Saturday, April 10, 2021
UAE has failed to show proof that Princess Latifa is alive, says UN
Luke Harding
The UN says the United Arab Emirates has failed to provide compelling proof that Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum – the missing daughter of Dubai’s ruler, last seen in late 2018 – is still alive. The UAE last month said Princess Latifa was being cared for at home by family and medical professionals. The UN’s human rights office has repeatedly asked Dubai to provide “proof of life” for Latifa, a demand echoed by the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and other western governments. On Friday, the UN spokesperson Marta Hurtado told a briefing in Geneva that the UAE had not responded to its request or clarified the conditions in which Latifa was apparently being held.UN spokesperson says UAE has not responded to its request for ‘proof of life’ in relation to missing princess.
“We haven’t got any proof of life, and we would like one, one that is clear compelling evidence that she is alive. Our first concern of course is to be sure of that, that she is still alive,” Hurtado said.Senior UN officials had sought a meeting with the UAE ambassador in Geneva about Latifa, which in principle had been agreed, Hurtado said. She added that the UN also planned to raise the case of Latifa’s older sister Shamsa, who was kidnapped in 2000 from the streets of Cambridge. Concerns over the fate of Latifa, 35, have grown after videos emerged in which she claimed her villa home had been “converted into a jail”. Latifa claimed to have been imprisoned in the villa after an escape attempt in 2018 in which she crossed into neighbouring Oman and took a jetski to a yacht in international waters. With two friends she managed to reach the west coast of India before discovering she was being tracked by another vessel and had been spotted by the Indian coastguard. After eight days at sea, the ship was raided by Indian commandos who handed her to UAE security forces in an operation authorised by her father, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, according to a 2020 fact-finding judgment by a UK court. Latifa had not been seen since apart from in official photographs released by the UAE foreign ministry, in which she was pictured dining with the former Irish president Mary Robinson, who later told the BBC she was “horribly tricked” into publicly vouching for Latifa’s wellbeing. “All the windows are barred shut,” the princess said in the latest footage. “There’s five policemen outside and two policewomen inside the house. And I can’t even go outside to get any fresh air. I’m doing this video from a bathroom, because this is the only room with a door I can lock. I’m a hostage. I am not free. I’m enslaved in this jail. My life is not in my hands.” She has not been heard from in six months, according to her friends. The UAE’s embassy in London said that “media coverage does not reflect the true situation” and she was being cared for at home supported by her family and medical professionals. “She continues to improve and we are hopeful she will return to public life at the appropriate time,” a statement last month said. Sheikh Mohammed has said his daughter – the second of his children to try to escape – is in the loving care of her family. His youngest wife, Princess Haya, also left Dubai fearing for her life after claiming she was subjected to a campaign of intimidation and harassment. A UK court judgment in 2020 found her claims were true on the balance of probabilities. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/09/uae-has-failed-to-show-proof-that-princess-latifa-is-alive-says-un
Twitter Is Enabling Saudi Arabia’s Brutal Crackdown on Dissent
Jacob Silverman
The jailing of a dissident and two lawsuits reveal Twitter’s complicity with MBS’s dictatorship.
Contrary to Saudi Arabia’s self-proclaimed image as a reform-minded state gradually opening to the world, the country’s human rights situation is worsening, according to both activists and the family members of imprisoned dissidents. “Saudi Arabia is carrying out more repression” than ever, said Areej Al Sadhan, whose brother Abdulrahman, a 37-year-old aid worker, was abducted by Saudi security forces in 2018 for running a satirical Twitter account. “They are ruthlessly going after anyone who exercises their freedom of speech.”
This week, a counterterrorism court in Saudi Arabia sentenced Abdulrahman Al Sadhan to 20 years in prison, with a subsequent 20-year travel ban. Accused of running a pseudonymous Twitter account that parodied members of the Saudi government, Al Sadhan had violated the country’s stringent prohibitions on political speech that allow authorities to arrest (and sometimes torture and execute) virtually anyone showing public dissent. While Al Sadhan has 30 days to appeal his sentence, absent pressure from Western governments (which has so far been meager), his prison term is likely a fait accompli.
Al Sadhan’s family has had only two brief phone calls with him since his arrest in 2018, and they fear for his future. Though he is not Saudi Arabia’s most famous political prisoner, Al Sadhan is emblematic of the treatment meted out to anyone who challenges the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Completely intolerant of dissent—with mockery holding a special place of scorn—MBS has had critics harassed, kidnapped, and killed all over the world. The gruesome murder of former Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi is perhaps the best known instance of MBS’s penchant for brutality, but he was merely one victim of a larger crackdown that has seen thousands of people, including some of MBS’s own family members, rounded up and sent to prisons and black sites, where torture is routine.
“The level of human rights abuses are continuing on a high scale,” said Areej Al Sadhan. “People should not be fooled by the recent release of [women’s rights activist] Loujain Alhathloul.”
This crackdown began, in part, on Twitter, which is used by approximately 10 million people in Saudi Arabia, making it the service’s largest Middle Eastern market. For many citizens of autocracies, social media provided a welcome entree to a public square where issues of societal concern could be discussed—openly—like never before. In Saudi Arabia, where independent media is nonexistent, social media at first appeared to be “a great equalizer,” said Ali Al Ahmed, a Saudi analyst living in Washington, D.C., who is suing Twitter for failing to protect his account from Saudi spies. “That did not last.”
