GUNTUR, India — There’s a pungent odor on Ratna Raju’s farm that he says is protecting his crops from the unpredictable and extreme weather that’s become more frequent with human-caused climate change.

The smell comes from a concoction of cow urine, an unrefined sugar known as jaggery, and other organic materials that act as fertilizers, pesticides and bad weather barriers for his corn, rice, leafy greens and other vegetables on his farm in Guntur in India’s southern Andhra Pradesh state. The region is frequently hit by cyclones and extreme heat, and farmers say that so-called natural farming protects their crops because the soil can hold more water, and their more robust roots help the plants withstand strong winds.

Andhra Pradesh has become a positive example of the benefits of natural farming, and advocates say active government support is the primary driver for the state’s success. Experts say these methods should be expanded across India’s vast agricultural lands as climate change and decreasing profits have led to multiple farmers’ protests this year. But fledgling government support across the country for these methods means most farmers still use chemical pesticides and fertilizers, making them more vulnerable when extreme weather hits. Many farmers are calling for greater federal and state investment to help farms switch to more climate change-proof practices.

For many, the benefits of greater investment in natural farming are already obvious: In December, Cyclone Michaung, a storm moving up to 110 kph brought heavy rainfall across India’s southeastern coast, flooding towns and fields. A preliminary assessment conducted a few weeks later found that 600,000 acres of crops were destroyed in Andhra Pradesh state.

On Raju’s natural farm, however, where he was growing rice at the time, “the rainwater on our farms seeped into the ground in one day,” he said. The soil can absorb more water because it’s more porous than pesticide-laden soil which is crusty and dry. Planting different kinds of crops throughout the year — as opposed to the more standard single crop farms — also helps keep the soil healthy, he said.

But neighboring farmer Srikanth Kanapala’s fields, which rely on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, were flooded for four days after the cyclone. He said seeing Raju’s crops hold firm while his failed has made him curious about alternative farming methods.

“I incurred huge losses,” said Kanapala, who estimates he lost up to $600 because of the cyclone, a substantial sum for a small farmer in India. “For the next planting season, I plan to use natural farming methods too.”

Local and federal government initiatives have resulted in an estimated 700,000 farmers shifting to natural farming in the state according to Rythu Sadhikara Samstha, a government-backed not-for-profit launched in 2016 to promote natural farming. The state of Andhra Pradesh hopes to inspire all of its 6 million farmers to take up natural farming by the end of the decade.

The Indian federal government’s agriculture ministry has spent upward of $8 million to promote natural farming and says farmers tilling nearly a million acres across the country have shifted to the practice. In March last year, India’s junior minister for agriculture said he hoped at least 25% of farms across India would use organic and natural farming techniques.

But farmers like Meerabi Chunduru, one of the first in the region to switch to natural farming, said more government and political support is needed. Chunduru said she switched to the practice after her husband’s health deteriorated, which she believes is because of prolonged exposure to some harmful pesticides.

While the health effects of various pesticides have not yet been studied in detail, farm workers around the world have long claimed extended exposure has caused health problems. In February, a Philadelphia jury awarded $2.25 billion in damages in a case where a weed killer with glyphosate — restricted in India since just 2022 — was linked to a resident’s blood cancer. In India, 63 farmers died in the western state of Maharashtra in 2017, believed to be linked to a pesticide containing the chemical Diafenthiuron, which is currently banned in the European Union, but not in India.

“Right now, not many politicians are talking about natural farming. There is some support but we need more,” said Chunduru. She called for more subsidies for seeds such as groundnuts, black gram, sorghum, vegetable crops and corn that can help farmers make the switch.

Farmers’ rights activists said skepticism about natural farming among political leaders, government bureaucrats and scientists is still pervasive because they still trust the existing farming models that use fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides to achieve maximum productivity. In the short-term, chemical alternatives can be cheaper and more effective, but in the long term they take a toll on the soil’s health, meaning larger quantities of chemicals are needed to maintain crops, causing a cycle of greater costs and poorer soil, natural farming advocates say.

“Agroecological initiatives are not getting adequate attention or budgetary outlays,” said Kavitha Kuruganti, an activist who has advocated for sustainable farming practices for nearly three decades. The Indian government spends less than 3% of its total budget on agriculture. It has earmarked nearly $20 billion in fertilizer subsidies this year, but only $55 million has been allocated by the federal government to encourage natural farming. Kuruganti said there are a handful of politicians who support the practice but scaling it up remains a challenge in India.

A lack of national standards and guidelines or a viable supply chain that farmers can sell their produce through is also keeping natural farming relatively niche, said NS Suresh, a research scientist at the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, a Bengaluru-based think tank.

But because the practice helps keep the plants and the soil healthy across various soil types and all kinds of unpredictable weather conditions, it’s beneficial for farmers all around India, from its mountains to its coasts, experts say. And the practice of planting different crops year-round means farmers have produce to harvest at any given time, giving an extra boost to their soil and their wallets.

Chunduru, who’s been practicing natural farming for four years now, hopes that prioritizing natural farming in the country can have benefits for producers and consumers of crops alike, and other farmers avoid the kind of harms her husband has faced.

“We can provide nutrient-rich food, soil and physical health” to future generations, she said. 
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A search was under way in Pakistan’s northwest after gunmen ambushed and opened fire on a police vehicle, killing two people and injuring two more, an official said Saturday.

The assault took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan and has borne the brunt of militant violence since the Pakistani Taliban unilaterally ended a cease-fire with the central government in November 2022.

The province is a former stronghold of the militant group, which is also known as the TTP and allied with the Afghan Taliban.

Police officer Tariq Khan said the attackers shot and killed a deputy superintendent and a constable in Lakki Marwat district.

Heavy police reinforcements arrived at the scene, but the assailants had fled. Khan did not say how many attackers there were.

Umar Marwat, a militant commander from the district, claimed responsibility for the attack and alleged the deputy superintendent had been active in operations against the TTP in the area.

The TTP spokesperson has not issued a statement about the assault so far.

