India and Britain have agreed to boost economic as well as defense ties that could eventually help New Delhi move away from its dependance on Russian arms.   

Following talks in New Delhi between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his British counterpart, Boris Johnson, who is on a two-day visit to India, the two sides said they will wrap up a free trade deal by October and announced a security partnership.  

“We have agreed a new and expanded defense and security partnership, a decadeslong commitment that will not only forge tighter bonds between us, but support your goal of Make in India,” Johnson said, referring to Modi’s push to expand domestic manufacturing of weaponry.    

Despite pressure from its Western allies, like the United States and Britain, India has taken a neutral position on the Ukraine crisis, refusing to condemn Russia or join sanctions imposed by Western countries.   

Analysts attribute India’s stance partly to the fact that India sources much of its military equipment from its former Cold War ally.   

Britain said it will ensure faster delivery of defense equipment by streamlining licensing rules for exporting military hardware to India. Officials in New Delhi called it a “welcome development.”  

Britain is offering next-generation defense and security collaboration across five domains — land, sea, air, space and cyber — to face complex new threats, according to the British Embassy.   

“What we are looking for is a combination of U.K.’s technology and our production base to make it a win-win situation,” Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla told reporters.   

Indian Prime Minister Modi told reporters that both sides underscored the importance of diplomacy and dialogue to settle the Ukraine crisis.   

Indian Foreign Secretary Shringla said that there was no “pressure” on India over the position it has taken.   

Modi said he also stressed a “free, open, inclusive and rule-based order in the Indo-Pacific,” in an apparent reference to China’s aggressiveness in the region.  

Both leaders sounded an upbeat note on strengthening ties. Using Hindi words, Johnson called Modi a “khaas dost,” or special friend, and said, “Our relations have never been as strong or as good between us as they are now.”  

It was “historic” that Johnson’s visit to India came in the 75th year of its independence, Modi said.  

Johnson said a free trade pact, when signed, could take trade between the two countries “to a whole new level.” The deal is expected to double their current trade of $50 billion by 2030.  

The British prime minister also announced that Britain is to reopen its embassy in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, at a news conference he held after his talks with Indian leaders.     

“The extraordinary fortitude and success of (Ukraine) President (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy in resisting Russian forces in Kyiv means I can announce that very shortly, next week, we will reopen our embassy in Ukraine’s capital city,” Johnson said.   

The main British diplomatic mission had been moved to the western city of Lviv in February.    

In response to a question, the British leader said it remained a “realistic possibility” that Russia could win the war in Ukraine.    

“Putin has a huge army. He has a very difficult political position because he has made a catastrophic blunder. The only option he now, he now has is to use his appalling, grinding approach led by artillery, trying to grind the Ukrainians down,” Johnson told reporters.   

Saying that it was important to keep up “wave after wave” of pressure on Russia, he said Britain was seeing what it could do to reinforce the supply of military equipment, such as tanks to Poland, so that it could send heavier weaponry to Ukraine. 

 
…

An Islamic State affiliate on Friday claimed a series of bombings a day earlier that targeted Afghanistan’s minority Shiite Muslims, while Pakistan issued a warning of IS threats in its eastern Punjab province.

The deadliest of three bombings on Thursday in Afghanistan exploded inside a Shite mosque in northern Mazar-e-Sharif. Hospital officials say at least 12 people were killed and as many as 40 were hurt.

Earlier Thursday, a roadside bomb exploded near a boys school in the Afghan capital of Kabul, injuring two children in the city’s predominately Shiite neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi. A third bomb in northern Kunduz injured 11 mechanics working for the country’s Taliban rulers.

Since sweeping to power last August, the Taliban have been battling the upstart Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State in Khorasan Province or IS-K which is proving to be an intractable security challenge for Afghanistan’s religiously driven government. Last November the Taliban’s intelligence unit carried out sweeping attacks on suspected IS-K hideouts in eastern Nangarhar province.

In a statement Friday, the IS-K said the explosive device that devastated Mazar-e-Sharif’s Sai Doken mosque was hidden in a bag left inside among scores of worshippers. As they knelt in prayer, it exploded.

“When the mosque was filled with prayers, the explosives were detonated remotely,” the IS statement said, claiming that 100 people were injured.

The Taliban say they have arrested a former IS-K leader in northern Balkh province, of which Mazar-e-Sharif is the capital. Zabihullah Noorani, information and culture department chief in Balkh province, said Abdul Hamid Sangaryar was arrested in connection with Thursday’s mosque attack.

The IS-K had been relatively inactive in Afghanistan since last November, but in recent days have stepped up its attacks in Afghanistan and in neighboring Pakistan, taking aim at Shiite Muslim communities reviled by Sunni radicals.

Earlier this month two bombs exploded in Kabul’s Shiite neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, killing at least seven students and wounding several others.

The IS-K established its headquarters in eastern Afghanistan in 2014 and have been blamed for some of the worst attacks in Afghanistan, including a vicious assault on a maternity hospital and at a school that killed more than 80 girls in 2021, months before the Taliban took power.

The IS-K also took responsibility for a brutal bombing outside the Kabul International Airport in August 2021 that killed more than 160 Afghans who had been pushing to enter the airport to flee the country. Thirteen U.S. military personnel also were killed as they oversaw America’s final withdrawal and the end of its 20-year war in Afghanistan.

In recent months, the IS-K has also stepped up attacks in neighboring Pakistan, targeting a Shiite mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar in March. More than 65 worshippers were killed. The upstart affiliate has also claimed several deadly attacks against Pakistan’s military.

In Pakistan’s central Punjab city of Faisalabad, the local police on Thursday issued a threat warning, saying “it has been learned that IS-Khas planned to carry out terrorist activities in Faisalabad,” advising people to “exercise extreme vigilance.” The police warning did not elaborate.

Meanwhile late on Thursday a Pakistani soldier was killed in southwestern Baluchistan province after militants raided a security outpost. No one claimed responsibility. The area has been targeted by both IS-K as well as the violent Pakistani Taliban militants known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) also headquartered in neighboring Afghanistan.

The safe havens of militant groups in Afghanistan has raised concerns for Pakistan which earlier this month carried out air strikes inside Pakistan, killing at least 20 children, according to the United Nations education fund (UNICEF).

Pakistan has not confirmed the strikes but has warned Afghanistan’s Taliban to stop its territory being used to attack across the border into Pakistan.
…

When Matiullah Wesa was 9 years old, Taliban insurgents torched his community school in Marouf District in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province. Terrified and disappointed, Wesa thought this marked the end of his education because there was no other school in his war-ravaged village.

Fearing more Taliban violence, the villagers forced Wesa’s father, who was determined to rebuild the school, to move out. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

“We moved to Kabul, where I graduated from high school,” Wesa, the founder of PenPath, a community-based education support network in Afghanistan, told VOA.

Wesa’s passion for education took him to India, where he pursued higher education in human rights and learned how to engage in a civic and apolitical campaign for girls’ education in his native country.

With more than 70% of Afghan women unable to read and write, Afghanistan has the worst education indicators for women in Asia, according to the World Bank.

Trying to tackle the widespread illiteracy, Wesa has gone to all 360 districts of Afghanistan over the past decade, promoting education in some of the most marginalized and highly conservative parts of his landlocked country.

“We’ve opened tens of schools across the country where more than 110,000 students are enrolled,” he said, adding that the work has not been easy.

“Twice we escaped direct firing at our car as we were traveling in rural areas … and there have always been people who call me names and threaten to kill me.”

The PenPath network now has more than 2,400 volunteers across the country who help set up local classrooms, find teachers, distribute books and stationery, and organize community gatherings in support of education for both boys and girls.

“Our work is entirely apolitical, and we never oppose or support any political agenda,” Wesa said.

Critical work

Ziauddin Yousafzai, the father of Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai and an education activist, said Wesa’s work is extremely important in rural Afghanistan, where women’s education and overall development are scarce.

