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MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines and China traded accusations Saturday following an encounter between their aircraft over a contested area of the South China Sea.

The Philippine military strongly condemned “dangerous and provocative actions” by China’s air force, while the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, said it acted in a professional and legal manner.

It is the first time the Philippines has complained of dangerous actions by Chinese aircraft, as opposed to navy or coast guard vessels, since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office in 2022.

Two Chinese air force aircraft executed a dangerous maneuver and dropped flares in the path of a Philippine air force aircraft conducting a routine patrol over the Scarborough Shoal Thursday morning, the military said in a statement.

It “endangered the lives of our personnel undertaking maritime security operations recently within Philippine maritime zones,” said Philippines armed forces chief Romeo Brawner, adding that the Chinese aircraft interfered with lawful flight operations and violated international law on aviation safety.

The Philippine aircraft, “despite repeated warnings from China, insisted on illegally intruding into the airspace of Huangyan Island,” disrupting training activities, the Southern Theater Command of the Chinese PLA said Saturday.

China’s naval and air forces carried out identification, tracking, warning and expulsion in accordance with the law, it said.

“The on-site operation was professional, abided by norms, legitimate and legal,” the PLA said, urging the Philippines to stop what it called infringement and provocation.

Filipino fishermen frequent the Scarborough Shoal, one of two flashpoints in a longstanding maritime rivalry with China. Beijing Wednesday organized a combat patrol near the shoal, which Manila calls Bajo de Masinloc and China seized in 2012 and refers to as Huangyan island.

Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, a conduit for more than $3 trillion in annual shipborne commerce, including parts also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.

China rejects a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that Beijing’s expansive claims had no basis under international law.

The Philippines in May accused Chinese fishermen of destroying the environment at Scarborough by cyanide fishing, harvesting giant clams and other protected creatures, and scarring coral reefs, which China denied.
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PARIS — Refugee breaker Manizha Talash, or “b-girl Talash,” was disqualified from the first Olympic breaking competition on Friday after she wore a cape that said, “Free Afghan Women” during her prequalifier battle against India Sardjoe — known as “b-girl India.”

The 21-year-old, originally from Afghanistan and representing the Olympic Refugee Team, lost in the prequalifier battle against Sardjoe and would not have advanced even if she hadn’t been disqualified.

Political statements and slogans are banned on the field of play and on podiums at the Olympics. World DanceSport Federation, the governing body for breaking at the Olympics, issued a statement afterward that said she “was disqualified for displaying a political slogan on her attire during the Pre-Qualifier battle.”

Talash sought asylum in Spain after fleeing Taliban rule in her home country in 2021.

“I’m here because I want to reach my dream. Not because I’m scared,” she told The Associated Press before the Olympics from Spain, where she was granted asylum.

The one-off prequalifier battle between Talash and Sardjoe was added in May, when Talash was included in the Olympic roster after the b-girl from Afghanistan missed registration for qualifying events. The International Olympic Committee’s executive board invited her to participate after learning of her efforts to defy the strict rule of the Taliban in her home country.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s military says North Korea is again flying balloons likely carrying trash toward the South, adding to a bizarre psychological warfare campaign amid growing tensions between the war-divided rivals.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Saturday that the winds could carry the balloons to regions north of the South Korean capital, Seoul. Seoul City Hall and the Gyeonggi provincial government issued text alerts urging citizens to beware of objects dropping from the sky and report to the military or police if they spot any balloons.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or property damage.

North Korea in recent weeks has flown more than 2,000 balloons carrying waste paper, cloth scraps and cigarette butts toward the South in what it has described as a retaliation toward South Korean civilian activists flying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border.

Pyongyang has long condemned such activities as it is extremely sensitive to any outside criticism of leader Kim Jong Un’s authoritarian rule.

North Korea last flew balloons toward the South on July 24, when trash carried by at least one of them fell on the South Korean presidential compound, raising worries about the vulnerability of key South Korean facilities. The balloon contained no dangerous material, and no one was hurt, South Korea’s presidential security service said.

South Korea, in reaction to the North’s balloon campaign, activated its front-line loudspeakers to blast broadcasts of propaganda messages and K-pop songs. Experts say North Korea hates such broadcasts because it fears it could demoralize front-line troops and residents.

The Koreas’ tit-for-tat Cold War-style campaigns are inflaming tensions, with the rivals threatening stronger steps and warning of grave consequences.

Their relations have worsened in recent years as Kim continues to accelerate the North’s nuclear weapons and missile program and issue verbal threats of nuclear conflict toward Washington and Seoul. In response, South Korea, the United States and Japan have been expanding their combined military exercises and sharpening their nuclear deterrence strategies built around U.S. strategic assets.

Experts say animosity could further rise later this month when South Korea and the United States kick off their annual joint military drills that are being strengthened to deal with the North’s nuclear threats.

The resumption of the balloon campaign comes as North Korea struggles to recover from devastating floods that submerged thousands of homes and huge swaths of farmland in areas near its border with China.

North Korean state media said Saturday that Kim ordered officials to bring some 15,400 people displaced by the floods to the capital, Pyongyang, to provide them with better care, and that it would take two or three months to rebuild homes in flood-hit areas.

Kim has so far turned down aid offers by traditional allies Russia and China and international aid groups, insisting that North Korea can handle the recovery on its own. He accused “enemy” South Korea of a “vicious smear campaign” to tarnish the image of his government, claiming that the South’s media have been exaggerating the damage and casualties caused by the floods.
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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea will not seek outside help to recover from floods that devastated areas near the country’s border with China, leader Kim Jong Un said as he ordered officials to bring thousands of displaced residents to the capital to provide them better care.

Kim said it would take about two to three months to rebuild homes and stabilize the areas affected by floods. Until then, his government plans to accommodate some 15,400 people — a group that includes mothers, children, older adults and disabled soldiers — at facilities in Pyongyang, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.

KCNA said Kim made the comments during a two-day trip to northwestern town of Uiju through Friday to meet flood victims and discuss recovery efforts. The agency gave Kim its typical effusive praise, saying the visit showed his “sacred leadership” and “warm love and ennobling spirit of making devoted service for the people.”

State media reports said heavy rains in late July left 4,100 houses, nearly 3,000 hectares of agricultural fields, and numerous other public buildings, structures, roads and railways flooded in the northwestern city of Sinuiju and the neighboring town of Uiju.

The North has not provided information on deaths, but Kim was quoted blaming public officials who had neglected disaster prevention for causing “the casualty that cannot be allowed.”

Traditional allies Russia and China, as well as international aid groups, have offered to provide North Korea with relief supplies, but the North hasn’t publicly expressed a desire to receive them.

“Expressing thanks to various foreign countries and international organizations for their offer of humanitarian support, (Kim) said what we regard as the best in all realms and processes of state affairs is the firm trust in the people and the way of tackling problems thoroughly based on self-reliance,” KCNA said.

Kim made similar comments earlier in the week after Russian President Vladimir Putin offered help, expressing his gratitude but saying that the North has established its own rehabilitation plans and will only ask for Moscow’s assistance if later needed.

While rival South Korea has also offered to send aid supplies, it’s highly unlikely that the North would accept its offer. Tensions between the Koreas are at their highest in years over the North’s growing nuclear ambitions and the South’s expansion of combined military exercises with the United States and Japan.

