Police in India’s Punjab State are continuing to look for Amritpal Singh, a leader of the Khalistan movement that supports the establishment of a separate Sikh homeland. 

Punjab’s government has turned off all internet service until Tuesday as the police look for the radical Sikh.  

The police engaged in a car chase with Singh Sunday, but he was able to elude them.  

Police have arrested 112 of his supporters.  

Authorities have been looking for Singh since Saturday, weeks after his supporters overtook a police station, demanding the release of an aide.  
…

Kazakhstan voted in a snap parliamentary election on Sunday widely expected to cement President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s grip on power and complete a reshuffle of the ruling elite that began after he fully assumed leadership last year. 

Exit polls showed the ruling Amanat party winning 53-54% of the vote, enough to retain a comfortable majority. Voter turnout stood at 54.2%, the Central Election Commission said. 

A stronger mandate will help Tokayev navigate through regional turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent damage to trade, investment and supply chains throughout the former Soviet Union. 

Although he formally became president in 2019, Tokayev, 69, had remained in the shadow of his predecessor and former patron Nursultan Nazarbayev until January 2022, when the two fell out amid an attempted coup and violent unrest. 

Tokayev sidelined Nazarbayev, after suppressing political unrest in the oil-rich Central Asian country and had several of his associates removed from senior positions in the public sector, some of whom later faced corruption charges. 

While Tokayev has reshuffled the government, the lower house of parliament – elected when Nazarbayev still had sweeping powers and led the ruling Nur Otan party – was not due for election until 2026, and the president called a snap vote. 

Ruling party 

Unlike Nazarbayev, Tokayev has chosen not to lead the ruling party, rebranded Amanat, but it is certain to form the core of his support base in the legislature. Five other parties set to win seats also support Tokayev. 

However, for the first time in almost two decades, several opposition figures were running as independents, a move which may allow some government critics to win a limited number of seats. 

Still, in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s biggest city which usually shows the most support for the opposition, voting appeared slow Sunday amid a heavy police presence on the streets. 

“We keep complaining that nothing changes in our country and we ourselves take no part in our country’s political life,” said Yevgeniya, a 36-year-old marketing executive who declined to give her last name or say for whom she voted. “Going out and voting is the least we can do to bring about change.” 

Tokayev, who cast his ballot in Astana early in the morning without talking to the press, has said the vote would allow him to start implementing his plan to reform the country and ensure a fairer distribution of its oil wealth. 

The completion of this political transition is also likely to strengthen Tokayev’s hand in foreign policy. Despite receiving Moscow’s backing during the 2022 unrest, he has refused to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or recognize its annexation of some Ukrainian territories. 

Astana is trying to maintain good relationships with both Moscow, its neighbor and major trading partner, and the West, which seeks to isolate Russia. 
…

Police in Pakistan on Sunday filed new terrorism charges against the country’s populist former Prime Minister Imran Khan, a day after thousands of his supporters clashed with security forces in the capital, Islamabad.

Dozens of senior leaders and workers of Khan’s opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party have also been named for allegedly committing terrorism and offenses such as wounding officers and threatening their lives.

Police rounded up 61 PTI workers in connection with the clashes, saying raids were underway for further arrests.

The allegations stemmed from Saturday’s clashes outside of a court compound in Islamabad where Khan was due to appear to face charges of unlawfully selling state gifts he received while in office.

Several thousand riot police fired tear gas and wielded batons for hours to disperse the crowd. Authorities said security forces responded to rocks being thrown at them. The violence injured dozens of people, including police and protesters.

Witnesses and officials said the chaos had prevented the 70-year-old opposition leader from entering the court compound, prompting the judge to allow Khan to mark his attendance from inside his vehicle and adjourn the hearing until March 30. 

Khan denies the corruption charges and characterizes them as politically motivated. 

Meanwhile, in a televised speech Sunday, the former prime minister condemned a police raid against his residential compound in the eastern city of Lahore while en route to Islamabad for the court hearing. 

Khan said police had stormed his home and smashed down the gate and walls while his wife was at the property along with a few servants. He vowed to take legal action against the police officers behind the raid. 

“I want to ask the people, police officers, military officers, and judges of this country how they would have reacted if the police had carried out such an action against their homes without a search warrant?”

Khan warned that attempts to corner him and his party or get him eliminated could plunge the country into anarchy.

“Pakistan has been pushed to a point where the situation can spiral out of control. And in such an eventuality, you will forget about (the crisis in) Sri Lanka. It will take us to an Iran-style revolution.”

The state-run media regulator barred television channels from broadcasting Khan’s speech, which was carried live by PTI social media outlets, including YouTube.

Police officials defended the raid against the politician’s Lahore residence, claiming they had seized weapons and ammunition, and had arrested dozens of people from the compound involved in last week’s clashes with security forces, charges Khan and his aides rejected as concocted. 

The police action came days after a violent standoff erupted Tuesday outside Khan’s Lahore home when police officers had attempted to arrest him for failing to appear in the Islamabad court on graft charges.

Khan was removed from office in a parliamentary no-confidence vote last April, toppling his nearly four-year-old government and paving the way for the then-opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif to become the prime minister of a new coalition government. 

The ousted leader has since held massive protest rallies across Pakistan to press for fresh elections. He has alleged his ouster was a conspiracy plotted by the Pakistan military and Sharif in collaboration with the United States. 

Washington and Islamabad rejected the charges. Sharif has also turned down calls for a snap vote until later this year when the parliament completes its mandated five-year term.

Khan’s party says the government has brought 97 cases against him since his removal from power, ranging from sedition, terrorism, blasphemy, and corruption.

The deposed leader reiterated Sunday the “fake” legal challenges were allegedly part of efforts to get him arrested or disqualified from national politics in the wake of his party’s popularity and sweeping victories in recent elections. 

Khan was shot and wounded during a protest rally last November. He accused Sharif and an unnamed army general, among others, of plotting to kill him. Since then, he has called on the courts to allow him to appear virtually in the dozens of cases brought against him — due to the threats to his life. 

Pakistani Minister of Information Marriyum Aurangzeb dismissed Khan’s assertions Sunday, calling him a “terrorist.”

She told reporters in Lahore that the opposition politician was “flouting the law” to run away from courts. “Yesterday it was proved that claim of Imran Khan’s threat to life is bogus…Imran is intimidating the court with hooliganism and terrorism,” Aurangzeb said referring to Saturday’s chaotic scenes outside the court in Islamabad. 