After a brief honeymoon of unfettered speech, pro-regime trolls and surveillance emerged on the site. Now as popular with members of the Saudi ruling family as the public, Twitter is no longer a place where ordinary Saudis feel comfortable speaking freely. Much the same could be said of Saudi dissidents and exiles, who talk of constant harassment, death threats, and attempts to hack their accounts. In their view, Twitter bears some responsibility for how its service has been abused. “There was no real step taken by the company to take care of and protect these activists,” said Al Sadhan.
Saudi Twitter has since become a place for the government to propagandize, track dissident thought, and identify victims for MBS’s personal team of enforcers. Regime officials are even known to chat with their future targets. Ali Al Ahmed told me that after he’d exchanged some direct messages with MBS’s adviser Saud Al Qahtani, someone who claimed to be Al Qahtani sent Ahmed a phishing email, attempting to steal his login information. (Al Ahmed messaged Al Qahtani, who was later banned from Twitter after being linked to Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, but he received no response.)
The story of MBS’s renewed crackdown on dissent is not as simple as combing Twitter for anti-regime statements, but Twitter plays a major role in the savage turn that’s occurred since MBS rose to power. In June 2014, a Saudi official named Bader Al Asaker—the secretary general of MBS’s personal charity, the Misk Foundation, and head of the crown prince’s private office—took a tour of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. The tour was jointly arranged by a man named Ahmed Almutairi, who operated a social media marketing company that contracted to members of the Saudi royal family and MBS’s foundation, and a Twitter employee named Ahmad Abouammo. Abouammo, who worked on media partnerships in the Middle East, would soon be groomed to spy directly for Al Asaker. In the months to come, Abouammo would receive more than $100,000 in cash and gifts as he gathered information—including email addresses, phone numbers, and private messages—relating to Saudi dissidents, journalists, and other accounts of note.
In 2015, Abouammo got a new job at Amazon, but the Saudi regime found a worthy replacement in Ali Alzabarah, a Twitter engineer whose position and technical skills gave him access to more user data than Abouammo. Soon enough, Alzabarah became an even more productive spy for Al Asaker and the Saudi regime, allegedly tracking dissidents across borders and providing IP addresses that could reveal people’s locations.
In December 2015, an FBI agent visited Twitter headquarters in San Francisco to tell them they had a Saudi espionage problem. While Abouammo was gone, Alzabarah was still siphoning data from thousands of accounts and passing it to his handlers. The FBI asked that Twitter refrain from taking immediate action but, reportedly suspicious about the intentions of government security agencies, which are known to pressure tech companies for private user information, Twitter decided to confront Alzabarah and suspend him. According to a federal indictment against Alzabarah, the engineer turned spy then frantically called Al Asaker, who, along with the Saudi consul general of Los Angeles, helped spirit Alzabarah to Saudi Arabia. After finding refuge there, Alzabarah was named the CEO of the Misk Foundation. (He was present at the infamous touching of the glowing orb event.) Alzabarah remains on Twitter—where his account is locked for privacy—and on the FBI’s most-wanted list.
Over the years, Saudi investors, chief among them Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, the country’s most famous business mogul, have bought up shares in U.S. tech companies like Twitter. By 2015, the prince owned an estimated 5.2 percent of Twitter—more than Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey himself. In November 2017, bin Talal was arrested and confined to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh as part of a sweeping “anti-corruption” purge that forced numerous wealthy Saudis and members of the royal family to sign over their assets to MBS. That well may have included bin Talal’s Twitter shares. “Since late 2017 or January of 2018, MBS has exercised control over more Twitter stock than is owned by Twitter’s founder,” according to a civil complaint filed against Twitter and McKinsey by Omar Abdulaziz, a Saudi exile who says that the consultancy helped finger him as a prominent online dissident, leading to his Twitter account being hacked. (Last year, Canadian authorities warned Abdulaziz that he may be a target of a Saudi kill team.)
According to Abdulaziz’s original complaint, “Because of the tremendous wealth of key figures in [the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia], major corporations have enabled, collaborated with, and turned a blind eye to KSA’s efforts to suppress, torture, falsely imprison, terrorize, and murder dissenters both within Saudi Arabia and around the world.” Other exiles have expressed similar thoughts, saying that Twitter gives the Saudi government a long reach well beyond its borders—and that Twitter has a responsibility to do more to protect its users from harassment and hacking.
“Instead of these tools being used to enable freedom of speech, [they are] being used by dictators to oppress freedom of speech and to track their personal information and target them personally,” said Al Sadhan.
Ali Al Ahmed has been the target of numerous hacking and phishing attempts, some of which he’s detected before they were able to succeed. But as he states in his lawsuit against Twitter, he believes the company failed to protect him and—more importantly—failed to protect the dissidents and other sensitive figures he had communicated with via Twitter direct messages. Among those people was Abdulrahman Al Sadhan, whose satire Al Ahmed appreciated. It’s not certain whether Abdulrahman was unmasked through the Twitter spy ring—sources close to the investigation believe his name was on an FBI list of surveilled accounts—but Al Ahmed believes that the spy ring definitely outed other friends, who were then disappeared, tortured, even killed.*
“It made me decide to do something about it, at least for the friends who were lost,” said Al Ahmed, who said he hopes his lawsuit will “force the truth to come out.”
