Pakistan said Wednesday it is “actively engaged” with Iran to try to dissuade it from pursuing international arbitration over constructing a major gas pipeline to link the two nations, rejecting recent media claims that the multibillion-dollar project has been shelved. 

Musadik Malik, the Pakistani minister of state for petroleum, told a news conference that Islamabad had until March 2024 to negotiate a settlement with Tehran to avoid any legal battles, saying both sides are working closely to “come up with creative solutions” to keep the project on track.

“We need that [Iranian] gas. We are actively engaged [with Iran’s government] towards having that gas because that gives us energy security,” Malik said. 

He spoke in response to last week’s media reports claiming Pakistan had abandoned its decadelong effort to import cheap Iranian energy because of fears the U.S. economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program could also hit Pakistani state-owned entities.

The reports quoted the minister telling lawmakers last week that the pipeline “is stalled due to international sanctions on Iran” and will only resume when the sanctions are lifted.

Speaking Wednesday, Malik rejected the reported assertions, saying they misrepresented his written testimony to the parliament. He admitted, however, that the “vague” and “insufficient” information in his official text were to be blamed for causing the confusion. 

The minister said the references and communications with Iran documented in his testimony “go back about 10 years” when Pakistan initially asked Tehran to suspend the project citing the U.S. sanctions.

Malik acknowledged, however, that the U.S. and the United Nations sanctions on Iran had mainly deterred cash-strapped Pakistan from laying the pipeline from the Iranian border to Nawabshah in southern Sindh province since signing the agreement with the Iranian government in 2013.

Iran maintains that it has finished constructing its part of the pipeline, running from the Persian Gulf to the border of Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province. Earlier this year, Tehran warned Islamabad that if it failed to complete its section of the project by March 2024, it would be required to pay a penalty of about $18 billion.

“We are using all of our creative thinking, as well as the legal instruments available, as well as the foreign policy instruments available, to make sure that Pakistan under no circumstances comes under sanctions,” Malik said.

He declined to disclose the amount Pakistan will owe Iran as a financial penalty, insisting the two countries will be able to reach a settlement by the March deadline. 

Malik’s assertions echoed remarks Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian made during last week’s visit to Islamabad, where he announced Tehran’s readiness to help urgently complete the long-delayed pipeline.

“We held important discussions on how we can find solutions to some existing banking and financial problems between the two countries within the framework of the international rules and regulations,” Amirabdollahian told reporters without elaborating.

The Iranian chief diplomat stated that the gas pipeline project would “serve the national interests” of the two neighboring countries. 

“We stand ready to see this gas pipeline be completed, finalized and operationalized as soon as possible,” he added. 

Amirabdollahian’s three-day visit came amid an expansion in bilateral economic and trade ties. In May, Iran and Pakistan opened their first joint marketplace and an Iranian power transmission line along their nearly 900-kilometer border.  
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Pakistan’s election commission ruled Tuesday that former Prime Minister Imran Khan cannot hold any public office for five years after being convicted and jailed on corruption charges.

The commission announced the disqualification hours after Khan appealed his conviction in a high court in Islamabad. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

Police arrested the 70-year-old opposition leader on Saturday, minutes after a federal court convicted him of “corrupt practices” and sentenced him to three years for allegedly concealing earnings from the sale of state gifts he acquired while in power from 2018 to 2022.

Tuesday’s order by the Election Commission of Pakistan cited the court verdict and relevant electoral laws for declaring Khan ineligible to hold public office.

“Therefore, Mr. Imran Ahmad Khan Niazi is disqualified for a period of five years,” it said.

Polls show the cricket-star-turned-political-leader is the most popular national politician heading the country’s largest party — Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI.

Khan maintains that he did not violate any law and accuses the powerful military and incumbent Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of being behind the “politically motivated” graft charges to keep him from contesting elections slated for later this year.

Sharif and the military deny the charges.

Saturday’s court verdict was announced in the absence of Khan and his lawyers, prompting legal experts to question its legality and the haste with which it was carried out.

A central PTI leader denounced “the premature decision” by the election commission, saying it is yet another government attempt to eliminate Khan from Pakistan’s political landscape.

“We’re very confident the [graft] case against Imran Khan will be reversed in the high court, if not in the Supreme Court,” Zulfikar Bukhari told VOA.

Since Khan was forced out of power by a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April 2022, Bukhari said, Pakistani authorities have instituted what he called about 200 frivolous and politically motivated cases against Khan, from terrorism and corruption to murder charges.

The former prime minister was taken into custody from his home in the eastern city of Lahore on Saturday before being transferred to a high-security British-colonial-era prison about 70 kilometers west of the Pakistani capital.

On Monday, PTI leaders and lawyers protested that Khan was held in a cramped, dirty, and insect-filled cell at the notorious prison meant for suspected terrorists and hard-core criminals. They said the former Pakistani leader “is deprived of the rights and facilities to which he is otherwise entitled” under the country’s prison rules.

Government officials have refused to comment on the alleged mistreatment of the former Pakistani leader.

Khan’s conviction and subsequent disqualification came a day before Sharif was due to dissolve the government and the legislative National Assembly, the lower house of parliament. Wednesday’s expected move will pave the way for a caretaker administration to take charge and oversee new elections in Pakistan within 90 days in line with the constitution.

The jailed PTI chief has consistently accused the military of orchestrating his ouster from office and the subsequent legal challenges facing him.

The military has ruled Pakistan for nearly half its 75-year history by staging coups against elected governments. Critics say Pakistani generals have meddled in political affairs even when they are not in power and orchestrated the toppling of prime ministers because they had fallen out with the military.

Khan was arrested in May in a separate case, but the Supreme Court outlawed the move two days later and ordered his release. His brief arrest, however, triggered nationwide violent protests by PTI supporters, with some storming military installations.

An army-backed government crackdown has since arrested thousands of Khan party leaders and workers, including women. More than 100 detainees face trial in military courts for their alleged roles in ransacking defense infrastructure.

The ousted prime minister blames intelligence agency operatives for “infiltrating” protests and attacking army buildings to pave the way for the crackdown on PTI leaders and workers. Pakistani officials reject those charges.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government faced a no-confidence motion in parliament Tuesday over ethnic strife that has gripped the remote northeastern state of Manipur and his failure to speak on the issue for over three months.

The motion, brought by the “INDIA” alliance that includes 26 opposition parties, poses no threat to the stability of Modi’s government, which has an overwhelming majority in parliament.

Initiating a debate in parliament, Congress Party lawmaker Gaurav Gogoi said the no confidence motion was not about numbers, but one of justice for the people of Manipur. “If Manipur is burning, India is burning. If Manipur has been divided, India is divided,” he said.

Questioning the prime minister’s public silence over the strife in a state that is ruled by the BJP, Gogoi said, “our call is clear, that the prime minister should talk on the issue.”

Modi has not commented on the violence that erupted in the state more than three months ago, except for brief remarks that he made after a video showing two women in Manipur being paraded naked went viral.

The clashes that have broken out between the majority Meitei group and the tribal Kuki community in Manipur have claimed over 150 lives and displaced about 60,000 people. Several incidents of sexual violence against women have been reported.

The violence erupted in the wake of an order by the Manipur High Court that asked the government to implement an affirmative action program. The program would give the Meitei community more access to land and jobs reserved for Kukis and other ethnic tribes.

The Supreme Court, which is hearing a case on violence reported against women in the state during the ethnic strife, has said it will monitor all cases of gender-based violence.  It also said last week that the law and order machinery in the state appeared to have broken down.

Political analysts said the opposition INDIA alliance, which was formed by 26 parties last month, is hoping to gain political traction ahead of next year’s general elections by using the debate in parliament to focus attention on what it calls are divisive policies of the BJP.

“From the opposition’s standpoint, the no-confidence motion should be seen more in terms of building a tempo against Mr. Modi,” said political analyst Rasheed Kidwai. “What the opposition is doing through the Manipur crisis is to highlight these types of fault lines during BJP’s rule.”

Hoping to improve its prospects in the elections, in which Modi is widely expected to lead his party to victory, the alliance plans to fight jointly against the BJP.

Ruling party members who spoke during the debate highlighted the achievements of the Modi government, saying the nation was progressing rapidly under him and slammed the opposition.

