach as the Trump administration urged them to avoid further escalation. New Delhi said its strikes were based in part on intelligence about imminent attacks like the one which killed 26 people in Indian-administered Kashmir in April. India didn’t give a death toll from the overnight strikes but said it avoided collateral damage.Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office on Wednesday called India’s actions an unlawful act of war. Sharif later said Pakistani pilots had destroyed five Indian fighter aircraft in an hourslong battle while remaining in their own airspace.“This was our answer to them,” he said.India declined to comment on the assertion, for which Pakistan didn’t provide evidence. Locals in some parts of Kashmir reported seeing planes crash overnight.Islamabad said India had killed 31 civilians in the strikes.Pakistan denies involvement in the attack last month, in which militants shot dead tourists in front of family members.The U.S. has sought to persuade both sides to defuse tensions. But while U.S.-India ties have strengthened in recent years, Washington’s influence over Islamabad has waned over the past decade as China has become Pakistan’s closest ally.President Trump said the strikes were “a shame” and that he hoped the fighting would end “very, very quickly.” Lisa Curtis, who worked as a National Security Council official for South and Central Asia in Trump’s first administration, said the U.S. had leverage because its ties with Pakistan had improved during Trump’s second term, something she said Islamabad had long craved.“The administration could warn Pakistan that further escalation could risk those gains,” said Curtis, now director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.In 2019, when India and Pakistan last confronted each other militarily after a deadly assault on Indian security forces in Kashmir, the two sides had a tit-for-tat military exchange before de-escalating. India’s action this week came despite diplomatic efforts, including phone calls by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Sharif and Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, aimed at persuading both sides to lessen tensions.Rubio “is encouraging India and Pakistan to reopen a channel between their leadership to defuse the situation and prevent further escalation,” National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said Wednesday.India has long accused Pakistan of fomenting a violent insurgency in Kashmir, the region divided between the two countries but that both claim in its entirety. Islamabad denies supporting militancy and has pursued some members of the militant group responsible for attacks on Mumbai. India and Pakistan have exchanged small-arms fire along their border over several days since the April attack in Pahalgam, a valley in Indian-administered Kashmir. Overnight, the two sides began cross-border shelling, which India said had killed 15 of its civilians.Political analysts said it was difficult to gauge how Pakistan would respond to India. Pakistan’s army, a powerful political player in the country, could see conflict with India as bolstering its standing, but the country is also confronting economic and political crisis that could hold it back from a full-bore response.India has sought to portray its actions as moderate, analysts said, noting that it didn’t attack Pakistan’s military installations, leaving an off-ramp for Islamabad.“India recognizes the challenges of climbing the escalation ladder,” said Harsh Pant, a visiting professor at the King’s College India Institute and vice president of the foreign policy program at the New Delhi-based Observer Researcher Foundation. “That gives Pakistan space to maneuver. If they want to take it or not is their call.”But Pakistan is under pressure on many fronts, said Pant.Residents on the Indian side of the de facto border in Kashmir reported hearing explosions and seeing a jet plunge from the sky overnight Wednesday. In one village, 12 miles south of the Indian Kashmir city of Srinagar, residents said they were jolted awake late at night by the deafening roar of what they said sounded like jet fighters overhead. Moments later, a thunderous explosion shook the area as villagers witnessed a burning aircraft spiraling from the sky.“I was convinced our village was under attack,” said local resident Mohamad Mumeeb. “When I looked up, I saw this enormous fireball falling from the sky.”Police cordoned off an area of the village Wednesday morning. The smell of aviation fuel filled the air.If Pakistan did manage to down India’s planes during the attack by New Delhi, it would indicate the two countries would be evenly matched in a shorter aerial conflict, analysts said. Since India has upgraded its Air Force with Rafale jets from France, Pakistan has inducted China’s J-10C combat aircraft. It couldn’t be determined which aircraft took part in the recent strikes.India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars mainly over the disputed territory, were last at war over two decades ago.Kashmir was India’s only Muslim-majority state until New Delhi took tighter administrative control and downgraded it to a union territory in 2019, arresting thousands of Kashmiris. But in recent years officials have pointed to rising tourism as a sign the region was returning to normalcy.The April attack was the worst on civilians in India since the wide-scale assault on Mumbai in 2008. Without providing evidence, India has said the militants were associated with U.S.-designated terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani group behind the Mumbai attacks.Indian security officials have detained hundreds of people in Indian Kashmir since the April attack, and demolished homes associated with militants or their family members.India has also implemented economic and diplomatic measures against Pakistan, including suspension of a crucial water-sharing agreement.Both countries have been focused on domestic concerns as a frosty peace prevailed. Pakistan confronted a deepening political and economic crisis, while India focused on expanding its manufacturing base to take advantage of the U.S. pivot away from dependence on Chinese goods. Back-channel communications between the countries, which had helped maintain the tense truce, have declined in recent years, said Praveen Donthi, of the International Crisis Group. He added that in previous confrontations, U.S. pressure had helped to lessen tensions. Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Asim Munir, is seen as taking a harder line on India than his predecessor as part of what India analysts perceive as an attempt to revive the idea of the army as the sole guarantor of the nation’s security. In a speech just days before the attack in Indian Kashmir, the military leader portrayed the India-Pakistan conflict as a war of religions with no common ground, and called Kashmir “our jugular vein,” a phrase used by Pakistan’s founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, to describe the region.“We will not forget it,” Munir said. Global leaders call for ‘restraint’ as India-Pakistan tensions escalate (BBC)
BBC [5/7/2025 5:14 PM, Jessica Rawnsley, 69901K]