The North had also rejected South Korea’s offers for help while battling a COVID-19 outbreak in 2022.

During his recent visit to Uiju, Kim repeated an accusation that South Korea exaggerated the North’s flood damages and casualties, which he decried as a “smear campaign” and a “grave provocation” against his government. Some South Korean media reports claim that the North’s flood damages are likely worse than what state media have acknowledged, and that the number of deaths could exceed 1,000.
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Almaty, Kazakhstan — Central Asian leaders met in Kazakhstan on Friday seeking to agree on a shared policy on water management in a region where the scarce resource causes frequent disputes.

Interruptions to water supplies are a regular occurrence in the five ex-Soviet Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan – whose territory is 80% desert and steppe.

Hosting the summit, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said it was “necessary to develop a new consolidated water policy, based on equal and fair use of water and strict fulfilment of obligations,” the presidential website said.

The way water access is shared in the Central Asian states has remained the same since the Soviet era and is fraught with problems: those countries with more water exchange it in return for electricity from the more energy-rich countries.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which have more water than the others, have often clashed over control of supplies.

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov on Friday called for the creation of a “mutually economically beneficial mechanism for water and energy cooperation,” taking into account “the limited amount of water resources and their importance for the whole region.”

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev emphasized the need to adopt a “regional strategy on the rational use of water resources of cross-border rivers.”

The volume of water in the main Central Asian rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, is expected to continue falling in the years to come, according to experts.

Shortages of water, along with global warming, is compounded by significant waste due to outdated infrastructure.

After three years of tensions, the Central Asian states are now trying to coordinate efforts in numerous areas, particularly water management, amid growing demand for agriculture and energy generation in a region with a population of about 80 million.

Another concern for the Central Asian governments is the construction by the Taliban of the Qosh Tepa Canal to irrigate northern Afghanistan, which could further threaten water supplies.
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Washington — The Philippines and Vietnamese coast guards conducted their first joint drills Friday in firefighting, rescue, and medical response in Manila Bay, off the west coast of Luzon, the Philippines’ main island, leading into the South China Sea.

This exercise represents the first such joint activity between the coast guards of the two countries amid ongoing territorial disputes with each other and, more significantly with China, which claims almost the entire South China Sea as its own.

The drills featured a simulated search and rescue operation and the use of water cannons to repel a mock threat.

According to Jay L. Batongbacal, a professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law, the strengthened relations and security cooperation between Vietnam and the Philippines serve as a significant counter to China’s increasingly expansionist and assertive actions in the South China Sea.

“Since both [countries] carry these activities out fully in accordance with international law, it should be seen as a stabilizing factor and deterrent to Chinese aggression, and at the same time stand for asserting and maintaining international law,” Batongbacal told VOA.

Strategic shifts

Although the Philippines and Vietnam face overlapping sovereignty disputes with China in the South China Sea, Batongbacal views this first-ever Philippines-Vietnam exercise as a key demonstration of how claimant countries should interact.

“It is a demonstration of what is possible between claimants who are sincere in their declarations to cooperate and improve relations, temporarily setting aside the disputes and maintaining the status quo,” Batongbacal said. “So even if they do not have active and direct cooperation, their activities contribute to maintaining the regional balance of power because of their common goals and converging interests.”

Vietnam in late June said it was open to discussing overlapping claims with the Philippines in the South China Sea.

Since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office in 2022, the Philippine government has adopted a more assertive stance on the South China Sea, differing from his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte. This shift has heightened maritime tensions with China as Beijing has sought to assert its claims to the region.

In mid-June 2024, the Philippines accused Chinese coast guards of boarding a Philippine navy vessel near Second Thomas Shoal, confiscating equipment, and causing a severe injury to a Philippine sailor.

Just ahead of the joint exercise with Vietnam, the Philippines conducted multilateral maritime exercises with the U.S., Australia, and Canada on August 7-8.

The exercises aimed at “safeguarding the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea,” according to a joint statement.

Additionally, the Philippines and Japan held their first joint exercises in the South China Sea on August 2, despite Beijing’s repeated warnings to “extraterritorial states” against interfering in the region.

Chinese response

China’s Foreign Ministry has not yet commented on the Philippines-Vietnam joint drills but Tuesday spokesperson Mao Ning repeated Beijing’s claim, “It is the Philippines, not China, that is creating problems in the South China Sea.”

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) announced on August 7 that its Southern Theater Command had conducted air and sea combat patrols near Scarborough Shoal— an area with a long-standing sovereignty dispute between China and the Philippines.

According to Ding Duo, deputy director of the Institute of Marine Law and Policy at the China Institute of South China Sea Studies, Beijing is likely to respond with measured concern to the Vietnam-Philippines joint exercise despite the ongoing disputes over territorial sovereignty and maritime boundaries.

“The venue for the Vietnam-Philippines joint exercise is Manila Bay, and the scale of the exercise is relatively small,” Ding said. “Its defensive nature suggests that China will probably view it as a routine instance of bilateral security and military cooperation among regional nations.”

Ding said China aims to prevent Vietnam-Philippines cooperation from growing into a broader alliance that could challenge its interests.

“I believe China may use diplomatic or party-to-party channels to address military security concerns and mitigate the risk of potential miscalculations,” Ding said.

Beijing has been stepping up its friendly military engagements and exercises with Hanoi, as the two sides have sought to reduce historic tensions in the South China Sea.

China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported on August 7, the Vietnam people’s navy’s guided-missile frigate 015 Tran Hung Dao arrived at Zhanjiang, a naval port in southeast Guangdong province for a visit.

The PLA stated that the visit would include “ship tours, deck receptions, cultural exchanges, joint exercises, and other activities” aimed at “improving mutual understanding and trust between the Chinese and Vietnamese navies and further strengthening the friendship between the two naval forces.”

Four ships from the Chinese and Vietnamese navies in June held a two-day joint patrol exercise in the Gulf of Tonkin between Vietnam and China, which Chinese state media said was their 36th such drill.

China and the Philippines have tried to improve their relations since the June clash.

Chinese and Filipino officials in a July 2 meeting in Manila agreed to reduce tensions and even consider cooperation between their coast guards.

Regional impact

Nonetheless, analysts say this first joint exercise between Hanoi and Manila is likely to carry significance beyond its immediate scope.

Nguyen Khac Giang is a visiting scholar at the Vietnam Studies Program at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

“I think that is important because although this is only a search and rescue exercise and not a military drill, I think it will signal further collaboration between the two countries in the future, including military exercises and other activities in the region. So I think it’s very important for both countries going forward,” Nguyen told VOA.

Nguyen highlighted that Vietnam and Indonesia successfully concluded negotiations on their exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea at the end of 2022. He suggested that if Vietnam and the Philippines can use this joint exercise to address their overlapping border issues, it could represent the potential for Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) claimants in the South China Sea to enhance cooperation and collectively address challenges posed by China.

“Because China always wants to divide and conquer, they want to negotiate with each country individually because it will give them better leverage,” Nguyen said.

