Narendra Modi

Flydubai uçağında felaketi önleyen pilot saldırı anlarını anlattı

Flydubai'e ait FZ 1073 sefer sayılı uçakta çıkan çatışmada yaralanan kaptan pilot Smit Machchhar, saldırganla mücadele ettiği anlara ilişkin konuştu. Saldırı anında herkesin ölmesine izin veremeyeceğini" düşündüğünü belirten Machchhar, Hindistan Başbakanı Narendra Modi ile görüntülü görüşmesinde olayın detaylarını paylaştı.

Indian pilot hailed as hero recalls Flydubai cockpit attack

The Indian airline captain who helped thwart an apparent attempt to crash a Flydubai flight described on Friday how he fought for his life in the minutes after his co-pilot stabbed him and the plane began a steep descent. Captain Smit Machchhar, recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital, told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a televised video call that he knew he had to get back on his feet to save his passengers. “I had so many wounds. I had fallen down,” he said from the hospital, his head...

Flydubai hero pilot tells Modi 'I could not let all those people die'

Smit Machchhar, the Indian captain who was attacked by his co-pilot onboard the Flydubai flight 1073 in an apparent attempt to crash the plane, on Friday told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that although he was severely injured in the altercation, “I could not let all those people die”. Although collapsed, he made a last-ditch effort and managed to push the door to the cockpit open.

‘I was fighting for my life’: Indian pilot hailed as hero recalls flydubai cockpit attack

Smit Machchhar says in video call with Indian PM that he realised if he did not get up then ‘passengers would lose their lives’ The Indian pilot who helped thwart an apparent attempt to crash a flydubai flight has described how he fought for his life in the minutes after his co-pilot stabbed him and the plane began a steep descent. Capt Smit Machchhar, who is recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital, told the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, in a video call broadcast live on television news channels that he knew he had to get back on his feet to save the passengers onboard the aircraft. Continue reading...

I opened cockpit door of plane while being attacked, Indian pilot tells Modi

Capt Smit Machchhar, who was stabbed on the Israel-bound flight, has been hailed as a hero.

India's Cockroach Janata Party, student groups to protest, demand poll chief's resignation

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will face renewed pressure on Friday as the Gen Z-led Cockroach Janata Party and a separate coalition of student and activist groups stage fresh protests, demanding the resignation of the elections commission chief over a controversial voter roll revision. The CJP will rally in Mumbai and plans to expand demonstrations nationwide in the coming days, while student and civil society groups will gather at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. The protests mark the latest escalation in a dispute that has put unprecedented scrutiny on India’s Election Commission, long regarded as one of the country’s most trusted institutions. The protesters’ main allegation is that the commission manipulated voter rolls in ways that favour Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The commission and the government have denied the allegations. Pressure on Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar intensified last month after the Indian Express newspaper reported the election chief’s two deputies had formally raised concerns at least 14 times over the past 10 months over voter-list revisions, registration procedures and the commission’s digital systems. The Election Commission has said differing views are a normal part of internal deliberations and that all its actions were lawful. “We have been asking and demanding for a change but nothing of that is going to happen, if our only tool that is left to change anything in our society ‘the right to vote’ is taken away from us,” Saurav Das, CJP’s convenor, told Indian news agency ANI on Thursday. “We will only end the protest after Gyanesh Kumar resigns.” The controversy centres on a nationwide voter-verification exercise launched last year that critics say has led to millions of eligible voters being removed from electoral rolls. The commission says the exercise is intended to remove duplicate, deceased or ineligible voters and ensure the accuracy of electoral rolls. Opposition parties led by the Congress party are also set to begin protests demanding Kumar’s resignation on October 6. The CJP, a youth movement that emerged earlier this year from online frustration over unemployment and leaked examination papers, has become an unexpected political force. Led by Abhijeet Dipke, the party gained national prominence after spearheading mass protests over exam-paper leaks that led to the resignation of India’s education minister, one of Modi’s most significant political setbacks in recent years.

PM Modi has ‘good ideas’ for settlement of Ukraine conflict: Putin

The Russian leader said PM Modi “brings up these matters at every meeting we have and takes a keen interest in them”

Uçak saldırısında inanılmaz detaylar!

Birleşik Arap Emirlikleri (BAE) Başsavcılığı, olayın terör saikiyle düzenlenip düzenlemediğinin araştırılması talimatını verdi. Fox News televizyonuna röportaj veren İsrail Başbakanı Binyamin Netanyahu ise, olayda İran’ın dahli olup olmadığına dair soruya “Bunu söylemek için henüz erken” yanıtını verdi. Netanyahu, “Saldırgan pilot şu anda Suudi Arabistan’da sorgulanıyor. Sanırım geldiği yere ya da en azından uçuşu başlattığı yere, BAE’ye götürülecektir” dedi. Netanyahu, saldırgan yardımcı pilota müdahale edenlerin “11 Eylül benzeri bir felaketi önlemeyi başardığını” belirtti. Yardımcı pilotun motivasyonunun ne olduğu henüz netlik kazanmış değil. Ulusal Güvenlik Bakanı Itamar Ben-Gvir, saldırgan pilotun İsrail’e teslim edilmesini istedi. Durumu ağır Bıçaklanarak yaralanan Hint uyruklu Kaptan Smit Machchhar ise hastaneye kaldırıldı ancak durumu stabil. Machchhar hem Netanyahu hem de Hindistan Başbakanı Narendra Modi tarafından kahraman ilan edildi. Modi, “Hindistan, Kaptan Machchhar ile gurur duyuyor. Kendisine hızlı bir iyileşme, yeniden güç ve sağlık diliyorum” dedi. Machchhar’ın özellikle elleri ve kollarında ağır yaralar bulunduğu ve ciddi miktarda kan kaybettiği ifade ediliyor. Bununla birlikte yolcuların da uçağın ele geçirilmesinde büyük rolü olduğu görülüyor. İnişin ardından yolcular, kokpite girdikleri anı, çığlık seslerini ve kan gördüklerini anlattılar. Başka bir uçakla Tel Aviv’e varan yolcular, İsrail’de kalabalık bir grupça karşılandı. Trump bile şaştı kaldı ABD Başkanı Trump, Dubai-Tel Aviv seferini yapan Flydubai uçağında kaptan pilotu bıçaklayan yardımcı pilotun kimliğine ilişkin net bir bilgi bulunmadığını belirterek, olayla ilgili “çok sayıda asılsız hikâye” dolaştığını söyledi. Trump, “Görünüşe göre ya bir teröristti ya da dengesiz biriydi ve pilotu bıçakladı” dedi. Trump, Dubai-Tel Aviv seferi yapan yolcu uçağı kriziyle ilgili İsrail Başbakanı Binyamin Netanyahu’nun verdiği bilgiler için de, “Doğru olup olmadığını bilmiyorum” dedi. Kokpitteki çığlıkları duyarak müdahale eden İsrailli bir tesisatçının, acil durum bilgilerini bir televizyon programından öğrenerek uçağı düz uçuşa geçirmeyi başardığını anlatan Trump, şaşkınlığını gizleyemeyerek, “Bu akıl almaz bir şey” dedi. Uçuran tesisatçı! Saldırıya uğrayan Kaptan Machchhar’ın, yaralanmasına rağmen saldırgana karşı koyduğu ve kokpit kapısını açarak kabin ekibinin ve yolcuların müdahale edebilmesini sağladığı belirtilmişti. Saldırganı etkisiz hale getirmeye yardım eden yolculardan olan tesisatçı Yaniv Hayun, saldırgan pilotu yakalayarak boynundan kavradığını, ardından kokpitten dışarı sürüklediğini anlatmış, daha sonra uçağın kontrolünü kısa süreliğine ele aldığını ve ne yapacağını televizyonda izlediği “Uçak Kazası Raporu” programından öğrendiğini anlatmıştı.

Vladimir Putin Praises PM Modi, Says He Has "Good Ideas" For Ending Ukraine War

PM Modi has consistently underscored the need for dialogue to resolve the Russia-Ukraine war, which began in February 2022.

UAE says investigation launched into diverted flydubai flight

The United Arab Emirates’ chief prosecutor on Thursday ordered an investigation into the incident aboard flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, which made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after a reported altercation in the cockpit. The state news agency WAM said the attorney general had ordered the probe, adding that “the investigation team has launched its work into the incident” that forced the plane to land in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. The investigation will examine the circumstances and motives, including whether it was linked to any militant activity or involved prior planning or direction. UAE judicial authorities have jurisdiction over the incident because the aircraft is registered in the UAE and flies under its flag, the statement said, adding that UAE law applies to crimes committed on board “even if they occur outside the country’s territory”. Passengers described rushing the cockpit after the plane suddenly plummeted, losing around 17,000 feet of altitude in the span of a minute, according to the Flightradar24 website. Airline flydubai said all the passengers — of whom 166 out of 174 were Israeli, according to media reports — were safe, adding that the reasons for the altercation were unknown. Netanyahu praises Indian pilot Meanwhile, Israel has alleged that the co-pilot of the flight had tried to crash the aircraft but that the pilot and passengers intervened and averted the crash. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credited the wounded pilot — identified as Indian national Smit Machchhar — and passengers of the flight, with Israeli officials terming the incident “an attempted terrorist attack”. Netanyahu hailed Smit’s “extraordinary bravery”, saying he fought off his copilot, preventing a “catastrophic mid-air disaster”. “During the flight, as they approached the country, one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot, and apparently tried to crash the plane with everyone on board,” Netanyahu claimed in a separate video message. In a Fox News interview, he also claimed an Israeli passenger helped overpower the attacker, identifying him only as Yanik and describing him as a plumber. “An amazing act of heroism — of his, of the Indian pilot, of the people who helped them. They stopped a disaster that could have been global,” Netanyahu insisted. The Indian embassy said Machchhar was being treated at a hospital in Saudi Arabia, and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi described him as a “HERO” in a social media post on Thursday. “His valour helped save hundreds of lives,” Modi said. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he had spoken with his UAE counterpart Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and agreed “to collaborate against extremist elements seeking to harm security and undermine stability”. US President Donald Trump, after discussing the incident with Netanyahu, said: “It seems as though the co-pilot was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack-job.” Riyadh turned down Israeli requests to send planes for passengers Saudi Arabia turned down multiple requests by Israel to send its own planes to retrieve passengers from the diverted flydubai flight, a Saudi source with knowledge of the matter told AFP on Thursday. “They asked to send military warplanes. Two or three direct to Tabuk airport,” the source told AFP. “Turned down.” “Then asked to send [El Al] commercial one. Turned down as well.” The source also told AFP the message was communicated through the UAE and not directly with the Israelis. The Saudi source said the kingdom fulfilled its “international obligation” and assisted the passengers of the flight after they made the emergency landing, emphasising that the nationality of the travellers had no impact on their decision. “We were to act the same way, regardless of the nationalities of flydubai passengers,” the source added. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has resisted pressure to join the US-backed Abraham Accords and establish diplomatic ties with Israel. Riyadh has maintained that it will not normalise relations with Israel without a clear path to Palestinian statehood. But the kingdom has long been seen as the most consequential potential addition to the Abraham Accords, with negotiations advancing at various points before stalling. ’Out of control’ AFPTV images showed another flydubai plane carrying the passengers touching down at Tel Aviv airport, hours after their initial flight was diverted to Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk. Footage shared by Netanyahu’s office showed the premier meeting passengers after their arrival in Tel Aviv and embracing a man in a bloodied shirt. Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon described the plane as being “pretty much out of control” as the incident unfolded over Jordan. “The co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane,” she told reporters by speakerphone held up by her mother at Ben Gurion Airport. “It was really on the way to crashing, and it was simply the resourcefulness of many people who took control of the co-pilot and neutralised him,” she said. The airline said it was another “on-duty flydubai crew travelling on the flight who diverted and landed the aircraft safely” and that it was suspending flights to Israel while an investigation took place. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz alleged that the incident was an attempted terror attack, but did not identify his source of that assessment. The director general of Israel’s foreign ministry also called it “an attempted terrorist attack against Israelis, the United Arab Emirates, and the Abraham Accords”, referring to the normalisation deal the two countries signed in 2020. ‘Terrifying’ Passenger Almog Italie told AFP it was like “we were having very big turbulence” before fighting erupted near the cockpit. “The other passengers from the front took over control,” he told AFP via video call from Saudi Arabia. Passengers from an earlier diverted flydubai flight are seen after landing at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in Lod on September 30. – AFP Another passenger, Chaim Nazarovitz, said the ordeal had been “very terrifying”, adding that for a moment he felt like he was “not among the living”. Israeli media reported that the military scrambled fighter jets after concerns emerged that the aircraft might have been hijacked— with the hypothesis later dismissed. The incident comes months into a regional war that erupted in late February with US-Israeli strikes on Iran and just ahead of Israel’s elections due at the end of October. On Tuesday, Netanyahu said there were “indications” that Israel’s enemies could try to attack ahead of elections and was accused of “fear-mongering” by the opposition chief.

Flydubai uçağını faciadan kurtaran Hindistanlı pilot, ülkesinde kahraman ilan edildi

Dubai-Tel Aviv seferini yapan Flydubai uçağında yardımcı pilotun uçağı düşürme girişimini cansiparane şekilde önleyen Hindistanlı pilot Smit Machchhar ülkesinde kahraman ilan edildi. İçindeki 174 yolcuyla dün Dubai'den Tel Aviv'e hareket eden Birleşik Arap Emirlikleri'ne (BAE) ait Flydubai uçağında yaşanan olaylar tüm dünyada gündeme damgasını vurmuştu. Seyir halindeyken uçaktan gelen kaçırılma sinyali üzerine alarm durumuna geçilmiş, İsrail'den jetler havalanmış ve uçak Suudi Arabistan'a yönlendirilmişti. Sonradan, bu alarm durumunun iki pilotun kokpitteki kavgası sırasında verildiği anlaşılmıştı. O kavganın aslında, yardımcı pilotun, uçağı düşürmek üzere ani bir dalış yaparak uçağa hızla irtifa kaybettirmesi üzerine Hindistanlı pilot Smit Machchhar'ın olaya müdahale etmesiyle çıktığı öğrenildi. Müdahale sırasında yardımcı pilot tarafından bıçaklanarak yaralanan Machchhar, uçağın daha sonra güvenli bir şekilde iniş yaptığı Suudi Arabistan'ın Tebük kentinde hastanede tedavi altına alındı. Yardımcı pilotun Suudi Arabistan'da sorgulandığını belirten İsrail Başbakanı Binyamin Netanyahu, yardımcı pilota müdahale edenlerin “11 Eylül benzeri bir felaketi önlemeyi başardığını” söylemişti. Büyük bir havacılık faciasını önleyen pilot Smit Machchhar, ülkesi Hindistan'da da kahraman ilan edildi. Mumbai kentindeki komşuları ve arkadaşları (üstte) Machchhar ile gurur duyduklarını söylerken, 30'lu yaşlarında ve 10 yıldan fazla uçuş deneyimine sahip olan Machchhar'ı yumuşak başlı, yardımsever ve güler yüzlü olarak tanımlıyorlar. Machchhar'ın ailesinin bitişikteki komşusu olan ve Machchhar'ı 15 yıldır tanıdığını söyleyen Akshay Doshi, "Kendisinden daha azını bekleyemezdik. Yaptığı şey sürpriz olmadı." derken, AFP'ye konuşan diğer komşuları, "Tabiatı ve cesareti için onunla gurur duyuyoruz", "Kendisi tehlikedeyken insanların hayatını kurtardı. Yaraları canını yakarken uçağı havada kontrol altında tutmaya çalışıyordu" gibi ifadeler kullandı. Machchhar'ın yakın arkadaşlarından Pratik Gandhi ise arkadaşının çocukluğundan itibaren bir hayli soğukkanlı olduğunu söyledi. Gandhi, "Küçükken çocukların yaptığı tüm yaramazlıkları biz de yaptık. O zamanlarda Machchharher zaman çok sakindi. Aynı özelliğini yetişkinlik hayatına da taşıdı." dedi. Hindistan Başbakanı Narendra Modi sosyal medyada yaptığı paylaşımda, "Kaptan Smit Machchhar bir KAHRAMANDIR." derken, Mumbai Mirror gazetesi ise onu "Gökyüzündeki süper kahraman" olarak nitelendirdi. Machchhar, ailesinin tekstil işine yardımcı olmak için işletme eğitimi alırken bir havacılık seminerine katılmış ve burada kendi deyimiyle "havacılık virüsünü" kaptığını söylüyor. Geçen yılki bir konuşmasında, yolcuların hayatını taşımanın getirdiği sorumluluk nedeniyle ilk ticari uçuşunun "korkutucu" geçtiğini söyleyen Machchhar 2022'den bu yana Flydubai şirketinde uçuyor.

