epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Friday, May 9, 2025 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Afghans resort to death over being sent back into Taliban’s clutches (The Telegraph)
The Telegraph [5/9/2025 1:00 AM, Akhtar Makoii, 29116K]
Osman spent years fighting alongside international forces against the Taliban before fleeing to Pakistan when the Islamist group returned to power in Afghanistan.

Last month, however, after being driven to despair by the threat of being forced back into the hands of the insurgents he once fought, he hanged himself in a small room in Rawalpindi.

The former major-general was among the three million Afghan refugees whom Pakistan wants to send back across the border and into the clutches of the Taliban.

Pakistani authorities have ramped up arrests and deportations since the beginning of April and expelled over 100,000 Afghans in the month alone.

While some Afghans in Pakistan have documentation – about 1.3 million hold proof of registration cards and around 800,000 have Afghan citizen cards – an estimated one million are in the country without any paperwork.

Different deadlines apply to different categories, creating confusion and fear among families with mixed documentation status.

Tens of thousands fled Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021 and were approved for US resettlement owing to their work with the US government and NGOs.

But after Donald Trump paused refugee programmes in January, about 20,000 Afghans are now stuck in uncertainty. Osman was one of them.

“We are facing the same amount of pressure,” Jamileh Akbari, a former Afghan member of the armed forces, told The Telegraph from Islamabad.

“The pressure has caused me mental issues because I’d be killed in Afghanistan,” she said. “For me, going back to Afghanistan is like buying death.”

The nationwide crackdown, which began in October 2023, has already led to 845,000 Afghans leaving Pakistan over the past 18 months. The campaign has drawn criticism from human rights groups, the United Nations, and even the Taliban government.

In Peshawar, 42-year-old Shahnaz also faces deportation to Afghanistan where she escaped death once before by fleeing to Pakistan.

Before 2021, she worked as a human rights activist in remote Afghan villages and also helped girls marry for love, not for dowry or duty. This made her a quiet revolutionary in a society where marriage is often dictated by family arrangements rather than personal choice.

But her work as a women’s rights activist also made her a target for the Taliban, which has systematically curbed women’s rights in Afghanistan. A woman’s right to choose their own husband directly contradicts the Taliban’s regressive policies.

As a result, returning to Afghanistan isn’t just difficult – it’s potentially fatal.

“My family and I have no sleep these nights,” she said, her voice heavy with worry. “When I was in my city, I used to get lots of threats from the Taliban due to my work, because I was doing women rights activities,” she said.

The threats soon turned into violence. “Before fleeing Afghanistan, my car was ambushed and some people started shooting at us – my husband was injured, they were not happy,” she said.

Three months after Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, Shahnaz and her family made the desperate decision to flee. Now, she is being forced to go back under the massive deportation campaign.

“We are now told to leave within two months,” she said.

Pakistan said it will make sure that Afghans do not return once deported.

Many in Afghanistan believe Pakistan played a key role in the country’s current crisis and the Taliban’s return to power.

Pakistan has long had close ties with the Taliban, with many of the group’s leaders and fighters having studied in Pakistan madrasas during the two decades of war.

Experts say the Taliban’s takeover would have been unlikely without Pakistan’s support and the safe haven it provided. But the relationship has deteriorated over the past three years, with several cross-border clashes erupting.

This has not stopped the mechanisms for deportation from being established. Two transit stations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province will process deportees, including one in Peshawar’s suburbs and another near the Torkham border crossing.

The human cost of this policy affects multiple generations.

Some deportees say they were born in Pakistan after their families fled war. The forced returns are straining Afghanistan’s already struggling economy and infrastructure, with a population close to 45 million.

‘Returning feels like exile’

“They tell us Afghanistan is safe now, but what should we do with safety? Can we eat or wear safety?” said Sana Gul Ahmadzai, 45, who was born in Pakistan and considers the country home.

“They told us to leave within two months,” he told The Telegraph. “We have work and people have properties, how can we leave everything behind?”

For those who have never known Afghanistan, the prospect of “returning” feels like exile to a foreign land.

“I was born here and lived here for 45 years, I have nothing in Afghanistan, what can I do there?” says Ahmadzai. “You cannot just leave your home and go to another place and start from zero.”

In January, the office of Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister, released a two-page plan to deport Afghans in three phases. Despite appeals from the UNHCR and rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the government says it won’t change its policy.

The Taliban says it is setting up towns for returning Afghans, but in places like Torkham, the sites are little more than cleared land.

The International Organisation for Migration says there needs to be more clarity and infrastructure – such as healthcare and schools – to make these towns liveable and they say that returns must be voluntary.

For many, the consequences of the political moves and statements would be deadly.

“I cannot return to Afghanistan,” Shahnaz says. “Death would be waiting for me and my family.”
Trump Admin Faces Lawsuit Over Ending More Migrant Protections (Newsweek)
Newsweek [5/8/2025 9:59 AM, Dan Gooding, 3973K]
The Trump administration is facing another legal challenge over its immigration policies, after it was reported Temporary Protected Status (TPS) would be cancelled for thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians.

In a court filing shared exclusively with Newsweek, immigration advocacy group CASA said it was suing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristie Noem and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for failing to use official channels to cancel the legal status of individuals who had fled violence and instability in their home countries.

"The reason that CASA is bringing this case is because we have thousands of members who are impacted here, and nobody knows what is going on. All we have to go on is a quote in a newspaper around the intention to terminate for Cameroon and Afghanistan," Nick Katz, general counsel for CASA, told Newsweek Thursday.

"But our members don’t know if they’re going to be able to continue working after the termination date. They don’t know if they’re going to be subject to enforcement, and that concern is really heightened in the environment that we’re in right now.".

Newsweek reached out to DHS for comment via email Thursday but did not immediately hear back.

Why It Matters

The Trump administration has been critical of the use of TPS and the multiple extensions granted by consecutive secretaries of Homeland Security, including those granted by the Biden administration between 2017 and 2021. The White House views the program as a way for temporary migrants to overstay their welcome. Some countries have already seen their status cancelled since the day Trump took office.

What To Know

This latest lawsuit, one of several challenging the president’s immigration policies, comes after the New York Times first reported that TPS would be allowed to lapse for Afghans after May 20.

DHS told the media on April 11 that Secretary Noem had determined Afghanistan no longer met the requirements for TPS – that is a country facing ongoing conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary or temporary conditions.

CASA believes this to not be true, and that those it represents from both Afghanistan and Cameroon could be subjected to deportation to countries where they previously faced persecution, torture and ongoing political turmoil.

One TPS holder and plaintiff is identified as O.M. in the complaint. She is a senior citizen from Cameroon, who now lives in Maryland. She works as a home health assistant and relies on TPS for work authorization.

"Losing TPS exposes me to the risk of being forced to return to a country where I am not safe," she said in a press release first shared with Newsweek. "I faced physical abuse all because of my religious faith when I lived in Cameroon. I can’t go back and suffer that again. This is my home.".

Katz said CASA had thousands of members facing similar uncertainties, including those who fled the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"They are part of the fabric of our communities, they have United States children who rely on them, so this is creating fear that they will be separated from their families," Katz said.

Trump Wants TPS Cancelled

The scrapping of TPS for those from Afghanistan potentially affects about 8,200 people, per the National Immigration Forum. For Cameroon, that number is around 3,260, compared to the over 300,000 from Venezuela alone.

Trump has said that former President Joe Biden abused both TPS and humanitarian parole – two programs which grant temporary legal status to immigrants. TPS is offered to those from countries affected by conflict, natural disasters and political turmoil already within the U.S. and protects them from deportation.

Humanitarian parole is a temporary visa program allowing vetted, sponsored immigrants to fly into the country and stay for a certain period of time, at which point they can then apply for more permanent legal status.

Attempts to dramatically cut this system back, which would create thousands of new undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., have been widely challenged in court, while also receiving pushback from some within the Republican Party.

This latest challenge alleges that DHS did not go through the standard process for ending TPS designation required by Congress, which requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to give 60 days’ notice.

"I think it’s very clear from the text in the name of the statute that this is a temporary status, but if the administration is going to end it, it has to do so in a lawful way. And there’s a very straightforward and clearly delineated procedure for doing that, and the government just didn’t do that here," Sam Siegel, senior counsel at ICAP, told Newsweek.

When DHS responded to reports it was ending TPS for Afghanistan and Cameroon, it stated that the situations in both countries which had initially prompted the status had improved, and therefore TPS criteria was no longer being met.

The U.S. Department of State currently lists Afghanistan as a Level 4 country, meaning: "Do not travel", due to ongoing civil unrest, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention and kidnapping.

TPS was extended for Afghanistan in 2022, due to the ongoing unrest following the Taliban’s return to power the year prior. Many Afghans arrived in the U.S. on other visa and refugee programs as well, following the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country under Biden.

Cameroon has a less-severe rating from the State Department of Level 2, meaning: "Exercise increased caution", due to armed violence, crime, and kidnapping in various parts of the country.

What People Are Saying

DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement to the press on April 11: "The Secretary determined that Afghanistan no longer continues to meet the statutory requirements for its TPS designation and so she terminated TPS for Afghanistan."

Julia Gelatt, an immigration expert at the Migration Policy Institute, told The New York Times in April: "Revoking TPS for Afghans would be a stark reversal in the country’s treatment of Afghan allies who fought and worked alongside the U.S. government. Most Afghans in the U.S. have strong asylum cases based on their U.S. affiliation. This is even more true for Afghan women. Revoking their TPS will push thousands of Afghans into our backlogged asylum system—if they can find a lawyer with capacity to support their application."

What’s Next

The lawsuit is calling for a stay on the plans to end TPS before May 20, when Afghanistan’s designation is set to lapse. Cameroon’s status is due to end shortly thereafter, on June 7. DHS is yet to formally acknowledge the suit or indicate how it would respond to the new suit.
Taliban say more than 5,000 children living with thalassemia in Afghanistan (Amu TV)
Amu TV [5/9/2025 4:45 AM, Siyar Sirat, 29116K]
More than 5,300 children in Afghanistan are currently living with thalassemia, a life-threatening inherited blood disorder, the Taliban’s deputy minister of public health said Thursday at a public health event in Kabul.

Speaking at a session marking World Thalassemia Day, Deputy Minister Abdul Wali Haqqani said the government has taken steps to support patients, including the establishment of diagnostic centers in several provinces. He did not provide further details about the scope or location of these centers.

Haqqani emphasized that thalassemia patients are a priority for the Ministry of Public Health, adding that the ministry is offering free diagnosis, treatment, medication and blood donations to children affected by the condition.

He also urged the public to participate in blood donation campaigns to help support thalassemia patients, who require frequent transfusions to manage the disease.

The Taliban official called on relevant aid agencies, including ICRC, to support efforts for helping thalassemia patients.

Thalassemia is a genetic disorder that affects the body’s ability to produce hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen. Children born with severe forms of the disease often require lifelong blood transfusions and specialized care. Without proper treatment, thalassemia can lead to serious complications, including organ damage and early death. The condition is more prevalent in parts of South Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

Accurate data on the prevalence of thalassemia in Afghanistan is limited; however, available studies provide some estimates.

According to figures published on ResearchGate, approximately 1 to 1.5 million people in Afghanistan are believed to be carriers of the beta-thalassemia gene, based on a 3.8 percent prevalence rate observed in a study of 369 outpatients.

Among pregnant women, the carrier rate for alpha-thalassemia is estimated at 14.4 percent, while beta-thalassemia carriers account for about 3 percent.

A February 2025 report published in the Journal of Hematology and Allied Sciences found that more than 1,500 children in Nangarhar Province alone were living with thalassemia.

Meanwhile, a January 2024 study by the Afghanistan Journal of Basic Medical Sciences found that 17.6 percent of anemic children examined at a Kabul hospital had beta-thalassemia, with two-thirds of those cases classified as thalassemia major — the most severe form of the disease.
Pakistan
Pakistan’s US ambassador says India, Pakistan have had contacts at national security level (Reuters)
Reuters [5/8/2025 9:04 PM, Kanishka Singh, 41523K]
Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. said on Thursday that India and Pakistan have had contacts at the level of their respective National Security Councils, when asked if the nuclear-armed Asian neighbors had any ongoing lines of conversation.

The ambassador, Rizwan Saeed Sheikh, made the comments in an interview with CNN in which he also said the responsibility to de-escalate tensions between the two countries lay with India after two days of clashes.

KEY QUOTES

"I think there have been contact at the level of NSCs, but then this escalation, both in terms of the actions that have been taken and in terms of rhetoric that is coming out, has to stop," Sheikh said in the interview without giving more details about the contacts.

