Authorities and humanitarian groups are responding to the worst floods Pakistan has experienced in decades, as the devastation has impacted some 33 million people and led to the deaths of almost 1,200 others over the past two months.

Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said Monday that one-third of Pakistan, a country of about 220 million people, was under water, creating a “crisis of unimaginable proportions” since June when the monsoon seasonal rainfall began.

“It’s all one big ocean; there’s no dry land to pump the water out,” Rehman said.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), leading the response in coordinating assessments and directing humanitarian relief to affected people, declared 72 out of the country’s 160 districts as calamity-hit in its latest situation report.

The NDMA noted that at least 1 million homes, 162 bridges, and nearly 3,500 kilometers of roads have been damaged or destroyed across the South Asian nation.

The flooding has also killed more than 800,000 farm animals and damaged vital farmlands and crops.

Pakistan has already appealed for international help to deal with the massive floods. Some countries, including China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, have already sent cargo planes that are carrying tents, food, medicines and other relief supplies, and rescue teams, the Pakistani military said Monday.

Pakistani and United Nations officials said the death toll is likely to rise as erratic monsoon rains continue and more rivers burst their banks, with many communities in the mountainous northern regions cut off.

Officials say that relief and rescue operations have almost concluded but that it may take “years” to rehabilitate flood victims. They also say the country will require international help to confront the emergency.

Julien Harneis, the U.N. resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator in Pakistan, said the flooding and landslides had brought widespread destruction across the country, creating its “biggest challenge” in decades.

Harneis called for “burden-sharing and solidarity” internationally in the wake of the “climate-change-driven catastrophe.” He warned that the humanitarian situation is expected to worsen, with diseases and malnutrition expected to rise.

The U.N. is set to launch a $161 million flash appeal for Pakistan on Tuesday, saying the funding will provide critical food and cash assistance to nearly one million people in districts across the four provinces, Baluchistan, Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The flooding comes at a time when the country faces an economic crisis, with dwindling foreign cash reserves and historic inflation.

Finance Minister Miftah Ismail told a news conference in Islamabad the economic impact could reach at least $10 billion. He also hinted at reopening some trade with arch-rival India to import vegetables in the wake of widespread devastation the flooding has unleashed on the agriculture sector.

Pakistan suspended already limited trade with India in 2019 when New Delhi unilaterally ended a semi-autonomous status of the disputed Kashmir region.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) anticipates a sharp increase in food insecurity and a severe impact on the national economy.

“Our needs assessment showed that we are already seeing a major increase in cases of diarrhea, skin infections, malaria and other illnesses,” the group said in a statement.

Shabnam Baloch, the IRC country director, was quoted as saying Pakistan has been facing increasingly devastating climate-driven drought and flooding.

“Despite producing less than 1% of the world’s carbon footprint, the country is suffering the consequences of the world’s inaction and stays in the top 10 countries facing the consequences,” Baloch said.

The flash floods in Pakistan are comparable to those of 2010 when more than 2,000 people were killed.

AFP contributed to this report.
…

An American journalist and documentary-maker of Indian origin was sent back to the United States after he landed at New Delhi airport last week, his family reported.  

Angad Singh, who produces video documentaries for Vice News, had arrived to visit his relatives, including his mother and grandparents, in the northern Indian state of Punjab, when he was refused entry by Indian immigration officials at the airport, his mother told VOA.   

Angad arrived at Indira Gandhi International Airport from the United States at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, he informed his mother Gurmeet Kaur in Punjab in a text message.  

“We were eagerly waiting to welcome him in Punjab. Fifteen minutes after sending the first message, my son texted me again saying that the immigration officials had taken away his passport,” Kaur, an American citizen who is on a family visit to India now, told VOA. “Three hours later, he was made to board a New York-bound flight and deported to the U.S.”   

Singh, who is an American citizen and a practicing Sikh, had visited India many times in the past and made documentaries on subjects including the country’s farmer protests, the COVID-19 pandemic, Kashmiri Muslim protests and “love jihad” — a right-wing Hindu belief that Muslim men lure Hindu women into marriage to convert them to Islam and spread the religion.  

Singh had last visited India two or three years ago and made a documentary on the Shaheen Bagh sit-in protest, Kaur said. In 2019 and 2020 in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh neighborhood, women, mostly Muslim, blocked a major road in protest of a new Indian citizenship law welcoming immigrants of all religions from neighboring countries except Muslims.  

Later, during the COVID-19 pandemic’s second wave, Singh made a documentary, Inside India’s COVID Hell, for which he received an Emmy nomination.  

Although Singh was on a personal visit to India this time, Kaur said, Indian authorities suspected that he would do some professional work while in the country.  

“He has so many relatives in India. He was certainly on a personal trip. But, I think, the Indian authorities thought that he would do some journalism-related work this time … There should be no other reason to deny the entry,” Kaur told VOA. 

Kaur said she thought Indian authorities stopped Singh from entering India because they suspected that he would work on a documentary on Dalits—who were once known as “untouchables” and remain at the bottom of India’s Hindu caste system. He has been denied a visa in the past to report on this issue.  

“[A] long time ago the application for his visa to work on the Dalits issue was rejected. This time his trip was purely personal, with no connection with any documentary on Dalits,” Kaur told VOA.  

Kaur wrote on Facebook that her son was deported because of his journalistic work, in which he has often been critical of the government led by Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.  

“They did not give any reason [describing why he was deported]. But we know it is his award-winning journalism that scares them,” Kaur wrote.  

“It’s not easy to be a Sikh, a Gursikh [a term used usually to describe a practicing Sikh] on top, a journalist, a warrior of truth and justice. … Speaking [the] truth has a price. We must pay it.”  

People should raise their voices against such deportation, Kaur said.   

“We cannot make out why the Indian authorities have been vindictive on him while he was on a personal visit to his motherland. Why are they forcing him to sever his connection with his motherland?” Kaur added. 

At least two journalism organizations have condemned the deportation of Singh as government “vendetta and harassment.”  

The episode is “gravely disturbing” and is part of the “ongoing trend of government authorities harassing and intimidating journalists,” Indian Journalists Union president Geetartha Pathak said. The International Federation of Journalists said the decision to send back Singh “smacks of vendetta and harassment,” in a statement posted on Twitter. The advocacy group said it “strongly condemns” the government’s action. 

Rohit Chopra, an associate professor at Santa Clara University, told VOA the decision to not allow Singh to enter India is “reflective of a pattern of denying or revoking visas to academics, journalists and artists, and reveals the deep insecurities that haunt the Hindu nationalist leadership” of the Indian state.  

“The message is clear: no matter what the evidence, no matter how grave the injustices to which you seek to draw attention, criticize Mr. Modi or his government at your peril,” Chopra added.  

The Indian Home Ministry, which controls the immigration authority, has not issued any statement on Singh. Phone calls to the ministry went unanswered. 
…

Deaths from widespread flooding in Pakistan topped 1,000 since mid-June, officials said Sunday, as the country’s climate minister called the deadly monsoon season “a serious climate catastrophe.”

Flash flooding from the heavy rains has washed away villages and crops as soldiers and rescue workers evacuated stranded residents to the safety of relief camps and provided food to thousands of displaced Pakistanis.

Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority reported the death toll since the monsoon season began earlier than normal this year — in mid- June — reached 1,061 people after new fatalities were reported across different provinces.

Sherry Rehman, a Pakistani senator and the country’s top climate official, said in a video posted on Twitter that Pakistan is experiencing a “serious climate catastrophe, one of the hardest in the decade.”

“We are at the moment at the ground zero of the front line of extreme weather events, in an unrelenting cascade of heatwaves, forest fires, flash floods, multiple glacial lake outbursts, flood events and now the monster monsoon of the decade is wreaking non-stop havoc throughout the country,” she said. The on-camera statement was retweeted by the country’s ambassador to the European Union.

Flooding from the Swat River overnight affected northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where tens of thousands of people — especially in the Charsadda and Nowshehra districts — have been evacuated from their homes to relief camps set up in government buildings. Many have also taken shelter on roadsides, said Kamran Bangash, a spokesperson for the provincial government.

Bangash said some 180,000 people have been evacuated from Charsadda and 150,000 from Nowshehra district villages.

Khaista Rehman, 55, no relation to the climate minister, took shelter with his wife and three children on the side of the Islamabad-Peshawar highway after his home in Charsadda was submerged overnight.

“Thank God we are safe now on this road quite high from the flooded area,” he said. “Our crops are gone and our home is destroyed but I am grateful to Allah that we are alive and I will restart life with my sons.”

The unprecedented monsoon season has affected all four of the country’s provinces. Nearly 300,000 homes have been destroyed, numerous roads rendered impassable and electricity outages have been widespread, affecting millions of people.

Pope Francis on Sunday said he wanted to assure his “closeness to the populations of Pakistan struck by flooding of disastrous proportions.’’ Speaking during a pilgrimage to the Italian town of L’Aquila, which was hit by a deadly earthquake in 2009, Francis said he was praying “for the many victims, for the injured and the evacuated, and so that international solidarity will be prompt and generous.”

Rehman told Turkish news outlet TRT World that by the time the rains recede, “we could well have one fourth or one third of Pakistan under water.”

“This is something that is a global crisis and of course we will need better planning and sustainable development on the ground. … We’ll need to have climate resilient crops as well as structures,” she said. 

In May, Rehman told BBC Newshour that both the country’s north and south were witnessing extreme weather events because of rising temperatures. “So in north actually just now we are … experiencing what is known as glacial lake outburst floods which we have many of because Pakistan is home to the highest number of glaciers outside the polar region.”

The government has deployed soldiers to help civilian authorities in rescue and relief operations across the country. The Pakistani army also said in a statement it airlifted a 22 tourists trapped in a valley in the country’s north to safety.

Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif visited flooding victims in city of Jafferabad in Baluchistan. He vowed the government would provide housing to all those who lost their homes.
…

The Taliban defense minister Sunday directly accused neighboring Pakistan of allowing the United States to use its airspace for drone attacks against Afghanistan.

Mohammad Yaqoob leveled the allegations nearly a month after Washington said it killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri with a missile fired from a drone against his hideout in central Kabul on July 31.

Yaqoob told a news conference in the Afghan capital that U.S. drones have since continued to fly over his country’s airspace in breach of its territorial sovereignty, urging both Washington and Islamabad to stop these violations.

The Taliban could not accurately track the airspace violations because the withdrawing American military had “completely destroyed” the “Afghan radar system,” the minister said when asked whether his government knew which neighboring country was facilitating the post-exit U.S. drone operations.

“But according to our information the drones are entering through Pakistan to Afghanistan, they use Pakistani airspace, we demand Pakistan stop the use of its airspace against us,” he said.

Officials in Islamabad have not immediately commented on the Taliban charges. Pakistani authorities have previously denied media reports their country had played a role in the U.S. attack.

Taliban leaders until now had warned an unnamed neighboring country of “bad consequences” for permitting the U.S. to use its territory to conduct the airstrike that killed al-Zawahiri while he stood on a balcony at his posh Kabul neighborhood hideout.

Yaqoob’s allegations are likely to fuel mutual tensions as his government is mediating talks between Pakistan and leaders of an outlawed extremist group, known as the Pakistani Taliban, that has taken refuge in Afghanistan.

The landlocked country’s Taliban rulers heavily rely on trade with and through Pakistan to overcome economic and humanitarian challenges facing Afghanistan in the wake of international financial and banking sanctions.

