The World Food Program said it is increasing emergency aid to reach 1.9 million people in Pakistan devastated by the worst floods to hit the country in more than a century.

WFP spokesman Thomson Phiri said emergency food aid already has been distributed to more than 400,000 people in the hardest hit Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh provinces.  He said the WFP is continuing to expand its operations across the country.

“We have reached 400,000 people, but of course, the floods have affected a record 33 million people and it is the deadliest in more than a decade,” he said.    

The United Nations said torrential rains have inundated a third of the country, killing some 1,400 people, including hundreds of children. It said more than half a million homes have been destroyed, hundreds of bridges and roads demolished or washed away, cutting off vulnerable communities from humanitarian assistance.  

Phiri said more than 630,000 people are in overcrowded relief camps where they are exposed to outbreaks of waterborne diseases.

“In addition to food distribution, the World Food Program is providing specialized, nutritious food for 31,000 young children and 28,000 pregnant and nursing women to prevent malnutrition and boost their immunity,” he said.  

Phiri said the WFP is looking beyond the emergency phase of its operation. He said Pakistan needs longer-term support to restore people’s livelihoods.

“Once the initial relief response is concluded, the World Food Program will immediately implement recovery programs to improve community infrastructure, create livelihood opportunities and boost resilience, combined with cash-based transfers, through early 2023,” he said.   

Phiri said the WFP will be working closely with the government to help communities strengthen their ability to withstand climatic shocks. He said some of the projects include plans to create irrigation channels and dams in drought- and flood-prone areas.  He noted both men and women will be given vocational training and income-generating activities to boost their livelihood prospects.
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India’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release on bail of Siddique Kappan, a journalist who has been in jail for more than 23 months for seeking to meet the family of a Dalit girl allegedly gang-raped by upper-caste Hindu men in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

After the 19-year-old victim was set ablaze and died, the state government quickly cremated her body, sparking a nationwide outrage.

While Kappan, a New Delhi-based Muslim journalist reporting for Malayalam language news media, was going to the town of Hathras, where the alleged rape occurred, on Oct. 5, 2020, he was arrested and charged under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act-1967 — a stringent anti-terrorism law.

In the charge sheet the police said Kappan reported news, “only and only to incite Muslims which is the hidden agenda of [Muslim political organization] Popular Front of India or PFI.” The police added in the charge-sheet that PFI was engaged in terrorism-related activities and Kappan was involved with the organization.

Media rights groups the Committee to Protect Journalists and Vienna-based media International Press Institute condemned Kappan’s arrest and demanded he be released immediately.

After the Allahabad High Court had rejected Kappan’s bail petition in August, he challenged the court order in the Supreme Court.

The Uttar Pradesh police opposed his bail in the Supreme Court, with their lawyer claiming Kappan was going to Hathras in a “conspiracy” to “incite riots.”

While granting Kappan bail Friday, Indian Chief Justice Uday Umesh Lalit said, “Every person has the right to free expression. He is trying to show that victim needs justice and raise a common voice. Is that a crime in the eyes of the law?”

The order said Kappan must be freed within three days.

Kappan’s lawyer, Mohamed Dhanish KS called the police charges “totally baseless and fabricated.”

“At the time of argument in the Supreme Court, the prosecution failed to establish any serious offense committed by Mr. Kappan. It was clear that the stringent UAPA was invoked against him without applying mind or with substantiating act or evidence,” the lawyer told VOA.

Delhi University professor of Hindi Apoorvanand, who only uses one name, said, Kappan was trying to visit Hathras like many other journalists and activists “who were pained and outraged by the criminality.”

“But he, being a Muslim, was trapped by the UP police and framed. He had to spend more than 710 days in prison for doing what is just normal in a free society and what the court itself said was perfectly within his rights to do,” Apoorvanand told VOA.

“His bail petition was repeatedly rejected. The state persisted with its lies. The Supreme Court has taken only the first step in undoing this criminal injustice done to him.”

Kappan’s wife, Raihanath Kappan, said she was happy with Friday’s court order.

“For two years we went through immense pain while continuing the legal battle. I am happy that finally he is released,” the wife told VOA.

“Many people and groups stood by us in our fight for justice. I am thankful to all of them,” she said.
…

India’s opposition Congress Party leader, Rahul Gandhi, has embarked on a mammoth five-month march across the country as he seeks to resurrect his party’s political fortunes before 2024 general election.

The “Grand Old Party” that dominated India’s politics for over five decades has been pushed to the margins since 2014, when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi rose to power.

The 3,570-kilometer trek across 12 states that began Thursday amid the sound of drumbeats and waving of national flags, has been billed as a “Bharat Jodo Yatra” or “Unite India March.” Starting from the southern state of Kerala, it will end up in the north in Kashmir. It is taking place as opposition parties accuse the ruling BJP of polarizing the country along religious lines and weakening democratic institutions.

Praying at a memorial in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where his father, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated in 1991 by a Tamil suicide bomber, Gandhi tweeted before embarking on the march, “I lost my father to the politics of hate and division. I will not lose my beloved country to it too.

The party seems to be emulating a tradition of long political marches in India. The most famous was led by independence leader Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 to resist British rule. Another political roadshow led by BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani in 1990 to campaign for building a Hindu temple at the site of a mosque catapulted the party into national prominence.

Calling the Congress Party’s march a landmark occasion, the party president, Sonia Gandhi, said, “I am confident our organization will be rejuvenated.”

After two humiliating defeats in general elections in 2014 and 2019 under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership, the party has also suffered significant losses in state elections in recent years. It is being called a dispirited party that has floundered in its bid to counter the dramatic rise of the BJP.

“It’s quite a hill they have to climb. In the last two elections, the BJP has substantially increased its vote share and it also seems to have spread to many parts of the country, east, northeast, even parts of south, where it was marginal. And the personal appeal of Mr. Modi is probably more than that of any other leader in decades,” said Mahesh Rangarajan, a professor of history at the Ashoka University.

“From the Congress party’s point of view, this outreach is a major initiative to give their party a boost and an impetus,” he said.

At the same time, analysts also question whether the long march will be enough to lift the party out of its deep political slump ahead of the 2024 election without addressing the core problems that have led to its decline.

Walking about 20 kilometers a day and spending the night in makeshift accommodations, Gandhi aims to connect with India’s people, according to senior Congress leaders, who are calling it a “mass mobilization” program.

Although he stepped down as party president in 2019, Gandhi is seen as the de facto leader in a party that has been dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi family.

However, there have been many questions raised over his leadership.

A string of senior leaders has quit the party in recent years – the most recent to leave, Ghulam Nabi Azad, called Gandhi “immature” and “childish,” and accused the leadership of “foisting a nonserious individual” at the helm of the party. Little attention was given to a group of 23 leaders who last year demanded reform in a party long accused of following dynastic politics.

“The big problem leading to the Congress Party’s massive decline is that sections of party leaders are losing trust in their own leader and voters are also losing trust in the leadership of the Congress. The leader is not even seen as legitimate within his own party,” according to Sanjay Kumar at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. “That is the biggest crisis facing the Congress,” he said.

