Month: February 2020

Australian university professor Timothy Weeks, who was held captive for three years by the Taliban, arrived Thursday in Qatar in the Middle East to witness the signing of a peace deal between the U.S. and Taliban.The Taliban maintain a political office in Qatar, where Washington’s peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad conducted negotiations over 17 months to come up with the deal being signed Saturday in the capital of Doha. The agreement will open the door for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan and bring an end to 18 years of war.FILE – A photo combination if images taken from video released June 21, 2017, by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, shows kidnapped Australian Timothy Weeks, top, and American Kevin King.Weeks was met at the airport by Anas Haqqani, who was freed from an Afghan jail in exchange for Weeks’ release as well as American Kevin King. The two men, both professors at the American University of Afghanistan, were kidnapped in the Afghan capital in 2016. They were held by the Haqqani network.Anas is the younger brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the chief of the feared Haqqani network, which is part of the Taliban.Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted a picture of Weeks and Haqqani. Mujahid tweeted “Timothy Weeks — an Australian professor who was detained by the Islamic Emirate & later released arrived in Doha.”Weeks was invited to attend by the Taliban, Mujahid said.Weeks said on his Twitter account: “I cannot believe I am here in Qatar and have met and spoken with Anas. I am blessed to be an official guest at the signing ceremony.”Although the full list of those attending Saturday’s ceremony has not been identified, Pakistan and uneasy neighbor India are both invited, as is Russia. It’s not clear who will attend from Kabul.
 
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Intense pressure from the international community, coupled with fatigue among ordinary Afghans toward a repeat of past election fiascos, seems to have taken the wind out of a political crisis in Kabul following the bitterly disputed results of a presidential election. After the Afghan election commission declared incumbent President Ashraf Ghani the winner earlier this month, his chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, declared the results invalid and himself the real victor. This week, both sides were planning parallel inauguration ceremonies. A similar crisis after the 2014 election became so destabilizing that it required direct intervention from then-Secretary of State John Kerry, who brokered a power-sharing agreement and formed the Unity Government that led Afghanistan for the past five years. This time is different. While the Afghan elite was busy staking its claim to power, regular Afghans were suffering from a sense of deja vu multiple times over.  “The fact that elections have been contested before [not just once but almost twice, in 2009 as well], that Afghans and observers predicted a similar standoff to 2014 would happen, has contributed to a sense of inevitability and fatigue for many,” said Andrew Watkins, a senior analyst on Afghanistan for the International Crisis Group. Afghan youth dance and peace activists gather as they celebrate the reduction in violence, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Feb. 27, 2020. In street interviews by VOA teams, Afghans have said peace is their top priority.Top priority: peaceNot to mention the fact that after 19 years of war, Afghans may not have patience for anyone or anything that stands between them and the prospect of peace. In street interview after street interview by VOA teams, Afghans have mentioned peace as their top priority. According to the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, the war has taken more than 100,000 Afghan lives. Millions are internally displaced and facing hardships. Every Afghan knows someone who was killed or wounded or had to flee.   For the first time in many years, the prospect of peace seems greater than ever before, especially when the other side, the Taliban, also has sent repeated signals of its willingness to be flexible. In an unprecedented move, the deputy leader of the Taliban, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who also leads the group’s deadliest faction, the Haqqani Network, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times titled “What We, the Taliban, Want.” “We are aware of the concerns and questions in and outside Afghanistan about the kind of government we would have after the foreign troops withdraw. My response to such concerns is that it will depend on a consensus among Afghans. We should not let our worries get in the way of a process of genuine discussion and deliberation free for the first time from foreign domination and interference,” he wrote. It is hard to say whether Haqqani managed to convince his skeptics. What is more certain is that a great deal of deliberation among the top-tier Taliban leaders must have gone into putting his name to their message. Possible spoiler“This appears to have been written with the intent of refuting a popular refrain, that the Haqqani Network — with its strong historical ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service, as well as to more globally oriented jihadist groups in the region — is likely to play spoiler to any peace deal that the Americans or even intra-Afghan talks may come to with the Taliban,” Watkins said. He added the fact that the Taliban seem to be addressing their skeptics head-on was a sign of forward progress, if not yet one of trust. FILE – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, second left, stands next to Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, left, and his deputies at his inauguration in Kabul, Sept. 29, 2014.So when Ghani and Abdullah seemed poised to launch into a repeat of 2014, the international community was quick to express its displeasure. “It is time to focus not on electoral politics but on taking steps toward a lasting peace, ending the war with the Taliban, and finding a formula for a political settlement that can serve the interests of all of this country’s citizens through intra-Afghan negotiations we expect will begin in March,” said a statement issued by State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus this week. