The Taliban appear poised to take by force what they do not get through negotiations once U.S. and coalition troops complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a new assessment based on intelligence from United Nations member states. The report, issued Thursday by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team for Afghanistan, warns that while the Taliban are still technically in compliance with the terms of last year’s agreement with the United States, they have tightened their grip on power, exercising direct control over more than half of the country’s district administrative centers while contesting or controlling up to 70% of territory outside of urban areas. And U.N. member state intelligence agencies caution this may be just the beginning. “Taliban rhetoric and reports of active Taliban preparations for the spring fighting season indicate the group is likely to increase military operations for 2021, whether or not a spring offensive is announced,” the U.N. report said. FILE – Afghan security forces stand near an armored vehicle during fighting between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters in the Busharan area on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, May 5, 2021.Intelligence indicates Taliban commanders have also massed their forces around key cities and towns, ready to strike, as part of a strategy to “shape future military operations when levels of departing foreign troops are no longer able to effectively respond.” The U.N. report further warns that there is little evidence to suggest the Taliban have done much to sever ties with the al-Qaida terror group, as required by the agreement with the U.S. In contrast, the intelligence shows the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaida “has grown deeper as a consequence of personal bonds of marriage and shared partnership in struggle, now cemented through second-generational ties.” “Members of (al-Qaida) have been relocated to more remote areas by the Taliban to avoid potential exposure and targeting,” the report found. It said as many as 500 al-Qaida members — both with the core group and with the al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) affiliate — reside in at least 15 provinces.  Contact between the two groups has also continued, though the report said al-Qaida “has minimized overt communications with Taliban leadership in an effort to ‘lay low’ and not jeopardize the Taliban’s diplomatic position vis-à-vis the Doha agreement.” The U.N. sanctions-monitoring team additionally warned AQIS “is reported to be such an ‘organic’ or essential part of the insurgency that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to separate it from its Taliban allies.” #alQaida in the Indian Subcontinent “reported to be such an ‘organic’ or essential part of the insurgency that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to separate it from its #Taliban allies” per @UN report— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) June 3, 2021The Taliban on Thursday immediately rejected the U.N.’s findings. “Unfortunately, this report has been compiled on the basis of false information from enemy intelligence agencies,” according to a statement from Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, translated from Pashto. “Such one-sided reports call into question the impartiality of the U.N. Security Council and undermine its international credibility,” Mujahid added, further accusing the U.S. of failing to abide by the terms of the Doha agreement. “Representatives of the Islamic Emirate are also fully prepared for the inter-Afghan negotiating table, in order to make progress in the negotiations and implement all the clauses,” he said. The release of the U.N. report comes just days after U.S. military planners announced the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is 30% to 44% complete, and that the pullout is ahead of schedule. US Military Says Afghan Pullout Nears Halfway MarkAmerican military planners said Tuesday as much as 44% of the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan is completeWhile the Doha Agreement called for all U.S. and coalition forces to be out of Afghanistan by this past May, U.S. President Joe Biden delayed the timeline, announcing in April that U.S. forces would compete the pullout by early September. Still unanswered, however, are key questions about ongoing training for Afghan government security forces and how the U.S. will conduct counterterror operations, if needed. Fate of US Training Mission Uncertain as Afghan Withdrawal Nears End    Pentagon says support to Afghan forces will be mainly financial, with some logistical support, but it is mostly silent on the training issueWith Afghanistan’s Future at Stake, US Courts Pakistan Officials from across Washington are reaching out to Islamabad, urging Pakistan to do more to prevent Afghanistan from falling apartThe fate of peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, scheduled to resume this week in Doha, is also uncertain.Afghan Peace Talks Set to Resume, Sources Tell VOA The Pakistan-brokered negotiations between Taliban and Afghan government representatives are set to begin Thursday in Qatar’s capital, Doha Thursday’s report from the U.N. sanctions monitoring team suggests the Taliban, at least, seem intent on giving the negotiations a chance if they can leverage their military advantage into concessions from the Afghan government. If not, the assessment of U.N. member state intelligence agencies points to more fighting. The Taliban “is reported to be responsible for the great majority of targeted assassinations that have become a feature of the violence in Afghanistan, and that appear to be undertaken with the objective of weakening the capacity of the government and intimidating civil society,” the report said. Key Taliban leaders, including top deputies Mullah Mohammad Yaqub Omari and Sirajuddin Haqqani, “oppose peace talks and favor a military solution,” the report found. U.N. member state intelligence agencies also assess that despite some attrition, the Taliban’s military force remains potent, boasting up to 100,000 fighters, including some units that have been placed in reserve, as well as units that specialize in explosives and rocket construction. While still smaller than the Afghan government force, which stood at about 308,000 as of February this year, the U.N. reports the Taliban appear to be better positioned, and as a result, are denying Afghan government forces freedom of movement. The Taliban appear to have increased their grip on northern parts of Afghanistan, the U.N. report said, in particular, where they “exert more control over road networks in the north than at any other time since 2001.” Money also does not seem to be an issue for the Taliban. U.N. member state intelligence found the Taliban are generating anywhere from $300 million to as much as $1.6 billion in revenue annually.   Much of the money comes from drug trafficking, opium production, kidnapping and extortion, but intelligence suggests the Taliban are doing more to exploit Afghanistan’s mining sector. According to one U.N. member state intelligence service, mining alone earned the Taliban $464 million in 2020. Ayaz Gul in Islamabad contributed to this report.
 
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A bomb ripped through a minivan in a mostly Shiite neighborhood of the Afghan capital on Thursday, killing at least four people, a police spokesman said.  
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The police spokesman, Ferdaws Faramarz, said the attack happened in western Kabul. The area is largely populated by the minority Hazara ethnic group who are mostly Shiite Muslims.  
The Islamic State group has carried out similar bombings in the area, including an attack on two minivans on Tuesday that killed at least 10 people.
Shiites are a minority in mostly Sunni Afghanistan, and the local Islamic State affiliate has declared war against them. In a statement late on Wednesday, IS said they had also bombed an electrical grid station on Tuesday, leaving much of Kabul in darkness.
Violence and chaos continues to escalate in Afghanistan as the U.S. and NATO continue their final withdrawal of the remaining 2,500-3,500 American soldiers and 7,000 allied forces. The last of the troops will be gone by Sept. 11 at the latest.
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The fate of the international effort to train Afghan national security forces has become increasingly unclear as Pentagon officials point to other priorities with only about three months left until U.S. and NATO forces complete their troop withdrawal from the war-torn country.The Resolute Support training, advising and assisting mission, which began in January 2015, has for years aided Afghan forces in honing skills ranging from budgeting, transparency and accountability to force generation, force sustainment, intelligence and strategic communications, according to U.S. Central Command.”Recently we have been involved in all of that training, alongside our partners,” a defense official told VOA.Some leaders have pushed the expectation that this training would continue outside the country following the pullout. As recently as Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement that the alliance  was “looking at how we can provide military education and training outside Afghanistan, focused on Special Operations Forces.”Pentagon officials, however, said their priorities were elsewhere.”Right now, the focus of the post-withdrawal support to the Afghan National Security, National Defense and National Security Forces is going to be largely through financial means, with some over-the-horizon logistical support — for example, aircraft maintenance,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Wednesday.”Beyond that, I don’t have any policy decisions to speak to,” Kirby added when pressed again on the training issue.FILE – Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon, May 6, 2021.Not 100% sureLast month, Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, similarly told reporters that the military’s intent was to keep the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan open and “to keep supporting the Afghan government, the Afghan security forces, with financial aid and money.””We’ll also continue to take a look at training them in perhaps other locations — but, no, we haven’t figured that out 100% yet,” he added.With just months or possibly weeks to go before the withdrawal is complete, the Pentagon is running out of time to put a training-and-assisting plan in place before the exit.U.S. President Joe Biden announced in April that American troops would leave Afghanistan by September 11, after nearly 20 years of military involvement in the country.U.S. Central Command said Tuesday that its troop withdrawal was between 30% and 44% complete.Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, speaking Wednesday at a Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) event, stressed that steps must be taken to prevent the U.S. from having to go to war again in Afghanistan as it did in Iraq in the 2010s. He said one of those steps must be offering training to the Afghan forces.”Make it happen that we’re providing military assistance, and continue to provide training to the Afghan forces. Make it happen that we’re trying to develop a strategy that protects the major population areas of the cities in Afghanistan,” Panetta said.”This isn’t just, ‘We’re taking off and to hell with it.’ We’re going to have to have some involvement there, if for nothing else but to make sure that the men and women in uniform that gave their lives there did not die in vain,” he said.FILE – Former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is pictured at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Sept. 6, 2019.Panetta pointed to recent Taliban gains as evidence Taliban fighters “are going to move a lot faster in taking that country back than what we suspected, and that’s going to create a real dilemma for the United States.”Different takeHis words contrasted starkly with those of Milley, who told reporters last month that “it’s not a foregone conclusion” that the Taliban win and Kabul falls.Afghan security forces have been battling for years against the Taliban and some of the roughly 20 terrorist organizations that operate in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.The Taliban have made territorial gains across the country, including in Baghlan province in the north, Helmand province in the south, Farah province in the west and Laghman in the east.Experts remain mixed on the effectiveness of training Afghan forces in another country after U.S. and NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan.Jason Dempsey of the Center for a New American Security told VOA: “Taking small parts of them out and training them overseas and then putting them back in — if they don’t know who they’re fighting for, which faction, which warlord is it who takes control of the government, then we’re offering them a little support, but I’m not sure this will be effective.”Bradley Bowman, an Afghan war veteran and defense expert with FDD, disagreed, telling VOA that financial and logistical support for the Afghan government and security forces was “important” but likely “insufficient to prevent a disaster in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. and other international forces.””The United States and our allies should provide continued training to Afghan forces from outside of Afghanistan, at a minimum,” he said.The Pentagon has requested $3.3 billion in military aid for Afghanistan, $300 million more than the U.S. gave Afghanistan this past fiscal year. If approved by Congress, that sum would include money for training requirements.White House Proposes Slight Boost in Aid for Afghan Forces  US President Joe Biden’s proposed fiscal year 2022 defense budget asks for an additional $300 million to support Afghan government forces in the absence of US troopsNational Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin and VOA’s Afghan Service contributed to this report.
 
