Pakistan

class=”MuiTypography-root-239 jss217 MuiTypography-h1-244″>Lights out in Pakistan as energy-saving move backfiresAssociated PressJanuary 23, 2023 · 10:00 AM EST

Shopkeepers and workers wait for electric power at a market following a power breakdown across the country, in Lahore, Pakistan, Jan. 23, 2023.

K.M. Chaudary/AP

Much of Pakistan was left without power Monday as an energy-saving measure by the government backfired. The outage spread panic and raised questions about the cash-strapped government’s handling of the country's economic crisis.

It all started when electricity was turned off during low usage hours overnight to conserve fuel across the country, officials said, leaving technicians unable to boot up the system all at once after daybreak. The outage was reminiscent of a massive blackout in January 2021, attributed at the time to a technical fault in Pakistan's power generation and distribution system.

Many major cities, including the capital of Islamabad, and remote towns and villages across Pakistan were in darkness as authorities struggled to make even partial restorations of the power supply.

As the outage continued into Monday night, authorities deployed additional police at markets around the country to provide security.

The nationwide electricity breakdown left many people without drinking water as pumps powered by electricity failed to work. Schools, hospitals, factories and shops were without power amid the harsh winter weather.

Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir told local media Monday that engineers were working to restore power across the country and tried to reassure the nation that power would be fully restored within the next 12 hours.

According to the minister, electricity usage typically goes down overnight during winter — unlike summer months when Pakistanis turn to air conditioning, seeking a respite from the heat.

“As an economic measure, we temporarily shut down our power generation systems" Sunday night, Dastgir said. When engineers tried to turn the systems back on, a “fluctuation in voltage" was observed, which “forced engineers to shut down the power grid" stations one by one.

Dastgir insisted the outage did not constitute a major crisis and that electricity was being restored in phases. In many places and key businesses and institutions, including hospitals, military and government facilities, backup generators kicked in.

By late afternoon Monday, Dastgir told reporters at another press conference that Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif ordered a probe into the outage.

“We are hoping that the supply of electricity will be fully restored tonight,” he said, adding that everything was being done to achieve this.

Karachi, the country's largest city and economic hub, was without power Monday, as were other key cities, such as Quetta, Peshawar and Lahore.

In Lahore, a closing notice was posted on the Orange Line metro stations, with rail workers guarding the sites and trains parked on the rails. It was unknown when the metro system would be restored.

Imran Rana, a spokesperson for Karachi's power supply company, said the government's priority was to restore power to strategic facilities, including hospitals and airports.

Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org said network data showed a significant decline in internet access in Pakistan that was attributed to the power outage. It said metrics indicate that connectivity was at 60% of ordinary levels as many users struggled to get online Monday.

Pakistan gets at least 60% of its electricity from fossil fuels, while nearly 27% of the electricity is generated by hydropower. The contribution of nuclear and solar power to the nation's grid is about 10%.

Pakistan is grappling with one of the country's worst economic crisis in recent years amid dwindling foreign exchange reserves. That has compelled the government to order shopping malls and markets closed by 8:30 p.m. to conserve energy.

Talks are underway with the International Monetary Fund to soften some conditions on Pakistan’s $6 billion bailout, which the government thinks will trigger further inflation hikes. The IMF released the last crucial tranche of $1.1 billion to Islamabad in August.

Since then, talks between the two parties have oscillated due to Pakistan's reluctance to impose new tax measures.

By Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed. Jon Gambrell in Dubai, UAE, contributed to this report.

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class=”MuiTypography-root-225 MuiTypography-h1-230″>Health crisis unfolding in Pakistan even as floodwaters recede 

Flooded areas have seen surges in malaria and other waterborne illnesses. 

The WorldDecember 2, 2022 · 12:45 PM EST

• By Carolyn Beeler

Dr. Tasmine Panhwer treats patients at the Dadu-district hospital.

