In a clear sign that India is increasingly crucial for the United States, the White House will be rolling out its full pageantry on Thursday for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official state visit and state dinner.

President Joe Biden has only twice previously extended such an invitation, the highest-ranking and most prestigious of White House visits, to French President Emmanuel Macron and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, leaders of U.S. treaty allies.

Even the term “official state visit” is distinctive. As heads of government, prime ministers are usually invited on an “official visit” instead of a “state visit,” which is given to heads of state such as monarchs, as well as presidents of countries where he or she is also the head of government.

The White House has not responded to queries about why Modi is given this exception. Protocol-wise, it will be a step up compared to his previous White House visits in 2014, 2016 and 2017, which were a “working visit,” “working lunch,” and “official working visit,” respectively.

Key partner

For more than two decades, U.S. administrations have treated India as a key partner. Successive American presidents from Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump have made the 15-hour flight to New Delhi. 

Trump even campaigned for Modi, heaping praise on the Indian leader in front of tens of thousands of Indian Americans at a “Howdy, Modi!” 2019 rally in Texas. Modi reciprocated by hosting the “Namaste Trump” 2020 event where Trump was cheered on by a crowd of more than 100,000 in Ahmedabad, Modi’s political homeland.

But no American president has granted Modi what Biden will this week — maximum display of White House respect and hospitality, including a full honor guard arrival and departure ceremony, lavish dinner reception and accommodation at Blair House, the official guest house located across the street from the White House.

It will be the same full-on pomp that Obama rolled out in 2009 for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Modi also will be invited to speak to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, his second time speaking to American lawmakers following his speech in 2016. His predecessors, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Singh, delivered addresses in 2000 and 2005.

Geostrategic interests

Biden has at least two reasons to roll out the red carpet for Modi: to bolster India’s role in the region to counterbalance China and to wean it off Russian arms.

India is the only country that has engaged in open conflict with China in the past decades. From Washington’s perspective, a robust partnership with New Delhi is critical to realizing the U.S. vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific, said Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, at a recent event at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank working on defense and national security policies.

“A stronger India that can defend its own interest, and its sovereignty is good for the United States,” he said.

Clashes have erupted between Chinese and Indian soldiers along the two countries’ 3,400-kilometer-long contested border, the last one in December 2022. Both sides are ramping up militarization, increasing the potential for escalation between the two nuclear-armed powers.

The U.S. administration is supporting New Delhi’s military modernization, said Ratner, and is working to further integrate it into the U.S. defense industrial base and those of other allies, including Japan, Australia and the Philippines. Earlier this month, Washington and New Delhi signed a defense cooperation road map for the next few years, a move that will bolster India’s weapons manufacturing ambitions.

“A stronger India that can contribute to regional security out of U.S. co-production, co-development with India — there is an aspiration to see India as an exporter of security in the region — that’s good for the United States,” Ratner added.

Local media have reported that during his visit, Modi will sign a $3 billion deal to purchase more than two dozen armed Predator drones for surveillance along India’s border with China and Pakistan.

Another potential deliverable — a technology transfer by American company General Electric for state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to produce engines for Tejas military fighter jets at its facility in Bengaluru.

“India is also seeking sensitive, critical and emerging technologies that the U.S. is often loath to share,” said Donald Camp, chair in U.S.-India policy studies at the Center of Strategic and International Studies during a recent briefing at the nonprofit research organization. “So, they will be talking about cooperation in artificial intelligence and quantum computing.”

Micron Technology Inc. is reportedly close to committing at least $1 billion toward setting up a semiconductor packaging plant in India — a deal blessed by the administration as it seeks to diversify the supply chain of chips away from China.

Russian weaponry

Tensions with China and Pakistan have long driven India to become the world’s largest arms importer. From 2018 to 2022, it purchased 11% of the world’s weapons, almost half of it from Russia, according to the international arms transfer report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

It’s one of the reasons why India has been reluctant to condemn Moscow’s invasion, said Aparna Pande, director of the Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia at the Hudson Institute.

The war on Ukraine, she told VOA, has provided the Biden administration a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to wean India away from its dependence on Moscow. “Because the equipment is not as easily available, spare parts are not coming through, and it’s not really performing that well.”

Russia was also the largest supplier of arms to India from 2013 to 2017, accounting for 64% of total Indian arms imports. It fell to 45% during the period from 2018 to 2022 due to increased domestic Indian arms production, and since 2022, constraints related to its invasion of Ukraine.

Global South

This year, India holds the presidency of the G20, a group of 20 developing and developed economies, including the G7, the world’s seven richest democracies. It will host the G20 summit later this year, with an agenda heavy on the interests of the so-called Global South, shorthand for low- and middle-income countries.

Biden is expected to consult with Modi on the G7’s outreach to the Global South, which is partly based on concerns about China’s heavy footprint across the developing world, which is creating unsustainable levels of infrastructure debt in some countries, as well as Beijing’s clout over supply chains and critical minerals.

A proposal is being pushed by Modi to give the African Union permanent membership at the G20. The move could be strategic to regain ground lost to China and Russia — countries that have taken a head start in forging relations with the group’s 55-member nations, Beijing with its infrastructure loans and Moscow with its arms export.

Modi will also likely discuss with Biden the awkward task of finalizing the G20 guest list — whether to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country is a member. Amid threats of G7 leaders’ boycott, last year’s G20 president, Indonesia, navigated the diplomatic headache by convincing Putin to send his foreign minister and inviting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to attend virtually as an observer.
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Dozens of Afghan refugees enter Serbia every day, having taken treacherous routes in hopes of reaching Western European countries. VOA’s Wali Arian spent time with refugees in Belgrade and filed this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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A global aid agency warned Monday that a large-scale plague of locusts is ravaging northern Afghanistan and could destroy 1.2 million metric tons of wheat, almost one-quarter of the country’s annual harvest.

“The escalating situation threatens to plunge millions of people into worsening levels of hunger,” the nongovernmental aid group Save the Children said in a statement.

The locust outbreak comes as funding shortfalls have cut off food aid for 8 million people in Afghanistan in the past two months, the group said. It urged the international community to increase humanitarian aid and resume development assistance to help prevent the impoverished country from spiraling into “famine-like conditions.”

Save the Children said that the Moroccan locust, one of the world’s most damaging plant pests, is sweeping across eight of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, the country’s wheat basket.

The agency said the outbreak has come at the worst possible time for Afghanistan, where more than 15 million people — one-third of the population — are projected to face crisis levels of hunger over the next five months, including 3.2 million children.

Aid organizations face a $2.2 billion shortfall in humanitarian funding to support Afghanistan’s most vulnerable children and families, especially women and girls.

Arshad Malik, the Save the Children country director, said that millions of children would suffer unless humanitarian aid is immediately increased.

“However, humanitarian aid alone is not a quick fix. The underlying drivers of hunger, including resuming development aid and support to the country’s ailing economy, will also need to be addressed.”

