A shallow and strong earthquake of magnitude 6.1 struck the Myanmar-India border region early Friday, India’s National Center for Seismology said. 

The quake was felt in Chittagong in Bangladesh and as far away as Kolkata in eastern India, according to witness accounts posted on the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre’s (EMSC) website and by users on Twitter. 

“Very strong,” one such witness posted on EMSC from Chittagong, which is about 184 km (115 miles) west of the quake’s epicenter. 

EMSC pegged the temblor’s magnitude at 5.8, after having earlier given it a magnitude of 6.0, and said the epicenter was about 126 km southeast of Aizawl in northeastern India.
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A 17-month-old standoff between India and China in the Himalayan border region of Ladakh is imperiling the six-century-old Pashmina wool industry, which employs almost three-quarters of a million people, according to industry leaders. 

Soldiers from the two countries stood eye to eye in the disputed region for more than a year after a June 2020 clash in the Galwan valley of eastern Ladakh that left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead, according to reports, and tensions remain high. 

The dispute has cut off almost all access to pastureland around the area where Ladakhi nomads have long herded an estimated 250,000 Pashmina-producing Changthangi goats at altitudes above 4,200 meters. 

The Indian army “is not allowing the shepherds to go to the high altitudes for the grazing and hence it has affected the production of the wool,” said Zakir Hussain Zaidi, a businessman based in Leh, a town in India’s neighboring Himachal Pradesh state, who procures the wool directly from nomads. 

Pashmina wool, the finest version of cashmere, is six times thinner than human hair and highly prized in the international market. While most of the world’s cashmere comes from Mongolia, an authenticated hand-embroidered Kashmiri Pashmina scarf can sell for several thousand dollars in the United States and Europe. 

Pashmina exporter Abdul Hamid Punjabi, a former president of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told VOA the border friction is just the latest problem to beset Pashmina fiber production. 

Other factors include lockdowns due to the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and India’s abrupt move in 2019 to abrogate Article 370, which provided a degree of autonomy to the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir where much of the wool is processed. The move was accompanied by a massive security clampdown and prolonged curfew.

Both the lockdowns and the curfew have severely impacted all aspects of the Kashmiri economy, including the Pashmina sector, according to Sheikh Ashiq, president of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Sluggish global demand and poor quality control by some traders have also contributed to a decline in Pashmina sales, said Mahmood Ahmad Shah, director of Handicrafts and Handloom Kashmir. He told VOA that exports of the prized shawls have declined from $41 million in 2018-19 to just $23.16 million in 2020-21. 

Mujtaba Kadri, founding director of the luxury international cashmere brand Me&K, blames the industry’s decline in part on the low wages offered by manufacturers to weavers and artisans. 

“At an individual level I am trying my best and pay 50% more to my artisans compared to what others pay,” said Kadri, who employs more than 300 women as spinners and runs programs for women to learn to work on spinning wheels known as charkhas. 

Pashmina industry leaders responded to the mounting crisis last summer by founding the Kashmir Pashmina Organization to advocate for their interests. The president of the association, Mubashir Ahmad Shaw, told VOA that prices for raw Pashmina will rise because of the border friction, affecting the well-being of about 700,000 people who are associated with the trade. 

The price of a kilogram of raw Pashmina has already risen from $37 to $47, according to Junaid Shahdhar, executive managing director at the Pashmina manufacturing and marketing company Phamb Fashions Pvt Ltd. 

The industry problems are reverberating in Ladakh, where an estimated 1,600 to 1,700 nomadic families maintain a hardscrabble existence rearing the Changthangi goats that produce the precious fiber. 

“They are living a very hard life and their children don’t want to continue with it,” said Konchok Stanzin, a councilor representing a border constituency on the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council. 

Stanzin recently presented a list of demands to Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, requesting an allotment of land in the city of Leh for border residents who are finding life is no longer viable near the tense Line of Control that separates India from China.
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Italy has given safe haven to Sharbat Gula, the green-eyed “Afghan Girl” whose 1985 photo in National Geographic became a symbol of her country’s wars, Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s office said Thursday.

The government intervened after Gula asked for help to leave Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the country in August, a statement said, adding that her arrival was part of a broader program to evacuate and integrate Afghan citizens.

 

U.S. photographer Steve McCurry took the picture of Gula when she was a youngster, living in a refugee camp on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

 

Her startling green eyes, peering out from a headscarf with a mixture of ferocity and pain, made her known internationally, but her identity was only discovered in 2002 when McCurry returned to the region and tracked her down.

 

An FBI analyst, forensic sculptor and the inventor of iris recognition all verified her identity, National Geographic said at the time.

 

In 2016, Pakistan arrested Gula for forging a national identity card in an effort to live in the country.

 

The then Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, welcomed her back and promised to give her an apartment to ensure she “lives with dignity and security in her homeland.”

 

Since seizing power, Taliban leaders have said they would respect women’s rights in accordance with Sharia, or Islamic law. But under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, women could not work, and girls were banned from school. Women had to cover their faces and be accompanied by a male relative when they left home.  

 
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As more Afghan refugees are approved to enter the US, VOA’s Deana Mitchell catches up with one family who has now been here for three months
…

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TRANSCRIPT

 

The Inside Story: Afghanistan’s Addiction Crisis

Episode 10 – October 21, 2021

 

Show Open:

 

Voice of: KATHERINE GYPSON, VOA Congressional Correspondent:

 

Afghanistan’s poppy fields provides most of the world’s opium … 

Creating a crisis of addiction in the country. 

 

 

Mark Colhoun, Former UNODC Representative in Afghanistan:

 

So, these are all increasing the threat to the population exponentially.

 

 

KATHERINE GYPSON:

The old … the young. 

The men … and the women … 

Drugs’ grip on Afghanistan’s society and economy — 

On The Inside Story: Afghanistan’s Addiction Crisis. 

 

 

The Inside Story:

KATHERINE GYPSON:

 

Hi. I’m Katherine Gypson, VOA’s Congressional Correspondent. 

 

While members of Congress and others debate the tactics of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the strategies of 20 years of war, there is one issue that has constantly plagued that country: Drugs. Narcotics. Specifically, opium. 

 

According to the U.N., Afghanistan produces 80 percent of the world’s opium. 

While the rest of the world tries to deal with the trafficking of the drug, millions of people are addicted inside Afghanistan. 

 

Before the U.S. withdrawal, VOA’s Afghan Service traveled through the country to document the extent of Afghanistan’s Addiction Crisis. 

 

 

Our grim trip begins in the capital, Kabul. 

 

Voice of narrator (Annie Ball):

 

In Afghanistan, this is where, and how, it sometimes ends. A drug addict’s life.

 

Health workers came to round-up the addicts and take them to addiction treatment centers. But today they encounter the lifeless bodies of three addicts.

 

Here, at Kabul’s “Pul-e-Sokhta” bridge, the health workers face the grim, and heavy chore of removing the bodies, hauling them up to the street and away for burial. If no family can be located, they will be laid in an unmarked grave, with no one to mourn their loss. It is the mark of shame to be buried alone in Afghanistan.

 

For the workers and government officials, it reminds them they cannot help everyone.

Dr. Aref Wafa was working with addicts.

 

 

 

Dr. Aref Wafa, Department of Drug Demand Reduction:

 

Especially when we come here in the winter, our goal is to save their lives. They may increase the dose due to cold or chills. When they overdose, they do not feel it, therefore, this causes their death.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

Doctors say, these addicts are consuming heroin, morphine, opium and increasingly, crystal meth. The cause of death is usually a drug overdose. They are taken to a Kabul cemetery for burial. How many bodies are buried there? No one knows. Officials don’t track the numbers.

 

Gholam Yahya’s brother lost his life to addiction under the bridge. Yahya, an addict like his brother, still lives under this bridge. Now, he describes the sadness—and shame—and how addicts’ deaths are treated by religious leaders.

 

 

 

Gholam Yahya, Drug Addict:

 

They said those who use drugs, commit suicide. Since they commit suicide, their funeral prayers are forbidden. They cannot be washed. His mother did not bring her child to this world to end up under Pull-e-Sokhta bridge. He did not wish this for himself., but I could not bury him in any cemetery.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

In Kabul’s ‘Pul-e-Sokhta area, this is not just the story of Gholam Yahya’s life.

 

Throughout Afghanistan, it is known as a drug addiction center. The bridge in western Kabul has become a major hub for drug users for the past two decades. An iconic symbol of drug abuse in a nation rife with addiction.

 

The addicts don’t come just from Kabul, but many from the provinces, too.  Hundreds of them share this grimy space, spending their days and nights getting high amidst the waste and debris.  Most of them have been evicted by their families and have no shelter.

 

They live in squalor, surrounded by filth, black walls, and dirty water.

 

Over the years there have been several unsuccessful attempts to close the area. But it remains a popular gathering place for addicts.

 

Nazo is one of many looking for loved ones. Her husband and brother are addicted to drugs. Nazo’s husband uses opium and is remarried. He left her with the responsibility of taking care of their six boys. In Afghanistan, single mothers with no men in the house face a particularly difficult life, especially when the single mother is the only breadwinner. This is why Nazo hopes to find her brother, who is a heroin addict.