"Now the responsibility for de-escalation is on India, but there are constraints on restraint. Pakistan reserves the right to respond back. There is enough pressure from our public opinion on the government to respond," he added.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

Many global powers, including the U.S., have urged New Delhi and Islamabad to de-escalate tensions and keep lines of communication open. Washington has called for direct dialogue.

CONTEXT

On Thursday, Pakistan and India accused each other of launching drone attacks, and Islamabad’s defence minister said further retaliation was "increasingly certain," on the second day of major clashes between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Two days of fighting have killed nearly four dozen people.

The latest escalation in the decades-old India-Pakistan rivalry began on April 22 when Islamist militants killed 26 people in India-administered Kashmir in an attack that New Delhi blamed on Islamabad, which denied the accusations and called for a neutral probe.
India
India ramps up diplomatic outreach as Pakistan tensions spiral (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [5/8/2025 8:38 AM, Kiran Sharma, 1191K]
India has launched a massive diplomatic outreach to countries such as the U.S., Japan and China after hitting what it called "terrorist camps" in Pakistan with missiles amid spiraling worries over a wider conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

The diplomatic push comes after New Delhi said it targeted "terrorist infrastructure" on Wednesday in its 25-minute "Operation Sindoor," which followed a deadly attack on tourists in Pahalgam in India’s Kashmir region in late April.

Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval spoke with his counterparts from nations including America, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Russia and Pakistan’s ally China, briefing them on the action taken by New Delhi, according to sources.

Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri separately briefed envoys of 13 countries in the Indian capital, all of them members of the U.N. Security Council, on Wednesday.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar shared a series of posts on X, saying that he had held a joint teleconference with his French and German counterparts and had also spoken to officials from Japan, Spain and Qatar. According to the posts, he used the talks to discuss India’s action against "cross-border terrorism" and expressed his appreciation for "solidarity and support" in the wake of the Pahalgam attack.

"For India, this extensive diplomatic outreach ensures that it has the narrative in place; that it has the support of its key partners in place; and that it is seen as an actor that is responsible enough to demonstrate willingness to punish but also willingness to contain the damage," said Harsh V. Pant, vice president of studies and foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation think tank.

The name of the Indian operation against Pakistan on Wednesday appears to be a reference to women who lost their husbands in the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 25 Indians and one Nepalese citizen, all males. Sindoor is Hindi for the traditional vermillion applied by married Hindu women to the parting in their hair, something they stop using when they are widowed.

Most of those killed in Pahalgam were Hindus, and the attack marked the largest number of civilian casualties in India since the Mumbai terror attack in 2008. New Delhi blames its neighbor for the deaths, while Islamabad denies any involvement.

According to Raj Kumar Sharma, a visiting fellow at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University Department of Diplomacy and India Studies Center, diplomacy is a critical element of India’s crisis management. New Delhi is communicating with friendly and important countries about its intentions and actions against Pakistan, he said. "In times when there is rampant disinformation, such efforts [by India] are necessary."

Other countries urged restraint in both New Delhi and Islamabad, calling for de-escalation.

In Washington, the U.S. Department of State posted on X that Secretary Marco Rubio had spoken to national security advisers from both India and Pakistan, urging "both to keep lines of communication open and avoid escalation."

In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters that his government "strongly urges both India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and stabilize the situation through dialogue for the sake of peace and stability in South Asia."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian on Wednesday called India’s operation "regrettable" but also urged both sides "exercise restraint and refrain from taking actions that may further complicate the situation."

Meanwhile, Misri said at a media briefing on Wednesday that The Resistance Front, which claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack, is "a front for the U.N.-proscribed Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba." The Indian foreign secretary also stressed that the fatal attack was designed to impact tourism, a mainstay of the economy in the northern Jammu and Kashmir region. The area attracted a record 23 million tourists in 2024.

Through the Wednesday operation, India exercised "its right to respond and preempt as well as deter more such cross-border attacks," Misri said. "These actions were measured, non-escalatory, proportionate and responsible. They focused on dismantling the terrorist infrastructure and disabling terrorists likely to be sent across to India."

Sofia Quereshi, a colonel in the Indian Army, said at the same briefing that the camps targeted during the Indian operation included facilities belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba and another terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed. "I want to share that no military installation was targeted and there is no report of any civilian casualty so far."

Islamabad said on Wednesday that its forces brought down five Indian aircraft and that it "reserves the right to respond," while also alleging that 26 Pakistanis were killed in the Indian attacks.

Despite the calls for de-escalation from the international community, the current conflict between both countries continues to escalate. India’s Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday that 13 civilians were killed in Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir in "ceasefire violations along the [Line of Control] by Pakistan," the de facto border between the two countries. A Pakistan military spokesperson said India on Thursday flew a number of drones to multiple locations in Pakistan, including the two largest cities of Karachi and Lahore, with at least 25 drones intercepted.

Asked whether the latest crisis could lead to a wider conflict between the neighbors, ORF’s Pant said, "The proverbial ball is in Pakistan’s court because in some ways it depends on how far Pakistan wants to take it."

Analyst Sharma said India would be prepared for various possibilities. "India’s political message is to de-escalate, but [it] has to maintain military preparedness for any kind of escalation."

"The conflict could go either way from here," he noted. "Anything is possible in the ongoing tensions."

Ayanjit Sen, a security analyst and chief adviser at the Red Lantern Analytica think tank, said that "it is unlikely that this conflict is going to end very soon because there are chances that Pakistan may hit back."
India offers to slash tariff gap by two-thirds in dash to seal trade pact with Trump (Reuters)
Reuters [5/9/2025 5:17 AM, Shubham Batra, Shivangi Acharya, and Ira Dugal, 126906K]
India has offered to slash its tariff gap with the U.S. to less than 4% from nearly 13% now, in exchange for an exemption from President Donald Trump’s "current and potential" tariff hikes, two sources said, as both nations move fast to clinch a deal.

This would mean that the average tariff differential between India and the U.S., calculated across all products without weighting for trade volume, would be reduced by 9 percentage points, in one of the most sweeping changes to bring down trade barriers in the world’s fifth largest economy.

The United States is India’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade totalling some $129 billion in 2024. The trade balance is currently in favour of India, which runs a $45.7 billion surplus with the U.S.

Trump announced on Thursday his administration’s first "breakthrough deal" with Britain. It lowers average British tariffs on U.S. goods but keeps in place the 10% base tariff imposed by Washington on British goods, likely setting a template for Washington’s approach with other trading partners.

Last month, Trump announced a 90-day pause on his long-planned reciprocal tariffs on global trading partners, including a 26% tariff on India, while his administration negotiates trade deals. A 10% base tariff continues to apply to India and many other nations during the pause.

After the UK, India and Japan are the next two nations in line to finalise a deal, a third Indian government official said. "We will see which one crosses the line first."

To achieve this, New Delhi has offered to reduce duties to zero on 60% of the tariff lines in the first phase of the deal which is under negotiation, said the first two sources, both Indian government officials familiar with the matter.

India has offered preferential access to nearly 90% of goods imported from the United States, including the reduced tariffs, one of the two officials said.

Details of India’s offer to slash the tariff gap and what it has asked the U.S. in return have not been previously reported.

A delegation of Indian officials is likely to visit the U.S. later this month to take the negotiations forward, a fourth official said, adding that India’s trade minister, Piyush Goyal, might visit too but his plans were not finalised.

All four government officials did not wish to be identified as details of the negotiations are private and sensitive.

India’s trade ministry, which is leading talks, did not respond to a request for comment.

PREFERENTIAL ACCESS

Alongside tariff exemptions, India has also asked for preferential market access for key export sectors including gems and jewellery, leather, apparel, textiles, plastics, chemicals, oilseeds, shrimp, and horticultural produce such as bananas and grapes.

"Preferential market access for India would mean better terms of trade for these goods compared to America’s other trading partners," the first official said.

India is also looking for concessions that would give it an edge over competitors in supplying "products of interest", the official added.

However, India’s expectation of being exempted completely from tariffs on its exports is at odds with the deal struck between the U.S. and Britain.

To make the deal more attractive for Washington, India has offered to ease export regulations on several high-value U.S. exports, the first official said.

These include aircraft and parts, luxury cars and electric vehicles, telecom equipment, medical devices, hydrocarbons, wines and whiskey, berries, prunes, certain chemicals, and animal feed.

Beyond tariffs, India has also asked the U.S. to treat it at par with other top U.S. allies such as Britain, Australia and Japan in critical technology sectors such as AI, telecoms, biotech, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors.

Washington’s desire to share critical technologies with allies like India has often faced hurdles due to the U.S. government’s own restrictive rules.
UK-India trade pact to be signed after three months, India official says (Reuters)
Reuters [5/8/2025 11:19 AM, Shivangi Acharya, 126906K]
A bilateral trade deal between India and the United Kingdom could be signed after three months and will take over a year to implement, an Indian government official said on Thursday.

New Delhi and London concluded talks for a free trade deal on Tuesday, closing a long-coveted deal between the world’s fifth and sixth largest economies.

India - the world’s third largest car market - has offered separate import quotas to Britain for combustion engine vehicles and electric cars, the official said, and tariff cuts on the vehicles will be offered in a phased manner.

The quotas have been offered based on engine capacity and car prices, while "cheaper" cars have been kept out of the deal, the official added without elaborating.

They spoke on condition of anonymity as the details of the pact have not been made public.

The countries clinched the deal in the shadow of erratic tariffs imposed by U.S. President Trump, which have threatened to upend the stability of global trade. Trump has in the past, called New Delhi a "tariff abuser".

Separately, India and Britain agreed that New Delhi reserves the right to retaliate, if London introduces the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the official said.

India has sought exemption from Britain’s CBAM, which aims to levy higher taxes on imports from countries with less strict climate policies.

New Delhi has also not set a minimum import price for tariff cuts on spirits as part of the trade deal, the official said.

India is the world’s largest whisky market and the tariff cuts are aimed at making Britain’s Scotch whisky industry more competitive.
Walmart calls, but India’s garment worker woes blunt tariff edge (Reuters)
Reuters [5/9/2025 3:52 AM, Dhwani Pandya, Praveen Paramasivam, Ruma Paul and Manoj Kumar, 126906K]
In a garment hub in south India, R.K. Sivasubramaniam is fielding requests from Walmart and Costco who want to sidestep higher U.S. tariffs faced by rival Asian suppliers, Bangladesh and China. But rows of idle sewing lines at his factory lay bare his biggest challenge.

"Even if orders come, we need labour. We don’t have sufficient labour," said the managing director of Raft Garments which supplies underwear and t-shirts priced as low as $1 to U.S. brands.

Considered India’s knitwear capital, Tiruppur city in the southern state of Tamil Nadu accounts for nearly one-third of the country’s $16 billion in apparel exports, and is staring at a huge opportunity as U.S. buyers explore ramping up sourcing from India in the face of heftier tariffs on other Asian hubs.

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to hit India, the world’s sixth largest textile and apparel exporter, with a 26% tariff from July, below the 37% imposed on Bangladesh, 46% on Vietnam and 145% on China - all of which are bigger American suppliers.

Those tariffs will make apparel from India much more competitive with both Bangladesh and China.

But the mood is somber at the Tiruppur textile park as it faces a reality check: India’s hopes of capitalising on its tariff advantage are hindered by a skilled labour crunch, limited economies of scale, and high costs.

Raft Garments wants to expand production to tackle new orders but is importing high-end machines to automate some stitching processes, given the business for now heavily depends on migrant labour, which is very tough to find or retain.

Garment exporters in India say workers have to be trained and many leave within months to work at smaller, unorganised units that allow longer hours and pay more. The larger manufacturers can’t match them due to foreign clients’ requirements on cost and workers’ conditions, according to Reuters interviews with 10 manufacturers and apparel exporter trade groups representing 9,000 businesses.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has for years courted foreign investors to his "Make in India" programme to turn the South Asian nation into a global manufacturing hub. A shortage of skilled workers in a nation where 90% of the labour force operates in the informal sector is seen as a big roadblock, especially in labour-intensive sectors like garments.

Tiruppur offers a glimpse of India’s labour strain.

"We need at least 100,000 workers," said Kumar Duraiswamy of the exporters association in Tiruppur, where he said more than 1 million people currently work.

Modi’s government last year said it was extending a programme to specifically train 300,000 people in textile-related skills, including garment making.

In the textile hub, some have taken matters into their own hands.

