A people without roofs: The Middle East's displacement problem

As Israel and Iran continue to exchange strikes, civilians are being pushed away from their homes. US President Donald Trump even called on Iranians to evacuate Tehran, a city housing over 10 million people, for their safety.Israel has experienced internal displacement before. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, between 2011 and 2022, Israel saw approximately 2.3 lakh instances of internal displacement due to conflict and violence, which affected at least 2.6 lakh people. The highest displacement occurred in 2023, when two lakh people were displaced due to conflict. In 2024, the number decreased to 68,000.advertisementInternal displacement across Middle EastAccording to the 2025 Global Report on Internal Displacement, several Middle Eastern countries faced significant internal displacement in 2024 due to ongoing conflict and instability. Syria had the highest number of people living in internal displacement due to conflict and violence, at over 7.4 million, with about seven lakh instances of displacement annually. Yemen followed, with around 4.8 million internally displaced peoples. In Palestine and Lebanon, two countries facing a prolonged conflict, 2.03 million and 0.99 million people were displaced in 2024.
Internal displacement is a global issue. But it has overwhelmingly affected the Middle East. Among the five countries with the highest number of people living in displacement due to conflict and violence in 2024, two are from the Middle East: Syria and Yemen.In 2024, conflict and violence caused 20.1 million displacements worldwide. By the end of the year, the number of people living in internal displacement reached 83.4 million. This reflects a 106 per cent increase from 2015, when 40.5 million people were living in displacement.Tune InMust Watch

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Hans India

9 minutes ago

• Hans India

India's exports of pharmaceuticals, textiles, jewellery to US likely to go up after bilateral trade pact

New Delhi: Although the US is India's largest export partner, there is scope to increase exports further in areas such as smartphones, certain pharma products and labour-intensive exports such as textiles and gems and jewellery under the bilateral trade agreement (BTA) between the two countries that is expected to be signed by the fall (September-October) of this year, according to a Crisil report released on Monday. To begin with, India should be prepared to see more imports from the US under the BTA. This is because India's tariffs are much higher than those of the US, and bringing these down would be advantageous to exporters in the US, the report points out. It highlights that the imminent bilateral trade agreement will likely lead to a reduction in India's goods trade surplus with the US. India would be able to import more energy products, defence equipment and certain agricultural products, among others, from the US after the agreement is signed. The report further states that India accounts for only a small part of the USA's imports. India's exports, however, are unlikely to see a major spike because the focus of the Donald Trump administration is to reduce its trade deficit with India, and most of India's top exports to the US are already duty-free (i.e. before the application of baseline 10 per cent, which is applicable since April 10). Besides, the export potential would also depend eventually on the amount of tariff India faces when compared with other competing nations, it added. According to the report, there is some potential to improve. The US is not only the world's largest economy, but also the world's largest importer. In 2024, its goods imports stood at $3.36 trillion (in contrast, China and Germany, the second- and third-largest importing nations, recorded $2.59 trillion and $1.43 trillion worth of goods imports, respectively), according to ITC Trade Map. But India's share in the US's global imports was just 2.7 per cent. Thus, there is some scope for India to increase its exports to the US. The report said that "to understand the areas where India can potentially increase exports to the US, we assess the following two matrices". "Among the top 25 items India exports to the US, products such as diamonds, marine products and bed linen already have a high penetration there. The penetration remains low for others, such as smartphones and certain pharma products. Also, only two of India's top 25 export items faced the most favoured nation (MFN) tariff in 2024; others were duty-free. Clearly, this means Indian goods will have to become more competitive to gain further market share. Though a vast majority of India's exports to the US are duty-free, several products attract MFN tariffs. For instance, out of the US's goods imports of $91.2 billion from India in 2024, $32.9 billion worth of goods (36 per cent) attracted tariffs. The US announced reciprocal tariffs on India and a host of other nations on April 2, 2025, and then paused the increase for 90 days from April 10 to negotiate trade deals with these countries (for India, the reciprocal tariff was 26 per cent, lower than the tariff on many other Asian peers). During the pause period, a 10 per cent base tariff remains applicable (over and above the existing tariffs) on all countries, including India.

