Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Al-Qaida enjoying a haven in Afghanistan under Taliban, UN warns

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Intelligence report raises fears country could again become base for international terrorists

Al-Qaida has a haven in Afghanistan under the Taliban and “increased freedom of action” with the potential of launching new long-distance attacks in coming years, a UN report based on intelligence supplied by member states says.

The assessment, by the UN committee charged with enforcing sanctions on the Taliban and others that may threaten the security of Afghanistan, will raise concerns that the country could once again become a base for international terrorist attacks after the withdrawal of US and Nato troops last year.

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Starmer urges PM to request India release UK citizen Jagtar Singh Johal

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Labour leader writes to Boris Johnson after UN working group declared Johal’s five-year detention arbitrary

Keir Starmer has asked Boris Johnson to intervene and request that the Indian government release a British citizen after a UN working group declared his five-year detention arbitrary and without any legal basis.

In a letter, the Labour leader asks why Johnson has not acted to ask for the release of Jagtar Singh Johal given the findings of the UN report on arbitrary detention last month.

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Rohingya refugee deported from Kashmir to Myanmar reunited with family

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Separated in March, Hasina Begum’s family have now settled in Bangladesh as India continues to deport Rohingya despite UN refugee status

A Rohingya woman deported to Myanmar from Indian-administered Kashmir in March has been reunited with her family in Bangladesh.

Hasina Begum, 37, was deported from Jammu despite having UN refugee status, leaving her husband and three children behind in Kashmir. She was the first Rohingya refugee to be deported from among 170 who were detained by authorities in the region in March 2021.

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Indian singer KK dies aged 53 after falling ill while performing

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Krishnakumar Kunnath, a star Bollywood singer best known as KK, complained of feeling cold and unwell before collapsing

Star Bollywood singer Krishnakumar Kunnath, popularly known as KK, has died of a suspected heart attack at age 53 after a concert on Tuesday, prompting a flood of tributes from fans including Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.

“His songs reflected a wide range of emotions as struck a chord with people of all age groups,” Modi said on Twitter.

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Tanzila Khan: disability rights campaigner tells young women ‘the world is yours’

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Winner of the inaugural Amal Clooney Women’s Empowerment award says she saw mainstream culture did not represent her, so she created her own space

Tanzila Khan does not like people feeling too sorry for themselves – or for her.

“I don’t like sob stories or tragedies,” said Khan, who is a disability and women’s rights campaigner in Pakistan. “I’m not saying they don’t exist – we can all face adversity – but I think we need a more positive approach to solving problems. I wanted to present people with disabilities in a more positive way.

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‘People are going to die’: crisis-hit Sri Lanka runs out of medicine

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Economic crisis is becoming health crisis as the country is unable to afford to import essential supplies

Chandrapala Weerasuriya can’t remember when he last took his medication. The 67-year-old retired businessman, living in Sri Lanka’s Gampaha district, has always relied on a drug to keep at bay his hereditary nervous condition, which makes him dizzy and unable to walk.

But since his prescription recently ran out, he cannot get another supply. The drug is simply not available in Sri Lanka any more.

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Sidhu Moose Wala: Punjabi singer and rapper shot dead

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Musician whose real name was Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu was killed a day after his security cover was withdrawn

Indian police are investigating the murder of a popular Punjabi rapper a day after he was fatally shot.

Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, better known by his stage name Sidhu Moose Wala, was killed on Sunday evening while driving his car in Mansa, a district in Punjab state, northern India. Moose Wala, 28, was taken to hospital where he was declared dead.

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China funnels its overseas aid money into political leaders’ home provinces

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Schools, stadiums or airports help the presidents of countries that receive cash from Beijing tighten their grip on power

China’s financing of overseas projects has disproportionately benefited the core political supporters of incumbent presidents or prime ministers of those countries that receive the funds, according to a new book.

During the 20th century, China was mostly known as a recipient of international development finance. Its overseas development programme was modest – roughly on a par with that of Denmark. But over the course of one generation, as Beijing emerged as the world’s second-largest economy, its footprint began to extend far beyond its borders – often in the form of infrastructure initiatives such as Belt and Road.

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Crash site found after plane goes missing over Nepal with 22 onboard

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Bodies being recovered after army locates Tara Air aircraft that took off from Pokhara, after conditions hampered earlier search

Rescue workers in Nepal have recovered 14 bodies from the crash site of a small plane carrying 22 people that went down in a remote region, according to an airport official.

“The search for others is continuing,” said Tek Raj Sitaula, a spokesman for the Tribhuvan international airport in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.

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Revealed: Afghan journalists facing death threats and beatings, despite UK pledge to save them

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Group who worked with UK media to sue government over failure to relocate them to Britain

A group of Afghan journalists who worked closely with the UK media for years have revealed how they face beatings, death threats and months in hiding, and accuse the government of reneging on a pledge to bring them to Britain.

Having fought in vain for clearance to come to the UK since the return of Taliban rule last summer, the eight journalists are now taking legal action against the government. They have applied for a judicial review after waiting months for their applications to relocate to the UK to be processed. They report only receiving standard response emails from the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) programme.

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‘It seems this heat will take our lives’: Pakistan city fearful after hitting 51C

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Residents of Jacobabad say loss of trees and water facilities makes record-breaking temperatures unbearable

Muhammad Akbar, 40, sells dried chickpeas on a wheelbarrow in Jacobabad, and has suffered heatstroke three times in his life.

