Author: ITas

Islamabad, Pakistan — The United Nations rights chief expressed his “abhorrence” Monday at the recent promulgation of “so-called morality laws” in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan that silence women or order them to cover their faces and bodies in public.

Volker Türk told a U.N. Human Rights Council session in Geneva that the new laws were implemented alongside bans on Afghan girls attending secondary school, prohibiting female students from accessing university education, and severely curtailing women’s access to public life and employment opportunities.

“I shudder to think what is next for the women and girls of Afghanistan. This repressive control over half the population in the country is unparalleled in today’s world,” the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner stated.

Türk denounced the morality laws as outrageous and amounting “to systematic gender persecution.” He warned that the intensifying curbs on women are “propelling Afghanistan further down a path of isolation, pain, and hardship.” It would also jeopardize the country’s future by “massively stifling its development,” he added.

Richard Bennett, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of Afghan human rights, also spoke and informed Monday’s session in Geneva that the Taliban had lately barred him from visiting the country to conduct assessments in line with his mandate.

He added that the morality law “marks a new phase in the ongoing repression of respect for human rights” since the Taliban regained control of the country three years ago.

The 114-page, 35-article law enacted by the Taliban last month outlines various actions and specific conduct that the Taliban consider mandatory or prohibited for Afghan men and women in line with their strict interpretation of the Islamic law of Sharia.

The restrictions prohibit Afghan women from traveling without a male guardian, require them to be silent in public, enforce mandatory covering of females from head to toe, including their faces, and forbid eye contact between women and unrelated men.

The law empowers the Taliban’s contentious Ministry for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice to enforce it strictly.

Ministry enforcers are ordered to discipline offenders, and penalties may include anything from a verbal warning to fines to imprisonment for offenses such as adultery, extramarital sex, lesbianism, taking pictures of living objects, and befriending non-Muslims.

Taliban leaders did not comment on Monday’s U.N. assertions, but they have rejected previous international criticism of the morality laws. 

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, recently stated that “non-Muslims should educate themselves about Islamic laws and respect Islamic values” before rejecting or raising objections to them. “We find it blasphemous to our Islamic Sharia when objections are raised without understanding it,” he said.

No country has officially recognized the Taliban as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan, citing human rights concerns, particularly the harsh treatment of women.

“Any normalization of engagement with the de facto authorities must be based on demonstrated, measurable, and independently verifiable improvements in human rights,” Bennett stressed in his speech Monday, urging the Islamist Taliban to reverse current policies. 
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Taliban laws and restrictions make journalism in Afghanistan increasingly challenging. But media in exile are ensuring that voices of women and others are still being amplified. For Mohammad Qasim Mandokhil in London, Bezhan Hamdard has the story for VOA. Roshan Noorzai contributed to the story. (Camera: Jonathon Spier, Helay Asad)
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Islamabad — Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Monday that a roadside bomb explosion injured at least 10 people, including anti-polio vaccinators and police personnel escorting them.  

 

The bombing in the South Waziristan district near the border with Afghanistan targeted a convoy carrying polio workers and their guards on the opening day of a nationwide immunization campaign.  

 

Area security and hospital officials reported that three health workers and six security personnel were among the victims. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the violence in a region where security forces are fighting militants linked to the outlawed Pakistani Taliban.  

 

Last week, Pakistan reported its 17th wild poliovirus case of the year from Islamabad, saying it paralyzed a child and marked the first infection in 16 years in the national capital.  

 

Pakistani health officials said in the lead-up to Monday’s polio campaign that it is designed to vaccinate more than 33 million children under five in 115 districts nationwide. 

 

Muhammad Anwarul Haq, coordinator of the National Emergency Operations Center for Polio Eradication, stated that the immunization drive would primarily focus on districts where “the virus has been detected and the risk of continued transmission and spread is really high.” 

 

Haq encouraged all parents and caregivers to ensure their children get vaccinated, lamenting that “parents have not always welcomed and opened their doors to the vaccinators when they visit their homes.” 

 

Pakistan and Afghanistan, which reported nine paralytic polio cases so far in 2024, are the only two remaining polio-endemic countries globally. Polio immunization campaigns have long faced multiple challenges in both countries, such as security and vaccine boycotts, dealing setbacks to the goal of eradicating the virus from the world.
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New Delhi — India reported Sunday that it had put a “suspected mpox case” into isolation, assuring that the world’s most populous nation had “robust measures” in place, the health ministry said in a statement.

There have been no confirmed cases of mpox in India, a country of 1.4 billion people.

“A young male patient, who recently traveled from a country currently experiencing mpox transmission, has been identified as a suspect case of mpox,” the health ministry said in a statement.

“The patient has been isolated in a designated hospital and is currently stable,” it said, adding the samples “are being tested to confirm the presence of mpox.”

It gave no further details of where he may have contracted the disease.

“There is no cause of any undue concern,” the statement added.

“The country is fully prepared to deal with such (an) isolated travel related case and has robust measures in place to manage and mitigate any potential risk.”

Mpox’s resurgence and the detection in the Democratic Republic of Congo of a new strain, dubbed Clade 1b, prompted the World Health Organization to declare its highest international alert level on August 14.  