UAE prosecutor general orders investigation into diverted flydubai flight

The UAE prosecutor general has ordered an investigation into the incident aboard flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, which was diverted and landed in Saudi Arabia after an altercation in the cockpit, the state news agency reported on Thursday. The investigation will examine the circumstances and motives, including whether it was linked to any militant activity or involved prior planning or direction. UAE judicial authorities have jurisdiction over the incident because the aircraft is registered in the UAE and flies under its flag, the statement said, adding that UAE law applies to crimes committed on board “even if they occur outside the country’s territory”. Netanyahu praises pilot, passengers Earlier, Israel’s leader credited the pilot and passengers of a Dubai-Tel Aviv flight with averting a catastrophe on Wednesday after they overpowered a co-pilot who allegedly tried to crash the aircraft, forcing an emergency landing. Passengers described rushing the cockpit after the plane suddenly plummeted, losing around 17,000 feet of altitude in the span of a minute, according to the Flightradar24 website. Airline flydubai said all the passengers — of whom 166 out of 174 were Israeli, according to media reports — were safe, adding that the reasons for the altercation were unknown. Israeli officials called the incident “an attempted terrorist attack” while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US broadcaster Fox News it was “too early” to say who was behind the altercation and lauded those who prevented a crash. “During the flight, as they approached the country, one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot, and apparently tried to crash the plane with everyone on board,” Netanyahu said in a separate video message. “I salute these heroes,” he said of the passengers, adding “they prevented a major disaster”. He later hailed the wounded pilot – identified as Indian national Smit Machchhar — “for his extraordinary bravery”, saying he fought off his copilot, preventing a “catastrophic mid-air disaster”. In the Fox News interview Netanyahu also praised an Israeli passenger who helped overpower the attacker, identifying him only as Yanik and describing him as a plumber. “An amazing act of heroism — of his, of the Indian pilot, of the people who helped them. They stopped a disaster that could have been global,” Netanyahu said. The Indian embassy said Machchhar was being treated at a hospital in Saudi Arabia, and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi described him as a “HERO” in a social media post on Thursday. “His valour helped save hundreds of lives,” Modi said. ’Out of control’ AFPTV images showed another flydubai plane carrying the passengers touch down at Tel Aviv airport, hours after their initial flight was diverted to Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk. Footage shared by Netanyahu’s office showed the premier meeting passengers after their arrival in Tel Aviv and embracing a man in a bloodied shirt. Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon described the plane as being “pretty much out of control” as the incident unfolded over Jordan. “The co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane,” she told reporters by speakerphone held up by her mother at Ben Gurion Airport. “It was really on the way to crashing, and it was simply the resourcefulness of many people who took control of the co-pilot and neutralised him,” she said. The airline said it was another “on-duty flydubai crew travelling on the flight who diverted and landed the aircraft safely” and that it was suspending flights to Israel while an investigation took place. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz described the incident as an attempted terror attack, but did not identify his source of that assessment. The director general of Israel’s foreign ministry also called it “an attempted terrorist attack against Israelis, the United Arab Emirates, and the Abraham Accords”, referring to the normalisation deal the two countries signed in 2020. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he had spoken with his UAE counterpart Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and agreed “to collaborate against extremist elements seeking to harm security and undermine stability”. US President Donald Trump, after discussing the incident with Netanyahu, said: “It seems as though the co-pilot was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack-job.” ‘Terrifying’ Passenger Almog Italie told AFP it was like “we were having very big turbulence” before fighting erupted near the cockpit. “The other passengers from the front took over control,” he told AFP via video call from Saudi Arabia. Passengers from an earlier diverted flydubai flight are seen after landing at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in Lod on September 30. – AFP Another passenger, Chaim Nazarovitz, said the ordeal had been “very terrifying”, adding that for a moment he felt like he was “not among the living”. Israeli media reported that the military scrambled fighter jets after concerns emerged that the aircraft might have been hijacked. In a video filmed inside the plane, a passenger with blood dripping from a head injury pleaded for assistance as they descended into Saudi Arabia. Israel has no formal ties with the Gulf kingdom, but said the group received a “very warm” welcome there. The incident comes months into a regional war that erupted in late February with US-Israeli strikes on Iran and just ahead of Israel’s elections due at the end of October. On Tuesday, Netanyahu said there were “indications” that Israel’s enemies could try to attack ahead of elections and was accused of “fear-mongering” by the opposition chief.

Israel PM hails Indian pilot of rerouted Flydubai flight for averting disaster

Israel’s leader credited the pilot and passengers of a Dubai-Tel Aviv flight with averting a catastrophe on Wednesday after they overpowered a co-pilot who allegedly tried to crash the aircraft, forcing an emergency landing. Passengers described rushing the cockpit after the plane suddenly plummeted, losing around 17,000 feet of altitude in the span of a minute, according to the Flightradar24 website. Airline flydubai said all the passengers — of whom 166 out of 174 were Israeli, according to media reports — were safe, adding that the reasons for the altercation were unknown. Israeli officials called the incident “an attempted terrorist attack” while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US broadcaster Fox News it was “too early” to say who was behind the altercation and lauded those who prevented a crash. “During the flight, as they approached the country, one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot, and apparently tried to crash the plane with everyone on board,” Netanyahu said in a separate video message. “I salute these heroes,” he said of the passengers, adding “they prevented a major disaster”. He later hailed the wounded pilot – identified as Indian national Smit Machchhar — “for his extraordinary bravery”, saying he fought off his copilot, preventing a “catastrophic mid-air disaster”. In the Fox News interview Netanyahu also praised an Israeli passenger who helped overpower the attacker, identifying him only as Yanik and describing him as a plumber. “An amazing act of heroism — of his, of the Indian pilot, of the people who helped them. They stopped a disaster that could have been global,” Netanyahu said. The Indian embassy said Machchhar was being treated at a hospital in Saudi Arabia, and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi described him as a “HERO” in a social media post on Thursday. “His valour helped save hundreds of lives,” Modi said. ’Out of control’ AFPTV images showed another flydubai plane carrying the passengers touch down at Tel Aviv airport, hours after their initial flight was diverted to Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk. Footage shared by Netanyahu’s office showed the premier meeting passengers after their arrival in Tel Aviv and embracing a man in a bloodied shirt. Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon described the plane as being “pretty much out of control” as the incident unfolded over Jordan. “The co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane,” she told reporters by speakerphone held up by her mother at Ben Gurion Airport. “It was really on the way to crashing, and it was simply the resourcefulness of many people who took control of the co-pilot and neutralised him,” she said. The airline said it was another “on-duty flydubai crew travelling on the flight who diverted and landed the aircraft safely” and that it was suspending flights to Israel while an investigation took place. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz described the incident as an attempted terror attack, but did not identify his source of that assessment. The director general of Israel’s foreign ministry also called it “an attempted terrorist attack against Israelis, the United Arab Emirates, and the Abraham Accords”, referring to the normalisation deal the two countries signed in 2020. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he had spoken with his UAE counterpart Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and agreed “to collaborate against extremist elements seeking to harm security and undermine stability”. US President Donald Trump, after discussing the incident with Netanyahu, said: “It seems as though the co-pilot was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack-job.” ‘Terrifying’ Passenger Almog Italie told AFP it was like “we were having very big turbulence” before fighting erupted near the cockpit. “The other passengers from the front took over control,” he told AFP via video call from Saudi Arabia. Passengers from an earlier diverted flydubai flight are seen after landing at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in Lod on September 30. – AFP Another passenger, Chaim Nazarovitz, said the ordeal had been “very terrifying”, adding that for a moment he felt like he was “not among the living”. Israeli media reported that the military scrambled fighter jets after concerns emerged that the aircraft might have been hijacked. In a video filmed inside the plane, a passenger with blood dripping from a head injury pleaded for assistance as they descended into Saudi Arabia. Israel has no formal ties with the Gulf kingdom, but said the group received a “very warm” welcome there. The incident comes months into a regional war that erupted in late February with US-Israeli strikes on Iran and just ahead of Israel’s elections due at the end of October. On Tuesday, Netanyahu said there were “indications” that Israel’s enemies could try to attack ahead of elections and was accused of “fear-mongering” by the opposition chief.

India’s opposition parties call for protests over ‘vote theft’

NEW DELHI: India’s opposition parties announced on Wednesday planned protests to “save democracy”, escalating their campaign against the election commission after a newspaper investigation suggested impropriety in a large-scale voter roll revision. Politicians have accused the head of the Election Commission of India — long regarded as the guardian of the world’s largest democracy — of acting at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. The election body has rejected the allegations, saying all its decisions were legally valid, while its chief Gyanesh Kumar has not commented. “The main issue is the theft of votes,” said Rahul Gandhi, of the main opposition Congress party. “We are going to ensure that those who have destroyed Indian democracy are punished,” he told reporters. Opposition lawmakers will march to the Election Commission in New Delhi on Tuesday, and hold “save democracy” rallies countrywide in the days following, said Congress party chief Mallikarjun Kharge. The Indian Express daily reported last week that some key decisions linked to the contentious revision exercise were likely taken without the approval of two of the three election commissioners. The commission said the report gave “only one part of the picture”. It maintains that the revision was intended to remove duplicate entries and prevent “foreign illegal immigrants” from appearing on voter rolls. Modi’s party has long alleged that undocumented migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh have fraudulently registered as voters. Many such migrants are Muslims. Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026

Modi, Trump review bilateral ties amid concerns over Russia sanctions

‘We agreed to maintain close engagement to take our Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership forward’, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a post on X

Modi speaks with Trump as India seeks interim deal with US

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump agreed to maintain close engagement to advance the countries’ strategic partnership, New Delhi said on Wednesday, as India’s trade minister holds talks in the United States aimed at securing an interim trade deal. In a telephone conversation, Modi and Trump reviewed bilateral cooperation in trade, defence, energy and critical technologies, the Indian prime minister said in a post on X. “We agreed to maintain close engagement to take our Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership forward,” Modi wrote. “We also exchanged views on regional and international issues, including ongoing efforts to advance global peace and security.” India’s Trade Minister Piyush Goyal is visiting the United States from September 29 to October 5 for talks on a proposed bilateral trade agreement and an interim arrangement. Goyal is due to meet US counterparts as part of efforts to advance a “balanced and mutually beneficial” India-US Bilateral Trade Agreement, New Delhi said earlier this week. Goyal arrived in Milwaukee on Tuesday for a G20 trade ministers’ meeting and met chief executives and senior executives from US manufacturing and technology companies at a roundtable hosted by the National Association of Manufacturers, India’s trade ministry said. He was also scheduled to attend a meeting of G20 trade ministers in Wisconsin at the invitation of US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. India and the United States have yet to reach agreement after months of negotiations, with New Delhi seeking improved terms in the proposed deal. Earlier this month, India said it had told Washington that new US tariff measures linked to India’s purchases of Russian oil could affect bilateral relations.

The unholy alliance

THE Israeli prime minister’s reported secret visit to Abu Dhabi last Sunday has reinforced the growing nexus between the UAE and the Zionist state. It was not the first time that Benjamin Netanyahu had made an unannounced trip to the Gulf country. In March this year, at the height of the Iran war, he travelled there to meet UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. During the same period, the head of Mossad, Israel’s main intelligence agency, made two trips to the country to apparently coordinate military operations. And last week, while 77 nations boycotted the Israeli prime minister’s speech at the UN General Assembly, the UAE delegation remained seated — a clear show of solidarity with the Zionist state. Since joining the Abraham Accords in 2020, the UAE has not only established diplomatic relations with Israel but has gone much further, elevating the relationship into a de facto alliance — even as the Israeli state was carrying out a genocidal war in Gaza. That relationship deepened as the US, along with Israel, imposed an unprovoked war on Iran. The extraordinary relationship between the two countries marks a developing unholy alliance in a rapidly changing regional order, as America’s war on Iran drags on. The UAE has reportedly carried out its own strikes on Iran and has also borne the brunt of retaliatory strikes — with devastating effect — despite the deployment of the Iron Dome air defence system, run by Israeli military personnel. Its close military cooperation with Israel has drawn the UAE directly into the war on Iran. It is the first time this highly advanced system has been deployed outside Israel and the US, signalling the critical role of the Emirates in a potential Israeli-led regional defence alliance. It is also the first Arab-Israeli relationship to acquire real military and industrial substance. And this Israel-UAE nexus goes beyond the ongoing Iran war: the UAE appears to be a critical part of Israel’s plan to build what Netanyahu calls the “hexagon of alliances”. That idea was pitched by the Israeli prime minister early this year. Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Feb 22, 2026, days before the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Netanyahu presented his vision of creating “a hexagon of alliances around or within the Middle East” — a bloc against what he described as the “radical Shia and emerging Sunni axis”. He named four members — Israel, India, Greece and Cyprus — and left the remaining slots (Arab, African and Asian states) unnamed. But it is widely assumed that the Emirates is one of the six, given its close diplomatic and defence ties with Israel. Netanyahu also pointed to intelligence-sharing and counterterrorism cooperation with India as the core of the project. Modi’s February visit produced a Special Strategic Partnership between the two countries, which have long cooperated on defence and intelligence. Israel is one of India’s largest arms suppliers. The UAE, too, has built close defence ties with New Delhi. All three are part of the four-nation I2U2 grouping, alongside the US, and of IMEC, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. This web of alliances, bound together by bilateral defence relationships, is shaping the emerging security landscape in West Asia and beyond. Although the Israeli-proposed hexagon alliance has not yet taken formal shape, it is widely seen as a potential counter to the Makkah alliance — which Israel portrays, wrongly, as a ‘Sunni alliance’. Netanyahu has repeatedly called Turkiye a greater threat than Iran and a major challenge to his ‘Greater Israel’ ambition. Against this background, the growing Israel-UAE diplomatic and defence cooperation is alarming. Over the past few years, the UAE has drifted away from its Gulf allies on a range of regional and foreign policy issues, above all by widening its differences with Saudi Arabia. The Emirates is accused of arming and financing a separatist group in strife-torn southern Yemen, bringing the UAE into conflict with Riyadh. It is also widely believed to be arming and funding an armed group involved in Sudan’s civil war, one accused of mass atrocities. And it backs Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia recognised only by Israel — while every other Arab state supports a united Somalia. A few months ago, at the height of the Iran war, the Emirates pulled out of Opec, the Saudi-led oil cartel, severely damaging the organisation. Its close military cooperation with Israel has drawn the Emirates directly into the war on Iran, endangering its own security in the process. Any participation in an Israeli-proposed alliance could prove extremely destabilising for the region. Pakistan’s own relations with the Emirates have hit a low over the past few years. Early this year, the UAE withdrew a $3 billion deposit from the State Bank of Pakistan, and once-close ties have become significantly strained. With a large Pakistani workforce in the Emirates, the shift has put Pakistan in a very difficult position, which requires a delicate balancing act. The widening regional divide — in the middle of the Iran war, Israel’s continuing genocide in Gaza and its military actions in Lebanon — is extremely troubling. Israel’s idea of a ‘hexagon alliance’ that also includes India is dangerous for Pakistan’s security, particularly as Israel and India are already tied in a strategic relationship. It is certainly not good news for the Middle East and the wider region, which is being rocked by America’s unending war on Iran. The situation has become much more complicated with the escalating conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Last week, the military chiefs of the three allied countries met to discuss the deteriorating situation, and there is talk that Article 5 of the alliance — under which an attack on one member is considered an attack on all — could be activated. Any such move could draw Pakistan directly into the conflict. With a resolution to the Iran war still far off, an expansion of the conflict could render the situation far more explosive. Against this backdrop, the unholy alliance between Israel and the UAE could further destabilise the region, with far-reaching implications. The writer is an author and journalist. zhussain100@yahoo.com X: @hidhussain Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2026

SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE AGE OF POLITICAL ABSURDITY

More than ever, modern political leaders across the globe are issuing statements that defy logic, science and history. Yet, instead of facing ridicule, these figures are frequently met with applause from their supporters. Last week, when Polish foreign minister Radosaw Sikorski claimed that Poland could swiftly defeat Russia in a direct conflict, political commentators across the United States and Europe met his remarks with mild mockery. However, within Poland, social media exploded with enthusiastic endorsement. Rather than facing critical pushback, Sikorski’s exaggerated claim was embraced as gospel by supporters. This perfectly illustrates how readily absurd political rhetoric is now absorbed. In a 2019 interview, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while discussing India’s air strikes against Pakistan, explained that he advised military officials to launch the attack despite heavy rain and cloud cover. He ‘reasoned’ that clouds would block Pakistani radars. Even though radars operate via radio waves rather than visual sight, his supporters championed the assertion as an example of “military genius.” Modi’s historical claims are often even more surreal, such as his declaration that the birth of Karna in the ancient epic Mahabharata proves that test-tube baby technology was invented in ancient India. In a live 2021 television QnA, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan attributed rising sexual violence to women wearing “vulgar” clothes. He argued that “men are not robots” and that “if a woman wears very few clothes, it will have an impact on the men.” When he was criticised by women activists, his supporters (including many women) rallied around him, asserting that his critics were trying to undermine “traditional cultural values.” In an age of algorithmic outrage, identity politics and collapsing trust in institutions, the most outrageous claims can become expressions of loyalty and powerful instruments of persuasion Following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in 2021, Khan praised the event, declaring that the Afghan people had “broken the shackles of slavery.” The statement ignored the ensuing human rights crises while framing a complex geopolitical takeover as a glorious anti-imperialist victory. Many of his supporters applauded his ‘bold’ statement. During the global Covid vaccination drive in 2021, then-Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro warned citizens that taking the Pfizer vaccine could cause people to turn into alligators and make women grow beards. His core evangelical support base accepted this without hesitation. In the US, Donald Trump remains a master of uttering similar hogwash. During his first presidency, he dismissed global warming threats by claiming that rising sea levels would simply create “more oceanfront properties.” He reduced a complex ecological crisis to a real estate opportunity while ignoring basic coastal geography. His supporters praised his insightfulness. Illustration by Abro These are just a handful of examples highlighting a shift in modern political discourse. This move from facing ridicule for spouting outright nonsense to this nonsense enjoying widespread applause is the result of some drastic changes in media ecosystems, societal psychology and the nature of modern political power. The primary engine driving the acceptance of absurd statements is what the American academic Dan Kahan calls “identity-protective cognition.” According to Kahan, when political identity becomes tightly tied to a group, individuals process information not to evaluate its objective truth but to protect their status within the group. Accepting an absurd claim made by the group’s leader confirms an individual’s loyalty to the group, whereas rejecting the claim means aligning with political opponents. Research led by the American professor of psychology and neural science Jay Van Bavel suggests that political loyalty in this regard acts as a “cognitive filter.” It overrides basic critical thinking and yields psychological rewards that reinforce one’s sense of belonging to a group, even when a leader’s claim contradicts reality. Historically, mainstream media often acted as gatekeepers. A ridiculous statement was processed through editorial standards, highlighted for its absurdity and derided on public platforms. Western media used to take apart various leaders for this — for instance, leaders such as Uganda’s dictator Idi Amin, who was reduced to being a joker, and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Now the same West is struggling to comprehend mouthy far-right leaders in its own backyard. In Pakistan, Pir Pagara was often treated as a jester for making outlandish political predictions. Cartoonists often showed him with a parrot. Altaf Hussain was another politician who was regularly satirised and ridiculed, even though, to his followers he was a ‘visionary’. Till the 1990s, such characters were exceptions. Today, they are a norm. The rise of algorithmic platforms has gradually dismantled the role of gatekeepers. Various studies show that repeated exposure to a statement increases its perceived truthfulness, regardless of how implausible it sounds. Social media algorithms prioritise outrageous content because it drives engagement, causing absurd claims to be repeated millions of times in digital echo chambers. Studies by psychologists Gordon Pennycook and David Rand on misinformation show that repetition lowers a reader’s analytical guard, transitioning statements from sounding ridiculous to familiar and, eventually, to plausible and true. There are also studies that suggest that politicians, especially contemporary populists, do not utter absurdities by accident. They use them strategically. In their Rand Corporation paper on propaganda techniques, researchers Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews coined the term “firehose of falsehood” to describe this “strategic disorientation.” The goal of flooding public space with continuous and blatantly absurd claims is not necessarily to convince everyone that a lie is true. It is used to exhaust the public’s capacity for critical thought. When politicians regularly spout absurdities, fact-checkers become overwhelmed. Academics at the global research network Evidence in Governance and Politics found that politicians, such as Trump, who aggressively dismiss corrections as ‘fake news’ retain public support and attention by sowing doubt about the mainstream media and fact-checkers themselves. Mouthy populist leaders are still roundly satirised, though. But when they routinely cross into surreal territory, satire loses its power. German-American political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism that the ideal subjects of totalitarian rule are people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists. When public trust in actual experts and state institutions collapses, expert consensus is no longer seen as a benchmark for truth. Instead, expertise is reframed as an establishment conspiracy. In this environment, an absurd statement from an ‘anti-establishment’ politician is perceived not as ignorance but as ‘bold defiance’ against a ‘corrupt’ system. The shift from ridiculing absurd political statements to believing them marks a transition from fact-based politics to identity-based politics. When an absurd claim is made, it serves as a flag planted by a leader in the ground. Followers do not process it through a filter asking if it is logically true. Instead, they spend more energy in contemplating which side they belong to if they accept or reject the claim. Until the dynamics and incentives of social media algorithms change and trust in shared institutions is restored, political absurdity will continue to erode as a punchline. Instead, it will solidify as a rather dangerous instrument of persuasion. Published in Dawn, EOS, September 27th, 2026

India’s killer tourists

THE date was January 2024, and Israel’s destruction of Gaza was underway for all to see. Among the Israeli soldiers demolishing Palestinian homes was a man named Eitan Gilboa. In videos obtained by the Hind Rajab Foundation, which analyses publicly available data to identify Israeli soldiers it alleges are implicated in war crimes, Gilboa and his unit can be seen detonating residential buildings and celebrating their destruction. The foundation alleges that in June of the same year, Gilboa was in Rafah ordering the demolition of multiple buildings and in July was involved in another demolition. It argues that Gilboa’s actions — and the actions of thousands of Israeli soldiers who took part in similar mayhem — are in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Where do these Israeli war criminals go to ‘rest’ after destroying the lives of innocent Palestinians? Many go to India, following a backpacking route so well known for hosting Israeli soldiers that it is called the ‘Hummus Trail’. It stretches through destinations like Kasol and the Parvati Valley, Dharamkot and Tosh in Himachal Pradesh and on to places like Pushkar in Rajasthan, and Goa. Around 80,000 Israeli soldiers are said to travel there annually. This is also where Gilboa went. The path of guest houses frequented by Israeli travellers is well established and Indians have gone through a lot of trouble to accommodate them. Attractions include raves where visitors can lose themselves in trance music and drugs. So established is this trade in providing peace and ‘healing’ that one writer called towns on the Hummus Trail the “ashrams for war criminals”. Dharamsala even boasts of a ‘mini-Israel’, where shopkeepers speak Hebrew and serve Israeli food. In 2015, a cafe in Kasol was accused of refusing to serve Indian customers while admitting white tourists. Israeli soldiers reviled in other parts are welcome in India. The most important thing that India provides is absolution. Here, Israeli soldiers condemned and excoriated in most other parts of the world, are welcome. They can partake of a commercialised, tourist-friendly mix of ‘healing’ from the trauma of war, without having to take accountability for their actions in Gaza. Gilboa was no different. The Hind Rajab Foundation analysed photographs and other material from his Indian journey and filed complaints with the Himachal police, the home ministry and the Bureau of Immigration seeking his arrest. No arrest followed and Gilboa eventually left India. India’s ties with Israel run deep and increasingly point to an ideological, economic and military alignment. Hindutva’s founder Vinayak Damodar Savarkar praised the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine, describing Palestine as the Jews’ “Fatherland and Holyland”. Zionism’s blend of attachment to a motherland and religious attachment to a holy land was precisely what Savarkar wanted for Hindus. Modi’s India in this sense is like Zionist Israel. India’s Citizenship Amendment Act created an expedited route to citizenship for specified non-Muslim migrants from neighbouring countries while excluding Muslims from its provisions. Israel’s 2018 nation-state law similarly privileged Jewish national identity by declaring that the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people. In contemporary India, the state supports these Israeli enclaves on the Hummus Trail even as it punishes people for expressing their support for Palestinians. An editorial published in The Edict, a newspaper at Ashoka University, noted how eager Hin­­dutva supporters want to fraternise with Israeli tourists, imagining their sha­red hostility tow­ards Muslims as a natural alignment, while some Israeli travellers treat br­­own Indians as les­ser locals there to serve them. In Pu­­shkar, The Edict re­­ported that the Chabad House has Hebrew signage and a perimeter fence, with Indians facing restrictions on entry while white tourists were admitted with less scrutiny. So India welcomes Israeli soldiers on their ‘healing journeys’, including those facing allegations of war crimes. The Indian state — as evidenced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s eager embrace of Israeli officials — is keen to emphasise the closeness of the two countries. In his speech at the Knesset, Modi even peddled yoga and ayurveda as sources of holistic wellness that Israelis could partake in when they visited India. This, then, is the tale of two hatreds. Men like Eitan Gilboa, accused of participating in the destruction of civilian homes, can leave Gaza and seek succour in a new environment where they can forget the cruelties of war. Hosting those accused of such acts without demanding accountability raises its own moral questions, but this is a truth that India, drowning in its own hatreds, appears unable to acknowledge. The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy. rafia.zakaria@gmail.com Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2026

India’s theatre command push marred by capability gaps, readiness concerns

The Modi government’s push for Integrated Theatre Commands has faced growing criticism and concerns over its implementation. The emphasis on political objectives and tight deadlines risks coming at the expense of military professionalism and could undermine the combat effectiveness of India’s armed forces across the three services. The Indian Air Force (IAF) remains the most visible victim, but critical shortages in the army and navy further expose the dangerous fragility of India’s defence posture. The Inter-Services Organisations (Command, Control and Discipline) Act, 2023, was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Mar 15, 2023, passed during the Monsoon Session and received presidential assent on Aug 15, 2023. It came into effect on May 10, 2024, while the rules were notified on May 27, 2025, granting the executive sweeping powers over joint military structures. By early 2026, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan had submitted recommendations for three theatre commands — Northern, Western and Maritime — while a Joint Operations Centre was being prepared for operational status by the end of May under pressure to meet government deadlines before the CDS’s extended tenure ended. This politically mandated restructuring overrides professional concerns and service-specific doctrines, turning a potentially valuable reform into a high-risk gamble. The crisis within the IAF is dire. As of Apr 2026, the force operates only 29 fighter squadrons — its lowest level in decades — down from roughly 31-32 before the full retirement of the MiG-21 in September 2025. This is well below the sanctioned strength of 42 squadrons. Each squadron fields 18-20 aircraft, giving India a total combat fleet of roughly 464-522 jets. Major platforms include 258 Russian-built Su-30MKIs, 36 French-made Rafales, more than 40 Russian MiG-29s and only 30-plus locally made Tejas Mk1 aircraft. Pakistan maintains about 25 squadrons, comprising an estimated 387-450 combat aircraft, while China deploys 66 fighter squadrons and more than 1,200 fighters. Projections suggest that the IAF could reach only 35-36 squadrons by 2035, despite orders for 141 Tejas Mk1A aircraft and procurement clearance for 114 Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA) in February 2026. Discussions about raising the target to 54-56 squadrons highlight the scale of the gap. The strain is not limited to the air domain. The Indian Army faces persistent equipment shortfalls and manpower challenges. As of 2026, several infantry and artillery units continue to rely on outdated systems. The artillery modernisation plan remains delayed, with critical gaps in long-range precision munitions and air defence systems. Mountain warfare capabilities along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) have also been hampered by slow infrastructure development and equipment shortages, amid heightened tensions with China since the June 2020 Galwan Valley clash. The Indian Navy operates only one aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya, while the full operationalisation of INS Vikrant has been delayed by technical and logistical issues. Its submarine fleet has also faced significant shortfalls, with India operating only 15-16 conventional submarines, many of them ageing, against a requirement of at least 24. The number of nuclear-powered attack submarines remains limited. Destroyer and frigate numbers are insufficient for effective multi-domain operations across the vast Indian Ocean region, particularly amid China’s growing naval presence. Indigenous shipbuilding delays and budget constraints have further widened these gaps, raising questions about the Maritime Theatre Command’s preparedness even before its full implementation. The IAF has strongly resisted the permanent division of its depleted assets among the three theatre commands, warning that such fragmentation could undermine air power’s core advantage of flexibility. Similar concerns have been raised across the other two services. The army is concerned about losing operational control of assets, while the navy fears its limited blue-water capabilities could be stretched too thin. Yet pressure to proceed with the restructuring has continued despite these concerns, contributing to increased inter-service friction since the 2023 Act and the 2025 rules. Since the post of CDS was created on Jan 1, 2020, the government has outlined a series of reforms, including binding joint orders in July 2025, while planning for the restructuring was reportedly more than 90 per cent complete. However, chronic under investment, with defence spending consistently below 2.5 per cent of GDP, procurement delays and a multi-vendor fleet have continued to pose challenges for the armed forces. The gap between the reform plans and existing capabilities remains significant. With only 29 IAF squadrons, fewer than 522 combat aircraft, limited naval platforms and delays in army modernisation, questions remain over the pace at which India can strengthen its overall military capabilities. The accelerated 2026 restructuring could have long-term strategic implications. Without corrective measures, including substantially increased defence spending, addressing critical shortages across the services, avoiding the forced division of assets and building greater professional consensus, the Integrated Theatre Commands could face significant operational and strategic challenges.

India's 'cockroach' movement warns of another protest, demanding chief election officer's resignation this time

The leaders of India’s “cockroach” youth movement said on Thursday that they would launch nationwide protests if India’s chief election officer does not resign within 48 hours, after a newspaper report said he had been questioned by his deputies over changes to voter lists. Opposition parties have said the lists have been manipulated to benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). On Wednesday, the Indian Express newspaper said two election commissioners had raised questions or expressed concern at least 14 times in 10 months — mostly in connection with the process of updating voter lists that began last year — with Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The report sparked a political furore, with opposition parties launching a fresh attack on the election commission that they have accused of being biased. The panel has denied these claims. On Thursday, the main opposition Congress Party announced protest marches on all state election offices across India on Friday, demanding Kumar’s arrest, his removal from office and an independent review of all decisions and voter-list changes made under him. The Election Commission of India has said that differences between election commissioners were normal for any institution and that all its actions were lawful. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. “If Gyanesh Kumar does not resign within 48 hours, the Cockroach Janta Party will start a nationwide agitation … we will not back down without Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation,” said Abhijeet Dipke, who founded the self-named movement, at a press conference. Differences are normal, poll panel says The Cockroach Janta Party is fresh off its successful youth demonstrations in July, which led to the resignation of Modi’s education minister over exam-paper leaks — one of Modi’s biggest political setbacks since he came to power in 2014. “Differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution,” the panel said in a statement on Wednesday following the newspaper report. “They are a part of the decision-making process before a final decision is taken.” Kumar is one of three election commissioners and is the chief as he is the most senior. Election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi — who the newspaper said had questioned and differed with Kumar — did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. Opposition parties have criticised the conduct of the panel in recent years, alleging that names of millions of voters were deleted without warning and that new voters were added without verification to favour the BJP. The BJP has defended the poll panel and said opposition parties had launched a smear campaign because they were regularly losing elections. “Neither the Election Commission of India nor any constitutional body in India is under dictatorial rule … they are functioning democratically,” BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said at a media briefing on Wednesday.

