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After five weeks of war, Donald Trump has claimed “total and complete victory” over Iran. Tehran begs to differ. Agreeing to the conditional two-week ceasefire, Iranian officials said their country had dealt a “crushing historic defeat” to the US and Israel.

Meanwhile, commentators are pointing to real, quiet wins for both China and Pakistan, whose behind-the-scenes roles in pushing for the ceasefire have increased their global standing.

What did the commentators say?

Benjamin Netanyahu “looks set to be the biggest loser” of the conflict, said The Guardian’s senior international correspondent, Peter Beaumont. Pressuring Trump to agree to his decades-long goal of neutralising Iran has “turned out to be a bust”. The “political consensus” between Israel and the US is “visibly crumbling”, and there’s “domestic fallout” for Netanyahu in the run-up to an election.

Trump has also emerged as a “strategic loser”, said the South China Morning Post. Washington failed to achieve regime change in Tehran, and Iran retained control of the Strait of Hormuz, the conflict’s “most strategic asset”. Meanwhile, the US has used up “sophisticated air-defence missiles” intercepting “far cheaper Iranian drones and projectiles”. Iran’s nuclear programme has survived, along with the “stockpile of enriched uranium” from which it could “potentially produce a viable weapon”, said The Times’ Middle East correspondent, Samer Al-Atrush. That “will not be given up easily”.

Tehran’s blocking of the Strait of Hormuz was a “high-risk” strategy that “paid off”, said DW. It “secured a ceasefire without conceding defeat”, which it “can present as proof that it withstood the US and all its military might”. The Iranian regime “survived, and bought time to try to shape” the phase of negotiations “on more favourable terms”.

In the longer term, it is actually Beijing that most “stands to gain”. America has “moved many military assets to the Middle East to protect shipping”, which “leaves fewer resources for the Indo‑Pacific, where Washington and Beijing compete for influence”. China has also had the chance to present itself “as a responsible global actor”, with its power brokers widely credited with pushing Iran to agree to the ceasefire.

China is “shaping up to be the big winner”, said Roger Boyes, The Times’ diplomatic editor. Unlike the US, it expected Iran to seize the strait and “amassed large oil reserves”, making itself “more resilient” to an energy crisis. “As a significant exporter” of other goods, it was still initially “hit hard” by the strait’s closure but then the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ordered that China-bound vessels could pass through “toll-free”.

Pakistan’s credentials have been burnished, too. Its role in brokering the ceasefire was “unexpected” but the Islamabad Accord is the country’s “most consequential diplomatic moment in a decade”, said former UN peacekeeper Anil Raman on NDTV. Capitalising on its good relations with both the US and Iran, Islamabad will “press hard to consolidate” this “return to global relevance”.

What next?

J.D. Vance is due to lead a US delegation in negotiations with Tehran in Pakistan this weekend. The White House said the ceasefire between the US and Iran has created an “opening for a diplomatic solution and long-term peace”.

But the specifics of the terms to be discussed “remain murky”, said the BBC, “as is the current state of shipping traffic” through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian forces have warned that ships would be “destroyed” if they tried to sail through without permission.

While the world is distracted by the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, another conflict is erupting between Iran’s neighbours.

Pakistan has declared “open war” on Afghanistan after fighting intensified over recent weeks. In a dangerous escalation from cross-border skirmishes, Pakistan launched air strikes at the end of February, targeting major cities including Kabul. Afghanistan’s Taliban regime responded with drone attacks. Both sides blame the other for the conflict.

More than 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed or injured, and 100,000 displaced. In one air strike on a Kabul drug rehabilitation centre last week, 400 people were killed, according to Afghan officials. With a ceasefire to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr set to expire, there are no signs of a desire for de-escalation.

What’s the background?

This is “not a sudden rupture of relations”, said Rabia Akhtar on The Conversation. It’s the “intensification of long-simmering, historical security concerns” along their disputed 1,600-mile border: the Durand Line.

Afghanistan has never formally recognised the border, drawn in 1893 through ethnic Pashtun areas. That’s caused “sustained and persistent tension” since Pakistan’s independence in 1947. The countries also took opposite sides in the Cold War, with Pakistan “embedded” in the US-led framework and Afghanistan maintaining “closer ties” with the Soviet Union (until it invaded). All of this “entrenched cross-border militant networks”.

When the Taliban retook power in 2021, Pakistan “anticipated a more cooperative security environment” than the series of US-backed Afghan governments. It hoped the Taliban, which it had covertly supported all along, would help “rein in” several militant groups, said The New York Times. This was a “strategic miscalculation”.

Instead, terrorist attacks within Pakistan increased, particularly by the Tereek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, or Pakistan Taliban). The group took advantage of Pakistan’s political chaos to further entrench its power in the border lands and threaten the country’s all-powerful military. The TTP also took a share of the US military equipment left in Afghanistan when America withdrew. This, and the release of hundreds of its fighters from Afghan prisons, erased much of Pakistan’s efforts to defeat it.

What triggered this outbreak?