Carolyn Beeler/The World

The floodwaters have largely receded in Pakistan since they inundated large swaths of the country in late summer, but the waters triggered a health crisis that is still unfolding.

Flooded areas have seen surges in malaria and other waterborne illnesses. More than 1 in 9 kids in impacted areas suffer from life-threatening malnutrition, according to the UN children’s agency.

“The crisis in Pakistan has become an acute child survival crisis,” said George Laryea-Adjei, UNICEF regional director for South Asia, after a recent visit.

At a camp for displaced people in the hard-hit Dadu district in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, Dr. Junaid Ahmed said he’s seen a progression of illnesses since late summer.

When the floods started, drinking water and sanitation systems were damaged, meaning that people often had little choice but to drink contaminated water. Diarrheal disease quickly followed, Ahmed said.

Next came “huge numbers of patients with skin diseases,” from swimming or wading through floodwaters.   

After mosquitoes started to multiply in the standing water covering much of the region, Ahmed said malaria cases shot up. He’s worked more than 200 mobile clinics since the floods started, and said he’s now seeing more cases of respiratory illness as winter sets in and displaced people continue to live in tents. 

On a recent morning, Ahmed checked patients lining up at the clinic tent’s entrance with an electronic thermometer, sometimes using the flashlight on his phone to peer into their throats.

Sumerran Vighio was at the front of the line when the clinic opened, reporting that her 2-day-old daughter had stomachaches, fever and wasn’t eating.

A line forms outside a health clinic held at a camp for displaced people in Dadu district, Pakistan, which was hard hit by this summer’s historic flooding. 

 

Credit:

Carolyn Beeler/The World

“There’s not enough milk in my breast to feed her,” Vighio said, blaming the camp rations of two plates of rice a day.   

In another corner of the tent, 8-year-old Imran Khan Jamali, who’d been shivering with fevers and refusing food and water, tested positive for malaria.

“There are lots of mosquitoes around here. Many of them,” said his uncle, Ali Khan Jamali.

The family of eight shares a tent at the camp and has only one mosquito net, which the youngest kids use.

Malaria cases in Sindh province were more than three times higher in August than a year earlier, and in the hardest-hit districts in the country cases went up again in September.

Climate change made the historic monsoon rains in Pakistan more intense this year, and it’s expected to play an increasing role in human health.

The World Health Organization expects an additional 250,000 people a year by the 2030s to die from malaria malnutrition, heat stress and diarrhea.

Pathogens that cause illnesses such as malaria and cholera tend to reproduce faster and survive longer in warmer temperatures, “so, average increased temperatures favor transmission of these diseases,” said Diarmid Campbell-Lendrom, head of the World Health Organization’s climate change and health unit.  

No one is immune to the health impacts of climate change, he said, pointing to the more than 70,000 people who died during a European heat wave in 2003. But the most exposed populations will still have it the worst as temperatures warm.  

“If you live in Pakistan and you don't have a safe water supply or a good sanitation system, then, increasing temperatures and floods which overflow your sanitation are going to hit you more than somebody living in a good quality house,” Campbell-Lendrum said. “So, across the board, it's those that are most vulnerable, which are most at risk from climate change.”

In Pakistan, the floods have also destroyed health infrastructure and made it harder for people to access care.

The August floods damaged 800 miles of roads and 38 health centers in the hard-hit Dadu district, where hundreds of thousands of people were still displaced this month.

Last month, patients were spending up to two days navigating floodwaters to get to a hospital, according to one physician.

Ali Khan Jamali at a health clinic for people displaced by Pakistan’s historic floods. 

 

Credit:

Carolyn Beeler/The World

At the Dadu district hospital, which serves a population of about 1.5 million, the head of pediatrics, Dr. Allah Korejo, said his unit is overcrowded, with two children in each bed in some wards.

“We need more beds,” he said.

His biggest concern is climbing rates of malnutrition as more families in this farming region fall into poverty.

“Most of the lands and crops are underwater, and the main source of income of our villagers is land,” he said. “So, their source of income is totally finished.”  

