New Delhi — India’s navy said Friday it intercepted a fishing vessel in the Arabian Sea after a suspected hijacking, its latest anti-piracy operation after a spate of regional attacks on shipping. 

Two Indian vessels had approached the Iranian-flagged FV Al Kamar 786 around 165 kilometers (103 miles) southwest of the Yemeni island of Socotra, not far from the eastern tip of Somalia. 

An operation was “currently underway by the Indian Navy towards rescue of hijacked FV & its crew,” the navy said in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter. 

The statement added that nine armed pirates were believed to have taken over the vessel. It did not say how many crew members were aboard. 

India’s navy has been deployed continuously off Somalia since 2008. 

It stepped up anti-piracy efforts last year following a surge in maritime assaults, including in the Arabian Sea and by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. 

This month, the Indian navy rescued 19 crew members off the Maltese-flagged cargo ship MV Ruen, which had been hijacked by Somali pirates in December.  

On Saturday, it brought 35 Somali nationals accused of the hijacking to Mumbai aboard the warship INS Kolkata, which had led the rescue operation, to face a piracy trial in an Indian court. 
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WASHINGTON — What is normally a time of celebration is turning to one of anxiety, as counterterrorism officials are on high alert for the Islamic State terror group to build on its deadly Moscow attack with new plots targeting Easter.

Already, some European countries have issued heightened threat alerts while increasing security. Italy, in particular, cites the approach of the Easter holiday as one reason for additional concern.

The latest propaganda from Islamic State, also known as IS or ISIS, has only served to reinforce such worries.

In a statement Thursday marking 10 years since IS first announced its now-defunct caliphate in Iraq and Syria, spokesperson Abu Huthaifa al-Ansar called on followers to target “crusaders,” especially in Europe and in the United States.

Even in its claim of responsibility for the attack near Moscow, the group’s Amaq news agency said its operatives have targeted a gathering of Christians. And this past January, IS claimed responsibility for an attack on a Catholic church in Istanbul that killed one person.

IS also has a history of attacking Christians celebrating Easter, notably claiming responsibility for Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka in April 2019 that killed more than 300 people and wounded at least 500 more.

“Easter and/or Easter-related activities would absolutely be high on the hit list for a potential attack,” said Colin Clarke, director of research at the global intelligence firm the Soufan Group.

“ISIS is on a roll, and there could be a real push to sustain the momentum by launching another high-profile assault, especially on a symbolic target,” Clarke told VOA. “I’d also be concerned about Orthodox Easter the following weekend, and the logical place to look would be where ISIS has struck Christian targets before.”

‘Substantial’ threat risk

Other countries, while acknowledging the threat, say they have long been on high alert for such plots and that sounding additional alarms will do little good.

“The security authorities’ risk assessment of the Islamist threat in Germany has not yet changed as a result of the terrible attack in Moscow,” a German government spokesperson told VOA, speaking on the condition they not be named.

“It was already high before,” the official added, calling the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate “currently the most aggressive” of the terror group’s branches while adding it “currently poses the greatest Islamist threat in Germany.”

Britain has taken a similar stance.

“The threat level to the U.K. from terrorism is already currently substantial, meaning an attack is likely,” a spokesperson told VOA, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This assessment has not changed.”

In the United States, as well, nothing has changed.

Last May, U.S. officials warned the country was stuck in a “heightened threat environment.” In September 2023, the Department of Homeland Security’s annual threat assessment said the U.S. was at “high risk” for a terror attack, specifically pointing to the threat from the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, also known as IS-Khorasan, ISIS-K, or ISKP.

“We remain vigilant against the evolving threat posed by terrorist groups, including ISIS-K,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Thursday. “We have maintained an unwavering focus.”

US assessment

The Pentagon issued a similar assurance.

“The Department of Defense has not taken its eye off of ISIS,” press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said Thursday in response to a question from VOA.

Recent U.S. intelligence assessments have portrayed IS as a terror organization that may be at a turning point, underscoring what the intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, issued earlier this month, described as “cascading leadership losses in Iraq and Syria.”

But the same report warned that “regional affiliates will continue to expand.” And while the U.S. report cited a shift to Africa, U.S. and other current and former Western officials see IS leadership in Afghanistan as taking on a more prominent role.

“Most plots that we are aware of go back to ISIS-K,” a former senior Western counterterrorism official told VOA earlier this year.

There has been long-running concern about IS-Khorasan’s efforts to expand its sphere of influence beyond Afghanistan.

Some Western officials and regional observers warn that as far back as 2021, the IS Afghan affiliate was seeking to seed Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with small but highly capable cells and networks that could serve as the basis for future attacks.

Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who specializes in jihadism, said, “There was a large cohort of Central Asian foreign fighters that went to Syria last decade when IS was controlling territory there. So, those that survived were likely a backbone to this broader facilitation and plot/attack network.

“There was also a smaller cohort of Central Asians that joined up with ISKP in Afghanistan,” Zelin told VOA. “Then there are Central Asian migrant communities in Russia that IS can recruit from in the same way they do with Arab migrant populations in Western Europe.”

Focus on Central Asia

One humanitarian official in Central Asia, who asked that their name be withheld because of fears they could be targeted, told VOA that IS has managed to establish small, high-quality cells and networks across the region.

“The networks still exist, but they are not going to be recruiting more [big] numbers,” the official said, adding that there are signs that “the recruitment might happen more outside of Central Asia.”

“The vulnerabilities and push factors [that move someone to join IS] are a lot stronger in Russia, especially in light of the current situation in Russia toward migrants,” the official said, noting those same factors exist across many European countries that host Central Asian diaspora communities.

There are indications that IS-Khorasan has found ways to leverage other terror groups.

said Andrew Mines, a program specialist at the United States Institute of Peace, said, “ISKP doesn’t just attract foreign recruits, it also cooperates with Central Asian-dominated groups like IMU [Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan] and … ETIM/TIP [Turkistan Islamic Party] to a more limited extent.”

Mines told VOA that IS-Khorasan has proven to be adept at maximizing its resources.

“ISKP has shown it is capable of receiving, training and deploying assets within and outside of Afghanistan, as well as using the ‘virtual planner’ and inspiration attack planning models.”

Current and former officials say it is those types of capabilities, combined with high-profile attacks, such as the one near Moscow and January’s double suicide bombing in Kerman, Iran, that make IS-Khorasan a formidable threat even as some data suggest the affiliate’s exploits in Afghanistan itself have been on the decline.

The IS-Khorasan attack in Russia, along with foiled plots in Germany late last year, both of which appear to have relied on ethnic Tajiks, could also be an indication that group’s efforts to build an extended network is coming to fruition.

“This could even be the first sort of real flowering of a developed ISIL-Khorasan capability,” according to Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former senior U.N. counterterrorism official, using another acronym for the IS Afghan affiliate.

And Fitton-Brown, now a senior adviser for the New York and Berlin-based Counter Extremism Project, worries IS leaders will want to capitalize on the momentum they likely see from this year’s successful terror attacks.

“They got that attention for Iran. They’ve got a lot more attention for doing it in Russia. And they would get even more attention if they could bring off something on this scale in Western Europe,” he told VOA.

“But whether they can bring it off is a question, because up to now there have been a lot of abortive attempts where they’ve had active terrorist plots in Western Europe, particularly in Germany, but they’ve been detected and prevented and disrupted,” Fitton-Brown said.
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Seoul, South Korea — The future of international efforts to restrain Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program is in question after Russia voted on Thursday to dismantle a body meant to monitor the implementation of United Nations sanctions against North Korea. 

Since its creation in 2009, the so-called “Panel of Experts” has played a key role in attempts to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions against North Korea. Most notably, the eight-member panel produced regular reports outlining alleged violations of U.N. sanctions, keeping the issue in the public eye and prompting follow-up reporting by independent news outlets. 

Though Security Council cooperation on North Korea had already eroded, and North Korea has steadily found ways to evade existing sanctions, the dismantling of the expert panel could remove remaining barriers to North Korea’s weapons program and undermine global non-proliferation efforts. 

How did we get to this point? 

The Security Council first imposed sanctions on North Korea following its initial nuclear test in 2006. It expanded the measures as North Korea ramped up illicit weapons development in subsequent years. 

As permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council, Russia and China voted for the North Korea sanctions. But as their respective ties with the United States deteriorate, both countries are calling for sanctions to be eased or lifted, leading to questions about whether the expert panel will survive. 

During recent negotiations, Russia and China pushed to add “sunset” clauses to at least some of the North Korea sanctions, which would allow them to expire after a fixed amount of time if a consensus is not reached on their extension, according to several media reports. 

With those efforts having apparently failed, Russia on Thursday voted against renewing the annual mandate of the expert panel, while China abstained from the vote. Without unanimous support, the panel’s mandate will expire on April 30. 

Why did Russia kill the UN sanctions panel?  

For years, Russia has argued that the North Korea sanctions are outdated and counterproductive. In Moscow’s view, not only did the sanctions fail to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons, they instead created a humanitarian crisis in the country.  

U.S. officials disagree, saying North Korea is to blame for spending vast sums of money on weapons rather than food for its people. 