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A cargo ship with tons of chemicals on board sank near Sri Lanka’s main port, the government said Wednesday, sparking one of the country’s worst-ever marine environmental disasters.
 
The MV X-Press Pearl, a Singapore-registered vessel, caught fire after an explosion on May 20 while anchored off Sri Lanka’s west coast. The navy said it believes the fire was caused by the chemicals.  
 
Tons of plastic pellets contaminated the country’s fishing waters, prompting the government to suspend fishing along an 80-kilometer stretch of coastline. Hundreds of military troops have been deployed to clean affected beaches, the navy said.
 
Salvage experts said the ship began to sink on Wednesday after efforts to extinguish the fire over the past two weeks failed, causing containers of blazing chemicals to tumble into the sea.
 
The operators of the ship, X-Press Feeders, said experts boarded the vessel and attached a tow line, but “efforts to move the ship to deeper waters have failed.”
 
Navy spokesman Captain Indika de Silva said the navy was getting ready to begin cleaning up an oil spill that occurred after the vessel sank.
 
Sri Lankan environmentalist Ajantha Perera said 81 containers of dangerous goods and about 400 containers of oil were believed to be aboard the ship and that its sinking could trigger “a terrible environmental disaster.”
 
The MV X-Press Pearl was headed to Singapore via Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, after leaving India’s port of Hazira on May 15. 
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Pakistan’s prime minister warned Wednesday that if warring parties in Afghanistan fail to reach a peace arrangement, “anarchy” will erupt in the turmoil-hit neighbor after the withdrawal of the United States and allied troops, threatening regional stability.Imran Khan issued the warning a day after Washington said almost half of U.S. troops and equipment had been sent home or destroyed since the drawdown formally began on May 1.  
 
The withdrawal is the outcome of a February 2020 deal the U.S. negotiated with the Afghan Taliban, which is waging a deadly insurgency against the internationally backed Kabul government.
 
“It is very important for Afghanistan to have a political settlement and stability when the Americans leave and a government with consensus is established that could prevent the country from descending into anarchy,” Khan said.
 
The Pakistani leader spoke at a news conference in Islamabad with visiting President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan, which also borders Afghanistan. He stressed the need for regional countries to jointly push the Afghan political reconciliation, saying it would help boost much needed regional trade and economic links.
 
“We are concerned that when the Americans leave, and there is no political settlement, a situation may arise similar to the aftermath of the Soviet departure from Afghanistan, which will be detrimental to Pakistan and other neighboring countries,” Khan said. The prime minister also said Pakistan fears terrorism will rise without a political settlement.VOA Exclusive: Taliban Attach Conditions to Istanbul Conference Participation    Militant group does not want to send high-level leadership to US-proposed gathering  
Islamabad maintains that anti-state militants have taken refuge in Afghan territory after fleeing Pakistani security operations and continue to plot cross-border terrorist attacks from there.
 
For its part, the Kabul government accuses Pakistan of covertly supporting the Taliban and allowing insurgent leaders to direct violence inside Afghanistan, allegations Pakistani officials deny.  
 
The allegations and counter-allegations are at the center of long-running tensions and suspicions between the two countries that share nearly a 2,600-kilometer border.  
 
The United States credits Khan’s government with arranging the negotiations with the Taliban that culminated in the landmark troop withdrawal deal a year ago, ending nearly two decades of war between the two foes.  
 
The pact encouraged the insurgents to open peace talks in Qatar last September with a team representing the Kabul government.  
 
Islamabad takes credit for persuading the Taliban to engage in what is officially dubbed the intra-Afghan negotiations. The dialogue has mostly been deadlocked, however, with each side blaming the other for stalling the peace process.  
 