Other analysts agree. They say, while the campaign marks a starting point to revive the party, it has simply not done enough in recent years to offer a credible alternative to the BJP and to Modi, whose rankings continue to stay high despite such problems as mounting unemployment and inflation.

“Rahul Gandhi simply has not clicked with the people of India. And the Congress Party is showing little signs of reviving. It has been accused of becoming a party that is flabby, stagnant, a party of the drawing room, used to being in power while the leadership is accused of entitlement in a young, aspirational India,” said independent political analyst Neerja Chowdhury. “To hit the road again and go back to the people is a good idea but it is uncertain whether it will work,” she said.

The jury is out on whether the march can help the Congress Party’s revival.

“Can this stand-alone event do it? There is a big question mark on it,” Kumar said, although, according to him, it could “trigger a momentum in favor of the party and have some positive impact on its image if not its electoral prospects.”
…

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, while referring to Pakistan’s catastrophic floods, said Friday that “humanity has declared war on nature and nature is striking back.”

Guterres spoke in Islamabad at the start of his two-day visit to express solidarity with the flood-ravaged South Asian nation. He said nature is blind and it is not striking back at those who have contributed more to the war on nature.

“It’s like nature has attacked the wrong targets. It should be those that are more responsible for climate change that should have to face this kind of challenge,” Guterres said.

He described Pakistan among the places most affected by the consequences of climate change.

The country of about 220 million people contributes less than 1% of the global greenhouse gas emissions, but it is constantly listed among the top 10 countries vulnerable to climate change.

“So, there is an obligation of the international community to massively support Pakistan in these circumstances, and there is an obligation of the international community to take seriously the need to drastically reduce emissions,” he said.

Guterres renewed his call for increasing international support to help Pakistan deal with the emergency, promising mobilization of more U.N. resources.

“We know that our contribution is limited. We know that what we do is a drop in the ocean of the needs, but we are totally committed,” he said.

Pakistan is currently being hit by catastrophic and unprecedented floods stemming from historic monsoon rains that began in mid-June. The U.N. says the seasonal downpours “have broken a century-long record” and dumped more than five times the 30-year average for rainfall in some parts of the country.

The flooding has claimed the lives of about 1,400 people, including nearly 500 children, and has affected 33 million others, with nearly 700,000 people made homeless, and has drenched one-third of Pakistan, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. Nearly 13,000 people have been injured and upwards of 750,000 livestock have perished in floodwaters,

Pakistani officials say damage to infrastructure and property also has been colossal, as more than 1.7 million homes have been washed away or damaged. The flooding has turned most of southern Sindh province, one of the hardest-hit regions, into an “ocean of water,” according to Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman.

The U.N. has called for $160 million in international assistance to help the flood victims. The World Health Organization has said more than 6.4 million flood victims need humanitarian support.

The National Disaster Management Authority, in its latest situation report, said the raging floodwaters have washed away 246 bridges, nearly 7,000 kilometers of roads, and swamped more than 809,370 hectares of farmland across the country. Officials estimate the disaster could have cost the country between $15 billion and $20 billion in losses, and the reconstruction process could take years.

More than 50 international humanitarian relief flights have arrived in Pakistan as of Friday from countries such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, China, France, Iran, Britain, Azerbaijan, Norway, the United States and Kazakhstan.
…

Unlike his predecessor, who almost terminated opium production in Afghanistan in the last year of Taliban rule with one decree in 2000, the current supreme leader of the Taliban appears to be unsuccessful in implementing his ban on opium production.

In April, shortly after Afghan famers harvested opium from their 2021 poppy cultivation, Hibatullah Akhundzada issued a decree outlawing poppy cultivation and the production, sale and use of all other drugs.

As this year’s poppy cultivation season approaches, the Taliban have presented a modest scorecard for their counternarcotics achievements.

Over the past year, less than 100 hectares of poppy fields were destroyed, about 2,000 drug dealers and traffickers were arrested, and 4,270 kilograms of opium were seized, according to figures from the Taliban’s Interior Ministry.

These figures put the Taliban regime far behind the previous Afghan government, which presided over two decades of soaring drug production in Afghanistan, in counternarcotics performance.

In 2020, the Afghan government made more than 3,100 drug-related arrests, seized about 80,000 kilograms of opium and eradicated almost 1,000 hectares of poppy fields, according to the U.N. and Afghan officials.

“There is serious doubt on the intentions of the current rulers whether they really want to eradicate poppy,” said Javid Qaem, a former deputy minister for counternarcotics in Afghanistan and now a researcher at Arizona State University.

“At the time of the Republic, security was a big challenge. Police could not go to the areas where poppy was cultivated. Taliban claim that they have all the areas under their control. They should be able to do it easily,” he told VOA.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has yet to release its annual assessment of the Afghan opium production for 2022 but says the trend appears unchanged.

“Although the peace process in Colombia and the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan have essentially ended insurgencies, both countries have to date retained prominent roles in illicit drug cultivation and production,” the UNODC reported in June.

Economic considerations?

Income from opium production, estimated between $1.8 billion to $2.7 billion, made up about 12% to 14% of Afghanistan’s GDP in 2021.

With the Taliban’s return to power, Afghanistan has plunged deep into an economic crisis that has pushed nearly all Afghans into poverty. The U.N. says more than half of the Afghan population is in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.

“Drugs have been a critical source of economic revenue in this impoverished country,” Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told VOA, adding that the drug money was also going to members of the Taliban.

Taking serious action against the powerful drug trade, particularly under current economic conditions, will worsen the poverty in Afghanistan and could result in local opposition to the Taliban, experts say.

The Taliban reportedly pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars from Afghanistan’s illicit drug trade. Between 2018 and 2019, the group earned more than $400 million from the trade, according to U.N. and U.S. officials.

The Taliban, however, deny involvement in the drug trade.

The Taliban’s war against drugs may also be slow because of internal frictions, Qaem said.

“Certain groups of Taliban are involved in this trade. It will be difficult for them to control their own ranks and files. It could lead to internal rifts, and I do not think the Taliban leadership will take this risk at this time,” he said.

Not only a Taliban job

The U.S. has spent more than $8.82 billion on counternarcotics projects in Afghanistan over the past two decades, according to the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR).

Because Afghanistan produces more than 80% of the heroin consumed globally, other donors such as the U.N., the World Bank and the European Union also aided counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan.

The former Afghan government even created a Ministry of Counternarcotics to deal with the problem, but despite all the efforts made and money spent, Afghanistan remained the world’s No. 1 opium producer.

Foreign donors have ceased development assistance to Afghanistan, including funding counternarcotics programs, since the Taliban seized power last year.

“The State Department’s current policy prohibits direct assistance to the Taliban. While some counternarcotic programs remain active indirectly — administered through implementing partners and NGOs — other programs have been terminated or paused following the Taliban takeover in August 2021,” a spokesperson for SIGAR told VOA.

Isolated and pressed under economic sanctions, Taliban officials say they need foreign assistance, mostly in creating alternative sources of livelihood for poppy farmers and employment opportunities for poppy field laborers, in order for them to effectively rid the country of its illicit drug economy.