Mpox has also been detected in Asia and Europe.
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WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Sunday issued a scathing report on their investigation into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, blaming the disastrous end of America’s longest war on President Joe Biden’s administration and minimizing the role of former President Donald Trump, who had signed the withdrawal deal with the Taliban.

The partisan review lays out the final months of military and civilian failures, following Trump’s February 2020 withdrawal deal, that allowed the Taliban to sweep through and conquer all of the country even before the last U.S. officials flew out on Aug. 30, 2021. The chaotic exit left behind many American citizens, Afghan battlefield allies, women activists and others at risk from the Taliban.

But House Republicans’ report breaks little new ground as the withdrawal has been exhaustively litigated through several independent reviews. Previous investigations and analyses have pointed to a systemic failure spanning the last four presidential administrations and concluded that Trump and Biden share the heaviest blame.

Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, who led the investigation as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Republican review reveals that the Biden administration “had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies.”

“At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security,” he said in a statement.

McCaul earlier in the day denied that the timing of the report’s release ahead of the presidential election was political, or that Republicans ignored Trump’s mistakes in the U.S. withdrawal.

Defending the administration after release of the report, a State Department spokesman said that Biden acted in the U.S.’s best interest in finally ending the country’s deployment in Afghanistan.

The spokesman, Matthew Miller, said in a statement that Republicans produced a narrative “meant only to harm the Administration, instead of seeking to actually inform Americans on how our longest war came to an end.”

House Democrats in a statement said the report by their Republican colleagues “cherry-picked witness testimony to exclude anything unhelpful to a predetermined, partisan narrative about the Afghanistan withdrawal” and ignored facts about Trump’s role.

The more than 18-month investigation by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee zeroed in on the months leading up to the removal of U.S. troops, saying that Biden and his administration undermined high-ranking officials and ignored warnings as the Taliban seized key cities far faster than most U.S. officials had expected or prepared for.

“I called their advance ‘the Red Blob,”’ retired Col. Seth Krummrich said of the Taliban, telling the committee that at the special operations’ central command where he was chief of staff, “we tracked the Taliban advance daily, looking like a red blob gobbling up terrain.”

“I don’t think we ever thought — you know, nobody ever talked about, ‘Well, what’s going to happen when the Taliban come over the wall?”’ Carol Perez, the State Department’s acting undersecretary for management at the time of the withdrawal, said of what House Republicans said was minimal State Department planning before abandoning the embassy in mid-August 2021 when the Taliban swept into Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.

The withdrawal ended a nearly two-decade occupation by U.S. and allied forces begun to rout out the al-Qaida militants responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Taliban had allowed al-Qaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden, to shelter in Afghanistan. Committee staffers noted reports since the U.S. withdrawal of the group rebuilding in Afghanistan, such as a U.N. report of up to eight al-Qaida training camps there.

The Taliban overthrew an Afghan government and military that the U.S. had spent nearly 20 years and trillions of dollars building in hopes of keeping the country from again becoming a base for anti-Western extremists.

A 2023 report by the U.S. government watchdog for the U.S. in Afghanistan singles out Trump’s February 2020 deal with the Taliban agreeing to withdraw all American forces and military contractors by the spring of the next year, and both Trump’s and Biden’s determination to keep pulling out U.S. forces despite the Taliban breaking key commitments in the withdrawal deal.

House Republicans’ more than 350-page document is the product of hours of testimony — including with former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, U.S. Central Command retired Gen. Frank McKenzie and others who were senior officials at the time — seven public hearings and round tables, as well as more than 20,000 pages of State Department documents reviewed by the committees.

With Biden no longer running for reelection, Trump and his Republican allies have tried to elevate the withdrawal as a campaign issue against Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now Trump’s Democratic opponent in the presidential race.

The report by House Republicans cites Harris’ overall responsibility as an adviser to Biden but doesn’t point to specific counsel or action by Harris that contributed to the many failures.

Some highlights of the report:

Decision to withdraw

Republicans point to testimony and records that claim the Biden administration’s reliance on input from military and civilian leaders on the ground in Afghanistan in the months before the withdrawal was “severely limited,” with most of the decision-making taking place by national security adviser Jake Sullivan without consultation with key stakeholders.

The report says Biden proceeded with the withdrawal even though the Taliban was failing to keep some of its agreements under the deal, including breaking its promise to enter talks with the then-U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Former State Department spokesperson Ned Price testified to the committee that adherence to the Doha Agreement was “immaterial” to Biden’s decision to withdraw, according to the report.

Earlier reviews have said Trump also carried out his early steps of the withdrawal deal, cutting the U.S. troop presence from about 13,000 to an eventual 2,500 despite early Taliban noncompliance with some parts of the deal, and despite the Taliban escalating attacks on Afghan forces.

The House report faults a longtime U.S. diplomat for Afghanistan, former Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, not Trump, for Trump administration actions in its negotiations with the Taliban. The new report says that Trump was following recommendations of American military leaders in making sharp cuts in U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan after the signing.

‘We were still in planning’ when Kabul fell

The report also goes into the vulnerability of U.S. embassy staff in Kabul as the Biden administration planned its exit. Republicans claim there was a “dogmatic insistence” by the Biden administration to maintain a large diplomatic footprint despite concerns about the lack of security afforded to personnel once U.S. forces left.

McKenzie, who was one of the two U.S. generals who oversaw the evacuation, told lawmakers that the administration’s insistence at keeping the embassy open and fully operational was the “fatal flaw that created what happened in August,” according to the report.