While speaking Sunday, Yaqoob again cast doubt on al-Zawahiri’s death, saying a Taliban investigation into the incident was still ongoing and yet to reach a conclusion.

Taliban officials maintain they have not yet found the al-Qaida leader’s body or any other evidence, saying the missile attack destroyed everything in the target area.

A post-strike Taliban declaration said they were unaware of the slain terror leader’s presence in Kabul, reiterating they had no ties to al-Qaida, nor have they allowed their soil to be used to threaten other countries since taking control of Afghanistan last August.

The Taliban have condemned the strike and subsequent alleged drone intrusions as a violation of the U.S. withdrawal deal. Washington denounced al-Zawahiri’s presence in the heart of Kabul as a violation of the pact.

The February 2020 agreement required the Islamist group to prevent Afghan territory from becoming a safe haven for terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, in return for all the U.S.-led foreign troops leaving the country.
…

Indian authorities demolished two illegally constructed skyscrapers in a wide plume of dust debris on Sunday near the capital New Delhi, razing the tallest structures ever pulled down in the country in less than 10 seconds.

Crowds watching the collapse from rooftops on nearby high-rise buildings cheered and clapped as the 103-meter-tall towers collapsed from a controlled demolition and the dust enveloped the residential area.

The Supreme Court last year ordered the demolition of the towers in the Noida area after a long legal battle found they violated multiple building regulations and fire safety norms.

Over 3,700 kg of explosives were used around 2:30 p.m. (0900 GMT), officials told local media. The strategically placed explosives were meant to ensure minimal damage to the area.

Police said they were assessing whether any damage had occurred. Nearby residents said they would check whether their properties had been damaged. Such demolitions are rare in India despite rampant illegal construction.

Thousands had vacated their apartments near the blast site for about 10 hours, and scores of police and emergency personnel were deployed for the demolition of the towers containing 850 unoccupied apartments.

Traffic was being slowly restored and firefighters were using water sprinklers to bring the dust levels down around the Apex and Ceyane towers, which had stood on the edge of a busy highway linking India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, to the capital.

Some buildings in the vicinity were covered in white plastic sheets to protect them from debris.

On Twitter, many people said the decision to blow up the towers was a strict action against corruption and would serve as an example and warning for builders and construction companies.

The blast was expected to leave over 80,000 tons of rubble, most to be used to fill the site and the rest to be recycled.

Several families moved to safety on Saturday, fearing heightened pollution and health hazards from the massive debris.

Sudeep Roy, owner of a four-room apartment in a nearby low-rise building, said he booked hotel rooms last week to spend the night with family and friends.

“It is best to stay away from the blast site for 24 hours because the air will get toxic and we don’t know how it can impact our health,” said Roy, a mechanical engineer and father of twin boys, one of whom suffers from asthma.
…

Tens of thousands of people fled their homes in northern Pakistan on Saturday after a fast-rising river destroyed a major bridge, as deadly floods cause devastation across the country. 

Powerful flash floods in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa caused the Kabul River to swell, sweeping away a large bridge overnight, cutting off some districts from road access. 

Downstream, fears of flooding around the riverbanks prompted around 180,000 people in the district of Charsadda to flee their homes, with some spending the night on highways with their livestock, according to disaster officials. 

Historic monsoon rains and flooding in Pakistan have affected more than 30 million people over the last few weeks, the country’s climate change minister said, calling the situation a “climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.” 

The military has joined the country’s national and provincial authorities in responding to the floods and Pakistan’s army chief on Saturday visited the southern province of Balochistan, which has been hit heavily by the rains. 

“The people of Pakistan are our priority, and we won’t spare any effort to assist them in this difficult time,” said army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa. 

Pakistani leaders have appealed to the international community for help and plan to launch an international appeal fund. The foreign affairs ministry said Turkey had sent a team to help with rescue efforts. 

“The magnitude of the calamity is bigger than estimated,” said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in a tweet, after visiting flooded areas. 

In neighboring Afghanistan, the Taliban administration also appealed for help after flooding in central and eastern provinces. 

The death toll from floods this month in Afghanistan had risen to 192, disaster authorities said. Thousands of livestock had been killed and 1.7 million fruit trees destroyed, raising concerns over how families would feed themselves going into the cooler months while the country deals with an economic crisis. 

“We ask the humanitarian organizations, the international community and other related organizations and foundations to help us,” Sharafudden Muslim, the deputy director of Afghanistan’s disaster ministry, said at a press conference, adding more than a million families required assistance. 
…

Hundreds of people Saturday held demonstrations in several parts of India to protest a recent government decision to free 11 men who had been jailed for life for gang raping a Muslim woman during India’s devastating 2002 religious riots.

The protesters in the country’s capital, New Delhi, chanted slogans and demanded the government in the western state of Gujarat rescind the decision. They also sang songs in solidarity with the victim.

Similar protests were also held in several other states.

The 11 men, released on suspended sentences August 15 when India celebrated 75 years of independence, were convicted in 2008 of rape, murder and unlawful assembly.

The victim, who is now in her 40s, recently said the decision by the Gujarat state government has left her numb and shaken her faith in justice.

The Associated Press generally doesn’t identify victims of sexual assault.

The victim was pregnant when she was brutally gang raped in communal violence in 2002 in Gujarat, which saw over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, killed in some of the worst religious riots India has experienced since its independence from Britain in 1947. Seven members of the woman’s family, including her three-year-old daughter, were also killed in the violence.

“The whole country should demand an answer directly from the prime minister of this country,” said Kavita Krishnan, a prominent activist.

Officials in Gujarat, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party holds power, have said that the convicts’ application for remission was granted because they had completed over 14 years in jail. The men were eligible under a 1992 remission policy that was in effect at the time of their conviction, officials said. A newer version of the policy adopted in 2014 by the federal government prohibits remission release for those convicted of certain crimes, including rape and murder.

The riots have long hounded Modi, who was Gujarat’s top elected official at the time, amid allegations that authorities allowed and even encouraged the bloodshed. Modi has repeatedly denied having any role and the Supreme Court has said it found no evidence to prosecute him.

Asiya Qureshi, a young protester in New Delhi, said she participated in the demonstrations to seek justice for the victim.

“Modi gave a speech on 15th August on the safety and protection of women of India and the same day they released the rapists,” Qureshi said. “How am I safe in such a climate?” 
…

A U.S. judge on Friday recommended that victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks not be allowed to seize billions of dollars of assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank to satisfy court judgments they obtained against the Taliban. 

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan said Da Afghanistan Bank was immune from jurisdiction, and that allowing the seizures would effectively acknowledge the Islamist militant group as the Afghan government, something only the U.S. president can do. 

“The Taliban’s victims have fought for years for justice, accountability and compensation. They are entitled to no less,” Netburn wrote. “But the law limits what compensation the court may authorize, and those limits put the DAB’s assets beyond its authority.” 

Netburn’s recommendation will be reviewed by U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan, who also oversees the litigation and can decide whether to accept her recommendation. 

The decision is a defeat for four groups of creditors that sued a variety of defendants, including al-Qaida, they held responsible for the September 11 attacks, and obtained default judgments after the defendants failed to show up in court. 

At the time of the attacks, the ruling Taliban allowed al-Qaida to operate inside Afghanistan. 

Return to power

The United States ousted the Taliban and al-Qaida in late 2001, but the Taliban returned to power a year ago when U.S. and other Western forces withdrew from the country. 

Lawyers for the creditor groups did not immediately respond to requests for comment.  

The groups have been trying to tap into some of the $7 billion of Afghan central bank funds that are frozen at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. 

In an executive order in February, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered $3.5 billion of that sum set aside “for the benefit of the Afghan people,” leaving victims to pursue the remainder in court.  

The U.S. government took no position at the time on whether the creditor groups were entitled to recover funds under the Terrorist Risk Insurance Act of 2002. 

It urged Netburn and Daniels to view exceptions to sovereign immunity narrowly, citing the risks of interference with the president’s power to conduct foreign relations, and possible challenges to American property located abroad. 

Other countries hold about $2 billion of Afghan reserves. 

‘Right thing’

Shawn Van Diver, the head of #AfghanEvac, which helps evacuate and resettle Afghans, said he hoped the frozen funds could be used to help the struggling Afghan economy without enriching the Taliban. 

“The judge has done the right thing here,” he said. 

Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001, when planes were flown into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in northern Virginia, and a Pennsylvania field. 

U.S. sanctions ban doing financial business with the Taliban but allow humanitarian support for the Afghan people.
…

The executive board of the International Monetary Fund is slated to convene Monday to decide whether to disburse over $1 billion in loans to Pakistan. The move will unlock critically needed additional foreign funding as the country struggles to avoid economic collapse amid high inflation and low foreign exchange reserves.

While Pakistan’s economic woes are nothing new, experts say its strategic significance compels global powers to keep this nuclear-armed South Asian nation of almost 230 million people afloat.

How poor is Pakistan’s economy? 

The Pakistani currency, the rupee, lost more than a third of its value and hit an all-time low against the U.S. dollar in July before rebounding a bit. Year-over-year inflation touched a painful 25%, according to government data released in July, with prices of staples like cooking oil and lentils almost doubling.

Earlier the government banned imports of more than three dozen “nonessential” or “luxury” items including canned fish, jams and jellies. A government minister famously urged people to “drink less tea” as the rising import bill, coupled with a lack of foreign funding, ate away at the country’s foreign exchange reserves.

According to the State Bank of Pakistan, the central bank’s foreign exchange reserves stood below $8 billion in mid-August, barely enough to cover a few weeks’ worth of imports.

Government officials blame the country’s economic woes on the global rise in the cost of food and fuel because of supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Uzair Younus, director of the Pakistan Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, said in an interview, “Pakistan’s COVID strategy on the health and economic side was perhaps the best in the region … [but] the amount of stimulus and amnesties that were given were just enormous, and so a lot of import spending went out as a result of that.”

The country relies heavily on foreign loans and imports. Government data show its total external debt — the money it owes other countries and foreign lenders — is more than 80% of its GDP.

Why Pakistan’s economic stability matters

Standing on the brink of default, Pakistan managed in the last six weeks to secure loans, financing, deferred oil payments and investment commitments close to $12 billion from China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE. However, much of this and more from other multilateral lenders such as the World Bank will become available only after the IMF board approves the release of almost $1.2 billion.

Younus believes the optics of a Pakistan in peril are particularly poor for China, which is anxious for the success of its global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

“If the BRI is the poster child of China’s foreign and economic policy globally, that shows China has arrived, then CPEC was its crown jewel in so many ways,” he told VOA, referring to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an almost $60 billion collection of infrastructure development projects funded by Chinese loans and investments in Pakistan.

“If [Pakistan] goes belly up and defaults, that will really raise questions about China’s own ability to set up competing infrastructure, competing financial instruments, et cetera … for its own strategic partners,” Younis said. In that event, “the contagion effect of Pakistan’s economic collapse on broader Chinese foreign policy, economic policy, would be too big.”

Tamanna Salikuddin, director of South Asia programs at the United States Institute of Peace, said the “U.S. tap [has] much more dried up” over the last 20 years as the war in Afghanistan dragged on.

However, she said, Washington still supports the loans through the IMF, where it is the biggest donor, because “a crisis on Afghanistan’s border is not something that the U.S. wants to see. … Counterterrorism interests and nuclear security and stability remain in U.S. national security interests.”

As the competition for global influence between Beijing and Washington heats up, Salikuddin said, Pakistan can position itself in the middle and ensure that it “certainly gets bailed out.”

