MANILA, Philippines — Hundreds of American and Philippine troops concluded Monday a new combat exercise in the northern Philippines that tested their endurance in more than a week of brutal heat and volatile weather, and braced them to respond to any threat in tropical jungles and on scattered islands, two U.S. and Philippine generals said. 

The Biden administration has been strengthening an arc of military alliances in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China, including in any possible confrontation over Taiwan and other Asian flash points. The move has dovetailed with Philippine efforts to shore up its territorial defenses amid escalating disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea. 

The large-scale battle drills, which have been held in Hawaii in recent years under the U.S. Army’s Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, have been introduced in the Philippines this year. There is also a version in Alaska. The exercises allow the U.S. Army, its allies and friendly forces to train in extreme conditions “where they are most likely to operate from archipelagos, jungles and heat in the tropics to high-altitude and extreme cold in the Arctic,” said Major Adan Cazarez, a public affairs officer of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division. 

The June 1-10 warfighting exercise began with an air assault on mock enemy forces to allow the deployment of U.S. and Philippine soldiers who secured an area, which served as a staging ground before a major offensive. When their communication lines for supplies were threatened, top commanders decided to shift to a defensive assault and repelled the enemy attempt and successfully launched the offensive. 

Key aspects of the mock battle, including the planning, deployments, logistical preparations and contingency readiness, were reviewed by military assessors for combat efficiency. 

The combat exercises, Cazarez said, were integrated in annual U.S.-Philippine army joint exercises called Salaknib for the first time this year. About 1,500 U.S. and Filipino soldiers participated in the new battle drills staged in a hinterland in Fort Magsaysay, a sprawling Philippine army camp in an agricultural region known for its scorching weather. The temperature this year has been exacerbated by El Nino, an occasional warming of the Pacific that shifts global weather patterns. 

“The terrain is without question some of the most difficult that our soldiers have ever had the experience to move into. The heat on a daily basis was well over 95 degrees (Fahrenheit; 35 degrees Celsius) and it challenged us from a sustainable perspective,” Major General Marcus Evans, commander of the U.S. Army’s Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, told The Associated Press in an online interview from the battle training site. 

Coordinating artillery and aerial fire and maneuvers “on a very challenging piece of terrain and, really, unforgiving temperatures, were all things that added to the overall training value,” Evans said. He added that American pilots also had to adjust to the region’s unpredictable weather. 

Philippine army Major General Andrew de Lara Costelo said the combat drills were designed to allow U.S. and Philippine forces and potentially other allies to operate seamlessly in future contingencies. 

“This fosters interoperability and shared tactics, techniques and procedures,” Costelo told the AP. 

“By working together, we harness our combined strengths, knowledge and capabilities, ensuring that we are prepared to face any challenges that may arise,” he said. 

The war exercises were staged after the conclusion of two larger back-to-back exercises earlier this year between U.S. and Philippine forces, the Salaknib and the Balikatan — Tagalog for shoulder-to-shoulder — which involved more than 16,000 U.S. and Philippine military personnel in their largest combat maneuvers that involved live-fire drills in and near the disputed South China Sea. Several countries sent military observers. 

China has vehemently opposed the combat exercises and increased deployments of American forces to Asia, including in the Philippines, saying such military presence was endangering regional stability and was designed to contain Beijing. The Philippine military says the military drills didn’t target any country and served to deter aggression. 

Last year, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. defended his decision to allow a U.S. military presence in more Philippine military camps under a 2014 defense pact, saying it was vital to his country’s territorial defense. 

China had warned that the increased U.S. military presence would “drag the Philippines into the abyss of geopolitical strife.”
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ISLAMABAD — Pakistani government officials are hailing as a success a recent five-day visit to China by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Observers, however, say that despite the usual display of warm relations from both sides, hurdles remain in improving the economic partnership between Beijing and Islamabad, largely because of Pakistan’s poor policies.

Prime Minister Sharif’s visit to China late last week comes as Pakistan is seeking more foreign investment and looking to boost exports to help with its economic crisis amid security concerns.

At a press conference Monday, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar called the visit “extremely successful and historic.”

