Pakistan

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Ariella Rotenberg, Gabriel Walker, and Pei-Yu Wei look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Indian Prime Minister Modi earns points for his “Make in India” campaign. Attesting to the increasing vitality and quality of India’s automobile industry, Maruti Suzuki, a special joint venture set up in 1983 between India’s Maruti Udyog and Japan’s Suzuki, began exporting to Japan its new hatchback automobile, the Baleno. Although Suzuki has been operating with Maruti in India for decades, this is the first time an Indian-made car is available for export to the Japanese market. To start, Japan plans to import twenty to thirty thousand cars per year; the car will also eventually be exported to over one hundred other countries. As the “undisputed leader of the Indian market,” Maruti Suzuki manufacturers half of all passenger vehicles made in India. But competition is increasing: with India’s huge population and growing middle class, the world’s automobile manufacturers are increasingly gravitating toward India to set up and expand shop. 2. Suicide attack at Pakistani court kills over a dozen. After forcing his way through the main entrance of a Pakistani court compound on Monday morning, a suicide bomber shot a police officer who tried to stop him and then detonated his suicide vest. Sixteen people were killed and several others remain in critical condition. The supposed aim of the bomber was to reach the civil court, which is reserved for family disputes on Mondays and therefore was busier than usual. Luckily the police stopped the bomber before he could reach the civil court building. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, an offshoot of the group Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack. Their spokesperson claims it was in retaliation for the hanging of Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, a former security guard who assassinated the governor of Punjab province in 2001. The governor, Salmaan Taseer, was calling to reform the country’s blasphemy laws in 2001, which greatly upset the Taliban and its followers, such as Qadri. 3. China offers Afghanistan expanded military aid. The chief of the People’s Liberation Army’s Joint Staff Department, Fang Fenghui, pledged additional military aid to Afghanistan during a meeting with the Afghan national security adviser.  Overall, China has extended approximately $70 million in military assistance to the nation. Afghan officials are now putting together a “wish list” of military equipment they hope to acquire.  China has recently taken a more active stance on promoting Afghan security.  This stance may stem from a number of Chinese concerns relevant to Afghanistan, including a ninety-kilometer border with the restive Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang, the rise of the Islamic State, and the safety of investments such as a $3 billion Mes Aynak copper mine in Afghanistan and the $46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor. China is also a part of the four-country peace talks to reach an agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban. 4. Viral video pressures Unilever to settle mercury exposure claim in India. Fifteen years ago, a thermometer factory operated by Hindustan Unilever in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, was shuttered because villagers found illegal mercury-laden waste in a local dump site. This week, 591 factory workers suffering from mercury-related illnesses have finally received a settlement from the company, bringing closure to a long and difficult legal battle. The workers’ union, which claims that forty-five factory employees and eighteen children died due to the effects of mercury, chose to withdraw its ten-year-old petition after reaching the undisclosed, ex-gratia settlement. In earlier years, various investigations reached contradictory conclusions regarding whether workers’ health had actually been affected. But last summer, a twenty-eight-year-old India rapper released a protest music video that later went viral and garnered over 60,000 signatures in a petition urging Hindustan Unilever to clean the site and compensate its workers. Activists say the battle is only “half won,” however, as environmentalists are still fighting to have the company remove residual mercury from polluted soil. 5. Chinese firm sanctioned over Iran business. The United States announced sanctions on Monday prohibiting the sale of items made in the United States to ZTE, a Chinese producer of telecommunications and networking equipment, claiming the company sells to Iran, violating U.S. law. Officials released internal company memos that state that ZTE “does business with all five major embargoed countries—Iran, Sudan, North Korea, Syria and Cuba—and propose establishing shell companies to get around sanctions. China’s foreign ministry criticized the export restrictions and the company is looking into resolving the issue after requesting that its shares suspend trading on the Hong Kong and Shenzhen exchanges. In the meantime, companies that wish to continue supplying ZTE with U.S.-manufactured products must apply to the U.S. Department of Commerce for permission. This isn’t the first time ZTE has tangled with the United States government: in 2012, a congressional investigation claimed that the company’s equipment posed a security threat because of ties to the Chinese government. Bonus: McDonald’s comes out with controversial ad in Taiwan. A Taiwanese commercial featuring a young gay man coming out to his father in a McDonald’s restaurant has gone viral. McDonald’s Taiwan posted the ad on its Facebook page on March 4, and over the past week has received both criticism and praise. The commercial was met with protests from Taiwan’s religious community. For example, the Alliance of Taiwan Religious Groups for the Protection of Family stated that, “Now, even if you want to just take a leak at a McDonald’s bathroom, you can’t help but feel polluted,” and added that it would boycott the fast food chain. However, online reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, which is unsurprising given that public support for same-sex marriage equality has been rising in recent decades. 71 percent of the respondents to a 2015 Taiwanese Ministry of Justice poll supported marriage equality.