Amid a hum of sewing machines at the Cotton Blossom factory, which makes 1.2 million garments a month, including for American sporting goods retailer Bass Pro Shops, Naveen Micheal John said he has set up three centres thousands of miles away to train and source migrant workers.

And even then, most return to their home towns after a few months.

"We skill them there for three months, then they are here for seven months. Then they return back," John said during a tour of his garment unit, adding he wants to look at other states where labour and government incentives both may be better.

CAPACITY WOES

China’s $16.5 billion worth of apparel exports, Vietnam’s $14.9 billion and Bangladesh’s $7.3 billion made them the three biggest suppliers to America in 2024, when India shipped goods worth $4.7 billion, according to U.S. government data.

U.S. companies have for years been diversifying their supply chains beyond China amid geopolitical tensions. And even before the news of tariffs in April, now paused until July, Bangladesh’s garment industry began losing its sheen amid political turmoil there.

A survey of 30 leading U.S. apparel brands by the United States Fashion Industry Association showed India had emerged as the most popular sourcing hub in 2024, with nearly 60% of respondents planning to expand sourcing from there.

With the tariffs, India’s exports would cost $4.31 per square metre of apparel, compared with $4.24 for Bangladesh and $4.35 for China, a sharp improvement on India’s competitiveness without the levies, according to Reuters calculations based on 2024 import data from the U.S. Office of Textiles and Apparel.

But it’s in the economies of scale where India loses.

Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association says an average garment factory there has at least 1,200 workers, whereas in India, according to its Apparel Export Promotion Council, there are only 600 to 800.

"Bangladesh capacities are huge ... We have issues of capacity constraint, lack of economy of scale due to smaller size of factories, labour unavailability during peak seasons," said Mithileshwar Thakur of the Indian trade group.

To address those challenges, garment makers have started to set up factories in states where migrant workers come from, he said.

In Tiruppur, its exports association says the largest 100 exporters contributed 50% of its $5 billion sales last fiscal year, with the rest from 2,400 units, a telling sign of the fragmented and largely smaller-scale operations.

Raft makes 12 million garment pieces a year with a workforce of just 250 people. A U.S. client is close to placing an order for 3 million units, which will stretch the factory to its limit and force it to consider expansion.

"This one order is more than enough for us," said Sivasubramaniam.

PRICING ROADBLOCK

Data from shipping consultants Ocean Audit showed Walmart (WMT.N) imported 1,100 containers of household goods and clothing between April 2 and May 4 from India, nearly double the same period last year, including cotton shirts and pleated maxi skirts.

In a statement, Walmart said it sources from more than 70 countries around the world as it aims to find the right mix of suppliers and products.

While U.S. retailers are lodging more queries in Tiruppur, pricing negotiations remain contentious due to higher labour and other costs.

Indian brokerage Avendus Spark said in March Bangladesh’s cost of labour stood at $139 per month, compared to India’s $180 and China’s $514.

P. Senthilkumar, a senior partner at India’s Vector Consulting Group, said India had stricter rules for overtime policies and worker shifts, further raising costs.

In Dhaka, Anwar-ul-Alam Chowdhury of Evince Group said most of their U.S. buyers were sticking with Bangladesh, given the "large production capacity, lower costs, and reliable quality give us a clear edge."

In India, though, Tiruppur exporters said they are in hectic talks with many U.S. clients who love the Bangladesh cost advantage and are aggressively bargaining.

At Walmart-supplier Balu Exports, Mahesh Kumar Jegadeesan said U.S. clients had conveyed "we will not budge on the price" and were willing to move some orders only if Indian exporters can match prices.

Inside the nearby Raft Garments factory, where women were stitching underwear, the smile on managing director Sivasubramaniam’s face sparked by 14 new business inquiries of recent weeks faded quickly.

"All want us to match Bangladesh prices. Price is a big problem," he said.
NSB
Chinese embassy in Nepal advises citizens to avoid Nepal-India border region (Reuters)
Reuters [5/9/2025 12:50 AM, Xiuhao Chen and Liz Lee, 62527K]
The Chinese embassy in Nepal has advised Chinese citizens to avoid areas along the Nepal-India border, it said in a statement posted on its social media account.

Nepal and India have an open border. Chinese citizens should avoid mistakenly entering India without a valid visa, the embassy said, adding that both India and Nepal have stepped up security efforts along their border amid heightened tension between India and Pakistan.
Military helicopter plunges into reservoir in Sri Lanka, killing 5 (AP)
AP [5/9/2025 2:15 AM, Staff, 456K]
A military helicopter plunged into a reservoir in Sri Lanka on Friday, killing five people.

Air force spokesperson Eranda Geeganage said the helicopter was carrying 12 people from the army and air force to a military pass out event when it plunged into a reservoir in Maduru Oya, some 280 kilometers (175 miles) northeast of the capital Colombo.

All the passengers were recovered alive, but three army personnel and two from the air force died later in a hospital, Geeganage said.

The reason for the crash was not immediately known.
Helicopter crash in Sri Lanka kills six military personnel (Reuters)
Reuters [5/9/2025 3:43 AM, Mrinmay Dey, 5.2M]
A helicopter crash in Sri Lanka has killed six military personnel, an Air Force official said on Friday.

A Bell 212 helicopter had crashed into the Maduru Oya reservoir in central Sri Lanka with a dozen armed forces personnel on board.

Six died after they were rescued and rushed to hospital, Sri Lanka Air Force spokesman Group Captain Eranda Geeganage said.

"The helicopter was assigned to conduct a grappling exercise at a passing-out parade. Four special forces personnel and two Air Force gunmen died of their injuries," Geeganage told Reuters.

He declined to give details on the possible reason for the crash.
Six Killed In Sri Lanka Helicopter Crash: Military (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [5/9/2025 2:37 AM, Staff, 931K]
A Sri Lankan Air Force helicopter crashed on Friday, killing six of the 12 people on board, the military said.

The personnel were taking part in a demonstration flight and preparing for a rope jump when their Bell 212 plunged into a lake at Maduru Oya, east of capital Colombo, a military official told AFP.

They had been due to perform a "fast-roping" manoeuvre during a graduation ceremony of Special Forces commandos, showcasing their skills at descending from the helicopter while it hovered above roof height.

"There were 12 people on board, and six of them survived with minor injuries," the official said, saying those killed included four commandos and two Air Force gunners.

The ceremony was called off, the official said, adding that an investigation into the cause of the incident was underway.

Friday’s tragedy is the worst for the air force since a Chinese-built Y-12 aircraft crashed at Haputale, 200 kilometres (125 miles) east of Colombo, in January 2020, killing all four crew members on board.

In September 2000, an Mi-17 helicopter crashed in central Sri Lanka, killing all 15 people on board, making it the worst helicopter crash in the island’s history.
Central Asia
Kazakhstan Says It Has No Plans to Cut Oil Production in May (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [5/8/2025 7:07 AM, Nariman Gizitdinov, 16228K]
Kazakhstan, which has created tensions within OPEC+ by consistently breaching its production limit, has no plans to cut oil output in May, the country’s Energy Ministry said.

Central Asia’s largest oil producer will pump a daily average of 277,000 metric tons of crude and condensate in May, the same level as in April, and compared with 260,000 metric tons in March, the Astana-based Energy Ministry said by email.

For two months in a row, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies have agreed to make super-sized production increases that surprised
traders and drove down

prices. The move was driven in large part by cartel leader Saudi Arabia’s desire to punish member countries, such as Kazakhstan, that have consistently exceeded their production limits.

The kingdom warned at the its most recent meeting on May 3 that there will be further output increases if the group’s quota cheats don’t fall in line. Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry said on Tuesday that it is considering its options for complying with its OPEC+ obligations to cut production, without giving further details.

According to the OPEC+ agreement, Kazakhstan should pump just under 1.4 million barrels a day of crude this month. The nation’s planned production for May, including condensate that isn’t counted in OPEC+ limits, will be about 2 millions barrel a day, according to Bloomberg calculations using Energy Ministry data and a tons-to-barrels conversion rate of 7.33. Kazakhstan typically pumps about 260,000 barrels a day of condensate, which is a type of a light oil.

Amid the tensions with fellow OPEC+ members, Kazakhstan has maintained that it has little influence on production decisions at projects within the country that are operated by foreign firms.

Last week, Chevron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Mike Wirth told analysts that his company had received no instructions from the government to rein in its massive Tengiz oil project, which is largely responsible for a recent surge in Kazakhstan’s production. Italy’s Eni SpA has made similar comments about the giant Kashagan oil field.
Turkmen leader touts trade and investment during French trip (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [5/8/2025 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K]
Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan’s true center of power, has completed a rare trip abroad to France, yielding what a state-controlled news agency described as “important bilateral documents aimed at expanding cooperation between the two countries.”

The visit was not devoted solely to the topic of expanding exports of Turkmenistan’s abundant natural gas supplies to the European Union. The May 7 report distributed by Turkmenportal indicated that memoranda of understanding were signed with various French firms involving aviation, agriculture, urban development, water resource management and telecommunications, as well as one covering the development of gas reserves. The report did not delve into the specifics of the deals.

It is uncertain whether memos will lead to substantive investment in the Turkmen economy, but they nevertheless are symbolically important, reaffirming the Turkmen leadership’s desire to open up the country after keeping Turkmenistan largely sealed off from the outside world for the first three-plus decades of its independent existence.

A focal point of Berdymukhamedov’s May 5-6 trip was a Turkmen-French economic forum attended by top executives of leading French firms. He also held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron. In a speech at the forum, Berdymukhamedov emphasized that Turkmenistan was open for business.

“Turkmenistan is ready to offer French entrepreneurs all favorable conditions for investment and further expansion of mutually beneficial cooperation,” he stated, emphasizing that the country was not just interested in attracting investment to its energy sector, but was also interested in exploring “the possibility of attracting small and medium-sized French enterprises to carry on business in our country.”

Berdymukhamedov additionally appealed for French help in developing “Turkmenistan’s significant tourism potential,” before concluding by saying Turkmenistan possesses “all the prerequisites for systematic planning of the strategy of economic cooperation.”

Over the past year, Turkmenistan has sought to end its years of self-imposed isolation from the West. In March, the country initiated a groundbreaking gas swap deal to send natural gas westward via Turkey.
Ukraine complicates Central Asian leaders’ presence at Victory Day celebration in Moscow (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [5/8/2025 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K]
Central Asian leaders are converging on Moscow for a show of loyalty to the Kremlin, centering on Victory Day celebrations May 9. Ukraine is doing its best to make the visit uncomfortable for them.

In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Victory Day is the most important occasion on the political calendar. And this edition of the parade on Red Square has particular significance, marking the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s triumph over Nazi Germany. It was a point of particular importance for Putin, then, that leaders of other formerly Soviet states attend the event.

Top officials from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were all set to comply with Putin’s wishes, traveling to Moscow to observe what promises to be a grand display of militarism and nationalism. In addition, troop contingents from all five Central Asian states are expected to march in the parade. The occasion additionally offers opportunities for Central Asian attendees to hold informal discussions among themselves and other global leaders who are planning to be in Moscow, including China’s Xi Jinping.

This year’s celebrations are occurring against the backdrop of a stalemated war between Russia and Ukraine, which of late has seen Russia resort to launching increasingly deadly missile attacks against civilian targets in Ukraine, far from the front lines.

To ensure a measure of security for the parade, with a host of leaders all congregating in one spot, Russia unilaterally declared a three-day ceasefire starting May 8.

But Ukrainian officials say they are not obligated to observe a ceasefire enabling what they view as a bacchanal of Russian propaganda. Ukraine launched drone attacks on Russia that disrupted traffic at Russian airports for several days in early May. Officials in Kyiv did not exclude the possibility of drone attacks on May 9.

“Our position is very simple for all countries traveling to Russia on May 9: we cannot be held responsible for what happens on the territory of the Russian Federation,” the Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as saying on May 3.

A Telegram channel with evident Ukrainian government connections has additionally sought to embarrass Central Asian leaders by publishing long lists of citizens of their respective countries who have signed up to fight for Russia against Ukraine.

The channel, called Project Hochu Zhit, (I want to live) has paid particular attention to Uzbekistan, publishing the names of 1,110 Uzbek nationals who have served as mercenaries in the Russian army. Later, it posted a video featuring six Uzbeks held as POWs by Ukraine appealing directly to Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to help facilitate their release from captivity.

“On their initiative, we publish a video appeal,” read a Hochu Zhit statement that accompanied the video’s publication. “This appeal is especially relevant against the background of the planned visit of the President of Uzbekistan to the parade in Moscow on May 9. We hope that [Mirziyoyev] will raise before Putin the issue of illegal recruitment of citizens of Uzbekistan into the Russian Armed Forces and will also help with inclusion in the Russian lists for the exchange of those mercenaries who were captured in Ukraine.”