Since the Taliban regained control of the conflict-torn South Asian nation in August 2021, the international community has suspended development assistance and imposed financial sanctions.

The United Nations says the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, stemming from years of war and prolonged drought, has worsened since the Taliban took control of the country. 

U.N. officials say that the Taliban’s discriminatory policies against Afghan women have caused the humanitarian and economic situation in the country to deteriorate. The hardline group has barred Afghan women from working for the United Nations and other aid agencies. 

The Taliban have suspended girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and banned many women government employees from workplaces. 

The restrictions on Afghan women, and other human rights concerns, have deterred foreign governments from recognizing the Taliban as legitimate rulers of the country.   
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Pakistan said Monday that it has arrested 12 people suspected of being traffickers in connection with the migrant boat that capsized last week off the coast of Greece.

Pakistan has only confirmed that 12 Pakistanis lost their lives when a fishing trawler reported to be carrying about 750 men, women, and children capsized in the Mediterranean five days after leaving Libya for Italy.

Pakistani media said Sunday that nearly 300 Pakistanis died in the incident.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has declared Monday a national day of mourning in honor of the Pakistanis who did not survive the tragedy.

Greek officials said 104 people were rescued from the trawler and 78 bodies were retrieved.

Thousands of young Pakistanis, seeking a better life in Europe, pay human smugglers for the trip across the Mediterranean that all too often ends in tragedy.
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Relatives and media in Pakistan reported Sunday that up to 300 of its citizens were among those believed to have been killed after a migrant boat capsized off Greece.

The incident occurred last Wednesday when a fishing trawler, reportedly carrying around 750 men, women, and children, sank off the Greek coast in the Mediterranean Sea five days after leaving eastern Libya for Italy.

The ill-fated boat was packed with migrants from Pakistan, Syria, and Egypt, fleeing dire economic conditions in their home countries and trying to reach relatives in Europe. Greek authorities have since rescued 104 people and retrieved 78 dead bodies, with little hope of finding more victims and survivors.

The Pakistani foreign ministry has so far confirmed that only 12 survivors were from Pakistan, saying it was verifying the number and identity of Pakistanis among the victims.

On Sunday, Pakistani news channels aired interviews of victims’ wailing relatives and reported the death of at least 298 Pakistanis in the shipwreck. Officials have not commented on the reported death toll.

Muhammad Akash, a 21-year-old Pakistani, was also on board the fishing trawler. He was in regular communication with his family and made one last contact before his boat began its journey.

“He made a heartfelt phone call to his brother, urging the family to pray for him as he embarked on what he acknowledged to be a perilous journey,” his uncle Amanat Ali told AFP Sunday after learning Akash was one of the hundreds who drowned off the coast of Greece on Wednesday. “The devastating news has left us in deep sorrow.”

Ali said the family joined forces to pay an agent around $7,000 to organize his journey, starting with flights to Dubai, Egypt, and finally Libya.

“While the number of people on board the boat which capsized on 14 June off the coast of Greece is not clear, it is believed to have been somewhere between 400 and 750, according to various testimonies,” the International Organization for Migration and the U.N. refugee agency said in a joint statement Friday.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said the country would observe a national day of mourning on Monday for those who perished. It shared no details about the casualty toll.

Sharif also ordered an immediate crackdown on agents involved in human smuggling, with federal authorities reporting Sunday the arrest of 10 suspects linked to the shipwreck.

Critics remain skeptical about Pakistan’s efforts to counter human trafficking, saying the illegal practice takes place with authorities’ backing, and culprits often escape prosecution because of their links to influential political figures.

The United States released its annual report last week, listing Pakistan among countries whose governments do not fully meet the minimum standards for eliminating the trafficking of persons.

“The [Pakistani] government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in human trafficking crimes; however, corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes remained significant concerns, inhibiting law enforcement action,” the report noted.

Thousands of young Pakistanis from poverty-stricken families pay vast amounts to human smugglers and undertake dangerous journeys in a bid to illegally enter Europe in search of a better life, despite frequent accidents and coming under deadly fire by border guards at times.

A famous Pakistani female athlete, Shahida Raza, and several others were among 150 people from Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan who were killed in March when their boat was wrecked off the coast of Italy.

In recent months, lingering political turmoil coupled with the worst economic crisis facing Pakistan have prompted tens of thousands of people to leave the country, legally and illegally. The South Asian nation of about 230 million people suffers from record-high inflation and unemployment is growing due to the closure of factories.
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At least 96 people died in two of India’s most populous states over the last several days, officials said Sunday, with swaths of the country reeling from a sweltering heatwave. 

The deaths happened in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and eastern Bihar where authorities warned residents over 60 and others suffering various maladies to stay indoors during the daytime. 

All the fatalities in Uttar Pradesh, totaling 54, were reported in Ballia district, some 300 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Lucknow, the state capital. Authorities found out most of those who passed away were over 60 years old and had preexisting health conditions, which may have been exacerbated by the intense heat. 

S. K. Yadav, a medical officer in Ballia, said in the past three days, some 300 patients were admitted to the district hospital for various ailments aggravated by heat. 

Due to the gravity of the situation, authorities canceled leave applications of medical personnel in Ballia and provided additional hospital beds in the emergency ward to accommodate the influx of patients. 

Officials said most of the admitted patients are aged 60 and above, exhibiting symptoms of high fever, vomiting, diarrhea, breathing difficulties and heart-related issues. 

R.S. Pathak, a resident of Ballia who lost his father on Saturday, said that he witnessed an increased flow of patients at the hospital’s emergency ward while attending to his father. 

“This has never happened in Ballia. I have never seen people dying because of the heat in such large numbers,” he said. “People fear venturing out. The roads and markets are largely deserted.” 

Ballia, along with central and eastern Uttar Pradesh, is currently grappling with oppressive heat. 

On Sunday, the district experienced a maximum temperature of 43 degrees Celsius, surpassing the normal range by five degrees. The relative humidity was recorded at 25%, intensifying the effect of the heat. 

Atul Kumar Singh, a scientist from the India Meteorological Department, or IMD, said temperatures across the state were presently above normal. He added, “no relief is expected in the next 24 hours.” 

The IMD issued an alert saying heatwave conditions would last until June 19 in parts of Uttar Pradesh. 

The state’s health minister, Brijesh Pathak, said that they have opened an investigation into the cause of death of “so many people” in Ballia. 

In eastern Bihar, scorching heat has engulfed most of the state, leading to 42 deaths in the past two days. Among the fatalities, 35 occurred at two hospitals in the state capital of Patna where over 200 patients suffering from diarrhea and vomiting were being treated. 

Patna recorded a maximum temperature of 44.7 degrees Celsius on Saturday. 

The main summer months — April, May and June — are generally the hottest in most of India, before monsoon rains bring in cooler temperatures. 

But temperatures have become more intense in the past decade. During heat waves, the country usually suffers severe water shortages, with tens of millions of its 1.4 billion people lacking running water. 