“It is a televised debate so they are using the opportunity to target the opposition alliance and the Congress Party. Also, since the Manipur issue concerns a remote part of India, it does not bring much traction in the rest of the country, so both sides are speaking consciously on broader issues as well,” said Kidwai.

The motion will be voted on Thursday, when Prime Minister Modi is expected to speak. The BJP and its allies control more than 350 seats in the 545-member house.

This is the second time Modi’s government has faced a no-confidence motion during its nine-year rule. Another motion brought in 2018 was defeated.

Ahead of the motion, Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi was reinstated as a lawmaker after the Supreme Court suspended a two-year jail term in a criminal defamation case over his comments on Prime Minister Modi’s surname. The conviction had led to his disqualification from parliament. 
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War crimes committed by Myanmar’s military, including the bombing of civilians, have become “increasingly frequent and brazen”, a team of United Nations investigators said in a report published on Tuesday.

The report by the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), which covered the period between July 2022 and June 2023, said there was “strong evidence that the Myanmar military and its affiliate militias have committed three types of combat-related war crimes with increasing frequency and brazenness.”

These crimes include the indiscriminate or disproportionate targeting of civilians using bombs and the burning of civilian homes and buildings, resulting at times in the destruction of entire villages, it said.

The report also cited “killings of civilians or combatants detained during operations.”

“Our evidence points to a dramatic increase in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the country, with widespread and systematic attacks against civilians, and we are building case files that can be used by courts to hold individual perpetrators responsible,” said Nicholas Koumjian, head of the IIMM.

Since a junta seized power two years ago, Myanmar has been plunged into chaos, with a resistance movement fighting the military on multiple fronts after a bloody crackdown on opponents that saw Western countries re-impose sanctions.

A spokesperson for the junta could not be reached for comment on the findings made by U.N. investigators.

The junta has previously denied atrocities have taken place, saying it is carrying out a legitimate campaign against terrorists.

Although it has justified bombings as attacks against military targets, U.N. investigators said the Myanmar military “should have known or did know” that a large number of civilians were in or around the alleged targets when the attacks took place.
…

The United States on Monday described the arrest of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan over the weekend as an “internal matter” for the South Asian nation, while the United Nations called for respecting due process in proceedings against the embattled politician.

The 70-year-old Pakistani opposition leader was taken into custody Saturday and swiftly transferred to Attock prison, west of the national capital, Islamabad, after being sentenced to three years for selling state gifts and allegedly concealing their proceeds.

“We believe that is an internal matter for Pakistan, and we continue to call for the respect of democratic principles, human rights, and the rule of law in Pakistan,” U.S. State Department spokesman Mathew Miller told reporters in Washington when asked for his reaction.

Miller dismissed suggestions the U.S. response to the troubles facing Khan was muted compared with the prosecution of politicians elsewhere in the world because the former Pakistani leader was a known critic of Washington’s policies.

“Let people characterize their responses,” Miller said. “At times there are cases [around the world] that are so obviously unfounded that the United States believes it should say something about the matter. We have not made that determination here.”

In New York, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for all parties Monday to refrain from violence.

“[Guterres stressed] the need to respect the right to peaceful assembly,” U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters. “The secretary-general urges the authorities to respect due process and the rule of law in proceedings against the former prime minister.”

Khan denies the corruption allegations, saying they are politically motivated to keep him from contesting a general election due later this year. Unless overturned by an appeals court, the conviction will disqualify him from running in a national election for five years.

On Monday, the cricket star-turned-politician was allowed to meet with one of his lawyers at the jail for the first time to prepare an appeal of his conviction.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who is leading the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) political party while Khan is in jail, said the former prime minister was being held in an “insect-ridden” cramped room and being denied privileges, including television, books, and newspapers, that he is entitled to as a former leader of the country.

“The conditions are deplorable. He is being kept in a cell where hygienic conditions are terrible,” Qureshi told a news conference along with Khan’s legal team. “There are no separate toilet facilities. The room is dark and tangy. The basic rights that even an ordinary prisoner under the prison rules can access, he has been deprived of.”

Qureshi condemned the government for placing Khan in the notorious British colonial-era prison and said his party would approach the country’s superior judiciary to secure their leader better conditions. He also denounced a police crackdown and subsequent detention of PTI supporters protesting Khan’s arrest.

Pakistani officials deny they have anything to do with the court ruling or legal proceedings. Government officials have not yet commented on allegations that Khan was being mistreated in prison.

Khan was ousted from power in April 2022 in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence, which he rejected as illegal and orchestrated by Pakistan’s powerful military to enable incumbent Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to replace him. The deposed leader initially blamed the U.S. for being behind the vote, charges Washington and Islamabad reject.

The ousted Pakistani leader has long publicly criticized the U.S.-led war on terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan, which continued for almost two decades until 2021, with American counterterrorism drone strikes hitting suspected targets on both sides of the border.

Pakistani authorities have instituted scores of cases against Khan since his removal from power. He was also arrested in May in a separate case, but the country’s Supreme Court outlawed the move a couple of days later.

The brief arrest, however, sparked nationwide protests by his supporters, who clashed with riot police. Protesters also stormed military installations in some cities, prompting a crackdown on PTI workers and the detention of thousands, with more than 100 put on trial in controversial Pakistani military courts.  

“I will dissolve my government and the National Assembly on August 9,” Sharif told a rally in Punjab province Sunday. “After that, an interim government will take over, and elections will be held,” he said.

Despite all the legal troubles and crackdown facing Khan, analysts say he remains the most popular politician in Pakistan and his party is rated as the country’s largest political force. 

The military has ruled Pakistan over nearly half its 75-year history by staging coups against elected governments. Generals have influenced political happenings even when they are not in power and orchestrated the toppling of prime ministers because they had fallen out with the military.

“In the past, parties and leaders have been cut down to size, their leaders have been imprisoned, and that hasn’t stopped some from returning,” said Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asian Institute at Washington’s Wilson Center.

“PTI enjoys public support and benefits from strong anti-incumbency. It can pull through if it gets the right leadership and isn’t banned,” Kugelman wrote on Twitter.
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The Philippine government summoned China’s ambassador Monday and presented a strongly worded diplomatic protest over the Chinese coast guard’s use of water cannons in a weekend confrontation with Philippine vessels in the disputed South China Sea, officials said.

The tense hours-long standoff occurred Saturday near Second Thomas Shoal, which has been occupied for decades by Philippine forces stationed onboard a rusting, grounded navy ship but is also claimed by China. It was the latest flareup in long-seething territorial conflicts in the South China Sea involving China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.

The United States, the European Union, Australia and Japan expressed support for the Philippines and concern over the Chinese actions. Washington renewed a warning that it is obliged to defend its longtime treaty ally if Philippine public vessels and forces come under armed attack, including in the South China Sea.

Philippine coast guard and diplomatic officials held a news conference Monday at which they showed videos and photographs which they said showed six Chinese coast guard ships and two militia vessels blocking two Philippine navy-chartered civilian boats taking supplies to the Philippine forces at Second Thomas Shoal. One supply boat was hit with a powerful water cannon by the Chinese coast guard, the Philippine military said.

Only one of the two Philippine boats managed to deliver food, water, fuel and other supplies to the Philippine forces guarding the shoal, the officials said.

During the confrontation, two Philippine coast guard ships escorting the supply boats were also blocked by the Chinese coast guard ships at close range and were threatened with water cannons. Three Chinese navy ships stood by at a close distance at one point, Philippine coast guard Commodore Jay Tarriela said.

“This was like a David and Goliath situation,” Jonathan Malaya of the National Security Council said.

Malaya emphasized that the Philippines would not withdraw its forces from Second Thomas Shoal.

Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Teresita Daza said China’s ambassador to Manila, Huang Xilian, was summoned and handed a diplomatic protest by Philippine Undersecretary Theresa Lazaro.

In it, the Philippines told China to stop its illegal actions against Philippine vessels in the South China Sea, stop interfering in legitimate Philippine activities, and abide by international laws, including the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Seas, Daza said.

In Beijing, the Chinese coast guard acknowledged its ships used water cannons against the Philippine vessels, which it said strayed without authorization into the shoal, which Beijing calls Ren’ai Jiao. It accused the Philippines of reneging on a pledge to remove the grounded Filipino warship from the shoal.

China has long demanded that the Philippines withdraw its naval personnel and tow away the still commissioned but crumbling ship, the BRP Sierra Madre. The ship was deliberately marooned on the shoal in 1999 and now serves as a fragile symbol of Manila’s territorial claim to the atoll.