Government ministers in recent days have even called for outlawing the PTI and its leader, even though recent surveys have found Khan to be the most popular leader with a massive following in urban centers of Pakistan.

“Treating a major political leader…a principal rival, like an outlaw is short-sighted and reeks of desperation,” read an editorial in the English-language DAWN newspaper Sunday.
…

A speeding bus veered off a major expressway in central Bangladesh and plunged into a ditch, killing at least 19 people and injured dozens, police said.

The death toll could rise further as some of the injured passengers are in critical condition, said Anowar Hossain, police official of Shibchar, where the crash occurred. The city is 80 km away from the capital Dhaka.

The bus, carrying more than 40 passengers, fell about 9 meters (30 feet) into a roadside ditch after breaking through the railing of the newly-built Padma river bridge expressway, Hossain said.

The driver, who was killed, appeared to have lost control of the vehicle after the tire of the bus burst, he said, adding that the cause of the accident was under investigation.

Road accidents are common in Bangladesh, often blamed on reckless driving, old vehicles and poor safety rules, and killing thousands each year.

In 2018, a series of massive student protests, sparked by the death of two teenagers, forcing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government to approve raising the maximum prison time to five years from three for causing death by rash driving.

 
…

Pakistani police stormed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s residence in the eastern city of Lahore on Saturday and arrested 61 people amid tear gas and clashes between Khan’s supporters and police, officials said.

Senior police officer Suhail Sukhera, who led the operation in an upscale Lahore neighborhood, said police acted to remove a barricade erected by members of Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party and his defiant supporters. He said they blocked the lanes around Khan’s residence with concrete blocks, felled trees, tents and a parked truck.

Khan was not in the home, having traveled to Islamabad to appear before a judge to face charges he sold state gifts while in office and hid his assets. The judge postponed that hearing until March 30.

Sukhera said baton-wielding Khan supporters attempted to resist police by throwing stones and Molotov cocktails and a man on the roof of Khan’s residence opened fire. At least three police officers were injured.

Sukhera said police broke open the main door of Khan’s residence and found automatic weapons, Molotov cocktails, iron rods and batons used in attacks on police during the week. Sukhera said that inside the sprawling residence, illegal structures had been erected to shelter people involved in attacks on police that have injured dozens of officers.

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said later that police would do a complete search of Khan’s home, where they found bunkers and suspected more illegal weapons and ammunition were hidden.

Witnesses in Lahore said police attempted to disperse Khan’s supporters by firing tear gas and chased them to several homes in the Zaman Park neighborhood.

Khan’s lawyer appeared in an Islamabad court Saturday after a top court a day earlier suspended Khan’s arrest warrant, giving him a reprieve to travel to Islamabad and face charges in the graft case without being detained.

Khan had been holed up at his home in Lahore since Tuesday after failing to appear at an earlier hearing in the case. His supporters hurled rocks and clashed with baton-wielding police for two days to protect the former premier from arrest.

Khan’s motorcade arrived Saturday near the federal judicial complex in Islamabad, where his supporters also clashed with police who prevented them from entering the complex. The enraged Khan supporters threw rocks at police who responded by lobbing tear gas canisters to disperse them. Sanaullah said many of Khan’s supporters were armed.

Khan’s attorney, Babar Awan, filed an application for Khan’s exemption from appearance in court amid special circumstances.

Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar condemned Khan for not turning himself over to police and not appearing in court Saturday despite arriving at the judicial complex gate. He accused Khan of using his protesting supporters to avoid indictment.

Khan’s supporters set two police vehicles and several motorcycles outside the judicial complex on fire while dispersing, according to Tarar.

Khan, during his road trip to Islamabad, said in a video message that police had broken into his residence in Lahore while his wife was alone at the home. He condemned the action and demanded that those responsible be punished.

Khan’s PTI party secretary-general, Asad Umar, in a letter to Pakistan’s chief justice noted that police waited until Khan was en route to Islamabad to storm his Lahore residence. He said the “doors and walls have been razed to the ground” and more than 40 people at the home were arrested.

Khan, now the opposition leader, was ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament last April. He is accused of selling state gifts while in office and concealing assets, charges he denies. It’s one in a string of cases that the former cricket star turned Islamist politician has been facing since his ouster.

The 70-year-old Khan, who has called for early elections in Parliament, has claimed that his removal from power was part of a conspiracy by his successor, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, and the United States. Both Washington and Sharif’s government have denied the allegation.
…

When Razia Muradi, a 27-year-old Afghan student, won a gold medal for her performance in a master’s program in a college in India, her thoughts flashed back to her homeland, she told VOA this week.

Growing up in Bamiyan province in Afghanistan, the future looked promising. She worked by day and went to night school to complete her bachelor’s degree.

“Life was peaceful and normal,” Muradi said.

“Women were free to attend university. Girls were eager to learn. Families were supportive and encouraged their daughters to pursue higher education.”

Two years ago, she came to India on a scholarship for a postgraduate course in public administration. She was among thousands of Afghans who headed to Indian colleges in the last two decades after the Taliban’s overthrow in 2001 following its first stint in power.

Like many of these young students, her goal was to return and use her degree in policymaking to take a job and help Afghanistan modernize.

All that changed abruptly when Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021. Like many women, she was gripped with dread that the country would regress into the dark days an older generation vividly remembered.

That is why it was a moment of great pride but also deep sadness when Muradi went onstage this month to accept the gold medal for achieving the highest grade-point average in her program at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University in in the western Gujarat state.

“I dedicate this achievement to all the women who do not have the opportunity that I have to study,” she told VOA. “And at some point in time, girls like me want to return this chance in some way to them. This medal is an affirmation that women can accomplish anything.”

Muradi said she sees herself as representing the women of Afghanistan deprived of education.

In December, the Taliban banned women from attending university, dealing a second blow to female education – the group had earlier barred girls from secondary schools, depriving millions from studying beyond the sixth grade.

In the year and a half since the group swept into power, women have been removed from many jobs, must wear the full veil, and are not allowed to travel without a male relative or visit parks and gyms as the hard-line Islamists roll back women’s rights and freedoms.

For Afghan women like Muradi, all hopes that the Taliban would live up to their initial promises of a more liberal rule have been crushed.

“I feel broken from inside. Everything that happened in the 1990s is being repeated. The hope with which I came to India is destroyed,” Muradi said.

