GOVT TO INTRODUCE INCENTIVES FOR MOBILE EXPORTS
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The latest firewall will be used to inspect information originating from different internet protocol addresses The national firewall will serve two purposes: identify the locations from where the propaganda material is being originated and the subsequent blockade or diminished coverage of those accounts” He added: “But, I think the main focus will remain on locating the source of such propaganda to nip the evil in the bud ” said an official who was aware of the information There will be a keyword filtering system to detect content the government considers undesirable or prejudicial to national security etc The filter will act like an information inspector These kinds of posts will likely be camouflaged and will subsequently be made invisible to outside users Posts from all dissenting voices in and out of the country are likely to pass through this inspection before they are allowed to be made properly visible This filter will run its check on social media
platforms like Facebook YouTube and X (formerly known as Twitter) Preparation is also in progress to prevent the misuse of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as the government can declare it mandatory for citizens to inform the PTA about the VPNs they are using Anyone failing to do that could land in trouble
Ministry spokesperson Jameel Ahmed said that the implementation of the firewall fell within the domain of the PTA
Contrastingly, the PTA spokesperson claimed that ministry’s project and only they could respond to questions about the firewall
Moreover the PTA earlier this month proposed a new regulatory framework requiring all Over-The-Top (OTT) services including YouTube Netflix WhatsApp Facebook and X to register locally for a period of 15 years
According to a 14-page draft available on its website, the PTA recommends that OTT Communication Services operating in Pakistan obtain a 15-year license from the regulatory
TH E attempt to save baseline electricity consumers from paying the full tariff for their electricity to be paid for by cutting the development budget, may well run into trouble with the International Monetary Fund, for while the books may well be balanced, the aim of reducing the subsidy given to these consumers will be defeated by the government actually increasing the subsidy The government also probably earned another black mark from the IMF by the Prime Minister announcing that 28,000 tubewells in Balochistan would convert to solar power in three months as part of a programme to convert all 100 000 tubewells in the country thus ending the need to import $3 5 billion worth of diesel per year It might be pointed out that one of the highest rates of electricity theft takes place in the Quetta Electricity Supply Corporation, which provides power to the whole of Balochistan most of it in tubewell connections Recovery is virtually impossible, as is cutting the connection However, shifting to solar energy would mean that most defaulting tubewells could go off-grid, as they will not require tubewells to run at night In that case, the distribution companies’ only lever so effective against domestic consumers of needing a supplier at night when there is no solar power, will be ineffective The IMF favours
H I L E there has long been concern about President Joe Biden s age and his ability to run an effective campaign, many Democrats have resisted any discussion of replacing him at the top of the ticket They recognize that the president’s record on domestic issues has been a good one on which to run They know that his persona directly challenges former President Donald Trump s appeal with white working-class voters in key battleground states And they are afraid of the uncertainties that might accompany his stepping down After the president’s unsettling performance during the June 27 televised debate confronting this con-
Recognizing that the President’s performance and capacity are a
that can’t be ignored I submitted a proposal to the party outlining a process that would
the President to step down and be replaced by a candidate chosen through an open transparent, and democratic process It
I hoped, that would be
of the
and his accomplishments It would have to begin, of course, with the President’s announcement that he would not be seeking reelection; that he understands the need to defeat Donald Trump; and that he is confident in the deep Democratic bench that can both defeat Trump and build on the successes of his presidency While he could endorse his Vice-President, he would make it clear that this was not a coronation, but an open process that would be decided by the Democratic Convention In order to en-
N a v i g a t i n g t h e C h a
safet y reforms needed
regional connectivity and infrastructure Additionally China s diplomatic clout in Iran has been strengthened after it acted as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia Under CPEC, more than 50 projects worth $25 billion have been completed The first phase of the Gwadar Free Zone covering 60 acres is finished with Phase-2 in progress In contrast India s efforts to enhance trade ties with Russia via Iran through the Chabahar-Zahedan and Rasht-Astara railway lines, have been stalled for over two decades due to lack of investment It indicates that CPEC infrastructure projects are nearing completion while Chabahar is still years away from being fully operationalised and being opted as an alternate route to CPEC Additionally, awadar Port possesses significant advantages over Chabahar Port due to its geographical characteristics and operational efficiency Gwadar has the capability to accommodate supertankers weighing up to 200 000 tons compared to Chabahar that is limited to the vessels of 20 000 tons Additionally the annual capacity of Gwadar is about 300 million to 400 million tons of cargo, whereas, the capacity of Chabahar is only 10 million to 12 million tons of cargo Gwadar, being a naturally deep sea port also entails relatively less maintenance cost Therefore Gwadar port is at a strategically superior position that overshadows the regional importance of Chabahar port The threat of US sanctions is another major obstacle for India to capture foreign investment for the development of Chabahar port The US government has expressed concerns and issued warnings about potential sanctions related to the new Iran-India Chabahar deal In 2015 the Trump Administration waivered Chabahar port development from its sanctions list to support development in Afghanistan However, after its withdrawal, its strategic valuation of the