The release of the Hochu Zhit list of mercenaries caused such a social media stir in Uzbekistan that the Foreign Ministry announced May 3 an investigation into instances of alleged illegal recruitment. Uzbek law prohibits Uzbek citizens from fighting in “military actions beyond the country’s borders,” according to a report published by the semi-official Kun.uz outlet, citing a Foreign Ministry spokesman. “In case of confirmation of this data, appropriate measures will be taken.”

Putin’s efforts to carefully orchestrate the Victory Day celebrations have already experienced a setback: on May 8, Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev suddenly announced the cancellation of his plans to attend the event. A caustic commentary published by a government-connected news outlet listed old and new grievances as the reason for the sudden cancellation.

“Russia has not yet started a transparent investigation of the AZAL Baku-Grozny plane crash, which was shot down by the Russian Air Force. No one has been detained, no one has been arrested, no charges have been brought against anyone,” the commentary published by the Minval.az website complained. It added that a prominent member of the Azerbaijani delegation that flew to Moscow to attend the May 9 events was denied entry with “no explanations” offered for the refusal.

Aliyev appeared to take the incident personally. “Participating in the celebrations on May 9 in Moscow is no longer about the memory of the Second World War. This is about relations between Azerbaijan and Russia. The same relationship that, by definition, is a two-way street. But they seem to have forgotten about that fact in Moscow,” the Minval commentary added.
Indo-Pacific
Rubio urges India and Pakistan to de-escalate, backs direct dialogue (Reuters)
Reuters [5/8/2025 1:24 PM, Simon Lewis and Ismail Shakil, 62527K]
Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged de-escalation and expressed support for direct dialogue in separate calls with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

Fears have grown that the worst confrontation in two decades in the conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors could escalate after India on Wednesday struck what it said was "terrorist infrastructure" in Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in retaliation for a deadly attack in Indian Kashmir on April 22 that New Delhi has blamed on Islamabad.

New blasts rang out across the city of Jammu in Indian Kashmir late on Thursday during what Indian military sources said they suspected was a Pakistani drone attack.

Rubio, in both phone calls that took place before the latest blasts, "emphasized the need for immediate de-escalation," Bruce said in readouts of the calls.

"He expressed U.S. support for direct dialogue between India and Pakistan and encouraged continued efforts to improve communications," Bruce said.

President Donald Trump has said he hopes the tit-for-tat strikes will stop and said he was willing to help, but Washington has not offered to formally mediate to quell the tensions.

Showing the delicate balancing act of Rubio’s diplomacy, the two State Department spokespersons’ readouts, sent out within a minute of each other, also included tailored messages for each side.

To Jaishankar, Rubio reaffirmed his commitment to work with India in the fight against terrorism, Bruce said. He expressed sorrow to Sharif for the reported loss of civilian lives in the current conflict between the two neighboring countries, while also urging Pakistan to take steps to end support for terrorist groups, she said.
US VP Vance says war between India and Pakistan will be ‘none of our business’ (Reuters)
Reuters [5/8/2025 9:23 PM, Kanishka Singh, 2456K]
U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday that India and Pakistan should de-escalate tensions, but he added that the U.S. cannot control the nuclear-armed Asian neighbors and a war between them would be "none of our business".

"We want this thing to de-escalate as quickly as possible. We can’t control these countries, though," Vance said in an interview on Fox News show "The Story with Martha MacCallum.".

"What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit, but we’re not going to get involved in the middle of war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it," he added.

India is an important partner for Washington, which aims to counter China’s rising influence, while Pakistan remains a U.S. ally despite its diminished importance after Washington’s withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan in 2021.

Analysts and some former officials have said 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 their tensions, without much direct pressure from the U.S. government.

Pakistan and India accused each other of launching drone attacks, and Islamabad’s defence minister said further retaliation was "increasingly certain," on the second day of major clashes on Thursday. Two days of fighting killed nearly four dozen people.

The latest escalation in the decades-old India-Pakistan rivalry began on April 22 when Islamist militants killed 26 people in India-administered Kashmir in an attack that New Delhi blamed on Islamabad, which denied the accusations and called for a neutral probe.

"Our hope and our expectation is that this is not going to spiral into a broader regional war or, God forbid, a nuclear conflict," Vance said on Thursday.

Washington has held regular talks with both in recent days, including on Thursday when Secretary of State Marco Rubio held calls with Pakistan’s prime minister and India’s foreign minister while urging them to de-escalate and have direct dialogue.

U.S. President Donald Trump called rising tensions a shame. On Wednesday, he said he hoped the two countries will stop now after going "tit-for-tat." The State Department urged both countries to work towards what Washington terms as a "responsible solution.".
Vance urges nonintervention with India and Pakistan as conflict escalates with mass drone attacks (Washington Examiner)
Washington Examiner [5/8/2025 8:38 PM, Brady Knox, 2296K]
Vice President JD Vance urged India and Pakistan to deescalate tensions as both countries launched mass drone attacks against each other, but the U.S. leader declined to intervene.

The burgeoning conflict between India and Pakistan escalated significantly on Thursday, with both countries accusing each other of launching mass kamikaze drone strikes. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with senior figures in India and Pakistan in the aftermath, urging them to deescalate as the conflict rapidly approaches the worst violence between the two since the 1999 Kargil War.

In a Thursday interview with Fox News, Vance also urged deescalation but ardently declared the conflict outside of U.S. interests.

"What we can do is try to encourage these folks to deescalate a little bit, but we’re not going to get involved in the middle of a war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it," he said.

Rubio spoke on the phone with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday. The State Department readouts on both calls were nearly identical, saying Rubio called for "immediate deescalation" and expressed support for direct dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad. The statements slightly differed in the added message, which appeared to slightly favor India.

The readout for the call with Jaishankar said Rubio "reiterated his condolences for the horrific terrorist attack in Pahalgam and reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to work with India in the fight against terrorism," while that with Shehbaz said he "expressed sorrow for the reported loss of civilian lives in the current conflict. He reiterated his calls for Pakistan to take concrete steps to end any support for terrorist groups.".

On Thursday, Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations Lt. Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said his country had neutralized 25 Israeli-made Harop drones that attacked military sites throughout the country, including in Karachi and Lahore.

The Harop drone is among roughly $2.9 billion of weapons imported from Israel over the past decade, according to Dawn newspaper. The kamikaze drone is vaunted for its performance in the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War by Azerbaijan, which used them to decimate Armenia’s military and quickly gain air supremacy. The Harop and Turkish Bayraktar drones are widely credited with being the decisive factor in deciding the war in Azerbaijan’s favor.

Pakistan published photos of debris from the drones, showing them as Israeli-made.

The drone attacks against Lahore led the U.S. consulate to issue a warning urging its staff to shelter in place.

The ISPR’s statement claimed the "cowardly" attack was made "in panic," in response to India’s losses of three to five fighter jets in an air battle on the first day of hostilities.

India, meanwhile, claimed success in the attack, saying it "neutralized" an air defense system in Lahore. It also claimed to have shot down Pakistani drones launched against Indian targets in Kashmir.

In addition to artillery fire exchanged along the line of contact in Kashmir, drone and missile strikes have been reported in nearly a dozen cities in India and Pakistan since early in the morning Wednesday. Open source intelligence analyst Damien Symon recorded Indian drone or missile attacks against ten cities in Pakistan and Pakistani drone or missile attacks against 15 cities in India.

Both sides have a penchant for denying their own attacks or minimizing damage from enemy attacks, aside from civilian casualties.

Pakistan and India, longtime rivals since their independence in 1947, have ramped up hostile rhetoric. A new nationalistic music video has already been produced by Pakistanis, "We are ready for the fight," showcasing Pakistani troops and military hardware to lyrics expressing a willingness for war.

Clips of coverage of the war on Indian and Pakistani news stations have gone viral on social media, with spirited pundits speaking alongside graphics of explosions and military hardware.

Violence in the conflict has already surpassed the flare-up in 2019, reaching levels not seen since 1999. That year’s Kargil War was the only time in history that two nuclear-armed powers engaged in a conventional war, a title that could soon be joined by the conflict.
Vance says US won’t intervene in India-Pakistan conflict: ‘None of our business’ (The Guardian)
The Guardian [5/8/2025 6:22 PM, Andrew Roth, 78938K]
JD Vance has said that the US will not intervene in the conflict between Pakistan and India, calling fighting between the two nuclear powers "fundamentally none of our business".

The remarks came during an interview with Fox News, where the US vice-president said that the US would seek to de-escalate the conflict but could force neither side to "lay down their arms".

"What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit, but we’re not going to get involved in the middle of war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it," Vance said during the interview. As the US could force neither side to lay down their arms, he continued, the country would "continue to pursue this thing through diplomatic channels".

"Our hope and our expectation is that this is not going to spiral into a broader regional war or, God forbid, a nuclear conflict," Vance said. "Right now, we don’t think that’s going to happen.".

The remarks match Donald Trump’s "America first" foreign policy of calling for a retreat from the US role as a mediator in foreign conflicts. Trump and Vance have both warned that the United States is willing to walk away from an attempt to broker a ceasefire in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine if the two sides cannot be led to hold direct talks.

India on Thursday evening said that it had thwarted missile and drone strikes launched by Pakistan in what would mark the latest round of tit-for-tat attacks between the two countries. Indian missile strikes on Pakistan in the early hours of Wednesday killed 31 people. India claimed that it was targeting "terrorist infrastructure", while Pakistan denied that any terrorist groups had been operating in the areas hit by Indian missiles.

As Vance signaled the US continued intent to take a diminished role in mediating conflicts abroad, secretary of state Marco Rubio spoke with leaders of both countries and called for an "immediate de-escalation" in the fighting. The Iranian and Saudi foreign ministers also flew into Delhi on Thursday.

Vance, who has played a significant role in foreign policy in the new Trump administration, traveled to India last month, where he said that India could retaliate against "terrorists" in Pakistan but said the US did not want that to spiral into a broader regional conflict.

"Our hope here is that India responds to this terrorist attack in a way that doesn’t lead to a broader regional conflict," Vance said, referring to a recent Islamist militant attack in Kashmir. "And we hope, frankly, that Pakistan, to the extent that they’re responsible, cooperates with India to make sure that the terrorists sometimes operating in their territory are hunted down and dealt with.".
Danger Grows as India and Pakistan Appear to Escalate Military Clash (New York Times)
New York Times [5/9/2025 12:31 AM, Mujib Mashal and Salman Masood, 831K]
India and Pakistan appeared to be dangerously escalating their armed confrontation on Thursday, as both countries said that their military sites had come under attack, and heavy shelling and strikes were reported overnight on each side of their border.

The military face-off began on Wednesday, when India struck several sites in Pakistani territory — its deepest strikes inside Pakistan in decades — in retaliation for a deadly terrorist attack two weeks before.

In a sign of the international alarm that the conflict could spin out of control, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with leaders from both countries on Thursday and emphasized the need for “immediate de-escalation,” according to State Department accounts of the calls.

India and Pakistan both continued to claim that they were not seeking an escalation in their military clash. But the reality on the ground indicated that the two nuclear-armed countries were not yet ready to take the offramps from their boiling tensions that had appeared to take shape a day before.

The Indian government said on Thursday that it had thwarted Pakistani attempts to unleash drones and missiles at Indian military targets in more than a dozen cities and towns, many of them home to air force bases.

India said it had responded by striking Pakistan’s air defense systems and radars close to the city of Lahore — the kind of blow that often causes a military conflict to intensify, analysts said.

Pakistan accused India of continuing what it called illegal aggression and said its forces had shot down more than two dozen Indian drones that entered Pakistan’s airspace.

In the rapidly developing situation, the claims from both sides could not be independently verified.

Late on Thursday, some parts of Jammu, an Indian city of about half a million people that is part of the territory of Jammu and Kashmir, were under blackouts. The sounds of blasts and sirens could be heard across the city, as shells and drones flew overhead, according to eyewitness accounts.

“Residents are in panic and staying indoors,” said Raman Sharma, a civil activist and resident of Jammu.

India’s defense ministry, in a post on X, said that military bases in Jammu and two other cities, Pathankot and Udhampur, which are close to India’s disputed Kashmir border with Pakistan, were “targeted by Pakistan using missiles and drones.”

Panic also spread during an evening cricket match in Dharamsala, not far from the area facing heavy shelling, where a crowd of more than 10,000 people had to be evacuated and the game called off.