“I cannot see any bright future for myself. I don’t know whether I will be able to go back and meet my family. I struggle with these thoughts all the time.”

With her country in turmoil, studying for her master’s was not easy. She worried about her family, but she said she worked to stay calm as there was little she could do except honor her luck in being among the Afghan women still pursuing an education.

“I had to manage my stress. Every time I thought about Afghanistan, I told myself that it is my responsibility to take advantage of this opportunity that other girls in my country can no longer avail. So, I must focus on my studies and build my capacity if I want to bring change in the future,” she said.

Muradi is now working on her Ph.D. in public administration from the same college, supported by a scholarship from the Indian government’s Indian Council of Cultural Relations, and she has a message for the Taliban.

“I think the Taliban need to rethink about depriving women of education. If they want to rule, they cannot ignore the women. Women will protest, at some point they will stand and ask for their rights. Otherwise, half the country’s population will be useless,” she said.
…

Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan is set to appear in court Saturday to face charges of unlawfully selling state gifts he received during his four years in office.

Khan’s decision to finally make a court appearance came after Pakistan’s high court in Islamabad canceled an arrest warrant it issued after Khan failed to appear for several recent court dates.

Clashes between Khan’s supporters and security forces erupted earlier this week outside his residence in Lahore, the capital of Punjab, the most populous Pakistani province, when police attempted to arrest him for failing to make his court dates.

The cricket hero turned politician was ousted from office last April by a parliamentary no-confidence vote. He has since been slapped with dozens of legal challenges across Pakistan — ranging from sedition and terrorism to corruption charges — his lawyers told a provincial court in Lahore on Friday.

Khan denies all the allegations, saying his successor, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is behind the cases to prevent him from contesting elections and staging a comeback to power. He also has accused the government of unleashing a crackdown on leaders and workers of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party to deter them from participating in elections scheduled for later this year.

The government rejects the charges, saying it has nothing to do with the opposition leader’s legal challenges nor is it targeting the opposition party.

The political turmoil comes as Pakistan struggles with a deepening economic crisis. The Sharif administration’s attempts to convince the International Monetary Fund to resume critical lending to the cash-strapped country have failed so far because of a lack of key reforms.
…

A federal court in Pakistan suspended an arrest warrant Friday for the country’s populist former prime minister, Imran Khan, clearing the way for him to appear before a judge on Saturday to answer charges of unlawfully selling state gifts given to him during his four-year rule.

The verdict also eased a tense standoff between Khan’s supporters and law enforcement personnel outside his residence in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, where dozens of people were injured on both sides.

The clashes erupted on Tuesday when police tried to arrest the leader of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party for failing to appear before the trial court in the national capital, Islamabad, to face the graft allegations.

Khan, who was shot in the leg during a political rally last November, has defended his absence from the legal proceedings, saying authorities did not provide him with adequate security during his previous court appearances.

The cricket-hero-turned-politician was ousted from office last April by a parliamentary no-confidence vote. He has since been slapped with dozens of legal challenges across Pakistan — ranging from sedition and terrorism to corruption charges — his lawyers told a provincial court in Lahore on Friday.

“There are 94 cases against me. If six more are registered, it will make it a century,” Khan said while attending legal proceedings in Lahore before being granted protective bail by the provincial court in eight cases registered against him under terrorism charges.

Khan denies all the allegations, saying his successor, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is behind the cases to prevent him from contesting elections and staging a comeback to power. He also has accused the government of unleashing a crackdown on PTI leaders and workers to deter them from participating in elections scheduled for later this year.

The government rejects the charges, saying it has nothing to do with the opposition leader’s legal challenges nor is it targeting the opposition party.

Khan alleged in a tweet Friday that authorities had carried out fresh raids against his party workers in Islamabad.

“Today, they have arbitrarily arrested more than 70 of our workers in Islamabad. This is condemnable & absolutely unacceptable. They must be released immediately,” tweeted Khan, who remains the most popular politician in Pakistan, according to the latest surveys. There was no immediate government reaction to the charges.

Khan has been demanding a snap election at massive protest rallies his party has organized across the country since his ouster. The campaign was disrupted by the November gun attack on him. He has accused Sharif and an unnamed army general, among others, of plotting to kill him. Sharif has rejected the charges and dismissed Khan’s demands for early elections as unconstitutional.

The political turmoil comes as Pakistan struggles with a deepening economic crisis. The Sharif administration’s attempts to persuade the International Monetary Fund to resume critical lending to his cash-strapped country have failed so far because of a lack of key reforms.

Security in the country also has deteriorated recently in the wake of growing militant attacks, mostly claimed by the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban.
…

Officials in northern Pakistan say a fire erupted at a wooden home in the Seri area of Pattan, killing 10 family members.

Three other people were injured in the blaze and have been hospitalized.

Lower Kohistan Rescue spokesperson, Farman Ali, told Dawn.com, a Pakistani news website, that an electrical short circuit ignited the fire that caused the home’s roof to collapse as the family slept. 
…

One of the Islamic State terror group’s most dangerous affiliates has its sights set on the West and could launch an attack before the year is out, according to a top U.S. military official.

Despite sporadic skirmishes between Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, the terror group is closer to taking its fight beyond Afghanistan’s borders, U.S. Central Command’s General Michael Kurilla told lawmakers on Thursday.

“They can do external operations against U.S. or Western interests abroad in under six months with little to no warning,” Kurilla said.

The CENTCOM commander said there was a “higher probability” that IS-Khorasan operatives would target Western or U.S. interests in Asia or Europe, noting it would be “much harder” for them to carry out an attack against the U.S. homeland.

Kurilla’s assessment comes more than a year and a half after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, severely degrading the ability of the United States and its partners to gather intelligence on groups like IS-Khorasan or its rival, al-Qaida.

It follows similar assessments by other top U.S. officials, who see evidence IS-Khorasan is looking to make a statement on the global stage.

“It’s a matter of time before they may have the ability and intent to attack the West,” the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, told lawmakers at a hearing last week.

In January, the top U.S. counterterrorism official told a virtual audience that IS-Khorasan is the “threat actor I am most concerned about.”

“We see concerning indications of ISIS-Khorasan in Afghanistan and its ambition that might go beyond that immediate territory,” said National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid, declining to elaborate on how soon the IS affiliate might try to strike.

Other countries are also seeing signs of a rising IS-Khorasan.