In a separate incident, in the province’s Bajaur tribal district, one police officer was killed and another was injured on Saturday in a roadside blast. Police official Zahid Khan said the initial investigation suggested it was an improvised explosive.

Also Saturday, Pakistan’s army said that security forces killed eight militants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Dera Ismail Khan district.

According to an official statement, the eight men died after an intense exchange of fire in the Friday night operation. The army alleged they were actively involved in activities against security forces and the targeted killing of civilians.

The statement said that weapons, ammunition, and explosives were recovered from the slain militants.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack in Lakki Marwat and offered his condolences to victims’ families. He praised the army for its operation in Dera Ismail Khan.
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ISLAMABAD — The Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada urged his officials to set aside their differences and serve Afghanistan properly, according to a written statement released Saturday ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

Public dissent within the Taliban is rare, but some senior figures have expressed their disagreement with the leadership’s decision making, especially the bans on female education.

Akhundzada, an Islamic scholar who almost never appears in public, rarely leaves the Taliban heartland in southern Kandahar province. He and his circle have been instrumental in imposing restrictions on women and girls that have sparked an international outcry and isolated the Taliban on the global stage.

His message was distributed in seven languages including Uzbek and Turkmen — the Taliban are courting cash-rich Central Asian countries for investment and legitimacy — and it touched on diplomatic relations, the economy, justice, charity and the virtues of meritocracy.

Akhundzada said Taliban officials should “live a brotherly life among themselves, avoid disagreements and selfishness.”

He said that the war against the Soviet invasion and communism failed due to disagreements within the Taliban and that they could not implement Shariah in Afghanistan due to these divisions.

While he mentioned education, he said nothing about reopening schools and universities for girls and women.

Nor did he refer to recent unconfirmed reports about him saying there would be a resumption of stoning Afghan women to death for adultery, a punishment previously carried out during the Taliban’s first period of rule, in the late 1990s.

Akhundzada in Saturday’s message said security did not come from “being tough and killing more; rather, security is aligned with Shariah and justice.”

Hassan Abbas, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington and author of the “Return of the Taliban,” said Akhundzada’s message sounded “largely reasonable” and was focused on governance and anti-corruption matters.

“I believe this message is carefully crafted to dispel the negative impression created by a recently released audio of his that gives a very dogmatic and regressive message, especially about public punishments and women rights,” Abbas told The Associated Press. “I think this new message is also intended as damage control.”

Also Saturday, the Taliban-controlled Supreme Court said six people, including a woman, were publicly flogged on adultery charges in eastern Logar province.
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ISLAMABAD — Pakistan on Saturday denounced Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh’s “provocative remarks” threatening to enter Pakistan and kill suspects who escape over its border after carrying out terrorist attacks in India.

Singh made the controversial remarks in an interview with an Indian TV news channel that aired Friday when asked for his reaction to a recent British media report accusing the Indian government of killing some 20 people in Pakistan since 2020.

“India’s assertion of its preparedness to extrajudicially execute more civilians, arbitrarily pronounced as ‘terrorists,’ inside Pakistan constitutes a clear admission of culpability,” said a Pakistani foreign ministry statement.

It said the Indian minister’s claims backed Islamabad’s “irrefutable evidence” linking New Delhi to an alleged campaign of “extrajudicial and transnational assassinations” on Pakistani soil.

Islamabad cautioned that Indian officials’ “myopic and irresponsible behavior” could put regional peace at risk.

Singh said in his interview that his government would give a “befitting reply” to “any terrorist from a neighboring country” who tries to disrupt peace or conducts “terrorist activities” in India. “If he escapes to Pakistan, we will go to Pakistan and kill him there,” he said.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported earlier this week, quoting interviews with Pakistani and Indian intelligence officials, that New Delhi had been plotting the assassinations of individuals in Pakistan as part of a wider strategy to eliminate anti-India “terrorists living on foreign soil.”

The newspaper said the killings were carried out by operatives of the Research and Analysis Wing, the Indian spy agency, which is directly controlled by the office of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi is running for a third term in office in elections later this month.

Last year, Canada and the United States accused India of killing or attempting to kill people in their respective territories.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in September that his government was pursuing “credible allegations” linking the Indian government to the assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada. New Delhi rejected the charges as “absurd and motivated.”

In November, Washington said it had thwarted an Indian plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader and announced charges against a person U.S. officials said had worked with India to orchestrate the attempted murder.

New Delhi has pledged to investigate any information it receives on the matter.

Pakistan’s traditionally troubled relations with India have deteriorated since a 2019 suicide bombing of a military convoy in the Indian-administered part of the disputed Kashmir region that killed 144 Indian soldiers.

The attack was reportedly claimed by a Pakistan-based outlawed militant group, prompting India to carry out aerial strikes against what it said were militant bases in the Pakistani-administered portion of Kashmir.

Islamabad rejected Indian claims of sheltering militants and denounced the Indian military attack. It then carried out retaliatory airstrikes against several targets in Indian-controlled Kashmir. During an ensuing skirmish, Pakistan shot down an Indian fighter jet and briefly held its pilot captive before returning him to India.
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Washington — Ukrainian officials are cultivating closer ties with India, pursuing mutual economic benefits while hoping to nudge the Asian giant away from its historic close ties with Kyiv’s war enemy, Russia.

Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba visited India on March 28-29, the first visit of a top Ukrainian diplomat to the country in seven years. Days before that, the countries’ presidents spoke by phone.

The primary task for Kuleba`s visit — Ukrainian Ambassador to India Oleksandr Polishchuk said in an interview with VOA — was to restore high-level political cooperation.

The parties agreed that a high-ranking Indian official will participate in a Global Peace Summit set for this summer in Switzerland with the goal of supporting Ukraine.

India will also work on a possible visit to Ukraine by its external affairs minister and organize other top-level mutual visits, he said. The parties also agreed to resume the work of the India-Ukraine Inter-Governmental Commission, inactive since 2018.

The two countries “agreed to restore the level of cooperation between our countries that existed prior to the full-scale war launched by Russia,” Kuleba wrote on X.