India and Pakistan, separated from each other at the end of British colonial rule in 1947, have fought several wars, with the main flashpoint being their competing claims over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided between them.

The latest escalation came after a gruesome terrorist attack on the Indian side of Kashmir last month that killed 26 civilians. India accused Pakistan of being behind the attack and vowed military action. Pakistan denied the accusations and warned that it would respond in kind if it was attacked.

After a day of violence on Wednesday that opened with Indian airstrikes and Pakistani claims to have shot down aircraft — and reports of dozens of deaths in total — both India and Pakistan seemed to be open to finding a way to de-escalate.

Even as leaders on both sides publicly struck victorious tones, Pakistani officials said that security officials from both countries had made initial contact to reopen communication.

President Trump expressed his willingness to help, too, as U.S. officials said they were engaging with the leaderships of both India and Pakistan to seek a resolution.

But later in the day, Vice President JD Vance said on Fox News that while the administration was urging de-escalation, “we’re not going to get involved in the middle of a war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it.”

There were some hopeful signs of engagement on Thursday, including a flurry of diplomatic meetings in New Delhi and Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. Top diplomats from Iran and Saudi Arabia, crucial regional players that have close ties to both of the warring countries, were in New Delhi for meetings.

But away from the halls of power, the news was of more violence as both sides appeared to be bracing for escalation.

The Indian side said that it had received heavy shelling from Pakistani positions along the border areas overnight, and it reported concerted attempts by Pakistani forces to target military towns with missiles and drones.

Indian officials said they had responded forcefully, and claimed that they had targeted Pakistan’s air defense radars and systems at several locations.

The Indian defense ministry said that the “Indian response has been in the same domain with same intensity as Pakistan,” suggesting that the volleys from the Pakistani side had been aimed at Indian defense installations.

“Our intention has not been to escalate matters,” said Vikram Misri, India’s foreign secretary. “We are only responding to the original escalations. And our response has been targeted, precise, controlled and measured.”

Pakistan, for its part, added to its claims that it had downed Indian aircraft, saying on Thursday that it had shot down two dozen drones that had penetrated Pakistani territory to carry out “another act of aggression.”

Early Thursday morning, reports of explosions started trickling from multiple cities in Pakistan, including Karachi, Pakistan’s principal port city, and Rawalpindi, which houses the headquarters of the country’s powerful military. At least three people were reported killed in the drone attacks, according to the military.

One of the Indian drones had managed to strike a military target near Lahore, said Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif, a spokesman for the Pakistani military, adding that four members of its forces had been wounded and equipped had been damaged.

In a sign of the escalating violence, the United States issued an alert to American citizens in Lahore, the regional capital of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, near the border with India.

“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 statement said.

As they tried to piece together the events of a murky second night of violence, analysts said that Pakistan had most likely tried to mount an attack that was intended to answer India’s strikes on Wednesday.

While India had claimed to have limited its targets to terrorist sites on Wednesday, Pakistan has no similar option for striking India, making its task trickier in selecting targets.

Pakistan appeared to try to dial up the volume of shelling that had already been happening around the line dividing Kashmir between the two countries, to include targeting of towns farther away.

India’s decision to hit Pakistan’s air defense systems suggested that India’s own defense systems may have suffered damage, or that it was trying to establish dominance as it escalated the conflict, analysts said.

“Targeting air defense systems involves particular risks, because you make your adversary feel like they could be blinded, or their command-and-control systems could be left defenseless or degraded,” said Joshua White, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who formerly directed South Asia policy in the White House’s National Security Council.

“That induces leaders to act even more quickly as crises escalate,” he added, “changing the tempo and character of a conflict.”

Another possibility behind the second night’s escalation, according to Western diplomats and analysts, was that India did not consider its initial strikes decisive enough to establish deterrence as it demands that Pakistan do more to stop terrorism. India may have attempted a more forceful response either provoked by Pakistani attempts at retaliation or independent of them.

While there was evidence that India had managed to hit facilities related to two prominent terrorist outfits, there was increasing evidence that India had suffered blows in the process.

At least two Indian aircraft went down in the confrontation, according to Indian officials. At least one of the planes was a French-made Rafale, according to two people in the French defense ministry with knowledge of the situation. The ministry, as well as the company that makes the planes, declined to comment.

The diplomatic push in the day after the initial confrontation was being built around the hope that the heaviest military engagement could be contained to the actions on early Wednesday.

Pakistani officials said the national security advisers of both countries had established “some interaction” after Wednesday’s initial strikes. The engagement was first mentioned by Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, in an interview with the news channel TRT. A second official confirmed the contact, but said it was indirect — suggesting there were mediators in the mix.

Still, in both capitals, it was clear that the risk of escalation was far from over.

In New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government briefed representatives of the opposition parties on India’s military action, and all of the political figures came out with a statement of support for the government’s action.

“This is an ongoing operation,” India’s parliamentary affairs minister, Kiren Rijiju, said after the meeting.

At the beginning of his meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar of India said that the government’s actions against Pakistan had been “targeted and measured.”

“It is not our intention to escalate the situation,” he said. “However, if there are military attacks on us, there should be no doubt that it will be met with a very, very firm response.”

In Pakistan, the country’s leadership also showed a united front. Dominating newspapers and social media were images of a funeral held on Wednesday for a 7-year old boy who was killed in the Indian strikes. Pakistan’s top leadership, including the country’s prime minister, president and its army chief, were all in attendance.

After the funeral, Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, condemned India’s actions as “cowardice” and vowed they would be “met with decisive action.”
Fog of war thickens as India and Pakistan trade blame and accusations (Washington Post)
Washington Post [5/9/2025 12:31 AM, Niha Masih and Rick Noack, 831K]
As India and Pakistan entered their third day of hostilities, the two nuclear-armed nations remained on the brink of a head-on military confrontation — but how close was difficult to tell, the fog of war made even murkier by tit-for-tat accusations of strikes and false-flag attacks.

As of Friday, New Delhi still had not commented on Islamabad’s claims to have downed up to five Indian warplanes in response to Indian strikes deep inside Pakistan on Wednesday — a loss that, if true, would constitute a humiliation of the Indian military, analysts said. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, officials remained tight-lipped about their next actions and whether they would seek retaliation for India’s strikes Wednesday, which Islamabad said killed 26 people.

Each country has portrayed the other as the aggressor, trading blame for civilians coming under fire along the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and for apparent drone and missile attacks.

On Thursday, Pakistan’s military said it had shot down 16 Indian drones inside the country that day, while India’s Defense Ministry said it “neutralized” an air defense system in Lahore — a Pakistani city of 14 million people — and that overnight into Friday it had taken out Pakistani drones in Punjab as well as the contested region of Kashmir.

But Islamabad has denied attacking any locations across the border and accused New Delhi of attacking its own territory to stoke anti-Pakistan sentiment and create a “phantom defense.”

Some of the most significant claims — with Pakistan saying it killed up to 50 Indian soldiers and India claiming it targeted what it called nine “terrorist” sites in Wednesday’s deadly strikes — remained difficult to independently verify.

“It’s really hard to read, quite frankly,” said Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst.

Kugelman noted a “very high volume of particularly egregious fake news” in government-aligned Indian media outlets. (India fell to 151st position in the World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders this year, down from 136th place a decade ago. Pakistan is ranked 158th.)

Indian media outlets have over the past 24 hours claimed that Delhi has damaged or destroyed Pakistan’s main port in Karachi; captured the Pakistani capital, Islamabad; that Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir may have been arrested; and that militants are taking over Quetta, a city of around 1.6 million in southwestern Pakistan.

“This is the type of fake news that pretty much everyone would know is not true,” said Kugelman, adding that the continued hostilities are a bad sign for how the crisis could play out.

“There was the option not to send any missiles or drones into the other country, but the fact that that did happen — even though we’re not talking about huge numbers of them — that suggests that each side is not ready to step back from the brink,” he said.

Several Indian right-wing accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers have sought to add another dimension to the conflict, framing it as “information warfare” and urging Indians to amplify any news damaging to Pakistan — regardless of its accuracy.

Social media accounts in both India and Pakistan have circulated the same visuals, even though they are unrelated to the current tensions — with each side trying to pass them off as evidence of conflict or to claim their country has dominance over the other. In one instance, footage from a popular military video game was shared by users on both sides of the border, with one Indian account garnering more than 2 million views.

A division of the Pakistani Economy Ministry denied Friday that it had appealed to its international partners “for more loans after heavy losses inflected by enemy” in a now-deleted post on X. Officials said the account had been hacked.

Experts warn that heightened nationalistic sentiment among the public not only fuels misinformation but also amplifies extreme voices, crowding out measured perspective or those advocating peace.

“The short-term impact is that if the social media discourse gets out of hand, then you have the government being forced to do certain things which it might not otherwise do in typical statecraft, because now blood has to be spilled, and that’s the advantage for extreme elements,” said Joyojeet Pal, an associate professor at the University of Michigan who studies misinformation.

The United States and China have called for a diplomatic solution, but it was unclear who would lead those efforts. In a Thursday night interview with Fox News, Vice President JD Vance said the United States wants de-escalation but emphasized it is “fundamentally none of our business,” adding that Washington will not get involved in a conflict it cannot control.

New Delhi has framed its strikes as retaliation for the April 22 rampage by gunmen in a tourist area in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, which killed 26 people — the deadliest assault on Indian civilians in more than 15 years.

India said the attack had links to Pakistan, which it has long accused of harboring violent Kashmiri separatists; Islamabad denied any involvement and has called for an international investigation.

The Indian drone attacks on Thursday killed one civilian and injured another in rural Sindh province, Pakistani authorities said. Pakistan said drones were downed in or around Chakwal, Attock, Lahore, Gujranwala and Rawalpindi — the location of Pakistan’s military headquarters.

As both sides braced for possible escalation, a major cricket tournament was moved from Pakistan to the United Arab Emirates, and international airlines continued to cancel flights to and from Pakistan on Friday. Schools in Pakistan’s Punjab province and Islamabad were closed for Friday and Saturday.

In India, there were growing signs of unease, too. At least 21 airports in the country’s north will remain closed until at least Saturday, officials told an Indian news agency. Eyewitnesses in several parts of northern and western India said their cities had no electricity Thursday night. School was canceled in parts of Kashmir.

“We’ll have a better sense about the immediate-term trajectory of this crisis when we see what Pakistan’s next move will be,” said Kugelman, the analyst.

Striking back against India carries serious risks for Pakistan, a country struggling to find its economic footing and beset by its own violent insurgencies.

“Pakistan potentially could use that claim of downing the jets as a potential off-ramp,” said Kugelman. “But I’m not sure if that would be enough, quite frankly. Pakistan described the Indian airstrikes as an act of war, so that suggests that they’re going to have to show more to the Pakistani public than simply a few jets having been shot down.”
Pakistan and India accuse each other of drone attacks as tensions mount (Washington Post)
Washington Post [5/8/2025 2:48 PM, Haq Nawaz Khan, Rick Noack, Shams Irfan and Karishma Mehrotra, 31735K]
India and Pakistan accused each other Thursday of further hostile acts, including drone attacks, as the nuclear-armed neighbors edged closer to a head-on military confrontation.

Pakistan’s military said it shot down 16 drones inside the country on Thursday, while India’s Defense Ministry said it “neutralised” an air defense system in Lahore and took out Pakistani drones deployed in the contested region of Kashmir.

India’s military also claimed to have thwarted drone and missile attacks by Pakistan late Wednesday into Thursday on 15 sites; locals in the northwestern city of Amritsar reported explosions and bright flashes of light. Islamabad countered that India had attacked its own territory to stoke anti-Pakistan sentiment and create a “phantom defense.”

Since early Wednesday, when New Delhi launched its deepest and deadliest strikes inside Pakistan in more than half a century, the adversaries have been locked in an information war, with each touting its military achievements while portraying the other as the aggressor. The claims and counterclaims have often been hard to verify. Islamabad said Wednesday it had downed five Indian warplanes, which New Delhi has neither confirmed nor denied.

Equally difficult to discern Thursday was where the conflict would go next. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif told Reuters that retaliation against India was “increasingly becoming certain” but added that “I will still refrain from saying it is 100 percent.”

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, meanwhile, said “there should be no doubt” that any Pakistani attack “will be met with a very, very firm response.”

Pakistan said drones were downed in or around Chakwal, Attock, Lahore, Gujranwala and Rawalpindi — the location of Pakistan’s military headquarters. One Indian drone near Lahore attacked a military target, according to the government, causing damage and injuring four soldiers.