A diplomatic push is underway to bring India and Pakistan back from the brink as tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours have escalated.Overnight into Wednesday, India launched strikes on sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.India said it acted in response to a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir two weeks ago that killed 25 Indians and one Nepali. Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack.Indian police alleged that two of the attackers were Pakistani nationals, with Delhi accusing Pakistan of supporting militants - a charge Islamabad denies.World leaders urged the two sides to exercise "restraint" and called for a de-escalation of tensions."The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan," UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s spokesman said.He said Guterres is calling for "maximum military restraint from both countries".UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the situation was a "serious concern"."The UK government is urging India and Pakistan to show restraint and engage in direct dialogue to find a swift, diplomatic path forward," Lammy said. "I have made clear to my counterparts in India and Pakistan that if this escalates further, nobody wins."Lammy also said the safety of British nationals in the region was "our priority", with the UK foreign office monitoring developments closely.US President Donald Trump called it a "shame" and said that he "hopes it ends very quickly".China’s foreign ministry said India’s military operation was "regrettable". The foreign ministry spokesperson said they were "concerned" about the ongoing situation and asked both countries to "remain calm, exercise restraint and refrain from taking actions that may further complicate the situation".France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told French media: "We understand India’s desire to protect itself against the scourge of terrorism, but we obviously call on both India and Pakistan to exercise restraint to avoid escalation and, of course, to protect civilians."Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi travelled to Delhi and is due to meet with India’s president and external affairs minister on Thursday, after holding talks with Pakistan’s army chief and prime minister earlier this week.Iran has offered to mediate between India and Pakistan.India said its strikes had targeted sites "from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed" and "no Pakistani military facilities have been targeted".Pakistan said six locations had been hit, but denied India’s allegations of these being terrorist infrastructure.Pakistani authorities said India’s strikes had killed 31 people. Indian authorities said at least 15 civilians had been killed by Pakistani shelling.Pakistan’s military said it had shot down five Indian aircraft and a drone. India has yet to respond to these claims.Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the air force made its defence - which was a "reply from our side to them". India and Pakistan May Have an Off-Ramp After Their Clash. Will They Take It? (New York Times)
New York Times [5/8/2025 12:29 AM, Mujib Mashal and Salman Masood, 831K]
For two weeks, as India promised a forceful response to a terrorist massacre that it linked to Pakistan, the only real question seemed to be just how hard it would strike.
The answer came in the wee hours of Wednesday, as India sent jets soaring through the air to hit several sites in Pakistan, and as the Pakistani military mobilized its own fleet to try to shoot the Indian planes out of the skies.
By day’s end, long after the missiles had stopped flying and the killing had come to a close, both sides took stock and found that they had enough to claim victory — or to further escalate the conflict.
India struck deeper into Pakistan than it had at any point in recent decades of enmity between the two nuclear-armed rivals. The damage by all accounts was extensive, with more than 20 people killed in dozens of strikes across six to nine locations, including in towns long known to harbor terrorist leaders wanted for carnage inflicted on India.
But there was also growing evidence that Pakistan, too, had delivered serious blows. Two or three Indian planes went down on the Indian side of the border, according to Indian officials and Western diplomats, as well as local media reports and eyewitness descriptions. It was exactly what India had hoped to avoid after having suffered a similar embarrassment the last time it exchanged military strikes with Pakistan, in 2019.
The question now is whether Pakistan will decide that it must answer India’s strikes on the Pakistani heartland with an attack of its own on Indian soil.
For now, Pakistan says it is keeping all options open. But diplomats and analysts expressed some hope that the day’s events might offer the two sides an offramp that allows them to avert a spiral into all-out war. That hope was in part fueled by suggestions that back-channel conversations had started, with Pakistan’s foreign minister telling a news channel that there had been “some interaction” between the two countries’ national security advisers since Wednesday’s military confrontation.
Those looking for signs that the two countries might be serious about de-escalation pointed in part to India’s statements about its strikes. In its public announcements and a flurry of diplomatic activity, India emphasized that its action was limited and targeted, and that it did not seek an escalation.
The nature of the strikes, which targeted places associated with terrorist groups that are recognized names in India, could also help the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi quell the public anger that followed last month’s terrorist massacre in Kashmir.“These actions were measured, nonescalatory, proportionate and responsible,” said India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri.
On the Pakistani side, military and civilian officials tried to keep the narrative focused on what they called Pakistan’s major victory in bringing down Indian aircraft.Pakistani officials publicly claimed that the country’s forces had brought down five Indian aircraft in total. In private conversations with diplomats, the officials emphasized that they had remained restrained. Pakistani forces, they said, waited for Indian planes to begin unleashing their loads before hitting them.
In a signal of some return to normalcy, Pakistan declared on Wednesday night that its airspace was open again.“Our armed forces were on standby 24/7, ready to shoot down enemy jets the moment they took off and throw them into the sea,” the Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said in an address. “The five Indian planes that went down last night could have been 10, but our pilots and falcons acted with caution.”
What comes next, analysts and diplomats said, will depend on whether the two sides have extracted enough to satisfy their people, and on whether sufficient international diplomacy can be mustered in a time of global upheaval.
Shashi Tharoor, a member of the Indian Parliament, said the gruesome nature of last month’s carnage in Kashmir had left the Indian government no choice but to carry out some military action, “because otherwise terrorists would feel they could come and kill and go away with impunity.”
But he said the Indian side had “sensitively calibrated” its response to make sure any chance of escalation would be reduced.“I think it was done in a manner that sought to convey very clearly that we were not looking to see this as the opening salvo in a protracted war, but rather as a one-off,” Mr. Tharoor said.
He said there was no official Indian confirmation that the Pakistani military had downed Indian planes. “But if it is true that Pakistan was able to shoot down a couple of aircraft, they could easily be able to argue that honor is satisfied,” he said.
The Pakistani side, while needing to demonstrate strength against India, also has powerful reasons to avoid further escalation.
Pakistan can scarcely afford a protracted war at a time of severe economic hardship. It would also face a complicated puzzle in choosing targets inside Indian territory. India has no equivalent terrorist apparatus to hit in tit-for-tat attacks. One potential option, striking Indian military installations, would risk serious reprisals.