region has changed Therefore it has become more challenging for India to navigate Chabahar port, keeping in view the US threat of sanctions Parallel to these developments, Pakistan has adopted a pragmatic approach towards regional development It emphasises cooperation over competition in connectivity initiatives While Chabahar s advancement may alter regional dynamics Pakistan s primary focus remains on CPEC to drive economic growth, improve infrastructure, and strengthen regional partnerships Therefore, to combat the security challenges triggered by US withdrawal from Afghanistan operation Azm-e-Istehkam has been initiated Additionally Pakistan is diplomatically engaging with Afghanistan to resolve cross-border tension, facilitating the connection of CPEC with Central Asia
The dynamics surrounding the India-Iran Chabahar agreement reveal a complex interplay of strategic interests in South Asia India’s pursuit of Chabahar as a gateway to Central Asia highlights its commitment to diversify trade routes and emerge as a regional key player However, this initiative faces significant challenges due to US-Iran tensions and China s formidable presence through infrastructure investments in Iran Pakistan’s unwavering focus on CPEC and the geographical superiority of Gwadar Port provide Pakistan with a strategic edge Although India has secured an automatic renewal deal with Iran and taken administrative control of one terminal at Chabahar, the full operationalisation of this agreement will require time, considering the history of suspensions and delays in India-Iran relations
The writer is a researcher at the Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies (CASS) Lahore She can be reached at info@casslhr com
In suppor t of student councils
Since then the negotiations between the two countries have taken many shifts and turns However India s persistence to remain engaged with Iran over Chabahar indicates its foreign policy goal of maintaining autonomy in the region Nevertheless, China’s $400 billion partnership deal with Iran is a Gordian knot for India to achieve this goal In 2020 China signed a historic deal with Iran to establish a direct shipping line to Chabahar encompassing the Shahid Beheshti and Shahid Kalantari ports While India s investments are confined to Shahid Bheshti port, China’s extensive investment in Iran positions Chabahar as a potential asset in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) China has reiterated on different occasions that it does not see Chabahar as a competition to CPEC but that they complement each other, as it would boost the overall
r e s t s i n S o u t h A s i a I n d i a Ês p u rs u i t o f C h a b a h a r a s a g a t ew ay t o
C e n t r a l A s i a h i g h l i g h t s i t s c o m m i t m e n t t o d i v e rs i f y t r a d e ro u t e s a n d e m e rg e a s a r e g i o n a l
naba Fatima
and over the years, they have helped keep its economy afloat Saudi aid has been substantial while Emirati aid has been more modest in comparison especially during difficult periods such as Pakistan s wars with India in 1965 and 1971 Saudi Arabia also provided a financial lifeline to Pakistan after it declared itself a nuclear power in 1998 After India’s nuclear tests Pakistan faced immense international pressure and threats of sanctions to stop it from testing its weapons The Saudis have continued to offer deferred oil financing to Pakistan in recent years Additionally, the United Arab Emirates, along with China and Saudi Arabia, has given billions of dollars in loans to Pakistan to avoid bankruptcy Relations between Pakistan and the Gulf states have expanded beyond financial cooperation to include trade investment and public relations The UAE has become the secondlargest exporter to Pakistan, while Saudi Arabia is the fifth-largest source of petroleum exports Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have long been important for Pakistani workers An estimated 2 6 million Pakistanis live in Saudi Arabia and another 1 7 million in the UAE Saudi Arabia is also the largest source of remittances for Pakistan, followed by the United Arab Emirates The fact that a member of the Sharif family is once again in the prime ministership improves Pakistan’s chances of strengthening its ties with the Gulf States The Sharif family managed to form a coalition government in March after the February elections, despite the popularity of ousted and imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan The Sharifs have longstanding ties with the Saudis and Emiratis In addition to helping the Nawaz Sharif-led government move forward and confront US sanctions after its nuclear tests Saudi Arabia also provided personal aid to the
long been allies of Islamabad
Modi’s personalisation of political pow er
OV E R the past decade it has been frequently stated that Narendra Modi’s years as Gujarat Chief Minister were essentially a dress (sic) rehearsal for his tenure as prime minister The working style, legislative changes, stranglehold on the governance system, marginalising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates where he was politically reared and replacing it with a structure that was loyal solely to him which he perfected in Gujarat were transposed at a national level This was greatly facilitated by absolute majority in the state Vidhan Sabha, almost touching the two-third mark if not going well beyond as it did in 2002, being seamlessly altered to a comfortable majority in Lok Sabha in 2014 and bettered by more than ten per cent in 2019 In the decade before the 2024 elections Mr Modi weakened Indian Parliament just as he marginalised the legislature in Gujarat