However, Nguyen noted that if ASEAN countries like Vietnam and the Philippines can work together, it would strengthen their ability to counter Chinese influence not only in terms of military presence in the South China Sea but also on diplomatic and economic fronts.
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washington — Experts in Washington are split on their perspectives of the durability of the recently elevated U.S.-South Korea-Japan security cooperation in the event of former President Donald Trump winning the November U.S. presidential election, given his critical stance toward U.S. alliances in the past.

Last month, the U.S., South Korea and Japan signed a memorandum of cooperation on the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework (TSCF), which is aimed at institutionalizing the countries’ security partnership against threats from China and North Korea.

While not legally binding, the memorandum is expected to facilitate trilateral security cooperation regardless of any leadership changes in their respective countries.

The agreement calls for regular high-level talks, joint exercises and other exchanges among the three nations.

Some in Washington, however, question whether the United States, South Korea and Japan would successfully institutionalize the enhanced security cooperation in a second Trump presidency.

“Certainly, the greatest and near-term concern is if President Trump is reelected, whether he would undo some of the progress of recent years,” Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation, told VOA Korean by telephone Wednesday.

Klingner added that the three governments hoped that signing the memorandum would regularize and operationalize the ongoing security improvements among the three nations.

The Biden administration says stronger trilateral cooperation is an integral part of its Indo-Pacific strategy.

The administration also has been touting the August 2023 summit at Camp David with the U.S., South Korea and Japan as a historic meeting, saying the three leaders “inaugurated a new era of trilateral partnership” there.

In a Washington Post opinion piece published this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the U.S. security partnership in the Indo-Pacific region is working more effectively than before, citing the cooperation among the United States, South Korea and Japan as an example.

“President [Joe] Biden brought together Japan and South Korea — two countries with a difficult history — to join the United States in the Camp David Trilateral Summit, spurring unprecedented defense and economic cooperation among our countries,” they wrote.

Uncertainty looms

It is uncertain how the U.S. trilateral partnership with South Korea and Japan would shape up if Trump returns to power, as the former president has not publicly articulated a stance on the trilateral cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

Trump has put strong emphasis on U.S. allies paying their “fair share” of defense costs.

During his presidency, Trump demanded that South Korea and Japan pay more for the cost of the U.S. military presence in their countries. He warned the U.S. could withdraw its troops unless the demands were met.

Michael O’Hanlon, director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told VOA Korean via email Wednesday that it would be hard to predict whether the TSCF would survive a possible Trump second term.

“Most things are personalized with him, or they relate to his instincts and impressions based on previous business dealings,” he said.

“Both the leaders [of South Korea and Japan] he dealt with when president are now gone. So, it’s a wild card or blank slate.”

However, some disagree.

Richard Armitage, who served as deputy secretary of state during the George W. Bush administration, told VOA Korean by telephone Thursday that Trump would likely allow the institutionalization of the TSCF, considering the strong support from both sides of the aisle.

“I find the majority [of] members on Capitol Hill are very positive to it,” Armitage said.

“I do notice that some of the people who are rumored to be coming in, should Mr. Trump win, are actually quite international in their outlook,” he added, declining to say who those people are.

Alliance commitment

Frederick Fleitz, who served as chief of staff of the National Security Council in the Trump White House, told VOA Korean by phone Wednesday that he would expect the agreement on the security framework among the U.S. and the two U.S. allies in Asia to be upheld in a second Trump administration.

“It’s going to remain,” Fleitz said. “He [Trump] is a strong supporter of alliances, particularly our alliance in the Asian Pacific.”

Fleitz added that the stronger security ties among the three countries is “a significant achievement that’s going to continue.”

Evans Revere, who served as acting assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, told VOA Korean via email that China’s rise to become the greatest threat in the Indo-Pacific theater is a fact not to be ignored by any of the three countries.

“There is every reason to believe the three countries can effectively institutionalize trilateral security cooperation, even if there is a change of administration in one or more of the three capitals,” Revere said. “There is a growing perception in all three countries of the threats and challenges they share in common. China’s attempts at political, military and economic intimidation are becoming more frequent.”

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running to become the successor to Biden, is widely predicted to continue on the path Biden forged.

“Harris does not have a clearly established record on U.S.-South Korea-Japan security cooperation, but I expect that she will follow the policies of the Biden administration on this issue,” Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, told VOA Korean via email.

Blinken, Austin and Sullivan highlighted in the Post opinion piece that the transformed approach toward the Indo-Pacific region is “one of the most important and least-told stories of the foreign policy strategy advanced by President Biden and Vice President Harris.”

Joeun Lee contributed to this report.
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Bangkok — Armed groups in Myanmar fighting the country’s military regime are making major, even “historic,” gains in the northeast since the breakdown of a cease-fire in June, experts tell VOA, setting up a possible push toward Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city.

The centerpiece of the groups’ recent string of wins was the taking last weekend of Lashio, the headquarters of the Myanmar military’s northeast regional command, in Shan State.

Lashio anchors one of 14 regional commands across the country and is the first to fall to resistance groups since the military seized power from a democratically elected government in February 2021, setting off a bloody civil war.

With a population of some 150,000, it is also the largest city the military has lost and straddles the main highway between Mandalay and Myanmar’s border with China, a key trade route.

“It’s just a massive, historic achievement for the resistance, something that hasn’t been seen before … so, it will have a lot of ramifications,” said Matthew Arnold, an independent Myanmar analyst tracking the fighting.

Of the 14 regional command bases, he said, Lashio was among the most heavily fortified and defended.

“This was a massive, massive garrison, with layers of defense,” Arnold said. “If they can’t keep Lashio, it starts to open up lots of other questions about what they can keep.”

Cease-fire collapsed

The rebel advance is part of Operation 10-27, for October 27, the date last year that a trio of ethnic minority armed groups based in Shan — the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, Ta’ang National Liberation Army and Arakan Army — launched a coordinated offensive against the junta.

After sweeping across much of northern Shan in a few months, the so-called Three Brotherhood Alliance agreed to a cease-fire brokered by China in January but has been back on the offensive since the truce collapsed in June.

Jason Tower, Myanmar program director for the United States Institute of Peace, a U.S. government-funded think tank, estimates the alliance has seized at least another 12,000 square kilometers (about 4,630 square miles) since then, an area greater than all of Jamaica.

He says its latest push has seen more cooperation between the ethnic armed groups, which have been around for decades, and the People’s Defense Forces, local community militias that have sprung up across Myanmar to resist the junta.

Tower said the first phase of 10-27 saw some collaboration, but less coordination between the two.

“But now, for phase two, you see where the TNLA is very publicly working with the Mandalay PDF, and operations are going on down in Mandalay Region,” he said.

“That alliance is quite significant and also sends a sign … that you could well see a much more robust type of relationship begin to emerge between the Brotherhood and the PDFs.”

That cooperation and coordination was on show in Lashio, where hundreds of PDF and other fighters helped the MNDAA seize control, said Ye Myo Hein, a senior adviser at the USIP and a global fellow at the Wilson Center, another Washington think tank.

By taking Lashio, he said, the groups have proven their ability to wage and win in conventional urban warfare in what has been a largely rural armed resistance movement using mostly guerrilla tactics.

“Resistance forces have demonstrated their ability to defeat junta troops even in conventional warfare, advancing toward key cities like Mandalay. If the resistance succeeds in gaining ground in major cities such as Mandalay in the upcoming wave of operations, the regime will find it exceedingly difficult to maintain control in Naypyidaw and Yangon in 2025,” said Ye Myo Hein.

Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, and Yangon, its largest city, remain firmly in the junta’s hands.

The TNLA and Mandalay PDF have each claimed victories in recent weeks in towns inching ever closer to Mandalay, though. That includes Mogok, the source of the world’s most-prized rubies, landing another financial blow against a junta already hit hard by international sanctions.

A spokesperson for the regime could not be reached for comment.

In a rare move, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing on Tuesday admitted the military was under pressure in Shan in a televised address on state media. He accused “foreign technology experts” of aiding its enemies.

The general’s remarks were widely seen as a stab at China. Myanmar’s giant neighbor has been one of the military’s main weapons suppliers. But it is also widely believed to be aiding some ethnic armed groups, which have in turn been helping arm and train some of the PDFs.

‘What does the junta lose next?’

Despite a broadly unpopular conscription drive started earlier this year to shore up the military’s dwindling ranks, the analysts say the momentum in the war is squarely with the resistance.

“The question is, what does the junta lose next, and overall, how does it stem the momentum of the resistance? And I think for everybody across the resistance, they can sense that the junta is … gravely weakening,” said Arnold.

“It just doesn’t have experienced, combat-proven units that it can maneuver to launch counteroffensives, so what it tries to do is pump in fresh conscripts,” he said. “It’s just not an adequate response.”

Since the coup, resistance groups have been pushing the junta farther and farther away from the country’s borders and inching closer to its strongholds in the center.

The fighting has come at a grave cost. More than 5,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed, on top of tens of thousands of fighters on both sides. The United Nations says more than 2.8 million have been displaced.

Seeing the junta’s latest run of losses in Shan, the analysts say, resistance groups elsewhere across Myanmar are likely to try to push the military a bit harder, and the Brotherhood’s successful siege of Lashio could give them some valuable lessons on how to take other well-fortified positions.

“I think across the country you’re going to see more waves … by both ethnic armed organizations and other PDFs to try their own hand against the Myanmar military given that they have seen just how readily people are surrendering and how easy it’s been for the Brotherhood to finish off this operation,” said Tower.
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ISLAMABAD — A group of heavily armed militants launched coordinated attacks on two Pakistani military posts near the border with Afghanistan Friday, reportedly killing several security personnel and wounding many more.

Multiple area security sources confirmed the predawn raid in the volatile border district of Khyber, telling VOA that it resulted in the death of at least five security personnel and injuries to at least a dozen more. Ensuing clashes with Pakistani security forces reportedly also killed several assailants.

The military’s media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations, did not respond to VOA inquiries seeking details of the assault in time for publication.

Militants tied to an outlawed entity known as the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group claimed responsibility for the attack in a social media post.

The group has stated publicly that its fighters are waging insurgent attacks in coordination with the globally designated terrorist organization Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.

Militancy-hit Khyber and surrounding border districts often encounter deadly attacks aimed at Pakistani security forces and their facilities.

Pakistan complains that the TTP and leaders of other antistate groups have taken shelter in Afghanistan after fleeing counterinsurgency operations and orchestrated cross border attacks from sanctuaries there.

The violence has intensified and killed hundreds of Pakistanis, mostly security forces, since the Taliban reclaimed control of Afghanistan three years ago.

The de facto Taliban government denies the presence of foreign militants in the country, insisting that it does not allow anyone to threaten other countries, including Pakistan, from Afghan soil.

The United Nations has backed Pakistani assertions, noting in its latest situation report that the TTP is “the largest terrorist group” in Afghanistan and receives growing support from the ruling Taliban to launch cross-border attacks.

The report, released last month, estimates that up to 6,500 TTP militants, including Afghan fighters, are operating in Afghanistan and being trained as well as armed at al-Qaida-run camps there.

U.N. officials have repeatedly warned about the threat of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan, identifying Islamic State Khorasan, or IS-K, an Afghan offshoot of Islamic State, as the most serious regional threat.

The head of the U.N. counterterrorism office told a Security Council meeting on Thursday that IS-Khorasan has intensified its recruitment efforts in Afghanistan and that there is a risk of the group carrying out attacks abroad.

“ISIL-K has improved its financial and logistical capabilities in the past six months, including by tapping into Afghan and Central Asian diasporas for support,” Vladimir Voronkov said, referring to the terror organization by an acronym.

The Taliban have not commented on the latest U.N. assertions and previously rejected such assessments as propaganda against their government.

The fundamentalist de facto Afghan rulers claim their security forces have eliminated IS-Khorasan bases in the country and degraded the group’s ability to threaten national security and that of the region.
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Sydney — Australia Friday called a new nuclear technology agreement with the United States and Britain a “very significant step down the … path” toward a nuclear-powered fleet of submarines. Australia struck the deal Monday, aimed at allowing transfer of nuclear equipment and technology for the country’s proposed fleet. It is the latest advance in the 2021 AUKUS security pact linking the three countries.

The agreement, described by U.S officials as another significant “AUKUS milestone,” is a further step to giving Australia the technology and hardware to build, run and maintain nuclear-powered submarines.

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles, who is also the deputy prime minister, signed the latest part of the trilateral accord in the United States Monday. He called the agreement “a key foundational document.”

Under plans unveiled in San Diego, California, last year, Australia intends to spend up to $242 billion over the next 30 years to first buy second-hand Virginia-class submarines from the United States and then develop a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines using technology from Rolls Royce.

Marles told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Friday the AUKUS pact is taking an important step forward.

“This agreement is the legal underpinning for that technology to be provided to Australia, for ultimately the nuclear equipment to be provided to Australia. So, that is both the Virginia Class submarines from the United States [and] the nuclear reactors from Rolls Royce that will form part of the submarines that we build in Australia,” he said.

The AUKUS accord is widely seen as a counter to China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Beijing has said the security pact undermines peace and stability.

China accused Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of fueling military confrontation when the AUKUS accord was signed in 2021.

The alliance has been criticized by former Australian Prime Ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating, who have said the deal would erode the country’s sovereignty.
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TOKYO — Nagasaki marked the 79th anniversary of its atomic bombing at the end of World War II at a ceremony Friday eclipsed by the absence of the American ambassador and other Western envoys in response to the Japanese city’s refusal to invite Israel.

Mayor Shiro Suzuki, in a speech at Nagasaki Peace Park, called for nuclear weapon states and those under their nuclear umbrellas, including Japan, to abolish the weapons.

“You must face up to the reality that the very existence of nuclear weapons poses an increasing threat to humankind, and you must make a brave shift toward the abolition of nuclear weapons,” Suzuki said.

He warned that the world faces “a critical situation” because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and accelerating conflicts in the Middle East.

The atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, killed 70,000 people, three days after the bombing of Hiroshima killed 140,000. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, ending World War II and its nearly half-century of aggression across Asia.

Speaking at Friday’s ceremony, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reiterated his pledge to pursue a nuclear-free world. His critics, many of them atomic bomb survivors, or hibakusha, say it’s a hollow promise as Japan relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella while building up its own military.

At 11:02 a.m., the moment the plutonium bomb exploded above the southern Japanese city, participants observed a moment of silence as a peace bell tolled.

