Insurgents free four people from former stronghold of Pakistani Taliban

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Insurgents freed four people Saturday, including an army officer who was abducted three days ago from a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, the military said. 

Lieutenant Colonel Khalid Ameer was seized Wednesday while sitting in a mosque to receive mourners after attending his father’s funeral, according to local police. 

The “unconditional release” of Ameer and three of his relatives was secured due to the role played by tribal elders and “all the abductees have safely returned home,” the military said in a statement without giving any further details. 

No one claimed responsibility for the kidnappings in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northwest Pakistan. However, in video statements released hours after they were kidnapped, two of the abductees said they were in the custody of Pakistani Taliban. They also urged the government to accept their abductors’ demands, although these were unclear. 

Though the Pakistani Taliban often targets security forces, such kidnappings and releases of abductees are rare. The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, are separate from but allied to the Afghan Taliban, and they have been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021. 

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As floodwaters in Bangladesh recede, fears of waterborne disease rise

DHAKA, bangladesh — Authorities in Bangladesh are bracing for the spread of waterborne diseases and racing to get drinking water to people after devastating floods last week left at least 54 people dead and millions stranded. 

As floodwaters recede slowly, many people remain stranded and in urgent need of food, clean water, medicine and dry clothes, especially in remote areas where blocked roads have hindered rescue and relief efforts. 

The Bangladesh Meteorological Department said that flood conditions could persist if the monsoon rains continued, as water levels were receding very slowly. 

Around 470,000 people have taken refuge in 3,300 shelters across 11 flood-hit districts, where around 600 medical teams are helping provide treatment, with the army, air force, navy, and the border guard assisting in rescue operations, authorities said. 

A disaster management ministry official warned that as floodwaters recede, there is a risk of an epidemic, adding that the outbreak of waterborne diseases is likely if clean water is not provided soon. 

“Our top priority is to ensure the availability of safe drinking water,” the official said. 

In the past 24 hours, around 3,000 people have been hospitalized due to waterborne diseases in flood-hit areas, according to the Directorate General of Health Services. Many areas remained submerged, preventing stranded people from accessing healthcare facilities. 

“Water is everywhere but there is no clean water to drink. People are getting sick,” said Farid Ahmed, a resident of one of the worst-hit districts, Lakshmipur. 

Vast areas of land are submerged, posing a significant threat to crops, agriculture ministry officials said. 

The United Nations children’s agency has warned that 2 million children were at risk as the worst floods in three decades sweep through eastern Bangladesh. The organization is urgently appealing for $35 million to provide life-saving supplies. 

“The devastating floods in eastern Bangladesh are a tragic reminder of the relentless impact of extreme weather events and the climate crisis on children,” said Emma Brigham, deputy representative of UNICEF Bangladesh. 

An analysis in 2015 by the World Bank Institute estimated that 3.5 million people in Bangladesh, one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, were at risk of annual river flooding. Scientists attribute the exacerbation of such catastrophic events to climate change. 

Farah Kabir, director of ActionAid Bangladesh, said that countries like Bangladesh, which contribute minimally to global emissions, urgently need funding to recover from climate-related losses and build resilience for future impacts while pursuing green development pathways. 

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‘Renaissance of illegals’: Since its war in Ukraine, Russia is relying more on bargain basement spies

Madrid/Washington — They are known as “illegals” — spies who operate under the guise of normal jobs.

Since Russia lost many of its valuable spy assets when dozens of diplomats were expelled from Western countries after the invasion of Ukraine, these civilian agents have become essential.

Experts in Russian intelligence told VOA that this was the “renaissance of illegals,” with 90% of operations now carried out by these shadowy figures.

The August 1 hostage swap, in which American journalists and Russian rights activists were exchanged for an assassin and spies, exposed how some of these “illegals” operate.

Many manage to avoid detection by working in innocuous jobs that allow them access to events and people of interest to Moscow. The prisoner swap included supposed art dealers and a freelance journalist.

President Vladimir Putin welcomed back Russian couple Artem and Anna Dultsev, who posed as Argentinians and ran a tech start-up and gallery in Slovenia, and Spanish-Russian freelance reporter Pablo Gonzalez, also known as Pavel Rubtsov.

On the surface, Gonzalez worked as a reporter for media outlets that included DW and VOA, specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. But in reality, according to the head of the British MI6 secret service, he was gathering information on Russian opposition groups and trying to destabilize Ukraine in the run up to Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

Polish authorities detained Gonzalez in February 2022. Until August 1, he was held in a high-security jail on charges of spying for Russia — allegations he had denied.

Media watchdogs condemned the conditions in which Poland held Gonzalez, but footage of him being welcomed by Putin after the swap appeared to confirm his primary role was spy craft, not journalism.

Gonzalez himself gave VOA a cryptic answer to a request for an interview. Referring to an earlier VOA article about his release, Gonzalez said through his Spanish wife, Oihana Goiriena, “If there are no more speculations, then I don’t know what you want to talk about.”

 

Russian roots

Speaking perfect Russian and Spanish, Gonzalez forged a career in journalism after studying Slavic studies at the University of Barcelona. But despite his new life in the West, he retained much sympathy for his country of birth.

A source with knowledge of the Russian intelligence sector who did not want to be named told VOA that Gonzalez grew up in Spain’s Basque country, where sympathies for a regional independence movement are common — and, in left-wing circles, support for Putin is not unusual.