Highly placed Pakistani official sources told VOA Tuesday that Islamabad has played a role in breaking the impasse, and the Afghan rivals are expected to return to the negotiating table later this week, possibly Thursday, to discuss a reduction in deadly battlefield hostilities in Afghanistan, among other pressing issues.
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The U.N. refugee agency warns a severe shortage of COVID-19 vaccines in Asia-Pacific is putting the lives of refugees and asylum seekers at risk as this deadly disease continues to spread like wildfire throughout the region. These countries have pledged to include refugees and asylum seekers into their COVID-19 vaccination programs. However, there are not enough vaccines to go around, so marginalized groups are among the last to benefit from these schemes.  In the past two months, the World Health Organization has recorded some 38 million COVID-19 cases and more than half a million deaths in the Asia-Pacific region, the largest increase globally.  UNHCR reports refugees who live in overcrowded, unsanitary settings are especially vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19.  Spokesman Andrej Mahecic says there has been a huge increase in the number of cases among Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh since April.  He notes nearly 900,000 refugees are living in this densely populated camp, the largest in the world.”As of 31 May, there have been over 1,188 cases confirmed among the refugee population, with more than half of these cases recorded in May alone,” said Mahecic. “We have also seen a worrying increase in the number of COVID-19 cases among refugees and asylum-seekers in Nepal, Iran, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.”   Even as much of the world appears to be recovering from the pandemic, aid agencies report fragile health systems in many countries in the region are struggling to cope with the recent surge of cases.  They say help is needed to address the scarcity of  hospital beds, oxygen supplies and other essential health facilities and services.  Mahecic says efforts are under way to mitigate the spread of the virus, but preventive measures must be bolstered with intensified vaccinations.  He says some refugees, including in Nepal, have received their first vaccine dose with supplies provided by WHO’s COVAX vaccination-sharing facility.”Among the Rohingya refugees in camps in Bangladesh, not a single vaccine has been administered yet given the scarcity of supplies in the country,” said Mahecic. “The current delays in vaccine shipments, brought about by limited supplies to COVAX, mean that some of the world’s most vulnerable people remain susceptible to the virus.”   The UNHCR is appealing for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines to save lives and curb the devastating impact of the virus in the Asia-Pacific region.  It is urging the wealthier countries to donate surplus doses to COVAX for distribution in the poorer countries.
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Representatives of warring parties in Afghanistan are set to return to the negotiating table in Qatar this week to discuss, among other pressing issues, a de-escalation in Afghan violence as international forces continue to withdraw from the conflict-torn country.Highly-placed official sources in neighboring Pakistan told VOA the Islamabad “brokered” peace meeting between the Taliban and Afghan government negotiators will begin Thursday in the Qatari capital, Doha.Afghan officials have confirmed members of their negotiating team left Tuesday for Doha but they did not discuss when they will meet Taliban interlocutors.Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem, who is based in the Qatari capital, told VOA that “no exact date has been set for the meeting yet” and maintained that the insurgent group “has always been ready to join the process whenever it begins.”The much-needed breakthrough in the stalled Afghan peace process comes amid reports the United States along with NATO allies intend to withdraw all their troops from Afghanistan by July 4, well ahead of the September 11 deadline announced by U.S. President Joe Biden.The drawdown of the remaining estimated 2,500 U.S. troops and roughly 7,000 NATO partners began on May 1.FILE – President Joe Biden speaks from the Treaty Room in the White House, April 14, 2021, about the withdrawal of the remainder of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.Officials in Washington have not commented on the media speculation, and the U.S. military estimated Tuesday it has “completed between 30%-44% of the entire retrograde process.” The reports of an early troop exit have worried Pakistani leaders as they repeatedly have called for an “orderly” military drawdown to prevent the turmoil-hit neighboring country from plunging into another round of civil war and bloodshed.The continuation of Afghan fighting would undermine Pakistan’s security and economic stability, according to officials in Islamabad. Prime Minister Imran Khan reiterated these concerns Monday.”The prime minister underscored the importance of responsible withdrawal and steady progress by the Afghan parties towards a political solution,” an official statement quoted Khan as saying in a phone conversation with leaders of the United Arab Emirates.Officials in Pakistan, which already hosts nearly 3 million Afghan refugees, say they expect another influx of refugees unless the Afghan warring sides negotiate a peace deal to permanently end the war.U.S. and allied troops are exiting Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of military involvement in the war-shattered country.The drawdown stems from a peace-building agreement Washington signed with the Taliban in February 2020, which had required all foreign forces to leave the country by May 1 — before Biden revised the deadline citing logistical reasons.In return, the Taliban have pledged to prevent international terrorist groups from using Afghan soil for attacks against the United States and its allies. The insurgents also launched peace negotiations last September with Afghan rivals in Doha but the process has been mostly deadlocked, with both sides blaming each other for blocking it.Washington credits Islamabad with facilitating its negotiations with the Taliban and the ensuing intra-Afghan peace talks.FILE – U.S. Marines fill sandbags on the frontlines of a U.S. Marine Corps base, near a cardboard sign reminding everyone that Taliban forces could be anywhere, in southern Afghanistan, Dec. 1, 2001.The Taliban have rejected calls for a cease-fire, however, or reducing violence until all foreign forces are out of Afghanistan. The increase in battlefield attacks in recent weeks has killed hundreds of combatants on both sides and Afghan civilians.NATO’s foreign and defense ministers were meeting Tuesday in Brussels to discuss, among other issues, winding up the military operations in Afghanistan and how to sustain support for Afghan forces battling the Taliban from somewhere outside the country. Providing safety to Western diplomatic missions and staff in Kabul is another key security challenge facing the alliance. 
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The U.S. pullout from Afghanistan is speeding up, with military planners saying almost half of U.S. forces and equipment has been sent home or destroyed.U.S. Central Command Tuesday said the withdrawal is “between 30-44%” complete and that six facilities have now been turned over to Afghan security forces, with more bases likely to be handed over in the coming days and weeks.“We anticipate additional transfers of bases and military assets in the future which will support the ANDSF/GIRoA (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) as they work to stabilize and defend their nation,” CENTCOM said in statement.Overall, the U.S. has removed “the equivalent of approximately 300 C-17 loads of material” from Afghanistan, according to the update, which said another 13,000 pieces of equipment were sent for destruction.CENTCOM said just last week that the withdrawal was close to 25% complete, and in testimony before lawmakers in Washington, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the withdrawal was proceeding “slightly ahead” of pace.#Afghanistan withdrawal – “The retrograde is proceeding on pace, indeed, slightly ahead of it” @SecDef Lloyd Austin tells lawmakers during budget hearinghttps://t.co/EPF2ECZTgB— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) May 27, 2021Separately Tuesday, Agence-France Presse quoted Afghan and U.S. officials as saying the U.S. would be handing over Bagram Air Base to the Afghan government in the next 20 days.Pentagon press secretary John Kirby on Tuesday declined to confirm a timeline but told Pentagon reporters, “Clearly, Bagram is going to be turned over.” Bagram has served as a key command and control center for air operations in Afghanistan.  Afghan officials said last month that the U.S. has already left Kandahar Airfield, a large security installation that once housed about 30,000 coalition troops and contractors. US Leaves Key Base as Afghan Eid Truce Largely HoldsSprawling security installation, located in southern Kandahar province, used to serve about 30,000 foreign forces and contractorsU.S. President Joe Biden announced in April that all U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by early September, ending nearly 20 years of war against the Taliban and al-Qaida.U.S. officials have repeatedly promised to continue support for the Afghan government and Afghan security forces, while it pursues what has been described as “over-the-horizon” capabilities to launch counterterrorism strikes against groups like al-Qaida and Islamic State-Khorasan Province, if needed.With Afghanistan’s Future at Stake, US Courts Pakistan Officials from across Washington are reaching out to Islamabad, urging Pakistan to do more to prevent Afghanistan from falling apartHowever, U.S. officials have said that the majority of U.S. support for the Afghan military will be financial.Afghan forces are slated to get a slight increase in funding under the Pentagon’s proposed Fiscal Year 2022 budget, unveiled last week.
 
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A popular television political talk show host in Pakistan said Monday his employer had removed him from the job for his criticism of the country’s powerful military.  
 
“Nothing new for me. I was banned twice in the past. Lost jobs twice,” Hamid Mir, host of the Capital Talk political show on the private Geo News channel, wrote on Twitter. 
 
The announcement comes just days after Mir delivered a speech, critical of the army, at a rally in Islamabad in support of fellow journalist Asad Ali Toor, who was beaten by unidentified assailants in his apartment in the Pakistani capital last week. 
 
Geo News did not issue any statement in support of Mir’s claims. Officials at the network did not respond to VOA’s query about the issue.  
 
“Survived assassination attempts but cannot stop raising voice for the rights given in the constitution. This time, I am ready for any consequences and ready to go at any extent because they are threatening my family,” Mir alleged in his tweet, without naming any individual or Pakistani institution.  Nothing new for me.I was banned twice in the past.Lost jobs twice.Survived assassination attempts but cannot stop raising voice for the rights given in the constitution.This time I m ready for any consequences and ready to go at any extent because they are threatening my family. https://t.co/82y1WdrP5S— Hamid Mir (@HamidMirPAK) May 31, 2021 
It was not immediately clear whether the television station had banned Mir under pressure from any Pakistani institution. Local journalists’ groups demanded an explanation from the news network’s runners.  
 
Information Minister Fawad Hussain Chaudhry wrote in the Urdu language on Twitter that the government had nothing to do with the working of any broadcast groups, saying all of them are functioning under relevant constitutional clauses and independently decide to air their programs and appoint teams for them. Mir was shot in 2014 in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi and seriously wounded. He and his family at the time had blamed the country’s prime spy agency, ISI, for plotting the attack, charges officials vehemently denied. FILE – Pakistani journalists chant slogans during a protest against the attack on political talk show host Hamid Mir, outside the press club in Karachi, April 20, 2014.
Local and international press freedom advocates often accuse the Pakistani military and its spy agencies of intimidating and orchestrating attacks on journalists, charges army officials and the government reject as unfounded.  
 
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the decision to take Mir off the air after “he spoke fervidly” against curbs on freedom of expression in the country. 
 
“We demand that Mir be allowed to resume his professional duties immediately and the threats against him taken seriously and addressed,” the watchdog wrote on Twitter.  
 
Amnesty International also stressed in a statement that censorship, harassment and physical violence must not be the price journalists pay to do their jobs. It wrote on Twitter that “the punitive action” against Mir “severely undermines the responsibility media outlets and authorities have to protect free speech in an already repressive environment.” 
 
