DRULAP

Death Scene in Burned Ferry Moves Filipino Rescuers to Tears

A Philippine coast guard commander said Friday that the tragic scenes of death his team saw aboard a gutted ferry, including bodies of adults clutching children, had moved them to tears and sparked fears other passengers could be found dead in the still-smoldering ship.

At least 29 of more than 250 people onboard the M/V Lady Mary Joy 3 were killed in the blaze that raged through the ferry Wednesday while it was on an overnight trip from the southern Zamboanga city to Jolo town in Sulu province. At least seven passengers, including two army soldiers, remained missing in the country’s deadliest sea disaster this year, the coast guard said.

Basilan Governor Jim Hataman initially reported 31 deaths Thursday but later reduced the toll to 29 after search and rescue groups cross-checked their figures.

All 35 crew members survived, including the captain, who issued an abandon-ship order when the fire hit close to midnight and then ran the ferry aground on an island off Basilan province to give remaining passengers a better chance to survive, coast guard officials said.

Many passengers jumped into the sea in panic without life jackets and were saved by rescuers but at least 11 drowned. When a team of coast guard personnel, including Bureau of Fire officers, boarded the burned ferry on Baluk-baluk island’s coast, they discovered the bodies of 18 passengers scattered on the uppermost open-air economy deck and another floor below, coast guard Commander Chadley Salahuddin said.

The passengers, including an adult clutching a child by the railing, could have easily jumped into the sea and survived like many others but failed to do so for unclear reasons. Two passengers, apparently siblings who were among the missing, were found holding each other in a bathroom, he said.

“When I first saw that scene, I was moved to tears with some of my men,” Salahuddin told The Associated Press by telephone. “It was a short journey. Why did so many have to die?”

“What if my mother or my other loved ones were the ones who were trapped here? They were just a step away from the open sides but why did they not jump off like the others?” Salahuddin asked.

The passengers, some of whom were burned beyond recognition, could have been overcome by smoke and passed out or could have been immobilized by injuries. Some survivors said they heard a series of firecracker-like blasts during the fire, but Salahuddin said all those details could only be confirmed by investigators.

He feared more bodies could be found in the lower enclosed decks, which remained dangerously hot and could not be inspected Thursday by his team.

His team found a partly burned rifle, which may have been left by a police officer who was among the passengers who survived, Salahuddin said, adding that there was no sign of a bomb explosion at least in the upper decks that they managed to inspect.

The steel-hulled ferry could accommodate up to 430 people and was not overcrowded, said another coast guard official, Commodore Rejard Marfe.

According to the manifest, it was carrying 205 passengers and a 35-member crew, Marfe said. In addition, it had a security contingent of four coast guard marshals, who all survived. Eight soldiers were traveling to Sulu.

Threats posed by Muslim insurgents, including those aligned with the Islamic State group, remain a security issue in the southern Philippines, where cargo and passenger ships are provided extra security by the coast guard and other law enforcement agencies in vulnerable regions.

Marfe said officials are investigating whether the 33-year-old ferry was seaworthy, if there were passengers not listed on the manifest, and whether the crew properly guided passengers to safety.

Sea accidents are common in the Philippines because of frequent storms, badly maintained vessels, overcrowding and spotty enforcement of safety regulations, especially in remote provinces.

In December 1987, the ferry Dona Paz sank after colliding with a fuel tanker, killing more than 4,300 people in the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster.
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Stampede for Food Aid Kills 11 in Pakistan

Authorities in Pakistan said Friday that a stampede at a free-food distribution center in the southern port city of Karachi had killed at least 11 people and injured five others.

Local police and rescue workers in the impoverished country’s largest city said the victims were mainly women and children.

The stampede occurred outside a Karachi factory where a distribution center for employees had been set up in connection with the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Hundreds of people in the crowd, made up mostly of women, panicked and started pushing each other to collect food, with some falling into a nearby drain, witnesses and police said.

Friday’s incident brought the death toll from stampedes at private- and government-funded food aid centers to at least 22 in recent days as Pakistanis struggle with soaring costs of basic staples and food items.

The South Asian nation of about 232 million people is suffering through one of its worse economic crises in decades.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government rolled out a free-flour distribution project at the start of Ramadan to help millions of low-income families offset the impact of record-breaking inflation. Official estimates suggest inflation is running above 40%, a five-decade high, with the price of flour skyrocketing more than 45% in the past year.

The government initiative has resulted in thousands of people crowding distribution centers. Families say a lack of proper arrangements to accommodate large crowds in some districts has triggered deadly stampedes over fears of not being able to get the free flour.

Authorities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces collectively reported 11 deaths as of Thursday. Thousands of bags of flour have also been looted from trucks and distribution points, according to officials.

The deadly rush underscored the desperation in the face of soaring costs, exacerbated by the falling rupee exchange rate and the removal of fuel subsidies. Government cuts were required for the International Monetary Fund to unlock the latest tranche of its financial support package.

Critics have slammed the government for launching the project without putting in place proper arrangements to ensure the safety of people.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan blamed what it said was the mismanagement of the flour distribution center for the deadly stampedes.

In a statement Friday, the watchdog described the Karachi incident as particularly alarming and demanded the government immediately improve the distribution system across the country.

“This situation is adding insult to injury for marginalized people of Pakistan who are braving the economic injustice perpetrated by the elites who dominate the state,” the HRCP said.