“Our immediate goal is to get trade back to earlier levels,” wrote his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

In an interview with the Financial Times (FT), Kuleba said that India could greatly benefit from expanding trade and technological ties with Ukraine and participate in post-war reconstruction.

Kuleba noted that India’s close ties with Russia are based on a “Soviet legacy” that is “evaporating.” One such legacy is India’s imports of Russian weapons, the share of which dropped from 76% in 2009-13 to 36% in 2019-2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Polishchuk said that since Russia cannot fulfill all of its obligations to supply new equipment and spare parts, India is trying to establish its own military production based on Western standards.

“Ukraine can partially meet the needs of the Indian armed forces, particularly the navy, since many warships use gas turbine engines produced in Ukraine,” said the ambassador.

In an interview with The Times of India newspaper, Kuleba also softened Ukraine’s position toward India’s import of Russian oil, saying that Ukraine doesn’t object to it because the deal was structured in a way that Russia can’t invest the profit “in the production of tanks, missiles, and weapons.”

Paradoxes of India-Ukraine relations

Mridula Ghosh, a lecturer at the Ukraine National University of Kyiv-Mohyla and a native of India, pointed to two paradoxes in the relations between the two countries.

First, she told VOA, that ties between India and Ukraine are strengthening while the U.S. Congress is unable to approve aid to Ukraine and the U.S. and some European countries use the assistance to Ukraine as a bargaining chip in electoral politics. In India, she said, foreign policy is not part of the electoral debates because it is of little interest to the voters.

Second, the warming of relations between the two countries on the highest level happened while Russia increased its propaganda and influence on Indian society.

“When the full-scale war began, society was ready to condemn this aggression. The authorities, on the contrary, reacted restrainedly. Now, many people in power and intellectual circles clearly and correctly understand what is happening in Ukraine. But the media began actively disseminating Russian propaganda,” Ghosh explained.

Mediator between Russia and Ukraine?

In New Delhi, Kuleba called on India to play a more active role in the peace process.

“With India’s more active involvement in this process, we expect that the number of countries looking at India and its role in this process will also grow,” Polishchuk said.

However, observers doubt that India could mediate between Ukraine and Russia or influence Moscow to end the war.

While India leaned closer to the U.S. and the West in recent years, it “will not undertake steps that would significantly affect Russia strategically, just as Russia would not take an adverse position to affect India strategically in favor of China or Pakistan,” said Nandan Unnikrishnan, a distinguished fellow at the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation to the South China Morning Post.

Former U.S. Consul General to India Katherine Hadda doubts that India would act as a mediator in a peace process where one of the parties is absent — Russia does not participate in summits based on the peace formula proposed by Ukraine.

“India has stressed that it will serve as a mediator [only] at both sides’ request,” said Hadda in the same article.

In a column for the Indian NDTV news outlet, Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London, writes that achieving peace in Eurasia is not India’s job.

“New Delhi would like to see a resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war soon. But ultimately, it is for the main protagonists in this conflict — Russia, Ukraine, and the West — to decide what kind of Eurasian security architecture they can live with.”

Since the beginning of the full-scale aggression, India has not condemned Russia’s actions, gas abstained from voting for Ukrainian initiatives at the U.N. and has not joined the sanctions against Russia. Still, Ghosh believes India is moving away from Moscow.

“The Indian elephant is slow but steady in reacting. At the beginning of the full-scale war, it was reluctant to make strong positional statements, but now it is reviewing many things. There is a decoupling from Russia.”  
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BANGKOK — Observers are expressing concern that deliveries of aid under Thailand’s new humanitarian aid program for war-torn Myanmar will be misused because of the role of the junta-run Myanmar Red Cross – which is distinct from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

U.N. agencies say fighting since the February 2021 coup has displaced some 2.4 million people and that a quarter of them are at risk of acute food insecurity. In a country of 54 million, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says 18.6 million need aid. Myanmar’s military has been accused of “brazen” war crimes and crimes against humanity in its war against the resistance, and researchers estimate it has killed thousands of civilians.

The 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries endorsed Thailand’s proposal for a “humanitarian corridor” to deliver aid to Myanmar through Thailand in January and the first convoy of 10 trucks,  bearing 4,000 aid packages of mostly food and water crossed into Myanmar on March 25 at the Thai border town of Mae Sot, where the Thai Red Cross handed the shipment over to its Myanmar counterpart.

Thai officials said at the handover ceremony the packages would reach some 20,000 people displaced around three towns in eastern Myanmar’s Karen state and that the program could expand to other areas if the first delivery went well.

However, aid groups and experts say relying on the military regime and affiliates, including the Myanmar Red Cross, to distribute aid to victims of the fighting puts the aid program at risk.

“This organization is handpicked and instructed by the military regime, so it is not a good idea [for them] to hand over the assistance to … the victims of the military regime,” said Sann Aung, executive director of the New Myanmar Foundation, a charity on the Thai-Myanmar border that helps families that have fled the fighting.

Thailand’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, which is spearheading the program, refused VOA’s requests for an interview.

Its reliance on the Myanmar Red Cross to dispense the deliveries inside Myanmar has many aid experts worried.

Adelina Kamal, a former head of ASEAN’s aid agency, the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance, said any aid outfit run by Myanmar’s military regime could not be trusted to dispense the aid fairly.

“In a conflict and crisis like Myanmar, how the aid is being given and who is behind the aid are often much more important than the aid itself. And if it is actually delivered by the one who initiated the crisis in the first place, there is a big probability that it is actually used as a tool in gaining popularity or … showing that they’re trying to help the population that they’ve tried to kill,” she said.

Kamal and others fear the junta may also “weaponize” the aid by directing it to communities it favors and away from those it does not. Many if not most of the displaced have taken shelter in parts of the country under the control of the armed groups the junta is fighting.

“When we talk about weaponization of aid, it can actually come in various forms … for example blocking access for aid, which actually was done by the military after Cyclone Mocha hit Rakhine state, or selecting who actually should receive the aid or targeting how and where the aid should be actually provided,” Kamal said.

A month after Cyclone Mocha slammed into western Myanmar’s Rakhine state in May of last year, the U.N. said the regime abruptly cut off humanitarian access to the area, “crippling life-saving aid distributions to affected communities.”