More than 2,000 people, including representatives from 100 countries, attended Friday’s ceremony. But ambassadors from the U.S. and five other Group of Seven nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. — and the European Union were absent. Their governments sent lower-ranking envoys in response to Suzuki’s decision not to invite Israel.

They said that treating Israel like Russia and Belarus, which also were not invited, was misleading.

U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel instead attended a ceremony at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo honoring the Nagasaki atomic bombing victims, joined by his Israeli and British counterparts, Gilad Cohen and Julia Longbottom.

“We are obviously in Tokyo but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to think and to reflect and to remember” what happened 79 years ago in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Emanuel said.

Suzuki denied that his decision to exclude Israel was political, and said he feared that possible “unforeseeable situations” such as violent protests over the war in Gaza might disrupt the ceremony. Suzuki, whose parents are hibakusha, said the Aug. 9 anniversary is the most important day for Nagasaki and must be commemorated in a peaceful and solemn environment.

Emanuel disagreed.

“I think it was a political decision, not one based on security, given the prime minister’s attendance,” which required high security, Emanuel told reporters.

He said excluding Israel drew “a moral equivalency between Russia and Israel, one country that invaded versus one country that was a victim of invasion,” and that “my attendance would respect that political judgment, and I couldn’t do that.”

Cohen, in a statement on the social media platform X, expressed his “gratitude to all the countries that have chosen to stand with Israel and oppose its exclusion from the Nagasaki Peace Ceremony. Thank you for standing with us on the right side of history.”

The anniversary comes shortly after the United States and Japan reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to provide “extended deterrence” under its nuclear umbrella for Japan amid growing tension in the region. That is a shift from Japan’s previous reluctance to openly discuss its protection under the nuclear umbrella as the world’s only country to have suffered atomic attacks.
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miami — A U.S. federal grand jury on Thursday indicted the former chairman of the Philippines election commission for allegedly taking bribes from a company that provided voting machines for the country’s 2016 elections.

Andres “Andy” Bautista, 60, faces one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and three counts of international laundering of monetary instruments, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Three executives of the voting machine company were also indicted for their roles in an “alleged bribery and money laundering scheme to retain and obtain business related to the 2016 Philippine elections,” it said.

The Justice Department did not identify the company, but one of the three indicted executives is Roger Alejandro Pinate Martinez, 49, a Venezuelan citizen and Florida resident who is a co-founder of Smartmatic.

The indictment alleges that between 2015 and 2018, Pinate, Jorge Miguel Vasquez, 62, and others “caused at least $1 million in bribes to be paid” to Bautista.

Pinate and Vasquez are each charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Like Bautista, Pinate, Vasquez, and Elie Moreno, 44, a dual citizen of Venezuela and Israel, are also charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and three counts of international laundering of monetary instruments.

The Philippines Commission on Elections banned Smartmatic last year from bidding on election contracts, but the country’s highest court overturned the ban in April.

Bautista, who headed the election commission from 2015 to 2017, awarded Smartmatic a $199 million contract to supply the Philippines with 94,000 voting machines for the 2016 presidential election won by former leader Rodrigo Duterte.

He has denied any wrongdoing, writing on X that he “did not ask for nor receive any bribe money from Smartmatic or any other entity.”

The Justice Department and U.S. Attorney’s Office did not respond to a query from AFP as to whether Bautista is in U.S. custody.

In a statement, Smartmatic confirmed two of its employees had been indicted, saying that “regardless of the veracity of the allegations and while our accused employees remain innocent until proven guilty, we have placed both employees on leaves of absence, effective immediately.”

“No voter fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic is not indicted,” the company said, adding: “Voters worldwide must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency. These are the values that Smartmatic lives by.”

Smartmatic has filed lawsuits against Fox News and allies of former president Donald Trump, including ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, over false claims that its machines were used to manipulate the results of the 2020 U.S. election. 
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DHAKA, BANGLADESH — Nearly 80 hours after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh amid violent protests that resulted in more than 300 fatalities, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was sworn in to lead the country’s interim government.

At 84, Yunus took the oath of office during a ceremony held Thursday night at the presidential palace in Dhaka. The event was attended by political leaders, civil society figures, military generals, and diplomats, and was set against the backdrop of continuing unrest in the country. Analysts say Yunus faces a challenging path ahead, as the nation may be on the brink of deeper political crisis.

The 17-member Cabinet, referred to as “advisers,” includes two key coordinators from the student-led movement, Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, and prominent human rights defender Adilur Rahman Khan, previously imprisoned under Hasina’s government for documenting rights violations.

The Cabinet also includes economists, NGO activists, academics, and a retired military officer. The planned duration of the interim government has not been announced.

Earlier that day, arriving at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, the microfinance pioneer delivered an emotional speech to reporters as he prepared to take up his new duties. Yunus expressed his hope to restore peace and rebuild Bangladesh following the uprising that ended Hasina’s 15-year, increasingly autocratic reign.

“Law and order have been disrupted; people are attacking each other, setting homes and property on fire, looting, and burning offices. They are attacking Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Ahmadis,” Yunus told the reporters. The Ahmadis are a messianic Islamic movement that began in the 19th century.

“We must protect them and restore order, as violence and chaos are major enemies of progress,” he added.

Political analysts, however, say a major challenge will be governing with a Cabinet that, despite emerging from a “mass revolution,” lacks a democratically obtained mandate.

Political crisis ahead?

Dhaka-based political analyst Zahed Ur Rahman expressed concerns that political parties, which have been sidelined from power for an extended period, may not provide the interim government with enough time to execute the “nation-rebuilding” envisioned by the new Cabinet.

He said that under Hasina’s leadership, her Awami League political party had “debilitated every state mechanism.”

“From the police to the media, the bureaucracy is thoroughly corrupted; even the election commission is completely ineffective. Therefore, to restore effectiveness, the interim government will need to undertake extensive efforts, which will require a significant amount of time,” Rahman told VOA.

The current crisis presents an opportunity to put Bangladesh back on the path of genuine democracy and move beyond the hyperpartisan, winner-take-all electoral dynamics that have caused so much damage over the past three decades, said Thomas Kean, International Crisis Group senior consultant.

“It needs to embark on the long task of rebuilding democracy in Bangladesh, which has been so badly eroded in recent years,” Kean said in a statement.

While political parties have welcomed the movement that ousted the Hasina regime and the appointment of Yunus as the head of the interim government, they appear reluctant to allow much time for this new administration to establish itself.

Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, a leading figure in Bangladesh’s major political party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, told VOA, “We fully support this government, which is endorsed by the country’s youth and students who drove this change. I am very hopeful for their success. However, we expect that they will fulfill their constitutional duty to conduct a free and fair election within 90 days.”

As the country shifted to the interim government, the BNP held a rally in Dhaka Wednesday. The rally was led by former prime minister Khaleda Zia, who was recently released from house arrest after receiving a presidential pardon and addressed the party activists in a prerecorded video message.

This action by BNP is perceived by many as an indication of impatience and a desperate bid for power. “The wound from this movement is still fresh, and there is no government and law and order, how can you hold a rally under such condition? This impatience from them will send the country towards a deeper crisis in this crucial time,” Rahman said.

