Maldives new leader vows to expel Indian troops

AFP Published November 18, 2023 

MALE: President Mohamed Muizzu of the Maldives vowed on Friday to expel Indian troops deployed in the strategically located archipelago, in his first speech to the nation after being sworn into power.

Muizzu, 45, did not name India — but promised he would deliver on his election promises, key among them a pledge to evict some 50 to 75 Indian security personnel.

“The country will not have any foreign military personnel in the Maldives,” Muizzu said after being sworn in before chief justice Ahmed Adnan at a televised, open-air ceremony.

“When it comes to our security, I will draw a red line. The Maldives will respect the red lines of other countries too.” Earlier this week, Muizzu said that his intention was not to upend the regional balance by replacing the Indian military with Chinese troops.

Muizzu, a former mayor of the capital Male and a construction minister for seven years, had previously promised to cultivate “strong ties” with China, a key financial backer of his nation.

The country’s eighth president since independence from Britain in 1965, Muizzu was elected in September as a proxy for a pro-China predecessor who is jailed on corruption charges.

High-level representatives from both China and India were in attendance, as well as from Bangla­desh, the Seychelles and Sri Lanka.

Primarily known as one of the most expensive holiday destinations in South Asia, with pristine white beaches and secluded resorts, the Maldives has also become a geopolitical hotspot.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2023

WOWZERS
ChatGPT maker OpenAI ousts Sam Altman as CEO

Reuters Published November 18, 2023

Sam Altman, CEO of Microsoft-backed OpenAI and ChatGPT creator speaks during a talk at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel June 5, 2023. 

— Reuters

The board of the company behind ChatGPT on Friday fired OpenAI CEO Sam Altman —to many, the human face of generative AI— sending shock waves across the tech industry.

OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati will serve as interim CEO, the company said, adding that it will conduct a formal search for a permanent CEO.

“Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” OpenAI said in a blog without elaborating.

Greg Brockman, OpenAI president and co-founder, who stepped down from the board as chairman as part of the management shuffle, quit the company, he announced on messaging platform X late on Friday.


“Based on today’s news, I quit,” he wrote.



The departures blindsided many employees who discovered the abrupt management change from an internal message and the company’s public-facing blog. It came as a surprise to Altman and Brockman as well, who learned the board’s decision within minutes of the announcement, Brockman said.

“We too are still trying to figure out exactly what happened,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter, adding, “We will be fine. Greater things coming soon.”



The now four-person board consists of three independent directors holding no equity in OpenAI and its Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever. The organisation did not immediately answer a request for comment on Brockman’s claims.

Backed by billions of dollars from Microsoft, which does not have a board seat in the non-profit governing the startup, OpenAI kicked off the generative AI craze last November by releasing ChatGPT. The chatbot became one of the world’s fastest-growing software applications.

Trained on reams of data, generative AI can create human-like content, helping users spin up term papers, complete science homework and even write entire novels. After ChatGPT’s launch, regulators scrambled to catch up: the European Union revised its AI Act and the U.S. kicked off AI regulation efforts.

Altman, who ran Y Combinator, is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He was the face of OpenAI and the wildly popular generative AI technology as he toured the world this year.

Altman posted on X shortly after OpenAI published its blog: “I loved my time at OpenAI. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all I loved working with such talented people. Will have more to say about what’s next later.”



Altman did not respond to requests for comment.

Murati, who has worked for Tesla, joined OpenAI in 2018 and later became chief technology officer. She oversaw product launches including that of ChatGPT.

At an emergency all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon after the announcement, Murati sought to calm employees and said OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft is stable and its backer’s executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, continue to express confidence in the startup, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The Information previously reported details of the meeting. “Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers,” a spokesperson for the software maker told Reuters on Friday.

In a statement published on Microsoft’s website, Nadella said: “We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI… Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world.”
Earthquake

The shakeup is not the first at OpenAI, launched in 2015. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk once was its co-chair, and in 2020 other executives departed, going on to found competitor Anthropic, which has claimed it has a greater focus on AI safety.

Well-wishers and critics piled onto digital forums as news of the latest shuffle spread.

On X, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Altman “a hero of mine,” adding, “He built a company from nothing to $90 billion in value, and changed our collective world forever. I can’t wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work — it’s going to be simply incredible.”



“This is a shocker and Altman was a key ingredient in the recipe for success of OpenAI,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. “That said, we believe Microsoft and Nadella will exert more control at OpenAI going forward with Altman gone.”

The full impact of the OpenAI surprise will unfold over time, but its fundraising prospects were an immediate concern. Altman was considered a master fundraiser who managed to negotiate billions of dollars in investment from Microsoft as well as having led the company’s tender offer transactions this year that fueled OpenAI’s valuation from $29bn to over $80bn.

“In the short term it will impair OpenAI’s ability to raise more capital. In the intermediate term it will be a non-issue,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at hedge fund Great Hill Capital.

Other analysts said Altman’s departure, while disruptive, would not derail generative AI’s popularity or OpenAI or Microsoft’s competitive advantage.

“The innovation created by OpenAI is bigger than any one or two people, and there is no reason to think this would cause OpenAI to cede its leadership position,” said D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria.

“If nothing else, Microsoft’s stake and significant interest in OpenAI’s progress ensure the appropriate leadership changes are being implemented.”

As late as Thursday evening, Altman showed no signs of concern at two public events. He joined colleagues in a panel on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in San Francisco, describing his commitment and vision for AI.

