Category Archives: South and Central Asia

‘We’re so proud of her’: Afghanistan’s gutsy female cyclists ready to cheer on Ali Zada

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Watching an Afghan refugee in the Olympics is a source of inspiration to many women in a country where riding a bike is seen as a political statement and the Taliban are gaining ground

When Masomah Ali Zada makes her Olympic debut at the women’s cycling time trial this week, speeding her way around the 22km route with Mount Fuji in the background, it won’t just be her teammates in Japan cheering her on. In Kabul, where the 25-year-old joined the national squad as a teenager, a small but gutsy group of female cyclists will be glued to the television, willing her to do the best she can.

“I’m really, really proud of her and so are all of the team members, and we are really looking forward to watching her race and seeing her do great,” says Zahla Sarmat, assistant development director of the Afghan cycling federation’s women’s division. For her and her fellow riders, Ali Zada is a source of huge inspiration, even if her sporting success eventually led her to leave Afghanistan and claim asylum in France. She is competing in Tokyo as part of the Refugee Olympic Team.

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Schooled for success: the academy in India giving rural children a chance

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Competition is stiff for places at an elite school in Uttar Pradesh, set up by an IT mogul, offering poor students an education out of reach for most

Manu Chauhan used to dread running out of notebooks and pens. Though school in the village of Akrabad in Uttar Pradesh was free, stationery was not. He would have to go to his dad to ask for money, knowing his father earned 3,000 rupees (£30) a month selling insurance.

In September, Chauhan, now 18, will fly to the US to take up his place at Stanford University to study international relations, after graduating from an Indian academy that is educating future leaders in a state that has produced eight of India’s 14 prime ministers.

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Afghanistan civilian casualty figures at record high, UN says

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Report reveals ‘acute rise’ in deaths and injuries since 1 May as Taliban exploit departure of foreign troops

Record numbers of civilians have been killed and injured in Afghanistan in intense fighting since 1 May, when international forces began their final drawdown and the Taliban launched a major offensive.

The heavy toll so far comes largely from battles in rural areas, according to the UN. If the conflict were to spill into more densely populated towns and cities, the consequences could be catastrophic, it says in its report, The Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict.

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India floods: rescuers search for survivors among mud and debris

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Death toll from heavy monsoon rains on western coast climbs to 76, with nearly 90,000 people evacuated

Rescuers in India combed through mud and debris on Saturday in a desperate search for survivors as the death toll from heavy monsoon rains climbed to 76, with nearly 90,000 people evacuated.

Torrential downpours have lashed India’s western coast in recent days, leaving dozens missing near the financial capital of Mumbai and causing the worst floods in decades in the resort state of Goa.

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India monsoons: at least 112 dead in Maharashtra state

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Torrential rains cause landslides as military personnel assist with rescue operations in coastal regions

At least 112 people have died in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, authorities have said, after torrential monsoon rains caused landslides and flooded low-lying areas, cutting off hundreds of villages.

Parts of India’s west coast received up to 594mm (23 inches) of rainfall over 24 hours, forcing authorities to evacuate people from vulnerable areas as they released water from dams that were threatening to overflow.

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‘I shoot for the common man’: the photographs of Danish Siddiqui

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The photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was shot dead last week while documenting the Taliban offensive in Afghanistan. His award-winning work for Reuters spanned some of the world’s most era-defining crises.
He said: ‘I shoot for the common man who wants to see and feel a story from a place where he can’t be present himself.’
Siddiqui leaves behind his wife, Rike, and two children. And a breathtaking body of work

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Dozens dead in Mumbai after intense monsoon rains cause landslides – video report

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More than 30 people have died in the Indian city after an intense burst of rainfall caused flooding and landslides, as changing monsoon patterns because of the climate crisis lead to more extreme rains across India.