The committee report claims that State Department officials went as far as watering down or “even completely rewriting reports” from heads of diplomatic security and the Department of Defense that had warned of the threats to U.S. personnel as the withdrawal date got closer.

“We were still in planning” when Kabul fell, Perez, the senior U.S. diplomat, testified to the committee.
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Islamabad — Thousands of supporters of Pakistan’s imprisoned former prime minister, Imran Khan, rallied on the outskirts of Islamabad Sunday to denounce his “illegal” incarceration and demand his immediate release.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party organized the public gathering, one of the largest in the Pakistani capital’s history. 

The strong turnout came despite the police blocking the officially designated route for rally participants with shipping containers in an apparent bid to restrict convoys from other cities from reaching the venue. The administration also deployed riot police to prevent possible unrest.

Social media videos and images showed PTI workers and leaders from elsewhere in Pakistan marching toward Islamabad. PTI activists were seen successfully removing containers to clear the way at several entry points.

Police briefly clashed with and fired tear gas shells on PTI workers en route to the rally. Authorities later reported injuries to several police personnel due to stone pelting allegedly from Khan supporters, charges party leaders rejected. 

“We will continue our efforts until Khan is freed from prison,” Hammad Azhar, a central PTI leader, told the rally. 

Critics observed that Sunday’s rally demonstrated once again that the 71-year-old former cricket star-turned-prime minister remains Pakistan’s most popular politician despite facing a series of state-backed criminal prosecutions and lawsuits. 

“Strong turnout for PTI rally despite the state’s tactics to limit numbers through roadblocks and containers, and despite the risk of violent crackdowns and arrests,” Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at Washington’s Wilson Center, said on X.

“Its size and popularity ensure its mobilization capabilities remain intact despite relentless attempts to curb it,” Kugelman wrote.

Khan completed 400 days in prison on Sunday. The charges against him range from corruption to sedition to stoking violent anti-army protests. He rejects all the allegations as politically motivated and asserts that the powerful Pakistani military is behind them to block his return to power. 

Subsequently, appeals courts have overturned or suspended all his convictions for lack of evidence, but authorities quickly launched new charges to prevent him from leaving prison. The United Nations in July declared Khan’s detention arbitrary, saying there was no legal basis for keeping him in prison.

 

Mushahid Hussain, who recently retired from Pakistan’s Senate, the upper house of parliament, criticized Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government for “barricading Islamabad” through containers and coercion and for creating an “atmosphere of fear & force” in its attempt to block Sunday’s political rally.

Hussain warned through a post on X that such efforts would impede political stability and economic recovery. “’Common Sense’ can be quite Uncommon!” he wrote.

Sunday’s rally by the PTI in Islamabad was its first since parliamentary elections on February 8. Khan’s convictions at the time barred him from running, but his party candidates emerged winners of most seats in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, but not enough to form the government. 

The PTI alleged the vote was massively rigged to prevent its candidates from sweeping the polls. This allowed military-backed rival political parties to form a coalition administration with Sharif as prime minister.

Hundreds of PTI workers and leaders, including women, have been jailed or under trial on charges defense attorneys reject as baseless and part of the state crackdown on the party.

Khan served as Pakistan’s prime minister from 2018 until April 2022, when he was ousted through an opposition parliamentary no-confidence vote he alleges was planned by the military. Successive Pakistani governments and military officials have denied the allegations.

Last month, his party announced that Khan had formally applied to run for chancellor of the University of Oxford in Britain from his prison cell. The election university website states that the new chancellor will be elected through an unprecedented online ballot process beginning on October 28.  

 

Khan, an Oxford graduate, served as the chancellor of University of Bradford from 2005 to 2014.
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ISLAMABAD — Millions of people in Pakistan continue to live along the path of floodwaters, showing neither people nor the government have learned lessons from the 2022 devastating floods that killed 1,737 people, experts said Thursday, as an aid group said half of the 300 victims killed by rains since July are children.

Heavy rainfall is drenching those areas that were badly hit by the deluges two years ago.

The charity Save the Children said in a statement that floods and heavy rains have killed more than 150 children in Pakistan since the start of the monsoon season, making up more than half of all deaths in rain-affected areas.

The group said that 200 children have also been injured in Pakistan because of rains, which have also displaced thousands of people. Save the Children also said that people affected by floods were living in a relief camp in Sanghar, a district in the southern Sindh province, which was massively hit by floods two years ago.

“The rains and floods have destroyed 80% of cotton crops in Sanghar, the primary source of income for farmers, and killed hundreds of livestock,” the charity said, and added that it’s supporting the affected people with help from a local partner.

Khuram Gondal, the country director for Save the Children in Pakistan, said that children were always the most affected in a disaster.

“We need to ensure that the immediate impacts of the floods and heavy rains do not become long-term problems. In Sindh province alone, more than 72,000 children have seen their education disrupted,” he said.

Another charity, U.K.-based Islamic Relief, also said weeks of torrential rains in Pakistan have again triggered displacement and suffering among communities that were already devastated by the 2022 floods and are still in the process of rebuilding their lives and livelihoods.

Asif Sherazi, the group’s country director, said his organization is reaching out to flood-affected people.