Later he spoke at a Burning Man-related event in Oakland, California, engaging in an hour-long conversation on the topic of art and AI. Altman seemed relaxed and gave no indication anything was wrong, but left right after his talk was over at 7:30 pm.

The event organiser said at the event that Altman had another meeting to attend.

UPDATED

‘Delicate and risky operation’: India tunnel rescue ongoing one week after collapse

Reuters Published November 18, 2023

Rescuers trying to reach workers trapped for nearly a week in a collapsed highway tunnel in the Indian Himalayas are working to replace the main digging machine on Saturday to restart operations after they hit a snag.

The disaster management office revised the number of people trapped since Sunday morning in the tunnel in Uttarakhand state to 41, up from 40. All are safe, the authorities have said.

The augur machine drilling through the debris broke on Friday.

A new machine flown in from the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, has reached the site, Anshu Malik Halko, director at state-run National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDC) told Reuters.

“We will first bring out the defunct machine from inside and then deploy the new one. This will take time and I cannot comment on the timeline. It’s a delicate and risky operation,” Halko said.

Members of rescue teams stand at the entrance of a tunnel where road workers are trapped after a portion of the tunnel collapsed in Uttarkashi in the northern state of Uttarakhand, India, November 17, 2023.—Reuters/Shankar Prasad Nautiyal

Authorities have not said what caused the 4.5-km tunnel to cave in, but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods.

Fifty to sixty workers were on the overnight shift at the time of the collapse, and those near the exit got out of the tunnel on the national highway that is part of the Char Dham Hindu pilgrimage route.

Work was suspended on Friday after a “large-scale cracking sound” was heard as rescue workers sought to restart the drilling machine, according to a report from NHIDC.

Close to 100 tunnel workers gathered at the site on Saturday, demanding faster progress in reaching and freeing those trapped.

Vishnu Sahu, a labourer who was leading the protest, said the rescue team is keeping workers in the dark about the pace of progress of the rescue.

“We want the top people of the company to come here,” Sahu said.

Palestinians barred from Al-Aqsa pray on the street
Agencies Published November 18, 2023 

JERUSALEM: Israeli policemen check the identity papers of a Palestinian on his way to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound for Friday prayers. Israel has barred Palestinians under 50 years of age from praying at Al-Aqsa.

JENIN: For the sixth consecutive week, Israeli authorities imposed tight restrictions on Palestinians, banning them from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem for Friday prayers, leaving the mosque all but empty, Anadolu Agency reported.

An official said that only around 4,000 Palestinians, most of them elderly, had managed to reach the venerated mosque to perform Friday prayers due to the strict Israeli control of the streets.

Israeli forces have been heavily deployed across occupied East Jerusalem, particularly in the Old City and the entrances leading to the mosque.

Hundreds of Palestinians were forced to perform Friday prayers in the streets near the Old City area after being barred from entering the mosque itself.

10 killed in West Bank fighting; Blinken warns Tel Aviv to stop settler violence

The Israeli side gave no reasons for restricting Muslims’ access to Al-Aqsa for prayers.

Violence in the West Bank

The Israeli army has killed over half dozen people in the West Bank in the past couple of days, amid a dramatic rise in the number of violent incidents in the Palestinian territory.

Israeli forces carried out an operation overnight Thursday-Friday in a refugee camp in Jenin, claiming to have killed five people.

The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said three people had been killed in the Jenin raid and 15 wounded, four of them critically.

In the south, the ministry also said two people were killed “by Israeli army bullets” at the entrance to the flashpoint city of Hebron.

A day earlier, three Palestinians were killed at a checkpoint on a road between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Bethlehem, while an Israeli soldier was killed and others wounded in a shootout.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank say they have faced increased harassment from Israeli settlers since the war began.

Warning on settler violence

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday called on Israel to take “urgent” action to stop settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Blinken, in San Francisco for an Asia-Pacific summit, made the plea in a telephone call with Benny Gantz, an opposition leader who joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wartime cabinet.

Blinken “stressed the urgent need for affirmative steps to de-escalate tensions in the West Bank, including by confronting rising levels of settler extremist violence,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

On the war front, Blinken with Gantz “discussed efforts to augment and accelerate the transit of critical humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” Miller said.

“We have seen far too many Palestinian civilians killed and we have been urging Israel all along to do everything possible to minimize civilian casualties,” Blinken told NBC News on Thursday.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2023

PAKISTAN
Sheema Kermani ‘ejected’ from UK mission for pro-Palestine slogan

Shazia Hasan


KARACHI: Classical dancer, social activist and founder of the cultural action group Tehrik-i-Niswan Sheema Kermani was on Friday “ejected” from a programme held at the British Deputy High Commission here after she raised a slogan in favour of the people of Gaza.

Ms Kermani said that the event was held to celebrate the birthday of King Charles III on Friday and guests also included other artists, politicians, parliamentarians, bureaucrats and other officials.

She told Dawn when they were making speeches and sending felicitations to Britain she raised the slogan “Ceasefire Now”.

This prompted security personnel to come closer to her and try to force her out of their premises. “That’s when I asked them to not touch me as I would see myself out,” Ms Kermani said after the regrettable incident.

“They were all congratulating the British Government and the royal family without any mention of the atrocities taking place in Gaza. I just had to do what I did. I couldn’t stay silent. Sadly, when the other guests saw me being thrown out and my leaving, none of them, not even one of them, decided to also take a stand and join me,” she added.