Toor told police his attackers had identified themselves as ISI operatives before assaulting him. Chaudhry and the spy agency rejected the charges as baseless and politically motivated. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, and no arrests have been made. 
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Pakistan reported Monday that the national coronavirus positivity rate had remained well below 5% over the past week, with the country’s top health official attributing the declining trend to “effective” government policies, including restrictions on public movement and effective screening of international travelers.Officials recorded 43 deaths and detected more than 2,100 new cases in the last 24 hours, raising the national tally of deaths to nearly 21,000 and infections to more than 921,000 since the pandemic hit the South Asian nation early last year.The national positivity ratio decreased to just over 4% from more than 11% a couple of weeks ago.Last week, health authorities reported the detection of the first case of a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus which has caused record infections and deaths in neighboring India, threatening Pakistan’s gains against the disease.But Faisal Sultan, an infectious disease physician who is also special assistant to the prime minister on national health services, told VOA that an “effective” screening system for international travelers and other measures to deal with the health crisis have so far enabled the country to keep the situation under control in a country of about 220 million.“I would say we are not out of the woods yet, but it seems at this point that I don’t foresee an India-like situation,” Sultan, who is directing all health-related interventions and measures against the pandemic, told VOA in a detailed interview at his office in Islamabad.People queue to receive the first shot of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Karachi, Pakistan, May 8, 2021.“We really do think that to reach our targets, we need to go over the 500,000 a day mark, perhaps the 600,000 a day mark. So, I think that we really need to ramp up our vaccinations.”Sultan said government surveys have found that “at least two-thirds” of the Pakistani population is willing to get vaccinated.“So, the vaccine centers will have to go close to their homes. It will have to be easy and accessible. It will have to be so easy that in the United States, even normal retail pharmacies were allowed to do the vaccination,” he said.Sultan said the government really needed “to get at least a quarter of its population” in dense urban areas vaccinated before Pakistan “can even talk about any relaxation” in coronavirus-related restrictions, including asking those inoculated against the disease to remove their masks.Health care systemPrime Minister Imran Khan’s government, which took office in August 2018, has from the outset focused on the country’s underfunded and largely neglected national health care system.The focus, Sultan noted, enabled the government to timely position itself to combat the pandemic, despite critical economic challenges facing Pakistan.“We added over 7,000 oxygenated beds into the health care system across Pakistan. The second expansion that was done is even more important — a 66% increase in the medical oxygen capacity was done. Had we not done that, we would have faced a crisis. We came to about 90% capacity in the ongoing third wave,” Sultan explained.A vendor refills oxygen cylinders which will supply private hospitals for COVID-19 patients, in Karachi, Pakistan, April 26, 2021.Pakistan initially received vaccine donations from close ally China to launch the national vaccination drive in early March before purchasing large quantities of vaccine doses to ensure supplies for the national campaign.“They came out, gifted us the first lot, although we had told them we can pay for it. But they insisted. I think it speaks volumes about the level of trust and cooperation between China and Pakistan,” Sultan said.The Pakistani government is using the Chinese-made Sinovac, Sinopharm and CanSino vaccines. It has also received just over a million doses of AstraZeneca under a United Nations-backed program for poor nations, known as COVAX.Pakistani officials say they are in conversations with several suppliers, and the government will have procured about 20 million additional vaccine doses by end of July.“The only challenge is, in an environment where everybody wants the vaccine, to have a steady supply so that you don’t run out of it. This is a challenge that will stay for the rest of the world,” Sultan said, noting that Pakistan was in talks with several suppliers to secure enough doses to sustain domestic supplies.Beijing has also trained Pakistani staff and established a facility at Islamabad’s National Health Institute, where the one-dose CanSino vaccine is being filled from the concentrate provided by China. Sultan noted that the rare facility has the capacity to roll out about 3 million doses of CanSino a month to help boost the vaccination drive.“It may be a small step for us that we have started filling the vaccine from concentrate. But it is a vital step toward actually manufacturing the vaccine in Pakistan, and I think it may take a few months,” he said. 
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About 40% of the more than 617,000 bridges in the U.S. are at least 50 years old, and of that number more than 46,000 are in dangerously poor condition. The job of bridge inspectors is to locate and identify their structural deficiencies. Svitlana Prestynska met with one such inspector and filed this report from Denver, Colorado, narrated by Anna Rice.
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Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said Sunday that bilateral ties with India cannot return to normal until the neighboring country restores the semi-autonomous status of the disputed Kashmir region. “If we normalize relations with India at this stage, it will be a betrayal with the people of Kashmir,” Khan said while responding to a question in a live tele-chat dubbed “Prime Minister on Call with You.”   
 
Islamabad downgraded its traditionally acrimonious ties with New Delhi in August 2019, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government revoked the special status of the India-ruled part of the majority-Muslim Himalayan region and declared it as an integral part of India. 
 
Khan acknowledged that restoration of trade links with India would immensely benefit Pakistan’s economy. “But this would amount to disregarding the entire struggle of Kashmiris and around 100,000 lives they have sacrificed in this struggle,” he said. “Therefore, it is not possible for us to think of improving our trade with India over their (Kashmiris) blood. It simply can’t happen.” The Pakistani leader said that if New Delhi reversed its controversial steps in Kashmir, only then would his country be willing to resume talks and discuss the Kashmir dispute to “agree on a roadmap to resolve it.” 
 
Pakistan maintains that India’s Kashmir-related steps were in violation of a longstanding United Nations resolution that recognizes the region as a disputed territory.  
 
New Delhi rejected the objection by Islamabad as interference in its internal affairs, arguing its actions were meant to improve security in Indian-ruled Kashmir and bring economic development there. 
 
Volkan Bozkir, president of the U.N. General Assembly, during his three-day visit to Pakistan last week, urged both South Asian rival nations to find a negotiated settlement to the Kashmir dispute and desist from altering its status.  
 
“I have encouraged all parties to refrain from changing the status of the disputed territory… As President of the General Assembly, I call upon India and Pakistan to pursue the path to a peaceful resolution of the dispute,” said Bozkir, a former Turkish diplomat and politician. 
 
An Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman swiftly denounced as “unacceptable” Bozkir’s comments. 
 
“When an incumbent President of the UNGA makes misleading and prejudiced remarks, he does great disservice to the office he occupies. The President of the U.N. General Assembly’s behavior is truly regrettable and surely diminishes his standing on the global platform,” said Arindam Bagchi said in a statement Friday. 
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At least six Afghan civilians were killed and several more were wounded when a mortar shell hit a house during a wedding ceremony in northern Kapisa province, security officials said Sunday.The explosion Saturday evening was in the Tagab district, which has seen fighting between the Afghan government forces and the Taliban insurgents.Shayeq Shoresh, a spokesperson for the provincial police, blamed the Taliban for firing the mortar and added that the victims included women and children.A senior security official in Kabul put the death toll at at least 10 and the number of wounded at 18.A Taliban spokesperson dismissed the allegation and said the mortar was fired by Afghan security forces.Afghan civilians often bear the brunt of the attacks as they are caught in the crossfire.Violence has sharply increased across the country since Washington announced plans last month to pull out all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11.Nearly 1,800 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first three months of 2021 during fighting between government forces and Taliban insurgents despite efforts to find peace, the United Nations said last month.According to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission’s annual report last year, there were 8,500 civilian casualties in 2020, including 2,958 deaths.
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A roadside bomb hit a bus carrying university staff in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing three teachers and wounding 15 others, police said Saturday.The incident took place in Charikar, the provincial capital of Parwan. The bus was carrying teachers from Al-Biruni university, according to a spokesman for the provincial police, Salim Noori.
 
Some of the wounded teachers were in critical condition, said Hamed Obaidi, a spokesman for the ministry of higher education.
 
No group claimed responsibility for the incident. Roadside bombs, small magnetic bombs attached under vehicles and other attacks have targeted members of security forces, judges, government officials, civil society activists and journalists in recent months in Afghanistan.
 
The government usually blames the Taliban for such attacks, but the insurgent group denies involvement. Violence has sharply increased since Washington announced plans last month to pull out all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by September 11.
 
Three weeks ago, a bomb attack outside a school in the capital Kabul killed 68 people, most of them students, and wounded 165 others.
 