The landslide in the eastern suburb of Chembur enveloped homes as people were sleeping and killed at least 21, according to the National Disaster Response Force

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Indonesia’s daily Covid infections higher than India and Brazil

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Health systems overwhelmed as Delta variant sweeps across south-east Asia

Indonesia has reported more daily Covid-19 infections than India and Brazil as the Delta strain sweeps across south-east Asia, placing intense pressure on health systems.

Most countries in the region are experiencing their worst outbreaks since the pandemic began, fuelled by the emergence of more aggressive variants and a lack of vaccines.

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Tensions remain high as hopes dashed for breakthrough in China and India stalemate

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Military build-up continues ‘like never before’ on both sides of 2,100-mile border despite high-level talks

It was described as a dialogue, the first high-level meeting in months between the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers to address the ongoing border aggressions that have pushed the two nuclear-armed countries to the brink of war.

But those hoping Wednesday’s meeting would help break a year-long stalemate during which 200,000 troops have built up on both sides of the Himalayan frontier were to be left unsatisfied.

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Where UK aid cuts bite deepest – stories from the sharp end

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As women and children lose out on programmes that could change their lives, Britain’s reputation has been diminished

Bukola Onyishi was delighted when she found out that the British government was going to help her realise a dream in one of the poorest parts of Nigeria. With a grant agreement that was meant to last for three years, she was finally going to be able to launch a female empowerment programme for the women of Bauchi state in the country’s north-east, many of whom had fled the militant Islamist group Boko Haram and were now living in abject poverty in camps for the internally displaced.

“The grant made us very happy,” says Onyishi, country director for Women for Women International. “[Bauchi] was the right place to be.” Setting it up was not easy: Onyishi and her colleagues had a job to persuade community elders of the project’s value, encountering deep-seated patriarchal beliefs that surprised even her in their obstinacy. But they came round in the end, and the first 12-month empowerment programme began, teaching 1,200 carefully selected women about everything from their basic human rights to numeracy and business skills.

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British general’s ‘discreet’ effort to revive Afghan peace negotiations

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General Sir Nick Carter has been arranging meetings with contacts in Kabul and Pakistan to try to prevent a descent into civil war

Britain’s top general, Sir Nick Carter, has been using his personal connections with Afghan and Pakistan leaders in a behind-the-scenes effort to stop Afghanistan sliding into full-blown civil war, and help bolster stalling US-brokered peace talks in Qatar.

At the weekend a senior Afghan delegation arrived in Doha to try to restart the virtually dormant negotiations, after months which have seen the Taliban sweep across much of rural Afghanistan, although they still do not hold any cities.

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Daughter of Afghan envoy abducted and ‘severely tortured’ in Pakistan

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Silsila Alikhil, 26, was badly beaten and held for over five hours in Islamabad, according to diplomatic sources

The daughter of Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan was abducted in the middle of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, held for several hours and brutally attacked, officials in both countries said on Saturday.

No one has been arrested in connection with Friday’s assault on Silsila Alikhil, 26. The Afghan foreign ministry issued a statement demanding a quick investigation, saying she was “severely tortured”.

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Afghans flee to eastern Turkey as Taliban takes control amid chaos

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Some pay smugglers to take them to Istanbul as withdrawal of US troops rekindles fears of civil war

Twenty-eight days into their journey out of Afghanistan, a woman and her five children are sitting in the shade near a bus station in Tatvan, a town on the shore of Lake Van in eastern Turkey.

She is waiting for a smuggler, who was paid in advance, to take the family to Istanbul. Tired and dirty, the younger children are playing in the dust and laughing; the youngest boy wants a piggyback. The smuggler is two days late.

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Nepal sees huge rise in maternal deaths as Covid keeps women at home

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Health workers fear deaths could reach levels not seen this century as up to 90% miss check-ups and many opt for home births

Earlier this month, 21-year-old Lakhu BK decided to have her baby at home in her village in the far west of Nepal. She had feared contracting Covid-19 if she went to a health centre. She lost her life giving birth.

“I thought my daughter-in-law will die from [the] virus but did not think she would die from being unable to give birth,” said her mother-in-law, Pamfi BK, 50.