There was no immediate response from the country’s ministry of climate change and national disaster management authority.

Pakistan has yet to undertake major reconstruction work because the government didn’t receive most of the funds out of the $9 billion that were pledged by the international community at last year’s donors’ conference in Geneva.

“We learned no lessons from that 2022 floods. Millions of people have built mud-brick homes on the paths of rivers, which usually remain dry,” said Mohsin Leghari, who served as irrigation minister years ago.

Leghari said that less rain is predicted for Pakistan for monsoon season compared with 2022, when climate-induced floods caused $30 billion in damage to the country’s economy.

“But the floodwater has inundated several villages in my own Dera Ghazi Khan district in the Punjab province,” Leghari said. “Floods have affected farmers, and my own land has once again come under the floodwater.”

Wasim Ehsan, an architect, said Pakistan was still not prepared to handle any 2022-like situation mainly because people ignore construction laws while building homes and even hotels in urban and rural areas.

He said the floods in 2022 caused damage in the northwest because people had built homes and hotels after slightly diverting a river. “This is reason that a hotel was destroyed by the Swat River in 2022,” he said.
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Islamabad — Border security forces of Pakistan and Afghanistan were engaged in intense clashes Saturday, reportedly resulting in several casualties on both sides. 

 

The war zone is located between the southeastern Afghan border province of Khost and the adjoining Pakistani district of Kurram, as reported by security officials and residents on both sides. 

 

The conflict reportedly broke out when Taliban forces attempted to construct a security outpost on the Afghan side, prompting Pakistani troops to open fire to force the other side to stop the activity.  

 

Pakistani officials maintain neither side can construct new posts unilaterally under mutual agreements regarding the nearly 2,600-kilometer border between the two countries.  

 

Multiple sources reported that ongoing heavy clashes had injured at least five Pakistani soldiers, including an officer, and more than four Afghan border guards. 

 

Pakistan and Afghanistan authorities have not commented immediately on the fighting. This is the second time in as many days that the two countries have clashed over the construction of the disputed Afghan border outpost. 

 

The military tensions come amid Pakistan’s persistent allegations that militants linked to the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, have taken shelter on Afghan soil and are being facilitated by the country’s Taliban leaders in orchestrating cross-border terrorist attacks.  

 

“We have, on numerous occasions, presented evidence of the activities of these terror groups, which have hideouts and sanctuaries inside Afghanistan,” Mumtaz Baloch, the Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson, reiterated Thursday.  

 

“We urge the government of Afghanistan to take action against these terror groups and to ensure that these terror groups do not stage terror attacks against Pakistan,” she told a weekly news conference in Islamabad.  

 

Taliban authorities deny foreign militant groups, including TTP, are present in Afghanistan, saying no one is being allowed to threaten neighboring countries from their territory.  

 

However, recent United Nations assessments disputed the Taliban claims and backed Pakistan’s concerns that TTP operatives had intensified cross-border violence with the help of the de facto Afghan government in Kabul, which no country has officially recognized. 

 

Since the Taliban regained power three years ago, bilateral ties have been strained due to increasing TTP attacks inside Pakistan and occasional border skirmishes, significantly undermining trade and transit ties between Pakistan and landlocked Afghanistan. 
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washington — Shunned by the West for over three years, Afghanistan’s Taliban scored a diplomatic victory of sorts this week when the small Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan quietly removed the group from its list of banned terrorist organizations.

The move underscores warming ties between the Taliban, in power since August 2021, and the countries of Central Asia. While the United States has led an international campaign to deny the Taliban government legitimacy, over a dozen regional countries, led by China and Russia, have embraced the self-styled “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”

“It fits with the broader trend of governments in the region and internationally warming up to the idea of having to work with the Taliban,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and a research fellow at the Soufan Center. “Generally, there is a recognition that the Taliban is not going anywhere, so you have to work with whoever is ruling Afghanistan for economic and security reasons.”

Taliban reaction

The government of Kyrgyzstan, once considered a close U.S. ally in the region, did not publicize its decision to delist the Taliban, but the Taliban’s Foreign Ministry quickly seized on it as the latest breakthrough in its regional diplomacy.

“Aligning with actions of other countries, the step taken by Kyrgyzstan signifies a growing political recognition of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on both regional and international levels, and removes a barrier to strengthening bilateral relations between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan & other countries,” it said Thursday in a statement.

The Taliban, which first ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 before waging a 20-year insurgency, has appeared on various international terrorist lists over the years. While the U.S. has not officially labeled them a “foreign terrorist organization,” it considers members “specially designated global terrorists.”

Kyrgyzstan is the second Central Asian country to delist the Taliban in recent months. In December, Kazakhstan took the group off its own terrorist list as part of its growing economic engagement with the Taliban. In May, Russia said it, too, was considering such a move as it decides whether to recognize the Taliban’s government.

Although no country has extended official recognition to the Taliban, more than a dozen, including all six of Afghanistan’s neighbors, have allowed Taliban diplomats to take charge of Afghan embassies or consulates. Among them, three have accepted accredited Taliban envoys: China in January, followed by Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates last month.

In pursuing ties with the Taliban, Central Asian countries are taking their cues from Russia and China, both of which have deepened their engagement with Afghanistan’s de facto government in recent years.

