Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Pakistan—with assist from its neighbors—pushes for a “loss and damage” plan at COP27, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar meets his Russian counterpart in Moscow, and China and India have their eyes on Nepal’s parliamentary elections.

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Pakistan is weathering a livid political storm at house, together with an financial disaster. But at this 12 months’s United Nations local weather change convention in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt—generally known as COP27—Islamabad is main the cost within the international combat for local weather help to the growing world.

Pakistan at present chairs the G-77 group, comprised of 134 growing international locations on the U.N., and Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, is a vice chair of COP27. Before the convention started, Islamabad succeeded in placing the difficulty of “loss and damage” onto the summit agenda. As at present envisioned, loss and injury financing would contain developed international locations offering assist to growing international locations on the entrance strains of the local weather disaster.

Developed international locations have lengthy resisted such a coverage, fearing it would make them weak to steady calls for for compensation, given their outsized manufacturing of greenhouse gasoline emissions. But Pakistan has a golden alternative to make the case for rich international locations to embrace loss and injury help and for worldwide donors to make new commitments for help centered on adaptation and mitigation.

Pakistan’s catastrophic floods this 12 months—triggered by early and intense monsoon rains—supply a vivid instance of why loss and injury is so compelling. The catastrophe, which submerged one-third of the nation and affected 33 million folks, supplies an ideal information level. The flooding and its aftermath have thus far value the cash-strapped nation round $40 billion, in addition to a projected 2.2 percent decline in GDP.

At COP27, Islamabad has power in numbers: not solely full assist from the G-77 but in addition from its neighbors. Support for loss and injury is a uncommon level of coverage convergence in South Asia. Excluding India, the area contributes comparatively little to international greenhouse gasoline emissions. But it is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable areas and suffers from high levels of poverty—that means that its residents are among the most affected by local weather change.

Shortly earlier than COP27, Indian Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav launched a statement calling for motion on local weather finance, adaptation, and loss and injury. Bangladesh’s surroundings minister, Md. Shahab Uddin, has promised to push for loss and injury funding, too. In his COP27 speech, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe said that growing international locations “need to be compensated for loss and damage.” Even Afghanistan’s Taliban have echoed the language of loss and injury.

With its international clout, India may play a key position in advocating for loss and injury financing. India made formidable carbon-emissions-reduction pledges finally 12 months’s local weather summit. It has backed them up with mitigation methods, together with major investments in renewable power which have made it one of many world’s fastest-growing solar markets. India’s efforts can drive house a robust message: Developing international locations might search loss and injury assist, however they’re additionally keen and succesful relating to combating local weather change.

This isn’t to recommend these efforts will end in speedy coverage success. It’s a significant victory for South Asia and its G-77 companions simply to get loss and injury on the U.N. local weather summit’s agenda. But the negotiations over loss and injury might be lengthy and acrimonious, and there’s unlikely to be an settlement—or perhaps a breakthrough—by the tip of COP27.

Meanwhile, there’s at all times extra to be accomplished domestically: Poor governance choices usually exacerbate local weather change impacts in South Asia, together with Pakistan’s current floods. These embrace unregulated deforestation, subsidies for wasteful types of irrigation, and poor city planning. The area makes a powerful case for loss and injury reduction, however that doesn’t absolve it of the necessity to make different course corrections. As a current Nepali Times editorial put it: “[P]oliticians must stop invoking climate change to cover up past failures.”

Jaishankar visits Moscow. Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met together with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow on Tuesday. The go to marked the first time that Jaishankar has visited Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February. The assembly didn’t seem to yield any notable new agreements, though either side described it as a chance to debate bilateral points. Jaishankar said that the “Ukraine war was a dominant feature” in his talks with Lavrov.

The journey is notable for its timing: It comes as India, an in depth accomplice of Russia, reveals indicators of frustration with the warfare in Ukraine, although it has not condemned the invasion outright. At a regional summit in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin that “today’s era is not an era of war.” This week, a New York Times report highlighted the likelihood that India may pitch itself as a mediator to assist finish the warfare.