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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India’s Five-Decade Battle to Save Tiger Succeeding, but Road Ahead Challenging

Five decades ago, a count of tigers in India revealed that their numbers had plummeted from tens of thousands to about 1,800 as they fell prey to recreational hunting or lost habitat to a growing population pressing into forests.

That prompted India to launch one of the world’s most ambitious conservation projects. In April 1973, the tiger was declared the country’s national animal and protected areas were set up to conserve a species that lies at the top of the food chain. Hunting had been outlawed months earlier.

In its 50 years, Project Tiger has seen many ups and downs. But the nearly 3,000 tigers that now roam India’s forests show the mighty cat has been saved from extinction, although conservationists warn that it still counts as an endangered species.

“I rate it as one of the finest examples in the annals of conservation globally. It is not matched anywhere in the magnitude, scale and effort,” said Rajesh Gopal, secretary-general of the Global Tiger Forum.

“But we are still very much in project mode because the treasure you are guarding is unlocked and mobile and there is always a new challenge to overcome,” he told VOA.

Over the years, the number of sanctuaries has grown from nine to 54 and India is now home to 70% of the world’s tigers, which have disappeared from all except 13 countries in South and Southeast Asia.

The battle was not easy. More than 30 years after the project was launched, a census in 2006 rang alarm bells when it indicated that the tiger population had declined to 1,411. The wake-up call led authorities to refocus strategies to save the species.

A major threat to tigers was the rampant poaching of the predator as rising affluence in China and East Asian countries fueled growing demand for tiger parts used in traditional Chinese medicine.

But increased surveillance and better technology paid dividends in checking the thriving illegal trade in tigers and, while poaching has not ended, it no longer poses a significant threat, according to wildlife experts.

They say, though, that the challenges over the next 50 years could be greater than those of the past half century. The most pressing is the risk to tiger habitats from the ever-growing demand for land and resources in a rapidly developing country.

“There is the enormous pressure of the economic transformation of India – the building of highways, roads and mines that are cutting off access to what once used to be wildlife corridors along which tigers moved unhindered between forest landscapes in search of territory,” said Mahesh Rangarajan, professor of environmental studies and history at Ashoka University in Haryana.

“This also raises a biological challenge – the danger of inbreeding of tiger populations as some of these reserves get cut off from one another,” he said.

While tiger habitats have been secured, coexistence of the world’s second-largest population in a densely packed country of 1.4 billion with the world’s largest tiger population is not easy. Even though hundreds of villages have been relocated from sanctuaries to make space for the tigers, many parks are adjacent to human settlements into which tigers sometimes stray, resulting in increasing incidents of human-tiger conflict.

“A third of the tigers are still living outside protected areas and their prey often becomes livestock due to dwindling prey species due to hunting in the forests,” Rangarajan said.

“There have been many incidents of tiger attacks on humans and also the reverse, that is the killing of tigers by villagers in retaliation. This needs serious redressal.”

Some conservationists also question whether the single-minded focus on tigers needs to be broadened and say the tiger should be seen as a symbol of sustainable development.

“When we launched the project, the vision was that the tiger was a means to an end, to utilize it as an iconic flagship species to save something much more valuable than the tiger itself – the diverse habitat of which the tiger is an integral part but not its only representative,” said M.K. Ranjitsinh, who was the country’s first wildlife preservation director and was associated with Project Tiger.

“The project has been a success, but the focus is now too species-centric. We judge a wildlife reserve by the number of tigers it holds instead of seeing whether the entire ecosystem, the other species and flora and fauna in the park, are also flourishing,” Ranjitsinh said.

Experts say that in coming decades, the focus should be on stabilizing the tiger population rather than increasing numbers.

“The tiger reserves are already reaching their carrying capacity. If we try to increase the tiger population beyond a point, we will land in a situation where we will be grappling with other problems such as more incidents of tiger-human conflict,” said Gopal, who headed Project Tiger for several years. “We don’t want the tiger to gain a pest value. We have to balance the needs of the tiger with that of more than a billion people.”

India will reveal the results of the latest tiger census during a three-day event starting April 9 to commemorate 50 years of the project.

Regardless of the numbers, though, conservationists say India is now indisputably the world’s greatest tiger stronghold.
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Activists Criticize Journalist’s Arrest on Terror Charges in India-Administered Kashmir

Activists this week described the March 20 arrest of Kashmiri freelance journalist Irfan Mehraj for association with a Kashmir-based human rights group as another in a series of instances of Indian government punishment of journalists and activists who expose rights abuses in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Mehraj was arrested by India’s National Investigation Agency for his connection with Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, or JKCCS, for which he provided research support. The organization, a federation of rights organizations and individuals in Indian-administered Kashmir, is being investigated as part of what is known as the “NGO terror funding case” — security agencies allege that several organizations have funded Kashmiri terrorist groups.

The group’s leader, Kashmiri rights activist Khurram Parvez, had been detained on terrorism-related charges since November 2021. He was formally arrested in the terror funding case March 22.

Mehraj worked for such Indian news portals as Article 14 and The Caravan magazine. He also contributed to international media outlets, including Deutsche Welle and Al Jazeera, apart from his work for the JKCCS.

“Investigation revealed that the JKCCS was funding terror activities in [Kashmir] valley and had also been in the propagation of secessionist agenda in the Valley under the garb of protection of human rights,” the NIA said in a statement after Mehraj’s arrest.

However, Mehraj’s arrest “for his principled articulations is grievous,” Angana Chatterji, a University of California at Berkeley scholar who has long worked on Kashmir human rights issues, said.