Malnutrition and infectious diseases were already a big problem here, said his colleague Dr. Tasmine Panhwer.

“This flood crisis has multiplied these already existing problems to huge numbers,” she said. 

She’s already seeing babies being born underweight to malnourished mothers, which can have lasting impacts on infant health.

“I think in the long term, it will affect us in terms of compromised health conditions, and it may increase neonatal mortality rate as well.”

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class=”MuiTypography-root-134 MuiTypography-h1-139″>'Doomsday' flooding in Pakistan linked to glacial melt, expert says

Himalayan glaciers are melting at a much faster pace than anyone had really appreciated to date, according to Huma Yusuf, host of "Climate Mahaul," a podcast focused on climate change. Yusuf joined The World's host Carol Hills to discuss Pakistan's catastrophic flooding.

The WorldSeptember 6, 2022 · 2:15 PM EDT

• By Omar DuwajiThe World staff

Women carry belongings salvaged from their flooded home after monsoon rains, in the Qambar Shahdadkot district of Sindh Province, of Pakistan, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2022. 

Fareed Khan/AP

Unusually heavy monsoon rains have caused severe flooding in Pakistan, affecting more than 33 million people. At least 1,300 people have died and millions of others have lost their homes.

Many experts are blaming the situation on climate change. The nation’s climate minister, Sherry Rehman, described the situation as a "climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.” 

“There's definitely, for the first time, a consistent story in Pakistan that the multiple causes of flooding are largely driven by climate change,” said Huma Yusuf, a columnist for the Dawn newspaper. She is also the host of "Climate Mahaul," a podcast focused on climate change.

For the first time, she said, Pakistanis are "starting to see the link between climate change and these kinds of natural disasters.” 

Yusuf explained that glacial melt from the Himalayas — which have been referred to as the "Third Pole," after the North and South Poles, are also adding to the problem.

Himalayan glaciers are melting at a much faster pace than anyone had really appreciated to date, she said, referring to research that came out last year. 

“The ice sheets in the Himalayas have shrunk 10 times faster in the last 40 years than they have in the several centuries before that. And obviously, this kind of rapid ice melt has been contributing to flooding in recent years.” 

Similar floods partially linked to glacial melt also occured in 2010. But this year’s flood has been described as "biblical" in proportions, she said.  

“It was the kind of doomsday scenario that we thought would happen one day, maybe in the 22nd or 23rd centuries, and yet it is, it's all around us in Pakistan.”

Yusuf said that Pakistan recognizes it can not meet its climate commitments set at COP26 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without some kind of financial assistance and that ideally, that would come in the form of debt relief from more developed countries or the International Monetary Fund. 

Temporary housing is constructed for flood victims in Hyderabad, Pakistan, Sept. 6, 2022.

Credit:

Pervez Masih/AP

But there’s work to be done at home, too. 

“I think Pakistanis will be the first to acknowledge that some of the work is with us,” Yusuf said, adding there’s a need for better governance overall around how to organize evacuations. There's also a need for improved infrastructure development, including more intelligent highway design and construction regulations in flood-prone areas.

“Ultimately, if you look at the scale of these floods … this has to be seen as the whole world's problem,” she said.

AP contributed to this report.

Hazara community demands justice for slain coal miners in Pakistan

ISIS took responsibility for the attack — the latest example of their systematic targeting of Hazaras in recent years.

The World

January 18, 2021 · 12:45 PM EST

By
Shirin Jaafari

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Hazara men protest and refuse to bury the dead bodies till the prime minister Imran Khan came to visit the victims and their families.

 

 

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Asef Ali Mohammad/The World

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In the early hours of Jan. 3, gunmen ambushed a group of miners as they slept in their shared living space near a coal mine in the town of Machh, in southwestern Pakistan.

The attackers separated those who belonged to an ethnic group called Hazaras, blindfolded them, tied their hands behind their backs and brutally killed them. They recorded it all on video.