Sann Aung agreed that Myanmar’s Red Cross lacks the independence needed to ensure the aid will reach those who need it most.

“Humanitarian assistance … must be sent to the targeted areas without bias, without preference to any organization or anybody. But the Burma Red Cross, they are biased, they have to follow the instructions of the military regime,” he said, calling Myanmar by its former name.

“So, we are very afraid that humanitarian assistance can be used, for example, [for] the people that are supporting the military regime or … cronies,” he added.

Thailand has said ASEAN’s aid agency would monitor the deliveries to ensure the aid is doled out fairly.

Kamal, though, who ran the agency for four years until 2021, said it is ill-equipped for the role by design.

She said the agency is geared toward responding to natural disasters, not political crises like the one in Myanmar. Having ASEAN state officials on the agency’s governing board, including officials from Thailand and Myanmar’s junta, she said, means it is unlikely to be critical if significant problems arise.

Thailand says its aims for the aid corridor include encouraging peace talks between the junta and resistance.

Both sides have rejected any compromise to date, and the key role of the Myanmar Red Cross in the aid corridor is unlikely to turn the thinking of the resistance around, said Surachanee Sriyai, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute based in Thailand.

“They’re saying this is for humanitarian purposes, for humanitarian assistance. But when you do that and working with the Myanmar Red Cross — which everybody knows by now that this is part of the junta-controlled apparatus — how are you going to facilitate trust from the ethnic groups or what you would now call the resistance … forces?” she said.

“That trust cannot be created and it cannot be forced by external actors,” she added.

Myanmar’s so-called National Unity Government, a shadow government mainly including political leaders ousted by the coup and aiming to oust the junta, said in a statement to VOA that they “truly appreciate” Thailand’s new aid corridor.

However, lasting peace will come to Myanmar only when most of the population’s “fundamental grievances against military dictatorship are credibly addressed,” the NUG’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs added.

It did not suggest kicking the Myanmar Red Cross out of the aid corridor entirely but proposed a “parallel” plan involving the full cooperation of resistance groups as well to make sure the aid is distributed based strictly on need.

Aid groups and experts have echoed the need to involve the NUG, armed resistance and nongovernment charities on both sides of the border to ensure the aid reaches the most desperate and vulnerable. 
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Afghan cancer patients say they are struggling to enter Pakistan for treatment after the placement of tighter restrictions on cross-border travel. From Peshawar, Pakistan, VOA’s Muska Safi has the story, narrated by Bezhan Hamdard. Camera: Muska Safi.
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Ho Chi Minh City — A heatwave in Vietnam is worsening environmental conditions in the Mekong Delta region, and farmers and gig workers have told VOA the heat is causing grueling working conditions and cutting crop yields.

The heatwave is fueled by the El Nino weather pattern causing hotter and drier conditions in Vietnam. Le Dinh Quyet, head of the Southern Regional Hydro-Meteorological Center, told local news outlet VnExpress that peak temperatures hit the South early this year due to the El Nino and a heatwave that started early March is expected to continue through April and delay the start of the rainy season.

Vo Quang Tuong, a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City Open University specializing in Hydrology, told VOA by email April 2 that the El Nino is “expected to exacerbate extreme weather and climate events like heat waves, floods, and droughts.”

In Ho Chi Minh City, a driver with the Grab ride-hailing service in his 60s told VOA that the heat was difficult to bear midday while carrying passengers on his motorbike.

“You feel the heat reflecting from the asphalt and the sky,” he said in Vietnamese on March 8. “This combination makes the heat unbearable.”

Another Grab driver, in his 20s, told VOA the same day in Vietnamese that he starts working after 4:00 p.m. to stay out of the sun during the hottest hours. “I don’t think it is worth working under the crazy heat.. I don’t think we should sacrifice our health,” he said.

Decreased crop yields

Tuong, the Ho Chi Minh City lecturer said, “Vietnam should be prepared for low rainfall, leading to drought, saltwater intrusion, and water shortages.”

The soaring temperatures, lack of rainfall, and increased salinity are already posing challenges for farmers.

A 46-year-old selling vegetables at an outdoor market in Ho Chi Minh City on March 19 said that although he waters his crops three times daily, the soil dries quickly in the heat.

“This March is much hotter,” he said in Vietnamese. “My vegetables are dying from the heat. The crop yields dropped 30% to 40% compared to the past.”

In the Mekong Delta, the country’s southernmost region made up of 12 provinces and Can Tho City, saltwater is intruding into freshwater sources. 

According to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, a salinity rate of 4 grams per liter is expected to reach 24 to 40 miles inland between April 1 and 10 while most plants can only cope with one gram of salinity. The Delta is reliant on the Mekong River for fresh water, which flows through five countries before it reaches Vietnam, splits into nine tributaries and meets the sea. 

Local outlet VietnamNews reported that authorities are building dams, dredging canals, encouraging farmers to store water in ponds in their orchards, and setting up 77 free water supply sites in coastal Tien Giang province. 

A 42-year-old rice farmer in the Mekong Delta Province of Long An told VOA he expected crop yields will be 20% to 30% lower than normal this year.

“In other years, I did not have to add water to the rice field but this year I have to do it once every five to seven days,” he said, during a phone call in Vietnamese on March 20. 

“This March is too hot, my skin got burned. I have to be in the field from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. to work,” he said, adding that the majority of his day is spent extracting well water for his rice fields.

Resource competition

For Brian Eyler, co-lead of the Mekong Dam Monitor at the Stimson Center in Washington, the biggest threats to the Mekong Delta are caused by humans and complicated by China’s control of the largest dams and cooperation among the five lower Mekong countries. 

During a public talk in Ho Chi Minh City on March 19, Eyler said that decades of damming, sand mining, and groundwater extraction pose an existential threat to the river. 

“This is a river undergoing a heart attack,” he said of the disruption to the river’s natural ebb and flow.

Eyler said that out of the hundreds of dams built on the Mekong, the biggest are two Chinese hydropower dams which are large enough to “see from outer space” and make “severe changes” to the river.