Why Pakistan needs repeated bailouts 

Pakistan is among the world’s most bailed-out countries. It is currently participating in its 23rd loan program with the IMF since the country joined the institution in 1950, just three years after partition from India.

Successive governments have promised to “break the beggar’s bowl” or get the country out of IMF’s “trap,” but experts note a consistent lack of political will and public appetite for necessary economic reforms. In a nation of almost 230 million, fewer than 3 million file income tax returns, according to government data. Any efforts at expanding the tax net are met with severe opposition.

The latest disbursement to be decided on by the IMF board Monday is, in fact, part of a $6 billion loan program agreed upon with Islamabad in 2019. If approved, the money will come after months of delays and tough negotiations as Pakistan backtracked on promised policy reforms.

Younis applauded the new government that took over in May for its willingness to make some tough choices like raising taxes on fuel and electricity and reducing government subsidies after a few reversals but sees no signs of long-term reform.

What’s next for Pakistan? 

Lifting the ban on most “luxury” imports at the end of last month, Finance Minister Miftah Ismail assured a late-night news conference that Pakistan would not default. However, political wrangling at home may still derail plans with the IMF.

Experts VOA spoke to noted that Pakistan’s economy is broad and deep and its geostrategic position strong enough for it to avoid default.

However, Salikuddin said, it’s partially this geostrategic importance that leads Pakistan to make “irresponsible” economic policies as the leadership perhaps believes the country is “too big to fail.”
…

Officials in Pakistan said Friday that weeks of flooding triggered by historic monsoon rains had killed nearly 1,000 people and “badly affected” 33 million others, and they appealed for international help to deal with the calamity. 

The devastation across all four provinces of the country prompted Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif to declare a national emergency amid forecasts of more rain, his office said.  

Sharif was quoted as saying the government was working closely with the United Nations to launch a flash flood appeal on August 30. 

Southwestern Baluchistan and southern Sindh provinces were the hardest hit. Video showed swollen rivers and gushing floodwaters submerging towns, destroying buildings, washing away villages, bridges, roads and other infrastructure. 

Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman described the seasonal rainfall as a “monsoon monster” and blamed climate change for the deadliest flooding in the South Asian nation of about 220 million people in more than a decade.  

She declared that Pakistan was living through “one of the most serious climate catastrophes” in the world, and that it was wreaking nonstop havoc throughout the country. 

“We are at this point ground zero, the front line, with extreme weather events, which we have seen from early this year in an unrelenting cascade of heat wave, forest fires, flash floods, multiple glacial lake-outburst-flood events and now the monster monsoon of the decade,” Rehman said.  

“The amount of water on the ground has inundated huge swaths of Pakistan, with 33 million people affected, many stranded,” she said. “Thousands are without shelter; many are without food. And people are stranded.” 

Baluchistan, already battered by flash floods, lost communication with the rest of the country after massive overnight rains, said the English-language Dawn newspaper. The communication breakdown was hampering rescue and relief operations in the impacted region.  

The Pakistan Telecom Authority said Friday that it had restored voice and data services in Baluchistan and efforts were being made to resolve “this unprecedented situation.”  

Officials at the Pakistan Meteorological Department said the country saw its wettest July since 1961, warning another cycle of torrential rains could emerge next month. Rescue teams, assisted by Pakistani military troops, were erecting tents and shelters in the flood-affected areas, where many were without food and shelter. 

Rehman said an assessment of needs was being prepared but that Pakistan would require all the international help it could get because dealing with the disaster was beyond the capacity of federal or provincial governments. 

Sindh received “784%” more rainfall this month than the August average, while Baluchistan had received almost 500% more, according to official data. 

Since mid-June, when the monsoon seasons began in Pakistan, more than 3,000 kilometers of roads, 130 bridges and tens of thousands of homes have been damaged across the country, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. 

Parts of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and central Punjab provinces might face “very high to an exceptionally high level of flooding” in the next few days, according to the NDMA forecast.  

Former Prime Minister Imran Khan, whose opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party rules KP, visited flood-hit parts Friday and described on Twitter the level of destruction in the province as massive. The scenic Swat valley in the province was one of the hardest-hit districts.

The calamity has struck Pakistan at a time when the country faces an economic crisis, with dwindling foreign cash reserves and historic inflation.  

The Sharif government has cut spending and increased fuel and utility prices to ensure Pakistan receives a much-needed $1.2 billion bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund.  

The United Nations has responded by allocating $3 million. “This will be used for health, nutrition, food security, and water and sanitation services in flood-affected areas, focusing on the most vulnerable,” said a U.N. statement.
…

The Taliban have been in control of Afghanistan for more than a year but still do not have an ambassador in the United Nations or any country. And since last Friday, the regime’s foreign minister has been banned from traveling abroad.

Diplomatically, the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is even worse off than the dictatorship in North Korea, often said to be the most isolated country in the world, which has embassies in more than 45 countries and a seat at U.N. headquarters in New York.

A short-term travel waiver that had been granted to 13 Taliban officials expired on August 19 because U.N. Security Council members did not agree to extend it.

Since 1999, under UNSC Resolution 1267, 151 Taliban officials have been banned from traveling abroad because of their alleged links to international terrorism.

The U.S. government, which fought the Taliban for two decades in Afghanistan and has designated several Taliban leaders as international terrorists, wants “strictly limited” diplomatic engagement with the Taliban.

“[F]ace-to-face discussions in third countries with the Taliban have proven to be useful to advance our interests, particularly as we have no presence in Afghanistan at this time,” a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told VOA.

Two other UNSC members, Russia and China, have also expressed the need for continued diplomacy with the Taliban.

“For China, definitely, we hope that engagement is very much necessary since Afghanistan is at a critical stage,” Zhang Jun, China’s ambassador to the U.N., told reporters Thursday.

But despite their ostensible agreement on the need to engage with the Taliban, major powers on the UNSC appear to strongly differ on how and where to do business with Taliban representatives.

For years, U.S. officials dealt with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, where a small U.S. diplomatic mission handles Afghanistan-related issues. The U.S. reportedly prefers a Taliban travel exemption only to Doha, where Taliban officials can meet diplomats from any country or international organization.

China and Russia have not only kept their respective embassies open in Taliban-controlled Kabul but have also accredited Taliban diplomats in Moscow and Beijing without officially recognizing the Taliban regime.

While the U.S. wants to meet Taliban interlocutors in Qatar, Chinese and Russian officials prefer to host Taliban envoys in Russia and China.

Extending the travel exemption to a smaller group of more moderate Taliban officials is also an option cited in some diplomatic circles.

But the differences among UNSC powers are deeper than minor preferences, some analysts say.

“The Taliban travel ban waiver issue is no longer so much about the situation in Afghanistan. It is now a … great power alignment crisis within the UNSC,” Omar Samad, a former Afghan ambassador, told VOA.

“The real issue itself is sensitive enough, given the political and technicality pillars, but it has now become embroiled in high-wire diplomacy influenced by East-West tensions.”

Ineffective sanctions?

From asset freezes to travel bans to rewards for their arrest, Taliban leaders have been facing strong international sanctions for more than two decades.

While many observers criticize these sanctions as largely ineffective, others say the Taliban’s refusal to accept international laws leaves the world with few options but to impose sanctions on them.

“As much as you offer latitude to the Taliban, they think that’s a reflection of their strength,” said Shinkai Karokhail, a former Afghan lawmaker and diplomat, “and they show no commitment to international norms.”

Karokhail said the sanctions regime needs improvement and should specifically target the most problematic elements in the Taliban leadership.

“If Taliban’s ties to Pakistan are effectively sanctioned, this will bring cataclysmic changes in the Taliban regime,” she told VOA, referring to the alleged support of the Taliban by Pakistani intelligence.

The Taliban deny receiving orders from Pakistan, but U.S. officials and many Afghan observers say the group has deep ties to Pakistan.

In a recent interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai alleged that the Taliban have shut secondary schools for Afghan girls at the behest of Pakistan.

Taliban officials say that the sanctions are counterproductive and that no external pressure will force them to compromise on their Islamist policies, “even if they use a nuclear bomb,” the Taliban’s supreme leader told a religious gathering in Kabul in July.

US presence

With more than $700 million in aid, the U.S. has been the single largest humanitarian donor to Afghanistan over the past year.

The U.S. has channeled funds through the U.N. and other international organizations and has no presence in Afghanistan to monitor how its aid dollars are being used.

“The best way for the United States to maintain regular contact and develop insights into conditions on the ground would be to reestablish a diplomatic presence in Kabul,” a report by RAND, a U.S. global policy think tank, recommended in May 2022.

The authors of the report, two former senior U.S. diplomats and one researcher with extensive work on Afghanistan, described the engagement policy with the Taliban as a preferable option for the U.S. to further its interests and hold the Taliban accountable to their counterterror commitments.

“The United States has no immediate plans to resume operations at Embassy Kabul,” a State Department spokesperson said without offering details.

On August 1, a U.S. drone killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, an event that significantly set back U.S. engagement with the Taliban. U.S. officials have accused the Taliban of “a flagrant violation” of their commitment not to host al-Qaida and other terrorists in areas under their control.

More than three weeks since the drone bombing, Taliban officials maintain they have not found al-Zawahiri’s body and instead criticize the U.S. for violating Afghanistan’s aerial sovereignty.
…

A series of Twitter notifications alerted Gharidah Farooqi that she was once again at the center of a harassment campaign. A hashtag, using a Pakistani term for prostitute, pulled in tens of thousands of hate-filled posts directed at the political journalist.

“I had already seen the hashtag at night but ignored it, thinking it is just a few people,” she told VOA. “By the next morning, it was trending on top and I said to myself, ‘OK, here we go again.’”

The online attack was upsetting, but not a first for Farooqi. The host of “G for Gharidah” on Pakistan’s NewsOne, has dealt with years of online abuse during her 20-year career.

When it comes to online trolls, Pakistan has ranked among the top five worst offenders monitored by the Coalition For Women in Journalism or CFWIJ. The global non-profit has analyzed digital threats in 132 countries for the past two years.

“Most women journalists are resilient and continue to do their work,” said Kiran Nazish, founding director of CFWIJ. But, “it does have a negative effect on their ability to carve time and resources to be able to report freely.”

The country’s female journalists disproportionately experience sexualized abuse and gender-related threats.

“Remove the online trolling from the equation, and what do you see? Women journalists being able to pursue journalism freely and asking tough questions without fearing discrediting campaigns online,” Nazish said.

In Farooqi’s case, the online attacks started after she shared news and commented on the arrest of an aide to former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Most of the attacks came from accounts that appeared to support his Pakistan Tehreek e-Insaf, or PTI, party.

Twitter took action to try to halt the abuse but by that point, the hashtag had appeared in more than 128,000 tweets.

Farooqi believes the PTI is behind the online harassment. She and other female journalists in Pakistan have previously accused the party and government officials of “instigating” online attacks that their supporters then amplify against critics.

Andleeb Abbas, the PTI Punjab information secretary and former National Assembly member, acknowledged that online attacks are an issue but said the PTI does not support harassment of the media.

Abbas told VOA that the youth running the PTI’s digital media are passionate volunteers who have far more important party activities to work on than pushing abusive hashtags.

Media bias should also be taken into account, Abbas said.

“Just because you are a woman and you are giving whatever news you want to, then you should expect whatever reaction there comes. Do not play [the] woman card,” she said. “If you are continuously giving news with a tilt and you are being identified as such, there will be a reaction, maybe not from the party but from the supporters. And the reaction comes not just for women but men as well.”