Intelligence shared by member states for a U.N. report last month warned IS-Khorasan has anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 fighters who have established cells in Kabul and in Kunar, Nangarhar and Nuristan provinces.

Smaller groups of IS-Khorasan fighters are thought to have established themselves in as many as five additional provinces, and the group is actively recruiting in multiple languages, from Pashto to Persian to Russian.

The report further warned that IS-Khorasan is seeking to “undermine the relationship between the Taliban and neighboring countries … by targeting diplomatic missions.”

Kurilla is not the first U.S. official to suggest that an attack by the group on a Western target could be imminent.

In October 2021, just months after the U.S. withdrawal, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon warned that IS-Khorasan was positioned to conduct external operations in as little as six to 12 months.

That dire prediction did not come to pass, and until several months ago, most U.S. officials agreed the IS Afghan affiliate had shown few indications it could strike outside the region.

U.S. military and intelligence officials have said getting a more accurate gauge on developments in Afghanistan has been difficult because of the lack of a presence on the ground and the distances American surveillance planes and drones have to cover before they can conduct surveillance.

“Our intelligence is degraded,” Kurilla told lawmakers on Thursday.

“We’re working to close that gap with alternative airborne ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and some of our other intelligence,” he added, cautioning, “I believe we can see the broad contours of an attack, [but] sometimes we lack the granularity to see the full picture.”

Syria and Iraq 

There are also concerns about IS activity in Syria and Iraq.

“While ISIS is significantly degraded in Iraq and Syria, the group maintains the capability to conduct operations within the region and has the desire to strike outside of it,” Kurilla told lawmakers.

A major worry is the 10,000 IS fighters being held in 26 mostly makeshift prisons across northeastern Syria.

Kurilla said CENTCOM is working with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces to consolidate those prisons by constructing newer, more secure facilities.

Also concerning are the wives, children and other relatives of jailed or dead IS fighters, especially those at the al-Hol displaced-persons camp in northeastern Syria, which holds about 51,000 people, including more than 30,000 children.

“About 50% of the camp holds, espouses, some form of [Islamic State] ideology,” Kurilla warned. “The other half are trying to escape ISIS.”
…

A Pakistani court on Thursday extended a pause in the effort to arrest former premier Imran Khanin a graft case, a sign of easing tension in the country’s cultural capital after clashes erupted this week when police tried to detain him.

The decision is a reprieve for Khan, who was due to be arrested a few hours earlier. The Lahore High Court ordered police to suspend the plan to arrest the 70-year-old opposition leader until Friday. It also asked Khan’s legal team for talks to resolve the issue.

The court also barred Khan’s Pakistan Tehree-e-Insaf opposition party from holding a rally that was to be led by Khan on Sunday ahead of the elections for a regional assembly, according to lawyers from the two sides.

Thursday’s order sent a wave of relief through Khan’s stick-wielding supporters, who were prepared to prevent police from reaching Khan’s house in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province. Despite the order, however, police and paramilitary rangers deployed for Khan’s arrest were not immediately withdrawn.

Usman Anwar, the police chief in the Punjab province, said the violence in Lahore began Tuesday when officers went to comply with the court order and arrest Khan. But, he said, Khan’s supporters started throwing stones at officers, who were unarmed and only carrying batons.

“We will comply with the court order, and we will do it,” he told a local Geo TV station.

Lahore police have registered two new cases against Khan and his supporters on charges of damaging public property and attacking police when they went to his house Tuesday to arrest him.

In Islamabad, Khan’s legal team on Thursday asked judge Zafar Iqbal to suspend the arrest warrants he had issued last week for Khan, who is accused of illegally selling state gifts and concealing his assets.

Iqbal gave no indication of whether he will suspend the arrest warrants for Khan. Instead, he asked why Khan resisted when officers went to his house to arrest him. The judge said if Khan surrenders to the court now, he will stop police from arresting him.

During Thursday’s court hearing in Islamabad, Saad Hassan, a lawyer for the election tribunal, opposed Khan’s request for the cancellation of his arrest warrants, saying the former premier had been avoiding court hearings since January.

Violence erupted in Lahore on Tuesday when about 1,000 supporters of Khan clashed with police when they tried to arrest the former premier at his house in the upscale area of Zaman Park. Khan’s supporters hurled petrol bombs, rocks and bricks at police. Officers responded by swinging batons, firing tear gas and using water cannons. They failed to arrest Khan.

On Wednesday, Khan said in a video message that he was ready to travel to Islamabad on March 18 to appear before the court, if he is not arrested. Khan also posed for cameras seated at a long table, showing off piles of spent tear gas shells he said had been collected from around his home.

“What crime did I commit that my house has been attacked like this,” he tweeted the previous day.

Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament in April, was ordered to appear before a judge in Islamabad on Saturday to answer charges of illegally selling state gifts he had received during his term as premier and concealing his assets.

He was also disqualified from holding any public office in October on the charges.
…

A court in Pakistan ordered police Wednesday to pause an operation to arrest former prime minister Imran Khan until Thursday, ending more than 24 hours of violent clashes between his supporters and law enforcement personnel outside his residence in the eastern city of Lahore.

The clashes in the capital of the country’s most populous Punjab province erupted on Tuesday after police officers tried to arrest Khan for failing to appear in court on graft charges, prompting thousands of supporters of his opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party to gather outside his home to block the attempt.

Police and paramilitary forces fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd. Stick-wielding PTI workers responded by attacking law enforcement officers with slingshots and bricks, turning the upscale Zaman Park locality into a battleground.

The standoff continued into Wednesday afternoon and injured many people on both sides, with police rounding up scores of PTI workers. Violent protests also broke out in other major Pakistani cities, including Islamabad, the neighboring garrison city of Rawalpindi, Karachi, Peshawar, and Quetta.

Khan, 70, has been facing dozens of court cases, including sedition, terrorism and corruption charges, since a parliamentary vote of no-confidence toppled his government last April. He denies the allegations, saying they result from the “political victimization” by his successor, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

The deposed prime minister released a video statement Wednesday morning from inside his home, surrounded by dozens of spent tear gas canisters that he said were fired at his compound. The cricket-hero-turned politician alleged the police action aimed to kill him.

“These are not only the canisters, but they fired bullets at us. Those who fired bullets were not here to put me before the court. They want my exclusion from national politics, so they came to arrest me,” Khan said.

Khan later came out of his home, wearing a gas mask, and spoke to his supporters.