“It is impossible to do effective counternarcotics only through eradication of poppy fields,” Felbab-Brown said, “and if you do not rely on the use of force, there have to be economic tools to apply, which also appear unfeasible under the current financial sanctions.” 
…

Indian and Chinese troops are pulling back from one of the several disputed border areas in the Himalayan mountains where they have been locked in a standoff for over two years.

The Indian Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday evening that troops had begun to disengage from the area of Gogra-Hotsprings “in a coordinated and planned way, which is conducive to peace and tranquility in the border areas.”

The announcement marks a step forward in resolving a military standoff that began after a June 2020 clash in Ladakh in the western Himalayas killed 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers.

Both countries have since deployed about 50,000 troops each, backed by fighter jets, artillery and tanks along the Himalayan borders, along what are called “friction points” along their unmarked 3,800-kilometer border. At several places, the troops are positioned in close proximity.

“The perception that things could flare up due to the military standoff have been diffused so the pullback has created a degree of tranquility in Ladakh,” Brigadier Arun Sahgal from the Delhi Policy Group, a think tank in New Delhi, told VOA. However, he warned that the buildup along Himalayan borders by the two countries will not end anytime soon.

“Both sides have built up certain capacities and capabilities and they are here to stay.  To that extent the postures will remain hard, so I don’t think the de-escalation will take place any time soon.”

Protracted negotiations between each side’s military commanders to end the standoff in the last two years have made slow progress. The agreement to withdraw troops from the Gogra-Hot Springs area came in the 16th round of talks, held last month between the Indian and Chinese military commanders, a year after they last announced they were withdrawing troops from another area.

The pullback comes ahead of a regional summit to be held next week in Uzbekistan, scheduled to be attended by both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. There has been speculation in domestic media of a likely meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit marking their first direct contact since tensions erupted after the 2020 border clash.

India has repeatedly said that ties with China will not improve unless the status quo that existed along the Himalayan border prior to that clash is restored.

“The state of the border will determine the state of the relationship,” Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said last week at the launch of an office in New Delhi of the Asia Society Policy institute, a think tank.

Key disputes at other places along their Himalayan borders continue to pose a challenge – one of the toughest to tackle is an area called Depsang Plains, where Indian analysts say Chinese troops are blocking access to a key mountain pass.

However, the latest pullback of troops in Ladakh has led to some optimism. “A sort of political narrative is being created that there is a move forward,” Sahgal said, which ”probably would open up space for more political-level consultations.”  
…

When Queen Elizabeth II acceded to the throne in 1952, the British Empire had recently lost the proverbial “Jewel in the Crown,” India, and the subcontinent was still reeling from the bloodshed of the partition that had led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

Despite the bitter history of colonialism in South Asia, Ayesha Jalal, professor of history at Tufts University, told VOA, it’s “remarkable” that the queen “was not a controversial figure in the otherwise fairly dense annals of South Asian anti-colonial nationalism.”

Jalal credits “good PR [public relations].”

Salima Hashmi, a Pakistani artist and art historian, remembers as a schoolgirl waving at the queen’s motorcade in Lahore when the British monarch visited the young country for the first time in 1961.

Hashmi recalled to VOA that years later, as the principal of the National College of Arts in Lahore, she hosted Queen Elizabeth during her second and final visit to Pakistan.

Hashmi said she was impressed by the queen’s “great ease with every kind of person, and her ability to make other people feel comfortable.”

Analyzing the queen’s legacy in South Asia, Hashmi told VOA that “as someone who had inherited the idea of the empire,” Queen Elizabeth “tried very hard to make the Commonwealth viable,” but the concept faded over time.

Queen Elizabeth ruled during a period of waning British influence in South Asia.

Jalal said that despite America emerging as the powerbroker, the royals “have been able to keep a rather balanced view of South Asia. They’ve kept their cultural presence, if not their political presence, to the same extent.”

The queen visited India three times and Pakistan twice during her 70-year reign.

While Britain could have done more to address the differences between the rival nations, Jalal said the queen was “an icon, who was seen as able to do good or to try and do good in the world.”

By the time of her death, Hashmi said, the queen was a “fading imprint” for South Asia, and people would be “intrigued to know how the Prince of Wales [now King Charles III] sees his role ahead, and whether he will have that kind of ceremonial clout.”
…

The United States has vowed to continue to partner with Pakistan to alleviate the damage from recent catastrophic floods and torrential rains that have claimed the lives of nearly 1,400 people, including 496 children, and affected millions of others.

“We are here at a very difficult moment for Pakistan. The floods have been just devastating in this country and it’s capturing the world’s attention,” said Derek Chollet, a senior State Department diplomat, after meetings with Pakistani leaders in Islamabad.

The U.S. diplomat said that he and his interagency delegation are visiting the country to express solidarity with its people and to show that “the United States has Pakistan’s back in this crisis.”

Chollet noted that Washington had already pledged more than $30 million in response to the destructive flooding, saying the U.S. will be making more aid announcements soon.

“We fully recognize that this is going to be a long-term challenge for Pakistan and the United States, as Pakistan’s partner, is here for the long term.”

Chollet added that the U.S. military also “plans to start to land in Pakistan” beginning Thursday, to deliver needed supplies for flood victims.

The U.S. Department of Defense later said in a statement it had begun airlifting “critical life-saving humanitarian supplies” to Pakistan from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s warehouse in Dubai. The U.S. military’s C17 Globemaster cargo aircraft will transport the supplies over the course of the coming days on approximately 20 different flights.

“We are working closely with USAID to support their critical mission to provide some measure of relief to the people of Pakistan,” said General Michael Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command.

The catastrophic flooding, blamed on climate change-driven, erratic monsoon rains, has made almost 700,000 people homeless, affected an estimated 33 million across the country of 220 million people, and drenched one-third of Pakistan since mid-June when the seasonal rainfall began.

On Wednesday, Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman told reporters in Karachi, the capital of the hardest-hit southern Sindh province, that it is totally inundated, and relief workers are struggling to find dry ground to place tents for displaced families.

“The water is standing everywhere. Outside of Karachi, if you go a little further up in Sindh, you will see just a veritable ocean of water, with no break,” she said.

The United Nations says the seasonal downpours “have broken a century-long record” and dumped more than five times the 30-year average for rainfall in some parts of the country.

Officials in Pakistan say their country contributes less than 1% of the global greenhouse gas emissions but is constantly listed among the top 10 climate-vulnerable countries. Islamabad has repeatedly urged the world in recent days to work feverishly toward tackling the climate change challenge.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is scheduled to arrive in Pakistan on Friday to tour flood-hit areas and express his “deep solidarity” with Pakistanis. He told reporters he would appeal for the “massive support” of the international community to help the country deal with the emergency.

Guterres said climate change is “supercharging the destruction of our planet,” and the world needs to step up efforts to counter it. “Today it is Pakistan. Tomorrow it can be anywhere else. To deal with climate change, that is the defining issue of our time, with a business-as-usual approach is pure suicide.”

The U.N. has called for $160 million in international assistance to help the flood victims. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said more than 6.4 million flood victims need humanitarian support.

More than 50 international humanitarian relief flights have arrived in Pakistan as of Thursday from countries such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, China, France, Iran, Britain, Azerbaijan, Norway and Kazakhstan. The foreign ministry in Islamabad said more flights were on the way.