Online dynamics

When Farooqi first started covering the PTI, she says the party was generally pleased with the coverage, especially when she reported on their dharna, a 2014 protest that lasted over 100 days.

But when the party came to power in 2018, the dynamic changed.

While being a fierce critic of the government when it was in opposition, the party had no idea it would come under the same criticism and scrutiny when it formed a government, Farooqi said.

She said the PTI and its supporters launched vicious social media campaigns against journalists, calling them Lifafa (sell-out), Ghaddar (traitor), Boot Polishiya (boot-lickers), and worse. Female journalists are on the worst end of a campaign to discredit media, she said.

Life as a journalist has always been a struggle for women, says Mazhar Abbas.

The political analyst and senior journalist at the Geo and Jang media group has been at the forefront of press freedom efforts in Pakistan.

Women in the field have always been under threat in Pakistan, Abbas said. They have fought through tear gas and baton charges, and one has spent time in prison with her 1-year-old child.

He recalled a time when women were denied assignments but said some progress has been made. Nevertheless, they are still exposed to online harassment and violence, and still face restrictions and physical abuse, he said.

“As far as online trolling is concerned, it has been observed that the digital media wings of political parties target women politicians and women journalists with a single agenda of discouraging and stoking fear in them, so they either leave their profession altogether or stop reporting fearlessly,” he said.

Asma Shirazi, a political journalist with AAJ TV, says that for years she has been targeted with abusive comments, false allegations, doctored pictures and character assassinations.

“If we complain to the leadership, we are told that the reaction must have been due to our critique of the political party [but] raising questions in the public interest is our job,” said Shirazi, who in 2014 was awarded the Peter Mackler Award for Courageous and Ethical Journalism.

Like Farooqi, she blames the PTI and other parties.

Both journalists believe the misogynistic attacks aim to stop women reporting freely by making them vulnerable.

“They are scared,” Farooqi said. “They do not accept democratic rights, do not want journalism or critical thinking to thrive in Pakistan, neither do they respect differences in opinion.”

Support network

Farooqi said she has filed multiple complaints to the Federal Investigation Agency’s cybercrime wing and is still awaiting action.

She jokingly says she has skin “thick as a crocodile” and pays little attention to online threats and violence. Shirazi also has coping methods: she has limited the reply option on her social media posts.

Farooqi, however, says she has seen colleagues self-censor– either abandoning social media or avoiding asking tough questions.

Pakistan’s journalists have previously tried to improve conditions.

A group of journalists in August 2020 released a joint statement calling on the government and political parties to stop sexualized online abuse directed at women who report critically on the government.

In a little over a month, the joint statement carried more than 160 signatures.

Separately, in 2021, under Khan’s government, a Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Bill was passed.

Under it, threats, coercion, and acts of violence and abuse of journalists are to be investigated, prosecuted, and penalized.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says that the protection offered is “conditional on reporters adopting a certain ‘conduct.’”

This article originated in VOA’s Urdu Service.)
…

Afghanistan’s Taliban on Thursday called for ending the travel ban on some of their leaders to help advance diplomacy, as the U.N. Security Council remains divided over whether to grant the exemption.

A Security Council waiver allowing 13 Taliban leaders, including Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, to travel abroad expired last Friday, after member states failed to agree on a possible extension in the exemptions.

“[The] travel ban is tantamount to the closing of the door of engagement and talks. It is a hurdle in the way of resolving issues through peaceful means,” Suhail Shaheen, who heads the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, told VOA.

A total of 135 Taliban officials are subject to sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, under a 2011 Security Council resolution. The 13, though, were granted exemptions from the travel ban to allow them to conduct peace talks with officials from other countries, including the United States, and the Security Council regularly renewed the exemptions.

The waiver ended last Friday, though, after objections from Western nations to its automatic renewal, citing the Taliban’s failure to uphold their commitments that they would respect human rights of all Afghans, including women, form an inclusive government, and fight terrorism.

The United States and allied nations have proposed granting the travel waiver to a lower number of Taliban officials and limiting their travel only to Qatar, where U.S. officials have routinely held talks with Muttaqi-led Taliban delegates in recent months.

China and Russia, however, advocated allowing all 13 officials of the Islamist group, which seized power in Afghanistan a year ago, to continue to travel. Chinese officials have argued against linking human rights to travel issues, deeming it “counterproductive.”

“In this critical time, I hope it is dawned on all that it is a need for diplomacy and dialogue. It is worth mentioning that we greatly appreciate the efforts of all those who are supporting the travel ban waiver,” Shaheen told VOA.

Until Security Council members reach a deal, none of the Taliban officials on the sanctions list can travel abroad.

Despite the split over whether to extend the travel ban waiver, a U.S. State Department spokesperson in Washington stressed the need for engagements with the Taliban.

“The exemption expired on August 19, and discussions on whether to grant an exemption remain ongoing, and a decision requires consensus among other members of the Security Council,” said Vedant Patel.

“Generally, we see the need to continue limited engagement with the Taliban to help the Afghan people, and have found that face-to-face discussions in third countries have proven to be useful to advance our interests, to advance our national security interests,” Patel added.

In June, the Security Coucil’s Afghanistan Sanctions Committee had removed two Taliban education ministers from the exemption list to protest the continued ban on secondary school education for girls across most of the country.

Late last month, the United States announced the killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike against his safe house in the heart of Kabul. The presence of one of Washington’s most wanted men in the Afghan capital called into question the Taliban’s counterterrorism pledges.

Analysts say the Taliban’s reneging on their pledges is making it difficult for the U.S. and allied nations to push for an early release of billions of dollars in frozen Afghan central bank assets, held internationally.

“Unfortunately, the Taliban have not done anything to make it politically easier for the U.S. to unfreeze the assets, given the facts that they are still banning girls from going to secondary schools, that the leader of al-Qaida was found right in the middle of central Kabul,” said Barnet Rubin, a former senior advisor at the U.S. State Department.

“All of those things indicate that improving their relations with the outside world is not important priority for them,” Rubin told an online discussion this week on how to deal with the Afghan humanitarian crisis. China’s state television organized the event in partnership with an Afghan news channel.

Meanwhile, chief Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid reiterated Thursday they had not found the body of al-Zawahiri and investigations into the U.S. claims of the slain al-Qaida leader’s presence in Kabul were continuing.

Speaking at a news conference, Mujahid also demanded the U.S. stop flying drones over Afghanistan’s airspace in breach of their country’s sovereignty, saying the Taliban had taken up the issue with U.S. officials. “If they the U.S. government has any concerns they should share them with us,” the spokesman insisted.

The Taliban reaction came in response to reports that U.S. drones had been seen flying over southern Kandahar province and surrounding areas Wednesday.

Nike Ching contributed to this report.
…

A Pakistani court on Thursday extended former premier Imran Khan’s protection from arrest through the end of the month, officials said, after police filed terrorism charges against the country’s popular opposition leader.

The court protected Khan from arrest until Sept. 1 over accusations that during a speech over the weekend, he threatened police officers and a female judge. The developments before the court relief for Khan had raised fears of violent clashes between police and Khan, who is leading mass rallies and seeking snap elections after being ousted. The government says elections will be held as scheduled next year.

On Thursday, Khan told reporters outside the court that he never threatened anyone.

He said the terrorism charges against him were politically motivated and that Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s government feared Khan’s growing popularity.

“You are making fun of Pakistan,” Khan said of Sharif’s government.

Later, Khan went to another court where a criminal case was registered against him this week on charges of defying a ban on staging rallies in the capital, Islamabad. He was protected from arrest in that case as well until Sept. 7.

Earlier, Khan’s lawyer requested the anti-terrorism court to protect Khan from arrest. Babar Awan said the terrorism charges filed against Khan were “an act of revenge.”

Arriving at court, Khan was asked to walk toward the courtroom as ordinary suspects do.

Hundreds of Khan’s supporters gathered outside the court building, chanting slogans against Sharif’s government. Demonstrators said Khan is being politically victimized by Sharif’s government. Later, Khan left the court for his home on the outskirts of Islamabad.

Sharif replaced Khan in April when he was ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament. Legal experts say Khan could face from several months to 14 years in prison, the equivalent of a life sentence if he is found guilty by the court during the trial which has not started yet against him on the terrorism charges.

Thursday’s appearance of Khan before an anti-terrorism tribunal amid tight security was the latest development in the saga between Pakistan’s government and Khan, who has been holding mass rallies, seeking to return to power.

Khan is also to appear before the Islamabad High Court on Aug. 31 to face contempt proceedings on charges of threatening a judge. His conviction, in this case, will mean his disqualification from politics for life under Pakistani law. No convicted person can run for office.

It is the second time that Khan — a former cricket star turned Islamist politician — faces contempt charges. After elections in 1993, he was summoned but pardoned by the Supreme Court after describing the conduct of the judiciary as “shameful” and saying it did not ensure free and fair elections.

Legal experts say Khan has limited options and could avoid a conviction if he apologizes for his remarks against Judge Zeba Chaudhry, when he told her to “get ready for it, we will also take action against you.”

Khan made that critical comment against judge Chaudhry after she allowed police to interrogate Gill, who is the chief of staff at Khan’s party. Gill was arrested earlier this month for allegedly attempting to incite soldiers to revolt against the top military leadership. Gill was sent to jail the previous day, pending trial.

Since his ouster, Khan has alleged — without providing evidence — that Pakistan’s powerful military took part in a U.S. plot to oust him. Washington, the Pakistani military and the government of Khan’s successor, Shahbaz Sharif, have all denied the allegation.

Khan came to power promising to break the pattern of family rule in Pakistan. His opponents contend he was elected with help from the powerful military, which has ruled the country for half of its 75-year history. Since his ouster, Khan has also demanded early elections and vowed to oust Sharif’s government through “pressure from the people.”
…

An Indian billionaire close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to buy a broadcaster seen as the last major critical voice on television, stoking fears about media freedom in the world’s largest democracy.

Under Modi, India has slipped 10 places in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom ranking to 150 out of 180, with critical reporters often finding themselves behind bars and hounded on social media by supporters of the ruling BJP.

Gautam Adani — Asia’s richest person, with interests ranging from Australian coal mines to India’s busiest ports — announced late Tuesday that his firm had indirectly acquired a 29% stake in NDTV and was bidding for a further 26%.

NDTV said that the move came “without any discussion” with the broadcaster, “or the consent of the NDTV founders,” journalist Radhika Roy and economist Prannoy Roy.

Its two channels, one in Hindi and one in English, stand out among India’s myriad rolling news broadcasters for inviting on critics of the government as well as their hard-hitting reporting.

It has already been hit by a slew of legal cases that its owners said were a result of its reporting.

On Wednesday morning an employee at NDTV told AFP that there was a “general sense of shock and disbelief” in the newsroom following the announcement.

“We only found out from other news agency flashes and channels about the takeover and then all hell broke loose,” the employee said, asking to remain anonymous.

“People are still trying to figure out what has happened and what will happen. There is a sense of uncertainty since it is only a matter of time till the new management comes in.”

Geeta Seshu, founder of the Free Speech Collective, an independent organization that advocates press freedom, said that “the space for independent journalism has shrunk alarmingly over the last few years.”

“The few brave journalists who continue to put out information are also battling court cases, are lodged in jail for long periods without bail, attacked or silenced permanently,” Seshu told AFP.