Lack of planning

THE Prime Minister’s Committee on Civil Service Reforms has finalised its core recommendations, yet omitted any clear roadmap for the Planning Commission. The latter is routinely described as dysfunctional. Whether or not that description is true is beside the point. The more useful question is whether Pakistan will do what India did when its own planning body stopped delivering, or take a different course altogether. The two commissions began as near-twins. India’s was founded in 1950, Pakistan’s in 1953, both modelled on Soviet-style central planning and staffed by trained economists. Both were extra-constitutional bodies, created by executive order. Both were nominally chaired by the head of government and run day to day by a deputy chairman. Both produced Five-Year Plans as their central output and controlled how resources moved from the centre to the provinces or states. For roughly three decades, they were the same institution representing two flags. The split started in the late 1980s with a fork in the road that both countries reached and only one of them took. India hit its own balance-of-payments crisis in 1991. It liberalised, and it grew out of the crisis rather than falling into a cycle of dependency. Pakistan entered IMF structural adjustment in 1988 and never left. It is now on its 25th programme. That single divergence did more to determine the two institutions’ fates than anything that followed. Since 1988, IMF adjustment programmes have taken precedence over what became, in Pakistan, the largely academic exercise of five-year planning. The Commission became just another ministry, concerned mainly with approving projects, and constrained even there by a development budget whose size the finance ministry set. India’s Commission kept setting the fiscal and growth framework that the finance ministry worked within. Pakistan’s relationship has flipped: the framework now comes from Washington, and the Commission works around it. For a while, India’s Commission adapted. It absorbed the human development agenda from Mahbub ul Haq’s 1990 Human Development Report and embedded the eight National Missions of the 2008 National Action Plan on Climate Change into successive Five-Year Plans. It completed 12 plans across 65 years. But incremental change has a shelf life. By the early 2010s, India’s economy had become too large, too market-driven and too federally assertive for a centralised allocator to keep dictating terms to states that no longer needed its money. In 2014, the Modi government dissolved the Commission and replaced it with NITI Aayog, a leaner think tank with no power to allocate funds, built around advisory strategy, SDG tracking and competition between states. The point is not that India dissolved a failing institution. It dissolved a working one, because a model built for 1950 was not fit for 2015. The civil service reform committee has left out crucial reform for planning institutions. Pakistan never reached that fork, because it never adapted enough to outgrow the old model in the first place. Where India’s Commission built capacity and then had to be redesigned, Pakistan’s mostly stood still. The 18th Amendment in 2010 devolved 17 ministries to the provinces. But nobody redesigned what the federal Planning Commission should do once the subjects it used to plan for no longer belonged to it. It was recast into a full ministry in 2013-14, gaining nominal breadth, Vision documents, SDG coordination, CPEC planning, and losing whatever independence it once had. Four provincial planning and development departments expanded around it, each building its own project pipeline — and national development spending across federal and provincial channels now exceeds Rs3.5 trillion. The PSDP, the Commission’s one remaining function, amounts to just seven per cent of the federal budget, its ceiling fixed by the Finance Division, the IMF interlocutor. This is where the comparison stops. NITI Aayog, for all its own gaps, has a claim: a 165pc increase in renewable capacity in a decade, an NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) process it coordinated across ministries and industry, and the world’s first government-led subnational SDG index, lifting India’s national SDG score from 58 to 71 between 2018 and 2024 by making states compete on published rankings. It has real failures too. But it measures them. It tracks 113 indicators across every state and publishes the results. Pakistan has no institution that does either job for its own provinces. Nobody ranks them on outcomes. Nobody has evaluated whether the PSDP, after decades and trillions of rupees, has achieved what it was funded to achieve. If we count what’s missing, nine separate failures emerge: a macro framework that has surrendered to the IMF since 1988; a series of launched and abandoned Vision documents; a collapse in human development that has left Pakistan’s HDI ranking 20 places behind India’s, with Bangladesh ahead of both; a PSDP process captured by political patronage rather than sustainable development logic; a think-tank function that atrophied while Mahbub ul Haq’s own institutional descendants scattered abroad; a climate and environmental blindspot in a country that ranks among the 10 most climate-vulnerable states; a federal role left undefined after the 18th Amendment; no subnational monitoring or evaluation framework; and, binding all of it together, an institution that has expanded in size while abandoning its function, producing the appearance of planning where substance no longer exists. Put together, this is not one failure of implementation. It is three failures of obsolescence, layered on top of each other: 1) globally, the development agenda moved from GDP and infrastructure towards human capabilities, the SDGs and climate finance, and the Commission never followed, 2) domestically, four periods of military rule and an un-redesigned federal mandate after 2010 did separate, serious damage, and 3) functionally, what remains is a gatekeeping exercise inside a PSDP ceiling set in Washington, approving a backlog of projects, the so-called throwforward, worth several trillion rupees more than can ever be funded. Pakistan does not lack planning institutions. It lacks a plan for its planning institutions. That is the reform the PM’s committee left out, and the one that was never optional. The writer is a climate expert. Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2026

A question of region

“Don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology, Don’t know much about the science book, don’t know much about the French I took…” THIS is an old song, which seems to be an apt description of journalists — especially in Pakistan. Over the decades, the profession has moved on from print to television and now digital but our training remains rooted in old-fashioned ‘generalism’ (if there’s such a word). As with the bureaucrats who run petroleum one day and health the other, we journalists move from commenting on foreign affairs one evening to the economy and healthcare the next. The notion of specialising in issues or studying them in depth is as alien to us as democracy is to Islamabad’s neighbours. Perhaps this is why most in the profession rarely bother with reading and books. Take history — even of Pakistan. Those of us who entered the field at the time of newspapers learnt the country’s history through oral tradition. Late-night chats with senior colleagues, who had survived martial laws and newsroom working hours, told us of tumultuous times such as war, secession and dictatorship. They included those who remembered what it was like working during the censorship of Ziaul Haq’s times, the night Pervez Musharraf removed the government or when an operation was first launched against the MQM in Karachi. The oral history we learnt alongside copy editing was the best counter-narrative to the whitewashed account taught in school books under Pakistan Studies. Our daastango provided us with a fun but patchy account of the land of the pure. Patchy, for it leaves us with more questions than answers — the personal accounts that we learn history from are rooted in Pakistan but are a little sketchy on details of the region. Few journalists have travelled around the region and reported on other countries. As a result, many may point out similarities between Pakistan and Egypt (aren’t they obvious?) but few will note what makes them different and why. For a hack such as myself, the biggest difference is perhaps Pakistan’s impatience with its rulers. Our last dictator spent eight years in power, struggling in the last two. And in Egypt, Anwar Sadat spent 11 years in power, Hosni Mubarak around three decades, while Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been ruling for 12 and is still going strong. Closer to Pakistan, the Gulf states in general have also enjoyed stability and long reigns without much pressure from below. Evidently, this is due to oil, but can it explain everything? After all, Iran is no less oil-rich and yet it went through a revolution, which perhaps remains unprecedented as a political event in the region. Despite the authoritarianism of both the Shah and the theocracy that followed, Iran has demonstrated that its people believe in resistance. In recent years, they have pushed back multiple times against crackdowns; at times they have even compelled the state to change course. This is a strain missing in Iran’s neighbours to the west. Crowded, noisy and poor, societies in this region struggle with imperfect democracies. But to its east, it’s a different story. Pakistan and the rest of South Asia, in comparison to its western neighbours in the Middle East, are poorer and noisier. Is this why this region has avoided the kind of authoritarianism that marks the Middle East? Crowded, noisy and poor, societies in this region continue to struggle with flawed and imperfect democracies; there is flirtation with authoritarianism but on paper most of them adhere or aspire to the framework left by the British. This is true of Pakistan where martial law dictators have also worked hard to prove their democratic credentials by holding elections. And with it comes the inability of rulers in the region to lord it over their citizens for long periods. Indeed, in recent years, Hasina Wajed’s 15 years in power has been quite a feat. In India, Jawaharlal Nehru and Narendra Modi have also enjoyed prime ministerships for a similar period of time. On the other hand, in Pakistan, the longest power stints have been a bit shorter. In a tradition closer to Iran, South Asia has also pushed back against dictators of the civilian (Wajed) and military (Musharraf) type, with street protests forcing them to call it a day. Strongmen such as Modi have also been bested by students armed with their wit and social media, while in Pakistan, authoritarian establishments have struggled to clamp down on criticism on X. This is not entirely new: back in the 1970s, both Indira Gandhi’s imposition of the Emergency and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s authoritarian rule came to an end, albeit in very different ways. In one country, the democratic system pushed back while in the other, the military establishment did so. With all our problems, Pakistan’s journalists still sit in talk shows and complain about the censorship they face; their counterparts in nearby regions are perhaps not allowed to whine thus on live television. In most countries with censorship, journalists usually spend their time complaining about absolute freedom. There is an ‘argumentative’ South Asian that shapes this region differently from its western neighbours. And perhaps also its eastern ones. Travel east to Myanmar and here once again, regimes tend to become more authoritarian and more long-lasting. The long detention of Aung San Suu Kyi under a martial law regime illustrates this best. After a short experiment with elections and civilian control, Myanmar has returned to military rule but one in which contestation by the people has turned to civil war. While this may seem alien to Pakistanis, it is worrying that in parts of our country we, too, face a situation where the state appears to only control the cities. But what eventually determines the different state-society relationships in these countries? Why is Myanmar able to sustain military rule while Bangladesh is not? Or why has Pakistan, despite its close ties to the Middle East, not been able to impose a similar system of government? Now if I hadn’t learnt history in newsrooms and had read more, perhaps I could have answered some of these questions. The writer is a journalist. Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2026

India’s Modi caught between much-needed Russian oil and US trade threats

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is caught in an energy policy bind with no easy exit. Cutting Russian oil imports to avoid potential new US tariffs could increase fuel prices ahead of key regional elections, or stress government finances. Maintaining such purchases could cripple Indian exports to its largest market. India, the world’s third-largest oil importer and among the biggest buyers of Russian crude, reacted unusually strongly on Thursday to a US congressional bill that would allow...

New US sanctions bill on Russia puts India's Modi in a bind

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is caught in an energy policy bind with no easy exit. Cutting Russian oil imports to avoid potential new US tariffs could increase fuel prices ahead of key regional elections, or stress government finances. Maintaining such purchases could cripple Indian exports to its largest market. India, the world’s third-largest oil importer and among the biggest buyers of Russian crude, reacted unusually strongly on Thursday to a US congressional bill that would allow Washington to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on countries, including India and China, for major purchases of Russian oil. The sharp response showed how an energy trade that has delivered India billions of dollars in savings since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is now colliding with its broader strategic and commercial interests. New Delhi said it had warned the United States that the measure could damage bilateral relations and disrupt global energy markets, vowing to keep “ensuring energy security for its 1.4 billion people” by buying from diversified sources. But holding firm could further strain ties with Washington after a turbulent year marked by repeated disputes over trade and tariffs under President Donald Trump. A planned trade deal between the two countries has already faced multiple delays. Trade talks at delicate stage Two Indian sources said the latest tensions did not mean New Delhi would abandon hopes of striking a trade deal with Washington, though they said India may increasingly need to lean on deals elsewhere if additional US tariffs hit exports. Since last year, India has signed a trade deal with Britain, finalised one with the EU and is looking to conclude talks on another one with Canada by the end of the year. New Delhi is hoping for a breakthrough when Modi travels to the US for the G20 summit in December, where he could meet Trump on the sidelines, said one of the sources. The White House and the Indian government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. “The US-India relationship has suffered over the last year for a range of reasons, including US tariffs,” said Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “But this new legislation, which enjoyed strong bipartisan support and takes the most maximalist position possible on punishing India for its Russian oil buys, may be the biggest blow yet.” If Washington delayed implementing tariffs or applied them only lightly, the damage could be manageable, he said, adding the legislation nevertheless could widen the trust gap in Delhi for a trade deal and make it harder for Indian negotiators to agree to last-minute concessions needed to secure a deal. “From the perspective of the trade talks, this new legislation couldn’t have come at a worse time,” he said. “The two sides are not far from the finish line, but getting there will require careful diplomacy.” Political headache for Modi The bill has already become a political issue in India, with the opposition urging Modi to adopt a tougher stance. Any hike in pump prices would be risky for Modi, whose party faces elections in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, in Punjab and in Modi’s home state of Gujarat starting early next year. Modi’s BJP runs both Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. Before Trump, India was courted by the United States for decades as a strategic counterweight to China, but the world’s fifth-largest economy has repeatedly been left reeling over the past year by decisions taken in Washington. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, India sharply increased purchases of discounted Russian crude, which now account for more than 40pc of India’s overall oil supplies. The stepped-up purchases were partly the reason Trump imposed tariffs of as much as 50pc on Indian goods in August 2025, among the steepest levied on any country. In February, Trump rolled back those duties in exchange for what he said was India’s commitment to halt Russian oil purchases and lower trade barriers. But New Delhi only briefly reduced purchases from Russia in early 2026. They have since jumped, especially since the supply shock that followed the US and Israeli attack on Iran. New Delhi has repeatedly resisted pressure to scale back purchases, arguing that its large population and growing economy need secure, affordable and reliable energy supplies. Indian refiners have already secured crude supplies for September and October that include Russian oil, sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters. Indian analysts said the country’s purchases of Russian oil were not financing the Ukraine war, but only helping stabilise global supplies and keeping domestic prices in check. “Tariffs of up to 100pc would punish Indian exporters and American consumers, disrupt trade and give the US president excessive power over major partners,” said Ajay Srivastava, founder of New Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Initiative and a former trade ministry official.

India to take 'all necessary measures' to protect economic interests after US passes Russia sanctions bill

India said on Thursday it would continue buying oil from “diversified” suppliers, after US lawmakers approved sanctions designed to squeeze Russia over its war in Ukraine. The US legislation targets Russia’s energy and defence sectors, President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials, as well as Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet of tankers used to circumvent Western sanctions. It also gives US President Donald Trump authority to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on major buyers of Russian oil and gas — including potentially China and India — in an effort to choke off revenue financing Moscow’s war. But India’s foreign ministry said it “remains firmly committed to ensuring energy security for its 1.4 billion people”. “It will continue to do so through diversified sourcing and on the basis of evolving market dynamics.” Moscow is one of New Delhi’s most important strategic partners and military suppliers. “The Indian side has also made clear its determination to take all necessary measures to protect its trade and economic interests,” the ministry added. India has navigated the energy crisis caused by the US-Iran conflict in part by turning to Russia, despite Moscow’s war in Ukraine and pressure from Washington and other Western capitals. Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks in New Delhi last week ahead of a Brics summit. “This issue has been discussed at high levels in recent months with various US interlocutors,” the ministry added. “Its potential implications for not just the bilateral relationship but also the international energy market have been very clearly articulated by the Indian side.” Indian refiners nearly doubled crude imports from Russia to 2.25 million barrels a day in March — the weeks after the Middle East war erupted — helped by temporary US waivers. Shipments hit a record 2.81m in July, according to trade intelligence firm Kpler, but have since dropped back to 2.07m last month.

Birthday greetings to Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi

The message from the President of Russia reads, in part: “You are rightly enjoying a deep respect from your compatriots and great authority on the global stage. It is impossible to overstate your personal contribution to strengthening the special and privileged strategic partnership between India and Russia. I would like to express my gratitude for the warm and cordial welcome and hospitality extended to me and the Russian delegation during my visit to New Delhi last week. The talks we held were undoubtedly substantive, frank, and productive. As always, it was a genuine pleasure to talk with you, and our discussions once again demonstrated your extraordinary political wisdom and foresight. We will, of course, continue our constructive cooperation on pressing bilateral and international issues for the benefit of our friendly nations.”