This meant many who met him did not question his pro-Russian leanings; far fewer suspected he secretly worked for Russian intelligence.

“This is a renaissance for illegals,” Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, an expert in subversive Russian and Soviet special services, told VOA from Kyiv.

“Historically, it was so difficult to travel abroad. [These spies] can travel, they can live, they can join governments, businesses,” said Danylyuk, who is an associate fellow of the London-based Royal United Services Institute, a defense think-tank.

“Some people are still not convinced that illegals are important, but it is 90% of all the [Russian intelligence] activity.”

Danylyuk said part of their value is that millions of Russians — and foreign-national Kremlin sympathizers — can travel freely without suspicion.

“They can travel to Silicon Valley and steal secrets, and they can recruit Westerners. Why would you need to use diplomats?” he said. “For some specific tasks, yes, but in fact for other operations you would use illegals, and you would have spymasters.”

Danylyuk said one purpose of illegals is to exert influence on the Western world by infiltrating radical protest groups or opposition organizations.

In 2016, Gonzalez engaged with leaders of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom — named after the Russian opposition politician assassinated in 2015 — where he became close with key members of the group.

Nemtsov’s daughter and co-founder of the foundation, Zhanna Nemtsova, said she was a target of Gonzalez’s espionage.

“I was the first to tell Agentstvo about Pablo Gonzalez/Pavel Rubtsov in May 2023 after I had access to the case materials,” she wrote on social media X on August 27. Agentstvo is an independent Russian media outlet.

Gonzalez collected detailed reports on his contacts with Nemtsova and the foundation, Agentstvo said.

Spy operations

Marc Marginedas, a correspondent for Spanish newspaper El Periodico, said despite the expulsions of Russian diplomats after the Ukraine invasion, the Russian intelligence service is like a small army.

“Tens of thousands of people work for the different branches of the intelligence services in Russia. Some sources elevate this to hundreds of thousands if it includes those working not on a regular basis,” said Marginedas, who specializes in the former Soviet states and Middle East.

Staff in Russian embassies and state-run media organizations, he added, are probably forced to work in some kind of intelligence capacity.

Marginedas agreed that “illegals” are now a mainstay of Moscow’s spying operation.

“Russia has invested heavily in ‘illegal’ agents who do not enjoy diplomatic protection,” he said.

“They provide them with a personal alibi that is very difficult to track down. Latin American countries, with not very tight controls and regulations when providing citizenship to foreigners, are very useful for this purpose.”

Marginedas said that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine resulted in large numbers of suspected Russian spies being expelled from embassies around the world. So, when Putin appeared at the airport in Moscow to welcome the agents in the prisoner swap in August, it sent a specific message.

“Following the war in Ukraine and the mass expulsions of Russian diplomats from Western countries, its capacities were seriously undermined,” Marginedas said.

“Putin, by receiving those people with pomp at [Moscow’s] airport and promising them jobs and medals, was sending out the message to the future spies that the Russian state will not abandon its spies.”

A journalist who knew Gonzalez said his real identity came as a shock.

Xavier Colas, who works for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, has known Gonzalez since 2014 when they met in Ukraine.

“He was not a person who pretended to be a journalist. He really was one. He did reports and traveled and knew what he was talking about,” Colas said. “He styled himself as an expert in Ukraine and other [post-Soviet] republics. He knew his stuff.”

Colas, whom Russia expelled earlier this year, also said Gonzalez espoused “pro-Russian” arguments that attacked Ukraine and the European Union and claimed Alexei Navalny, the late opposition leader imprisoned by Russia, was being treated well by the Russian government.

Navalny died in a penal colony in the Arctic in February.

“Gonzalez’s opinions were very pro-Russian. But he was not some stupid young radical journalist. He knew what he was talking about, but his arguments did not make sense,” Colas remembers.

He said that Gonzalez worked for mostly regional newspapers such as the pro-separatist Basque Gara newspaper, but he never seemed short of funds to travel to all parts of Ukraine and Syria.

Gonzalez worked for Spanish outlets Publico, La Sexta and Gara. He also worked as a freelancer for Voice of America in 2020 and 2021 and the public broadcasters Deutsche Welle and EFE.

VOA hired Gonzalez via a third-party freelance media platform. After learning of his arrest in Poland, the broadcaster removed his content.

Deutsche Welle did not reply to a request for comment. But Miguel Angel Oliver, president of EFE, told VOA: “We have not made any comment. Gonzalez worked for EFE over two years ago. It was a brief collaboration principally about photographs at the start of the Ukraine war.”

Colas said he thought Gonzalez came from “a wealthy Basque country family.” It was a shock, he said, when Gonzalez emerged from a plane with a Russian hitman and other spies.

“I knew for a while that the Spanish secret services believed he was a spy. But this was still a shock for me,” he said.

Intelligence services

Three different intelligence services had no doubt about where Gonzalez’s real loyalties lay — even if his colleagues and many peers were in the dark.

Spanish secret services, who spoke on background to a VOA reporter, said they believed he was a Russian spy. And Polish security services said Gonzalez was included in the prisoner swap because of “common security issues” with the United States.

In a statement, they said: “Pavel Rubtsov, a GRU officer arrested in Poland in 2022, [had been] carrying out intelligence tasks in Europe.”

Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6, said at the Aspen Security Forum in 2022 that Gonzalez was an “illegal” arrested in Poland after “masquerading as a Spanish journalist.”

“He was going into Ukraine to be part of their destabilizing efforts there,” Moore said.

Gonzalez has always denied spying for Russia.

His lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, noted the case of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter Russia detained on false espionage charges who was freed in the prisoner swap and welcomed by U.S. President Joe Biden.

“Nobody in the USA has questioned that Gershkovich was simply a journalist. We think that neither Gershkovich nor Pablo Gonzalez are spies, but journalists are trapped in a new kind of cold war, where truth matters little,” he told VOA.

Boye also acted as a lawyer for Edward Snowden and Carles Puigdemont, a fugitive former Catalan independence leader wanted in Spain on charges of embezzlement and misuse of public funds. (Boye himself has faced legal action, convicted in a 1996 trial involving Basque separatists.)

Gonzalez is now living in Russia, but his wife, Goiriena, still lives with the couple’s three children in Spain’s Basque country. She told VOA that she remains in touch with her husband daily by social media or telephone.

“So far there is no news of him coming back from Russia,” she said. “I think he has to recover from everything he has been through.”

While living in Warsaw in the run-up to Russia’s invasion, Gonzalez had a girlfriend, named in local media as Magdalena Chodownik. She has since been charged by Polish authorities with assisting espionage but denies the charge.

Chodownik, who has worked for several European outlets, declined to comment to VOA when asked about Gonzalez.

Spain’s Foreign Ministry did not reply when asked by VOA if Gonzalez will be allowed to return to Spain to see his family while Poland has accused him of spying.

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Tourist helicopter carrying 22 goes missing in Russia’s Kamchatka

Moscow, Russia — A helicopter with 22 people aboard, most of them tourists, has gone missing in Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula in the far east, regional authorities said Saturday.

“Today at about 1615 (0415 GMT) communication was lost with a Mi-8 helicopter … which had 22 people on board, 19 passengers and three crew members,” Kamchatka Governor Vladimir Solodov said in a video posted on Telegram.

Rescue teams in helicopters have been searching into the night for the missing aircraft, focusing on a river valley that the helicopter was due to fly along, Russian authorities said.

The Mi-8 is a Soviet-designed military helicopter that is widely used for transport in Russia.

The missing helicopter had picked up passengers near the Vachkazhets ancient volcano in a scenic area of the peninsula known for its wild landscapes, pristine rivers, geysers and active volcanoes.

Kamchatka, which is nine hours ahead of Moscow, is a popular tourist destination.

A source in the emergency services told TASS news agency that the helicopter disappeared from radar almost immediately after taking off and the crew did not report any problems.

The local weather service said there was poor visibility in the airport area.

Accidents involving planes and helicopters are frequent in Russia’s far eastern region, which is sparsely populated and where there is often harsh weather.

The emergencies ministry said the search and rescue operation was being hampered by thick fog in the area.

In August 2021, a Mi-8 helicopter with 16 people on board, including 13 tourists, crashed into a lake in Kamchatka due to poor visibility, killing eight.

In July the same year, a plane crashed as it tried to land on the peninsula, with 22 passengers and 6 crew aboard, all of whom were killed.

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Floods in Nigeria kill scores, wash away farmland, raise hunger concerns

ABUJA, Nigeria — Weeks of flooding have killed 185 people in Nigeria and washed away homes and farmlands, the country’s disaster management agency said, further threatening food supplies, especially in the hard-hit northern region.

The floods, blamed on poor infrastructure and badly maintained dams, have displaced 208,000 people in 28 of Nigeria’s 36 states, the National Emergency Management Agency said in an update Friday, triggering frantic efforts to evacuate hundreds of thousands to makeshift shelters.

Nigeria records flooding every year mostly as a result of failure to follow environmental guidelines and inadequate infrastructure. The worst floods the country has seen in a decade were in 2022, when more than 600 people were killed and more than 1 million people were displaced.

However, unlike in 2022 when the floods were blamed on heavier rainfall, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency predicted delayed or normal rains in most parts of the country this year and said the current floods were more a result of human activities.

“What we are doing is causing this climate change, so there is a shift from the normal,” said Ibrahim Wasiu Adeniyi, head of the central forecasting unit. “We have some who dump refuse indiscriminately, some build houses without approvals along the waterways.”

The Nigerian disaster response agency warned the flooding could get worse in the coming weeks as the flood waters flow downwards to the central and southern states.

“People [in flood-prone areas] need to evacuate now … because we don’t have time any longer,” said its spokesperson, Manzo Ezekiel.

In Jigawa, the worst-hit state, has recorded 37 deaths. The impact of the floods there has been “devastating,” and authorities are converting public buildings and schools as shelters for those displaced, according to Nura Abdullahi, head of emergency services in the state.

The floods have so far destroyed 107,000 hectares of farmland, especially in northern states, among the most affected and where most of Nigeria’s harvests come from.

Many farmers in the region are already unable to farm as much as they would like either because of decreasing inputs as families struggle amid Nigeria’s economic hardship or as a result of violent attacks that have forced them to flee.

Nigeria has the highest number of hungry people in the world, with 32 million — 10% of the global burden — facing acute hunger in the country, according to the U.N. food agency.