“The strategy of the Indian government to brand certain Kashmiri journalists and human rights defenders as agents of ‘terror’ is an assault on freedom of speech and seeks to effectively silence reportage on the egregious political violence and human rights abuses in Indian-administered Kashmir,” Chatterji told VOA.

The crackdown on journalists and rights activists has increased since August 2019, when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led national government unilaterally revoked the autonomy that Kashmir had had for 70 years, dissolved its government, and brought it fully under the control of the central Indian government.

In the past 3½ years, dozens of Kashmiri journalists have been summoned by the security agencies for background checks or to explain their stories, or their houses were raided. Some of them were arrested and jailed.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, four Kashmiri journalists, including Mehraj, are now in jail.

Dilbag Singh, director general of police for Jammu and Kashmir, did not respond to a WhatsApp request from the VOA for comment on the issue.

New Delhi-based senior BJP leader Alok Vats told VOA, however, that whatever security-related actions the government is taking in Kashmir are in the interest of peace and stability in the region.

“Under the garb of journalism and human rights activism, many secessionists and unlawful people are at work in Kashmir, in collaboration with the terrorist organizations. They are aiming to disrupt the region’s peace and stability, ” Vats said.

“The government is simply acting to stop those subversive activities. In this process suspects are arrested and questioned, to establish their links with terrorist organizations. Their arrest and interrogation in custody are fully justified.”

Several global media rights groups, including Reporters Without Borders, have condemned the arrest of Mehraj and sought his immediate release.

Daniel Bastard, head of the organization’s Asia-Pacific desk called Mehraj “an experienced, responsible and careful reporter who has no place being in prison.”

“Special laws intended to combat terrorism should not be used to suppress the activities of journalists,” he said.

A Kashmir-based journalist said journalists and rights activists are being targeted by the government “primarily because they are exposing rights violations committed by the forces.”

“The government is punishing some journalists to send out a message to others that any journalist or human rights activist daring to expose rights violation in Kashmir would face punishment,” the journalist who did not want to be identified told VOA.

Meenakshi Ganguly, south Asia director of Human Rights Watch told VOA the Indian authorities need to uphold human rights protections in Kashmir instead of punishing activists and journalists that draw attention to problems.

“Arbitrary arrests of journalists under draconian counterterrorism laws only exposes the Indian government to allegations that it is repressive, discriminatory and authoritarian,” Ganguly said.

Mehraj’s arrest is “another indication of the erosion of rights and democracy in India” under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, Rohit Chopra, an associate professor at Santa Clara University in the U.S., told VOA.

“Like all regimes that seek to consolidate power at the expense of rights, the Modi regime wishes to control the flow of information and censor stories of state repression and rights violations. Mehraj’s deep understanding of Kashmiri society and his record of work challenges the official narratives about Kashmir trotted out by the government,” Chopra said.

“Kashmir activists are likely being targeted for the same reason that they might bring to light rights violations, a crackdown on ordinary freedoms of Kashmiris, and the fact that all is not hunky-dory in Kashmir.”

With elections set for next year in India, “Modi is keen to project an image as a hypernationalist strong leader and immobilize any sources of criticism,” he added.

“This strategy had worked for the BJP and him in 2019, so we will likely see jingoistic chest-thumping and stronger state repression in India in the months to follow,” he said.
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35 Die in India When Well Cover Collapses

Indian officials said Friday at least 35 people fell to their deaths Thursday and 16 were injured when the cover of a well collapsed in a temple complex in Indore in Madhya Pradesh state. One person remains unaccounted for.

“The stepwell was covered, but the slab covering it collapsed because of the crowd and extra load on it,” Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said.

The well had not been in use for years.

Dozens of emergency workers, including army personnel, were called to the site where worshippers had been celebrating a festival for the deity Rama.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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03/30/2023 DruchinaChina

Rare Trade Occurs Between Pakistan, Israel

An association of American Jews on Thursday hailed what it said was the first shipment from Pakistan of food products offloaded in Israel.

The transaction this week involved Pakistani-Jewish businessman Fishel BenKhald and three Israeli businesspeople, the American Jewish Congress said in a statement from its New York headquarters.

BenKhald lives in Karachi, the largest city in the Muslim-majority nation, where he runs a Jewish kosher certification business for food manufacturers exporting products to destinations worldwide. He disclosed the rare bilateral trade via Twitter on Tuesday.

The businessman posted a video clip of his items, including dates, dry fruit and spices, on display in a Jerusalem market. The clip has since garnered more than 640,000 views.

“I was not expecting it to be taken that big of a deal,” BenKhald said in written comments to VOA, adding that this was not the first export of Pakistani products to Israel.

“The Israeli government and buyers have no problem accepting the direct shipment from Pakistan,” he said, adding that Israel does not have a problem sending payments to Pakistani banks.

BenKhald’s initiative was mainly praised by his Pakistani Twitter followers, including journalists, politicians and businesspeople, some of whom asked for his advice on how to sell their products to Israel. He attempted to reply to every message.

“Congrats brother, you are doing excellent service that diplomats and politicians couldn’t do,” wrote Syed Wiqas Shah, a prime-time television news show host.

“Time for both the countries to initiate dialogue and for this citizens-to-citizens contact could play a vital role in bringing both the countries close to each other,” wrote Zameer Ahmed Malik.

Pakistani officials did not immediately comment on the rare trade.

Islamabad does not have diplomatic ties with Israel and refuses to recognize it as a sovereign state until the state of Palestine is established — a long-running policy of many Muslim-majority countries.

