ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s minister for information technology and telecommunication confirmed Friday the government is implementing an internet firewall but rejected talk that the tool will curb free speech online, defending it as a cybersecurity upgrade.

“It’s a system. It is not a physical wall that we are putting up,” Shaza Fatima Khawaja, the state minister, told VOA. “It will not curb anything.”

The junior minister, currently the ministry’s top official, defended the government’s decision to implement a nationwide internet regulatory tool, saying the country was under daily cyberattacks.

“If a cybersecurity system, a capability, comes to the government, it’s a good thing,” Khawaja said in response to a VOA question at a news briefing earlier.

Pakistan has allocated more than $70 million for a Digital Infrastructure Development Initiative in the latest budget. Critics and digital rights activists worry the nationwide firewall will be used to silence dissent.

Pakistani authorities have hinted at a nationwide censorship tool for months but hesitated to issue a formal statement.

In a January interview with a news channel, Pakistan’s then-interim prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, announced the measure.

“Very soon a national firewall will be deployed,” Kakar said.

A high-ranking government official confirmed to VOA Urdu in June that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government was working to deploy a nationwide tool meant to control internet traffic and filter content available to online users in Pakistan.

Sharif’s government has rebuffed calls for clarity, however, while downplaying censorship concerns.

“I think if there is a firewall system, it will be about cybersecurity and data security. It will have nothing to do with freedom of speech, as far as I know,” Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar said at a news briefing Sunday.

Earlier the minister dismissed reports that Pakistan was acquiring an online censorship tool from China.

Digital terrorism

The firewall comes as the Pakistani military faces severe criticism online for its alleged role in keeping former Prime Minister Imran Khan behind bars while his party continues to face a crackdown.

The military, which denies meddling in political affairs, has lately been using the term “digital terrorists” for online critics.

“Just as terrorists use weapons to get their demands met, digital terrorists use negative propaganda and fake news on social media platforms, mobiles and computers to create despondency to get their demands met,” Pakistani military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said at a news conference this week.

Chaudhry said the military had become the sole target of digital terrorists.

He blamed a “certain” political party without naming Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf party, which has a formidable social media presence.

This week, police raided the PTI’s headquarters in the Pakistani capital, detaining its chief spokesperson and several other media team members, accusing them of running an “anti-state campaign.”

Service disruption

On Thursday, Pakistani media outlet The News reported recent problems users encountered in sharing content via the Meta-owned messaging app Whatsapp were a result of a test run of the firewall.

Refusing to comment on the implementation process of the firewall, the spokesperson of the independent Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said the regulator did not receive any reports of service disruptions.

“Our systems were clear. They were up and running. They did not falter anywhere,” Malahat Obaid told VOA, adding that the problems users faced could be because of a technical glitch.

Cybersecurity watchdog NetBlocks recorded five incidents of authorities restricting internet access so far this year. The disruptions occurred around February’s general elections.
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BEIJING — What was Typhoon Gaemi was heading to inland China on Friday after weakening to a severe tropical storm soon after making landfall on the east coast the previous night.

The storm felled trees, flooded streets and damaged crops in China but there were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage. Five people died in Taiwan, which Gaemi crossed at typhoon strength on Thursday before heading over open waters to China.

The worst loss of life, however, was in a country that Gaemi earlier passed by but didn’t strike directly: the Philippines. A steadily climbing death toll has reached 34, authorities there said Friday. The typhoon exacerbated seasonal monsoon rains in the Southeast Asian country, causing landslides and severe flooding that stranded people on rooftops as waters rose around them.

China

Gaemi waned into a severe tropical storm after coming ashore Thursday evening in coastal Fujian province, but it is still expected to bring heavy rains in the coming days as it moves northwest to Jiangxi, Hubei and Henan provinces.

About 85 hectares (210 acres) of crops were damaged in Fujian province and economic losses were estimated at 11.5 million yuan ($1.6 million), according to Chinese media reports. More than 290,000 people were relocated because of the storm.

Elsewhere in China, several days of heavy rains this week in Gansu province left one dead and three missing in the country’s northwest, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Taiwan

Residents and business owners swept out mud and mopped up water Friday after serious flooding that sent cars and scooters floating down streets in parts of southern and central Taiwan.

Five people died, several of them struck by falling trees and one by a landslide hitting their house. More than 650 people were injured, the emergency operations center said.

Visiting hard-hit Kaohsiung in the south, President Lai Ching-te commended the city’s efforts to improve flood control since a 2009 typhoon that brought a similar amount of rain and killed 681 people, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported.

Lai announced that cash payments of $20,000 New Taiwan Dollars ($610) would be given to households in severely flooded areas.

Philippines

At least 34 people have died in the Philippines, mostly because of flooding and landslides triggered by days of monsoon rains that intensified when the typhoon — called Carina in the Philippines — passed by the archipelago’s east coast.

The victims included 11 people in the Manila metro area, where widespread flooding trapped people on the roofs and upper floors of their houses, police said. Some drowned or were electrocuted in their flooded communities.

Earlier this week, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered authorities to speed up efforts in delivering food and other aid to isolated rural villages, saying people may not have eaten for days.

The bodies of a pregnant woman and three children were dug out Wednesday after a landslide buried a shanty in the rural mountainside town of Agoncillo in Batangas province.
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ISLAMABAD — New research suggests that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan will drop to record-low levels in 2024, due to the ban on the crop imposed by the Taliban government two years ago.

The findings, released this week by Alcis, a geospatial analytics firm, are based on high-resolution satellite mapping of 14 out of the 34 Afghan provinces.

“These 14 provinces were responsible for 92% of the country’s total poppy cultivation in 2022, cultivating 201,725 hectares out of a total of 219,978 hectares grown,” according to the study published on Thursday.

“In 2023, cultivation in these provinces had fallen to 15,648 hectares (50% of the crop that year), and in 2024, only 3,641 hectares of poppy were grown,” it said.

“This year, as in 2023, it is expected that poppy cultivation will be at close to historically low levels,” said Alcis.

The Afghan provinces in focus include Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Farah in the south and southwest and Nangarhar and Baghlan in the east and north.

The Taliban banned poppy cultivation and production eight months after the then-insurgent group reclaimed power from an internationally backed Afghan government in August 2021.