Likewise, the Chief Minister s Office in Gandhinagar appeared to have been effortlessly transplanted to New Delhi with a name change – the Prime Minister ’s Office (PMO) The working style in the new office remained the same – a group of bureaucrats all bound by an unspoken oath of loyalty and secrecy, micromanaged the behemoth of the government They mostly left individual ministries with little to do but implement decisions already taken and conveyed to them
Christophe Jaffrelot is no stranger to India and to the study of the rise and growth of the Hindu right wing He worked on his book Gujarat Under Modi: The Blueprint for Today s India (Westland, 2024) more than a decade ago, over the course of his engagement and regular visits to Gujarat from early 2001 – significantly when Mr Modi was yet to become chief minister – and the manuscript was submitted in the closing months of 2013 by when he had been
declared the Bharatiya Janata Party s prime ministerial candidate Unsurprisingly, the book did not secure the approval of legal assessors and it went into cold storage till 2020, when the author felt, after possibly anticipating that the enhanced margin in the 2019 elections would presage a more authoritarian turn that this book had become more important than ever The updates which draw in developments since 2014, only make it more insightful After concerns over the book’s release in India, of the kind that preceded Dr Jaffrelot’s previous work ‘Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy this book finally hit the stores in India during the election campaign and the verdict ensures that it will continue being available To use the author s words, the book was aimed as a political biography of an Indian state through the personality and actions of its most resilient ruler ” Mr Modi was made Gujarat chief minister to stall the BJP s electoral slide down Modi failed to halt this and in a bunch of bye-elections in February 2002, only he was victorious Within days the Godhra carnage triggered mass communal violence across the state and the events over the next few months provided Mr Modi with the “first pillar” of his politics in the state The book s first part narrates and analyses how with the Gujarat riots Mr Modi raised communal polarisation as his primary weapon to reverse the BJP s electoral decline and secure a two-third majority in elections held in December 2002
The second part of the book is devoted to how Mr Modi “de-institutionalised” the rule of law in the state and how this became a strategy for strengthening his political control over the state This part traces the swift saffronisation of the police, bureaucracy and the judiciary and how vigilante groups linked to the Sangh Parivar were given a carte blanche to indulge in a wide range of extra-legal activities from moral policing to running kangaroo courts and punishing minorities and dissenters Promotion of cronyism and pursuit of economic policies contributed to the state s growth but not development and did not reduce economic inequalities either, and this comprises the third part of the book It underscores what the Gujarat Model was: One in which the state frees space for the private sector and creates an enabling environment for it
The fourth section is extremely significant; it details how Mr Modi personalised political power and promoted what is now an omnipresent cult Significantly, in this process he also destroyed his own party’s collegial character which enabled it to underscore its distinctiveness
The fifth and final part of book examines how Mr Modi widened the party s primary social base from the narrow upper-caste urban middle class while also drawing critics into an imaginary arc of conspirators that destabilised the nation by aligning with opposition parties a strategy pursued nationally with success before some chinks appeared in the 2024 polls Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is an author and journalist based in Delhi-NCR
LAT E last month, roughly two dozen countries sent envoys to Qatar for a conference about international engagement with Afghanistan and for the first time the Taliban participated too Taliban representatives attended the latest round of the Doha process because, unlike the May 2023 gathering, activists were not in attendance this time around This conference gave the Taliban the chance to call on the U S and other western governments to lift economic sanctions on Afghanistan and build deeper ties with the Islamist regime in Kabul That diplomats from these roughly two dozen countries and Taliban officials attended this recent conference speaks to the fact that more states are engaging the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) even if no government has officially recognized the Taliban since it reconquered the country in August 2021 Most of Afghanistan s immediate neighbors and a host of non-western, Muslim-majority countries along with China and Russia have essentially informally recognized the Taliban and stepped up outreach to the IEA to further their own economic trade and security interests
AFGHANISTAN’S DISASTROUS
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS: Against this backdrop of growing international engagement with the Taliban Afghanistan’s economy is in horrible shape As of March 69% of Afghanistan s population is subsistence insecure and dramatic water scarcity plagues many parts of the country, according to a UN official The Afghan economy has contracted by 27% since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 Unemployment has doubled and only 40% of the Afghan population enjoys access to electricity while the country s financial sector has basically collapsed
The Taliban’s governance and extreme policies that limit women’s rights have greatly contributed to these problems But there is no denying that much of the blame for Afghanistan s economic crises can be laid on Washington s doorstep given the sanctions it has imposed on the country since the Taliban retook power almost three years ago