A study by World Weather Attribution, an academic group that examines the source of extreme heat, found that a searing heat wave in April that struck parts of South Asia was made at least 30 times more likely by climate change. 

In April, the heat caused the death of 13 people at a government event in India’s financial capital of Mumbai and prompted some states to close all schools for a week. 
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At least 34 people have died in the past two days as a large swath of the north Indian state Uttar Pradesh swelters under severe heat, officials said Saturday, prompting doctors to advise residents older than 60 to stay indoors during the daytime.

The dead were all at least 60 years old and had preexisting health conditions that may have been exacerbated by the intense heat. The fatalities occurred in Ballia district, some 300 kilometers southeast of Lucknow, the state capital of Uttar Pradesh.

Twenty-three deaths were reported Thursday and another 11 died Friday, Ballia’s Chief Medical Officer Jayant Kumar said.

“All the individuals were suffering from some ailments and their conditions worsened due to the extreme heat,” Kumar told The Associated Press Saturday. He said most of the deaths were because of heart attacks, brain strokes or diarrhea.

Diwakar Singh, another medical officer, said these people were admitted to Ballia’s main hospital in critical condition. “Elderly people are vulnerable to extreme heat too,” he said.

India Meteorological Department data shows Ballia reported a maximum temperature of 42.2 degrees Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit) Friday, which is 4.7 C (8 F) above normal.

The scorching summer has sparked power outages across the state, leaving people with no running water, fans, or air conditioners. Many have staged protests.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath assured the public that the government was taking all necessary measures to ensure an uninterrupted power supply in the state. He urged citizens to cooperate with the government and use electricity judiciously.

“Every village and every city should receive adequate power supply during this scorching heat. If any faults occur, they should be promptly addressed,” he said Friday night in a statement.

The main summer months — April, May and June — are generally hot in most parts of India before monsoon rains bring cooler temperatures. But temperatures have become more intense in the past decade. During heat waves, the country usually also suffers severe water shortages, with tens of millions of its 1.4 billion people lacking running water.

A study by World Weather Attribution, an academic group that examines the source of extreme heat, found that a searing heat wave in April that struck parts of South Asia was made at least 30 times more likely by climate change.

In April, the heat caused 13 people to die at a government event in India’s financial capital of Mumbai and prompted some states to close all schools for a week.
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Human Rights Watch and other rights organizations have urged U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix to “publicly voice concerns” about rights abuses by Bangladesh’s security forces when he visits the south Asian country later this month.

Lacroix is set to visit Bangladesh on June 25-26 at the invitation of the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as a state guest. In Dhaka, he will attend a conference organized by the ministry.

Bruno Stagno Ugarte, the chief advocacy officer at HRW, said the security forces of Bangladesh — “in particular, the Rapid Action Battalion”— have long been involved in serious human rights violations.

“Lacroix should emphasize that if Bangladesh is to maintain its role as the top contributor of peacekeeping troops, it should appropriately apply the U.N. human rights screening policy, which requires governments, alongside the U.N. to ensure their nationals serving with the U.N. have not violated human rights laws,” Ugarte said in a statement, which was released Monday.

Bangladesh is one of the largest contributors to U.N. peacekeeping missions. Currently, more than 6,000 personnel from Bangladesh’s armed forces and police — including the Rapid Action Battalion, or RAB, a unit made up of army and police officials — are deployed in U.N. peacekeeping missions across different countries.

Meenakshi Ganguly, south Asia director of HRW, said there is a great risk that troops responsible for grave human rights violations in Bangladesh would be rewarded with a U.N. deployment.

“Mr. Lacroix should publicly voice concerns to ensure there is adequate screening, particularly if anyone has been part of RAB,” Ganguly told VOA.

While the authorities in Bangladesh deny that government forces were behind any human rights abuse, in December 2021, Washington imposed human rights-related sanctions on the RAB and six of its former and then-serving officers, saying they were responsible for hundreds of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

Faulty screening policy

In Monday’s HRW statement, chief advocacy officer Ugarte said the current screening policy of Bangladeshi personnel fails to ensure that Bangladeshi troops that have been involved in rights violations at home are not deployed with U.N. missions abroad.

“In Bangladesh, systematic human rights screening by the U.N. is applied only at higher ranks and otherwise left to the National Human Rights Commission, which has limited purview over security forces. Bangladesh’s weak enforcement of this policy reinforces a message that grave rights violations will not preclude one from service under the U.N. flag, presenting a moral hazard for the U.N.,” he said.

VOA reached out to the legal and media wing director of RAB, Khandaker al-Moin, seeking his comment on the issue but has not received a response. VOA also contacted via email the home ministry of Bangladesh. The ministry has not responded to VOA, either.

While reviewing the human rights record of Bangladesh, in 2019, the Committee against Torture, a U.N. human rights body, said in a statement it was “concerned about reports that personnel that have served with the Rapid Action Battalion have frequently been deployed for service with United Nations peace missions.”

The committee also recommended an independent vetting procedure, “to ensure that no person or unit implicated in the commission of torture, extrajudicial killing, disappearances or other serious human rights violations is selected for service.”

Referring to the statement of the committee, HRW’s Ugarte said, “The U.N. should require Bangladeshi officers to disclose previous deployments with RAB, then automatically bar anyone affiliated with RAB from U.N. peacekeeping.”

When Lacroix visits Bangladesh, he “should publicly commit to an enhanced human rights screening that addresses well-documented abuses by Bangladesh security forces, the government’s failure to hold those responsible to account, and the threat they pose to the integrity of U.N. peacekeeping worldwide,” Ugarte added.

Rights groups’ support

Several other rights groups have supported Ugarte on the issue.

Lacroix’s visit to Bangladesh is “potentially extremely problematic in its timing” ahead of a crucial election in the country, Angelita Baeyens, vice president of international advocacy & litigation at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR) said.

The general election is to be held in Bangladesh at the end of this year. The last general election in the country in 2018 was marred by widespread allegations of rigging by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ruling Awami League party.

“Such a move could be misrepresented as a sign of complete trust by the U.N. of Bangladeshi security forces unless Mr. Lacroix both publicly and unequivocally states his concern over the continuing abuses by security forces in the country,” Baeyens told VOA.

Hong Kong-based Bangladeshi rights activist Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman said Lacroix is visiting Bangladesh as a state guest at a time when the incumbent Sheikh Hasina government is “accused of committing grave human rights violations for almost 15 years with blanket impunity.”

“As a responsible senior official of the U.N., USG (Undersecretary-General) Lacroix has an obligation to respect the International Bill of Human Rights. He should ensure that his U.N. portfolio is not being used by the Sheikh Hasina regime for strengthening her political power and validating the gross human rights violations that Sheikh Hasina’s government is committing for retaining her illegitimate power.

“It’s a shame for the U.N. Peacekeeping Operations when they trust the murderers as peacekeepers.”
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Cyclone Biparjoy knocked out power, uprooted trees and electrical poles, and tossed shipping containers around this week as it ravaged India’s western coastline. 