Although there are solutions to restore the Mekong, Eyler said he sees shrinking space for hope. He said that cooperation is limited and although the Mekong River Commission was founded in 1957 to work with the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam to jointly manage the sustainable development of the river, the organization lacks power. 

“There’s not enough water to go around these days – resource competition is increasing,” Eyler told VOA.

A new Cambodian project could “drive a wedge between Cambodia and Vietnam,” according to Eyler. Cambodia plans to start building a 111-mile waterway, the Funan Techo Canal, which would connect Phnom Penh with key ports and cut off Vietnam’s grip on the shipping industry. ((https://www.voanews.com/a/villagers-near-proposed-canal-in-cambodia-worry-and-wait/7552864.html)) 

“Shared resources like the Mekong need to be governed in a smart way otherwise there’s a race to the bottom,” Eyler said. “It’s starting to really look like those last days are here in a very profound way.”
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HUALIEN, Taiwan — Rescuers in Taiwan faced the threat of further landslides and rockfalls in their search Friday for a dozen people still missing from this week’s earthquake, as the death toll rose to 12 and some of the stranded were brought to safety.

Searchers discovered two more bodies after Wednesday’s quake of magnitude 7.2 struck the sparsely populated, largely rural eastern county of Hualien, stranding hundreds in a national park as boulders barreled down mountains, cutting off roads.

As some 50 aftershocks rattled the area overnight, some felt as far away as Taipei, rescuers said about 400 people cut off in a luxury hotel in the Taroko Gorge national park were safe, with helicopters ferrying out the injured and bringing supplies.

“Rain increases the risks of rockfalls and landslides, which are currently the biggest challenges,” said Su Yu-ming, the leader of a search team helping the rescue effort.

“These factors are unpredictable, which means we cannot confirm the number of days required for the search and rescue operations.”

Taiwan’s fire department said two bodies were found in the mountains, but did not immediately update the death toll. It put the number of missing at 18, three of them foreigners of Australian and Canadian nationality.

It dropped from the list of missing an Indian national whose inclusion it called a mistake but did not elaborate.

A group of 50 hotel workers marooned on a road to the national park are now mostly safe.

“I am lucky to survive,” said David Chen, 63, a security manager at the hotel, after his rescue. “We were terrified when the earthquake first happened. We thought it was all over, all over, all over, because it was an earthquake, right?”

Rocks were still tumbling down nearby slopes as the group left, he added. “We had to navigate through the gaps between the falling rocks, with the rescue team out front.”

Chen’s 85-year-old mother wept in relief on being reunited with her son, as the family had not known for some time if he had survived.

“I was happy when he returned,” said the mother, Chen Lan-chih. “I didn’t sleep at all last night and couldn’t eat anything.”

The quake came a day before Taiwan began a long weekend holiday for the traditional tomb sweeping festival, when people head to their homes to spruce up ancestral graves.

Many others visit tourist spots, like Hualien, famed for its rugged beauty, but the earthquake has crushed business, with many bookings canceled, some businesses said.

“This is a disaster actually for us because no matter (whether) hotel, hostel, restaurants (everything) really depends on tourism,” said hostel owner Aga Syu, adding that her main concern was the well-being of guests. “I hope this won’t destroy their image of Hualien.”

Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is prone to earthquakes. More than 100 people were killed in a 2016 quake in its south, while one of magnitude 7.3 killed more than 2,000 in 1999.
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BANGKOK — Panicked passengers jumped into the sea to escape a raging ferry fire in the Gulf of Thailand early Thursday, and all 108 people on board were safe. 

The overnight ferry from Surat Thani province was about to arrive at Koh Tao, a popular tourist destination off the Thai coast, when one of the passengers suddenly heard a crackling sound and smelled smoke. 

Maitree Promjampa said he saw billowing smoke and fire less than five minutes later, and that was when people started shouting and rang the alarm. 

“We could barely get the life vests in time,” he told The Associated Press. “It was chaotic. People were weeping … I also teared up.” 

Of the 108 people on the ferry, 97 were passengers, Surat Thani officials said on Facebook. The province’s public relations department posted that everyone was rescued with no casualties. 

Videos showed people hurrying out of the ferry’s cabin while putting on life vests, as thick black smoke swept across the ferry. It was later engulfed in fire. 

Maitree, a Surat Thani resident who often travels to Koh Tao for work, said several boats came to their rescue around 20 minutes after they called for help, but the boats could not get close to the ferry out of fear of explosions. He said people had to jump into the sea to be rescued. Videos showed the ferry was also carrying several vehicles. 

“Everyone had to help themselves,” he said. 

Officials said the fire was since brought under control. It began in the engine, but the cause is being investigated. The ferry did not sink. 

The ferry from Surat Thani to Koh Tao carries both commuters and tourists. Koh Tao is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the coast. 
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ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban rulers Thursday sentenced two people to 15 years each for engaging in political activity, while a third person was flogged 30 times and jailed for similar charges.  

The de facto government in Kabul, yet to be formally recognized by the international community, has banned all political parties and activities nationwide, deeming them as unIslamic.

The Taliban Supreme Court said in a statement that Thursday’s judicial actions were carried out in the southern province of Kandahar. Without further details, it said a fourth individual was sentenced to eight months for “moral corruption.”

The reclusive Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, lives and governs the country from Kandahar, which is known as the birthplace and political base of his fundamentalist group.

“There is no Sharia basis for political parties to operate in the country. They do not serve the national interest, nor does the nation appreciate them,” Abdul Hakim Sharaee, the Taliban minister of justice, said while announcing the ban on political activities last year.

Until the Taliban seized power in August 2021, around 70 major and small political parties were formally registered with the ministry.  

Akhundzada is governing the impoverished, war-ravaged South Asian nation through his strict interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia. He has banned girls from attending schools beyond the sixth grade and forbidden most Afghan women from public and private workplaces.  

The Taliban have carried out flogging of hundreds of men and women in sports stadiums in the presence of onlookers for what they call “moral crimes” such as adultery, running away from home, and robbery. Several convicted murderers have also been executed publicly.  