This post features a conversation with Dean Karlan, professor of economics at Yale University, president and founder of Innovations for Poverty Action, and founder of ImpactMatters, a newly-launched organization that assesses how well nonprofits use and produce evidence of impact. 1) How have development economics and the study of poverty evolved in recent years? Until about fifteen years ago, there were two different strands of development work, both with limitations. The first asked a big, monolithic policy question—“does aid work?—and compared how aid affected development outcomes across countries. But the cross-country research lacked the necessary data and an understanding of critical micro-level mechanisms, or the obvious first step of why some countries get more aid than others. It led to big debates, but failed to determine causality. The other strand in academia focused on understanding markets and decision-making at the individual and household-level, an approach that was valuable for understanding the world, but was often fairly removed from policy implications. Then, we saw major shifts with the availability of cheaper and better data, and intensified pressure on development economists to deliver policy prescriptions. These shifts allowed us to rigorously evaluate specific projects to find out what was working, what was not, and what to do about it. Perhaps as a byproduct of the cross-country data debate, development economists started focusing on asking when aid works, not whether aid works. The point being: there is no simple answer. This led to a blossoming of work using randomized control trials (RCTs) to test specific policies on the ground with NGOs, the private sector, and governments. We also began to see academic analysis that was more prescriptive than descriptive, and could help to guide policy.   2) In your randomized control trials (RCTs), what were some surprising findings about what’s working and what’s not? Several hot development debates have led to surprises. But, of course, since these were “hot debates,” some were surprised while others were not. Microcredit is a perfect example. Some oversold microcredit as the tool to fight poverty and to increase income for the world’s poorest, benefiting low-income households, which would ultimately lead to better healthcare and education. On the other side, critics claimed that it led to negative outcomes, such as suicides among poor farmers who could not repay loans. Despite anecdotal evidence, there was equally bad analysis on both sides and neither could establish causality, or prove what would have happened if people had not received the loans. There was no counterfactual, as economists call it. Wading into the debate using evidence, we saw strikingly similar results from seven RCTs across seven countries, several of them conducted by researchers with Innovations for Poverty Action. The punchline: microcredit loans were not typically reaching world’s poorest, and they were not increasing income on average. So, they were not meeting their main goal (though they were not causing much harm either). Once we saw the evidence, we said: “we’re a fan of microcredit, but as it’s currently done, it’s best for private investors, not for donors.” Donors should either look elsewhere or use their charitable dollars to push for more innovation, to figure out how to improve the microcredit model.   3) So what is an effective investment for donors? After we found that microcredit is not reaching the world’s poorest, donors asked us: what might? Through RCTs we found one approach that works quite well to move people out of poverty: a graduation program. At its core is the transfer of a “productive asset”—a way to make a living that has a positive impact on household consumption, savings, income, food security, and other life outcomes even years after the initial asset transfer. We have completed six RCTs on graduation programs in six countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan, and Peru). Other researchers completed a seventh in Bangladesh, and there are several similar studies from Uganda. The program first gave the asset, along with training on how to use it. We also set up a savings account, provided healthcare access, offered life coaching, and supplied food for up to six months (so recipients wouldn’t be forced to kill and eat livestock right away). Because graduation programs are expensive, at around $1,000 per person, our research focused on cost effectiveness. We had no doubt the program would create a bump in income, but would it last? In six of the seven RCTs we found strikingly similar results proving both cost effectiveness and a sustained impact—up to three years after assets were transferred in all of our RCT sites. In one of the sites, India, where we now have seven years of results, the effects are getting bigger over time rather than dissipating. This trend suggests that those in the graduation program were previously stuck in a poverty trap, and that a holistic and integrated approach combining income with social and economic support helped to get them out of it.   4) What have you found on cash transfers, another area of growing interest and investment? The most prominent study Innovations for Poverty Action did on unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) was with GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that does exactly what it says. They donate 91 cents of every dollar to poor households using mobile money for the transfers, which makes for a low-cost, lean operation. People critical of this approach at first were concerned that money would be used for alcohol and tobacco, rather than for food and other necessities. We said, “let’s go get the facts,” and set up a carefully-designed study. Our randomized evaluation found that households receiving cash transfers spent them on food, education, and medical expenses, as well as on family obligations, resulting in higher assets and better psychological well-being. There was no increase on alcohol and tobacco spending. Yet even with evidence of positive outcomes, we are seeing that cash transfers work best for short-run problems—catastrophes or conflicts where the challenge is not long-term development. They work best for helping people in a moment of need.   5) What do you say to RCT critics who argue they are too expensive, or take too long? First, it is critical to note that randomization is not the reason RCTs can be expensive (and I’ll explain why they are not always). Costs are driven by tracking and surveying people over time to see if the program affected lives, which is necessary even for non-randomized studies. While RCTs are more expensive than simple studies that ask beneficiaries—“were you happy with the program?”—I would argue that overall they are far cheaper than non-RCT evaluations, because they allow us to zoom in on what is working and what is not much faster and more accurately, ultimately saving money on bad measurement and ineffective programs. RCTs allow the testing of multiple versions of a program at once, too. For example, in Uganda we tested four variations of a classroom savings program, and found that three that did not work, but one did. The variations shed insight into why the program was working. Regarding timing, it is also critical to point out that an RCT need not be a long-term study, nor does it need to be expensive. We have done cheap, rapid-fire tests on getting people to save more by sending text messages reminding them to save, and a few months later, comparing savings rates for those that received the messages versus those that did not. Many operational questions, such as how to enroll people in a program, can and should be rapid-fire studies to give immediate feedback that improves operations. For example, MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab just released a toolkit that helps organizations run RCTs through data they may already be collecting. Full, long-term RCTs aren’t always appropriate. But when they are, getting good data that both establishes causality and illuminates why something works can put programs on the right track to maximize impact, and save money in the long run.

Robert M. Hathaway is a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, where he is writing a book on leverage in foreign policy. Previously, he was director of the Wilson Center’s Asia program for sixteen years. Prior to joining the Wilson Center, he served for twelve years on the professional staff of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, focusing on South and East Asia. More than fourteen years after routing the Taliban, and seven years after President Barack Obama, pledging to wind up the war, entered the White House, the United States faces another turning point in the seemingly endless conflict in Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported last week that current and former officials are quietly pointing to South Korea, where 28,500 U.S. troops remain sixty-three years after the end of the Korean war, as a model for the future American presence in Afghanistan. The military situation in Afghanistan is tenuous and by some measures deteriorating. The optimism raised nineteen months ago by the election of President Ashraf Ghani is slipping away. It seems clear that Obama’s earlier hopes for ending the war on his watch will not be met. Yet simply standing pat until a new U.S. president takes office next January seems unattractive, irresponsible, and dangerous. Before making new commitments in Afghanistan that will inevitably bind the hands of his successor, Obama must provide persuasive answers to a handful of questions, including the following: What can we hope to accomplish with a few thousand troops for a few more years that we and our coalition partners were unable to accomplish with up to 140,000 troops deployed over a far longer period? Is it within our power to build the Afghan army and police into an effective force capable of providing security for most of the populated areas of Afghanistan? Can U.S. training and other assistance counteract the desertions, defections, and low reenlistment rates that make the Afghan army a revolving door? More broadly, can Afghanistan develop an effective military force absent fundamental reform in Afghan society? Can a culture riddled with corruption and patronage politics, in a country where opium, from which heroin is produced, is the number one cash crop, build a capable army that respects the principle of civilian rule and the rights of the population it is supposed to defend? The Taliban controls more territory today than at any time since 2001. How are the Taliban, in the face of staggering casualties inflicted by the mightiest army in history, able to persevere, and even to seize new territory? How do