Nearly 1,800 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first three months of 2021 during fighting between government forces and Taliban insurgents despite efforts to find peace, the United Nations said last month. 
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A year after Mount Everest was closed to climbers as the pandemic swept across the globe, hundreds are making the final push to the summit with only a few more days left in the season, saying they are undeterred by a coronavirus outbreak in base camp.Three expedition teams to Everest canceled their climb this month following reports of people getting sick. But the remaining 41 teams decided to continue with hundreds of climbers and their guides scaling the 8,849-meter top in the season that ends in May, before bad weather sets in.”Even though the coronavirus has reached the Everest base camp, it has not made any huge effect like what is being believed outside of the mountain,” said Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks, the biggest expedition operator on Everest. “No one has really fallen seriously sick because of COVID or died like the rumors that have been spreading.”With 122 clients from 10 teams on Everest, the company led the biggest group but there were no serious illnesses among them, he said.Nepalese officials have downplayed reports of coronavirus cases on Mount Everest, apparently out of concern of creating chaos and confusion in the base camp. After a gap year of no income from climbers, Nepal has been eager to cash in on this year’s season.”Many people made it to the base camp, and it is possible that the people who went there from here could have been infected,” Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli said. “But that does not mean that it (coronavirus) has reached the entire mountain, maybe a part of the base camp or the area below that.”In April, a Norwegian climber became the first to test positive at the Everest base camp. He was flown by helicopter to Kathmandu, where he was treated and later returned home.FILE – In this Nov. 12, 2015, file photo, Mount Everest is seen from the way to Kalapatthar in Nepal.Prominent guide Lukas Furtenbach of Austria decided to halt his expedition this month and pull out his clients because of an outbreak among team members.After returning from the mountain, Furtenbach estimated more than 100 climbers and support staff have been infected. He said in an interview last week that it was obvious there were many cases at the base camp because he could see people were sick and could hear them coughing in their tents.”I think with all the confirmed cases we know now — confirmed from (rescue) pilots, from insurance, from doctors, from expedition leaders — I have the positive tests so we can prove this,” Furtenbach told The Associated Press.China last week canceled climbing from its side of Everest due to fears the virus could spread from Nepal.The climbing season was accompanied by a devastating surge in coronavirus cases in Nepal, with record numbers of daily infections and deaths. On Friday, Nepal reported 6,951 new confirmed cases and 96 deaths, bringing the nation’s totals since the pandemic began to more than 549,111 infections and 7,047 deaths.Another expedition, by the Telluride, Colorado-based company Mountain Trip, also announced it was pulling out of Everest.”While it’s a difficult decision to make when considering all of the work, years of preparation, sacrifice and resources that have went into the expedition, it’s the only sensible outcome from a risk management standpoint,” a statement by the company said.Six Sherpa guides working for the company have been evacuated to Kathmandu with COVID-19 symptoms, it said.A total of 408 foreign climbers were issued permits to climb Everest this season, aided by several hundred Sherpas and support staff who have been stationed at base camp since April.Since Everest was first conquered on May 29, 1953, thousands of people have scaled the peak and many Nepalese Sherpas have done it multiple times. Veteran Sherpa guide Kami Rita scaled the summit a record 25th time this month. 
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The United States is hoping more money will help make up for the absence of U.S. combat troops on the ground in Afghanistan.U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday unveiled his proposed $715 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2022, including $3.3 billion for Afghan forces.FILE – President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, May 13, 2021.The request is $300 million more than what the U.S. gave Afghanistan this past fiscal year. If approved by Congress, the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund money would help cover equipment and training requirements, as well as infrastructure, for the 352,000 members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.”We believe that given that we’re pulling out of Afghanistan, we need to provide some additional security support for the forces there,” Anne McAndrew, the Pentagon’s acting Under Secretary of Defense and Chief Financial Officer, told reporters.Military planners are also requesting $8.9 billion to cover so-called “direct war costs” in Afghanistan, about a $4 billion reduction from the previous year.McAndrew said some of that money will help cover residual expenses from the current withdrawal from Afghanistan as well as help pay for “an over-the-horizon capability outside Afghanistan.”In addition to the military aid, Afghanistan could also be getting more funding from the U.S. State Department.The State Department on Friday said its proposed FY 2022 budget includes about $360 million for Afghanistan — an increase of $34 million — to help combat terrorism, counter the narcotics trade and protect rights for women.U.S. diplomats and defense officials have Zalmay Khalilzad, special representative on Afghanistan reconciliation, speaks during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the US-Afghanistan relationship on Capitol Hill on May 18, 2021.Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, has said Taliban officials have assured him they “seek normalcy.””They have said to me that their views have evolved,” Khalilzad told lawmakers earlier this month. “They say the Afghan women have rights, including political participation, education, and work. … We will have to see.”Iraq, Syria forces see cutsWhile Afghan forces may be getting more money from the U.S. military, U.S. partner forces in Iraq and Syria could see their funding cut.The Pentagon’s proposed FY 2022 budget calls for just $522 million to help train and equip Iraqi security forces and vetted Syrian groups such as the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, down from a proposed $700 million the previous year.Under the new proposal, Iraqi forces would get just over $322 million, while the SDF and other U.S. partner forces in Syria would get $177 million, according to the Pentagon budget proposal.The U.S. currently has about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria. Military officials say they expect those numbers to hold steady for the coming fiscal year.
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Pakistan has conveyed to the leadership in Afghanistan it will no longer conduct official business with Kabul’s top national security chief because of his recent “abusive outburst” against Islamabad, highly placed officials and diplomatic sources confirmed to VOA Friday.
The controversy has again highlighted political tensions and historic mistrust plaguing relations between the South Asian neighbors, which share a nearly 2,600-kilometer border.
The latest trigger came from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, who routinely accuses Pakistan and its spy agency of supporting and directing the Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan, charges Islamabad rejects.
In a public speech earlier this month in eastern Nangarhar province, next to the Pakistani border, Mohib not only repeated his allegations but called Pakistan a “brothel house.”
His remarks outraged leaders in Islamabad, who denounced them, saying they “debased all norms of interstate communication.”
A senior Pakistani official privy to the matter told VOA on condition of anonymity his government lodged a strong protest with the Afghan side and conveyed “deep resentment” in Pakistan over Mohib’s “undignified” remarks.
The official said Kabul has been told Islamabad, henceforth, would not hold bilateral engagements with the Afghan national security adviser. It has also been conveyed “by our side that Afghan side is not serious in engaging with Pakistan, but only in the blame game and degrading Pakistan’s sincere efforts,” the official added. Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani meets with Pakistan’s Army Chief of Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 10, 2021.
Diplomatic sources confirmed to VOA that Pakistan’s military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, during his visit to Kabul this month, had raised the issue in his meeting with Ghani in the presence of Nick Carter, Britain’s chief of the defense staff.
VOA approached Mohib’s office for a reaction but could not immediately get a response.
Carter has been engaged in facilitating contacts between the two countries to help ease tensions at a time when the United States and NATO allies have been withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of war with the Taliban.
An official Pakistani military statement following the May 10 meeting in Kabul confirmed it was held in the presence of Carter.
“Matters of mutual interest, current developments in the Afghan peace process, enhanced bilateral security and defense cooperation and need for effective border management between the two brotherly countries were discussed,” the statement said, but it did not say anything about the controversy stemming from Mohib’s remarks.
Washington had also stopped meetings with the Afghan national security adviser over controversial remarks he made on a visit to the U.S. two years ago, though contact has since been resumed.Zalmay Khalilzad, special representative on Afghanistan reconciliation, speaks during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the US-Afghanistan relationship on Capitol Hill on May 18, 2021.
Mohib had accused Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, of undercutting the Kabul government in bilateral U.S.-Taliban peace negotiations.
Khalilzad was leading the talks that culminated in an agreement in February 2020 with the insurgents, setting the stage for the foreign troop drawdown from the war-torn nation, which began on May 1 and is expected to be completed by September 11.
While Afghan leaders accuse Pakistan of being behind the Taliban’s violent campaign in their country, U.S. officials, including Khalilzad, have persistently praised Islamabad for bringing the insurgents to the negotiating table to discuss a peace arrangement with the Afghan government to permanently end the war.