When contacted, a spokesperson for the British Deputy High Commission said that Ms Kermani was shouting during “an important speech about climate change in Pakistan by the British Deputy High Commissioner”.

The spokesperson added that it was then that the “security personnel came forth to stop her from shouting. But then she left on her own. So it won’t be correct to say that we threw her out”.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2023

Talking to children about Gaza

Bina Shah 

HOW do we talk to our children about what’s happening in Gaza? It’s a quandary that most parents in Pakistan are confronting as the conflict continues, one month and approximately 11,000 casualties later. Horrific images bombard us day and night, on television and through social media.

Children are not unaffected; they listen to their parents’ conversations about the conflict, they discuss it in their classrooms with their teachers, trying to make sense of it all.

The news outlet NPR has suggested some guidelines for these difficult conversations, although they leave out assigning blame for the Israeli response to the Hamas attacks of Oct 7.

It does detail the impact of the war on civilians on both sides, though, and notes that half of Gaza’s residents are children under 18 years of age. This is bound to make our children feel worried, not just for the safety of the Gazans, but for themselves.

The shooting of Malala Yousafzai, the actions of courageous Aitzaz Hasan, and the APS school attack in which so many children and teachers were killed, have all traumatised our children and made them fearful; the tragedy of Palestine today makes our children’s scars sting all over again. How we talk to them about Gaza today can go a long way towards alleviating their fears.

Parents should be proactive about encouraging conversations with their children about what’s going on in Gaza. Encouraging them to ask questions rather than expounding on your own political views is more helpful to them. Children should be taught to be cautious about everything they’re seeing on the internet, and be told to avoid spreading disinformation.

They should be spared repetitive viewings of violence on television or social media, although this is unfortunately difficult to avoid. This can be a good time for you and your child to learn about the history of the area together, too. Most importantly, children should be left with a feeling of hope, and the idea that peace and reconciliation is always possible even in the direst situations.

The tragedy of Palestine today makes our children’s scars sting all over again.

This month, the Pakistan Learning Festival took place in Karachi at the Arts Council. The Pakistan Learning Festival, formerly known as the Children’s Literature Festival, is one of the most successful literacy and learning festivals in the country.

For the last 12 years, it’s been going all over Pakistan, educating and encouraging children through storytelling, interactive sessions, direct participation in educational activities, and having a whole lot of fun. Rumana Husain, a well-known artist and co-founder of the festival, thought it was a fantastic opportunity to speak to the children about the Gaza conflict.

She put out a call on Facebook to ask if anyone had access to children’s stories about Palestine, and named a few books that she’d researched and found suitable. These books were not available in Pakistan at all, so I decided to help by writing to the publishers and asking if they would be able to send us a copy for the PLF. I told Rumana that I’d help her with the session as well if she wanted, and we agreed to hold a joint storytelling session in English and Urdu.

One publisher responded: Michel Moushabek, of Interlink Books in Massachusetts. The book Sitti’s Bird: A Gaza Story is a beautifully illustrated children’s book by the Palestinian artist and illustrator Malak Mattar. Sitti’s Bird is Malak’s own story of her childhood growing up in Gaza and longing to be an artist. She wrote it at the time of the second intifada, when Israel bombed Gaza and she and her family could not leave their home for 50 days. Michel generously sent us a PDF of the book and granted us permission to use it for our storytelling session.

Rumana Husain made a PowerPoint presentation out of the PDF, and she added a map of Israel and Palestine so that we could talk about the geography of the countries to the children.

On the day of the first session, Rumana made an announcement: “We have to be very careful that we don’t hate anyone because of their religion or their nationality, whether they be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or any other background. After all, Jews are People of the Book as well, and there are many Jewish people who are against the bombing of innocent civilians in Gaza.”

The children listened eagerly to our story; we read each page, first in the original English followed by Rumana’s explanation/translation in Urdu. I did my best to read the story dramatically, and the children were rapt as they heard of bombs falling, schools closing, little Malak’s fear, and her loving relationship with her ‘Sitti’, which means grandmother in Palestinian and Egyptian Arabic.

On the second day, we read the story again, to a different, smaller audience. As I looked out at the children in their seats, a group of secondary school girls held up homemade posters that read ‘Safe Palestine — Free Palestine’ with pictures of the destruction of various places in Gaza.

We announced that after the end of our story, they could come onto the stage and take a photograph with us. When they came up to the stage I saw they had put stickers of Muslim nations on their foreheads — Pakistan, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar — and taped over their mouths.

They stood beside us in a two-minute silent protest, as one girl held up a poster with the name of the school they represented, as students and girl guides, in a low-income area of Malir.

I thought about Rumana’s message of interfaith harmony and how radical it was for a Pakistani festival. And I thought about the political awareness and agency being demonstrated by this group of teenaged girls. I thought about how Malak’s dream of reaching different countries through her art had come true this week. If there’s hope for Pakistan, I realised, it’s right here.

The writer is an author.
X:@binashah

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2023

War of narratives: Why we must all speak up for Gaza

What has emerged is an unspoken rivalry between independent voices on the ground and global media giants — the judges of whom are the people.

Noor Usman Rafi 

Published November 17, 2023

In 2007, Palestinian poet and author Mahmoud Darwish wrote, “The Palestinians are the only nation in the world that feels with certainty that today is better than what the days ahead will hold.” Today, 75 years after the Nakba, the poignancy of his words cut deeper; echoing the unceasing suffering of the Palestinians.