The following year, Afghanistan still supplied about 80% of the global illegal opiate demand and 95% of Europe’s heroin in 2022, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC.  But the U.N. agency noted in its 2024 World Drug Report that the ban had reduced opium production in the impoverished country by 95%.

The Alcis study warns there are pockets of resistance to the Taliban’s ban, particularly in the remote, northeastern border province of Badakhshan.

“Widespread [poppy] cultivation persists” in the province, the study noted, and the Taliban’s eradication efforts have been met with violence, leaving at least five people, including three Taliban soldiers, dead in April.

“The events in Badakhshan and elsewhere, where farmers have responded to the ban by abandoning important cash crops, growing staple food crops such as wheat, and leaving land fallow, suggest the Taliban’s poppy ban is fragile and will become more difficult to enforce in the future,” Alcis cautioned.

The firm noted that without the income brought in by opium production, many Afghan farmers are struggling to earn a livelihood.  It said without markets for cash-producing crops and an increase in non-farm opportunities, the Taliban may face “further unrest and further outmigration.”

The Taliban takeover has led to deepening economic troubles in Afghanistan, mainly attributed to international financial and banking sector sanctions. It has also exacerbated a long-running Afghan humanitarian crisis.

The country remains a global pariah largely because of the Taliban’s curbs on women’s access to education and work, deterring the international community from formally recognizing the de facto Afghan government and offering any financial aid.

On Tuesday, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told a national conference in Kabul that the drug ban had led to immense economic pressures and severe hardships for Afghans already reeling from the effects of years of war and natural disasters. He lamented the ongoing lack of international cooperation in response.

“The illegal production of drugs has ceased. The [more than 4 million] addicts [in Afghanistan] are now in need of medical treatment while the farmers need livelihoods and employment,” Muttaqi said.  

“Regrettably, the international community has failed to fulfill its responsibility in this matter. Instead, they have imposed sanctions on Afghan trade, travel, and banking sectors in breach of the universal fundamental human rights,” he added.
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New Delhi — Sri Lanka will hold its first presidential election since the country sank into a deep economic crisis two years ago. The vote to be held September 21, will be a referendum on the reforms that have helped stabilize the economy but also led to hardship for millions in the island nation.    

After the Election Commission announced the polls on Friday, President Ranil Wickremesinghe filed as an independent candidate. He had taken charge in 2022, after widespread protests forced his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to resign.    

His rise to the top job had disappointed the protesters, analysts say. “This is an election that people are really looking forward to because it will restore a government with the mandate of the people which was lost two years ago following the popular uprising against the government led by Rajapaksa, who was blamed for massive economic mismanagement and corruption,” Jehan Perera, a political analyst in Colombo told VOA.    

Wickremesinghe had been elected as president by Parliament, largely with the support of lawmakers from Rajapaksa’s party.    

Economic issues will dominate the five-week campaign in a country that was ranked as a middle-income nation before it faced virtual bankruptcy and defaulted on its foreign debt.    

Wickremesinghe is credited with putting the economy on the path to recovery with the help of a $2.9 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund. The economy is expected to grow 3% this year after shrinking by 7.3% two years ago. The severe shortages of fuel, cooking gas, food and medicines that the country witnessed two years ago have eased and the hourslong daily power cuts have ended.   

But austerity measures imposed by his government to rescue the economy have been deeply unpopular. Taxes have been hiked on businesses and professionals and massive subsidies for electricity and other utilities have been slashed.    

As a result, millions of ordinary Sri Lankans face plummeting standards of living. 

 “Prices have risen threefold since 2022, but for a vast majority of people incomes are still the same. While it is true that there are no long lines for food and gas now, that is because people cannot really afford to buy much,” Perara said.    

An April World Bank report said that poverty rates have continued to rise in the country, with an estimated 25.9% of Sri Lankans living below the poverty line last year.    

Opposition parties have been critical of what they call “hard reforms” imposed on the country.    

Wickremesinghe’s main rival is expected to be Sajith Premadasa, who heads the country’s main opposition party. Anura Dissanayake, who leads a leftist party that has gained popularity in the last year, is expected to be another contender for the top job.      

“The opposition says it will relieve the austerity measures and will renegotiate part of the IMF program, but it is not yet clear what exactly they are proposing,” Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo told VOA. “Polls conducted over the last month suggest that the public mood is also one of disapproval of the reforms.”     

Saravanamuttu also calls the presidential election critical for democracy – it will be the first vote to be held in the country since the economic collapse triggered political turmoil.    

Local elections due to be held last year were postponed indefinitely after the government said it had no money to conduct a nationwide vote.
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Vientiane, Laos — China and Russia’s foreign ministers met their Southeast Asian counterparts Friday after vowing to counter “extra-regional forces,” a day before Washington’s top diplomat was due to arrive.

Wang Yi and Sergei Lavrov were attending a three-day meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc in the Laos capital of Vientiane.

Both held talks with counterparts from the bloc, while Wang also met with new British Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

On Thursday Wang and Lavrov agreed to work together in “countering any attempts by extra-regional forces to interfere in Southeast Asian affairs,” according to Moscow’s foreign ministry.

They also discussed implementing “a new security architecture” in Eurasia, Lavrov said in a statement, without elaborating.

According to a readout from Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Wang said Beijing was “ready to work with Russia to… firmly support each other, safeguard each other’s core interests.”

China is a close political and economic ally of Russia, and NATO members have branded Beijing a “decisive enabler” of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to arrive in Vientiane on Saturday morning for talks with ASEAN foreign ministers.

Blinken has made Washington’s alliances in Asia a top foreign policy priority, with the aim of “advancing a free and open” Indo-Pacific — a veiled way of criticizing China and its ambitions.

But Blinken shortened his Asia itinerary by a day to be present for Thursday’s White House meeting between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Wang and Blinken will meet in Laos, a spokeswoman for Beijing’s foreign ministry said, to “exchange views on issues of common concern.”

South China Sea dispute

On Friday Wang met ASEAN foreign ministers and hailed Beijing’s deepening economic ties with the region.

For the customary joint handshake, Wang stood next to Myanmar’s representative Aung Kyaw Moe, permanent secretary to the foreign affairs ministry.