The disputes in the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest sea lanes, have long been regarded as a potential flashpoint and have become a fault line in the rivalry between the United States and China in the region.

China claims ownership over virtually the entire South China Sea despite an international ruling that invalidated its claims in 2016 by an arbitration tribunal set up under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. China rejects that ruling and continues to defy it.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement Sunday that by “firing water cannons and employing unsafe blocking maneuvers, [Chinese] ships interfered with the Philippines’ lawful exercise of high seas freedom of navigation and jeopardized the safety of the Philippine vessels and crew.” It added that such actions are a direct threat to “regional peace and stability.”

While the U.S. lays no claims to the South China Sea, it has often criticized China’s aggressive actions and deployed its warships and fighter jets in patrols and military exercises with regional allies to uphold freedom of navigation and overflight, which it says are in America’s national interest.

China has told the U.S. to stop meddling in what it calls a purely Asian dispute and has warned of unspecified repercussions.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. Monday of “threatening China” by raising the possibility of the U.S.-Philippines mutual defense treaty being activated.
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Passenger rail service was partially restored Monday in southern Pakistan, a day after a train derailed in the region, killing at least 30 people and injuring scores, officials said. Families were holding funerals for the victims of the crash. 

According to Aqeel Ahmed Qureshi, a doctor at a hospital in the district of Nawabshah in Sindh province, 27 bodies of the victims have been handed over to relatives for burials while three bodies have still to be identified. 

Dozens of injured people remained in hospital as funerals got underway on Monday. Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafiq said engineers had opened a probe into the train accident. 

“Unfortunately,” he told reporters, “we don’t have enough funds to properly maintain our aging railway tracks, and yesterday’s train crash apparently took place because of it.” 

Sunday’s crash happened when 10 cars of the Hazara Express train went off the tracks near the Sarhari railway station. Train traffic was suspended, and work on the main line was still underway, senior police officer Abid Baloch said. 

On Monday, local television stations showed engineers clearing the railway track. “We have been told by engineers that the rail service will be fully restored today,” Baloch said. 

After the crash, many passengers complained that they were waiting for the resumption of the train service from Karachi to the eastern Punjab province. 

Authorities say military and paramilitary troops helped rescue workers get trapped passengers out. The most seriously injured were transported by military helicopter to distant hospitals for better treatment. 

Train accidents in Pakistan are often the result of poor railway infrastructure and official negligence. 

In 2021, at least 65 people were killed in Sindh province when two trains collided in the district of Ghotki. In 1990, a packed passenger train plowed into a standing freight train in southern Pakistan, killing 210 people in the worst rail disaster in the nation’s history. 
…

Investigators scoured the wreckage on Monday of a train derailment that killed at least 34 people, the latest deadly crash to hit Pakistan’s antiquated railway network.
…

India’s main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was restored to parliament Monday after the Supreme Court last week suspended his defamation conviction over political comments on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Gandhi’s disqualification “has ceased to operate subject to further judicial pronouncements,” Utpal Kumar Singh, secretary general of the lower parliament house said in a statement.

The 53-year-old Congress party leader was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in March in a case that critics flagged as an effort to stifle political opposition in the world’s largest democracy.

The conviction stemmed from a remark made during the 2019 election campaign when Gandhi had asked why “all thieves have Modi as (their) common surname”.

His comments were portrayed as a slur against the prime minister and against all those with the same surname, which is associated with the lower rungs of India’s caste hierarchy.

Anyone sentenced to a custodial term of two years or more is ineligible to sit in India’s parliament, forcing Gandhi’s expulsion from the body in March.

He was turfed out of the legislature as a result but stayed out of jail while appealing the case at the Supreme Court in New Delhi.

Congress head Mallikarjun Kharge called it “a welcome step,” and called on the government to concentrate on “governance rather than denigrating democracy by targeting opposition leaders.”

Fellow Congress party MP Shashi Tharoor welcomed the announcement of Gandhi’s reinstatement “with enormous relief.”

“He can now resume his duties in the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) to serve the people of India and his constituents… A victory of justice and for our democracy,” he said.

India’s top court on Friday suspended Gandhi’s defamation conviction and said that the initial trial had failed to justify imposing the maximum sentence for his campaign rally comments four years ago.

“The order of conviction needs to be stayed pending final adjudication,” Justice B.R. Gavai said in his ruling.

Gandhi is the scion of India’s premier political dynasty and the son, grandson and great-grandson of former prime ministers, beginning with independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru.

Congress was once the dominant force of Indian politics but Gandhi himself has lost two elections to Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, after being cast as a princeling out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Indians.
…

Party officials and lawyers of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan complained Sunday that authorities had denied them access in jail to Khan a day after he was arrested on a corruption conviction.  

On Saturday, a federal judge in Islamabad sentenced the 70-year-old opposition leader to three years in prison on charges of illegally selling state gifts, including watches, charges Khan denies as politically motivated to keep him out of politics.  

Police took Khan into custody at his home in the eastern city of Lahore minutes after the verdict was announced in his and his lawyers’ absence before transferring him to Attock prison, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of the Pakistani capital. 

A party spokesperson for legal matters said Sunday that Khan’s team of lawyers could not meet him in the jail to inquire about his well-being and have him sign crucial legal documents to appeal the trial court decision swiftly and apply for bail. 

“Attock Prison is a ‘No Go’ area for (his) legal team as well as locals in the vicinity,” said Naeem Haider Panjutha in a statement released by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party.  

Pakistani government officials did not immediately comment on allegations that Khan was being denied access to his lawyers and kept in jail under harsh conditions — as opposed to facilities a former prime minister is entitled to — in line with the country’s prison system.  

Unless overturned by an appeals court, the conviction will disqualify the PTI chief from running in a national election for five years. 

Khan’s party vice chairman, former Foreign Affairs Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said in a video message late Sunday that the country’s former prime minister was being held in the notorious Attock prison, and they were not allowed to take him food. “His life is in danger,” Qureshi asserted without elaborating. 

On Sunday, PTI supporters were in the streets across the country for a second day to protest their leader’s arrest, but they largely remained peaceful. His party officials alleged that police had detained scores of supporters to deter any mass uprising.

The cricket legend-turned-political leader’s arrest came days before incumbent Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government was expected to dissolve parliament this week, allowing a caretaker setup to take charge and organize new elections in Pakistan.  

“I will dissolve my government and the National Assembly on August 9,” Sharif told a rally in Punjab province Sunday. “After that, an interim government will take over, and elections will be held.” 

Legal experts and critics have questioned Saturday’s court ruling, saying it was politically motivated because Khan remains the most popular politician in Pakistan. 

“The punishment is all the more problematic after the concerns raised by several observers over the manner in which the trial was conducted and the seeming haste with which the judgment was issued,” an editorial in the English-language Dawn newspaper said Sunday. 

Khan was ousted from power in April 2022 in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence, which he rejected as illegal and orchestrated by Pakistan’s powerful military to enable Sharif to replace him.  

The PTI leader was also arrested in May in a separate case before the country’s Supreme Court outlawed the move. But it quickly sparked nationwide protests by his supporters and clashes with riot police.  

In some cities, protesters also stormed military installations, prompting a nationwide government crackdown on PTI workers and the detention of thousands, with more than 100 put on trial in controversial Pakistani military courts. 

Analysts said the crackdown had deterred PTI supporters from organizing significant protests of Khan’s latest arrest. Politicians and commentators point fingers at the military for the crisis facing Khan and his party.  

The military has ruled Pakistan over nearly half its 75-year history by staging coups against elected governments. Generals have influenced political happenings even when they are not in power and orchestrated the toppling of prime ministers because they had fallen out with the military. 

“It must be asked why our state periodically subjects popular leaders to such humiliation when it routinely ignores far more serious crimes,” the Dawn wrote in its editorial.  

It recounted that several Pakistani prime ministers had suffered the kind of treatment being meted out to Khan, but such attempts would not make him irrelevant, as was the case with his predecessor.  

“The experiment was tried in the earlier two cases and failed, and the state seems to be repeating the same mistake, only to weaken a fraying social contract further,” the newspaper cautioned. 