Resident Abdullahi Gummi in Zamfara state’s Gummi council area said the floods destroyed his family’s farmlands, which are their source of income. “We spent around 300,000 naira [$188] on planting, but everything is gone,” Gummi said.

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Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is legitimate, says NATO’s Stoltenberg

BERLIN — Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is legitimate and covered by Kyiv’s right to self-defense, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told German weekly Welt am Sonntag in his first reaction to the advance into Russian territory.

“Ukraine has a right to defend itself. And according to international law, this right does not stop at the border,” Stoltenberg told the paper, adding that NATO had not been informed about Ukraine’s plans beforehand and did not play a role in them.

The NATO chief said Ukraine was running a risk with the advance onto Russian territory but that it was up to Kyiv how to conduct its military campaign.

“(Ukrainian) President (Volodymyr) Zelenskiy has made clear that the operation aims to create a buffer zone to prevent further Russian attacks from across the border,” he said.

“Like all military operations, this comes with risks. But it is Ukraine’s decision how to defend itself.”

Kyiv launched a major cross-border incursion into the Kursk region on August 6, while Moscow’s troops keep pressing towards the strategic hub of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.

The incursion was also discussed at a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine-Council on Wednesday that was requested by Kyiv amid Moscow’s biggest wave of air attacks on its neighbor.

The council, grouping members of the Western military alliance and Ukraine, was established last year to enable closer coordination between the alliance and Kyiv.

Russia has called the Kursk operation a “major provocation” and said it would retaliate. 

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Ukrainian air defense downs 24 Russian drones, Kyiv says

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian air defenses shot down 24 out of 52 drones launched by Russia during overnight attacks on eight regions across Ukraine, the air force said Saturday.

It said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app that 25 Shahed drones had fallen on their own and three others had flown toward Russia and Belarus. There were no reports of anybody being hurt in the attacks or of any major damage being caused.

Ukraine uses electronic warfare as well as mobile hunting groups and aircraft defenses to repel frequent Russian drone and missile strikes.

Air alerts sounded several times during the overnight drone attacks, with many people rushing to shelters in the middle of the night.

In the capital, Kyiv, where alerts lasted for about four hours, it was the fourth drone attack this week, officials said.

All drones targeting the city were downed and no major damage was reported, Kyiv city officials said.

Ukrainian air defenses also shot down Russian drones in the Poltava, Cherkasy, Kyrovohrad and Dnipropetrovsk regions in central Ukraine, in the Chernihiv and Sumy regions in the north and the Mykolayiv region in the south.

Regional officials in the Cherkasy region said the drones’ debris had damaged several private houses.

The Russian forces also launched five missiles during the attack, the Ukrainian air force said, but gave no other details.

Meanwhile, five people were killed and 46 injured in a Ukrainian attack on the southwestern Russian city of Belgorod late Friday, the local governor said. Vyacheslav Gladkov said that 37 of the injured, including seven children, were hospitalized.

Video from a car dashboard, posted on social media and purporting to demonstrate the attack, showed another car being blown up while moving on the road. Seconds later an explosion is seen on the other side of the road. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video.

Russia’s Investigation Committee said on its Telegram channel that it had initiated a criminal case into the Belgorod attack.

Authorities also reported that a woman was injured Saturday during Ukrainian shelling of the border town of Shebekino in the Belgorod region.

Ukraine has staged frequent attacks on Belgorod and other Russian border regions in recent months. The city has been the focal point of the attacks.

Ukraine and Russia say they do not deliberately target civilians in the war that began when Russia sent thousands of troops into its smaller neighbor in February 2022. Moscow has called the invasion a “special military operation.”

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How families in South Asia confront the enforced disappearance of loved ones

Washington — They’ve been waiting for years, sometimes decades, not knowing if their loved ones – victims of enforced disappearances in South Asia – are dead or alive.

The uncertainty over their fate gnaws, yet it also keeps them going.

Farzana Akhtar’s husband, Parvez Hossain, was taken by Bangladeshi security forces 11 years ago. An opposition activist, he was one of more than 600 people forcibly disappeared during former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s rule from 2009 to 2024. While some were released or reported dead, more than 100 are unaccounted for.

Hope for their freedom surged after Hasina’s government collapsed on August 5 in the face of student protests. Three people were released from a notorious detention center in Dhaka, but desperate families that rushed to the site found only empty cells.

Still, Akhtar clings to hope that her husband is alive.

“For this, we hope there are people,” Akhtar said.

Her daughter, Abida Islam Ridi, was just 2 years old when her father vanished. Watching a video of the detention center, she felt a chill of fear.

“How could people stay there?” she said.

Yet, like her mother, she holds onto the hope that her father is alive.

“My mother says I have a father,” Ridi said. “Everyone says they will return my father. But they don’t say where. Everyone just says, you have a father.”

This hope mingled with anguish is echoed by nearly a dozen family members in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan interviewed by VOA.

To human rights activists, the feeling is all too familiar.

“In Sri Lanka, the war ended in 2009 and yet we meet mothers who are still hoping that their sons may be in some secret arrest place and that they will be returned,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Enforced disappearances are a grave human rights violation. Victims are grabbed off the street or taken from their homes by security forces. Their fate remains unknown: They might be held indefinitely, released, or die in custody. The practice, made notorious by Latin America’s military regimes in the 1960s, has plagued South Asia for decades.