Pakistan’s chief military spokesman, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, described the early-morning attacks as “yet another blatant military act of aggression” by India. One civilian was killed and another injured in rural Sindh province, Pakistani authorities said. India denied that any civilians had been killed in its strikes.

The U.S. Consulate in Lahore wrote in a security alert that it had directed all personnel to shelter in place because of “reports of drone explosions, downed drones, and possible airspace incursions.”

In India, there were growing signs of unease. At least 21 airports in the country’s north will remain closed until at least Saturday, officials told an Indian news agency. Eyewitnesses in several parts of northern and western India said their cities had no electricity Thursday night.

School was canceled in parts of Kashmir, the disputed territory that has been at the heart of multiple wars between India and Pakistan, and where the latest round of tensions began last month with a deadly militant attack on Indian tourists.

Late Thursday, India’s Defense Ministry posted on X that it had “neutralised” Pakistani drones and missiles targeting military stations in three cities in Jammu and Kashmir. It added that no casualties occurred. Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Pakistan had not attacked any locations in the area.

“Kashmir has been through a lot in the last three decades, but I have never been this scared,” said Zahid, 45, a resident of Wuyan village in the district of Pulwama, where locals say a jet crashed Wednesday night during the Indian attack.

Zahid, who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals, said he was sleeping at home when the jet crashed into a school building. “I had seen war footage only on television so far,” he said. “I never imagined it would be this scary in reality.”

Analysts said the popular mood in Pakistan was a key factor as the government weighs whether, and where, to retaliate against its larger, more powerful rival.

“There’s mounting public pressure in Pakistan to take some form of retaliatory action,” said Nishank Motwani, an analyst with the U.S. branch of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a government-funded think tank.

Pakistan’s military — long seen as the ultimate power broker in the country — saw its standing erode after the 2023 arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan and may see an opportunity to win back favor.

Many Pakistanis applauded the military’s response to the Indian strikes. Some took to the streets to celebrate. “We are happy that the planes were shot down,” said Adnan Shahid, 35, a teacher in Sialkot, one of the districts targeted by Indian strikes.

In Islamabad, authorities urged citizens Thursday to join the civil defense brigades.

Usman Mujtaba, a 34-year-old who lives in southern Punjab, said many of his friends are eager to enlist. “Morale is high,” he said. A music video for a new war song was aired on Pakistani channels and went viral on social media, showing soldiers marching in formation and firing artillery, set to a thumping beat.

But striking back against India carries serious risks for Pakistan, a country struggling to find its economic footing and beset by its own violent insurgencies. Any attack on the Indian military or strategic infrastructure “could lead to massive escalation,” said Sushant Singh, a Yale University lecturer and former Indian military official.

The United States and China have called for a diplomatic solution, but it was unclear who would lead those efforts. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke Thursday with both Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Jaishankar, his Indian counterpart.

“At this moment in time, there is one thing that has to stop, which is a back-and-forth and a continuation, and that is what we are focused on right now,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a news briefing Thursday.

Jaishankar also received Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s minister of state for foreign affairs, for an unannounced visit to Delhi on Thursday, and met with the Iranian foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi.

New Delhi has framed its strikes as retaliation for the April 22 rampage by gunmen in a tourist area in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, which killed 26 people — the deadliest assault on Indian civilians in more than 15 years.

India said the attack had “linkages” to Pakistan, which it has long accused of harboring violent Kashmiri separatists; Islamabad denied any involvement and has called for an international investigation.

The triumphal reaction in India to Wednesday’s cross-border strikes carried an undercurrent of Hindu nationalism. Some senior politicians fawned over the military’s code name — Operation Sindoor, named for the vermilion that adorns Hindu brides and a likely reference to images of Hindu women grieving over their husbands slain in Kashmir.

Pravin Sawhney, the editor of an Indian defense magazine and a former army official, said he was troubled by the religious connotations of the name, which local media said was chosen by the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Sawhney said that politicizing India’s secular military would be harmful to unit cohesion. “A political message is being sent to the people of India,” he said, “that Hindus were killed there, so we have taken revenge.”

Others believe India’s aggressive military response was in service of long-term objectives. By showing it has the “capability to strike by air from within its own borders deep inside Pakistan,” New Delhi may be trying to “create a strategic space” for future operations and to “rewrite the deterrence playbook in South Asia,” said Motwani, the ASPI analyst.

But there was still confusion Thursday over how much India had gained by its strikes and how much it had lost. New Delhi has still issued no official response to Pakistani claims that it shot down its warplanes. Singh, the former Indian military official, said the government’s silence makes it “very difficult to assess” the truth.

The Hindu, an Indian newspaper, deleted a social media post Wednesday that said three Indian jets had been downed; the paper said it was because there had been no “on-record official information,” fueling concerns among journalists that Modi’s administration might intensify its clampdown on the media.

The Global Government Affairs team at X, the social platform owned by Elon Musk, said late Thursday it had received orders from the Indian government to block more than 8,000 accounts in the country. For many accounts, X said, the government did not specify which posts violated local law; for others, it did not provide any evidence at all.

“To comply with the orders, we will withhold the specified accounts in India alone,” the post from X read, but “we disagree with the Indian government’s demands,” characterizing them as “contrary to the fundamental right of free speech.”

Across Kashmir — where Indian and Pakistani forces continued to exchange shells across their contested border — people braced for another long and nervous night.

In Jammu, a large Indian city next to Kashmir, two eyewitnesses said the sky above them was lit up by a volley of projectiles; the power was out, they said, and the cell network was down. Another Jammu resident reported hearing four explosions near the military airport down the road.

Nayaz Ahmed, 25, watched from his rooftop as four projectiles flew above his home in Jammu near a large garrison. Some time later, he heard loud sirens: “That is when people started to run and panic,” he said.
India Says It Intercepted Missiles and Drones Launched by Pakistan (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [5/8/2025 2:54 PM, Waqar Gillani, Aakash Hassan, and Corinne Abrams, 126906K]
India said it intercepted missiles and drones launched by Pakistan on Thursday that targeted military installments on its territory, turning up the heat in a confrontation between the two nuclear-armed states that has been simmering since militants killed tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

India’s Defense Ministry said on the social-media platform X that there were no casualties or damage reported. Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on X that Pakistan hadn’t attacked any locations in the area.

India and Pakistan also accused each other of drone attacks on Thursday against military targets.

India said it had struck Pakistani air-defense radar systems in response to drone and missile attacks on its military sites by Pakistan, which were repelled by Indian air defenses.

Earlier, Pakistan’s army spokesman accused India of targeting Pakistani soldiers with Harop drones, a type of loitering munition. At least three people have died and four injured in Indian drone strikes, Pakistani officials said Thursday. Drones attempted to strike military installations and one hit the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium.

Pakistan’s army spokesman, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, accused New Delhi of whipping up "war hysteria" with exaggerations about Pakistan attacks within India.

"When is this Indian government going to transit from the theatrical and cinematic to the actual world we are living in?" he said Thursday.

Tensions between the two countries have reached their highest point in years after New Delhi said Pakistan was behind a militant attack last month that killed 26 tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan denies involvement.

Despite the upsurge in violence in recent days, both countries have appeared to calibrate their actions to avoid a full-blown conflict after decades of relative peace. In their latest statements, each accused the other of escalatory actions. Shelling by Pakistan has so far killed 16 people and injured 59 on India’s side of the border, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said Thursday.

"Our intention has not been to escalate matters," he said. "We are only responding to the original escalation.".

In strikes on nine locations Wednesday night, which India said were retaliation for the Kashmir attack, New Delhi said that it had avoided military targets and that there was no collateral damage.

Islamabad said that those strikes left 31 civilians dead, and that it had downed Indian jets involved. "That was our response," Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said late Wednesday. Sharif’s office had earlier described the Indian strikes as an unlawful act of war and threatened to retaliate.

For decades, India has accused Pakistan of backing an armed insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir, which Pakistan denies. The Himalayan region is divided between the two countries but each claims it in full. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the area’s special autonomous status in 2019, which triggered a political uproar but fulfilled a campaign promise to his Hindu-nationalist supporters.

In recent years, militants have sometimes killed Hindus in apparent retaliation for the region’s loss of autonomous status.

The U.S. has sought in recent days to persuade both sides to defuse tensions in a flurry of diplomatic calls with both countries. President Trump said Wednesday that he hoped to see an end to the recent flare-up. "They’ve gone tit-for-tat so hopefully they can stop now," he said. "If I can do anything to help, I will be there.".

Pakistan said Thursday that one of the drones had hit a military target near Lahore, damaging equipment. India said an air-defense system in Lahore had been destroyed.

Pakistani army officials said it had downed 25 drones across the country since Wednesday night.

"It appears India has, apparently, lost the plot and rather than going on a path of rationality is further escalating in a highly charged environment to satisfy the hubristic mindset of its government," said Chaudhry, Pakistan’s army spokesman.

India said Thursday that it had responded to recent cross-border shelling that had left 16 of its civilians dead.

The town of Poonch and its surrounding areas in Indian-administered Kashmir were among the worst-hit by shelling, according to India’s Foreign Ministry. Resident Ashfaq Majeed, 46, said he was at home when he heard a loud explosion from shelling at a neighboring property. He said he helped move the injured to a hospital, but one boy died. "I don’t know why we’re being punished for this fight between two countries," Majeed said.

Farther north, in a village in the Uri region, Farhan Lone, 24, said that before the recent outbreak of violence, many of his neighbors had begun to remove bomb shelters after years of relative quiet. Since the latest bout of fighting, he said, about 25 houses in the neighborhood have been destroyed by artillery fire.

"It has been a dreadful time for us. The shelling was so intense that I thought no one would survive," he said. "The nights are especially terrifying.".
India, Pakistan Trade Blame for More Strikes as US Seeks Calm (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [5/8/2025 11:56 AM, Faseeh Mangi, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, and Chiranjivi Chakraborty, 16228K]
India and Pakistan said they shot down each other’s drones and missiles over densely populated cities in a second day of military hostilities, while the US continued to seek to ease the flare-up between nuclear-armed neighbors triggered by last month’s deadly militant attack in the disputed region of Kashmir.

Pakistan’s army shot down several Indian drones over major cities, including Lahore, Rawalpindi and outside Karachi, a spokesman told reporters Thursday. India’s Ministry of Defence separately said in a statement it “neutralized” Pakistan’s attempt to strike a “number of military targets in Northern and Western India” using drones and missiles on Wednesday and Thursday.

The military action raised concern of a significant escalation in hostilities between the nuclear-armed rivals, prompting a plunge in Pakistan stocks and the biggest drop in India’s rupee in three years.

Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar denied India’s claim, calling them “lies.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting Thursday with top bureaucrats from various ministries to review planning and preparedness amid rising tensions. He asked officials to review readiness, emergency responses, and internal communication protocols, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

On Wednesday, India conducted military strikes against nine targets in Pakistan, saying they were targeted to hit suspected terrorist camps and designed to be “non-escalatory.” The strikes, which Pakistan’s army said killed 31 civilians, were the deepest breach of Pakistani territory since the 1971 war.

The conflict was sparked by the April 22 attacks in India’s Jammu and Kashmir region, where gunmen killed 26 civilians. India called the attack an act of terrorism and accused Pakistan of involvement — allegations Islamabad has denied.

Pakistan’s army said Wednesday its Chinese-made fighter jets shot down five Indian jets. It didn’t provide proof and India’s government didn’t confirm the claims. On Thursday, Pakistan said the drones shot down were Israeli-made Harop ones. The so-called kamikaze drones carry explosives to their targets and destroy themselves on detonation.

In a press briefing Thursday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri responded to a question on the claims of downed planes, saying “information will be provided at an appropriate time.”

In response to another question on New Delhi asking the International Monetary Fund to review its loans to Pakistan, Misri said India’s executive director at the IMF will “put forward” the country’s position at the lender’s board meeting tomorrow.

“I think the case with regard to Pakistan should be self-evident to those people who generously open their pockets to bail out this country,” he said.

India Ministry of Defence said armed forces “targeted air defense radars and systems at a number of locations in Pakistan” on Thursday morning. India’s response “has been in the same domain with same intensity as Pakistan,” the ministry said.

The two sides also engaged in cross-border firing, which killed 16 people so far, it said. India has also halted civilian flights to over 25 airports as tensions mount.

Pakistan’s stock market slumped after the news of the drone attack Thursday, triggering a trading halt for an hour. The KSE-30 Index closed 7.3% lower on a provisional basis after trading resumed, its biggest drop since the onset of the pandemic.

“Fresh reports of Indian drones downed in Pakistan signal rising escalation,” said Ali Raza, head of international equity trading at BMA Capital Management Ltd. “Without a ceasefire or diplomatic shift, tensions to remain high — bad for investors’ sentiments,” he said.