Moeed Yousaf, a former national security adviser in Pakistan, said he saw the issue as one of deterrence — to make clear to India that it cannot strike across international borders and get away with it.“There’s debate within decision-making circles” in Pakistan about whether its claims of success in downing Indian aircraft are enough, Mr. Yousaf said. “I think the options have been kept open,” he said, adding that “the ball is still in India’s court.”Muhammad Saeed, a retired general who served as chief of the general staff of Pakistan’s army, said the two sides would need help in tamping down tensions.“The international community must understand, no matter how distracted they are with Ukraine or elsewhere, this is a brewing crisis with massive implications,” Mr. Saeed said. “If the region spirals into open war, and there is no crisis management framework, what then? Will you keep flying in mediators from Washington, London, Rome every time?”
He said that world powers must make a sustained “push for engagement.” Otherwise, he said, “we’re setting ourselves up for the same crisis again.”
While there appeared to be a broad consensus on the damage inflicted by Indian strikes on the Pakistani side, the exact nature of the reported downing of Indian aircraft remained unclear.
Public accounts from both sides suggested that it was unlikely that Indian aircraft had crossed into Pakistani airspace. All indications were that India had carried out its strikes, either from the sky or with ground-based missiles, from its own territory.
If it is true that Indian planes did not enter Pakistani airspace, it is unclear how Pakistan would have potentially brought down the Indian aircraft.
Pakistani military officials said they had used air-to-air missiles to shoot down the planes, which could not be independently verified. In interactions with foreign diplomats, Pakistani officials described the face-off as a nearly hourlong dogfight along the line that divides India and Pakistan.
Military analysts said that given the long-range missiles that both countries have in their arsenals, they would not need to breach each other’s airspace to carry out cross-border strikes against air or ground targets. For India and Pakistan, a path to de-escalation (Washington Post – opinion)
Washington Post [5/7/2025 4:57 PM, Staff, 31735K]
India’s early-morning missile strikes in Pakistan and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir on Wednesday killed dozens of people and marked an intensification of the long-simmering conflict between the two neighbors. Even so, the strikes seem to have been designed to be a reasonable response to a deadly attack by militants on tourists in India-controlled Kashmir that India says was backed by Pakistan.Given the existential stakes on the subcontinent — both India and Pakistan have sizable nuclear arsenals — this might be small comfort. But India’s strikes were restrained enough that the new conflict between the two countries conceivably could stop here. Pakistan appears to have shot down several of India’s fighter jets over Indian territory, demonstrating its ability to inflict costs in return. If Pakistan insists on escalation beyond this, it will bear most of the responsibility for the unnecessary war that would follow.Restraint is a relative concept. These latest strikes have been more violent than other recent flare-ups between the countries. In 2016, Indian troops crossed the Line of Control in Kashmir to attack terrorist staging areas after gunmen affiliated with a Pakistani Islamist group killed 19 of its soldiers. And in 2019, India carried out airstrikes in response to a suicide attack that killed 40 Indian paramilitary police. In both instances, plausible deniability was the way out. India claimed it had sufficiently avenged itself, while Pakistan, in one instance, denied that India’s attacks had even occurred and, in another, that India had failed to hit anything.This time, plausible deniability will not be so easy. India’s strikes inside Pakistani-controlled Kashmir were broader, hitting targets in Pakistan’s Punjab province for the first time since the 1971 war. India claims its attacks were designed to not hit any Pakistani military targets, and to be “non-escalatory.” Pakistani officials counter that the strikes amount to an act of war and that they killed 31 people, including children and other civilians.Images of dead children and smoldering mosques will no doubt inflame Pakistani public opinion. However, two of the targets in Punjab, in Bahawalpur and Muridke, are known to be operational headquarters of prominent Islamist militant groups — Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba — which were built around mosques. The number of civilian casualties claimed by Pakistan should be understood in this context.The April 22 Pahalgam attack on a popular tourist destination in Indian-administered Kashmir was itself a gruesome escalation. Uniformed gunmen directly targeted civilians, killing at least 25 Indians and one Nepalese citizen. All the victims were men, and many were executed point-blank in front of their spouses, after the gunmen confirmed that they were not Muslim. It was the deadliest attack on civilians in the region since the 2008 Mumbai attacks.The Resistance Front, an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, is said to initially have claimed responsibility for the attack on social media. But it has since denied any participation and instead blamed Indian cyber operations for engineering a setup. India claims that two of the three suspects in the attack were Pakistani nationals.Although President Donald Trump has tried to keep his distance from the conflict — “I hope it ends very quickly,” he said when asked about India’s strikes — Secretary of State Marco Rubio admirably has been trying to mediate between the sides, urging dialogue and restraint. In light of the recent violence, these efforts need to be stepped up.A plausible way out of this mess exists, and it could follow a familiar script: Both sides can declare victory. India appears to already have paid a price for carrying out its attacks with the loss of its fighter planes. Even so, India maintains that its strikes were sufficient revenge for the Pahalgam atrocity. Pakistan’s friends, including China, should now help find an acceptable narrative for their side, perhaps by claiming that the downing of the Indian planes has restored deterrence. There are signs that this might be happening. On Wednesday, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif indicated to Bloomberg TV that “if India backs down, we will definitely wrap up these things.”Once both sides have stepped back from the brink, diplomacy will need to continue. India could reinstate the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan it had suspended after the Pahalgam attack, perhaps in exchange for visible efforts by Pakistan to rein in the terrorist networks operating within its borders. Most of all, Delhi and Islamabad should work to reestablish diplomatic and military back channels. Nuclear brinkmanship is hair-raising in any context; it’s even worse when the two sides are not communicating. ‘Unresolved history’: 3 columnists on India-Pakistan tensions (Washington Post – opinion)
Washington Post [5/7/2025 5:30 PM, Damir Marusic, 31735K]
On Wednesday morning, India launched strikes against Pakistan in retaliation for an earlier terrorist attack in India-administered Kashmir — an attack Pakistan denies it had anything to do with. The two nuclear powers have long fought over control of Kashmir, but these are the first skirmishes between them in six years. Can India and Pakistan quash tensions before more violence erupts? I’m joined by my Post colleagues Rana Ayyub and Max Boot to discuss.