they continue to draw new recruits to their cause? Has the introduction into Afghanistan of forces fighting under the banner of the self-declared Islamic State changed the nature of the war? If so, what should this mean for American strategy? Does the appearance of the Islamic State in Afghanistan make a negotiated political settlement less likely? Even leaving the Islamic State aside, is such a settlement possible? Are the Taliban prepared to compromise, which after all is the essence of negotiation? And if so, can we have any confidence in their promises? Or are the Taliban so fractured as to make the idea of negotiating with the Taliban meaningless? If a political settlement seems unlikely, what are the alternatives? It is no accident that Pakistan is invariably described as both part of the problem in Afghanistan and part of the solution. What do we need from Pakistan in order to succeed in Afghanistan? Are we in danger once more of building on pipedreams of Pakistani cooperation? Pakistan claims that its army has found religion, so to speak, and is at last serious about weeding out extremism. Even if accurate, does this include Afghan-focused extremism, or only that which targets Pakistan itself? Either way, does Pakistan have the leverage to force the Taliban to negotiate in good faith? What’s the exit strategy? How will we know when we can leave Afghanistan, or at least end an active military presence? What are reasonable benchmarks for success? And what happens if we don’t reach those benchmarks? Suppose the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. Can the United States afford to be seen, by friend or foe, as uncaring or incapable if Afghanistan slides into chaos? Won’t failure in Afghanistan materially strengthen the forces of violence and extremism around the world? Finally, what do we owe those—Americans, Afghans, other foreign friends and allies—who have died since the United States went into Afghanistan in 2001? A great deal, no doubt, but doubling down will not bring them back to life. Is there a point when placing more lives at risk and expending more treasure no longer honors those who have given their lives? Noticeably missing from these paragraphs, I realize, are any substantive answers to the questions they pose. In part, this reflects my own uncertainties, even after decades of tracking events in Afghanistan. But it also underscores the failure of the administration to provide persuasive answers. These issues deserve to be subjected to fact-based analysis, an approach seldom evident in this election year. To be sure, measured reason is not sufficient; Kennedy’s best and brightest didn’t know what they didn’t know, and we paid a huge price in Vietnam for their ignorance. But if not sufficient, fact-based, illusion-free analysis should provide the base from which we consider these matters. Abandonment of our Afghan friends or expansion of U.S. combat operations are not the only options. We will almost certainly want to continue providing weapons and other equipment to Afghan security forces. Perhaps air support, or additional training, intelligence, and logistical assistance. A strong case can be made for continued economic support for the Ghani government. But before he makes these or other commitments, Obama should be able to answer each of the questions asked above. Some will say that this is setting the bar too high, that it is impossible to foresee all possible contingencies or predict the actions of other actors. The requirements set forth above, they would argue, are an invitation to indecision. But to advance this argument is to assert that momentous decisions should be made on the basis of guesses, gut feelings, and short-term calculations. Is this, after America’s longest war, all the American people expect from their leaders? Shouldn’t we demand the same analytical rigor that goes into a feasibility study for a new water project, or the location of a new shopping mall? Making the right choices won’t be easy. Anyone who assures us that there are simple, painless answers in Afghanistan is either a liar or a fool. We have already had one too many slam-dunks.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Ariella Rotenberg, Ayumi Teraoka, Gabriel Walker, and James West look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Terrorists kill twenty-one in attack on Pakistani university. On Wednesday, gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Charsadda district, killing twenty-one people and injuring dozens more. Four attackers were killed in an hours-long gun battle with security guards, local police, and the army in the attempt to secure the campus. A Pakistani Taliban (TTP) faction led by Umar Mansoor—the alleged mastermind of the December 2014 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar that killed more than 140 people—claimed responsibility for the attack. However, an official spokesman for TTP chief Mullah Fazlullah later issued a statement denying any TTP involvement. Umar Mansoor on Friday released a video again claiming the attack and vowing more attacks on schools in the future. The attack threatens to again heighten tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan—just as the two countries are attempting to restart peace talks with the Afghan Taliban—as Pakistani security officials shared evidence with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and U.S. commander John Campbell on Friday that the attack was planned and directed from Afghanistan. 2. Myanmar frees some political prisoners and arrests others. On Friday, a spokesman for the Myanmar government announced that a total of 102 prisoners, including more than fifty serving for political offenses, would be released from jail. Before this week, more than five hundred political prisoners were serving time in Burmese prisons, including many dissidents sentenced during the country’s junta rule and over sixty students jailed and awaiting trial for a peaceful demonstration last March. Earlier this week, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with President Thein Sein and urged him to free all remaining political prisoners before the new National League for Democracy government forms this year. But although the release is a positive step forward for the burgeoning democracy, not everything was well and good for outspoken citizens of Myanmar this week: on Friday an activist was jailed for posting a picture online that mocked the military, and a few days before a former Saffron Revolution leader, who has been re-arrested multiple times since his release in 2012, was detained on alleged immigration charges. 3. Singapore arrests twenty-seven “radicalized” laborers. Twenty-six Bangladeshi construction workers were deported from Singapore following their arrest for supporting violent Islamist ideology and preparing to conduct attacks at home. One worker remained under arrest in Singapore, as he had attempted to flee the country upon hearing of the detention of others in the group. The workers were arrested under Singapore’s Internal Security Act. According to Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs, certain members had studied pamphlets on assassination methods and held weekly meetings at which extremist-affiliated materials were circulated. Following the arrests, Singaporean officials posted messages on Facebook emphasizing the need not to let the recent incident harm religious and racial relations. The Bangladeshi High Commissioner to Singapore identified the arrested men as affiliated with the Ansarullah Bangla Team, an Islamic extremist group banned in Bangladesh, but the men have not been linked to foreign organizations. Twelve of the workers were subsequently released in Bangladesh as no evidence was found against them. 4. United States considers tighter sanctions on North Korea. The United States is considering tighter sanctions on North Korea due to a pattern of threatening behavior, highlighted by their most recent nuclear test on January 6. Tighter sanctions on the part of the United States could, however, upset Beijing, who the United States believes has not been tough enough on North Korea. For years, Washington has urged Beijing to use economic influence on North Korea to halt its nuclear program; China has been reluctant to do so in fear of making North Korea more aggressive, or of collapsing the country’s government. A high-ranking U.S. diplomat, speaking about the potential new sanctions, said “everything is on the table,” including an agreement with South Korea to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, missile system in South Korea to better defend against a North Korean threat. The United States is also considering secondary sanctions—similar to those recently used on Iran—that would target third-party countries doing business with North Korea. China sees actions such as Thaad and secondary sanctions on the part of the United States as threatening China’s national security and economic stability, respectively. China does condemn North Korean nuclear tests, but also places most of the blame on the United States, not Pyongyang, for North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities. 5. DPP wins in a landslide. Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) dominated at the polls last week, with party chair Tsai Ing-wen winning the presidency with 56.1 percent of the vote and the DPP securing 68 of the 113 seats in the Legislative Yuan. The current ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), captured only thirty-five seats, putting it in the minority for the first time in the history of the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name). The high margin of the DPP’s victory in the at-large representative vote—44.1 percent to the KMT’s 26.9 percent—can be seen as both a rebuke to the last several years of KMT President Ma Ying-jeou’s administration and a mandate for Tsai as she comes into office. International responses to the election have been positive, noting the continuing consolidation of Taiwan’s democratic institutions and the progress the island has made—except across the Taiwan Strait, where Chinese officials reminded the world that what happens in Taiwan is part of China’s “internal affairs.” Bonus: French fries get a face-lift in Japan. McDonald’s Japan announced on Monday that it will release a new menu item next week, the “McChoco Potato”—french fries covered with both “coco” and white chocolate.  “The combination creates a wonderful salty and sweet harmonious taste,” says the press release. McDonald’s Japan, which operates the second-most restaurant locations of the chain outside of the United States, has suffered from a record net loss of 29.28 billion yen (around $245 million) from January to September 2015. Can the new invention help save the company?