 

 

 

Nazo, Sister of a Drug Addict:

 

It has been five months since I went to Kart-e-now, Arzan Qemat, Jada, and Cinema-e-Pamir to Shama-li so that anyone could tell me his whereabouts. I don’t know the area. I went to ask. I got home about ten o’clock at night. I am a woman. I cannot bear this grief, if God forbid. someone touches me or someone talks dirty behind my back.

 

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

In addition to her six children, Nazo also has been taking care of her mother and her brother’s wife. She washes dishes and cleans people’s laundry, making about $2.60 a day.

 

 

 

 

Nazo, Sister of a Drug Addict:

 

I suffered for him so much. The other day, I told my mother. ‘Mother!’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I said ‘it’s a pain, we can get over it. I will find a poison tablet and we will end everything together.

 

 

 

KATHERINE GYPSON:

 

Stories like Nazo’s are becoming more commonplace because of the drug trade’s grip on Afghanistan’s economy.  

 

2017 was the peak, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. 

 

Nearly 10-thousand tons of opium brought in one-point-four billion dollars — seven percent of Afghanistan’s GDP. 

 

And now the opium produced from the poppy plant has a rival that also grows wild in Afghanistan. 

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

As a country, Afghanistan deals with insecurity, endless wars, corruption, poverty, a weak economy, high unemployment, and other challenges. But it also faces the problem of home-grown addiction and drug use. Some describe drug addiction in this country as a hidden tsunami; a large wave ready to crush what is in its wake.

 

Despite billions of dollars in international aid, government projects and efforts, Afghanistan remains the world’s top cultivator of poppy—the plant used to make opium and heroin.

 

The country is the world’s largest narcotics producer.  A joint survey by the Afghan government and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, shows they are losing the war to eradicate the crop.

 

It says in 2020, poppy cultivation was up 37% in Afghanistan.

 

The report found that last year poppy was cultivated on nearly a quarter of a million hectares of land in 22 of the 34 provinces.

 

Most of the opium is smuggled abroad, but what remains is a problem at home.

 

 

 

Mark Colhoun, Former UNODC Representative in Afghanistan:

 

We are seeing high level of opioid use in the country. We are seeing high level of cannabis use in the country and an emerging threat that we have been noticing for the last number of years is definitely methamphetamine and other amphetamine type stimulants in the country. So, these are all increasing the threats to the population exponentially, so we have drug production and then rising drug use in the country which is a severe threat to the people of the country.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

Drug production and addiction go hand-in-hand, and both are on the rise.

 

User statistics are hard to come by. The most recent numbers are from a 2015 survey. It was conducted by INL, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and the Afghan government. It found that 2.5 to 3.5 million Afghans are directly or indirectly addicted to drugs. At that time, one in three families tested positive for drugs. And the rural areas were three times worse than in the cities.

 

 

 

Dr. Ahmad Jawad Osmani, Former Afghanistan Minister of Public Health:

 

Unfortunately, drug addiction is not diminishing. It is increasing. And that’s why, we think that the number that was estimated in the past has increased even more.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

Meanwhile, a recent report shows crystal methamphetamine – also called crystal or meth — is a growing problem in Afghanistan. Last November, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) reported that the country is becoming a significant global producer of meth.

 

One reason is drug traffickers discovered that the ephedra plant, which commonly grows wild in parts of Afghanistan, can be used to make meth. The report focused on the production of meth in Bakwa district. It called the preliminary findings “worrying,” adding there is potential for meth to rival the country’s production of opiates.

 

 

 

KATHERINE GYPSON:

Concern over the rapid increase in meth production is its relative low cost to make.  

And for many of Afghanistan’s addicts, low cost is what they are looking for. 

And it is not limited to the cities. 

 

VOA’s Afghan Service went about 180 kilometers west of Kabul — to Bamyan province — for a ground-level view of addiction’s reach into rural villages. 

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

Bamyan is known for its beautiful landscapes. It is where, nearly 20 years ago (March 2001) the Taliban destroyed two ancient statues of Buddha, which had been the largest in the world.

 

Here, people in the cities and villages suffer from drug addiction.

 

Local officials say there are about 50,000 addicts, and people affected by addiction.

 

Head west, into more rural areas, and you find drugs even more prevalent than in central Bamyan province.

 

The Waras district is where most of the villagers use drugs.

 

The long drive to get there winds through scenic landscapes and rutted roads.

 

Waras district is surrounded by green hills and valleys.

 

People in this remote area live in poverty. They lack the benefits of modern society, like good schools, clinics or hospitals, and technology.

 

The sun shines brightly this morning in Bazobala village. Here, everyone, young and old, including the men, women and children are drug addicts.

 

Eighty families live in Bazobala. 

 

Most people here use drugs together, in groups, and out in the open. The lives of the villagers revolve around smoking drugs. When they have it, they use it.

 

When asked why, they mention many reasons. Like this 18-year-old man:

 

 

 

Drug Addict, Bazobala Shuqol village:

 

The reason I became addicted to drugs was unemployment and poverty. I went to Iran, far away from home. I was unemployed and the situation was bad, so I got addicted to drugs. So, when I return here, I thought that the situation will be better. The situation is bad here as well.

 

 

 

Ali Yawar, Bazobala Shuqol village:

 

I have been using drugs for almost fifteen years. First, I used heroin, now I’m using in crystal.

 

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

It affects the children too. Parents not only use themselves, but also give drugs to their children. In addition to heroin, opium and crystal meth, the addicts of Bazobala are also familiar with other drug options, like tramadol tablets. It is a cheap alternative to heroin and opium.

 

 

 

Drug Addict, Bazobala Shugol village:

 

Those whose consumption is high, like myself, my spending is also high. I use may be one or one and half packet. A packet is 25 (32 cents) to 50 Afghanis. You can’t even purchase this tramadol 500 for 100 Afghanis.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

In Pezhandur village, women are also drug addicts.

 

In many families in the area, they use drugs with their husbands and children

 

This is Fatima. She has been addicted to drugs for 30 years. Fatima, her husband and her sons use drugs together.

 

 

 

Fatima, Pashandur Village:

 

I have asthma. I’m sick as well. I’m 65 years old. I go to work in the desert and mountains until late. I’m weak and my husband is also sick.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

Villagers here work in farming and raising animals. Young people go to the mountains to collect grass for the animals, and the children are shepherds.

 

The idyllic life of these villages is disrupted by narcotics, brought in from neighboring provinces. Residents say they have repeatedly informed security agencies about the smugglers, but no action is taken.

 

The villagers want the government’s attention. They want help, and they want an addiction treatment center.

 

There is only one 20-bed clinic in Waras, which clearly lacks the ability to treat all the addicts in an area of tens of thousands of people. Local officials want more.

 

 

 

Qasim Ali, Chairman, People’s Council of the Peshandur & Bazobala Area:

 

Everyone is addicted to drugs. These people are all unfortunate. The reason is unemployment and poverty. The government does not care about these people. I request from the government, the international community, and human rights to build a hospital in the Shiwqol area. The hospital should be 100 beds or so so these people can be treated.

 

 

 

KATHERINE GYPSON

Addiction treatment is undergoing a change now that the Taliban are running Afghanistan. 

 

Police have been recently rounding up addicts in Kabul, giving them a choice to either sober up or face beatings. 

 

They are stripped, bathed and shaved before going into a 45-day treatment program. 

 

But as one Taliban officer put it: “It’s not important if some of them will die. Others will be cured. After they are cured, they can be free.”

 

The addicts rounded up in these raids have been men. But women fall victim to drug addiction, too. Before the Taliban took over, our VOA Afghan Service team went to Balk province in northern Afghanistan and discovered the disturbing way women addicts can be preyed upon. 

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

The yellow morning sun shines on Mazar-e-Sharif, Balkh’s capital.

 

This is one of the most populous provinces in northern Afghanistan, and Mazar-e-Sharif is the fourth largest city in the country.

 

The Blue Mosque, dating back to the 15th century, has made this city famous.

 

Mazar-e-Sharif hosts internally displaced people, IDPs, from nearby provinces. Security in the city brings people to come live here.

 

The city suffers from a large presence of drug addicts. Local officials say more than 300,000 people in Balkh province, including women and children, use drugs.

 

Easy access to drugs has led to more addicts. In the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, some women addicts are homeless, and some seek shelter in the cemetery at night.

 

This area is called Dasht-e-Shoor. These are the tents of internally displaced families.

 

This woman lives in the camp. She is an addict with a difficult story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zohra, Homeless Drug Addict:

 

I was 13 years old, and my father was not there when my brother and mother married me. Now I am 31 years old, and I am lost. My mother-in-law was beating me. My father-in-law was beating me. I was smoking opium. I used to drink opium and that’s why they were beating me and telling me not to eat it. My husband left me and said “I don’t want a wife like you. You are free.” I have my two children with me. My husband hates me and doesn’t allow me to go home. I live in a tent. I have relatives, but they don’t care about me.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

But Zohra says she is not addicted to drugs by her own free will. She says her family got her hooked. They used drugs in groups, she explains, to lessen the intense pain caused by their work as carpet weavers.

 

Zohra uses marijuana and opium. She has tried to quit several times but concerns about being homeless led her to relapse.

.

She walks the streets of Mazar-e-Sharif at night, begging and collecting usable garbage. This is NOT normal practice for women—because generally, it is not safe here for a woman to be out alone at night.

 

VOA went with her one night to see how she fares alone.