Speaking to VOA on Tuesday, the ousted prime minister denounced the attempt to arrest him as illegal and he signaled that Pakistan’s powerful military establishment was behind the government’s alleged efforts to keep him from running for office.

“And the establishment is one man, the army chief. He makes the decisions. Whatever he says is followed,” Khan said when asked to explain the establishment.

Khan is not the first high-profile leader to have accused the military of interfering and orchestrating removal of elected governments in Pakistan. The army has staged three coups and ruled Pakistan for nearly half of its 75-year history.

The former prime minister was shot in the leg during a protest rally last November and accused the Sharif government of plotting to kill him with the help of an unnamed Pakistani army general. The government rejected the charges.

A provincial high court in Lahore, while ruling on a PTI challenge to the police operation on Wednesday afternoon, ordered its suspension until Thursday morning.

The judge left it for a federal court to determine the fate of Khan’s arrest warrant after reviewing his written pledge that he will appear at a hearing later this week about his alleged selling of state gifts given by foreign leaders when he was prime minister from 2018 to 2022.

The arrest warrant was issued last week against the PTI chief for defying orders to present himself to answer the graft charges.

Khan, who has rejected any wrongdoing accusation, confirmed on Twitter that he had signed a “surety bond” guaranteeing his appearance in the court on Saturday.

The political turmoil in cash-strapped Pakistan comes as Sharif’s coalition government has been struggling to convince the International Monetary Fund to resume lending to the country to help address a deepening economic crisis and avert a looming default on foreign loan payments.
…

A high-ranking Taliban official told a gathering of Afghan judges this week that the group outlaws any public opposition to the Taliban or its policies. 

“All those who undermine the [Taliban’s] regime, whether that is via tongue, pen or practically undermining it, are considered rebellious and deserve death,” said the Taliban’s acting minister of higher education, Neda Mohammad Nadim, who spoke Sunday at the graduation ceremony of the Taliban’s judges and Islamic jurists in Kandahar.

He added that the Taliban would ‘suppress’ all those who are, according to him, “making problems for the people of Afghanistan based on foreigners’ agendas.” 

Nadim’s remarks contradict the Taliban’s spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid’s assurances that their government’s policy will be open to criticism and will listen and answer “any questions or objections with patience.”

So who is correct and what is the Taliban’s official policy on public dissent? 

It’s still difficult to say. 

In recent months, some prominent Taliban leaders have publicly disagreed with official policies issued by the group’s supreme leader. 

The Taliban’s acting interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani criticized Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, for “monopolizing power,” adding that the “situation can no more be tolerated.”

The Taliban, who seized power following the withdrawal of U.S. troops in August 2021, has formed an all-male government drawn from the group’s fighters despite promising to form a more inclusive administration. 

But that has not led to a more coherent policy-making process, as various Taliban officials continue to contradict each other publicly. 

Human rights watchdogs say regardless of what the Taliban has stated as official policy, the group’s actions have violated human rights, and suppressed minorities and political dissidents. 

The Taliban have rejected the accusations. 

Richard Bennett, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, in his new report released last month, said that the Taliban government continues to fall back on using fear and repression to suppress Afghan communities. 

 “There is very little tolerance for differences, and none for dissent,” Bennett said.

Human rights violations

 “The Taliban have mounted a ustained attack on human rights, persecuting minority groups, violently clamping down on peaceful protests, suppressing women’s rights and using extrajudicial executions and disappearances to spread fear among Afghans,” said an Amnesty International report released last year. 

In an exclusive interview with VOA Afghan service, Bennett said that the Taliban’s repression of women is “a crime against humanity,” and individual members of the Taliban can be held accountable for it.

The Taliban has imposed strict restrictions on women, banning them from getting high a school or college education, prohibiting them from outside work and long-distance travel, and barring them from gyms and public parks.

“Afghanistan under the Taliban remains the most repressive country in the world regarding women’s rights and it has been distressing to witness their methodical, deliberate, and systematic efforts to push Afghan women and girls out of the public sphere,” said Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the U.N. mission in Kabul on March 8.

VOA Afghanistan Service contributed to this report.
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A Myanmar delegation is visiting Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh this week to verify a few hundred potential returnees for a pilot repatriation project, though a Bangladeshi official said it was unclear when they would be going home.

Nearly one million Rohingya Muslim refugees are living in camps in the border district of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner in Cox’s Bazar, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, told Reuters there was a list of 1,140 Rohingya who are to be repatriated through the pilot project, of which 711 have had their cases cleared.

The remaining 429 on the list, including some new-born babies, were still being processed.

“We’re ready” to send them back, Rahman said, but added he did not know when that could begin.

A Myanmar junta spokesman did not answer phone calls from Reuters seeking comment.

China’s ambassador to Bangladesh Yao Wen hoped that the first batch of displaced Rohingya would be repatriated to Myanmar soon while China continued its role as mediator, the official Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha news agency reported.

Hitherto, Myanmar’s military junta, which took power in a coup two years ago, has shown little inclination to take back any Rohingya.

“The international community are playing ping pong with the Rohingya,” Tun Khin, president of Burmese Rohingya Organization UK, told Reuters. “Rohingya refugees face an impossible choice. Stay in terrible conditions in refugee camps where rations are being cut, or return to their home country where genocidal policies continue.  

“This is not a repatriation process, it is a public relations process. Governments want to claim progress when in fact the core issues of the treatment of Rohingya by the Myanmar military are ignored.”

Crammed with tens of thousands of huts made of bamboo and thin plastic sheets, living conditions in the camps are dangerous.

Two years ago, a massive blaze killed at least 15 refugees and destroyed more than 10,000 homes, and earlier this month another fire left 12,000 people without shelter.

Aside from longstanding problems like lack of employment and educational opportunities, the camps also suffer from surging crime.

Desperate to find somewhere better, many Rohingya have risked their lives making the hazardous sea voyage from Bangladesh to countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

According to estimates from the United Nations at least 348 Rohingya are thought to have died at sea last year.

 
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Supporters of former populist Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan clashed with police outside his private residence in the eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday inuring a senior police officer as authorities attempted to arrest Khan for not appearing in court hearings. Speaking to VOA’s Pakistan bureau chief Sarah Zaman via Skype, Khan called the attempt to arrest him illegal and signaled that the country’s powerful army chief was behind the government’s alleged efforts to keep him from running for office.
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Despite conspicuous differences with the United States over many issues, Russia, China and Iran appear to share Washington’s concerns about terrorism threats from Afghanistan as they call on the de facto Taliban regime to fulfill counterterror promises.