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Taliban claim Afghan border crossing with Pakistan in major gain

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Militants say they have made what could be their most significant advance in a nationwide offensive

The Taliban have claimed to have seized control of a crucial border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan, as their forces continue to rapidly advance in the wake of US troops pulling out, fuelling fears of the conflict spilling into Pakistan.

In one of their most strategic gains yet, on Tuesday night Taliban forces descended on the district of Spin Boldak in Afghanistan, just a few miles from the Pakistan border, and attacked several posts of Afghan troops, who reportedly surrendered immediately.

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Battle for oxygen as coup-hit Myanmar faces its most severe Covid outbreak

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Outbreak could not have come at a worse time, after military coup caused hospitals to collapse and threw vaccination campaign into chaos

Khin Nwe Soe* went in a taxi, from factory to factory across Myanmar’s main city of Yangon, desperately searching for oxygen tanks for her 21-year-old son. A home test had shown he had Covid-19. He was in pain, able only to lie down, and his oxygen levels had dropped as low as 90%.

“She tried very hard, queuing at every place she could find, because her child needed it,” said Aye Myat Noe*, her daughter, who lives abroad but had called oxygen suppliers to help her mother. “She has a lot of health issues too, including diabetes and heart problems. She is very scared herself … She was seriously risking her life to find oxygen.”

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Missing school: how art can help girls in Nepal get an education – in pictures

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Some of the UK’s best-loved illustrators, including Axel Scheffler, Debi Gliori and Jackie Morris, have created artworks telling the stories of children in rural Nepal who struggle to get an education. The pictures are being raffled by the charity United World Schools, which has opened schools in the country.

All photographs by Navesh Chitrakar for UWS

*All girls’ names have been changed

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Deadly heat: how rising temperatures threaten workers from Nicaragua to Nepal

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As scorching temperatures spread, the search for ways to protect against heat stress is becoming ever more urgent

William Martínez, who as a child worked on a sugarcane plantation in rural Nicaragua, learned the hard way what many in the US and Canada are now realising: that rising temperatures are costing lives and livelihoods.

Martínez, along with fellow villagers in La Isla, found himself getting sicker as he worked long, gruelling days in the fields under the beating Nicaraguan sun two decades ago. Workers at the nearby mill, which supplies molasses to alcohol companies, began to suffer kidney failure, and would be forced out of the workforce and into expensive and time-consuming dialysis. His father and uncles, addled with the same affliction, had died when Martínez was a boy, forcing him to join the workforce.

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Hunger sweeps India in Covid’s shadow as millions miss out on rations

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Desperation grows for those unable to access subsidised food, as worst hunger in two decades reported

When India’s devastating second wave of Covid-19 struck in April, Nazia Habib Khan’s second marriage abruptly came to an end after a year of beatings and abuse. The 28-year-old daughter of migrants from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh returned to live with her mother, brothers and a sister-in-law in Mumbai.

Their 40 sq metre (400 sq ft) home in Kurla East stands huddled among the 800 or so brick, tin sheet and tarpaulin houses of Qureshi Nagar, the entire shanty town trembling when a train roars past on a nearby railway line.

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‘We can do anything’: the Indian girls’ movement fighting child marriage

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At 17, Priyanka Bairwa refused her arranged marriage. Instead, she started Rajasthan Rising to help thousands of others and call for free education

Priyanka Bairwa was 15 when her family began to look for a husband for her. The pandemic sped up the process, as schools shut and work dried up. By October 2020, her parents had settled on a suitable boy from their village of Ramathra in the district of Karauli, Rajasthan.

But Bairwa, now 18, wouldn’t hear of it. “During the pandemic, every family in the village was eager to marry off their girls. You’d have to invite less people, there were fewer expenses,” says Bairwa. “But I refused to be caught in a child marriage. There was a major backlash – constant fights. I finally threatened to run away and, fearing I would do something drastic, my family called it off. My mother convinced them to let me study and I joined a college.”

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