In the wake of the deadly bombing of a mosque in northwestern Pakistan on January 30, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has called a conference of all political parties on February 7 to seek agreement on how to tackle terrorism.

As Pakistan mulls its response to the rising threat from Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, parliamentarians, including ministers, this week demanded that the military provide information about terrorism and leave the decision-making to elected representatives.

The massive bomb blast in a Peshawar mosque made January the deadliest month in Pakistan since July 2018, according to the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies. Across the country, 134 people died and more than 250 were injured in at least 44 militant attacks during the month.

The bombing, which targeted police, climaxed a wave of near daily attacks since peace talks with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan failed last year and the militant group announced war against Pakistani security institutions.

Although the group, also known as the TTP, distanced itself from the Peshawar bombing after one of its factions took responsibility, it was behind most of last year’s deadly attacks.

This week, TTP fighters attacked a police station in Punjab province, showing their growing reach. The group is also building alliances with militants in  the restive southwestern Baluchistan province.

Zahid Hussain, an Islamabad security affairs expert, called negotiating with the globally recognized terror group “a huge mistake” because it gave TTP a chance to reorganize.

“They have regrouped, and they are better armed because they are equipped now by probably more modern weaponry from Afghanistan, because lots of weapons have been left by the NATO forces and that has been used by the TTP,” said Hussain.

In a recent meeting of the cabinet, Sharif blasted his predecessor Imran Khan’s government for negotiating with the TTP.

In a nationally televised address, Khan defended that policy, saying that 30,000 to 40,000 TTP fighters wanted to come back to Pakistan after the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan ended.

Referring to resettling TTP fighters in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, Khan said his government had the option to “either kill all of them or reach an agreement with them and allow them to settle in the province.”

Parliamentarians say military officials briefed them about the possibility of talks with the TTP, but that negotiations were held without formal endorsement from elected representatives.

Pakistani Taliban and Afghanistan 

TTP top leadership and thousands of fighters are allegedly present in Afghanistan. They fled there after the Pakistani military conducted operations in the former tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

The TTP is an ideological offshoot of the Afghan Taliban. The terror group supported the Afghan Taliban in fighting the U.S.-led coalition.

Referring to Pakistan’s policy of fighting the Pakistani Taliban but supporting the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani parliamentarian Mohsin Dawar said, “There was a general narrative, which was coined by the state, that there is a good Taliban, there is a bad Taliban.”

“We’ve been saying for a very long time that TTP, this Imarat-e-Islami [Afghan Taliban] and the Haqqanis [Haqqani network], XYZ, all these are the same thing. You know, there is no difference between them,” said Dawar, who represents parts of the former tribal areas in the National Assembly of Pakistan’s bicameral parliament.

He said the victory of the Afghan Taliban had emboldened the Pakistani arm.

Speaking to the National Assembly after the Peshawar bombing, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif did not comment on the contradictory policies toward the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban but expressed regret over the state’s involvement in wars inside Afghanistan.

“We ourselves sowed the seeds of terrorism when the Russian troops entered Afghanistan and we provided our services to the U.S. on rent,” said Asif.

Pakistan contends the TTP is using Afghan territory to plan attacks and accuses Afghanistan of taking insufficient action against the terror group, a charge the Taliban rulers reject.

Military’s role

Residents of former tribal areas and other cities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have been protesting for months, demanding government action as incidents of targeted killing, extortion and bombings rise.  

Hussain said that while the military can be used to reclaim fallen territory, “terrorism is fought by the civilian forces in the long term” and government should strengthen police and counterterrorism departments to target breeding grounds of extremists, as the police “are in [a] much better position to know actually where those elements are.”

Civilian law enforcement in Pakistan is perpetually underfunded, routinely faces political interference and is often accused of corrupt practices.

In the lead-up to the all-parties conference on February 7, Sharif chaired a high-level meeting Friday to consider steps to upgrade the counterterrorism departments and police force.

Speaking to the National Assembly after the Peshawar attack, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said the military should place the facts before the house. He said the prime minister and the army chief would come to brief the lawmakers on the way forward.

Dawar is not hopeful lawmakers will be able to call the shots. He said parliament is “dysfunctional,” largely because of political wrangling between the ruling coalition and Khan’s party.

Senior members of Khan’s party have indicated he may not join the all-parties conference.

As the current and former prime ministers and their parties accuse each other of mishandling the threat of TTP, Dawar said none should be exempt from criticism, “because if you surrender your power and you leave your policymaking to the military leadership, it’s your fault.”
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Islamabad will ask the secretive supreme leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban to rein in militants in Pakistan after a suicide bombing killed scores of police in a mosque, officials said Saturday.

Since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul, Pakistan has witnessed a dramatic uptick in attacks in regions bordering Afghanistan, where militants use rugged terrain to stage assaults and escape detection.

Detectives have blamed an affiliate of the Pakistani Taliban — the most notorious militant outfit in the area — for the Monday blast in Peshawar which killed 101 people inside a fortified police headquarters.

The Pakistani Taliban share common lineage and ideals with the Afghan Taliban, led by Hibatullah Akhundzada who issues edicts from his hideaway in the southern city of Kandahar.

Special assistant to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Faisal Karim Kundi, said delegations would be sent to Tehran and Kabul to “ask them to ensure that their soil is not used by terrorists against Pakistan.”

A senior Pakistani police official in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where Monday’s blast took place told AFP the Kabul delegation would hold “talks with the top brass.”

“When we say top brass, it means… Afghan Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada,” he said on condition of anonymity.

Afghan officials did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.

But Wednesday, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi warned Pakistan should “not pass the blame to others.”

“They should see the problems in their own house,” he said. “Afghanistan should not be blamed.”

During the 20-year U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, Islamabad was accused of giving covert support to the Afghan Taliban even as the country proclaimed a military alliance with the United States.

But since the ultra-conservatives seized Kabul in 2021, relations with Pakistan have soured, in part over the resurgence of the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

The TTP — formed in 2007 by Pakistani militants who splintered off from the Afghan Taliban — once held sway over swathes of northwest Pakistan but were routed by an army offensive after 2014.

But over the first year of Taliban rule, Pakistan witnessed a 50% uptick in militant attacks, concentrated in the border regions with Afghanistan and Iran, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies.

The TTP, notorious for shooting schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, has “arguably benefitted the most of all the foreign extremist groups in Afghanistan from the Taliban takeover,” a U.N. Security Council report said in May 2022.

Last year Kabul brokered peace talks between Islamabad and the TTP, but the shaky truce collapsed. 
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Sri Lanka marked its 75th independence anniversary Saturday as a bankrupt nation, with many citizens angry, anxious and in no mood to celebrate.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has started to improve some but not all the acute shortages, acknowledged the somber state of the nation, saying in a televised speech, “We have reached the point of destruction.”

“Let’s seek to heal this wound though it’s difficult and painful. If we endure the suffering and pain for a short period of time, we can get the wound healed completely,” Wickremesinghe said, adding that the first six months of the year will be difficult.

Silent protest

Many Buddhists and Christian clergy had announced a boycott of the celebration in the capital, while activists and others expressed anger at what they see as a waste of money in a time of severe economic crisis.