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Ariella Rotenberg, Gabriel Walker, and James West look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Taiwan takes to the polls. Tomorrow, the island’s citizens will choose between the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Tsai Ing-wen, the Kuomintang’s (KMT) Eric Chu, and the People First Party’s (PFP) James Soong when they turn out to vote for a new president. Tsai, who lost the 2012 presidential race to incumbent KMT president Ma Ying-jeou, is expected to win with a significant margin this year. That would make Tsai, a noted cat-lover, the first woman to hold the office and the second non-KMT president. Legislative elections are less certain, however. All 113 seats in the Legislative Yuan are up for grabs, but it is not clear that either major party (the KMT and DPP) will secure a majority. KMT candidates have been hurt by the deep unpopularity of President Ma and the party’s loss of its monopoly on the public narrative of Taiwan’s relationship to China. But the DPP may also be prevented from securing a majority by small, issue-focused third-party candidates who have sprung up in the wake of the 2014 Sunflower Movement. However, the DPP may come close enough to a majority that they can form a coalition with these “third force” parties. For commentary as the polls open, see this list of Twitter’s top voices on Taiwan. 2. Diplomats meet to restart Taliban peace talks. Officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and the United States met in Islamabad on Monday to discuss a “road map” for reviving stalled peace talks with the Afghan Taliban. Direct talks between the Afghan government and Taliban representatives, facilitated by Pakistan and observed by Chinese and U.S. officials, collapsed after only one meeting in July 2015. Afghan officials said beforehand they expected a list from Pakistan of Taliban willing to negotiate with Kabul, and are “seeking unprecedented cooperation” from the Pakistani military in convincing Taliban factions to come to the table, and more importantly, to crack down on those factions that do not. The day-long meeting ended with a statement that officials would reconvene in Kabul next week. This week’s meeting comes after a serious deterioration of security across Afghanistan in the past year, with the Taliban now controlling dozens of districts across the country and threatening major population centers—including the brief takeover of Kunduz last fall and ongoing battles around key districts in Helmand province. Separately, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack near the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad on Wednesday that killed at least seven Afghan security forces. Support for the Islamic State’s Afghanistan branch has grown as Taliban factions, disaffected by the new Taliban leadership, have splintered and defected to the group. 3. Park presses China for heavier hand with North Korea. Following North Korea’s test of an alleged hydrogen bomb last week, South Korean President Park Geun-hye addressed China’s relationship with North Korea during an annual press conference, stating, “I think China is fully aware that if such strong will is not matched by necessary measures, we cannot prevent fifth and sixth nuclear tests by the North or guarantee real peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.” She also noted that “the best partners are those who will hold your hand in difficult times.” China is South Korea’s largest trading partner and Park has made improving ties with China a key part of her foreign policy. It was hoped that the warming of relations might increase China’s willingness to pressure its ally North Korea, but the success of this approach remains in question. Although the Chinese foreign ministry has also repeatedly stated its opposition to North Korea’s nuclear program, the Chinese official response thus far has been to emphasize the need to resume disarmament talks and address the issue through continued dialogue rather than impose new sanctions. Furthermore, when the South Korean defense minister attempted to use a recently established hotline with China after last week’s test, his call did not receive a response. On Thursday, China and South Korea announced that the nuclear test would be discussed during annual working-level military talks between the two nations to be held Friday. 4. Islamic State claims deadly Jakarta attack. On Thursday morning, suicide bombers and armed militants attacked a busy street in Jakarta, killing at least two and injuring more than twenty. Five assailants also lay dead in the aftermath. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, raising fears that the group was expanding its reach through Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. The alleged organizer, Bahrun Naim, is a leader of a Southeast Asia–based military group under the Islamic State and purportedly runs a blog with terrorist “teachings” written in Indonesian. Although this is the first major terrorist attack in Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, since a hotel bombing in 2009, arrests of suspects have spiked recently with at least sixteen over the past month. On Friday, Indonesia police killed one suspected militant, arrested two more, and were investigating the networks involved in planning this week’s attacks. 5. Japan submits bid for Australian submarine contract. Japanese, German, and French companies are vying to win an Australian defense contract to build as many as twelve submarines, which could be worth up to $36 billion. Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd., have proposed the world’s first lithium ion battery–powered submarines. Japan has indicated that they see their chances as very good for winning the contract over France and Germany. Furthermore, the Japanese government has argued that their success in this contest would also serve to bring the two countries closer together and help ensure maritime security in the Asia-Pacific. On the other hand, Australia may be concerned that a closer relationship with Japan may risk angering China, its largest trading partner. Although the United States has not taken an official position, U.S. government officials have said privately that a strengthened relationship between Australia and Japan would be good for U.S. strategic interests in the region. Bonus: Grindr hooks up with Chinese comrade. This week, the Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech, the developer of popular mobile titles like “Space Hunter” and “Sword of Soul,” paid nearly $100 million for a 60 percent stake in Grindr, a geosocial gay social networking app. CEO Joel Simkhai wrote that the investment would allow for “business as usual” with “a renewed sense of purpose and additional resources.” Besides serving as an additional source of revenue for Kunlun Tech, Grindr may also be used to direct users to the company’s games. Although Grindr does have a Chinese-language version of its app, it has faced competition in China from Blued, a Chinese-made dating app for gay men that had fifteen million users, mainly in China, in 2014—possibly more than twice the number of Grindr’s users worldwide. Kunlun Tech’s investment and the popularity of Blued are signs of changing attitudes towards homosexuality in China; it was illegal in the country until 1997, and the Chinese Psychiatric Association officially classified it as a psychiatric disorder until 2001.