The WHO has warned that stagnant water can give rise to water-borne and vector-borne diseases in flood-affected districts, saying almost 10% of Pakistan’s health facilities have been damaged or destroyed.

Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority, which is leading and coordinating the humanitarian response, in its latest situation report said that the raging floodwaters had washed away or damaged more than 1.7 million homes, 246 bridges and nearly 7,000 kilometers of roads, and swamped more than 809,370 hectares of farmland across the country.

Officials estimate the disaster has cost the country more than $10 billion in losses and that the reconstruction process could take years.
…

A court in Pakistan decided Thursday it will indict the country’s populist former prime minister Imran Khan in a contempt case for threatening a female judge. 

The 70-year-old opposition leader could end up in jail for six months if he is convicted. It would also lead to his disqualification from national politics for five years under Pakistan’s election laws.

After a hearing into the case, a five-judge panel of the high court in the capital, Islamabad, has ruled that charges against Khan will be framed on September 22.

The former prime minister has been holding massive anti-government rallies to press for early elections in a bid to stage a political comeback since being deposed as prime minister in April through a parliamentary no-confidence vote. 

The contempt charges stemmed from a televised speech Khan made last month to tens of thousands of his party supporters in the capital. 

He told the gathering his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party would bring lawsuits against a female judge and senior Islamabad police officers for their roles in the alleged custodial torture of one of his close aides. “We will not spare you. … We will sue you,” Khan vowed.

City police later charged him under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism law for threatening their officers, while the high court summoned him to explain his controversial remarks against the judge.

Khan, in his written response submitted to the court earlier this week, expressed regret rather than an outright apology, saying his “unintentional utterances” at the rally did not mean to threaten the judicial officer.

The court on Thursday declared Khan’s response “unsatisfactory” and decided to indict him later this month.

“We are not convinced that the respondent has purged himself of the wrongdoing alleged against him,” English-language Dawn media quoted the ruling as saying. 

Khan’s detained aid, Shahbaz Gill, faces treason charges for allegedly inciting in televised remarks Pakistani military officers to mutiny, allegations the detainee has rejected. 

Gill accused security personnel of electrocuting his genitals while being subjected to torture to extract a confession against Khan. 

The government of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has rejected the allegations.

Khan’s nationwide rallies are attended by tens of thousands of his PTI supporters where the cricketer-turned-politician denounces Sharif’s coalition government as corrupt and an outcome of a U.S.-backed conspiracy, without evidence. 

Both the government and Washington deny the charges, calling them politically motivated.

The no confidence vote deposed Khan amid a deepening economic crisis and his strained ties with the country’s powerful military, which united Sharif-led opposition at the time and eventually resulted in a multi-party coalition against Khan.

But the ousted prime mister’s popularity has since grown dramatically and criticism of the Sharif administration over worsening economic conditions, with inflation rising to historic levels and the high cost of utilities, has helped Khan build his anti-government campaign, according to analysts.
…

India and Japan said Thursday they would deepen defense cooperation, with New Delhi inviting investment by Japanese industries and both countries planning a joint military drill involving their air force fighters.

India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh held talks in Tokyo with his Japanese counterpart Yasukazu Hamada, and both will join their respective foreign ministers later in the day for “two-plus-two” talks.

“He invited Japanese industries to invest in India’s defense corridors,” India’s defense ministry said in a statement, referring to Singh.

“The two ministers agreed that the early conduct of the inaugural fighter exercise will pave the way for much greater cooperation and inter-operability between the air forces of the two countries.”

India, like Japan, is bolstering its military to tackle what it sees as increased security threats, including from neighboring China.

In Japan, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has promised a “substantial” defense spending increase. His ruling Liberal Democratic Party wants to double Japan’s military budget to 2% of gross domestic product over the next five years amid worry Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could embolden China to act against neighboring Taiwan.

Delhi, which last week commissioned its first home-built aircraft carrier, is expanding its security ties with Tokyo as both Asian nations grow wary of China’s growing military might in the region.

The two countries, along with Australia and the United States are members of the Quad group of nations and hold annual naval exercises across the Indo-Pacific to demonstrate inter-operability.

The last leaders gathering in May in Japan was dominated by discussion about Taiwan after U.S. President Joe Biden angered China a day earlier by saying he would be willing to use force to defend the democratic island. As they met, Russian and Chinese warplanes conducted a joint patrol in the region.

Kishida and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a separate bilateral meeting agreed to work closely together to promote a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”
…

The U.N. Population Fund says that almost 650,000 pregnant women in Pakistan’s flood-affected areas need maternal health care for safe deliveries. VOA’s Sidra Dar has more from Sindh province in Pakistan in this report narrated by Aisha Khalid.
…

Taliban leaders are touting the success of so-called media reforms which bar state and private TV channels in Afghanistan from showing programs considered indecent — such as foreign movies or songs by female singers — or any content that is critical of Islam or the Taliban themselves.

“Ninety-five percent of the visual and audio media outlets in the country have been reformed,” Hayatullah Mohajir Farahi, deputy information and culture minister in the Taliban’s caretaker Cabinet, told a press conference in Kabul Tuesday.

To implement its regulations, the Taliban leadership has set up a media monitoring office that screens every broadcast program for full compliance with strict Islamic and political preferences.

In practice, experts say, the so-called reforms amount to extensive censorship of a seriously weakened Afghan media. Among other restrictions, the Taliban have ordered female anchors to wear facemasks and headscarves when presenting TV programs.

Over the past year, at least 245 cases of censorship, detention and violence against media personnel have been reported, according to the Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFCJ), one of the few media support groups still left.

The Taliban say no journalist has died in the country since the group returned to power in August 2021. At least 10 journalists were killed in Afghanistan in 2020 and 2021, figures compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists show, and the Taliban were blamed for some of the deaths.

“It’s good news that no journalist has been murdered in the past one year, but we should also know that more than 130 journalists and media personnel were detained and some were tortured by the Taliban in the same period,” said a representative from AFCJ who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal.

At least three journalists, several video bloggers and a U.S. filmmaker and her producer are in Taliban detention right now.

Media law

The Taliban have annulled Afghanistan’s constitution, which modeled the country into an Islamic republic and offered protections for free media and equal rights for women. Instead, the group has declared the country an Islamic emirate with their unseen leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, as an undisputed supreme ruler.

The dilution of the country’s media law, last amended in 2019 and which offered extensive press liberties, is all but certain.

“The media law was recently reviewed by the Ministry of Information and Culture … and some amendments were made in regard to religious and cultural issues and [the draft] has been sent to the leadership for approval,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s spokesman.

It is not clear if or when the Taliban leadership will approve the amended media law and then how the leadership will implement it.

Thus far, the Taliban’s feared intelligence agency has directly dealt with alleged cases of media violations mostly by detaining, threatening and even torturing journalists, media advocacy groups have reported.

On Tuesday, Taliban officials also announced the establishment of a media violations commission that will handle media complaints.

Unlike the media commission under the former Afghan government, the Taliban’s media commission has no female members or journalists, and no representative from the Afghan human rights commission. The Taliban dissolved the country’s only human rights commission earlier this year without explanation.

The new media commission has several officials from the Ministry of Information and Culture, media support groups and an Islamic scholar, the AFJC said.