In recent years, Russia has grown bolder about conducting activities that may explicitly violate U.N. sanctions. Most notably, U.S. officials say Russia has imported at least 10,000 containers filled with North Korean munitions, including ballistic missiles, for use in its war in Ukraine. 

Both Russia and North Korea deny the weapons transfers, despite mounting evidence in the form of commercial satellite photos appearing to show repeated deliveries of North Korean weapons. 

Britain’s Financial Times newspaper this week reported that Russia also started supplying oil directly to North Korea in defiance of U.N. sanctions. In 2017, the Security Council imposed a strict limit on the amount of oil products North Korea can import. 

By effectively killing the panel, Russia may be trying to make it easier to hide its sanctions-violating activities with North Korea, suggested U.S., South Korean and other Western diplomats who made public statements after Russia’s Thursday vote. 

“This is almost comparable to destroying a CCTV (closed circuit television) to avoid being caught red-handed,” said Hwang Joon-kook, South Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations. 

Russia itself has hinted at selfish motives. Asked Friday whether the vote means Russia has changed its policy regarding enforcement of U.N. sanctions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “Such a position is more in line with our interests. The talk was about a group of experts. The issue is that we do not agree with the practical aspects of this project.” 

Will this move make it easier for North Korea to evade sanctions?  

Possibly, according to many Western diplomats and analysts. One reason: The effort to gather and disseminate information about sanctions evasion could become more complicated. 

Expert panel reports included “vast amounts of exclusive information from member states … as well as correspondence, photos and data obtained through panel communication with relevant parties,” Chad O’Carroll wrote on NK News, a North Korea-focused website he founded. “In many cases, journalists, private companies and individual governments lack the authority or clout to secure such materials.” 

In the absence of the expert panel, Washington and its allies are vowing to find workarounds. At a briefing Thursday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the United States will continue to work to secure information about North Korea’s “pursuit of illegal weapons.” 

“And we will continue to work to make that information public and make it available to other members of the Security Council,” Miller added. 

Earlier this week, the United States and South Korea announced the formation of a task force meant to prevent North Korea from obtaining oil in violation of U.N. sanctions, which are imposed indefinitely. 

Trilateral cooperation among the United States, Japan and South Korea may also increase, according to Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. 

“And more evidence of sanctions violations could be released to the public since the restraining influence Russia and China had over headline-generating reports will be gone with the U.N. panel of experts,” he added. 

However, it is not clear if those smaller initiatives can replace the pressure created by a unified Security Council. If they cannot, many fear North Korea will more easily find the financial means to accelerate its nuclear buildup — perhaps even emboldening other countries to follow its example. 

Hwang, the South Korean ambassador, said Russia’s vote represents a setback to the international non-proliferation regime. 

“A permanent member of the Security Council and depository of the non-proliferation treaty completely abandoned its responsibility,” he said.
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Washington — Last week’s concert hall massacre in Russia demonstrates not only the capacity of Islamic State-Khorasan to stage complex attacks beyond its base in South-Central Asia, but also the inability of the Taliban and regional countries to counter its threats, experts say.

The Islamic State group claimed the attack on a music venue near Moscow Friday that killed 143 people and wounded more than 180. Although it was the Islamic State, not its offshoot IS-Khorasan, that took the responsibility, U.S. officials said that IS-Khorasan was behind the murderous rampage.

The Taliban’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, condemned the attack “in the strongest terms,” describing it as “a blatant violation of all human standards.”

“The regional countries must take a coordinated, clear & resolute position against such incidents directed at regional destabilization,” Balkhi said Friday on X, previously known as Twitter.

The Islamic State, in a 30-page statement published on social media platforms and sent to journalists Monday, praised the attack and mocked the Taliban for seeking relations with the United States, Russia, China and other countries.

Homayoun Mohtaat, former Afghan deputy ambassador to Russia, told VOA that the attack made it clear that IS has the ability “to launch complex attacks that could inflict heavy casualties.”

Using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State, he said the “Daesh attack shows the group’s maneuverability and ability to move from one place to another.”

Mohtaat said that IS-Khorasan, also known as ISKP, has been able to expand its activities within the region and beyond.

“But we can see that Afghanistan, because of its geopolitical location, has become an operational platform for Daesh,” he said. “It allowed the group to expand its operation to the Central Asian states and beyond, in Russia.”

He said that the Taliban “neither has the will nor resources” to fight IS-Khorasan.

The Taliban, however, have claimed success against the IS affiliate in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s defense minister, Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, claimed at a press conference in Kabul in December that because of their operations against IS-Khorasan, the number of the group’s attacks decreased by 90%.

But a U.N. report released in January said IS-Khorasan “continued to pose a major threat in Afghanistan and the region.”

In another report released in June 2023, the U.N. estimated that IS-Khorasan’s fighters and their families number between 4,000 and 6,000, including citizens of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and Central Asian countries and a small number of Arabs who traveled from Syria to Afghanistan.

Kamran Bokhari, senior director of the Eurasian Security and Prosperity Portfolio at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, told VOA that IS-Khorasan is taking advantage of “weak security, weak governance and strategic vacuums” in the region.

“Afghanistan is the strategic vacuum,” Bokhari said. “Yes, the Taliban are there, but it’s not a robust state. The Taliban regime is still trying to consolidate power. Pakistan is in meltdown mode on all levels — political, social, economic and security wise. And Iran has its challenges internally.”

IS-Khorasan is a major rival to the Taliban and has claimed responsibility for several high-profile attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban took power.

In January, the group said it was behind twin blasts in the Iranian city of Kerman that killed at least 95 people. Iranian Intelligence traced back the attacks to the Tajik fighters of IS-Khorasan.

Russia has said that its security forces arrested four Tajik nationals for allegedly carrying out the Moscow massacre.

Attacks will help recruitment

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA that the attacks in Russia and Iran would “certainly” help IS-Khorasan to recruit more militants.

“Those spectacular attacks have a great effect on recruiting. … So, they might be able to poach some fighters from [other extremist] groups, the disaffected or those who want to see the result now,” Roggio said.

The United Nations says that there are around 20 militant groups active in Afghanistan.

Most of these, including al-Qaida and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, have close ties to the Taliban. But even before seizing power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban considered IS-Khorasan as an adversary and conducted military operations against the group.

Riccardo Valle, Islamabad-based analyst and director of research for The Khorasan Diary, told VOA that the Taliban have been “successful” in their fight against IS-Khorasan.

The Taliban “were able to decapitate the Islamic State leadership in several instances. They have been able to infiltrate Islamic State in Afghanistan and thus it has been able to prevent several attacks,” said Valle.

But he said the group has been able to move across Turkey, Central Asia and Afghanistan. “This is coupled with the fact that [the relationship] between Afghanistan and Pakistan is extremely tense,” which makes it easy for the militants to move across that border.

Pakistan accuses the Taliban of harboring and supporting TTP fighters involved in attacks in Pakistan, a charge the Taliban deny.

Valle said that the Taliban alone would not be capable of “tackling the issue” of containing IS-Khorisan.

“The real threat posed by the ISKP in Afghanistan and the whole region is fueling instability within the region, fueling mutual distrust between the countries and posing a major threat to the civilians,” Valle said.

Ali Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister, told VOA he believes the threats will continue until the Taliban cut ties with all foreign extremist groups in Afghanistan.

“During their war against the republic, they allied with many extremist groups. These groups supported them. Now they are in [Afghanistan], and they cannot cut their ties with them,” he said.

Jalali said that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has not brought stability and the formation of a ‘lawful’ government. “And unless there is [political] stability, this will continue.”

This story originated in VOA’s Afghan Service.
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WASHINGTON — After nearly three decades in Hong Kong, VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Asia has closed its physical bureau in the city and no longer has full-time staff there due to the declining press freedom landscape, the outlet announced in a statement Friday.

“Concerns about the safety of RFA staff and reporters in Hong Kong have led us to restructure our on-the-ground operations there. While RFA will retain its official media registration, at this time we no longer have full-time personnel in Hong Kong and have closed our physical bureau,” RFA President Bay Fang said in the statement.

The announcement comes less than a week after Hong Kong enacted Article 23, a national security law that media watchdogs warn will further erode press freedom in the city.

The new law is a domestic extension of the controversial national security law that Beijing imposed in 2020 that criminalized secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. Article 23 builds on that legislation to also criminalize acts such as espionage, external interference and theft of state secrets.

Press freedom groups, including Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, expressed concern about the new law.

“By transposing the national security provisions imposed by Beijing into Hong Kong’s domestic laws, the government hopes to restore the illusion of a territory governed by the rule of law while carrying on its campaign against independent voices,” Cedric Alviani, RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director, said in a statement before the law was enacted.

“We urge democracies to build up pressure on Chinese authorities so that full press freedom is restored in the territory,” Alviani continued.

RFA, which opened its Hong Kong bureau in 1996, specifically cited Article 23 as a reason behind its departure from the city.

“Actions by Hong Kong authorities, including referring to RFA as a ‘foreign force,’ raise serious questions about our ability to operate in safety with the enactment of Article 23,” Fang said in the statement.