US DIPLOMACY TOWARD THE TALIBAN: Despite waging financial warfare against post-occupation Afghanistan, the Biden administration has been engaged with the IEA diplomatically since before the U S withdrawal in 2021 Since the Obama years, Doha has been the main venue for U S -Taliban dialogue and engagement To this day
Qatar s foreign ministry remains the chief interlocutor between Washington and the Taliban To lesser degrees, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Norway, and the United Nations serve bridging roles too Throughout the past roughly three years the U S and Taliban have engaged on a host of issues such as the mutually perceived threat of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the status of American citizens detained in Talibanruled Afghanistan, rights of women and girls and humanitarian challenges in post-U S Afghanistan
The extent to which such engagement with the de facto rulers of Kabul has advanced Washington s interests is mixed With respect to the status of Afghanistan’s women and girls, Washington’s diplomatic outreach to the Taliban has basically achieved nothing At the same time the Biden administration s efforts to convince the Taliban to protect certain segments of the Afghan population from the IEA s oppressive hand have proven futile
“The U S has also failed to convince the Taliban not to target former Afghan government officials former Afghan National Defense and Security Force members and millions of those Afghans who were educated under the U S involvement in Afghanistan, Ahmad Sayer Daudzai, the former Afghan ambassador to the United Arab Emirates told RS
“This is important for the U S as the U S considers this generation of Afghans as a long-term asset of the U S in Afghanistan As the Taliban continue to target, arrest, assassinate and force this segment of Afghan society to emigrate from Afghanistan, the U S is losing their 20-year gains in Afghanistan ” he added
But since August 2021 diplomacy has resulted in the release of four U S citizens who were held in the Taliban s prison system According to U S government sources, and it has also led to some productive counterterrorism coordination
“There is cooperation between the U S and the Taliban’s Defense Minister Mullah Yaqoob which has allegedly led to successful raids against ISKP in eastern Afghanistan The details of this financial and intelligence cooperation were declassified [in June 2024] by a CIA veteran of Afghanistan named Sarah Adams ” explained Daudzai
RUSSIA CHINA AND IRAN S IN-
FLUENCE: In the longer-term great power competition is the key variable in the equation that incentivizes the Biden administration to engage the IEA through diplomacy
Put simply the White House understands that if the U S does not engage the Taliban at all Washington s foes and rivals Russia, China, and Iran will
move to fill vacuums in post-occupation
Afghanistan at the expense of America s interests in West Asia This dynamic helps explain in part the rationale behind the Biden administration’s outreach to the IEA despite the humiliation of doing so A concern for U S policymakers is that Moscow Beijing and Tehran could bring Taliban-governed Afghanistan increasingly into their orbits of influence One example pertains to trade and sanctions Currently, China s over-land trade with Iran has to transit Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan But if there is greater stability in Afghanistan such Sino-Iranian trade could go through one country (Afghanistan) rather than three Central Asian countries, serving to increase geo-economic connectivity between China and Iran
TALIBAN RULE IS PROBABLY HERE TO STAY: The reality on the ground in Afghanistan is that no actor poses any credible challenge to the IEA s rule ISKP is the most serious threat to the Taliban government today, but this extremist group is unlikely to establish any statelet within Afghanistan (as other Islamic State franchises did in Libya Iraq and Syria) let alone topple the IEA and take control
Dr MuhaMMaD akraM Zaheer
Chinese, Thai FMs pledge to expand exchanges, enhance cooperation
BEIJING
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday co-chaired the second meeting of the Consultation Mechanism between the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of China and Thailand with Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa in Beijing
Calling the two countries good neighbors, relatives and friends, Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee said China and Thailand have always upheld mutual trust and developed hand in hand
China has remained Thailand’s largest trading partner for more than 10 consecutive years and has become its largest source of foreign investment Wang said, adding that the number of Chinese tourists to Thailand has exceeded 3 million this year
Noting that China regards Thailand as a trustworthy partner and a force for peace and stability in the region Wang said China supports Thailand in playing a more vital role in global and reg i o n a l a ff a i r s Wang urged the two sides to enhance the level of connectivity, strengthen law enforcement and security cooperation and jointly crack down on cross-border crimes such as Internet gambling and telecom fraud
Chinese envoy on Monday called for efforts to push for the cessation of fighting to end the violence among armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Geng Shuang China s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations (UN), delivered a statement at the Security Council briefing on
to all parties in the country uniting as one and accelerating nation-building with the government s National Action Plan as the blueprint to achieve peace and stability ”
Addressing the recent violence Geng noted In the past three months alone over 500 civilians were killed by armed groups 7 3 million forcibly displaced He condemned the attack on a Chinese company located in the DRC on July 3, which resulted in several deaths and disappearances of Chinese citizens
“China strongly condemns such an act and we urge that the perpetrators be immediately arrested and held accountable by law
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