Following the Hamas attack on Israel last month, the region witnessed yet another violent chapter, with thousands of innocent civilians killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.

“We are fighting human animals,” said an unapologetic Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on October 9, after Israel imposed a total blockade of the Gaza strip, cutting off electricity, and blocking the entry of food, fuel, and water. Subsequently, Israeli airstrikes bombed the besieged land, reducing entire neighbourhoods to rubble. These tides of brutality disregarded the difference between militants and civilians, exposing the invasion for what it really is — a blatant breach of international and humanitarian law, and a mockery of Israeli claims that their operation is against Hamas.

Today, the death toll in Gaza has risen over 11,500, nearly a third of whom are children, while an estimated 2,700 people remain missing.
The Palestinian counter-narrative

Even as Israel launched its offensive, another front opened up against the Palestinians — the mainstream Western media. Media outlets such as BBC, CNN, and Fox News acted as unofficial spokespersons for Israel.

Every Palestinian guest appearing on these channels was prompted to “condemn Hamas”, while pro-Israeli guests were rarely asked to condemn the brutality of Israel’s response. Claims of Israeli war crimes from Palestinian sources were consistently met with scepticism and demands for evidence, while Israeli claims were taken as the gospel truth and given extensive coverage.

This muffling of pro-Palestinian voices stirred a huge reaction from social media. What emerged was an unsaid rivalry between independent voices on the ground and global media giants — the judges of whom are the people. Public opinion on social media challenged the Israeli narrative as loud as the mainstream media carried it.

Social media became a vital source of information that showed the unfiltered ground reality. Merely hours into the conflict, social media platforms were flooded with content from both Palestine and Israel.

Over time, this became all the more important as journalists reporting from the Gaza strip were killed in numbers never seen before. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), between October 7 and November 16, at least 42 journalists have been killed in the violence. Among the victims are 37 Palestinian journalists, four Israeli, and one Lebanese. Another nine journalists have been reportedly injured, three are missing and 13 have been arrested.

In spite of this, the world saw images that mainstream media downplayed or simply ignored — gut-wrenching videos of injured children in crowded hospitals, vacant gazes and uncontrollable trembles from trauma; pictures of infants with fragile bodies, bombed, drenched in blood, lying limp in the arms of wailing parents, cradling them as if they were alive; rows upon rows of lifeless bodies, once vibrant and breathing, now reduced to mere statistics.

These devastating visuals, combined with the rejection of a ceasefire by Western powers, added to the social media uprising for Palestine.

“It is heartless to not speak up. While some may understandably feel reluctant or overwhelmed by the distressing content, this is an issue that transcends individual discomfort,” says Irum Amir, 50, from Lahore.
Censorship and consequences

And so, with the rise of the ‘conflict’ rose the global conversation about Western media bias, complicity and double standards.

On one hand, there was an inflow of provocative content from pro-Israeli accounts, marked by a celebratory, mocking tone directed at the Palestinian plight, while on the other, pro-Palestinian accounts encountered perplexing and excessive content moderation — also known as ‘shadow banning’.

Posts and comments containing words like “genocide”, “Free Palestine”, and “Gaza” were subject to flagging and removal. Even factual records of the violence were met with bans.

One of the most prominent voices, Motaz Azaiza, a Palestinian journalist who shares extensive live coverage and content from Gaza has garnered 14.5 million followers on Instagram and 494,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter). Amidst the vicious assaults, his account on X was temporarily suspended.

Eye on Palestine, an Instagram account with over 8m followers, delivered first-hand reports of the attacks and the aftermath on civilians. This page also faced a temporary ban, and these acts of censorship were met with strong backlash from online users.

Rasha Abdul-Rahim, Director of Amnesty International Tech stated on October 27, “As Israel intensifies its unprecedented bombardment of Gaza that has killed over 7,000 people, most of whom are civilians, we are extremely concerned by reports of partial blocking and removal, known as ‘shadowbanning’, of content from advocates of Palestinian rights.”

Gaza 2.0 — The world’s first digital genocide

Nonetheless, this act of censorship served as a catalyst for social media users. Those in support of Palestine posted even more fervently, with a fierce conviction as the plight of Palestinians that was already disturbingly unaccounted for was now also being deliberately suppressed.

“Their statements alone stir our emotions, as they refer to Palestinians as ‘children of darkness’ and accuse everyone in Palestine of being a terrorist. They’re blatantly killing journalists, silencing voices on social media,” says Maryam Goheir, 33. “They’ve silenced the Western media but our silence cannot be bought.”
Palestinian dehumanisation and the price of speaking up

For people, especially in Western countries, showing solidarity with Gaza or taking a pro-Palestine stance comes with numerous obstacles, including the risk of losing their jobs.

Over the past weeks, Palestine Legal, an organisation that specifically works to protect the civil and constitutional rights of those based in the US, documented 260 instances of individuals losing their jobs, students and professors facing disciplinary measures, and even award-winning novelists having their events cancelled as a result of expressing their support for Palestine.

The restriction on freedom of speech fuelled a fresh surge of anger and disappointment among people who now find themselves unable to voice their opinions.

