Government accused of inaction as downpours leave schools destroyed, homes ruined, crops failing and cholera on the rise
More than 580 people have died and thousands have lost their homes across Pakistan as torrential rains batter the country.
An estimated 1 million have been affected by heavy rainfall, flash floods and landslides since July as Pakistan endured more than 60% of its normal total monsoon rainfall in three weeks.
Continue reading...Impact of ‘traumatic period’ still lingers with those now based in UK – and their families – 75 years on
After living in Britain for nearly half a century, Pabitra Ghosh is still gripped by a rootlessness borne after being displaced from modern-day Bangladesh as a child.
When a communal riot broke out in 1950, Ghosh, then five, fled with his family across the newly carved Indian border from East Pakistan. The train journey was both “bedlam” and “traumatic” as they abandoned their home to start afresh in Kolkata.
Continue reading...Chance encounter on Facebook led Reena Varma, 90, to visit family home she was forced to abandon in 1947
For decades, Reena Varma would return to her home in Rawalpindi in her dreams. She would wander down the narrow lane to the three-storey house and walk through the rooms where she had lived with her five siblings, parents and an aunt for the first 15 years of her life.
But for 75 years, this was a home located across a seemingly impenetrable national border, one Varma could only visit as a painful memory. That was, until July this year. Now 90 years old but still sprightly, a chance encounter on a Facebook group helped her find and visit the family home she was forced to abandon 75 years ago, located in what is now Pakistan.
Continue reading...Social media is helping long-lost relatives discover each other after a lifetime separated by the India-Pakistan border
It was an embrace that held 74 years of pain and longing. As Sikka Khan, 75, fell into the arms of his older brother Sadiq Khan, now in his 80s, the pair wept with simultaneous sorrow and joy. More than seven decades had passed since the brothers, torn apart by the horrors of partition, had seen each other. With Sikka in India and Sadiq in Pakistan, neither knew if the other was alive. Yet both had never stopped looking.
But on a crisp January afternoon this year, the pair were reunited along the border that had so devastatingly fractured their family. “Finally, we are together,” Sadiq told his brother, tears streaming down his face.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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).
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...‘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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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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