A group of activists began a silent protest Friday in the capital, condemning the government’s independence celebration and failure to ease the economic burden. University students also attempted a protest march later Saturday, but police blocked them. Troops with assault rifles were stationed every few meters (yards) surrounding the site of the independence ceremony and riot police stood ready to prevent anti-government demonstrations.

Despite the criticism, armed troops paraded along the main esplanade in Colombo, showcasing military equipment as navy ships sailed nearby and helicopters and aircraft flew over the city.

Catholic priest Rev. Cyril Gamini called this year’s ceremony commemorating independence from British rule a “crime and waste” at a time when the country is experiencing such economic hardship.

“We ask the government what independence they are going to proudly celebrate by spending a sum of 200 million rupees ($548,000),” said Gamini, adding the Catholic Church does not condone spending public money on the celebration and that no priest would attend the ceremony.

About 7% of Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka’s 22 million people are Christians, most of them Catholics. Despite being a minority, the church’s views are respected.

Prominent Buddhist monk Omalpe Sobitha also said there was no reason to celebrate and that the ceremony was just an exhibition of weapons made in other countries.

Sri Lanka is effectively bankrupt and has suspended repayment of nearly $7 billion in foreign debt due this year pending the outcome of talks with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout package.

The country’s total foreign debt exceeds $51 billion, of which $28 billion has to be repaid by 2027. Unsustainable debt and a severe balance of payment crisis, on top of lingering scars from the COVID-19 pandemic, have led to a severe shortage of essentials such as fuel, medicine and food. Massive protests last year forced Wickremesinghe’s predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to flee the country and resign.

Despite some improvements, power cuts continue due to the fuel shortages, hospitals struggle with a lack of medicines, and the treasury cannot raise money to pay government employees.

To manage the country’s expenses, the government has increased income taxes sharply and has announced a 6% cut in funds allocated to each ministry. Also, the military, which had swelled to more than 200,000 members amid a long civil war, will be downsized by nearly half by 2030.

Wickremesinghe said that everyone, politicians and citizens alike, were to blame for the country’s woes. He said from the early days of independence, Sri Lankans were divided in terms of race, religion and region.

“We worked for political candidates expecting personal favors in return. Most of us contested not for the country, but for personal power, for greater perks and to earn a little more.”

Wickremesinghe also said steps were being taken to restore ethnic amity in the country by releasing military-occupied land in the ethnic Tamil-majority north and releasing suspects detained for alleged connections with a now-defunct separatist rebel movement. He also promised to devolve maximum power to the Tamil regions.

Tamil rebels fought for an independent state in the country’s northeast for more than 25 years until they were crushed by the military in 2009. More than 100,000 people were killed in the conflict by conservative U.N estimates.

Successive governments pledged maximum power-sharing with Tamils, short of a separate homeland, but have not followed up on them.
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Pakistani police killed two commanders from a militant group in the country’s northwest, a local officer said Saturday. 

Pakistan has increased its operations against militants after a surge in violence by the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, particularly in the northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. 

The TTP ended its cease-fire with the government in November, ordering its fighters to carry out attacks across the country. 

Regional police officer Muhammad Ali Gandapur said the slain TTP fighters were wanted in connection with the killing of five police officers and were also involved in attacks on security checkpoints. 

The government had a bounty of $7,259 on the two men. 

Police arrested four fighters and recovered gunpowder, hand grenades, electronic detonators and Kalashnikov rifles in the same intelligence operation in Hund village, Swabi district. 

The operation came days after a suicide bomber attacked a mosque within a police and government compound in the city of Peshawar, the provincial capital, killing 101 people and wounding at least 225. The attack was one of the deadliest in years in the volatile region. 
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Pakistan has blocked access to Wikipedia for not removing what it denounced as blasphemous content, the host of the world’s largest free online encyclopedia said Saturday.

The Wikimedia Foundation demanded that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) immediately reverse the ban, and said, it “believes that access to knowledge is a human right.”

The ban denies “the fifth most populous nation in the world access to the largest free knowledge repository,” the platform said in a statement.

“We hope that the Pakistan government joins us in a commitment to knowledge as a human right and restores access to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects promptly, so that the people of Pakistan can continue to receive and share knowledge with the world.”

A spokesperson for the PTA was quoted as confirming to local media it had blocked Wikipedia services in the country for not complying with directives for the removal of “unlawful” content from the platform.  

“The decision can be reviewed once Wikipedia removes sacrilegious content that has been identified by the regulatory authority,” PTA spokesperson Malahat Obaid told the English-language Dawn newspaper.  

The state regulator Wednesday “degraded” Wikipedia services across Pakistan and linked its full restoration to “blocking/removal” of the reported content by late Friday, according to a Twitter post. The PTA did not elaborate.

The ban on Wikipedia drew criticism from Pakistani social media activists and users, demanding the government review the decision and denouncing it as “regressive” and “harmful” for the country’s global image.  

The Wikimedia Foundation noted in its statement that the English version of Wikipedia in Pakistan “receives more than 50 million page views per month. There is also a sizable and engaged community of editors in Pakistan that contributes historical and educational content, it added.

The online platform defended its editorial policy, saying Wikipedia is written by nearly 300,000 volunteer editors around the world. They have designed “robust editorial guidelines that require strict citations and references to verified sources of information,” the statement said.  

“We respect and support the editorial decisions made by the community of editors around the world.”

Pakistan has previously also imposed temporary bans on access to Facebook, YouTube and other social media outlets in the country for posting content deemed offensive to Islam.  

Blasphemy is a highly sensitive issue in the Muslim-majority South Asian nation of about 220 million people and it carries the death penalty under Pakistani laws.

Human rights activists have long alleged successive governments in Pakistan use blasphemy laws to crackdown on free speech to silence dissents and intimidate political opponents as well as religious minorities.
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Indian business tycoon Gautam Adani is in the eye of a storm after a dramatic crash in the stocks of his companies.

Adani’s businesses have lost more than $100 billion after a U.S. investment firm, Hindenburg Research, alleged that the companies engaged in stock market manipulation and fraud. The Adani Group has called the allegations “nothing but a lie.”

The rout faced by the Adani conglomerate, which spans such key areas as ports, power generation, airports, mining, and renewable power, has raised fears of a potential loss of investor confidence in India’s growing economy. It has also triggered a political storm, with opposition parties demanding a probe into the accusations of malpractice against a business figure perceived to have close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The spectacular rise of the Adani empire over the last decade has catapulted Gautam Adani into the realm of the world’s wealthiest people. He was ranked as the world’s third richest, and Asia’s richest man by Forbes, behind Bernard Arnault and Elon Musk until late January.

That ranking has tumbled since seven listed companies of the Adani group lost nearly half their market capitalization after Hindenburg raised doubts over the business practices of the conglomerate. In a report, it accused the group of artificially boosting share prices by funneling money into stocks through offshore tax havens. The report said the shares were overvalued and their prices had soared more than 800% in the past three years.

Hindenburg is a small investment firm known as a short seller on Wall Street. The firm looks for corporate wrongdoing and makes money if stock prices of the company fall.

Hindenburg said that the “brazen stock manipulation” and accounting fraud by Adani Group was “the largest con in corporate history.” It also said that “substantial debt” puts the group on a precarious financial footing.

In a 413-page response, the Adani Group called the report baseless and a “malicious combination of selective misinformation” and “stale, baseless and discredited allegations.” It said the charges were driven by “an ulterior motive” to allow the U.S. firm to make financial gains.