Skepticism on military’s role

In Bangladesh, marked by a tumultuous history of military coups and countercoups, there is significant skepticism regarding the military’s current role, which it claims is merely to steward the current political turmoil and oversee the transition of power.

“I don’t trust the military to run this country,” Hasan Robayet, a 38-year-old poet and civil society member, told VOA. “We have seen the outcomes of past military rule. The military should not dictate terms to this government. This revolution was won by the students and the masses; they should hold full control of the government.”

The military declared an emergency in January 2007 after widespread political unrest and installed a military-backed caretaker government for two years, following which Hasina and her Awami League secured a decisive victory in the elections.

A general close to the army leadership told VOA that the current chief, Waker-Uz-Zaman, is not inclined to pursue a full military takeover. Instead, he aims to support the interim government from the sidelines, facilitating a smooth transition and the swift handover of power to a democratically elected government, the general said.

Bangladesh experienced military rule from 1975 to 1990, beginning with the assassination of its founding leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. This period included multiple coups, particularly starting in 1977 under General Ziaur Rahman, who shifted the nation from a single-party socialist state to a multiparty system, though the military retained significant influence.

Following General Zia’s assassination in 1981, General Hussain Muhammad Ershad assumed the presidency in 1983. The military regime in Bangladesh ended in 1990 following a massive public uprising for democratic reforms, led by opposition parties and a strong student movement that staged strikes and protests nationwide, and compelled Ershad to resign in December 1990.

Despite all challenges, Nahid Islam, the coordinator of the movement and now an adviser in the interim government, has vowed to fulfill the promises made to the people during the mass uprising.

“We have come to government to fulfill the promises that led to this mass uprising, promises for which hundreds of our brothers and sisters were injured or killed. We are committed to fulfilling these promises as soon as possible,” he told VOA after being sworn in. 
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Washington — When the Taliban overran the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif in August 2021, Aminullah Ranjbar, a police officer, says he had “no option” but to flee with his family to Iran.

The Ranjbars have been living in Tehran as undocumented refugees for the past three years, fearing deportation to Afghanistan, where Aminullah’s life is in danger.

“We know that many [former Afghan security officials] were killed by the ruling group in Afghanistan,” Ranjbar said.

Thousands of former Afghan security forces fled to Iran after the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021 for fear of reprisals.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan says it documented “at least 60 instances of arbitrary arrest and detention, at least 10 instances of torture and ill-treatment, verbal threats and at least five killings of former government officials and former ANDSF members” between April 1 and June 30, 2024.

The U.N. has also recorded at least 800 human rights violations, including 218 extrajudicial killings, against government officials and security forces from the Taliban’s takeover in 2021 to June 2023.

UNHCR said an estimated 1 million Afghans fled to Iran after the Taliban took power in 2021.

According to the UNHCR, 4.5 million Afghan refugees are in Iran, of whom only 750,000 are registered as refugees.

Many Afghan refugees living in Iran share Ranjbar’s concerns.

“I just go to work and come back to the hostel. I am afraid of going anywhere else,” said Shah Mahmood, a daily laborer who has been living in Iran for the past five years.

Mahmood told VOA that the Iranian government’s behavior toward Afghan refugees changed after the fall of Afghanistan in 2021, which forced many more Afghans to flee to Iran.

“Harassment, detention and deportation of Afghan refugees increased in the past three years,” he said. “It is becoming difficult for Afghans to live in Iran, but we are desperate, and there is nothing if we return to Afghanistan.”

In a statement on Monday, the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Norway-based human rights nongovernmental organization reporting on human rights violations in Iran, reported an increase in “anti-Afghan racism within both governmental and social spheres in Iran.”

Videos of the mistreatment of Afghan refugees in Iran are circulating on social media. A viral video posted Tuesday shows Iranian policemen kneeling on a young Afghan refugee. VOA cannot verify the authenticity of the videos.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials said that undocumented foreigners should leave Iran by the end of this year.

In May, the Iranian government said it deported 1.3 million foreigners, primarily Afghan refugees, in one year.

Fearing deportation, Mahmood hopes the new Iranian government, headed by Masoud Pezeshkian, will adopt a more tolerant policy toward the refugees.

However, Abdul Ghafoor Liwal, former Afghan ambassador to Iran, told VOA that he does not think the Iranian policy toward Afghan refugees and Afghanistan will change.

“In general, it is the Iranian policy, in their own words, to expel undocumented Afghans from Iran. I don’t think that there would be any changes,” Liwal said, adding, “The region is not in the hands of the civilian governments in Iran.”

Iran-Taliban relations

Iran has cultivated close relations with the Taliban since the group seized power in 2021.

The country handed over the Afghan Embassy in Tehran to the Taliban in early 2023.

“Iran’s policy toward Afghanistan is security-focused,” said Liwa. “Iran does not want to open another front on its eastern border while it is involved in the Middle East,” he said.

Fatemeh Aman, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, agreed that Iran’s relations with the Taliban are driven by security concerns. “As recently as this year, there have been terrorist attacks in Iran. Terrorists could enter the border undercover,” she said.

In January, twin suicide bombings in the Iranian city of Kerman killed at least 95 people.

Iranian officials traced the attack to Islamic State-Khorasan Province based in Afghanistan.

Aman said that migrant flow from Afghanistan is another important issue that Iran’s regime is facing.

This story originated in VOA’s Afghan Service. 
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washington — Germany’s entry into the U.S.-led U.N. Command, which expanded the multinational body tasked with defending South Korea against North Korea, reflects growing fears in Europe and the U.S. that multiple wars that could break out simultaneously across the globe, said analysts.

North Korea this week denounced Germany’s membership in the U.N. Command (UNC), calling the expansion an attempt by the U.S. to create an Asian version of NATO, according to state-run KCNA.

The move will “inevitably aggravate the military and political situation on the Korean Peninsula and the rest of the region,” KCNA said Tuesday.

Pushing back against Pyongyang’s criticism, the German Federal Foreign Office told VOA Korean in a statement on Tuesday that by joining UNC, it is “sending a signal for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and strengthen[ing] our commitment in the Indo-Pacific.”

The statement continued, “Just as others are there for us, we are there for others when they need us.”

Germany joined UNC on August 2, becoming the 18th member of the body charged with maintaining the armistice on the Korean Peninsula during peacetime. In the event of war, the UNC would coordinate the movement of troops and weapons from its members to the Combined Forces Command of the U.S. and South Korea. 

Enhanced deterrence

Markus Garlauskas, who served as the U.S. national intelligence officer for North Korea from 2014 to 2020, said the UNC’s main role is to defend South Korea but that “expanding the number of countries contributing to UNC helps enhance deterrence … of the escalation of aggression in the entire region.”

This is particularly important because a conflict on the Korean Peninsula could escalate into a conflict with China, said Garlauskas, director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The U.S. maintains several military bases and approximately 28,500 troops in South Korea.

But with wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza and the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, analysts said the addition of new members to the UNC makes it easier for the United States to respond to crises elsewhere without having to send additional forces that may be needed to defend South Korea if the North attacks.

“The U.S. military is not large enough to fight multiple contingencies around the world” by itself, said David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy.