Biparjoy means “calamity” in Bengali, and that is what it brought to India’s Gujarat state.   

Brij Chauhan, a resident who returned home to Biparjoy’s aftermath, told Reuters, “Everything has blown away.” 

About 100,000 people were evacuated before the cyclone made landfall.  Weather forecasters had warned that the devastation would be thorough.  

The Indian Meteorological Department also advised people to expect significant damage to houses, crops, roads and telecommunications networks. 

Gujarat Health Minister Rushikesh Patel told Reuters, “We are trying to bring back normalcy as soon as possible. The state administration is working to help people get all the facilities like drinking water, electricity and medicine within a few hours.”  

Some information for this report came from Reuters. 
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Twelve Pakistanis were among survivors from a boat packed with migrants that capsized off the coast of Greece this week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Saturday.

Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said the government was unable so far to verify the number of Pakistanis who died, or their identities.

People seeking missing relatives were urged to share with the ministry identity documents and DNA reports from authenticated laboratories, she said.

The death toll in Wednesday’s disaster could run to many hundreds as witness accounts suggested that between 400 and 750 people had packed the fishing boat that sank about 80 kilometers from the southern Greek town of Pylos.

Greek authorities have said 104 survivors and 78 bodies of the dead were brought ashore in the immediate aftermath. Hopes were fading of finding any more people alive.

Most of the people on board were from Egypt, Syria and Pakistan, Greek government officials have said.
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Pakistan is in a debt crisis. It must pay billions in debt servicing, but the state’s coffers are almost empty. As hopes for reviving a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund fade, experts say the country may escape default this month, but the situation will grow increasingly grave.

Hit by devastating floods, political instability and pandemic-related supply shocks, Pakistan’s import-dependent economy has been on the brink of default for months as the country’s external debt burden mounts against shrinking foreign exchange reserves.

Pakistan’s total external debt stood at upward of $126 billion at the end of 2022. Most of the country’s income goes to pay off the principal as well as interest on this debt.

In June, Pakistan is due to pay $3.6 billion to its lenders. According to the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, the country’s central bank, $400 million has been paid, while $2.3 billion is expected to be rolled over. Still, the country must pay $900 million. The dollar reserves of the central bank are hovering at about $4 billion.

Need for IMF

Hopes of reviving a stalled 2019 International Monetary Fund, or IMF, bailout deal faded further this week after the lender objected to a few provisions in Pakistan’s proposed federal budget for the fiscal year starting July 2023.

In a statement to VOA, IMF resident representative for Pakistan, Esther Perez Ruiz, listed several measures that did not meet the lender’s expectations, including a new tax amnesty that she said was “against program’s conditionality and governance agenda.”

However, Perez Ruiz said, “the IMF team stands ready to work with the government in refining this budget ahead of its passage.”

Pakistan’s Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar rejected the objections.

“Pakistan is a sovereign country and cannot accept everything the IMF demands,” local media quoted Dar as saying in a briefing to the Pakistani Senate Standing Committee on Finance on Thursday.

The $6.5 billion 2019 deal regarded as a key to avoiding default would give Pakistan $1.1 billion. Not a huge amount by itself, yet it would unlock funds from other lenders, helping to ease the country’s debt crisis.

To revive the deal, Islamabad slashed subsidies, increased taxes and largely stopped controlling the value of the rupee, among other steps over past few months, to woo the IMF.

Experts say the actions were too little, too late.

Differences also persisted on how much funding Pakistan should gather from friends. Islamabad failed to reach the target as allies, slow to help, signaled frustration with the country’s lack of economic reform.

Default risk

The 2019 program ends June 30 with Pakistan’s current fiscal year. Dar maintains Pakistan will not default if talks with the Washington-based lender fail.

“We have sovereign commitments, which the past government made. They are not PTI’s [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf] or [former Prime Minister] Imran Khan’s, they are Pakistan’s commitments. I think even at the cost of paying a political price we must meet those obligations, and we have,” Dar said at a news briefing last week.

Pakistan’s major ally China, to whom it owes the largest chunk of its bilateral debt, came to its rescue yet, again. In a message to journalists late Friday night, the State Bank of Pakistan announced receiving a $1 billion loan from China. Beijing refinanced the loan which Islamabad had earlier repaid.

However, the current government’s term in office ends mid-August, after which a caretaker setup will run the country until general elections.

Pakistan’s former finance minister, Hafeez Pasha, told VOA if the present government fails to unlock IMF funds, it may put Pakistan’s economy in peril in the new fiscal year.

“IMF will not talk to temporary governments. So, the earliest we can talk to the IMF is sometime after the elections, which could be October, November. This interim period is a period of great uncertainty. And this is what we are all very worried about,” Pasha said.

Plan B

It is unclear how the government plans to manage debt repayment without the IMF.

Dar told a post-budget news conference last week that the government would engage in debt restructuring with bilateral lenders or individual countries.

Days later, the central bank governor informed analysts in a briefing that he was unaware of any such plans.

Earlier, when asked if Pakistan had a Plan B, Dar’s response in a pre-budget news briefing had been an emphatic yes, but it was short on details.

He then signaled Pakistan could sell or lease assets to remain current on debt repayments.

“If you are pushed into a corner, what will you do? Lie down? Let there be a default? Pakistan is solvent. If Pakistan’s loans have soared from 70 billion to 100 billion in the last four years, Pakistan also has assets worth billions,” Dar told journalists.

Some experts say that in many ways, Pakistan already has defaulted, as companies face restrictions in sending dividends to shareholders overseas, airlines threaten to move out over nonpayment of dues, and parents struggle to find dollars for their children studying abroad.

Ali Khizar, research head at Business Recorder, a major Pakistani news outlet, points to the flight of human and financial capital from Pakistan as a sign.

“Pakistan may not have defaulted technically on its debt,” Khizar told VOA. But, he says, as people use informal means to send money outside, large businesses leave the country, and people migrate in record numbers to find work outside Pakistan, “we have defaulted on many grounds.”
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Russia confirmed Friday that it had started exporting oil to Pakistan and had agreed to accept Chinese currency as payment, clarifying that the South Asian country did not receive any exclusive discounts on the purchase deal. 

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced Sunday that the first “Russian discounted crude oil cargo” had arrived and offloaded at the port in the southern city of Karachi.

Sharif touted the shipment as “the beginning of a new relationship” between Islamabad and Moscow. His petroleum minister later revealed Pakistan had paid in yuan for the first government-to-government Russian crude oil import. 

Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said there was no reduced pricing for Pakistan.

“Oil deliveries to Pakistan have begun. There is no special discount; for Pakistan, it is the same as for other buyers,” Russian state media quoted Shulginov as telling reporters on the sidelines of an international economic conference in St. Petersburg.

His remarks raised questions about official Pakistani assertions that Moscow had agreed to supply oil to Islamabad at a discounted price under a deal the two sides negotiated earlier this year.  

