Foreign Affairs update - Dated 29th May 2021

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Foreign Affairs update - Dated 29th May 2021

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Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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1. Hope in Afghanistan: The Taliban returned to the battlefield in May 2021 after a three-day truce for Eid al-Fitr, but signaled their readiness to return to peace negotiations with the Afghan government. The Taliban met with government negotiators in Doha on May 14. But Kabul and Islamabad have encountered diplomatic turbulence, after Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa visited Kabul, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani accused Pakistan of overseeing an “organized system of support” for the Taliban insurgency. That prompted an angry rebuttal from Pakistan’s foreign office. Fresh tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has close ties to the Taliban, could negatively affect the peace process.
2. Bangladesh cracks down on media: Ms. Rozina Islam, a reporter for Bangladeshi newspaper Prothom Alo, was arrested and charged with stealing documents from the country’s health ministry under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act. Ms. Islam investigated government corruption and published coverage critical of Dhaka’s pandemic response. She was confined to a room by health ministry officials for five hours before being turned over to police. She reportedly fainted during her detention. In 2020, authorities arrested Mushtaq Ahmed, a writer who alleged corruption in Dhaka’s pandemic response in a Facebook post under Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act. He died in jail in February. 
3. Arctic Council meet: The Arctic Council met in Reykjavik as the eight Arctic nations of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the US convened alongside delegates from Indigenous groups to discuss areas of coordination in the Arctic. The Russian and American representatives at the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, met in person, and spoke for longer than expected—almost two hours—covering myriad issues including humanitarian access in Syria, the detention of U.S. citizens Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, and cooperation on Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea policy, according to a State Department readout.
4. Coronavirus in South Asia: India and Nepal remained two of the world’s pandemic hot spots, and although India’s new cases fell for the second week in a row, the crisis is expanding in its rural areas, where health care infrastructure is even weaker than in cities. In Nepal, positivity rates are approaching 50 percent, and the number of new cases has topped 9,000. The presence of the highly infectious Indian variant is likely driving Nepal’s crisis. Experts point to recent surges of Nepalese laborers returning home after lockdowns in India prevented them from working there. As many as 4,00,000 people could return to Nepal in the next few weeks.
5. Russia and Syria: Eastern promises. Media stories pointed out that Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t plan a military intervention in Syria to prop up the Bashar al-Assad regime out of the kindness of his own heart. A network of little-known Russian companies were behind deals with Assad’s government for offshore oil and gas exploration. It was less about the fuel and more about Russia securing a foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean.
6. China moves on cryptocurrencies: The price of Bitcoin plunged 30 percent before recovering, after the Chinese financial regulator banned banks and other payment firms from offering services related to cryptocurrencies. In explaining the move, the regulator blamed the asset’s volatile pricing, adding that it was “seriously infringing on the safety of people’s property and disrupting the normal economic and financial order,” the Chinese regulator said. The move comes as Beijing moves forward with its plan for its own digital currency.

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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