“They’re pursuing practical policies, and they’re also given a kind of umbrella by two of the major great powers — Russia and China — who are working with the Taliban quite closely,” Webber said.

A ‘necessary evil’

In a report on the Taliban’s regional diplomacy, analysts at the International Crisis Group noted how various countries pursue disparate agendas.

Afghanistan neighbors such as Iran, Pakistan and Uzbekistan view dealing with the Taliban as a “necessary evil if they are to address core concerns,” the analysts wrote. Those concerns include extremist threats as well as trade. For Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, a planned project designed to carry surplus power to Afghanistan and Pakistan is a priority.

Regional powers China, India and Russia use engagement to contain “any spillover” from Afghanistan, the analysts said. Russia regards the Taliban as a bulwark against the Islamic State’s local branch. And while China has signed lucrative investment deals with Afghanistan, it, too, is motivated by fear of terrorism.

Countries farther afield, such as the UAE and Qatar, aim “to challenge the Taliban’s Islamic exceptionalism but [are] also spurred by the need to balance their own regional rivalries,” they wrote.

Strategic interests vs. human rights

Significantly, none of the countries that have established diplomatic ties with the Taliban were classified as “free” by Freedom House, the freedom and democracy advocacy group. All but two are labeled “not free,” according to a VOA review. Only Pakistan and Turkey are designated as “partly free.”

This suggests that the Taliban can ward off international isolation if enough countries prioritize strategic interests over human rights and democracy, according to experts.

While human rights haven’t always been a U.S. foreign policy priority, the Biden administration, along with its Western allies, have made Taliban recognition contingent on respect for human rights, women’s rights and an inclusive government.

“Given the issues related to the treatment of women and other human rights issues, it’s more difficult for liberal democratic governments to recognize and work with the Taliban than it is for less democratic governments or nondemocratic governments, where they can be more practical in terms of pursuing their national interests solely and then working with the Taliban on this basis,” Webber said.

The implications for Afghanistan’s future and U.S. diplomacy are immense. Increased political and economic engagement could embolden the Taliban to keep their harsh policies, such as their ban on girls’ education after sixth grade, experts say.

It could also force Washington to reassess its dual policy of engaging and isolating the Taliban. Since the Taliban takeover, U.S. and European diplomats have held ongoing talks with Taliban officials in Qatar, where they maintain their Afghanistan embassy operations.

Biden administration officials have also reportedly weighed working with the Taliban to combat the Afghan-based Islamic State Khorasan terror group, even while refusing to establish diplomatic ties.

“There is going to be pressure as more governments recognize that this kind of resistance to working more closely with the Taliban doesn’t hold up,” Webber said. “But it will be hard to do so publicly and officially, given the humanitarian violations and problems that we see with the Taliban government.”

The Biden administration defends its Afghanistan policy. Asked about the Taliban’s growing diplomatic footprint, a State Department spokesperson noted that no country has said that it recognizes the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan.

“The Taliban seek recognition as Afghanistan’s government,” the spokesperson said in a statement to VOA. “The United States and the international community have been clear with the Taliban that our ability to take meaningful steps toward normalization will be based on the Taliban’s own actions.”

These include respecting the rights of women and minorities, fulfilling anti-terror obligations and starting a political process for inclusive governance, the spokesperson said.
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WASHINGTON — A Pakistani citizen living in Canada was arrested Wednesday and charged with planning an attack in New York City in support of the Islamic State group, the Department of Justice said Friday. 

Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, is accused of plotting a mass shooting at a Jewish center in Brooklyn around October 7, 2024, nearly one year after Hamas’ attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel. 

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Khan, who is also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, aimed to kill “as many Jewish people as possible.”  

Khan attempted to travel from Canada to the United States, where he intended to use automatic and semiautomatic weapons to carry out the attack, according to the indictment. 

He was arrested in Canada, just 19 kilometers from the U.S. border. 

Khan told two undercover law enforcement officers of his plans to create “a real offline cell” of Islamic State supporters to carry out an attack, the indictment alleged.  

He instructed them to obtain AR-style assault rifles, ammunition and other materials to carry out the attacks, and he identified specific locations where the attacks would take place. 

Khan targeted New York City because it has “the largest Jewish population in America,” prosecutors said. 

“We are deeply grateful to our Canadian partners for their critical law enforcement actions in this matter. Jewish communities — like all communities in this country — should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack,” Garland said in a statement. 

Khan faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
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Washington — The death of a former journalist who experienced beatings and inhumane treatment in prison shows the harassment that media workers and their families endure in Turkmenistan, analysts said.

Khudayberdy Allashov was 35 years old when he died in August, after what watchdogs said was eight years of persecution and physical assault by Turkmen authorities. No cause of death was listed on his death certificate.

“The beatings and torture that Allashov was subjected to and the impossibility of providing him with rehabilitation and medical care led to the death of a brave and honest man,” Farid Tuhbatullin, the head of the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, told VOA via email.

Known as one of the most closed-off countries, Turkmenistan has little space for independent reporting. Nearly all media outlets are state-owned, and ministries monitor content, according to watchdogs. Journalists such as Allashov who try to report independently — and their families — are subject to arrest and harassment, according to Reporters Without Borders, or RSF.

Azatlyk, which is run by VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Turkmen Service, provides a rare source of news.

When Allashov was initially detained in 2016, he had been working for Azatlyk for about three months.