“It’s been 216 days since the Taliban’s ban on secondary education for girls, and throughout this time, Matiullah Wesa has raised his voice for girls’ education, and that proves that he is a fearless, tireless and unbending champion for education,” the elder Yousafzai told VOA.

The Taliban’s ban has denied secondary education for more than 1.1 million Afghan girls, according to the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF.

“Any grassroots initiatives that help communities to better understand the value of education for all children are extremely valuable in increasing demand for education and getting more girls into school,” Samantha Mort, a UNICEF spokeswoman in Afghanistan, told VOA.

There are hundreds of community-based schools, mostly at mosques or in makeshift tents, in rural Afghanistan where tens of thousands of children learn how to read and write. Half of the students in those makeshift schools are girls, Mort said.

“The PenPath represents an extremely critical movement in Afghanistan,” Shinkai Karokhail, a former member of the Afghan parliament and a women’s rights activist, told VOA. “Nothing is more needed for a self-sufficient, independent and prosperous Afghanistan than education, and that’s what this movement is striving to achieve,” she added.

Diminishing resources

Over the past two decades, the U.S. government spent more than $1.2 billion on educational programs in Afghanistan. The European Union and other donors have also channeled hundreds of millions of dollars to nongovernmental organizations in support of education in the country.

Despite its vast outreach, the PenPath network has not received funding from foreign donors.

“I’ve personally dedicated everything to this cause,” Wesa said, “and I’ve relied on support from family, friends and the communities that I serve.”

As poverty deepens in Afghanistan, the PenPath founder finds it even more difficult to support classrooms and distribute books and stationery.

“Children’s education is the first victim of poverty in our community,” Wesa said, adding that more and more families find it difficult to feed their children.

Poverty and starvation threaten to take more lives in Afghanistan than the war took in the past two decades, aid agencies have warned.

Despite the risks and challenges facing his work, Wesa remains undeterred and optimistic.

“I see change in the way people think about women’s education. In the past, people did not even talk about women’s education. Now they’re demanding it because they need female doctors, teachers, writers and what not,” he said.
…

Turkey has one of the worst records in Europe when it comes to the number of women murdered, or femicides. One of the most prominent groups challenging this phenomenon is called the “We Will Stop Femicide Platform.” But a court case could soon shut the group down, prompting outrage and protests across Turkey. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
…

U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar traveled to the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir on Thursday and promised to push Washington to pay more attention to the disputed region, drawing swift criticism from India.

“I don’t believe that [Kashmir] is being talked about to the extent it needs to in Congress but also with the [U.S.] administration,” Omar said after visiting the military Line of Control, or the de facto border separating Pakistani and Indian-ruled parts of the divided territory.

She spoke to reporters in Muzaffarabad, the administrative center of the Pakistani part of Kashmir, after making the rare visit for a U.S. lawmaker.

Omar, a member of President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party in the U.S. Congress, is a naturalized citizen who was born in Somalia. She traveled to Islamabad for meetings with Pakistani leaders before traveling to Kashmir.  

“On the question of Kashmir, we held a hearing in the [Congressional] Foreign Affairs Committee to look at the reports of human rights violations,” she said.

India denies long-running allegations of rights abuses in its portion of the divided territory; it tightly controls access to Kashmir for foreign observers, including those from the United Nations.

New Delhi swiftly condemned Omar’s visit to the Pakistan-ruled part.

“We have noted that she has visited a part of the Indian union territory … that is currently illegally occupied by Pakistan,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi told a news conference in the Indian capital.  

“Let me just say that if such a politician wishes to practice her narrow-minded politics at home, that’s her business,” he said. “But violating our territorial integrity and sovereignty in its pursuit makes this ours and we think the visit is condemnable.”

India controls two-thirds of the Muslim-majority Himalayan region and Pakistan the rest, with both countries claiming Kashmir in its entirety. India ended the decades-old semi-autonomous status of its part of Kashmir in 2019 and divided it into two territories to be directly controlled by the federal government.  

Islamabad condemned the move and demanded New Delhi reverse it, saying a long-running United Nations resolution bars the countries from unilaterally altering the status of the region.

The territorial dispute has sparked two of the three wars between the nuclear-armed South Asian nations since they gained independence from Britain in 1947, and Kashmir remains the main source of military tensions between India and Pakistan.  

Earlier this month while speaking in Congress, Rep. Omar questioned what she called the reluctance of the U.S. government to criticize Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on human rights, warning he is “criminalizing the act of being a Muslim in India.”

Days later, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was monitoring what he described as a rise in human rights abuses in India by some government, police and prison officials, in a rare direct rebuke by Washington of New Delhi’s rights record.

Critics say Modi’s Hindu nationalist ruling party has encouraged religious polarization since coming to power in 2014. Right-wing Hindu groups have assaulted minorities, claiming they are trying to prevent religious conversions, among other abuses.  

Some information for this report comes from the Reuters news agency.
…

Tourist operators in the Indian-administered Kashmir Valley are celebrating a return of visitors after several lean years prompted by COVID-19 and — before that — unrest over India’s revocation of the region’s special constitutional status and autonomy.

The Srinagar Airport Authority reported almost 15,000 tourists in the Jammu and Kashmir capital aboard 106 flights on a single day this week. That compares to an average of about 30 flights a day two years ago.

Hotels in the valley are packed and fully booked until June, according to Tariq Rashid Ghani, secretary general of the Jammu and Kashmir Hoteliers Club. “We are hopeful to break all the previous records this year,” he said in an interview.

Authorities say visitors are overwhelmingly from India, attracted by an aggressive promotional campaign within the country and an easing of COVID-19 pandemic limits, which made Indians eager to travel. Foreign visitors accounted for only about 1,000 of the record 340,000 visitors to the scenic valley in the first three months of this year.

“With the steady decline in COVID-19 cases in India, people are encouraged and dare to travel. Like Kashmir, many other hilly states are witnessing similar type of tourist rush,” said Rauf Tramboo, president of the Adventure Tour Operators Association of Kashmir.

Anamika Shil, a tourist from Kolkata, who works for a domestic airline, told VOA she only regretted having not come to Kashmir sooner, having been frightened away by media reports of disturbances and violence. “Not only the stay but I am enjoying the food as well,” she said.

Nevertheless, security is still a concern. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a website that monitors terrorism and low intensity warfare in South Asia, there have been 48 violent incidents in Indian-administered Kashmir already this year, killing 11 civilians and 11 security forces along with 54 insurgents.

Tourism to the valley, famed for its dramatic Himalayan landscapes and pristine lakes, fell off dramatically after the New Delhi government withdrew the region’s special status on August 5, 2019. The action was accompanied by a harsh crackdown in which social media platforms and many other forms of communication were cut off.

By the time the security situation was stabilizing, the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing around the world, sharply reducing interest in tourism, both foreign and domestic. International arrivals in the valley fell to 3,897 in 2020 and just 1,615 last year.

But now, a reluctance to journey abroad among Indian vacationers is working to the region’s advantage, according to G.N. Itoo, the director of Tourism Kashmir.

“People who would otherwise go to Europe and other countries preferred to come to Kashmir [while] restrictions were in force on international travel. Secondly we created good experiences like houseboat festival, sufi festival, winter carnival and many more which created a buzz,” he told VOA.

Dramatic scenery has always been the biggest draw for visitors to Kashmir, who account directly for nearly 8% of its gross domestic product and indirectly for more through patronage of its crafts and cottage industries.

But this year’s tourist season got off to an early start with a banner year for winter sports in Gulmarg, a ski resort high in the Himalayan mountains. Tramboo said almost 1,700 skiers, snowboarders and others from 17 Indian states took part this year.