Putin is far from isolated. Europe must play him at the long game

Putin is far from isolated. Europe must play him at the long game Expert comment jon.wallace 15 September 2026 The SCO and BRICS summits indicate Russia retains sufficient value to China, India and other non-Western powers to pursue its war objectives. Europe needs to adjust to that reality. The past fortnight has seen President Vladimir Putin undertake plenty of summit diplomacy. Throughout he has shown no sign he is open to compromise on Russia’s war aims in Ukraine. On the contrary, escalation has accelerated. Europe seems inclined to read this increased aggression as a sign of desperation on Moscow’s part. But that is a miscalculation. In reality, the Kremlin’s strategy of blended diplomatic impassivity and calibrated escalation may be stronger than it looks. No backing down US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spent more than three hours with Putin in Moscow on 5 September, discussing how to end the war. The Kremlin hailed the discussions as ‘highly useful’ but gave no indication that it was ready to relax its demands: Ukrainian territorial concessions and restrictions on Kyiv’s future security alignment. Days later, an offer by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet Putin at December’s G20 summit in Miami was rebuffed. Meanwhile, Russian attacks have intensified. On 13 September, a Russian drone struck railway infrastructure near Yahodyn, shortly after a train carrying Boris Johnson, former CIA director David Petraeus and others had passed through the area. Whether they were deliberately targeted remains unknown. What is certain is that the strike was part of Russia’s largest drone barrage in months and followed intensified attacks on Ukrainian transport, energy and civilian infrastructure. Many European officials argue that Moscow’s behaviour shows it is running out of options in Ukraine. Indeed, Russia’s position is uncertain. It is suffering extraordinary losses. Its territorial advances remain slow and costly. And Ukrainian forces have regained ground in several sectors. Yet the conclusion that Russian escalation betrays desperation is closer to wishful thinking than reality. Putin behaves like someone who still believes time is on his side and that he retains room for manoeuvre. His recent diplomacy offers a useful interpretative framework. Putin can (still) afford to ignore friendly advice Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s July intervention on the Ukraine war rightfully attracted considerable attention. Sitting alongside Putin in Omsk, Tokayev said the conflict should be frozen and negotiations resumed. The Kremlin promptly rejected the idea of a freeze. Narendra Modi went a step further in Bishkek on 31 August, at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), telling Putin publicly that the world needed to ‘move from endless war to end of war’. Yet Modi also addressed Putin as his ‘friend’, praised the strength of Russia–India relations and less than two weeks later, during the BRICS summit, discussed a bilateral trade target of $100 billion with Putin. There is no reason to doubt that governments like India and Kazakhstan genuinely want the war to end. But that does not mean they are prepared to make their relations with Russia conditional upon it. This distinction explains much of Putin’s confidence. Despite its criticism, India continues to treat Russia as a key strategic partner. And, while Kazakhstan has carefully diversified its foreign relations, it has preserved a close relationship with Moscow. Meanwhile the New Delhi BRICS declaration criticised unilateral sanctions and trade restrictions while avoiding directly confronting Russia over Ukraine. These sustained partnerships may provide Moscow with something it needs almost as critically as support for the war in Ukraine: economic integration in Asia, diplomatic legitimacy, and a respected role in influential international groupings. Russia is valuable to China too Chinese President Xi Jinping told Putin at the SCO summit that the foundations of their bilateral relationship would only become stronger. Russia is often described by Europeans as China’s ‘vassal’. This captures a genuine economic asymmetry: China’s economy is roughly eight times larger than Russia’s. And Russia conducts at least 34 per cent of its international trade with China, whereas Russia accounts for only around 4 per cent of China’s. But it is missing an important aspect of the partnership, which cannot be measured through bilateral trade alone. Beijing has reasons to keep Moscow strong enough to remain an independent power. Russia has a nuclear arsenal, a permanent UN Security Council seat, vast energy and commodity resources, and a strategic position straddling Central Asia and the Arctic. Most importantly, Moscow is willing to challenge what remains of the US-shaped world order. For Beijing, Moscow remains the useful disruptor-in-chief. Chinese involvement in Russia’s war economy shows that the relationship is more consistent than many in Europe may think. Documents reported this month by Politico suggest that a Chinese state-owned firm shipped carbon fibre used in Geran attack drones to Alabuga-Volokno, a sanctioned subsidiary of Rosatom (Russia’s state-owned nuclear conglomerate). An earlier investigation by the Robert Lansing Institute documented Chinese engines and components in Russian drones. Last year, Reuters reported that Chinese drone specialists were working with Russian manufacturers. This does not prove that every transaction was ordered by Beijing. Nor is it evidence of ‘limitless’ Chinese support. Xi has no interest in becoming hostage to Putin’s decisions and Beijing will continue to calibrate its exposure very carefully. It does show, however, how misleading it is to equate China’s rhetorical caution over Ukraine with distance from Russia. For Beijing, Moscow remains the useful disruptor-in-chief. Its actions help an alternative international system emerge, through groups like the SCO and BRICS, in which US and European power carry less weight. And even though these groups’ members disagree profoundly about what a more multipolar order should look like, they offer increasingly clear diplomatic expression to China’s ambition. India may not share China’s vision of global order, but neither does it see an advantage in isolating Russia. Nor does Kazakhstan or any other BRICS member. This has proved a comfortable enough ambiguity with which Putin has learned to live. More realism is needed in Europe These past few months of Russian escalation against Ukraine and Europe, and diplomatic consolidation with Asia, should teach European leaders a lesson: Their effort to shame governments into choosing between Russia and the West has clearly reached its limits – if not failed. The European Union (EU)’s relations with India may offer a better model. This has seen the EU strengthen commercial ties with India while lowering its tone over New Delhi’s relationship with Moscow. The World Today Related work The Open Centre: Reimagining Europe’s offer to a fractured world This makes sense: there is considerable scope to deepen relations with India and Central Asia. Europe can offer investment, technology, access to the single market, and critical-mineral partnerships. It can also offer transport routes that reduce dependence on Russia, such as the Trans-Caspian corridor. By using such an approach, Europe can adjust to a new reality, working patiently to widen the space between Russia and its partners rather than assume that the separation is already underway. On China, the EU has already sanctioned a growing number of Chinese companies involved in sanctions circumvention and Russia’s military-industrial complex. The success of Europe’s own long game may hinge on how far the EU is prepared to extend those sanctions and hit strategic supply chains when the evidence points to direct involvement by larger or state-owned Chinese suppliers. Russia’s escalation in Ukraine indicates that Putin still wagers he can outlast Ukraine’s supporters. He remains confident that Russia is sufficiently connected to the rest of the world to absorb Western pressure. And he sees his position as bolstered by what he believes is a US weakened by war with Iran. Putin’s summit diplomacy of the past few months suggests that, at least for now, he has some reason to be confident. But Europe does not have to accept his wager. What it must do is understand the underlying long-term dynamics and respond accordingly. If Putin is playing the long game, perhaps it is time Europe does too.

Millions affected as floods ravage India’s eastern Bihar

PATNA: Flooding in India’s eastern Bihar state has affected nearly five million people, officials said on Tuesday as aid was being sent the worst-hit areas. Bihar is among India’s most flood-prone states and all seven of its key rivers measured above their “danger level” on Tuesday after heavy rain, according to the state water resources department. “Food, clean drinking water, medicines, and other essential facilities are being continuously provided to the needy families,” Vijay Kumar Chaudhary, Bihar’s deputy chief minister, said in a statement. Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary said 7,000 rupees ($72) each had been transferred to more than 827,000 flood-affected families in the state. Nearly five million people have been affected by floods, according to figures from Bihar’s Disaster Management Department. The government’s “priority is that every affected family gets flood relief and reconstruction work is done with a spirit of building back better”, Choudhary said in a statement. Flooding began this month and local media have reported 20 deaths, while officials said swaths of farmland have been swamped. Bihar is downstream from Nepal, which suffered deadly flooding last month. “Flood is our fate, every year we face it,” said Chandan Kumar Mahto, 46, a resident of Saran district. “We are helpless… we are struggling for food, safe drinking water and milk for children.” Bihar’s government is made up of a coalition of parties, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. It said it had opened 13 relief camps, with more than 1,000 community kitchens and nearly 1,800 boats deployed in flood-hit areas. Modi has sent a federal government team to conduct a “detailed assessment of damages”, officials said. Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2026

India FTA passes with significant majority

Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay is welcoming the passing of the India Free Trade Agreement legislation today, and says the 93-29 vote is a clear demonstration of Parliament’s strong support for this FTA and its significant benefits for the economy. “The India FTA opens the door for Kiwi exporters to one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies. Parliament today overwhelmingly backed the long term benefits the agreement will deliver for all New Zealanders,” says Mr McClay. “For exporters, the benefits are immediate and substantial. From day one, 57 per cent of New Zealand’s exports to India will become duty-free. Once fully implemented, tariffs are eliminated or significantly reduced on 95 per cent of our exports. That means real savings and real opportunities. The kiwifruit industry alone expects to save around $125 million in tariffs over five years. “Added to this are faster border clearance and preferential access to a fast-growing middle class that is demanding high-quality food, fibre, technology, education, tourism and professional services. The FTA is also future-proofed, through most favoured nation commitments for wine and key services sectors. “Negotiations were announced in March 2025 and we expect this high quality agreement to enter into force this year, delivering on our promise to complete an FTA with India this term,” Mr McClay says. “Exporters will be able to use this agreement to build new relationships, sell more of our world-class products, and contribute to the goal agreed by Prime Ministers Modi and Luxon of doubling two-way trade by 2030.” “We are already seeing strong momentum as exporters, customers and investors respond to the increased engagement between our countries. This agreement turns India from a market of future promise into a practical opportunity for more New Zealand businesses.” The FTA will enter into force after both parties have completed their respective ratification procedures.

To heal a divided family

CENTURIES before Charles Darwin theorised our shared human evolution from the fish, multiple traditions linked humanity to a single common fold. The 18th BRICS summit in Delhi saw Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the host leaning on the Sanskrit phrase ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ — the world is a family — to underpin the spirit of unity, which unfortunately eludes much of mankind. The ancient aphorism is a good but an overstretched reminder of seeing everybody as an equal human being. Some would say that there was perhaps a greater need to find a phrase that frames all Indians as one family before stretching it to include the world. A problem with citing one’s ancient aphorisms at international conferences is that it begins to resemble the Sadda Mian complex. Sadda Mian was a roundly admired elderly Afghan member of Bhopal’s royal family. He wou­­ld walk along the promenade abutting Bhopal’s vast lake called Bhadbhada, which, he decided, was the largest water body in the world. Another characteristic unique to Sadda Mian was that he fed his domesticated quails with his mouth, tucking the tiny grains of food behind the lower lip. The late thespian Dilip Kumar told me about his invitation to Sadda Mian to visit Bombay where the actor took the genial Pathan to watch the Arabian Sea from the city’s Marine Drive. Sadda Mian, his sherwani unbuttoned and fluttering in the breeze, was so awestruck by the sea’s expanse that he exclai­med gently: “Kya haqeeqat hai Bhadbhade ki!” Sadda Mian’s dumbfounded response translates as: ‘Where does any Bhadbhada hold a chance!’ I looked up a few random traditions from across the lands and seas that don’t seem too different in the spirit of acknowledging the world as a family. But few among them, if any, would be found jumping ecstatically as Newton did watching an apple fall from a tree. There was a time in the early days of Narendra Modi’s rule that the foreign ministry printed and distributed copies of the Bhagavad Gita to foreign dignitaries. In the bargain, the ministry displaced coffee-table books of the Taj, Ajanta caves and Madurai temples. I am not aware of Israel handing out the Torah, or the Vatican presenting the Bible to esteemed visitors, nor does Saudi Arabia or Iran make it a point to offer return gifts of the Holy Quran to visiting dignitaries. Or for that matter, would a privileged guest, returning from China, come home with an officially gifted copy of Mao Zedong Thoughts, or more recently Xi Jinping Thoughts? I bought the Xi book on Amazon. If the world is a family, which it is, talking to the neighbour and sorting out the problem bilaterally is mature. So yes, the world is a family, but what kind of a family? The BRICS summit sought to address some aspects of the troubling question but, by all accounts, it’s going to be a long trudge. Modi said BRICS has come of age — in the sense that the leaders of the UAE and Iran agreeing to meet and not pressing their case too hard to enable a summit statement was an achievement. One could have accepted the condemnation of the terror attack in Pahalgam and reference to cross-border terrorism as a victory for India. But Pakistan had condemned the attack too. Actually, the BRICS summit in Xiamen in 2017 had gone several steps further when under President Xi’s stewardship it named some extremist outfits allegedly based in Pakistan together with Taliban groups and local security elements for censure. If the world is a family, which it is, talking to the neighbour and sorting out the problem bilaterally is mature. The world brotherhood will applaud. And, yes, the word ‘family’ loses its meaning when someone is seen standing with an aggressor like Israel and visits the country on the eve of Israel’s assassination of a revered supreme leader of a far friendlier country. Also, if the world is a family, let’s stop patronising lynch mobs against fellow humans everywhere. It’s not unlikely that the BRICS summit’s statement slamming Israel’s occupation of Lebanon was a sign of the coming of age. Xi Jinping dominated the show. He said BRICS should become a peacemaker. There needs to be peace within the family. Looking objectively at the idea of global brotherhood with all its warts and wrinkles, the Nehruvian ideal of non-alignment was quite representative of the quest. But Xi, too, has made a forceful intervention to make BRICS more proactive in its quest for global brotherhood. And he stated that BRICS must be a “pioneer in upholding peace and stability”, emphasising that the group needs to actively manage global hotspot issues by addressing both their symptoms and root causes. He clearly outlined a four-point plan for West Asia, focusing on peaceful coexistence, respect for national sovereignty, adhering to international law, and regional development. It was Xi who reiterated the necessity of pushing for an immediate ceasefire at all the hotspots in West Asia to establish a lasting two-state solution for Palestine to resolve the nub of the crisis. Unlike the Sanskrit phrase cited by Modi, which seems ornamental and ill-fitting given India’s domestic and foreign entanglements with strife, the ancient South African ideal of Ubuntu very crucially was at play when apartheid was dismantled in the country. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu leaned on the Zulu phrase ‘Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’. Strikingly similar to the Sanskrit worldview, Ubuntu assured every race and community in the country of equity and equality. The phrase literally means: ‘A person is a person through other persons’ or ‘I am because we are’. The Abrahamic scriptures carry similar messages of a united mankind. The Galatians 3:28 in the Bible says: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This isn’t dissimilar to India’s Maha Upanishad defining narrow-mindedness as calculating ‘this person is a relative, that one is a stranger’. A tricky proposition for Modi to grasp. The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi. jawednaqvi@gmail.com Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2026

Kremlin says Xi, Modi ready to help end Ukraine conflict

The three leaders met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in New Delhi, with Russia saying it welcomed efforts to persuade Kyiv to show 'greater flexibility'.