“Pakistan has played an important role in Afghanistan,” David Helvey, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific affairs, told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee last week. “They supported the Afghan peace process. Pakistan also has allowed us to have overflight and access to be able to support our military presence in Afghanistan.”
Islamabad has lately further relaxed visa restrictions for Afghans, created new border facilities to accelerate bilateral and transit trade with the landlocked country, and increased scholarships for Afghan students to study at Pakistani universities. Pakistani officials say the measures are meant to enhance bilateral ties in support of the Afghan peace process.UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir speaks during a joint press conference with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, in Islamabad, Pakistan, May 27, 2021.
“I commend Pakistan’s leadership and its role in supporting the efforts to forge reconciliation, security and transition in Afghanistan,” Volkan Bozkir, president of the U.N. General Assembly, said Friday before concluding his three-day visit to Islamabad.
“We also know that lives of Afghanistan and Pakistan are now inextricably intwined. Peace in Afghanistan is an imperative for Pakistan to open trade routes to landlocked Central Asia. Peace in Afghanistan is critical for securing benefits from China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,” Bozkir said.He referred to a Chinese-funded multi-billion-dollar infrastructure development project in Pakistan, which Beijing intends to extend to Afghanistan to help in rebuilding efforts there.
Pakistan says it is making all possible efforts to promote Afghan peace, fearing that another round of civil war following the withdrawal of international forces would affect Pakistani security and economic development. The country already hosts nearly 3 million Afghan refugees and has concerns that more refugees will flood Pakistan if the conflict continues. 
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The Afghan government’s media spokesperson has said his country wants Pakistan to take “practical steps” to close the Taliban bases and end its support for the insurgent group in the wake of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.“Afghanistan’s demands are very clear,” Dawa Khan Menapal, director of Afghanistan’s Government Media and Information Center, told VOA. “We all believe that the terrorists have bases and support in Pakistan.”Menapal reiterated Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s claim of May 14 when he told Der Spiegel magazine that the Taliban had received logistics, finances and recruitment from Pakistan, and that their consultative bodies were named after Pakistani cities such as “Peshawar Shura, Quetta Shura and Miranshah Shura.”The verbal battle between the two countries seemed to enter a new level in mid-May when the Afghan national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, during a rally in eastern Nangarhar province, warned the Taliban that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies would “sacrifice” the Taliban for their own objectives.“They neither want you nor will they help [you] to take power,” he said. “All they have told you are a lie. The only thing they want from you is that they are sacrificing you for themselves and for their own war.”‘Baseless accusations’Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri, in a WhatsApp message to VOA, sharply rebutted those allegations, calling them “irresponsible statements” and “baseless accusations.””Pakistan has conveyed its serious concerns to the Afghan side by making a strong demarche with the ambassador of Afghanistan in Islamabad,” he said.On May 17, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement, warned that the Afghan leadership’s accusations could “erode trust and vitiate the environment between the two brotherly countries and disregard the constructive role being played by Pakistan in facilitating the Afghan peace process.”FILE – Pakistani soldiers stand near the debris of a house that was destroyed during a military operation against Taliban militants in the town of Miranshah in North Waziristan, July 9, 2014.Taliban basesRelations between the two Muslim neighbors have over the years been characterized by mutual mistrust over allegations that Pakistan has been providing safe haven for the Afghan Taliban.The Afghan government now claims that Pakistan’s failure to live up to its promises of containing the Taliban has contributed to the unending cycle of violence in Afghanistan.Afghan media spokesperson Menapal said Pakistan had promised to close the bases and “end the support system for the Taliban.”Haris Nawaz, a retired Pakistani brigadier, rebutted the charge, saying, “All their [Taliban] hideouts and safe places inside Pakistan have been dismantled.”“Even we have asked the Americans, if you feel there is any place you’ve pointed out and you have any information, we will immediately go and destroy them,” Nawaz told VOA.Promoted negotiationsFormer Pakistani Ambassador to Afghanistan Ayaz Wazir, however, said Pakistan has strong ties to and influence over the Taliban.“It is our long-standing relationship with the Taliban which helped us bring them to the negotiating table with the Americans,” he told VOA.Wazir said Pakistan is opposed to a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan because “we don’t want an ideologically extremist government in Kabul that could also encourage Talibanization in Pakistan.”He said a Taliban government could not survive global opposition, including U.N.-imposed sanctions.“It is wrong to assume that Pakistan would support a Taliban government that could be sustained by our financial support, because we ourselves are in an economically weak position,” he added.FILE – Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the Afghan High Council for National Reconciliation, right, meets with Pakistan’s Army Chief of Staff Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 10, 2021.Pakistan surprisedAnalysts say Afghanistan’s recent accusations took Pakistan by surprise, coming only days after Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed met government officials in Afghanistan.Subsequently, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, gave an emotional speech addressed to the Afghan leadership inside Pakistan’s National Assembly.“I want to ask Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani: On the one hand you are asking Pakistan to help, but, on the other hand, your employee levels allegations against Pakistan and criticizes the Pakistani institutions. For God’s sake, what do you want?”Pakistan’s media quoted Qureshi as saying, “We want economic cooperation, we want bilateral trade, we want to shift geopolitics to geoeconomics. But what do you want?”China’s roleSome analysts say that when Pakistan’s foreign minister urged Afghan leaders to work with Pakistan for stability and “regional connectivity,” he took the phrase from China’s playbook.China seeks Afghan peace because of the region’s natural resources and its economic projects in Pakistan and is concerned they will be hurt by militant attacks, they say.On May 17, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, spoke to the Afghan national security adviser and assured him that China endorsed the “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned principle” in finding a broad and inclusive political solution to Afghanistan.Islamabad-based political analyst Mateen Haider said Pakistan, too, seeks a peaceful transfer of power that could balance the needs of competing groups in Afghanistan.“Pakistan has made it a priority to complete the China-Pakistan Economic Project, bring energy lines from Central Asia and support road connectivity that goes through Afghanistan,” he told VOA.FILE – U.S. Marines watch during a change of command ceremony at Task Force Southwest military field, Helmand province, Afghanistan, Jan. 15, 2018. The final phase of ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan began May 1, 2021.US roleWhile the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan has begun, Washington seems to be increasing its diplomatic push to bring Islamabad and Kabul closer.U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his Pakistani counterpart, Moeed Yusuf, held their first meeting in Geneva on Sunday. The White House, in a statement, said both sides discussed how to advance “practical cooperation.”Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Wilson Center, a global issues think tank in Washington, believes that U.S. efforts are afoot for a security accord to prevent Pakistani and Afghan soil from being used for cross-border terrorism.Such an accord could bring “much needed relief, certainly to suffering of the Afghan people but Pakistanis as well,” Kugelman said.Diplomacy urgedWazir, the former Pakistani diplomat, said Islamabad would support any U.S. initiative to foster a peaceful resolution with Kabul.“Both sides need to control their verbal outbursts and work behind the scenes rather than take their disagreements into public,” Wazir said, adding that differences between Afghanistan and Pakistan were not unresolvable.The Pakistan Foreign Office, in its statement on May 17, suggested that henceforth Pakistan and Afghanistan iron out their disagreements through a previously set up mechanism called the Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity. The mechanism, in which officials of both countries worked together to resolve border issues, may be revived to “address all bilateral issues,” it recommended.
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South Asian countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are turning to China for vaccines for Covid 19 after India suspended vaccine exports due to critical shortages at home. Analysts say this will help Beijing increase its clout in the strategic Indian Ocean region where it has been building influence.  China has given 1.1 million doses of vaccines made by its Sinopharm Group company to Sri Lanka. Bangladesh received its first donation of half a million vaccines from China this month while Nepal has been promised an additional one million shots.    The shots from China are helping these countries restart inoculation drives that had stalled as supplies from India dried up. They come at a critical time — surging infections are raising fears that the torrid second wave which India is battling could impact neighboring countries.  “Make no mistake, India’s suspension of vaccine exports is a strategic opportunity for Beijing,” according to Michael Kugelman, the Deputy Director of the Asia Program and Senior Associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center. “China certainly sees its vaccine diplomacy as an image-building tactic at a time when Beijing has had a tough time with image management.” Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 12 MB480p | 17 MB540p | 23 MB720p | 45 MB1080p | 87 MBOriginal | 260 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioChina’s Vaccine Diplomacy Aimed At Deepening Ties with Central and Eastern EuropeAs in many countries, there was some hesitancy in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh about Chinese-developed vaccines, but the emergency approval granted last month by the World Health Organization to Sinopharm’s has boosted its acceptance.    