Other attractions that have contributed to the tourist resurgence include Shri Amarnath, a Hindu temple set in a cave high in the in the snow-capped mountains. Authorities expect that close to 1 million pilgrims will trek to the shrine this year, setting an all-time record.

Another draw is Asia’s largest tulip garden, sprawling across some 30 hectares in the foothills of the Zabarwan range in Srinagar. Farooq Ahmad Rather, director of Floriculture Kashmir, said more than 360,000 visitors, including local residents, came to witness this year’s spring bloom.

Most famous of all the valley’s attractions is Srinagar’s Lake Dal, where visitors can see the mountains reflected in the waters as they circle the lake in small boats known as shikara or arrange a stay in a luxurious houseboat moored to the shore.
…

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is visiting India to deepen trade ties with one of the world’s fast-growing economies, said that the two countries hope to seal a free trade deal by the end of the year.

While the British leader will discuss the Ukraine crisis with Indian leaders, Johnson has indicated that he will not “lecture” New Delhi over its neutral stance on the hostilities or its decision to increase Russian oil imports – issues that have irked Western countries.

“India and Russia have historically a very different relationship, perhaps than Russia and UK have had in the last couple of decades. We have to reflect that reality,” Johnson said in Ahmedabad city in western Gujarat state, from where he began his two-day visit on Thursday.

Johnson, who met business leaders in Ahmedabad, said the trip would lead to investments from India to Britain worth about $1.3 billion.

The commercial deals are expected to create almost 11,000 jobs in Britain in sectors like software engineering and health.

Johnson and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, are scheduled to hold talks on Friday.

Johnson said there was an opportunity to deepen the strategic and defense partnership between the two countries as Britain makes an “Indo-Pacific tilt” in its national security strategy.

“India and the UK both share anxieties about autocracies around the world, we’re both democracies and we want to stick together,” he told reporters.

Western countries including Britain have been pressing New Delhi to speak out against the war in Ukraine, but India, which is the world’s biggest buyer of Russia’s weapons, has refused to condemn the invasion and is sealing deals to buy more oil from Russia.

Britain is also hoping to wean India off its dependence on Russian arms. Before Johnson’s arrival, his spokesman, Max Blain, said that Britain would work with other countries to provide alternative options for defense procurements and energy for India but not “lecture other democratically elected governments on what course of action was best for them.”

Analysts in New Delhi said that India is unlikely to shift the diplomatic position it has taken on the Ukraine crisis and pointed out that there are limitations to how much Britain can help India, especially in terms of critical military hardware that it sources from Russia.

“The British prime minister’s message would certainly be taken on board but I do not see this making any tangible difference,” said Uday Bhaskar, director of the Society for Policy Studies in New Delhi. “Britain’s locus standi as an oil supplier is modest. It is also not in a position to supply to India the kind of military equipment that Moscow has been giving us over the last 50-60 years.”

The key focus of the visit will be on enhancing economic relations between the two countries as Britain tries to expand ties with Asian nations following its departure from the European Union. 

India’s trade with Britain has not jumped at the same pace as with other countries like the United States – from third position as New Delhi’s trading partner two decades ago, Britain has slipped to 17th position. 

Hoping to change that, the two countries began negotiations on a free trade deal in January, which the British leader said would be clinched by the “end of the year, by autumn.” 

While Britain wants more access to Indian markets and its huge middle class for products such as cars and whiskey, India is seeking removal of barriers that restrict access for its services and manufacturing industries. New Delhi has also long demanded easier access to British visas for students and skilled workers. 
…

A bomb explosion ripped through a crowded Shi’ite Muslim mosque in northern Afghanistan Wednesday, killing at least 17 worshipers and wounding 52 others.

The deadly bombing in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of the northern Balkh province, occurred during midday prayers, said local Taliban authorities.

Ghousuddin Anwari, the head of the provincial Abu Ali Sina-e-Balkhi hospital, told VOA that at least six of those wounded were in “critical condition.” Eyewitnesses reported the number of casualties was much higher.

Islamic State terror group’s Afghan affiliate, known as the Islamic State Khorasan Province or IS-Khorasan, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to SITE intelligence group, which tracks terrorist propaganda.

Authorities in the nearby Kunduz province also reported a bomb explosion in the provincial capital, also named Kunduz, but did not share immediate details. Local media reports quoted Taliban officials as saying a vehicle transporting airport workshop employees was the target of the bombing, killing four of them and wounding 18 others.

Separately, a roadside bomb attack Thursday wounded two children in a Shiite neighborhood in western Kabul, the Afghan capital, said Khalid Zadran, the city police spokesman.

And an overnight bomb blast in Khogiani, a troubled district in the eastern Nangarhar province, killed at least four Taliban security personnel.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombings in Kunduz, western Kabul and Nangarhar province.

Thursday’s roadside blast in Kabul happened in the same western neighborhood where multiple bomb explosions at a boys’ school and nearby tuition center two days ago killed six people and wounded 17 others.

The victims were mostly Shiite Hazara children. No one took responsibility for that attack, though nearly all bomb and gun attacks against the Hazara community in recent years have been claimed by IS-Khorasan.

The Hazara community is considered the most persecuted minority group in Afghanistan. They are despised by Sunni Muslim militant groups like ISKP and discriminated against by many in the Sunni-majority country.

ISKP has increased attacks against minority Shiites and the Taliban. The Islamist Taliban regained power in Afghanistan last August, days before the U.S.-led international troops withdrew after 20 years of involvement in the war with the hardline insurgent group.

Last May, three months before the then-Western-backed Afghan government collapsed, bomb blasts outside a school for girls in western Kabul, killed at least 90 people, almost all of them members of the Hazara community. ISKP claimed responsibility.

The Taliban have condemned attacks by ISKP and have repeatedly pledged to counter the group’s activities and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan. Earlier this month, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi claimed that their interim government has reined in ISKP activities.

But recent spike in terrorism-related incidents have raised questions about Taliban claims and worried neighboring countries as well as the global community at large about the resurgence of the terror threat in Afghanistan.
…

India is expected to reduce shortages of wheat on global markets created by the war in Ukraine as overflowing warehouses help it step up exports.

Although India is the world’s second biggest wheat producer after China, it has been a small exporter, selling wheat mostly to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and some Middle Eastern markets.

But as supplies from Russia and Ukraine are threatened by the war, India is eyeing markets across Africa and Asia. The Black Sea region is one of the world’s important grain-growing regions and the two countries together account for about 30 percent of global exports.

Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, approved India as a supplier after it sent a trade delegation to the country last week as it seeks alternatives to shipments from Russia and Ukraine. Indian officials have said they aim to supply three million tons of wheat to Egypt this year.

“Our farmers have ensured our granaries overflow & we are ready to serve the world,” India’s Commerce and Industry minister, Piyush Goyal, said in a tweet following the Egyptian delegation’s visit.

After holding a virtual summit with U.S. President Joe Biden last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he had told the American president that India could step up food supplies to the world.

Modi said India had “enough food” for its 1.4 billion people and was “ready to supply food stocks to the world from tomorrow” if the World Trade Organization allowed.

India is relying on surplus stocks in its warehouses as it eyes exports — its vast northern and central plains grow millions of tons of wheat and farmers harvested bumper crops for five straight years until 2021.

The country is holding nearly two-and-a-half times the buffer stocks that it needs to maintain. Millions more tons will be added this month as farmers bring their produce into markets following the wheat harvest.

India’s exports have traditionally been low because the government buys huge stocks of wheat from farmers at guaranteed prices – those prices are usually higher than overseas market prices, meaning exports are not competitive.

But the huge increase in global prices has changed that, making it lucrative for traders to sell Indian wheat abroad .

World food prices hit an all-time high in March as the war in Ukraine “spread shocks through markets for staple grains and vegetable oils,” the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement this month.

An increase in exports was already witnessed in the fiscal year that ended in March – India’s wheat exports hit 7.85 million tons compared to 2.1 million tons in the previous year.