 

Zohra told us about how she pays for her habit. And in this harrowing story, she shared about someone giving her a ride, and the offer he made her:

 

 

 

Zohra/Homeless Drug Addict:

 

I weave carpets to earn money. I use opium, that’s not cheap. I was on my way to collect waste when a car stopped, and the driver told me to get in the car. And he told me I will take you home and help you. Then I got in the car. The driver showed me the suicide jacket and asked me, ‘Do you want to do this? I will give you money.’ I said ‘No, I will not do it.’ And I jumped out of the car.

 

 

 

 

 

KATHERINE GYPSON:

 

The United States spent more than eight-and-a-half billion dollars between 2002 and 2017 battling Afghanistan’s drug trade — That, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. 

 

In May, the Special Inspector General said the Taliban gets an estimated 60 percent of its income from illegal drugs —   About 400-million dollars between 2018 and 2019 according to the U.N. 

 

And in Afghanistan’s easternmost province, VOA’s Afghan service found out that addiction knows no age — old or young. 

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

Here in Badakhshan province, there are an estimated 25 to 30,000 addicts. Like elsewhere, addiction tends to run in families.

 

Jan Begum’s family is one of them. They live in the city of Faizabad. Her two sons and husband are addicted. They use crystal meth and heroin.

 

 

 

Jan Begum, Drug Addict:

 

We don’t have anything. They are both unemployed, this one is an addict, that one is an addict, too. My older son is not here. It has been three years since he is missing. I don’t know if he is alive or dead. There are four of us, and all four of us are addicts. Yes, we sold everything. We sold bedsheets and everything that we had. And with the money, we bought drugs and used it.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

Jan Begum’s family used to live in a house in Faizabad.  When the homeowner found out the family was using drugs, he kicked them out.

 

Now, they beg, take in laundry, and spend most of their income on drugs. Some of them have been treated several times for their addiction, but relapsed.

 

Samiullah is 18 years old. He uses drugs together with his mother, father, and brother.

 

Samiullah, Drug Addict:

 

I have been taking drugs from a young age. I take it with my parents. I go out to find then I take it. I wish the government would come and treat us and I would work as a server in a hotel.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

Afghanistan remains the world’s largest opium producer.

 

Here in Nangahar province, children and teenagers work in the poppy fields collecting the gum with the elders in their family. They’re helping with opium production.

 

Mustafa is one of the teenagers working the poppy fields. Now,16 years old, Mustafa says he has been moving towards addiction for a long time, just because he works with poppies and opium.

 

 

 

Mustafa, 16-Year Old Poppy Field Worker:

 

Well, it’s narcotics, it gets you high. When we collect, we sniff, and it made us dizzy. Made us high, then we would sit down or go home with an excuse to relax and then go out. It had a bad effect. I had a headache when I went to school. I got permission to leave. It had a very bad effect because our heads were spinning, we were high. Drugs must cause this condition to our body.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

This is some of Mustafa’s poppy harvest for the year. A few kilograms of opium have been harvested from the fields. He says that after collecting, he sold the opium and kept two more kilograms to sell later.

 

When the poppy season is over, he works in fields tending other crops like onions.

 

Mustafa says he has seen many people, including women, become addicted to drugs after working in poppy fields. He does not want to become an addict himself.

 

 

 

 

Mustafa, Poppy Field Worker:

 

If no narcotics were planted here, maybe no one would be addicted to drugs. Poppy made many people addicted to heroin. We want the government to stop the poppy cultivation. They should cultivate for us good, good fruit trees.

 

 

 

Narrator:

 

Less poppy production would mean less drug addiction, and fewer drug addicts ending up here, in this cemetery, in an unmarked grave. A sad and shameful death, in a nation where nothing is more important than family, honor and tradition.

 

 

 

KATHERINE GYPSON:

 

These are just a few of the stories of addiction in Afghanistan – you can watch the entire documentary at VOANews.com. That’s all we have for now. 

 

Connect with us at VOANews on Instagram and Facebook. 

And you can follow me on Twitter at Kgyp. That’s @ K G Y P. 

See you next week for The Inside Story. 

 

 

###

 

 

 

 

 
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A top official in Taliban-led Afghanistan has assured female players they can continue playing cricket in the strife-torn country.

The assurance comes as the South Asian nation risks international isolation following the Taliban’s return to power last August, raising fears the Islamist group would not allow women to play the sport.

“Our girls will be playing cricket on the normal basis, and we are looking to provide them with their basic needs and all the facilities they need,” Mirwais Ashraf, acting head of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, or ACB, was quoted as telling an internal meeting.

Ashraf emphasized that female cricket development was a major requirement for members of the International Cricket Council (ICC), the world governing body, and they were committed to obtaining it, according to the ACB statement issued Tuesday. 

Last week, the ICC announced it was setting up a working group to review the future of the Afghan cricket program under the Taliban government.

“The ICC Board is committed to continuing to support Afghanistan Cricket to develop both men’s and women’s cricket moving forward,” ICC chairman Greg Barclay said in a statement while announcing the formation of the working group.

“We believe the most effective way for this to happen will be to support our member in its efforts to achieve this through its relationship with the new [Taliban] government,” Barclay emphasized.

The rise of the Afghan men’s team in international cricket in a remarkably short period of time despite years of war and high poverty levels in the country has won it international praise.

“We should protect that status and continue to try to influence change through the ACB but will continue to closely monitor the situation and take any decisions accordingly,” the ICC chairman said.

The Taliban have assured the world they will not reintroduce the harsh Islamic rule of their previous government from 1996 to 2001, when women were barred from leaving home unless accompanied by a close male relative and most girls from receiving an education. 

The current Taliban administration allowed boys to return to schools in September but instructed girls to stay home until arrangements were in place for them to return to the classroom in a “safe environment.”

The decision drew global condemnation, but the Taliban have since allowed girls to return to school in several provinces across Afghanistan and the number is increasing gradually.

Critics remain skeptical about whether the hardline group will stick to its commitments of protecting human rights, especially those of women and girls.

Earlier this week, the Taliban ordered Afghan television channels to stop broadcasts of entertainment programs, dramas and movies that feature female artists.

The edict said female news presenters must wear hijabs in accordance with the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law or Sharia.
…

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Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban urged the United States Wednesday to take “practical steps” toward settling outstanding issues as the two sides prepare for a fresh round of talks in Doha next week.

The U.S. said on Tuesday its special envoy for Afghanistan, Thomas West, will lead the American team in two weeks of meetings with Taliban leaders in the Qatari capital.

Senior Taliban official Suhail Shaheen hailed as “a good step” the U.S. decision to resume bilateral meetings.

“We are open to resolve all issues with the U.S. through dialogue and start positive relations with them,” Shaheen, the Taliban’s permanent representative-designate to the United Nations, told VOA.

“The ball is in the U.S.’s court. It is now time for the U.S. to take practical steps toward normalizing relations and resolving all outstanding issues with us,” Shaheen said.

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington that special envoy West will discuss issues of “vital national interest” with Taliban interlocutors.  

“That includes counterterrorism, that includes safe passage for U.S. citizens and for Afghans to whom we have a special commitment, and that includes humanitarian assistance and the economic situation of the country,” Price said.

The U.S.-Taliban talks come amid a mounting humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan where the U.N. estimates almost 23 million people or 60 percent of the population are suffering from acute hunger.  

The crisis, stemming from years of war, high poverty levels and rampant corruption, has been exacerbated by the imposition of international financial sanctions on the Taliban when it seized power in mid-August, ousting the Western-backed Afghan government.  

The U.S. and other Western countries have blocked the Taliban’s access to nearly $10 billion in Afghan central bank assets, largely held in the U.S. Federal Reserve. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have also halted aid programs for the country.  

The Taliban and international aid agencies have warned international sanctions have plunged Afghanistan into an economic crisis.

West said in an exclusive interview with VOA on Tuesday the worsening humanitarian crisis has a lot to do with the loss of foreign aid because the Afghan economy largely depended on that over 20 years.  

“Some 75% of the former government’s public expenditures were foreign donor funded, some 40% of the country’s GDP was foreign donor funded,” West said.   

“And so really, in our engagement … with the Taliban over a period of years, we made clear that if they chose a military path to power, that that aid would disappear, and that is what occurred,” the U.S. envoy explained.  

West said it is not as simple for the U.S. as the Taliban might think to unfreeze the Afghan aid.

“There are very complicated legal reasons, as well as judicial reasons, for why that money is not moving from particular banks into other places. I think it’s important also to recognize that there are an additional $2 billion worth of foreign reserves located outside of the United States. That money, likewise, has not moved for similar reasons,” he said.

The international community has ignored Taliban calls for diplomatic recognition of their new government, citing human rights concerns, especially those of women and girls, and questions about whether the Islamist group will deliver on its counterterrorism pledges.  

The Taliban are also being pressed to govern the warn-torn country through an inclusive political set up to ensure that the rights of all Afghans, including women and minorities, are protected.  

For their part, the Taliban say their interim government represents all Afghans and has brought security to the conflict-torn nation in a short period of time.  

Last week, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi published an “open letter” calling on the U.S. Congress to release the frozen assets. He said the economic misery at home could prompt a mass exodus and refugee problems for the world.   

Muttaqi’s office said Wednesday he will lead the Taliban delegation in the Doha talks with the U.S. and discuss, among other issues, the release of Afghan assets.