“We agreed that the payment would be made in the currencies of friendly countries,” Shulginov said when asked for a response to Pakistani assertions that the trade is taking place in Chinese currency. He also confirmed that the issue of barter supplies was also discussed, “but no decision has been made yet.”

Cash-strapped Pakistan earlier this month allowed its state and private entities to open barter trade with several countries, including Russia, in an attempt to ease pressure on Islamabad’s rapidly depleting foreign exchange reserves.  

Shulginov said that the two countries had not yet reached an understanding on prices for the export of liquefied natural gas to Pakistan. He noted that “the discussion is about long-term contracts, but so far, we are talking about spot supplies, and spot gas prices are now high.” 

Pakistan has purchased 100,000 metric tons of Russian crude oil, of which 45,000 tons arrived earlier this week, said Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik. He told the media on Monday that the payment was made in Chinese yuan and said that there would be a reduction in local oil prices in a few weeks. But Malik did not disclose details such as pricing or the discount Islamabad received, as claimed by Sharif.

However, the deal in yuan marked a significant shift in the U.S. dollar-dominated export payments policy as Pakistan faces a cash crunch and default on external debt.

Energy imports make up the majority of the country’s external payments. The foreign exchange reserves held by the central bank have dipped to around $4 billion, barely enough to cover a month of controlled imports.
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Pakistan is facing a debt crisis. It must pay billions in debt servicing, but the state’s coffers are almost empty. At the same time, hopes of reviving a stalled 2019 International Monetary Fund bailout program are fading. Is Pakistan just days away from a default? VOA’s Pakistan bureau chief Sarah Zaman reports from Islamabad. Camera/Edit: Naveed Nasim, Wajid Asad, Malik Waqar Ahmed
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Cyclone Biparjoy knocked out power, uprooted trees and electrical poles and tossed about shipping containers Friday as it ravaged India’s western Indian coastline.
 

Biparjoy’s destruction has caused almost 200,000 people in western India and southern Pakistan to leave their homes and seek shelter from the further devastation that’s sure to come.

Pakistan’s Sindh province, ravaged by floods last year, will be hit again by more fallout in the days ahead by Biparyjoy’s drenching rains, according to weather forecasters.   

The Indian Meteorological Department has warned people to expect significant damage to houses, crops, roads and telecommunication networks.

Biparjoy is traveling with maximum sustained winds of 120 kph with gusts up to 140 kph. It is expected to weaken as it moves into India’s Gujarat state where religious sites have been closed.

The World Health Organization said it is providing free food and clean drinking water to people in Pakistan. Meanwhile, UNICEF, the U.N.’s children’s agency, has declared that 625,000 children in India and Pakistan are at immediate risk. 
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The U.N. children’s agency said it was holding discussions with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban over “timelines and practicalities” for a possible required handover of its education programs and that classes would continue in the meantime.

Aid officials say that the Taliban had signaled international organizations could no longer be involved in education projects, in a move criticized by the U.N. but not yet confirmed by Afghan authorities.

UNICEF said it had received assurances from the education ministry that its community-based classes, which educate 500,000 students, would continue while they discussed the matter.

“As the lead agency for the education cluster in Afghanistan, UNICEF is engaged in constructive discussions with the de facto Ministry of Education and appreciates the commitment from the de facto minister to keep all … classes continuing while discussions take place about timelines and practicalities,” UNICEF Afghanistan spokesperson Samantha Mort told Reuters.

“In order to minimize disruption to children’s learning, it is imperative that any handover to national NGOs is done strategically and includes comprehensive assessment and capacity building,” Mort said.

A spokesperson for the Taliban did not respond to request for comment. The Ministry of Education has not publicly confirmed the policy.

The Taliban, who took power in 2021, have closed most secondary schools to girls, stopped female students attending universities and stopped many Afghan women working for aid groups and the United Nations in accordance with their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

International organizations have been heavily involved in education projects, and UNICEF made an agreement with the Taliban to run community classes before they took over the country.

Two humanitarian sources told Reuters this month that aid agencies had been told provincial authorities had been directed to stop the involvement of international organizations in education projects, possibly within weeks.

The U.N. spokesperson in New York said the move would be a “horrendous step backwards.”

UNICEF runs many community-based classes including for 300,000 girls, often in homes in rural areas.

The Taliban took over Afghanistan after a 20-year insurgency against U.S.-led forces with a speed and ease that took the world by surprise. 
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes his first state visit to Washington in nine years on June 21. The trip comes as the United States and India increase cooperation in critical emerging technologies. Matt Dibble has the story.
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There is mounting, controversial evidence that Afghanistan is rapidly turning into a cauldron for terrorist activity, with both al-Qaida and the Islamic State terror group’s Afghan affiliate growing substantially, in numbers and capabilities, without U.S. or Western forces on the ground.

The dire assessment, shared in a recently released United Nations report based on member state intelligence, concludes the terror groups “have greater freedom of maneuver” under Taliban rule and are making “good use of this.”

The report by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team warns that al-Qaida and the Taliban maintain a symbiotic relationship, “with al-Qaida viewing Taliban-administered Afghanistan a safe haven.”

In contrast, the report finds Islamic State Khorasan Province, also known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, has used the Taliban’s inability to establish control over remote areas, as well as dissatisfaction with Taliban rule to its advantage.

“Attacks against high-profile Taliban figures raised [IS-Khorasan] morale, prevented defections and boosted recruitment, including from within the Taliban’s ranks,” the U.N. report said.

In each case, the U.N. report contends, the terror groups have significantly grown their footprints.

Al-Qaida, assessed to have had as few as several dozen members in Afghanistan a year ago, is believed to have 30 to 60 senior officials based out of Afghanistan, as well as an additional 400 fighters, 1,600 family members and a series of new training camps.

IS-Khorasan, according to the U.N. data, has grown to between 4,000 to 6,000 members, with strongholds or camps in at least 13 provinces and a network of sleeper cells that can reach Kabul and beyond.

But as alarming as the estimates in the U.N. report may be, multiple U.S. officials told VOA they have seen nothing to support such findings.

“These stats do not align with our intelligence community’s analysis in a number of areas,” one U.S. official told VOA on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence matters.

Another official was even more blunt, calling the estimates for the size of al-Qaida and Islamic State in the U.N. report “wildly out of whack.”

“These numbers are wildly out of whack with the best estimates of the U.S. intelligence community, and indeed the best estimates of our partners and allies,” that senior administration official told VOA, likewise speaking on the condition of anonymity.

According to the senior official, U.S. intelligence assesses there are fewer than a dozen al-Qaida core members currently in Afghanistan and that there has not been a senior al-Qaida core leader in the country since the U.S. killed then al-Qaida core leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in an airstrike in July 2022.

Al-Qaida “simply has not reconstituted a presence in Afghanistan since the U.S. departure in August 2021,” the official said, adding that it is unlikely attempts by al-Qaida to establish training camps in Afghanistan, as the U.N. report claims, would go unnoticed by the U.S. and its allies and partners.

