Bangladesh: Hasina accuses US of seeking regime change

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has accused the United States of seeking a regime change in the country. “They are trying to eliminate democracy and introduce a government that will not have a democratic existence,” Hasina said in Parliament. “It’ll be an undemocratic action.”

Hasina’s criticism of the United States comes at a time when Washington has pulled up her party – the Awami League – on issues related to human rights.

In December 2022, several former and current leaders of the Rapid Action Battalion were sanctioned by the United States. The RAB, an elite Bangladesh paramilitary unit, is alleged to have carried out enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings on behalf of the government.

In the same month, American Ambassador Peter Haas had met families of victims of alleged enforced disappearance under Hasina’s rule. This included the family of Sajedul Islam Sumon, a leader from the Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

In February this year, Derek Chollet, the US State Department counselor, had expressed concern about the decline of democracy in Bangladesh. He had warned that this would limit American cooperation with Dhaka and urged Hasina to ensure free and fair elections.

 

Iran and Pakistan key players in Afghan peace process

Ms. Hina Rabbani, Pakistan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs, said the role of Iran and Pakistan are crucial to ensuring long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Rabbani made the remarks in a meeting with Mohammad Ali Hosseini, the Iranian ambassador to Pakistan.

With reference to her recent visit with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on the heels of the fourth Foreign Ministerial Meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbors in Samarkand, Rabbani emphasized the crucial contributions that Pakistan and Iran make to regional stability, particularly when it comes to matters pertaining to Afghanistan.

Regarding the resumption of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Rabbani also said Pakistan warmly welcomes restoration of ties between Tehran and Riyadh.

The conversation between Pakistan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs and Ambassador Hosseini focused on the importance of building strong political, economic, and commercial connections between Islamabad and Tehran.

Hosseini stated that trade between Iran and Pakistan has grown greatly in recent years and is projected to grow further by enhancing infrastructure at the two nations’ borders.

Hosseini and Rabbani discussed increasing Iran’s electricity exports to Pakistan as well as arranging the formal opening of the Pishin-Mand border market.

The discussion also covered ways to activate bilateral cooperation mechanism such the Political Advisory Committee, Joint Consular Commission, and Special Committee on Security.

The Iranian ambassador also met separately with Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Sardar Ayaz Sadiq. During the talks, the Pakistani officials stressed the significance of advancing high-level consultations between the two friendly and neighboring countries in order to deepen bilateral cooperation in a variety of areas.

 

As the United States focuses on its showdown with Russia in Ukraine and its escalating competition with China, the Middle East has been left to run its affairs the way it always has: with marriages of convenience between rival powers. These are not Catholic-style ‘holy matrimonies’, comprehensive and permanent, but coolly pragmatic deals to survive through short-term relationships that fit changing strategic conditions. If only Israel understood that.

Of course, one relatively constant factor—religion—does play an important role in determining whether countries in the region are rivals or allies. But the Sunni–Shia divide has been accorded excessive weight in assessments of the Middle East’s diplomatic shifts. Geopolitical interests and regime survival always prevail over religious identities. This helps to explain why conservative Arab regimes have shown such a remarkable ability to withstand both internal upheaval—exemplified by the resounding defeat of pro-democracy forces during the Arab Spring—and external pressures.

The Gulf countries exemplify this hard-headed approach. Business-oriented and living in the shadow of predator states like Iraq and Iran, they are much more concerned with commerce and discreet security understandings than with ideology. A particularly striking display of such diplomatic pragmatism came last month, when Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunni world and Shia Iran re-established relations.

Beyond the headlines trumpeting China’s role in mediating the rapprochement, the logic driving the shift is clear. For Iran—desperate to extricate itself from the economic and social crises that have fuelled popular uprisings in recent months—Saudi Arabia is a much-needed lifeline. For the Saudis, the failure of America’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran—thanks, not least, to its alliance with China and Russia—and Iran’s imminent emergence as a nuclear state make détente a necessity.

Saudi Arabia was most likely also motivated by the prospect of ending the war in Yemen, where it has suffered humiliating losses at the hands of the Houthis, Iran’s proxies. Peace would enable the kingdom to focus its attention on diversifying its economy away from oil and petrochemicals. As a trade-dependent economy, Saudi Arabia can thrive only in a context of peace and security.

Saudi Arabia’s opening with Iran is part of a broader regional accommodation. The United Arab Emirates re-established diplomatic relations with Iran last year, with Bahrain expected to follow suit soon. Turkey has reached out to both Syria and Israel, and the Arab states seem to be allowing Syria—with its distinctly secular and nationalist Ba’ath regime—back into the fold. Last month, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, long shunned as a pariah, visited the UAE, and a Saudi reconciliation with the ‘butcher of Damascus’ is now in the offing.

Here, too, pragmatism has been the guiding principle. Different conditions call for different policies, and at a time when the US—Assad’s main international nemesis—has become less assertive in the region, Syria has come to seem like a legitimate partner.