The U.S. Commission on the National Defense Strategy released a report in July saying the U.S. must prepare to deal with simultaneous conflicts coordinated by China and Russia and involving countries such as North Korea and Iran, amounting to a “global war.”

Bruce Bennett, senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, said, “The more forces that are available to potentially assist South Korea, the better it is for the U.S. if conflict occurs in both Taiwan and in Korea.”

By joining the UNC, “Germany is hoping South Korea will also become more supportive of the defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression” by sending ammunition and other weapons, Bennett said.

South Korea has withheld sending lethal weapons directly to Ukraine while providing nonlethal weapons.

Germany’s membership in UNC follows a NATO summit last month in Washington where the alliance agreed to cooperate closely on security with the Indo-Pacific countries of South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Germany’s participation in UNC demonstrates “a tangible step” toward that defense cooperation, Garlauskas said. He noted that Pyongyang’s and Beijing’s support of Russia’s war against Ukraine “directly threatens Germany security.”

Germany, along with other NATO member states, has been arming Ukraine so it can defend against Russia, which has been threatening NATO with nuclear strikes. The U.S. and its NATO allies have condemned China for supporting Russia’s defense industry and North Korea for sending munitions to aid its war in Ukraine.

James Przystup, senior fellow and Japan chair specializing in alliance management in the Indo-Pacific at the Hudson Institute, said Germany, the U.K., France, the Netherlands and the EU “have all released Indo-Pacific strategy that recognizes that stability in the region is critical to Europe’s own prosperity.”

Those countries have also expressed their commitment to supporting a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific, he said. “But this is far from the emergence of an Indo-Pacific NATO.”
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ISLAMABAD — Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan clinched his country’s first gold medal in four decades by setting a new record with his stunning throw in Thursday’s men’s javelin final at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Nadeem raised his arms in celebration after breaking the Olympic record on his second throw with 92.97 meters.

The 27-year-old Pakistani javelin thrower beat defending champion Neeraj Chopra of India, who took silver with 89.45 meters. Grenada’s Anderson Peters claimed bronze with 88.54 meters.

The record had stood since the 2008 Beijing Games when Norway’s Andreas Thorkildsen threw 90.57 meters while defending his Olympic title.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif congratulated Nadeem for presenting “a wonderful gift to the entire Pakistani nation,” his office said in a statement in Islamabad.

“You have made the whole nation proud,” Sharif wrote separately on X, formerly Twitter.

Celebrations erupted outside Nadeem’s home in the city of Mian Channu in Punjab, the country’s most populous province, where a crowd watched him win the competition on a large-screen television, reported local media and his neighbors.

Pakistan had never won an individual Olympic gold medal until Nadeem’s javelin throw on Thursday. The South Asian nation previously secured three gold medals in field hockey, with its team winning gold in 1960, 1968 and 1984.

Until now, only two Pakistani athletes have won individual Olympic medals of any color — a bronze in wrestling in 1960 and a bronze in boxing in 1988.

Pakistan’s last medal came at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona when its field hockey team took bronze.
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washington — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s landmark three-day visit to Central Asia, beginning Friday, is poised to challenge the existing geopolitical balance in the region.

The Central Asia + Japan group will hold its inaugural summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, where Kishida, supported by a delegation of 50 Japanese business leaders, will unveil a strategic $2 billion economic support package.

During the August 9-12 trip, Kishida is also scheduled to visit Uzbekistan and Mongolia.

Japan’s foreign ministry said on X that the meeting marks the 20th anniversary of the Central Asia + Japan Dialogue, though it is the first such meeting at this level. “The friendships built over these last two decades will form the foundation for further cooperation & partnerships for decades to come,” the posting said.

Experts say that as Central Asia’s natural resources and its strategic roles in trade and security attract global interest, Japan is seeking to counter Russia’s and China’s dominance in the region with alternative models for trade and governance.

“The visit shows Japan’s desire somewhat to counter, or perhaps more realistically, to mitigate the historically closer economic engagement with Central Asian countries that Russia and China have had,” said Koichi Nakano, professor of political science at Sophia University in Japan.

“But it would seem unrealistic to think that Japan can quickly ‘flip’ them to its side by ditching their close ties with Russia and China in economic and security terms,” he told VOA.

In the five post-Soviet Central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — China is the leading exporter, boosted by its Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Meanwhile, Russia exerts substantial influence through energy exports, labor migration and regional security, particularly via the Collective Security Treaty Organization and its military presence in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

China hosted a summit with Central Asian leaders in May 2023, followed by a high-level meeting organized by the European Union in June. The United States and Germany then held their own summit in September.

Japan has maintained diplomatic relations with Central Asian countries since their independence in the early 1990s. In August 2004, Japan established the regional framework called the Central Asia + Japan Dialogue. Subsequently, other countries, including the U.S., India and South Korea, have initiated similar diplomatic frameworks with the region.

Cautious alliances

According to Nakano, Central Asian countries are cautious about being dominated by Russia and China.

“But now that the tension between Japan, on the one hand, and Russia and China, on the other hand, is rising, there is a stronger reason for Japan to boost its ties with the Central Asian countries,” Nakano said.

Those tensions have escalated because of Japan’s support for Western sanctions against Russia and disputes over the Kuril Islands. Japan’s concerns about China’s military activities have also strained relations.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Wednesday issued a statement criticizing the Tokyo-led summit as “Japan’s attempts to penetrate Central Asia.”

“We have no doubt that our partners from Central Asia, with their wisdom, will be able to distinguish approaches in favor of mutually beneficial cooperation from plans to reduce their countries to the position of a neocolonial appendage of the Western camp,” she said in the statement.

“We hope that the destructiveness of such a prospect and the serious costs of losing full-blooded ties with Russia are quite obvious to them.” 

Domestic motives

Hiromoto Kaji, professor at Aichi University in Japan, said that while the new summit framework with Central Asia might seem like a foreign policy move, it is actually driven by Japan’s internal political factors.

“The new cooperation framework that Prime Minister Kishida has now proposed does not fundamentally change the policy objectives. Rather, Prime Minister Kishida may be seeking to establish ‘a diplomatic legacy’ in preparation for the upcoming LDP [Liberal Democratic Party] presidential election,” Kaji told VOA.

Kishida’s LDP will hold elections in September to choose its next party president.

Tsuyoshi Nojima, a professor at Daito Bunka University in Japan, said Japan enjoys a higher level of goodwill in Central Asia and the Middle East than the United States.

“In Asia, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia are all competing for influence — one in Southeast Asia and one in Central Asia. Japan is effectively helping the U.S. manage relationships with Central Asian countries,” Nojima told VOA.

Democratic engagement

Anders Corr, publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, says Japan’s summit in Central Asia is a positive development that could introduce greater democratic influence in the region.

“The summit is focused on bringing Japanese diplomacy and businesses to the region, which will assist in democratic influence efforts through economic incentives,” Corr told VOA.

Corr also said democracies will need to solidify any gains in the region through a combination of business incentives and sanctions aimed at addressing authoritarianism and human rights abuses.

“Such incentives and disincentives can only be reliably based upon the economic and military strength and unity of the democracies more broadly as they face off against increasingly belligerent autocracies, including Iran, that surround Central Asia,” Corr said. 