Nike Ching contributed to this report.
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Indian farmers have welcomed Prime Minister Modi’s decision to repeal three controversial farm laws that had led to the longest and largest protest against his government. However, as Anjana Pasricha reports, the farmers plan to continue pressure on the government to meet other key demands.
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A senior State Department official said the United States is “extremely concerned about the worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan,” adding the country was suffering such a crisis before the military takeover by the Taliban in August.  

Last week, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi wrote an “open letter” to the U.S. Congress, warning of a mass refugee exodus from Afghanistan unless the United States unlocks more than $9 billion in Afghan central bank assets and ends other financial sanctions against the country.

“Unfortunately, even before the change that took place in the middle of August, Afghanistan was already suffering a horrific humanitarian crisis. The reason we saw it worsen had a lot to do with the evaporation of international aid, on which the Afghan economy depended enormously over a period of 20 years,” U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West told VOA in an interview on Tuesday, his first on-camera interview since taking the new position.   

“We made clear that if they (the Taliban) chose a military path to power, that that aid would disappear, and that is what occurred,” he said. 

West, who is also a deputy assistant secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs at the State Department, participated in the so-called “Troika Plus” meetings earlier this month where Pakistan hosted China, Russia and the U.S. for talks on Afghanistan, bringing them to Islamabad at the same time as a Taliban delegation led by Muttaqi also arrived.

In a joint statement, the four countries said they agreed to “continue practical engagement with the Taliban to encourage the implementation of moderate and prudent policies that can help achieve a stable and prosperous Afghanistan as soon as possible.”

“I do not see moves by Russia and China, in particular, to recognize the Taliban. I think the Pakistanis are engaging more actively and in a more forward-leaning manner than certainly we are comfortable engaging at the moment. But the answer to your question, since it’s a hypothetical, is no,” West said when asked whether the U.S. would follow suit if other members in the Troika Plus group move ahead to formally recognize the Taliban. 

The following are excerpts from the interview. It has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

VOA: On access to frozen reserves, what are the specific conditions and steps to release those assets? What is the U.S. response to the Taliban’s warning about the worsening humanitarian situation? What does the Taliban’s appeal to unfreeze those assets say to you? 

WEST: The United States is extremely concerned about the worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. I think, if you step back, you have to take a nuanced and reasonable view about the reasons for this worsening humanitarian crisis. Unfortunately, even before the change that took place in the middle of August, Afghanistan was already suffering a horrific humanitarian crisis. The reason we saw it worsen had a lot to do with the evaporation of international aid, on which the Afghan economy depended enormously over a period of 20 years. Some 75% of the former government’s public expenditures were foreign donor funded, some 40% of the country’s GDP was foreign donor funded. And so really, in our engagement, and frankly, in our allies’ and partners’ engagement with the Taliban over a period of years, we made clear that if they chose a military path to power, that that aid would disappear, and that is what occurred. 

VOA: What is your response to the Taliban’s appeal to release those assets? 

WEST: At the moment, the reason that those assets are not moving is not because there is some executive branch action to freeze them, so to speak. That’s a misnomer that I know has gotten a lot of attention in the press. There are very complicated legal reasons, as well as judicial reasons, for why that money is not moving from particular banks into other places. I think it’s important also to recognize that there are an additional $2 billion worth of foreign reserves located outside of the United States. That money, likewise, has not moved for similar reasons. 

VOA: Earlier this month, you had participated in the Troika Plus meeting with counterparts from China, Russia and Pakistan. You also met with the Taliban’s foreign minister in Pakistan. What are your takeaways in these meetings? What role can China and Russia play to stabilize Afghanistan and to counter terrorism, as they are also members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?  

WEST: So, this was the first time on, I guess it was the 11th of this month, that the so-called Expanded Troika met since August 11th or so. This is a format that the United States supports.  

I think we see an important role for the countries of the region, including Russia, including China, including Pakistan, in achieving stability in Afghanistan. That is a format that bridges East and West. We’ve certainly been encouraged, even by our allies in the West who do not participate in this format, to represent their views. I thought we landed on a responsible, common statement out of those meetings, and I was very glad to see that my Russian, Chinese and Pakistani counterparts share a commitment that we share: to move toward fundamentally more inclusive governance, on the protection of women, minority rights and on moves to permit access by humanitarian aid workers to all aspects of delivery. So, it was a good meeting, I think, a positive outcome where we demonstrated unity, and I appreciated Pakistan’s effort to host. 

VOA: Could you please elaborate on counterterrorism, including countering Islamic State Khorasan, and what roles does the U.S. want to see China and Russia play? 

WEST: (President Joe Biden) has made clear that the United States will maintain an unwavering commitment to ensure that Afghanistan never again represents a threat to the United States or its allies. Certainly central to our discussions with the Taliban on October 9 and 10 and, frankly, even going back to August when I was in Kabul as a part of our efforts to support the evacuation. Fulfillment of the Taliban’s terrorism commitments has been just a bedrock gating issue for us, and it will remain so. As far as Russia and China are concerned, I think they share our depth of concern over the possibility that terrorists will present a threat to their countries and to their neighbors. And so, it’s a common point of concern for the entire international community when it comes to engaging with the Taliban. 

VOA: An American is being held hostage in Afghanistan: Mark Frerichs. Do you have anything on his condition? 

WEST: I’ll tell you that Mark’s release is an essential issue for us with the Taliban, essential issue that we raise on virtually every occasion. Responsible states do not hold hostages. That’s just a fact. And so, if they want to be treated as a responsible state going forward, then we will see Mark’s return as soon as possible. 

VOA: How do you assess Pakistan’s role, given its support for the Taliban in the past 20 years? Is Pakistan’s support for the Taliban a point of contention in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship? Or could it be a leverage over the Taliban to make concessions on women’s rights, girls’ education, and to form an inclusive government, et cetera? 

WEST: You know, we will continue intensive discussions at all levels of the Pakistani bureaucracy on Afghanistan. They do still hold considerable leverage, I think, in the region and in Afghanistan, just by dint of their history, their linguistic and cultural ties, and the strong ties between communities across the border. Is it a point of contention? Sometimes yes, and it’s a two-way dialogue. I think the Pakistanis have concerns about U.S. policy in Afghanistan, and we’ve long had concerns about Pakistan’s policy in Afghanistan. I think the important part is that it is a two-way dialogue, and we are not shutting down channels of communication, as evidenced by their good effort to host the last expanded Troika meeting. 
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Human rights activists have criticized India’s arrest of prominent activist Khurram Parvez in Indian-controlled Kashmir. 

The National Investigation Agency arrested Khurram Parvez late Monday, while also conducting searches of his home and office in Srinagar.   

He is being held under India’s Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which allows authorities to detain someone for up to six months without trial.  

“The Indian Government’s policy has increasingly been to weaponize the law to go after the people who are speaking out and denouncing these abuses and by accusing brave and well-recognized human rights defenders such as Mr. Parvez,” Angelita Baeyens, vice president of international advocacy and litigation for the US-based Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, told VOA.  “It helps send a threatening message to the rest of the human rights community on what may happen if they dare continue their work.” 

Parvez heads the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, a rights group that has reported on violence involving Indian troops in the region.   

The National Investigation Agency did not issue a public statement about Parvez’s arrest. 

Human rights activist Angana Chatterji, an anthropologist at University of California, Berkeley, called the actions taken against Parvez “baseless.” 

“The state’s security apparatus seeks to subjugate those in principled refusal to political malevolence,” Chatterji told VOA.  “Khurram is person of immense courage, brilliance, integrity, and grace. His work attests to his formidable capacity to dissent oppression. The state is fearful of human rights defenders, journalists, scholars, lawyers, and civil society who protest absolute nationalism.” 

Shaikh Azizur Rahman contributed to this report.
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Indian journalists are denouncing the arrest of two colleagues who were charged with “spreading communal disharmony” after they attempted to cover violent attacks on Muslims by Hindu activists in the Indian state of Tripura earlier this month.

Many journalists see the police action and charges as an attempt by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to silence the media for reports that show the Hindu nationalist party-led government in a poor light.

Samriddhi Sakunia and Swarna Jha were in Tripura, a BJP-ruled state, on a reporting assignment for the Mumbai-based digital news channel HW News Network. 

While working, Sakunia posted a tweet about the vandalization of a mosque. The next day, police arrested Sakunia and her colleague, saying they “incited communal violence by posting fake news in social media.”

A court in Tripura granted the two journalists bail one day after.

Last year, more than 60 journalists were arrested, detained, interrogated and served show-cause notices by police for their professional work in India, according to Free Speech Collective [FSC], a media rights group. 

Journalist and independent media researcher Geeta Seshu said that journalists engaged mostly in investigative work are being targeted. 

“The government arsenal to curtail press freedom includes arrests, criminal cases and interrogation of journalists along with raids on independent media houses,” Seshu, an FSC member, told VOA. 

A national spokesman for the BJP, Delhi-based Gopal Krishna Agarwal, broadly dismissed the idea that the party is cracking down on reporters. 

“Some rights activists, who are trying to defame BJP on this issue of police action against journalists, are from a communist background. On all issues, they stand against BJP. We do not like to comment against this charge they are slapping against BJP,” he told VOA.