Scroll.in

12 minutes ago

• Scroll.in

Israel-Iran conflict top updates: Global oil prices surge to five-month high

Global oil prices surged to a five-month high on Monday amid escalating tensions in West Asia, following strikes by the United States and Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities, Reuters reported. The conflict escalated on Sunday when the US joined Israel's war on Iran. President Donald Trump said that the country carried out a 'very successful attack' on Iranian nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz and Esfahan. The United States' decision to directly enter the conflict came more than a week after the Israeli military struck what it claimed were nuclear targets, and also other sites, in Iran with the aim of stalling Tehran's nuclear programme. Iran retaliated with missile attacks on Israel. Iran responded to the US strikes by threatening to expand its list of legitimate military targets. Here is more on this and other top updates: The benchmark Brent crude on Monday briefly touched the price of $81.4 per barrel and US West Texas Intermediate hit $78.4, before falling marginally, Reuters reported. The prices stabilised at a about 1% gain. The volatility reflected heightened concerns about the potential disruption of fuel supplies, particularly because of the possible blocking of the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint. Around one-fifth of the world's oil passes through the narrow strait. While no direct disruption to oil flows had taken place, the market was pricing in a possible Iranian retaliation, which could include targeting of oil tankers, Reuters quoted analysts as saying. Iran is the third-largest oil producer among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said that Iran's underground nuclear facility at Fordo had likely suffered ' very significant damage ' following the US strikes that used bunker-buster bombs. 'At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordo,' the chief of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said. The Israel Defense Forces said that it had carried out a second strike on the Fordo nuclear site earlier in the day, following the US attack on Sunday. The action was meant to 'obstruct access routes' to the site, the Israeli military said. Israel also carried out strikes on Iranian security command centres and targets in the capital city of Tehran, including the Evin prison, where political prisoners are believed to be held, BBC quoted Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz as saying. Iran warned the US of a broader military response, with a senior Iranian official calling Trump a ' gambler ', Reuters reported. 'Mr Trump, the gambler, you may start this war, but we will be the ones to end it,' said Ebrahim Zolfaqari, the spokesperson for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters. During talks in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi that the strikes on Iran were not justified

Time of India

14 minutes ago

• Time of India

Donald Trump strikes Iran: How India got its nukes – and defied US and other nuclear-haves