India is targeting exports of 10 million tons of wheat this year, but that could go up to 15 million tons if conditions remain favorable, Commerce Minister Goyal has said.

Experts say that while it is possible to sell more wheat abroad than in the past, the government should be cautious as it looks to accelerating exports.

“We need to keep a very close watch on domestic stocks because the next crop will only come next April, so we must ensure sufficient reserves,” said Harish Damodaran, agriculture editor with The Indian Express newspaper. “We should not move from saying we are going to feed the world to a situation where we suddenly have to curtail exports.”

Experts also stress that in a country of 1.4 billion people, India’s food security will have to be an important consideration, especially amid warnings by the World Food Program that the disruption in supplies due to the war in Ukraine could lead to the worst global food crisis since World War II.

There are also fears that forecasts of a bumper wheat crop this year may not pan out. Unusually high temperatures in March, when the crop ripens in India, may have hurt output.

Pointing out that the government runs a massive food subsidy program in which it supplies both rice and wheat at cheap prices to nearly 700 million poor people, food policy analyst Devinder Sharma said, “We are walking on a tight rope. We must set up an upper limit for exports. We have to be treading very cautiously.”
…

At least six people were killed and nearly a dozen injured on Tuesday when two bombs exploded outside a sprawling school in predominantly Shiite Hazara western Kabul, police said.   

Kabul Police spokesman Khalid Zadran tweeted that the back-to-back explosions took place outside the main entrance of Abdul Rahim Shahid High School in Dasht-e-Barchi, and that the victims were “our Shia countrymen.”  With nearly 16,000 students, the school is one of Afghanistan’s largest.   

Taliban security forces arrived at the scene, and an investigation was under way, Zadran wrote.   

Another bomb went off earlier at a nearby learning center, according to local reports.  One student was seriously wounded, and six other people sustained light injuries from the blast, the Etilaatroz newspaper reported, citing school officials 

The newspaper said the death toll was higher than the official tally.  

The attack was widely condemned by the international community, including the United States, the United Nations and major human rights organizations.  

“The United States joins the international community in expressing outrage in response to today’s heinous attacks on the Mumtaz Education Center and the Abdul Rahim Shahid school in Kabul, Afghanistan,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.  

In a statement posted on Twitter, the U.N. secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan said those “responsible for the crime targeting schools & children must be brought to justice.” 

Calling the bombings a “reprehensible attack” on religious and ethnic minorities, Amnesty International said it showed that the Taliban are “failing to protect civilians.” 

No one claimed responsibility for the bomb blasts, but Islamic State’s Afghanistan branch, known as ISIS-K, has said it staged similar attacks on Shiites in western Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan.  

Formed in 2015 by disgruntled former members of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, ISIS-K has targeted the Taliban and minority Shiites in Afghanistan.  

Last May, three months before the Taliban takeover, bomb blasts outside the Syed al-Shuhada, a school for girls in western Kabul, killed at least 90 people. ISIS-K claimed responsibility.   

The group’s attacks continued after the Taliban swept to power in August.  Bombings at Shiite mosques in Kunduz and Kandahar claimed by ISIS-K killed nearly 200 people last October.   

The group has also claimed responsibility for attacks on Taliban targets in Kabul, including an October explosion near a mosque during a memorial service for Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid’s mother. At least eight people were killed in that attack.  

The Taliban, accused of war crimes against Shiites during their first time in power in the 1990s, have pledged to protect the community and have condemned attacks by ISIS-K.   

But they’ve also sought to downplay the threat. Earlier this month, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi claimed that the interim government has reined in ISIS-K’s activities in Afghanistan.  

“Daesh had no operations in the last four months,” Muttaqi told Chinese television, using the acronym for Islamic State. “We could say that Afghanistan is a secure country right now, and we are committed to the pledges we made to the world — the pledge that Afghanistan’s soil would not be used against any country.”  

VOA State Department bureau chief Nike Ching contributed to this report.  
…

Authorities in Uzbekistan have dismissed as “untrue” reports that militants linked to Islamic State had launched a rocket attack against the country from neighboring Afghanistan.

The denial comes a day after the terrorist group claimed its Afghan affiliate, the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISKP, fired 10 rockets Monday morning from the northern Afghan province of Balkh, targeting a military unit in Termez on the Uzbek side of the border.

The Uzbek Defense Ministry on Tuesday released a statement on its website noting the country’s border with Afghanistan “is fully controlled by the Uzbek military and is stable.”

Islamic State released a picture and video of Monday’s alleged rocket assault, claiming it was launched from somewhere in the border town of Hairatan in Balkh, according to Site Intelligence Group, which tracks terrorist propaganda.

The Uzbek Defense Ministry urged its citizens not to believe such “false” reports and rely only on “official sources” of information.

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban on Tuesday also denied the reported attack, saying the situation on the border between the two countries “is normal and there is nothing to worry about.”

“Reiterating its pledge, IEA as a responsible government assures all neighboring countries that all our border security forces are controlling the borders, allowing none to disrupt security,” said a Taliban foreign ministry statement, which used the official name for the Taliban, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, or IEA.

ISKP has increased attacks in and around Afghanistan following the U.S.-led foreign military withdrawal from the country in August after 20 years.

The group has carried out several attacks in neighboring Pakistan, including a deadly suicide bombing of a Shi’ite mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar last month.

The attack killed more than 60 worshippers from the minority sect and wounded scores of others. Pakistani authorities said the bomber was an Afghan refugee who received training in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Taliban attacks

Meanwhile, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), designated as a global terrorist group by Washington, has also stepped up attacks in Pakistan from its Afghan bases since the foreign troop withdrawal and the Taliban’s return to power.

Authorities in Islamabad say leaders and fighters of the banned anti-Pakistan militant outfit have established bases in Afghanistan after fleeing Pakistani counterterrorism operations and are plotting cross-border attacks against security forces.

Pakistani officials say that since the start of the year, more than 100 Pakistani military officers and soldiers have been killed in TTP-plotted roadside bombings and gun attacks in remote districts on the Afghan border.

On Sunday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry urged Taliban rulers in Afghanistan to take “stern actions” against militants staging cross-border attacks on security forces in Pakistan.

“Pakistan has repeatedly requested Afghan government in last few months to secure Pak-Afghan border region,” the ministry said in a statement. “Terrorists are using Afghan soil with impunity to carry out activities inside Pakistan.”

The statement came a day after the Taliban accused Pakistan of carrying out deadly airstrikes inside Afghanistan. They summoned Islamabad’s ambassador in Kabul to the foreign ministry to protest the alleged early Saturday strikes that reportedly killed up to 40 people in the Afghan provinces of Khost and Kunar.

The casualties and the alleged Pakistani airstrikes could not be verified through independent sources.

Islamabad has been pressing the Taliban to rein in TTP activities since the Islamist group seized control of Afghanistan last August.

It is widely known that the TTP provided recruits and sheltered Afghan Taliban commanders on the Pakistani side of the porous border between the two countries to launch insurgent attacks against the then-Western-backed government in Kabul and international troops inside Afghanistan.
…

Decorated glazed bricks almost 3,000 years old are on display at Iran’s National Museum after a four-decade search disrupted by war and an international legal battle.

Lions and winged cows with human heads, horses and bulls with a goat’s horn, kneeling men and women and other mythological figures decorate the work, created by the Mannaeans who lived in northwestern Iran in the first millennium BC.

The 51 square bricks are painted with a glazed coating on a black, brown, light blue, yellow or white background.

Their discovery and repatriation “is a series of incredible adventures,” Youssef Hassanzadeh, an archaeologist with the museum, told AFP.

It is also the latest example of Middle Eastern and African countries recovering stolen antiquities which have ended up in Western countries.