“The fruits of the historic visit to China will reach the people of Pakistan,” Tarar said.

Sharif visited China at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart, Premier Li Qiang, with whom he held delegation-level talks in Beijing. Sharif also visited Shenzhen and Xi’an to help build business-to-business ties and to observe China’s advancements in agriculture, technology, and business facilitation.

China-Pakistan economic corridor

In China, both sides committed to “forging an upgraded version” of the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, by boosting construction, mining and exploration, and industrial cooperation.

Some critics say in its bid to ramp up CPEC, Pakistan is ignoring some harsh lessons from the first decade of the energy and infrastructure project.

“The corridor’s original sin was that Pakistan signed up for a large number of projects that added obligations in foreign currencies and this conflicted with Pakistan’s domestic-oriented exchange rate and industrial policies,” said economist Ali Hasanain. “Those obligations have gradually and predictably narrowed Pakistan’s fiscal space,” added Hasanain, an associate professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Pakistan owes more than $7.5 billion in project debt to power plants set up under CPEC. The country also owes nearly $2 billion in circular debt, or unpaid bills, to Chinese power producers.

Unable to boost exports on the back of new roads and added power generation capacity acquired through CPEC, Pakistan now faces a debt crisis where it is seeking new loans to pay past debt.

Many Pakistani economists blame Islamabad for the crisis.

Hasanain pointed to the Sharif government’s push to upgrade a crumbling cross-country railway line as an example of CPEC projects that will add to the country’s debt burden. The scope of the much-delayed Mainline-1 or ML-1 project has been reduced to bring down the cost, but the roughly $6.8 billion project is struggling to attract Chinese investment.

“While this upgradation will eventually be needed, there has been little consideration of the financial stress it will cause, and how the country will honor resultant obligations in the future,” Hasanain told VOA.

Economic cooperation

According to a joint statement issued at the end of the visit, China and Pakistan signed 23 agreements and Memoranda of Understanding, or MOUs, in a myriad of fields including cooperation on agriculture, infrastructure, industrial cooperation, inter-governmental development assistance, market regulation, surveying and mapping, media, and film.

Ammar Habib Khan, a Karachi-based business affairs expert, says Chinese firms are interested in investing in Pakistan because it is a strategic partner.

“Economic impact extends much longer into the future, maybe 30, 40, even 50 years. With a 30-year horizon or a 20-year horizon it makes sense to continue to invest in Pakistan,” Khan said, adding that the first phase of CPEC has been successful given the infrastructure development it brought.

More than 100 Pakistani business leaders accompanied Sharif on the trip that included a convention with Chinese businesses.

“There is an opportunity here to bring lots of Chinese energy-intensive industry to Pakistan where a lot of surplus power can essentially be used,” Khan said. “CPEC 2.0 will actually be more about utilizing the infrastructure that is in the country and how it can be optimized.”

Khan acknowledged that the renewed focus on CPEC would require Pakistan to first fix its finances.

The joint statement noted Beijing will encourage companies to invest in Pakistan in accordance with the market and commercial principles, signaling that it will not push firms to take unwanted risks or to give any concession to Pakistani companies.

Debt relief

Pakistan’s nearly $375 billion economy is facing a debt burden of almost $290 billion. According to data compiled by CEIC, an online economic database, Pakistan’s foreign debt is close to $130 billion.

Chinese officials say around 13 percent of Pakistan’s external debt is owed to China, but the International Monetary Fund put the figure at almost 30 percent in a 2022 report.

Experts believe China will have to restructure the debt Pakistan owes. During Sharif’s visit, however, no public statement was issued on the topic.

“The Pakistani side entered these meetings with realistically low expectations about winning concessions in the form of restructuring Pakistan’s outstanding debt to China. Some form of relief may yet come, but is unlikely to be significant,” said Hasanain.

Khan believes, even if China agrees to much-needed debt restructuring with Pakistan, it will do so quietly.

“They [the Chinese] are dealing with around 50 countries, all needing some kind of debt relief. If they [Chinese] give public statements, that basically becomes a precedence,” he said.

Security

During the visit, the Pakistani leader, along with the country’s powerful army chief, Gen. Asim Munir, held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping for more than three hours.