The ASEAN bloc has banned Myanmar’s junta from high-level meetings over its 2021 coup and crackdown on dissent that have plunged the country into turmoil.

Lavrov also met ASEAN counterparts at the venue in Vientiane but did not take questions from journalists.

ASEAN ministers are expected to issue a joint communique after the three-day meeting.

One diplomatic source said the joint communique is being held up by lack of consensus over the wording of the paragraphs on the Myanmar conflict and disputes in the South China Sea.

Beijing claims the waterway — through which trillions of dollars of trade passes annually — almost in its entirety despite an international court ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.

Several Southeast Asian countries have competing claims. 
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MELBOURNE, Australia — At least 26 people were reportedly killed by a gang in three remote villages in Papua New Guinea’s north, United Nations and police officials say.

“It was a very terrible thing … when I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women. They were killed by a group of 30 young men,” acting Provincial Police Commander in the South Pacific island nation’s East Sepik province James Baugen told Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday.

Baugen told the ABC that all the houses in the villages had been burned and the remaining villagers were sheltering at a police station, too scared to name the perpetrators.

“Some of the bodies left in the night were taken by crocodiles into the swamp. We only saw the place where they were killed. There were heads chopped off,” Baugen said, adding that the attackers were hiding and there were no arrests yet.

U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement Wednesday that the attacks happened on July 16 and July 18.

“I am horrified by the shocking eruption of deadly violence in Papua New Guinea, seemingly as the result of a dispute over land and lake ownership and user rights,” Turk said.

Turk said at least 26 people had reportedly died, including 16 children.

“This number could rise to over 50, as local authorities search for missing people. In addition, more than 200 villagers fled as their homes were torched,” Turk said.

The Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary in the capital Port Moresby did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’s request for comment on Friday.

East Sepik Governor Allan Bird said violence across this diverse nation of more than 10 million people, who are mostly subsistence farmers, had escalated in the past decade. Police were under-resourced and rarely intervene, Bird said.

Papua New Guinea has more than 800 Indigenous languages and has been riven by tribal conflicts over land for centuries.

Most of the country’s land belongs to tribes rather than individuals. With no clear borders, territorial disputes never end.

These conflicts have become increasingly lethal in recent decades as combatants move from bows and arrows to assault rifles. Mercenaries are increasingly becoming involved.

Blake Johnson, an analyst at the Australian Security Policy Institute think tank, said while the East Sepik slayings appeared to be a “particularly gruesome event, it is not the first instance of mass murder this year” in Papua New Guinea.

“Escalation of violence between groups, often leading to retaliatory murder is, at best, culturally accepted and at worst encouraged,” Johnson said.

Law enforcement officers lacked the resources and training to police most of the country, he said.

“The country is took big, too harsh and too difficult to navigate, and we don’t even know how many people live in these places,” Johnson said.

Papua New Guinea’s tribal fighting attracted international attention in February, when at least 26 combatants and an unconfirmed number of bystanders were killed in a gunbattle in Enga province.

Ongoing conflict complicated an emergency response in May when a landslide in the same province devastated at least one village. The Papua New Guinea government said more than 2,000 people were killed, while the United Nations estimated the death toll at 670.

Internal security problems in Papua New Guinea, the South Pacific’s most populous country after Australia, has become a battle line for China’s struggle against U.S. allies for influence in the region.

Australia, Papua New Guinea’s former colonial master and its most generous provider of foreign aid, signed a bilateral security pact last year that targets its nearest neighbor’s growing security concerns, while Beijing also reportedly wants to ink a policing agreement with Port Moresby.

In 2022, China struck a secretive security pact with Papua New Guinea’s near-neighbor Solomon Islands in 2022, which included police aid and has raised concerns that a Chinese naval base could be established in the South Pacific.
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The Indian Sundarbans is home to millions of people and the region’s endangered Bengal tigers. In recent years, rising sea levels and deadly storms forced farmers to travel deep into the tigers’ forests to make a living. Hundreds of men have been killed, leaving widows impoverished and shunned.
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TOKYO — Heavy rain in the past week has triggered floods and landslides in Japan, disrupting transportation and forcing residents to take shelter on safer ground. Four people were missing Friday, including two police officers.

The rain had subsided in Yamagata and Akita prefectures Friday, but the area was still at risk of flooding and landslides. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida urged people to “put safety first.”

According to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, one person was missing Thursday in Yuzawa city in Akita prefecture after being hit by a landslide at a road construction site. In Akita city, rescuers were searching for an 86-year-old man whose bicycle and helmet were found floating by a river, media reports said.

Rescue workers in Yokote city evacuated 11 people from a flooded area with the help of a boat.

In Shinjo city in Yamagata prefecture just south of Akita, two police officers were missing after reporting from a patrolling vehicle that they were being swept away by floodwaters. A police vehicle half filled with water was found by the swollen river, the agency said. Thirty-seven people were stranded at a flooded nursing home in the city.

More than 10 centimeters of rain fell in the hardest-hit Yuza and Sakata towns in Yamagata within an hour earlier Thursday.

Thousands of residents have been advised to take shelter at higher and safer grounds, but it was not immediately known how many people took that advice.

Yamagata Shinkansen bullet train services were still partially suspended Friday, according to East Japan Railway Company.

The Japan Meteorological Agency forecast up to 20 centimeters of more rainfall in the region through Friday evening, urging residents to remain cautious.
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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka will hold a presidential election on Sept. 21 that will likely be a test of confidence in President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s efforts to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis.

The date was announced by the independent elections commission Friday, which said nominations will be accepted on August 15.

Wickremesinghe is expected to run while his main rivals will be opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and Anura Dissanayake, who is the leader of a leftist political party that has gained popularity after the economic debacle.

It will be the first election in the South Asian island nation after it declared bankruptcy in 2022 and suspended repayments on some $83 billion in domestic and foreign loans.

That followed a severe foreign exchange crisis that led to a severe shortage of essentials such as food, medicine, fuel and cooking gas, and extended power outages.

The election is largely seen as a crucial vote for the island nation’s efforts to conclude a critical debt restructuring program and as well as completing the financial reforms agreed under a bailout program by the International Monetary Fund.

The country’s economic upheaval led to a political crisis that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign in 2022. Parliament then elected the then-Prime Minister Wickremesinghe as president.