According to Hassanzadeh, the story began after the 1979 Islamic revolution when a farmer, Mirza Ali, discovered painted ceramic bricks while cultivating his field. They had been used to decorate a temple near his village in West Azerbaijan province.

“People were looting and selling glazed bricks, taking advantage of the absence of government control,” said Hassanzadeh, who organized the exhibition at the museum, where visitors peer at the bricks through glass cabinets.

‘A unique collection’

A few years later in 1985, during war with Iraq, Iranian authorities sent a group of archaeologists, protected by soldiers, to the village. They started to dig and seized some bricks but it was too late for the others.

Smugglers had already shipped some of them overseas, where a number entered private collections and museums, the archaeologist said.

The story took a new turn when the British Museum learned that an Iranian family had offered to sell a set of glazed bricks in Chiasso, on the Italian-Swiss border. In 1991, the museum sent its curator John Curtis to purchase the collection.

But Curtis realised the bricks came from the West Azerbaijan site “and advised the British Museum and other European museums not to buy it, because it is a unique collection which must not be divided and must be returned to its country of origin,” Hassanzadeh said.

The Iranian owner of the collection had a different view. He was not prepared to return the artifacts from Switzerland.

“In 2008, the Swiss police seized the objects. The case went to court. French archaeologist Remy Boucharlat, who led excavations in Iran, confirmed the collection’s “identity,” the Tehran-based museum said in a statement.

Legal proceedings dragged on for more than a decade, with a lawsuit filed by the National Museum in 2015, and pressure from Iranian diplomats.

“Finally on December 20, 2020, the collection returned to us,” said Jebrael Nokandeh, curator of the National Museum which is exhibiting the bricks until Tuesday.

A separate drawn-out legal saga concluded in October, 2019 when the National Museum opened an exhibition of around 300 cuneiform clay tablets returned from the United States.

Other artifacts have also come back, but with far fewer complications.

Nokandeh, who is also an archaeologist, said a descendant of a Frenchman who lived in Iran during World War II approached Iran’s cultural adviser in Paris last year to say “that he had a collection of Iranian antiquities.”

Those 29 pieces, from the Bronze Age to the Islamic period, are now also on display at the museum, while the quest to recover other stolen and lost artifacts from the country’s rich history continues.

“We are in talks with the United States as well as with Australia to return objects,” Nokandeh said.
…

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s new Cabinet took the oath of office Tuesday, a week after an opposition-led parliamentary vote of no-confidence ousted incumbent Imran Khan, bringing down his nearly four-year-old government.

Acting President Sadiq Sanjrani administered the oath to the 37 ministers and advisers at a ceremony televised live, with Sharif and senior leaders of his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in attendance.

Sharif, who was elected by the National Assembly, or lower house of parliament, on April 11 as the successor to Khan, has formed a coalition government of several parties, with his bitter political adversary, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) as the second largest partner.

The PML-N, which is back in power after almost four years, and the PPP, have 16 and 11 members in the Cabinet respectively. The rest represent smaller coalition partners.

Khan, the 69-year-old former cricket star, lost the no-confidence motion after more than two dozen lawmakers from his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Justice Movement) party defected and allies abandoned his coalition government in the run-up to the April 10 vote.

The ousted prime minister has since unleashed a series of massive public rallies in Pakistan in a show of power and to demand early elections.

Khan accuses the United States of colluding with his political rivals to remove him from power for visiting Russia and persuading an “independent foreign policy” for Pakistan.

Washington has rejected the allegations as not true as have Pakistani opposition parties. Since taking office last week, Sharif has dismissed Khan’s allegations as a pack of lies, although he has promised to get them investigated.

Prominent PML-N leaders such as Khawaja Mohammad Asif, Ahsan Iqbal, Ayaz Sadiq and Marriyum Aurangzeb are among the Cabinet members.

Hina Rabbani Khan, a former foreign minister, Sherry Rehman, former ambassador to Washington and former minister Khursheed Shah are among the ministers representing the PPP in the Cabinet who were sworn in Tuesday.
…

 Police in Kabul say at least six people have been killed after a series of explosions at a high school in the Afghan capital Tuesday.

Police spokesman Khalid Zadaran says another 11 people were injured when three bombs went off in succession at the Abdul Rahim Shahid High School and an adjoining training center for children in the mostly Shiite Hazara neighborhood in western Kabul.

The neighborhood has been targeted in the past by Afghanistan’s Sunni militant groups, including Islamic State’s ISKP affiliate, killing dozens of residents.

No one has immediately claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s bombings.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.  
…

A regional affiliate of Islamic State on Monday said it had carried out a rocket attack on Uzbekistan from neighboring Afghanistan, the first strike by the terrorist group against the Central Asian nation. 

Islamic State Khorasan Province fired 10 rockets at an Uzbek military base in the border town of Termez, the group said in a statement released Monday, according to Site Intelligence, which tracks terrorist propaganda. 

Uzbek authorities did not immediately comment on IS Khorasan’s claims.   

The launching pad was reportedly in Hairatan, a border town in the northern Afghan province of Balkh. The terror group also released a photo and video of the projectiles to back its claims.    

IS Khorasan has increased attacks in and around Afghanistan following the U.S.-led foreign military withdrawal from the country in August after 20 years.   

The group has carried out several attacks in neighboring Pakistan, including a deadly suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar last month.    

The attack killed more than 60 worshippers from the minority sect and wounded scores of others. Pakistani authorities said the bomber was an Afghan refugee who received training in Afghanistan. 

Pakistani Taliban attacks   

Meanwhile, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), designated as a global terrorist group by Washington, has also stepped up attacks in Pakistan from its Afghan bases since the foreign troop withdrawal and the Taliban’s return to power.  

Authorities in Islamabad say leaders and fighters of the banned anti-Pakistan militant outfit have established bases in Afghanistan after fleeing Pakistani counterterrorism operations and are plotting cross-border attacks against security forces.    

Pakistani officials say that since the start of the year, more than 100 Pakistani military officers and soldiers have been killed in TTP-plotted roadside bombings and gun attacks in remote districts on the Afghan border.  

On Sunday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry urged Taliban rulers in Afghanistan to take “stern actions” against militants staging cross-border attacks on security forces in Pakistan. 

“Pakistan has repeatedly requested Afghan government in last few months to secure Pak-Afghan border region. Terrorists are using Afghan soil with impunity to carry out activities inside Pakistan,” the ministry said in a statement.    

The statement came a day after the Taliban accused Pakistan of carrying out deadly airstrikes inside Afghanistan. They summoned Islamabad’s ambassador in Kabul to the Foreign Ministry to protest the alleged early Saturday strikes that reportedly killed up to 40 people in the Afghan provinces of Khost and Kunar. 

The casualties and the alleged Pakistani airstrikes could not be verified from independent sources. 

Islamabad has been pressing the Taliban to rein in TTP activities since the Islamist group seized control of Afghanistan and U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from the country.   

It is widely known that the TTP provided recruits and sheltered Afghan Taliban commanders on the Pakistani side of the porous border between the two countries to launch insurgent attacks against the then-Western-backed government in Kabul and international troops inside Afghanistan. 
…

An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan has sentenced six men to death and nine others to life in prison for lynching a Sri Lankan factory manager, who they accused of insulting Islam.

The court announced the verdict Monday, sentencing 72 additional suspects to “rigorous” jail terms of two years each. Another person received five years’ imprisonment for his role in the fatal mob assault on Priyantha Kumara in December.

The incident took place in the industrial Sialkot district in Punjab province, where Kumara had worked as an export quality control manager at a sporting goods factory for 10 years before being tortured and burned by hundreds of coworkers as well as local activists of a radical Islamist group.

The slain man was accused of desecrating and removing posters bearing the name of the Prophet Muhammad from factory walls before informing others about the allegedly blasphemous act. However, investigators later concluded that the accusations were baseless and Kumara was murdered merely for instructing workers to abide by factory regulations.