“We are postured to see indications of al-Qaida activity were to be resurgent in various forms, whether it’s a training camp, whether it’s plotting that doesn’t require a training camp,” the official said.

The U.S. also rejected intelligence shared by some U.N. member states that al-Qaida’s de facto leader, Saif al-Adel, left his base in Iran and visited Afghanistan in 2022, with at least one member state asserting al-Adel is now based out of Afghanistan.

“We do not have indications that the likes of Saif al-Adel have traveled to Afghanistan,” the senior official said. “Al-Qaida, as far as we can tell, and we look pretty closely, they do not see Afghanistan right now as a permissive or hospitable environment in which to attempt to operate.”

As for the U.N report’s assertion that IS-Khorasan has grown to between 4,000 and 6,000 fighters, including family members, “that is thousands more than the [U.S.] intelligence community has assessed or assessed there to be,” the senior official told VOA.

And while the U.S. agrees that IS-Khorasan has the desire to attack the United States, “it is clear that the terrorist group’s ability to do so, to actually fulfill that ambition, has faced setbacks in the last two years,” the official said.

“Our view is that ISIS-K has not closed that ambition-capacity gap that it very much hoped to close after the U.S. departure, and indeed has faced some very real setbacks and some very concerted pressure from the Taliban,” the official added.

The U.S. officials who spoke to VOA were unable to explain the divergence between the assessments of al-Qaida and IS-Khorasan as presented in the U.N. report and those of the U.S. intelligence community, noting previous reports by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team have tracked much more closely with Washington’s own findings.

But a source familiar with the production of the report, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told VOA that U.S. officials were aware of the conclusions before it was published and did not raise objections.

The source also said that there appeared to be some disagreement among U.S. agencies, with some falling in line with some of the U.N.’s findings.

Western officials and researchers generally have viewed the U.N. reports as a valuable source of information, especially because they include the viewpoints of multiple countries, some of which sometimes have unique insights into developments on the ground.

And while they admit estimates from member states on how many fighters or members groups such as al-Qaida and IS-Khorasan have can vary significantly, the trends identified in the reports are significant.

“The [U.N.] monitoring team goes to great lengths to try to triangulate information, and it publishes things that it’s reasonably confident of, and that goes through a rigorous editorial process,” Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former senior United Nations counterterrorism official and monitoring team coordinator, told VOA.

Fitton-Brown, now an adviser to the nonprofit Counter Extremism Project, said that even if there are disagreements over the extent to which al-Qaida or IS-Khorasan have grown their footprints in Afghanistan, the larger point remains.

The report “makes it very clear why the Taliban cannot, will not, live up to their responsibilities under the Doha accords,” he said, citing intelligence in the U.N. report that some Afghan Ministry of Defense courses now feature some al-Qaida training manuals.

Some analysts also have raised concerns based on the report’s findings.

“Historically, the U.S. has woefully underestimated al-Qaida’s strength in Afghanistan,” Bill Roggio, senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told VOA.

The U.N. report “is far more realistic than what U.S. intelligence is trying to present as the true estimate of al-Qaida strength in Afghanistan,” he added.

Other analysts highlighted the reported establishment of al-Qaida training camps in various Afghan provinces, as well as the ability of other, smaller terror groups to operate more freely.

“Afghanistan seems eerily reminiscent to pre-9/11 Afghanistan, with the number of groups that are allegedly active,” Colin Clarke, director of research at the global intelligence firm The Soufan Group, told VOA.

“That’s what I think the nightmare scenario was for a long time, that the U.S. would have limited-to-no-presence in the country, and these groups would reconstitute, begin reestablishing training camps and then training these fighters — either Afghans or foreign terrorist fighters — for external operations,” Clarke said. “Terrorist groups thrive and indeed flourish amid instability. And that’s exactly what we have here.”
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Multiple identical complaints filed with police in Pakistan this week have accused several self-exiled journalists of inciting mutiny against the state and defaming the military, a move critics view as another attempt to suppress freedom of speech in the country.

The journalists facing the charges work out of the United States and Britain. Most of them fled Pakistan in recent months, citing personal security concerns. They include freelancer Wajahat Saeed Khan, Shaheen Sehbai — the former editor of a mainstream Pakistani newspaper — and Moeed Pirzada and Sabir Shakir, both of whom hosted popular TV political talk shows on national channels.

While those filing the complaints have identified themselves as “patriotic citizens,” critics accuse the military of being behind the cases.

Reporters Without Borders, a France-based international defender of media freedom, denounced the charges against Khan and Sehbai as absurd, demanding Pakistani prosecutors immediately dismiss them. The watchdog defended the two men saying they “have just practiced journalism” and have done nothing else.

“Make no mistake — the sole purpose of this ludicrous complaint … is to intimidate the two journalists into silence,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk. “The credibility of the rule of law in Pakistan, and above all, judicial independence in the face of unacceptable military interference is at stake.”

The allegations against the journalists stem from violent nationwide protests sparked by the May 9 arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan on corruption charges.

Protesters also vandalized several military sites and symbols, prompting incumbent Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the military to arrest thousands of supporters of Khan’s opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party.

The detainees include women. Dozens of PTI workers face trials in military courts for allegedly playing a role in the attacks on defense installations.

The journalists in question, via YouTube shows and Twitter posts, have since routinely criticized the military for unleashing the clampdown on Khan supporters and alleged human rights abuses against detainees.

Pirzada dismissed charges against him as “bogus and baseless,” vowing to contest them through his attorneys in Pakistani and even U.S. courts.

“The only goal is to silence dissent from journalists outside Pakistan — after totally suppressing Pakistani media,” Pirzada wrote on Twitter.

The whereabouts of a nationally known journalist, Imran Riaz Khan, remain unknown a month after police picked him up in the populous Punjab province.

“In the run-up to general elections that are due to be held on a still-undetermined date in the coming weeks, Pakistan’s journalists – both those in Pakistan and those abroad – are being subjected to growing harassment by the military establishment and intelligence agencies,” the RSF alleged in its statement.

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the growing censorship in Pakistan is extremely concerning.

“It is essential for journalists to keep the public informed about the country’s political situation,” Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, told VOA.

“Pakistani authorities must reverse their blatant acts of censorship and allow the media to report freely without the fear of harassment by law enforcement,” she said.

Ban on Khan

The military has allegedly barred all Pakistani news channels from showing pictures of former Prime Minister Khan or using his name. Senior army officers conveyed the warning to media owners in a meeting in the capital, Islamabad, earlier this month, several attendees told VOA on the condition of anonymity.

Instead, government news conferences, speeches, and statements denouncing Khan and his supporters as “miscreants” and “hatemongers” are often broadcast, with all the channels airing images of the incidents of arson and vandalism in the run-up to hourly bulletins.

The former prime minister has openly accused the Pakistani military of being behind the crackdown and media ban in a bid to dismantle his party. Khan has distanced his party from the violence, blaming government-infiltrated “saboteurs” for the ransacking.

VOA has contacted the army’s media wing for a reaction to the allegations but did not receive a response immediately.

