Month: July 2024

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s minister for information technology and telecommunication confirmed Friday the government is implementing an internet firewall but rejected talk that the tool will curb free speech online, defending it as a cybersecurity upgrade.

“It’s a system. It is not a physical wall that we are putting up,” Shaza Fatima Khawaja, the state minister, told VOA. “It will not curb anything.”

The junior minister, currently the ministry’s top official, defended the government’s decision to implement a nationwide internet regulatory tool, saying the country was under daily cyberattacks.

“If a cybersecurity system, a capability, comes to the government, it’s a good thing,” Khawaja said in response to a VOA question at a news briefing earlier.

Pakistan has allocated more than $70 million for a Digital Infrastructure Development Initiative in the latest budget. Critics and digital rights activists worry the nationwide firewall will be used to silence dissent.

Pakistani authorities have hinted at a nationwide censorship tool for months but hesitated to issue a formal statement.

In a January interview with a news channel, Pakistan’s then-interim prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, announced the measure.

“Very soon a national firewall will be deployed,” Kakar said.

A high-ranking government official confirmed to VOA Urdu in June that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government was working to deploy a nationwide tool meant to control internet traffic and filter content available to online users in Pakistan.

Sharif’s government has rebuffed calls for clarity, however, while downplaying censorship concerns.

“I think if there is a firewall system, it will be about cybersecurity and data security. It will have nothing to do with freedom of speech, as far as I know,” Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar said at a news briefing Sunday.

Earlier the minister dismissed reports that Pakistan was acquiring an online censorship tool from China.

Digital terrorism

The firewall comes as the Pakistani military faces severe criticism online for its alleged role in keeping former Prime Minister Imran Khan behind bars while his party continues to face a crackdown.

The military, which denies meddling in political affairs, has lately been using the term “digital terrorists” for online critics.

“Just as terrorists use weapons to get their demands met, digital terrorists use negative propaganda and fake news on social media platforms, mobiles and computers to create despondency to get their demands met,” Pakistani military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said at a news conference this week.

Chaudhry said the military had become the sole target of digital terrorists.

He blamed a “certain” political party without naming Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf party, which has a formidable social media presence.

This week, police raided the PTI’s headquarters in the Pakistani capital, detaining its chief spokesperson and several other media team members, accusing them of running an “anti-state campaign.”

Service disruption

On Thursday, Pakistani media outlet The News reported recent problems users encountered in sharing content via the Meta-owned messaging app Whatsapp were a result of a test run of the firewall.

Refusing to comment on the implementation process of the firewall, the spokesperson of the independent Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said the regulator did not receive any reports of service disruptions.

“Our systems were clear. They were up and running. They did not falter anywhere,” Malahat Obaid told VOA, adding that the problems users faced could be because of a technical glitch.

Cybersecurity watchdog NetBlocks recorded five incidents of authorities restricting internet access so far this year. The disruptions occurred around February’s general elections.
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ISLAMABAD — New research suggests that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan will drop to record-low levels in 2024, due to the ban on the crop imposed by the Taliban government two years ago.

The findings, released this week by Alcis, a geospatial analytics firm, are based on high-resolution satellite mapping of 14 out of the 34 Afghan provinces.

“These 14 provinces were responsible for 92% of the country’s total poppy cultivation in 2022, cultivating 201,725 hectares out of a total of 219,978 hectares grown,” according to the study published on Thursday.

“In 2023, cultivation in these provinces had fallen to 15,648 hectares (50% of the crop that year), and in 2024, only 3,641 hectares of poppy were grown,” it said.

“This year, as in 2023, it is expected that poppy cultivation will be at close to historically low levels,” said Alcis.

The Afghan provinces in focus include Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Farah in the south and southwest and Nangarhar and Baghlan in the east and north.

The Taliban banned poppy cultivation and production eight months after the then-insurgent group reclaimed power from an internationally backed Afghan government in August 2021.

The following year, Afghanistan still supplied about 80% of the global illegal opiate demand and 95% of Europe’s heroin in 2022, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC.  But the U.N. agency noted in its 2024 World Drug Report that the ban had reduced opium production in the impoverished country by 95%.

The Alcis study warns there are pockets of resistance to the Taliban’s ban, particularly in the remote, northeastern border province of Badakhshan.

“Widespread [poppy] cultivation persists” in the province, the study noted, and the Taliban’s eradication efforts have been met with violence, leaving at least five people, including three Taliban soldiers, dead in April.

“The events in Badakhshan and elsewhere, where farmers have responded to the ban by abandoning important cash crops, growing staple food crops such as wheat, and leaving land fallow, suggest the Taliban’s poppy ban is fragile and will become more difficult to enforce in the future,” Alcis cautioned.