The foreigner’s brutal murder had drawn nationwide outrage and condemnation, with demands that the perpetrators be publicly hanged, prompting Pakistani authorities to swiftly arrest dozens of suspects and put them on trial.

Defense lawyer Israr Ullah said the special court had conducted the trial inside a prison in the provincial capital, Lahore, for security reasons before announcing the verdict Monday.

Mob lynchings of alleged blasphemers are common in Pakistan, but the assault on the Sri Lankan national was the first such incident involving a foreigner.

In January, Kumara’s employer announced it would pay his salary, approximately $1,700 per month, to his widow for the next 10 years, while the Sialkot business community separately donated and transferred $100,000 to her account.

Blasphemy is a highly sensitive matter in majority-Muslim Pakistan and carries the death penalty under local laws, although no one convicted of the crime has been executed to date as lower court convictions are often overturned by the higher judiciary.

Critics have long called for reforming the laws, saying they are abused by influential members of society and religious fanatics to intimidate the country’s religious minorities and pressure opponents into settling personal feuds.
…

A 20-year-old Azerbaijani university student is describing near-daily beatings during his time as a prisoner of Russian forces near Mariupol, Ukraine last month.

Huseyn Abdullayev, who was studying at Mariupol State University when Russia invaded Ukraine, tells VOA Azerbaijani he was held from March 17 until April 12 after Russian military personnel kidnapped him at a military post west of Mariupol in Berdyansk.

Abdullayev said that after he was taken, “They tied my hands and covered my head with my jacket so that I could not see anything. Then they threw me in a truck and took me to prison. They spoke Russian.”

Abdullayev said he was tortured while in captivity and accused of being a Ukrainian soldier.

“They used electric shock (baton), and then I was beaten. They were Russians, and there were Azerbaijanis and Chechens among them. First, they used electric shock, then beat me with a wooden board and trampled my feet. I was beaten almost every day. They asked me whether I am not a student but a Ukrainian soldier.”

Abdullayev said that he was released after Chechen commanders pardoned him for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“We were eight people. I was the only citizen of Azerbaijan. We were all captured by Russian soldiers of Chechen origin and tortured,” he added.

Huseyn Abdullayev was seen seated in a car in a video released on social media on April 13 by an Azerbaijani volunteer in Mariupol. “Student Huseyn Abdullayev, who was held captive in Mariupol by the Kadyrovs, is now free,” stated the volunteer, identified as Aykhan Hajibeyli.

The volunteer was referring to forces under the control of Ramzan Kadyrov, a leader from the Chechnya region of the Russian Federation and a strong supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Hajibeyli added that other Azerbaijanis are in Mariupol and other parts of Ukraine, but that their fate is not known.

Officials from Azerbaijan have yet to comment on the situation.

Huseyn Abdullayev’s father, Amin Abdullayev, who lives in Azerbaijan’s Neftchala region, told VOA Azerbaijani that his son’s health is critical.

“My son was kept in a freezing place and tortured. This is horrible. One of the torturers was an Azerbaijani. They gave him only dry bread and water. He lost a lot of weight. He was oppressed. They beat him every day,” he said.

Amin Abdullayev added he only spoke to his son twice throughout his son’s captivity, on March 19 and March 25.

The father also thanked the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, along with other Azerbaijani officials, for their help in releasing his son.

Amin Abdullayev said, “I sent a telegram to the president at 10 o’clock. At about 1:30 in the afternoon on the same day, the hostage-takers called and said that we would release your son tomorrow.” VOA could not independently verify that information.

According to Amin Abdullayev, an agreement was reached to hand over his son to the members of the Azerbaijani diaspora in Ukraine.

Huseyn Abdullayev’s family told VOA Azerbaijani that he is now in Lviv and plans to go to Poland Tuesday as he makes his way home.

This story originated in the Azerbaijani service.

 
…

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who has been serving a prison term for crimes against humanity committed during his presidency, was hospitalized April 17 for the second time in a month, prison authorities announced. 

The 83-year-old, who has served 15 years of a 25-year term, suffered a drop in blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat and was raced to a hospital, where his condition was stabilized, the National Penitentiary Institute said on Twitter. 

He was later transferred to a clinic for monitoring. 

Fujimori, who suffers recurrent respiratory, neurological, and hypertension problems — he had heart surgery in October — was hospitalized on March 3 after suffering a strong arrhythmia.  

After an 11-day stay, he was returned to the police base where he is the only prisoner. 

His latest health crisis came a week after the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) urged Peru to refrain from implementing a high court ruling that would have freed Fujimori under a 2017 presidential pardon. 

Lima has said it would abide by any IACHR decision. 

Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000, was subsequently jailed over massacres committed by army death squads in 1991 and 1992 in which 25 people were killed in supposed anti-terrorist operations. 
…

The Taliban accused Pakistan on Saturday of launching cross-border military raids inside Afghanistan, which reportedly caused dozens of civilian casualties.

Local Taliban officials confirmed to VOA on condition of anonymity that Pakistani jets on Saturday bombed several villages in the border province of Khost, killing “at least 30 civilians, including women and children.”

The claims could not be immediately verified by independent sources. Hundreds of residents in Khost were in the streets Saturday to protest the deadly airstrikes, chanting “Death to Pakistan.”

Separately, Taliban officials in the adjoining Kunar province reported overnight cross-border shelling by Pakistani troops, targeting civilian areas in the Shultan District.

A provincial government spokesman, Mawlawi Najibullah, told VOA the shelling killed at least six residents in the Shultan District. He did not confirm reports of Pakistani airstrikes taking place in Kunar.

Officials said the military actions prompted Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to summon the Pakistani ambassador in Kabul, Mansoor Ahmad Khan, to his office Saturday and give a “strong démarche” or official protest note to him.

“The Afghan side condemned the recent attacks on Khost and Kunar provinces, stressing prevention of such acts,” Muttaqi’s office said in a statement.

It quoted the foreign minister as warning the military violations by Pakistan would deteriorate bilateral ties and allow “antagonists to misuse the situation leading to undesired consequences.”

The statement did not mention, however, whether the raids had caused any casualties.

Chief Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in a statement, later stressed the need for resolving bilateral problems through political means.

“IEA calls on the Pakistani side not to test the patience of Afghans on such issues and not repeat the same mistake again, otherwise it will have bad consequences,” Mujahid warned. He used the official name for the Taliban government, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA).

Officials in Islamabad have not commented on the allegations that their forces were behind Saturday’s attacks.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said it was working to establish facts on the ground and verify the extent of losses.

“UNAMA is deeply concerned by reports of civilian casualties, including women and children … Civilians are never a target,” the mission tweeted.

The border regions of Afghanistan are known for harboring fugitive leaders and fighters of the banned Pakistani Taliban militant outfit, known by its acronym, TTP, waging deadly terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

Islamabad says the TTP, which is designated as a global terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations, is plotting terrorism against the country from its Afghan sanctuaries.

Pakistani officials have acknowledged a recent spike in TTP attacks, particularly in northwestern districts on the Afghan border, which reportedly have killed and wounded dozens of soldiers.

The latest such attack took place Saturday when militants ambushed a Pakistani military convoy in the volatile North Waziristan district opposite Khost, killing seven troops.

The Pakistan government has repeatedly urged the Taliban rulers to rein in TTP activities since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan last August, days before U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from the country after 20 years.

It is widely known that the TTP provided recruits and sheltered Afghan Taliban commanders on the Pakistani side of the porous border between the two countries to launch insurgent attacks against the then-Western-backed government in Kabul and international troops inside Afghanistan.

In recent years, the Pakistani military undertook major offensives against TTP bases in Waziristan and adjoining districts, forcing thousands of militants to flee into Afghanistan. The crackdown had significantly reduced terrorism in Pakistan, but the return of the Taliban to power in Kabul eight months ago has resulted in a dramatic spike in TTP-led militant violence.
…

The Taliban prohibition on girls’ education shows the movement’s ultra-conservatives retain tight control of the Islamist group and exposes a power struggle that puts at risk crucial aid for Afghanistan’s desperate population, experts say.