Former Pakistani military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa admitted in a nationally televised speech before stepping down from office last November that his institution has been illegally interfering in national politics for seven decades.
…

The supreme leader of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban has labeled cross-border attacks, including those on Pakistan, as “haram” or forbidden under Islam.

Senior Taliban leaders communicated the “diktat” or decree from Hibatullah Akhundzada to Pakistani officials during recent bilateral talks to underscore their determination not to allow anyone to threaten other countries from Afghan soil, highly placed official sources in Islamabad told VOA.

The issue figured prominently during the three-day meetings Asif Durrani, the special representative on Afghanistan, and his delegation held last month with Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, among others, in the capital, Kabul.

The visit took place amid a surge in deadly attacks on Pakistani security forces and civilians, with the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, claiming responsibility for plotting much of the violence.

A senior Pakistani official privy to the Kabul meetings told VOA that TTP bases and activities in Afghanistan had dominated the discussions. He spoke on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

“Sheikh Hibatullah’s diktats bind all groups pledging allegiance to him, and his diktat is that attacking Pakistan is haram,” the official quoted Taliban hosts as telling the delegates.

The Pakistani side urged the Taliban to make the diktat public to help deter TTP and its Afghan supporters from conducting activities that undermine relations between the two countries.

“We have circulated it among our people, among the [security] formations, and intelligence,” Taliban leaders responded, according to the Pakistani official who spoke to VOA.

The Taliban did not immediately comment on the reported Pakistani assertions.

The official Afghan television station aired audio of a speech Saturday by Taliban Defense Minister Muhammad Yaqoob, in which he revealed for the first time a few details about Hibatullah’s order regarding cross-border violence.

Yaqoob said, without naming any country, that the Taliban supreme leader had terminated the jihad or holy war, and “obedience” to his decree is mandatory” for all. Yaqoob was speaking to a gathering of Taliban commanders and security forces.

“If someone still leaves Afghanistan intending to wage jihad abroad, it cannot be considered jihad anymore. If Mujahideen [Taliban forces] continue to fight despite orders from the emir to stop, it is not jihad but rather hostility,” Yaqoob said, using Hibatullah’s official title.

The Taliban call their two decadeslong insurgency against the United States and NATO forces a jihad against “the occupation” of Afghanistan and its supporters, citing their Islamic beliefs. Hibatullah announced the termination of the so-called jihad after his hardline group reclaimed power in August 2021 when all international forces departed the country.

Islamabad alleges that TTP leaders, known to have pledged allegiance to Hibatullah, and other insurgent groups have moved their operation bases to Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul and intensified terrorism in Pakistan, allegations the Taliban reject as unfounded.

Last week, a suicide bomber struck a political rally in the northwestern border town of Khar, killing 63 Pakistanis and injuring dozens more. Islamic State in Khorasan Province, or IS-K, an Afghan-based affiliate of the Islamic State terrorist group, claimed responsibility for that bombing.

Pakistani authorities have stated the TTP was behind a July 12 raid against a military base in the southwestern city of Zhob, saying three heavily armed fighters linked to the Afghan Taliban were among some five assailants. The attack killed at least nine Pakistani soldiers and all the assailants in the ensuing hourslong gun battles.

The Pakistani foreign ministry reported last week that investigators had identified the three slain Afghans as residents of the southern Kandahar province in Afghanistan, and it had asked the Afghan Embassy to receive their bodies.

The Taliban urged Pakistan during the recent meetings to restart talks with TTP to find a negotiated settlement to the militant violence. Pakistani officials declined the offer, saying previous negotiations, brokered and hosted by Kabul last year, “miserably failed” because the TTP had refused “to surrender their arms and owe allegiance” to the constitution of Pakistan.

“These are the conditions. Whether they [TTP] like it, they must fulfill them. We cannot allow non-state actors to dictate their agenda,” said the Pakistani official who shared details of the talks in Kabul.

Pakistani officials report a 70% increase in TTP-led terrorist attacks over the past two years. This year alone, the violence has killed more than 450 people, including security forces. The army has confirmed the deaths of more than 120 officers and soldiers in the first seven months of 2023.

The Taliban reportedly told the Pakistani delegation that they plan to move TTP members and families away from the Afghan border regions to address Islamabad’s counterterrorism concerns. They also reiterated that Kabul would need financial assistance for relocating and resettling the militants in other parts of Afghanistan.

A recent U.N. Security Council report has also confirmed the relocation of TTP by Kabul authorities.

In June, certain TTP elements were relocated away from the border area as part of the Taliban’s efforts to rein in the group under pressure from the government of Pakistan,” the report said. It noted that up to 6,000 TTP members operate out of Afghanistan, and the Taliban takeover has “emboldened” them.

The U.N. report warned that the TTP could become a regional threat if it continues to have a safe operating base in Afghanistan.
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At least 15 passengers were killed and 50 more injured when a train derailed near the Pakistani town of Nawabshah in southern Sindh province, officials said Sunday.

The Hazara Express was on its way from Karachi to Rawalpindi when 10 cars derailed near the Sarhari railway station off Nawabshah, said senior railway officer Mahmoodur Rehman Lakho. Lakho is in charge of railways in the accident area.

Lakho said rescue crews took injured passengers to the nearby Peoples Hospital in Nawabshah.

Mohsin Sayal, another senior railway officer, said train traffic has been suspended on the main railway line as repair trains have been dispatched to the scene. Sayal said alternative travel arrangements and medical care will be made available for the train’s passengers.

Train crashes often occurred on poorly maintained railways tracks in Pakistan where colonial-era communications and signal systems haven’t been modernized and safety standards are poor.
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The Maldives Supreme Court confirmed on Sunday that jailed former President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom is barred for the country’s September presidential election.

The ruling is another setback for the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), which declared Yameen its candidate before his December conviction for corruption and money laundering over kickbacks from a private company while he was president.

The party last week challenged the Election Commission’s block on his candidacy because he is serving an 11-year jail sentence, arguing the commission had misinterpreted the constitutional prerequisites for presidential candidates.

The commission’s decision “that Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom is ineligible as he doesn’t meet the conditions stipulated under article 109 is the correct decision,” Justice Husnu Al Suood ruled.

Yameen, the half-brother of former dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, was seeking a comeback in the South Asian archipelago after losing power in 2018. He campaigned against Indian influence in Maldives, raising concerns in New Delhi.

Close to strategic shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, Maldives is a focal point of competition between India and China for influence in the region.

The PPM’s coalition partner, the Progressive National Congress, has said it would field a candidate if the Supreme Court declared Yameen ineligible.

President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih is seeking a second term despite his Maldivian Democratic Party splitting in June after a public fallout between Solih and another former president, Mohamed Nasheed.

Nasheed, after losing the party’s president primary to Solih, formed a party called The Democrats, which has announced its own candidate.
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India’s latest space mission entered the moon’s orbit on Saturday ahead of the country’s second attempted lunar landing, as its space program seeks to reach new heights.

The world’s most populous nation has a comparatively low-budget aerospace program that is rapidly closing in on the milestones set by global space powers.

Only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved a controlled landing on the lunar surface.

The Indian Space Research Organization confirmed that Chandrayaan-3, which means moon craft in Sanskrit, had been “successfully inserted into the lunar orbit,” more than three weeks after its launch.

If the rest of the current mission goes to plan, the mission will safely touch down near the moon’s little-explored south pole between Aug. 23 and 24.

India’s last attempt to do so ended in failure four years ago, when ground control lost contact moments before landing.

Developed by ISRO, Chandrayaan-3 includes a lander module named Vikram, which means valor in Sanskrit, and a rover named Pragyan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom.

The mission comes with a price tag of $74.6 million, far smaller than those of other countries, and a testament to India’s frugal space engineering.

Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing space technology. It also has an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts’ wages.

The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has taken much longer to reach the moon than the manned Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days.

The Indian rocket used is much less powerful than the United States’ Saturn V. Instead, the probe orbited Earth five or six times elliptically to gain speed, before being sent on a monthlong lunar trajectory.

If the landing is successful, the rover will roll off Vikram and explore the nearby lunar area, gathering images to be sent back to Earth for analysis.

The rover has a mission life of one lunar day or 14 Earth days.

ISRO chief S. Somanath has said his engineers carefully studied data from the last failed mission and have worked to fix the glitches.

India’s space program has grown considerably in size and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the moon in 2008.