Under Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka has been negotiating with the international creditors to restructure the staggering debts and to put the economy back on the track. The IMF has also approved a four-year bailout program last March to help Sri Lanka.

Last month, Wickremesinghe announced that his government has struck a debt restructuring deal with countries including India, France, Japan and China — marking a key step in the country’s economic recovery after defaulting on debt repayment in 2022.

The economic situation has improved under Wickremesinghe and severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine have largely abated. But public dissatisfaction has grown over the government’s effort to increase revenue by raising electricity bills and imposing heavy new income taxes on professionals and businesses, as part of the government’s efforts to meet the IMF conditions.

Sri Lanka’s crisis was largely the result of staggering economic mismanagement combined with fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which along with 2019 terrorism attacks devastated its important tourism industry. The coronavirus crisis also disrupted the flow of remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad.

Additionally, the then-government slashed taxes in 2019, depleting the treasury just as the virus hit. Foreign exchange reserves plummeted, leaving Sri Lanka unable to pay for imports or defend its beleaguered currency, the rupee.

Under the agreements with its creditors, Sri Lanka will be able to defer all bilateral loan instalment payments until 2028. Furthermore, Sri Lanka will be able to repay all the loans on concessional terms, with an extended period until 2043. The agreements would cover $10 billion of debt.

By 2022, Sri Lanka had to repay about $6 billion in foreign debt every year, amounting to about 9.2% of gross domestic product. The agreement would enable Sri Lanka to maintain debt payments at less than 4.5% of GDP between 2027 and 2032.
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washington — Militant attacks in Pakistan’s northwest have plagued the region for years, leading to tensions between some of the region’s civilian leaders and the Pakistani military.

Last month, the military announced the Azm-e-Istehkam or “Resolve for Stability” offensive would be an operation that cracks down on militants, but after a decade of similar interventions, many residents in the region are wary.

This week, a man recorded a video while standing next to debris from a girls school that militants blew up Monday night in a small village in the North Waziristan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He lamented how violent the province has become, especially compared with other, more peaceful parts of Pakistan.

“We never heard that a school was blown up in Punjab,” Pakistan’s most populous province and home to the majority of the country’s armed forces, he said.

Mohsin Dawar, the former chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Pakistan’s lower house, posted video of the destroyed school on the X platform with a comment, “The state stands by, complicit in the destruction.”

Monday’s destruction of the girls school was not unusual. Last week there were attacks on police stations, a hospital and an army base, all in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province about the same size as Iceland or South Korea.

After years of violence, the local Pashtun population is questioning why peace has not returned to the border region despite the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from neighboring Afghanistan.

The ongoing militant attacks have boosted support for a local rights movement, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement, which is leading a series of mass peace rallies aimed at holding Pakistan’s military accountable for its track record in combating terrorism.

The group is the major voice opposing the government’s plan to launch another military operation in the region to try to drive out militants and end the attacks.

The prospect of another military offensive has drawn opposition from residents, who remember the large-scale displacements that happened when the military launched offensives twice before in the last decade.

Army spokesperson Lieutenant General Ahmad Sharif on Monday blamed groups who oppose the new offensive for allegedly trying to sabotage the operation with a disinformation campaign.

He insisted the proposed Azm-e-Istehkam is aimed at destroying militant groups operating in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, two provinces that border Afghanistan, Iran and the strategic Arabian Sea, and also host several major Chinese-backed development projects.

Murad Ali, an academic at Malakand University in the nearby Swat Valley, says the region’s history of military offensives has left many skeptical of the army’s plans.

“It is a fact that [the] military also suffered in terms of sweat and blood in [the] fight against militants,” Ali said, but many in the Pashtun population doubt the capability of the military to eradicate militancy or suspect it is an “accomplice in perpetrating this hide and seek with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban.”

The army spokesman said security forces have lost 137 soldiers so far, including officers, in 2024 in the fight against militants.

Ahmad Kundi, an elected member of Pakhtunkhwa’s regional assembly, says over the years, the national government has sent a mixed message about how to combat militancy.

“One prime minister said negotiations with militants was a way forward and another prime minister opts for military operations, though it didn’t deliver in the past,” Kundi said.

Hamid Ullah in Peshawar contributed to this report.
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washington — This week, as Taiwan was preparing for the start of its Han Kuang military exercises, its air defense system detected a Chinese drone circling the island. This was the sixth time that China had sent a drone to operate around Taiwan since 2023.

Drones like the one that flew around Taiwan, which are tasked with dual-pronged missions of reconnaissance and intimidation, are just a small part of a broader trend that is making headlines from Ukraine to the Middle East to the Taiwan Strait and is changing the face of warfare. 

The increasing role that unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, play and rising concern about a Chinese invasion of democratically ruled Taiwan is pushing Washington, Beijing and Taipei to improve the sophistication, adaptability and cost of drone technology.

‘Hellscape’ strategy

Last August, the Pentagon launched a $1 billion Replicator Initiative to create air, sea and land drones in the “multiple thousands,” according to the Defense Department’s Innovation Unit. The Pentagon aims to build that force of drones by August 2025.

The initiative is part of what U.S. Admiral Samuel Paparo recently described to The Washington Post as a “hellscape” strategy, which aims to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan through the deployment of thousands of unmanned drones in the air and sea between the island and China.

“The benefits of unmanned systems are that you get cheap, disposable mass that’s low cost. If a drone gets shot down, the only people that are crying about it are the accountants,” said Zachary Kallenborn, a policy fellow at George Mason University. “You can use them at large amounts of scale and overwhelm your opponents as well as degrade their defensive capabilities.”

The hellscape strategy, he added, aims to use lots of cheap drones to try to hold back China from attacking Taiwan.

Drone manufacturing supremacy

China has its own plans under way and is the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial drones. In a news briefing after Paparo’s remarks to the Post, it warned Washington that it was playing with fire. 

“Those who clamor for turning others’ homeland into hell should get ready for burning in hell themselves,” said Senior Colonel Wu Qian, spokesperson for the Chinese defense ministry.

“The People’s Liberation Army is able to fight and win in thwarting external interference and safeguarding our national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Threats and intimidation never work on us,” Wu said.