Just eight days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise Christmas Day stop in Lahore to visit with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, terrorists attacked an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, Punjab. The attack, only the latest strike after a thaw, follows a long-established pattern of spoilers jeopardizing positive openings between India and Pakistan. Since 1998, when both countries tested nuclear weapons, a possible conflict has become more dangerous for the region and the world. Meanwhile, Pakistan continues to harbor a plethora of terrorist groups, and the country’s pursuit of miniaturized “tactical nukes” fuels an already combustible situation. If Modi and Sharif can lead their countries to durably improve their relationship, even modestly, they will realize a goal that has eluded their predecessors. Given the complex politics of the India-Pakistan relationship, the United States does not play a role in their bilateral talks, but Washington can certainly take steps to help prevent spoilers from once again disrupting a dialogue process that deserves every chance to succeed. In War on the Rocks, I provide the backdrop of the recent history of conflict in South Asia, and elaborate on what Washington can do to help. In a nutshell, the single most useful thing the United States can do is to unequivocally pressure Pakistan to end support for terrorist groups — not just some, but all — that destabilize India and the region. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa

Each of the past two years, I’ve done a roundup of the developments and stories that mattered the most in South Asia. In 2014, India’s historic national election and the coming together of Afghanistan’s hard-won unity government topped my list. The year before, Indian women’s political activism, and Nawaz Sharif’s election in Pakistan’s first transfer of power from one civilian to another, were my top two picks. Looking back at those posts compared with the ten events I’ve selected for 2015, this year suggests a markedly less hopeful mood. The most chilling development has been the steady trickle of reports about the self-proclaimed Islamic State and its presence in the region, particularly in Afghanistan, border areas of Pakistan, and possibly in Bangladesh. Other developments in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Maldives present a mixed picture of both progress and setbacks. Here is my selection of 2015’s most consequential stories in South Asia: Security deteriorates in Afghanistan: In December 2014, President Barrack Obama ceremonially marked the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan, as did the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The U.S. troop presence “transitioned” to a train and support role, with the intention of completing troop withdrawal by the end of 2016. But grim news from Afghanistan, including a resurgent Taliban and “little nests” of the Islamic State, led Obama to revise his plan in October. Afghanistan’s unity government remains dysfunctional and without a full cabinet; the Taliban stepped up attacks (despite the belated revelation this year that Mullah Omar had died some two years ago), and hopes for a secure and stable Afghanistan in the near term have dimmed. In a tragic sign of the country’s situation, by year’s end, Afghans had become the second largest population of migrants after Syrians seeking refuge in Europe. Modi juggernaut slows, narrative returns to earth: In 2015, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued to successfully project India overseas, but faced a changed narrative at home. The expectations that he would be able to usher in transformational “big bang” economic reform proved unrealistic as his government found itself stymied by uproar in parliament’s upper house. Modi government officials spoke of “creative incrementalism” as the cumulative effect of a series of smaller reforms and performance improvements instead. Politically, hopes for continued gains by the Bharatiya Janata Party in state-level elections were dashed when the populist Aam Aadmi Party won Delhi by a landslide in February, and a “grand alliance” of regional parties swept Bihar in November. In the second half of the year, Modi’s much-delayed response to a shocking murder of a Muslim man merely suspected of eating beef—among the most visible of a series of similar incidents—led to a significant and politically polarized public debate in India and abroad over whether the country was growing more intolerant. India’s economy fastest growing in the world, top foreign direct investment (FDI) destination: Even as expectations changed in India, and as political problems became more salient for the Modi government, the Indian economy chugged ahead to become the world’s fastest-growing major economy, growing at 7.4 percent in the third quarter of 2015, overtaking China. It also became the world’s top foreign direct investment destination, according to the Financial Times, as announced FDI commitments to India surged to $31 billion in the first half of 2015. Those figures more than double India’s FDI levels from the first half of 2014. China and Pakistan announce vast “economic corridor” project: In April, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan and announced a major investment package of some $46 billion. China has been Pakistan’s “all-weather friend” for decades, but the April announcement promised infrastructure developments of another order. The vision will link western China down to the Arabian Sea through a “China Pakistan Economic Corridor” that will require roads from Pakistan’s Gwadar deep water port all the way up through the Karakorum Highway linking Pakistan to China via hairpin turns carved into Himalayan mountainsides. Nepal suffers massive earthquake: On April 25 a massive quake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale shook Nepal. Its epicenter was forty-eight miles (seventy-seven kilometers) northwest of Kathmandu. Homes and ancient buildings crumbled; nearly nine thousand people were killed, 2.8 million displaced, and more than 600,000 homes were destroyed. Despite an outpouring of international support, delays in distributing aid with in the country led to criticism. Tourism, a mainstay of the Nepali economy, has not returned to its earlier levels. The passage of a new constitution—eight years in the making—led not to strengthening of democracy, but mass protests from Nepal’s Madhesis; a supply blockade at the India-Nepal border has further resulted in economic disruption. By the end of the year, concerns about Nepal’s economy had grown, even as the country had not yet managed to fully rebuild from the April tragedy. Bloggers and foreigners assassinated in Bangladesh: Bangladesh’s political problems worsened in 2015. During the first half of the year, an astonishingly gruesome series of murders made international headlines as small groups of machete-wielding terrorists targeted secular and/or atheist bloggers for assassination. By September and October foreigners became the targets, and later in October a bomb exploded during a Shia procession. Following the September and October attacks, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility, but the Bangladeshi government has stated instead that the violence must be the work of domestic groups. Concerns about Bangladesh’s security have now become the headline. Sri Lankans unseat strongman Rajapaksa, elect “combined opposition” in surprise outcome: On January 9, Sri Lanka’s Maithripala Sirisena defeated ten-year incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa. It was an upset by any measure. Sirisena previously served in the Rajapaksa cabinet, but defected along with more than twenty other members of parliament to form an opposition coalition only two months before the January polls. Rajapaksa conceded graciously. The results represent a victory for Sri Lankan democracy. Under Sirisena, Sri Lanka has also “rebalanced” its foreign relations, rebuilding its ties with India—badly frayed by 2014—as well as with the global human rights community. In a step unimaginable a year back, in September Colombo even cosponsored a consensus resolution in the UN Human Rights Council on accountability for rights violations in Sri Lanka during the war. India emerges as a leader in Paris climate negotiations, deal reached: India has been willing, in previous multilateral negotiations, to say “no” to deals, no matter the consequences for global consensus. The India that arrived in Paris for the Conference of Parties negotiation on climate showed up with a different plan, including a proactive proposal for a new international solar alliance, which Modi inaugurated with French President Francois Hollande. Over the more than two weeks of deliberations India was a voice for the developing countries, and pushed for its priorities, but focused on a deal. The outcome—a global climate agreement—provides a good indication of how India’s new ambition of being a “leading power, rather than just a balancing power” is already positioning it to shape outcomes. Raheel Sharif rises, Nawaz Sharif sinks in sadly predictable setback for Pakistani democracy: As the Wall Street Journal put it, “Powerful General Raheel Sharif Eclipses Pakistan’s Prime Minister.” Though General Sharif had been in place since 2013, it was not until this year that his profile appeared to shine brighter than the democratically-elected Nawaz Sharif. But Nawaz became hobbled domestically by street protests throughout 2014, and the military clipped his foreign policy efforts to build better ties with India. In 2015, Pakistan’s military once again rose in prominence as the institution that can “deliver,” and General Raheel Sharif became the subject of social media memes and “cult hero” tributes. Maldives court sentences former president to prison in Kafkaesque trial: In a continued setback to Maldives’ nascent democracy, former President Mohamed Nasheed remained in prison at the end of 2015, despite the high-profile efforts of his legal team led by Amal Clooney, who has single-handedly helped this case gain visibility it might not have enjoyed otherwise. In March, a Maldivian court sentenced Nasheed to thirteen years’ imprisonment on the charge of terrorism relating to his actions in office when he ordered the arrest of a judge. The trial itself was ridden with numerous irregularities. The UN Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion in favor of Nasheed in September. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Ariella Rotenberg, Ayumi Teraoka, Gabriel Walker, and James West look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Canadian pastor sentenced by North Korea to life in prison with hard labor. Hyeon Soo Lim, a Canadian pastor, was sentenced to a life term of hard labor by the highest court in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. After a ninety-minute trial, Lim was convicted of crimes against the state that included running a human rights campaign against North Korea in cooperation with the United States and South Korea, as well as assisting defectors who wished to leave North Korea. A video was circulated of Lim admitting his guilt in what is suspected to be a staged confession. The Canadian government is doing what it can to negotiate his release and repatriation, and has characterized his sentence as “unduly harsh” particularly given Lim’s “age and fragile health.” 2. Pakistan surprised by inclusion in “Islamic military alliance.” In a rare press conference on Tuesday, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammad bin Salman announced the formation of an “Islamic military alliance,” with a permanent base in Riyadh that will coordinate the efforts of thirty-four Muslim countries to combat global terrorism, including providing assistance with military training and equipment and countering violent extremism messaging. Pakistan—along with several other countries, including Indonesia and Malaysia—was caught off guard by the announcement of a military alliance, with reports indicating that Saudi Arabia had reached out to states simply to establish a coordination center and that senior officials and lawmakers learned about it from news reports. On Thursday, the Foreign Office confirmed Pakistan’s support for the alliance, but cautioned that Pakistan “is awaiting further details to decide the extent of its participation in different activities in the alliance” and it is unlikely Pakistan will send combat troops abroad. Earlier this year, Pakistan declined a Saudi request for troops, naval, and aircraft support for its intervention in Yemen against Houthi rebels. 3. Xinjiang mine attack suspect spoke of jihad. Chinese state media released a video of one of the alleged perpetrators of a September knife attack at Sogan coal mine in northwestern Xinjiang. As many as fifty people are believed to have died in the attack, which sparked an eight-week manhunt for the attackers. In the video, the sole suspect to have surrendered, Turghun Emet, describes his motives in Uighur. “If we die when we do jihad, then we will go to heaven… At that time, they gave me a knife. There was a knife in everyone’s hands—if you cut someone, kill someone, then you will be a martyr and go to heaven.” Twenty-eight other terrorists died during the manhunt. Concerns about terrorism, and particularly the Islamic State group, have increased in China following the killing of a Chinese hostage held by the Islamic State in November and the release of a chant in Mandarin exhorting Chinese Muslims to “take up weapons to fight.” Chinese officials recently cited the Xinjiang mine attack and manhunt as evidence to compare their nation’s experiences with terrorism to other incidents such as the Paris attacks. 4. Japanese journalist found not guilty for defaming South Korean president. Tatsuya Kato, former Seoul bureau-chief of the Sankei Shimbun, was acquitted of a charge of defaming South Korean President Park Geun-hye. This decision came amidst the two governments’ efforts to improve relations, and led the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to appeal to its Ministry of Justice for leniency in the case. In October 2014, Kato was indicted for his online article on Park’s whereabouts on the day of the Sewol ferry disaster, in particular regarding the mysterious seven hours during which she was missing. The article introduced a scandalous rumor that she may have been with her former secretary, quoting a column published by the Chosun Ilbo, a major Korean newspaper. Kato was barred from leaving the country until April 2015, and this fueled Japanese public anger towards South Korea for its lack of freedom of press, worsening an already deteriorated bilateral relations due to complicated issues of history. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took this incident so seriously that he met with Kato the day after he returned to Japan in April. Although both Abe and South Korean MOFA viewed the court’s decision positively, the Japanese public, as represented both in conservative and liberal newspapers, still remains unhappy about the prosecution itself. 5. To cut smog in New Delhi, India restricts vehicle use. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of India passed a number of temporary restrictions on vehicle use in Delhi in order to address the capital’s dire air pollution problem. The move included a ban on some diesel vehicles and SUVs, old “transport vehicles,” and an increased tax on commercial vehicles. Additionally, all taxis operating in the city must switch from gasoline or diesel to compressed natural gas by March of 2016. Though international media frequently make Beijing out to be Asia’s most important battleground in the fight against air pollution, the World Health Organization reported in 2014 that Delhi’s mean annual concentration of PM2.5, the smallest and potentially most dangerous particles, was nearly three times that of Beijing. Beginning on January 1, Delhi will implement a Beijing-like, odd-even license-plate restriction system, and also has plans to close a coal-fired power plant and further upgrade vehicle emissions standards. But because vehicles in Delhi only produce about a quarter of PM2.5 pollution, and the majority comes from industry, road dust, and burning firewood, and other sources, the vehicle restrictions are just a first step to clearing the city’s smoggy skies. Bonus: South Koreans are living through the experience of death. In response to high suicide rates, “fake funerals” are now being offered to South Koreans as a way to reflect on their lives and contemplate the reality of death. Providers of the service offer coffins for clients to lay in as they mediate on death. High amounts of professional stress and social pressure have led to increased suicide rates, giving South Korea the nickname the “suicide capital of the developed world.” The near-death experience encourages clients to imagine their deaths by writing letters to their friends and family before walking out to the graveyard and entering their coffins. By offering a near-death experience, the goal of the service is to bring clients a new appreciation and relationship with life.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Ariella Rotenberg, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Human trafficking investigator flees Thailand. Maj. Gen. Paween Pongsirin, a senior Thai police officer leading an investigation on human trafficking in Thailand, has fled the country to seek asylum in Australia. After more than thirty graves, which are believed to contain the remains of trafficked Rohingyas, were discovered near the Malaysian border this summer, Paween had been tasked with investigating the site and the trafficking network responsible. His investigation resulted in more than 150 arrest warrants and other charges against individuals in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Thailand, including a senior lieutenant general in the Thai Army. Paween reported that the inquiry had been shut down prematurely, and that he now feared retribution from traffickers and corrupt authorities implicated for the crimes. The Thai government is considering whether to bring a defamation case against Paween, as it did recently against two journalists for reporting the Thai navy’s involvement in human trafficking. In a report published earlier this year, the U.S. Department of State found that the Thai government “does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, and is not making significant efforts to do so.” 2. China merges state-owned enterprises.  Multiple mergers among Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were announced this week. On Tuesday it was revealed that the China Metallurgical Group will be incorporated into China Minmetals, although the timing to complete the merger is unknown. The State Council has also reportedly approved the merger of two shipping companies, China Shipping Group Co. and China Ocean Shipping Co., which will result in the fourth-largest shipping line in the world. Such mergers are hoped to reduce competition between firms and improve economies of scale. Metals and shipping SOEs were recently identified as among those with the worst financial-risk ratings, so it is not shocking that firms in these sectors would be targeted for early restructuring. Not all recent mergers have improved competitiveness, however. In June, two state-owned train makers, the CSR Corp. and CNR Corp., merged but thus far the year-on-year revenue for the new combined company has fallen. The mergers come in the wake of overall SOE reforms presented by the Chinese government in September that seek to promote private investment, establish investment mechanisms for state capital, and potentially restructure certain SOEs to create national champions. SOEs in the telecom and air transport sectors are now also allegedly being considered for mergers. 