More than five years have passed since the FBI told Twitter it had a Saudi spy problem. The company has since promised tightened procedures and access controls. But for many dissidents, it’s too late. Put another way, a murderous autocratic government abused its close relationship with Twitter to cultivate spies who provided information that then got innocent people thrown in jail. That government remains one of Twitter’s largest outside shareholders and continues to harass and monitor its citizens via the micro-blogging service. MBS has yet to suffer so much as a public warning, while people like Bader Al Asaker—who spoke multiple times with the Khashoggi hit squad on the day the journalist was murdered—use the site to propagandize to a huge audience.
On Twitter, Al Asaker appears like just another member of the global elite, mingling with royals, politicians, and business executives. He has 1.8 million followers—including Jack Dorsey. The U.S. tech CEO and the Saudi royal fixer appear to at least have a passing relationship, and in June 2016, six months after Twitter’s management learned about the spy ring from the FBI, Al Asaker tweeted a photo of Dorsey meeting with MBS in New York.
For Al Ahmed, the relationship, and Twitter’s passivity in the face of Saudi aggression, is difficult to explain.
“If somebody was spying on my company, would I be his friend?” Al Ahmed asked. “This is very serious. People died, people are in jail. Abdulrahman, this beautiful young man, is going to spend 20 years. This is sick, honestly.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/161995/twitter-saudi-arabia-mbs-dissident
Saudi Arabia’s Yemen blockade is starving millions. Democrats want Biden to stop it.
By Alex Ward@AlexWardVox
The Biden administration faces relentless pressure from the left to push Saudi Arabia to lift its Yemen blockade.Saudi Arabia is continuing its six-year air and sea blockade of Yemen, starving millions of Yemenis and deepening the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Anger from Democrats and progressives in the US isn’t just directed at Riyadh, though. It’s also aimed at the Biden administration for failing to fully pressure Saudi Arabia to lift the restrictions. When Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a war against the Houthis in 2015 — with US support — Saudi used its military to block planes from landing and ships from docking in Yemen, saying such measures were necessary to stop the Houthis from smuggling in weapons, including from Iran. The Saudi coalition is fighting to oust the Houthi rebels, who overthrew the internationally recognized government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur al-Hadi in 2015, and return al-Hadi, who currently lives in exile in Saudi Arabia, to power. But critics warned the blockade would keep much-needed food, fuel, medicine, and humanitarian aid from reaching desperate Yemenis, including millions of children, who are caught in the middle of the fighting. That concern proved devastatingly prophetic. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the world’s top authority on food security, said last year that 47,000 Yemenis were suffering from famine-like conditions and that more than 16 million — over half of Yemen’s population — couldn’t reliably and adequately feed themselves. Multiple United Nations agencies have said that at least 400,000 Yemeni children could die this year alone if conditions don’t improve. In early February, President Joe Biden promised the US would stop supporting the Saudi-led coalition’s offensive operations in the war. But, he added, “We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people.” Two people stand in front of a row of security vehicles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. One is throwing an object at the police vehicles. Some analysts believe Riyadh took that as implicit support for the blockade, even as the Biden administration has consistently expressed the free flow of fuel and goods into Yemen is “critical.” That may partly explain why Saudi Arabia has kept the restrictions in place. In March, for instance, CNN found that Saudi warships had kept all oil tankers from docking in the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah since the start of the year. “The Saudi vessels that patrol the waters of Hodeidah have control over which commercial ships can dock and unload their cargo,” CNN reported. “Some goods are getting through — CNN witnessed aid being loaded on to trucks at the port after being delivered by ship — but not any fuel to deliver them.” Now, Democrats want Biden to push Riyadh to end the blockade once and for all. Nearly 80 Democrats made that clear in a Tuesday letter to the president. “We ask you to take additional steps to publicly pressure Saudi Arabia to lift this blockade immediately, unilaterally, and comprehensively,” wrote the lawmakers, including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the House Intelligence Committee chair. Among other things, they want the Saudis to “[guarantee] that humanitarian and commercial imports can freely enter Yemen” and “[ensure] that and crossings for commercial and civilian traffic are permanently opened.” “Every day that we wait for these issues to be resolved in negotiations is another day that pushes more children to the brink of death,” the letter added. It’s unclear if the White House will listen to their plea. The Biden administration’s current approach toward the conflict is to try to broker a peace deal between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis. Some progressive activists accuse the president and his team of wanting to keep the blockade in place to serve as a bargaining chip in negotiations. “They support the blockade currently,” said Erik Sperling, executive director of Just Foreign Policy, a progressive foreign policy group. “The administration would only want it lifted as part of a comprehensive agreement.” Other analysts disagree. “That’s hyperbolic,” said Seth Binder, an advocacy officer at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) in Washington, DC, noting that Biden’s team restarted humanitarian funding for northern Yemen cut by the Trump administration and repeated calls for open trade. Still, Binder said the president and his aides “could and should be sharpening their rhetoric” toward Saudi Arabia about ending the blockade. Biden will continue to face pressure over the Saudi blockade Days after CNN’s March report exposing the