China’s effort to expand its use of drones has been bolstered, analysts say, by leader Xi Jinping’s emphasis on technology and modernization in the military, something he highlighted at a top-level party meeting last week.

“China’s military is developing more than 50 types of drones with varying capabilities, amassing a fleet of tens of thousands of drones, potentially 10 times larger than Taiwan and the U.S. combined,” Michael Raska, assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told VOA in an email. “This quantitative edge currently fuels China’s accelerating military modernization, with drones envisioned for everything from pre-conflict intel gathering to swarming attacks.”

Analysts add that China’s commercial drone manufacturing supremacy aids its military in the push for drone development. China’s DJI dominates in production and sale of household drones, accounting for 76% of the worldwide consumer market in 2021.

The scale of production and low price of DJI drones could put China in an advantageous position in a potential drone war, analysts say.

“In Russia and Ukraine, if you have a lot of drones – even if they’re like the commercial off-the-shelf things, DJI drones you can buy at Costco – and you throw hundreds of them at an air defense system, that’s going to create a large problem,” said Major Emilie Stewart, a research analyst at the China Aerospace Studies Institute.

China denies it is seeking to use commercial UAV technology for future conflicts.

“China has always been committed to maintaining global security and regional stability and has always opposed the use of civilian drones for military purposes,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA. “We are firmly opposed to the U.S.’s military ties with Taiwan and its effort of arming Taiwan.”

Drone force

With assistance from its American partners, pressure from China and lessons from Ukraine, Taiwan has been pushing to develop its own domestic drone warfare capabilities.

The United States has played a pivotal role in Taiwan’s drone development, and just last week it pledged to sell $360 million of attack drones to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, or TECRO, Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington.

“Taiwan will continue to build a credible deterrence and work closely with like-minded partners, including the United States, to preserve peace and stability in the region,” TECRO told VOA when asked about the collaboration between Taipei and Washington. “We have no further information to share at this moment.”

The effort to incorporate drones into its defense is crucial for Taiwan, said Eric Chan, a senior nonresident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute.

“The biggest immediate effects of the U.S. coming into this mass UAV game is to give Taiwan a bigger advantage to be able to, first, detect their enemy and, second, help them build a backstop to their own capabilities as well,” Chan said.

With the potential for China to consider using drones in an urban conflict environment, Taiwan is recognizing the importance of stepping up its counter-drone defense systems.

“After multiple intrusions of Chinese drones in outlying islands, the Taiwan Ministry of Defense now places great emphasis on anti-drone capabilities,” said Yu-Jiu Wang, chief executive of Tron Future, an anti-drone company working with the Taiwanese military.

The demand is one that Wang said his company is willing and ready to fill.
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Kansas City, Kansas — A man who officials say worked for one of North Korea’s military intelligence agencies has been indicted for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to hack American health care providers, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

A grand jury in Kansas City, Kansas, indicted Rim Jong Hyok, who is accused of laundering ransom money and using the money to fund additional cyberattacks on defense, technology and government entities around the world. The hack on American hospitals on other health care providers disrupted the treatment of patients, officials said.

“While North Korea uses these types of cybercrimes to circumvent international sanctions and fund its political and military ambitions, the impact of these wanton acts have a direct impact on the citizens of Kansas,” said Stephen A. Cyrus, an FBI agent based in Kansas City.

Online court records do not list an attorney for Hyok.

Justice Department officials said an attack on a Kansas hospital, which they did not identify, happened in May 2021 when hackers encrypted the medical center’s files and servers. The hospital paid about $100,000 in Bitcoin to get its data back.

The department said it recovered that ransom as well as a payment from a Colorado health care provider affected by the same Maui ransomware variant.

The Justice Department has brought multiple criminal cases related to North Korean hacking in recent years, often alleging a profit-driven motive that differentiates the activity from that of hackers in Russia and China.

In 2021, for instance, the department charged three North Korean computer programmers in a broad range of global hacks, including a destructive attack targeting an American movie studio, and in the attempted theft and extortion of more than $1.3 billion from banks and companies.

Investigators said Hyok has been a member of the Andariel Unit of the North Korean government’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, a military intelligence agency. Hyok allegedly conspired to use ransomware software to conduct cyberespionage hacks against American hospitals and other government and technology entities in South Korea, and China.
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Islamabad — Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb arrived in Beijing on Thursday for talks on power sector debt relief alongside structural reforms suggested by the International Monetary Fund, two government sources said.

He held a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing, they said, and is leading a delegation, along with Power Minister Awais Leghari, that will discuss several proposals, including reprofiling nearly $15 billion in energy sector debt.

The countries, which share a border, have been longtime allies, and rollovers or disbursements on loans from China have helped Pakistan meet its external financing needs in the past.

The IMF this month agreed on a $7 billion bailout for the heavily indebted South Asian economy, while raising concerns over high rates of power theft and distribution losses that result in debt accumulating across the production chain.

The government is implementing structural reforms to reduce “circular debt” – public liabilities that build up in the power sector due to subsidies and unpaid bills – by 100 billion Pakistani rupees ($360 million) a year, Leghari has said.

On Thursday he said on X that he and the finance minister had briefed Chinese Minister of Finance Lan Fo’an on Pakistan’s “efforts to introduce tax and energy reforms in the system.”

Pakistan’s finance ministry, junior Finance Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik and the Chinese finance ministry did not respond to requests for a comment.

Both the finance and power ministers told Reuters in interviews last week that they would be discussing the power sector reforms in their Beijing visit, though they did not specify the timing.

Poor and middle-class households have been affected by a previous IMF bailout reached last year, which included raising power tariffs as part of the funding program that ended in April.

China has set up over $20 billion worth of planned energy projects in Pakistan.
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BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN — Military spending is surging in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, a development officials link to regional conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, although experts doubt the buildup will increase stability.

While Russia was the dominant arms supplier to these countries for more than three decades, other countries including Turkey, China and the United States have now entered the market.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, last year’s military spending by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan was $1.8 billion. Figures from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which do not disclose information about the share of military spending in their gross domestic product, were not included in the report.

Regional media reports say that last year’s Kazakhstani military budget was 0.5% of the country’s estimated $259.7 billion GDP. Kyrgyzstan’s military accounted for 1.5% of its estimated $13.9 billion GDP, or $208.5 million, and for Tajikistan it was 1% of an estimated $12 billion GDP, or $120 million.