But some observers see a pattern. Earlier this year, police filed criminal charges, including sedition, spreading “fake news” and threatening national integration, against eight journalists in connection with reports on farmers’ protests in Delhi. Six of the eight journalists faced the cases in four BJP-ruled states.

Last year, police in the BJP-ruled northern state of Uttar Pradesh arrested Siddique Kappan, a journalist from Kerala, when he traveled to the town of Hathras to report on the gang rape and murder of a low-caste Hindu girl. Charged under an anti-terrorism law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and other accusations, the journalist has been in jail for more than a year.

VOA’s attempts to speak with an officer of the UP police were unsuccessful. 

Arresting a journalist on his way to report a rape case is totally unjustified, says Sujata Madhok, general secretary of the Delhi Union of Journalists.

“This is even worse as he has been charged under the UAPA which means he cannot get bail. An under-trial has a right to get a copy of his charge sheet. But he has not got it despite being in jail for over a year. How will his lawyer fight his case if he does not have a copy of the charge sheet?” Madhok asked. 

“I believe draconian laws like UAPA should be repealed as they are being misused for political reasons, in case after case,” she said. 

Since the Indian government revoked the special constitutional status of Indian-administered Kashmir in August 2019, threats of arrests, detention and harassment of journalists have risen to a new level there too, according to journalists from the centrally-controlled territory.

Last month, Srinagar-based freelance photojournalist Manan Gulzar Dar, who worked for Pacific Press, was arrested by India’s anti-terror National Investigations Agency, in connection with a militant conspiracy case in Kashmir, and is now in a Delhi jail.

Kashmiri photojournalist Aasif Sultan, who worked for local monthly magazine Kashmir Narrator, has been in a Srinagar jail since he was arrested by Jammu and Kashmir police in August 2018. Police charged him for “harboring known terrorists.” 

Junaid Kathju, the principal correspondent of the news portal Kashmir Walla, said it is extremely difficult to work as a journalist in Kashmir now.

“Reporting in Kashmir is like walking on a razor’s edge. We don’t know today what will happen to us tomorrow,” Kathju told VOA.

“If a report appears to support the government on any issue, we are being labeled as anti-people and anti-Kashmir. If we describe in our reports the sufferings of the Kashmiri people, we are labeled as being on the side of the militants. We are tagged as anti-nationals and face the risks of being arrested or jailed.” 

Journalists in the country are operating in an atmosphere of “indifference, extreme hostility and intimidation,” the FSC’s Seshu said.

“And, the result is self-censorship, fear­­­­­­­ — as we see in conflict areas like Kashmir — and shrinking space for independent news-gathering and dissemination. Impunity is one of the most important reasons why police harassment can happen and continues to occur,” she said. 

Several rights activists noted that the police in different BJP-ruled states are harassing journalists at the behest of the Hindu nationalist party. 

Delhi University teacher and writer Apoorvanand, who uses one name, said that India’s BJP-led federal government and the governments in the states ruled by the party have decided that the act of collecting and communicating information will be criminalized. 

“They want to send a message that if you want to report, you would be seen as spreading hate and violence. This is exactly what was done in Delhi and UP,” Apoorvanand told VOA. “It will make reporting and fact-finding impossible in India.” 

India’s ranking on the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders has declined in recent years. This year India was ranked 142nd among 180 countries.

While releasing the latest World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders identified India as “one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists trying to do their job properly.”

Daanish Bin Nabi in Srinagar contributed to this report. 

 
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U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West will head to Doha, Qatar, next week for meetings with Taliban leaders, the State Department says. West told VOA the U.S. is deeply concerned about the humanitarian crisis in the country, as VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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A senior Red Cross official has voiced anger at the continuation of sanctions and freezes in international aid to Afghanistan, preventing basic services from being delivered to the population.

Dominik Stillhart, the director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement Monday that he is “livid” after a six-day day visit to field hospitals, where he said he witnessed first-hand suffering of Afghans.

“When you’re standing in the pediatric ward in Kandahar’s largest hospital, looking into the empty eyes of hungry children and the anguished faces of desperate parents, the situation is absolutely infuriating,” Stillhartsaid.

Earlier this month, the United Nations warned that more than half of Afghanistan’s estimated 40 million population is likely to go hungry this winter unless more funds are forthcoming from donors. The World Food Program said that fuel costs are up, food prices are soaring, fertilizer is more expensive, and all of this feeds into the unfolding Afghan crisis.

Stillhart said the situation is angering, given that civilians’ suffering is “man-made” and the result of the international community’s choice to impose sanctions on the Taliban regime, which assumed power in Afghanistan in August.

The return to power of the Islamist Taliban after the withdrawal of U.S.-led foreign troops has plunged the country into an economic crisis and increased Afghan humanitarian needs to unprecedented levels, which stem from years of war and a prolonged widespread drought.

The international community has refused to grant diplomatic recognition to the Taliban government mainly over human rights concerns, especially those of women and girls, under the Islamist movement’s rule. The Taliban have banned women from most employment opportunities and restricted education for most women and girls.

The absence of legitimacy led to suspension of several billions of dollars in annual foreign assistance to Kabul and blocked the Taliban’s access to about $10 billion in Afghan assets, mostly held in the U.S. Federal Reserve. The sanctions have made it extremely difficult for the Taliban to pay salaries or import essential goods.

Stillhart said that recent resolutions from the U.N. and general economic sanctions are causing donors to rethink, and pause, their contributions to humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan, which can deny live-saving assistance to civilians.

In order to prevent the collapse of Afghanistan’s public health system, the ICRC on Monday began supporting 18 regional and provincial medical facilities, including running costs and medical supplies. The ICRC is planning to support the facilities for six months.

The agency also began paying employees’ salaries on Monday, Reuters reported.

In his statement, Stillhart said cases of malnutrition, pneumonia and dehydration at the Mirwais Regional Hospital in Kandahar have doubled from mid-August to September.

Stillhart said the future of medical care and education in Afghanistan are dependent upon international support.

“States must engage with Afghanistan. This is the only way to prevent a total collapse of essential services like health care and education. Political considerations should not interfere with humanitarian action,” Stillhart said.

Analysts say Washington and other Western governments have few good options in Afghanistan: They can either try to work with the Taliban, and in effect collude with human rights violations, or watch the worsening crisis from afar and see 20 years of development work reversed.

Stillhart pushed donors to find “creative solutions” to save the lives of millions of Afghans.

He warned that the economic sanctions “meant to punish those in power in Kabul are instead freezing millions of people across Afghanistan out of the basics they need to survive,” according to an Agence France-Presse report.

He told AFP that “sanctions on banking services are sending the economy into free-fall and holding up bilateral aid.”

In October, the heads of government and foreign ministers from the world’s 20 leading economies — the G-20 — agreed at a video summit to examine how to inject more aid into Afghanistan, while preventing funds being controlled by the Taliban and used for political purposes rather than humanitarian.

The European Union announced during the summit a $1.15 billion aid package for Afghanistan “to avert a major humanitarian and socio-economic collapse.”

However, earlier this month, Jan Egeland, secretary general of the humanitarian organization Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said, “The international response to the suffering, immense suffering in Afghanistan and for Afghans and neighboring countries is really pitiful.

“There must be an immediate scale up of aid both inside Afghanistan and in neighboring countries like Iran, before the deadly winter cold,” he said.

(Ayaz Gul and Jamie Dettmer contributed to this report. Some material for this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.) 
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Pakistan rejected as “entirely baseless” India’s renewed claims that an Indian pilot shot down a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet during a February 2019 aerial skirmish between the two nuclear powers.

Tuesday’s reaction came a day after the Indian president awarded pilot Abhinandan Varthaman the country’s third-highest honor for displaying “exceptional resolve in dealing with the adversary in a brave and dignified manner.” The ceremony in New Delhi was also attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and top military officials.

 

“The citation of the award to the downed Indian pilot is a classic case of Indian fabrications and pure fantasy to appease domestic audience and hide the embarrassment,” said a Pakistan Foreign Ministry statement.

Indian Air Force officials at the time said that Varthaman managed to shoot down a Pakistani F-16 during the Feb. 27 aerial battle, before his own plane took a missile hit and he ejected safely into the Pakistan-ruled part of the disputed Kashmir region. Islamabad swiftly denied Indian claims.  

 

The Indian pilot was taken into custody by Pakistani troops and released two days later, bringing the two countries back from the brink of war. 

“International experts and U.S. officials have already confirmed that no Pakistani F-16 was shot down on the day, after taking stock of Pakistani F-16 aircraft,” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry asserted in its statement Tuesday.

“Granting military honors for imaginary feats of gallantry is contrary to every norm of military conduct,” it said, adding that Varthaman’s repatriation was testimony of Pakistan’s “desire for peace despite India’s hostility.”

The Indian air force recently promoted the pilot to the rank of group captain while Pakistani pilots who downed Varthaman’s plane have also been given prestigious military awards.

The February 2019 dogfight erupted hours after India carried out a cross-border airstrike against alleged militant camps in Pakistan blamed for a recent suicide bombing in the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir that killed 40 Indian soldiers. 

Islamabad rejected New Delhi’s claims, saying the Indian strike caused no damage on the ground nor were there any militants. 

India and Pakistan have fought three wars and their dispute over Kashmir remains the primary source of diplomatic and military tensions.
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A month-long truce between Pakistan and the outlawed militant alliance known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) largely held into a 15th day Tuesday as the two adversaries negotiate a peace deal, with neighboring Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban mediating the talks.