The security of Chinese nationals in Pakistan is a key concern for Beijing. Five Chinese workers died in a suicide attack in northwest Pakistan in March, while at least a dozen more have died in targeted attacks in recent years.

“The fact that the army chief accompanied the prime minister shows that we are taking security issues seriously,” Tarar told the press Monday. “We did not spare any effort in satisfying China’s security concerns.”

Naghmana Hashmi, a former Pakistani ambassador to China, told VOA that Beijing is talking tough with Islamabad on the security of Chinese nationals to avoid a backlash from its own people.

“Their people ask questions, their journalists ask questions that here is our best friend and we don’t have people dying anywhere except when they go to Pakistan,” Hashmi said. “Now, everybody does not understand the politics of it so the optics of it are very bad,” the former diplomat said, reiterating Pakistani officials’ stance that adversaries want to derail CPEC.

In the joint statement at the end of the visit, Beijing appreciated Pakistan’s probe of the March 26 attack.

“[The Chinese side] … hoped that the Pakistani side would continue to make every effort to hunt down any perpetrators and make sure they receive deserved severe punishment.”

“The Pakistani side was committed to enhancing security forces deployment,” the statement continued.

Pakistan has blamed the attack on militants based in Afghanistan. In the joint statement, both sides called on Afghanistan to “firmly combat terrorism, including not allowing its territory to be used for terrorist acts.”

The ruling Afghan Taliban have rejected Pakistan’s assertion that militants based in Afghanistan attacked Chinese nationals, saying Islamabad is attempting to poison Kabul’s relations with Beijing.
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Bangkok — Thailand’s democracy movement faces a pivotal week as the Constitutional Court considers whether to dissolve the election-winning Move Forward Party (MFP), a ruling which would effectively nullify the votes of 14 million people and trigger a new period of political instability. 

MFP became Thailand’s largest party at the May 2023 polls, winning 151 parliamentary seats and igniting calls to cut the army from politics and redistribute wealth and power more evenly.  

But it was blocked from forming a government and has since run into endless obstacles brought by a conservative establishment rattled by its success.  

The court will meet on June 12 to consider MFP’s fate on an allegation that it breached the Thai constitution by calling for reform of the royal defamation law — which protects the monarchy from criticism — during its election campaign. 

Party frontman Pita Limjaroenrat says MFP had no intention of overthrowing the monarchy, as alleged, with a call to amend a law that has seen scores of young pro-democracy activists charged since 2020. 

The activists came out to protest when the same court dissolved Move Forward’s predecessor — Future Forward.  

“No one can really say how the court is going to rule but if we are to be dissolved this would be two parties in five years,” Pita told reporters Sunday at a news conference. 

“I don’t even want to think or forecast how this might affect Thailand especially when our society, economy, and politics are still fragile,” he added.   

The court is widely expected to strike out the party, which has the potential to stir a new round of political uncertainty. 

“In the short term, there may be big protests across the country like those that happened when they dissolved Future Forward,” Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang, a constitutional scholar at Chulalongkorn University, told VOA. 

“But in the long term I’m more concerned that the conservative elite will actually succeed in slowly weakening the progressive movement, by banning MPs and dissolving whatever the next party incarnation is.” 

The monarchy sits at the head of Thai power, backed by an army which has carried out 13 coups since the kingdom became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. 

Where coups have failed to end the democracy cause, the courts have stepped in by banning parties and popular politicians, mainly from groups which threaten the status quo.  

The Constitutional Court can also impose a decade-long political ban on the party leader — including Pita — when it renders a decision. 

What happened 

Move Forward emerged from last year’s poll as the most serious threat to the elite order in a generation. Harvard-educated leader Pita appeared primed for the premiership. 

But he was blocked from taking office by senators who were appointed by generals after the last coup in 2014. The party was subsequently forced into the role of the opposition. 

Instead, conservatives rallied behind the Pheu Thai party, formerly Thailand’s most radical group, to take the reins of government. 

The courts have previously taken out parties linked with Pheu Thai’s founder, 74-year-old telecoms billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra. Until its deal to lead the government, Pheu Thai was seen as the gravest threat to the establishment.  

