Category Archives: Pakistan

‘They’d come to kill me’: The Afghan tax reformer hunted by the Taliban and abandoned by the Britain he served

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A year after the fall of Kabul, Abdullah Sayyid is in hiding, his wife has been murdered and the Home Office seems to have lost his case file

Abdullah Sayyid often thinks about the moment the Taliban broke down his door, burst inside and shot his wife. The gunmen left, but would soon redouble their efforts to kill him because of his work for the British government.

Sayyid’s wife was murdered during the chaotic aftermath of Operation Pitting, the UK’s emergency mass airlift from Kabul that began on 13 August last year.

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Weather tracker: monsoon rains sweep India and Pakistan

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Further heavy rainfall forecast after deadly lightning strikes and flooding last week

The monsoon season in India and Pakistan is well under way, with further heavy rain events expected in parts of south-west India over the next week or so. The states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala in particular could experience rainfall totals above 200mm widely over the next couple of days.

Towards the weekend, this risk could transfer further north and east across India, with 200mm potentially affecting central states. This follows a week when dozens were killed by lightning strikes in India, while hundreds died in severe flooding in neighbouring Pakistan.

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Australian mountain climber Matthew Eakin one of two men found dead on K2

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The bodies of two mountaineers, Eakin and Canadian man Richard Cartier, found on the world’s second-highest mountain in Pakistan

An Australian and a Canadian climber have been found dead on K2, with the world’s second-highest mountain in Pakistan claiming at least three lives in recent weeks.

The Himalayan Times identified the Australian mountaineer as Matthew Eakin and the Canadian climber as Richard Cartier, after reports the two had gone missing last week during their descent from Camp 2 to Camp 1.

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‘Harassed here too’: Afghan artists find no sanctuary in Pakistan

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Musicians had hoped to keep their art alive after fleeing Taliban but now face crackdown on refugees

Ajmal Haikalzada, 44, first became a refugee when his artist father left Afghanistan for Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s. In 2001, then a musician, he returned, singing and performing across the country of his birth after the US toppled the Taliban.

Two decades later, he fled once again as the Taliban took over Kabul.

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No kidding: long-eared goat becomes media star in Pakistan

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Simba the goat’s owner says kid’s ears are record-breaking and has contacted Guinness World Records

A kid goat with extraordinarily long ears has become a media star in Pakistan, with its owner claiming a world record that may or may not exist.

Simba is living a pampered existence in Karachi, where he was born last month with ears that were strikingly long – and have grown to reach 54cm (21in).

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Monsoon rains cause at least 77 deaths in Pakistan in three weeks

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Homes, roads, bridges and power stations also badly hit with Balochistan province faring worst

At least 77 people have died in rain-related incidents across Pakistan in the past three weeks, the country’s minister for climate change said on Wednesday.

The monsoon rains have also damaged homes, roads, bridges and power stations, Sherry Rehman told a news conference in the capital, Islamabad, as storms continued to lash the country.

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Visa delays leave UK families with adopted babies stranded in Pakistan

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Home Office accused of leaving mothers and traumatised children stranded for months while priority is given to Ukraine refugees

British couples who travelled to Pakistan to adopt children have been left stranded after the Home Office told them to expect months of delays in processing visas because of the Ukraine refugee crisis.

The delays are part of wider failings in visa processing that have left families around the world stuck waiting to return to the UK.

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Father-in-law charged with murder after Australian woman Sajida Tasneem killed in Pakistan

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Tasneem was allegedly killed in front of her father after being taken to northern Pakistan from Perth with her three children

An Australian woman has allegedly been bludgeoned to death by her father-in-law with an axe in northern Pakistan after an argument about moving back to Australia with her children.

Sajida Tasneem was allegedly killed in front of her father at a home she shared with her in-laws in the city of Sargodha, 250km south of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, on 11 June.

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Pervez Musharraf’s wish to return to Pakistan reopens debate about his rule

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The exile who once led a military dictatorship is in hospital and a spokesperson has said his wish to come home should be granted

The possible return to Pakistan of its former president Pervez Musharraf for the first time since he left the country in 2016 has reopened a bitter debate about the military dictatorship he led for more than a decade.

Musharraf came to power in a coup in 1999 that toppled Nawaz Sharif’s government, and went on to hold the presidency from 2001 to 2008, when he resigned to avoid impeachment. Since then he has spent most of his time in self-imposed exile in the UK and the Middle East.

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Pakistanis told to drink less tea to help fight economic crisis

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Minister appeals for people to cut their consumption by one or two cups a day and save on imports

A minister in Pakistan’s newly elected government has been criticised after appealing to the nation to drink less tea to help save on imports amid a deepening economic crisis.

Pakistan is among the world’s top tea importers, and the brew is hugely popular among rich and poor. The typical Pakistani is believed to drink at least three cups a day on average.

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Pakistani garment workers left destitute and starving after Missguided collapse

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Fashion retailer’s suppliers in Pakistan have sacked hundreds without pay, as invoices for completed orders remain unpaid

Hundreds of garment workers in Pakistan making clothing for collapsed fast fashion brand Missguided say they have been left destitute and starving after not receiving salaries for more than four months.

The workers, who typically earn between £100 and £160 a month, say that despite not being paid they have continued working even as the Manchester-based retailer went into administration, with suppliers claiming the company owes them millions of pounds for clothing already completed and shipped.

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Polio outbreak in Pakistan worsens as eighth child reported paralysed

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Investigation launched as first cases in a year blamed on vaccine refusal fuelled by clerics and falsification of records by parents

Pakistan’s polio eradication campaign is in disarray after an alarming jump in cases last week. Eight polio cases have now been reported in children over the past month in North Waziristan district, bordering Afghanistan. They are the first cases in more than a year.

This new outbreak, officials believe, is due to parents falsely marking themselves and their children as vaccinated, and the government has launched an investigation into the outbreak.

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Prophet Muhammad remarks embroil India in row with Gulf states

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‘Insulting’ comments by spokespeople for ruling Bharatiya Janata party met with anger in Middle East

The Indian government has become embroiled in a diplomatic row with Gulf states after two ruling party spokespeople were accused of making Islamophobic and derogatory comments insulting the prophet Muhammad.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) suspended its national spokesperson, Nupur Sharma, and expelled its Delhi media head, Naveen Kumar Jindal, after their comments went viral in the Middle East, where they were met with a chorus of diplomatic anger.

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‘Fear is increasing’: Hindus flee Kashmir amid spate of targeted killings

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Increase in violence prompts protests and biggest exodus of Kashmiri Pandit families for two decades

Hundreds of minority Hindus have fled from Indian-administered Kashmir, and many more are preparing to leave, after a fresh spate of targeted killings stoked tensions in the disputed Himalayan region.

Three Hindus have been killed by militants in Kashmir this week alone, including a teacher and migrant workers, prompting mass protests and the largest exodus of Hindu families from the Muslim-majority region in two decades.

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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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‘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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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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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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Pakistan: former human rights minister arrested over land grabbing allegation

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Shireen Mazari’s daughter tweeted that her mother was beaten and taken away by police near her Islamabad home on Saturday

Pakistan’s former human rights minister was arrested on Saturday in the capital over a decades-old land grabbing allegation, her daughter and another former minister said.

Shireen Mazari, who served in the cabinet-level position under former prime minister Imran Khan, was detained by police near her Islamabad home, daughter Imaan Mazari said in a tweet.

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