The ban has triggered international outrage and even left many in the Taliban movement baffled by the decision.

“The order was devastating,” a senior Taliban member told AFP. “The supreme leader himself interfered.”

All Taliban officials who spoke to AFP on the subject did so on condition of anonymity, due to the sensitivity of the topic.

Secondary schools for girls were ordered to shut last month, just hours after being reopened for the first time since the Taliban’s return to power in August. The shocking U-turn came after a secret meeting of the group’s leadership in the city of Kandahar, the Taliban’s de facto power center.

Officials have never justified the ban, apart from saying the education of girls must be according to “Islamic principles.” But one senior Taliban official told AFP that Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and some other senior figures were “ultra-conservative on this issue” and dominated the discussion.

Two groups — the urban and the ultra-conservatives — have emerged in the movement, he said. “The ultra-conservatives have won this round,” he added, referring to a group of clerics including Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Sharai, Minister for Religious Affairs Noor Mohammad Saqib and Minister for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Mohammad Khalid Hanafi.

Reimposing Kandahar’s influence

The clerics feel excluded from government decisions and voicing their opposition to girls’ education is one way to restore their influence, said Ashley Jackson, a London-based researcher who has worked extensively on Afghanistan.

She told AFP the “outsized influence of this out-of-touch minority” has prevented the country from moving ahead with something the vast majority of Afghans favor — including much of the leadership.

“It shows that Kandahar remains the center of gravity for Taliban politics,” said International Crisis Group analyst Graeme Smith.

A senior Taliban member said the hardliners were trying to appease thousands of fighters who hail from the deeply conservative countryside. “For them, even if a woman steps out of her home it is immoral. So, imagine what it means to educate her,” he said.

The Taliban member said Akhundzada was against “modern, secular education” as he associated it with life under former Western-backed presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani.

“That’s his worldview.”

The Taliban returned to power last year as U.S.-led forces ended an occupation in place since an invasion ousted the hardliners in 2001.

In the 20 years between the Taliban’s two reigns, girls were allowed to go to school and women were able to seek employment in all sectors, though the country remained socially conservative.

Activist and Islamic scholar Tafsir Siyaposh noted girls in Afghanistan have always studied in single-sex classes and followed an Islamic curriculum, so the ban shows the Taliban just wanted to “oppress the rights of women by giving excuses.”

Blow to foreign aid

A Taliban source in Pakistan confirmed differences at the leadership level on the issue, but said the movement was in no danger of fragmenting. “There is a debate on this issue … but we are trying to overcome our shortcomings,” he said.

Still, analysts say the ban was a blow to Taliban efforts to gain international recognition and to raise aid to address Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis.

Jackson said neither Akhundzada nor those closest to him “fully understood or appreciated” the consequences of their edict for an international community that has linked official recognition to the group’s respect for women’s rights.

Even some senior Taliban officials agree.

“We are telling them (the ultra-conservatives) that running a country is different from running a madrassa,” said one Taliban official from Kandahar, using the term for an Islamic school.

“Everything was going smooth until this harsh order came. And it came from our leader so we have to follow it — but we are trying to change it,” he said.

The ban reduces the willingness of governments to cooperate with the Taliban said the ICG’s Smith. “It raises the question of who exactly they should speak with inside the Taliban.”
…

Senior aides to Pakistan’s ousted prime minister, Imran Khan, have pushed back against claims by the country’s powerful military that the embattled leader had reached out for help to end recent political crises.

The turmoil eventually brought down Khan’s nearly four-year-old coalition government this week in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence, and opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif replaced him as the country’s new prime minister.

An army spokesman told a nationally televised news conference on Thursday that Khan had reached out to Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and asked him to convey to the opposition that the prime minister would call early elections if the no-confidence motion against him was withdrawn.

Bajwa had taken the offer and placed it before the opposition but it turned it down, said Major General Babar Iftikhar. He added that Khan’s resignation from office as well as the no-trust vote were also discussed in the meeting with the army chief.

A senior Khan party leader, in a rare public rebuttal, said Friday that Bajwa, and not their embattled leader, had sought the meeting to find a solution to the crisis.

“Let me be clear — I am stating on record PM did not call military for help on ‘breaking political deadlock,’” tweeted Shireen Mazari, a central leader of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, who served as the human rights minister in the deposed government.

Mazari claimed that option to how to resolve the crisis was brought to the table by Bajwa but Khan rejected the call to step down.

“The military sought the meeting through then Defense Minister (Pervez) Khattak & they (the army) put forward the 3 proposals of either PM resigning or taking part in VNC (vote of no-confidence) or fresh elections!” she tweeted.

Another aide to Khan, who requested not to be named, clarified further to VOA that Mazari’s statement “nullifies” the claim made by the army spokesman in his press conference that the request for mediation had come from the former prime minister’s office.

“I have already said what I had to say and I stand by it,” Army spokesman Iftikhar told VOA when asked for his response to Mazari’s comments.

Khan, the 69-year-old former cricket star, has alleged the United States orchestrated his government’s ouster in collusion with Pakistani opposition parties to punish him for paying an official visit to Russia against Washington’s advice. His meeting with President Vladimir Putin took place on February 24, the day Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

Washington rejected the charges and the Pakistani opposition ridiculed them as a desperate attempt by Khan to cling to power after having lost support of the majority in parliament.

Iftikhar confirmed in his news conference Khan’s assertions that senior U.S. officials in a meeting early last month with Islamabad’s ambassador in Washington had used “undiplomatic language” that amounted to “blatant interference” in Pakistan’s domestic affairs.

The army spokesman also for the first time publicly acknowledged that Khan had visited Moscow with the backing of the military. Until now, opposition leaders were dismissing the ciphered diplomatic letter from Washington as a fake document. It was also being widely perceived that Khan had traveled to Russia without consulting with the military.

Iftikhar, however, dismissed Khan’s assertions that his removal from power was the outcome of a U.S. conspiracy.

The war of words between Khan’s party and the military comes as the former Pakistani leader is set to address another massive rally in the country largest city, Karachi, on Saturday.

Khan told a rally of tens of thousands of people in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Wednesday that his party would continue to hold these gatherings across major cities until the new government agrees to call early elections.

The next election in Pakistan is due in late 2023.

The former prime minister, on the eve of the Karachi rally, renewed allegations of U.S. involvement in his ouster.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price on Thursday strongly rejected the allegations by the former Pakistani leader.

“Our message has been clear and consistent on this. There is no truth whatsoever to the allegations that have been put forward,” Price told reporters in Washington.

Price reiterated that the U.S. supports the peaceful upholding of constitutional and democratic principles, including respect for human rights.

“We do not support, whether it’s in Pakistan or anywhere else around the world, one political party over another. We support broader principles, including the rule of law and equal justice under the law,” he added.
…

Russia has handed over the Afghan embassy in Moscow to the Taliban, becoming the latest country to accredit Taliban-appointed diplomats without recognizing the 8-month-old government. The Taliban, which seized power by force last August, have yet to be formally recognized by any country. VOA’s Afghan Service filed this report, narrated by Roshan Noorzai. VOA footage by Shahnaz Nafees, Said Sulaiman Ashna, Mirwais Rahmani. Video editor – Nawid Orokzai.
…

A blanket ban on poppy cultivation by the Taliban emir is exacerbating Afghanistan’s already dire economic situation and could lead to armed uprisings against the Islamist regime, experts say. 

“This is a crazy policy at the worst possible time,” said William Byrd, senior Afghanistan expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, in response to a VOA question at an event on Wednesday.  

If implemented, the policy would “put hundreds of thousands of Afghan rural households out of business,” Byrd warned.   