The TTP, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban, comprises about two dozen banned militant groups and has been waging deadly terrorist attacks against security forces as well as civilians in Pakistan for many years.

Leaders and fighters of the militant outfit have taken refuge in Afghanistan after fleeing army-led counter militancy operations against their strongholds in Pakistani border areas. Thousands of militants were also killed in the process.

Officials in Islamabad say TTP continues to pose a threat from its sanctuaries on the Afghan side and approached the neighboring country’s new Taliban government to help contain the threat.

Amir Khan Muttaqi, the foreign minister of the Afghan government, confirmed during his official visit to Islamabad earlier this month his government had brokered the peace talks and the ensuing temporary truce. Muttaqi did not elaborate further but said they were hopeful the process would produce a settlement.

Pakistani officials privy to the meetings with TTP insisted the talks “are still at a very early stage” and “it is too soon” to expect any progress or discuss possible outcomes.

A security official told VOA the government has initiated the process only to determine whether TTP militants are willing to “surrender to Pakistan’s constitution, submit themselves to the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) to obtain national identification cards” and lay down their arms.

“These are the red lines for advancing the dialogue,” emphasized the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the status of the peace effort.

TTP has long demanded the government withdraw troops from northwestern districts lining the border with Afghanistan and restore the traditional semiautonomous status of the region that once served as strongholds for local and foreign militants, including the Afghan Taliban. TTP has also called for implementing an Islamic system in Pakistan in accordance with the group’s own interpretation of Islamic law.

But Pakistani officials have long rejected as unacceptable those demands, ruling out any discussions on the constitution, the status of the troops or the border districts that once served as TTP strongholds and also provided sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban.

“The aim of the 30-day cease-fire is to see whether or not they (TTP) are serious and want to carry the process forward,” Moeed Yusuf, Pakistan’s national security advisor, told a local television channel last Saturday. “But there is nothing significant that can be shared at this stage in terms of progress in the talks,” he said. 

“The red lines are very much clear; no-one would be allowed to challenge the Pakistani constitution, impose their own system of governance or law and resume violent activities,” Yusuf added.

Pakistan maintains that hardcore TTP members who are involved in serious crimes against the state will have to face legal proceedings, but “foot soldiers” of the group could be offered an amnesty in the event of a deal to encourage them to reconcile and restart living peacefully in Pakistani society.

 

The temporary truce went into effect from November 9 – December 9 after the government reportedly freed an unknown number of prisoners of the militant outfit. TTP spokesman Muhammad Khurasani announced at the time that both sides had agreed to set up negotiating committees to try to advance the dialogue process.

In a brief statement Tuesday, Khurasani rejected as incorrect media reports the government had freed their 100 prisoners. He also denied his group has already placed any demands on the negotiating table. 

“Negotiations committees have not sat at the table, so it would be premature to discuss the terms and conditions. The TTP has not yet offered any conditions,” Khurasani said. 

Role of Afghan Taliban

A senior Afghan Taliban cabinet member in Kabul has offered some details about the role they are playing in facilitating Pakistan’s peace talks with TTP but he requested anonymity to protect their neutrality.

“Our role is exclusively that of a mediator and a mediator cannot take sides. We have urged both parties to demonstrate sagacity and be patient while conducting these negotiations,” he added.

“Both sides are happy that we are mediating the talks. Sometimes we sit between the two negotiating sides and sometimes we talk to both separately,” said the Taliban official.

“We have already made it clear to the TTP that whether or not they accept (Pakistan’s terms) they can no more use our (Afghan) soil against anyone,” he stressed. The Taliban cabinet member said there was a need “at this stage for tactfully” moving the process forward.

 

“It is not appropriate for the mediator to threaten them (TTP) with consequences like ‘we will expel you, we will crackdown on you’,” the Taliban leader said when asked if Kabul would be willing to use force at the request of Pakistan to evict TTP from Afghanistan in case the talks failed. 

“The negotiations have just begun and already made remarkable progress in the shape of the month-long cease-fire,” he said.

He added the Afghan Taliban hopes the peace process would “gradually strengthen” and lead to an extension of the cease-fire. The Taliban leader said that all conflicts ultimately are brought to an end through talks because “blood cannot be washed away with blood.”

For their part, Pakistani officials remain skeptical about the future progress and whether the Afghan Taliban would crack down on TTP fighters if the peace process collapsed because of the long partnership between the two groups in their 20-year war in Afghanistan against the United States and its allies.

The officials also acknowledge that the nascent Taliban government lacks the capacity to take on militant groups like TTP as they deal with a deepening humanitarian and economic crisis facing Afghanistan.

“We cannot completely rely on the Afghan Taliban being the guarantor of any possible peace with TTP because they themselves are fighting for the survival in the wake of economic sanctions and the possibility of Afghanistan descending into chaos again is very much there,” cautioned the Pakistani official.

The United States and the United Nations have designated TTP as a global terrorist organization.

Since regaining power in Afghanistan last August, Taliban rulers have repeatedly assured neighboring countries and the world at large that no terrorist groups would be allowed to operate and threaten others from Afghan soil.

The counterterrorism pledge is part of a set of international demands the Taliban have to meet to claim a much-needed diplomatic recognition for their nascent government in Kabul.
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Indian authorities have arrested a prominent rights activist in Indian-controlled Kashmir. 

The National Investigation Agency arrested Khurram Parvez late Monday, while also conducting searches of his home and office in Srinagar. 

He is being held under India’s Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which allows authorities to detain someone for up to six months without trial. 

Mary Lawlor, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders, criticized the arrest on Twitter, calling it “disturbing.” 

“He’s not a terrorist, he’s a human rights defender,” Lawlor wrote Monday. 

Parvez heads the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, a rights group that has reported on violence involving Indian troops in the region.  
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A flight carrying more than 100 Afghans arrived Monday in northern Greece. 

According to Greek officials, the group of 119 people included Mohibullah Samim, Afghanistan’s former minister of border and tribal affairs, as well as a lawyer who prosecuted Taliban fighters, women’s rights activists and a female judge. 

The evacuees are expected to remain in Greece until arrangements are made for them to travel on to other countries, including the United States and Canada. 

Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, Greece has flown in about 700 Afghans. 

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press.
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The United States is taking aim at the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, sanctioning some of the group’s top officials as well as a financier charged with bolstering the terror group’s numbers with foreign fighters. 

The State Department on Monday designated senior Islamic State Khorasan leaders Sanaullah Ghafari, Sultan Aziz Azam, and Maulawi Rajab as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs). 

The designation clears the way for Washington to block them and their associates from accessing money and assets that come into contact with the U.S. financial system. 

Sanaullah Ghafari, also known as Sanaullah or Shahab al-Muhajir, has led IS-Khorasan since about May 2020, when Afghan government forces captured his predecessors.

Intelligence shared with United Nations counterterrorism officials earlier this year indicated that Ghafari had been operating out of the Kabul area, where the group had established a strong network of sleeper cells.

Additionally, the U.S. Treasury Department on Monday sanctioned Ismatullah Khalozai, describing him as a top financier and facilitator for the IS Afghan affiliate, also known as ISIS-K.

Khalozai “has carried out missions for senior ISIS leadership,” according to a Treasury Department statement, which added he is also responsible for “facilitating the movement of foreign fighters who seek to escalate tensions in Afghanistan and the region.” 

Treasury officials said Khalozai most recently operated a money transfer scheme out of Turkey and that he previously ran an operation out of the United Arab Emirates, raising money for IS-Khorasan through the resale of luxury goods. 

Despite having been pushed out from its territorial strongholds following pressure from both the U.S. and the Taliban through the first half of 2020, IS-Khorasan has mounted a comeback, growing significantly since the U.S. pulled the last of its forces from Afghanistan this past August. 

The top U.N. diplomat in Afghanistan warned last week that IS-Khorasan “seems to be present in nearly all provinces and increasingly active.” 

Top U.S. defense and intelligence officials have likewise warned the terror group could regenerate the capacity to attack U.S. and Western interests around the world in as little as six months.

U.S. officials estimate IS-Khorasan now has at least 2,000 “hardcore” fighters, mostly organized in cells across the country. 

Those numbers have already been bolstered as a result of the Taliban decision to empty out key prisons as their forces advanced across Afghanistan in August. 

International counterterrorism officials and independent experts have also raised concerns that IS-Khorasan could get an additional boost from foreign fighters. 

Chatter intercepted following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan indicated IS supporters from outside the region were expressing a desire to travel to Afghanistan to join the fight there.

 
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When the Taliban took Kabul in August, Zakia was six months pregnant and in her first year of university while her husband, Hamid, was working as an auditor. They decided to flee, and along with five relatives, began a two-month odyssey that took them through Iran and Turkey.

When it was time to cross the Mediterranean, they did so on an expensive sailboat that came ashore this month on a beach in the southern Italian region of Calabria.

They were dehydrated, but relieved to have survived a lesser-known migration route to Europe that is increasingly being used by wealthier Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians and Kurds.

 

Entire families are paying top price for passage from Turkey aboard new or nearly new sailboats that can more easily avoid detection by authorities. Investigators say they are captained by smugglers, often Ukrainians, who may be in cahoots with Turkish mobsters and Italian ’ndrangheta clans on shore.