But the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain forged relations with Israel in 2020 under the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords. Sudan and Morocco followed suit.

“Trade exhibits hosted by the UAE helped Pakistani and Israeli businessmen conclude a deal that enabled this week’s Pakistani shipment to Israel,” the American Jewish Congress noted. “We welcome this small step that can have wider implications for Israeli and Pakistani economies and for the region at large.”

Pakistan is an acknowledged nuclear power and Israel is widely understood to have nuclear weapons. The two countries have held secret meetings on security-related issues since their foreign ministers met publicly in 2005. Pakistani Islamic groups and right-wing parties vehemently oppose forging bilateral ties with Israel over the Palestinian issue.

Pakistani citizens are barred from visiting Israel because the country’s passport clearly says it is valid for all countries of the world except Israel.

BenKhald was among a group of Pakistanis who undertook a rare trip to Israel last year and visited the Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem known as the Western Wall. The 15-member group of primarily Pakistani Americans, who traveled on their U.S. passports, was organized by an American Muslim women’s activist group in collaboration with an Israeli organization promoting ties with Muslim countries.

The visit drew a rebuke from Pakistani opposition politicians warning the government against ending Islamabad’s official boycott of Israel. The reaction intensified after Israeli President Isaac Herzog told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, about his private meeting with the delegation at his Jerusalem residence in early May 2022.

“I must say, this was an amazing experience because we haven’t had a group of Pakistani leaders in Israel ever in such scope, and that all stemmed from the Abraham Accords,” Herzog said.

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03/30/2023 DruchinaChina

Taliban Under Fire for Alleged Afghan Civil Society Crackdown

Human rights defenders have alleged that Taliban authorities in Afghanistan are increasingly targeting civil society activists and media workers critical of their curbs on women’s access to education and most areas of public life.

Afghan civil society sources, who did not want to be named due to safety concerns, said this week’s arrest of Matiullah Wesa, a well-known education activist and founder of the PenPath community-based education support network, is part of a larger crackdown in the country.

The de facto Taliban authorities have detained “many lesser-known non-governmental organization workers on trumped up charges” in recent months, the civil society sources and former detainees told VOA. The Taliban spy agency, the General Directorate of Intelligence, or GDI, is leading the clampdown, the sources said.

Since returning to power in Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban have closed secondary schools for girls beyond grade six and recently suspended female students from attending universities and other higher education institutions.

Rasul Abdi Parsi, a former Herat University professor, was detained several weeks ago, reportedly over his Facebook posts critical of the hardline rulers.

“With the Taliban’s tight restrictions on local media, many other arrests of activists likely go unreported, especially in Afghanistan’s more remote provinces,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement Thursday, expressing concerns over the crackdown.

The watchdog group lamented that Taliban authorities rarely provide information about reasons for those arrests or when those arrested will be put on trial, if ever.

“Those in custody lack access to lawyers and, in most cases, family members are not even allowed to visit them,” the statement said.

Wesa’s relatives said he was picked up on Monday evening outside a mosque after prayers in the capital, Kabul, because he was campaigning against the ban on girls’ education.

Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, confirming Wesa’s arrest for the first time on Wednesday, told VOA that the GDI had “some suspicious information” about him that was “a cause of concern” for the government.

Mujahid did not elaborate and defended the official action.

“The government must detain and investigate suspicious people to ensure public order,” he said.

On Wednesday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights office said that a “concerning number of civil society activists” have been detained since early 2023 without clear information about their whereabouts.

The statement identified some Afghan detainees, including Nargis Sadat, Zakaria Osuli, Sultan Ali Ziaee, Khairullah Parhar and Mortaza Behboudi.

Jeremy Laurence, the UNHCR spokesperson, was quoted as describing the ongoing “arbitrary arrests” and detentions as alarming.

“We call for the immediate release of all those arbitrarily detained. … Arrest or detention as punishment for the legitimate exercise of fundamental rights, such as the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, is arbitrary under international human rights law,” said Laurence in a statement.

“The Taliban seem to believe that crushing all criticism is the path to political legitimacy. … These arbitrary arrests and detentions are only imperiling Afghanistan’s future,” said Human Rights Watch.

The international community has refused to formally recognize the Taliban government, citing the treatment of Afghan women, among other human rights concerns.

The radical leaders have rejected calls for removing the bans and instead defend their governance, saying it aligns with their interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan culture.

In an apparent attempt to convey to the world that the Taliban are not ready to reverse their rules for women, they re-issued this week a recent speech of their reclusive chief Hibatullah Akhundzada with English subtitles.

“What do you have to do with what I do, my government, my country, or my principles? Why do you interfere?” the Taliban chief asked. “I will not move even one step with you or interact with you, nor will I engage in a transaction with you at the cost of this Sharia [Islamic law].”
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03/30/2023 DruchinaChina

Pakistani Taliban Kill 4 Police Officers, Injure 6

Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Thursday that a predawn militant assault on a police outpost and subsequent roadside bomb blast had killed four police officers and wounded six others.

The deadly violence occurred in Lakki Marwat district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.

A provincial police statement said that militants raided a security outpost in the area, injuring six security forces. It added that a nearby police station had quickly dispatched reinforcements to respond to the attack when their vehicle was blown up on the way by an “improvised explosive device.” The ensuing blast killed four officers.

The Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for what it claimed was a coordinated gun and bomb assault. The outlawed group, known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, has intensified attacks, killing hundreds of people in recent months, mostly security forces.

The insurgent violence has resurged since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, as all U.S. and NATO troops withdrew from the country after two decades of involvement in the Afghan war.