But no one should expect that the Arab League will welcome Syria back only if it pledges to reduce Iran’s military deployment on its territory. A key feature of Middle Eastern marriages of convenience is that they don’t entail policy changes that reflect the parties’ core interests. Iran won’t downgrade its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, whether it has embassies in Saudi Arabia or not.

Likewise, the Saudi–Iranian rapprochement won’t change the fact that the US is the ultimate guarantor of Saudi Arabia’s security. Nor does it rule out a Saudi–Israeli peace agreement. The House of Saud is always keen to diversify its strategic options.

Before a Saudi deal with Israel can happen, however, Israel will have to put its domestic political house in order, avoid escalation in the occupied territories, freeze settlement expansion and restore its relationship with the US. More fundamentally, Israelis must comprehend what the Arabs, Turks and Iranians already understand: pragmatic deal-making will do it a lot more good than an impossible quest for total victory.

The 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, were more a product of American pressure than diplomatic savoir faire on Israel’s part. And, in the eyes of its newfound Arab partners, Israel’s standing is already deteriorating, owing not only to its domestic crisis, but also to its refusal to rethink its Iran strategy.

While other Middle Eastern countries adapt to current strategic conditions, Israel remains committed to its longstanding ‘shadow war’ against Iran, with its covert attacks, including drone strikes and cyberattacks, as well as airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria. Despite the region’s recent surfeit of marriages, Israeli leaders’ lack of vision and courage implies that they are unlikely to step up to the altar any time soon.

Curtesy: The Strategist

Parts of China trip more than shocking, says German Foreign Minister

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Wednesday described parts of her recent trip to China as more than shocking and said Beijing was increasingly becoming a systemic rival more than a trade partner and competitor.

The blunt remarks followed Baerbock's visit to Beijing last week where she warned that any attempt by China to control Taiwan would be unacceptable.

Beijing claims democratically governed Taiwan as a Chinese province and has never ruled out the use of force to bring the island under its control.

Baerbock also said China wanted to follow its own rules at the expense of the international rules-based order. Beijing in turn asked Germany to support Taiwan's reunification and said China and Germany were not adversaries but partners.

Speaking to the German Bundestag (lower house of parliament) on Wednesday about her China trip, Baerbock said some of it was really more than shocking.

She did not elaborate on specifics, although her remark came after she said China was becoming more repressive internally as well as aggressive externally.

For Germany, she said, China is a partner, competitor and systemic rival, but her impression is now that the systemic rival aspect is increasing more and more.

China is Germany's largest trading partner, said Baerbock, but this did not mean Beijing was also Germany's most important trading partner.

The German government wants to work with China but does not want to repeat past mistakes, for example the notion of change through trade, she said, that the West can achieve political shifts in authoritarian regimes through commerce.

Baerbock also said China had a responsibility to work towards peace in the world, in particular using its influence over Russia in the war in Ukraine.

She welcomed Beijing's promise not to supply weapons to Russia, including dual use items, though added that Berlin would see how such a promise worked in practice.

In a departure from the policies of former chancellor Angela Merkel, Olaf Scholz's government is developing a new China strategy to reduce dependence on Asia's economic superpower, a vital export market for German goods.

 

 

 

Poverty 4th leading cause of death in United States

Research published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that poverty was linked to at least 183,000 deaths in the United States in 2019 among people aged 15 or older, making inadequate income the nation's fourth-leading mortality driver that year behind heart disease, cancer, and smoking.

“Poverty kills as much as dementia, accidents, stroke, Alzheimer's, and diabetes," said David Brady, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside and the lead author of the new analysis.

"Poverty silently killed 10 times as many people as all the homicides in 2019," Brady continued. "And yet, homicide, firearms, and suicide get vastly more attention."

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, wrote Wednesday that the research underlines the importance of connecting extremists' inaction on gun violence to other forms of policy murder.

The new analysis, co-authored by Ulrich Kohler of the University of Potsdam in Germany and Hui Zheng of Ohio State University, stressed that the US perennially has a far higher poverty rate than peer-rich democracies, which presents an enormous challenge to population health given that considerable research demonstrates that being in poverty is bad for one's health.

Poverty, which the study defined as less than half the median US income, was associated with greater mortality than many far more visible causes in 2019—10 times as many deaths as homicide, 4.7 times as many deaths as firearms, 3.9 times as many deaths as suicide, and 2.6 times as many deaths as drug overdose."

The researchers argued their results indicate that poverty should be considered a major risk factor for death in the US, which has seen life expectancy decline since 2015—and fall sharply amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"Because the US consistently has high poverty rates, these estimates can contribute to understanding why the US has comparatively lower life expectancy," the researchers wrote. "Because certain ethnic and racial minority groups are far more likely to be in poverty, our estimates can improve understanding of ethnic and racial inequalities in life expectancy."