Self-made billionaire

Seshu said that while NDTV has been “struggling” commercially for some time, “the manner of this takeover is shocking, given the naked display of economic and political muscle.”

The Adani group’s closeness to the government was “hardly a secret,” she added.

Self-made billionaire Adani, 60, this year overtook fellow Indian Mukesh Ambani to become Asia’s richest man, with a net worth of $139 billion according to Forbes, behind Jeff Bezos and ahead of Bill Gates.

Modi and Adani both come from the western state of Gujarat, and the latter’s conglomerate has expanded aggressively in recent years, including into new areas like airports and renewable energy.

But this growth into capital-intensive businesses has raised alarms, with Fitch Group’s CreditSights warning on Tuesday that the group was “deeply overleveraged.”

Ambani’s wealth and influence have also grown under Modi — he now owns more than 70 media outlets that are followed by at least 800 million Indians, according to Reporters Without Borders.

This includes a majority stake in Network18, one of the biggest media conglomerates in the country, which owns several leading broadcasters.

‘Oligarchs’

NDTV’s integrity has been a bright spot in a media landscape compromised by increasing corporate control, said P. Sainath, founder and editor of the grassroots reporting network People’s Archive of Rural India.

“Under the circumstances and under the pressure they’ve worked in, they really stand out,” he said.

Hartosh Singh Bal, journalist at Caravan magazine — a rare critical voice among print media — said the takeover could bring the curtain down on “the only channel left that could be called partly independent.”

“The government influence on the media is growing. The control of what I call oligarchs — the Adanis and the Ambanis — is also growing and it will keep on growing,” he told AFP.

“This [takeover] means there is almost no independent media left and that shrinking space is extremely dangerous.”
…

Since taking power last year, the Taliban have issued more than 700,000 passports to Afghan nationals inside the country, earning about $50 million in revenue, according to officials.

“We are issuing up to 4,000 passports daily and we aim to increase the number to 10,000,” Shirshah Quraishi, deputy director of Afghanistan’s passport department, told reporters Tuesday in Kabul.

Fearing the Taliban’s repressive rule, with many enduring hunger and poverty since their return to power, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have fled the country over the past year.

The U.S. government, which evacuated more than 120,000 Afghans last year, plans to resettle thousands of additional Afghans to the U.S. through the Special Immigration Visa and Priority-2 programs.

About half a million Afghans are estimated to have left their country in the months immediately after the Taliban’s takeover, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

While the Taliban have banned women from work, except in the health and education sectors, and have closed secondary schools for girls, passports have been issued both for male and female applicants, a Taliban official said.

The Taliban leadership also made more than $1 million in visa fees paid by more than 4,100 foreign nationals who have visited Afghanistan over the past year.

Passport and visa income is a small portion in the Taliban’s budget of about $2 billion for 2022 that reportedly is incurring a $500 million deficit.

Foreign donors have stopped all nonhumanitarian aid to Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover of the country, contributing to massive unemployment, heightened poverty and a widespread humanitarian crisis. Afghanistan received $4.2 billion in developmental assistance in 2020.

Corruption

While some observers say that the Taliban have tackled corruption, particularly in revenue-generating sectors such as customs, getting a new passport remains mired in bribery and administrative corruption.

“I paid $800 in bribes and illicit commissions to get a passport,” said Farzana, an Afghan woman who has applied for a U.S. visa in Pakistan and preferred not to use her surname in this article.

Two other Afghans who recently got their passports in Kabul gave similar accounts of outright graft in the process.

Even Taliban officials acknowledge the corruption.

“We have arrested more than 350 corrupt individuals, including tens of [passport department] employees,” said Quraishi, who urged the media to help report corruption in the passport department.

Passports of nonexistent government

To meet the high demand from Afghans who want to leave the country, Taliban authorities have finalized plans to print 2 million new passport booklets.

Lacking the print technology inside the country, the Taliban have sought assistance from the U.N. to produce the new passports in Lithuania, officials said.

A spokesperson for the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan was not available to answer questions about helping the Taliban print new Afghan passports abroad.

“The new passports will carry the logo of the republic,” said Quraishi, referring to the former Afghan government.

More than a year since the collapse of the former Afghan government, no country has officially recognized the Taliban’s Islamic emirate, which has annulled the Afghan constitution and changed the national flag, emblem and other official logos.

“Taliban cannot introduce new passports until their regime is recognized internationally,” Ali Ahmad Jalili, a former Afghan interior minister and ambassador, told VOA.

Afghanistan’s passport is ranked the least powerful travel document in the world by the 2022 Henley Passport Index, facilitating entry to no country without a visa.
…

A detained opposition politician in Pakistan, facing sedition charges, alleged Wednesday that his genitals were electrocuted while he was being subjected to torture in police custody to extract a confession.

Shahbaz Gill, a close aide to ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan, talked to reporters outside a court in Islamabad. He spoke two weeks after he was arrested for allegedly making anti-military comments during a television talk show.

The 42-year-old assistant professor of business administration at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is Khan’s chief of staff.

Gill, his lawyers and the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party have repeatedly accused police of torturing him since taking him into custody on August 9.

There was no immediate official reaction to Gill’s statement. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government has previously denied the torture allegations.

Gill’s statement came a day after Human Rights Watch demanded an urgent investigation into his complaints, citing “numerous credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment of political opponents” in Pakistan during previous governments.

The U.S.-based group also questioned sedition charges against the detained politician.

“Pakistan’s sedition law, based on a colonial-era British provision, is vague and overboard and has often been used against political opponents,” it said.

Human Rights Watch called on the Sharif government to urgently pass pending legislation in parliament that, if enacted, would make torture during investigations by Pakistan’s security forces a criminal offense.

Pakistan’s most watched ARY News television channel aired Gill’s alleged seditious statement.

The government subsequently removed the broadcaster from air, accusing it of being part of the opposition plot to incite mutiny in the army. The military has ruled Pakistan for roughly half of its 75-year history through coups against democratically elected governments, and criticism of the powerful institution is considered a red line.

Khan, meanwhile, has staged massive anti-government rallies since his ouster in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April, demanding fresh national elections in the country.

On Saturday, the former prime minister told a crowd of thousands of his supporters in Islamabad that he would bring lawsuits against a senior police official and a judge for their roles in the alleged torture against Gill. “We will not spare you. … We will sue you,” Khan pledged.

The Sharif government on Sunday charged Khan under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism laws for threatening government officials, escalating political tensions across the country of about 220 million people.

Khan’s party leaders and thousands of supporters quickly rushed to his residence outside the capital, creating a human barrier there to resist any attempt by the police to arrest him.

The crowd dispersed on Monday after a court granted the former prime minister three days of protective bail, which ends on Thursday. Khan is expected to appear before an anti-terrorism tribunal to seek pre-arrest bail in the case registered against him by the government.

PTI leaders have rejected the terrorism charges against their party chief as “bogus” and political victimization.” Khan has said he has every right to approach the higher judiciary to seek justice for Gill in line with the constitution.

Pakistani Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah has not ruled out arresting Khan if the ousted leader fails to get bail on Thursday. “We will ensure that he is arrested from the court,” the minister told a local television channel.

Defense lawyer Babar Awan said Wednesday that Khan plans to personally appear before the anti-terrorism court.

“This is a fake case in which neither a bomb blast nor a Kalashnikov was used,” Awan said. “This move by the police to use anti-terrorism law [against Khan] has destroyed Pakistan’s narrative against terrorism developed over the last 20 years.”

Pakistan introduced anti-terrorism laws in the 1990s to deter sectarian and religiously motivated terrorism in the years that ensued. Successive governments have since used the legislation in cases against political opponents and critics to deter dissent.

The Sharif government has also filed terrorism charges against several journalists for accusing the military of playing a role in Khan’s ouster. Some of the journalists have been briefly detained while a couple of popular political talk show hosts have recently fled the country.

A spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday he was aware of the charges brought against the former prime minister.

“He emphasizes the need for a competent, independent and impartial legal process. The secretary-general urges calm, lowering of tensions and respect for the rule of law, human rights and fundamental freedoms,” Stéphane Dujarric told reporters.
…

A group of HIV-positive people has been protesting for more than a month at the central office of India’s National AIDS Control Organization, or NACO, in New Delhi, demanding a regular supply of life-saving antiretroviral therapy — also known as ART — drugs across the country.

NACO is the nodal organization of the government of India that manages programs for the prevention and control of HIV and AIDS in the country. ART drugs work by stopping the virus from replicating in HIV-infected people, helping them live longer and reducing or stopping the infection of the virus to others.

Centers that supply ART drugs across India have been out of stock on several antiretroviral drugs for months, threatening the lives and well-being of hundreds of thousands of HIV patients, according to leaders of the group that has been protesting in Delhi since July 21.

“I have been getting distress calls from hundreds of HIV-infected persons from different states of the country reporting the shortage in supply of the ART drugs from the ART centers across the country,” Hari Shankar, a leader of the ongoing Delhi protest, told VOA.

“The crisis has been acute since April. Most of them cannot afford to buy the drugs from the market privately,” Shankar added. “We will not withdraw from this protest until they, all across the country, start receiving the ART drugs supply regularly.”

According to a government estimate, India has 2.3 million people living with HIV. In 2004, the government began providing free ART to the people living with HIV in the country. Now around 1.5 million HIV patients are dependent on the ART provided by the government.

NACO procures ART drugs and distributes them through more than 675 ART centers spread across the country. People undergoing ART visit the centers every one, two or three months to collect their drugs. But since April, the supply of the drugs has been irregular in many parts of the country, many people said.

“Earlier, we regularly used to get the stock of the drugs for one to three months. Now we get the drugs just for one week or 10 days. The ART centers even in some big hospitals in New Delhi are turning us away because of the shortage of the drugs,” said Shankar, a member of the Delhi Network of Positive People or DNP Plus, which works to facilitate better medical treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in New Delhi.

The Delhi protest demanding a regular supply of ART drugs across the country is organized by DNP Plus.

Nisha Jha, another DNP Plus member, said that many people across the country are reporting a shortage of Dolutegravir (DTG) 50 mg, a key ART drug, from the ART centers.

“Those HIV patients who have been on the first line, second line, or third line ART for years, and are also infected with tuberculosis, need to take DTG 50 separately,” Jha told VOA.

“Because of the crisis of DTG, lives of thousands of our PLHIV brothers and sisters are in jeopardy now.”

There is a crisis of drugs like Nevirapine, Ritonavir, Lopinavir, Abacavir, and Zidovudine — which are used in different ART regimens for HIV ­patients — at ART centers across the country, Jha added.

The ART centers are asking patients to change their drug regimens because of the shortages of some drugs, many people said.

Surmick Waribam, a leader of HIV patients group Manipur Network of Positive People, or MNP Plus, in the northeastern state of Manipur, said the normal protocol calls for HIV patients to undergo certain medical tests before their ART regimens are changed.

“The ART centers are asking HIV patients to change the regimens without conducting any such medical tests. The patients are scared to change the regimen, fearing adverse impacts on their health. Being very poor, most of them cannot afford to buy the drugs from the market. So, they are left with no option but to change the regimen,” Waribam told VOA.

In response to a query from VOA, Dr. Manisha Verma, a spokesperson for the Indian health ministry, said in an emailed statement that there is “adequate stock for around 95% [of HIV patients] in India.”

“There is no stock-out of drugs and there are no instances of disruptions or non-availability of treatment services or ARV medicines at the national and state levels,” Verma said.