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg expressed a similar sentiment, asking all sides to “engage in dialogue and unite behind the peace process, which is the priority for all Afghans.” Still, the election dispute has the potential to complicate the formation of a team of negotiators at a time when Afghan politicians should be building consensus about how to present a united front to the Taliban, said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia program at the Washington-based Wilson Center research group. Phase twoThe intra-Afghan negotiations, as they are called, are the second phase of a deal the United States has negotiated with the Taliban to end its longest war. The historic signing ceremony is to take place in Qatar’s capital, Doha, this Saturday. As part of that deal, the Taliban have agreed to start negotiations with a team of Afghans, including representatives of the government, other political factions, human rights activists and women, to decide the future of their country. International stakeholders, including the U.S., are expected to play only a supporting role this time. FILE – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, June 25, 2019.”Our mission set is very clear. We want to assist and provide structure so that the Afghans can ultimately get an outcome that is led by Afghanis, driven by Afghanis and is a long-term solution that all the people of Afghanistan can live with,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday in Washington. Yet if the U.S. had to pressure Ghani and Abdullah into putting their differences aside to form a negotiation team, it could do it, said Kabul-based political analyst Najib Azad. Some, like Watkins, say the upcoming negotiations could provide Afghan political leaders with “an alternative venue for resolving their election-related grievances.” Whether that has an impact on how well Afghans can defend their hard-won human rights gains against a more unified Taliban team is yet to be seen. 
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A spike in prices of pharmaceutical ingredients in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in China is impacting Indian drugmakers and has raised concerns about the vulnerability of one of the world’s major producers and exporters of generic drugs to shortages.  The Indian drug industry imports nearly 70 per cent of raw pharmaceutical ingredients from China.  While big companies have said they have enough stock to last them for about two months, smaller manufacturers have been hit by price hikes. 
“Paracetamol was Rs 275 (about $ 4) about one month or six weeks back. It has gone up to Rs. 450 ($ 6.3) a kilogram,” according to T. Srikrishna, the chief executive officer at Low Cost Standard Therapeutics, a not-for-profit generic drug manufacturer in Gujarat. “Anything which has got a link to China has been affected.”  Supply chain disruptions are also a cause of major worry. Amid efforts to limit the spread of the deadly coronavirus outbreak, factories in China have been impacted and supply lines affected. Hubei province, where the virus originated, is a production hub for pharmaceutical ingredients.  
“Since half the world’s manufacturers are all relying on active ingredients coming from the Chinese manufacturers, there can be severe problems more downstream and later in the year specially when it comes to niche products that are manufactured at very few manufacturing sites in the world,” according to Jayasree Iyer, executive director at the Netherlands-based Access to Medicine Foundation, a non-profit organization that analyses the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.  Among the drugs that could be affected are antibiotics and vitamins, she said. India is one of the world’s main producers of affordable medicines.  While some stocks are being airlifted from China, drugmakers face uncertainty about when shipments will arrive, according to Deepnath Chowdhury, former president of the Indian Drug Manufacturers Association. “Logistic problems are there,” he says. “Once sea shipments will start coming, then only things will be easier.”  He says fortunately most of the bigger drug companies had stocked up before the Chinese New Year as per usual practice.  However smaller drugmakers, who do not import directly but procure in smaller quantities from local distributors are grappling with higher costs. According to Rahul Soni of Overseas Healthcare in the northern city of Jalandhar, “My inventory is not going to last for long and that is what worries us today. Some things I am already buying at a premium of 40 to 50 per cent. ” The price of azithromycin, an antibiotic for example, he says has risen by 50 per cent since January.  India’s thriving pharmaceutical industry is the world’s third largest producer of drugs in terms of volume and a major exporter of generic drugs.    But as the coronavirus outbreak turns the spotlight on the reliance of India’s thriving drug industry on China, the Confederation of Indian Industry has recommended that the country needs to build manufacturing capacities to strengthen domestic production of active pharmaceutical ingredients.  Iyer says drug companies should explore dual sourcing and cut down dependence on manufacturers in one country.   Smaller drug makers meanwhile worry about keeping their production lines viable due to the rising prices of raw ingredients. Many of them make basic medicines needed for primary health care such as antibiotics and vitamins.  While the rising costs do not impact retail consumers because prices of essential medicines in India are regulated by the government, Srikrishna says smaller manufacturers will have to simply stop producing if it is not viable.“If I cant afford to manufacture within that price limit, then I will stop manufacturing it. So shortages could come at a later stage. Now whatever is in the pipeline is being supplied,” he says.  The coronavirus outbreak has infected more than 75,000 people in about 40 countries around the world, most of them in China. The death toll has climbed to more than 2,700.          
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