Kyrgyz buildup

Kamchibek Tashiev, deputy chairman of the Kyrgyz Cabinet of Ministers, who coordinates Kyrgyzstan’s security forces, told a July 2023 government meeting that since 2021, Kyrgyzstan had spent $1,3 billion to modernize its military. He said much of that went to new high-tech weaponry.

“We bought unmanned Bayraktar, Aksungur, Akinci, combat aerial vehicles, which many countries have not yet bought; we also bought upgrades to our air defense system, Mi-8, Mi-17, helicopters,” he said.

Tense relations with neighboring Tajikistan prompted Kyrgyzstan’s government to start paying more attention to the military, with a 2023 Kyrgyz Defense Ministry military doctrine calling the threat level posed by Kyrgyz-Tajik border tension significant.

That tension led to armed conflicts between the countries in April 2021 and September 2022, together causing the deaths of civilians and displacement of thousands of people.

If Kyrgyz officials were hoping new weapons would give them an upper hand with Tajikistan, they were mistaken.

In May 2022, Iran opened a drone production plant in Tajikistan, producing the Ababil-2 reconnaissance and combat drone. Then, in April of 2024, the Tajik government signed a $1.5 million agreement with Turkey on the supply of unspecified number of Bayraktar attack drones.

In a December 2022 interview, Dushanbe-based political analyst Parviz Mullojanov, said in the “ongoing arms race” Tajikistan is likely to buy modern weapons.

“We’re talking about radio and electronic warfare equipment, air defense systems that will neutralize attack drones,” he said.

Other regional countries

Other countries in the region are increasing military spending too. Kazakhstan’s defense spending has increased by 8.8% compared to last year. Uzbekistan, which does not disclose its military budget, reportedly allotted an additional $260 million to its defense budget last year.

During his January 2024 meeting with Uzbek military leaders, broadcast by Uzbek state TV, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said that by 2030, Uzbekistan will have a modernized army with high-tech weaponry. In Turkmenistan, President Gunbanguly Berdymukhamedov instructed the Defense Ministry to increase military preparedness at a meeting this month of the country’s security council.

Regional officials point to the conflicts in the post-Soviet space – such as the Ukraine war and the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, border conflicts in Central Asia, and instability in Afghanistan – as reasons for beefing up their militaries.

However, Peter Leonard, a writer specializing in Central Asian affairs, told VOA, “Partly it is a matter of prestige. Authoritarian leaders like to flaunt shiny and expensive weapons. We see this visually in Turkmenistan, where officials show off their new weapons and vehicles from China, Europe and elsewhere during annual military parades. We see this trend in all of Central Asia.”

The rise in Central Asian militarization underscores changing geopolitical context as well. The Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization, an alliance of Russia and five other former Soviet republics — Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia – has historically played an important role in in Central Asian security matters.

However, in recent years, outside countries, including Turkey, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, China, Germany, France, and Belarus, have emerged as military partners to the Central Asian republics.

According to regional media reports, between 2010 and 2024, Turkey and Iran supplied attack drones to Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; the United States provided technical support and military vehicles to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan; China sold air defense equipment to Uzbekistan; France and Germany sold military helicopters to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan; and Belarus supplied air defense equipment to Kyrgyzstan.

Varying views on effects from militarization

With so much cash given to the military and weapons flooding the region, discussions among experts focus on the militarization’s effects. Svenja Petersen, a Berlin-based analyst and researcher specializing on the former Soviet Union, told VOA that the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan arms race was of particular concern.

“While Kyrgyz and Tajik leaders have spoken about a need to foster peace and security along the frontier, both countries have been girding for renewed battle,” she said.

A January 2023 commentary by Vecherni Bishkek, a Kyrgyzstani pro-government news website, claimed that “while the likelihood of a war is low, confrontations [between regional armed forces] are unavoidable.”

Other experts express doubt that the arms race between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will lead to conflict.

“Paradoxically,” Leonard said, “the intensification of militaries in these countries has not, in fact, exacerbated tensions but has resulted in a different outcome — which is much more cordial and practical dialogue about border demarcation. These countries, which were at a dangerous point, are on the cusp of signing a historic border agreement which will put an end to three decades of [border-related] conflict.”

Bakhtiyor Ergashev, director of the Tashkent-based political research institute Mano said in a January 2023 media interview that he doubted that large-scale military conflicts in the region would happen.

“Undoubtedly, there are some hotspots, such as the conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. But I am convinced that this conflict, though it has tendency for escalation, will be resolved.”

Regional residents also hold differing views on the effects of militarization.

Danil Usmanov, a Kyrgyzstani photojournalist who was in Kyrgyzstan’s Batken province, bordering Tajikistan, reporting on the April 2021 and September 2022 Kyrgyz border conflicts told VOA that in his conversations with residents of Kyrgyz border towns, he sensed they would prefer that Bishkek officials spend more to solve their region’s economic problems.

But, he said, they accept increased military spending and militarization of Batken “as a necessary vice to deter border conflicts with Tajikistan.”

Kyrgyz officials have defended their increased military spending, saying that it boosted their capacity to thwart potential conflicts. During his January 2024 meeting with residents of Kyrgyzstan’s Jalal-Abad province, Tashiev said weapons and related purchases have allowed a change in the Central Asian balance of power.

“We are no longer seen as a weak country that lacks [military] might. … Today, we are seen as a formidable opponent, as a strong state and strong partner. All of this indicates that our country has grown in strength,” he said.

Leonard, though, said the militarization is unlikely to bolster the Central Asian republics’ political stability.

“If Central Asian governments are perceiving conventional armed forces as a key to bolstering stability in their countries without giving sufficient attention to issues such as political reform, putting institutions in place that serve as means for relieving pressure from below, then they may be in for an unpleasant surprise,” he said.

“Kazakhstan, for instance, invests extensive resources into its army. But can that prevent events like the January 2022 nationwide protests that rocked the whole country?”
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Hanoi, Vietnam — Thousands of black-clad mourners including top Vietnamese officials gathered Thursday in Hanoi for the funeral of Communist party leader Nguyen Phu Trong as two days of national mourning began.

The 80-year-old, who died at a military hospital in the capital Hanoi last week “due to old age and serious illness,” was the most powerful leader the country had seen in decades.