While aid workers call these “1st class” crossings, there is nothing elite about them. Hamid and Zakia were packed with 100 people below deck for a week as food supplies dwindled. After two days without fresh water, Zakia couldn’t feel the baby moving inside her anymore.

“It was the worst experience of my life,” Hamid said in an Italian gym as he and his wife waited to be processed for COVID-19 quarantine locations after their sailboat, “Passion Dalaware,” came ashore Nov. 10.

For years, most political, humanitarian and media attention has focused on the hundreds of thousands of migrants, most of them Africans, who cross the central Mediterranean aboard unseaworthy vessels launched by smugglers from Libya and Tunisia.

The Calabrian route, which brings the migrants from Turkey to the “toe” of boot-shaped Italy rather than Sicily and its islands further south, has seen a nearly four-fold increase in arrivals in 2021 and now accounts for 16% of the sea arrivals in Italy this year. 

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is monitoring the situation closely, though the increase in Calabrian arrivals is mirrored by a similarly sharp increase in migrants arriving in Sicilian ports. Overall, sea arrivals in Italy this year are up to 59,000 compared with 32,000 at this point last year. The Calabrian route has seen 9,687 arrivals as of Nov. 14, compared with 2,507 last year. 

“We are seeing Afghans. We are seeing Iraqis. We are seeing Iranians, Kurds,” said Chiara Cardoletti, the UNHCR representative in Italy. Whereas single men used to account for most migrants, “right now on all the routes what you are seeing is an increase in the number of families arriving with lots of children. And that is true also for the route to Calabria.” 

The Calabrian route is just one of the myriad ways that would-be refugees from the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa try to reach Europe, a steady crisis that has fueled anti-immigrant sentiment on the continent and strained European Union solidarity. 

Hamid and Zakia had a fraught odyssey that cost far more than most: After escaping Kabul with Hamid’s sister, her husband and their three children, the family arrived in Turkey and paid 8,500 euros ($9,600) for each adult and 4,000 euros ($4,500) for each child to get to Calabria. Hamid’s parents in Sweden helped finance the trip.

Hamid’s 29-year-old sister, Tooba, who speaks good English, said the family decided to risk their lives on the journey because life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule was no longer safe, especially given her work as a lawyer.

“I cannot live in Kabul, and because of them I must leave Afghanistan,” Tooba said, as she cradled a sleeping child. 

Like Hamid and Zakia, she asked that her last name not be used for safety reasons. 

Hamid said the smugglers provided enough water for the first four or five days, but that after it ran out, the passengers drank seawater with sugar for the final two days.

When the sailboat approached shore, the passengers came up on deck only to see the two smugglers who had captained the ship, both wearing ski masks, fleeing the scene in a black boat.

“The traffickers, who obviously have no concept of human scruples, are now even squashing 100 people in each sailboat,” said Vittorio Zito, the mayor of Roccella Jonica, a small town on the Calabrian coast that has been a prime destination for smugglers.

The sailboats are difficult to intercept since even to aerial patrols, they look like normal pleasure boats. The “Passion Dalaware” was even flying a plastic American flag from its sail.

Zito said smugglers can make about 500,000 euros ($565,000) per trip on a stolen sailboat that costs around 100,000 euros ($113,000). Red Cross officials counted 101 people on Hamid’s boat, whose smugglers stood to pocket 858,500 euros ($969,000).

There have been so many of these deserted sailboats recently that their carcasses line the Calabrian coast. Others are piled up in a boat cemetery near the port in Roccella Jonica.

The route is also being used by smugglers bringing fishing boats from Libya. On Nov. 14, 550 migrants arrived in Roccella Jonica, the highest number in one day. The migrants, including at least 100 Egyptian minors, were rescued from two fishing boats off the coast that had departed from Tobruk, a town in Libya near the Egyptian border.

Italian police have arrested several Ukrainian smugglers who have been sentenced for aiding and abetting illegal migration, but they are just small cogs in the wheel of a larger criminal operation. 

“We have to go beyond the individual boats and arrests of smugglers to understand the reason behind the exponential increase,” said Giovanni Bombardieri, chief prosecutor in the Calabrian capital of Reggio Calabria, who is leading the migration investigation.

“It is clear that our work requires an evaluation of the possible involvement of clans of the ’ndrangheta,” the Calabrian-based organized crime syndicate, he told the AP.

Hamid and Zakia’s odyssey isn’t over. The extended family has been put in different locations in Calabria to complete two weeks of virus quarantine. After that they can begin the process of requesting asylum or can try to reach relatives in Sweden.

There is also some good news. 

“I am very happy,” said Zakia. “The Italian doctors checked and my baby is OK.” 
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Not long ago, Ferishta Salihi and her family had enough for a decent life. Her husband was working and earned a good salary. She could send several of her daughters to private schools. 

But now, after her husband lost his job following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, she was lined up with hundreds of other Afghans, registering with the U.N.’s World Food Program to receive food and cash that her family desperately needs just for survival.  

“We have lost everything. We’ve lost our minds,” Salihi said after her registration was complete. With her was her eldest daughter, 17-year-old Fatima, whom she had to take out of school. She can’t afford to pay the fees at a private school, and the Taliban so far are not allowing teenage girls to go to public schools.  

“I don’t want anything for myself, I just want my children to get an education,” Salihi said. 

In a matter of months as Afghanistan’s economy craters, many stable, middle-class families like Salihi’s have plummeted into desperation, uncertain of how they will pay for their next meal. That is one reason the United Nations is raising alarm over a hunger crisis, with 22% of the population of 38 million already near famine and another 36% facing acute food insecurity – mainly because people can’t afford food. 

The economy was already in trouble under the previous, U.S.-backed government, which often could not pay its employees. The situation was worsened by the coronavirus pandemic and by a punishing drought that drove up food prices. Already in 2020, nearly half of Afghanistan’s population was living in poverty. 

Then the world’s shutdown of funding to Afghanistan after the Taliban’s Aug. 15 seizure of power pulled the rug out from under the country’s small middle class. International funding once paid for much of the government budget — and without it, the Taliban have largely been unable to pay salaries or provide public services. The international community has not recognized Taliban rule, demanding the militants form a more inclusive government and respect human rights. 

International aid also fueled projects around the country that provided jobs, most of which are now on hold. The country’s banks are cut off from the international banking system, further snarling the private sector. The country’s economy is estimated to have contracted 40% in just three months. 

Hospitals are seeing increasing numbers of emaciated, malnourished children, mostly from the country’s poorest families who were already barely getting by.

Now families that have seen their once-stable livelihoods wrecked also find themselves with nothing and must scrape for ways to cover costs of food, rent and medical expenses.  

Salihi’s husband once made around 24,000 Afghanis ($264) a month working in the logistics department at the World Bank’s office in Kabul. But after the Taliban took power, the World Bank halted its projects. The 39-year-old Salihi said her husband was told not to come to the office and he hasn’t received his salary since.  

Now she is the family’s only source of income. One of her neighbors has a business selling nuts, so they give her bags of nuts to shell at home and she then sells the shells to people who use them to burn for fuel.  

Her husband, she said, spends his day walking around the district looking for work. “All he can do is measure the streets with his steps,” she said, using an expression for someone with nothing to do.  

The U.S. and other international donors are funneling money to Afghanistan for humanitarian aid through U.N. agencies, which ensure the money doesn’t go into the coffers of the Taliban government. The main focus has been on two tracks. The U.N. Development Program, World Health Organization and UNICEF are working to directly pay salaries to doctors and nurses around the country to keep the health sector from collapsing. The WFP, meanwhile, is providing direct cash aid and food to families, trying to keep them above water. 

The WFP has had to ramp up its program dramatically. In 2020, it provided aid to 9 million people, up from the year before. So far this year, that number has risen to nearly 14 million, and the rate has risen sharply each month since August. Next year, the agency aims to provide for more than 23 million people, and it says it needs $220 million a month to do so. 

It’s not just the poorest of the poor, usually based in rural areas, who need help.  

“There’s a new urban class of people who up until the summer would have been drawing a salary … and now are facing hunger for the first time,” said Shelley Thakral, the WFP spokesperson for Afghanistan.  

“People are now having to scavenge for food, they’re skipping meals and mothers are forced to reduce portions of food,” she said. 

Last week, hundreds of men and women lined up in a gymnasium in a west Kabul neighborhood to receive a cash distribution – 3,500 afghanis a month, about $38.  

Nouria Sarvari, a 45-year widow who was waiting in line, used to work at the Higher Education Ministry. After the Taliban came to power, they told most women government employees to stay home. Sarvari said she hasn’t received a salary since and she’s struggling to keep food on the table for her three children still living with her.  

Her 14-year-old son, Sajjad, sells plastic bags in the market for a little cash. Sarvari says she depends on help from neighbors. “I buy from shopkeepers on credit. I owe so many shopkeepers, and most of what I receive today will just go to paying what I owe.” 

Samim Hassanzwai said his life has been overturned completely over the past year. His father and mother both died of COVID-19, he said. His father was an officer in the intelligence agency and his mother was a translator for an American agency.  

Hassanzwai, 29, had been working in the Culture Ministry but hasn’t gotten a salary since the Taliban came to power. Now he’s jobless with his wife and three children as well as his four younger sisters all dependent on him.  