disastrous effects of the blockade, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud proposed to reopen the airport in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and allow food and fuel imports at Hodeidah. “The initiative will take effect as soon as the Houthis agree to it,” the minister said. It was the first time Riyadh openly acknowledged carrying out a deliberate blockade in Yemen. Hodeidah is vitally important to Yemen’s economy. It’s the country’s largest and most important port, and it’s crucial to the nation’s trade and taxation efforts, said Shamiran Mako, an assistant professor at Boston University. But the Houthis almost immediately rejected the Saudi plan, saying it didn’t fully lift the long-imposed restrictions. “Opening the airports and seaports is a humanitarian right and should not be used as a pressure tool,” said Mohammed Abdulsalam, the Houthis’ chief negotiator. The Houthis, however, are also known to divert aid away from the population and to their own officials, supporters, and fighters. Since then, the Saudi-led coalition has allowed at least four fuel ships in Hodeidah’s port, even as Riyadh has gone back to denying restrictions exist. “There is no blockade,” the Saudi foreign minister told CNN in an interview this week, saying that 67 ships had docked in Hodeidah over the last three months and that the flow of goods continues at other crossings. But experts say that’s still not enough to ease the humanitarian crisis. And they say Saudi Arabia won’t change its tune unless the Biden administration exerts significant pressure. One way it could do that, POMED’s Binder said, is to threaten to further downgrade the US-Saudi relationship if such restrictions persist. “That gives the administration the most leverage” throughout the diplomatic process. For example, the US could further restrict arms sales to the kingdom or curtail economic ties. Meanwhile, pressure from Democrats and activists has become more visible. Activists from Detroit and Dearborn, Michigan, have been on a hunger strike for more than 10 days, calling for an end to the blockade. Their effort has the support of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who joined one of the striking activists, 26-year-old Iman Saleh, outside the White House for a press conference on Friday. It was Saleh’s 12th day without food. Between the letter from lawmakers and increased activity from anti-blockade activists, it looks like Biden will continue to face criticism on the issue. “Democrats are starting to get concerned and wanting to push the administration more,” Binder told me. “The honeymoon phase is coming to an end.” https://www.vox.com/2021/4/9/22375381/saudi-arabia-yemen-blockade-biden-letter
Opinion: I’m on hunger strike until the U.S. ends all support for the Saudi-led blockade against Yemen
By Iman Saleh
Iman Saleh is the general coordinator of the Yemeni Liberation Movement.
My name is Iman, and I am entering the 11th day of my hunger strike in Washington, D.C. I’m Yemeni American, and for years I have watched helplessly as a Saudi-led coalition — backed by the United States — has blocked food and basic necessities from reaching my family and my people as part of an illegal war, creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
At least 400,000 Yemeni children under 5 could die of starvation this year without urgent intervention, according to four United Nations agencies. The siege against Yemen not only has had a crippling effect on everyday life, but it is also compounding the ongoing conflict in the country, causing damage that exceeds even the violence itself in both scale and intensity.
During the past few days, I have marched and chanted and drummed my way through the streets of Washington. I have cried and laughed and sung with whatever voice I was able to muster. I have linked arms with other hunger strikers, with my sister, friends and strangers. I have strived to not only imagine a more just world, but also to demand one.
After days without food, I have lost much of my short-term memory. Day in and day out, I feel the physical burden of starvation that my people have endured for so long. But my pain cannot amount to that of Yemenis under siege.
I am starving, but I am not being starved. I am suffering, but I can choose to end that suffering.
To go on a hunger strike is to put my body, my very physical existence, in the line of fire. It is not nonviolent to go on a hunger strike. Starvation is an attack on the body, a last resort. As I write this, my body is breaking itself down to keep me alive.
The blockade on Yemen prevents fuel from entering the country. A key to survival in any war zone, fuel heats stoves, powers engines, lights buildings and allows for the foundation of an economy to be rebuilt, so that a nation may have some hope of feeding itself on a larger scale. Without fuel, hospitals are unable to run their generators. Food remains at ports, unable to be transported to towns and villages where starvation is rampant. Without fuel, Yemen will bleed dry until no blood remains.
In the past few weeks, the blockade has reached a critical stage, with food reserves totally depleted and thousands of children at grave risk of imminent starvation. Time has run out. We are no longer waiting for a human tragedy to unfold — it has unfolded: Yemenis are experiencing famine, displacement, poverty, a deadly outbreak of cholera, lack of medical aid, no access to education.
This urgent situation persuaded my friends and me in the Yemeni Liberation Movement to bring attention to our people’s plight. We are on strike with one demand: that the United States end all support to the Saudi blockade causing mass starvation in Yemen.
In February, President Biden announced that he would end “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” But neither Biden nor Congress has taken any concrete steps to end the support.
For the administration, this will require only the stroke of a pen and a series of commands issued to the U.S. military. We do not believe these actions would end the war in Yemen, but they would certainly be effective steps toward alleviating an unimaginable amount of suffering on the ground.
Our people are resilient. They have survived hardships most people will not experience in their time on this Earth. And yet, there is only so much our bodies are able to withstand, no matter our strength or our determination. For me, each passing day on hunger strike is a searing reminder of that reality.