Alleged terrorist groups based in Afghanistan have plotted and executed attacks against Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, according to U.S. officials. More than 20 armed groups claim to have a presence in the landlocked country.

Of particular concern is the active presence in Afghanistan of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an insurgent group that has claimed several terrorist attacks in Pakistan over the past few months.

Last week, senior diplomats from Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan gathered in Tashkent to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

“The participants, pointing out that all terrorist groups based in Afghanistan continue to pose a serious threat to regional and global security, strongly called on the current de facto Afghan authorities to take more effective measures to eliminate terrorist groups in the country,” read a statement from Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“Even though the Taliban committed not to host terrorists that wish other countries harm and not to allow training or recruiting or fundraising in their territory, all of that is happening,” Thomas West, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, told TOLOnews channel last week.

When negotiating U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2019-2020, the Taliban committed to taking swift action, in areas under their control, against groups and individuals that threaten the security of any country. Then the Taliban, an insurgent group, had control over no province or city in Afghanistan.

Now running a country with porous borders with six neighbors, having no established army and suffering international sanctions, the Taliban appear unable to meet U.S. and regional counterterrorism expectations, experts say.

“The Taliban did promise to stop militants from using Afghan soil to threaten any country, and they are obviously not fulfilling that pledge: everyone can see that TTP fighters are sheltering in Afghanistan and attacking Pakistan,” Graeme Smith, an expert with the International Crisis Group (ICG), told VOA. everyone can see that TTP fighters are sheltering in Afghanistan and attacking Pakistan,”

Domestic terror

The Taliban deny harboring terrorist groups inside Afghanistan and reiterate their commitment to preventing security threats to other countries.

Despite downplaying persistent threats from the so-called Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and other armed opposition groups as insignificant and manageable, the Taliban have largely failed to prevent terror attacks inside Afghanistan.

Last week, the Taliban’s governor for the northern Balkh Province was killed in a suicide attack claimed by the ISKP. In December, ISKP claimed killing a district policy chief in the northeastern Badakhshan province.

Both the Taliban and ISKP say they are engaged in an Islamic war against each other.

ISKP has also targeted religious minorities and other vulnerable groups under the Taliban rule, killing hundreds of people across Afghanistan last year, the U.N. has reported.

Between November 14 and January 31, “The United Nations recorded 1,201 security-related incidents, a 10% increase from the 1,088 incidents recorded during the same period in 2021–2022,” the U.N. secretary-general said in a report to the Security Council on March 8.

Al-Qaida

For almost three decades, the United States has voiced concerns about the presence of al-Qaida militants and leaders in Afghanistan, from where they allegedly masterminded attacks against U.S. interests around the world.

In search of al-Qaida leaders, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and engaged there in what is referred to as the longest foreign war in U.S. history.

Last year, a U.S. drone strike killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul.

Dodging the blame for sheltering al-Zawahiri in violation of their counterterror promises, the Taliban refuse to confirm that the al-Qaida leader was indeed found and killed in Kabul.

Even al-Qaida has not yet declared its new leader because of “sensitivity to Afghan Taliban concerns not to acknowledge the death of al-Zawahiri in Kabul,” according to a U.N. report in February.

U.S. officials say al-Qaida’s new leader, Saif al-Adel, a former Egyptian special forces officer, is sheltered in Iran — an allegation Tehran has strongly repudiated.

While the U.S. and Taliban accuse each other of violating certain parts of the agreement that their representatives signed in February 2020 in Doha, Qatar, it is unclear how the parties should address disputes and what consequences violations of the deal may bear.

“The two sides have expressed interest in dialogue for the sake of ensuring better implementation of the deal,” said Smith of the ICG. “We have advocated for a revival of the Doha process to make sure that both the U.S. and Taliban have a shared understanding of the agreement and a common vision for what they hope to achieve through its implementation.”
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Pakistan recorded the second largest increase in terrorism-related deaths worldwide in 2022, with the toll rising significantly to 643, a 120% rise from the 292 deaths the previous year, a new report said Tuesday.

The year saw Pakistan overtake Afghanistan as the country with the most terrorist attacks and deaths in South Asia, a position held by the latter since 2017, said the annual Global Terrorism Index (GTI), released by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

Burkina Faso had the largest number of deaths globally, increasing from 759 to 1,135 in 2022.

The GTI said Afghanistan remained the country “most impacted” by terrorism for the fourth consecutive year, despite attacks falling by 75% and deaths being reduced by 58% in 2022. Afghanistan recorded 633 deaths in 2022, according to the GTI.

“GTI is a composite measure made up of four indicators: incidents, fatalities, injuries and hostages,” the report says, adding that a five-year “weighted average”—a calculation that takes into account varying degrees of importance of the numbers in a data set—is applied to measure the “impact of terrorism” within a given country.

“Afghanistan’s drop can largely be attributed to the Taliban taking control of the country after the fall of Kabul in August 2021,” the report said. “As the Taliban are now the state actor in much of Afghanistan, their attacks fall outside the scope of the GTI’s definition of terrorism.”

The report noted that out of all the deaths caused by terrorism worldwide in 2022, about 9% occurred in Afghanistan, a decrease from the 20% recorded the previous year.

Islamic State-Khorasan has emerged as “the most active terrorist group” in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the country, killing 422 people in 2022 and accounting for almost 67% of total terrorism-related deaths for the year.

The number of fatalities in Pakistan represented the largest year-on-year increase in the last decade, with 55% of all terror-related victims being military personnel. The South Asian nation moved up four places to sixth on the index due to the sharp increase in fatalities, according to the GTI.

The Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) was responsible for 36% or a third of terror-related deaths in Pakistan, a ninefold increase from the year prior, making it “the fastest-growing terrorist group in the world.” The GTI noted that the BLA had overtaken the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also called the Pakistani Taliban, as the deadliest terrorist group in the country.

“As a result, BLA’s lethality rate increased to its highest level, with attacks by the group killing 7.7 people per attack in 2022, compared to 1.5 people per attack in 2021. Of the 233 deaths attributed to BLA in 2022, 95% were of military personnel.”

The BLA claims to be fighting for the independence of Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, alleging extortion by the Pakistani government of the region’s natural resources and discrimination against its ethnic Baluch population. Islamabad rejects the charges.