The impact was seen on Indian assets too. India’s benchmark Nifty 50 Index closed 0.6% lower and the rupee slid over 1% against the dollar — the biggest fall in intraday trading in over three years. Bonds reversed earlier gains.

“International investors undoubtedly evaluate geopolitical risk into their assessment of India, contributing to the rupee’s underperformance in recent weeks,” said Samsara Wang, Asian sovereign analyst in PineBridge’s Global Emerging Markets Fixed Income team. “That said, conflicts between India and Pakistan have not had a lasting effect on Indian financial assets, and the impact is likely to be limited and temporary.”

India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said Thursday “it is not our intention to escalate this situation,” but India would retaliate if there’s an attack, according to opening remarks made in a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi.

The US and other major global powers have called for both sides to show restraint. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the conflict was “so terrible” and that he wanted the two nations to “work it out.”

“They’ve gone tit-for-tat, so hopefully they can stop now,” Trump said in reply to a question during a White House event. “We get along with both the countries very well, good relationships with both, and I want to see it stop. And if I can do anything to help, I will be there.”

Hours after Trump’s statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and emphasized the need for the two neighbors to de-escalate the situation.

The last time the two sides came close to an all-out war was in 2019, after a suicide bomber killed 40 members of India’s security forces. India blamed Pakistan and responded about two weeks later with its first airstrikes on Pakistani soil since 1971. Pakistan retaliated by shooting down an Indian jet and arresting the pilot, who was later released. Tensions died down soon afterward.
Indian and Pakistan troops swap intense artillery fire overnight (AP)
AP [5/9/2025 3:48 AM, Aijaz Hussain, Munir Ahmed, Sheikh Saaliq, and Rajesh Roy, 456K]
Indian and Pakistani soldiers exchanged heavy volleys of shells and gunfire across their frontier in Kashmir overnight, killing at least five civilians amid a growing military standoff that erupted following an attack on tourists in the India-controlled portion of the disputed region.

In Pakistan, an unusually intense night of artillery exchanges left at least four civilians dead and wounded 12 others in areas near the Line of Control that divides Kashmir, local police official Adeel Ahmad said. People in border towns said the firing continued well into Friday morning.

“We’re used to hearing exchange of fire between Pakistan and India at the Line of Control, but last night was different,” said Mohammad Shakil, who lives near the frontier in Chakothi sector.

In India, military officials said Pakistani troops barraged their posts overnight with artillery, mortars and gunfire at multiple locations. They said Indian soldiers responded, triggering fierce exchanges until early dawn.

A woman was killed and two other civilians were injured in Uri sector, police said, taking the civilian death toll in India to 17 since Wednesday.

Rivals exchange strikes and allegations

Tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals have soared since an attack on a popular tourist site in India-controlled Kashmir left 26 civilians dead, mostly Hindu Indian tourists, on April 22. New Delhi has blamed Pakistan for backing the attack, an accusation Islamabad rejects.

On Wednesday, India conducted airstrikes on several sites in Pakistani territory it described as militant-related, kiling 31 civilians according to Pakistani officials. Pakistan said it shot down five Indian fighter jets.

On Thursday, both countries reported drone attacks that the other swiftly denied. These incidents could not be independently confirmed.

India orders X to block thousands of accounts

Meanwhile, social platform X in a statement on Thursday said the Indian government had ordered it to block users in the country from accessing more than 8,000 accounts, including a number of “international news organizations and other prominent users.”

The social platform did not release the list of accounts it was blocking in India, but said the order “amounts to censorship of existing and future content, and is contrary to the fundamental right of free speech.” Later, X briefly blocked access to the Global Affairs Account from which it had posted the statement, also citing a legal demand from India.

Crisis disrupts schools, sports and travel

Panic also spread during an evening cricket match in northern Dharamsala city, where a crowd of more than 10,000 people had to be evacuated from the stadium and the game called off, according to an Associated Press photographer covering the event.

Meanwhile, several northern and western Indian states, including Punjab, Rajasthan, Indian-controlled Kashmir, shut schools and other educational institutions for two days.

Airlines in India have also suspended flight operations from two dozen airports across northern and western regions. India’s Civil Aviation Ministry late Thursday confirmed in a statement the temporary closure of 24 airports.

The impact of border flare up was also seen in the Indian stock markets. In early trade on Friday, the benchmark Sensex tanked 662 points to 79,649 while Nifty 50 declined 215 points to trade at 24,058.

Vance says a war would be ‘none of our business’

As fears of military concentration soar and worried world leaders call for de-escalation, the U.S. Vice President JD Vance has said that a potential war between India and Pakistan would be “none of our business.”

“What we can do is try to encourage these folks to de-escalate a little bit, but we’re not going to get involved in the middle of war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it,” Vance said in an interview with Fox News.
India reports strikes on military bases, Pakistan denies any role (BBC)
BBC [5/8/2025 4:26 PM, Frances Mao, 52868K]
India has accused Pakistan of attacking three of its military bases with drones and missiles, a claim which has been denied by Islamabad.

The Indian Army said it had foiled Pakistan’s attempts to attack its bases in Jammu and Udhampur, in Indian-administered Kashmir, and Pathankot, in India’s Punjab state.

Blasts were reported on Thursday evening in Jammu city in Indian-administered Kashmir as the region went into a blackout.

Pakistan’s defence minister told the BBC they were not behind the attack.

"We deny it, we have not mounted anything so far," Khawaja Asif told the BBC, adding: "We will not strike and then deny".

Earlier on Thursday, India said it had struck Pakistan’s air defences and "neutralised" Islamabad’s attempts to hit military targets in India on Wednesday night.

Pakistan called that action another "act of aggression", following Indian missile strikes on Wednesday on targets in Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

India’s strikes on Wednesday sparked a chorus of calls for de-escalation from the international community with the UN and world leaders calling for calm.

The attacks and incidents of shelling along the border have fanned fears of wider conflict erupting between the nuclear-armed states.

It is being viewed as the worst confrontation between the two countries in more than two decades.

India said it hit nine "terrorist infrastructure" sites on Wednesday in retaliation for a militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

Pakistan has strongly denied Indian claims that it backed the militants who killed 26 civilians in the mountainous town of Pahalgam.

It was the bloodiest attack on civilians in the region for years, sending tensions soaring. Most of the victims were Indian tourists.

Indian-administered Kashmir has seen a decades-long insurgency against Indian rule which has claimed thousands of lives.

Kashmir has been a flashpoint between the countries since they became independent after British India was partitioned in 1947. Both claim Kashmir and have fought two wars over it.

There were calls for restraint from around the world after India launched "Operation Sindoor" early on Wednesday.

But on Thursday both sides accused each other of further military action.

Pakistan’s military spokesman said drones sent by India had been engaged in multiple locations.

"Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations," Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said. "These locations are Lahore, Gujranwala, Chakwal, Rawalpindi, Attock, Bahawalpur, Miano, Chor and near Karachi.".

He said one civilian had been killed in Sindh province and four troops injured in Lahore.

The US consulate in Lahore told its staff to shelter in the building.

India said its latest action had been taken in response to Pakistan’s attempts to "engage a number of military targets in northern and western India" overnight.

"It has been reliably learnt that an Air Defence system at Lahore has been neutralised," a Defence Ministry statement said. Pakistan denied the claim.

There was no independent confirmation of the two countries’ versions of events.

Later in the day India’s foreign secretary Vikram Misri told a news conference in Delhi: "Our intention has not been to escalate matters, we are only responding to the original escalation.".

Meanwhile, casualty numbers continue to rise. Pakistan says 31 people have been killed and 57 injured by Indian air strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and firing along the Line of Control, since Wednesday morning.

India’s army said the number of people killed by Pakistani firing in the disputed Kashmir region had risen to 16, including three women and five children.

India initially did not name any group it believed was behind the attack in Pahalgam but on 7 May it accused the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group of carrying it out.

Indian police have alleged that two of the attackers were Pakistani nationals, a claim denied by Islamabad. It says it has nothing to do with the 22 April attacks.

In a late-night address on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to avenge those killed in India’s strikes.

He repeated Pakistan’s claim that it had shot down five Indian fighter jets, saying that was a "crushing response". India has not commented on that claim.

Following the reports of Thursday’s explosions in Jammu, local media cited Indian military sources on Thursday in reporting that blasts across the Jammu region were also reported in the towns of Akhnoor, Samba and Kathua.
How the US military guards against India-Pakistan nuclear war (Washington Examiner – opinion)
Washington Examiner [5/8/2025 3:26 PM, Tom Rogan, 2296K]
Tensions between longtime political, territorial, and ideological foes, India and Pakistan, are escalating.

The current crisis began when Pakistan-based terrorists killed 26 Indian tourists in an April 22 attack in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region. On Wednesday, India launched retaliatory air strikes against terrorists inside Pakistan that it blames for the attack. Pakistan then appears to have responded with drone attacks on Indian territory on Wednesday. India has subsequently responded with its own counter-retaliation, and both sides are now engaged in limited but growing conflict.

This conflict would only be of relatively mild concern for the international community were it not for one factor: India and Pakistan have around 170-200 nuclear weapons each. In terms of delivery systems, India has intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States. Fortunately, U.S.-India relations mean that an Indian nuclear attack on the U.S. is almost (no certainty can be afforded in the nuclear world) inconceivable.

In contrast, U.S.-Pakistan relations are tenuous at the best of times. And while the Pakistani military offers a flawed but functional bulwark against internal Islamist extremist movements, anti-American and anti-Indian extremists also define top ranks of the military. The enduring U.S. fear is that a full-scale war with India might lead to either the seizure of Pakistani nuclear weapons by Islamist extremists or the employment of those weapons by extremist-minded military officers. And that those weapons would then be employed to attack U.S. interests. While Pakistan lacks missiles that could hit the U.S., it is developing them at pace. Pakistan already has a probable ability to strike Israel with nuclear weapons.

The ensuing U.S. priorities in this crisis are threefold.

First, diplomatic action to reduce tensions and prevent the catastrophe of a full-scale India-Pakistan conventional or nuclear war. Second, to detect moves by either side to prepare for nuclear strikes against each other, or U.S./allied interests. Third, to deter and, if necessary, defeat action by Pakistan or external parties such as China to threaten U.S. interests. China is relevant because Pakistan is now a de facto colony of the Chinese Communist Party, and because China has a growing stockpile of nuclear warheads that range the U.S. homeland.

How will the U.S. address these three priority interests?

On the diplomatic side of things, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is playing the key role. Rubio and his foreign allied counterparts are speaking regularly to Indian and Pakistani officials. Behind the scenes, they will offer inducements for a reduction in tensions and warn of costs amid escalation. But crisis diplomacy also requires insight as to what each side is thinking and doing behind closed doors. That leads to the second priority of intelligence activity.

A key responsibility will fall on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Responsible for analyzing imagery from U.S. spy satellites, the NGA will analyze the activities of nuclear forces from both countries. This will provide warnings to the Trump administration if either Pakistan or India appears to be moving closer to the use of nuclear weapons.

Similarly, the National Security Agency will intercept Indian-Pakistani communications to detect any developing plans for nuclear posture changes, or, for example, the movement of senior leaders to nuclear bunkers. The NSA will also develop evolving assessments of who the doves and hawks are on both sides, thus enabling the U.S. and its allies to target varying measures of leverage at those individuals.

Finally, the Central Intelligence Agency will focus on leveraging its influence with its Pakistani and Indian sources, both civilian and military, to understand where things might be headed. One benefit of the War on Terror is that the CIA has developed a number of well-placed Pakistani officials who will have special insight into the current situation. The Defense Intelligence Agency will also play a role here.

That leads us to the final priority: effective deterrence and defense of the U.S.

The U.S. military’s standing, and unilateral, nuclear weapons enabled ability to end Pakistan and China’s sovereign existences is the key source of deterrence. But the U.S. military must also be ready if deterrence fails. And that means providing President Donald Trump with the means of a first-strike surprise attack. This capability could be employed if there were indications that a nuclear attack against U.S. interests was imminent. The mission would fall primarily to the U.S. Navy’s Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, or SSBNs.

One of these submarines may already be operating within the Indian Ocean, or have been ordered to move there. Three to four U.S. SSBNs are operating at any one time, with two normally in the Pacific Ocean, and one in the northern Atlantic Ocean. But were an SSBN now operating in the southern Indian Ocean on an axis west of the India-Pakistan border, it would have a potent first strike capability against Pakistan and land-based ICBM bases in western China. In the scenario of a seizure of nuclear forces by Islamist extremists in Pakistan, an Ohio-class submarine could potentially destroy those forces before they were ready to launch against U.S. interests.