Last week, a strongly worded military statement quoted its chief, General Asim Munir, as telling his top commanders that “attempts to take refuge behind imaginary and mirage human rights violations to create a smoke screen for hiding the ugly faces of all involved, are absolutely futile.”

Without naming Khan, the army chief added, “It is time that the noose of law is also tightened around the planners and masterminds who mounted the hate-ripened and politically driven rebellion against the state.”

On Wednesday, Pakistani Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar defended military trials of civilians while speaking to reporters. He claimed the country’s army laws meet “the internationally acknowledged minimum requirements” for a fair trial.

Additionally, Sharif attempted in a recent statement to assure critics that “the culprits are being dealt with under the law and that I will ensure that no rights violations take place.”

Pakistan’s National Assembly, the lower house of the parliament, passed a resolution on Monday calling for military trials “without even a single-day delay” of PTI members allegedly involved in last month’s rioting.

Skeptics such as the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, or HRCP, swiftly rejected the resolution, reiterating their strong opposition to military trials of civilians. The watchdog said the resolution “seems to imply that the government is willing to sacrifice the right to a fair trial, transparency, and due process on the altar of political expediency.”

Khan’s critics attribute his rise to power after the 2018 election to his close ties with the military, and he was removed from power in April 2022 through a parliamentary vote of no-confidence after falling out with the institution.

According to all recent polls, the deposed prime minister remains the most popular politician in Pakistan, but the crackdown on his party has forced dozens of his aides to publicly abandoned Khan or quit politics altogether, praising the military and condemning the protests. They all appeared to be reading from the same script but denied they were leaving the party under any pressure, claims critics dismissed.

Those abandoning Khan have been allowed to leave jails and join rival political parties without facing prosecution regarding the alleged violence against military installations. PTI leaders who remain in hiding to avoid being arrested have complained their family members have been harassed and subjected to abuse by police in repeated raids on their homes.
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The coastal regions of India and Pakistan were on high alert Wednesday with tens of thousands of people being evacuated a day ahead of a cyclone’s expected landfall.

The India Meteorological Department said Cyclone Biparjoy was packing sustained winds of up to 145 kilometers per hour (90 mph) and was projected to make landfall near Jakhau port in the Kutch district of India’s Gujarat state on Thursday.

Residents living within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the coast in Gujarat were evacuated, and those living within 10 kilometers (6 miles) may also have to leave, officials have said.

Five people have been killed so far in incidents related to the cyclone, including three boys who drowned off Mumbai’s coast and a woman who was killed in an accident caused by strong winds in Gujarat. Rescuers were searching for another person who drowned off Mumbai.

Experts say climate change is leading to an increase in cyclones in the Arabian Sea region, making preparations for natural disasters all the more urgent.

At a relief camp for displaced people in the Pakistani village of Gharo in Sindh province, laborer Allah Noor, 59, said soldiers came and evacuated them during strong winds.

In Kutch, where the cyclone was expected to hit land, 57-year-old boat owner and businessman Adam Karim Dhobi said this was the worst storm he’d seen since 1998.

“We have parked our boats in safe places,” Dhobi said. “We are praying to God that this cyclone doesn’t cause too much damage here.”

The Press Trust of India news agency said nearly 50,000 people have been evacuated to relief camps in Gujarat. Nikhil Mudholkar from the National Disaster Response Force, who was overseeing relief operations in Devbhoomi Dwarka district along Gujarat’s coast, said they were fully prepared and were now in waiting mode.

“We have deployed 23 teams and have moved everyone living near the coast to safer ground,” Mudholkar said. “Windspeeds have picked up now and rains have started too.”

In Pakistan, despite strong winds and rain, authorities said all people from vulnerable areas have been moved to safer places in the southern districts, including Thatta, Keti Bandar, Sajawal and Badin — regions that only last summer were hit by devastating floods that displaced thousands.

For many there, it was a second displacement in less than a year. People packed as many of their belongings as they could into their cars and left — either on their own or under troop escort — heading to relief camps set up inside government buildings and schools.

At the Gharo relief camp, 80-year-old Bayan Bibi said there was no medicine for the sick available at the camp.

On Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif ordered the evacuations from areas at risk and asked local authorities to arrange food, shelter and medical facilities for the displaced. Pakistan Climate Minister Sherry Rehman urged people not to panic but work with the authorities, promising they would be taken to safer places.

She said the threat of the cyclone making landfall in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city with 20 million people, had been averted. She told reporters that Pakistan will consider suspending commercial flights when it assesses the situation on Thursday.

Nearly 80,000 people have been evacuated or have voluntarily moved away from danger zones, authorities said.

Pakistan’s electricity minister, Khurram Dastgir, warned at a news conference of power outages once the cyclone makes landfall. He said transmission lines will likely be damaged and that the government has deployed 2,000 engineers to deal with the situation in the south.

The cyclone has “extensive damaging potential” and is likely to impact the Kutch, Devbhumi Dwarka and Jamnagar districts the most, India’s meteorological department says.

Fishing activities have been suspended in both countries until Friday and all ports in the region have been shut. Dozens of trains and flights were diverted or canceled.

On Tuesday, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah announced a budget of $972 million for disaster management.

A recent study shows that the Arabian Sea has warmed up by almost 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since March this year, making conditions favorable for severe cyclones, he said.

“The oceans have become warmer already on account of climate change,” said Raghu Murtugudde, an Earth system scientist at the University of Maryland.

Another study, in 2021, found that the frequency, duration and intensity of cyclones in the Arabian Sea increased significantly between 1982 and 2019, he said.

Cyclone Tauktae in 2021 was the last severe cyclone that made landfall in the region. It claimed 174 lives, a relatively low figure, thanks to extensive preparations ahead of the storm.

In 1998, a cyclone that hit Gujarat state claimed more than 1,000 lives and caused extensive damage. A cyclone that hit Sindh province and Karachi in 1965 killed more than 10,000 people.
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The United Nations says a record 110 million people around the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes.

Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters in Geneva Wednesday that 108.4 million people were displaced by war, persecution or human rights violations by the end of 2022, an increase of 19 million people. Grandi said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, was the main reason for the record increase.

The number has since risen to the current number of 110 million due to the eight-week old conflict in Sudan, which has led to the displacement of 2 million people.

The numbers were part of the UNHCR’s annual report on forced displacement around the world. Grandi said more than 35 million of those displaced had fled to safety across international borders, while another 62 million were internally displaced. He said the number of people who were stateless or of undetermined nationality rose to 4.4 million in 2022

“It’s quite an indictment on the state of our world,” Grandi said.

He also said more low and middle-income nations are hosting displaced persons than wealthier ones.

Grandi noted a rising backlash among many nations in accepting refugees and asylum-seekers, but welcomed the agreement reached last week among the European Union’s 27 members to share responsibility for migrants and refugees.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse.
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Rights activists have expressed concerns about reports that Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are being coerced and offered cash incentives by the Bangladesh government to return to Myanmar. Bangladesh “must immediately suspend” the pilot repatriation project for Rohingya refugees to return to Myanmar, a senior U.N. expert said.