The firm noted that without the income brought in by opium production, many Afghan farmers are struggling to earn a livelihood.  It said without markets for cash-producing crops and an increase in non-farm opportunities, the Taliban may face “further unrest and further outmigration.”

The Taliban takeover has led to deepening economic troubles in Afghanistan, mainly attributed to international financial and banking sector sanctions. It has also exacerbated a long-running Afghan humanitarian crisis.

The country remains a global pariah largely because of the Taliban’s curbs on women’s access to education and work, deterring the international community from formally recognizing the de facto Afghan government and offering any financial aid.

On Tuesday, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told a national conference in Kabul that the drug ban had led to immense economic pressures and severe hardships for Afghans already reeling from the effects of years of war and natural disasters. He lamented the ongoing lack of international cooperation in response.

“The illegal production of drugs has ceased. The [more than 4 million] addicts [in Afghanistan] are now in need of medical treatment while the farmers need livelihoods and employment,” Muttaqi said.  

“Regrettably, the international community has failed to fulfill its responsibility in this matter. Instead, they have imposed sanctions on Afghan trade, travel, and banking sectors in breach of the universal fundamental human rights,” he added.
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New Delhi — Sri Lanka will hold its first presidential election since the country sank into a deep economic crisis two years ago. The vote to be held September 21, will be a referendum on the reforms that have helped stabilize the economy but also led to hardship for millions in the island nation.    

After the Election Commission announced the polls on Friday, President Ranil Wickremesinghe filed as an independent candidate. He had taken charge in 2022, after widespread protests forced his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to resign.    

His rise to the top job had disappointed the protesters, analysts say. “This is an election that people are really looking forward to because it will restore a government with the mandate of the people which was lost two years ago following the popular uprising against the government led by Rajapaksa, who was blamed for massive economic mismanagement and corruption,” Jehan Perera, a political analyst in Colombo told VOA.    

Wickremesinghe had been elected as president by Parliament, largely with the support of lawmakers from Rajapaksa’s party.    

Economic issues will dominate the five-week campaign in a country that was ranked as a middle-income nation before it faced virtual bankruptcy and defaulted on its foreign debt.    

Wickremesinghe is credited with putting the economy on the path to recovery with the help of a $2.9 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund. The economy is expected to grow 3% this year after shrinking by 7.3% two years ago. The severe shortages of fuel, cooking gas, food and medicines that the country witnessed two years ago have eased and the hourslong daily power cuts have ended.   

But austerity measures imposed by his government to rescue the economy have been deeply unpopular. Taxes have been hiked on businesses and professionals and massive subsidies for electricity and other utilities have been slashed.    

As a result, millions of ordinary Sri Lankans face plummeting standards of living. 

 “Prices have risen threefold since 2022, but for a vast majority of people incomes are still the same. While it is true that there are no long lines for food and gas now, that is because people cannot really afford to buy much,” Perara said.    

An April World Bank report said that poverty rates have continued to rise in the country, with an estimated 25.9% of Sri Lankans living below the poverty line last year.    

Opposition parties have been critical of what they call “hard reforms” imposed on the country.    

Wickremesinghe’s main rival is expected to be Sajith Premadasa, who heads the country’s main opposition party. Anura Dissanayake, who leads a leftist party that has gained popularity in the last year, is expected to be another contender for the top job.      

“The opposition says it will relieve the austerity measures and will renegotiate part of the IMF program, but it is not yet clear what exactly they are proposing,” Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo told VOA. “Polls conducted over the last month suggest that the public mood is also one of disapproval of the reforms.”     

Saravanamuttu also calls the presidential election critical for democracy – it will be the first vote to be held in the country since the economic collapse triggered political turmoil.    

Local elections due to be held last year were postponed indefinitely after the government said it had no money to conduct a nationwide vote.
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Islamabad — “We have never seen a Chinese reaction like this one,” says regional security affairs analyst Ahmed Rashid, referring to Beijing’s persistent public demand that Pakistan ensure the safety of Chinese nationals since a March 26 suicide attack killed five Chinese workers there.

As Pakistan fights a resurgent wave of terrorism that has killed hundreds of local civilians and security personnel this year, officials insist they can keep a few thousand Chinese nationals safe.

A major ally of China, Pakistan has seen billions of dollars in much-needed energy and infrastructure projects pour in through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor — the flagship project of Beijing’s global Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.

The project, popularly known as CPEC, however, has suffered as Islamist militants and Baloch insurgents fighting the Pakistani state target Chinese nationals and projects.