3. Anonymous hacks Abe’s site to retaliate for whaling. The hacking group Anonymous took credit for temporarily disabling Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s personal website yesterday, claiming the act was a retaliation for Japan’s decision to resume scientific whaling activities last week. Although an investigation as to whether Anonymous was indeed responsible for the cyberattack is still ongoing, Anonymous has hacked the government sites of other whaling countries before, like Iceland, and a Twitter account representing the group threatened to continue if Japan did not discontinue the program. Despite a 2014 International Court of Justice ruling that deemed one of Japan’s “scientific” whaling programs illegal, last week’s program, which sent a fleet to Antarctica’s Southern Ocean to kill 333 minke whales, is new. One scientist called the whaling campaign the same old story with a different name—like putting “lipstick on a pig.” In total, thirty-three countries, including the United States, have protested against Japan’s new whaling program, and Australia has considered taking legal action to put an end to it. 4. Afghan president visits Pakistan. On Wednesday, leaders from Pakistan and Afghanistan announced plans to resume peace talks between the two governments, although the Taliban has not yet agreed to the talks. The announcement was made at the annual Heart of Asia conference where Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani met. Ghani’s visit to Pakistan coincided with a two-day Taliban siege of the Kandahar airport, which left more than fifty people dead and signaled a growing Taliban resurgence. Ghani risked political criticism by engaging with Pakistan, an unpopular nation among many Afghans, to attempt to restart the peace talks. Tensions persist between the two countries over a variety of issues including whether Pakistan harbors terrorists and Pakistan’s desire to repatriate approximately two million Afghan refugees currently in the country. Rahmatullah Nabil, the head of the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, resigned this week amidst disagreements surrounding Ghani’s policy toward Pakistan. In July, Pakistan hosted an initial round of peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but the second round was postponed after the announcement of Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s death. 5. Myanmar opens stock exchange. After two decades of delays, Myanmar finally launched its first stock exchange, the Yangon Stock Exchange, on Wednesday. Prior to this, Myanmar was the largest economy in Asia without a stock exchange. The move is an important step towards liberalization for a country that has languished in recent decades due to mismanagement by a military junta; officials hope the exchange will help spur investment and boost the economy. Progress will come slowly, however. Although six companies have already been approved to list on the market, they will not start trading until next spring, and foreign firms are still barred. Bonus: The Islamic State produces a new propaganda song, this time in Chinese. This week, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, released a war chant in Mandarin calling for Chinese Muslim men to take up arms. Al-Hayat Media Center, the ISIS-run media group, released the four-minute acapella chant known in Islam as a “nasheed” that advocates death in service of Islam. By using Mandarin for the song might indicate that ISIS is aiming to attract a broader base of Chinese Muslims, whereas previous propaganda has been aimed at China’s Muslim Uighur minority in the Uyghur language. The spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry said in response to the video that “in the face of terrorism, no country can stand alone.”

Here is a quick round-up of this week’s technology headlines and related stories you may have missed: United States and Chinese officials led respectively by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun met in Washington, DC Tuesday for the first round of a high-level dialogue on cybercrime. The two sides agreed on guidelines for jointly combating cybercrime, announced a joint cybersecurity tabletop exercise to be held in spring 2016, and began planning a hotline for cyber issues. The next round of the dialogue will be in Beijing in June 2016. The meeting came as China’s state news service reported that the cyber-enabled theft of personal information from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was conducted by criminals, rather than state-sponsored actors as U.S. lawmakers have claimed. The Washington Post also reported that China arrested suspects in relation to the OPM hack in September prior to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States, although some Chinese media reports dispute this account. BlackBerry will no longer operate in Pakistan, the company announced Monday. BlackBerry provides encrypted e-mail and messaging services to its corporate clients through its Blackberry Enterprise Servers (BES), which prevents the Pakistani intelligence services from achieving their surveillance goals. When the company refused to build encryption backdoors, Pakistan’s telco regulator ordered mobile network operators to shut down access to Blackberry servers, which would essentially make the handsets useless. The short-term impact of Blackberry’s decision on Pakistanis is likely to be minimal, as the company holds just 0.3 percent of the world smartphone market share. However, as mobile device makers increasingly move to end-to-end encryption, we may see similar showdowns between Pakistani regulators and bigger phone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung. In other encryption news, my colleague Matt Waxman has a good roundup of Israeli encryption policy over at Lawfare. Pakistan is not the only central Asian government that’s trying to limit Internet freedom. Kazakhstan’s primary telecommunications provider Kazakhtelecom JSC announced Monday that it and other telcos are "obliged" by law to conduct surveillance on HTTPS connections to addresses outside the country. Starting next year, Kazakhtelecom will require all users to install a "national security certificate" on their Internet-enabled devices that will trick programs into thinking the telecom’s servers are the legitimate websites users intended to visit. This will allow Kazakhtelecom to man-in-the-middle any encrypted connection to servers outside the country, giving them the power to see all the online activity of their users. Some commentators have called it a cheap version of China’s Great Firewall, although they’re fundamentally different systems albeit with similar effects. Although the company subsequently pulled the announcement from their website, you can expect it to come back soon; Kazakhstan has one of the worst records in the world for online freedom. Max Schrems’ crusade against Facebook isn’t over yet. In October, the Austrian grad student’s case against the Irish data protection authority resulted in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidating the Safe Harbor framework that governed data transfers between the EU and the United States. In letters to data regulators in Ireland, Belgium, and Germany this week, Schrems calls on the authorities to suspend all data flows from Facebook’s local subsidiaries to the U.S.-based company, ahead of the January 2016 deadline EU regulators have given companies to change their practice. January 2016 is also the self-imposed deadlines that EU regulators set to have a new Safe Harbor framework in place, but that seems increasingly unlikely. EU officials said this week that they’d like to give national data regulators a greater role in ascertaining that the privacy of EU citizens is protected in the United States. The good news is that the Judicial Redress Act currently being considered by Congress could help move the negotiations forward. The bad news is that it’s not looking like it will be passed any time soon. Meanwhile, the Dutch minister of justice says he doesn’t expect a conclusion to the Safe Harbor negotiations any time soon. A House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday examined the Email Privacy Act, which has languished in Congress for two and a half years despite having more than three hundred cosponsors and broad support from the tech industry. The bill would update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to require the government to obtain a warrant before accessing emails more than 180 days old, rather than seizing them with a subpoena, as ECPA allows. Federal regulators and law enforcement officials are concerned this revision would tie their hands, and in a committee hearing Tuesday reviewing the bill, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) reiterated these apprehensions. Goodlatte said that while he supports the “core” of the bill, he wants an exception allowing the government to demand information from tech companies without a warrant when it has determined that an “emergency” exists. It’s unclear when the bill might get a vote in the committee.