No protests, no coverage

Among other restrictions, the Taliban have instructed media outlets to stay away from peaceful protests.

Since taking power, the Taliban have faced sporadic protests, primarily by women’s rights activists, who call for the reopening of secondary schools for girls, work opportunities and political rights for women.

“Recent protests have been illegal and therefore filming and reporting on them is also illegal,” said Mujahid, adding that protesters must seek permits from Taliban authorities before marching in the streets.

The U.N. and human rights organizations have repeatedly condemned the Taliban’s policies toward women and the press.

“The de facto authorities have increasingly limited the freedom of peaceful assembly. To disperse protests, they often use excessive force, including live ammunition, batons, whips, pepper spray and tear gas, and house raids to target protesters, thereby heightening people’s fear of reprisals for publicly expressing dissent,” a U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan reported on Sept. 6.

Hundreds of journalists and media personnel have left Afghanistan over the past year and more than 80 percent of female journalists have lost their jobs, according to media advocacy groups.

“I think the media makers and TV producers are driven by a desire to serve the public with news, entertainment, and other programs that people crave and need, especially in their current extra-difficult circumstances,” said Wazhmah Osman, author of a book on Afghan television culture and assistant professor at Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University in Pennsylvania. He spoke to VOA.

Despite prevalent risks and challenges, some 210 TV and radio stations and more than 100 publications are active in Afghanistan.
…

Parts of Pakistan seemed “like a sea,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday, after visiting some of the flood-hit areas that cover as much as a third of the South Asian nation, where 18 more deaths took the toll from days of rain to 1,343.

As many as 33 million of a population of 220 million have been affected in a disaster blamed on climate change that has left hundreds of thousands homeless and caused losses of at least $10 billion, officials estimate.

“You wouldn’t believe the scale of destruction there,” Sharif told the media after a visit to the southern province of Sindh. “It is water everywhere as far as you could see. It is just like a sea.”

The government, which has boosted cash handouts for flood victims to $313.90 million (70 billion Pakistani rupees), will buy 200,000 tents to house displaced families, he added.

Receding waters threaten a new challenge in the form of water-born infectious diseases, Sharif said.

“We will need trillions of rupees to cope with this calamity.”

The United Nations has called for $160 million in aid to help the flood victims.

Many of those affected are from Sindh, where Pakistan’s largest freshwater lake is dangerously close to bursting its banks, even after having been breached in an operation that displaced 100,000 people.

National disaster officials said eight children were among the dead in the last 24 hours. The floods were brought by record monsoon rains and glacier melt in Pakistan’s northern mountains.

With more rain expected in the coming month, the situation could worsen further, a top official of the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) has warned.

Already, the World Health Organization has said more than 6.4 million people need humanitarian support in the flooded areas.

The raging waters have swept away 1.6 million houses, 5,735 kilometers (3,564 miles) of transport links, 750,000 head of livestock, and swamped more than 2 million acres (809,370 hectares) of farmland.

Pakistan has received nearly 190% more rain than the 30-year average in July and August, totaling 391 mm (15.4 inches), with Sindh getting 466% more rain than the average.
…

A local government’s decision in August to shut down 34 schools in India’s northeastern state — after none of their students passed a critical exam this year necessary to receive a graduation certificate — has been termed by critics as “illogical” and “senseless.”

Hundreds of thousands of students from schools in the state of Assam sat for the High School Leaving Certificate exam. More than 1,000 students, from the 34 schools that were shut down, failed the exam.

Although parents and teachers blamed the inconveniences faced by the students during COVID-19 lockdowns for the poor results, the Assam government chose to close down the 34 schools — which are mostly located in rural areas — and send all students to better-performing schools in the neighboring areas.

“It is the primary duty of schools to impart education to children. If a school fails to perform this duty and students fail the crucial exam like HSLC, it is pointless to keep running the school,” Assam’s education minister Ranoj Pegu said.

“The government cannot spend taxpayer’s money for schools with zero success record.”

The performance of some 2,500 other schools is also being assessed, and more schools are likely to be closed for what the government insists are “performance-related reasons,” several sources said.

Teachers and education activists blamed the poor infrastructure of the government schools in Assam as the root cause of the crisis.

“By shutting down the schools the government is handing out a collective punishment to the students and teachers. They should have rather conducted a survey in all government schools to find out why exactly the students performed badly,” Bhupen Sarma a teacher and educationist in Assam told VOA.

“Following the survey, with the help from expert agencies, the government should have adopted policies to improve the infrastructure in those schools.”

In the past six years, 6,000 government elementary schools — where first through fifth grade students usually study — have also been closed by the government in Assam.

In most cases those schools were closed because very few students were attending, the government said.

Sarma said “poor infrastructure” in those elementary schools was the main factor that led to their closure.

“Some of those schools had no teacher at all. Others had only one teacher in each school, for students of five different classes [grades],” Sarma said. “Since the government kept the infrastructure of those elementary schools in very poor shape, most families avoided sending their children to those schools, and finally the government closed down those 6,000 schools.”

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, course work for many students, mostly in rural areas, were disrupted and it was one of the reasons why the students of those 34 schools performed poorly in the HSLC exam, Sarma added.

“The government [public] high schools in Assam’s rural areas often have a lack of teachers. This factor might have also contributed to the failure of the students in the HSLC exams. Instead of taking steps like finding out the reasons behind the students’ failure in the exams and addressing those faults, they took a senseless decision to close down the schools,” he said.

Recently, after the government responded to a Right to Information application, from some activists, it became known that in Assam there were 3,221 schools, each having only one teacher and 341 of them had no teacher at all.

Souvik Ghoshal, a high school teacher in the neighboring state of West Bengal said that during the COVID-19 lockdowns many students across the country could not study well, which might have been an important reason behind the failure of the students in the Assam schools.

“Most of the poor and lower middle-class families send their children to government schools in India. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, almost all schools switched to the online mode, most of the children in the government schools — especially in rural areas — could not afford to have their smart phones that they needed to attend the online classes,” Ghoshal told the VOA.

“Some, despite having smartphones in their families, could not arrange money to pay for the Internet services. Only a small section of the government school students could regularly attend the online classes during the lockdowns.”

A survey conducted last year by a group of educationists across over 15 Indian states, including Assam, indicated that during the COVID-19 lockdowns only 24% students in urban areas had attended the online classes regularly. And, in the rural areas, just 8% of the students had regular access to online classes.

Mahmud Hossain, a teacher in Assam’s Barpeta district, blamed a shortage of teachers as the biggest reason for the poor performance of the students in Assam.

“Most teachers happen to be posted in urban areas. The crisis of teachers is more acute in rural areas. This is why the students in rural areas are performing badly in exams,” Hossain told VOA.

As per India’s National Education Policy 2020, every school should ensure that the pupil-teacher ratio, there is below 30:1. In areas with large numbers of socially and economically disadvantaged students the PTR should be under 25:1, according to the policy.

Across socioeconomically disadvantaged rural areas of Assam’ schools, the PTR is as dismal as 150:1, Sarma said.

“Over 70% of the elementary to high school standard students in Assam study in government schools — they cannot go to private schools where the educational infrastructure is better,” Sharma said.