Damir Marusic: So, we all knew India would eventually hit Pakistan after the terrorist attacks in Pahalgam. Now, they have. How worried are the two of you that this will spiral further?
Max Boot: Only moderately worried. Leaders in both Islamabad and New Delhi are nationalistic, but they are not suicidal. Neither side wants to spark a nuclear war. Since 1945, nuclear weapons have been a force for strategic stability; that’s a big reason why World War III never broke out between the United States and the U.S.S.R., and why India and Pakistan have not fought a major war since both countries acquired nuclear weapons. This crisis will certainly test the logic of deterrence, but I don’t expect it to break down. 🤞.
Rana Ayyub: I see a predictable pattern here: provocation, retaliation, international concern, then de-escalation without any resolution. And both countries will play to their domestic constituencies. Unfortunately, we continue to be hostage to our history and the legacy of partition.
Damir: Regarding domestic constituencies, that’s what seems like the big unknown. The Pahalgam attacks fueled an astounding level of anti-Muslim sentiment on Indian social media. Do you think India’s response has satisfied these passions?
Rana: Any terror attack in India fuels anti-Muslim rhetoric and attacks, especially against Kashmiri students.
Max: I am hopeful that India’s strikes have satisfied Indian public opinion, and that the Pakistani response (there are claims of Indian jets being shot down, and France confirmed to CNN that at least one Rafale jet had been lost) will satisfy Pakistani opinion, so we can all move on.
Rana: But we should not forget that the collateral damage in the fight between India and Pakistan has been the ordinary Kashmiri, whose voices often go unheard in this fog of war.
Damir: The strikes that hit Punjab in Pakistan proper (not Pakistan-controlled Kashmir) were the first since the 1971 war. And though they were reportedly targeting the headquarters of Islamist terror groups, they demolished mosques. Alongside reports of several dead children, opinion in Pakistan is now likely to be also inflamed. Will authorities be able to contain it there?
Rana: I have seen several conflicting statements from the Pakistani establishment. The prime minister has claimed that civilians were being targeted, which is partly true. But the chief of the Pakistani militant group Jaish has said that they have lost 12 members. So, India is citing that statement to say that it was precise, not civilian, targeting.
Max: Public opinion is certainly important, but Pakistani policy is effectively determined by the army, not by elected politicians. The army wants to maintain its public standing as a defender of Pakistan, which justifies its de facto control of the state. Presumably, Gen. Asim Munir, the Pakistani army chief of staff, is less likely to cater to public opinion than Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. But who knows?
Rana: Munir made several hawkish statements regarding Kashmir just before the Pahalgam attack, invoking the "two-nation" theory. He was extremely unpopular in Pakistan and now will use this opportunity to redeem himself.
Damir: Yes, I understand Munir’s standing has only gone up since this crisis kicked off.
Max: Which is what you would expect: In most nations, the army’s standing goes up in wartime, at least initially. But I doubt Munir wants to be the one responsible for kicking off a nuclear conflict.
Damir: Let me ask a different question: How would you rate the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts? It appears Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been working the phones. Given how far the United States has drifted away from Pakistan and toward India, just how much influence does the U.S. even have at this point?
Max: I do worry that the administration is trying to do too many things at once. President Donald Trump is dealing with a million other subjects (including peacemaking with Russia and Ukraine, nuclear negotiations with Iran, and trade talks with the entire world). Even Rubio now has 4 different jobs (including serving as archivist of the United States!). This is the kind of crisis that rewards focused diplomacy on the part of the U.S., but I question how much focus the administration can bring to this crisis.
Rana: Speaking of Trump, can someone please fact-check him about India-Pakistan history? He has been calling it a 1,500-year-old fight.
Max: The good news is that the U.S. is far from the only country that has a stake in limiting this conflict. China and Saudi Arabia, among others, also have a useful role to play. And China has more leverage with Pakistan these days than Washington does.
Rana: Yes, China has been explicit in its support of Pakistan. And Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been meeting leaders of the gulf countries and has managed to garner support.
Max: This could be an opportunity for Beijing and Washington to work together to limit the risk of escalation in the India-Pakistan conflict. If so, that would represent a rare area of common ground in the midst of the trade war started by Trump.
Rana: One aspect that troubled me: No questions asked of the Modi government post-Pahalgam attack over security lapses and intelligence failure in the most militarized zone in the world. I have reported long enough to see the Manmohan Singh government hauled over the coals for similar attacks.
Damir: Very good point. Final question: Is there a path forward to a less dangerous dynamic between these nuclear powers?
Max: It would be wonderful if this crisis, once the present passions cool a bit, would lead both India and Pakistan to think about how to de-escalate future conflicts and enhance communication between their two militaries. More ambitious would be if this crisis led to a diplomatic process to resolve the competing claims over Kashmir. (Can Trump add this to Steve Witkoff’s ever-expanding portfolio?!?).
Rana: Unfortunately, like I said in the beginning, this pattern of escalation and de-escalation is likely to continue. We can try our best to be global powers, but our unresolved history will keep getting in the way. India Tries to Subdue the Threat From Pakistan (Wall Street Journal – opinion)
Wall Street Journal [5/7/2025 1:14 PM, Sadanand Dhume, 810K]
The drumbeats of impending war in the Indian subcontinent just got a lot louder. India said early Wednesday that it has conducted military strikes on nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in retaliation for a terrorist attack that killed more than two dozen civilians, mostly Indian tourists, in Kashmir on April 22. Pakistan called the Indian moves “acts of war” and vowed to retaliate. It said the attacks killed 26 Pakistanis.
The strikes are the latest in a series of intensifying confrontations between the nuclear-armed neighbors. In the past two weeks, India has also suspended a 1960 water-sharing treaty with Pakistan, further restricted bilateral trade, and initiated civil-defense drills. Pakistan has stepped up shelling and threatened to suspend a 1972 peace agreement with India.