There's a running meme on X, the hellhole formerly known as Twitter, where a doctor asks a patient: 'Do you have a history of mental illness in your family?' To this, the patient replies: 'I have an uncle who believes Iran is close to a nuclear weapon for the last 50 years. ' Perhaps that's why Operation Midnight Hammer – a blow-by-blow remake of Top Gun: Maverick – was carried out with such haste that even half of Donald Trump's base were still railing against it as the bombs dropped on Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. While Iran's Godot-like wait for nuclear weapons continues, it's illustrative to see how India, a nation that didn't evoke very warm feelings from Uncle Sam in the past, became a nuclear superpower. How did a newly freed, partition-bruised, socialist-leaning, and largely illiterate country go from famine queues and imported milk powder to becoming one of the world's most improbable nuclear powers? The truth is that politicians of various vintages played a part, irrespective of their worldview or political leanings. Every one of them was of the opinion that the Ayatollahs of Potomac (a delightful term coined by TOI legend K Subrahmanyam, the father of the current external affairs minister) couldn't be the only ones with the power of the sun in the palm of their hands. As George Fernandes, the erstwhile Defence Minister of India in the Vajpayee government, summed up this grit: 'I am not a former socialist; I am a socialist. I am not a former pacifist; I am a pacifist. I am even today an anti-nuclear weapon man. But as a defence minister of the country, I will do whatever is best to protect its border, and if that means nuclear bomb, then why not?' When pressed on how one could do so at the risk of contradicting oneself, Fernandes dug deep into the Lord Krishna rationale that one's dharma trumps all contradictions, pointing out: 'Yes, even at the cost of contradicting oneself, even at the cost of dying. If the security of the country requires me to die, I shall die. It's about being realistic. It's about being patriotic.' While with the benefit of hindsight, it might seem inevitable that the land that gave the world the Bhagavad Gita would come up with nuclear weapons, here's the tale of how it went down. The Science Segue What is a nuclear weapon — and why do countries want one? Let's say you haven't seen Oppenheimer , skipped physics class, and think 'fusion' is what happens when you have tandoori gravy momos. To understand nukes, we need to rewind to 1905, when a wild-haired Swiss patent clerk named Albert Einstein wrote four papers that changed science forever. One of them suggested that mass and energy are two sides of the same coin. A few months later, he dropped a tiny but terrifying equation: E = mc². That means energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Since light travels really fast — about 300 million metres per second — squaring it makes even a small amount of mass release a huge amount of energy. So, how do we turn that into a weapon? That's where nuclear physics steps in. Certain heavy atoms like uranium-235 or plutonium-239 are naturally unstable. If you shoot a neutron at them, they split — releasing heat, radiation, and more neutrons. Those neutrons hit other atoms, which split too. It's called a chain reaction — kind of like a viral WhatsApp message, but instead of arguments, you get a mushroom cloud. That's how atomic bombs work. The ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki used two designs: Gun-type: smash two pieces of uranium together I mplosion-type: use explosives to compress plutonium until it explodes Both use Einstein's idea: a little mass disappears, and a huge burst of energy takes its place. There's also the hydrogen bomb, which is even more terrifying, but beyond the scope of this piece. By the 1960s, nuclear weapons were the privilege of a select five—America, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China—enshrined as permanent members of the global atomic aristocracy, the kind that liked to invade Vietnam in their spare time and host disarmament conferences in their downtime. There is something about nukes and their miasma. Once you have them, you don't want others to get them. You start doing everything in your power to stop anyone else from joining this super-exclusive club, because deterrence is always more comfortable when it's a monopoly. And then in 1974, India came knocking—with Smiling Buddha, gatecrashing the party with a silent explosion in the Rajasthan desert. If Israel was the nuclear sphinx, India was the grinning intruder who didn't wait for an invitation. Act I: Nehru's Noble Atom and Bhabha's Quiet Calculations How did a socialist, beggared and non-aligned country acquire nuclear weapons? It all started with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Fabian socialist who wasn't beyond making a Faustian deal if it was for the nation's betterment. While he publicly championed atomic energy for rural electrification, privately he laid the groundwork for a weapons programme. Enter Homi Jehangir Bhabha—part physicist, part institution-builder, all ambition, played with élan by Jim Sarbh in the heavily fictionalised Rocket Boys, whose cheekbones are capable of setting off a different sort of chemical reaction. A Cambridge-trained genius with a velvet accent, Bhabha envisioned a self-sufficient Indian nuclear complex. He set up the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948 and Trombay's Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) soon after. His three-stage nuclear plan was audacious: heavy water reactors for plutonium, fast