In 2014, it became the first Asian nation to put a satellite into orbit around Mars, and three years later, the ISRO launched 104 satellites in a single mission.

The ISRO’s Gaganyaan (“Skycraft”) program is slated to launch a three-day manned mission into Earth’s orbit by next year.

India is also working to boost its 2% share of the global commercial space market by sending private payloads into orbit for a fraction of the cost of competitors. 
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Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was arrested in Lahore Saturday after a lower court in the capital, Islamabad, convicted him of corruption. The decision, unless overturned, disqualifies him from running for office in upcoming elections. VOA Pakistan Bureau Chief Sarah Zaman reports.
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Pakistani police arrested former Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday, minutes after a federal court sentenced him to three years in prison on charges of illegally selling state gifts.

The 70-year-old popular politician was taken into custody in the eastern city of Lahore and was being taken to a prison facility in the national capital, Islamabad, where the verdict was announced, government and Khan representatives said.

Unless overturned by an appeals court, the conviction will disqualify Khan from national politics for five years and end his chances of contesting Pakistan’s next elections, scheduled for later this year, legal experts said, citing election laws.

Khan’s political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, said it had quickly challenged the verdict in the Supreme Court.

“It’s absolutely shameful and disgusting how a mockery of law is going on just because the wish is to disqualify and jail Imran Khan,” the PTI said in a statement.

The sentence relates to an inquiry by the country’s election commission, which found the former cricket legend guilty of unlawfully selling state gifts while serving as prime minister from 2018 to 2022.

The judge ruled Saturday in Khan’s absence that charges against him in the so-called Toshakhana case were proven.

Toshakhana is a repository where foreign dignitaries’ gifts to government officials are stored, but officials are allowed to keep gifts after paying a certain percentage of the price to Toshakhana administration.

“He has been found guilty of corrupt practices by hiding the benefits he accrued from the national exchequer willfully and intentionally,” the judge wrote in his verdict. “He cheated while providing information of gifts he obtained from Toshakhana, which later proved to be false and inaccurate. His dishonesty has been established beyond doubt.”

Khan was accused of “deliberately” concealing proceeds from the reported sale of the gifts he had received during foreign trips worth $635,000. He repeatedly complained of having an unfair trial and sought termination of the proceedings.

Prior to his detention Saturday, Khan released a video statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, that his “arrest was expected & I recorded this message before my arrest.” He urged his followers to remain “peaceful, steadfast and strong.”

In an earlier statement on X this week, the former prime minister said: “My message to the nation on the ongoing ToshaKhana case where I have been continuously denied the Constitutional Right to Fair Trial and not even allowed to present witnesses in my defense.”

He added: “The superior courts must intervene immediately to stop this miscarriage of justice in what feels like a military-styled mis-trial.”

Pakistani Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb, addressing a hurriedly called news conference on Saturday, rejected allegations that the government had anything to do with the court ruling and insisted Khan was given full opportunity to defend himself.
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Pakistan and China are marking a decade of economic cooperation with much fanfare these days as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, popularly known as CPEC, completes 10 years. Experts say while the mega-project helped Pakistan develop much-needed infrastructure, the less-than-generous loans from Beijing coupled with Islamabad’s mismanagement has kept the project from turning Pakistan’s economy around.

Estimated to be the largest partnership of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global investment and infrastructure project, CPEC launched in 2013 with more than $45 billion in planned investments. Over time, it grew to more than $62 billion, of which at least $25 billion was invested in Pakistan, according to both governments.

Mustafa Hyder Sayed, executive director of the Islamabad-based, nongovernmental Pakistan-China Institute, told VOA that the project came at a critical time for Pakistan.

“At that time, we had a lot of terrorism, there was a lot of turmoil and it [Pakistan] wasn’t seen as one of the best places to invest in, particularly,” he said. “And China reposed its trust in Pakistan at that time and dove right in. All in.”

Pakistani government data indicates CPEC has so far created 200,000 jobs, built more than 1,400 kilometers (897 miles) of highways and roads and added 8,000 megawatts of electricity to the national grid. The country’s deep-sea southwestern port of Gwadar, the centerpiece of CPEC, handled 600,000 tons of cargo in the last 18 months, according to officials.

At an event in Islamabad this week celebrating a decade of CPEC, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the project a game-changer.

“And this was the result of vision and commitment and friendship,” Sharif told an audience of Pakistani and Chinese dignitaries.

Visiting Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, who received Pakistan’s highest civilian honor for his services in promoting economic cooperation, called the project exemplary.

“It has set an example of common trust and mutual development,” Lifeng said.

While Pakistan is among the top recipients of China’s infrastructure and energy investments, Islamabad now owes nearly one-third of its overwhelming external debt to Beijing.

Research shows that Chinese investments, largely shrouded in secrecy, do not come cheap. A 2021 report by U.S.-based research lab AidData found that most Chinese development financing in Pakistan between 2000 and 2017 were loans, not grants, given at or near commercial rates.

Pakistan-based economist Ammar Habib Khan, a nonresident senior fellow with the Washington-based Atlantic Council, told VOA this financial burden is partly why Pakistan has struggled to stimulate its economy through CPEC.

“A lot of that infrastructure came at a fairly high cost, and a lot of that borrowing was essentially in dollar terms and fairly higher than market terms,” he said. “Because of that, Pakistan continues to make significant dollar payments for the Chinese debt. Because of that we continue to have a current account crisis and some serious debt issues.”

In 2018, complaining of unfavorable terms, then-Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government set out to review CPEC projects. By 2021, the government was promising to prioritize the projects, however, in a bid to revive cooling bilateral relations that observers believe stemmed from the Khan government’s unease with CPEC’s terms.

Economist Khan said Pakistan definitely has a debt problem but not a Chinese debt problem. He blamed Islamabad for mismanaging resources.

“We added a lot of generation capacity, but we did not make efficient the distribution channels, due to which whatever electricity is generated, a lot of it is wasted,” Khan said.

That wasted electricity is costing the government millions of dollars every year, and its debt to power plants built under CPEC is piling up.

Islamabad and Beijing reject Washington’s assertion that China’s development financing to Pakistan and other BRI recipients is a debt-trap.

Pakistan has plenty of say in CPEC projects, Sayed said, through the Joint Coordination Committee that includes Chinese and Pakistani officials.

“So, this perception of China coming in by predatory financing and weakening a host country and gaining political influence is unfounded,” he said.

A report last year by Taiwan-based anti-disinformation lab DoubleThink’s China in the World network placed Pakistan at the top of the list of countries most exposed to Chinese influence.

According to the AidData report, Chinese loan terms are less generous than what Western countries usually offer. Khan said a lack of Western funding for Pakistan left Islamabad with little choice.

“The choice was simply whether to have a power plant or whether to have 12 to 15 hours of electricity shutdown,” Khan said. “So, yes, CPEC did provide Pakistan with a base of necessary infrastructure required for industrial growth. Meanwhile, Western countries have not been able to provide the same over the last many years.”

Under the BRI, China is spending over eight times more in Pakistan than the United States is, according to AidData’s research. The U.S. spends on soft infrastructure in Pakistan such as education, governance, and law and order capacity building, while China spends on hard infrastructure there.

Pakistan is the biggest recipient of China’s energy investment in Asia, while its share of BRI’s transportation and storage projects is the highest in the world.

Along with being Pakistan’s biggest single creditor country, China also routinely rescues it from economic collapse. In the last few months, Beijing rolled over close to $8 billion in debt, according to the Pakistani government, preventing Islamabad from default.

Experts say that to lessen the debt burden stemming from CPEC, Pakistan must find ways to efficiently use the energy and infrastructure it acquired through the mega-project and strengthen domestic production and exports.
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India’s top court has suspended the conviction of Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi in a criminal defamation case, paving the way for the country’s main opposition leader to return to Parliament.

Gandhi was disqualified from Parliament in March after a lower court in the western Gujarat state handed down a two-year jail sentence to him for remarks he had made four years ago at an election rally alluding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surname.

Friday’s suspension of Gandhi’s sentence is a major boost for the opposition Congress Party as it gears up for next year’s general elections.

Unless the top court upholds his conviction and two-year jail term in its final judgment, the ruling will enable Gandhi to contest the upcoming polls.

Under Indian law, a jail term of two years or more makes a person ineligible to be a lawmaker and to contest elections for eight years.