How AI could change the world

How AI could change the world The World Today iallan.drupal 7 September 2026 Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly and threatens to transform politics, economics and societies. How should it be regulated? Are significant job losses inevitable? Should countries try to compete with the US and China? What is most misunderstood about the technology? We asked six experts to weigh in on these and other big questions. How do you feel about the broad direction of AI? Stuart Russell, distinguished professor of computer science, University of California Berkeley and president of the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI: We are pushing hard on capabilities with titanic investment levels, but with no plan for how to control systems far more powerful than ourselves. There is a 70 per cent chance capabilities will plateau and the AI bubble will burst, and a 30 per cent chance that we get to artificial general intelligence / artificial superintelligence, with then a very high chance of catastrophe unless governments intervene soon. Shikoh Gitau, chief executive of Qhala, a Kenyan digital consultancy and a leading voice on AI in Africa: I’m an AI optimist, because in Africa, we have little choice but to be. The biggest fear around AI is about it taking away people’s jobs, their humanity. The other question is, what can AI do for the continent? For instance, in Kenya, we have one doctor for every 5,700 people. But there is widespread smartphone penetration and internet coverage across Africa. With the right AI tool, one doctor can provide world-class care via mobile devices to more than 5,700 people. It’s the same with children’s education. Alejandro Mayoral Baños, co-executive director of Access Now, a civil society organization for digital rights: AI is no different from other digital technologies in one respect: its impact depends on who has the power to shape, control and benefit from it. I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the technology itself. The question is whether communities can develop and use AI for their own self-determined purposes, or whether control stays with a handful of companies and already powerful countries driven by profit and geopolitical interest. Anton Leicht, fellow with the Technology and International Affairs Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: I feel as dazzled by the potential upside as daunted by the risks, while still deeply uncertain as to whether we’ll get the policy right. I hope we find out more as we continue muddling through. Alex Krasodomski, director of the Digital Society Programme, Chatham House: Given time, this technology will create an extraordinary set of tools in science, art, education and work. My fear is that we won’t give it that time, instead accelerating into market corrections, misapplications, zero-sum competition and perhaps even catastrophic misalignment with humanity. Yao Xu, secretary-general of the Centre for Global AI Innovative Governance and associate professor, Fudan University, China: I am cautiously optimistic about AI’s broad direction. It could greatly expand scientific discovery, productivity and access to public services, but societies will have to absorb two serious shocks: rapid disruption in labour markets and the risk that people become too dependent on machines for judgment, learning and original thought. What is the likely effect of AI upon each of the following sectors over the next five years? Alex Krasodomski: The gap between the intelligence explosion enabled by AI and its deployment is under-appreciated. It’s going to take more than five years’ work for abundant, cheap intelligence to be translated into the kinds of measurable gains we would expect to see in public services or science. Yao Xu: In medicine, AI will improve diagnosis, drug discovery and clinical work, although data and liability will slow adoption. In the creative arts, it will reshape production and distribution more than creativity itself. Personalized tutoring will spread in the education sector, and in transport, autonomous vehicles will reshape logistics. In the world of security, intelligence, cyber operations and autonomous systems will rapidly change. Shikoh Gitau: I’m bullish about AI accelerating the speed of research using locally available staff in Africa. It will also be important in understanding the human genome from an African perspective, and at a much lower cost. Alejandro Mayoral Baños: Rating sectors on a scale of 1 to 5 creates precision that does not exist. Adoption varies in nature, pace, subsector and consequence within each sector, across national jurisdictions, and according to the specific applications in question. Baños declined to rank these effects. Gitau declined to rank IT. Russell and Leicht declined to comment How optimistic are you that labour markets will adapt to the effects of AI without significant disruption? Alejandro Mayoral Baños: Personally, I am moderately confident societies will adapt, as they have to earlier waves of technological change. (Access Now does not focus on ‘future of work’ policy). My concern is the structural conditions. Wealth and technological capacity are already held by only a few companies and countries. The disruption may have less to do with AI than with the inequalities of the societies where it is deployed. Anton Leicht: In the long run, viewed globally, I feel optimistic. Macroeconomic fundamentals will still favour plenty of work for plenty of humans. But the rearrangement of the economy will proceed much faster than in past transitions, and we have few policy answers to manage it. Disruption will be great, yet temporary. — Protesters with anti-AI placards outside OpenAI offices in London. Photo: Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images. Alex Krasodomski: I expect very significant disruption, followed by unevenly distributed adaptation. Work that depends on human ingenuity, creativity or skill will not be eclipsed overnight by an intelligence explosion, and converting intelligence gains into gains in science, national security, production and so on will create a lot of new jobs. But exposure varies. Economies built on tradeable services such as those of the Philippines, Kenya or India face painful disruption, and I don’t expect the new jobs to appear where the old ones disappeared. Stuart Russell: Not at all. Yao Xu: I am not optimistic. Wealthier countries may soften the shock through retraining and social protection, but many governments lack the money and administrative capacity. Because labour markets and supply chains cross borders, disruption in the least-prepared countries will spread through migration, trade and political instability. Shikoh Gitau: Labour markets have no option but to adapt. But I am certain AI is going to create entirely new jobs in the next two years. Anthropic, OpenAI and others are sending engineers to their customers’ offices to help them adapt their AI models. In other words, they are launching what amounts to consultancy businesses, which shows where the world is heading. How likely is it that popular concerns about AI will lead to profound political consequences? Alex Krasodomski: AI development is increasingly seen as necessary by political and economic elites and as a threat and burden by everyone else. Data centres are the physical manifestation of the AI revolution and its local costs in electricity prices, land and water usage. They are already consequential electoral issues in mid-2026. Anton Leicht: AI will be the deciding political issue of the decade. This technology will touch the most politically sacrosanct parts of voters’ lives: their jobs, their personal safety and that of their children, their economic welfare and the integrity of their government. Shikoh Gitau: In America and perhaps Europe there may be big political consequences, but not in Africa. There, people will want data centres because they will create jobs. Stuart Russell: If AI succeeds, few young people have a meaningful future beyond basic subsistence. Already AI is hated. There is a wall-sized Le Monde poster near my apartment in Paris that reads: ‘Tout le monde déteste l’IA’ (‘Everyone detests AI’). Yao Xu: As people see AI giants gaining influence over information, employment and public policy, many will feel that the existing political system is losing control. The reaction may split between two extremes: demands to stop or tightly restrict AI, and support for technology leaders who promise to bypass traditional institutions altogether. Alejandro Mayoral Baños: Political consequences are highly likely, but they will come as much from the political, economic and social context in which AI is developing as from AI itself. We are already seeing narratives about AI justify opposing responses: stronger regulation and public oversight versus deregulation, surveillance and competitiveness framing. The political challenge is whether democratic institutions can build the expertise and accountability to govern technologies moving at this speed. Who will dominate AI by 2035, the United States or China? Yao Xu: Neither – and no country should. The US may retain advantages in capital, chips and cloud platforms, while China may lead in industrial use, scale and open models. But AI will reach too deeply into economies and public life for one power to control it safely. By 2035, a more distributed system would be more realistic and more desirable. Alex Krasodomski: China, if domination here means diffusion. Anton Leicht: The United States, due to its current decisive lead in chip design and the effects of that lead. More revenue means more computing power; more usage means more data and better models mean greater acceleration of research and development. The US will start this flywheel effect before China has enough chips to catch up. Shikoh Gitau: China, hands down. They already are dominating. So much digital infrastructure in Africa is Chinese, not to mention ubiquitous Chinese electric vehicles, tablets, software. The use of Kimi AI, a Chinese chatbot, is widespread – it looks like Claude but is in some ways superior and cheaper. Also, many thought that the US government’s decision to compel Anthropic to withdraw its Fable and Mythos models was diplomatically and politically wrong. How can African businesses rely on American AI models if the US government can decide effectively to shut them down? The US will regulate AI. It’s unlikely that the rest of the world will get much of a say. Anton Leicht, fellow with the Technology and International Affairs Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Alejandro Mayoral Baños: At Access Now, we would push back on the premise. Framing AI’s future as a contest between two states reproduces an arms race narrative and treats technological leadership as zero sum. The two approaches share more than the rivalry suggests, though they diverge in one important respect: China’s open weight models give Global South countries more room to build their own systems. Nothing requires AI to be organized around two centres of power. Regulatory frameworks, public investment, open technologies and decentralized infrastructure could produce other centres across Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia. Stuart Russell: The United States. Is it too late for middle powers and developing countries to build their own AI? Anton Leicht: In theory, no; in practice, yes. Given the gaps in infrastructure, we should expect an attempt to catch up to the frontier AI models to cost in the order of trillions; too much for regional markets to fund, too ambitious for the current cast of middle-power governments to attempt. Alejandro Mayoral Baños: No. Access to a model alone does not provide genuine autonomy. This requires control over architecture, source code, training pipelines, weights, data and the ability to modify and deploy independently. Middle powers and developing countries do not need to reproduce the scale of large companies. They can invest in open technologies, regional infrastructure, local datasets and the capacity to adapt models to their priorities. They can also set standards for accountability, transparency and human rights. — India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, left, with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, centre, and Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on 19 February, 2026. Photo: Ludovic Marin / AFP via Getty Images. Yao Xu: No, but they do not all need to build a frontier model from scratch. The international community can make AI development more inclusive by providing affordable computing access, open models and practical training as public goods. The best assistance will deliver a finished product and allow local people to be able to build and improve the next one themselves. Shikoh Gitau: Instead of competing with the Americans and Chinese, middle powers have the opportunity to build what we call ‘minimum viable intelligence’ – AI models that serve a specific need. For instance, we released a benchmark study last year that showed that the big AI models were not catering for diseases that are prevalent in Africa, such as HIV and sickle cell disease. So, we have collected data sets and built models that align with what Africa needs. Stuart Russell: No, but stop obsessing about ‘sovereign stack’. No country has a sovereign stack, including the US and China. It makes sense to build one’s own user-facing model, but trying to start at the bottom with semiconductor plants, for instance, is madness. Alex Krasodomski: No. The task facing middle powers is to be clear on what they mean by ‘their own AI’, to choose when to hedge, when to align with the US or China, when to cooperate with other middle powers and when to invest in sovereign, domestic capacity. Should the world regulate AI? If so, what existing model might serve as a starting point? Stuart Russell Yes. Use the International Atomic Energy Authority as a model and implement a licensing regime. Prove your AI system is safe before you are allowed to develop or deploy it. Yao Xu: Yes. The European Union Artificial Intelligence Act’s risk-based approach offers a useful starting point, but rules should respond to what a system can do and how it is used, not to the nationality of its developer. High-risk uses need serious testing and clear accountability, while the United Nations can help establish common principles that countries adapt. Alejandro Mayoral Baños: What we need is regulation grounded in the international human rights framework. That means giving people control over their data and over how the content they see on platforms is curated. Industry has spent enormous resources lobbying against exactly these things. Policymakers have to resist that pressure and put people first. The biggest misunderstanding is that AI must lead to a new Cold War or another Star Wars-style technological contest- it need not. Yao Xu , Secretary-General of the Centre for Global AI Innovative Governance. Shikoh Gitau: This is a can of worms. It’s a very powerful technology so we need guardrails. My worry is who defines regulation because the world is far from agreement on what that should look like. Alex Krasodomski: Yes. Red lines on the use of AI in certain contexts such as mass surveillance are already being deployed. Red lines on AI systems’ behaviour are now the priority to tackle the kinds of incidents seen this year in which AI systems appeared to manipulate, deceive and carry out cyberattacks. Anton Leicht: The US will regulate AI. It’s unlikely that the rest of the world will get much of a say. Banking regulation should be our initial starting point: the appropriate focus being the enormously powerful frontier labs. Their decision-making matters more than their output. Regulation should aim at auditing and shaping this decision-making. Is open-source AI a risk or an opportunity? Alex Krasodomski: Open source and open weight AI is an opportunity. No middle power that is serious about fostering an AI ecosystem domestically and aligned with its own interests and values should restrict access to open weight models. Open weights also support verification and inspection, with one caveat: once they are out in the wild, they cannot be recalled, making pre-release scrutiny even more important. Stuart Russell: Below middling levels of capability, probably a net benefit. As they become more capable, open-weight models become much more dangerous than closed-weight models. For instance, imagine if five billion people had free access to an open-weight model more powerful than Claude Mythos, which Anthropic withdrew access to – how long would it take until one of those five billion decided to use it to try to bring down the critical infrastructure of a country? Yao Xu: Mostly an opportunity. Open-source models give smaller countries, universities and businesses a way to lower costs and tailor systems to local languages and needs. Some models can be misused, so safeguards are necessary, but closing the technology would concentrate power in a few companies and countries without removing the underlying risks. Anton Leicht: At present, largely a risk, sadly. Most of our approaches to making AI systems safe depend on features that can be removed from open-source systems. Shikoh Gitau: It’s an opportunity, particularly if the alternative is constantly paying for tokens. An open model allows you to download them – so you have a back-up should it be shut down, and power over your data. Alejandro Mayoral Baños The greater systemic risk is allowing a few companies and countries to control increasingly consequential technologies. The question is not whether a system is labelled open, but what people can access, audit and independently deploy. Broader access carries real safety risks. So does concentration. Social media has shown what happens when a handful of actors control infrastructure and the rules governing it. How likely is it that AI will be the primary cause of a major incident that threatens global security in the next five years? Alejandro Mayoral Baños: I would be cautious about naming AI as the primary cause of such an incident. The pressing concern is that AI accelerates existing tensions. They come from inequality, concentration of power, armed conflict, authoritarianism, surveillance, discrimination and weak governance. If AI is seen as the primary threat, policy responses narrow to controlling the technology and ignore the structural conditions that enable harmful deployment. Anton Leicht: Our ability to make AI systems powerful is far outpacing our ability to make them safe and reliable and there are no clear policy interventions that will change that fact. Small things keep going wrong right now, big risks keep drawing closer and a major cybersecurity incident caused by misused or uncontrolled AI agents by the end of the decade seems highly likely. Shikoh Gitau: It will happen, but I don’t think AI will go wild and carry something out autonomously. It will be a human manipulating a catastrophic outcome. Yao Xu: AI is more likely to intensify a crisis than to cause one by itself. It may make a cyberattack, military miscalculation or disinformation campaign more damaging, but the original failure will usually lie in political decisions and weak safeguards. Alex Krasodomski: AI is already being deployed into high-stake areas including war zones, critical infrastructure and financial systems, while the gap between the capabilities of these tools and our ability to control them is growing. Unfortunately, it may take precisely such an incident to accelerate governance efforts. Russell declined to comment Do the anticipated gains of AI outweigh the environmental costs? Yao Xu: On balance, yes, if data-centre growth is planned as part of the energy system. China’s Eastern Data, Western Computing initiative assesses projects against grid capacity, water use and regional needs, while companies compete to offer more efficient plans. This mix of public planning and market competition helps explain why data centres have caused less public anxiety in China than in the United States. Anton Leicht: Yes. The environmental costs of AI might be substantial by the standards of a normal technology, but the extraordinary impact that AI will likely have on productivity and innovation – including on environmental issues – will by far outweigh the costs. Right now, the best way to emit a ton of CO2 is powering a frontier AI data centre. Shikoh Gitau: We are smart enough to build environmentally sustainable infrastructure. For instance, Nvidia’s chips are becoming smaller and less power hungry. Stuart Russell: Yes. Alejandro Mayoral Baños: Expanding AI infrastructure drives demand for energy, water, critical minerals and data centres, intensifying extractive pressures felt most acutely by communities already facing environmental and economic inequality (Access Now does not work on environmental so I am cautious in my assessment in this area). The question is not what AI produces, but what it takes to build and run it, where those resources originate and who bears the consequences. Krasodomski declined to comment

Trump's America-first world is pushing other powers to hedge their bets

Xi, Putin and Modi meet in New Delhi as U.S. tariffs, sanctions and the Iran war test whether BRICS members can find more common ground.

'India started a war based on a lie and lost miserably': Bilawal reacts to Indian media's attempt to link Pakistan to terrorism

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Monday reacted to Indian media’s attempts to link Pakistan to terrorism, saying that the neighbouring country had “started a war based on a lie and lost miserably”, a reference to last year’s May conflict. Bilawal made the remarks on the social media platform X, while reacting to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s interview with an Indian media channel. In an interview with NDTV, Ibrahim — who was in India to attend the BRICS summit over the weekend — was asked if he considered Israel’s actions against Hamas terrorism. “Yes, it is terrorism,” Ibrahim replied. The host then asked if “by that token”, what “Pakistan has done against India and in Pahalgam” would be considered “terrorism”. “I would not go to that extent. I know it is very sensitive to say that in India. I’m a close friend of Modi ji, and we engage with the Pakistanis,” the Malaysian prime minister said. Asked why the Malaysian PM was “not as direct in criticising Pakistan for terrorism”, Ibrahim said: “Well, it has to be established.” He continued: “I mean, none of my intelligence establishment … would come back and tell me, ‘Anwar, yes, there was state-sponsored terrorism’. Therefore, I, as the prime minister of Malaysia, would then refer to this fact.” Reacting to the clip of the interview, Bilawal said on Monday: “Malaysian PM exposing Indian propaganda, in India on Indian TV. The truth is India started a war based on a lie and lost miserably.” He said that India now stood “exposed internationally”. “India must live up to its commitments made at the time of the ceasefire; to discuss all friction points with Pakistan. So we can together bring peace, prosperity and stability to our region,” he said. In May 2025, a four-day conflict between Pakistan and India was sparked by an attack on tourists in occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which New Delhi, without evidence, linked to Pakistan. Islamabad strongly denied responsibility while calling for a neutral investigation. After New Delhi launched deadly air strikes in Punjab and Azad Kashmir on May 7, Pakistan said it downed five Indian planes in air-to-air combat, later raising the tally to eight. After tit-for-tat strikes on each other’s airbases, it took American intervention on May 10 for both sides to finally reach a ceasefire. In April, on the first anniversary of the Pahalgam attack, Pakistan had rejected a renewed Indian propaganda campaign linking it to the attack, deploring that the neighbouring country was focusing on “weaponising its false narrative” in the midst of a regional crisis sparked by the US-Israel war on Iran.