Pakistan has maintained fugitive TTP leaders operate out of their Afghan bases. Officials say the militants have enjoyed “greater operational freedom” since the Taliban took control of the war-torn country.

The Pakistani Taliban, an offshoot and a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, is also designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and Britain.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif claimed last week that some of the weaponry the withdrawing U.S.-led coalition troops left behind in Afghanistan had surfaced in his country, further arming TTP and other insurgents.

“They have sophisticated weapons. There is no doubt about it. They have night vision devices,” Asif told a small group of reporters last Friday without elaborating.

Pakistani security forces have lately reported coming under increased nighttime raids by TTP insurgents and suffering heavy casualties eventually.

A recent counterterrorism department assessment of new TTP propaganda videos has found insurgents carrying U.S.-made weapons, such as M4 carbines with Trijicon ACOG scopes, M16A4 assault rifles with Pulsar Apex XD50 thermal scopes, and M82 semi-automatic anti-material sniper rifles with a range of up to 1.8 kilometers.

“These weapons were not secured and ended up in Afghanistan’s weapons black market,” according to a copy of the assessment seen by VOA. The weapons “allow TTP militants to target Pakistani security forces at night over long distances,” it noted.

More than $7.1 billion in U.S.-funded military equipment was in the inventory of the former Afghan government when it collapsed in the face of then-insurgent Taliban nationwide attacks amid the foreign troop exit 19 months ago, the U.S. Department of Defense estimated in a report released in August.

“The U.S. military removed or destroyed nearly all major equipment used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan throughout the drawdown period in 2021,” the report said.

Islamabad has been demanding the new rulers in Kabul evict or rein in TTP activities. Instead, the de facto Afghan authorities brokered and hosted peace talks between Pakistani government officials and the TTP, but the process collapsed in November.

The recent spike in violence prompted Asif to travel to Kabul last month at the head of a high-profile security delegation where they shared information about the TTP’s activities on Afghan soil, sources privy to the meeting told VOA.

Taliban hosts in the discussions agreed to disarm the insurgents and relocate them to northern Afghanistan from areas bordering Pakistan only if Islamabad bears the financial cost, sources said. Officials in both countries said no such discussions took place.

“They [the Taliban] have given us some suggestions to counter whatever TTP is doing in Pakistan,” Asif said while speaking on Friday. He did not share further details, saying the two sides are in close contact to deal with the terrorism threat.

The International Crisis Group noted in a new report released this week that the TTP’s central command is based in Afghanistan and linked the rise in violence in Pakistan to the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

“With their ideological allies ensconced in power in Afghanistan, and U.S. and NATO forces gone, the Pakistani Taliban have been more capable of conducting operations across the porous mountain frontier between the two countries,” the ICG said.
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Azerbaijani Student Reported Missing in Iran

An Azerbaijani student studying in Germany has disappeared after traveling to Iran to meet his girlfriend, according to his family.

Farid Safarli’s mother, who is currently in Iran searching for him, told VOA that Iranian law enforcement agencies have not given her any information about him.

“There was no information about Farid in the system of law enforcement agencies. Some agencies even refused to check the system,” Dilara Asgarova told VOA.

“They said that if Farid had committed a misdemeanor, there would have been information about him in the system. But information about felonies does not appear in the system. I asked what constitutes a felony? And they said espionage and other crimes. So, we have not been able to get any information about Farid so far.”

Asgarova said she has hired a lawyer in Iran to help her search.

According to the press service of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ministry was notified on March 9 that Farid Safarli, a citizen of Azerbaijan and a student at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany, went to Iran on February 20 but his family has not heard from him since March 4.

Safarli’s mother said she knows her son’s phone was active on March 6 and 10.

“Farid’s phone was turned on at one point in time. His Telegram account showed that he was active. I called immediately, but no one picked up,” Asgarova told VOA.

Safarli met his girlfriend, who is an Iranian citizen, in Jena, Germany, where she was participating in a medical training program at a local university. She left for Iran after her training ended, his mother told VOA.

“After the training, she returned to Iran. Nevertheless, they maintained connection via phone calls. They decided to meet in Istanbul. Farid went to Istanbul, but she could not get her visa at the time. So, Farid went to Iran from Istanbul,” she said.

Asgarova, who earlier had traveled to Germany in her search for her son, said German police were able to get access to the information on Safarli’s laptop that she found in his apartment.

“They recovered phone numbers, photos, names, part of [the girlfriend’s] surname, workplace, just a lot of information about Farid’s girlfriend,” she said.

German police also confirmed with Pegasus Airlines that Safarli had not flown anywhere since arriving in Tehran last month.

“The police said that they received information from the airline company that Farid Safarli had not taken any flights out of Tehran. They sent a letter to the Iranian Embassy in Germany, inquiring about Farid. But the Iranian Embassy has not yet responded to the police.”

Asgarova, who then left for Iran, said she has received conflicting information from the staff of the hospital in Iran, where her son’s girlfriend was said to be working as an intern.

“First when I called them, they told me she had taken leave and had not gone to work for 20 days. Those 20 days coincide with the time my son went missing. But when I got to the hospital, the situation changed. They said she never worked there,” Asgarova told VOA.

The spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan, Aykhan Hajizada, told VOA that the ministry has sent a diplomatic note to the Iranian Embassy requesting information about the matter. But the embassy has not responded yet.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent a note to the Iranian Embassy in our country in order to clarify the mentioned information and is currently waiting for a response from the other side,” he said.