In a video message to investors Thursday, Adani said that the fundamentals of his group are “strong” and that its record on paying back debt was “impeccable.” The Adani Group called the report an attack on the “growth story and ambition of India.”

Hindenburg countered by saying, “India’s future is being held back by the Adani Group, which has draped itself in the Indian flag while systematically looting the nation.”

The controversy has turned a spotlight on the dizzying rise of the 60-year-old businessman, a college dropout from a middle-class family, who began as a commodities trader before expanding into infrastructure in the 1990s when he built a port in Gujarat state and made a foray into areas such as coal mining. Then came power plants, airports, roads and defense equipment, areas he said were in step with the country’s need for infrastructure. The group became one of the country’s top three conglomerates.

He has also made investments overseas — on Tuesday, even as the controversy raged, Adani stood with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he took control of Israel’s Haifa port, acquired for $1.2 billion. In 2011 he bought a large coal mining operation in Australia. Other investments are lined up in Sri Lanka.

Adani hails from Gujarat state, which Modi headed as chief minister before arriving on the national stage in 2014. Critics point out that his dramatic expansion has coincided with Modi’s rule.

“From the time Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, there were close ties with Adani at the personal level,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a political analyst who has written a book on Modi. “However, I did not really look into their association at a business level.”

Adani has denied claims of any preferential treatment by Modi’s government. “These allegations are baseless,” Adani told India Today television saying that their shared origins made him an “easy target” for such claims. “The fact of the matter is that my professional success is not because of any individual leader.”

For the time being, the group faces a crisis of confidence despite a marginal rally in its companies’ stocks on Friday. Adani has scrapped a $2.5 billion share offering that opened after the release of the Hindenburg report, saying he was doing it to insulate investors from potential losses, but that it would not affect his business. The share issue had been seen as a key sign of investor confidence. Although it found support from institutional investors and wealthy Indians, small retail investors had largely shunned it.

Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that she did not expect the controversy around Adani’s business empire to affect investor confidence in India.

India remains a “very well-regulated financial market,” she told broadcaster News18 on Friday.

“One instance, however much talked about globally it may be, I would think is not going to be indicative of how well Indian financial markets are governed,” Sitharaman said. “I think the investor confidence which existed before shall continue even now.”

However, calls for a probe are growing amid questions about whether financial regulators had done enough scrutiny of the group. “The allegations made by Hindenburg need an enquiry at the level of the Supreme Court because the charges are serious,” economist Prasenjit Bose said.

The controversy has also turned into a political flashpoint. Parliament was adjourned Thursday and Friday as opposition lawmakers demanded an inquiry either by a joint parliamentary committee or one monitored by the Supreme Court into the allegations and have expressed concerns about exposure that Indian financial institutions have to the Adani Group.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi, a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters outside parliament on Friday that “we [the government] have no connection” with the Adani controversy.

Political analyst Mukhopadhyay said, “The Adani meltdown will only have a political impact if there is a negative fallout on the wider stock markets and Indian public financial institutions. Otherwise, it will blow over.”
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Editor’s note: Here is a fast take on what the international community has been up to this past week, as seen from the United Nations perch. 

Two years since Myanmar military coup

The U.N. special rapporteur for Myanmar warned Tuesday that two years after its coup, Myanmar’s military will try to legitimize its hold on power through sham elections this year, and he urged the international community not to recognize or engage with the junta.

Humanitarians await ‘guidelines’ from Afghan Taliban on women aid workers

The U.N. humanitarian chief said Monday he is awaiting a list of guidelines from Taliban authorities to allow Afghan women to work in the humanitarian sector, following a decree last month that has restricted their work. Martin Griffiths said he also asked Taliban officials if they are not going to rescind their decree now, then they should extend exemptions to cover all aspects of humanitarian work.

Iran dismisses IAEA report

Iran’s atomic energy organization on Wednesday dismissed a report by the United Nations nuclear watchdog that said Tehran had made an undeclared change to uranium enriching equipment at its Fordow plant. The IAEA said its inspectors found a modification to an interconnection between two clusters of centrifuges that was substantially different than what Iran had declared.

Red Cross warns world dangerously unprepared for next pandemic

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned Monday in its World Disaster Report that the world is dangerously unprepared for the next pandemic, and this will have severe health, economic and social consequences for countries around the world.

In brief 

— The World Health Organization said Monday that COVID-19 continues to be a global health emergency. Following a meeting of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on January 27, WHO Chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the pandemic is probably at a transition point that must be carefully navigated. The committee offered temporary recommendations including continuing vaccinations especially for high-risk groups. The health agency says as of January 29 there have been more than 753 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 6.8 million deaths globally.

— WHO also launched a new initiative Friday to reach the target of saving 2.5 million women’s lives from breast cancer by 2040. The campaign seeks to promote early detection, timely diagnosis and comprehensive management of breast cancer. WHO says there are more than 2.3 million cases of breast cancer annually, making it the most common cancer among adults. In 95% of countries, breast cancer is the first or second leading cause of female cancer deaths. Survival rates vary dramatically both between and within countries, with nearly 80% of deaths from both breast and cervical cancer occurring in low- and middle-income countries. Saturday is World Cancer Day.

— The Food and Agriculture Organization said Friday that global food commodity prices had dropped in January for the 10th consecutive month. The FAO Food Price Index averaged 131.2 points in January, 0.8% lower than in December and 17.9% below its peak in March 2022. The price indices for vegetable oils, dairy and sugar drove the January decline, while those for cereals and meat remained largely stable. Wheat prices were down by 2.5% as production in Australia and Russia outperformed expectations. The FAO said low domestic prices could result in a small cutback in wheat plantings in Russia, the world’s largest exporter, while the impact of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine are estimated to reduce winter wheat area plantings by 40%. Record plantings are forecast in India.

— The U.N. said that an inter-agency aid convoy delivered five truckloads of medications, shelter materials, tool kits, hygiene items and solar lamps to the Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast Ukraine on Thursday. The supplies are headed for people in Huliaipole, where about 3,000 people remain close to the front line. Humanitarians say the community has been without electricity and water since March, as power stations were damaged by fighting and cannot be repaired because of the ongoing hostilities. This is the second convoy this week to reach frontline communities, after a convoy reached Donetsk region on January 31. U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths will brief the U.N. Security Council on the humanitarian situation on February 6.

What we are watching next week

On February 6, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will brief member states on his priorities for the year ahead. With the world facing conflicts, inflation and climate catastrophes, look for him to amplify his calls for unity and urgent action.
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VOA White House Correspondent Sayed Aziz Rahman speaks with National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby about what the Taliban’s policies mean for future US relations
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The United States Friday renewed criticism of Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban for reneging on promises they would govern the country in a responsible way and respect the rights of all Afghans, including women.

John Kirby, the U.S. National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, told VOA the Taliban will continue to isolate itself from the international community unless they reverse restrictions on women.

“So, if the Taliban wants to be considered legitimate, if they want the recognition of the international community, if they want financial aid and investment in their country, then they should meet their promises, meet their obligations, and behave accordingly,” Kirby stressed.

Takeover

The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August 2021 and have since implemented harsh restrictions that severely curtail the rights of women and girls to participate in social, economic and political life.

The hardline rulers have turned Afghanistan into the only country in the world where girls are banned from attending secondary schools and universities.