A*, who works for a social media platform in the UK and asked not to be named for fear of repercussions, described how he had to hold back even if he felt strongly about the issue. “This constitutes a humanitarian crisis, a genocide. While I’ve been vocal on social media and have participated in protests, the question remains: can I discuss it openly in my professional environment? Probably not.”

He also stressed the dehumanisation of Palestinians. “There seems to be a diminished level of sympathy for Palestinians. There is a prevailing narrative that categorises Arabs and Muslims as inferior. There is a lack of empathy and a general perception that Palestinian lives do not have equal worth.”

The Arab Centre Washington DC reported an unprecedented scale of disinformation and hate speech against Palestinians since October 7, including calls to “flatten Gaza” and to “kill all Palestinians”. As the conflict has intensified, so has hate speech.

Two days into the conflict, a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy became the target of a hate crime and was stabbed 26 times by his American landlord. It is this anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab prejudice that justifies the genocide of Palestinians. The Western psyche, tainted by racism, poses a grave threat to Muslim communities at large. When media and political figures cast Muslims as a “security threat”, these sentiments reverberate through the broader populace, fuelling a hostile breeding ground for Islamophobia.

Moreover, any critique of Israel is often quick to be characterised as an act of anti-Semitism. This tactic effectively mutes many individuals, discouraging them from adopting a clear stance on the genocide.

The internet blackout and a glimmer of hope ahead

Since the start of the invasion, Israel has imposed several communication and internet blackouts in Gaza in attempts to silence key voices in the region while bombing civilian sites including refugee camps, and hospitals.

These internet blackouts also mark a crucial juncture in the ongoing conflict, where it falls upon us, the spectators, to find our voices and vehemently speak for justice.

Then there are the outright lies and attempts at deception, perpetuated by accounts linked to the Israeli government ranging from the fake news about the beheading of babies to a staged video of a Palestinian nurse condemning Hamas and claims of finding evidence of Hamas command and control centres established in tunnels beneath medical facilities. While these stories have been propagated by many Western media outlets as hard facts, they have been subsequently debunked by individuals on social media, who have painstakingly gone through the evidence and ripped apart Israel’s claims, exposing its blatant lies.

“Not speaking up is like siding with the oppressor. Some people who like to talk about moral and social issues, choose to not advocate for the Palestinian cause, perceiving it as an exclusively Muslim issue. It is our responsibility to take a stand in this regard.” says Irtiza Hassan.

Simultaneously, there is a prevailing sentiment among some individuals that the situation is unlikely to improve, given the actions of the policymakers. “Everything is being done by the governments involved, and I don’t think people speaking up will change their policies,” says Dr Amir Manzur.

Yet, a beacon of hope emerged from the amplification of our collective voices. Social media activists initiated the #ESIMSForGaza movement, facilitating the distribution of thousands of ESIMs and mobile data plans to Gaza through a network of individuals. This movement highlighted a notable shift in public opinion, showing how people worldwide united in collective action to oppose state tyranny.

In the past weeks, millions of people of all religions, races, and countries have come out on the streets, marching in solidarity, expressing their anger, and demnding that Israel and the US be held accountable for the attack on Palestine. In the largest pro-Palestine march in US history, protestors chanted: “Netanyahu, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide! Biden, Biden, you can’t hide; we charge you with genocide,” outside the White House.

As the global uproar intensifies, US officials fear that it won’t be long “before support erodes” and uproar against civilian casualties reaches a tipping point.

Through our will and determination, we must continue to speak up and compel the world to address the pain and trauma that defines Gaza at this very moment. If your voice can serve as a vessel of acknowledgement for Palestinian suffering, let the words come out loud and clear. It is time to say “enough”.

Header illustration: Areesha Rehan

Noor Usman Rafi is a writer with a focus on social and political issues. She is a Journalism graduate, holding degrees from IBA and NUST.

Climate action

Aisha Khan 

EIGHT years after the Paris Agreement, the global community is nowhere near reducing emissions to keep temperature increase within the safe threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030. According to a study led by James Hansen, who is Nasa’s top scientist, “The 1.5ºC limit is deader than a doornail. The 2ºC limit will also be dead unless we take purposeful actions to reduce the Earth’s energy imbalance.”

In the backdrop of this apocalyptic scenario and no breakthrough in climate negotiations, the International Court of Justice has commenced advisory proceedings which include written submissions and oral hearings to give guidance on the obligation of states in respect of climate change, with a view to handing down an advisory opinion in late 2024 or early 2025. The UNGA initiated a formal request after adopting a resolution by consensus, supporting the government of Vanuatu’s request for an advisory opinion from the ICJ regarding state obligations on climate change. This offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of climate action with a pivotal shift in interpreting climate justice.

For countries that risk disappearing from the face of the earth and others that face life-threatening challenges, the ICJ’s upcoming advisory opinion can help in holding big emitters legally accountable under international law. The advisory opinion may also bolster climate litigation and court cases in jurisdictions across the globe — now seeking to hold governments accountable for climate acts and omissions that cause harm or injury to the most vulnerable of present and future generations. This offers a breakthrough opportunity for changing the course of climate action. The deadline for state contributions of the first round of written submissions to the ICJ has been extended until Jan 22, 2024. For countries in the forefront of the crisis, this opens the door for broader engagement in the climate justice discourse to strengthen arguments and place legal perspectives before the court.

Much will depend on how countries present their cases with strong evidence and progressive views on human rights and environmental and climate international law to help the justices of ICJ to underline what those most responsible for the climate crisis must now do to prevent significant harm to vulnerable nations.