The Taliban’s ban follows almost two decades of international efforts to wean the landlocked country from opium production, which accounts for more than 80% of the global supply. Counternarcotics policies of the previous Afghan government, which were bankrolled by Western donors, were largely considered a failure as opium production increased year after year.  

The illicit opium economy feeds organized crimes, corruption and militancy inside Afghanistan and in other parts of the world, the United Nations and other organizations say.   

But with the Afghan economy collapsing following the withdrawal of most international aid and much of the population at risk of starvation, experts fear that the Taliban’s move to crack down at this time will do more harm than good.  

This year’s harvest, which is anticipated to be higher than last year’s 6,800 tons, represents one of the few remaining sources of income for Afghan farmers and of seasonal job opportunities for tens of thousands of young Afghan men. 

The vast poppy fields, which covered 177,000 hectares of land in 2021, created the equivalent of 190,700 full-time jobs in 2019, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). 

“Small-scale poppy cultivation is an important source of income and income stability for many Afghan farmers. The ban on poppy cultivation will make their livelihoods all the more precarious,” Jeffrey Clemens, associate professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, told VOA. 

The Taliban’s terse poppy ban does not say what alternative livelihood and means of income will be provided to poppy farmers, laborers and traders. 

“If anyone cultivates poppy, his crops will be destroyed and he will be dealt with according to Sharia,” the Taliban order reads.  

Known for their harsh law enforcement tactics, the Taliban are expected to implement the poppy ban only through coercive means. The Taliban had enforced an effective ban on poppy cultivation in 2001, just before a U.S.-led international military intervention toppled the regime.  

Suspicious ban 

From 2002 to 2021, the U.S. government spent almost $9 billion on counternarcotics as it fought Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.  

The Taliban were widely reported to be sponsoring their insurgency with proceeds from Afghanistan’s illicit drug economy. In 2018 and 2019, the Taliban earned about $400 million from the drug trade, U.N. officials reported.  

Last year, the country produced some 6,800 tons of opium — which produced 320 tons of heroin — yielding between $1.8 billion and $2.7 billion to the farmers, according to UNDOC. The total value of Afghanistan’s opium in the international markets has been estimated at several billion dollars. 

The Taliban ban, while immediately hurting farmers and laborers, will prompt a rise in opium and heroin prices, said Javid Ahmad Qaem, a former deputy minister for counternarcotics in Afghanistan.  

“(The) Taliban will capitalize on it,” he told VOA. 

By banning the poppy cultivation, the Taliban regime, which faces growing international condemnations for closing secondary schools for girls and censoring media, might be seeking some kind of international understanding, others suggest.  

“My best guess is that the ban is intended to either be temporary or that it will be selectively enforced. It creates a mechanism through which Taliban loyalists can be rewarded, while dissenters can be punished and pushed out of the market,” Clemens said, meaning that the Taliban could look the other way and allow their supporters to continue cultivating poppy as before.  

A crippled economy  

Standing in the middle of his poppy field in southern Kandahar province, Juma Gul, a farmer, told VOA he cultivated the high cash crop out of desperation. 

“Neither wheat nor vegetables can make us this much income,” he said. 

In 2021, revenues from the poppy fields made up to 11% of Afghanistan’s GDP, UNDOC reported.  

Eliminating the poppy economy in an environment with no viable alternatives and no foreign assistance will further cripple the Afghan economy, which is already suffering under strict international financial sanctions imposed on the Taliban regime.  

Foreign development assistance, which accounted for 22% of the Afghan GDP in 2021, has been cut off since the Taliban returned to power. This has led to massive economic and humanitarian problems. 

Over the past eight months, Afghanistan has suffered a 34% decline in per capita income, and public spending has plummeted by about 60%, the World Bank said in a report on Wednesday.  

While foreign donors have pledged about $2.4 billion of humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, the Taliban’s controversial policies will likely cause further harm to the Afghan economy.  

Byrd, of the U.S. Institute of Peace, said the poppy ban is “a sign of the Taliban administration’s lack of savvy on some of these economic policy issues and the macroeconomy.”  

 
…

The war in Ukraine has put China’s rail connectivity to Europe at risk because most of its routes pass through Russia. It has also raised serious questions about the fate of China’s Belt and Road Initiative for building infrastructure across dozens of countries.

Even if the war were to end soon, neither China nor Ukraine would be interested in going ahead with the BRI projects in Ukraine, analysts said.

“BRI projects in Ukraine are basically off the table. Even China may not be interested to continue investing in a country with a seriously damaged economy,” Jacob Mardell, Research Fellow on global infrastructure and China’s foreign policy at the Mercator Institute of Chinese Studies, told VOA.

The BRI is the world’s biggest infrastructure program, with projects in European, Asian and African countries. China is estimated to have invested $59.5 billion in BRI projects last year alone, and more than $800 billion since the program was launched in 2013.

Just a week before the war in Ukraine began on February 24, France agreed with China to jointly build $1.7 billion worth of infrastructure in Africa, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. This plan may come under a cloud as some of the West’s anger toward Russia may spill over onto China, seen by some as a tacit supporter of Moscow.

The China-Europe Railway Express is a transit route for Chinese exports, though it also carries a smaller amount of goods from Europe to Chinese cities. The network has 73 routes, connecting China with Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, France, and Spain. Freight trains moving along these routes made 3,630 trips in the first quarter of this year, according to official Chinese sources.

The number of these trips is expected to fall by half or more if European countries continue isolating Russia, which falls in the middle of these routes, experts said.

“It is very likely that Russian isolation will impact China’s plans for further developing its BRI rail to Europe, much of which crosses Russian land,” Dexter Roberts, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Asia Security Initiative, told VOA.

“That is almost certain to affect their willingness to accept large shipments of goods crossing Russian territory to and from European markets. And if Russia is being sanctioned, it is extremely unlikely it would allow European goods to transit its territory as well,” said Roberts, author of The Myth of Chinese Capitalism.

Besides existing train routes, China has several rail routes in Europe under construction or still on the drawing board that will also be affected.

“China’s enthusiasm for rail connectivity will have to be seriously curbed for now. Beyond the short term, China must bypass the Russian-Belarusian and maybe Ukrainian geography,” said Mohammadbagher Forough, a research fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, in an article in The Diplomat.

Alternative routes

Faced with challenges in Europe, China may focus on BRI’s Central Asia-West Asia corridor, which connects it with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkey and other countries. The idea would be to move more Chinese exports via Central Asian countries, the Caspian region, Iran and Turkey.

There are problems with this route, though.

“The rail corridor through Turkey has limited capacity compared to the one passing through Russia, ” Mardell said. “Besides, it involves travelling a part of the journey by sea. On the whole, it is more time-consuming and expensive.”

For several years, Beijing has been hoping to strengthen the transit route in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, which connects to the Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea.

Pakistan, though, has recently gone through political upheaval, resulting in the installation of a new prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif. The new government is expected to face a new election by the end of the year. In addition, Pakistan is experiencing a serious financial crunch and is seeking International Monetary Fund aid.

Political observers say Pakistan might delay or cancel some of the CPEC projects because it cannot afford to take on more Chinese debt. Also, the IMF may be less enthusiastic about supporting a country with high levels of debt.

Some analysts have a different view of the situation. “Prime Minister Sharif is known as being skilled at balancing geopolitical relationships. Even as he may try to move closer to the U.S., he almost certainly will work to continue to maintain or more likely to strengthen relations with China,” Roberts said.

Sharif might try to further strengthen CPEC because his Pakistan Muslim League party ushered in the project in 2013, he said.

Even if construction work on CPEC continues unabated, it will be a long time before the Gwadar port has the capacity to allow Chinese exporters to use the Arabian Sea route. It is not an answer to China’s immediate problem, which is European resistance to the flow of Chinese cargo via Russian territory by train.
…