Late last month, Akhundzada said he was determined to enforce the Islamic criminal justice system across Afghanistan, including the public stoning of women for adultery. The United Nations decried his announcement as disturbing.   

The U.N. and other global monitors have consistently criticized worsening human rights conditions after the Taliban takeover, demanding that they reverse their restrictions on women and civil liberty.

The Taliban took control of Afghanistan as the United States and NATO withdrew all their troops in August 2021 after nearly two decades of war with Taliban insurgents.
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BOSTON — In a scathing indictment of Microsoft corporate security and transparency, a Biden administration-appointed review board issued a report Tuesday saying “a cascade of errors” by the tech giant let state-backed Chinese cyber operators break into email accounts of senior U.S. officials including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

The Cyber Safety Review Board, created in 2021 by executive order, describes shoddy cybersecurity practices, a lax corporate culture and a lack of sincerity about the company’s knowledge of the targeted breach, which affected multiple U.S. agencies that deal with China.

It concluded that “Microsoft’s security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul” given the company’s ubiquity and critical role in the global technology ecosystem. Microsoft products “underpin essential services that support national security, the foundations of our economy, and public health and safety.”

The panel said the intrusion, discovered in June by the State Department and dating to May, “was preventable and should never have occurred,” and it blamed its success on “a cascade of avoidable errors.” What’s more, the board said, Microsoft still doesn’t know how the hackers got in.

The panel made sweeping recommendations, including urging Microsoft to put on hold adding features to its cloud computing environment until “substantial security improvements have been made.”

It said Microsoft’s CEO and board should institute “rapid cultural change,” including publicly sharing “a plan with specific timelines to make fundamental, security-focused reforms across the company and its full suite of products.”

In a statement, Microsoft said it appreciated the board’s investigation and would “continue to harden all our systems against attack and implement even more robust sensors and logs to help us detect and repel the cyber-armies of our adversaries.”

In all, the state-backed Chinese hackers broke into the Microsoft Exchange Online email of 22 organizations and more than 500 individuals around the world — including the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns — accessing some cloud-based email boxes for at least six weeks and downloading some 60,000 emails from the State Department alone, the 34-page report said. Three think tanks and foreign government entities, including a number of British organizations, were among those compromised, it said.

The board, convened by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in August, accused Microsoft of making inaccurate public statements about the incident — including issuing a statement saying it believed it had determined the likely root cause of the intrusion “when, in fact, it still has not.” Microsoft did not update that misleading blog post, published in September, until mid-March, after the board repeatedly asked if it planned to issue a correction, it said.

Separately, the board expressed concern about a separate hack disclosed by the Redmond, Washington, company in January, this one of email accounts — including those of an undisclosed number of senior Microsoft executives and an undisclosed number of Microsoft customers — and attributed to state-backed Russian hackers.

The board lamented “a corporate culture that deprioritized both enterprise security investments and rigorous risk management.”

The Chinese hack was initially disclosed in July by Microsoft in a blog post and carried out by a group the company calls Storm-0558. That same group, the panel noted, has been engaged in similar intrusions — compromising cloud providers or stealing authentication keys so it can break into accounts — since at least 2009, targeting companies including Google, Yahoo, Adobe, Dow Chemical and Morgan Stanley.

Microsoft noted in its statement that the hackers involved are “well-resourced nation state threat actors who operate continuously and without meaningful deterrence.”

The company said that it recognized that recent events “have demonstrated a need to adopt a new culture of engineering security in our own networks,” and added that it had “mobilized our engineering teams to identify and mitigate legacy infrastructure, improve processes, and enforce security benchmarks.”
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islamabad — The United Nations has warned that delivering life-saving aid to millions of people in Afghanistan could be “severely impeded” as donors have given only 6% of the humanitarian funding appeal for 2024.

Indrika Ratwatte, the humanitarian coordinator for the impoverished country, has urged the international community to redouble its commitment and increase financial support for the Afghan people.

According to a U.N. statement released on Tuesday, Ratwatte expressed “deep concern” over the current funding levels and noted that the U.N. had secured just $290 million of the $3.06 billion requirements.

“Such a significant gap between existing needs and available funding will severely impede the delivery of life-saving assistance,” the statement said.

U.N. agencies estimate that more than half of the population in Afghanistan needs humanitarian assistance, citing frequent natural disasters and years of war. They caution that the lack of donor funding is aggravating one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

The return of the fundamentalist Taliban to power in 2021 has compounded challenges facing humanitarian operations in the country.

De facto Afghan authorities have banned many women from public and private workplaces, including the United Nations, and forbidden teenage girls from attending schools beyond the sixth grade.

The Taliban have rejected persistent international calls to reverse curbs on women, saying their governance is aligned with Afghan culture and Islamic principles.

Critics blame Taliban restrictions for contributing to the humanitarian crisis and discouraging foreign donors.

The World Food Program stopped food assistance for 10 million Afghans in 2023 because of a massive funding shortfall.

The Taliban have dismissed claims their misogynistic policies are jeopardizing the flow of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, alleging donors are politicizing the aid.

“We don’t need their assistance. Spare us from their [foreigners’] harm,” Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a recent social media-hosted seminar.
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Seoul, South Korea — South Korea is investigating a vessel that allegedly violated United Nations sanctions on North Korea, Seoul’s foreign ministry said Wednesday, after it was reportedly seized over the weekend.

The investigation comes after Moscow last week used its veto power to effectively end official UN monitoring of sanctions on North Korea amid a probe into alleged arms transfers between Moscow and Pyongyang.

South Korean authorities seized the 3,000-ton cargo ship known as the DEYI on Saturday, which was not registered to a country, in waters off the country’s south coast, Seoul’s Yonhap news agency reported.

It was held while reportedly “en route to Russia from the North via China,” the agency report said, citing security sources.

“Our government is conducting an investigation, based on close cooperation with the United States, regarding the ship’s alleged violation of Security Council sanctions resolutions” against North Korea, Seoul’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“As the investigation is currently ongoing, it is difficult to provide details,” it added.

Thirteen people were aboard the ship, including a Chinese captain and Chinese and Indonesian crew members, Yonhap reported.