ICJ’s advisory opinion can help hold big emitters legally accountable.

This is also an opportunity to place loss and damage at the forefront of future climate negotiations and make the global community realise that managing the climate crisis beyond moral responsibility also entails binding obligations that can be viewed as legal duty.

The ICJ’s advisory opinion may shift the discussions from countries merely offering charity and aid to vulnerable nations to fostering a fair and legally sound form of reparations for climate harm and injury. For countries like Pakistan that contribute the least to the crisis but suffer the most, this opportunity must be used for timely and strongly argued submissions. With the world caught in the grip of violence at a time when the planet is burning, this development infuses new hope in multilateralism and the global justice system. The idea of voluntary reduction in emissions has not worked. It was instrumental in developing an ‘Agenda of Solutions’ but hope of a fair future has been on the decline. This offers state and non-state actors a unique chance to participate in a process that can clarify countries’ legal obligations and hold them accountable for delivery.

As governments and civil societies around the world get ready to participate in COP28, this opening should be used to press home the point that no country has the right to put at risk the lives of people living in other parts of the world in the name of development that is neither fair nor sustainable. With only seven years to go before the projected scor­ching heat and devastating deluges overrun half of humanity, it is hoped that the ICJ will use past damages and projected future catastrophes to take a decision on what constitutes a global common and how best the international community can assign responsibility and liability for violations. This call for action has come at a time when the global community has taken cognisance of the impact of climate change on the cryosphere. The first inter-polar conference organised by ICIMOD in Nepal followed by a Polar Summit in France, signals that the planet’s equilibrium is at risk and cannot be managed without a “whole of planet approach”.

The decision of the UNGA to request the ICJ to address this issue should not be seen only through the lens of climate justice; instead what is needed is a more holistic view that involves the survival of life systems on Earth of which human beings are the only species accelerating their own extinction.

The writer is chief executive of the Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change.
aisha@csccc.org.pk

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2023

PAKISTAN
Scapegoating the refugee

Pervez Hoodbhoy 

HERDED like cattle, over 1,700,000 Muslim refugees — more than twice the number of Palestinians evicted in 1948 by Zionist Israel — are presently being expelled from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. A compliant caretaker government wants all undocumented Afghans booted out of the country.

Taking this a step further, the Balochistan caretaker information minister declared earlier this week that, in line with the state’s decision, even those Afghans with legal documents would be expelled. Who runs the state is clear.

Once these unfortunates cross the Torkham border, hell awaits them. Large numbers have never visited, much less known, the famine-stricken land to which they allegedly belong. Hundreds of thousands were born on Pakistani soil but could never acquire documents.

Pakistani authorities gave but 30 short days to sell off possessions acquired over a lifetime, decreed that only Rs50,000 per family could be carried in cash, and forbade evictees from taking along their livestock. Who could be more heartless? Zionists?

The story of loss and displacement doesn’t end here. After enduring extortion by Pakistani border guards, they will enter a country run by a primitive, murderous and misogynist militia that hates all forms of modernity except its guns. No girl may go to school, no woman may work, music and art are forbidden, limb-chopping and stoning to death are back in vogue.

In 1996, Pakistan was the first of three countries to recognise the Taliban as Afghanistan’s lawful government. They committed hideous crimes but Pakistan’s high-placed duffers — as the inimitable Asma Jahangir famously called them — carefully explained away their savagery. For decades Pakistan remained the Taliban’s chief champion and loudspeaker to the world.

Failure of Pakistan’s strategic depth doctrine is why Afghan refugees are being victimised.

When the Ashraf Ghani government fell in 2021, there was glee all around. Then-ISI chief Gen Faiz Hameed preened before television cameras in Kabul as though celebrating his personal victory, while then-PM Imran Khan famously proclaimed Afghans had “broken the shackles of slavery”.

Things have changed dramatically since then and we know exactly why. After a victory, the force of fanaticism does not diminish — it grows. Backed by the government in Kabul, TTP now savagely attacks Pakistan’s army and police almost daily.

Worried Pakistani rulers tried persuading Afghanistan’s rulers to denounce these terrorist acts but met a brick wall. Why expect otherwise? Both the TTP and Afghan Taliban carry the same mindset and have the same goals.

Although many Afghans fled to Pakistan after the 2021 Taliban victory, they are now being falsely accused of providing TTP terrorists a base. In fact the TTP was born in Swat under the nose of our security forces. Had there been a will, Maulana Fazlullah — aka Mullah Radio — could have been instantly neutralised in 2006-2007.

To cover up the establishment’s past incompetence and complicity, hapless refugees are now being scapegoated. They are victims of Pakistan’s bungled foreign policy and its delusionary pursuit of strategic depth. The days of dollar-fuelled ‘jihad’ being over, these penniless people are no longer useful as cannon fodder. Rich Afghans, of course, may stay.

Had Pakistan ever been serious about wanting to destroy TTP’s ideologically charged terrorism, it would have looked for places where the call to ‘jihad’ is loud and strident.

All across the Muslim world the mullah has been tamed by the state. Yet there’s little chance that Pakistani madressahs preaching violence will be investigated. Maulana Abdul Aziz, leader of the Lal Masjid insurrection that killed well over 200, supports the TTP but struts around Islamabad with armed escort.

Those who ordered the sudden deportations claim to defend Pakistan’s ideological frontiers. But unknowingly they are hollowing out the Islamic premise upon which Pakistan was founded.