VOA has reached out to the Hong Kong Security Bureau for a comment.

For years, Hong Kong was lauded for its lively and free media environment, but the city’s press freedom, along with other civil liberties, quickly deteriorated following the introduction of the national security law in 2020.

Hong Kong and Chinese authorities have denied that the law is harming Hong Kong’s media environment and instead say it has helped stabilize the city.

The threats facing independent media in Hong Kong are exemplified by the ongoing national security trial of pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai.

The 76-year-old British national stands accused of “collusion with foreign forces” under the national security law and sedition, both of which he rejects. If convicted, Lai faces life in prison.

Hong Kong officials have denied that the trial against Lai is unfair, but press freedom groups and Western governments have condemned the charges as politically motivated and baseless.

Although RFA is physically leaving Hong Kong, the outlet said it would continue to cover the city.

“This restructuring means that RFA will shift to using a different journalistic model reserved for closed media environments,” Fang said in the statement.

“For our audiences in Hong Kong and mainland China, who rely on RFA’s timely, uncensored journalism: rest assured, our programming and content will continue without disruption,” she said.
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washington — Millions of Turkish citizens will head to the polls Sunday to elect mayors and local administrators for their cities and districts.

The elections come less than a year after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured his term for another five years last May.

“Now we have 2024 ahead of us,” Erdogan said in his victory speech, adding, “Are you ready to win both Uskudar [a district in Istanbul where Erdogan’s personal residence is] and Istanbul in the local elections in 2024?”

Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) aims to win back key cities, including Turkey’s largest, Istanbul, and its capital, Ankara, which it lost to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 2019 through its alliance with the nationalist IYI Party.

Istanbul race

Winning Istanbul and Ankara, two cities that account for a quarter of Turkey’s population, gave the CHP a key position in power for the past five years.

Some analysts observe that the Istanbul race will be one of the main contested races.

“This election largely revolves around Istanbul. In the presidential elections, [opposition alliance candidate] Kemal Kilicdaroglu received more votes than Erdogan in both rounds in Istanbul,” political scientist Ismet Akca told VOA.

Istanbul, with its 15 million population, is symbolically important for political parties. An old saying in Turkish politics – “Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey” – was used by Erdogan a couple of times. Early in his career Erdogan was the city’s mayor, from 1994 to 1998.

The current Istanbul mayor and CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu was considered one of the possible vice presidents if the opposition alliance had won the May 2023 parliamentary and presidential elections.

However, after Erdogan’s victory in May 2023, the opposition alliance, headed by CHP and IYI, collapsed. The two parties are running their own candidates in the local elections.

Also, new political parties, including the center-right DEVA, the far-right Victory Party and the Islamist New Welfare Party, have emerged over the past five years, and they will compete in the Istanbul race with their own candidates.

In the 2019 election, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP, which is using a new name, DEM Party) did not announce a candidate and supported the opposition alliance’s Imamoglu. However, this year, the DEM Party has campaigned for prominent Kurdish politician Meral Danis Bestas, its candidate for Istanbul.

Erdogan’s AKP selected Murat Kurum, 47, former minister of environment and urbanization, who was one of the leading figures in the government’s response to the February 2023 earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in southeastern Turkey.

Main opposition CHP has Imamoglu, 52, seeking a second term. Already one of the most prominent figures in Turkey’s opposition, he is expected to run for president in 2028 if he wins.

With the lack of a broader alliance and Kurdish votes, Imamoglu is facing a tough race against Kurum, as Erdogan and his Cabinet officials are quite active in his campaign.

Erdogan’s ‘last election’

During a meeting of the Turkish Youth Foundation on March 8, Erdogan, 70, asked for support in the local elections, saying, “This is a final for me; under the mandate given by the law, this is my last election.”

“The eyes of the entire Islamic world are on Turkey. What will happen in Turkey? What result will the AKP get in these elections?” the president continued.

Erdogan came to power in 2002 and served as prime minister until 2014, when he became the first president elected by the public. He was re-elected in June 2018 and May 2023.

The Turkish constitution, which was last amended in 2017, enables the president to serve only two terms of five years. However, according to Article 116, if the parliament decides to repeat the elections during the president’s second term, the president may run for election again.

Erdogan hinted in November 2023 that his party aimed to work on a new constitution. Political scientist Akca thinks Erdogan’s statement was meant to consolidate his party’s voters.

“Erdogan does not want to lose this election to Imamoglu for the second time. The latest elections reveal that the lower classes and young people dissatisfied with the AKP are looking for other options,” Akca told VOA. Many of those voters have shifted allegiance from AKP to the Islamist New Welfare Party.

“The president is trying to overcome this problem with his emphasis on the Islamist cause and his speech with a high emotional tone.”

Gonul Tol, director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program, said Erdogan is involved “as if he were the one on the ballot box.”

“So he is intervening in the electoral process so often and attacking the incumbent, CHP Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, almost on a daily basis. It sounds like this is turning into a referendum on Erdogan, which I personally believe is a bad strategy,” Tol said Thursday in a webinar.

Kurdish votes  

Several prominent Kurdish politicians, including Ahmet Turk, Leyla Zana and the imprisoned former HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas, have recently named Erdogan as one of the vital actors in the solution to the conflict with the Kurds.

“Our door is closed to terrorists and those who play a political game under the guidance of a terrorist organization,” Erdogan said Wednesday while campaigning in Diyarbakir.

Some analysts think that Erdogan ended the possibility of a peace process.

“Considering Erdogan’s speech, I do not expect anything like a new compromise, negotiation or a meeting between DEM Party and Erdogan,” Reha Ruhavioglu, director of the Diyarbakir-based Kurdish Studies Center, told VOA.

The Turkish government says the DEM Party has links with the PKK, which the United States, European Union and Ankara have designated as a terrorist group. The party denies this allegation.

In 2019, the then-HDP won 65 municipalities, but later, the mayors of at least 48 municipalities were sacked over terror accusations and placed under the control of government-appointed trustees.

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service. VOA Turkish’s Hilmi Hacaloglu and Mahmut Bozarslan contributed from Istanbul and Diyarbakir.
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A space launch aborted only to find success days later. Plus, Japan makes a push into private spaceflight, and NASA really wants you to see the solar eclipse — but safety first. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Islamabad — Pakistan’s government announced Thursday that it will set up a special commission to investigate allegations the military-run spy agency has been subjecting federal judges to intimidation, torture and other abuses to secure favorable judicial rulings in political cases.

The charges were listed in a letter written by six of eight members of the Islamabad High Court and sent this week to the Supreme Judicial Council, which governs Pakistan’s judiciary under the leadership of the country’s chief justice, Qazi Faez Isa.

Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar told a news conference that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will discuss the letter at a Cabinet meeting on Friday before formally appointing a commission of inquiry to investigate the accusations.

Tarar said that Sharif made the decision after a Thursday meeting with Chief Justice Isa at the Supreme Court in Islamabad.

“This [letter] is an extremely grave matter, and it should be dealt with very seriously,” the minister stated.

Dated March 25, the letter accused the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of meddling in judicial proceedings “to seek a certain outcome.” An army general runs the spy agency, which is notorious for allegedly orchestrating the making or breaking of elected governments at the behest of Pakistan’s powerful military.

“We believe it is imperative to inquire into and determine whether there exists a continuing policy on part of the executive branch of the state, implemented by intelligence operatives who report to the executive branch, to intimidate judges, under threat of coercion or blackmail, to engineer judicial outcomes in politically consequential matters,” the judges wrote.

The document highlighted several instances of attempted coercion and intimidation by ISI officers “to influence the outcome of cases related to jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan. In one of the cases, ISI operatives intimidated “friends and relatives” of two judges who had refused to hear a state-instituted case against Khan for lacking merit.

“One of the judges had to be admitted to a hospital due to high blood pressure caused by stress,” the letter said.

It recounted the abduction of a “brother-in-law” of the Islamabad high court judge by alleged ISI operatives. It added that the abductee “was administered electric shocks” and “tortured into making false allegations” on camera against the judge.

Khan, the cricket hero-turned-prime minister, was ousted from power in April 2021 through an opposition parliamentary vote of no-confidence. Khan denounced the move as orchestrated by the military, allegations the institution rejected.

The military ruled Pakistan for more than three decades through coups against elected governments since the country gained independence in 1947.

Former prime ministers, including Khan and Sharif’s elder brother, Nawaz Sharif, have publicly accused army generals of interference in national politics in violation of the constitution.

“We want it to be thoroughly investigated because we had also been its victim,” said Tarar, a senior member of Shehbaz Sharif’s ruling Pakistan Muslim League, or PML-N, party.

Khan’s opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party swiftly rejected the government-proposed commission and demanded that the Supreme Court take up the matter.

“Senior judges incriminating officials working under the government of spying on their private life to pivot away for getting court decisions against former Prime Minister Imran Khan or any other politician, is actually a charge sheet against the government itself,” a PTI statement said.

“Therefore, the formation of an inquiry commission by the incumbent government is nothing but a deflection to avoid a contentious situation,” it said.

The Pakistani military denies it interferes in national politics, but its former chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, acknowledged in a nationally televised speech just days before his retirement in November 2022 that his institution had been meddling in politics for the past 70 years.