That’s how witnesses, local security officials and activists described the atrocities that took place in Machh earlier this month. The news shocked many far and wide. It was yet another reminder of how Sunni extremists — in this case, ISIS — continue to systematically target mostly Shiite Hazara people.

Related: Afghans mourn the loss of young lives in ISIS attacks 

On social media, the hashtags “HazaraGenocide” and “StopHazaraKillings” circulated.

Read more: UN rapporteur emphasizes responsibility to protect ‘vulnerable’ Hazaras

Local media published the names of almost a dozen victims: 18-year-old Anwer, 22-year-old Sher Mohammad, 28-year-old Hassan Jan, 17-year-old Naseem, 38-year-old Aziz, 35-year-old Chaman Ali, 36-year-old Abdullah, 33-year-old Karim Baksh, 35-year-old Mohammad Sadiq and 18-year-old Abdullah Shah.

Masooma Hazara mourns the killing of five of her family members on the 5th night of the sit-in near Hazara Town in Quetta, Pakistan.

 

Credit:

Asef Ali Mohammad/The World

Hazaras are an ethnic group native to Afghanistan who have survived genocidal campaigns, slavery and land dispossession since the 1800s, according to Derakhshan Qurban-Ali, a Hazara Canadian human rights advocate and a law graduate from McGill University.

Years of mass atrocities, persecution and discrimination have forced many of them to seek refuge in neighboring countries such as Pakistan and Iran. There are Hazara diaspora communities in other parts of the world as well.

In Quetta, outraged and grief-stricken families staged a sit-in that went on for days. They laid down the coffins in the middle of the road and refused to bury their dead — despite the explicit requirement in Islam that they do so as soon as possible.

Sajjad Hussain Changezi, a 34-year-old activist from the Hazara community in Pakistan, said this was the highest form of protest — a way to get Prime Minister Imran Khan’s attention. The families had a list of demands, including that the prime minister visit them in person and promise to do everything in his power to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“For six consecutive days, other officials like the chief minister and others kept coming to them but they refused to end their protest,” Changezi, who studied global studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told The World in a WhatsApp call from Quetta.

Related: New doc features the life of Iran’s leading human rights lawyer

When Khan did speak, he made matters worse, he said.

“We have accepted all of their demands,” Khan said in a public speech. “[But] one of their demands is that the dead will be buried when the premier visits. I have sent them a message that when all of your demands have been accepted […] you don’t blackmail the prime minister of any country like this.”

The families were furious.

“No leader in any civilized nation should ever talk to the bereaved families in such a tone.”

Sajjad Hussain Changezi, Hazara activist, Pakistan 

“No leader in any civilized nation should ever talk to the bereaved families in such a tone,” Changezi said.

In response, Changezi and a group of others went on a hunger strike.

A long history of persecution

As the news about the miners spread, protests spread to several other cities across the country.

Well-known Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai urged the prime minister to visit the families.

“The whole country is in mourning,” she said on Twitter.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for the Pakistani authorities “to do everything possible to bring the perpetrators of this terrorist act to justice.”

This isn’t the first time the Hazara community has come under attack in Pakistan.

For years, they have been killed at markets, sports clubs and mosques. Sunni extremist groups such as ISIS and the outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi have taken responsibility for the bloodshed, past and present.

Related: Fighting in Afghanistan claims lives and displaces families as peace talks drag on

Meanwhile, the Pakistani government’s response has been to secure the Hazara neighborhoods in Quetta, Changezi explained, adding that there are armed guards at every entrance point. Residents can’t leave without prior security arrangements. Many have simply given up on going out altogether, he said.

“We have lost employment opportunities, we’ve lost on the educational front, we’ve lost on the business front, the community’s mobility has been compromised immensely,” he said. “I have long been arguing that this could be a temporary solution to protect the community from outside attacks but in the longer term, this will create more alienation, more discrimination, more division within Balochistan and Quetta’s diverse communities.”

