Month: May 2024

GENEVA — U.N. agencies are banding together in coordination with Afghanistan’s de facto Taliban rulers to aid hundreds of thousands of survivors of devastating flash floods that struck northeastern Afghanistan Friday.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, reported Monday that search and rescue operations continue. It said that 14 U.N. teams have been deployed to jointly assess the damage and needs, and that humanitarian partners “have identified available emergency stocks in the region.”

Speaking to journalists in Geneva from Kabul Tuesday, World Food Program official Timothy Anderson stressed the critical need to provide emergency food aid in the worst-affected areas, which were already facing multiple crises.

“There has been widespread destruction, death and injury in areas where people are least able to absorb shocks,” said Anderson, the WFP’s head of program in Afghanistan. “On our current information, about 540 people are dead and injured, around 3,000 houses fully or partially destroyed, 10,000 acres of orchards destroyed, and 2,000 livestock killed.

“Many of those who have survived have nothing left, no homes to return to and no food,” he said, adding that the full impact of this disaster will not be known until U.N. personnel are able to reach currently inaccessible areas.

“We are taking food via donkeys, as that is the only way we can reach some of these districts. … So far, WFP provided the survivors with emergency food assistance, and we are planning to distribute blanket cash assistance in the coming days, which is enough to cover their basic needs for a month,” he said.

WFP reports that two of the hardest-hit areas, Baghlan and Badakhshan, are in so-called “hunger hotspots” — areas where the seasonal harvest has been destroyed and little food is available.

“These communities will still need food assistance over the summer just to survive,” Anderson said. “Our staff on the ground tell me everyone they speak to is worried less about the homes they lost and more about their destroyed agricultural land. As subsistence farmers, it is their sole source of livelihood — and already marginal to meet their basic needs.”

UNICEF reports 3.2 million Afghan children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition, a figure that “is set to climb.” UNICEF says undernutrition is responsible for nearly half of all deaths in children under 5 as it puts them at greater risk of dying from common infections.

Anderson said this worries him because WFP is suffering from a severe funding shortfall. He said WFP has received only 30% of the $1 billion it needs for its operation this year, forcing the agency to make drastic cuts in food aid.

Anderson said the agency is currently serving about 2 million people in Afghanistan, down from 12 million previously.

The World Health Organization reports the heavy rainfall that triggered the violent flooding has rendered several health facilities nonoperational, making it difficult for people to access essential services.

“The full extent of the damage caused by the floods is still being assessed, and WHO and local health authorities are closely looking into the situation on the ground to see what we can identify,” said Christian Lindmeier, WHO spokesperson.

He noted that WHO so far has delivered seven metric tons of essential medicines and medical supplies and has “immediately deployed a surveillance support team and other experts for flood-response activities.”

Prior to the disaster, he said, WHO had already provided enough medication for pneumonia and acute watery diarrhea, as well as enough malnutrition treatments for some 20,000 people, plus supplies for 500 trauma cases.

Additionally, he said, “Seventeen mobile health teams were deployed by WHO and health partners to support the delivery of health care.”

WFP’s Anderson said that to date, there have been no reported problems with the Taliban regarding “the integration of our female staff members” into WFP’s humanitarian operation.

“We are always very keen to ensure that all beneficiaries, all affected populations, male or female, are adequately and equally covered in our response mechanisms and processes,” he said.

While acknowledging the many competing crises in the world, the WFP official said this was no time to abandon Afghanistan. He repeated his appeal for international support, saying, “You cannot just stop feeding starving people.”
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New Delhi — India and Iran have signed a 10-year contract to develop and operate the Iranian port of Chabahar, which New Delhi envisages as a strategic trade route to landlocked Central Asian republics, allowing it to bypass rival Pakistan.

India said the deal has unlocked new avenues for trade. But the United States, whose ties with Iran have worsened, has warned of the potential risk of sanctions on anyone considering business deals with Tehran.

Analysts in New Delhi say the threat of sanctions could dampen hopes of turning the port into a trading hub.

The agreement was signed Monday in Iran’s Chabahar town by India’s Shipping Minister, Sarbananda Sonawal and Iran’s urban development minister Mehrdad Bazrpash.

“Chabahar Port’s significance transcends its role as a mere conduit between India and Iran. it serves as a vital trade artery connecting India with Afghanistan and Central Asian countries,” Sonawal said after the signing.

The agreement gives India 10-year access to use the port.

“We are pleased with this agreement, and we have full trust in India,” Iranian minister Bazrpash said.

India began helping to develop Chabahar port by building new cargo berths and terminals in 2016 after Washington eased sanctions on Iran – they were reimposed by the Trump administration in 2018.

After India and Iran signed the 10-year deal, U.S. State Department spokesperson, Vedant Patel, told reporters that U.S. sanctions on Iran remain in place, and that Washington will continue to enforce them.

“Any entity, anyone considering business deals with Iran, they need to be aware of the potential risk that they are opening themselves up to and the potential risk of sanctions,” he said.

Chabahar is India’s first major overseas port venture and for New Delhi, it is an important part of its strategy to improve links with resource-rich Central Asian republics and Afghanistan, access to which has been hampered due to the decades long hostile relations between India and Pakistan.

But Indian analysts say U.S. sanctions on Iran have long cast a shadow on the project and hampered New Delhi from realizing the port’s potential. While the Trump administration had exempted the Chabahar project due to the role India was playing in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, Washington’s ties with Iran have again worsened due to Tehran’s support for Hamas since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last October.