“I had a job, my mother had a job, my father had his duties. We were doing fine with money,” he said. “Now everything is finished.” 
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The Taliban on Sunday ordered television channels in Afghanistan to stop airing soap operas featuring women artists and said female journalists must wear hijabs in accordance with the group’s interpretation of Islamic law or Sharia.

 

The restrictions are part of a new eight-point set of guidelines issued by the Taliban Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or moral police, in the latest sign the hardline group is restricting women’s rights. Moreover, the guidelines said films and dramas should not have female actors. Additionally, the new policy prevents television stations from showing men who are considered indecently exposed or not covered from chest to knees.

 

The ministry defended the directive, saying it is aimed at countering propagation of “immorality” and airing of videos that “are against the principles of Sharia and Afghan values.” It asked representatives of television networks in Kabul to adhere to the guidelines during broadcast hours.  

 

“Foreign and locally produced movies that promote foreign culture and traditions in Afghanistan and promote immorality should not be broadcast,” it said.

 

The directive also prohibits airing satirical shows that “insult” or undermine the “dignity” of individuals.  

 

The moral police department existed during the previous Taliban rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when it ruthlessly enforced such restrictions in violation of fundamental human rights. The abuses at the time included barring women from leaving home unless accompanied by a close male relative and girls from receiving an education.

 

The Taliban moral police would publicly beat women for showing their wrists, hands, or ankles, and for leaving home unaccompanied, abuses that led to Afghanistan’s diplomatic isolation at the time.  

 

Since their return to power in mid-August, the Taliban have repeatedly pledged to protect women’s rights in accordance with Islamic law, although Afghan girls are still barred from returning to secondary school in most provinces.  

 

No country has so far recognized the new all-male interim Taliban government in Kabul.  

The United States and the global community at large have been pressing the Islamist group to govern Afghanistan through an inclusive political system that protects the rights of all Afghans, including women and minorities, before asking for international legitimacy.
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Weeks after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, families who fled the fighting in one southern village returned home to find something strange: the cricket ground had been circled in rocks painted red and white.’

White, it turned out, meant it was safe for children to play. But red was a sign of buried landmines and other ordnance — the explosive remnants of war that have killed or maimed tens of thousands of Afghans over the past four decades.’

The village of Nad-e-Ali in Helmand province became a front line in the final days of the war between the Taliban and Western-backed government forces in Kabul.’

It was besieged for two months until the Islamists took control of the country in mid-August.

When its residents returned in September, they found the village school riddled with gunfire, its roof blackened by smoke, and the children’s swings reduced to just a metal frame.

They also found that the area had been “totally mined” in the fighting, according to Juma Khan, the local coordinator for the HALO Trust, the main mine-clearing NGO operating in Afghanistan.

Newly laid mines and other booby traps were buried beneath doors of buildings and beside windows.

“The rooms inside had mines and there were mines on the main street,” Khan told AFP during a visit to Nad-e-Ali this month.

About 41,000 Afghan civilians have been killed or wounded by landmines and unexploded ordnance since 1988, according to the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS).

More than two-thirds of the victims were children, many of whom spotted the deadly devices while playing and picked them up.

The HALO (Hazardous Area Life-Support Organization) Trust was founded in 1988 specifically to tackle ordnance left behind during the Soviet occupation of the country.

The country was so badly contaminated, however, that the clearance work never stopped — even after an international treaty banning the use of landmines was signed in 1997, with Afghanistan ratifying the convention in 2002.

More than 30 years later, in the battles leading up to the Taliban’s return to power, mines and improvised explosive devices were again laid and left behind — this time by both the Islamists and their now ousted adversaries.

HALO — one of the favorite charities of Princess Diana — struck an agreement with the new Taliban authorities in September to have its more than 2,500 Afghan employees return to work.

In Nad-e-Ali, Taliban fighters are now guiding HALO’s deminers to find the deadly traps they themselves set up.

Because they live in the village and do not want to be blamed for civilian deaths, Taliban fighters “used to take them out with their own hands, but we stopped them to avoid any further detonations,” said Khan.

But even as demining efforts persist, explosions have already caused casualties among villagers.

Two months ago, the wife of a village teacher lost both her legs when an explosive device detonated the moment she opened the door of her house.

“This incident was very painful. I saw it happen with my own eyes,” said the teacher, Bismillah. “I saw my children screaming and crying… I’m alone and the stress is too much, too much.”

Since then, the village and its school have been classified as a “high priority” demining zone.

It was HALO that set up the red and white rocks to mark out safe corridors for their 10 teams of eight deminers as they carefully inspect the ground using metal detectors. 

“When it detects metal, battery or anything it rings an alarm. Then we mark the area, and start to dig very carefully,” said supervisor Bahramudin Ahmadi. “As soon as we have a visual of the mine, we inform the demining team and we inform the local security, as they have to give the permission to clear the zone and after that we detonate it.”

Over the past three months, 102 explosive devices have been defused in the region, including 25 in the village itself — but that is believed to be just a fraction of what remains buried in the ground and hidden inside some houses.

For HALO, it is a race against time in post-war Afghanistan to “decontaminate” one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

The priority is to protect children. In Nad-e-Ali, HALO workers were blunt about the dangers.

“Please understand, if you lose a leg, you know how much it will cost your parents, and if you die, how much sorrow,” Nazifullah, a HALO program manager, told a group of children sitting cross-legged on the ground.

“What do you do if you see this?” he asks them, pointing at a picture of a landmine.

“I will immediately tell my family, my brother or my imam at the mosque,” said 8-year-old Nazia. “I am afraid, but I know that when I see white rocks we can play and when it’s red we can’t play.”
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At least 17 people have died and dozens are reported missing in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh after days of heavy rains, authorities said Saturday.

The state has been hit by intense torrents since Thursday, sparking massive floods in at least five districts.

The death toll rose to 17 late Friday night after three people were killed when a building collapsed, police said. Ten people trapped under the debris were rescued but two are still missing.

Earlier Friday, at least a dozen people died as heavy floods washed away the bus they were on. Search and rescue efforts for missing passengers continued Saturday.

 

Deaths from various districts have been reported over the past few days, with officials warning that the numbers could rise as rescue operations carry on. Teams of the National Disaster Relief Force have been deployed to worst-hit and vulnerable districts, and local authorities have rescued and evacuated hundreds of families to shelter homes.

In Kadapa district, one of the worst-hit, incessant rains and floods forced officials to close the local airport until Thursday. Officials said breaches in dams and tanks have caused further flooding, leaving hundreds of villages marooned and many residents stuck in their homes.

Rains in southern India at this time are not unusual, although the country has seen a prolonged monsoon this year with experts warning that climate change has exacerbated the problem by making downpours more intense and frequent.

Last week, neighboring Tamil Nadu state was struck by floods while at least 28 people in southern Kerala state died as heavy rains triggered landslides last month. 
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Authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir early Friday exhumed the bodies of two civilians killed during a security operation, following demands by their families and outrage in the disputed territory.

Police said the men died in “crossfire” on Monday alongside a pair of suspected rebels during a shootout inside a commercial complex in Srinagar, the region’s main city.

Their families insisted they were civilians and accused security forces of murdering the two in “cold blood,” denying police claims that they were associated with militants.

The deaths sparked anger in the restive region, and the families demanded return of the bodies for a proper Islamic burial.

Hours after ordering a probe into the killings, authorities exhumed the two bodies from a remote graveyard where they were hurriedly interred in the middle of the night without their families present.

“The bodies will be handed over to the families soon,” a police official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Manoj Sinha, a New Delhi appointee serving as Indian Kashmir’s top administrator, said the government would take “suitable action” as soon as a report into the incident was completed.

The deaths of Mohammad Altaf Bhat and Mudasir Ahmed Gul came after more than 30 civilians have been killed this year in the territory.

Bhat owned the building where Monday’s shootout took place, while Gul was a tenant in the complex running a real estate business. Two suspected militants also died in the encounter.

The families prepared graves for the pair in their respective graveyards in Srinagar.

“We are told the bodies would be handed over after midnight for burial before dawn and no crowd should assemble,” a relative of Bhat told AFP, declining to be identified.

Police had raided a candlelight vigil staged by family members demanding the pair’s bodies be returned.

The sit-in protest had been underway since Wednesday morning, despite biting winter cold, but electricity was cut and several people were bundled into an armored vehicle.

“They harassed and beat us up and took us into a police station,” Abdul Majeed, Bhat’s brother, told AFP.

Those detained were later released.  

Since last year, police in Kashmir have refused families access to the bodies of slain militant suspects or their associates, saying it helps stop what it calls the glorification of anti-India rebels, whose funerals were usually attended by thousands of people.

Pervez Imroz, a prominent human rights lawyer who has monitored violence in the restive territory for more than three decades, said the probe was meant to “deflate public anger.”

“We have seen numerous executive probes ordered here in the past, but perpetrators were never punished despite many indictments,” Imroz told AFP.

A faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference separatist group called on people in Kashmir to close their shops and businesses on Friday to protest the deaths.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947.

The South Asian arch-rivals separately administer parts of the Himalayan region and each claim the territory in full.

Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have been killed since an armed rebellion against Indian rule erupted more than three decades ago.

Tensions have festered since 2019 when New Delhi canceled the region’s partial autonomy and brought it under direct rule.
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