Dr. Mothi SN, an HIV and AIDS specialist, said that since the global roll-out of ARV medicines began in 2004, the HIV/AIDS scenario changed from being a “rapidly progressing fatal illness” to that of “a chronic manageable illness like diabetes or hypertension with a near-normal life expectancy.”

“Regular intake of ARV medicines and prompt adherence to treatment are resulting in added years of life. People with HIV may survive the infection and finally die of other age-related diseases like stroke, heart disease, cancer, etc.,” Mysore-based Mothi told VOA.

“To achieve the optimum outcome, prompt adherence to uninterrupted ARV therapy becomes the cornerstone of management of people living with AIDS.”

Waribam from Manipur said the shortage in supply of his regular ARV drugs forced him to switch to a new regimen of drugs.

“For my ARV drugs, I am dependent solely on the ART center. So, in June, like most of around 14,000 [people living with HIV] in Manipur, I agreed to switch to the new drugs the ART center offered. Even then, the ART centers are giving us drugs for three, five or 10 days,” Waribam said.

“Like thousands of others, I am also anxious and in doubt, if the new drugs would succeed to keep my viral load under check and not cause any damage to my health. …The authorities are playing with the lives of the PLHIV.”
…

Retired Generals Frank McKenzie and Joseph Votel share their views on decision to pull US troops out of embattled country

 
…

Abdul is the father of four children aged 3 to 10. His wife, Jamila, is learning English.

“I’m teaching my wife. I need her mind to stay busy,” he said.

Abdul and Jamila are not their real names. They head an Afghan family hiding from the Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“My wife has depression and anxiety attacks. She’s always thinking about me, about my safety. … My daughters ask me every day, ‘Can we go play outside?'” Abdul told VOA via WhatsApp and Signal messages.

Abdul was a border officer who served in the Afghan Army. One of his jobs was to guide a robot to study explosives and disarm them. While Abdul has managed to keep his family safe, others have not been so lucky. His former captain was taken from his home last October during a Taliban raid.

The 30-year-old and his family are among the thousands of former Afghan military personnel who stayed behind after the conclusion of nearly 20 years of war. The U.S. completed its withdrawal in August 2021 and helped evacuate more than 130,000 Afghans in the chaotic final weeks. But one year after the massive evacuation, many of those who could not leave still hope for a life in the United States.

Among them are Abdul, Jamila and their children.

Safe passage

The Biden administration has sought to expedite processing for at-risk Afghans who leave the country, but the exact route Afghans take to reach the United States is not being publicized for security reasons.

The State Department did not comment on U.S.-chartered flights. On background, a spokesperson said the U.S. encourages Afghanistan’s neighbors to keep their borders open to allow entry for Afghans.

“We continue to work to facilitate safe passage for U.S. citizens, LPRs [legal permanent residents], SIV [Special Immigration Visa] holders, Afghan allies, and their eligible family members who want to leave Afghanistan,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA. “For security and operational concerns, we will not share details of these efforts. However, the issue of safe passage is an issue we continue to engage on.”

The spokesperson also said the U.S. government is increasing its resources to process eligible Afghans outside of the U.S. through the Special Immigrant Visa program available to military interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government. SIV recipients can become eligible for permanent U.S. residency while the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) gives a clear path to U.S. citizenship.

“Which maximizes efficiencies by handling immigration processing requirements and domestic resettlement placements while overseas,” a State Department spokesperson said, adding, “All potential travelers to the United States continue to undergo extensive biographic and biometric security vetting conducted by our law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence agencies.”

The United States boosted resettlement assistance by $1.2 billion last year, allowing an expansion of processing facilities, including Camp As Sayliyah (CAS) in Doha, Qatar.

A State Department spokesperson told VOA that innovations to refugee processing at Camp As Sayliyah have “dramatically” shortened the timeline from arrival to departure, and most who are approved depart within 30 to 60 days of arrival.

“We are working to incorporate efficiencies at CAS to expedite processing for Afghans in other third countries. While we continue to improve our system for relocating and resettling Afghan allies in the United States, what won’t change is our commitment to keeping Americans safe,” the spokesperson said.

In March, U.S. government officials told the Washington Post on background that about 7,000 Afghans were on U.S. bases awaiting resettlement. Speaking with VOA, the State Department did not divulge how many are currently awaiting resettlement.

Afghans evacuated to the United States warn of even more extreme hardships and dangers for their brethren stuck in Afghanistan, where more than half the population endures critical levels of hunger, according to aid agencies.

“We are working on trying to find evacuation opportunities. But so far, they’ve all failed,” Ryan Mauro, founding director of the Afghan Liberty Project, told VOA.

Mauro said some people fleeing Afghanistan are making it to Iran and Pakistan, but they find themselves living in “horrible” conditions.

“[They] very often get beaten and tortured and then deported back to Afghanistan. So those aren’t routes that we necessarily recommend for people, but some people are willing to try it,” he said.

Mauro and those working at the Afghan Liberty Project built a network of contacts where Afghans hiding from the Taliban could live in safe houses. But because funds “dried up,” the network of safe houses is shutting down.

“It looks like we’re going to have to close down the safe house network in the next month or two,” Mauro said, adding that even with secret hiding places, any semblance of freedom has been taken away from Afghans.

“They don’t get sunlight if they’re inside all day. They’re jailed with their own depressive thoughts. And that is torture — to be locked in a place of desperation where the only thing you have is your own negative thoughts; that is torture,” Mauro said.

Other ongoing efforts

Back in the United States, the Biden administration announced on July 18 a streamlining of the SIV process for Afghans, in which applicants would only need to file one form — cutting down on paperwork and processing it through a single government agency.

As of July 20, new applicants — some in the SIV pipeline — no longer needed to send a separate petition to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for special immigrant status, keeping the entire process within the State Department.

“We do anticipate that, at a minimum, this change in process will shave about a month off of the adjudication time, but even more importantly, I think, ease a great administrative burden on the visa applicant. So, the process from the U.S. government side can be eased by a month or potentially more. … It’ll be a lot easier for the applicants as well,” a senior government official said.

As of July, U.S. officials counted 74,274 applicants in the SIV pipeline, not including spouses and children. As many as 50,000 applications could be approved.

Standard SIV applications usually move through a lengthy 14-step application process, which requires specific criteria to be met and takes an average of three years to complete. Applicants must have a visa to enter the United States.

In the call, Biden administration officials said although all new Afghan SIV applicants — and most of the applicants already in the pipeline — are no longer required to submit a separate 19-page form to USCIS, the “bottom line” is the United States will still need all necessary and required information to process someone’s SIV application.

“But it will be one form instead of two, and I think that the new, revised form that will be submitted to the State Department, while it still contains all of the critical information, I believe is a shorter form to fill out,” said one senior official.

Various U.S. agencies were involved in determining what kind of information an applicant needs to submit in the new form.

In the meantime, Abdul, Jamila, and their children are still waiting for the safest opportunity to leave Afghanistan, a country where they thrived before the U.S. withdrawal.

“This is jail [now]. … We were so happy. I was doing my duty at the border. We used to have picnics and go to weddings. We were happy,” Abdul told VOA.

Nike Ching, State Department Bureau Chief, contributed to this report.
…

Schools in Bangladesh will close an additional day each week and government offices and banks will shorten their work days by an hour to reduce electricity usage amid concerns over rising fuel prices and the impact of the Ukraine war.

The reduced hours take effect Wednesday. In Bangladesh, most schools are closed on Fridays, but now will also close on Saturdays, Cabinet Secretary Khandker Anwarul Islam said Monday.

He said government offices and banks will cut their work days to seven hours from the previous eight hours, but that private offices will be allowed to set their own schedules.

Supply disruptions caused by the Ukraine war have led to soaring world prices for energy and food.

Bangladesh has been taking measures in recent weeks to ease pressure on its declining foreign currency reserves. Last month, fuel prices were raised by more than 50%. The government says it is exploring options to get cheaper fuel from Russia under a special arrangement.

The decision has drawn criticism, but the government said it is necessary to cut losses amid rising international fuel prices. Small street protests against the higher prices have taken place in recent weeks, and the government said domestic prices will be adjusted after international prices ease.

The country has been suffering more frequent power cuts after the government suspended operations of all diesel-run power plants, reducing daily electricity production by 1,000 megawatts.

But authorities have promised to continue supplying power to industrial zones to help support the country’s $416 billion economy, which has been growing rapidly over the last decade.

The country’s opposition has accused the government of failing to control corruption and eliminate losses in the energy sector.

In July, Bangladesh sought an unspecified loan from the International Monetary Fund, becoming the third country in South Asia to do so recently after Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Rahul Anand, division chief in the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department, said in a recent consultation that Bangladesh was not in a crisis situation and its external position was “very different from several countries in the region.”

“Bangladesh has a low risk of debt distress and is very different from Sri Lanka,” he was quoted as saying by the Dhaka-based The Business Standard Daily.

Bangladesh’s foreign currency reserves have dwindled to around $40 billion.
…

India’s Supreme Court will hold a hearing on a petition challenging the release last week of 11 Hindu men convicted of the gang rape of a pregnant Muslim woman during Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002 in the western state of Gujarat.

Dozens of women in Mumbai protested on Tuesday against their release and carried placards demanding justice for the victim, who said last week she had not been told the men would be freed and that it had shaken her faith in justice.

Her three-year-old daughter was among those killed during one of India’s worst religious riots. More than 1,000 people died during the violence, most of them Muslims.

The petition has been brought by a group of women including Subhashini Ali, a politician and member of the Communist Party of India; Revati Laul, an independent journalist; and Mahua Moitra, a member of parliament from the opposition Trinamool Congress Party, attorney Kapil Sibal said.

Sibal told Reuters the court had agreed to hear their Public Interest Litigation petition demanding the men serve their full life sentences. No date has yet been set for the hearing.

Critics contend that freeing the convicts contradicts the government’s stated policy of supporting women in a country with numerous, well-documented instances of violence against them.

Authorities in the Panchmahals district of Gujarat released the men last Monday after considering the time they had served after their conviction in 2008 and their behavior while jailed.

A senior Gujarat state official overseeing the release said the convicts had completed 14 years in jail and were allowed free after the Supreme Court directed authorities to consider their plea for leniency under a 1992 remission policy.

The months-long riots were triggered after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire. Hindus accused Muslims of setting the fire in which 59 pilgrims died, but Muslims said the train attack was part of a conspiracy to target their community. Several Muslims were convicted for the attack on the train.

Current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was Gujarat’s chief minister at the time of the riots and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party continues to rule the state.
…

The United States is not safer following the pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and President Donald Trump’s and President Joe Biden’s determination to withdraw all U.S. forces from there led to Kabul’s fall, according to the last commanders to oversee a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Retired General Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) from 2019-2022, and retired General Joseph Votel, the head of CENTCOM from 2016-2019, spoke exclusively to VOA on Monday about the U.S. and NATO’s nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan.

“I do not believe we are safer as a result of our withdrawal from Afghanistan,” McKenzie, who advised American presidents to keep a minimum of 2,500 U.S. troops in the country, told VOA.

“There’s a lot that we don’t know about the organizations, the terrorist organizations that are left on the ground,” Votel added. “I don’t think we’re more stable or more safe. I think Afghanistan is more unstable, and as a result, that this region is more unstable.”