These countries had initially relied on India, which had also given AstraZeneca vaccines to several countries including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal earlier this year. They had also placed commercial orders with the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine producer, but many of those have not yet been fulfilled due to India’s surging need.  In a video conference with several South Asian countries last month, Beijing’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, offered to set up an emergency reserve of vaccines for the region.     Analysts say as China moves in to fill the gap left by India, Beijing’s “vaccine diplomacy” could give it leverage in the strategic Indian Ocean region, where it has been pushing its Belt and Road initiative that aims at building infrastructure projects across many countries.  “Given that this crisis will be with us for the foreseeable future, certainly there is going to be a sense of China becoming a very important player for many of these countries if India is not able to pick up some slack after a few months once things stabilize,” according to Harsh Pant, Director Studies and Head Strategic Studies program at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.  In Sri Lanka, Beijing has already built several strategic infrastructure projects including port, roads and railways. It is now building a gleaming new port city off the coast of Colombo on reclaimed land. The vaccines will add another dimension to its growing presence in the country, says political analyst, Asanga Abeyagoonasekera in Colombo. “China already has influence in Sri Lanka, but the vaccines represent another layer that would strengthen the Chinese influence. Chinese humanitarian assistance during the pandemic is always welcome but the question is whether it will deepen its strategic inroads,” according to Abeyagoonasekera.   Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
FILE – A medical worker holds a package for a Sinopharm vaccine at a vaccination facility in Beijing, Jan. 15, 2021.Analysts say it will be crucial for countries like the United States, which has promised to donate 80 million shots, to help those scrambling for vaccines in a region that is of strategic importance.   “The fact that Chinese are able to help countries at this point will go a long way in shaping those countries memories and remembrances of what happened at a very critical phase in global history,” according to Pant. “So, America would do well to respond to some of these issues. Of course, the question is how far and how fast they are willing to go, but that might really shape the way in which these small countries, small players in the Indo Pacific, South Asia, would look at their foreign policy.”  India, which had exported about 65 million doses before it shut down shipments, hopes to ramp up enough capacity to resume vaccine deliveries to other countries – but that may not happen till the end of the year.   “New Delhi has the opportunity to reassert itself further down the road. India is the world’s top manufacturer of vaccines, so it has an inherent comparative advantage over China,” points out Kugelman. China’s vaccine diplomacy, he says is aimed at promoting its image at a time when it has taken a hit both due to its expansionist policies and questions over how and where the COVID virus originated.  China has emerged as the world’s largest vaccine exporter as many countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America use shots from Beijing for their inoculation drives.  
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Tons of charred plastic pellets from a burning container ship washed ashore near Sri Lanka’s capital Friday as an international effort to salvage the vessel dragged into a ninth day.Thick black smoke rose from the Singapore-registered MV X-Press Pearl, anchored just outside Colombo harbor, heightening fears that it could break up spilling its 278 tons of bunker oil.Navy personnel in hazmat suits were sent to clean millions of plastic granules mixed with burned oil and other residue that covered Negombo beach, 40 kilometers north of the capital.The plastic-covered beach, normally a draw for tourists and known as a fishing center, was declared off limits. The smoking container ship could be seen on the horizon.Bulldozers scooped up tons of the polythene pellets that came from at least eight containers that fell off the ship on Tuesday.Officials said the vessel was known to carry at least 28 containers of the pellets that are used as a raw material in the packaging industry.The fire broke out on May 20 as the ship waited to enter the Colombo port.It is also carrying 25 tons of nitric acid, an unspecified quantity of ethanol and lubricants in its 1,500 containers.Authorities believe the fire was caused by a nitric acid leak which the crew had been aware of since May 11, Sri Lanka’s Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) said.MEPA chairman Dharshani Lahandapura said the crew could have avoided the disaster had they offloaded the leaking containers or returned them to the port of origin before entering Sri Lankan waters.Lahandapura said the MEPA is bracing for an oil spill if the X-Press Pearl breaks up as monsoon winds have fanned the flames across the length of the ship.She said the vessel was carrying 278 tons of bunker oil and 50 tons of marine gasoil when the fire erupted.Oil residue and charred containers have already washed ashore at Negombo.Sri Lanka navy chief Vice Admiral Nishantha Ulugetenne said Thursday it would take days to extinguish the fire, even with the weather improving.Four Indian vessels have joined Sri Lanka’s navy in the battle to contain the fire. Salvage operations are led by the Dutch company SMIT which has sent specialist firefighting tugs.The 25-member crew evacuated on Tuesday and two of them suffered minor injuries in the process, the owners of the vessel said on Thursday.SMIT, renowned salvage troubleshooters, was also involved in dousing the flames on oil tanker which caught fire off Sri Lanka’s east coast last September after an engine room explosion that killed a crewman.The fire on the New Diamond tanker took more than a week to put out and left a 40-kilometer-long oil spill. Sri Lanka has demanded the owners pay a $17 million clean-up bill.   
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Thousands of families are fleeing their homes amid intensified Taliban offensives in several provinces, as the United States and NATO began withdrawing their remaining forces from Afghanistan on May 1.  “Most of those displaced are from the provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Baghlan and Laghman,” said Sayed Abdul Basit Ansari, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation. “They fled their houses due to the escalation in violence.” Ansari said that in Laghman province, which has witnessed heavy fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan government forces in recent weeks, 6,000 families have fled their homes.  The Taliban captured a district in Laghman and launched an assault on Mehtar Lam City, the provincial capital, last week.   Gul Meena, a resident of the Alingar district of Laghman province, has taken refuge in a makeshift camp in a park in Mehtar Lam City. She said she left her house because of the fighting in her district.   “I am here with my grandchildren and daughters,” she said. “My son stayed behind. I am trying to call him, but his phone is not working.”According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as of May 21, about 100,000 people had been displaced by conflict in Afghanistan this year.   Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
Members of Afghan security forces take their positions during a clash between Taliban and Afghan forces in Mihtarlam, the capital of Laghman province, on May 24, 2021.Fighting in Laghman The fighting started last week after the Taliban overran Dawlat Shah, the northern district in the province. After capturing several outposts in Alishing and Alingar districts, the Taliban launched an assault on Mehtar Lam City. Provincial officials in Laghman said Monday that security forces had pushed the Taliban back from the city. But local people said government forces were still fighting the Taliban on the outskirts of Mehtar Lam City. “The fighting has not ceased,” said Bilal Sarwari, an Afghan freelance journalist, adding that “sporadic fighting has continued on the outskirts and some parts of the city.”   Sarwari said the Taliban advances on Mehtar Lam City were stopped only when reinforcements were sent from Kabul and air attacks were carried out against the Taliban positions around the city.  Located east of Kabul, Laghman is strategically important because the Kabul-Jalalabad Highway that connects Kabul to eastern provinces passes through the province.  Afghan officials said Tuesday that the Afghan security forces were fighting against the Taliban in 104 districts across the country.  The Taliban have captured at least four districts in the past two weeks as the U.S. and NATO have started withdrawing their remaining forces from Afghanistan. The U.S. plans to pull out all its forces from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021.