Ending U.S. support for the blockade will single-handedly provide relief and restore hope for millions of Yemenis whose lives hang in the balance. We demand that the Biden administration act immediately.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/08/yemen-war-hunger-strike-biden-saudi-arabia/
South Asia surpasses grim milestone of 15 million COVID-19 cases: Reuters tally
By Anurag Maan, Roshan Abraham
Coronavirus infections in the South Asia sub-region surpassed the grim milestone of 15 million on Saturday, a Reuters tally shows, led by India’s record daily infections and vaccine shortages.India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, and Sri Lanka - accounts for 11% of global cases and almost 6% of deaths. The region accounts for 23% of the world’s population of 7.59 billion people. India, the country with the third-highest coronavirus total, accounts for over 84% of South Asia’s cases and deaths. The world’s second-most populous country reported 145,384 new cases on Saturday, the fastest climb in the world and the country’s fifth record this week, as well as 794 deaths. The government blames the current spike on crowding and a reluctance to wear masks. India is accounting for one in every six reported infections in its current surge. While ramping up its vaccination drive, inoculating about 4 million people a day, several states said they were rationing doses as the federal government was not refilling stocks in time. India’s western neighbour Pakistan, the second-hardest hit in the region, is in its third wave, recording more than 700,000 cases and 15,000 related deaths.It has seen a sharp rise in cases in the past 10 days. Officials say there are now more people in intensive care than at any other point during the pandemic. Bangladesh, India’s eastern neighbour, is reporting about 7,000 cases a day, totalling some 678,937 cases. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given Bangladesh 1.2 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. At least 94.1 million people had received their first COVID-19 vaccine dose in southern Asia by Friday, according to figures from Our World in Data. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-south-asia-cases/south-asia-surpasses-grim-milestone-of-15-million-covid-19-cases-reuters-tally-idUSKBN2BX08B
Another girl in Pakistan abducted,Raped,converted
The spate in incidents of alleged abduction of Hindu girls in Pakistan, their conversion and marriage, has led to the demand for a committee to decide whether the conversion took place by will or was forced.The latest case in the series is the alleged abduction and conversion of Aarti Devi of Larkana.
Meanwhile, the parliamentary committee to protect minorities from forced conversion has failed to form a law to protect minority community girls from involuntary conversion.Talking to the Times of India on Friday, Pakistan Muslim League (N), member National Assembly (MNA) Kheal Das Kohistani said the Hindu community in Pakistan is distraught at the series of kidnapping and forced conversions.
He said Aarti Devi was allegedly abducted by a man named Fawad, who converted her to Islam and renamed her Ayesha.
“The worst part is that in majority of cases, police remain a mute spectator and doesn’t do anything beyond arraigning the hapless girls in court.
In this case, even Aarti Devi’s family members were not allowed to meet her today,” he said.
In 2019, a parliamentary committee to protect minorities from forced conversions, headed by senator Anwarul Haq Kakar was constituted but so far, it has not been able to form any law to protect girls from the minority community.
PML(N) MNA Kheal Das said the committee was conducting meetings with all stakeholders across Pakistan and was in the process of finalising the Bill which would become law to give much-needed relief to minorities in Pakistan.
Condemning the incident, All Pakistan Hindu Panchayat, on its Facebook page, suggested formation of a committee comprising of retired judges, as well as known Hindu leaders to decide whether the conversion of minority girls was by force or by will.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/amritsar/another-girl-in-pak-abducted-converted/articleshow/81995063.cms
Pakistan linking trade and Kashmir issue shows leaders still don’t understand geo-economics
APARNA PANDE
For Pakistan, ideology has trumped the kind of pragmatism needed to move away from geopolitics to geo-economics in its external relations.
Pakistan officials have been saying lately that the country is eager to focus on geo-economics instead of geopolitics. Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa, while speaking at the inaugural Islamabad Security Dialogue in March 2021, spoke of the country’s “geo-economic potential”, the need for “economic security and cooperation”, and of Pakistan becoming the “connecting conduit” between South and Central Asia.
General Bajwa expressed the desire for Pakistan to be “a nation at peace” and South Asia “a region in harmony”. The speech, coming weeks after the ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, led many to hope that India and Pakistan may soon return to the negotiating table and might start trading with one another for mutual benefit.
But last week, a day after Federal Minister for Finance, Hammad Azhar announced the decision to import sugar and cotton from India, the Federal Cabinet reiterated the ‘no trade with India unless the Kashmir dispute is resolved’ mantra. Ideology and entrenched strategic thinking trumped the kind of pragmatism that is needed to move away from geopolitics to geo-economics in external relations.
Pakistan’s fraught economy
If the Pakistani establishment had truly been on the path to regional integration, as the army chief had stated, then the first step would have been to allow the import of products that Pakistan badly needs and are available from India at lower cost than elsewhere.
Prime Minister Imran Khan’s latest U-Turn on opening trade with India illustrates why Pakistan cannot fulfil its leaders’ stated goal of an economy-oriented foreign policy without moving away from the Islamist ideology that currently defines Pakistani nationalism.
Imran Khan’s Cabinet linked trade with India to the resolution of the Kashmir dispute on terms favorable to Pakistan, rejecting an earlier decision by the Cabinet’s Economic Coordination Committee to import sugar and cotton from India. Given that India has not given in to Pakistan’s demands on Kashmir after 72 years, multiple wars, and Pakistan-backed terrorism, linking the opening of trade to the Kashmir issue runs against the logic of geo-economics.