Now it finds itself aligned with its former enemies.  

“There’s no such thing as normal politics in this country,” Sirote Klampaiboon, an independent scholar and political commentator, told VOA.  

Referring to the establishment’s opposition, Klampaiboon said, “A political entity can be destroyed at any time. Participatory democracy can be destroyed at any time.” 

Even the current coalition government is now also being destabilized by court cases against its prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, and Pheu Thai’s patron, Thaksin. 

Experts say it is a sign of the kingdom’s conservatives exerting their behind-the-scenes control over politics despite losing the popular vote.  

If Move Forward is dissolved, most of its lawmakers are expected to regroup under a new banner, whose name has yet to be announced.  

Others, however, may defect to coalition parties — a common practice in Thai politics — weakening its parliamentary hand.  

Thailand’s latest democracy movement stems from Future Forward, founded by the billionaire scion of an auto parts empire, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. 

Future Forward won 6 million votes in the 2019 election but was dissolved a year later with Thanathorn banned from politics for a decade for breaching media shareholding rules, which he denied.  

Four years on, the party’s successor Move Forward won 14 million votes. 

Thanathorn, a charismatic figure who still pulls large crowds wherever he goes, says the future belongs to a new era in politics.  

“If Pita was our prime minister this would already be the beginning of a new era of progressive Thailand,” he told the audience at a June 1 screening of a documentary about his rise from nowhere to the center of Thai politics. 

“I’m confident that by 2027, when we will have the next election, our political horizons will be closer. Whatever our party name will be… we will absolutely be ready.”
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Tokyo — The United States needs Japan’s help to cope with strategic challenges in Europe and Asia that are straining its defense industries, the U.S. ambassador to Japan said on Monday as the countries kicked off talks on military industrial cooperation.

“Our national security strategy calls for us to be able to handle one and a half theaters, that’s a major war and another one to a stand-off, and with both the Middle East, Ukraine, and keeping our deterrence credible in this region (East Asia) you can already see that we are in two plus,” Rahm Emanuel told reporters. 

On Sunday, Japan and the U.S. kicked off their first talks in Tokyo on forging deeper defense industry collaboration under the U.S.-Japan Forum on Defense Industrial Cooperation, Acquisition and Sustainment (DICAS) established in April by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden.  

Discussions on Tuesday between U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William A. LaPlante and Masaki Fukasawa, the head of Japan’s Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Agency, will focus on naval repairs in Japan that could help free up U.S. yards to build more warships.

“China has a major capacity we already know that will surpass us on new shipbuilding,” Emanuel said.  

Other potential cooperation between Japan and the U.S. includes aircraft repairs, missile production and military supply chain resilience, he added.

Japan and the U.S. already build a missile defense interceptor together and Tokyo has also agreed to supply Patriot PAC3 air-defense missiles to the U.S. 
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Tokyo — Japanese laws making it easier for the country to deport failed asylum seekers took effect Monday, with campaigners warning that the new system will put lives at risk.

The world’s fourth-largest economy has long been criticized for the low number of asylum applications it accepts. Last year refugee status was granted to a record 303 people, mostly from Afghanistan.

Now the government can deport asylum seekers rejected three times, under immigration law changes enacted last year.

Previously, those seeking refugee status had been able to stay in the country while they appealed decisions, regardless of the number of attempts made.

The revised law is “meant to swiftly deport those without permission to stay and help reduce long-term detentions,” justice minister Ryuji Koizumi said in May.

“Those who need protection will be protected, while those who violate the rules will be dealt with sternly,” he said.

Critics have raised concerns over the transparency of Japan’s screening process, warning that the new rules could heighten the risk of applicants facing persecution after repatriation.

“We’re strongly concerned that the enforcement of this law will allow refugees who have fled to Japan to be deported, and endanger their lives and safety,” the Japan Association for Refugees said on social media platform X.

The group called for a “fair” system to be established instead that “protects asylum seekers in Japan according to the international standards.”

As of May, more than 2,000 Ukrainians were living in Japan under a special framework that recognizes them as “evacuees.”
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