Such a large Indian Ocean patrol area offers a vast amount of deep water to hide in. It would put any SSBNs well within optimal striking range (approximately 7,500 miles) for their Trident D5 nuclear warhead-armed missiles. Russia’s best attack cruise missile submarines and acoustic nets rarely operate in these waters, and PLA submarines lack the meaningful capacity to detect U.S. SSBNs outside of the East and South China Seas. Pakistan’s navy has only a limited, littoral detection capability.

All of this sounds very dark. And it is. But the U.S. has a unique balance of diplomatic, intelligence-related, and military power to bring to bear in the preservation of nuclear peace.

That’s a manifestly good thing. Something we should remember next time someone calls for wholesale diplomatic, intelligence, or defense cuts.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Maria Maalouf
@MariaMaalouf13
[5/8/2025 10:55 AM, 783 followers, 6 retweets, 12 likes]
In #Afghanistan , women endure brutal public lashings by the Taliban for "moral crimes" like leaving home without a male guardian. Forced confessions, beatings, and humiliation destroy lives. Deeba, Sahar, and Karima speak out, but the trauma persists.#FreeAfghanWomen #BanTaliban
Pakistan
Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[5/8/2025 2:48 PM, 3.1M followers, 23 retweets, 64 likes]
Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif received a telephone call from U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, this evening. The Prime Minister stated that Pakistan strongly condemns India’s unprovoked aggression and reaffirms its unwavering resolve to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity at all costs. Secretary Rubio emphasized the need for both Pakistan and India to work closely to de-escalate the situation.

Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
[5/8/2025 10:04 AM, 622.2K followers, 2.3K retweets, 7.1K likes]
Indian drones, during the daytime, can reach and bomb the Pakistani Army HQ city of Rawalpindi - Shouldn’t Pakistanis ask their army, what it is doing with the money and power it has snatched from Pakistani people for the last 78 years?

Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
[5/8/2025 7:11 AM, 622.2K followers, 2.8K retweets, 8.2K likes]
Pakistani army chief, Asim Munir’s hunger for power has exposed Pakistan to self destruction. India exposes Pakistan’s vulnerability in conventional military capabilities. Munir has kept Pakistan’s most popular leader Imran in jail, made it IMF dependent, and now takes the country to a terrible war.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[5/8/2025 7:18 PM, 249.9K followers, 86 retweets, 508 likes]
Pakistan is drowning in debt and begging the IMF for loans, so realistically, how many missiles can it even afford to fire at India? Each Babur or Shaheen missile costs at least $1.5 million.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[5/8/2025 5:56 PM, 249.9K followers, 1.4K retweets, 10K likes]
For the first time in Pakistan’s history, Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan are safer than Punjab and Karachi, thanks to India.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[5/8/2025 5:36 PM, 249.9K followers, 99 retweets, 617 likes]
Pakistanis are celebrating shooting down a few Indian drones, but the truth is Indian drones penetrated deep into Pakistan and hit major cities. That’s a total air defense failure and a massive breach.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[5/8/2025 5:26 PM, 249.9K followers, 486 retweets, 3.3K likes]
With the U.S. saying India-Pakistan isn’t “our problem,” Pakistan stands alone. China won’t risk war, the Gulf won’t cut ties with Delhi, and Russia stays neutral. The OIC is just noise. No one will save Pakistan. Only de-escalation or disaster remain.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[5/9/2025 2:40 AM, 8.6M followers, 37 retweets, 338 likes]
All Pakistani policies toward India should be based on constitutional principles and supported by full parliamentary consensus. https://islamabadpost.com.pk/limited-war-may-not-be-limited-when-two-nuclear-powers-clash/

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[5/8/2025 5:02 AM, 8.6M followers, 3.2K retweets, 20K likes]
Pakistan shoots down 31 made in Isreal drones sent by India.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[5/9/2025 2:54 AM, 276.1K followers, 86 retweets, 306 likes]
For decades, including 11 years on Modi’s watch, the weaker Pakistan waged with impunity a "war of a thousand cuts" against its larger neighbor through terrorist proxies. With its patience worn out, India has finally launched a military operation that signals a paradigm shift in its strategic posture toward Pakistan. The success of "Operation Sindoor" will hinge on India taking it to its logical conclusion in order to end the Pakistani military generals’ strategy of proxy warfare. History shows that, while military operations are undeniably important, political will is the crucial factor for achieving a desired outcome in conflict and diplomacy. As India’s measured and calibrated reprisal strikes on military installations underscore, its adversary is Pakistan’s terror-exporting military establishment (which has ruled the country formally or informally since its creation), not the Pakistani people.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[5/8/2025 10:37 PM, 276.1K followers, 525 retweets, 2.4K likes]
Over decades, the US built up Pakistan as a military counterweight against India. Under Biden, the US modernized and upgraded Pakistan’s F-16 fleet against India. Now the US is wisely taking a hands-off approach, with JD Vance saying that "we are not going to get involved in a war that is fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it." This essentially lets terrorism-exporting Pakistan stew in its own broth.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[5/8/2025 2:16 PM, 276.1K followers, 54 retweets, 191 likes]
Recent crises — from brutal Pakistani terror attacks to brazen Chinese land grabs in Doklam and Ladakh — highlight just how acute a threat the Sino-Pakistani strategic axis poses to India. But can the PRC now bail out Pakistan from its conflict with India?

Mariam Solaimankhil
@Mariamistan
[5/9/2025 12:41 AM, 99.1K followers, 22 retweets, 104 likes]
A must watch: Pakistan thinks social media posts count as “proof.” Meanwhile, India’s High Commissioner to the UK shows a photo of the Pakistani military honoring a Internationally.-sanctioned terrorist with a state funeral. Stop calling them victims. They are the factory. @SkyYaldaHakim
India
President of India
@rashtrapatibhvn
[5/8/2025 8:15 AM, 26.9M followers, 344 retweets, 2.8K likes]
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran, Dr. Abbas Araghchi called on President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Welcoming Dr. Araghchi, the President noted that while civilisational and cultural ties between India and Iran go back thousands of years, this visit is taking place on the special occasion of the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/8/2025 11:21 PM, 3.6M followers, 3.7K retweets, 48K likes]
Pay homage to India’s first Nobel laureate, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, on his Jayanti. He not only shaped Indian nationalism but inspired the entire world.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/8/2025 12:56 PM, 3.6M followers, 14K retweets, 85K likes]
Spoke with US @SecRubio this evening. Deeply appreciate US commitment to work with India in the fight against terrorism. Underlined India’s targeted and measured response to cross-border terrorism. Will firmly counter any attempts at escalation.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/8/2025 7:01 AM, 3.6M followers, 1K retweets, 9.3K likes]
Co-chaired the 20th India-Iran JCM along with FM @araghchi of Iran today in Delhi. Did a comprehensive review of our bilateral cooperation and agreed on next steps in many domains. Will be marking the 75th anniversary of our diplomatic relations in an appropriate manner. Also held wide-ranging discussions on regional and global developments.

Zalmay Khalilzad
@realZalmayMK
[5/8/2025 2:24 PM, 263.3K followers, 3.1K retweets, 14K likes]
In the course of its current military operation against #Pakistan, India has killed the brutal terrorist assassin Abdul Rauf Azhar, whose psychopathic beheading of @WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 we all remember. Justice has been served. Thank you, #India. #USA @POTUS

Zalmay Khalilzad
@realZalmayMK
[5/8/2025 4:14 PM, 263.3K followers, 434 retweets, 2.6K likes]
It is time to end the attacks and counter-attacks between #India and #Pakistan. @POTUS

Jon Danilowicz
@JonFDanilowicz
[5/8/2025 7:04 PM, 15.1K followers, 88 retweets, 307 likes]
India’s approach to online freedom of speech during the crisis with Pakistan comes as no surprise to those who have been following events in Bangladesh in recent months. The Indian media and establishment have engaged in massive disinformation and misinformation in an attempt to destabilize Bangladesh’s interim government. This approach undermines India’s democracy and international reputation.

Richard Rossow
@RichardRossow
[5/8/2025 11:08 AM, 30K followers, 3 likes]
The Quad countries (U.S., India, Japan, Australia) ran a simulation exercise on Indo-Pacific logistics in Hawai’i last week. Improving civilian response to disasters in the region. https://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/39476/Quad_Concludes_Simulation_Exercise_to_Advance_IndoPacific_Logistics_Network
NSB
Bangladesh Nationalist Party-BNP
@bdbnp78
[5/9/2025 2:51 AM, 82K followers, 2 retweets, 13 likes]
A United States-based delegation from The Carter Center held a meeting with BNP leaders today in Dhaka to discuss the overall political landscape ahead of Bangladesh’s upcoming national election. The meeting took place at the BNP Chairperson’s office in Gulshan at 10:30 AM.

Bangladesh Nationalist Party-BNP
@bdbnp78
[5/8/2025 9:23 AM, 82K followers, 6 retweets, 49 likes]
BNP’s Senior Joint Secretary General Adv. Ruhul Kabir Rizvi strongly protests a false media report claiming that "@albd1971’s clean-image activists can join BNP." He clarifies: Only those who opposed the Awami League’s misrule during its regime and embrace BNP’s ideals can become members of BNP. He condemns this distortion of his statement.

Jon Danilowicz
@JonFDanilowicz
[5/8/2025 8:52 AM, 15.1K followers, 6 retweets, 66 likes]
The controversy over former President Hamid’s travel further underscores the need for fundamental reform of Bangladesh’s criminal justice system. Freedom of travel is a fundamental right that should only be restricted after due process. This was true during the Hasina dictatorship and it is true today. If there is reason to prevent an individual from traveling, there should be a transparent judicial process that allows the individual in question and the state to present their cases. In extreme cases, the state may bar an individual preemptively, but this should also be subject to review. The same holds true with detention and bail applications. The problem with the current situation (which predates the Interim Government) is that so much depends on the arbitrary exercise of state power. This leaves the system open to abuse and manipulation. Rather than point fingers and use this latest incident to settle political scores, those who want to build a new Bangladesh should focus on how to enact meaningful reform. Sic transit gloria mundi.

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[5/8/2025 11:50 PM, 263.5K followers, 2 likes]
Seven Days to the first edition of the @S_Sambaad! "I would like to extend warm welcome to the First Edition of the Sagarmatha Sambaad, 2025. Sagarmatha Sambaad is our global dialogue platform ... to generate actionable solutions to pressing global, regional and national issues and challenges. Dialogue is central to Nepal’s heritage. The Himalayas have long been a source of wisdom, transcending time and space to inspire solutions that benefit humanity. Sagarmatha Sambaad is our contribution to the global discourse, reinforcing our commitment to a shared future. Climate change is intensifying worldwide, and mountain ecosystems are among the hardest hit. Nepal seeks to amplify the voice of mountains in the global climate dialogue. The Sambaad is for everyone – for you and for me. Let’s join this important Dialogue and be part of solutions." - @amritrai555 Foreign Secretary

Karu Jayasuriya
@KaruOnline
[5/8/2025 11:38 PM, 53.8K followers, 2 retweets, 8 likes]
Sri Lanka wants a new political culture. The people have expressed it loud and clear in many elections and during the Aragalaya. As this new political culture slowly emerges, we urge all political leaders to say no to vote-buying to gain power in LGs. For decades, horse trading has tainted our democracy and eroded public trust in politicians and institutions. Let us end this disgraceful practice of the past.
Central Asia
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[5/8/2025 3:39 PM, 216.6K followers, 3 retweets, 4 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev arrived on a working visit to #Moscow to attend events marking the 80th anniversary of the Victory in World War II and hold bilateral meetings. He was met by deputy head of Russia’s Presidential Administration Maxim Oreshkin and first deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[5/8/2025 10:04 AM, 216.6K followers, 1 retweet, 4 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev visited the Alley of National Heroes at Victory Park, honoring servicemen and officers who gave their lives defending the country in the years of independence. He met with their families, paid tribute to their sacrifice, and congratulated World War II veterans on the 80th anniversary of Victory.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[5/8/2025 6:41 AM, 216.6K followers, 2 retweets, 6 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev visited Victory Park for the Day of Remembrance and Honors celebrated on May 9, marking the 80th anniversary of World War II victory. He laid a wreath at the "Ode to Fortitude" monument, honoring the nation’s wartime sacrifices. He also viewed the "Light of Memory" exhibit, commemorating the bravery of our people on the front lines and the home front.

{End of Report}
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