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Suriname a small country of 600,000 people near Brazil, joins other countries with debt problems such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zambia, and others which have piled up debt borrowing with unsustainable debt payments. About 545 million borrowed from China and total $2.4 billion in debt accumulated. It is now negotiating with the IMF for $690 three year loan. The US says China has to agree to join in reducing the debt burden so that the cost of assistance does not fall only on the US as the IMF's largest shareholder. 

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Local customs, tradition and history of development play a part in each region. This is the message from Islamist politicians who want to bridge the differences with the USA in the northwest frontier province of Pakistan. They want to keep some of their Islamic ways of life and still work with the US. These Islamic organizations are working to reduce the violence in the region and promote democratic discourse and electoral representation. This is happening amid widespread mistrust of the U.S. of all Islamist politicians. There are negative perceptions about things Western which are not automatically accepted in these highly tradition bound areas of Pakistan, especially the Afghanistan border regions. Some kind of rapprocement could bring peace to the region and cool growth of militants. Is there a basic misunderstanding of the area and are their other more gradual ways of bringing these areas into the mainstream. Of modernizing these societies over time so they gradually accept women's rights, education and development as opposed to the sudden onset of change. One sign - these areas need hospitals, they need roads and there is no disagreement about this. Once they see the benefits of development and militancy drops then it s easier for them to understand the benefits of schools for girls, women's rights, and education and all other development. Its like the American South trying to baccept negro rights after years of blatant racism, took some time but now some of the southern states can't even be recognized from what they used to be in their perception of black people....

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Iran's oil production filling up existing storage leading to oil well shutoffs May 2026. Tankers near oil fields are used as storage as Iran faces prospect of filled up storage tanks and ships at sea at some point in the next few weeks. It has slow throttled production, increased storage, yet with no oil getting out of Hormuz straits Iran will at some point in the next couple of weeks have to shutdown some of the oil wells. The oil tanks cannot be monitored for storage level and their is existing storage in refineries and other places making it difficult to say precisely when but it could be in the next couple of weeks. This plays a part in Iran's thinking looking for ways to settle the conflict. US insists on getting all nuclear material out of Iran as an indispensable condition and the full and entire reason for the war not anything against the Iranian people. It is a basic idea- non-proliferation on nuclear weapons. Why in the Middle East- the answer is that for 5 decades there are wars in the Middle East, many small nations created by the British and the French who take no responsibility today, and the prospect of spread is real, sectarian conflicts for centuries, and a situation worse than in the Balkans where World War I started. The region extends from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, each nation destroyed by 5 decades of war including many Americans, Russians Europeans dead.  Costs of War Project at Brown University estimates are that 4.5 to 4.7 million people died in these wars. The US is not a colonial power like the British and the French, the Dutch. It seeks no oil as it is self sufficient, and it seeks no strife or involvement in the centuries old saga of the sectarian religious conflicts in the Middle East, having settled its own between Catholics and Protestants in the 17th century so that the Industrial Revolution and Scientific Revolutions could take place to create the Modern World of science, medicine, and industry we know today. Many of the nations of the Middle East seem averse to whole heartedly embracing the European contributions in this achievement as China, India, and America have done, in the process changing how their people think and live, and strive daily to further these achievements. ...

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Most of the media has failed to cover this aspect, yet the Collective agreement is a big, a huge plus on June 17 2026 at the G-7 Summit (G-9 expanded with India and Brazil). There was discussion and effort to convey different points of view which was an healthy aspect of this G-9 meeting in Les Bain, France, near Geneva. German chancellor Merz described the atmosphere as very constructive with lots of open thoughtful discussion- "This is the ​first ‌time since [US] President [Donald] Trump took office that we ‌have issued a joint ‌declaration ​at a G7 summit and found common language on the major ​foreign and security policy issues of our time. ⁠I ​consider that ​a real success."  "This ⁠sets a new tone, including ⁠regarding ​trans-Atlantic unity and resolve." Merz says all issues on the summit agenda were talked about "very openly" and "very constructively." Merz  says he will support a peace deal in the Middle East, including a possible military mission if there is "a lasting ceasefire."  A series of "preconditions that are not yet fulfilled, so there is no immediate hurry." What this means, as most of the media has failed to cover this aspect including NYT, WSJ and Washington Post, is that the US and the EU, India and China, Brazil, the poorer countries  Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, are now in a lot better positions, coming at it from different angles,  and are all aligned for their own interests, to push hard to support the US effort to get to the Memorandum of Agreement with Iran, and future settlement in Ukraine. The onus is for Iran and the entire Middle East to collectively come to an agreement to live with harmony among the neighbors for the mutual interest- including a nuclear free Middle East that is in their mutual interest- so that the rest of the world's people, a massive 5 billion compared to 500 million in the Middle East can industrialize, modernize, and make economic progress that benefits all the people of the world. ...