“Come what may, my duty remains the same. Protect the idea of India,” Rahul Gandhi tweeted after the ruling.

Congress Party leaders hailed the court’s decision as a victory for truth and justice.

“This is a win for democracy, for our constitution and the Indian people,” Congress Party President Mallikarjun Kharge said at a press conference.

Party workers danced, distributed sweets and waved flags as they celebrated outside the party’s headquarters in New Delhi.

The Congress Party and several other opposition parties had called the case against Gandhi politically motivated and accused Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, of targeting opposition leaders and crushing free speech. The BJP had said due process of law had been followed.

The Supreme Court said Friday the lower court had cited no reason for imposing the maximum jail term of two years on Gandhi.

Supreme Court Judge B.R. Gavai said that while Gandhi’s remarks were “not in good taste” and he “ought to have been more careful while making public speeches,” the conviction had not only punished him but also voters, who had elected him to represent their constituency. 

“The order of conviction needs to be stayed pending final adjudication,” Gavai said.

The defamation case against Gandhi was filed by a BJP lawmaker in Gujarat state, which is ruled by the BJP.

The jail sentence was imposed for remarks Gandhi made at an election rally in the run-up to the 2019 general elections.

“Why do all thieves have Modi as their surname?” Gandhi said before going on to name fugitive Indian diamond tycoon Nirav Modi, banned Indian Premier League boss Lalit Modi, and Narendra Modi. 

Gandhi said his remarks were meant to highlight corruption and were not directed against any community.

The suspension of Gandhi’s conviction will allow him to contest next year’s polls unless the top court upholds the two-year jail term in its final judgment.

Gandhi’s Congress Party suffered crushing electoral defeats in 2014 and 2019 as Modi led his party to huge victories. This time, the Congress Party and a raft of regional parties have formed an alliance called “India” to mount a collective challenge to Modi.

While Modi is one of India’s most popular leaders in decades, critics accuse him of undermining India’s democracy, polarizing the country along communal lines, and targeting opposition leaders.

The opposition alliance has said the “character of our republic is being severely assaulted in a systematic manner by the BJP” and stated that its goal in next year’s elections is to protect democracy. 
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A once-powerful symbol of harmonious relations between Muslims and Hindus in Indian-administered Kashmir today sits vacant and decaying on a quiet Srinigar side street, providing little more than a backdrop for youngsters practicing their cricket skills and dreaming of a better future.

Founded in 1951 by Hindu Pandit Parmanand Bhat in a Muslim-dominated area, the school known as Rupa Devi Sharda Peeth “stood as a beacon of hope and empowerment for the girl students from underprivileged backgrounds in the region,” recalled Vimla Dhar, a retired professor and the granddaughter of the founder.

At its height, placements in the school were avidly sought by Hindu and Muslim parents, who entrusted almost 700 students to its care at any time. Its attractions included some of Kashmir’s finest scholars among the teaching staff, and a treasured library of rare Sanskrit manuscripts and books — alongside a vast collection of literature in various languages.

Decline set in during the early 1990s when rising Muslim militancy prompted a mass migration of Hindus — almost all members of the Pandit community — from the Kashmir Valley, sharply reducing the number of Hindu students. And on May 8, 1922, a devastating fire destroyed the building along with its magnificent library.

The school carried on in temporary quarters for a few years and then in a newly constructed one-story building under the direction of Bhat’s descendants, but it never regained its former glory. Financial problems finally forced the family to shut it down in 2020, with only a hope of one day reopening.

Bhat established the institute as a tribute to his daughter, Rupa Devi, who suffered an untimely death in 1947. He retired from his position as the account general of the then-undivided princely state of Jammu and Kashmir and donated his pension to finance the school that would bear her name.

The rest of the school’s name comes from Sanskrit, where “Sharda” means “goddess of learning” and “Peeth” means “seat of learning.”

The institution’s original purpose was to educate girls, with a focus on Sanskrit, modern education and vocational skills. However, after initial challenges, the school transitioned towards general schooling and, under Vimla Dhar’s direction, revolutionized the region’s educational landscape by introducing co-education for girls and boys.

Aijaz Ahmed Shalla, a 40-year-old alumnus of the school and successful entrepreneur, reminisced about the impact the institution had on his life. Walking past the now-vacant school building with a VOA reporter, he described his time there as a cherished and irreplaceable part of his childhood.

“It was a place that nurtured and shaped the futures of many brilliant doctors and engineers, instilling within them a passion for knowledge and a drive for excellence,” he said.

Vividly, Shalla recalled the heart-wrenching day when the school was engulfed in flames, leaving the staff and students standing helplessly at a distance. As young children, they could only watch as the seat of their learning and growth turned to ashes.

While the cause of the 1992 fire has never been officially determined, it has long been associated with the militancy of the time.

“As schools were targeted and set ablaze, so was the school run by the Rupa Devi Sharda Peeth Trust,” wrote author Khemlata Wakhlu in her book, “A Kashmiri Century: Portrait of a Society in Flux.”

“With the burning of the school, some of the world’s rarest books and manuscripts — in Pali, Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi, Urdu and English — all went up in smoke! The greatest treasure of Kashmir — the ideas and words of wise and erudite seekers over the ages — which had all been kept intact in the premises of school, were gone. There was nothing left. Everything was burned to ashes.”

Plans to rebuild were dashed when the regional government withdrew the promise of a plot of land, saying the land had already been committed to another purpose.

“After the devastating fire, we faced enormous challenges and we have put in lots of efforts to rebuild Sharda Peeth,” said Dhar, the founder’s granddaughter. “The school was temporarily relocated to an empty building belonging to a migrant Pandit in the aftermath of the incident.”

Dhar and her family kept the school running for most of the next three decades until financial difficulties finally forced them to shut the doors three years ago.

“Despite our best efforts, it became increasingly burdensome to maintain the school’s activities. Eventually, we made the tough decision to cease school operations a couple of years ago temporarily to prevent further strain on already limited finances,” Dhar said.

The loss of the school is keenly felt by local residents like Nazir Ahmed Shora, now in his 60s.

“After the blaze, there was no proper school building, no funds, no playground facility, nothing but students and yet, it survived,” he told VOA. “Now, not a single person in this locality is happy to see the school locked. It’s a terrifying void to experience. We want children back to this abandoned school, to replace silence with jubilant buzz once more.”

Dhar remains uncertain how or if the family will ever be able to re-open the school, but for many neighborhood children, it remains a beacon of hope for a pathway to a better future.

“We practice our cricket skills here, so when the day comes that the school reawakens, we’ll be ready to make friends and have amazing matches together,” enthused Adil Bhat, a 7-year-old local boy who plays with his friends in front of the empty building most evenings.

Wasim Nabi contributed to this article.
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Rohingya refugees living in squalid and sprawling camps in Bangladesh are casting a skeptical eye on a Chinese initiative to facilitate their return to Myanmar, where they were subjected to a campaign of murder and burning by the same military forces that now rule the country.

“We want to return home. However, under this pilot scheme, the Myanmar military will confine us in camps. They won’t allow us to go back to our homes and villages,” Aung Myaing, a Rohingya relief volunteer at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, told VOA by phone.

“We feel that China’s intervention in the Rohingya repatriation issue has been motivated by China’s own self-interest rather than concern for the refugees here. If China truly wishes to assist, it must act to ensure that the Rohingya return safely and with dignity,” he said.

Nearly 1 million Rohingya are living in camps in the border district of Cox’s Bazar, most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017, now the subject of a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.

More than two years since the military coup in Myanmar, China has resumed close ties with the now-ruling junta. On July 27, during a surprise two-day visit to Myanmar, Chinese special envoy Deng Xijun met with key military officials, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

“We had a detailed discussion about our peace process, the stability of the China-Myanmar border region, and security and law enforcement issues,” junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun told VOA by phone.

Chinese representatives, including former Foreign Minister Qin Gang, have made several trips to Myanmar this year. According to analysts, the frequent visits are a sign that China is attempting to reimplement its large investment projects there.

In January, China renewed discussions with Bangladesh about a pilot repatriation program for displaced Rohingya. In April, Deng visited Dhaka to discuss Rohingya repatriation with Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen and Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen. That same month, China hosted a Rohingya repatriation tripartite (China, Myanmar, Bangladesh) meeting in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province.