Asgarova said she has appealed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, asking them to take more measures to ensure that İran responds to their diplomatic note.

“Maybe they can use the mediation of other countries. They should apply to international organizations. What if Iran stays silent forever? Are we going to sit and wait for their answer forever?” she asked.

“As a mother, I am very worried about the fate of my son. I am extremely worried. Maybe my son is in prison here in Tehran, a hundred meters away from me. But I can’t get any information from him. No one is giving me any information.”

International human rights groups for years have cataloged the Iranian government’s systematic use of enforced disappearances against thousands of people, often women, ethnic and religious minorities and others seen as a threat by the state. Some are freed after years of detention but others have been executed following sham trials.

This story originated in VOA’s Azerbaijani Service, with Parvana Bayramova contributing.
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Airlines Association Warns Pakistan Over $290 Million in Blocked Funds

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned Pakistan on Wednesday that foreign airlines could stop operations in the economically struggling country because of the sustained blockage of cash payments.

The trade association of global airlines said in a statement that Pakistan owed foreign airlines some $290 million in “repatriable funds” as of January, the second-highest total after Nigeria.

“If conditions persist that make the economics of operation to a country unsustainable, one would expect airlines to put their valued aircraft assets to better use elsewhere,” said Philip Goh, IATA’s Asia-Pacific regional vice president. He was quoted as saying that Virgin Atlantic Airways recently suspended flights to Pakistan.

Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves have lately sunk to around $4.6 billion, barely enough to cover four weeks of imports, prompting the central bank to make it difficult to send dollars out of the country.

IATA said that Pakistan’s foreign exchange controls are affecting the ability of foreign companies to retrieve their money and meet payment obligations. It noted that some airlines still have funds stuck in Pakistan from sales in 2022.

“Trying to get that money is a difficult and long-winded process. Essentially, airlines must undergo a costly monthly audit to produce an auditor’s certificate with each remittance showing the amount to be remitted,” the statement said.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government has been in talks with the International Monetary Fund to persuade the lender to resume disbursements from a $6.5 billion bailout program agreed to in 2019. The IMF was due to release another $1.1 billion in November but has not done so, citing a lack of progress on fiscal reforms Pakistan agreed to implement.

The IMF fund is vital to unlocking other external financing avenues to help Islamabad avert a default on its foreign debt obligations.

China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are among several countries that pledged to help Pakistan fund its balance of payments.

Goh described Pakistan, a country of about 220 million, as a “very challenging environment” for airlines. Currently, about 28 foreign airlines fly into Pakistan.

“The government already has a federal excise duty (FED) on air tickets for premium travelers and wants to increase it further. This will just make it more expensive to travel and dampen demand for air travel,” he cautioned.

An IATA study five years ago concluded that Pakistan could increase air travelers to 35 million a year by 2038, up from the current 11 million, contributing $9.3 billion to the country’s GDP and supporting almost 800,000 jobs.

But critics say successive governments have long neglected the country’s aviation industry.

Pakistan’s foreign currency shortage and declining local currency value are also hurting other vital sectors. Several car manufacturers have paused production due to the economic conditions.

The impoverished country relies heavily on imports, such as raw materials needed to manufacture medicine and complex surgical equipment, but the medical supply chain is under growing pressure.
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Taliban: Afghan Education Advocate Detained Over ‘Suspicious’ Activities

Afghanistan’s Taliban confirmed Wednesday to VOA that they had detained a prominent education activist in the county, saying the man is being interrogated for “suspicious” activities.

The confirmation comes two days after Matiullah Wesa, the founder and head of PenPath—a community-based education support network—was picked up at gunpoint outside a mosque in the capital of Kabul after prayers on Monday evening, his family said.

The arrest has outraged the international community and drawn calls for his immediate release.

“Yes, Matiullah Wesa has been detained for investigation because the intelligence agency had some suspicious information about him,” Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA by phone.

“Wesa was organizing meetings and making contacts that were a cause of concern for us,” Mujahid said without elaborating. “It is the duty of the government to detain suspicious people and investigate them to ensure public order.”

On Tuesday, Thomas West, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, urged the Taliban to release the education activist.

“The United States is deeply concerned about reports that revered education and rights activist @matiullahwesa was arrested by the Taliban,” West said on Twitter. “He has been a tireless and effective advocate for the education of boys and girls nationwide.”

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan also sought clarification from de facto Taliban authorities about the reasons for Wesa’s arrest and “to ensure his access to legal representation and contact with family.”

Wesa’s PenPath network, established in 2009, has been promoting education and schools for girls and negotiating with village elders in the conservative Afghan society to allow their girls to go to school.

The network has hundreds of volunteers across Afghanistan who help set up local classrooms, find teachers, distribute books and stationery, and organize community gatherings in support of education for both boys and girls.

The Taliban, however, have closed secondary schools for teenage girls, suspended female students from university education and ordered most women government employees to stay home since they took control of Afghanistan in August 2021. The hardline group has also banned women employees of non-governmental organizations from workplaces.

The Taliban returned to power 19 months ago as the United States and its Western coalition partners withdrew their troops from the country after almost two decades of involvement in the Afghan war.

The international community has been pressing the Taliban to remove bans on women’s access to work and education and respect civil liberties before granting them legitimacy.

Taliban leaders have ruled out any compromise on their governance, saying it is in line with Afghan culture and Islamic law.
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Azerbaijan Investigates ‘Terror Attack’ After Lawmaker Is Shot and Wounded

Azerbaijan’s State Security Service said on Wednesday it was investigating “a terror attack” after a lawmaker with strong anti-Iranian views was shot and wounded at his home.