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Azerbaijan captured Six Armenian soldiers Thursday, the latest in a series of escalating border incidents after last year’s war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The United States called on both sides to resolve the situation “urgently and peacefully.”The clash came at a delicate time for acting Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who faces snap elections next month. The Armenian defense ministry said that its forces were carrying out engineering work in a border region when Azerbaijan’s army “surrounded and captured six servicemen.”Azerbaijan’s military, however, branded the Armenian soldiers as a “reconnaissance and sabotage group.”It said they had “tried to mine supply routes leading to Azerbaijan army positions” and “were surrounded, neutralized and taken prisoner.””The situation is tense and explosive,” Pashinyan said during his visit to the eastern Gegharkunik region, where the soldiers were captured.Speaking separately at a meeting of his security council, the prime minister suggested that  international observers be deployed on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.US, France express concernThe U.S. expressed concern about the escalating tension and called for the release of the six soldiers and for the two sides to return to the negotiating table.”We call on both sides to urgently and peacefully resolve this incident,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement. “We also continue to call on Azerbaijan to release immediately all prisoners of war and other detainees, and we remind Azerbaijan of its obligations under international humanitarian law to treat all detainees humanely.”Washington would consider any movements in the nondemarcated part of the border area as “provocative and unnecessary,” the statement said.France urges cautionIn France, the foreign ministry similarly urged both sides “to show the utmost restraint and to refrain from any provocation.”This was just the latest in a string of border incidents between the historic rivals stretching back over several months, and it further strained the cease-fire Russia brokered last year.Last year, the two ex-Soviet countries in the Caucasus region fought for six weeks for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian region in Azerbaijan that separatists had controlled for decades.Some 6,000 people were killed in the conflict, which ended after Moscow brokered an agreement between Yerevan and Baku that saw Armenia hand large sections of territory it had controlled for decades to Azerbaijan.Among the recaptured territories was Kelbajar district, which lies across the border from Gegharkunik, the site of the latest incident.The cease-fire, monitored by 2,000 Russian peacekeepers, has largely held, but tensions persist.Snap pollsA senior Armenian army representative said there were 1,000 Azerbaijani soldiers on Armenian soil near Gegharkunik.For now, he said, incidents were being resolved peacefully, but “if a decision is taken to use force, then they will be destroyed.”Azerbaijan said that Armenia had deployed tanks to the area.Armenia said one of its soldiers was killed earlier this week when shooting broke out with Azerbaijan’s forces, an incident Baku denied responsibility for.Earlier in May, Armenia accused Azerbaijan’s military of crossing its southern border to “lay siege” to a lake shared by the two countries.Elections aheadAnd all of this comes in the run-up to snap parliamentary polls in Armenia on June 20, which Pashinyan announced under pressure from opposition protesters.For months they have staged rallies demanding the prime minister’s resignation.They hold him accountable for what many in Armenia believe was a humiliating defeat at the hands of Azerbaijan’s army, and for agreeing to hand over swaths of territory to Azerbaijan.Pashinyan, 45, says he had no choice but to concede or see his country’s forces suffer even bigger losses. Fresh elections are the best way to end the postwar political stalemate, he says.Earlier this month, Pashinyan said Armenia and Azerbaijan were in Russian-mediated talks on the delimitation and demarcation of their shared borders.He also said the two governments could discuss territorial swaps.Russia’s role as the broker between the two countries has largely come at the expense of Western powers such as France and the United States. All three are part of a mediating group that had tried but failed for decades to find a lasting solution to the conflict.Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan around the collapse of the Soviet Union in a conflict that claimed the lives of 30,000 people and displaced many more.
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Thousands of families have fled their homes as fighting between Taliban and Afghan government forces rages in the eastern province of Laghman. Zabiullah Ghazi reports from Mehtar Lam. 
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When Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev visited Washington three years ago, he renewed a strategic partnership agreement with the United States and pledged to intensify a broad range of systemic reforms while opening his country to a multi-dimensional relationship with the United States.Mirziyoyev’s first term in office is now winding down, with a presidential election set for October 24, and his success in fulfilling those and other promises is being assessed, both in Washington and at home.For the U.S. State Department, the verdict is mixed.Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month welcomed “Uzbekistan’s progress on its reform agenda, including when it comes to combatting trafficking in persons, protecting religious freedom and expanding space for civil society,” in a conversation with Uzbekistan Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov.But he also called for the “protection of fundamental freedoms, including the need to have a free and competitive electoral process,” according to an official readout of the conversation last month.The progress on Mirziyoyev’s reform agenda is also getting mixed reviews in Uzbekistan, where policymakers and ministers acknowledge in interviews with the Voice of America that intensifying citizen demands for accountability and responsibility have been difficult to meet.Tanzila Narbaeva, chairperson of the Uzbek Senate, is the highest-ranking woman in the country.“Reforms have so far been messy,” concedes Tanzila Narbaeva, the Senate chairperson. “We are finding out every day how our issues are much more complicated than we had imagined — and what it will take for us to overcome them. There will be roadblocks and barriers, none of us have any doubts about that. Still, we must not stop fixing the problems while making sure those fixes are systemic.”Narbaeva, Uzbekistan’s highest-ranking woman, is a close ally of Mirziyoyev, who has sought to rebuild popular support by institutionalizing his reforms. She acknowledges that it’s difficult to convince a deeply skeptical public that the Uzbek legislature is more than just a rubber stamp.“Parliament is fully independent,” she insists. “We are not getting orders from anyone anymore.”Deputy Prime Minister Sardor Umurzakov, the minister of investments and foreign trade, believes the system must closely work with Uzbek youth, who constitute a majority of the population and who he says are increasingly demanding, impatient and critical.”They are connected to the world … unstoppable. We must engage them, create opportunities, improve conditions. Ideas must turn into projects, projects into companies creating jobs, producing and exporting goods, paying taxes, and offering people space to prosper and thrive, here in our own country.”Akmal Burhanov, head of the Anti-Corruption Agency created in 2020, says corruption is deeply entrenched in Uzbekistan and expanded during the pandemic, a problem that is acknowledged by Narbaeva, Umurzakov and other lawmakers and ministers.“We are under enormous pressure from everyone,” Burhanov tells VOA. “The public wants us to fight corruption fast and effectively. They expect miracles. But just one agency can’t do it. We need everyone contributing.”Sardor Umurzakov, deputy prime minister and minister of investments and foreign trade.Burhanov’s agency is pushing an unprecedented law requiring financial disclosures by public servants. “It’s time for us to draw a line and make sure that the system does not allow conflicts of interest.”The U.S. Justice Department and State Department Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs are assisting this anti-corruption watchdog, providing technical support.Ibrokhim Abdurakhmonov, Uzbekistan’s innovation minister, a U.S.-educated scientist, has been working with international partners and hopes Washington will continue to support Tashkent’s development goals.”We want to create a knowledge-based economy,” says Abdurakhmonov. But just as with any strategic goal, the country faces a rocky road to achieving this. Uzbekistan generates growth – and revenue – mostly from natural resources and raw materials.”We have 1,000 researchers per million people. … Developed countries have three to four times more. Worse, this system isn’t used to rewarding creators and inventors. Scientific work and academic research have always been done merely to earn a salary,” not to advance the frontiers of knowledge, Abdurakhmonov explains.Energy Minister Alisher Sultanov insists that Uzbekistan has finally started reforming its gas and electricity infrastructure. He says an “outdated supply system cannot meet increasing demand,” while stressing the need for energy independence.Sultanov tells VOA that he takes responsibility for shortages experienced last winter and agrees that the system he oversees is deeply corrupt, lacks accountability and fails to deliver effective and consistent service.Avazbek Madaminov, the Justice Ministry official overseeing NGOs, also argues that his office does not take orders. Only the minister makes final decisions on NGO and political party registrations.But domestic and international critics say the more than 9,000 NGOs in Uzbekistan do not constitute a true civil society and that the current “nongovernmental” system is merely an extension of the state.Tashkent created much of what passed for civil society under its previous leader, Islam Karimov, as window dressing intended to fool the world into believing the country was democratizing.Uzbek activists and their allies abroad complain that the ministry still registers only those groups that promise to function as its agents. Instead of regulating organizations, they say, the government interferes directly, pressuring those that demand better services, transparency, accountability and justice.Tashkent gets countless recommendations every year from Western counterparts and partners, in particular, about how to assure a more robust and autonomous civil society.Pressed, Madaminov says that Uzbekistan hears the West, understands its international obligations, and tries its best to align with global norms while building “its own kind” of civil society, born of the needs and interests of Uzbeks.“The success of our civil society,” Madaminov says, “depends ultimately on the will and commitment of those who run these organizations. Our laws and the system we’re reforming offer opportunities to make a positive difference in the lives of the Uzbek people.”Every major political figure VOA talks to sees American support and assistance as key to transforming Uzbekistan, acknowledging that Washington has high expectations.Their message: Continue helping in any way possible. Have patience with Uzbekistan since it’s learning with every step. Just as America always wishes for it, they say, Uzbekistan, too, wants security, prosperity and ultimately freedom.
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