“The government has to upgrade the infrastructure of the government schools if they want the students to perform well.”
…

The United Nations is rapidly scaling up its relief operation in Pakistan amid fears the situation could further deteriorate as more rains are predicted in the coming month.

Torrential monsoon rains and floods in Pakistan have killed more than 1,200 people, and affected upwards of 33 million, rendering millions homeless, and causing widespread destruction and damage to homes and infrastructure. 

Forecasts of more rain in the coming weeks are spurring aid agencies to action. The U.N. refugee agency reports the first three of nine scheduled flights carrying sleeping mats, kitchen sets, tarpaulins and other supplies arrived Monday in Pakistan. Six more flights are scheduled to leave Dubai on Wednesday and Thursday. 

The UNHCR’s director for Asia and the Pacific, Indrika Ratwatte, said tents and other core relief items will be trucked into Pakistan from Uzbekistan. An initial 50,000 households in the worst flood-hit region are prioritized for aid, he said, adding that it is urgent to reach communities “in situ,” or close to their homes. 

“They do not want to go away from their areas because that is where they have whatever is left,” he said. “The food insecurity is going to be huge because the crops are devastated obviously, and the little they had in terms of homestead. Livestock is also destroyed. So, really, getting the assistance in situ right now, ramping it up is what is needed.”

Ratwatte said the UNHCR is dispatching all existing humanitarian stocks in the country to help some 420,000 of the hardest-hit Afghan refugees and the Pakistani communities hosting them. An estimated 1.3 million Afghan refugees currently are registered in the country. 

The World Health Organization, for its part, has delivered $1.5 million in essential medicines, water purification kits, tanks, tents, and other emergency supplies. WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said there is an urgent need to scale up disease surveillance, restore damaged health facilities, and provide mental health and psychosocial support to affected communities. 

“As the situation is still expected to worsen because of floods that are persistent in many parts and especially for the most vulnerable, we are trying to respond to the current health impact of the floods while, at the same time, scaling up preparedness for additional health risks as we expect more monsoon rains in coming months,” Jasarevic said.   

The WHO said the floods have damaged more than 1,000 health facilities and destroyed more than 430. That, it said, limits access to health facilities, essential medicine, and medical equipment, as well as treatment for diseases, injuries and trauma. 

 
…

India and Bangladesh reached an agreement on sharing the waters of a common river and pledged to boost trade links as they reaffirmed close ties Tuesday during a visit to India by Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.

Calling Dhaka “our biggest development and trade partner in the region,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said both sides will start talks on a comprehensive economic agreement and expand cooperation in sectors such as information technology, space and nuclear energy.

Building close ties with Bangladesh is a priority for India, which is trying to fend off inroads made by China in neighboring South Asian countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka, with Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.

In Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina’s four-day visit to India is seen as politically significant because it takes place ahead of general elections next year.

Among the seven pacts signed Tuesday, the one that will be welcomed the most in Dhaka is an agreement to share waters of the Kushiyara River. It is the first such deal the two countries have inked in more than 25 years and is seen as a breakthrough in addressing an issue that has cast a shadow on their otherwise close ties.

A pact to share water resources from transboundary rivers that run downstream from the Himalayas from India into Bangladesh has long been a priority for Bangladesh, a lower riparian state that suffers from crippling water shortages. The rivers sustain South Asia’s agriculture and meet the needs of very large cities in a region that is becoming increasingly water-stressed.

But an agreement that Bangladesh has sought for sharing waters on one of the major transboundary rivers, the Teesta, has eluded the two countries for more than a decade, largely due to opposition from the West Bengal government in India, through which the river runs.

“India and Bangladesh have resolved many outstanding issues and we hope that all outstanding issues, including Teesta water-sharing treaty, would be concluded at an early date,” Sheikh Hasina said.

Tuesday’s pact to share waters of the Kushiyara is expected to help alleviate some of Dhaka’s concerns.

New Delhi and Dhaka have shared close ties since Sheikh Hasina took power in 2009. Calling India Bangladesh’s most important neighbor, she said that “Bangladesh-India bilateral relations are known to be a role model for neighborhood diplomacy.”

Both countries said they will aim to grow bilateral trade, which doubled in the last five years to reach $18 billion last year. They also announced the completion of the first phase of a thermal power project that Prime Minister Modi said would increase the availability of “affordable electricity” in Bangladesh.

India and Bangladesh are also looking to expand connectivity projects – both countries are working on a raft of road, rail and waterway projects.

The bid to increase links comes as some countries become increasingly wary of Chinese investments after another South Asian country, Sri Lanka, spiraled into an economic crisis as Chinese investments there failed to generate the expected returns and added to a debt burden that has been partly blamed for its meltdown.   

Bangladesh has one of the world’s fastest growing economies. It has boomed on the back of a growing garment export industry. Bangladesh, however, is among South Asian countries seeking a loan from the International Monetary Fund as it grapples with depleting foreign exchange reserves.

Before coming for the visit, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told Indian news agency ANI that her country’s economy remains strong despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and higher oil and food prices in the aftermath of Russia’s war in Ukraine. 
…

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Kazakhstan on Sept. 14, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said on Monday, in what would be his first foreign trip since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Xi will meet Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and sign a number of bilateral documents, ministry spokesman Aibek Smadiyarov told a briefing.

Beijing, which gives little advance notice of Xi’s movements, has not confirmed a Kazakhstan visit by him, and China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Xi, who is expected to secure a precedent-breaking third leadership term at a congress of China’s ruling Communist Party starting on Oct. 16, has not left China since the country all but shut its borders to international travel under its “dynamic zero” COVID-19 policy in 2020.

Kazakhstan has close ties with China, supplying minerals, metals and energy to its eastern neighbor and transhipment of goods between China and Europe.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Xi was considering a trip to Central Asia to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization set for September 15 and 16 in the Uzbek city of Samarkand.

Last month, a longtime adviser to the Indonesian president said that Xi and Putin will attend November’s G-20 summit on the resort island of Bali.

Xi and Putin have grown increasingly close, and shortly before Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Beijing and Moscow announced a “no limits” partnership.

Xi made his first trip outside of mainland China since early 2020 when he visited Hong Kong on June 30 to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover from British control.
…

Pakistan’s ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan has accused the country’s coalition government this week of delaying fresh national elections to appoint “a new army chief of their own choice” to protect their alleged corrupt practices and ill-gotten wealth.

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, his coalition partners and the powerful military on Monday denounced the charges the populist former leader leveled while addressing a massive anti-government overnight rally in Faisalabad.

The controversy comes as a debate rages in national media and political circles on possible successors to incumbent Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who is scheduled to retire in November.

“They want to bring in an army chief of their choice because they have stolen away money,” Khan told the gathering of his opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party late on Sunday.

“They fear that if a strong, patriotic army chief is appointed, he will question them about their stolen wealth,” he said, and added that “whoever is on the top of the merit list should be appointed” to lead the army.

Sharif took to Twitter to dismiss Khan’s comments as “despicable utterances,” saying they were aimed at maligning state institutions.

A spokesman for the armed forces said the military “is aghast at the defamatory and uncalled for statement” by Khan. “Regrettably, an attempt has been made to discredit and undermine senior leadership of [the] Pakistan Army,” he added.