In the lead-up to Pakistan’s parliamentary elections last month, the military was constantly accused of influencing judicial proceedings and cracking down on Khan’s party to keep him in jail over controversial convictions.

Eventually, the 71-year-old politician was barred from running in the February 8 vote, and PTI candidates were restricted from winning the majority despite representing the most popular party, according to public surveys.

Khan has been in jail since last August and faces close to 200 lawsuits and prosecutions, ranging from terrorism, sedition, and corruption to murder. He rejects the charges as politically motivated, saying the Pakistani military has orchestrated them to punish him for directly challenging its largely unquestioned powers.
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UNITED NATIONS — Russia vetoed a U.N. resolution on Thursday, effectively abolishing the monitoring of United Nations sanctions against North Korea by a panel of U.N. experts. 

The Security Council resolution sponsored by the United States would have extended the mandate of the panel for a year, but Russia’s veto will halt its operations. 

The vote in the 15-member council was 13 in favor, Russia against and China abstaining. 

Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the council before the vote that Western nations are trying to “strangle” North Korea and that sanctions have proven “irrelevant” and “detached from reality” in reining in its nuclear program. 

The resolution does not alter the sanctions, which remain in force.
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Tokyo — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reiterated Thursday his determination to work toward a summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to realize the return of Japanese people believed abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 80s. 

“I remain committed to realizing this for Japan,” he told reporters, while declining to directly address the recent comments from North Korea that suggested such a meeting would be possible only if Japan stops pressing the abductions issue. 

Speaking at a news conference after the government budget cleared parliament, Kishida stressed he was directly involved in high-level negotiations to fix various bilateral problems, amid growing worries about neighboring North Korea’s missiles and nuclear weapons programs. 

In 2002, Kim Jong Il, the late father of Kim Jong Un, told then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that its agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 80s, and allowed five of them to return to Japan. 

Japan thinks hundreds more may have been abducted during that period and that some are still alive. Koizumi’s second visit to North Korea in 2004 was the last summit between the two nations. 

Deflation and public trust

Kishida, prime minister since 2021, also promised to wrest the nation out of decades-long deflation and set off “a positive cycle” of higher wages, company profits and strong productivity. 

“We have this historic chance to get out of deflation,” Kishida said, noting that the changes will come under his “new capitalism” program, based on economic changes such as a more mobile labor force, investments in artificial intelligence and income growth for the middle class. 

He promised that legal revisions and an internal investigation were underway to deal with a burgeoning scandal centered around political funding that ruling party lawmakers had allegedly secretly received through shady methods like expensive tickets for fundraising parties. 

Kishida said more time is needed to sort out details, but the erring politicians will get punished, to restore public trust. 

Kishida has seen his popularity plummet to record lows in recent months over the scandal. But his ouster, even if it happens, will likely result in another leader from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, because the opposition is weak and splintered. 

There is even speculation among pundits that Japan will get its first female prime minister, such as Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike. As a woman, Koike would be seen as a fresh change, although she is unlikely to stray too far from the status quo. 

A Japanese prime minister has almost always been a member of the lower house of Parliament, so Koike would need to run for a seat and give up being city governor. The Liberal Democrats have ruled Japan almost incessantly after World War II, except for brief periods of opposition control. 
…

NEW DELHI — An Indian court extended the custody of opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal until April 1 on Thursday in a graft case related to the national capital territory’s liquor policy, local media said. 

India’s financial crime-fighting agency arrested Kejriwal last week in connection with corruption allegations related to the city’s liquor policy and he was remanded to its custody until Thursday, weeks before India begins voting in general elections on April 19.  

Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) says the case is fabricated and politically motivated. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and his Bharatiya Janata Party deny political interference and say law enforcement agencies are doing their job.  

All the main leaders of AAP were already imprisoned in the case before Kejriwal was arrested.  

Terming his arrest a “political conspiracy”, Kejriwal, 55, told reporters outside court on Thursday that “the public will respond to this”. Speaking in court later, he said the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which has arrested him, aims to crush AAP. 

ED lawyers told the court that they needed Kejriwal in custody for another seven days as he was “deliberately not cooperating” and needed to be interrogated further.  

Kejriwal’s arrest has sparked protests in the national capital and the nearby northern state of Punjab, which is also governed by AAP, over the last few days.  

Dozens of AAP supporters were detained on Tuesday as they attempted to march to Modi’s residence to demand his release. Some AAP workers protesting and distributing leaflets to commuters outside a busy metro station in central Delhi were also detained on Thursday.  

“This is the time when we campaign (for elections), our leaders are being put in prison, arrested … they (federal government) are stopping us from campaigning, (but) nobody can stop us from winning,” a protester told news agency ANI.  

A joint rally of the ‘INDIA’ alliance, consisting of more than two dozen political parties including AAP, is planned in the capital on Sunday to protest against the arrest.  

The issue has also drawn international attention with the U.S. and Germany calling for a “fair” and “impartial” trial in the case, causing New Delhi to tell Washington and Berlin that India’s legal processes are based on an independent judiciary and that they should stay away from its internal affairs. 
…

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Surrounded by ordinary gray shop houses on Jakarta’s bustling Lautze Street, the building with the yellow façade stands out. Red overhangs echo the rooflines of traditional Chinese temples, and red arched wooden doors suggest a welcome within.

At a glance, the building could be mistaken for a Chinese temple. Built in 1991 by Haji Junus Jahya, an Indonesian businessman of Chinese descent, the Lautze Mosque embodies his interest in encouraging assimilation between the ethnic Chinese people and Indigenous Malay community known as Pribumi.

“Haji” indicates that he made the pilgrimage to Mecca, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam.

Ustaz Naga Qiu, which means the dragon Islamic teacher, said the mosque occupies what was once an ordinary shop occupied by the foundation founded by Haji Karim Oei, a prominent ethnic Chinese Indonesian nationalist.

Because Junus initially wanted the Chinese to blend in with other Indonesians, the mosque blended in with its surroundings. But in 2000, “after President Abdurrahman Wahid brought equality for Chinese Indonesians, the mosque’s look started to change,” Naga said.

This also reflected how Junus’ attitude about blending in changed before his death in 2011.

An uneasy relationship

The centuries-long relationship between Indonesians and their Chinese neighbors is one marked by violence.

Under Dutch colonial rule in the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Trading Company hired thousands of Chinese and Malay low-wage laborers to work on plantations and mines.

The company often stoked division between the groups to keep them from acting together against the corporation and forced the Chinese to live in separate areas. Attacks on property owned by Chinese traders and mass killings of ethnic Chinese started in 1740, when some 10,000 died on Java.

When Indonesia achieved independence from Dutch colonial rule in 1945, many ethnic Chinese were unable to obtain citizenship and were perceived as being more loyal to China. Hundreds were killed during an anti-Communist purge in 1965 that led to the authoritarian rule of President Suharto.

Suharto forced Chinese residents to assume more Indonesian-style names and carry ID papers, and he banned Chinese characters and holiday celebrations. During the financial crisis of 1997-1998 that eventually forced Suharto’s resignation, Chinese Indonesians were targeted again during Jakarta riots for their perceived wealth.

And while the Lunar New Year is now a national holiday, and Confucianism is one of the six official faiths of the Muslim-majority nation, anti-Chinese sentiment lingers.

“The anti-Chinese narrative is still very much alive and well under the surface and can be used for the purpose of political mobilization whenever the political circumstances are prime for it,” Charlotte Setijadi, an assistant professor of humanities at Singapore Management University who has researched Chinese-Indonesian identity politics, told Al Jazeera in 2023.

Which makes the standout building on Lautze Street even more remarkable, especially during holidays such as Ramadan, when more people visit. This year in Indonesia, Ramadan began the evening of March 11 and will end at sunset on April 9.

Since its establishment, the Lautze Mosque has served as a center for non-Muslim Chinese Indonesians who want to learn more about Islam from fellow ethnic Chinese. The mosque holds weekly meetings where new Muslims can learn how to carry out the ablution and prayers and study the Quran.

Haji Muhammad Ali Karim Oei, the son of Karim Oei and now chairman of the foundation that manages the Lautze Mosque, said the organization has built mosques in Bandung and elsewhere, as well as the one in Jakarta, and helped convert more than 1,800 ethnic Chinese to Islam.

“All our mosques are located near Chinese communities or Chinatown,” he said. “As the saying goes, ‘One can only catch the tiger cub by entering the tiger’s den.’”

The mosque in Bandung, a city in West Java, was built in 1997. It also features Chinese-style architecture.

Earlier this week, the acting governor of West Java, Bey Machmudin, performed Tarawih prayers at Lautze Mosque 2.

Naga said most of the non-Muslims who come to the Lautze Mosque in Jakarta are corporate workers who plan to marry Muslim women. The Islamic preacher said that many non-Muslim Chinese are curious about how they can maintain Chinese cultural practices if they convert.

“We share practical tips on how to prevent friction from occurring among family members due to different religious beliefs,” said Naga.