The Taliban also have banned Afghan women from working for national and international nongovernmental organizations that provide humanitarian aid to millions of people in the conflict-ravaged country. Women also have been ordered to stop using parks, gyms and public bathhouses.

The human rights concerns have deterred the global community from formally recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan.

The Taliban reject criticism of their polices, saying they are governing the country in line with Afghan culture and their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law — though scholars in Muslim-majority countries dispute those assertions, saying Islam gives full rights to women to work and seek education.

ISIS threat

Kirby also questioned the de facto rulers’ counterterrorism operations against Islamic State militants in Afghanistan.

“[The Taliban] are constantly under threat by ISIS in Afghanistan. … We know that ISIS remains still a viable threat, a credible threat, not just in Afghanistan, but in other parts of the world too,” Kirby said, using an acronym for the Islamic State terrorist group, which is also known as ISIL or IS.

The Afghan affiliate of the militant outfit, known as Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K, has routinely carried out high-profile attacks in the Afghan capital of Kabul, and elsewhere in the country in recent months, killing scores of people.

Neighboring Pakistan also increasingly alleged in recent days that fugitive leaders of the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), have increased cross-border terrorist attacks.

The latest attack occurred Monday when a suicide bombing ripped through a packed mosque in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing more than 100 people and wounding 225 others. The victims were mostly police officers.

Pakistani officials in Islamabad again pointed fingers at authorities in Kabul for not preventing TTP from launching cross border attacks and raising bilateral tensions. Taliban leaders reject the charges, saying they are not allowing any group to use Afghan soil for such activities.

Kirby noted Friday that the people of Pakistan remain under threat of terrorism from the Pakistani Taliban.

“There’s no question about that. And sadly, we’ve seen that borne out in recent days in a bloody, bloody way,” he said.

“We obviously will continue to stay in touch with Islamabad to see what we could do, what might be possible,” Kirby added when asked whether Washington would support Islamabad in countering the terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan. He did not elaborate.

Detained teacher

Meanwhile, the United Nations demanded Friday that the Taliban release a university lecturer and education activist recently detained by security forces in the Afghan capital.

The detainee in question, Ismail Mashal, had reportedly been distributing academic and other books on Kabul’s streets after tearing up his own diploma on live television in protest of the Taliban’s decision to ban female students from higher education.

“It’s a very concerning development. The professor should be released immediately,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a daily briefing in New York. “This is just yet another sign of the backsliding, shall we say, that we are seeing in Afghanistan with the de facto authorities, especially on issues of education for women and girls.”

A senior Taliban official claimed in a statement that Mashal had been arrested by security forces for gathering a crowd of journalists and for launching “propaganda against the government.”

Abdul Haq Hammad, head of media monitoring at the Taliban information ministry, claimed that he had visited the detained lecturer and found he was being held in good conditions and had been able to contact his family.
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Pakistani authorities say most of the victims of the January 30 deadly suicide attack on a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, were local policemen. Over 100 people were killed and dozens more were injured in the attack. Iftikhar Hussain narrates this report from VOA’s Deewa Service. Videographer: Riaz Hussain and Usman Khan
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Police in Assam have arrested more than 1,800 men for marrying or arranging marriages to underage girls, launching what the eastern Indian state’s chief minister said on Friday was the start of a sustained crackdown on the practice.

Police began the arrests Thursday night, and more were likely, including of people helping to register such marriages in temples and mosques, Himanta Biswa Sarma told Reuters.

“Child marriage is the primary reason behind child pregnancy, which in turn is responsible for high maternal and infant mortality rates,” he said.

Marriage under 18 is illegal in India, but the law is openly flouted.

The United Nations estimates that the country is home to the largest number of child brides in the world at around 223 million. Nearly 1.5 million underage girls get married there every year, U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said in a 2020 report.

“From Muslims to Hindus, Christians, tribal people to those belonging to the tea garden communities [tribal tea garden workers], there are men from all faiths and communities who got arrested for this heinous social crime,” Sarma said.

The Assam government has registered cases related to child marriage against 4,004 people, he added. 
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Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Friday the government would have to agree to IMF bailout conditions that are “beyond imagination.”

An International Monetary Fund delegation landed in Pakistan on Tuesday for last-ditch talks to revive vital financial aid that has stalled for months.

The government has held out against tax rises and subsidy slashing demanded by the IMF, fearful of backlash ahead of elections due in October.

“I will not go into the details but will only say that our economic challenge is unimaginable. The conditions we will have to agree to with the IMF are beyond imagination. But we will have to agree with the conditions,” Sharif said in televised comments.

Pakistan’s economy is in dire straits, stricken by a balance of payments crisis as it attempts to service high levels of external debt, amid political chaos and deteriorating security.

The country’s central bank said Thursday its foreign exchange reserves had dropped again to $3.1 billion, which analysts said was enough for less than three weeks of imports.

Data on Wednesday showed year-on-year inflation had risen to a 48-year high, leaving Pakistanis struggling to afford basic food items.

Bowing to pressure

Ahead of the IMF visit, Islamabad began to bow to pressure with the prospect of national bankruptcy looming.

The government loosened controls on the rupee to rein in a rampant black market in U.S. dollars, a step that caused the currency to plunge to a record low. Artificially cheap petrol prices have also been hiked.

The world’s fifth-biggest population is no longer issuing letters of credit, except for essential food and medicines, causing a backlog of thousands of shipping containers at Karachi port stuffed with stock the country can no longer afford.

“Accepting IMF conditions will definitely increase prices, but Pakistan has no other choice,” analyst Abid Hasan told AFP. “Otherwise, there is a fear of a situation like Sri Lanka and Lebanon.”

Rejecting conditions and pushing Pakistan to the brink would have “political consequences” for the ruling parties, but so will agreeing to IMF measures raising the cost of living, he said.

Political chaos

The tumbling economy mirrors Pakistan’s political chaos, with former prime minister Imran Khan heaping pressure on the ruling coalition in his bid for early elections while his popularity remains high.

Khan, who was ousted last year in a no-confidence motion, negotiated a multibillion-dollar loan package from the IMF in 2019.

But he reneged on promises to cut subsidies and market interventions that had cushioned the cost-of-living crisis, causing the program to stall.

It is a common pattern in Pakistan, where most people live in rural poverty, with more than two dozen IMF deals brokered and then broken over the decades. 
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The United Nations says its humanitarians will not leave Afghanistan and will continue delivering lifesaving aid despite Taliban restrictions on Afghan women’s work for nongovernmental organizations.

“The humanitarian community does not go on strike,” Martin Griffiths, a top U.N. official for humanitarian affairs, told representatives of member states on Wednesday.

The announcement comes as some international aid agencies have suspended their operations in Afghanistan to protest a December 24, 2022, order by the de facto Taliban government banning local women from working for NGOs.

The Taliban say the restrictions on women’s work and education are temporary until they figure out how this can be done within religious confines.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an intergovernmental body of 48 majority Muslim countries, and many Muslim scholars have condemned the Taliban’s restrictions on women as inherently against Islamic values.

Griffiths, who traveled to Afghanistan last week urging Taliban officials to reverse the ban, said some immediate exceptions have been offered for women to work in the health and education sectors.

“Where exceptions exist, we will work,” he added. “This year, the U.N. has appealed for $4.6 billion in humanitarian response to the crisis in Afghanistan.