The committee proposed to repatriate just 1,176 Rohingya under the pilot program. A Rohingya delegation was sent to Myanmar’s Rakhine state to assess housing conditions there, and later that month, a Myanmar delegation met with Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar. According to local news reports, a Bangladeshi official said it was unclear when the pilot program would begin.

China’s involvement

“China is pressing for stability in a region that is part of its Belt and Road Initiative project, specifically the Rohingya’s home, Rakhine state,” Hla Kyaw Zaw, a Burma-China scholar based in China, recently told VOA. “This will connect the important trading hub, the border town, Ruili, in southern Yunnan state, to Kyaukphyu seaport, which lies on the Bay of Bengal.

“As a world power, China likes to be seen as taking the initiative to solve regional issues. China’s slogan is ‘Development, Peace and Cooperation,'” she said. “There is a meeting at the end of this year to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of President Xi Jinping’s BRI project, and the Kyaukphyu deep sea port in Rakhine state is quite important to them, especially now.

“Another factor,” she said, “is that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor plan has already been completed; but in Myanmar, the road has not yet been built. In order to do this more quickly, China stepped in, thinking that it would help to solve the Rohingya problem in Burma.” Burma is another name for Myanmar.

Legacy of violence

China tried to broker an agreement with Myanmar in November 2017 to repatriate about 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who had fled persecution in their home country. Again, in 2019, further efforts were made to return the refugees, but Rohingya refugees rejected the move, fearing a reemergence of the violence that forced them to flee, a sentiment still widely held among Rohingya refugees.

Shwe Maung, a former Rohingya lawmaker during the Thein Sein presidency who now lives in the United States, told VOA that the Rohingya have serious reservations about China’s involvement.

“China is characterizing the Rohingya pilot repatriation project as a kind of humanitarian aid,” Shwe Maung said. “In fact, it should be seen through the lens of their actions against the minority Uyghur Muslims in their own country. They are put in prison camps called ‘educational camps’ and cut off from the world.”

He continued: “Since the coup in Myanmar, the world’s attention to the Rohingya issue has diminished, which is beneficial for both China and the junta’s interests.”

According to Shwe Maung, China has provided the junta with an example of how to control the Rohingya in a new way.

“The junta likes the way the Uyghurs were controlled,” he said. “More than 1,000 Rohingya who are now slated to be sent back to their home country will be kept in a detention center. This detention center will become a concentration camp in the long run.”

Bangladesh’s role

As the host country to one of the world’s largest refugee populations, Bangladesh has sought cooperation from the international community, including China, to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.

China is an important trade partner for Bangladesh, mostly for raw materials used in manufacturing, and the two countries get along well. But keeping close ties with Beijing is not easy for Bangladesh since it must balance political and trade ties with China’s major rivals: India and the United States.

Aung Myaing, the relief volunteer, told VOA that the government and the people of Bangladesh support repatriation of the Rohingya refugees to Myanmar.

“The prime minister of Bangladesh has appealed directly to the United Nations and the international community for help to resolve the crisis,” he said. “Bangladesh is also involved in the International Criminal Court case of possible crimes against humanity in Myanmar since 2019.”

He continued: “The international community, however, hasn’t been able to provide effective assistance in the past six years. Bangladesh is a very densely populated country with many internal issues that make hosting so many refugees that much more difficult. Therefore, international aid should be provided quickly and effectively.”

Yearn to return

“Looking at the situation in Myanmar,” Aung Myaing said, “the military junta has yet to resettle the Rohingya IDP [internally displaced persons] to their homes in Rakhine state. If we do any pilot resettlement projects, we should deal with IDP in Myanmar first. Only after we do that, we can begin the process of repatriation of Rohingya currently in Bangladesh.”

Aung Myaing is keen to return to Myanmar but says he wants his citizenship rights there guaranteed. “We are the citizens of Myanmar by birth. We want to go back home with all our rights, including citizenship, free movement, livelihood, safety and security,” he told VOA, adding that, “the refugees here still hold out hope for help from the international community, including from the United Nations.” 
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Iran announced Thursday its readiness to help urgently complete and operationalize a long-delayed multibillion dollar pipeline to export natural gas to neighboring Pakistan.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, on a three-day visit to Islamabad, made the remarks after delegation-level talks with his Pakistani counterpart, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

“We held important discussions on how we can find solutions to some existing banking and financial problems between the two countries within the framework of the international rules and regulations,” Abdollahian told a joint news conference without elaborating. He spoke through his official interpreter.

Tehran maintains that it has finished constructing the nearly 2,700-kilometer pipeline on its side of the border to export Iranian gas to the energy-deficient South Asian neighboring country and is waiting for Islamabad to complete its part of the project.

Pakistani officials told a parliamentary committee hearing earlier this year the agreement that the two countries signed nearly a decade ago requires Pakistan to complete its portion of the pipeline by March 2024 or pay $18 billion in financial penalties to Iran.

Islamabad maintains that sanctions the United States has imposed on Iran over its nuclear program have deterred Pakistan from constructing the pipeline.

Cash-strapped Pakistan reportedly sent a delegation to Washington in March to request the U.S. administration to allow Islamabad to build the pipeline or help pay the expected financial penalty. The mainstream Pakistani Dawn newspaper reported at the time that “Washington is still reviewing the request.”

Speaking Thursday, the Iranian foreign minister underscored the project’s importance for both countries but did not say if Tehran would ask for the penalty in case Islamabad fails to meet the completion deadline.

“We do believe that the completion of the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline is definitely going to serve the national interests of these two countries,” Abdollahian said.

Zardari, reading from a written statement, said he discussed a wide range of bilateral and regional issues with his Iranian counterpart but did not discuss the fate of the gas pipeline project.

Officials in Islamabad have consistently maintained they remain committed to the pipeline, calling it an “important project that symbolizes the friendship between Pakistan and our neighbor.”

Last May, Iran and Pakistan jointly inaugurated a marketplace and a power transmission line along their nearly 900-kilometer border in a significant move aimed at expanding bilateral, regional trade and energy cooperation.

Abdollahian said Thursday that in his discussions with Zardari, the two sides agreed to double the annual volume of bilateral trade to $5 billion. He said more border marketplaces would also be set up in the coming months to help enhance the business activity.

“Both sides remain committed and determined to get away from borders mostly characterized by security concerns and issues and move more towards making them as points of interaction, making them borders of economy and trade that can serve the interest of the two countries,” the Iranian chief diplomat said.

Insurgent attacks on both sides of their shared border have long strained relations between Iran and Pakistan. Both sides accuse the other of not doing enough to deny sanctuaries to militants operating on their respective soils.
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Taliban leaders in Afghanistan have called on Pakistan to share its “concerns” on cross-border terrorism formally instead of leveling unfounded allegations in the media.

Pakistani officials blame a recent uptick in terrorist attacks on the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, and militants linked to other extremist groups, allegedly from Afghan sanctuaries.  

Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid refuted the allegations Thursday and reiterated that his government does not allow anyone to use the territory of Afghanistan against another country.  

“If there is any concern about this, it should be shared directly with the Islamic Emirate instead of disseminating futile claims in the media, which are not in the interest of both countries and people,” Mujahid said in his statement, using the official name of his two-year-old government in Kabul.  

The rebuttal comes a day after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other Pakistani officials said that anti-state militants had found sanctuaries inside Afghanistan and stepped up cross-border attacks since the Taliban seized control of the country.  

Sharif called on de facto Afghan authorities to take “concrete measures toward denying their soil be used for transnational terrorism.”

Last Sunday, a suicide bomber struck a pro-election rally in the northwestern border town of Khar, killing 63 Pakistanis and injuring dozens more. Islamic State Khorasan Province, or IS-K, an Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State terrorist group, claimed it carried out that bombing.

Pakistani authorities have maintained that the TTP attacked a military base in the southwestern city of Zhob last month with the help of heavily armed fighters of the Afghan Taliban. The July 12 raid killed at least nine soldiers and five assailants in ensuing hours-long gun battles.

A foreign ministry statement said Wednesday that three of the slain “terrorists” had been identified as Afghan nationals who lived in the Afghan border province of Kandahar. It noted that Islamabad had asked the Afghan Embassy to receive the bodies of the slain terrorists.

“It’s an easy excuse to ask for evidence. What about Zhob attackers?” a senior Pakistani foreign ministry official told VOA when asked for his response to Thursday’s claims by the Taliban that they were not allowing the use of Afghan soil for cross-border attacks.  