That reporting was critical of the government, focusing on social problems such as food shortages, salary delays and forced labor, according to an Amnesty International report published at the time of Allashov’s first arrest.

“All of this is forbidden to be mentioned in the local media,” Tuhbatullin told VOA in an email. “The very word ‘problem’ is taboo.” He, too, had been arrested and exiled from Turkmenistan.

Allashov, his mother and his wife were all arrested under charges of possessing chewing tobacco, a commonly used substance in Turkmenistan. There are no other known criminal charges of possessing chewing tobacco; the maximum punishment is typically a fine, Farruh Yusupov, director of Azatlyk, told VOA.

In captivity, Allashov was tortured with electric shock. The severity of the torture during Allashov’s 74-day arrest caused him to declare he would no longer work as a journalist.

But even after his release and quitting the profession, authorities continually detained and harassed him up until his death, journalists and experts who spoke with VOA said. He faced violent interrogations in 2019, 2020 and 2023.

“Authorities never left him or his family alone,” Yusupov told VOA. “They told him they would not relent until they chased him to his grave. They were true to their promise.”

The Turkmenistan Embassy in Washington did not respond to VOA’s email requesting comment.

Despite having ceased his reporting, Allashov was denied any medical treatment due to his status as a target of the authorities, according to RSF. He leaves a wife and two children.

RSF condemned the targeted harassment of independent journalists.

“Allashov should never have lived through this nightmare,” Jeanne Cavelier of RSF said in a statement. “Under the Turkmen dictatorship, the lives of journalists and former journalists — and the lives of their families — continue to be at risk because of their work.”

Turkmenistan ranks 175 out of 180 countries on the RSF World Press Freedom Index, where 1 shows the best media environment.

“This is a country where the authorities can do anything to any citizen who expresses any form of dissent,” Gulnoza Said, a program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, told VOA.

Yusupov told VOA that while there are no “concrete numbers” available for how many journalists have been attacked by authorities, there are many well-documented instances.

In 2006, reporter Ogulsapar Muradova died in prison after being denied legal representation. The United Nations recognized the Turkmen government as the responsible party in her death. In 2013, authorities detained journalist Rovshen Yazmuhamedov without cause, according to RSF.

Most recently, in 2023, journalist Soltan Achilova was beaten by police officers and banned from leaving the country. Only a small number of independent journalists still operate in the country, and those who do all work under pseudonyms, said Tuhbatullin of the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights.

Turkmen authorities also harass the families of journalists.

Allashov’s wife and mother were arrested with him in 2016, and his mother was detained for three months and beaten. She was taken in for questioning again in 2019, when she was beaten and passed away two days later from heart failure, according to Yusupov.

Authorities also harassed the mother of journalist Yazmuhamedov, banning her from leaving the country to see her other children.

“This is one of the tools authoritarian governments use to silence independent reporting,” Said told VOA.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has reached out to Turkmen authorities after every government attack on a journalist. The government has never responded, Said told VOA.

Yusupov told VOA that government repression “makes the work of journalists like Allashov even more important.”

“It’s important to tell the truth in the face of an oppressive regime and provide independent reporting to society,” he said.
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NEW DELHI — India’s main opposition Congress party this week set up a new internal group to promote LGBTQ+ rights while another party has named a person from the community as its spokesperson, in the first such political recognition after many setbacks.

The country’s top court in 2018 decriminalized homosexuality but greatly disappointed the LGBTQ+ community last year when it declined to legalize same-sex marriage and left it to parliament to decide.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has also said the legislature is the right platform to rule on the contentious issue, and this week invited the public to share views on how best to ensure that policies for the community are inclusive and effective.

Same-sex relations are mostly a taboo in the largely conservative country of 1.42 billion people, and the government told the Supreme Court last year that such marriages were not “comparable with the Indian family unit concept of a husband, a wife and children”.

Congress, whose political clout has risen after doing much better than expected in the April-June general election, this week named LGBTQ+ activist Mario da Penha as the head of its new unit for the community under its All India Professionals’ Congress division.

This follows Congress’s poll promise to bring in a law to legalize civil unions between same-sex couples.

Da Penha said on X it was the “only representative framework for queer people within any recognised national political party in India”.

Anish Gawande, who last month became the first person from the community to become the spokesperson for a big party, the opposition Nationalist Congress Party – Sharadchandra Pawar, said da Penha’s appointment was “a major moment for queer inclusion in Indian politics.”

Gawande earlier said on social media of the Nationalist Congress appointment: “If you’d told me 10 years ago that it would be possible to be out and in Indian politics, I would have scoffed in disbelief.”

The federal government says it has taken a host of measures for the community, which includes enabling same-sex couples to access government food programs as families, open joint bank accounts and choose each other as nominees, and seek medical and other care without discrimination.

The Department of Social Justice and Empowerment said in a statement on Sunday it had invited inputs from the public to ensure that policies and initiatives for the community are inclusive and effective.

It did not mention any law to recognize marriages between same-sex couples.

A spokesperson for the ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Islamabad — Pakistan Federal Minister for Petroleum Musadik Malik said Wednesday that international sanctions have caused complications for the Iran-Pakistan cross-border natural gas pipeline project. 

Media outlets reported that Iran had warned Pakistan to complete its part of the project or face an $18 billion penalty — news that sparked a debate days later in Pakistan’s lower house, the National Assembly.  