North Korea has been under mounting sanctions since 2006, put in place by the UN Security Council in response to its nuclear program.

Since 2019, Russia and China, the North’s traditional allies, have tried to persuade the Security Council to ease the sanctions, which have no expiration date.

Pyongyang has moved to take advantage of gridlock at the United Nations, ramping up missile tests and weapons development and declaring itself an “irreversible” nuclear power in 2022.

Russia’s recent ending of the UN monitoring is a major win for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to experts.
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WASHINGTON — Speculation has been spreading about the future, role, and place in China’s power structure of Premier Li Qiang since the unexplained cancellation of a routine press conference he was expected to hold last month. It was arguably the biggest news about Li, a figure largely unknown to the outside world, since he took office a year ago.

Analysts tell VOA that to better know Li, it is important to understand his place in China’s leadership structure – highly centralized under Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s tight rule – and the two men’s past together, which stretches back two decades.

Path to premiership

Li was born in 1959 in a rural area of China’s coastal province Zhejiang. His family is rooted in the farming communities of Zhejiang, and Li started out working as an industrial laborer at the age of 17 after he graduated from high school.

His background differs sharply from that of his boss, Xi Jinping, whose father was one of China’s first generation of Communist Party leaders. His background is also different from that of his immediate predecessor, Li Keqiang, who studied at the prestigious Beijing University and whose father was a local party official.

Li Qiang’s climb within the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party began after studying at an agricultural college in his home province. After graduating in 1982, Li did not work in factories or in the rural communities again.

From 2000 to 2002, Li presided over the Zhejiang provincial bureau of commerce. In 2002, at age 43, he rose to become the youngest Communist Party secretary of Wenzhou, known to be a capital of entrepreneurs, in his native Zhejiang province.

That same year, Xi Jinping moved from Fujian, another coastal province, to lead Zhejiang as its party secretary, directly overseeing Wenzhou and other municipalities.

It was during Xi’s tenure in Zhejiang, from 2002 until he left for Shanghai in 2007, that the two men had opportunities to know each other. From 2004 to 2005, Li served as the chief of staff to Zhejiang’s provincial Communist Party committee, essentially Xi’s chief of staff. His portfolio soon expanded to include membership in the provincial Communist Party standing committee, deputy provincial party secretary, head of the provincial political and legal affairs committee, and governor of Zhejiang.

Li was promoted to party secretary in neighboring Jiangsu province in 2016 and a year later to party secretary of Shanghai. He was placed in the premiership in March 2023.

“It is fair to say that all of his later promotions happened thanks to Xi,” Xia Ming, a China-born political science professor at the City University of New York, said in a phone interview with VOA.

Wenzhou model

“It’s worth noting that Li is closely tied to what is known as the ‘Wenzhou model,’ which resembles what is known in the West as liberal economics,” Xia added.

What enabled the private entrepreneur-led “Wenzhou model” to succeed, Xia said, was local Communist Party officials’ non-interference at the time, which stands in contrast with the party’s heavy-handedness today.

“Now that Li has joined Xi’s cabinet, whatever model he might have been tied to will have to succumb to the Xi model,” Hu Ping told VOA. Hu Ping is a native of China’s south-central Sichuan province and received his degrees from Beijing University in the 1980s, before entering into exile in the United States. Hu Ping is editor emeritus of China Spring magazine.

Steve Tsang, author of The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, explained to VOA in a phone interview from London how he sees the Xi model: “What Xi Jinping is trying to do is to create one country, one people, one ideology, one party, one leader,” Tsang said. 

Unlike Li Keqiang, who landed the job due to support from party elders, Tsang added, Li Qiang was hand-picked by Xi and is expected to do Xi’s bidding.

While Li Qiang’s appointment to succeed Li Keqiang is seen as an attempt to solidify the above model, there were signs that Li Qiang’s ties with the Chinese business community from his years working in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shanghai might be tapped to help Xi solve some of the country’s economic challenges. 

Potential mediator

The Economist reported in March of last year that Li Qiang had a hand in persuading one of China’s most famous businessmen, Jack Ma, to return to China. Ma, like Li, a native of Zhejiang, had reportedly fallen out with Xi amid crackdowns on private enterprises and Ma’s increasing popularity, both at home and abroad. Ma was said gone into self-imposed exile in Japan.

Li was “trying to reassure wealthy private entrepreneurs that, though they should know their place, they are still valued by the party,” according to the article.

Despite assurances to Ma and private entrepreneurs, China’s economy continues to face big challenges, including falling foreign direct investment and outflow of capital.

Li Qiang’s predecessor, Li Keqiang, was known for his straight talk on China’s economy and calling for a more domestic welfare-centered approach, in contrast to the state power-centric and expansionist model put forth by Xi. 

In May 2020, Li Keqiang told reporters at the National People’s Congress press conference that more than 40 percent of China’s population of 1.4 billion live on $143 a month, remarks seen as a rebuke of the official line that poverty has been eliminated all throughout the country under Xi’s leadership.

Li Keqiang even developed an index for measuring China’s economic growth that was deemed more reliable than local government figures because it looked at railway cargo volume, electric consumption and loans disbursed by banks.

Li Qiang, who stepped into Li Keqiang’s role a year ago, is widely seen as a Xi protégé whose key job is doing the bidding of China’s leader. Whether that might include other mediation efforts on behalf of Xi in China’s political and economic power struggles remains to be seen. 

“To be a middleman, or power broker, you need to have a certain amount of sway on both sides,” said City University of New York’s Xia Ming. Putting his loyalist credentials aside, Xia said Li is also under pressure to show his ability to take care of the Chinese Communist Party’s pocketbook. 

Mao Zedong’s old saying that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun has since been amended, Xia adds. To stay in power, the money bag is a key factor as well.

 
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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Wednesday it tested another new hypersonic intermediate-range missile powered with solid propellants as it continues to expand its nuclear and missile program in the face of deepening tensions with neighbors and the United States.

The report by North Korean state media came a day after the South Korean and Japanese militaries detected the North launching the missile from an inland area around its capital toward its eastern sea.