Trong, who had led the party since 2011, was the first leader to have held three consecutive mandates in the role, after the liberalization of the country’s economy in 1986.

He was known for a high-profile anti-corruption drive that swept through the party, police, armed forces and business, which analysts say has been linked to political infighting.

Alongside bouquets of yellow flowers and burning incense, Trong’s flag-draped coffin was laid beneath a large portrait of the leader and dozens of his medals at the National Funeral House in central Hanoi.

Wearing black and white headbands, Trong’s family greeted the mourners, having requested no customary cash envelopes or flowers be given at the funeral.

All flags across the country flew at half mast, while entertainment and sporting events have been suspended during the mourning period.

Smaller remembrance ceremonies also started Thursday morning for Trong in the southern business hub Ho Chi Minh City and in his village in Dong Anh district on the outskirts of Hanoi.

“The general secretary’s death is an irreparable loss for the party, the state, the people and his family,” said politburo member Luong Cuong as the funeral started.

Tributes from abroad

The country’s top party officials led tributes, including President To Lam, who was handed the reins of power a day before Trong’s death was announced.

South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and Cuba’s parliamentary speaker Esteban Lazo Hernandez were among the foreign officials to pay their respects.

Trong was praised earlier by US President Joe Biden as “a champion of deep ties” between Vietnam and Washington, while Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the Vietnamese leader as a “true friend of Russia.”

Le Hong Hiep, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore, said that under Trong’s watch, “Vietnam managed to maintain a balanced foreign policy with all the major powers.”

“And thanks to this, Vietnam managed to achieve significant economic development and now is on the way to become an upper-middle income economy by 2030,” he told AFP.

Trong’s poor health had fueled widespread speculation that he would not be able to stay in power until the 2026 party congress. Details of his illness have never been made public.

He enjoyed remarkable longevity in office, during a mandate that rights groups say has coincided with increasing authoritarianism.

“I admired Trong… He spent his whole life and career working for the Communist Party and the people of Vietnam,” said Tran Van Thuong, a Hanoi resident.

Trong will be buried at Mai Dich cemetery, the final resting place for many senior leaders in Vietnam, at 3 p.m. Friday.
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HONG KONG — A Hong Kong court dismissed on Thursday a bid by the legal team for jailed democrat Jimmy Lai to end his national security trial, saying prosecutors appeared to have sufficient evidence to support all three charges against him.

Lai, 76, the founder of now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, has pleaded not guilty to two charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and a lesser charge of conspiracy to publish seditious material.

“Having considered all the submissions we ruled that the first defendant (Lai) has a case to answer on all the charges,” said Judge Esther Toh, one of a panel of three national security judges hearing the case.

Beijing imposed the security law on Hong Kong in 2020 after months of pro-democracy protests in the Asian financial hub.

The trial will resume on November 20. Lai has elected to give evidence in court. If convicted, he could face a life sentence.

It was the 92nd day of a high-profile trial begun on December 18 that had initially been expected to last 80 days.

Defense lawyers led by Robert Pang had sought to end the proceedings and seek Lai’s acquittal on the ground that there was no case to answer, contending the prosecution’s evidence was insufficient.

Pang said an agreement before the national security law would not automatically make it illegal, although the law invalidated earlier legal agreements.

Although there could be evidence of agreement to publish certain articles or work with some organizations, Pang said, there was no evidence of such agreements made after the law was promulgated.

“Whatever was agreed previously, when calling for sanctions was perfectly lawful, was not agreed subsequently,” Pang added.

In response to the prosecution’s accusation that Lai used the Apple Daily as a platform to conspire, Pang said that newspapers could have a spectrum of differing views, adding “That’s a very strange allegation.”

Pang said freedom of the press was guaranteed by Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, and the bill of rights ordinance.

Several witnesses mentioned that Apple Daily consulted lawyers on avoiding breaches of the national security law, Pang said, which was “positive evidence” that the agreement was to comply with the law.

The prosecution wrapped up its case in June, having called eight witnesses, among them five defendants who had earlier pleaded guilty.

A British citizen, Lai has been held in solitary confinement for more than three years since December 2020. He is now serving sentence of five years and nine months after being convicted of violating a lease contract for the paper’s headquarters.

Britain and the United States have urged Lai’s immediate release, calling the case politically motivated. Hong Kong officials have said Lai will get a fair trial.

Both the Chinese and Hong Kong governments said the national security law restored stability in the former British colony.

Western governments have voiced concern that the law is part of Beijing’s effort to end dissent and freedoms guaranteed to Hong Kong when Britain handed it to China in 1997.
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seoul, south korea — North Korea has sent about 500 balloons laden with trash into South Korea’s air space over the past 24 hours, officials in the South said on Thursday, disrupting flights and igniting a fire on the roof of a residential building. 

The balloons are part of an ongoing propaganda campaign by Pyongyang against North Korean defectors and activists in the South, who regularly send balloons carrying items such as anti-Pyongyang leaflets medicine, money and USB sticks loaded with K-pop videos and dramas.

A suspected balloon suspended take-offs and landings at Seoul’s Gimpo Airport on Wednesday evening for two hours, an official at the Korea Airports Corporation said.

Balloons have affected traffic at South Korea’s main international airport, Incheon, several times in recent weeks.

In Gyeonggi, a province near Seoul, a balloon caught fire on top of a residential building. Fire fighters extinguished the blaze, an official at the Gyeonggi Northern Fire and Disaster Headquarters said.

South Korea’s military said some trash balloons were equipped with timed poppers that could cause fires.

“A timer is attached to the trash balloons, which has the effect of popping the balloons and spreading the trash after a certain period of time has passed,” Lee Sung-jun, a spokesperson for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a briefing.

Lee said 480 balloons had landed mostly carrying paper and plastic trash in South Korea as of Thursday.

On Wednesday, North Korean balloons had landed in the vicinity of the heavily guarded presidential office in Seoul. 
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ISLAMABAD — The United States urged Pakistan Wednesday to protect the rights of all citizens, including freedom of expression and assembly, as a military-backed crackdown on the opposition party of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan continues. 

Donald Blome, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, stressed during a seminar in Islamabad that upholding constitutionally guaranteed rights is crucial to the country’s economic progress. 