Responding to a question by a lawmaker on the floor of the house regarding Iran’s final notice, Malik said, “This is a deeply complicated matter and involves international sanctions.” 

Malik did not provide more details about sanctions, but said the government is available to discuss the complications. 

He rejected the penalty figure of $18 billion, saying, “I do not know where it has come from.” 

In response to a query regarding reports of Iran’s notice, Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said last week that Pakistan had taken note of the development. 

“Pakistan and Iran have robust channels of communications including this matter. We have always said that we would like to resolve all issues [with Iran] through friendly consultations,” she said during a briefing. 

Petroleum Minister Malik, during an informal conversation on the gas pipeline project with local journalists in March, confirmed that Pakistan would present its case to the U.S. and seek an exemption from sanctions. 

“We cannot bear American sanctions. We will present our stance to the U.S. We want to complete this project but without any sanctions,” Malik told journalists. 

However, Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baloch, also in March, said that the project is progressing “in conformity with our commitment to the Iran-Pakistan pipeline.” She emphasized that Pakistan perceives no grounds for objections from external parties as the construction activities are confined within Pakistani territory. 

During a briefing Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that helping Pakistan address its energy shortage was a priority for the United States.  He added, however, that “we will continue to enforce our sanctions against Iran. We also advise anyone considering a business deal with Iran to be aware of its possible ramifications.” 

Pakistan experts say Pakistan failed to meet its commitment to build its part of the pipeline for several reasons, including a volatile security situation in Balochistan, where the pipeline is supposed to pass. Gas pipelines are not safe in restive Balochistan and Baloch insurgents frequently target gas pipelines in the resource-rich southwestern province bordering Iran.    

“In my opinion, however, Pakistan’s real worry is U.S. sanctions,” said Naveed Hussain, an editor of the Pakistan English daily newspaper The Express Tribune. “It has declared force majeure, but Iran says Pakistan had signed the agreement while being fully cognizant of [the] U.S. sanctions risk, especially when India had withdrawn from the project for the same reason.” 

Khaleeq Kiani, who writes about the economy for the Pakistan English daily newspaper Dawn, told VOA, “The U.S. stance is clear, and recently it imposed sanctions on companies providing equipment to Pakistan missile programs, that was a clear indication to Pakistan to not proceed with the pipeline project.” 

In April, the U.S. imposed sanctions on four entities — one based in Belarus, and the other three in China — for supplying missile‐applicable items to Pakistan’s ballistic missile program, including its long-range missile program.   

Despite that precedent, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Mohammad Ishaq Dar, said at a May press briefing that Pakistan would not succumb to international pressure on the pipeline project.  

“We will not let anyone use their veto,” Dar said, without naming the United States.  

Dar’s remarks came weeks after Donald Lu, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs, told a U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that importing gas from Iran would expose Pakistan to U.S. sanctions. 

Pakistan is facing gas shortages and relies on subsidized gas, putting pressure on the national exchequer, Petroleum Minister Malik said on the house floor Wednesday.

Originally envisaged as the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, the project was reduced to a bilateral agreement after India pulled out in 2008. Tehran and Islamabad signed a 25-year contract in 2009 to export gas from Iran through a 2,400-kilometer gas pipeline to be built jointly by both countries.  

While Iran has completed its pipeline section, Pakistan keeps dragging its feet on the project. In 2019, the two countries revised their contract, and Islamabad committed to building its portion of the pipeline by 2024.  

This story originated in VOA’s Deewa Service.
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ISLAMABAD — As monsoon season nears its end in Pakistan, higher than average rainfall and rain-related accidents leave behind a trail of deaths, nearly half of them children.

Monsoon season runs from July to September in Pakistan. Since the beginning of July, the country has counted at least 337 rain-related deaths, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. One-hundred-seventy children are among the dead. Thousands also have been displaced as floodwaters inundated villages.

Pakistan’s meteorological department recorded rains 60% higher than average in the first two months of the monsoon season. August saw 137% more rain than the month’s average after slightly below average rainfall in July. Weather officials expect mostly normal rainfall in September.

The data shows that rainfall patterns in Pakistan are changing.

“The shift that we are seeing is that monsoon used to go to the upper areas, that trend is lessening a bit,” Sahibzad Khan, director general of PMD, told VOA. “Now it’s shifting more to the south.”

Rain that was twice as heavy as normal battered Pakistan’s two southern provinces, Sindh and Balochistan, over the last two months, while the northern, mountainous regions saw average-to-below-average rain, according to the national weather agency.

Just in Sindh, 72,000 children saw their education disrupted by the severe weather, Save the Children said in a statement Wednesday.

Despite heavy rains, flooding, and displacement in parts of the country, experts say Pakistan escaped extensive damage this monsoon season, partly because of lessons learned from the devastating floods in 2022.

“We are working more on anticipatory approaches. Looking at past patterns, we are predicting the scale and velocity of upcoming floods,” said Shafqat Munir Ahmad, deputy executive director of the Resilience Development Program and Policy Outreach at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad.

In 2022, historic rains submerged nearly a third of the country at one time, affecting 33 million Pakistanis and causing nearly $30 billion in damage.