The funding, if provided by donors, will be used to assist 28 million Afghans, 6 million of whom are close to famine, Griffiths said.

Last year, donors met nearly 60% of the $4.4 billion the U.N. requested for the Afghanistan appeal.

Despite the U.N.’s readiness to continue operating in the country, it is unclear how donors will respond to providing funding to a country under a system that women’s rights groups have called gender apartheid.

Donors’ dilemma

The United States, European countries and other donors have refused to recognize the Taliban government. They have imposed sanctions and have warned that there would be costs for the group’s misogynistic policies.

Over the past 18 months, the United States has given about $2 billion in humanitarian assistance to U.N. agencies and other relief organizations to feed and assist millions of Afghans who have been pushed to extreme poverty.

“The Taliban regime’s institutionalized abuse of women raises the important question for policymakers of whether the United States can continue providing aid to Afghanistan without benefiting or propping up the Taliban,” the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in a report on Thursday.

Taliban authorities extract revenue from aid money to Afghanistan in the form of tax, license fees and administrative expenses, SIGAR said.

Germany, another major humanitarian donor to Afghanistan, has voiced concerns about whether aid can be delivered without violating humanitarian principles.

“It is clear to us that if women cannot continue to work and cannot participate in the implementation of humanitarian aid, then very fundamental humanitarian principles are being violated, principles that must be adhered to in the allocation of humanitarian aid,” German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Andrea Sasse told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday.

“The measures by the Taliban violate all of these principles. As the federal government, we are discussing how to respond to this behavior on the part of the Taliban,” Sasse said.

Sweden, which gave roughly $32 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan in 2022, may provide a similar amount this year but a decision will be made in March.

“We still hope that the edict will be rescinded, since it presents a serious obstacle to the delivery of principled humanitarian aid,” Rebecca Hedlund, a spokesperson for Swedish representation at the U.N., told VOA.

The State Department did not respond to written questions about whether Washington is considering reducing or ending humanitarian aid to a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Condemning the Taliban’s ban on women, the United States this week announced additional visa restrictions on unnamed Taliban officials and members of their families.

“We continue to coordinate closely with allies and partners around the world on an approach that makes clear to the Taliban that their actions will carry significant costs and close the path to improved relations with the international community,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Wednesday.

Activists have questioned the effectiveness of U.S. visa restrictions on Taliban leaders, saying most Taliban officials are already under a U.N. travel ban.
…

Majid Khan, a Pakistani man who has disclosed how he was tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, has been transferred from the Guantanamo Bay U.S. detention facility in Cuba to Belize, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

Khan, 42, admitted in 2012 to conspiring with members of the al-Qaida Islamist militant organization responsible for the 2001 attacks to commit murder as well as providing material support for terrorism and spying and had been serving as a government witness since, according to U.S. officials.

He was captured in Pakistan and previously held at an unidentified CIA “black site” from 2003 to 2006.

Thirty-four detainees — down from a peak population of 800 — remain at the Guantanamo Bay facility, with 20 already eligible for transfer, according to U.S. officials.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin notified U.S. lawmakers about his intent to transfer Khan last year, the Pentagon said in a statement.

“The United States appreciates the willingness of the government of Belize and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility,” the Pentagon added.

In a 39-page statement that Khan read aloud to a military sentencing commission in 2021, he described being hanged from a beam by his hands for days, naked except for a hood over his head at the CIA site. Guards would “throw ice water on my naked body every hour or two and placed a fan to blow directly on me,” Khan said.

Khan told of being beaten, subjected to the simulated drowning technique called waterboarding and raped anally by objects. He also said he had been deprived of sleep and food, kept isolated and shackled in a cell with music blaring 24 hours a day. This went on for three years, from the time of his arrest in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2003 until he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Khan said.

The detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base was opened under Republican President George W. Bush in 2002. President Barack Obama, a Democrat who succeeded Bush, whittled down the number, but his effort to close the prison was stymied largely by Republican opposition in Congress.
…

An Indian journalist held in custody for more than two years without trial walked free on Thursday after being granted bail in a money laundering case.   

Siddique Kappan was arrested in October 2020 in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where he had traveled to report on a high-profile gang rape case.   

He and three others were accused of belonging to an Islamist fundamentalist group and eventually charged with conspiracy to incite violence.   

Kappan has maintained his innocence and says that he had only traveled from his home state of Kerala to do his duties as a journalist.   

He was bailed in the case in September last year but remained behind bars for months longer because of a separate money laundering case against him.   

“I will continue my fight against draconian laws. They kept me in jail even after I got bail,” he told NDTV news network after his release from jail in the city of Lucknow.     

“These two years were very tough, but I was never afraid.” 

India has slipped 10 places in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom ranking to 150 out of 180 surveyed countries since the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014.   

Critical reporters often find themselves behind bars and hounded on social media by supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).   

Nine other journalists are currently in Indian prisons, according to Reporters Without Borders. 
…

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers Wednesday rejected allegations their territory was used in this week’s mosque bombing in Pakistan, urging the neighboring country to thoroughly investigate such terror acts before blaming others.

Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told a gathering in the capital, Kabul, that Pakistani officials should find a solution to their security challenges locally and desist from “sowing the seeds of enmity” between the two Muslim countries.

No group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s bombing of a crowded mosque in the highly guarded provincial police headquarters in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. The ensuing blast killed more than 100 people, mostly police personnel, injured many more and demolished the upper story of the building.

Pakistani authorities were quick to blame the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also called Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), for what they said was a suicide bomb attack and suggested the violence emanated from Afghanistan.

“We advise them to conduct a thorough investigation into the Peshawar bombing,” Muttaqi said Wednesday. “Our region is used to wars and bomb blasts. But we have not seen in the past 20 years a lone suicide bomber blowing up roofs of mosques and killing hundreds of people.”

Muttaqi echoed suspicions and questions being raised by critics in Pakistan in the wake of the large scale destruction caused by the blast.

The TTP, designated a global terrorist group by the United States, has long been conducting deadly terrorist attacks in Pakistan and its leadership allegedly directs the violence from Afghan sanctuaries. But the Pakistani Taliban has formally denied involvement in the Peshawar mosque bombing.

Moazzam Jah Ansari, the provincial police chief, told reporters Tuesday that a suicide bomber had entered the mosque as a guest, using up to 12 kilograms of explosive material earlier brought to the site in bits and pieces.

Investigators said Wednesday they had arrested several suspects in connection with the deadly bombing. Provincial police officials said they had recovered the remains of the attacker but shared no other details. They did not rule out the possibility that the bomber had internal assistance evading security checks.

Pakistan’s military was frequently accused of sheltering Afghan Taliban leaders and fighters while they were waging insurgent attacks, including suicide bombings, against U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan for almost two decades.

The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021 as the U.S. and allied nations withdrew troops from the country.

Since then, Islamabad has deepened economic and trade cooperation with the cash-strapped Islamist Taliban leadership in Kabul to help it deal with financial troubles stemming from sanctions and international isolation of the Afghan banking sector.

However, a spate of recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan, mostly claimed by the TTP, has strained relations between the two countries.

Islamabad and the global community at large have not yet recognized the Taliban as legitimate rulers, mainly over human rights issues and their restrictions on women’s access to public life and education.