Across the region, the toll is enormous. In Afghanistan, tens of thousands were forcibly disappeared in the late 1970s. In Sri Lanka, between 60,000 and 100,000 have disappeared since the 1980s. In India’s Kashmir region, at least 8,000 cases were recorded between 1989 and 2012. In Pakistan’s Baluchistan, 7,000 cases have been recorded since 2004.

Governments accused of carrying out enforced disappearances deny the allegations. Hasina’s regime often insisted that some of the victims had gone into hiding to evade criminal charges. But Bangladesh’s new interim government has set up a commission to investigate and signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances.

The lack of closure, human rights experts say, is the worst aspect of the practice: Family members would rather receive a body than not know.

“There is nothing more difficult than this,” said Fahima Bibi, whose son, Abdul Khalid, vanished in Pakistan’s Punjab province in 2012. “If a person dies, your heart gets closure, but not knowing if they are dead or alive?”

The long-term psychological effects on families are uncertain. A 2015 study found that post traumatic stress disorder, depression, and complicated grief are more common among these families than in people coping with the death of a loved one. A more recent study, however, found that the evidence is inconclusive.

The vast majority of victims are men, their children bearing the burden of their loss, even those too young to remember them. They come to know them through pictures, mementos, and family stories, forming an imaginary bond. The void becomes painful when they see peers with their fathers.

Fahmida Baloch was 2 when her father, Dr. Muhammad Akbar Marri, was taken from his clinic in Baluchistan by Pakistani paramilitary forces in 2010. Initially telling her that her father had gone on a business trip, Baloch’s mother disclosed the truth when she was about 8 years old.

“I didn’t know before what enforced disappearance meant,” she said.

Little things conjured her father’s absence: fathers picking up their children at school, teachers asking students to bring their fathers to school.

“How could I tell them where my father was?” Baloch said.

She drew strength and hope from her Islamic faith.

“My mother says, ‘Keep up your hope, he’ll definitely come back,'” she says. “I pray. Other than praying, I can’t do anything.”

This hope sustains others well into their middle years.

Farhad Ashkyar’s father was seized in Kabul in 1979. Farhad was 2 at the time. As he grew, he learned about his absent father from family stories: He was a health ministry employee and a good wrestler.

Like Baloch, seeing other children with their fathers sharpened his sense of loss.

“There is nothing harder than it, especially when you see other kids call their fathers or say, ‘My father is getting me new clothes for Eid,” he said.

Through the years of his father’s absence, the family clung to every rumor, every whisper of hope, every late-night knock on the door.

“The thing is we were always waiting,” Ashkyar said.

Waiting but also standing tall. “I realized that whether he comes back or not, I have to stand on my own feet. I have to work hard.”

Then, in 2013, the families of victims found a measure of closure.  A list of nearly 5,000 people forcibly disappeared and executed following the 1978 Communist coup surfaced. For many families, the list brought some solace, if not the bodies, at least an acknowledgement. To honor their memory, they held funeral and prayer services.

But Ashkyar’s father’s name wasn’t on the list.

“That gave us hope,” he said. “If he had been killed, his name would have appeared on the list. To this day, I can’t say ‘May God forgive him,’ because we haven’t seen his body.”

VOA’s Afghan, Bangla, Deewa, and Urdu services contributed to this article.

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With men at front lines, women watch Ukraine’s night sky for Russian drones

KYIV, Ukraine — When the air raid siren bellows in the dead of night, the women in arms rush to duty.

Barely two months since joining the mobile air-defense unit, 27-year-old Angelina has perfected the drill to a tee: Combat gear fitted, anti-aircraft machine gun in place, she cruised behind the wheel of a pickup, singing along to a Ukrainian song about rebellion.

The rest unfolded in seconds: Under a tree-lined position near Kyiv’s Bucha suburb, she and her five-woman unit mounted the gun, checked the salvo and waited. The chirp of crickets filled the silence until the Russian-launched Shahed drone was shot down — on this August night, by a nearby unit — another menace to near daily life in Ukraine eliminated.

To shoot down a drone brings her joy. “It’s just a rush of adrenaline,” said Angelina, who like other women in the unit spoke to The Associated Press on condition only their first names or call signs be used, in keeping with military policy.

Women are increasingly joining volunteer mobile units responsible for shooting down Russian drones that terrorize Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure as more men are sent east to the front line.

While women make up only a tiny fraction of the country’s armed forces, their service is vital. With tens of thousands of men reportedly recruited every month, women have stepped up as crucial operations from coal mines to territorial defense forces accept them to fulfill traditionally male roles.

At least 70 women have been recruited into the Bucha defense forces in recent months for anti-drone operations, said the area’s territorial defense commander, Col. Andrii Velarty. It’s part of a nationwide drive to attract part-time female volunteers to fill the ranks of local defense units.

The women come from all walks of life — stay-at-home moms to doctors like Angelina — and call themselves the “Witches of Bucha,” a nod to their role of keeping watch over the night skies for Russian drones.

Some were motivated to volunteer by the Russian massacre of hundreds of Bucha residents during the monthlong occupation of the Kyiv suburb by Russian troops soon after the February 2022 invasion. Bodies of men, women and children were left on the streets, in homes and in mass graves.

“We were here, saw these horrors,” said Angelina, who treated wounded residents, including children, during the Russian occupation.