But now, he says, the heat is getting worse. “In those days there were many trees in the whole city and there was no shortage of water and we had other facilities so we could easily beat the heat. But now there are no trees or other facilities including water, due to which the heat is becoming unbearable. I’m scared that this heat will take our lives in the coming years.”

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Male Afghan TV presenters mask up to support female colleagues after Taliban decree

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#FreeHerFace campaign gathers force as high-profile men rebel against crackdown on face coverings in Afghanistan

Male TV presenters in Afghanistan are wearing face masks on screen to show solidarity after the Taliban issued an order that all women on news channels must cover their faces.

In a protest dubbed #FreeHerFace on social media, men on Tolo News wore masks to mimic the effect of the face veil their female colleagues have been forced to wear after a Taliban crackdown.

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Afghan female judge awarded prestigious human rights prize

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Fawzia Amini advocates for rights of Afghan women and girls from London hotel room she’s been stuck in for nine months

One of Afghanistan’s top female judges has been honoured with an international human rights award while she continues her work to advocate for her country’s women and girls from a London hotel.

Fawzia Amini, 48, fled Afghanistan last summer after the Taliban takeover of the country. She had been one of Afghanistan’s leading female judges, former head of the legal department at the Ministry of Women, senior judge in the supreme court, and head of the violence against women court.

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Joe Biden: invasion of Ukraine shows need for free and open Indo-Pacific

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Leaders of US, India, Japan and Australia meet in Tokyo for Quad summit Beijing claims is an attempt to contain China

The turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has underlined the need for a free Indo-Pacific region, Joe Biden has said at a meeting with regional partners that Beijing has condemned as part of a US-led attempt to contain China.

Biden and the leaders of a loose alliance known as the Quad – India, Japan and Australia – reaffirmed their commitment to a “free and open” Indo-Pacific during talks in Tokyo on Tuesday. The comments came one day after the US president said Washington would be ready to intervene militarily to defend Taiwan, prompting China to accuse him of “playing with fire”.

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Sisters allegedly murdered by husbands in Pakistan ‘honour’ killing

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Six men arrested after Pakistani-Spanish women tricked into travelling to Gujrat where they were shot

Two sisters with dual Pakistani and Spanish citizenship were allegedly killed by their husbands, uncle and brother in a so-called “honour” killing a day after they were tricked into travelling to Pakistan.

Aneesa Abbas, 24, and Arooj Abbas, 21, were strangled and shot dead on Friday after arriving in the eastern city of Gujrat with their mother, Azra Bibi.

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Top official at Foreign Office called upon to resign over Kabul withdrawal

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Sir Philip Barton castigated along with Dominic Raab in damning report by MPs into UK’s chaotic exit

The senior civil servant in charge of the Foreign Office should consider his position after presiding over a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that betrayed UK allies, put lives in danger, showed a total absence of planning and was chaotically managed, MPs have concluded in a damning report.

The report from the foreign affairs select committee said the absence of leadership – both ministerial and official, including the permanent secretary, Sir Philip Barton – when Kabul fell was inexcusable and a grave indictment on those supposedly in charge. It added that Barton failed to give candid evidence to the committee, and says as a result it had lost confidence in him. The committee also accused him of covering up political interference in the fast-tracking of some individuals out of Afghanistan.

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Deadly Indian heatwave made 30 times more likely by climate crisis

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Soaring temperatures in subcontinent, which have caused widespread suffering, would be extraordinarily rare without global heating

The heatwave scorching India and Pakistan has been made 30 times more likely by the climate crisis, according to scientists. Extreme temperatures and low rainfall since mid-March have caused widespread suffering, including deaths, crop losses, forest fires, and cuts to power and water supplies.

The study is the latest to show the already severe impacts of global heating on millions of people, even though the global average temperature has risen only 1.2C above pre-industrial levels to date. If it rises to 2C, heatwaves as intense as the current one would be expected as often as every five years in India and Pakistan, the scientists estimated.

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Pakistan town blames deadly cholera outbreak on government neglect

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Residents of Pir Koh say poor water provision and a dirty water tank led to 26 deaths, the majority among children under seven

Two weeks ago, Ruqiyya Bibi fell sick. The two-year-old was vomiting constantly; her father, Mohammed Iqbal, took her to a basic health unit in Pir Koh, a impoverished town with a population of 40,000 in the mountains of Balochistan, south-western Pakistan.

Iqbal was told at first that his daughter had malaria but when treatment did not help, he took her to another doctor who said she had a blood condition.

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Taliban enforce face coverings for Afghanistan’s female news presenters

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Move is part of hardline pivot after militants hinted at more moderate restrictions when taking power last year

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have begun enforcing an order requiring all female TV news presenters in the country to cover their faces while on air, as part of a hardline shift that has drawn condemnation from rights activists.

After the order was announced on Thursday, only a handful of news outlets complied. However, on Sunday most female presenters were seen with their faces covered after the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice began enforcing the decree.

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Dozens dead, millions stranded as floods ravage Bangladesh and India

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Rains inundate thousands of villages and trigger landslides in north-east Bangladesh’s worst flooding in nearly two decades

Heavy rains have caused widespread flooding in parts of Bangladesh and India, leaving millions stranded and at least 57 dead, officials say.

In Bangladesh, about 2 million people have been marooned by the worst floods in the country’s north-east for nearly two decades.

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