Pakistan, the United States and Britain have designated both the BLA and TTP as terrorist organizations.

The GTI noted that terrorism remains primarily concentrated along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, with 63% of attacks and 74% of deaths occurring in that area.

Stepped-up terrorist activities by the TTP and the Islamic State terror group’s regional affiliate, Islamic State-Khorasan, have driven the rise in nationwide deaths.

The TTP has been waging terrorist attacks against Pakistani security forces to seek an Islamic Sharia-compliant state like the radical Taliban have established in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani Taliban is an offshoot and a close ally of the Afghan Taliban. Its leaders and commanders are based in Afghanistan and allegedly plot cross-border terrorism from there.

“Now that the Taliban are in control of neighboring Afghanistan, with reports suggesting leaders of terrorist groups such as TTP are using Afghanistan as a haven, it is likely that terrorist activity will continue along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border despite counter-terrorism efforts,” said Steve Killelea, IEP’s founder and chairman.

The Taliban leaders are under fire for not reining in activities of the TTP and other transnational terrorist groups on Afghan soil as outlined in their counterterrorism pledges, charges the de facto authorities reject.
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Feroza Amiri is a teacher who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power in August 2021. She and her son started a new life in Northborough, Massachusetts, where she now works at a high school as a teacher’s assistant. Roshan Noorzai has the story. Camera and video editing by Hoshang Fahim.
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India’s state minister for technology said on Sunday he will meet startups this week to assess the impact on them of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, as concerns rise about the fallout for the Indian startup sector. 

California banking regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on Friday after a run on the lender, which had $209 billion in assets at the end of 2022, with depositors pulling out as much as $42 billion on a single day, rendering it insolvent. 

“Startups are an important part of the new India economy. I will meet with Indian Startups this week to understand impact on them and how the government can help during the crisis,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the state minister for IT, said on Twitter. 

India has one of the world’s biggest startup markets, with many clocking multibillion-dollar valuations in recent years and getting the backing of foreign investors, who have made bold bets on digital and other tech businesses. 

SVB’s failure, the biggest in the U.S. since the 2008 financial crisis, has roiled global markets, hit banking stocks and is now unsettling Indian entrepreneurs. 

Two partners at an Indian venture capital fund and one lender to Indian startups told Reuters that they are running checks with portfolio companies on any SVB exposure and if so, whether it is a significant part of their total bank balance. 

Consumer internet startups, which have drawn the bulk of funding in India in recent years, are less affected because they either do not have an SVB account or have minimal exposure to it, the three people said. 

“Spoke to some founders and it is very bad,” Ashish Dave, CEO of Mirae Asset Venture Investments (India), wrote in a tweet. 

“Especially for Indian founders … who setup their U.S. companies and raised their initial round, SVB is default bank. Uncertainty is killing them. Growth ones are relatively safer as they diversified. Last thing founders needed.” 

Software firm Freshworks said it has minimal exposure to the SVB situation relative to the company’s overall balance sheet. 

“As we grew, we brought on larger, diversified banks such as Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and UBS. The vast majority of our cash and marketable securities today is not held at SVB,” Freshworks said in a blog post, adding that the company does not foresee any disruption to employees or customers. 

Freshworks said it is working with customers and vendors who were using its SVB account to migrate to alternate bank accounts. 

India’s Nazara Technologies Ltd., a mobile gaming company, said in a stock exchange filing that two of its subsidiaries, Kiddopia Inc. and Mediawrkz Inc., hold cash balances totaling $7.75 million or 640 million rupees with SVB. 
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The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Sunday for a bomb attack that killed a security guard and wounded a group of journalists and children in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif this week.

Saturday’s bombing occurred at an event honoring Afghanistan’s journalists and came two days after a suicide bomber killed the Taliban governor of Balkh province in an attack also claimed by IS.

The attack against journalists was caused by a “parcel bomb that IS fighters managed to place and detonate” at the event held at a cultural center in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province, IS said in a statement on its Amaq news agency website.

“The blast targeted a rally held inside a Shiite center to reward several journalists working in agencies involved in the war and instigation against IS,” the statement said.

A security guard was killed, while five journalists and three children were wounded in the bomb attack, police said.

The governor of Balkh, Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, was killed Thursday by a suicide bomber at his office in Mazar-i-Sharif.

That attack was also claimed by IS.

The killing of Muzammil, known for fighting IS jihadis, marked one of the highest-level attacks since the Taliban stormed back to power in 2021. 

Violence across Afghanistan has dramatically dropped since the Taliban seized control, but the security situation has again deteriorated with IS claiming several deadly attacks.

The Taliban and IS share an austere Sunni Islamist ideology, but the latter are fighting to establish a global “caliphate” instead of the Taliban’s more inward-looking aim of ruling an independent Afghanistan.

IS attacks in Afghanistan have often targeted the minority Shiite and Sufi communities, as well as foreigners and foreign interests.
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A fire that left thousands of Rohingya Muslims homeless in Bangladesh camps was a “planned act of sabotage,” a panel investigating the blaze said on Sunday.

Nearly 2,800 shelters and more than 90 facilities including hospitals and learning centers were destroyed in the fire on March 5, leaving more than 12,000 people without shelter, officials said.

More than 1 million Rohingya refugees live in tens of thousands of huts made of bamboo and thin plastic sheeting in camps in the border district of Cox’s Bazar, most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

“The fire was a planned act of sabotage,” senior district government official Abu Sufian, head of the seven-member probe committee, told Reuters by phone from Cox’s Bazar.

He said the blaze broke out in several places at the same time, proving it was a planned act, adding it was a deliberate attempt to establish supremacy inside the camps by militant groups. He didn’t name the groups.

“We recommended further investigation by the law-enforcing agency to identify the groups behind the incident,” he said, adding that the report was based on input from 150 eye witnesses.

The panel also recommended the formation of a separate fire service unit for the Rohingya camps. Each block of Rohingya camps needs to be widened to accommodate fire service vehicles and the construction of water cisterns, and the camps should use less flammable materials in shelters, among other recommendations.

Fires often break out in the crowded camp with its makeshift structures. A massive blaze in March 2021 killed at least 15 refugees and destroyed more than 10,000 homes.

Surging crime, difficult living conditions and bleak prospects for returning to Myanmar are driving more Rohingya refugees to leave Bangladesh by boat for countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, putting their lives at risk. U.N. data shows 348 Rohingya are thought to have died at sea last year.
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Two Namibian cheetahs relocated to India last year were released into the wild, more than seven decades after the world’s fastest land animal was declared extinct in the South Asian country.