So when she spotted a sign calling for female recruits on a highway while driving in June with her friend, Olena, also a doctor, “we didn’t hesitate,” she said.

“We called and were immediately told ‘Yes, come tomorrow,’” she said. “There is work that we can do here.”

A grueling training

At a training session deep inside Bucha’s forest this month, female recruits ranging in age from 27 to 51 were being tested on how quickly they could assemble and disassemble rifles. “I have eighth graders who can do this better,” their instructor shouted.

The recruits were taught about a variety of weapons and mines, tactics and how to detect Russian infiltrators — their skills adapted to a war in which their enemy’s methods are always changing.

“We train no less than men,” said Lidiia, who joined a month ago.

A 34-year-old sales clerk with four children, Lidiia said her main motivation was to do her part to protect her family. Her children have looked at her differently since she began wearing army fatigues, she said.

“My younger son always asks, ‘Mom, do you carry a gun?’ I say, ’Yes.’ He asks, ‘Do you shoot?’ I say, ‘Of course I do.’”

“I’ve always been the best for them, but now I’m the best in a slightly different way,” she said.

On July 31, she was on duty when Russia launched 89 Shahed drones, all of which were destroyed. Lidiia was an assistant machine-gunner that night.

“We got ready, we went to the call, we found that there were a lot of targets all over Ukraine,” she said. “We had night-vision devices so it was easy to spot the target.”

What did she feel as her unit shot down three of the drones? “Joy and some foul language,” Olena said.

After shooting down drones, the day job begins

When the sun rose, Angelina and Olena removed their heavy combat gear and went home to slip on surgical scrubs. Another shift, this time at the intensive care unit at the hospital where they work, was about to start.

By midnight, they would be back near the tree line, waiting for incoming Russian drones. “Today I slept for two hours and forty minutes,” Olena said.

There is no escape from the war for both women.

Their boyfriends are soldiers, and Angelina, an anesthesiologist, met hers at the hospital where he was recovering from a combat wound to his foot.

Seeing the numbers of wounded Ukrainian soldiers was one reason she decided to volunteer.

“To bring our victory closer. If we can do something to help, why not?” she said.

Angelina’s boyfriend worries every time she is on duty and the air raid alarm sounds. He texts her, “be careful” and when it ends, “write to me” — despite it being much scarier on the front lines, she said.

‘We are no longer women, we are soldiers’

The Russian drone attacks are typically more intense at night, but daytime attacks are just as deadly. The drone unit spends entire nights driving back and forth from their base in the forest to the position. Sometimes they stand there for hours waiting to shoot.

“There is nothing easy about it. In order to shoot it down, you have to train constantly,” Angelina said. “I have to train all the time, including on simulators.”

Their platoon commander, a confident woman with long braided hair who goes by the call sign Calypso, leads training in shooting, assault skills and combat medicine every Sunday.

There’s no difference between the male and female volunteers, she said.

“From the moment we come to serve, sign a contract, we are no longer women, we are soldiers,” she said. “We have to do our job, and men also understand this. We don’t come here to sit around and cook borscht or anything.”

“I have a feeling the girls and I would shoot down these Shaheds with our bare hands, with a stick, if we had to — anything to stop them from landing on our children, friends and family.”

The women in the mobile-fire units are on duty every two or three days. They work in groups of five, with a machine gunner, assistant, fire support, a driver and commander.

“Of course, war is war, but no one has canceled femininity,” Calypso said. “It doesn’t matter whether you hit a Shahed with painted eyes or not, the work is still going on. And not everyone has a manicure.”

As more women are trained to join the ranks of the territorial defense forces, the safer Ukraine’s skies will be, Angelina said.

“This means that I can make at least some small contribution to the fact that my mother sleeps peacefully, that my brothers and sisters go to school peacefully and they can meet their friends peacefully,” she said.

“So that my godsons can also grow under a relatively peaceful sky.”

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Germany ends military operations in junta-run Niger

Berlin — The German army on Friday vacated an air base in junta-run Niger and flew its final troops home, completing a withdrawal from the restive Sahel nation.

At the end of May, Germany and Niger reached an interim agreement allowing the German military to continue operating its airbase in the capital, Niamey, until the end of August.

But negotiations to extend that agreement broke down, notably because the base’s personnel would no longer benefit from immunity from prosecution.

Senior German and Nigerien military officials read out joint statements announcing the completion of the withdrawal.

“This withdrawal does not mark the end of military cooperation between Niger and Germany, in fact the two sides are committed to maintaining military relations,” they said.

Five cargo planes carrying 60 German troops and 146 tons of equipment landed at the Wunsdorf air base around 6:30 pm local time (1630 GMT), where they were met by state secretary for defense Nils Hilmer.

Germany had operated the base in Niger since February 2016, and it once housed some 3,200 personnel.

Niger has been run by a military government since a coup d’etat in July 2023 ousted president Mohamed Bazoum, who has been held as a prisoner ever since.

The regime has turned its back on other Western allies such as France and the United States to turn towards Russia and Iran.

A similar shift has taken place in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, which are likewise ruled by military leaders and faced with violence from jihadist groups. 

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Nigeria’s oil company lack funds to fix leaky pipelines

ABUJA, NIGERIA — Nigeria’s decades-old oil pipelines are vital for transporting crude, but most are now corroded and vulnerable to leaks and vandalism. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation says it lacks the funds to fix these pipelines, sparking concerns about Nigeria’s oil production.