“In the past fortnight, [Bangladeshi] government officials threatened several members of our [Rohingya] community with violence if we do not return to Myanmar,” a Rohingya on Bay of Bengal Island Bhasan Char — who fears reprisal and does not want to be identified — told VOA.

In a news release issued June 8 by the office of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, the special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said reports have surfaced that Bangladeshi authorities are using “deceptive and coercive measures” to compel Rohingya refugees to return to Myanmar.

“Conditions in Myanmar are anything but conducive for the safe, dignified, sustainable, and voluntary return of Rohingya refugees,” Andrews said in the statement.

“I implore Bangladesh to immediately suspend the repatriation pilot programme.”

Phil Robertson, Asia division deputy director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), noted that Bangladesh is “squeezing the Rohingya camp residents economically, abusing their rights, and making the refugees as miserable and desperate as possible” in the hope they will accept “Myanmar’s woefully unacceptable offer” for repatriation.

Third attempt at repatriation

After two previous efforts to send the Rohingya back to Myanmar failed in 2018 and 2019, Myanmar and Bangladesh are making another effort to repatriate about 1,100 Rohingya refugees.

Over the past couple of weeks, however, it has come to light that Rohingyas are not willing to return to Myanmar given the current situation, and the Bangladeshi officials are resorting to coercive tactics.

“Two weeks ago, some [Bangladeshi] government officials told us through some [Rohingya] cluster focal leaders that each Rohingya family would be offered U.S. $2,000 if they repatriated to Myanmar. The news brought relief to many of us who have been struggling to find income opportunities in Bangladesh. Like many other Rohingyas, I enrolled myself and my family for repatriation,” an anonymous Rohingya refugee told VOA on Monday.

“But after a high Bangladeshi official a few days ago clarified that there was no such offer of cash incentive for the repatriating Rohingyas from the Bangladesh government, I have decided to withdraw from the repatriation list.”

Other Rohingyas said they are scared to return to Myanmar at this time.

“We have overheard that the military junta intends to confine us to camps and issue a National Verification Card [NVC] that would render us illegal immigrants in our own homeland. These reports have created fear and doubts among the families who enlisted their names for repatriation, and now they all want to withdraw from the list,” another Bhasan Char-based Rohingya refugee told VOA.

Citizenship rights

The refugees are facing “indescribable hardships” in Bangladesh, and they all want to return to their “ancestral land” in Myanmar once the government officially recognizes the community as an “official ethnicity as Rohingya in the parliament,” Cox’s Bazar-based Rohingya community leader and human rights defender Htway Lwin said.

“We insist on the repatriation process including rehabilitating Rohingya in Sittwe’s IDP [internally displaced people] camps to their original villages, granting them full citizenship rights, ensuring their safety, religious freedom, and freedom of movement, as well as access to education and health care — the same rights being enjoying by the other 135 ethnic groups in Myanmar,” Lwin told VOA.

After violence displaced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya in 2017, Myanmar authorities interned many of them in an open-air detention camp in Sittwe where 130,000 of them still live in abusive and squalid conditions.

“If these demands are not guaranteed, the repatriation process mediated by China could result in a disastrous situation involving three countries, negatively impacting the Rohingya community,” he noted.

Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s refugee relief and repatriation commissioner in Cox’s Bazar, said Tuesday the repatriation-related preparation was “in process.”

“This is not true that the Rohingya are being coerced to return to Myanmar. And, we have not offered any cash incentive to anyone for returning to Myanmar,” Rahman told VOA.

The director of rights group Fortify Rights, John Quinley, told VOA, “The Myanmar junta recently gave out pamphlets to Rohingya promoting the National Verification Card [NVC] process and told refugees that if they return to Myanmar, they must accept NVCs. The reality is NVCs do not allow Rohingya to self-identify and label the Rohingya as foreigners in their own land.”

Myanmar’s State Administration Council junta has fundamentally failed to address any of the key Rohingya demands for their voluntary return, HRW’s Robertson said.

“The Rohingya refugees are facing the classic ‘out of the frying pan, and into the fire’ situation, with Bangladesh officials apparently threatening they will face violence if they stay,” Robertson told VOA.

“But the Rohingya know they could face atrocities and worse if they return to Myanmar under the control of the Tatmadaw, who butchered, raped, and burned them out of Rakhine state in 2017.”
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The Biden administration said Tuesday it would extend through 2025 the temporary legal status of more than 300,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua who had faced the risk of deportation and loss of work permits under the Trump administration’s policies. 

Under the Temporary Protected Status program, the Biden administration will permit migrants from these four countries to continue their lawful residence and employment in the United States. 

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that through the extension of Temporary Protected Status, “we are able to offer continued safety and protection to current beneficiaries who are nationals of El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua who are already present in the United States and cannot return because of the impacts of environmental disasters.”  

The TPS program does not lead to permanent U.S. residency, but it does provide legal status in the U.S. and protection from deportation for up to 18 months. It also provides work permits for people to work legally in the country. And it can be extended.  

Congress established TPS in 1990 when it said migrants whose home countries are considered unsafe could live and work in the U.S. for a period of time if they met the requirements established by the U.S. government. 

Currently, 16 countries have TPS designations: Afghanistan, Cameroon, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and Yemen.  

The Trump administration sought to terminate most TPS programs, arguing that previous administrations had misused them. However, these attempts were halted in federal court.  

Because of Tuesday’s announcement by the Biden administration, a lawsuit filed in federal court by advocates challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to terminate TPS will likely be deemed moot. A hearing was scheduled for late June.  

According to the DHS statement, soon-to-be-published notices in the Federal Register are expected to have more information on eligibility criteria and what is necessary for current beneficiaries to re-register for TPS and renew their work permits.  

Once the notices are published, existing TPS beneficiaries from the four countries “will be able to re-register to continue their TPS throughout the 18-month extension,” DHS said.  

Immigration advocates called the move “a hard-fought victory for TPS holders” but urged Congress to provide permanent relief for TPS holders who have been living and working in the U.S. for years without a long-term solution.   

Despite pressure from Democratic lawmakers and migrant advocates, the administration has chosen not to pursue the expansion or redesignation of the TPS programs for these countries, which means the program will not be opened to new applicants, thereby excluding more recent arrivals from eligibility for TPS. 

About 239,000 Salvadorans residing in the United States since 2001, about 76,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans who have been in the U.S. since 1998 and about 14,500 Nepalese who have been in the country since 2015 will be eligible for TPS renewal. 
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Muslim migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border have a safe place in Tijuana at a shelter with halal food, separate areas for men and women, and prayers five times a day. Genia Dulot has our story. Video editor: Barry Unger.
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Journalism — once a popular career path for young Afghan men and women — is losing its appeal for new students as the Taliban ban women from higher education and the country’s media work in an increasingly restrictive environment. For VOA, Shaista Sadat Lami has the story.
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