Indian government pushes wider rollout of polarising civil code

India’s interior minister has vowed to further implement a contentious common civil code for states governed by the ruling Hindu nationalist party, a move expected to stoke concern among minority Muslims. India’s 1.4 billion people are subject to a common criminal law, but rules on personal matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance vary based on the customary traditions of different communities and faiths. The introduction of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) to replace those diverse rules has been a long-standing goal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). At least four states have implemented the UCC so far. “We have introduced the UCC in several states … I am confident that we will implement (it) in all 21 states governed by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance by 2029,” Home Minister Amit Shah said on Sunday. The campaign for a standardised civil code has raised concerns, especially among Muslim citizens, who say such a move would infringe on their religious freedoms. Supporters say the UCC gives Muslim women the same rights as others by ending polygamy, setting equal property inheritance rights for sons and daughters, and requiring divorce processes to take place before a civil court. India, the world’s most populous country, is majority Hindu. It is also home to an estimated 220 million Muslims, giving it the world’s third-largest Muslim population. India’s next national elections are due in 2029, after Modi won a third successive term in 2024, when he was forced into a coalition government.

KP CM Afridi says no institution or govt can weaken PTI

PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi on Sunday said that the ‘state institutions’ and the government had employed every tactic against the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf founder Imran Khan, but failed to either make him submit or weaken PTI. “Imran Khan represents an ideology that cannot be made to bow,” the chief minister said after laying the foundation stones for two major projects under the Peshawar Revitalisation Plan, according to a statement issued from his office. The projects include the upgradation and improvement of key roads and routes across the city, and construction of the Pishtkhara Chowk underpass. Mr Afridi said those taking decisions behind closed doors were focused on forcing Mr Khan to submit, while showing no concern for the direction in which the country was heading. “We have never violated the Constitution or the law in the manner the corrupt and imposed rulers have done,” he said. Lays foundation stones of roads’ improvement and underpass projects Reacting to a recent statement by the Punjab chief minister, Mr Afridi termed it extremely regrettable and strongly condemned it, adding that the statement had effectively undermined the very narrative of a strong and stable Pakistani state. “We have had the friends of Modi imposed on us; whatever they say is forgiven because they are the favourites,” he said. “On the other hand, if one of our workers even speaks of peaceful protest, he is imprisoned. Fascism in the country has reached its extreme,” he said. The chief minister further alleged that a series of lavish foreign visits were being undertaken by the imposed rulers, resulting in the waste of public money, adding that ‘people will deliver their verdict on September 27 and people will prevail. Regarding the proposed Mianwali-to-Lahore street movement, the chief minister said the plan had been postponed for the time being and that he would travel to offer condolences over the death of a party worker and that a future course of action would be announced thereafter. “Our worker was preparing for Miladun Nabi when he was picked and thrown into a cauldron of oil. He has now been martyred,” the chief minister said, adding that what greater indifference and fascism could there be as these people [without referring to anyone] had crossed every limit of oppression. Mr Afridi said that development projects under the Rs200 billion Peshawar Revitalisation Plan were progressing at an accelerated pace and would be completed ahead of schedule, adding that the government’s efforts were focused on improving public welfare and ensuring better services and facilities for citizens. “In line with Imran Khan’s vision, we are pursuing the struggle for real freedom while, at the same time, delivering public service to the highest possible standard,” the statement quoted the chief minister as saying. He said that timely completion of development schemes was a key government priority and that projects aimed at public welfare would not be allowed to face unnecessary delays. Mr Afridi said that, in accordance with Mr Khan’s vision, the provincial government had placed KP on a path of development and prosperity through improved and transparent governance. He said provincial revenue collection had increased from Rs93 billion to Rs150 billion during the last financial year. “We will raise revenue collection to Rs200 billion during the current financial year, without imposing new taxes,” he said. In contrast, he said, the “fake federal government” had presented five budgets, yet the country’s economic and social conditions continued to deteriorate, adding that the country was being run on borrowed money, petrol prices were being increased repeatedly, and the federal government had no policy and no concern for the people. The statement said that the two projects had a combined estimated cost of Rs9.3 billion. The key roads and routes upgradation project includes the upgradation, rehabilitation, beautification and improvement of 19 major roads and routes in the city under Phase-I, at an estimated cost of Rs7.2 billion. Phase-I(A) covers nine major roads, while Phase-I(B) includes seven roads and other routes. The Pishtkhara Chowk underpass project has been initiated at an estimated cost of Rs2.1 billion and is scheduled for completion within three months. Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2026

BRICS member , partner countries to take part in open session ; PM Modi to hold series of bilateral meetings

Meeting of the 18th BRICS Summit in the BRICS Outreach/Plus format

Vladimir Putin attended the meeting of the 18th BRICS Summit in the BRICS Outreach/Plus format and delivered his remarks. The meeting took place at the Bharat Mandapam congress and exhibition complex in New Delhi. The heads of delegation participating in the summit posed for a group photo ahead of the event. * * * President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Prime Minister Modi, colleagues, friends. I would like to extend my warm welcome to all the participants in this BRICS Outreach/Plus format. This format has gained authority, offering opportunities for direct and open dialogue between the equal members of BRICS and partner countries, as well as with other states and multilateral organisations interested in cooperation with this group. The broad representation at today’s meeting confirms that the international community’s interest in BRICS continues to grow. Our fundamental values and ideals – such as commitment to an independent and autonomous course, striving to solve problems collectively while relying on international law and the key provisions of the UN Charter – appeal to many in the world. The BRICS group has always advocated that all countries without exception should have equal and unlimited opportunities for consistent and balanced economic and social growth, for ensuring their populations’ wellbeing, while being able to preserve unique national cultures and traditions and to adhere to their own sovereign development models. The theme of our meeting, proposed by Mr Modi, fits well into this context. It allows us to discuss what more our countries can do together for global stability and security, and to foster inclusive international economic development. I would like to emphasise that today BRICS is a powerful driving force behind the strengthening of genuine multilateralism in international relations, and plays a major role in shaping a new, fairer and multipolar world order. It is worth noting that the BRICS nations are seeing steady population growth and strengthening domestic markets; they have established robust industrial, technological, financial and academic hubs, as well as modern transport, energy and digital infrastructure. Trade within our association has already reached $1.2 trillion. Member states account for almost a quarter of global exports, and it is BRICS that, at 49 percent, provides most of global GDP growth. That said, the potential for the further development of BRICS is far from exhausted. One of the main untapped resources so far is the complementarity of the member states’ economies. The differences in their structure and specialisation offer vast opportunities for practical cooperation, for creating new production chains, technologies, services, and markets. In essence, the goal is to establish a common growth platform for BRICS that would organically integrate the competitive advantages of our economies. I must emphasise that it is crucial to build this platform on the principles of openness and accessibility, not only for BRICS members, but for all our partners and friends. I am confident that this is precisely what will happen. To be continued.

China's Xi pushes 'Greater Brics' economic ties to give bloc larger global role

Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled on Sunday initiatives in areas ranging from AI to trade to deepen cooperation among the “Greater Brics” emerging economies, as Beijing seeks to weld the grouping into a practical platform for Global South development. Cooperation in areas from politics and security to economics and finance are the main focus areas of the grouping, with 2026 chair India and 2027 chair China seeking wider partnership to boost its global clout. The success of the “Greater Brics Initiative” depends on laying a solid foundation for pragmatic cooperation, Xi told the leaders’ annual summit in New Delhi, the official Xinhua news agency said. “Greater Brics” nations should further co-operate, maintain the stability of industrial and supply chains, and cultivate an integrated market, Xi told the summit’s closing session. China will take the lead in establishing a Brics AI Open Source Zone to promote cooperation on large language models, AI training and an open AI ecosystem, Xi added. He also proposed a Brics Special Economic Zone partnership and said China would host a Brics Service Trade Forum next year to boost trade and investment ties. Expanded role for ‘Greater Brics’ grouping Brics has expanded to include Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates beyond an original membership of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa two decades ago that aimed to transform a world order dominated by the United States. In addition, 10 partner countries span emerging economies across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, broadening its reach across the Global South. China and Russia sometimes refer to this larger bloc as “Greater Brics”. Brics helps create fairer world order, Putin says The benefits of solutions developed within Brics should not stay limited to Brics alone, but should be made adaptable and accessible to meet the needs of the Global South, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in remarks earlier. Russian President Vladimir Putin called Brics a powerful driving force towards creating a new, fairer and multipolar world order, urging its members to find ways to combine the competitive advantages of their individual economies. The summit comes amid renewed fighting in the Gulf region, with tit-for-tat attacks by the United States and Iran and Iran-backed Houthis widening the conflict by launching attacks on Saudi Arabia. But the weekend summit scored an important diplomatic goal on Saturday, when it managed to forge consensus on a joint declaration backed by Iran and the UAE. In general terms, the declaration expressed deep concern over the continued escalation of tension in the Middle East and urged the exercise of maximum restraint. Separately, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also met the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi on the sidelines, in the highest-level meeting of the two countries’ officials since the start of the conflict. They discussed issues ranging from de-escalation and stability, and efforts to advance regional peace and development. Brics leaders including China, Russia and India, entered a second day of talks in New Delhi on Sunday, discussing “inclusive global growth”, after reaching rare agreement calling for calm in the Middle East. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for “cooperation” within the bloc, which he has said represents “50 per cent of the world’s population, 40pc of global GDP and more than 25pc of global trade”. “The power of Brics lies in our diversity and cooperation,” Modi told leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the final day of talks. Brics was created in 2009 as a forum for major emerging economies seeking greater influence in institutions dominated by Western powers. The group is seeking to bolster its global influence and address conflict, trade turbulence and energy security. “We have tried to push inclusive global growth,” Modi said. “We may be rooted in different realities, but together we rise through cooperation and blossom for humanity,” he said. ‘Maximum restraint’ The first day of the summit on Saturday was dominated by the conflict in the Middle East. Brics foreign ministers had failed to agree on a joint statement in New Delhi in May, with Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates divided over the war that began with US-Israeli strikes on February 28. However, leaders — who also included Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian — issued a statement after intense diplomatic efforts by host India. “We express deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions in Middle East/West Asia,” the joint statement said, adding that the Brics countries “call for exercising maximum restraint”. Modi maintains cordial relations with both Iran and US ally Israel, but is also careful to strike a delicate balance in India’s ties with Washington. India has navigated the energy crisis caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran in part by turning to Russia, despite Moscow’s war in Ukraine and pressure from Washington and other Western capitals. ‘Advancing together’ Xi’s participation in Brics is also important because it is his first visit to neighbouring India since 2019, and the biggest step yet in a cautious thaw between the nuclear-armed rivals. His visit comes six years after a deadly military clash along the disputed Tibetan border between China and India, with ties gradually improving through restored flights, visas and high-level contacts. “Although our two countries are different in many respects, they are fully capable of complementing each other’s strengths, supporting one another, achieving mutual success and advancing together,” Xi said as he met Modi, according to a video released by New Delhi. The underlying territorial dispute remains unresolved, and both sides retain heavy military deployments along their roughly 3,500-kilometre (2,175-mile) high-altitude border. India’s foreign ministry said in a statement after the meeting that “the two leaders expressed commitment to a fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable resolution of the boundary question”. Deep mistrust remains, with a widening trade deficit and strategic rivalry complicating ties. “Both sides should … work hand-in-hand to promote high-quality major financial cooperation, advocate an equal and sustainable global order, and foster an economic globalisation that is open and inclusive,” Xi said. Xi’s visit was the target of protests by dozens of Tibetans in New Delhi, exiles like their Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since fleeing a Chinese crackdown in 1959.

Beijing seeks to weld 'greater Brics' into practical platform for Global South development

Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled on Sunday initiatives in areas ranging from AI to trade to deepen cooperation among the “Greater Brics” emerging economies, as Beijing seeks to weld the grouping into a practical platform for Global South development. Cooperation in areas from politics and security to economics and finance are the main focus areas of the grouping, with 2026 chair India and 2027 chair China seeking wider partnership to boost its global clout. The success of the “Greater Brics Initiative” depends on laying a solid foundation for pragmatic cooperation, Xi told the leaders’ annual summit in New Delhi, the official Xinhua news agency said. ‘Greater Brics’ nations should further co-operate, maintain the stability of industrial and supply chains, and cultivate an integrated market, Xi told the summit’s closing session. China will take the lead in establishing a Brics AI Open Source Zone to promote cooperation on large language models, AI training and an open AI ecosystem, Xi added. He also proposed a Brics Special Economic Zone partnership and said China would host a Brics Service Trade Forum next year to boost trade and investment ties. Expanded role for ‘Greater Brics’ grouping Brics has expanded to include Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates beyond an original membership of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa two decades ago that aimed to transform a world order dominated by the United States. In addition, 10 partner countries span emerging economies across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, broadening its reach across the Global South. China and Russia sometimes refer to this larger bloc as “Greater Brics”. Brics helps create fairer world order, Putin says The benefits of solutions developed within Brics should not stay limited to Brics alone, but should be made adaptable and accessible to meet the needs of the Global South, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in remarks earlier. Russian President Vladimir Putin called Brics a powerful driving force towards creating a new, fairer and multipolar world order, urging its members to find ways to combine the competitive advantages of their individual economies. The summit comes amid renewed fighting in the Gulf region, with tit-for-tat attacks by the United States and Iran and Iran-backed Houthis widening the conflict by launching attacks on Saudi Arabia. But the weekend summit scored an important diplomatic goal on Saturday, when it managed to forge consensus on a joint declaration backed by Iran and the UAE. In general terms, the declaration expressed deep concern over the continued escalation of tension in the Middle East and urged the exercise of maximum restraint. Separately, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also met the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi on the sidelines, in the highest-level meeting of the two countries’ officials since the start of the conflict. They discussed issues ranging from de-escalation and stability, and efforts to advance regional peace and development. Brics leaders including China, Russia and India, entered a second day of talks in New Delhi on Sunday, discussing “inclusive global growth”, after reaching rare agreement calling for calm in the Middle East. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for “cooperation” within the bloc, which he has said represents “50 per cent of the world’s population, 40pc of global GDP and more than 25pc of global trade”. “The power of Brics lies in our diversity and cooperation,” Modi told leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the final day of talks. Brics was created in 2009 as a forum for major emerging economies seeking greater influence in institutions dominated by Western powers. The group is seeking to bolster its global influence and address conflict, trade turbulence and energy security. “We have tried to push inclusive global growth,” Modi said. “We may be rooted in different realities, but together we rise through cooperation and blossom for humanity,” he said. ‘Maximum restraint’ The first day of the summit on Saturday was dominated by the conflict in the Middle East. Brics foreign ministers had failed to agree on a joint statement in New Delhi in May, with Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates divided over the war that began with US-Israeli strikes on February 28. However, leaders — who also included Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian — issued a statement after intense diplomatic efforts by host India. “We express deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions in Middle East/West Asia,” the joint statement said, adding that the Brics countries “call for exercising maximum restraint”. Modi maintains cordial relations with both Iran and US ally Israel, but is also careful to strike a delicate balance in India’s ties with Washington. India has navigated the energy crisis caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran in part by turning to Russia, despite Moscow’s war in Ukraine and pressure from Washington and other Western capitals. ‘Advancing together’ Xi’s participation in Brics is also important because it is his first visit to neighbouring India since 2019, and the biggest step yet in a cautious thaw between the nuclear-armed rivals. His visit comes six years after a deadly military clash along the disputed Tibetan border between China and India, with ties gradually improving through restored flights, visas and high-level contacts. “Although our two countries are different in many respects, they are fully capable of complementing each other’s strengths, supporting one another, achieving mutual success and advancing together,” Xi said as he met Modi, according to a video released by New Delhi. The underlying territorial dispute remains unresolved, and both sides retain heavy military deployments along their roughly 3,500-kilometre (2,175-mile) high-altitude border. India’s foreign ministry said in a statement after the meeting that “the two leaders expressed commitment to a fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable resolution of the boundary question”. Deep mistrust remains, with a widening trade deficit and strategic rivalry complicating ties. “Both sides should … work hand-in-hand to promote high-quality major financial cooperation, advocate an equal and sustainable global order, and foster an economic globalisation that is open and inclusive,” Xi said. Xi’s visit was the target of protests by dozens of Tibetans in New Delhi, exiles like their Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since fleeing a Chinese crackdown in 1959.