Oil fuels Nigeria’s economy, making up more than 90% of its export value. Pipelines are the veins transporting crude from production sites to ports and refineries.

But those pipelines have lost more than 3 million barrels of oil in the first five months of this year, according to data from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission. That amounts to about $265 million or N400 billion, based on an average of $88 a barrel.

Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s recent disclosure of a funding shortfall for pipeline maintenance could have serious consequences.

Faith Nwadishi, a leading Nigerian energy expert, raised the alarm about potential risks of this development.

“Why would they say that they have a shortage in funding, knowing that the pipelines are the vehicles for transmitting or transporting the crude that could actually bring in funds and revenue to the country? … When these things are not done, we are also encouraging oil theft. We are encouraging destruction of the environment, oil spillages that could come from these pipelines that are over aged,” Nwadishi said.

Although it remains a major oil producer, Nigeria is often behind on production targets because of theft and infrastructure challenges.

NNPC’s 2023 financial statements show it spent nearly $29 million or N45.88 billion, on pipeline security and maintenance nationwide.

Public policy analyst Jide Ojo blamed the maintenance shortfall on multiple factors, including corruption.

“Corruption is what is responsible for the funding challenge of NNPCL. … When things are shrouded in secrecy, it spaces room for abuse of office, corruption and all manners of malpractice. … For many decades, we didn’t even know how many liters of crude oil we were producing per day and there was a lot of impunity in that sector,” Ojo said.

Nigeria’s 2022 Petroleum Industry Act aimed to boost sector performance and attract investments, but progress has been minimal.

Ojo stressed the need for better reforms to strengthen public-private partnerships.

“Government needs to have better policy environment. … The enabling environment needs to be better enhanced,” Ojo said. “Don’t forget, there is what is called the ease of doing business. I think the federal government needs to do more on that ease of doing business, so that our investors can come and make money, and be able to invest without much concern about repatriation of their money.”

Nigeria removed its petroleum subsidy in May 2023 to conserve oil revenue, causing fuel prices to surge.

Pipeline inefficiencies add to pricing pressure, straining Nigeria’s fragile economy.

Nwadishi called for a lasting solution to the crisis.

“If these pipelines have outlived their relevance or their lifespan, they should be replaced. … There’s technology to monitor the pressures that come from the different pipelines, and the different points of intersection,” she said. “It could also help to know when there’s interference in the pipeline. It also further helps to determine where volumes are being lost, so that early repairs can be made, and it reduces cost.”

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Africa’s mpox outbreaks could be stopped in 6 months, WHO chief says

geneva — The head of the World Health Organization believes mpox outbreaks in Africa might be stopped in the next six months, and he said Friday that the agency’s first shipment of vaccines should arrive in Congo within days. 

To date, Africa has received a small fraction of the vaccines needed to slow the spread of the virus, especially in Congo, which has the most cases — more than 18,000 suspected cases and 629 deaths. 

“With the governments’ leadership and close cooperation between partners, we believe we can stop these outbreaks in the next six months,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing. 

He said that while mpox infections have been rising quickly in the last few weeks, there have been relatively few deaths. Tedros also noted there were 258 cases of the newest version of mpox, with patients identified in Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Sweden and Thailand. 

Earlier this month, WHO declared the mpox outbreaks in Africa a global emergency, hoping to spur a robust global response to the disease on a continent where cases were spreading largely unnoticed for years, including in Nigeria. In May, scientists detected a new version of the disease in Congo that they think could be spreading more easily. 

Mpox, formerly called monkeypox, is related to smallpox but typically causes milder symptoms, including fever, headache and body aches. In severe cases, people can develop painful sores and blisters on the face, chest, hands and genitals. Mpox is typically spread via close skin-to-skin contact. 

WHO estimated about 230,000 vaccines could be sent “imminently” to Congo and elsewhere. The agency said it was also working on education campaigns to raise awareness of how people could avoid spreading mpox in countries with outbreaks. 

Maria Van Kerkhove, who directs WHO’s epidemic and pandemic diseases department, said the agency was working to expedite vaccine access for affected countries — given the limited supply available. 

Scientists have previously pointed out that without a better understanding of how mpox is spreading in Africa, it may be difficult to know how best to use the shots. 

Earlier this week, the head of Africa’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the continent was hoping to receive about 380,000 doses of mpox vaccines promised by donors, including the U.S. and the European Union. That’s less than 15% of the doses authorities have said are needed to end the mpox outbreaks in Congo. 

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Analysts welcome Nigeria’s security pact with Niger

abuja, nigeria — Nigeria and neighboring Niger have signed an agreement to boost their security cooperation, despite tensions following a coup in Niger more than a year ago.

The Nigerian army announced the security cooperation pact on Tuesday in a communique. The countries’ defense chiefs signed the accord this week in Niamey, Niger’s capital.

It’s the first military deal between the nations since last July’s coup.

The Nigerian military statement said that under the deal, Niger reaffirmed its willingness to resume active participation in the Multinational Joint Task Force, a regional security alliance.

Security analyst Saheed Shehu praised the agreement.