“Both cheetahs are doing good,” India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav tweeted Saturday after the male and female darted from quarantine enclosures of Kuno National Park into the wild.

“Big day for the cheetah reintroduction programme,” Yadav added.

Obaan and Asha were among eight cheetahs brought to India last September after India’s top court ruled in 2020 that the species should be reintroduced on an experimental basis.

The programme is a major prestige project for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who presided over the release of the animals into an enclosure after their arrival.

Twelve more of the globally listed “vulnerable” big cats were translocated from South Africa last month, with India aiming to bring in about 100 of them over the next decade.

The last Asiatic cheetah to roam the sub-continent was believed to have been hunted down in 1947 by an Indian prince.

The spotted feline was declared officially extinct in India in 1952.

Kuno National Park, a wildlife sanctuary in central India, was selected for relocation of the African cheetahs — a different subspecies — for its abundant prey and grasslands.

The African cheetah’s introduction in India is the first intercontinental relocation of the planet’s fastest land animal.

Critics have warned the creatures may struggle to adapt to the Indian habitat due to competition for prey from a significant number of leopards in the national park.

Cheetahs are one of the oldest big cat species, with ancestors dating back about 8.5 million years, and they once roamed widely throughout Asia and Africa in great numbers.

But today, after their extinction from many countries across the Middle East and Asia, only around 7,000 remain, primarily in the African savannahs.
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The Indian government opposes recognizing same-sex marriages, it said in a filing to the Supreme Court on Sunday, urging the court to reject challenges to the current legal framework lodged by LGBT couples.

The Ministry of Law believes that while there may be various forms of relationships in society, the legal recognition of marriage is for heterosexual relationships and the state has a legitimate interest in maintaining this, according to the filing seen by Reuters, which has not been made public.

The intent of existing legislation “was limited to the recognition of a legal relationship of marriage between a man and a woman, represented as a husband and wife.”

At least four gay couples in recent months have asked the court to recognize same-sex marriages, setting the stage for the legal face-off with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
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A dusty logjam of trucks inches across a rut in the mountains splitting Pakistan and Afghanistan, teeming with a cargo of fruit and coal — and paying the Taliban authorities for the privilege of passage.

In downtown Kabul, a patrol of accountants inspects a bazaar, billing shopkeepers for trading honey, hair conditioner and gas hobs under the snapping white flag of the country’s new rulers.

Afghanistan is frozen deep in a second winter of humanitarian turmoil since the Taliban seized power in 2021, but cash is changing hands at a dizzying pace.

The Taliban administration is proving adept at collecting tax — seemingly without the corruption associated with the previous administration.

At Torkham on the border, one trucker told AFP that under the old regime he would pay 25,000 Afghani ($280) at illegal checkpoints along a 620 kilometer (380 mile) trip to Mazar-i-Sharif.

“Now we travel day and night, and no one asks us to pay,” said 30-year-old driver Najibullah.

In late January, the World Bank reported “strong” revenue collection at 136 billion Afghani ($1.5 billion) over the first nine months of 2022 — broadly in line with the final full year of the U.S.-backed regime.

“It has been reported quite consistently that they’re doing quite well on revenue, and that too is happening when economic activity is quite subdued,” an official with a foreign organization in Afghanistan told AFP.

“It was a shock.”

However, in a country where the United Nations says half the citizens face severe hunger, the figures beg many questions.

At the coalface

About 60 percent of the Taliban treasury is funded by customs, the World Bank says, raised at tumbledown checkpoints like Torkham in eastern Nangarhar province, where truckers trade rubber-stamped paperwork for cash.

Incoming freight is mostly food — oranges, potatoes and World Food Program flour — but the outgoing lane is dominated by a convoy of lavishly painted trucks loaded with chromite and coal.

Neighboring Pakistan has been hammered by the global energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine at a time when an economic crisis has withered its dollar reserves.

So, it brokered a deal to pay for Afghan coal in rupees — cutting out usual suppliers in South Africa and Indonesia.

According to a 2022 report by research group XCEPT, coal exports to Pakistan likely doubled under the Taliban government and earned Afghanistan $160 million in tax — three times what the previous administration was capable of.

But the mining industry relies heavily on child labor, with punishingly low pay and the barest safety measures.

“This has been their strategy from day one — to increase revenue no matter what,” former Deputy Minister of Commerce and Industry Sulaiman bin Shah told AFP.

The Taliban’s lodestar has always been law and order — albeit on their ultra-conservative terms — and there are signs Kabul’s coffers have benefitted from a crackdown on corruption which leeched the U.S.-backed government for 20 years.

Afghanistan climbed 24 places up Transparency International’s corruption perception ranking last year, a rare case of a metric improving for the country.

“Afghanistan has that capacity, which now we are collecting,” said Ministry of Finance spokesman Ahmad Wali Haqmal.

“The main problem was the corruption.”

But analyst Torek Farhadi sees it another way.

“They are more effective because people are scared of them,” he said.

“The Taliban have an iron grip on the administration. They have the guns, and nobody can steal any money.”

Out of the shadows

The Taliban’s transition from insurgents to bureaucrats is not entirely surprising.

During their 20-year guerrilla war, they established a shadow government in many areas they controlled, including courts, regional governors and a tax system to fill their war chest.

Afghanistan’s customs director Abdul Matin Saeed once ran shadow toll booths for the insurgency in Farah province, bordering Iran, and Balkh, bordering Uzbekistan, roving the territory on raspy motorbikes to evade capture.

“We didn’t have complete control over the roads… but still we were meeting our ends,” he told AFP.

This experience was “very handy” when the republic fell and he took office in Kabul, he said.

The government’s ability to raise revenue has far-reaching implications.

The international community has pressured the regime over restrictions on women’s rights with financial sanctions, but their ability to raise domestic revenue grants them greater independence.

It also presents a dilemma for donors — does providing humanitarian support free up the Taliban administration to pursue discretionary aims such as quashing dissent?

But perhaps the most glaring issue is the lack of clarity over how all this cash is spent.

Last year the Taliban government issued an annual budget outlining 231 billion Afghanis of spending but offered few details.

“This money goes to the functioning of the government of the Taliban,” said analyst Farhadi.

“I want to see how they spent it. Where did it go?”
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