General Bajwa’s assertions did not conform to Pakistan’s traditional ideological paradigm. As author and diplomat, Husain Haqqani, wrote in his book Reimagining Pakistan, “Economic considerations have always been deemed secondary in Pakistan’s policy priorities, important only to the extent of finding resources for greater goals such as securing Kashmir, facing the ‘Indian threat’ or reviving Islam’s lost glory.”Pakistan’s leaders have tended to not understand economics. Unlike other American allies during the Cold War, Pakistan squandered billions of dollars in assistance from the United States in pursuit of a strategic advantage against India, instead of building its economic foundations. Japan, Germany, South Korea, and Taiwan — all these countries benefitted from American largesse, but they used it for building their economies, educating their populace, and investing in their societies. Pakistan used up American funding in building its conventional army. Instead of seeking American investment and technology, Pakistan shunned structural reforms and ended up becoming a rentier State, living off collecting aid to address American strategic concerns for seven decades before trying to do the same with China. There is a reason why, despite receiving 22 loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 1958, Pakistan has yet to implement structural reforms that would enable the country’s economy to move forward on its own steam. According to the IMF, global economic growth for 2021 will stand at 6 per cent, but Pakistan will only grow at 1.5 per cent. A country with a population of over 210 million, Pakistan’s annual bilateral trade with the world’s largest economy – the United States — stands at $6.6 billion, which is equivalent to American trade with Morocco, a country of 36 million people. Pakistan wants to compete with India, which has a population six times larger and an economy that is 20 times larger. India’s bilateral trade with the US, at $146 billion, is more than 20 times the volume of Pakistan’s trade with America. Moreover, Pakistan remains on the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global body that combats money-laundering and terrorist financing. And international arbitrators have repeatedly found that Pakistan does not fulfil its contractual obligations to foreign corporations. Bajwa’s motives General Bajwa may wish for “an economically interconnected South Asia”. But for now, South Asia is the least integrated of all regions around the world. Trade between ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries is 25 per cent of their global trade, but trade amongst South Asian countries is only around 5 per cent. Attempts at regional economic integration, namely a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) or South Asian Preferential Trading Agreement (SAPTA), have been held hostage by Pakistan’s insistence that the Kashmir dispute be resolved before any movement on the trade front. Even General Bajwa, while speaking of the need for “sub-continental rapprochement”, reiterated that it would need a resolution of the Kashmir dispute. Is the current army chief truly seeking to change Pakistan’s foreign policy or is he simply seeking breathing space to consolidate his position? If it’s the former, then General Bajwa would need to go against the army’s own institutional interests and whatever his personal beliefs or preferences, as the institution is more likely to prevail. As long as the Pakistani establishment does not allow an open discussion on why the country cannot get all of Kashmir, it would be unable to enter into a real discussion with India for a deal. That is why the Musharraf-Manmohan Singh era talks, which reportedly brought the two sides on the verge of a comprehensive settlement, failed to produce anything long lasting. Pervez Musharraf was strong as long as he remained both army chief and president. But he had to step down as army chief in 2007 to accommodate the demand for promotion from junior generals. His likely successor as the army chief at the time, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, covertly supported the Lawyers’ Movement against Musharraf to ensure that he could take over as army chief. General Bajwa is much weaker than Pervez Musharraf and is aware of this. He is, therefore, unlikely to prevail in undertaking major policy changes, let alone abandoning Pakistan’s national ideology based on Islam and anti-Indian rhetoric. His endeavours must be seen as a pursuit of breathing space and possibly another extension in the top job. https://theprint.in/opinion/pakistan-linking-trade-and-kashmir-issue-shows-leaders-still-dont-understand-geo-economics/636843/
China, Pakistan and Iran intensified their effort against Balochistan, We must unite Baloch nation: Hyrbyair Marri
China and Iran have signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement on 27 March 2021 that China will invest 400 billion dollars in Iran. Chinese state will get access to all sectors of the Iranian economy. China will get cheap oil which is looted by the Iranian state from Arabistan Al Ahwaz. They will get access to Balochistan’s ports and China will be able to even lease islands and strategic land to assert hegemony over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian Mullahs and Chinese are calling the agreement an extension of China’s strategic Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China has signed similar agreements with Pakistan, and they are trying to control Balochistan’s strategic Gwadar port and building a military base on the Jiwani peninsula.
On the other hand, India has pledged to invest a few billion dollars in Chabahar and few other projects. Chabahar is Baloch land, located in the coastal belt of Iranian occupied Balochistan (IOB). India is focusing on an area in IOB and thinking that it will protect their interests and through this Indian government thinks that they will influence the region. Because of the recent agreements between China and Iran, China will have enormous clout over the whole of Iran. Would India be able to protect its interest by investing merely in a port and a railway track when the Chinese will be economically controlling everything in Iran?
Our enemies regardless of being economically broke have always stood by their allies. The Iranian Mullahs and the Pakistani Punjabi Army are standing with their allies in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The irony is that the countries who are supposed to be our allies, despite being economic giants, their government lack long-term vision, commitment, and strategy to secure their national interest or to understand our mutual long-term interest.
Iranians and Pakistanis are occupiers of Balochistan, they have been committing ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Baloch nation since the early 20th century. A recent example of what the Iranians have been doing is the Saravan Massacre. On 22nd February, Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ forces opened fire on the Baloch fuel traders in the Shamsar area of Saravan and massacred 40 innocent Baloch. Every year thousands of people are murdered by Iranian forces in those territories colonised by Persians including Balochistan, southern Azerbaijan, Arabistan Al Ahwaz and Kurdistan.
From mid-December 2020 to early February 2021, twenty-one Baloch have been lynched by the Iranian state. In 2016, Iran’s Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, Shahindokht Molaverdi admitted in a TV interview that they executed all the adult males and not even a single male adult was spared in a village in Sar Jangal, Zahedan in Iranian occupied Balochistan.