Dealing with Pakistan—an unstable nation bristling with armed jihadists—is a serious challenge for India. New Delhi must find a way to deter Pakistan-army-backed jihadist groups that have long sheltered under Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella while factoring in Islamabad’s support from China, which calls Pakistan its “iron brother.” On Wednesday, China condemned the Indian strikes as “regrettable.”
The West, too, has a Pakistan problem, although it’s more manageable. The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Pakistan’s missile program last year over fears that the country was developing long-range ballistic missile capabilities that could threaten the U.S., and people of Pakistani origin have been implicated in terrorist attacks in the U.S. and the U.K. But the most immediate threat Western countries face from Pakistan is uncontrolled mass migration. This is easier to solve.
While sympathizing with India over terrorism, the Trump administration has made it clear it isn’t interested in getting overly involved in the India-Pakistan conflict. “They’ve been fighting for a long time,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “I just hope it ends very quickly.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio tweeted that he is monitoring the situation closely. Washington should nonetheless hope India succeeds in moderating the Pakistani army’s appetite for risk. India’s strikes, including on two high-profile terrorist groups’ facilities, may not end the Pakistani army’s long love affair with militant Islam. But the goal is nonetheless laudable. A Pakistan less prone to poking India could focus on its domestic problems instead of destabilizing South Asia. This would also allow India to focus more of its military capacity on China.Reshaping Islamabad’s behavior won’t be easy. More than 75 years after its creation, Pakistan is dominated by its army, which has ruled formally for about half the country’s history and informally for much of the rest. The country’s most popular politician, Imran Khan, has been languishing in prison since August 2023 after a falling out with the army. The 2024 election that returned Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to power, backed by Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir, was widely viewed as rigged to keep Mr. Khan from returning to power.
Yet the Punjabi-dominated army is struggling to maintain control over the country’s restive periphery. Despite Pakistan’s longtime backing for the Afghan Taliban, ties between Kabul and Islamabad have deteriorated sharply. Pakistan faces increased threats from the Taliban’s Pakistani faction, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Meanwhile, separatists in the province of Balochistan have ramped up a longstanding insurgency. In March, they hijacked a passenger train, leading to 64 deaths.
Unlike India, Pakistan failed to embrace market-friendly reforms after the Cold War. In 2023, Indian per capita income ($10,200 in purchasing power parity terms) was about 70% higher than Pakistan’s ($6,000). Fewer than half of Pakistani women are literate. The country ranks 27th on the Fragile States Index, between Eritrea and Uganda. An Asian Development Bank report last year warned that Pakistan’s population could reach 400 million by 2050, straining the government’s ability to provide basic services.
India’s population of 1.45 billion is about six times Pakistan’s, and its $4.2 trillion economy is about 11 times as large. The market capitalization of a single Indian conglomerate, Reliance Industries ($225 billion), is more than four times that of the entire Pakistan Stock Exchange. India produces nearly 27 times as much steel each year as Pakistan. India’s $86.1 billion defense budget dwarfs Pakistan’s $10.2 billion. And India has more than 80 chess grandmasters, while Pakistan has none.
Such comparisons, endlessly played up by the Indian media, heighten outrage in India every time a terrorist attack is attributed to a Pakistan-based group. That India has been unable to deter Pakistan—in part because India’s defense budget is more haphazardly allocated—is a source of frustration for ordinary Indians regularly told that India has become a major world power.
Indians are right to wonder why Pakistan picks fights with a larger neighbor. It happens in large part because in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the army—steeped in hostility toward “Hindu India”—calls the shots. For India, ending the symbiosis between the Pakistani army and jihadism in the near term may not be possible. But New Delhi has no choice but to try.
Wednesday’s strikes send a message to Pakistan that it can no longer expect to target Indians with impunity and that it will be held responsible for groups that shelter on its soil. Even if the U.S. doesn’t play an active part in the conflict, it should wish India well. A less dangerous Pakistan would be a gift to the world. U.S. pushes nations facing tariffs to approve Musk’s Starlink, cables show (Washington Post)
Washington Post [5/7/2025 2:06 PM, Jeff Stein and Hannah Natanson, 31735K]
Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on goods from the tiny African nation of Lesotho, the country’s communications regulator held a meeting with representatives of Starlink.The satellite business, owned by billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, had been seeking access to customers in Lesotho. But it was not until Trump unveiled the tariffs and called for negotiations over trade deals that leaders of the country of roughly 2 million people awarded Musk’s firm the nation’s first-ever satellite internet service license, slated to last for 10 years.The decision drew a mention in an internal State Department memo obtained by The Washington Post, which states: “As the government of Lesotho negotiates a trade deal with the United States, it hopes that licensing Starlink demonstrates goodwill and intent to welcome U.S. businesses.”Lesotho is far from the only country that has decided to assist Musk’s firm while trying to fend off U.S. tariffs. The company reached distribution deals with two providers in India in March and has won at least partial accommodations with Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Vietnam, although this is probably not a comprehensive count.A series of internal government messages obtained by The Post reveal how U.S. embassies and the State Department have pushed nations to clear hurdles for U.S. satellite companies, often mentioning Starlink by name. The documents do not show that the Trump team has explicitly demanded favors for Starlink in exchange for lower tariffs. But they do indicate that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has increasingly instructed officials to push for regulatory approvals for Musk’s satellite firm at a moment when the White House is calling for wide-ranging talks on trade.In India, government officials have sped through approvals of Starlink with the understanding that doing so could help them cement trade deals with the administration, according to two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations.“It’s not likely to be an explicit element of the trade negotiations with the U.S., but the Indian side sees this as an important lubricant that facilitates a deal,” said one of the people briefed on the matter by Indian leadership.Asked for comment on the satellite firm, the State Department said in a statement: “Starlink is an American-made product that has been game-changing in helping remote areas around the world gain internet connectivity. Any patriotic American should want to see an American company’s success on the global stage, especially over compromised Chinese competitors.”Musk is a key political ally of Trump’s who spent $277 million backing the president and other Republicans in last year’s elections, and he’s been working in the administration overseeing the U.S. DOGE Service, though he has said he’ll soon step down.A White House spokesman said the administration would not abide conflicts of interest.“The only consideration in the Trump administration’s trade negotiations with other countries is what’s best for the American people — which includes American companies succeeding at home and abroad,” spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “President Trump will not tolerate any conflicts of interest, and every administration official is following ethical guidelines set by their respective agencies.”Spokespeople for India, Lesotho and several other countries did not respond to requests for comment, nor did SpaceX.A Post opinion column last week also reported on Starlink’s expansion in Lesotho, Bangladesh and other countries.Some experts say the move makes strategic sense for the Trump administration. The United States is engaged in a competition with China over telecommunications around the world, and Starlink is the biggest domestic and international player in satellite internet connectivity.“When Elon’s name is attached to anything, there’s all sorts of feelings. But if he weren’t the CEO of SpaceX, I don’t think most people would have a problem with the U.S. government advocating for American companies to get international market access,” said Evan Swarztrauber, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, a technology policy think tank.Swarztrauber added: “We want American satellite companies to do well abroad, especially as our main competition is China. The U.S. has a lead in space, and we should double down on getting other countries to grant regulatory approvals for our companies. Otherwise, it will be Chinese companies that benefit from market access.”Starlink’s international expansion could unlock multibillion-dollar revenue streams. Capturing just 1 percent of India’s consumer broadband market could generate nearly $1 billion annually, with comparable upside in Latin America and Africa, according to Kimberly Siversen Burke, director of government affairs at Quilty Space, a space-sector intelligence firm. She noted these are early estimates based on Quilty Space’s financial model.The cables obtained by The Post shed new light into how U.S. officials are encouraging countries worldwide to adopt Starlink.Such efforts are not entirely new. The Biden administration was pushing embassies to adopt Starlink and other satellite-based internet services, the cables show. In early December, an “informational” cable went to diplomatic posts with then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s signature, touting the benefits of “low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites,” calling them “a resilient alternative to traditional internet service providers.” At the time, 50 American overseas posts were using LEO services, the cable stated, but the State Department planned to expand the technology to more posts across the globe.Blinken’s cable explicitly said the department wanted to push additional options, not just Starlink: State “will increase the number of available LEO vendors as they become available in the marketplace,” the cable stated.Under Trump, Rubio has signed at least two cables asking department staffers worldwide to promote American satellite services — including Starlink, mentioned by name in both missives — to combat “Russian space incumbents” and Chinese companies offering the same service. The cables labeled Russian and Chinese satellite-based internet services a potential threat to America’s national security.The cables appeared to go beyond Blinken’s December communication, which detailed plans for more American posts to adopt satellite-based internet, by instructing post staffers to persuade the countries where they are to choose the service.On March 28, one of the cables shows, an “action request” went out with Rubio’s signature citing Starlink by name and arguing that “U.S. government advocacy is essential to maintain and extend their global ‘first-mover’ advantage.’”A later cable shows the U.S. Embassy staff in Turkey delivering some of Rubio’s talking points to a top Turkish space official, who the cable says had expressed interest in purchasing satellite services like those offered by Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)Some of the cables came after Trump announced worldwide tariffs of varying levels on April 2.One State Department cable, issued in mid-April, said a top Malian official had met with staff members at the embassy in Bamako and shared his country’s interest in procuring Starlink. A comment added by embassy staffers noted that Mali is “in the process of developing a legal framework and platform to register and identify all Starlink users” and that, once that’s in place, the Bamako embassy’s “Deal Team” had already “identified” one Malian company “preparing to set up a Starlink franchise.”At least two countries have explicitly discussed or moved toward adopting Musk’s Starlink as a means of avoiding Trump’s tariffs and negotiating a better trade deal with the United States, the cables show.The 49 percent tariff rate on goods from Cambodia “came as a shock” to Cambodian government officials and the country’s private sector because they had hoped to avoid such measures, according to a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh on April 4, two days after Trump announced the import taxes.The day after Trump’s announcement, the cable shows, leaders of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia — a nonprofit made up of U.S. and Cambodian companies, known as AmCham — met with Ministry of Economy and Finance officials to discuss what the country could or should do to smooth relations with the Trump administration.Representatives for AmCham urged “decisive action in offering concessions to the United States,” the cable reported, which included “recommending that Cambodia offer duty-free access for U.S. imports (specifically mentioning Ford vehicles) and expeditiously approve Starlink’s market entry request.”An earlier cable from the Phnom Penh embassy, dated March 28, shows Cambodian government officials were already considering such a strategy before the import duties were rolled out: “Post has observed the Cambodian government — likely due to concern over the possibility of U.S. tariffs — signal its desire to help balance our trade relationship by promoting the market entry of leading U.S. companies such as Boeing and Starlink,” the cable stated.Another cable from April 17 reported that Starlink was pushing for a license to operate in Djibouti. A comment added by State Department staffers noted Starlink’s entry into Djibouti would be an opportunity to open the country’s market and boost “an American company.” Embassy staffers wrote they would help Starlink as much as they could: “Post will continue to follow up with Starlink in identifying government officials and facilitating discussions.”So far, the U.S. government has not struck any trade deals since the tariffs were announced.W. Gyude Moore, a fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank, said it appears more African countries are approving Starlink than were before the Trump administration, although precise data is difficult to come by.He said it is difficult for African officials to disentangle U.S. government demands from Musk’s. For instance, the Trump administration was exerting new pressure on South Africa just as Starlink stepped up its attempts to advance in the country.