U.S. officials are also skeptical of the Taliban’s pledges against terrorism and continue to press them to prevent the use of Afghan soil for cross-border attacks. Taliban authorities reject the skepticism and so did Muttaqi while responding to the Pakistani allegations Wednesday.

“Don’t point fingers at Afghanistan. If Afghanistan were a center of terrorism then it would also have hit China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran. Today, all these countries are safe and so is Afghanistan,” asserted the Taliban foreign minister. 
…

India’s economic growth will slow marginally this year, but the government expressed optimism Wednesday that the country’s economy is performing well as it moved to create more jobs ahead of general elections next year.

Despite a global slump, India has estimated that its economy will grow at around 6.5% in 2023 compared to the 7% growth expected in the current financial year, which ends in March.

“The Indian economy is therefore on the right track, and despite a time of challenges, heading towards a bright future,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, presenting the country’s annual budget in parliament. “After a subdued period of the pandemic, private investments are growing again.”

Sitharaman said that the government will hugely ramp up capital spending by 33% to over $122 billion. The massive boost in spending on projects such as roads and railways aim to create jobs in a country that has been struggling with high unemployment rates.

As India holds elections in nine states this year and then heads into general elections next year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under pressure to address joblessness.

Modi rose to power in 2014 on the promise of creating millions of jobs, but while growth in India has bounced back since the COVID-19 pandemic, critics point out that the recovery has been uneven and vast sectors of the economy such as agriculture and small industries are still struggling with a slowdown.

But some economists said that spending on infrastructure alone would do little to boost employment. “Construction of highways and rail projects are highly automated now and the employment generation is very low,” economist Arun Kumar told VOA. “Modern infrastructure is not employment intensive.” 

Sitharaman said the government’s focus is on ensuring “inclusive” growth and announced higher spending on several projects such as providing affordable housing to the urban poor and free grain for poor people.   

The government also said it would lower income tax for middle-income earners, a measure aimed at winning the support of India’s huge middle class. India, which has set a goal of going carbon neutral by 2071, also committed more than $4 billion toward clean energy initiatives. 

Some economists, who have been calling for more spending on rural welfare programs, expressed concern that the government has slashed spending on a rural jobs program that promises 100 days of work in a year to rural families and is seen as a crucial social buffer. 

“Demand for this program has been going up in the last 2½ years because of reverse migration from cities to villages during the COVID-19 pandemic and it still remains high,” according to economist Santosh Mehrotra at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. “It is surprising that the funds for this have been reduced though demand has not fallen off from those still facing distress.” 

The overall projections for India however remain upbeat with economists saying that if economic growth stays on track this year, it will remain the world’s fastest growing major economy for a second straight year. 

The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday while giving an update on the World Economic Outlook that together, China and India will account for half of global growth this year, while the United States, and the Euro-area combined will account for 10%. 
…

Pakistan’s Peshawar was once known as “the city of flowers,” surrounded by orchards of pear, quince and pomegranate trees. It was a trading city, situated at the gates of a key mountain valley connecting South and Central Asia. 

But for the past four decades, it has borne the brunt of rising militancy in the region, fueled by the conflicts in neighboring Afghanistan and the geopolitical games of great powers. 

On Tuesday, the city with a population of about 2 million was reeling after one of Pakistan’s most devastating militant attacks in years. A day earlier, a suicide bomber unleashed a blast in a mosque inside the city’s main police compound, killing at least 100 people and wounding at least 225, mostly police. 

Analysts say the carnage is the legacy of decades of flawed policies by Pakistan and the United States. 

“What you sow, so shall you reap,” said Abdullah Khan, a senior security analyst. 

Peshawar was a peaceful place, he said, until the early 1980s when Pakistan’s then-dictator Ziaul Haq decided to become part of Washington’s cold war with Moscow, joining the fight against the 1979 Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. 

Peshawar — less than 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Afghan border — became the center where the American CIA and Pakistani military helped train, arm and fund the Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Soviets. The city was flooded by weapons and fighters, many of them hard-line Islamic militants, as well as with hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees. 

Arab militants were also drawn there by the fight against the Soviets, including the scion of a wealthy Saudi family, Osama bin Laden. It was in Peshawar that bin Laden founded al-Qaida in the late 1980s, joining forces with veteran Egyptian militant Ayman al-Zawahri. 

The Soviets finally withdrew in defeat from Afghanistan in 1989. But the legacy of militancy and armed resistance that the U.S. and Pakistan fueled against them remained. 

“After the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1980s, Americans abandoned mujahedeen, Americans even abandoned us, and since then we are paying a price for it,” said Mahmood Shah, a former Pakistani army brigadier and a senior security analyst. 

The mujahedeen plunged Afghanistan into civil war in a bloody fight for power. Meanwhile, in Peshawar and another Pakistani city, Quetta, the Afghan Taliban began to organize, with backing from the Pakistani government. Eventually, the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, ruling until they were ousted by the 2001 American-led invasion following al-Qaida’s 9/11 attacks in the U.S. 

During the nearly 20-year U.S. war against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, militant groups blossomed in the tribal regions of Pakistan along the border and around Peshawar. Like the Taliban, they found root among the ethnic Pashtuns who make up a majority in the region and in the city. 

Some groups were encouraged by the Pakistani intelligence agencies. But others turned their guns against the government, angered by heavy security crackdowns and by frequent U.S. airstrikes in the border region targeting al-Qaida and other militants. 

Chief among the anti-government groups was the Pakistani Taliban, or Tahreek-e Taliban-Pakistani, or TTP. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, it waged a brutal campaign of violence around the country. Peshawar was scene of one of the bloodiest TTP attacks in 2014, on an army-run public school that killed nearly 150 people, most of them schoolboys. 

Peshawar’s location has for centuries made it a key juncture between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. One of the oldest cities in Asia, it stands at the entrance to the Khyber Pass, the main route between the two regions. That was a source of its prosperity in trade and put it on the path of armies going both directions, from Moghul emperors to British imperialists. 

A heavy military offensive largely put down the TTP for several years and the government and the militants eventually reached an uneasy truce. Peshawar came under heavy security control, with checkpoints dotting the main roads, and a heavy presence of police and paramilitary troops. 

TTP attacks, however, have grown once more since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021 amid the U.S. and NATO withdrawal from that country. The Pakistani Taliban are distinct from but allied to the Afghan group, and Pakistani officials regularly accuse the Afghan Taliban of giving the TTP free rein to operate from Afghan territory. 

Ahead of Monday’s suicide bombing, Peshawar had seen increasing small-scale attacks targeting police. In another spillover from Afghanistan’s conflict, the regional affiliate of the Islamic State group attacked Peshawar’s main Shiite mosque in March 2022, killing more than 60 people. 

Shah, the former officer, warned that more TTP attacks could follow and said that Pakistan needs to engage the Afghan Taliban and pressure them to either evict the TTP or ensure it doesn’t launch attacks from Afghan territory. 

“If we are to have peace in Pakistan, we should talk to TTP from the position of strength with help from the Afghan Taliban,” he said. “This is the best and viable solution to avoid more violence.” 
…

For more than a decade, Afghanistan was continuously ranked among the 10 most corrupt governments. But this year, the country has left its disreputable position, and the Taliban claim credit for it.

On Tuesday, Transparency International, a Berlin-based nongovernment corruption watchdog, released its latest annual corruption perception index, ranking Denmark as the least corrupt state in the world and Somalia 180th as the most corrupt.

Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is ranked 150th, a remarkable status upgrade from its 174th ranking in 2021. In 2011, at the height of U.S. military and developmental engagement in Afghanistan, the country was ranked 180th, next to North Korea and Somalia.

The improved ranking is surprising for a regime that has been widely condemned as deeply authoritarian and misogynistic because of its mistreatment of women and the press. But it does not give full credit to the Taliban for tackling Afghanistan’s chronic corruption ills.

“Although there are multiple anecdotes of the demand for bribes being reduced and the Taliban consolidating their revenue collection, we do not have enough verified evidence of a systemic reduction in corruption in the country,” Samantha Nurick, Transparency International’s communication manager, told VOA.

“The score change is not statistically significant and should not be interpreted as an improvement of the situation on the ground,” she said, adding that gathering reliable information from inside Afghanistan was extremely challenging.

Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban have reportedly reduced bribery and extortion at least in some public services.

“The Taliban have demonstrated the ability to greatly reduce corruption in Customs and at road checkpoints,” William Byrd, a senior researcher at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told VOA.

Tackling corruption has provided financial lifelines for an isolated Taliban regime that faces crippling international economic and banking sanctions.

Last week, the World Bank released an upbeat assessment of the Taliban-run Afghan economy, saying exports were high, currency exchange was stable and revenue collection was strong in the first three quarters of 2022.

The Taliban say revenues from their robust tax collections reached $1.7 billion in the last 10 months, but they have not explained how and where they spend the meager national resources.

Shutting secondary schools and universities for girls and women, the Taliban have opened and financed thousands of new religious seminaries across Afghanistan only for boys and young men.

Last year, the Taliban’s acting defense minister said the regime was planning to build a 110,000-strong army.

Aid-driven corruption

For two decades, the Taliban fought the former U.S.-backed Afghan government, calling it inherently corrupt and inefficient.

The United States spent $146 billion to rebuild Afghanistan, including the country’s anti-corruption agencies, before the Taliban returned to power, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a U.S. government entity that has investigated, reported and prosecuted numerous corruption cases involving Afghan and American contractors.

“The United States failed to recognize the magnitude of corruption early on, empowered warlords and other corrupt actors and poured too much money into the country at a rate that it could not be absorbed,” Shelby Cusick, a SIGAR spokesperson, told VOA in written replies.

Endemic corruption diminished public support for the former Afghan government, weakened its position in peace talks with the Taliban and culminated in its ignominious fall in August 2021.

Western donors have stopped development assistance to Afghanistan but have continued giving humanitarian aid to needy Afghans while bypassing Taliban institutions.

While corruption still permeates different layers of the public sector in Afghanistan and most citizens resort to bribery to receive basic services such as getting a passport, senior Taliban leaders show a will in tackling corruption.

“Taliban’s current supreme leader — and those close to him — are more predisposed to emphasize on combating corruption, both moral and material, as he rarely dwells on worldly pleasures,” said Malaiz Daud, a research fellow at the Barcelona Center for International Affairs.

“The movement, undoubtedly though, has a serious corruption problem at the very highest level,” he said.

The Taliban have called bribery in the public sector a criminal act, but other forms of corruption such as diversion of public funds, nepotistic appointments in public positions, access to information on government activities and the abuse of official powers remain prevalent across the country.
…

The White House is launching a partnership with India on Tuesday that President Joe Biden hopes will help the countries compete against China on military equipment, semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

Washington wants to deploy more Western mobile phone networks in the subcontinent to counter China’s Huawei Technologies, to welcome more Indian computer chip specialists to the United States and to encourage companies from both countries to collaborate on military equipment like artillery systems.

The White House faces an uphill battle on each front, including U.S. restrictions on military technology transfer and visas for immigrant workers, along with India’s longstanding dependence on Moscow for military hardware.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and his Indian counterpart, Ajit Doval, are meeting Tuesday with senior officials from both countries at the White House to launch the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies.

“The larger challenge posed by China — its economic practices, its aggressive military moves, its efforts to dominate the industries of the future and to control the supply chains of the future — have had a profound impact on the thinking in Delhi,” said Sullivan.

New Delhi has frustrated Washington by participating in military exercises with Russia and increasing purchases of the country’s crude oil, a key source of funding for Russia’s war in Ukraine. But Washington has held its tongue, nudging the country on Russia, while condoning India’s more hawkish stance on China.

On Monday, Sullivan and Doval participated in a Chamber of Commerce event with corporate leaders from Lockheed Martin, Adani Enterprises and Applied Materials.

While India is part of the Biden administration’s signature Asian engagement project Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), it has opted against joining the IPEF trade pillar negotiations.

The initiative also includes a joint effort on space and high-performance quantum computing.

General Electric, meanwhile, is asking the U.S. government for permission to produce jet engines with India that would power aircraft operated and produced by India, according to the White House, which says a review is underway.
…

Pakistan is facing a severe economic crisis. Prices of staples like food and fuel are skyrocketing. The country must repay billions in external debt, but its foreign reserves are so low it can barely afford to buy a few weeks’ worth of imports. As the government tries to revive stalled talks with the International Monetary Fund to unlock much-needed assistance, Sarah Zaman looks at how delaying reforms has brought Pakistan to the brink of economic disaster.
…

In India, Rahul Gandhi, leader of the main opposition Congress Party has concluded a five-month long foot march through the country, hoping to resurrect the political fortunes of the party that has been pushed to the sidelines in the last decade since the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. Anjana Pasricha in New Delhi reports on the impact of the march. Camera: P. Pallavi
…

India’s opposition Congress Party leader, Rahul Gandhi wrapped up a grueling long march that he began five months ago with the same message he delivered in towns and villages as he walked more than 3,500 kilometers from the country’s southern tip to Kashmir in the north. 

“The ideology that wants to break this nation, we need to stand against it together. But not with hatred, that is not our way,” Gandhi said in Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir, on Monday. He said he wants to show that India is a “country of love.”    

The 52-year-old Gandhi has trekked through 12 states since he launched the “Bharat Jodo” or “Unite India” march in September with the goal to counter what the Congress Party calls the divisive politics of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

But analysts say that while the march has revived the flagging spirits of an ailing party, it may not yield significant electoral gains. 

The Congress Party, known as the “grand old party” ruled India for decades since the country’s independence but has been pushed to the margins since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP emerged as the dominant political force in 2014. While critics and opposition parties criticize the BJP for polarizing India along religious lines, Modi remains hugely popular amid a rising tide of Hindu nationalism.  

Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the famous Gandhi political dynasty, has often been called an ineffective opponent to Modi. Often described as a “reluctant” politician, BJP leaders have mocked him as an entitled “prince” and contrasted him to Modi, the son of a tea seller who rose to the top job on his own merit. 

Gandhi’s march aimed to change that image. It emulated a tradition by past political leaders in India of traversing the rural heartland on foot, including the country’s independence leader, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who led a long march in 1930 to resist British rule. 

Besides party workers, the Congress Party leader was joined along the way by hundreds of ordinary citizens, including young people worried about rising joblessness, farmers who say their incomes were too meager and activists who say hate speech is on the rise. 

Political analyst Neerja Chowdhury, who observed the march briefly in western India, said Gandhi received a positive response. “People said that they were very taken by the fact that somebody had come to them to find out their problems and that had impressed them,” she said. 