breeder reactors for more fissile material, and eventually, thorium-based systems. In 1955, India obtained the CIRUS reactor from Canada, with heavy water courtesy the United States—both under the Atoms for Peace programme. It was a masterclass in strategic procurement. Act II: The Dragon Strikes, the Buddha Smiles Enter the dragon. In 1962, Chinese troops stormed Indian posts in Ladakh and Arunachal. The result wasn't just military humiliation; it was psychological trauma. Nehru aged a decade overnight. And two years later, when China tested a nuclear bomb in Lop Nur, India realised it wasn't just behind—it was vulnerable. And then came the prodigal daughter. Indira Gandhi had no qualms about the world or any delusions about power. By the early '70s, the scientific community—led by Raja Ramanna, P.K. Iyengar, and M.R. Srinivasan—had weaponised the plutonium harvested from CIRUS. On May 18, 1974, India conducted its first nuclear test in Pokhran, Rajasthan. Codenamed Smiling Buddha, because what better name for a nuclear bomb than the progenitor of peace, the device yielded around 8 kilotons, billed as a 'peaceful nuclear explosion'. Canada fumed and threw a Trudeau-level fit. The US imposed sanctions. But much like she did when Richard Nixon threatened her during the Bangladesh Liberation War, Indira Gandhi didn't flinch. Act III: Recessed Deterrence—Weapons Without Words From 1974 to 1998, India lived in nuclear ambiguity. We had tested a bomb—but never declared a doctrine. This era, later dubbed "recessed deterrence", saw India perfect the art of silent readiness. Prime Ministers like Morarji Desai were openly anti-nuclear. Others, like Rajiv Gandhi, were more nuanced—calling for universal disarmament while funding missile programmes. In this period, India commissioned the Dhruva reactor for weapons-grade plutonium. Ballistic missiles like Prithvi and Agni were tested under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, overseen by Dr. Abdul Kalam. Still, New Delhi avoided another test. The 1985 NPT Review Conference slammed the door shut on India's membership. But India refused to sign a treaty that said: 'You can't have nukes, but the P5 can.' Act IV: Narasimha Rao 's Nuclear Poker By the 1990s, India was ready. And P.V. Narasimha Rao, India's philosopher-king of pragmatism, knew it. In 1995, with the Clinton administration distracted by Yeltsin's vodka diplomacy and Pakistani warlords, Rao greenlit preparations for Pokhran-II. Shafts were drilled. Scientists were mobilised. Dr. Kalam, Dr. R. Chidambaram, and their teams stood by. Then, American satellites picked up movement. The CIA raised alarms. A New York Times exposé spooked Washington. Clinton dialled Delhi. Rao, deadpan as ever, stonewalled. The tests were paused. But he didn't stop the programme. Instead, he ensured everything stayed intact—ready for a more audacious successor. As legend has it, Rao whispered to Atal Bihari Vajpayee before leaving office: 'Everything is ready. You just have to press the button.' Rao never took credit. But when the mushroom clouds rose in 1998, they bore his blueprint. Act V: Pokhran-II—India Goes Loud On May 11 and 13, 1998, India conducted five nuclear tests. Codename: Operation Shakti. This time, it wasn't a 'peaceful' explosion. It was a declaration. Fission and fusion devices were tested. Thermonuclear capability was claimed (though some scientists later debated the yield). Prime Minister Vajpayee announced: 'India is now a nuclear weapons state.' Sanctions came. Condemnations followed. India shrugged. The team that delivered this feat: Dr R. Chidambaram – chief scientific coordinator Dr. Abdul Kalam – DRDO's key missile man K. Santhanam – test range commander Anil Kakodkar, V.S. Arunachalam, S.K. Sikka – technical leads Pakistan tested six devices in response. South Asia was officially a two-bomb region. But India's message was clear: deterrence, not domination. Act VI: From Outlaw to Operator—The Indo-US Nuclear Deal Having proven its capabilities, India now wanted respect. In 2005, under Manmohan Singh , India signed the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement with President George W. Bush. It was historic. For the first time, a non-NPT country gained access to civilian nuclear trade. The deal was backed by the US Congress, the IAEA, and the NSG. It marked India's transformation from global pariah to trusted partner—without dismantling a single warhead. Critics cried foul. Proponents hailed it as a realpolitik victory. For India, it was simple: we earned the bomb. Now we wanted the fuel. Epilogue: From Fallout to Future The bomb was never the endgame. It was the insurance policy. A radioactive reminder that India wouldn't be bullied into compliance or bribed into silence. The scientists were the magicians, the politicians their illusionists. But behind them stood a civilisation that never wanted conquest—only the right to decide its destiny. From Bhabha's lab bench to Vajpayee's launch pad, India's nuclear odyssey was built on a foundation of paradoxes: peaceful atoms turned potent, idealism wrapped in pragmatism, and restraint forged through power. Today, India's nuclear arsenal isn't about posturing. It's about posture—calm, calculated, credible. We built the bomb not to drop it, but to make sure no one else could. So the next time someone scoffs at Indian statecraft, remind them: we cracked open the atom, outfoxed the CIA, kept our doctrine unspoken, and still walked into the world's nuclear club with our head held high. We didn't explode to destroy. We exploded to exist. And that, in the final analysis, is how you detonate a dream.