Pakistani officials report a 70% increase in TTP-led terrorist attacks since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, when all American and NATO troops chaotically withdrew after nearly 20 years of involvement in the Afghan war.  

“Statistics show that Pakistan has experienced a quantitative rise in [terrorism] after the fall of Kabul [to the Taliban],” Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said Wednesday. “Also, weapons left behind by U.S. and NATO forces, unfortunately, have now found themselves in the hands of terrorists and criminal organizations,” Zardari told reporters in the Pakistani capital.  

Militant violence has killed more than 450 people, including security forces, across Pakistan in the first seven months of 2023. The Pakistani military has confirmed the killing of more than 120 officers and soldiers this year alone.   

The TTP, also referred to as the Pakistani Taliban, is known to be an offshoot and a close ally of the Afghan Taliban. It is listed as a global terrorist organization by the United States.  

The United Nations, in a report released late last month, noted that up to 6,000 TTP members are operating out of Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover has “emboldened” them. It is “gaining momentum in its operations against Pakistan and aspires to regain control of territory within the country,” the report said.  

“In June, certain TTP elements were relocated away from the border area, as part of the Taliban’s efforts to rein in the group under pressure from the government of Pakistan,” the U.N. report said. It warned that the TTP could become a regional threat if it continues to have a safe operating base in Afghanistan.

 
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Refusing to recognize the Taliban as legitimate rulers of Afghanistan and maintaining sanctions on the group’s leaders, the United States continues to reject calls by some former Afghan allies to help topple the extremist regime. 

Last week, Abdul Rashid Dostum, the former vice president of Afghanistan who backed U.S. Special Forces in ousting the Taliban in 2001, claimed he would be able to amass enough forces to overthrow the Taliban again, if only the United States supported him. 

At least two other former Afghan generals — Sami Sadat and Khoshal Sadat — have spent several months in the U.S. seeking support from veterans, lawmakers and other groups for a potential war against the Taliban. 

But the U.S. government response has been unequivocal.

“The United States does not want to see a return to violence in Afghanistan, and we do not support armed opposition to the Taliban,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, who spoke on background. 

The denial of support comes with a piece of advice to Afghan groups that want to defeat the Taliban militarily. 

“We call on all sides to exercise restraint and to engage. This is the only way that Afghanistan can confront its many challenges,” the spokesperson told VOA.  

U.S. officials say they are aware of former Afghan officials visiting the United States and advocating for armed resistance to the Taliban, but they cannot stop them because the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of expression for everyone inside the country. 

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 left no military support for former allies in the country and disappointed those that oppose the Taliban. 

“We feel betrayed. We feel left alone. … We are empty-handed,” Ahmad Massoud, leader of an anti-Taliban group, told an Aspen Security Forum last week from an undisclosed location via a video call. 

Since seizing power two years ago, the Taliban have controlled all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces largely uncontested, except for periodic attacks by Islamic State-Khorasan Province.

The Taliban and IS Khorasan each have declared religious war against each other.

The U.S. government has designated leaders of the Taliban and IS-Khorasan as terrorists. However, the Taliban have made counterterrorism commitments to the U.S. under the 2020 Doha Agreement.  

“The Taliban have shown themselves to be an active, and at times, effective actor against the Islamic State,” said Jonathan Schroden, director of the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the Center for Naval Analyses, a nonprofit military research group.

However, the Taliban have taken no serious actions against other groups such as al-Qaida and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which “is troubling to the U.S. and its Western allies, as well as to China, Russia and other regional countries,” Schroden said. 

Last week, an IS-Khorasan propaganda wing reportedly issued pamphlets calling on anti-Taliban groups to join arms in their war against the Taliban.   

Nearly all Afghan anti-Taliban leaders reside outside of Afghanistan, making it practically impossible for them to openly align with IS-Khorasan, a globally condemned terrorist group. 

The U.S. policy of not supporting anti-Taliban factions is premised on the notion that giving such aid would escalate the conflict and allow for the expansion of terrorist actors, Schroden said.

Taliban engagement

After suspending direct engagement with the Taliban for months, U.S. diplomats resumed face-to-face talks with Taliban officials in Doha, Qatar, this week. The talks revolved around some of the most contentious issues, including the Taliban’s ban on women’s work and education, which has drawn universal condemnation.

Both sides have reported progress and a desire to continue the engagement policy. 

“The Taliban will not go away by ignoring them,” said Obaidullah Baheer, an Afghan analyst and adjunct lecturer at The New School in New York. 

Baheer said U.S. engagement with the Taliban should not solely depend on contentious human rights conditions but include expectations for the establishment of a new constitutional order in Afghanistan and curbing the god-like powers of the Taliban’s unseen supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada. 

For the U.S., a primary objective in engaging the Taliban has been counterterrorism.

During the two-day meetings in Doha, “U.S. officials took note of the Taliban’s continuing commitment to not allow the territory of Afghanistan to be used by anyone to threaten the United States and its allies, and the two sides discussed Taliban efforts to fulfill security commitments,” according to a statement from the U.S. State Department.

Speaking at an online forum on Tuesday, Mohammad Mohaqiq, an ethnic Hazara warlord and a former Afghan minister, said the many anti-Taliban factions also lack support from Afghanistan’s neighboring countries for a number of reasons, including fears of an expanded armed conflict in the region. 

“We must wait,” Mohaqiq said. 
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India’s top court Wednesday began hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutionality of the legislation passed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 2019 that stripped disputed Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood, scrapped its separate constitution and removed inherited protections on land and jobs.

The five-judge constitutional bench that includes the Supreme Court’s chief justice is simultaneously hearing a series of petitions challenging the special status granted to the region after its accession with newly independent India in 1947. Such petitions were filed before the 2019 changes.

The unprecedented move divided the region into two federal territories — Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir, both ruled directly by the central government without a legislature of their own. The move’s immediate implications were that the Muslim-majority region is now run by bureaucrats with no democratic credentials and lost its flag, criminal code and constitution.

“The case is before the country’s top-most constitutional bench. We are optimistic as we know our case is very strong,” said Hasnain Masoodi, a Kashmir-based Indian lawmaker who was one of the first petitioners challenging the Modi government’s decision. He also served as a judge at Kashmir’s high court.

“This constitutional framework provided a mechanism to be part of the Indian union. The abrogation was a betrayal and an assault on our identity,” he said.

Masoodi, who is part of Kashmir region’s largest political party, the National Conference, said the 2019 decision “violated every norm and mechanism” under India’s constitution and its “gross violation in letter and spirit.”

Soon after, Indian officials began integrating Kashmir into the rest of India with administrative changes enacted without public input. A domicile law rolled out in 2020 made it possible for any Indian national who has lived in the region for at least 15 years or has studied for seven years to become a permanent resident of the region. That same year, the government also eased rules for Indian soldiers to acquire land in Kashmir and build “strategic” settlements.

Indian authorities have called the new residency rights an overdue measure to foster greater economic development, but critics say it could alter the population’s makeup.

Many Kashmiris worry that an influx of outsiders could alter the results of a plebiscite if it were to ever take place, even though it was promised under the 1948 United Nations resolutions that gave Kashmir the choice of joining either Pakistan or India.

The stunning mountain region has known little but conflict since 1947, when British rule of the Indian subcontinent divided the territory between the newly created India and Pakistan. Kashmiri separatists launched a full-blown armed revolt in 1989, seeking unification with Pakistan or complete independence.

Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country. New Delhi insists the Kashmir militancy in Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, a charge Islamabad denies. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

Many Muslim ethnic Kashmiris view the 2019 changes as an annexation, while members of minority Hindu and Buddhist communities initially welcomed the move but later expressed fear of losing land and jobs in the pristine Himalayan region.

While deeply unpopular in Kashmir, the move resonated in much of India, where the Modi government was cheered by supporters for fulfilling a long-held Hindu nationalist pledge to scrap the restive region’s special privileges.

In New Delhi’s effort to shape what it calls “Naya Kashmir,” or a “new Kashmir,” the territory’s people have, however, been largely silenced, with their civil liberties curbed, as India has shown no tolerance for any form of dissent.

Kashmir’s press has also faced major difficulties. Many journalists in the region have since been intimated, harassed, summoned to police stations and sometimes arrested. The administration also implemented a new media policy that seeks to control reporting.
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