“If you were a South African government official and this was before you, it’d be very difficult to separate,” Moore said. He added: “It might be that there’s nothing formal — that there’s no direct pressure on them — but people can conclude for themselves that Musk is close to Trump, and if I stall his business here, it could affect my country. They can see their life might be a lot easier if seen or perceived as getting along with Elon Musk.” Twitter
Afghanistan
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Afghanistan@MoFA_Afg
[5/7/2025 6:37 AM, 76K followers, 46 retweets, 142 likes]
IEA-MoFA Statement Regarding Escalating Tension Between India & Pakistan
Farnoush Amiri@FarnoushAmiri
[5/7/2025 9:07 AM, 14.8K followers, 42 retweets, 41 likes]
Spent time chatting with a few of tens of thousands of Afghans still stuck at U.S. bases around the world, awaiting their fate. One of them, Saliha, can’t go back to Afghanistan cause she helped the wives of Taliban leaders leave their abusive marriages https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-refugees-qatar-trump-immigration-refugee-ban-006240c5700fa7a95e4c2f2dcf66ad4f
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[5/7/2025 2:05 PM, 249.1K followers, 70 retweets, 433 likes]
Any Afghan standing with Pakistan is a child of its proxies, the Taliban and Mujahideen. No true Afghan forgets the decades of suffering and destruction Pakistan’s military brought upon our country. Pakistan
Government of Pakistan@GovtofPakistan
[5/7/2025 11:14 AM, 3.1M followers, 25 retweets, 139 likes]
Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif pays tribute to the Chief of the Pakistan Air Force, acknowledging his exceptional leadership and bravery. He made these remarks while addressing an important session of National Assembly. #PakistanZindabad
Government of Pakistan@GovtofPakistan
[5/7/2025 11:20 AM, 3.1M followers, 11 retweets, 28 likes]
Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif condemns India’s refusal to investigate the Pahalgam incident and its mocking response to the Jaffar Express tragedy, highlighting what he called India’s inconsistent and irresponsible stance. He made these remarks while addressing an important session of the National Assembly. #PakistanZindabad
Shehbaz Sharif@CMShehbaz
[5/8/2025 12:00 AM, 6.8M followers, 1.1K retweets, 7.5K likes]
Spoke with my dear brother President Recep Tayyip Erdogan @RTErdogan and thanked him for Turkiye’s solidarity and support with Pakistan at this critical time. Appreciate the prayers of our Turkish brethren for the martyrs of yesterday’s heinous missile strikes carried out by India. Briefed him on the valiant efforts of our armed forces who repulsed the enemy with their bravery and professional superiority. We will protect our sovereignty and territorial integrity at all costs. Pakistan is grateful for Turkish efforts to promote de-escalation and maintain peace in South Asia.
Mariam Solaimankhil@Mariamistan
[5/8/2025 9:08 AM, 98.8K followers, 35 retweets, 113 likes]
A US-designated terrorist leads funeral prayers- Pakistan Army lines up behind him like bodyguards. Bin Laden hid in their backyard. Hafiz walks free. Gilaman Wazir is dead. @MahrangBaloch_ is jailed. Baloch and Pashtun activists are threatened daily. The brave are buried or silenced. The terrorists get state honors. And Khawaja Asif says “social media posts” are proof? This is Pakistan’s truth. ISI’s legacy.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[5/8/2025 1:11 AM, 249.1K followers, 143 retweets, 1K likes]
The truth is, Pakistan couldn’t intercept a single Indian missile. Every strike hit its mark.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[5/7/2025 1:21 PM, 249.1K followers, 53 retweets, 296 likes]
Pakistani media and politicians should pick a story and stick to it, either they’ve already retaliated and downed Indian aircraft, or they’re planning to retaliate. Which one is it? Or is it all just face-saving with made-up lies?Hamid Mir@HamidMirPAK
[5/7/2025 11:41 PM, 8.6M followers, 878 retweets, 4.2K likes]
Pakistan shoots down Indian drones in Lahore, Chakwal & Sialkot this morning. One Indian drone was flying near Walton Airport of Lahore this morning but it was destroyed with a big bang. Debris not found. Destroyed drones were taken into custody by police in Sialkot and Chakwal.
Hamid Mir@HamidMirPAK
[5/7/2025 7:17 AM, 8.6M followers, 2.2K retweets, 8.4K likes]
This is home of 62 years old Raj Muhammad in Haveli district of Azad Jammu & Kashmir. He lost his life last night when an Indian missile attacked his home. He was a poor civilian and had no relationship with any militant organisation.
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[5/8/2025 2:55 AM, 78.7K followers, 42 retweets, 100 likes]
12 of Indian drones have been downed across Pakistan. These were Heron drones. This include in cities of Lahore, Gujranwala, Chakwal, Attock, Rawalpindi, Bahawalpur, Miano, Chor and near Karachi, informs DG ISPR Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif in a televised presser. #Pakistan #India
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[5/7/2025 12:55 PM, 78.7K followers, 169 retweets, 871 likes]
To sum up Prime Minister’s address to the nation, Ladies and Gents -- Pakistan WILL strike India under Article 51 of the UN Charter and Will "Make them pay for the civilian loss of lives". #Pakistan #India
Jalil Abbas Jilani@JalilJilani
[5/7/2025 8:56 AM, 26.9K followers, 51 retweets, 281 likes]
While Pakistan was prepared to respond to Indian aggression,we received credible information last evening from sources in India that India will carry out targeted strikes in Pakistan later at night. We are well aware of next Indian plan of action, and our response will be robust
Derek J. Grossman@DerekJGrossman
[5/8/2025 2:09 AM, 98.5K followers, 14 retweets, 143 likes]
On Pakistani retaliation, I’d be surprised if Islamabad opted for anything more than just limited cross-border strikes into Indian-held Kashmir and India proper. Mirroring effects of Operation Sindoor is key from an escalation management perspective. If I’m wrong, then escalation could spiral out of control.
Derek J. Grossman@DerekJGrossman
[5/7/2025 3:05 PM, 98.5K followers, 58 retweets, 283 likes]
Pakistan declares emergency in Islamabad.
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[5/7/2025 4:41 AM, 78.7K followers, 22 retweets, 144 likes]
#Pakistan’s Foreign Minister @MIshaqDar50 meets Ambassador of #China -- Pak FM underscored Pakistan’s firm resolve to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity at all costs.