Since 2017, at least 19 Chinese nationals have been killed in Pakistan. The March suicide attack in Besham, a town in northwestern Pakistan, came days after militants stormed a government compound in Gwadar, home to a Chinese-built deep-sea port in the southwest.

Keen to save one of its most critical bilateral relationships, Pakistan quickly revamped protocols, promising “fool-proof” security for Chinese citizens in meetings with the Chinese leadership.

In June, Pakistan also announced a new nationwide anti-terrorism campaign after a visiting senior Chinese official told Pakistani politicians “the primary factor shaking the confidence of Chinese investors is the security situation.”

“This is a very serious issue because for the first time we have had in the last few months some very strong, tough statements from the Chinese, criticizing its biggest ally in the region, Pakistan,” said Rashid.

What’s new?

A dedicated military division and special provincial police units provide security to Chinese nationals and projects in Pakistan. Local intelligence units keep a record of where the foreigners live and work. Chinese nationals usually move between cities in bullet-proof vehicles with a police escort. One percent of the cost of any project involving Chinese workers is budgeted for security.

“There is pressure,” a counterterrorism officer said while speaking to VOA on background about the new push in Pakistan to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel and projects.

Large-scale projects are often cut off from nearby towns to limit public access, while locals hired to work at sites secured with barbed wires and cameras must clear police background checks.

Since the Besham attack, the Ministry of Interior has created a so-called foreigners security cell to streamline coordination among provinces. A new Special Protection Unit of police in Islamabad now protects Chinese nationals in the capital.

Police personnel are undergoing renewed training and having equipment audited, while security checks on roads near where the Chinese live or work have increased, officials tell VOA.

“Another element that has been added since then [the Besham attack] is kinetic,” said a senior provincial law enforcement officer speaking to VOA on background. “There is improved record-keeping of area residents. So that we are aware of who lives there.”

“The probability of local support and facilitation is very high in our spectrum, and we try to keep identifying such people so that we can preempt it,” the official said.

Chinese help

Pakistani officials reject reports that China has sought to deploy its own security personnel in Pakistan but say law enforcement cooperation between the two countries already exists.

“They have extended support to the establishment of SPU [Special Protection Unit],” Aitzaz Goraya, provincial counterterrorism chief in Baluchistan, told VOA. “They have promised some equipment for it, too. Some has arrived and some is on the way. Such a process is ongoing, at least in Balochistan.”

Authorities say they hope to complete a “safe city” program in Gwadar by the end of the year. The project includes installing hundreds of cameras controlled from a centralized command center in the key port town to surveil residents as guards keep an eye on the situation from watchtowers.

Resentment

Heightened security for Chinese workers is also a source of resentment among locals in parts of Pakistan. In Gwadar, where the Pakistani military controls security, impoverished locals have staged mass protests in recent years, complaining of a lack of involvement in Chinese-funded development projects, and of loss of livelihood and limited mobility.

“All the shops and roadside restaurants close along the five- to six-kilometer-long distance when the Chinese travel from the port to the airport. This happens two to three times a week,” said Naeem Ghafoor, a local activist.

The new nationwide anti-terror offensive named Azm-e-Istehkam faces intense opposition in the militancy-hit northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where residents have experienced mass displacement and destruction of infrastructure in past military operations.

Security affairs expert Rasheed says Pakistan cannot ensure the security of Chinese workers without providing basic facilities to its own citizens first.

“There is a chronic need to involve civil society,” said Rashid. “It’s not just that the army can deal with this on its own or the police can. This needs development. It needs better facilities.”

Fulfilling decades-old promises of development may still take years as Pakistan struggles to bring its economy on track with bailouts from the International Monetary Fund.

Still, Goraya believes Pakistan can keep its promise of providing security to the Chinese.

“They [terrorists] don’t have anything that we don’t,” Goraya said. “If we follow the SOPs [Standard Operating Procedures] and don’t deviate from it, we can do it.”
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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka will hold a presidential election on Sept. 21 that will likely be a test of confidence in President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s efforts to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis.

The date was announced by the independent elections commission Friday, which said nominations will be accepted on August 15.

Wickremesinghe is expected to run while his main rivals will be opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and Anura Dissanayake, who is the leader of a leftist political party that has gained popularity after the economic debacle.

It will be the first election in the South Asian island nation after it declared bankruptcy in 2022 and suspended repayments on some $83 billion in domestic and foreign loans.

That followed a severe foreign exchange crisis that led to a severe shortage of essentials such as food, medicine, fuel and cooking gas, and extended power outages.

The election is largely seen as a crucial vote for the island nation’s efforts to conclude a critical debt restructuring program and as well as completing the financial reforms agreed under a bailout program by the International Monetary Fund.