Not to mention that the attacks haven’t stopped.

In an interview with The World, Fernand de Varennes, UN special rapporteur on minority issues, said he didn’t know the exact details of the situation in Pakistan but that he found the policies questionable.

“Essentially, what you need to do is provide a safe and inclusive environment for all. And you do not just try to isolate completely a group from the rest of the society because in a way, that is conceding that those who are committing atrocities can continue to live normal lives whereas the victims cannot.”

Fernand de Varennes, UN special rapporteur on minority issues

“Essentially, what you need to do is provide a safe and inclusive environment for all. And you do not just try to isolate completely a group from the rest of the society because in a way, that is conceding that those who are committing atrocities can continue to live normal lives whereas the victims cannot,” he said. 

Killed ‘because they are Hazara’

Among the miners killed earlier this month were young men who had come to Pakistan from Afghanistan in search of work.

In Afghanistan, too, Hazaras have long been persecuted, said Qurban-Ali, the Hazara Canadian human rights advocate.

Related: Afghan women negotiating with the Taliban say they feel ‘heavy responsibility’

More recently, the Taliban and ISIS have been behind the attacks.

“The reason Hazaras are being killed and targeted and massacred in Afghanistan and in Pakistan is because they are Hazara. This persecution is wholly based on their identity.”

Derakhshan Qurban-Ali, Hazara Canadian human rights advocate

“The reason Hazaras are being killed and targeted and massacred in Afghanistan and in Pakistan is because they are Hazara. This persecution is wholly based on their identity,” Qurban-Ali said.

Qurban-Ali, a representative for the Canadian Hazara Humanitarian Services, added that the persecution of Hazaras is not widely recognized and acknowledged outside the communities. This poses a major problem for many Hazara refugees who are denied refugee protection abroad and often get deported back to places they fled.

The uncle of Sadiq Hazara sits next to his dead body on the 6th day of sit-in staged by the Hazara Community of Quetta, Paskistan.

 

 

Credit:

Asef Ali Mohammad/The World

But that is slowly starting to change.

“I think before, there was widespread awareness within Hazaras of our own persecution. It is something that I think people felt powerless to change in the past. But today, I think people are more and more realizing their power to change through raising awareness and connecting with one another.”

A few days after the sit-ins and hunger strikes in Quetta, Prime Minister Khan eventually visited the families in person. He promised better security and compensation.

Changezi, the activist in Quetta, doesn’t think these promises will end attacks on the Hazaras in Pakistan.

“It’s a sorry and really sad state of affairs that the basic, essential definition of peace for the Hazara community has been the period between two attacks on them.”

Sajjad Hussain Changezi, Hazara activist, Pakistan

“It’s a sorry and really sad state of affairs that the basic, essential definition of peace for the Hazara community has been the period between two attacks on them,” he said.

Activists like Qurban-Ali hope more people learn about the plight of the Hazara people.

Admittedly, she said, there is a lot going on in the world right now — the pandemic, political crisis in the US and climate change. But for anyone who wants to help, she says, she has tips: Step one: Educate yourself and your community. Step two: Understand the skills or resources you can offer and connect with others working on the issue. Step three: Start at home, support refugees in your area, and write to your local representatives.

After all, she added, “it’s 2021, and it’s not OK for anyone to be killed because of their ethnicity or what they believe in.”

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I don’t go for no one hardly, hardly
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Maybe it’s the way that you never give up
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Love is on fire the way you lit it up
Oh, oh
Speak in tongues
Weekend’s up
And we can’t stop

(Chorus)
I don’t go for no one hardly, hardly
You already know the vibes shawty, shawty
And you know just how I do and parlé, parlé
And my crew is in the cut blasé, blasé, yeah
Oh, oh
Speak in tongues
Weekend’s up
And we can’t stop
I don’t go for no one hardly, hardly
You already know the vibes shawty, shawty
And you know just how I do and parlé, parlé
And my crew is in the cut blasé, blasé, yeah