After more than 30 years of independence, citizens in Central Asian countries at varying levels continue to face restrictions on press freedom, civil liberties and political rights as they endure authoritarian practices.

Chung-Hsi Tu of VOA Mandarin contributed to this report. 
…

…

Geneva — The United Nations on Thursday said the dissolution of Thailand’s main opposition Move Forward Party was “deeply troubling” and seriously affects fundamental freedoms.

The Constitutional Court, Thailand’s top court, voted unanimously on Wednesday to dissolve the MFP, the vanguard of the country’s youthful pro-democracy movement, and ban its executive board members from politics for 10 years.

“This decision seriously impacts fundamental freedoms of expression and association, and people’s right to participate in public affairs and political life in Thailand,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.

“No party or politician should ever face such penalties for peacefully advocating legal reform, particularly in support of human rights,” he said.

The MFP took first place in a general election last year after pledging to reform Thailand’s strict royal defamation law.

Calling the court move “deeply troubling,” Turk said U.N. human rights mechanisms had long expressed concern about Thailand’s lese-majeste laws, saying they were inconsistent with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“I call on the government to find pathways to ensure a vibrant, strong and inclusive democracy that promotes and respects the rights to freedom of expression and association and end the use of lese-majeste laws to suppress critical voices,” said Turk.

“A diversity of voices and opinions is fundamental to ensuring respect and protection of human rights and achieving peaceful social and economic development,” he said.
…

…

New Delhi — The ouster of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, with whom India had built strong ties, is a strategic setback for New Delhi, which could see its influence wane in a country that was its closest ally in South Asia, according to analysts.

“This is a serious challenge for India given that for over 15 years, there was a government which was largely sympathetic to Indian sensitivities,’’ Harsh Pant, vice president for studies at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, told VOA.

“So after years of relative stability in the relationship, the political uncertainty that now confronts Bangladesh is discomfiting,” said Pant.  

Stable ties with Bangladesh, with which India shares its longest land border, were important for New Delhi in a neighborhood where it confronts Pakistan and China across disputed frontiers.

Hasina stepped down Monday after student-led protests to abolish job quotas snowballed into a movement to oust a leader blamed for democratic backsliding and authoritarianism. She fled to India, where she is presently staying.

During her tenure, both countries built strong economic ties. Hasina had also clamped down on Islamic militant groups that used sanctuaries in Bangladesh to mount attacks in India’s northeastern states.

An interim government, headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, is due soon to take charge in the country and begin to prepare for elections. The leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Khaleda Zia, has been released after years of house arrest.

As Bangladesh confronts a political vacuum in the coming months, China could gain a stronger foothold in the country, setting back New Delhi’s efforts to contain its influence in the South Asia region, according to analysts. While seeking investments from Beijing and joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Hasina also took into account India’s sensitivities in the region.

“There will be concerns about China playing a bigger role in Bangladesh,’’ Pant said. ‘’Sheikh Hasina had balanced Chinese and Indian interests quite effectively from New Delhi’s perspective. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, on the other hand, had been seen as a pro-China party in the past when it was in power.”

Dhaka was seen as critical for helping to limit China’s expanding footprint in the Indo-Pacific region. Last November, a pro-China administration took charge in the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean.

India’s first task will be to build ties with opposition parties that are expected to step into the political vacuum in Bangladesh. But analysts say it will not be easy for a country whose close association with Hasina and her Awami League Party had alienated ordinary citizens and the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which had a rocky relationship with New Delhi in the past.

India was seen as Hasina’s strongest supporter through her 15-year tenure. Unlike the United States and U.K., which said that elections which brought Hasina back to power in January were not free and fair, India did not question the credibility of the polls. In Bangladesh, many viewed India’s silence as contributing to erosion of democracy in their country.

“India needs to reflect on its old policy of how it related to the previous government and to the people of Bangladesh,” Debapriya Bhattacharya, distinguished fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka, told VOA. “But it is now time to rebuild the relationship on a new footing. Bangladesh has learned to live with changing governments in Delhi. India will have to do the same.”

In New Delhi, analysts say there are fears of a setback to the strong linkages the two countries had built. Over the past decade, they had signed a land boundary agreement to settle border issues, boosted bilateral trade to about $13 billion and launched road and rail link projects.

“Instability in Bangladesh could affect all the gains that were made,” Chintamani Mahapatra, founder of the Kalinga Institute of Indo Pacific Studies in New Delhi, told VOA. “The hope is that the developmental activity that has taken place between the two countries will provide the foundation for the relationship to go ahead, but of course that will depend on whichever dispensation finally takes power.”

Meanwhile, the immediate challenge for New Delhi are reports of sporadic violence targeting minorities including, Hindus emerging from Bangladesh. In a statement in Parliament on Tuesday, Indian External Affairs Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar welcomed initiatives by various groups to ensure their protection, but he said, “India will naturally remain deeply concerned till law and order is visibly restored.”

Yunus has appealed for calm. Asking people to get ready to rebuild the country, he said in a statement on Wednesday, that “if we take the path of violence, everything will be destroyed.”
…

Seoul — A North Korean has defected to the South across a de facto maritime border in the Yellow Sea, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported Thursday.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the peninsula was divided by war in the 1950s.

The latest defection comes as relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with the North ramping up weapons testing and bombarding the South with trash-carrying balloons.

“1 N. Korean defects across maritime border in Yellow Sea: military,” the agency said in a one-line report.

Other South Korean local media reported Thursday that two North Koreans attempted to defect to the South through the border island of Gyodong, less than five kilometers from North Korea.

The South Korean military has only secured one of them, the reports said.

Most defectors go overland to neighboring China first, then enter a third country such as Thailand before finally making it to the South. 

The number of successful escapes dropped significantly from 2020 after the North sealed its borders — purportedly with shoot-on-sight orders along the land frontier with China — to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

But the number of defectors making it to the South almost tripled last year to 196, Seoul said in January, with more elite diplomats and students seeking to escape, up from 67 in 2022.

‘Unhappy with the North’s system’

The North Korean crossed the “neutral zone of the Han River estuary located west of the inter-Korean land border” and then arrived at South Korea’s Gyodong island, Yonhap reported Thursday, citing unnamed military sources.

South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik told a parliamentary committee that an investigation was “underway by the relevant authorities,” according to the Yonhap report.

The incident is the first time in 15 months since a North Korean defected to South Korea through the Yellow Sea.

In May 2023, a family of nine escaped the North using a wooden boat. 

Experts say defectors have likely been impacted by harsh living conditions, including food shortages and inadequate responses to natural disasters, while living in the isolated North.

“North Korea has suffered severe flood damage recently and has caused a lot of damage in other areas as well, including parts of the city,” Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Korean peninsula strategy at Sejong Institute, told AFP.

“It is possible that the people who were unhappy with the North Korean system may have used this internal instability and confusion to defect.”

Heavy rainfall hit the North’s northern regions in late July, with South Korean media reporting a possible death toll of up to 1,500 people.

Pyongyang treats defections as a serious crime and is believed to hand harsh punishments to transgressors, their families and even people tangentially linked to the incident.

South Korea has responded to the North’s increased weapons testing and trash-carrying ballon bombardments this year by resuming propaganda broadcasts along the border, suspending a tension-reducing military deal and restarting live-fire drills near the border.
…