Eko Tan, 67, a Muslim convert who lives in Jakarta and frequently prays at the Lautze Mosque, said he grew up as an atheist. Islam attracted him to what he said is its logical approach to faith.

During an interview with VOA Indonesian, Eko, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology, told VOA Indonesian the Lautze Mosque is affiliated with the Muhammadiyah Islamic organization, “whose teachings appeal to my logic. For me, the Quran is like a book on applied psychology.”

Muhammadiyah, founded in 1912, is the second-largest Islamic organization in Indonesia.

Eko, a parking attendant, said most mosques in Jakarta do not offer mentoring or training for Muslim converts. He added he found comfort being part of a community of Chinese Muslims at Lautze Mosque.

During the month of Ramadan, new converts can attend a brief sermon before breaking their fast at the mosque and are encouraged to take turns leading the congregation in Tarawih prayers each evening.

“This is meant to train the men to have more confidence in leading congregational prayers with their families,” Naga said.
…

TOKYO — Japan’s unmanned moon lander woke up after surviving a second frigid, two-week lunar night and transmitted new images back to Earth, the country’s space agency said Thursday.

“We received a response from SLIM last night and confirmed that SLIM had successfully completed its second overnight,” the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a post on the official X account for its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) probe.

“Since the sun was still high in the sky last night and the equipment was still hot, we recorded images of the usual scenery with the navigational camera, among other activities, for a short period of time,” it added.

A black-and-white photo of the rocky surface of a crater accompanied the post on X, formerly Twitter.

The SLIM lander touched down in January at a wonky angle that left its solar panels facing the wrong way.

Around three hours after the landing — which made Japan only the fifth nation to touch down on the moon — JAXA decided to switch SLIM off with 12% power remaining to allow for a possible resumption later on.

As the sun’s angle shifted, the probe came back to life in late January for two days and carried out scientific observations of a crater with a high-spec camera.

But the spacecraft was not designed for the freezing, fortnight-long lunar nights, when the temperature plunges to minus 133 degrees Celsius.

So space agency scientists had cause for celebration when it was successfully revived in late February after its first lunar night.

JAXA has dubbed SLIM the “Moon Sniper” for its precision landing technology.

The aim of the mission is to examine a part of the moon’s mantle — the usually deep inner layer beneath its crust — that is believed to be accessible.

Thursday’s news came after an uncrewed American lander called Odysseus — the first private spaceship to successfully land on the moon — was unable to wake up, its manufacturer said on Saturday, even after its solar panels were projected to receive enough sunlight to turn on its radio. 
…

TOKYO — Japan’s Cabinet OK’d a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets to other countries on Tuesday, its latest step away from the pacifist principles the country adopted at the end of World War II.

The controversial decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in a year-old project to develop a new fighter jet together with Italy and the U.K., but it’s also part of a move to build up Japan’s arms industry and bolster its role in global affairs.

For now, Tokyo says that it doesn’t plan to export co-developed lethal weapons other than the new fighters, which aren’t expected to enter service until 2035.

Here is a look at what the latest change is about and why Japan is rapidly easing weapons export rules.

What’s changing?

On Tuesday, the Cabinet approved a revision to its guidelines for selling defense equipment overseas, and authorized sales of the future jet. The government says that it has no plans to export other co-developed lethal weapons under the guidelines, and it would require Cabinet approval to do so.

Japan has long prohibited most arms exports under the country’s pacifist constitution, although it’s begun to take steps toward a change amid rising regional and global tensions.

In 2014, it began to export some non-lethal military supplies, and last December, it approved a change that would allow sales of 80 lethal weapons and components that it manufactures under licenses from other countries back to the licensors. The change, which was made in December, cleared the way for Japan to sell U.S.-designed Patriot missiles to the United States, helping replace munitions that Washington is sending to Ukraine.

The decision on jets will allow Japan to export lethal weapons it co-produces to other countries for the first time.

What is the new fighter jet?

Japan is working with Italy and the U.K. to develop an advanced fighter jet to replace its aging fleet of American-designed F-2 fighters, and the Eurofighter Typhoons used by the U.K. and Italian militaries.

Japan, which was previously working on a homegrown design to be called the F-X, agreed in December 2022 to merge its effort with a British-Italian program called the Tempest. The joint project, known as the Global Combat Air Program, is based in the U.K., and hasn’t yet announced a new name for its design.

Japan hopes the new plane will offer better sensing and stealth capabilities amid growing tensions in the region, giving it a technological edge against regional rivals China and Russia.

Why is Japan changing its stance on arms exports?

In its decision, the Cabinet said that the ban on exporting finished products would hinder efforts to develop the new jet, and limit Japan to a supporting role in the project. Italy and the U.K. are eager to make sells of the jet in order to defray development and manufacturing costs.

U.K. Defense Minister Grant Shapps has repeatedly said Japan needs “updating” to not cause the project to stall.

Kishida sought Cabinet approval before signing the GCAP agreement in February, but it was delayed by resistance from his junior coalition partner, the Buddhist-backed Komeito party.

Exports would also help boost Japan’s defense industry, which historically has catered only to the country’s Self Defense Force, as Kishida seeks to build up the military. Japan began opening the door to some exports in 2014, but the industry has still struggled to win customers.

The change also comes as Kishida is planning an April state visit to Washington, where he is expected to stress Japan’s readiness to take a greater role in military and defense industry partnerships.

Japan sees China’s rapid military buildup and its increasing assertiveness as threats, especially growing tensions in the disputed East and South China Seas. Japan also sees increasing joint military exercises between China and Russia around Japan as a threat.

Why are arms exports divisive?

Because of its wartime past as an aggressor and the devastation that followed its defeat in World War II, Japan adopted a constitution that limits its military to self-defense and long maintained a strict policy to limit transfers of military equipment and technology and ban all exports of lethal weapons.

Opposition lawmakers and pacifist activists have criticized Kishida’s government for committing to the fighter jet project without explaining to the public or seeking approval for the major policy change.

Recent polls show public opinion is divided on the plan.

To address such concerns, the government is limiting exports of co-developed lethal weapons to the jet for now, and has promised that no sales will be made for use in active wars. If a purchaser begins using the jets for war, Defense Minister Minoru Kihara said, Japan will stop providing spare parts and other components.

What’s next?

Potential markets for the jet include the 15 countries with which Japan has defense partnership agreements, such as the United States, Germany, India and Vietnam. A defense official said Taiwan — a self-governed island that China claims as its own territory — is not being considered. He spoke on condition of anonymity due to briefing rules.

More weapons and components could be added to the approved list under the new export guidelines.

When Kishida goes to Washington in April, he’s likely to talk to U.S. leaders about potential new defense and weapons industry cooperation. The new policy could also help Japan push for a bigger role in alliances and regional defense partnerships like Australia, the U.S. and the U.K.’s AUKUS.
…

WASHINGTON — Taiwan’s former President Ma Ying-jeou is scheduled to make an 11-day trip to China in early April.

The trip will include stops in the southern city of Guangdong, the northwestern province of Shaanxi, and the capital Beijing, where Ma, according to reports, may meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Some experts say that if the meeting happens, not only can Xi use it to send signals to Taiwan and the United States, but it could help Washington learn more about Xi’s intentions toward the island.

Earlier this week, Ma’s office announced that the visit will begin on April 1. The trip will include a speech at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong, a worshiping ceremony for the Yellow Emperor at the Shaanxi Huangdi Mausoleum, and a speech at Peking University.

Taiwanese online news site The Storm Media reported that the meeting between Ma and Xi will be held on April 8. However, Hsiao Hsu-tsen, director of Ma Ying-jeou Culture and Education Foundation, said in a radio interview on March 26 that the itinerary ­has not been finalized.

Lu-chung Weng, an associate professor of political science at Sam Houston State University, told VOA Mandarin in an emailed response that if Ma and Xi really meet, Xi will probably use this occasion to emphasize Beijing’s one-China principle and that the 1992 Consensus remains the basis for cross-strait exchanges and dialogues.

“The signal Xi wants to send to both sides of the Taiwan Strait would be to emphasize that peaceful reunification is still Beijing’s priority and that anyone who accepts the one-China principle can negotiate,” he said.

“Relatively speaking, it also highlights that if President-elect Lai Ching-te insists on not accepting the 1992 Consensus as the premise of one China in his inaugural speech on May 20, it will be difficult for the two sides to have a dialogue. In other words, Xi would use Ma to emphasize that the ‘1992 Consensus’ is the basis for exchanges,” he added.

Although Ma accepted the “1992 Consensus” while he was in office, the current President Tsai Ing-wen did not, and China rolled back tourism and other exchanges in response. Lai, who is from the same party as Tsai, is expected to follow in her footsteps.

For some, the “1992 Consensus” is the same as accepting Beijing’s position that democratically ruled Taiwan is a part of China. Others believe it can be interpreted as meaning that there’s one China, with both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China, Taiwan’s official name, free to define what that means.

Weng said that during the meeting, Xi may also respond to recent U.S. concerns about China’s possible invasion of Taiwan in 2027. U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that Beijing has ordered its military to be prepared by that year to invade Taiwan.

Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said during a congressional hearing last week that despite China’s economic slowdown, the People’s Liberation Army is still actively modernizing its military. He said all signs show the People’s Liberation Army is following Xi’s instructions to “prepare to invade Taiwan by 2027.”

Weng said a Ma-Xi meeting will be an opportunity to gain more insight into Beijing’s plans for Taiwan.

“If Xi really meets former President Ma, the U.S. can be sure that Xi’s challenges are indeed not small,” Weng said. “It will also send a signal that he will be focused more on ‘peaceful reunification,’ and that he will not take action in the short term.”

This does not mean China will not change its path in the future, he added, but at least for now “the U.S. can use the Ma-Xi meeting to determine that there is still time to prepare in the short term.”

Ma’s trip to China comes just weeks before the inauguration of Taiwan President-elect Lai Ching-te. Lai’s inauguration will be held on May 20 and many will be watching his speech for signs of how he will approach relations with China.

Chiaoning Su, a professor at the School of Communication at Oakland University in Michigan, told VOA Mandarin that while Lai’s inaugural speech will give priority to domestic affairs, relations with China will inevitably come up.

“Lai Ching-te has repeatedly said that he will continue Tsai Ing-wen’s framework, so both sides of the Taiwan Strait welcome closer dialogue and exchanges on the premise of equality and dignity, and that he does not want any conflicts to occur,” she said.

Lai “will maintain this tone and make some pledges regarding his cross-strait policies.”

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
…

ISLAMABAD — Two and a half years into their reign, the Afghan Taliban have cemented their ultra-conservative rule across the war-torn country but have yet to turn their fighting force into a traditional military. 

VOA spoke to analysts who say the former insurgent force does not need to pattern itself after a standard military to effectively counter a mounting security threat from an Islamic State affiliate and tackle growing tensions with neighboring Pakistan. 

According to an annual analysis of global militaries by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Afghan Taliban have 150,000 active fighters. Military chief Qari Fasihuddin Fitrat told Reuters last year that the regime plans to increase the force by another 50,000, but he did not specify the time frame for doing so. 

Since coming to power, the Taliban’s de facto government has not publicly released a defense budget. To formalize their defense forces, they have created three battalions under Special Forces and eight infantry corps.  

The military has a variety of armored vehicles, towed artillery, three light aircraft and 14 helicopters, including U.S.-made Black Hawks that it seized after the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) fell apart amid the chaotic withdrawal of international forces in 2021.  

The Taliban also have a few Russian attack helicopters from ANDSF. 

Capability 

Although U.S. forces left nearly $7 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan, experts assess the Taliban’s ability to operate some of the sophisticated machinery as limited. 

“Without maintenance contracts [and] materials from foreign suppliers who originally equipped the ANDSF, though, it is unlikely they can really use a lot of materials at scale,” Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told VOA. 

Adam Weinstein, deputy director of the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute, told VOA that the Taliban face challenges in training their forces similar to those the ANDSF faced.  

“They are still dealing with a largely uneducated population that has to be taught sometimes basic competencies of soldiering,” said Weinstein, a former U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan in 2012.   

Insurgency mode 

Analysts say despite establishing its rule after the end of the 20-year U.S.-led war, the Afghan Taliban are still in insurgency mode. 

“It allowed individual units to, sort of at the tactical level, operate in a semiautonomous way,” said Weinstein, adding that the former insurgents still have “cohesion and decent command and control over their fighters.” 

“The biggest strength of the Taliban is their popularity,” said Graeme Smith, a senior consultant at the International Crisis Group.   

Smith, who worked as a political affairs officer for the United Nations in Afghanistan between 2015 and 2018, said Taliban forces should not be analyzed like a traditional military, as their numbers change based on local needs. 

“During the years of U.S. [and] NATO troop presence, unpublished NATO studies concluded that the vast majority of Taliban fought within 1 kilometer of their own homes. That is to say, locals were going out and shooting at NATO troops, and then going home for lunch and having a home-cooked meal, and then going back out again in the afternoon and shooting some more NATO troops,” Smith explained. 

The easy availability of fighters and places to hide, Smith said, give Taliban forces a significant advantage. 

Security threats 

While the Afghan Taliban have effectively crushed armed resistance, Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as IS-K or ISKP, poses a significant internal security threat. 

“It’s an insurgency which is both malignant and persistent, and it poses an ideological challenge to the Taliban,” said Mir. 

The Taliban have killed senior IS-K commanders, eliminated the group’s cells and kept them from holding territory inside Afghanistan. 

“So, that’s a testament to the competence of the Taliban security forces,” Weinstein said. “They seem to have good intelligence on ISKP leaders and where the ISKP cells are located, and they seem to be effective in keeping them at bay,” he added. 

Externally, the Taliban’s Afghanistan faces a threat from Pakistan — the only neighbor Kabul has a border dispute with. Pakistan’s military has conducted strikes twice inside Afghan territory against alleged hideouts since the Taliban returned to power — once in April 2022, and this year on March 18.  

Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of giving a haven to anti-Pakistan militants, a charge the de facto rulers reject.  

Kabul retaliated to this month’s strike by targeting several Pakistani military posts along the border. In a statement condemning Pakistan’s action, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid warned of “very bad consequences, which will be out of Pakistan’s control,” if Pakistan launches more cross-border attacks. 

Fighting Pakistan 

Experts VOA spoke to agree that the Taliban do not have the firepower to take on one of the world’s largest, nuclear-armed militaries — but say that Kabul can engage in unconventional tactics against Pakistan. 

“They can push back by even doing less to rein in the TTP [Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan] or perhaps, giving the TTP carte blanche to engage in even greater attacks [inside Pakistan],” Weinstein said, adding that the Taliban see the TTP as an “insurance policy against the Pakistani state.” 

Allowing cross-border terrorism would “certainly raise a lot of international concern,” Mir warned. 

As tensions grow between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Smith said Kabul could also scuttle important regional projects. One such project, he said, is the Central Asia-South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project, popularly known as CASA-1000, which will bring electricity from Central Asia via Afghanistan to energy-hungry Pakistan. 

The Afghan Taliban could also hinder the land route Pakistan uses for trade with Central Asia, experts say. 

A Pakistani Ministry of Commerce delegation met with Afghan counterparts this week in Kabul as bilateral trade drops amid frequent border skirmishes and closures. 

Experts agree the chances of the Afghan Taliban getting into a conventional war with a neighbor are slim — but caution the de facto rulers of Afghanistan have a formidable doctrine of asymmetric warfare involving suicide bombers and contingents of locals willing to drop shovels and grab guns when called upon.
…

Washington — Russian media and analysts are reporting a spike in hate crimes and violence against migrants from Central Asia following last week’s terror attack on a Moscow concert hall, which has led to the arrests of seven people of Tajik origin.

Responsibility for the attack, which killed at least 139 people and injured nearly 200, has been claimed by the Islamic State terror group’s Afghan affiliate, known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or IS-K, which includes a number of Central Asians in prominent roles.

“A market owned by Tajiks in Blagoveshchensk, Amur Region, was torched. Unknown persons beat three Tajik migrants in Kaluga,” said Edward Lemon, president of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs in Washington.

“Tajiks have reported being evicted without reason. Screenshots have circulated on social media showing taxi riders on apps like Yandex refusing to ride with Tajik drivers. Law enforcement have launched raids across the country to find and detain illegal immigrants,” Lemon added. “Viral videos are circulating on social media calling for Tajiks to be deported, claiming they are all ‘terrorists’ and calling for the death penalty to be reintroduced.”

Tajiks are not the only victims of the backlash, according to Russian media reports and activists. In Yekaterinburg, security officials have reportedly threatened to fine businesses that refuse to list any Central Asians working for them. Kyrgyzstan has warned its citizens to avoid travel to Russia, while Uzbekistan’s External Labor Migration Agency issued a travel advisory outlining security precautions.

While publicly seeking to lay blame for the attack on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has behind the scenes been in talks with his Tajik counterpart, Emomali Rahmon, to discuss ways to strengthen counter-terrorism measures. Lemon said that one possible outcome could be the extradition of some Tajik citizens to Russia.

“From the Tajik side, my sources say that the government is already hoping to link the attacks to the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan in a bid to crack down on its actual and alleged supporters,” Lemon told VOA.

“Rahmon will seek to ensure that we don’t see mass violence against Tajik migrants in Russia or deportations that could destabilize his regime,” he said. “Putin needs to tread a tightrope as the Russian economy needs migrants.”

Other analysts see Central Asian migrants, who already face a difficult life in Russia despite the vital role they play in the economy, as convenient targets for the public’s discontent.

“It seems that in the end, everything will only come down to the persecution of migrant workers,” said analyst and Gazeta.ru columnist Semyon Novoprudsky.

He told VOA this is happening “despite the fact that they are critically important for some sectors of the Russian economy because of a growing shortage of laborers, especially in construction.”

Boris Dolgin, a visiting scholar at Estonia’s Tartu University, agrees. “Instead of truly engaging in terrorism prevention and working in communities where radical ideas can be spread, they chose migrant workers as scapegoats,” he said.