The mortality associated with poverty is also associated with enormous economic costs, they continued. Therefore, benefit-cost calculations of poverty-reducing social policies should incorporate the benefits of lower mortality. Moreover, poverty likely aggravated the mortality impact of Covid-19, which occurred after our analyses ended in 2019. Therefore, one limitation of this study is that our estimates may be conservative about the number of deaths associated with poverty.

The onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 brought about a sharp increase in US poverty as millions of people got sick, were thrown out of work, and lost health insurance.

Federal aid initiatives enacted in response to the public health and economic crisis—from stimulus checks to boosted unemployment benefits to enhanced nutrition assistance—ultimately led to a significant drop in poverty, further bolstering the case that poverty is a policy choice.

However, many of those poverty-reducing aid programs, including the enhanced Child Tax Credit that sharply slashed poverty among kids in the US, have since lapsed or been terminated, threatening to reverse any recent progress.

Brady said in a statement that if the US had less poverty, there'd be a lot better health and well-being, people could work more, and they could be more productive.

"All of those," he added, "are benefits of investing in people through social policies."

 

Pakistan Posts Current Account Surplus in March 2023

Pakistan has posted US$654 million current account surplus in March 2023, against a current account deficit (CAD) of US$36 million in February 2023. It is the first monthly surplus since November 2020 and the numbers are higher than market expectations.

This is the first monthly surplus since November 2020, thanks to tighter monetary and fiscal measures along with administrative steps taken by the government. CAD for 9MFY23 has been reported at US$3.372 billion against a CAD of US$13.014 billion in 9MFY22.

Balance of Trade in Goods and Services improved considerably and reported at US$1.595 billion in March 2023 against a Balance in Trade of Goods and Services of US$3.437 billion in March 2022. Even Balance of Trade in Goods improved by 9%MoM.

Workers’ remittances were reported at US$2.533 billion in March 2023 against US$2.835 billion in March 2022. Remittances have improved by 27%MoM. The trend in remittances is improving after 10-15% gap between official and unofficial rate of local currency has eliminated.

A Topline Securities report about falling workers’ remittances dated January 16, 2023 had indicated that rising gap between official and unofficial rate of USD forced workers to remit money through non-banking channels. This was also seen in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and remittances recovered once the countries moved to a more market based exchange rate.

Exports for March 2023 were reported at US$2.427 billion against exports of US$3.071 billion in March 2022, posting a decline of 21%YoY, mainly on the back of falling global demand and a fall in commodity prices. The SBP has taken measures to encourage exporters to bring back export proceeds in a timely manner.

Imports were reported at US$3.990 billion in March 2023 against US$6.114 billion in March 2022, posting a decline of 35%YoY.

Imports were down due to a weaker exchange rate along with administrative measures to curb imports.

To recall, State bank of Pakistan (SBP) in its Monetary Policy Statement on the April 04, 2023 stated that CAD had narrowed considerably and more than previously anticipated mainly on the back of import containment.

The SBP also stated that while the CAD had narrowed, the Balance of Payments (BOP) position remained under stress and noted that foreign currency reserves remained at low levels.

A reduction in imports led to a major improvement in CAD. Administrative measures such as a ban on Machinery Import which was later removed and replaced with banks prioritizing the imports of essential items.

Similar administrative controls on imports in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh played a key role. In fact after IMF deal in Sri Lanka it has been agreed that this L/C restriction will be lifted gradually, not immediately.

Topline Securities expects import controls to be removed gradually and expect no abrupt change in policy.

The brokerage house expects the Current Account Balance to remain muted for the remainder of the year. It estimates FY23 current account deficit of US$3.5 billion.

The brokerage house highlights that Pakistan’s main issue is external debt repayment. It believes that Pakistan has to talk to its lenders to push out maturities of its debt.

It believes that discussions on debt restructuring/ re-profiling will be done after elections by the new government along with a new IMF support program.

 

Saudi Arabian visas for Yemenis

Saudi Arabian Embassy in Yemen has issued about 850,000 work visas and 350,000 family visit visas to Yemenis since 2018, according to Saudi Ambassador in Sanaa Muhammad Saeed Al-Jaber.

Al-Jaber made the remarks on his official Twitter account, indicating that the visas issued since mid-2018 included Yemenis from all governorates in the country without exception.

He noted that this came within the keenness of Saudi Arabia to support the Yemeni people.

Meanwhile, the Prosthetics and Rehabilitation Center in Taiz Governorate provided various medical services to 326 beneficiaries in March 2023, as part of the support extended by King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center.

The center, within the project, has offered 1,201 services, benefiting 67% males and 33% females. The percentage of displaced persons was 11% of the total beneficiaries.

The center manufactured, installed, and maintained prostheses for 77 patients, which included handing over the prostheses, measuring and maintaining them.

Among the services provided by the center includes physiotherapy, which benefited 249 patients who received the services in multiple sessions, in addition to specialized consultations.

This comes as an extension of the humanitarian work provided by the Kingdom, represented by the center, to increase the health sector's capabilities, and its attempt to alleviate the suffering of the Yemeni people.