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Sungtae “Jacky” Park, Ariella Rotenberg, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Earthquake survivors in Afghanistan and Pakistan appeal for shelter and supplies. Just six months after a devastating earthquake in Nepal, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake shook geographically vulnerable regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The epicenter was reported 196 kilometers below the Hindu Kush Mountains in Afghanistan. Although the earthquake occurred much deeper than the Nepal earthquake, close to four hundred people have been reported dead, thousands suffered injuries, and many homes were destroyed by the quake and its aftermath. Three days on, many survivors remain without shelter in freezing conditions. Much of the affected area is mountainous and remote, and with communications disrupted in some places, rescue efforts have been severely hampered. To make matters worse, citizens in the area endured floods earlier this year so relief supplies typically on hand had not yet been replenished when the quake hit. In Afghanistan, the Taliban announced a ceasefire in the earthquake-affected regions and directed its members to provide support. Google launched its “Person Finder” service to assist in the search efforts—the same service that aided rescue operations in Nepal six months back. 2. China ends one-child policy. The Chinese Communist Party announced Thursday that it would allow couples to have two children, overturning a thirty-five-year-old policy limiting births to one child per couple. In 2013, facing an aging population, the government loosened the restriction by allowing couples to have two children if at least one parent was an only child. However, public response has been muted due to the high cost of raising a child, which may have led to the decision to eliminate the rule. Implementation of the one-child policy has long been a source of tension between citizens and the state in China, with the emphasis placed on hitting birth-rate targets often causing local government officials to resort to extreme measures like forcing women to have abortions or undergo sterilization. Eliminating the one-birth rule will not prevent such actions by local leaders, however; a change in the way the performance of local officials is assessed is necessary to remove incentives to restrict births. And even with the new rules, it may take years to overcome the negative effects of thirty years of family-planning policy, such as a severely skewed gender ratio. 3. Indonesian president plans to join TPP. During his visit to the United States this week, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced his nation’s intentions to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Indonesia is the sixteenth-largest economy in the world with a gross domestic product of nearly one trillion dollars, so if Indonesia joins the TPP it would be a major success for proponents of the trade deal. Although Jokowi entered office as an economic reformer, recently Indonesia’s economy dipped to a five-year low with youth unemployment above 20 percent. Joining the TPP, however, could bring considerable benefits. A 2012 study found that under the agreement the nation might increase exports by up to 20 percent by 2025. A fear that neighboring countries who have already signed on to TPP, such as Malaysia and Vietnam, may now attract a greater share of business could have also motivated Indonesia’s decision to join the trade pact. Jokowi’s push to join the TPP has sparked resistance in certain protectionist sectors of the government, and critics have questioned whether Indonesia possesses adequate infrastructure to compete if its markets become more open. Concerns may also arise over Indonesia’s environmental situation, especially given that Jokowi was forced to cut his U.S. trip short due to the ongoing forest fires that are causing a haze crisis across Southeast Asia and significantly increasing Indonesia’s carbon dioxide emissions. 4. Northeast Asian trilateralism puts South Korea at the center. On November 1, South Korean President Park Geun-hye will host Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Seoul for the first trilateral summit in three years. President Park will then hold a separate bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Abe on November 2—the first between the two leaders. The two meetings come at a time of increasing regional tensions, particularly between China and Japan and between China and the United States. South Korea has an interest in ensuring that it does not get dragged into regional conflicts, becoming a “shrimp crushed between two whales,” as an old Korean adage goes. Hence, Park is seeking to improve South Korea’s relations with both China and Japan while reducing the overall tension level in Northeast Asia. She has built friendly relations with Xi and has signaled for a move toward a “two-track” approach to Japan, decoupling the inflammatory history and territorial issues from more concrete security and economic issues. At the same time, South Korea seeks to maintain a robust U.S.-ROK alliance as a hedge against China’s rise. Although the outcome of Park’s efforts will not depend on the upcoming trilateral summit alone, results from the summit should give a preview of South Korea’s ability (or inability, historically speaking) to influence the country’s strategic environment. 5. Zuckerberg defends Facebook’s free Internet plan in India. On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a town-hall-style meeting at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi to answer questions about Facebook’s plan to bring the Internet to millions of unconnected Indians. The project, Free Basics (known previously as Internet.org), provides a number of simple internet services, including a stripped-down version of Facebook, through a local cell phone carrier free of charge. But even with the attractive price tag the plan is a tough sell: many complain about the carrier’s signal strength and the lack of included services. More widely, some have criticized the project for violating net neutrality, the principle of providing equal access to all web content and applications, while others have argued that such “zero rating” products can be a good thing if enough competition between providers exists. Nevertheless, Zuckerberg reiterated Facebook’s commitment to net neutrality on Wednesday, and emphasized the “moral responsibility” he felt for bringing more people online in India. Bonus: Chinese government encourages green burials. Due to the ageing population in China generally, and specifically in large cities, the Chinese government has embarked on a campaign to encourage green burials—burial practices that do not take up space—such as spreading ashes over an ocean. But so far the effort has been mostly unsuccessful. The government’s main concern is the scarcity of space for burying the dead, and some estimates show China’s current burial grounds reaching capacity in just six years. However, Chinese traditions dictate that people should show respect to their buried ancestors through offering gifts and making frequent visits to grave sites. Such traditions have proven to be a major hurdle to convincing the masses to opt for cremation and burial gardens. When faced with these options, many wonder how they will pay their respects to ancestors whose ashes have been scattered in a body of water or in a garden. In Beijing, the government set a goal to ensure half of its deceased citizens opt for a green burial by 2020. As for the program’s projected success? It doesn’t look too promising.