Farhod Abduvalizade, a journalist speaking with VOA from Khujand, Tajikistan, pointed out that “none of the suspects have been proven guilty.” He said many of his compatriots doubt that the real culprits are the battered and bruised men Russian authorities have been parading on TV.

“The public is closely watching how events are unfolding because almost every household in Tajikistan has someone working or studying in Russia,” he said.

Remittances last year accounted for over 48% of Tajikistan’s GDP, with most of it from Russia — $5.7 billion, according to the World Bank. Combined, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan received about $25 billion in remittances from Russia, where statistics show more than 10 million Central Asians present in the country. 

Central Asian militants in IS-K

University of Pittsburg professor Jennifer Murtazashvili, who has done extensive research in the region, elaborated on the role of IS-K militants from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

“They have used Afghanistan as a playground,” she wrote on X. “During the war against the U.S., the Taliban also benefitted from these militants,” with Tajik and Uzbek fighters participating in attacks against U.S. and allied forces.

“These fighters have also skillfully played the Taliban and IS-K off against each other,” she said, recalling that militants from Tajikistan took over large swathes of northern Afghanistan in 2021, killing members of the Afghan national security forces. Some recent reports indicate that the Taliban still rely on Central Asians to provide security in the north.

In its latest statement, IS-K denounced the Taliban’s engagement with Russia, China, Pakistan and other counties, even the United States. Still struggling for recognition as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, the Taliban claim they are at war with the group.

“Central Asia should be worried,” Murtazashvili told VOA. “The alliance of Central Asian leaders with Moscow makes them look very weak in the eyes of IS-K.”

VOA Russian stringer Victor Vladimirov contributed to this report. 
…

Bangkok — Thailand’s lower house passed a same-sex marriage bill Wednesday, as the country inches towards becoming the first Southeast Asian nation to recognize LGBTQ nuptials, a seismic legal shift lauded as a “fantastic first step” towards full gender parity.

The measure comfortably passed – 399 for to 10 against in the elected House of Representatives – some of whom waved rainbow flags during the landmark vote. To become law, it now has to be approved by the unelected upper chamber, the Senate, and then receive a royal assent. 

Once the law is passed, Thailand will join only Nepal and Taiwan in Asia in recognizing same-sex marriage.

Gay rights advocates say the progress after years of false starts shows Thailand’s changing cultural space and offers the country up as a legal sanctuary in Asia, where gay rights are virtually non-existent in many Muslim-majority and Communist-led nations.

“The repercussions are huge. My friends have spoken about feeling unshackled from their place as second-class citizens,” Paron Mead, 39, a Thai-British LGBTQ artist told VOA.

“We are thinking of the enormous number of queer people in Asia who have their eyes on Thailand as we navigate what this marriage bill leads to, both legally and culturally. This will undoubtedly help millions of queer people both in and out of Thailand feel a little safer.”

The government of Srettha Thavisin has prioritized the marriage equality bill seeing its potential to bring a ‘soft power’ win to Thailand, including potentially a boost in LGBTQ tourism.

But the bill is also a popular progressive win for his administration after it was criticized for allying with conservative hardliners who have blocked many other structural reforms to take power after an election last year.

Thailand has long had a reputation as a safe place for LGBTQ people to visit and live, despite the law failing to keep up shifting social attitudes towards gender.

The law was specifically amended within the Civil and Commercial Code, a piece of legislation that has proven notoriously hard to rewrite. 

“We’re making the impossible possible,” said Nada Chaiyajit, a transgender woman law lecturer and an advisor to the commission tasked with amending the Marriage Equality Law.

“We’ve come so far to demand rights for same sex couples, laying groundwork for the society including removing all the discriminatory terms towards women from the existing law, adding provisions to protect individuals.”

While the bill has practical outcomes such as inheritance, tax breaks and medical power of attorney for married LGBTQ couples, it says same sex couples who adopt children under the law cannot be called “parents” but instead must still use the gender specific terms “father” and “mother.”

“Passing the law is a fantastic first step,” said Aitarnik Chitwiset, who was an advisor to the panel which drafted the same sex marriage bill. “But it’s just a first step.”

Recognizing the lingering unease among some conservative parts of Thai society – including the country’s Muslim population – a spokesperson for the Pheu Thai party which leads the governing coalition, moved to reassure heterosexual couples will not be “deprived” of their legal rights.

Instead, it aims to it fix long standing injustice towards LGBTQ Thais, Danuporn Punnakan, of the Pheu Thai Party, who chairs the Same-sex Marriage Committee told parliament.

“I invite you all [members of parliament] to create a new chapter in Thai history together.”

After years of rejection by governments dominated by conservative elders, LGBTQ advocates say the law change will signal a new dawn for equality.

“We are in debt to the cultural leaders… who have fought for this reality,” Mead added.

“To empower anyone to love wholeheartedly is one of the simplest things we can do to shape a more peaceful world.”
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Islamabad — A majority of federal High Court judges in Pakistan have jointly accused the country’s military-run spy agency of intimidating them and their relatives through abduction, torture, and secret video surveillance inside their bedrooms to influence judicial outcomes.

In a rare letter this week addressed to mostly Supreme Court judges, including the chief justice, six out of eight members of the Islamabad High Court documented the allegations and sought their intervention to resolve the complaint.

It prompted Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa to summon an emergency meeting of all the Supreme Court judges to discuss the matter on Wednesday.

The letter dated March 25 blamed the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, for meddling in judicial proceedings “to seek a certain outcome.” An army general runs the spy agency, and it is notorious for allegedly orchestrating the making or breaking of elected governments at the behest of Pakistan’s powerful military.

The Pakistani military has not responded to VOA’s request for comment on the allegations.

“We believe it is imperative to inquire into and determine whether there exists a continuing policy on the part of the executive branch of the state, implemented by intelligence operatives… to intimidate judges, under threat of coercion or blackmail, to engineer judicial outcomes in politically consequential matters,” the letter read.

It highlighted several instances of attempted coercion and intimidation by ISI officers “to influence the outcome of cases, including those related to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan.”

Referring to a March 2023 state-backed lawsuit against Khan, the letter said that “considerable pressure was brought to bear” on judges “by operatives of the ISI.” It said the judges sought additional protection for their homes over personal security fears.

“One of the judges had to be admitted to a hospital due to high blood pressure caused by stress,” it noted.

The letter recounted the abduction of a “brother-in-law” of the Islamabad high court judge by alleged ISI operatives. It added that the abductee “was administered electric shocks” and “tortured into making false allegations” on camera against the judge.

“We, therefore, request that a judicial convention be called to consider the matter of interference of intelligence operatives with judicial functions and/or intimidation of judges in a manner that undermines [the] independence of the judiciary,” the judges wrote.

The letter was delivered to the Supreme Judicial Council, the governing authority of the judiciary in Pakistan.

The unprecedented chargesheet against the military has triggered calls from lawyers’ associations, Khan’s opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party, and independent critics to hold an independent inquiry and prosecute those involved. They lauded the judges for revealing the alleged interference of ISI operatives in the judicial work.

“Everyone has known the pressure the courts have been under, but the bravery of these 6 judges must be applauded,” Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, a human rights lawyer in Islamabad, said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Pushing politicos, press, or the judiciary the wrong way is counterproductive and is bound to have consequences, as we see in this letter,” said Mushahid Hussain, a former Pakistani senator.

“Revolt of the judges! Truly unprecedented!” he said. “This is the litmus test for the Supreme Judicial Council: will it move to protect its protesting ‘brother judges,’ who are working in the heart of the nation’s capital?” Hussain added.

Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at Washington’s Wilson Center, said the letter underscored “just how deep, extensive, and serious the establishment’s interference is these days.”

“The establishment” is a term commonly used to refer to the Pakistan military.

“The stunning letter written by six Pakistani high court justices illustrates not only the extent of interference in the legal process, at the highest levels but also the willingness of public servants to go public about it despite the risks that doing so may pose for them,” Kugelman said on X.

In the lead-up to the parliamentary elections in Pakistan last month, the military was constantly accused of influencing judicial proceedings and cracking down on Khan’s party to keep him in jail over controversial convictions. Eventually, he was barred from running in the February 8 vote, and PTI candidates were restricted from winning the majority, despite representing the most popular party, according to public surveys.

Many of the nearly 200 state-instituted lawsuits against Khan are pending in the Islamabad High Court. The 71-year-old incarcerated politician rejects all the charges as politically motivated, saying the military is behind them.

A statement posted on Khan’s X social media account said, “The fact that the judges have been intimidated and coerced into giving judgments based on political expediency raises a lot of questions on the fairness of the courts and their judgments over the last 2 years.”

Khan, the cricket hero-turned-prime minister, was ousted from power in April 2021 through an opposition parliamentary vote of no-confidence, a move he denounced as orchestrated by the military, allegations the institution rejected.

The military has ruled Pakistan for more than three decades through coups against elected governments since the country gained independence in 1947. Former prime ministers, including Khan, have publicly accused army generals of interference in national politics even when not in power in violation of the constitution.

The army denies the allegations, but its former chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, acknowledged in a nationally televised speech just days before his retirement in November 2022 that his institution had been meddling in politics for the past 70 years.
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ISLAMABAD — The U.S. State Department has said it does not support Pakistan’s plan to build a pipeline to import gas from Iran.