The spokesman noted that the process of appointing the army chief is “well defined” in the constitution, and that “scandalizing” it is “unfortunate and disappointing.”

Pakistan’s constitution allows the prime minister to pick the military head from of a list of generals submitted by the outgoing chief. The army chief’s term is three years.

Bajwa was due to retire in 2019, but then-Prime Minister Khan gave him an extension, which analysts say stemmed largely from close ties between the two.

Khan, who was deposed through a Sharif-led parliamentary no-confidence vote in April, has been staging massive rallies of his party supporters nationwide to press for early general elections, alleging that his successor conspired with the United States to oust him from office.

The military has repeatedly dismissed elected governments and ruled Pakistan for about half its history. Critics say even if the generals are not in power, they influence decision making in matters related to the country’s foreign, security and domestic policies. Tensions with generals have traditionally cost prime ministers their rules in Pakistan, according to Pakistani politicians and independent observers.

The military denies it interferes in national politics, saying it does not support any political party.

Khan has acknowledged in recent interviews that his relationship with Bajwa began fracturing last October over the appointment of the head of the country’s prime intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, and it eventually cost him his rule.

He also has indirectly accused Bajwa of backing what Khan claims was a U.S.-plotted “regime change” in Pakistan but offers no evidence. Washington vehemently rejects the charges.

Both the Pakistani government and the military also deny Khan’s allegations.

Sharif has rejected calls for new elections until his government completes its mandatory term in August 2023.

Arif Rafiq, a nonresident scholar with Washington’s Middle East Institute, said civilian governments in Pakistan tend to want to appoint an army chief based on their own political considerations.

“But the idea that a civilian leader can fully control the army ends up being proven a fallacy,” he told VOA, citing the dismissal of previous elected governments through military coups.  

“Khan’s recent statements escalate his battle of words with the senior army brass, making reconciliation less likely. But he’s still the favorite to win the next elections. If there are to be free and fair elections within the next year, a reconciliation or detente between Khan and the army is necessary,” Rafiq said.

The rise in political tensions comes as Pakistan struggles with unprecedented flash floods stemming from heavy, erratic monsoon rains. More than 1,300 people have been killed in the disaster, including almost 500 children; 13,000 people have been injured, and millions have been made homeless.

The flooding is the worst Pakistan has experienced in decades. Officials estimate that floodwaters have covered nearly one-third of the country and almost half of its crucial croplands, and that nearly 1.5 million houses have been washed away or damaged.
…

The U.N. refugee agency rushed in more desperately needed aid Monday to flood-stricken Pakistan as the nation’s prime minister traveled to the south where rising waters of Lake Manchar pose a new threat.

Two UNHCR planes touched down in the southern port city of Karachi and two more were expected later in the day. A third plane, with aid from Turkmenistan also landed in Karachi. While the floods in recent weeks have touched much of Pakistan, the southern Sindh province, where Karachi is the capital, has been the most affected.

More than 1,300 people have been killed and millions have lost their homes in flooding caused by unusually heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan this year that many experts have blamed on climate change. In response to the unfolding disaster, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week called on the world to stop “sleepwalking” through the crisis. He plans to visit flood-hit areas on Sept. 9.

On Sunday, engineers cut into an embankment in the sides of Lake Manchar in an effort to release rising floodwater to save the city of Sehwan and several nearby villages from possible destruction by flooding waters, which have damaged 1.6 million houses since mid-June.

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif was met by Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto in the city of Sukkur on the swelling Indus River, from where they toured the flood-hit areas by helicopter. Murad Ali Shah, the province’s chief minister, briefed Sharif about the damages caused by floods in Sindh.

Floods have affected more than 3.3 million in this Islamic nation of 220 million and the devastation has caused $10 billion in damage, according to government estimates. The provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been the most affected and the majority of people killed were women and children.

Last week, the United States announced $30 million in aid for Pakistani flood victims. On Monday, two members of Congress, Sheila Jackson and Tom Suzy, met with Pakistani officials and visited some of the stricken areas, the government said.

Flood waters were receding in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces, but the situation was alarming across Sindh province. Hundreds were leaving the district of Jaffarabad after their homes were flooded.

“Our homes are right now inundated,” said Khadim Khoso, 45, recounting how he waded through chest-high water. He said he and his family left their home once the floodwaters brought in the snakes.

“No government help has reached here,” he said. However, authorities say they are doing their best to deliver aid to flood victims.

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan also visited some of the flood-hit areas in Sindh on Monday, including the city of Sukkur. Last week, he drew government criticism for addressing a series of anti-government rallies at a time of a flooding emergency for Pakistan.

Afghan refugees living in Pakistan have also been affected by the floods. Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghans fleeing the violence in their country over the past four decades and currently has about 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees.

More than 420,000 Afghan refugees are estimated to be in the worst-affected areas in Pakistan, living side by side with their host communities.

Also Sunday, UNICEF delivered relief supplies, including medicines and water-purifying tablets, as part of the U.N. flash appeal for $160 million to support Pakistan’s flood response. UNICEF is also appealing for $37 million for children and families.

“The floods have left children and families out in the open with no access to the basic necessities of life,” said Abdullah Fadil, UNICEF’s representative in Pakistan.

Planes carrying aid from other countries are also expected later Monday in response to an appeal from Sharif, who has appealed to the international community to help Pakistan.

With the two UNHCR planes, 38 planes have brought in aid from countries including China, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.
…

Environmentalists in India have long campaigned to preserve forests as the country’s mega-cities push into green spaces on their outskirts. In one such forest in Haryana state near the capital New Delhi, environmentalists are teaching a younger generation why conservation is crucial in a country battling to save its green cover. Anjana Pasricha in New Delhi has a report. Camera: Darshan Singh
…

At least six people have been killed by an earthquake that has hit northeastern Afghanistan, officials said Monday. Authorities say the death toll could rise.

The 5.3-magnitude earthquake struck near Jalalabad, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

In June, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit Afghanistan, killing more than1,000 people.

Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
…

Officials warned Sunday that more flooding was expected as Lake Manchar in southern Pakistan swelled from monsoon rains that began in mid-June and have killed nearly 1,300 people.
…

Officials in Pakistan said Sunday that its largest freshwater lake in southern Sindh province had swollen to “dangerous” levels from an incessant monsoon rainfall, warning of more flooding in surrounding districts and urging villagers to evacuate amid a forecast of fresh downpours.

The development prompted provincial authorities to make a cut into the embankment of Manchar lake to allow the swelling water to eventually flow into the nearby Indus River rather than inundating densely populated areas.

Provincial Information Minister Sharjeel Memon said, however, the water released through the lake breach would still affect approximately 125,000 people.

“It was a difficult decision [but] it had to be taken,” Memon told reporters, adding that his government had already taken measures to evacuate villagers to safety.

The lake, one of Asia’s largest, spreads over Jamshoro and Dadu districts west of the Indus River. The districts are among Pakistan’s 80 districts worst hit by the flooding blamed on climate change driven by erratic rains. This is the severest flooding in decades in the South Asian nation.