McKenzie has repeatedly said U.S. intelligence gathering in Afghanistan has been reduced to a tiny fraction of what it was before the pullout, and Votel told VOA that while the recent U.S. strike against al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri shows the U.S. has maintained some intelligence capabilities, the fact that this month’s strike was the first of its kind since the U.S. departed last year reveals the U.S. still has work to do.

Both generals say the decision to remove all U.S. troops from Afghanistan ultimately led to Kabul’s fall, a decision that spanned two presidencies. Presidents serve as commanders-in-chief of the military while in office, and senior military officers offer options to their civilian leaders and execute the decisions of those civilians.

Biden has defended his decision as “designed to save American lives,” saying on the last day of the withdrawal last year that he was “not going to extend this forever war” and would not extend “a forever exit” from Afghanistan.

But Votel told VOA on Monday he feared the “forever war” political narrative “overtook smart, strategic decision making” in Washington.

“I just don’t buy the idea that we had to pull everybody out,” Votel told VOA, calling the U.S. and NATO military presence in Afghanistan a necessary “insurance policy” to ensure the U.S. could “support the Afghans” and “continue to look after our national security interests that are present in that country.”

“What we wanted was an elegant solution that was not attainable. We wanted to go to zero militarily yet retain a small diplomatic platform in Afghanistan that would be protected,” McKenzie said.

Instead, American diplomats evacuated the embassy via helicopter, a visual many would compare to the U.S. evacuation from Saigon, Vietnam, in 1975. The U.S. appeared caught by surprise as the Taliban overran Kabul, with desperate Afghans clinging to the outside of American evacuation planes before the U.S. was able to completely secure Kabul’s airport.

McKenzie pinpointed the Doha agreement, negotiated between the U.S. and the Taliban during the Trump administration, as the “defeat mechanism” for the military campaign and a “deflating experience” for the Afghan government.

But the Afghan government clearly shared the blame by its inability to stop corruption and its reluctance to bring this war to a political conclusion once Trump and Biden had settled on leaving, Votel added.

Biden has said the negotiations that the Trump administration made with the Taliban left him with just two choices: either leave or escalate the conflict by “committing tens of thousands more troops back to war.”d

But McKenzie told VOA he did not believe that large a number of American troops were necessary, and had the president chosen to leave 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, he believed the U.S. could have become a smaller, more difficult target for the Taliban while retaining the ability to advise and assist the Afghan military.

“At 2,500 we would have kept aircraft at Bagram and at HKIA [Hamid Karzai International Airport], and we have kept a contractor base to support that,” along with American contractors overseeing “the daily humdrum [of] things that make a large military operation work” such as making sure ammunition and supplies get to “units that need it, not to the bazar or the Taliban.”

During last year’s evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in which the U.S. airlifted more than 120,000 people to safety, the Islamic State’s ultimate goal was to try to get a bomb on an airplane, according to McKenzie. He said the U.S. bravely thwarted several attack schemas under way, including rocket attacks and vehicle improvised explosive devices (IEDs,) but they were ultimately unable to thwart the suicide bomb attack that killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 others.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity:

On what went wrong in Afghanistan: 

MCKENZIE: So, I’ve spent a year, I’ve had an opportunity to give a lot of thought to this subject. And my belief is that the core decision that caused the tragic events of last August was our decision to leave Afghanistan completely. And that decision was a decision that really spanned two presidencies. President Trump and President Biden, they both are probably as un-alike as any presidents in American history, but they both shared a desire to go completely out of Afghanistan.

And I think the decision and the implementation of that decision led inevitably to what happened last August. That was a key decision and all the other findings that followed came as a result of that. And we can go more in depth on these decisions. But I think that the idea that we could leave, and that Afghanistan would still be able to defend itself without on-the-ground support, even if it was indirect support. I didn’t agree with that at the time. I don’t agree with it now. And I think that’s been borne out the truth of that, of that hypothesis.

VOTEL: You’ve asked an important question and one that, I think, takes a lot of lateral reflection. And I think Frank really hit the big idea there. You know, I think it’s important to recognize that departure would have been difficult under almost any circumstance that we could have could have created. But I do think that we failed to appreciate the impact of a political narrative, I think that emphasized our departure over a long period of time and the effect that had on the psyche of, of not only Afghan forces, but the Afghan people and certainly the Afghan government.

And I think contributed to a large degree to the challenge of trying to depart this country, which as I mentioned, was going to be hard under any, any circumstances that we could imagine. I also think, frankly, that there was probably some different assumptions, some different expectations, certainly with the Afghans, certainly with our NATO partners, and then probably certainly within our own government here as we orchestrated this departure.

On what a U.S. military presence of 2,500 in Afghanistan would have looked like:

MCKENZIE: So, 2,500 troops would have given us a small, very hard platform in a series of bases in Afghanistan that would have included Bagram Air Base. It would have given us the ability to continue to support the Afghan logistics system, would have given us the ability to continue to support the Afghan Air Force on the ground, would not have given us tactical advise and assist, which we weren’t doing anyway at that time. But I believe it would have given us the opportunity, along with the 4,000 or so NATO troops that would have stayed with us, the ability to continue to influence Afghan operations on the ground. And Carla, remember the ultimate aim was to go after the counterterrorist targets … which is why we wanted to support the Afghan military on the ground.

VOA: Secretary Lloyd Austin said in testimony on September 28 of last year that he believed as many as 5,000 troops were needed to operate and defend Bagram. Are you disagreeing with him? 

MCKENZIE: No, here’s the distinction. At 2,500 the assumption would be you would have the Afghans to help you defend Bagram. And that’s the difference. And also NATO, although we did most of the work (in Bagram). There was some NATO assistance up in Bagram.

But here’s the theory: At 2,500, the Afghans will still stand and fight. Therefore, you’re going to have Afghans defending the perimeter at Bagram. It would not have required 5,000. His number is probably not a bad number if we had to go in and defend Bagram by ourselves. I would agree with the secretary on that, but I’m talking about a different case. I’m talking about a case where we still are maintaining a relationship with the Afghan military on the ground. They’re still standing beside us, and we believe at 2,500 that would, in fact, ensue and that would be the way forward.

On the turnover of Bagram and why the Afghans weren’t prepared to take over the base: 

MCKENZIE: The commander on the ground July 2 was General Scott Miller. He did an exhaustive turnover of that airfield with the entire chain of command of the Afghan military on the ministerial and the tactical level. Now, you can find people on the ground that aren’t going to know about it. You know, in any organization you are always going to be able to find somebody, but I would tell you that was actually a pretty well-planned turnover.

At the same time though, you want to maintain an element of tactical surprise about when we are actually departing. So not every Afghan soldier at Bagram knew what was happening. That’s true, but the chain of command knew what was happening. And I am not probably the best person to comment about failures from the Afghan chain of command, you know, to get the word down to their forces, and I regret that, but I would challenge the assertion that we did not fully coordinate that movement out of Bagram. That was a key priority for Scott Miller and his forces, and I’m confident they did everything they could to give the Afghans as good a chance as we could to maintain control of that base …

Look, I think we know what happened to the Afghans writ large in the month of July. They collapsed and lost the will to fight. That happened in other places. We shouldn’t be surprised it happened at Bagram as well.

On Afghanistan’s corruption problem: 

VOTEL: Well, I think actually, Carla, we were doing a lot of things. So I know General Nicholson who was the commander on the ground during my time prior to General Miller, and I knew General Miller when he was in charge there, we put a huge focus on this, and this was a constant point of discussion with them.

There certainly are some cultural aspects to the Afghan military, to the Afghan government that lended itself to corruption, and that certainly was a problem. But there were efforts, I think, that were made to account for the resources that we were giving to them, to try to implement best practices, and to try to make sure we looked after, you know, the U.S. and NATO tax dollars that were being invested into this country. So I think there were. But again, it is Afghanistan, and this is an endemic problem that existed before we arrived, and unfortunately existed throughout our time there. And it was a problem that would take time to address, and I think that’s how we were trying to address it.

On what was missing from the U.S. approach as it withdrew from Afghanistan: 

VOTEL: Well, I think the problem was that we had made this determination that we couldn’t be on the ground. We couldn’t be on the ground at any numbers and do it safely. And I really challenged that. I don’t think that was the case … We had several thousand on the ground for a period of time and we weren’t absorbing a lot of casualties. We were bolstering the Afghan government, the Afghan forces. We were doing important work to keep them in the game. And so I just don’t buy the idea that we had to pull everybody out. And that I think was a challenge. And we did leave a large security cooperation element in place in Iraq when we left in 2011. That helped bridge us until we unfortunately had to come back in there in the 2014 timeframe. So it gave us a platform. In this case, we largely pulled out everything.

I think the way I look at this, Carla, frankly, and I look at Afghanistan and I think about it now is, our presence on the ground, I think we have to think of it like an insurance policy. That’s what it was doing, a small, sustainable number of troops on the ground —and you’ve heard the numbers 2,500, 4,500, somewhere in that ballpark, that really ensures that we can support the Afghans and we can continue to look after our national interests that are present in that country.

On whether the attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport was preventable: 

MCKENZIE: We did everything we could to prevent those types of attacks from occurring. We prevented a number of those attacks largely planned by ISIS, delivered either by a human being walking with a bomb or a vehicle-borne IED. Their goal ultimately was to try to get a bomb on an airplane. And we were there to process people onto the airfield, get people in to get on the airplanes to fly away. If we’re going to do that, you have to have contact with people. That means brave young American men or women are standing out there with the breath of the person you’re searching in your face. There’s no other way to do that. You can’t do that remotely. You can’t contract that out. It just takes the enormous courage of American servicemen and women there on the ground doing it.

Why we were there was to bring people out. To bring people out, you got to bring people through the gates. We already net down the number of gates. We had done everything within our power to try to minimize the chances of that, but you’re in a dynamic environment against a tough murderous opponent, and sometimes the luck turns in their favor as it did in this case. That’s not going to make it any easier for those families that lost family members. But if we were going to continue to process people, I don’t know that that attack was preventable.

They wanted to cause mass casualties any way they could. They fired rockets at us, maneuvered vehicles around to try to get them up to a gate. And then you know, so they had a variety of attack schema that were under way. We were able to thwart the vast majority of those. We were not able to thwart this particular one.

VOTEL: I don’t know that I have much more to add to what General McKenzie said so very well, and I think it represents certainly my experience, not only in Afghanistan, but in a lot of the places where the enemy has a vote. They’re always trying to gain an advantage, and sometimes despite the very best efforts to try to prevent these things, to mitigate risks, things do happen. And that is that is the very unfortunate nature of war. And it’s unfortunate nature of this operation right here.

On where the blame lies for Kabul’s fall:

MCKENZIE: At the beginning, we talked about the Doha agreement. It remains my opinion that in our language, the defeat mechanism is what you call something that brings final defeat to an organization or an entity. The Doha agreement and the negotiations associated with that were the defeat mechanism for this campaign. I believe that since the Afghan government was largely excluded from those negotiations, and the fact that we ultimately did not proceed along those negotiations on a path of conditionality, where both the Taliban actually had to deliver as well as the Afghan government and the United States. I think that was a deflating experience for the Afghan government.

So, when I look at the problem, I don’t see it completely as a failure of the Afghan military. I see it as a collapse of the government writ whole. And so just as you evaluate our support for them, I think it is wrong to say this was purely a military failure in Afghanistan. I think there’s plenty of blame to go around for other elements of the United States government as well. Even as the Afghan government collapsed, so did our plan. Our plan to support their whole of government collapsed. For me at least, what drove it home was the Doha agreement, and our inability to successfully negotiate genuine conditional concessions from the Taliban.