“Protecting human rights for all is not just a fundamental pillar of a democracy; it’s a critical component of a vibrant and stable society drawing on the talents and contributions of all its citizens for the country’s benefits,” Blome said.  

“Without such stability, the prospects for investment and economic growth appear far less certain,” he noted, without directly naming Pakistani political stakeholders.

The U.S. ambassador’s remarks came as Pakistan faces prolonged political turmoil stemming from Khan’s removal from power in 2022 through a parliamentary no-confidence vote and his subsequent imprisonment last August, which the United Nations described as having no legal basis. 

The ongoing crackdown has led to the arrest of hundreds of supporters of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party, including women.  

This week, police raided the PTI’s headquarters in the Pakistani capital, detaining its chief spokesman and several other media team professionals, accusing them of running an “anti-state campaign.”  

Khan’s aides have denounced the arrests as part of a campaign of suppression and intimidation.  

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government, struggling to address Pakistan’s deep economic problems, has publicly stated its intention to ban the party over charges of anti-state activities and maligning the military.  

“We will, under no circumstances, tolerate such actions against our motherland, innocent people, or the armed forces of Pakistan,” Sharif reiterated Wednesday, while presiding over a cabinet meeting.  

The threat of banning the country’s most popular and the single largest party in parliament has further fueled political tensions.  

On Tuesday, during a congressional hearing in Washington, the crackdown and potential banning of the Pakistani opposition party also came under discussion when Donald Lu, the U.S. assistant secretary of state, was responding to questions from lawmakers.

Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, raised the issue of Pakistan banning Khan from holding public office and preventing his party from using its iconic cricket bat symbol on the ballots in the February 8 vote.  

“The information minister and two other ministers have said that they want to ban the PTI. And we see in the latest development that the PTI office has been sealed, their national information security and many women have been arrested,” Sherman said.  

“The best thing you can do is ask Ambassador Blome to go visit Imran Khan in prison, and I wonder if you would consider that,” the congressmen told Lu. “We’ll definitely discuss it with Ambassador Blome,” responded the assistant secretary of state. 

“Pakistan’s future must be decided by its people. It’s clear that the PTI is Pakistan’s most popular party. I disagree with Imran Khan on many things, but it’s the right of Pakistan’s people to choose their leader,” Sherman wrote on his social media X platform after the hearing.

Khan’s arrest last year sparked violent street protests in Pakistan, with some of his supporters attacking facilities linked to the country’s powerful military.  

The Sharif government and the military used the riots to defend the crackdown on the PTI and as a reason to keep Khan in prison after several of his convictions in other cases were recently overturned by appeals courts for lack of evidence.  

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the PTI was eligible for around two dozen extra reserved seats in parliament, saying the Election Commission of Pakistan deprived the party of them in breach of the constitution.  

Once implemented, the verdict will further strengthen the PTI in the parliament and weaken the ruling coalition. It has also given credence to the opposition and independent monitors’ allegations that the February 8 elections were rigged in favor of pro-military parties and prevented the PTI from sweeping the polls.  

Khan, 71, rejects all charges against him — ranging from corruption to sedition and a fraudulent marriage — as politically motivated and part of a larger effort by the military to keep him and his party from returning to power.  

The former cricket hero turned politician insists on the return of his party’s “stolen mandate” or new elections overseen by an impartial election commission. 

Sharif, who has the backing of the military, denies his government is unfairly targeting Khan and his party, saying it was determined to bring to justice those responsible for the May 2023 attacks on military facilities.  

Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted 368-7 to approve a resolution urging “the full and independent investigation of claims of interference or irregularities” in Pakistan’s election, a move Islamabad rejected.
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DHAKA — Rush-hour traffic returned to the streets of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on Wednesday, as a curfew was eased after four days of nationwide shutdown that followed deadly protests led by university students against quotas in government jobs.

Offices reopened and broadband internet was largely restored, although social media continued to be suspended, days after the clashes between protesters and security forces killed almost 150 people.

The country has been relatively calm since Sunday, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of an appeal from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government and directed that 93% of jobs should be open to candidates on merit.

Bangladesh’s mainstay garment and textiles industries, which supply to major Western brands, also began reopening some factories after a pause in production during the curfew.

“All our factories are open today. Everything is going smoothly,” said S.M. Mannan, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

The stock exchange opened too, as well as banks, after remaining shut the past two days.

Residents of Dhaka were out on the streets, some making their way to offices as public buses also began running in some places.

“It was a hassle to reach the office on time,” said Shamima Akhter, who works at a private firm in the capital. “Some roads are still blocked for security reasons. Don’t know when everything will get normal.”

Local news websites, which had stopped updating since Friday, were back online too.

Bangladesh authorities had shut mobile internet and deployed the army on the streets during the curfew that was imposed from midnight on Saturday.

The government said curfew restrictions would be relaxed for seven hours on Wednesday and Thursday, and offices would also be open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Student demands

Analysts say the student action has given fresh impetus to Hasina’s critics, months after she won a fourth-straight term in power in January in a national election boycotted by the main opposition party.

“The informal federation of government critics appears deeper and wider than before the election, which presents a serious challenge to the ruling party,” said Geoffrey Macdonald at the United States Institute of Peace.

Hasina, 76, is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, who led the country’s movement for independence from Pakistan.

The earlier 56% job quotas included a 30% reservation for families of veterans of the 1971 independence war, which critics said favored supporters of Hasina’s Awami League.

Hasina’s government had scrapped the quotas in 2018, but a high court ruling reinstated the them last month.

Students were furious because quotas left fewer than half of state jobs open on merit amid an unemployment crisis, particularly in the private sector, making government sector jobs with their regular wage hikes and perks especially prized.

Hasina has blamed her political opponents for the violence and her government said on Tuesday that it would heed the Supreme Court ruling.

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party has denied any involvement in the violence and accused Hasina of authoritarianism and a crackdown on her critics, charges denied by her government.

Protesting students have given the government a fresh 48-hour ultimatum to fulfill four other conditions of an eight-point list of demands, and said they would announce their next steps on Thursday.

“We want the government to meet our four-point demand, including restoration of internet, withdrawal of police from campuses, and opening universities (which have been closed for a week),” protest coordinator Nahid Islam said.
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