“It’s a very good development for Nigeria, for Niger and for the ECOWAS and for West Africa as a subregion,” Shehu said. “They actually muddled up the situation after the Niger coup such that for this one year we have been in a stalemate. So this is the first time we’re seeing the actual use of military diplomacy, because this followed a visit by the chief of defense staff.”

The July 2023 coup — which ousted Niger President Mohamed Bazoum — strained relations with Nigeria, after ECOWAS, led by Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, imposed tough sanctions on Niger and threatened a military invasion.

The West Africa subregion has struggled to stem violence from Islamist militants, including Boko Haram and other armed groups, for years.

Shehu said that if properly implemented, the Nigeria-Niger deal could lead to more positive outcomes for the region and ECOWAS.

“This is an avenue, if we exploit it very critically and with a lot of sense, it will be a way of bringing back not only Niger but also Burkina Faso and Mali,” he said. “And what I’ll like to advise President Tinubu — who’s the chairman of ECOWAS — is to send the same kind of military diplomacy to Mali, probably to Burkina Faso.”

In January, aggrieved by ECOWAS’s sanctions, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso announced an exit from the regional bloc and later created a confederation. The three nations blamed ECOWAS for failing to tackle insecurity in the region.

Meanwhile, ECOWAS has not ruled out the possibility of a military intervention in Niger but it says it wants to pursue dialogue with the juntas.

Regional political affairs analyst Ahmed Buhari said ECOWAS made mistakes.

“Whether we like it or not, our neighbor might not be doing exactly what we want, but we cannot go to war with our neighbors, especially when we’re interconnected on all levels,” Buhari said. “There’s no way we’re going to be fighting insecurities in Nigeria and having these terrorists move into Niger and after a while bounce back. Similarly, if Niger is fighting them and there’s no collaboration, they can come to Nigeria take a breather and then pounce back to Niger.”

In April, when Nigeria hosted a regional counterterrorism summit in Abuja, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso did not attend.

Nigerien military delegates are expected in Nigeria soon to discuss the military cooperation. Many will be watching to see if the new partnership will change the regional status quo.

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Moscow accuses Europe of ‘theft’ as frozen Russian assets fund Ukraine defense   

london — Russia has accused the European Union of “theft” after the bloc transferred the first tranche of profits from frozen Russian assets to Ukraine to boost its military capabilities in the face of Moscow’s invasion. The G7 group of leading industrialized nations plans a similar scheme.

However, there are concerns that the asset schemes could prompt some countries to cut their own bilateral funding to Ukraine, after Germany indicated it could end bilateral military aid for Kyiv after 2025.

The European Union said Friday that it had so far provided around $48 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion. The bloc has begun providing military and civilian aid to Ukraine using profits from $300 billion worth of confiscated Russian assets, following an EU agreement struck in May.

“We have mobilized the first tranche of windfall profits from Russian frozen assets. It’s 1.4 billion [euros, or $1.55 billion]. Part of it is going directly to Ukraine in order to boost the Ukrainian defense industry. By March, we will have the second tranche of the windfall profits,” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell told reporters Friday.

Russian anger

Moscow described the transfer of profits from its frozen assets as “theft.”

“These are illegal actions. They will definitely have legal consequences. This is nothing but illegal expropriation — in Russian, theft — of our money, our assets,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a phone call Thursday.

The G7 also agreed in June to use frozen Russian assets to finance a $50 billion loan to provide military aid for Ukraine, although that scheme has yet to be finalized.

Germany indicated this month that it intends to end bilateral military aid for Ukraine from 2026 as it seeks to close a $13 billion budget deficit. Berlin said the G7 asset mechanism could help pay for the shortfall.

Germany is currently Ukraine’s second-biggest bilateral donor, after the United States. The move to end that support has come under widespread criticism, said analyst Liana Fix of the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations.

“The political signal that it sends is devastating: that the biggest donor in absolute terms in Europe, Germany, suddenly stops its support for Ukraine, especially as it is unclear when and how exactly this G7 mechanism on the Russian frozen assets will work,” Fix said.

“The idea of the G7 instrument was to communicate to [Russian President] Vladimir Putin that it doesn’t make sense for him to outwait the West, right? That he cannot hope that at some point the West will stop support. And so this is a contradicting sign now — that the moment another financial source has been tapped, suddenly Ukraine funding is cut out of the budget,” Fix told VOA.

Political pressure

Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently insisted Germany would continue to support Kyiv.

“We will support Ukraine as long as it will be necessary and we will be the biggest national supporter of Ukraine in Europe,” Scholz told reporters during a visit to Moldova on August 21.

Amid enduring economic pressures at home, Scholz is facing domestic political difficulties, said Fix.

“Although the foreign policy has not changed, it shows changing priorities. Because before, for the governing coalition, Ukraine support was sacred. Nothing could be changed about that. And it shows how desperate the governing coalition in Berlin is for their political survival, ahead of elections in the autumn in eastern Germany.”

Long-range missiles

Meanwhile, the European Union on Thursday urged member states and Western allies to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles to target sites inside Russia.

“The military platform for Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure should not stay off limits for elimination, should not be a sanctuary for Russia attacking Ukraine,” Borrell told reporters.

“To facilitate Ukraine to respond to the Russian aggression inside Russian territory is in accordance with international law. And I don’t see why someone says it is going to war against Moscow. No, we are not going to war with Moscow. We are delivering arms to Ukraine, that’s all,” he added.

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