According to Human rights groups, Iranian occupied Balochistan (IOB) holds 3.5 per cent of the population of Iran but accounts for 5.7 per cent of total executions. Baloch people face the highest rate of executions in Iran, and despite being one of the richest nations in mineral wealth they are systematically being kept as one of the poorest people in the world with the lowest literacy and life expectancy rates.
Iran has spent around one billion dollars in dividing the Baloch nation and Balochistan along the Goldsmid line, by building the longest wall in modern history. Balochistan Wall is 700 kilometres long which is 5 times longer than the infamous Berlin Wall. Pakistan on the other hand has been fencing the Goldsmid line to further its colonial designs. In addition, Iran and Pakistan have divided Balochistan internally within several administrative boundaries to reduce the size of Baloch territory and now both occupying states are trying to further divide Balochistan because their goal is to somehow get rid of the name ‘Balochistan’.
A few months ago, the Pakistani Punjabi establishment planned to cut off Gwadar city from the rest of Balochistan by fencing it, but they backtracked when the Baloch people resisted these plans. To my knowledge, Pakistan has plans to fence the entire coastal belt of Balochistan in three phases. First, they want to fence Gwadar city and then they will extend the plan to the entire district of Gwadar. In the third and the last phase, Pakistan intends to build a fence and cut off the entire coastal belt from the rest of Balochistan. Calling Gwadar, the capital of the newly coined word ‘South Balochistan’ is another ploy to divide Balochistan and implement China’s grand plan in the region.
We as a nation have never accepted the division of Balochistan along Goldsmid and Durand Lines. We will never accept the division of Balochistan by Iran and Pakistan. We will not allow Balochistan to be divided like East and West Germany or North and South Korea. There is no North, South, East or West Balochistan, Balochistan is one land, and it is one country. Pakistan, China and Iran have intensified their efforts against the Baloch nation, it is our duty to unite the Baloch nation for once we are united no power in the world can divide us.
https://balochwarna.com/2021/04/06/china-pakistan-and-iran-intensified-their-effort-against-balochistan-we-must-unite-baloch-nation-hyrbyair-marri/
‘My Good Fight’: Being a Woman in Afghanistan’s Politics
By Bansari Kamdar
Hosna Jalil on fighting harassment, discrimination, and death threats as one of Afghanistan’s highest-ranking female officials. Politics in Afghanistan has always been fraught, especially for women. Afghanistan ranks last at 156th on the 2021 Global Gender Gap report. Earlier this year, Hosna Jalil, one of the highest-ranking women ever to serve in the Interior Ministry, quit her position to join the Ministry of Women’s Affairs as a deputy minister. “I was kicked out because I was a loud voice,” says the 29-year-old Jalil in a conversation online. “I was not their yes lady anymore; I wasn’t there to make anyone happy… I took my fight, I picked my good fight and fought it till the end.” It was not easy. The minister she worked under questioned her work ethic since his first week in the office. Jalil says she was undermined based on her gender, youth, and ethnicity. One minister accused her of getting salary from donor agencies and tried replacing her because she was not from a particular ethnicity. As the deputy minister of policy and strategy at the Interior Ministry, her job included police reform and improving women’s participation in the police force and empowering them. She worked on institutional development and the provision of on-time and quality services to the Afghan National Police. Jalil’s work and visibility as a woman in a senior security position also made her a target for harassment by her peers. During her time at the Interior Ministry, she received emails from lower-level employees calling her a “prostitute.” Verbal harassment included accusations of her “exchanging sexual favors to get the position.” “The only thing that makes me happy about this is that it makes me believe that professionally they could not attack me, so they attack me personally,” says Jalil. A study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union found that psychological violence, including sexist remarks, has affected 81.8 percent of female parliamentarians globally. One in four were subjected to physical violence. While Jalil was fortunate to start in a position of authority that has prevented any physical and sexual violence, she worries that such violence and harassment is not uncommon for Afghan women in public office, based on her experience listening to the women in the police force. She decries rampant discrimination in the public sector from access to resources to dictating one’s authority as a woman. “When they can’t take away your authority, they take your responsibility, and you end up being a symbolic person,” she says. “Sometimes it is difficult to keep my motivation up every morning. Working long hours, being ignored, being harassed, and receiving statements which could attack someone’s personality, could attack someone’s ethics, usually by someone who feels entitled to their position.” Now as the deputy minister of policy and plan in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, she intends to challenge these norms. Jalil believes that the ministry is not as strong as it should have become in the last 19 years. In her new role, she plans to strengthen women’s role in peace and security, ensure women equal access to services and resources, and empower and integrate women across all sectors. Another major impediment is increased violence on the streets. Despite pledges by the Taliban to reduce violence as part of the peace process, there has been a surge of assassinations across the county. Activists, journalists, doctors, judges, and professionals are increasingly being targeted and killed – even more so if they are women. In late March, three female health workers, part of the Afghan government’s polio vaccine campaign, were shot dead. Earlier that same month, three female journalists were murdered in Jalalabad. Jalil too has received death threats from the Taliban; they have become a routine for the young minister and her female colleagues. “I deeply believe that the date that I am supposed to die is my fate. I am not careless, but I don’t want to give up based on threats,” she says. “Our women have become resilient. It is normal now because around the peace talks and as we get closer to the peace process, it makes us more vulnerable. When we are not willing to compromise, pressure rises. One of the pressures is attacks.” While peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban continue and the United States administration contemplates