To understand this, let’s wind back to the mid 1940s when the secular Indian National Congress was in power in NWFP and Dr Khan Sahib, brother of Bacha Khan, was chief minister. The All-India Muslim League was rising but still on the back foot.

To woo the Pakhtuns and counter the Khan brothers’ popularity, Mr Jinnah insisted that Islamic unity must trump ethnicity. As recorded in the Jinnah Papers, on June 29, 1947, he declared, “I want the Muslims of the Frontier to understand that they are Muslims first and Pathans afterwards”.

With closely knitted Pakhtun families living on either side of the Durand Line — a British construct designed to demarcate British from Russian spheres of influence — Jinnah never suggested Pakhtuns would ever be prevented from freely crossing over.

How could a Muslim from Uttar Pradesh become a Pakistani but not another Muslim living right across an arbitrarily drawn line? It made no sense. Jinnah thus won over the Pakhtuns.

The Afghan refugee issue starkly exposes the inherent contradictions within a state created on the basis of religious identity. Still, in my opinion, Pakistan cannot and should not allow every Muslim from anywhere to migrate to the country. While the mass deportation ordered by the government is wrong and has been widely condemned, the wishes of the majority must be kept in mind.

We know, for example, that tensions exist in interior Sindh between the indigenous Sindhi population and the newly arrived Afghans, the latter tending to be socially conservative but also ready to work harder. Such tensions bring to mind Pakistani migrants in Europe who bring along with them their conservative culture plus a host of other problems, particularly crime.

Still, mass deportations of Pakistanis from Europe similar to what Pakistan is doing to Afghans would be wrong and immoral. Migration across borders is now a universal feature of humankind for which there are no absolutes and no clear answers. Open borders are still a distant dream for humanity. For now, sensitive, scientific management is needed. Europe is only halfway up the learning curve.

Afghans in Pakistan must be dealt with as per universal norms that respect human rights and dignity. At a very minimum, those born in Pakistan must be declared Pakistani citizens with rights equal to the rest.

For this, the documentation process must be simplified. Girls and women must not be forced back to suffer at the hands of misogynist rulers. Individuals at high risk must be given asylum, not deported. Nothing less is acceptable.

The author is an Islamabad-based physicist and writer.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2023

The other partition

Danyal Adam Khan 

THE Partition lives strong in public imagination. It triggered mass migrations; millions died and even more were displaced. Generations of South Asian writers have since revisited its horrors, allowing us, in so many small ways, to grieve for what was lost. What there is far less recognition for is the other partition; the one that took place along the western border of our country exactly 130 years ago this week.

The formation of the Durand Line was not nearly as violent, but it did formalise a boundary, which permanently split a group of people into two in order to create a buffer zone between the British and Russians. Like most things irredeemably wrecked by imperial interference, the Durand Line was a colonial quagmire inherited by modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. And its anniversary could not have come at a more grievous time for relations between the two countries.

This kneejerk policy of expulsion has been adopted by a caretaker setup that lacks the mandate for decisions of such consequence. Afghan refugees have been asked to pack up entire lifetimes in a matter of days as the state resorts to seemingly deliberate obfuscation on who is to be expelled and who is deemed legal. A door-to-door witch hunt has ensued against all. Afghans are being rounded up like cattle, herded into holding centres and pushed across a border — the other side of which some of them have never even seen.

Public opinion, meanwhile, has been rife with hate. The levels of empathy and nuance extended to conflicts farther away disappear when the bigotry is closer to home. Some attribute it to security, others to the economy. ‘Pakistan is for Pakistanis,’ say the people most furious about Western countries exhibiting xenophobia. More gratitude is demanded of Afghans, with no thought given to why their country was rendered unlivable in the first place.

Sending them to an uncertain future with the Taliban does not reduce our economic burden.

We would like to think of our hospitality, not of discriminatory state policies or awkward truths such as the fact that the third generation of a family born in Pakistan is still foreign. For every Afghan who has prospered (and why should they not?), there are countless others living in squalid conditions as permanent residents of refugee camps. Sending them to an uncertain future with the Taliban does not reduce our economic burden, only our moral standing.

But what happens when Afghans are indistinguishable from us? It enables the state to, once again, extend xenophobia towards unprivileged Pakhtuns. They will be harassed, intimidated, and forced to carry documentation for fear of deportation — all with legal cover and carried out in our collective name. What happens when the state treats a certain segment of Pakhtuns as the ‘other’, but does not appreciate expressions of solidarity with their Afghan counterparts over the mutual devastation they have endured for decades? For the past few years, we have been too sensitive about expressions of unity; they are often seen as something more, something treasonous. Any cross-border display of familiarity or critique of our own policies seems to trigger a deep-rooted insecurity. This is precisely why questions of language and identity cut to the heart of state formation. Can the Pakistani state only exist in negation of all other identities? Or is it possible for Pakhtuns to share a nationality with other Pakistanis and an ethnicity with other Afghans? Is there a mutually exclusive hierarchy of identities?

The 130th anniversary of the Durand Line is an apt moment to introspect on all these questions. The answers may very well be the missing pieces in Pakistan’s existential puzzle. Acknowledging this country’s reality of being a state comprising a few nations sets us at ease. It reminds us that the imposition of a homogenous identity on one of the most diverse populations in the world has already cost us half the country.