Weaponising critical minerals, technology can hinder progress, warns PM Modi at BRICS summit

Although he did not name any country, the remark came amid concerns about increasing Chinese export controls on rare earth elements.

China, Russia, India seek economic cooperation at BRICS

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for "cooperation" within the bloc, which he has said represents "50 percent of the world's population, 40 percent of global GDP and more than 25 percent of global trade".

SMOKERS’ CORNER: ESCAPING THE CULT

In the last decade or so, global politics began moving towards highly emotive, personality-driven territory. American scholars such as Steven Hassan, in his research on authoritarian control and cult dynamics, and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, in her work on ‘strongman’ politics, have described this form of governance using terminology traditionally reserved for fringe cults. This comparison serves as an analytical framework for understanding how certain modern political groups operate. In a recent piece for The Guardian, the American journalist Rachel Leingang highlighted the emergence of support networks, such as ‘Leaving Maga’, which assist disillusioned members in leaving the populist Maga (Make America Great Again) movement. Leingang wrote that walking away from contemporary populist movements often resembles breaking an addiction or escaping a high-control cult. The dynamics that define such movements include total devotion to a messianic figure, deep social enclosure and an all-encompassing identity. Donald Trump’s Maga movement in the United States, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) are prominent examples, along with similar movements across the globe, such as Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza in Argentina and Bolsonarismo [political movement tied to Jair Bolsonaro] in Brazil. At the core of any movement described as ‘cult-like’ is a charismatic leader. As the early 20th century German sociologist Max Weber observed, charismatic authority relies on followers projecting extraordinary, almost supernatural qualities on to a figurehead. Charismatic leaders, digital echo chambers and the politics of absolute loyalty are defining features of contemporary populist movements, walking away from which often resembles breaking an addiction or escaping a high-control cult Chilean political scientist Cristóbal R. Kaltwasser and German historian Jan-Werner Müller posit that modern populism and/or ‘political cults’ inherently rely on a central trope: a supposedly pure, virtuous populace pitted against a ‘corrupt’, entrenched establishment. Modern political cults position their top leader as the sole saviour capable of defeating this establishment. In the American context, Trump presented himself as an outsider who alone could “drain the swamp.” In India, Modi carefully cultivated an image of an incorruptible chowkidar [watchman] and spiritual ascetic who alone could restore national pride, contrasting his humble origins as a chai-wala [tea boy] with the entrenched dynastic elite of the Congress Party. In Pakistan, Khan built PTI around a powerful cult of personality, capitalising on his status as a cricket hero and national philanthropist to present himself not merely as a politician but as a morally superior saviour, sadiq [truthful] and ameen [trustworthy], standing against a corrupt political order. Illustration by Abro In all three cases, the movement/party became inseparable from the leader. In such cases, the party platform matters far less than absolute personal loyalty to the leader. This singular focus gives rise to a binary worldview, rooted in moral and religious language rather than pragmatic political disagreement. Political rivals are no longer viewed as fellow citizens with differing opinions but as existential threats or moral enemies. As documented by the American sociologist and cult recovery specialist Janja Lalich, former Maga members describe falling into a state of heightened fear and rage when confronted by any opposition against the leader. This is often perceived as a malicious plot by ‘deep state’ forces. In India, Modi’s supporters and party apparatus frequently equate criticism of their leader with anti-nationalism or treason, framing Modi’s authority as synonymous with the nation itself. PTI frames its ‘struggle’ to force Khan’s release from prison as a sacred duty. Khan himself frequently framed his political career as an eternal cosmic battle between haq [truth] and baatil [falsehood]. With this framing of political participation in spiritual and existential terms, criticism of the leader becomes equivalent to moral betrayal. When Khan was ousted via a vote of no-confidence in 2022, his followers readily adopted his narrative of a foreign-backed conspiracy, rejecting official legal processes and nuanced economic explanations in favour of complete loyalty to the leader’s account. What truly cements the ‘cult’ designation of these largely right-wing populist movements is the social enclosure and intense sense of belonging they provide. According to Canadian political theorist Laura K. Field, the community-building aspect of modern populist movements is frequently underestimated. She posits that members find purpose, validation and a pre-packaged social identity within the group. However, this total integration comes at a price: isolation from the outside world. Traditional cults achieve this through physical isolation, but as American social scientists Shoshana Zuboff and C. Thi Nguyen point out, modern digital platforms achieve the exact same result, virtually through personalised content algorithms. Machine-learning models designed to optimise engagement inevitably prioritise moral outrage, anger and conspiracy theories. Over time, these algorithms construct ‘filter bubbles’, a concept coined by the American activist and author Eli Pariser. These bubbles confine members to an alternative reality, shielding them from dissenting facts, while feeding them a steady diet of radicalising content. This psychological enclosure is further reinforced by what American legal scholar and cognitive scientist Dan Kahan describes as “identity-protective cognition.” When individuals tie their self-worth directly to a group’s ideology, accepting factual corrections feels like a threat to their personal survival. To guard against this discomfort, followers engage in motivated reasoning, dismissing objective evidence while clinging to comforting, convoluted narratives that protect their leader’s infallibility. This is why critics often lament that reasoning with fervent supporters of populist parties feels like speaking to a brick wall. As the American philosopher Jason Stanley emphasises in his analysis of fascist and authoritarian propaganda, cult-like political movements methodically destroy shared public reality by replacing truth with loyalty tests. Expressing doubt or nuance leads to social penalisation by fellow members. Populist leaders leverage social platforms to bypass traditional checks, broadcasting unfiltered directives directly to millions. This fosters decentralised online armies that aggressively police discourse, launch targeted campaigns against critics and enforce group conformity. According to American scholars Jonathan Haidt and Jon Askonas, social interactions in digital spaces are “gamified” through likes, retweets and shares, which function as instant dopamine rewards for blind loyalty and hostility toward ‘enemies’. Describing modern populist groups as cults reflects the psychological toll they exert on their followers. When politics ceases to be a rational debate or pragmatic negotiation over governance and transforms into an algorithmically enforced system of identity, leaving it needs an exit strategy rather than a simple ballot choice. Initiatives such as Leaving Maga demonstrate that recovering from these movements requires addressing the psychological trauma, fear and loss of community experienced by the defectors. Whether analysing Maga in the West, Modi’s dominance in India, or PTI in Pakistan, the underlying dynamic remains the same. Many troubled supporters struggle to get out. When a political movement demands total moral devotion to a single leader and uses digital echo chambers to cut off critical thought, it ceases to function as a mainstream political entity and crosses into the realm of the cult. Published in Dawn, EOS, September 13th, 2026

Indian premier says confidence in BRICS has increased amid rising global tensions

Addressing expanded session of BRICS in New Delhi, Modi says bloc increasing ‘resilience’ amid pandemic, climate disaster, supply chain disruption

BRICS Zirvesinde ‘sorumluluk’ mesajı

Bugün de devam edecek zirveye ev sahibi Hindistan Başbakanı Narendra Modi’nin dışında, Rusya Devlet Başkanı Vladimir Putin, İran Cumhurbaşkanı Mesud Pezeşkiyan, Mısır Cumhurbaşkanı Abdülfettah Sisi ve BAE Devlet Başkanı Şeyh Muhammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan da bulunuyor. Suudi Arabistan zirvede Dışişleri Bakanı Faysal bin Ferhan tarafından temsil ediliyor. Zirvede konuşan Şi, BRICS ülkelerinden, Ortadoğu’da tırmanan savaşın sonlandırılması ve barışın tesisi için üzerine düşen rolü üstlenmelerini istedi. Şi, “BRICS ülkeleri tarihin doğru tarafında yer almalı” ifadesini kullanırken, savaşın “uluslararası toplumun ortak çıkarlarına hizmet etmediğini” söyledi. Rus lider Putin ise, “BM’nin merkezi rolünün korunması ve güçlendirilmesi gerektiği” belirtirken, BRICS kapsamındaki işbirliğinin tüm yönlerde derinleştiğini kaydetti. İran Cumhurbaşkanı Pezeşkiyan, ABD’nin ülkesine uyguladığı yaptırımlara ve bununla mücadele yöntemlerine ilişkin “Tek taraflı ve insanlık dışı yaptırımlarla fiili olarak mücadele etmek BRICS üyeleri için öncelikli konudur” dedi.Öte yandan Çin’in gelecek yıl düzenlenecek 19. BRICS Liderler Zirvesi’ne ev sahipliği yapacağı bildirildi. Zirvenin Çin’in hangi şehrinde düzenleneceği henüz açıklanmadı.

BRICS urges ‘maximum restraint’ in Mideast

• Joint statement demands protection of civilians, respect of sovereignty, global trade routes; condemns strikes on N-plants as breaches of international law • Calls for ceasefires in Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria NEW DELHI: Members of the 11-nation BRICS group, including China, Russia, Iran and UAE, urged “maximum res­traint” in the Middle East on Saturday, papering over months of division to issue a joint statement even as fighting between the US and Iran shows no sign of abating. The declaration, relea­sed on the opening day of the group’s summit in New Delhi, called on countries to avoid steps that might inflame the conflict further and demanded protection for civilians, sovereignty and the free flow of trade, energy and shipping through the region. “We express deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions in the Middle East/West Asia and, recalling our respective national positions, call for exercising maximum restraint, as well as avoiding actions that could further aggravate the situation,” said the statement. Pointedly, the 11 natio­­ns also condemned strikes on nuclear sites, warning that attacks on facilities under the safeguard of the International Atomic Ene­rgy Agency (IAEA) bre­­ached international law. “We express serious con­­cern over deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities under full safeguards of the IAEA, in violation of international law and relevant resolutions of the IAEA,” the declaration said. “Nuclear safeguards, safety and security must always be upheld, including in armed conflicts, to protect people and the environment from harm.” The bloc, which also addressed the crises in Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan and Syria, called for ceasefires and humanitarian access across all four. Reaching any consensus at all marked a shift from May, when BRICS foreign ministers meeting in the Indian capital fai­led to agree a joint text on the Middle East because of sharply differing views among member states. Much of the diplomatic effort in New Delhi has gone into narrowing the gap between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, whose disagreements have intensified as Tehran and Washington trade strikes. Iran has targeted the US bases across the Gulf during the war, hitting the Al Minhad Air Base in the UAE as recently as late August. Foreign policy analysts said reaching a common statement reflected the bloc’s effort to maintain dialogue despite disagreements among its members. They added that the dec­laration was unlikely to immediately alter the cou­rse of the conflict but sho­­wed an attempt by eme­rg­ing economies to present a coordinated position. “The key to ending the war lies with the US and Israel,” Sunjay Sudhir, a former Indian ambassador to the UAE, told Reuters. “What India has done is keep the difficult conversations going by showing that countries of the region can sit at the same table.” China’s president, Xi Jinping, used the summit to press for a political settlement, telling the state broadcaster CCTV that the war served nobody’s interests. “Relevant parties must remain committed to a po­­litical settlement and work towards achieving a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire,” he said. Xi also said China was ready to play its “due role” in achieving peace and sta­­bility in the Middle East. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said BRICS members should focus on turning their cooperation into practical outcomes. Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2026

India's Modi and China's Xi seek to reset ties on BRICS sidelines

NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met Saturday on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in New Delhi, the latest effort by the rival neighbors to repair ties strained by a deadly border clash six years ago. Xi said China has approached relations with India from a “strategic and long-term perspective” and called for the two countries to draw on each other’s strengths, support one another and pursue common development. He also urged “high-quality coo

Modi, Xi push business links, border peace as India-China ties revive

NEW DELHI: India and China’s leaders pledged on Saturday to build up business and transport links, New Delhi said, as both rebuild ties badly damaged by a 2020 military clash on their disputed Himalayan border.

BRICS nations call for 'maximum restraint' in Middle East war

Members of the 11-nation BRICS group including China, Russia, Iran and India called for calm in the Middle East at a summit in New Delhi on Saturday, overcoming earlier divisions to issue a joint statement. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who joined Russian, Iranian, Indian and other leaders in India’s capital, told the summit that the Middle East war “does not serve the common interests of the international community”. Foreign ministers of the BRICS grouping had failed to agree on a joint statement when they met in New Delhi in May, with Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates divided over the war that began with US-Israeli strikes on February 28. But leaders issued a statement on Saturday after intense diplomatic efforts by host India, as the bloc seeks to bolster its global influence and address conflict, trade turbulence and energy security. “We express deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions in Middle East/West Asia,” the joint statement said, adding the countries “call for exercising maximum restraint, as well as avoiding actions that could further aggravate the situation”. “We have to transform this pyramid of privilege into a platform of partnership,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and other leaders as he opened the two-day summit. Modi said BRICS nations “represent 50 percent of the world’s population, 40 percent of global GDP and more than 25 percent of global trade”. But finding balance in the bloc is a tough diplomatic task. India maintains cordial relations with both Iran and US ally Israel, but is also careful to strike a delicate balance in its ties with Washington. Iran’s Pezeshkian attended the summit shortly after warning that the Middle East does not need the United States to be a “regional policeman”, with the two countries at war and tensions threatening the vital Strait of Hormuz. Pezeshkian met with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on the summit sidelines. India has navigated the energy crisis caused by the US-Iran war in part by turning to Russia, despite Moscow’s war in Ukraine and pressure from Washington and other Western capitals. Modi embraced Putin before talks on Friday. The Russian president, who last visited India in December 2025, is one of New Delhi’s most important strategic partners. ‘Handling differences’ Xi’s participation is also being closely watched because it is his first visit to neighbouring India since 2019, and the biggest step yet in a cautious thaw between the nuclear-armed rivals. Xi was given a red-carpet welcome, with an honour guard of soldiers and traditional dancers in colourful dresses. “Although our two countries are different in many respects, they are fully capable of complementing each other’s strengths, supporting one another, achieving mutual success and advancing together,” Xi said as he met Modi, in a video released from New Delhi. His visit comes six years after a deadly military clash along the disputed Tibetan border between China and India, with ties gradually improving through restored flights, visas and high-level contacts. The underlying territorial dispute remains unresolved, and both sides retain heavy military deployments along their roughly 3,500-kilometre high-altitude border. India’s foreign ministry said in a statement after the meeting that “the two leaders expressed commitment to a fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable resolution of the boundary question”. Modi “underlined the need for both sides to observe existing agreements and understandings on border related issues,” the foreign ministry added. Deep mistrust remains, with their contested Himalayan frontier, a widening trade deficit and strategic rivalry continuing to complicate ties. “Both sides should… work hand-in-hand to promote high-quality major financial cooperation, advocate an equal and sustainable global order, and foster an economic globalisation that is open and inclusive,” Xi said. ‘Oppose sovereignty violations’ President Xi Jinping called on Brics member states to oppose sovereignty violations and reject protectionism, speaking at a summit in India, Beijing’s state media reported. Xi told the gathering that Brics should “oppose violations of other countries’ sovereignty and interference in their internal affairs, [and] constructively participate in resolving hotspot issues,” according to state news agency Xinhua. “As the situation in the Middle East and the Gulf region continues to evolve, the war there has caused serious losses to people across the region,” Xi said, calling on countries to “uphold the authority of the United Nations” in his remarks, Xinhua reported. On trade, the Chinese president urged countries to “reject all forms of protectionism” and “support the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organisation at its core”. The comments come less than two weeks before Xi’s expected visit to Washington, a major trade rival of Beijing. ‘Big constraint’ Brics was created in 2009 as a forum for major emerging economies seeking greater influence in institutions dominated by Western powers. Modi told leaders that Brics nations “represent 50 per cent of the world’s population, 40pc of global GDP, and more than 2pc of global trade”. As well as Iran, Brics includes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — countries with sharply differing positions on the war launched by the US and Israel in February. UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi are also to attend. Brazil is represented by Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva campaigning for a fourth term in October elections. Brics foreign ministers failed to agree on a joint statement when they met in New Delhi in May. “The Gulf conflict is going to be the central fault line this time during the Brics summit,” said Harsh V Pant of India’s Observer Research Foundation. “What was seen until last year as an achievement — the expansion of Brics — today looks like a big constraint on Brics,” Pant said.