a hasty exit in May, the question over the fate of Afghan women’s rights remains unresolved. “The Afghan government has put the women’s rights and children’s rights as a red line for the negotiation, but I still believe that women’s rights, children’s rights, youth rights are in the basket that is very much vulnerable to negotiations,” says Jalil. “It is one of those baskets that can be dropped easily.” She adds that not only is the peace process fast paced but there have been numerous “U-turns” by various stakeholders that make it difficult to predict anything. Jalil raises concerns about the lack of clarity from the Taliban’s side in the ongoing negotiations. “I am a Muslim and I love to live under the Islamic scriptures, but [at the] end of the day my definition of Islam and the Taliban’s definition of Islam is very different,” she says. “We have the same frame [Islamic values] but the picture inside is missing. The structure they want for women is missing.” Quoting a scripture from the Quran, Jalil highlights that while education is mandatory for women and men in the holy book, women had little access to education under Taliban rule. The Taliban regime that was in power from 1996 to 2001 was notorious for denying women access to education and employment, restricting their freedom of movement, and subjecting them to public violence like lashing and execution by stoning. Following the Taliban’s ouster, Afghan women have made many strides toward equality and reversing the damage of nearly 40 years of war. Aided by quotas, the Afghan National Assembly has the same percentage of women legislators as the U.S. Congress; 40 percent of all schoolchildren in Afghanistan are girls; and gender equality is enshrined in the Afghan constitution. Nonetheless, the fear of losing women’s fragile gains remains. The Taliban claims that its views on female education have evolved since the 1990s but there is a “gap between official Taliban statements on rights and the restrictive positions adopted by Taliban officials on the ground,” according to Human Rights Watch. Representation is another key issue. While women in Afghanistan are often disproportionately impacted by decades of war, they remain largely absent in the peace talks. Only four of the originally appointed 21-member negotiating team from the Afghan government are women. Their numbers are dwindling with each round of talks, from four at the Doha talks to just one Afghan woman negotiator at the latest Moscow talks. The Taliban, who control around 30 percent of Afghanistan’s territory, have no female representative at the peace talks. Hosna Jalil just turned 29 on March 27. In closing, the young female minister says she is unafraid about what comes next. She thanks the challenges that she has undergone – from daily threats to her life and harassment at work to sickness and a close bout with ITP (idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura) – for making her stronger. “These fancy-mancy suited Western-educated, U.S.-educated men, I don’t find the difference between them and the warlords. I want them to understand that if they do something wrong, there is someone who is going to speak about it, she is not going to let it be buried,” says Jalil. “This is my responsibility to the next generation. I have to go through this so my next generation will not have to go through all of these issues. There has to be an end.”
https://thediplomat.com/2021/04/my-good-fight-being-a-woman-in-afghanistans-politics/
Vaccine from India, weapons for Pakistan — what Lavrov discussed in New Delhi, Islamabad
TASS collected main points discussed during the trip of the Russian top diplomat to South Asia.Russia is ready to scale up cooperation with India and Pakistan in fighting the pandemic and in the military-technical sphere, as well as welcomes their recent steps on improving a dialogue. These issues were discussed during talks of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with his colleagues during his "Asian tour" which started on Monday. TASS collected main points discussed during the trip of the Russian top diplomat to South Asia. Vaccine Russia has already agreed to produce the Sputnik V vaccine in India and doesn’t exclude production of Indian preparations on its territory. Moscow thinks that the vaccine production is also promising in Pakistan which so far has received only 50,000 doses of the Russian preparation and will soon receive 150,000 more. The Russian Foreign Minister admitted that the country’s needs are "much greater" yet "everything still depends on the ability to produce this vaccine." His Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi reiterated that Islamabad had already approved the use of Sputnik V (registration in India is expected within the next few days) and local authorities have confidence in its efficacy. Weapons The Russian top diplomat has also discussed joint arms production with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, reiterating that Russia is the only country "that actually provides India with cutting-edge defense technologies" yet respects India’s right to diversify its ties in this sphere. At the same time, Moscow does not feel "any hesitation" on the part of New Delhi over Washington’s pressure, since the US expresses serious discontent with the Russian-Indian military and technical cooperation. Russia is not ready yet to manufacture arms in Pakistan but will supply the republic with military equipment in order to "strengthen its anti-terrorist potential" and will participate in regular joint drills, such as "Druzhba" (Friendship) and the "Arabian Monsoon." Afghanistan Russia thinks that the best way to discuss settlement in Afghanistan is the so-called Moscow format including "not just immediate neighbors" of the republic. Moscow is ready to put together such a conference to accelerate progress along the intra-Afghan negotiation track which "has run into serious problems and has stalled recently," Lavrov stated. Moscow hopes that accords concluded between the United States and the Taliban group (outlawed in Russia) will be honored yet together with Pakistan is alarmed by increased activity of terrorist groups in northern and eastern Afghanistan. Conflicts in Asia Moscow welcomes recent steps by Pakistan and India on normalizing bilateral relations and hopes that New Delhi will manage to find ways of settling its border standoff with Beijing, the Russian chief diplomat said. In general, Moscow is ready to "facilitate in every possible way" a peaceful resolution of conflicts in South Asia. The Russian Foreign Minister reiterated Moscow’s stance regarding US actions in Asia: Russia is strongly against "dividing geopolitical frameworks" being built under Washington’s auspices and expressly supports "open frameworks" formed with the central role of ASEAN.
https://tass.com/politics/1275211
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