Since then, Pakistan incorporated technology to plan scenarios and issue early severe weather warnings to communities, said Ahmad, adding that improved coordination and response time also reduced damage.

This year, Pakistan also used lightning detectors that China provided last year.

“China has collaborated with us. With their help, we have 26 lightning detector stations that tell us about the type and severity of lightning and thunder,” said weather chief Khan.

Pakistan still lacks sufficient long-term planning, however, to tackle the impact of climate change, experts say. The Germany-based Global Climate Risk Index ranks Pakistan the 8th most vulnerable country.

A web app created at the University of Maryland that predicts what a city’s weather will be like in 60 years shows summers and winters in several Pakistani cities will be much warmer than they are at present.

While projects to mitigate climate change may attract funding, Ahmad said efforts to help vulnerable communities adapt to changing climate lack necessary financial support in Pakistan.

Several communities across the South Asian nation are still awaiting funds to rebuild homes devastated by the 2022 weather calamity.

Just last July, the Asian Development Bank approved a $400 million loan to fund the reconstruction of homes and infrastructure in Sindh.

At a donor conference in January 2023, donors pledged more than $9 billion to help Pakistan build back after the 2022 floods. Still, the country has barely tapped the funds that were largely designated as project loans.

As authorities and charitable organizations rush to provide food, water and shelter to communities displaced by this year’s rains and floods, Save the Children urged increased support to prevent the current impact of the floods from becoming long-term problems.

“Governments must tackle the underlying causes of these climate driven disasters, including channeling funding and support to children and their families in Pakistan to adapt, recover and rebuild their lives,” the statement said, quoting country director Khuram Gondal.
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Dhaka, Bangladesh — Thousands of students and others on Thursday rallied in Bangladesh’s capital to mark one month since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted from power by a mass uprising initially led by students over a quota system for government jobs.

Hasina fled to India on Aug. 5 after weeks of violence left more than 600 people dead, including students. The uprising ended the 15-year-rule of the country’s longest-serving prime minister who began a fourth consecutive term in January following an election boycotted by the major opposition parties, who questioned the credibility of the electoral process.

The demonstrators chanted slogans such as “Where is Hasina? Bury her, bury her!” and “Hasina-Modi, warning, be careful!” or “Naraye Takbeer, Allahu Akbar.”

They were referring Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, as Hasina is known to be a trusted ally of India. Many protesters do not like India for promoting Hinduism and demonstrating what they see as a big brotherly dominance, and condemned it for sheltering Hasina.

The central procession, styled as a “shaheedi march” or “procession for the martyrs” began from the Dhaka University campus and marched through streets. In addition to the many Bangladeshi flags, some participants carried a giant Palestinian flag.

Tens of thousands joined rallies across the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people.

In Dhaka’s Uttara neighborhood, thousands of school and madrasah students in uniform took part in processions, chanting anti-Hasina slogans. Some carried banners and placards, reading “We want Hasina’s execution” and “We want reforms of the state.”

Thursday’s development came as Bangladesh was returning to normalcy after the protests, despite challenges such as a struggling economy. An interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who had a frosty relationship with Hasina for many years, has prioritized law and order to stabilize the country.

Yunus in an interview with the Press Trust of India, or PTI, news agency released Thursday said that Hasina should stay quiet, and that her political remarks from India are an “unfriendly gesture.”

The protesters and other opponents of Hasina want her and her associates to stand trial for mass killings during the demonstrations that began in July.

“If India wants to keep her until the time Bangladesh wants her back, the condition would be that she has to keep quiet,” the PTI quoted Yunus as saying.

“No one is comfortable with her stance there in India because we want her back to try her. She is there in India and at times she is talking, which is problematic … No one likes it,” he said.

Yunus was apparently referring to Hasina’s statement on August 13 in which she demanded “justice”, saying those involved in recent “terror acts”, killings and vandalism must be investigated, identified and punished.

Yunus’ administration is reorganizing police, bureaucracy and other state institutions to take control amid reports of violence and continuing unrest.

Days of street protests by garment workers and other industries forced owners to shut their factories for days before they restarted their operations on Thursday amid heightened security in two major industrial hubs outside Dhaka.

Also, media reports said that a young Hindu man was beaten on Wednesday by a Muslim mob in the presence of security officials in the southwestern Khulna region after he allegedly posted derogatory comments online about the Prophet Muhammad.

The country’s two leading Bengali-language dailies, Prothom Alo and Samakal, reported online that the man, named as Sri Utso, was lynched by the mob, but they later removed the stories from their websites and republished new versions, saying that he did not die and was now receiving medical treatment. The reports provided no further details about the whereabouts of the 22-year-old man.

The military’s Inter Service Public Relations office in a statement later Thursday said that the soldiers rescued Utso after an angry mob attacked him inside the office of a senior police official. It said he survived and was out of danger, and he would be handed over to police for legal actions against him.

Yunus in the interview with the PTI refuted earlier reports that the Hindu minority had been targeted since Hasina’s fall. Modi had also earlier voiced concern over the reports of attacks on Hindus.

Yunus said the issue of attacks on minority Hindus in Bangladesh is “exaggerated” and questioned the manner in which India projected it.

He said the attacks on minorities in Bangladesh are more political than communal: he described them as the fallout of political upheaval as there is a perception that most Hindus supported the now-deposed Awami League regime of Sheikh Hasina.
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