VOTEL: I mean, the fact of the matter is that the Afghan government didn’t feel as engaged in this as perhaps they should have. Maybe that’s part of our problem. But I would share that that’s also part of their problem. These are compromises, and they have to come along, and I think they showed some reluctance in terms of trying to bring this war to a political conclusion. I think certainly the American leaders, both presidents … President Trump and President Biden, you know, expressed the desire for a political solution to this and that required the Afghans to come along, Afghan government come along as well. And so, some reluctance on that I think does point some responsibility on the Afghan side as well.

Ultimately, the failure of the Afghan troops was largely a result of a lack of trust in their own leadership, not necessarily American or NATO leadership. And again, I think that highlights some of the responsibility that does belong on the Afghan government side with respect to this whole situation, unfortunate situation.

On keeping troops in Afghanistan as the U.S. has done in other countries:

MCKENZIE: Two thousand, five hundred. That was a number that we proposed to stay would have been much more than just there to protect the embassy. You had to get out and advise at the ministerial level in Afghanistan to be effective, and you had to be able to move around, and maybe advise at the corps level, the regional level, and provide advice there. Nobody’s fighting but you’re providing advice to those Afghan commanders who are actually directing combat operations. So you were able to do that in a focused manner at 2,500.

Additionally, we felt at 2,500 we had reduced our platforms to the size where it would have been a hard target for the Taliban to go after. Additionally, we had vast resources from over the horizon in terms of fire support that we could have applied. Finally, we have felt the Taliban over the last year and a half had gotten somewhat flabby and lost a lot of their operational practices, so that they would have been very vulnerable to us had we chosen to take them out. So that was my recommendation. Look, I know there are people who say you can’t actually do it at 2,500 … would that have been successful? I don’t know the answer to that. I do know what the answer was for going to zero. That’s clear as always.

VOTEL: I think there is an irreducible minimum number that we could have left on the ground there that would have continued to provide the necessary support to the Afghan government, to the Afghan forces and would have helped protect the interests for which we were in Afghanistan, and whether that number fell between 2,500 to 4,500 or somewhere in between, the fact of the matter is, I think there could have been a sustainable number that we could have maintained on the ground for a long period of time that would have looked out for our interests and would have prevented the situation that we’ve seen play out over the last year.

I really do fear that unfortunately some political narratives, this so-called forever war, we had to end this, we had to get people out, I think this overtook smart strategic decision making in terms of what we were doing, and we just we just left. I’m with General McKenzie here. I think there is a number that we could have sustained on the ground for a long period of time, that would have taken care of the Afghans, would have looked out for our own interests here, and we should have pursued that with more vigor.

MCKENZIE: At 2,500 we would have kept aircraft at Bagram and at HKIA, and we have kept a contractor base to support that and to reduce what we still had contractors there to do the sort of daily humdrum things that make a large military operation work: making sure when ammunition gets in, it comes into the country and it goes to units that need it, not to the bazar or not to the Taliban.

On why the U.S. did not wait until winter instead of withdrawing in the middle of the fighting season:

MCKENZIE: We proposed … 2,500. That course of action was considered and taken a look at. We thought though that if you were going to get out and you had not done anything to prepare the Taliban for staying, you know, not indefinitely but over a period of time, the longer you stay, the greater the risk of them attacking you would be. So we didn’t see any particular gain for staying into the winter. We’d look at a variety of alternatives until … the president settled on the end of August as the time when we would actually leave. But as you get into winter, the other thing that begins to affect you, Carla, if you’re going to bring people out, the weather’s a factor now, particularly in Afghanistan, so you don’t really want to be doing large scale air movements in the winter out of the Kabul bowl or Bagram for that matter, because you’re going to have weather become a factor in a way that frankly, it wasn’t in May, June, July, August.

On why evacuations didn’t start earlier:

MCKENZIE: The first operation was a military withdrawal from Afghanistan. And that was complete largely by the middle of July. Most of our combat forces were out, the equipment that we were going to bring out was out. What was left as you went into the second half of July really was the force that we had agreed to leave that would be protecting the U.S. diplomatic platform.

Now, it is my belief that what we wanted was an elegant solution that was not attainable. We wanted to go to zero militarily, yet retain a small diplomatic platform in Afghanistan that would be protected. And that simply was not a feasible course of action. It was not defendable. It was not safe. And so when the alternative to that would have been to withdraw the diplomatic platform as you executed the military withdrawal, beginning back in the May timeframe. That would have [permitted] committed an orderly withdrawal…

But now, here’s the other thing, Carla, that we need to consider. We’re also planning to bring out a lot of Afghans — we talked about the Afghan elite forces — had we begun to bring them out back in April, May, June, July, you can see that would have had a pernicious effect on the Afghans’ ability to defend themselves. So if you consider bringing out a lot of Afghans earlier, you have to think about what would that have done to the Afghan will to resist, which was already crumbling, would it have made it collapse even faster? … But I think we waited too long to begin the noncombatant evacuation operation, beginning in the middle of August was far too late.

On the international goal of doubling the number of Afghan special forces:

VOTEL: I’m not sure I recall whether we achieved the full goal of doubling up, but we certainly came close to it. We expanded the number of command organizations, gave them more and more aircraft into their special mission wing. We made better use of a variety of different Afghan special operations organizations that were out in the provinces that were doing very, very good work. So I think we did pretty well in terms of doubling the size of all of that. Whether we actually achieved that actual number of doubling or not, I’m not I’m not certain and I won’t hazard a guess.

I guess we’ve kind of been talking a little bit about, it. I think it is the will to fight, frankly. And as we continued to talk in our strategic communications about departing Afghanistan, certainly as we made announcements in Doha that we’re going to, this, I think, played a significant impact in undermining, not only the will of the Afghan government and the conventional forces, but really the special operations forces as well. And I do think perhaps we did not fully appreciate how much that had been undermined. Again, I was not in the position. I was not on the ground. So this is my own personal view here. But certainly, I think that that caused a lot of problems. I would have expected that the Afghan special operations forces would have fought much harder, much more to the end, but as we saw that was not the case. We saw a completely different situation play out and I think it all gets down to the will to fight. And the fact of the matter is that they had to take, they chose to protect themselves and protect their families as opposed to trying to save a government that was ultimately not going to succeed.

On whether Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley advocated for General McKenzie’s advice as strongly as he wanted:

MCKENZIE: I think our advice was heard at the very highest levels of government. The president makes that decision. The president gets to make that decision. I’m not going to speak for them. I’d ask you to talk to them about that. But I felt my views were heard and were heard thoughtfully. For a commander, there’s not much more you can ask. I get to give advice. They can take it or not. And then I’m going to follow the order the president gives.

On whether the U.S. is safer now, and whether terror groups have grown in Afghanistan:

MCKENZIE: I see nothing to change the CENTCOM assessment that if we leave, eventually al-Qaida and ISIS in particular are going to go into open space in Afghanistan, and the threat the United States is going to rise. Actually I do not believe we are safer as a result of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. But I also would say … it’s too soon to tell. It’s been a while for this to manifest. I didn’t expect it to happen overnight, but I do not feel that we’re in a safer place because we executed that action.”

VOTEL: Yeah, I would agree with that assessment. I think that we’re not in a safer place. There’s a lot that we don’t know about the terrorist organizations that are left on the ground. I certainly was pleased to see the strike we conducted a couple weeks ago against Zawahri. That certainly was an indicator that we maintain some capabilities. That was good, but I think everyone should just reflect on the fact that’s the first time we’ve done that since our departure, to my knowledge. So you know, we’ve got work to do here, and I don’t think we’re more stable or more safe. I think Afghanistan is more unstable, and as a result that this region is more unstable. And that could cause problems for us down the line.

On why the Afghan Air force was so reliant on U.S. contractors, leaving most Afghan aircraft grounded following their departure:

MCKENZIE: So the fact that the Afghan Air Force relied on U.S. contractors is not unique to Afghanistan. Many countries across the world are reliant on contractor support to make those airplanes fly. So that’s not unique. What was understandable and predictable was, if you pull the contractors out, it’s going to be very difficult for a largely untrained force to support those aircraft. And we tried to do a variety of things. I would call them heroic things, to try to provide support to the Afghan Air Force.

One of them involves breaking airplanes down and flying them over the horizon to do maintenance on them and bringing them back in. Others using telecommunications to assist the Afghans in doing maintenance. None of those things work particularly well, but again, we didn’t have a lot of time to really see how it would work over the long haul. I thought it was going to be a significant uphill battle to keep the Afghan Air Force in the fight once we removed the contractor support on the ground. And that was a fact that was well known to everyone who looked at the problem.

VOTEL: I think it takes time to build professional maintenance forces that can stand up on their own. And I think that’s what we were attempting to do over a long period of time. But, you know, I think you have to look at the talent base in Afghanistan and the people that had the requisite skills, to include speaking English and other things that go along with this. And this, I think, highlights the challenge of what we were trying to do on the ground with all of that. So I think there certainly was an effort to try to train, as there is in many countries, to try to transfer the skills over to the host nation and make them self-reliant and take care of themselves. But again, this takes time. And there’s a lot of factors that go into this. It isn’t just showing up and giving them stuff. You have to train people. You have to develop leaders. You have to develop expertise, long-term expertise, and you know, we look at what it takes to build a to build a mechanic in our own country. People don’t just show up and start working on airplanes. They go through a whole path of professionalism, and that’s what we had to do in this situation. So it’s a much more difficult proposition then, I think, just providing equipment and showing up with showing up and stuff.

On whether the U.S. military will need to reenter Afghanistan:

VOTEL: I think that’s a real concern here. And what we have seen with these terrorist organizations that we’ve been fighting now for several decades is that they morph, they change, they evolve, they modify their practices, they grow in different ways than we might expect, and that we have to keep constant pressure on them. And I think when we do take pressure off with these organizations, we give them the ability to grow into a ball. And so I am very, very concerned about that. Whether we find ourselves back in Afghanistan, again, like we found ourselves back in Iraq, just literally three-plus years after we left, I don’t know. I hope not. But I think we have to be prepared for that. And we have to recognize that keeping pressure on these terrorist organizations is an important interest for our country, not only is it important for the country of Afghanistan, it’s important for the safety of our own nation and our own citizens.

On what will happen to Afghan partners left in the country:

MCKENZIE: I think the Department of State is doing everything they can to get those people out of Afghanistan. I think it’s going to be a long, hard slog to do that. And I also recognize in August, we brought out a lot of people who were not our primary target. It’s just a fact based on who was at the airfield, the amount of time we had and the direction that we were given. I wish it would have been different, but it wasn’t. We left a lot of friends behind, a lot of people who shed blood with us. I feel that very keenly. I know everybody that served in Afghanistan feels that very keenly, and I believe we’re going to try very hard to get those people out.

On whether evacuating some Afghan forces contributed to the Afghan military’s collapse:

MCKENZIE: Well, as Joe Votel, I think, he’s already talked about that very eloquently. I think that was a factor. But it is in fact their country, and they got to believe in it if they’re going to actually stand and fight on the ground. Yes, I think the fact that we evacuated people was a factor, but I don’t think it was a principal factor involved in the collapse of the Afghan military.
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Clockwise, from top left, Retired Marine General Frank McKenzie and Retired Army General Joseph Votel speak with VOA Afghan service chief Hasib Alikozai and VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb in a panel, held on Zoom, about what happened in Afghanistan on Aug. 22, 2022.
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