The calamity has claimed the lives of nearly 1,300 people, including 453 children. More than 12,500 people have been injured in the disaster that has affected an estimated 33 million people since mid-June when the seasonal monsoon rains begin. More than 600,000 people are sheltering in relief camps, according to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

Outbreak of diseases

On Sunday, Sindh Health Minister Azra Pechuho noted the outbreak of disease in the country’s worst-affected province of Sindh.

“More than 134,000 cases of diarrhea and 44,000 cases of malaria have been reported in the province,” she told local Dawn News TV. Pechuho said more than 100,000 skin-related conditions, along with 101 snake bites and 500 dog bites have been reported so far among flood victims.

The United Nations Population Fund last week said at least 650,000 pregnant women and girls, 73,000 of whom are expected to deliver in the next month, are among the flood victims, with many of them lacking access to health care facilities and support they need to deliver their babies safely. Pakistan authorities also say 47,000 pregnant women are sheltering in the camps.

The NDMA in its latest situation report said the flooding, landslides and swollen rivers have caused massive damage to infrastructure in Sindh, Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces.

Nearly 1.5 million houses, 243 bridges and more than 5,500 kilometers of roads have been washed away or damaged.

Meteorologists forecast more precipitation in Pakistan, which has already received nearly three times the 30-year average rainfall. Sindh, with a population of 50 million, getting 464% more rain than the 30-year average.

Meanwhile, officials said rescue operations are ongoing, with troops, civilian authorities and volunteers using helicopters and boats to evacuate people in flood-hit regions to relief camps.

Pakistan has appealed for an “immense humanitarian response” from the international community, estimating the rain and flooding have caused an estimated $10 billion in damages.

During a visit Sunday to Baluchistan, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif repeated the appeal, saying his country was battling “one of the worst climate-induced calamities.”

The Pakistani foreign ministry said that 35 planeloads of relief supplies have already arrived from China, France, Qatar, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with more expected in the coming days.

The humanitarian assistance is being delivered to flood victims, but most have yet to receive it because broken roads and bridges are hampering the relief operations, according to rescue and aid teams.

On Sunday, UNICEF delivered 32 metric tons of life-saving medical and other emergency supplies to support flood-stricken children and women in Sindh and elsewhere in Pakistan.

“This shipment is critical and lifesaving, but only a drop in the ocean of what is required. The risk of an outbreak of water-borne diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dengue and malaria, keeps increasing every day as people are forced to drink contaminated water and practice open defecation,” said Abdullah Fadil, the UNICEF representative in Pakistan.

“We need urgent support to help children grappling for survival,” said Fadil, who echoed many of the Sindh health minister’s concerns, while warning of respiratory diseases in disaster-hit districts.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) said Saturday it has deployed a disaster assistance team to lead Washington’s response to the catastrophic flooding.

“We stand with the people of Pakistan, and are working closely with a range of partners to support urgent relief efforts,” USAID administrator Samantha Power said on Twitter.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is due to visit Pakistan on September 9 to tour flood-hit areas, saying the unprecedented rains were caused by what he described as a “monsoon on steroids.”

Last week, Guterres renewed his call for the world to stop “sleepwalking” and urgently address climate change challenges. “Today, it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country,” Guterres warned.

The U.N. has launched a flash appeal for $160 million in aid to help Pakistan tackle the “unprecedented climate catastrophe.”
…

A day after India’s Supreme Court ordered the release on interim bail of Teesta Setalvad, the prominent Indian rights activist walked out of a jail in Ahmedabad, in the western state of Gujarat, Saturday.

Gujarat police arrested Setalvad in June on accusations of criminal conspiracy, tutoring witnesses and fabrication of evidence against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in connection with communal riots in the state in 2002.

In 2002, when Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslim, were killed in the riots. Setalvad is known for her fight in support of the victims.

“Considering the facts, including that she is a lady and submissions of other accused be considered purely on their merits, this court grants her interim bail,” the chief justice of India, Uday Umesh Lalit, said, while ordering Setalvad’s release Friday.

Rights activists have welcomed Setalvad’s release on interim bail.

There has been no comment from Modi on Setalvad’s release.

In its order, the court directed Setalvad to surrender her passport and cooperate with the police in the related investigation. The interim bail granted by the Supreme Court will be in effect until a court in Gujarat decides on her regular bail petition.

Rights activists claimed that during the 2002 riots, Gujarat police sat idly by while Hindu rioters went on a rampage and hacked and burned Muslims to death. India’s National Human Rights Commission blamed Modi’s Gujarat government for not taking steps to prevent violence and failing to respond to specific pleas for protection during the clashes. Many also alleged that Modi could have stopped or curbed the riot if he wanted.

A court-appointed special investigation team (SIT) filed a report in 2012 saying that there was “no prosecutable evidence” against Modi and his officials and exonerated all of them from involvement in the riots.

Fearing for his life during the riots, Ehsan Jafri, a Muslim former member of parliament from the Congress party, called senior government and police officials, seeking

protection. The officials allegedly paid no heed to his appeals and Jafri was burned alive by a Hindu mob that also killed at least 35 other Muslims in his apartment community.

Journalist-turned-activist Setalvad founded the rights group Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) to advocate for victims of the riots.

In 2013, Setalvad and Zakia Jafri, Ehsan Jafri’s widow, filed a petition to the court challenging Modi’s exoneration by the investigation team. In the petition, Setalvad and Jafri demanded a criminal trial of Modi and dozens of state officials, alleging criminal conspiracy to spread riots.

On June 24, India’s Supreme Court dismissed that petition after saying that those who had “kept the pot boiling” should be put “in the dock.”

A day later, Home Minister Amit Shah accused Setalvad of providing false information about the Gujarat riots to the police, “intending to defame” Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Gujarat police arrested Setalvad June 25, hours after Shah’s charges against her were broadcast on national TV.

In court, Setalvad’s lawyer said that the accusations against her were malicious and false. Although it has been more than two months since Setalvad was arrested, the Gujarat police have not filed formal charges.

Rights groups and opposition political leaders condemned Setalvad’s arrest and called it a political vendetta by the Modi government. Last month, a group of international scholars issued a joint letter requesting the Indian judicial authority release the activist.

Activist Henri Tiphagne said that the Supreme Court released Setalvad since there were no charges against her in a police document known as a first information report, or FIR. Police prepare this type of report when they receive information about the commission of an identifiable offense.

“Over two months in judicial custody to Teesta were meant to only harass her for her dogged follow-up of criminal actions that she had pursued against many persons, including the present prime minister [Modi] and home minister [Shah], which the NHRC [National Human Rights Commission] also pursued years ago in the Supreme Court,” Tiphagne, executive director of the rights group, People’s Watch, told VOA.

“The Gujarat High Court’s long adjournments in her bail only indicate how weakened our judiciary has turned out to be.”

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said Setalvad has been hounded by the BJP and its supporters for her persistent campaign to seek justice for the Muslim victims of the 2002 violence.

She should never have been jailed, and it is a relief that the Supreme Court has done the right thing in granting her bail,” Ganguly told VOA.

“The Indian government should be concerned about the continuing partisanship in the justice system that wants activists like Teesta in custody while releasing those convicted of rape and murder during the Gujarat violence,” Ganguly added.
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