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Bret Stephens of the WSJ puts the -question what is Pakistan? And looks at possible answers. Starting with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who he says had aquite different idea from that of the Taliban. He quotes Jinnah 'you will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus, and Muslims cease to be Muslims , not in the religious sense, because this is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State." His idea was of religion as apolitical identification of the state as opposed to asecular idea like that of India, not of a religious state in a religious sense.This Bret Stephens says is why a majority of Pakistanis have rejected religious parties at the polls but still find the idea of political religion identification appealing. He sees these aims as immodest or overreaching in the modern world of technology, mass communications and economic deveopment. Only by remaining backward can such aspirations be supported because economic development, technology and mass communications can only supplant such religious politcal identification with aspirations for higher standards of living. Witness the current general elections in India with 730 million people voters. The common driving force for all parties is how they can deliver on the economic aspirations of people for better living standards, better infrastructure, and better services such as health care and education. And communal parties like the BJP also have to shift their focus to delivering on these aspirations to get support. So Bret Sephens makes the point quite effectively when he says that the threat to Pakistan is existential, so he would like to put the point existentially - just accept simple countryhood, or face nothingness. ...

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Tourism is recovering in Kashmir as the violence in Kashmir is fading gradually with sporadic incidents, with a new democratically elected civilian coalition government in Pakistan which may not be interested in supporting violent factions inside Kashmir. 450,000 tourists visited Kashmir in 2007 but only 25,000 foreign tourists. The state is investing in golf courses in Kashmir to make Kashmir a golfer's destination for tourists from Europe, the Middle East and the USA. This shows that the mood there is changing and a new wind is blowing.

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Map shows new troop deployments for tens of thousands of new troops (20 to 30 thousand) to be sent to Afghanistan under the new strategy to salvage the situation there. All of these new troops will go into the countryside and especially in the opium growing region in the south and Helmand valley region. And also on the border with Pakistan. This will effectively double the number of American troops in Afghanistan. The boom in growing opium in the south has increased the funding of Taliban insurgents to hire new trrops and to get new weapons.

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Bret Stephens talks with Shiite Imam Mohsen Quadivar, who was a student of Hossein-Ali Montazeri, and a seminarian at Qom, Iran. He now teaches at Duke. Kadivar is the author of a three part work of political philosophy titled "The Theories of the State in Shiite Jurisprudence," which questions Khomeini's idea of vilayat e-Faqih, or principle for a supreme leader with near dictatorial powers. Nothing in this principle he says is intuitively obvious or necessary for religion. It is he says not a part of Shiite general principles, and by near consensus of the Shiite Ulama, a minor jurisprudential hypothesis. He says there are two interpretations of Islam: the aggressive Islam of Ahamadinejad or the mercy Islam of Moussavi. Kadivar points out that 2 of Iran's 4 major seminaries have refused to endorse Ahmadinejad's victory. There is here a search and a struggle for the true soul of Islam that goes beyond Iran, to Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The U.S., India, Pakistan and the Middle Eastern nations are having to walk carefully through a period where a search and a struggle for this true soul is taking place. Alahu akbar now takes on a different meaning....

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Countries in South Asia such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan, as well as other countries in Africa and Asia, Latin America face debt repayment problems. These countries need debt restructuring and restructuring of payments by the International Monetary Fund in the current environment of surging inflation, depreciating currencies, and need to first support essential food imports and essential supplies including medical supplies. This report in The Guardian says IMF's Kistalina Georgieva is sensitive to the needs of these countries as they face surging inflation. Georgieva talks about the need for central banks to raise interest rates till other solutions are found.

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India's greatest runner Milkha Singh describes his life and struggles in this interview in the Indian Express written by Nihal Koshie. Much of his early life was spent in poverty and facing partition, running for his life seeing his parents dead in the riots in Pakistan part of Punjab.

He worked very hard, so hard that he hardly sees this type of effort today. If he had the facilities and training received by athletes of today Milkha says he would be able to set records that no one could break in a hundred years. With so little he achieved so much. 

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Politicians, militant groups, intelligence agencies and security forces, unsettle the Kashmir valley, at a time when Pakistan faces a serious economic crisis, and India faces a slowing down and inflation also. Changing the demography of Kashmir and the dispute over 99 acres seems rather phony and it shows that political unrest can be whipped up when there is such a long legacy of conflict even when the conditions worldwide in developing Asian countries are shifting to modernization.

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A former cricketer who helped Pakistan win the World Cup, is elected prime minister of Pakistan, His party leads in the 2018 elections with 120 seats, the party of Mr. Sharif with its base in the Punjab wins 60 seats, and the party of the Bhuttos with its base in Sind province wins 40 seats. Imran Khan has the support of the military in Pakistan.

Mr. Sharif was ousted as prime minister before the election on corruption charges first revealed in the Panama Papers. 

Pakistan faces challenges of managing its economic relationship with China with debt repayments to China for infrastructure projects leading to a planned IMF bailout in 2019. The relationship with India remains strained over Kashmir, and leads to a situation in which the military runs external affairs of the country. The economic and political issues need to be untangled so that Pakistan and the rest of South Asia can divert resources from defense to economic development.

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UN programs to reduce food storage losses in Pakistan by using metal storage containers instead of jute bags and mud silos protect grain from insects, rats and water. This has cut losses in storage of grains by upto 70%.

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In December 2010 and January 2011 fuel prices went up 40% after Iran blocked fuel tankers at the border crossing. After the blockade ended prices still are high compared to before December. The price of wheat went up 80% worldwide with drought conditions and floods in wheat growing areas of the world. Floods in Pakistan have made things worse for food supplies and prices. With a third of Afghanistan's people living below the poverty line this creates huge pressures for higher wages. With the lack of government revenues from taxes the budget is mainly financed by donor countries.