North Korean state media said the test was supervised by leader Kim Jong Un, who described the missile – named Hwasong-16B – as a key piece of his nuclear war deterrent, which he vowed to further build up to counter his “enemies,” a reference to the United States, South Korea and Japan.

Kim said the North has now developed nuclear-capable, solid-fuel systems for “all the tactical, operational and strategic missiles with various ranges,” the Korean Central News Agency said.

In recent years, North Korea has been focusing on developing more weapons with built-in solid propellants. Those weapons are easier to move and hide and can be launched quicker than liquid-propellant missiles, which need to be fueled before launch and cannot stay fueled for long periods of time.

Since 2021, the North has been testing hypersonic weapons designed to exceed five times the speed of sound. If perfected, such systems could potentially pose a challenge to regional missile defense systems because of their speed and maneuverability.

However, it’s unclear whether the North’s hypersonic vehicles consistently maintained a desired speed exceeding Mach 5 during tests in 2021 and 2022. During Tuesday’s test, the missile’s hypersonic glide warhead, after being separated from the launch rocket, reached a peak altitude of 101 kilometers (62 miles) and flew about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) while performing various flight maneuvers before landing in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, the KCNA said.

The South Korean and Japanese militaries had assessed that the missile flew around 600 (372 miles) although Japan’s Defense Ministry announced a similar apogee with the North Korean report.

The North had also tested a purported hypersonic IRBM in January, which came years after it flight-tested liquid-fuel IRBMs. Experts say such weapons if perfected are potentially capable of reaching remote U.S. targets in the Pacific, including the military hub of Guam.

While North Korea had initially tested its hypersonic warheads with liquid-fuel systems, the ability to load them on solid-fuel rockets would allow for faster launches and operation, said Chang Young-keun, a missile expert at South Korea’s Research Institute for National Strategy.

“North Korea, in declaring that it has fully accomplished the nuclear weaponization of its missiles, also emphasized its commitment to arm its hypersonic missiles with nuclear weapons,” Chang said. “North Korea’s development of hypersonic IRBMs targets Guam, which hosts U.S. military bases, and even Alaska.”

Tensions in the region have risen since 2022 as Kim used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a distraction to accelerate his testing of missiles and other weapons. The United States and South Korea have responded by expanding their combined training and trilateral drills involving Japan and sharpening their deterrence strategies built around strategic U.S. assets.

While supervising Tuesday’s test, Kim called for his country to further expand its nuclear and missile program to acquire “overwhelming power capable of containing and controlling” his enemies, who have “recently run higher fever in boosting their military alliance and staging all sorts of war drills.”

Hours after the launch, Seoul’s Defense Ministry announced that South Korea, the United States and Japan conducted a combined aerial exercise above waters near Jeju Island that involved at least one nuclear-capable U.S. B-52 bomber.

The United States in recent months has been increasing its deployment of strategic assets to the region, also including aircraft carriers and missile-firing submarines, in a show of force against North Korea.
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taipei, taiwan — An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 hit Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, on Wednesday morning, the Taiwan central weather administration said. 

The strong quake knocked out power in several parts of the city, according to a Reuters witness. 

Japan issued an evacuation advisory for the coastal areas of the southern prefecture of Okinawa after a powerful earthquake triggered a tsunami warning. 

Tsunami waves of up to 3 meters were expected to reach large areas of Japan’s southwestern coast, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The warning came after a very shallow earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.5 struck in the ocean near Taiwan.  

A 30 cm tsunami reached Yonaguni Island at 9:18 a.m. (0018 GMT), JMA said. 

Japan was rocked by its deadliest quake in eight years on New Year’s Day when a 7.6 magnitude temblor struck in Ishikawa prefecture, on the western coast. More than 230 people died in the quake that left 44,000 homes fully or partially destroyed.  

Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world’s most seismically active areas. Japan accounts for about one-fifth of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater. 

On March 11, 2011, the northeast coast was struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the strongest quake in Japan on record, and a massive tsunami.
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ISLAMABAD — Russia said Tuesday that it is engaged in an “active dialogue” with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and is working toward removing them from Moscow’s list of terrorist organizations. 

“The fact is that this is our neighboring country. In one form or another, we maintain communication with them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to Russian news agency TASS. 

“We have to resolve pressing issues, which also requires dialogue. In fact, we are in contact with them just like everyone else,” Peskov stated. “They are actually the ones who are in power in Afghanistan.” 

He did not elaborate, but his statement came just days after gunmen stormed a concert hall outside the Russian capital and killed at least 144 people, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in the country in two decades. 

Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the bloodshed, with U.S. intelligence officials saying the terror group’s Afghan branch, IS-Khorasan, was behind it. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin quickly tied the attack to Ukraine — claims the neighboring country and the United States strongly rejected.  

“You have said yourself that the option is under consideration. Let’s wait until this process ends,” Peskov said when asked for his response to a Russian Foreign Ministry statement on Monday about possibly removing the Taliban from the terrorist blacklist.

The Taliban condemned the Moscow attack as “a blatant violation of all human standards” and urged regional countries to take “a coordinated, clear and resolute position” against such incidents. 

“Daesh, which has targeted civilians in Afghanistan and other regions of the world as well, again clearly demonstrated through this incident that it is a group in the hands of intelligence agencies aimed at defaming Islam and posing a threat to the entire region,” stated the Taliban Foreign Ministry, using a local acronym for IS-Khorasan. 

The Taliban reclaimed power in 2021 after the U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan, but they remain on a list of organizations Russia designates as terrorists.  

No foreign country has formally recognized the government in Kabul, citing a lack of political inclusiveness and sweeping restrictions on Afghan women’s access to education and work. 

Zamir Kabulov, the Russian special presidential envoy for Afghanistan, told TASS earlier this week that Moscow had invited a Taliban delegation to take part in an international economic forum, called “Russia – Islamic World: KazanForum,” in the city of Kazan from May 14 to 19. 

Russia is among several regional and neighboring countries that have retained their diplomatic presence in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. The U.S. and Western countries at large have since moved their Afghan diplomatic missions to Qatar. 
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