Fazil Mustafa, a member of parliament, was hospitalized after receiving wounds to his shoulder and thigh when he was shot with a Kalashnikov assault rifle on Tuesday night, the security agency said in a statement.

His life was not at risk, it said, and a criminal investigation had been opened to identify the perpetrator.

Azeri news site haqqin.az quoted Mustafa, 57, as saying from hospital that he had been hit by two bullets while driving into his garage.

The State Security Service noted in its statement that Mustafa was known for his critical views on Iran, Azerbaijan’s southern neighbor.

Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran, which has a large population of ethnic Azeris in its northwest, have been strained in recent months. In January, Azerbaijan closed its embassy in Tehran after what it called a “terrorist attack” that killed the embassy’s head of security.

Azerbaijan has also deepened a longstanding relationship with Tehran’s rival Israel, which on Wednesday formally opened an embassy in Baku.

At a joint news conference with Iran’s foreign minister in Moscow on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that he hoped that “frictions” between Iran and Azerbaijan would soon be resolved. Russia maintains friendly relations with both countries.
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Pakistan to Skip US Summit for Democracy

Pakistan on Tuesday declined to attend the second Summit for Democracy, hosted this week by the United States, saying it would instead engage bilaterally with Washington on democracy.

The Biden administration has invited 120 countries, civil society groups and technology companies to attend the summit on Wednesday, with Costa Rica, South Korea, Zambia, and the Netherlands co-hosting.

A Foreign Ministry statement in Islamabad thanked Washington for the invitation but did not specify any reasons for skipping the event. However, critics attributed the exclusion of longtime ally China from the event as a likely reason for Pakistan to opt out, as it did when Biden hosted the first summit in December 2021.

Islamabad does not want to upset its “all-weather friend” Beijing, Pakistani English-language Dawn newspaper reported. Turkey, which maintains close ties with Pakistan, also has not been invited to this week’s gathering in Washington.

“The summit process is now at an advanced stage, and therefore, Pakistan would engage bilaterally with the United States and co-hosts of the summit to promote and strengthen democratic principles and values and work toward advancing human rights and the fight against corruption,” the statement said.

It stressed that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government values Pakistan’s friendship with the United States.

“Under this Biden administration, this relationship has widened and expanded substantially, the statement said.

Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, defended Islamabad’s decision to avoid the event.

“Correct decision. The summit idea is driven by America’s contain-China strategy. And inviting Taiwan made it even more impossible for Pakistan to attend,” she said on Twitter.

Some in Pakistan saw the U.S. summit as an opportunity for the Sharif administration to secure Washington’s crucial support in persuading the International Monetary Fund to resume lending to the cash-strapped nation as it faces an economic meltdown.

Sharif told the parliament Tuesday that the IMF wants external financing commitments fulfilled from friendly countries before it revives a bailout program to help Pakistan fund its balance of payments.

Madiha Afzal, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said on Twitter that Pakistan’s refusal to attend the summit “ostensibly because of China” does not align with Islamabad’s assertions of seeking balanced ties with both world powers.

“This doesn’t make sense for a country that says it wants good relationships with both China and the U.S.,” she wrote.

Pakistan’s traditionally tumultuous relations with the United States have come under strain since August 2021 when American and allied troops chaotically withdrew from neighboring Afghanistan, and the insurgent Taliban took over the country.

Washington had long blamed Islamabad for covertly supporting the Taliban while they waged a deadly insurgency against U.S.-led international forces for two decades. However, the Biden administration has lately stepped up its engagement with the Pakistani government, leading to frequent visits by senior U.S. officials to Islamabad.

For its part, China has in recent years cemented its defense and economic ties with Pakistan, investing billions of dollars in the South Asian neighbor under its Belt and Road Initiative to build roads, power plants and ports.

Human rights

The U.S. summit comes amid allegations that the Sharif government is curtailing peaceful assembly, stifling freedom of speech and cracking down on former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s opposition political party to suppress demands for early elections.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf released a report Tuesday documenting alleged abuses against its supporters nationwide. The report said that hundreds of party leaders and workers had been detained, with some subjected to custodial torture and frivolously charged with terrorism, sedition and other criminal offenses since last April, when Khan was removed from office by a parliamentary no-confidence vote.

The country’s independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan backed the opposition complaints.

The HRCP “denounces the strong-arm tactics and disproportionate use of force by the state as a means of political repression,” the watchdog said in a statement Tuesday.

“We are deeply concerned to observe that this has involved resorting to the use of colonial laws of sedition, unwarranted charges of terrorism against political opponents, enforced disappearances, and attempts to gag freedom of expression through ill-conceived proposals and actions through PEMRA,” the commission statement said.

The HRCP statement referred to the state-run Pakistan Electronic Media Regulator Authority, which has repeatedly barred Pakistani television news channels from airing Khan’s speeches and news conferences despite court rulings against such attempts.

The regulator ordered TV stations on Monday not to air live or recorded coverage of rallies or public gatherings by any party, organization or individual in the Pakistani capital.

Amnesty International denounced the blanket ban as a “disturbing demonstration of how authorities continue to threaten press freedom” in Pakistan. “We urge PEMRA to immediately reverse this decision.”
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Unseen Taliban Leader Wields Godlike Powers in Afghanistan

Hibatullah Akhundzada is officially referred to as the leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, commander of the faithful, and scholar of the Quran and the hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad).