The country’s economic upheaval led to a political crisis that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign in 2022. Parliament then elected the then-Prime Minister Wickremesinghe as president.

Under Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka has been negotiating with the international creditors to restructure the staggering debts and to put the economy back on the track. The IMF has also approved a four-year bailout program last March to help Sri Lanka.

Last month, Wickremesinghe announced that his government has struck a debt restructuring deal with countries including India, France, Japan and China — marking a key step in the country’s economic recovery after defaulting on debt repayment in 2022.

The economic situation has improved under Wickremesinghe and severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine have largely abated. But public dissatisfaction has grown over the government’s effort to increase revenue by raising electricity bills and imposing heavy new income taxes on professionals and businesses, as part of the government’s efforts to meet the IMF conditions.

Sri Lanka’s crisis was largely the result of staggering economic mismanagement combined with fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which along with 2019 terrorism attacks devastated its important tourism industry. The coronavirus crisis also disrupted the flow of remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad.

Additionally, the then-government slashed taxes in 2019, depleting the treasury just as the virus hit. Foreign exchange reserves plummeted, leaving Sri Lanka unable to pay for imports or defend its beleaguered currency, the rupee.

Under the agreements with its creditors, Sri Lanka will be able to defer all bilateral loan instalment payments until 2028. Furthermore, Sri Lanka will be able to repay all the loans on concessional terms, with an extended period until 2043. The agreements would cover $10 billion of debt.

By 2022, Sri Lanka had to repay about $6 billion in foreign debt every year, amounting to about 9.2% of gross domestic product. The agreement would enable Sri Lanka to maintain debt payments at less than 4.5% of GDP between 2027 and 2032.
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The Indian Sundarbans is home to millions of people and the region’s endangered Bengal tigers. In recent years, rising sea levels and deadly storms forced farmers to travel deep into the tigers’ forests to make a living. Hundreds of men have been killed, leaving widows impoverished and shunned.
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washington — Militant attacks in Pakistan’s northwest have plagued the region for years, leading to tensions between some of the region’s civilian leaders and the Pakistani military.

Last month, the military announced the Azm-e-Istehkam or “Resolve for Stability” offensive would be an operation that cracks down on militants, but after a decade of similar interventions, many residents in the region are wary.

This week, a man recorded a video while standing next to debris from a girls school that militants blew up Monday night in a small village in the North Waziristan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He lamented how violent the province has become, especially compared with other, more peaceful parts of Pakistan.

“We never heard that a school was blown up in Punjab,” Pakistan’s most populous province and home to the majority of the country’s armed forces, he said.

Mohsin Dawar, the former chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Pakistan’s lower house, posted video of the destroyed school on the X platform with a comment, “The state stands by, complicit in the destruction.”

Monday’s destruction of the girls school was not unusual. Last week there were attacks on police stations, a hospital and an army base, all in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province about the same size as Iceland or South Korea.

After years of violence, the local Pashtun population is questioning why peace has not returned to the border region despite the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from neighboring Afghanistan.

The ongoing militant attacks have boosted support for a local rights movement, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement, which is leading a series of mass peace rallies aimed at holding Pakistan’s military accountable for its track record in combating terrorism.

The group is the major voice opposing the government’s plan to launch another military operation in the region to try to drive out militants and end the attacks.

The prospect of another military offensive has drawn opposition from residents, who remember the large-scale displacements that happened when the military launched offensives twice before in the last decade.

Army spokesperson Lieutenant General Ahmad Sharif on Monday blamed groups who oppose the new offensive for allegedly trying to sabotage the operation with a disinformation campaign.

He insisted the proposed Azm-e-Istehkam is aimed at destroying militant groups operating in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, two provinces that border Afghanistan, Iran and the strategic Arabian Sea, and also host several major Chinese-backed development projects.

Murad Ali, an academic at Malakand University in the nearby Swat Valley, says the region’s history of military offensives has left many skeptical of the army’s plans.

“It is a fact that [the] military also suffered in terms of sweat and blood in [the] fight against militants,” Ali said, but many in the Pashtun population doubt the capability of the military to eradicate militancy or suspect it is an “accomplice in perpetrating this hide and seek with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban.”

The army spokesman said security forces have lost 137 soldiers so far, including officers, in 2024 in the fight against militants.

Ahmad Kundi, an elected member of Pakhtunkhwa’s regional assembly, says over the years, the national government has sent a mixed message about how to combat militancy.

“One prime minister said negotiations with militants was a way forward and another prime minister opts for military operations, though it didn’t deliver in the past,” Kundi said.

Hamid Ullah in Peshawar contributed to this report.
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