Gandhi tried to identify with ordinary people as he sought to revive grassroots support — spending the night in cabins made of shipping containers and marching only in a white T-shirt even as temperatures plummeted in North India. He said he decided to forsake warmer clothes after meeting three poor young girls who were shivering in their inadequate clothing. He exchanged his clean-shaven look for a thick beard. 

Political analysts said the march had helped change perceptions of a political leader long seen as out of touch with the masses. “What it has achieved is rebranding, changing his image, making him come across as a more serious politician and not one who will just run away because it has taken incredible stamina to walk 3,500 kilometers, almost 25 kilometers a day,” according to Chowdhury. 

Besides spreading his message of social harmony, Gandhi also focused on issues such as economic inequality, joblessness and inflation, concerns that are expected to resonate during general elections scheduled to be held next year. “The aim is to stand against violence, unemployment, price rises and income inequality,” he said as he crossed Punjab state earlier this month. 

Analysts said the march had succeeded in making an impact. “The completion of the march itself is an accomplishment — it traversed across thousands of kilometers with so many challenges and it ended on a high note in Kashmir. So, it ticked all those boxes,” said political analyst Rasheed Kidwai. “But in electoral terms, I would wait and watch.”   

Although Congress Party spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said the march should not be linked with electoral politics, the question being raised is whether it will yield significant dividends for the Congress Party in the 2024 general elections. Reduced to a mere 52 out of 543 elected seats in parliament, compared to BJP’s 302 seats, it has a huge gap to cover. The Congress Party has also lost a series of state elections in recent years and several disenchanted senior leaders have quit the party. 

Rahul Gandhi stepped down as head of the Congress Party in 2019 after it suffered a second successive humiliating rout in general elections under his leadership. But the Gandhi dynasty is still seen as being firmly in control of the party. 

The impact of his march will be tested when nine states go to the polls this year ahead of next year’s general elections. “The Congress Party vote share has been around 19 percent in the past two general elections. If it can improve this number, then it could mark the start of the revival of the party,” said Kidwai. 

Analysts say the party’s comeback will hinge on its ability to address the issues that led to its decline. “People are viewing Gandhi with new eyes, and the party may get a few more seats than they would have got because of goodwill he has won, but the Congress has to become a fighting machinery, which at the moment it is not,” pointed out Chowdhury. 

While the march has enhanced Gandhi’s popularity, analysts say Prime Minister Modi, seen as one of the most charismatic leaders in recent decades, remains far ahead and is well-placed to win a third term in office. 
…

In a photograph posted on an Instagram page with almost 15,000 followers, a little girl smiles brightly, her hands folded and pressed together in a common Indian greeting gesture. She sits on an elaborate throne decorated with roses. Dressed in a pastel pink outfit, diamond jewelry and a tiara, she looks like the daughter of any affluent Indian family — enjoying a Disney Princess-themed birthday party, perhaps.

The caption dated January 17, however, spells a different story: “Antim Vidai Samaroh” — The Final Farewell Ceremony.

The next day, the eight-year-old girl, Devanshi Sanghvi gave up her multi-hued clothes and the worldly life of an heiress to Sanghvi and Sons, a multi-million-dollar diamond business based in the Indian city of Surat in Gujarat.

In the ceremony titled “Divya Diksha Danam” or The Divine Brilliance Initiation Donation — also chronicled on the Instagram page, Devanshi was dressed in white cotton robes, still grinning for photos. It was almost as if she was not completely aware of what entailed: she would now live as a nun, eat only what she received in alms, avoid using any kind of technology, not bathe, and even give up all her familial relations.

Devanshi comes from a family following Jainism, one of the oldest religions in the world — originating in India.

With around 4.5 million followers all over the globe, renunciation of worldly life is not uncommon among Jains. The induction of a child as young as eight into nunhood, though, is mostly unheard of.

Devanshi’s guardians have come under scrutiny from several child rights activists and mental health professionals.

Valavan V.S., a child rights professional based in Chennai, told VOA he strongly believed Devanshi’s decision to become a nun was heavily influenced by her parents and other adults around her.

“This cannot be the sole decision of an eight-year-old child, as it is being claimed. Even if she has made the decision herself, it cannot be amused or encouraged as she is too young,” he said.

The Instagram page highlighting Devanshi’s journey seemed to be aware of potential criticism even before news about her becoming a nun was made public. A video dated December 25, 2022, addressed several concerns in Hindi smattered with English.

Armed with visuals and animation, it claimed that Jain children who became nuns and monks would have access to nutritious food, specialized education, healthcare and adult mentors.

The video also claimed that Devanshi’s was not an imposed decision, but one that the child had taken out of her own volition.

Opposing the claims made by Devanshi’s social media handlers, Nilima Mehta, a professor and child protection consultant in Mumbai, explained, “The consent of a child— anyone under eighteen — is not considered consent in law. A child Devanshi’s age is not cognitively or emotionally matured enough to make an informed decision.”

In a poignant video posted on January 4, Devanshi can be heard speaking in childlike Hindi mixed with English. In the video, where she talks about a letter she wrote for her mother’s birthday, she says, “I realized that this is going to be my last birthday with my mother. So, my gift to her is going to be my Diksha (initiation into nunhood).”

In another Instagram video, Devanshi reveals how people kept asking her if she was sure about the Diksha. She added that she feared the adults around her would cancel the ceremony, refusing to let her become a nun.

Anindita Chatterjee, a child and adolescent psychiatrist based in Kolkata, told VOA, “It is evident that Devanshi is not aware of the hardships of a Jain nun’s life. This decision can have an adverse effect on her mental health, too, once she becomes cognizant of the realities of the harsh world she is about to face.

“The human mind is complex and prone to changes. There have been cases of children who became nuns and monks, only to run away later when they were old enough to think for themselves,” she said.

Valavan V.S. blamed the child protection system of India for failing to take any action regarding Devanshi’s case.

“The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) clearly states that in all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child should be the primary focus. If you look at this case from this perspective, the decision taken by an eight-year-old child could be considered void and adults who are supporting this must be brought into the legal circle,” he said adding, however, that “the District Child Protection Units (DCPUs), Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) have done nothing to protect Devanshi’s rights.”

The DCPUs, CWC and NCPCR are government agencies in India responsible for the protection of the rights of children at different levels.

Ironically, the caption of a video on Devanshi’s Instagram page says it all, describing her as “a girl who was happy singing, dancing, playing with her sister and having fun with her family.”

A professor of Jainism explained the theological aspect of children taking up monkhood.

“According to Jain sacred scriptures, an eight-year-old child’s mind is developed enough to make their own decisions,” said the professor who asked not to use her name due to the sensitive nature of this issue. “At that age, one attains the state of Atmanubhuti — knowing oneself through their own knowledge. Through this, the child learns to differentiate between the self and the other.”

The professor further explained the eleven stages of sacrifice.

“In the eleventh stage, the person can give up their birth family and home. If she now wishes to abandon worldly life including her parents, she has to ask her parents and Guru (spiritual teacher) for permission, who gauge if her wish for tyag (sacrifice) is strong enough,” the Jainism professor told VOA.

“This will surely bring fame to Devanshi’s family, alongside criticism. But only time can tell what the child’s final destination will be,” Kolkata-based Chatterjee said.
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