Expressions of empathy and shared culture and heritage between people on both sides of the border bring us closer. But blanket denial of the existence of these sentiments with threats of sedition charges only makes them resurface with a vengeance. Targeting the most vulnerable segments of society deepens wounds, whereas recognition of the impacts of this other partition will pave the way for a healing process necessary to establish lasting peace.

To achieve such a reconciliation, we must seek comfort in our discomfort. When a country contains multitudes, it is impossible to segregate the populace into black and white.

Such a move is entirely antagonistic to its own parts. Therefore, when things don’t fall into neatly packaged categories, all rage against the grey is futile.

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2023

Lethal pesticides

Shweta Dabholkar 

THE World Health Organisation estimates over 19,000 suicide deaths every year in Pakistan, with evidence suggesting that the actual number could be significantly higher due to under-reporting.

Previous research from across South Asia indicates that 20-30 per cent of these deaths are a result of pesticide self-poisoning. This is a particular problem among women and young people below the age of 30.

Counselling, therapy, and medication have been the most popular approaches in policy discourse for suicide prevention. However, to benefit from these services, a person either needs to survive an attempt or have access beforehand.

Strategies that would help a person avoid or survive a suicide attempt could therefore prevent deaths.

Many suicides in Pakistan can be prevented through stricter policy regulations.

Low intent to die: Not every person who dies from suicide intends to take their life.

Evidence shows that most suicides in low- and middle-income countries are of low intent. Often, it is an impulsive act of self-harm, or cry for help, taken in the heat of the moment without premeditation.

Young people may self-harm after being shouted at by parents, scoring low marks in school, or being bullied by their peers. Many instances of self-harm among women are due to domestic violence issues.

These low-intention suicides can be prevented by restricting easy access to lethal means of suicide.

Access to lethal means: During moments of crisis, the method of self-harm available can determine whether someone will survive. If a person has easy access to lethal means of suicide, such as an acutely toxic pesticide, there is a very high chance that the person will die.

However, if they do not have access to these lethal means, their chance of survival greatly improves. Either they will use a non-lethal means, or the self-harm impulse may pass before they act.

Surviving an act of self-harm allows people to access services and support from within their community. The evidence shows that they are unlikely to reattempt.

For this reason, restricting access to lethal means of suicide is recognised as a cost-effective suicide prevention strategy by the WHO. In particular, the WHO, along with the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), recommends banning highly hazardous pesticides.

The problem of pesticide suicide: Pesticide poisoning is the second most common method of suicide in Pakistan. It is also a major global health crisis, responsible for an estimated 150,000 deaths every year. The majority occur in low- and middle-income countries, where rural farming communities have easy access to lethal pesticides.

All pesticides are toxic, with some designated as Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs). These are particularly dangerous to people or the environment. A relatively small number of pesticides are extremely toxic to humans and it is these that cause most deaths in cases of self-harm.

Pakistan is predominantly an agrarian nation, with more than 40pc of the country’s workforce employed in the agricultural sector. Most farmers and agricultural workers use HHPs, believing they protect their crops and livelihoods. Unfortunately, many are unaware of the risks of HHP usage, and lack any means to mitigate those risks. They are also generally unaware of safer, more sustainable alternatives.

In the absence of stricter national regulations and effective enforcement, these deadly pesticides are sold in local shops without controls. They are then kept in homes and fields, within easy reach of family or community members.

As pesticide self-poisoning is usually an impulsive act, it is the easy availability of HHPs that puts people at risk. If lethal pesticides are regulated and replaced by less toxic, preferably non-chemical alternatives, the chance of survival is greatly improved.

Examples from across Asia: This approach has already worked in other countries across South-East Asia. Between 1980-2010, Sri Lanka implemented a series of carefully considered bans on a number of HHPs, resulting in a staggering 70pc drop in the annual suicide rate. There has been similar success in Bangladesh and South Korea.

Importantly, analysis of existing bans has shown that when implemented correctly — ensuring safe alternatives are available to farmers — there has been no adverse impact on agriculture. Food production, and farmers’ livelihoods, are protected.

Of course, this approach does not replace the need for mental health services, which remain crucial for any suicide prevention strategy.

Pakistan’s encouraging approach: Recently, Pakistan has taken an encouraging approach to the issue of HHPs and suicide. In 2019, the government proposed a ban on all WHO hazard class 1a (extremely hazardous) and class 1b (highly hazardous) pesticides, subject to availability of alternatives.

However, Pakistan’s efforts would be bolstered if data on suicides were centrally collected. Currently, there is no official data on suicides, which makes it difficult to inform policy. It is hoped that Pakistan’s progressive step to decriminalise suicide will improve suicide reporting.

There is also little information on how many deaths are due to pesticide poisoning, or which pesticides are responsible in these cases, as hospitals and police record poisoning cases under the broad category of ‘injuries’.

New analysis of research papers has recently identified the two main pesticides responsible for self-poisoning in Pakistan. However, only one of these is included in the WHO hazard class, used as the criterion for proposed bans. The other pesticide, despite being responsible for many deaths, will remain available.

Hope for the future: If all acutely toxic pesticides are removed from agricultural practice, it is estimated that the global pesticide suicide rate will fall rapidly from 150,000 deaths a year to less than 20,000.

A nuanced understanding of mental health-associated risk factors, suicidal intent, and methods of self-harm, will help policymakers to frame effective policies to save lives.

The writer is project and policy officer, Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2023