Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Nepal’s new government takes office with a public mandate for reform, Bangladesh grapples with a drastic fuel shortage as the whole region suffers, and Pakistan steps up its mediation efforts in the Iran war.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Nepal’s new government takes office with a public mandate for reform, Bangladesh grapples with a drastic fuel shortage as the whole region suffers, and Pakistan steps up its mediation efforts in the Iran war.

Nepal’s New Government Off to Quick Start

Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah took office on Friday, and his government has a strong public mandate to act on its electoral promise to pursue governance reforms and curb corruption. Shah’s anti-establishment party was elected in a landslide last month, spurred in part by the youth-led protest movement that ousted the previous government last September.

The new government seemed to waste little time following through on its pledge: Police arrested former Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and former Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak on Saturday in connection with a report prepared by the interim government about the Oli government’s crackdown on protesters. (The report was leaked shortly before Shah took office.)

On Tuesday, another former senior official, Chhabilal Rijal—previously Kathmandu’s chief district officer—was arrested. The government has also intensified money laundering probes against Oli and two of the other biggest names in Nepali politics: Sher Bahadur Deuba and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, both of whom are also former prime ministers.

These are major developments not only because they happened so quickly, but also because they are so rare. Nepal’s political elite don’t typically face justice, even though they are widely believed to be involved in various forms of malfeasance. The country’s main anticorruption body prosecuted a former prime minister for the first time just last year

Shah’s government already faces a fundamental dilemma: By holding back, it risks angering a public with high expectations for rapid and meaningful political change. But by moving quickly, it risks a confrontation with the elites who have dominated the country since the abolition of the monarchy in 2008 and even since the transition to democracy began in the early 1990s.

In effect, the new government took power knowing that it would need to make a gamble either way. For now, it appears to be going on the offensive—a move that will earn it ample public goodwill and political capital. But it could potentially pose new challenges to its reformist and anticorruption agenda.

Pushback has already begun. On Monday, Nepal’s Supreme Court asked the government to explain in writing the reason for Oli and Lekhak’s arrests. There were small-scale protests in response to Oli’s detention. But the larger concern for the government may be resistance from the elite, security institutions, and others that have long benefited from the status quo.

The Home Ministry is the biggest potential flash point. Sudan Gurung, the new home minister, was a top protest leader who harshly criticized Nepal’s security agencies—which he now manages. There are no indications of resistance to Gurung’s orders, but if the government continues to push for investigations of the country’s most powerful figures, the calculus could change.

For now, it’s full speed ahead: Kathmandu has announced a 100-point plan for effective governance that includes probing the properties and assets of senior officials who held power going back to 1991. The government will bank on the public rallying around its efforts and any vested interests deferring to its will. (Oli, notably, has cooperated with investigating officials since he was ousted.)

Shah hopes that his good governance push will foster unity. Nepal’s government—unlike the interim administration in Bangladesh, which struggled to push through its reform agenda before elections in February—has the advantage of enjoying a strong public mandate, which should give it comfortable amounts of time and political space.

However, given the long history of political fragility in Nepal, which has cycled through nearly three dozen governments since 1990, the situation could easily go downhill in a hurry. In a worst-case scenario, continued efforts to investigate old guard leaders could prompt unrest among their bases, unite the opposition, and imperil the government’s reform agenda.

Ultimately, for Kathmandu, a middle-ground option that takes meaningful steps toward reform but not at breakneck speed may be the most prudent.

Bangladesh fuel shortage. Most South Asian states are suffering from oil and gas shortages amid the Iran war because of their heavy dependence on imports from the Middle East. Bangladesh might be experiencing the most serious crisis: The Telegraph reported that officials in Dhaka are becoming desperate as they face a real possibility of running out of fuel.

Bangladesh imports 95 percent of its oil and gas, and two-thirds of those imports come from Gulf countries. Dhaka has sought to pivot in recent days, acquiring 60,000 metric tons of oil from Indonesia and even requesting approval from the United States to import 600,000 metric tons of oil from Russia without incurring sanctions. However, Bangladesh’s government has denied that the country is running dry, blaming panic buying.

In Dhaka, lines are hours long at gas stations, universities are shut down, and civil servants are being asked to limit their electricity consumption. These woes reflect Bangladesh’s worsening energy insecurity in recent years, including decreases in domestic natural gas production—as well as the world’s lowest share of renewable energy, according to a former senior official.

Pakistan steps up Iran peace efforts. Pakistan remains at the center of diplomatic efforts to mediate between the United States and Iran. On Sunday, it hosted foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia to explore pathways toward peace. Cairo and Ankara were previously coordinating with Islamabad, but Riyadh was a new addition.

The participation of Saudi Arabia, which signed a mutual defense pact with Pakistan last year, may have been intended to signal that it backs Islamabad’s facilitation efforts—but if they fail, it would expect Pakistan to pledge to back the Saudis militarily as they come under fire from Tehran. Pakistan would much prefer to avoid that scenario.

On Tuesday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing. Pakistan and China then released what they described as a five-point initiative to restore peace and stability in the Middle East, calling for an immediate cease-fire, the launch of peace talks, pledges not to attack nonmilitary targets, and security for shipping traffic.

The initiative is a clear indication that China endorses the peace process. But it’s also likely an acknowledgement from Pakistan that Iranian buy-in will require a push from China—which has more leverage, given its economic clout.

More Afghanistan-Pakistan violence. Hostilities continue between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which on Sunday deployed artillery and heavy weapons against each other. In the aftermath, Pakistan rejected a Taliban accusation that its attacks had injured women and children. The violence came as Pakistan hosted discussions about peace in the Middle East with Saudi, Egyptian, and Turkish leaders.

This timing is awkward: Pakistan is pitching itself as a peace facilitator even as it wages war against Afghanistan. But for Islamabad, the biggest concern isn’t its global reputation. It is the risk that ongoing war in the Middle East could hamper its war strategy in Afghanistan—especially if conflict spillover effects on Pakistan’s border with Iran serve as a distraction.

In South Asia, where renewables are a small percentage of the overall energy mix, Bangladesh’s low consumption of clean fuels isn’t surprising. What is more striking is how Pakistan has dramatically ramped up its use of green energy in recent years, especially solar power.

Pakistan’s share of electricity produced by solar increased fivefold between December 2021 and December 2025. In 2024, it was the world’s third-largest importer of solar panels. Now, as the region faces energy shortage risks, Pakistan’s turn to solar power has provided a helpful cushion: Its need for gas for electricity generation has declined, especially during daytime hours.

Research shows that as of February, Pakistan was able to avoid around $12 billion in oil and gas imports due to its increasing embrace of solar. Remarkably, this shift has been driven by the public rather than policy. When global energy prices skyrocketed after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, people started installing solar panels.

So, this is not a case of Islamabad opting to go green—it’s simply the Pakistani people doing what’s most affordable.

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A Daily Mirror editorial discussing corruption allegations against Sri Lanka’s energy minister argues that the ruling party “should not forget that its strongest trump card in politics has been morality, which should be manifested in every aspect of its activities including governance.”

In Dawn, author and journalist Zahid Hussain warns that Pakistan’s role in U.S.-Iran mediation has risks. “While this role could be beneficial in resolving the conflict … Mediation between the aggressor and aggrieved has its inherent pitfalls,” he writes. “The task becomes more challenging when one party possesses far greater power and resou­r­ces.”

In the Indian Express, M.P. Nathanael, a retired police inspector general, contends that India’s success in defeating a Maoist insurgency in central India was “made possible not only by acceding to the logistical and infrastructural demands of the security forces to counter the Maoists but also by focusing simultaneously on the development of the region.”

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