State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller refused to comment on the nature of sanctions Pakistan could face for importing energy from Iran. However, he cautioned Islamabad against going ahead with the plan.  

“But we always advise everyone that doing business with Iran runs the risk of touching upon and coming in contact with our sanctions, and would advise everyone to consider that very carefully,” said Miller, adding that “the assistant secretary made clear last week, we do not support this pipeline going forward.”

Donald Lu, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia told the House Foreign Affairs committee last Wednesday in a hearing that importing gas from Iran would expose Pakistan to U.S. sanctions.

Pakistan’s outgoing caretaker government approved the construction of an 80-kilometer section of the pipeline in February, largely to avoid paying Iran $18 billion in penalties for years of project delays.

Miller’s remarks came after Pakistani media reported Tuesday, Islamabad was planning to seek a U.S. sanctions waiver. 

“We will seek exemption from U.S. sanctions. Pakistan cannot afford sanctions in the gas pipeline project,” Minister for Petroleum Musadik Malik told media during an informal chat, according to a report in Dawn News.

VOA reached out to Malik for details but did not receive a response.

Lu told the committee last week Washington had “not heard from the government of Pakistan a desire for any waiver for American sanctions that would certainly result from such a project.”

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Islamabad did not need a waiver to build the pipeline.

“It is a segment of the pipeline which is being built inside Pakistani territory. So, we do not believe that at this point there is room for any discussion or waiver from a third party,” Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, the Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson said last Thursday in response to a VOA question at the weekly press briefing.

Pakistan and Iran signed an agreement in June 2009 for a pipeline to supply 750 million to 1 billion cubic feet per day of Iranian natural gas to Pakistan.

In the recently approved first phase, Pakistan will construct an 80km section of the pipeline from its border with Iran to its port city of Gwadar in the southwestern province of Balochistan. 

Iran claimed completing construction of 900 kilometers of the pipeline on its side in 2011. However, Pakistan delayed construction on its side, primarily for fear of U.S. sanctions.

Tehran is under sanctions from Washington for its nuclear program.
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Bangkok — Since Thaksin Shinawatra’s late-February parole from a police hospital in Bangkok, public support for Thailand’s former prime minister has been evident.

The 74-year-old received a hero’s welcome Tuesday when he visited the headquarters of Pheu Thai, the party he founded, which now leads Thailand’s government.

But his return to Thailand after 16 years in self-imposed exile has only added to questions about how much political power Thaksin now holds.

Pheu Thai lawmakers have insisted Thaksin’s appearance at party headquarters — which follows a visit to his hometown of Chiang Mai, where he was also mobbed by supporters — has no political significance.

Experts, however, say the mere fact of his renewed presence puts him in a position of political influence.

“Thaksin has been making sure he won’t simply become obscure by making a high-profile visit to Chiang Mai, which attracted widespread reporting by the Thai press,” Pravit Rojanaphruk, a veteran journalist and political analyst, told VOA.

“Given Thaksin’s persistent popularity … and the fact that his daughter [Paetongtarn Shinawatra] heads the ruling Pheu Thai party, it seems [Prime Minister] Srettha [Thavisin] will have to quickly prove his worth by delivering results that [are] visible to the voters, he said.

“Otherwise, the risk of him being replaced by Paetongtarn will be high,” Pravit added. “As for Thaksin: he’s clearly playing the role of kingmaker if not chairman of the current administration, with more influence than the PM himself.”

A popular but divisive figure in Thailand, Thaksin served as prime minister from 2001 through 2006, when he was ousted by a military coup. Faced with charges of corruption and tax evasion, he fled into exile in 2008.

Changing political landscape

While the billionaire businessman’s Pheu Thai movement championed an ideology of populism, reform and opposition to military rule, those same values made Thaksin unpopular with Thailand’s upper class and royalists.

Nearly two decades on, the Southeast Asian country’s political landscape has changed. Thaksin’s return in August coincided with Pheu Thai’s return to governance, with Srettha as the kingdom’s 30th prime minister.

Still subject to eight years in prison when he returned, Thaksin received a royal pardon that reduced his sentence to a year, triggering speculation among some observers that a secret deal would allow for his political rehabilitation amid Pheu Thai’s return to power.

Thaksin’s permanent transfer to Bangkok’s Police General Hospital just hours into his sentence — unspecified health issues were cited by officials — spurred additional rumors of a political arrangement.

Thaksin’s activities have already been followed closely by the press since he was paroled from the hospital last month. He has already received a visit from former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who passed power to his son Hun Manet last year.

Napon Jatusripitak, a political scientist at the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, a Singapore-based think-tank, believes Thaksin is aiming to expand his base in Thailand’s political landscape.

“I think Thaksin is sending a clear and unmistakable signal that the Shinawatra political machine is not only up and running again, but also in a position, now more than ever, to influence the direction of this government, especially in its dealings with Cambodia,” he told VOA.

“This is most likely geared towards reconsolidating his political base, among both actors in the government and in the electorate, after Pheu Thai’s poor election performance and betrayal of its supporters’ mandate,” Napon added.

Following elections last year, Pheu Thai formed a coalition that includes rival military parties, drawing criticism from supporters.

Thaksin’s influence could also stifle the rise of the reformist Move Forward Party, which won the most votes in the general election but was blocked by the Senate from leading the government because of its pledge to amend a law that criminalizes criticism of the monarchy.

“If he fails to serve as an effective buffer for the conservative establishment against the Move Forward Party, he’ll no longer be needed as an ally,” Napon said.

Despite Thaksin’s popularity and importance to Pheu Thai, not everyone is happy with the Thai tycoon. Dozens of demonstrators protested his parole when they gathered at a makeshift rally point outside of Thailand’s Government House last month.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political science professor at Chulalongkorn University, wrote that Thaksin’s influence is not what it was.

“Mr. Thaksin’s hand in politics is weaker than it used to be,” Thitinan wrote in an op-ed for the Bangkok Post.

Calling Move Forward’s electoral wins “an unprecedented defeat” for Pheu Thai, which had dominated elections for the last two decades, Thitinan said Move Forward’s rise is evidence of Thaksin’s age and waning influence.

The Shinawatra family, he suggested, now has less of a monolithically top-down structure and is limited to exercising influence and power only in collaboration with others. 

But Thaksin’s reappearance on the political scene could squeeze Prime Minister Srettha, a former finance minister who Thitinan says is “beholden to Thaksin” and under “pressure to perform” as he guides Thailand’s economy, which unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter of 2023.

 
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Bangkok — Vietnamese automaker VinFast announced Tuesday that it plans to sell its electric vehicles in Thailand and said it had tied up with auto dealers to open showrooms in the country.

VinFast, which only began exporting its EVs last year, faces stiff competition in Thailand from Chinese automakers like BYD. Tesla also recently entered the fray. All were displaying their latest models at the Bangkok International Motor Show.

The Thai EV market is small but growing fast, buoyed by incentives and subsidies from the government. The country of more than 70 million plans to convert 30% of the 2.5 million vehicles it makes annually into EVs by 2030.

VinFast hopes to start selling both its electric scooters and electric SUVs in the country in the next two months, Vu Dang Yen Hang, chief executive officer of VinFast Thailand, told The Associated Press.

Details about pricing and buying the EVs are likely to be announced later this year.

Thailand accounted for 58% of all EV sales in Southeast Asia in 2022, ahead of both Vietnam and Indonesia, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research. But the EV market remains small, accounting for only 0.5% of EV sales worldwide in 2022.

Thailand is trying to change this with incentives to promote manufacturing and sales of EVs, such as reducing import duties and paying subsidies to make them more price competitive.

VinFast has set a target of selling its cars in 50 markets worldwide by the end of 2024.

Initially it’ll rely on existing charging developers in Thailand, but the long-term plan was to work alongside V-Green, a company that builds EV charging stations and is owned by VinFast’s parent company, said Hang.

“We will be working alongside [V-Green] to build infrastructure for our customers in Thailand who are using our cars,” she said.

V-Green was launched this month and plans to spend $404 million in the next two years to build charging stations for VinFast cars in different countries. Like VinFast, it is a part of the sprawling conglomerate Vingroup, which began as an instant noodle company in Ukraine in the 1990s. It is founded and run by Vietnam’s richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong.

VinFast’s foray into Thailand is part of a global expansion that has included exports of EVs to the United States. The company is building an EV factory in North Carolina, where production is slated to begin later in the year. Another factory is under construction in India, and it plans another in Indonesia.

VinFast has begun shipping EVs made in Vietnam to neighboring Laos to supply vehicles for Green SM, an EV taxi operator that is mostly owned by VinFast’s founder, Vuong.

Last year, the company listed its shares in August on Nasdaq, where they initially soared, pushing its market value briefly above those of General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. But investor enthusiasm has cooled, and the company lost more in than $1.4 billion the first three quarters of 2023.

VinFast has struggled to sell its EVs in the U.S., and its early cars have received bad reviews. But the company maintains that if it can succeed in the crowded and competitive American market, it can succeed anywhere.
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