His words, written or spoken, are high law and strictly enforced by a regime that does not have a constitution or limits on the unchecked powers of its supreme leader.

Except for some senior Taliban officials who claim to have seen him in person, Akhundzada, believed to be in his 70s, is an enigma to Afghans — and the world — because there is no information about the man who rules Afghanistan without being seen, elected or accountable to anyone.

A photo of a man with a long black beard and wearing a white turban, believed to have been taken in 1990 for a passport, is the only image of Akhundzada circulating in the media. But it has never been officially confirmed as authentic.

This month, Akhundzada, who reportedly resides in Kandahar province, issued an edict banning the distribution and sale of public lands except under his order, effectively undermining the entire state bureaucracy for land management in the capital, Kabul.

From appointing ministers and judges to selecting district administrators, Akhundzada decides everything in the Taliban regime.

If or when the Taliban will allow girls to return to secondary school and women to work are issues that will be resolved only at Akhundzada’s behest.

“First, he is fearful of Allah,” Shahabudin Dilawar, the Taliban’s minister of mines, told an Afghan reporter about the special characteristics of Akhundzada.

“Second, he knows the hadiths. He is [an] interpreter of the Quran. He is a faqih [jurist in Islamic law]. … In this previous jihad, his own son did [a] martyrdom [suicide] attack while he was emir.”

The identity of Akhundzada’s young son who carried out the attack remains unknown to the public, as is information about the rest of his family. He is said to have two wives and 11 children, though there is no official denial or confirmation of this rumor.

Legitimacy

Like his two predecessors, Akhundzada was declared emir by a small, all-male council of Taliban clerics. That occurred in 2016 after Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the second Taliban emir, was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.

The Taliban maintain that the council’s selection of the emir secured his public legitimacy under the Islamic term of bay’ah [pledge of allegiance].

In the past, Muslim jurists said that through bay’ah, an emir or caliph had to seek the approval of his constituency, according to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, an Islamic jurist and president of the Cordoba House in New York.

“Today, many modern jurists consider a democratic election to be an equivalent of a bay’ah,” Rauf told VOA.

In addition to a bay’ah, an emir should meet other conditions.

“He has to be just, and he has to be pious,” said Rauf.

In the absence of a written framework of Taliban governance, it is unclear how long the emir can stay in power, how and whether he can be replaced, and whether he can pick his own successor.

Lacking international recognition, even among majority Muslim countries, Akhundzada’s regime is also defied by Afghans inside and outside the country as authoritarian and illegitimate.

When challenged with the opinion that the regime lacks electoral legitimacy, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told a BBC reporter this month that not every country holds elections, and Afghanistan is just one among them.

Authoritarian rule

North Korea, Syria and Saudi Arabia are often reported as the most authoritarian regimes in the world, where autocratic leaders rule with unchecked power.

Akhundzada has no less power than the leaders of these three countries, but he has one main distinction: his unique style of operation.

“He is like a ghost,” a lecturer at Kabul University, who did not want to be identified out of concern for his personal security, told VOA. “Why he does not appear in public is a million-dollar question. But something is definitely wrong.”

Invisibility of the emir is exclusive to the Taliban.

By shutting schools and universities for women, suppressing the free press, criminalizing political dissidence and isolating the country from the international arena, Akhundzada is largely mirroring leaders of other authoritarian regimes.

“It is really important for them to keep their own people ignorant of the better lives that people elsewhere may have. And it is also an absolute requirement that they keep their people believing in an external, existential threat,” Peter Harms, a professor of management at the University of Alabama, told VOA.

Under the Taliban, Afghanistan has been plunged deeper into poverty, with more than half of its estimated 38 million people in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Nearly all Afghans rate their lives on a par with suffering, according to a Gallup poll published in December 2022.

Taliban leaders often brag about bringing peace and security to a war-torn Afghanistan. As an armed insurgency, the Taliban were blamed for perpetrating thousands of security incidents — suicide attacks, bomb blasts, targeted killings — annually from 2002 to August 2021, when they regained power.

“Many people seem willing to trade their freedoms for safety,” said Harms, describing the nature of autocratic regimes.

The Taliban’s return to power, after almost two decades of an internationalized democratization in Afghanistan, is not an exceptional case.

Around the world, authoritarian regimes are expanding their grip. Only 20% of the world’s population lives in free societies, while 39% lives in societies where civic and political freedoms are curtailed at varying levels, according to the nonprofit Freedom House in Washington.

“Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting and circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic rights and liberties,” Cathryn Grothe, a research analyst for Middle East and North Africa at Freedom House, told VOA in written answers.

In Akhundzada’s Afghanistan, such institutions — the national human rights commission, electoral bodies and parliament — have already been dissolved indefinitely.
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Pakistanis Who Were ‘Drowning’ in Water Now ‘Are Too Dry’

“Apocalyptic,” “a flood from the sky” — that’s how some described last year’s heavy monsoon rains that caused catastrophic flooding across a large part of Pakistan. The flooding affected 33 million people and displaced nearly 8 million. VOA’s Pakistan bureau chief Sarah Zaman traveled to Sindh, the southern province hit the hardest, to see what life is like now. Camera: Wajid Asad
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In Afghanistan, Some Female Journalists Find Ways to Stay on Air

With women being pushed out of public life in Afghanistan, brave female reporters remain committed to finding ways to keep reporting. For VOA, Noshaba Ashna has the story, narrated by Shaista Sadat Lami. Roshan Noorzai contributed.
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