Jaishankar didn’t journey to Ukraine this week, however Modi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in October that India is ready to be concerned in peace efforts. Even whether it is well positioned to mediate, in actuality New Delhi isn’t going to volunteer for the duty except requested by either side. Jaishankar’s go to to Moscow probably pushed the stance that India has taken for weeks: Diplomacy, dialogue, and de-escalation are urgently wanted.

Supporters of Pakistani opposition chief Imran Khan shout throughout a protest in Karachi, Pakistan, on Nov. 5.RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP by way of Getty Images

Pakistan opposition march resumes. After final week’s assassination attempt on Pakistani opposition chief Imran Khan, the political temperature stays excessive. On Thursday, Khan’s anti-government “long march” resumed from the spot the place he was shot and wounded in Wazirabad, Pakistan. Later this month, the protest is anticipated to arrive in Rawalpindi, house to Pakistan’s navy headquarters and the place Khan, who was launched from hospital this week, promises to return to the march. He has said the protest will ultimately attain Islamabad, however he hasn’t specified a date.

Khan, who was ousted as prime minister earlier this 12 months, has not toned down his confrontational rhetoric. He has repeatedly accused three officers of involvement within the assault: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, and a senior intelligence official, Faisal Naseer. (The authorities has denied the accusations.) On Monday, Khan despatched a letter to Pakistani President Arif Alvi interesting to him to pay attention to “serious wrongdoings” by sure elements of the navy management and to conduct an investigation.

Khan’s letter accuses navy and intelligence officers of assorted abuses of energy; such particular allegations towards prime safety leaders from a senior member of the political class are uncommon in Pakistan. There is little that Alvi, a member of Khan’s occasion, can do; Pakistan’s presidency is a ceremonial position. But it’s vital that Khan went over the navy management’s head, marking the newest escalation in a rising confrontation between Khan, the federal government, and the navy—which till earlier this 12 months was allied with Khan.

Nepal prepares for elections. Nepal holds parliamentary elections on Nov. 20, pitting Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba towards an opposition alliance led by former Prime Minister Okay.P. Sharma Oli. Deuba and Oli are two of probably the most dominant figures in Nepali politics. The election is bound to be watched intently in each Beijing and New Delhi.

One of the marketing campaign’s large storylines is geopolitics: Nepal has turn out to be a significant battleground for India-China competitors. China’s affect in Kathmandu grew throughout Oli’s most up-to-date time period, from 2018 to 2021, as the 2 international locations inked infrastructure offers linked to its Belt and Road Initiative. Deuba is seen as extra aligned with India. Last week, the Indian authorities despatched 200 automobiles to Nepal to facilitate election logistics; the Indian Embassy said Kathmandu requested the vehicles.

In Foreign Policy, Marcus Andreopoulos wrote that the Chinese Communist Party has sought to form Nepali politics by means of each official diplomacy and mushy energy.

Afghanistan’s Taliban regime has reported vital achievements in bilateral commerce. This week, the deputy prime minister’s workplace announced that Afghanistan exported $1.8 billion in items over the past seven months, together with carpets, vegetables and fruit, coal, and semiprecious stones. Products went to China, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan. Islamabad alone imported $744 million price of products.

The commerce information represents a twofold enhance over the identical interval final 12 months. It reveals that regardless of tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan because the Taliban takeover final 12 months, business cooperation with Islamabad and different neighbors stays strong. The Taliban’s ability to generate government revenue from cross-border actions, together with commerce in addition to customs tariffs, stays one in all its few financial successes.

The Print editor D.Okay. Singh notes the “growing indiscipline and factionalism” inside India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the lack of occasion leaders to rein it in, leaving the duty to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “He is expected to play arbiter and keep the flock together … but he may have reasons to be disappointed with his senior party colleagues,” he writes.

A Himalayan Times editorial warns that sluggish export efficiency is contributing to Nepal’s balance-of-payment disaster, which stays severe regardless of some current reduction from elevated remittances. “If countries like Laos, Cambodia and Mongolia can export goods worth $6-9 billion annually, there is no reason why we should lag behind,” it argues.

Author Sibtain Naqvi argues within the Business Recorder that former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has defied expectations that he would turn out to be weaker after being ousted from energy. “Even his most ardent supporters would not imagine that a few months after losing the prime minister’s seat, Imran’s popularity would grow,” he writes.