“Chabahar has long-term potential. But due to U.S. sanctions on Iran, it has not turned out to be the gamechanger that India had hoped because private Indian companies have been and will be reluctant to use the port,” according to Manoj Joshi, Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “There has been no real sharp rise in India’s trade with Central Asia.”

However, Indian stakes in Chabahar have strategic significance — they are part of India’s outreach to Iran. “Where India is concerned, good ties with Iran are a pushback against Pakistan, which has a land blockade where India is concerned,” said Joshi.

Chabahar is also seen as a counter to China’s development of the Gwadar port in Pakistan. Located close to Iran’s southeastern border with Pakistan, the deep water Chabahar port is less than 100 kilometers from Gwadar.

Beijing’s investments in ports and infrastructure in India’s neighborhood as part of its Belt and Road Initiative have raised concerns in New Delhi and prompted it to expand its maritime footprint.

Indian officials expressed optimism about the ten-year deal that India and Iran have inked. “It will clear the pathway for bigger investments to be made in the port,” foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told reporters Monday.

India will invest $120 million in infrastructure development and extend a $250 million line of credit to Iran.

The “long-term contract symbolizes the enduring trust and effective partnership between India and Iran,” Indian minister Sonawal said.
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ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN — A court in Kazakhstan on Monday sentenced a former economy minister to 24 years in prison for the murder of his wife, in a case that led the patriarchal Central Asian nation to toughen its domestic abuse laws.

Kuandyk Bishimbayev was found guilty of torture and murder in the November 2023 beating death of Saltanat Nukenova.

The trial of Bishimbayev, which began in March, has been broadcast live. He will serve his sentence in a maximum-security prison.

The former minister beat Nukenova in a family restaurant in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on Nov. 9. His cousin Bakhytzhan Bayzhanov was found guilty of helping him to cover up the murder and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Both men have 15 days to appeal the ruling.

“I hope this non-human would be given a life sentence,” Nukenova’s father, Amengeldy Nukenov, told journalists before the verdict was read.

During the trial, thousands of people urged the authorities to adopt harsher penalties for domestic violence. 

The 24-year-long sentence has taken the public, especially rights activists, aback.

“Of course, we all expected a life sentence because the woman was killed deliberately with inconceivable violence,” Zhanar Sekerbayeva, cofounder of Kazakhstan’s LGBTQ women’s right group called, Feminita, told VOA after the verdict.

Sekerbayeva said her group held a march Monday along Almaty streets to protest a lack of “the strictest punishment” for Bishimbayev.

Bishimbayev served as an aide of the former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and as national economy minister until his arrest in 2017 for corruption crimes.

In March 2018, Bishimbayev was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released on parole in September 2019.

The murder trial drew parallels to the “trial of the century” of former U.S. football star O.J. Simpson, who in the 1990s was charged with the murder of his former wife. He was acquitted in 1995 in Nicole Brown Simpson’s death.

The Bishimbayev case brought attention to the wider topic of domestic violence in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in the region.

During the case, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev weighed in early and ordered the Interior Ministry to keep the case under special scrutiny.

“Everyone should be equal before the law,” he said last November in reference to Nukenova’s death. “Justice in society is citizens’ solidarity for the sake of strengthening the rule of law. A just Kazakhstan is a country where law and order triumph.”

Nukenova’s death highlighted the precarious position that victims of domestic violence can end up in and added urgency to the adoption of legislation against such abuse. 

As a result, the Kazakh parliament adopted a new bill on domestic violence in April, which the president immediately signed into law.

The country registers around 300 complaints about domestic violence every day, and at least 80 women die from domestic abuse every year, according to figures from Kazakh prosecutors. 

But a 2018 study backed by U.N. Women found about 400 women die from domestic violence each year in Kazakhstan, although many cases go unreported.

Last October, Culture and Information Minister Aida Balayeva said that “869 people had died as a result of domestic violence in the past 4.5 years,” without specifying gender or age.

The new law offers better protections to victims of domestic violence, such as shifting the responsibility for the collection of evidence from the victims to the police.

Police also now must register and investigate all domestic violence cases, even those not reported by a victim but by the media or on social media. 

The New York-based group, Human Rights Watch, hailed the new law as an improvement, but said it “fails to explicitly make domestic violence a stand-alone offense in the criminal code or elsewhere.” 
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mumbai, india — At least four people are dead, 61 injured and more than 40 feared trapped after a massive billboard fell during a rainstorm in India’s financial capital of Mumbai on Monday, local officials said.

The rainstorm was accompanied by gusty winds, causing the billboard, located next to a busy road in the eastern suburb of Ghatkopar, to collapse on some houses and a gas station.

A rescue operation for the people remaining trapped under the billboard is ongoing. Fire services, police, disaster response officials and other authorities are all involved in the rescue efforts, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, the civic body that runs Mumbai, said on X.

News channels and posts on social media showed the towering billboard billowing in the wind for a while before it gave way and crashed to the ground.

The local weather department had predicted that moderate spells of rain, accompanied by gusty winds reaching 40-50 kilometers per hour were likely to occur in parts of Mumbai district on Monday.

There were temporary flight disruptions at the Mumbai airport, with 15 flight diversions and operations suspended for a little over an hour, Asian News International, in which Reuters has a minority stake, reported.

Mumbai, like several Indian cities, is prone to severe flooding and rain-related accidents during the monsoon season, which usually lasts from June until September every year.
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