Lynne O’Donnell@lynnekodonnell
[5/7/2025 9:10 AM, 27.4K followers, 2 likes]
On May 2, @SCMP reported #Pakistan showcases advanced Chinese weapons amid escalating tensions with India https://sc.mp/dl8cs?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=3308808&utm_medium=share_widget via @scmpnews India
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[5/7/2025 11:48 AM, 3.5M followers, 741 retweets, 5K likes]
Major decisions taken by the Union Cabinet today: - Approved expansion of academic and infrastructure capacity of five new Indian Institutes of Technology in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka and Kerala. Will increase student & faculty intake, foster innovation & research, and strengthen industry-academia linkages.- The National Scheme for Industrial Training Institute Upgradation and Setting up of Five National Centres of Excellence for Skilling was also approved. Will lead to skilling of 20 lakh trainees over five years, meeting industry needs of high-growth sectors of electronics, automotive, and renewable energy.- The revised SHAKTI (Scheme for Harnessing and Allocating Koyala Transparently in India) Policy for Coal Allocation to Power Sector will cater to dynamic needs of power sector, promote coal import reduction/substitution and generate employment. #CabinetDecisions
Brahma Chellaney@Chellaney
[5/8/2025 3:20 AM, 274.4K followers, 28 retweets, 167 likes]
Having failed to bring peace to Ukraine or the Mideast, Trump now is offering to help dial back India-Pakistan tensions. But, unlike the 2016 and 2019 Indian strikes, the US hasn’t criticized India’s latest attack – the largest aerial assault on Pakistan in over half a century. If anything, Washington implicitly greenlighted Indian strikes as long as they do not "lead to a broader regional conflict."
Brahma Chellaney@Chellaney
[5/7/2025 12:07 PM, 274.4K followers, 308 retweets, 1.4K likes]
Powerful symbolism: By launching Operation Sindoor (the vermilion applied between hair partings by married Hindu women), India has signaled that Indian women are avenging the murders of 26 husbands by Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorists. This analogy was reinforced by two female Indian military officers, including a Muslim, briefing the media on the military strikes.
Brahma Chellaney@Chellaney
[5/7/2025 10:10 AM, 274.4K followers, 150 retweets, 476 likes]
My column: Despite risks of tit-for-tat retaliation, India, as the stronger side, could escalate or de-escalate the conflict to its advantage. However, the threat India faces is not coming from Pakistan alone. China provides cover for Pakistan’s terrorism. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/india-decision-to-suspend-the-indus-waters-treaty-is-justified-by brahma-chellaney-2025-05? NSB
Chief Adviser of the Government of Bangladesh@ChiefAdviserGoB
[5/8/2025 3:37 AM, 145.9K followers, 3 retweets, 56 likes]
BIDA and BEZA executive chairman Ashik Chowdhury visits Chittagong Port on Thursday.
The President’s Office, Maldives@presidencymv
[5/8/2025 12:49 AM, 113.3K followers, 86 retweets, 89 likes]
Maldives Islamic Social Finance Initiative, inspired by the upcoming National Financial Inclusion Strategy, represents a strategic leap in the achievement of our national development agenda - President Dr Muizzu
The President’s Office, Maldives@presidencymv
[5/7/2025 6:52 AM, 113.3K followers, 124 retweets, 120 likes]
The Secretary General of the OIC pays a courtesy call on the President https://presidency.gov.mv/Press/Article/33679 PMO Nepal@PM_nepal_
[5/8/2025 2:16 AM, 721.8K followers, 1 retweet, 14 likes]
The Rt. Hon. PM KP Sharma Oli today inaugurated the ‘Nepal Leprosy Conference, 2025’ organized by the Ministry of Health and Population and related health institutions. In his address, PM Oli emphasized the need to make leprosy elimination efforts more dynamic and effective.
PMO Nepal@PM_nepal_
[5/7/2025 9:21 AM, 721.8K followers, 3 retweets, 21 likes]
The Rt.Hon. PM KP Sharma Oli, while addressing a special ceremony marking the 125th year of Gorkhapatra Publication & the 63rd anniversary of Gorkhapatra Sansthan, affirmed that Gorkhapatra enjoys the freedom to report the truth without interference—unlike in the autocratic era.
Karu Jayasuriya@KaruOnline
[5/7/2025 9:23 AM, 53.8K followers, 5 retweets, 36 likes] The LG election results in Sri Lanka offer a wake-up call to both Govt & Opposition. Declining support stems from unmet promises and political stagnation. Intelligent voters are calling for the promised ‘system change’, from cost of living to PTA and constitutional reforms.
Namal Rajapaksa@RajapaksaNamal
[5/7/2025 4:47 AM, 436.1K followers, 16 retweets, 126 likes]
Over the past six months, the SLPP has regrouped and gained momentum by staying true to our principles. While some rely on false promises, we remain committed to honest, principled politics that put the people first. Thank you to everyone who stood by us. This is just the beginning. We will keep working, village by village, to rebuild and restore trust in real leadership. #LGE2025 #SLPP #NRWayForward Central Asia
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[5/7/2025 11:34 AM, 216.6K followers, 1 retweet, 8 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev chaired a meeting on improving healthcare and medical education. Measures include launching a guaranteed state-funded medical care package, performance-based salary incentives for medical staff, and ensuring greater accountability among doctors. Plans also cover public funding for complex surgeries, eliminating ineffective drugs from clinical protocols, enhancing medical education through dual programs and better assessments, and accelerating healthcare digitalization.
Saida Mirziyoyeva@SMirziyoyeva
[5/8/2025 2:30 AM, 22.2K followers, 1 retweet, 3 likes]
Uzbekistan returns to @la_Biennale with the “Sun” Geocomplex — a unique site near Tashkent reimagined through science, heritage & AI. Our 5th Pavilion explores Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. Grateful to the team bringing Uzbekistan closer to the world.
Saida Mirziyoyeva@SMirziyoyeva
[5/8/2025 12:21 AM, 22.2K followers, 2 retweets, 9 likes]
Yesterday we launched the Organizing Committee for TASHKENT TECH — a new flagship technical university initiated by the President. In partnership with @BCG , it will train future-ready engineers and boost Uzbekistan’s tech sovereignty. #TashkentTECH{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.