The TTP has been increasing its attacks in Pakistan as it grows in power, killing 4,000 people in the last four years according to Pakistani authorities. Last year was the most violent for militancy in a decade, according to the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies. The separatist Balochistan Liberation Army also claimed attacks that killed almost 50 people. Islamabad has long accused the Taliban of harbouring such groups, allegedly allowing them to operate from sanctuaries within Afghanistan.

Pakistan launched air strikes against alleged TTP hideouts in Afghanistan last year, warning it would no longer tolerate “safe havens” for fighters. It also accused its historic foe, India, of supporting the Taliban, allegedly with Indian-made drones used in recent attacks. India then effectively normalised relations with the Taliban.

Both India and the Taliban “vehemently deny” Pakistan’s accusations, said the BBC. They say the TTP is “an internal matter” for Islamabad: a “Pakistan-created problem”. That’s “done little but to further infuriate” Pakistani leaders.

Violent clashes erupted on the border in October, and Pakistan carried out air strikes before suspending trade with landlocked Afghanistan. A truce didn’t last long; after years of diplomatic efforts, Pakistan “now says that there is nothing to talk about”.

What’s the significance?

Middle Eastern powers that have been mediating between Afghanistan and Pakistan for years currently have “limited bandwith” to de-escalate, said Chietigj Bajpaee on Chatham House. Despite Pakistan’s “superior military”, the Taliban has “a significant capacity for asymmetric warfare”. And if Pakistan “perceives an Indian hand behind Kabul’s actions”, there could also be renewed hostilities between India and Pakistan – two nuclear-armed states.

Exacerbating tensions is “the forced repatriation of Afghan refugees” from Pakistan and Iran; an estimated 2.7 million Afghans were returned last year, further straining Afghanistan’s “stretched public services” and economic woes.

Pakistan has been “taking advantage of the West’s disengagement” and regional powers’ distraction, said the Financial Times. It is “enraged”. But all-out war “threatens stability” across Asia. There is “the very real risk” that Afghanistan becomes “an incubator for terrorism” again.

For the “shaky truce” to endure, the intervention of the US and China is required. Although “precedents for a settlement are not inspiring”, the stakes are “too high for the world to keep looking away”.

What happened

Pakistan’s military Sunday escalated days of violent skirmishes with Afghanistan by launching airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, according to Afghan officials. After months of attacks inside Pakistan by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Pakistani Taliban, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said on Friday that his country’s “patience has now run out” and “it is open war” with Afghanistan for allegedly harboring the militants.

Who said what

Pakistan has repeatedly bombed Kabul, Kandahar and “dozens of small Afghan military bases, ammunition depots and outposts in recent days,” The New York Times said. But “targeting Bagram is different,” because it is the “most prized military asset” of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and its “big trophy” from retaking the country from the U.S. Afghanistan said it thwarted the attack.

On Friday, Afghanistan said it had launched strikes against military targets in Islamabad and Abbottabad, and “both sides claimed their strikes were retaliatory,” The Associated Press said. Pakistan says it has killed more than 330 Afghan forces since the long-simmering conflict intensified last week and Afghanistan says it has killed 110 Pakistani soldiers. Both sides have dismissed the other’s casualty figures as inflated.

What next?

The “latest phase of the conflict” between the former allies “is expected to continue flaring up and may escalate” further, the Times said in an analysis. Pakistan “has one of the largest militaries in Asia” and can “inflict major damage on cities in Afghanistan,” but the Afghan Taliban “honed guerrilla tactics over more than two decades of war with U.S. forces,” and its allied militias “are likely to target deeper in Pakistan’s territory with more attacks, including suicide bombings and assaults on security forces.”

While the U.S. and Iran have been ratcheting up threats against each other, a simmering conflict in two neighboring countries just boiled over: Afghanistan and Pakistan devolved into armed conflict on Friday, with the latter declaring the countries in a state of “open war.” Tensions between the two sides have been increasing for months, and experts fear the fighting could represent a breaking point for the broader region.

Taliban began the conflict

The fighting started when the Taliban, the ruling government of Afghanistan, launched “what it called retaliatory attacks on military installations in northwest Pakistan,” said NBC News. As residents were forced to flee their homes, Pakistan hit back, announcing it had “struck military targets in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, as well as Kandahar and Paktia provinces.” A death toll has not been confirmed, but Pakistan said at least 70 people were killed while Afghan officials reported that “dozens of civilians were killed, including women and children.”

In all, Pakistan bombed more than 20 locations in Afghanistan. Following the initial combat, Pakistan “showed no willingness to stop the most expansive fighting in years,” said The New York Times. Pakistan “made every effort to keep the situation normal, directly and through friendly countries,” said Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif in a translated post on X. “Our cup of patience has overflowed. Now it is open war between us and you.”

This “marks one of the biggest escalations in outright hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2021 and could be the start of more violence,” said Time. The two countries had a shaky ceasefire deal since October 2025 and were historical allies. But tensions emerged over a border dispute; the Taliban does not consider the Durand Line, a boundary established by the colonial British, to be the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but Pakistani officials do. Relations also devolved because the Taliban is getting “closer to India, with which Pakistan has fought over the disputed region of Kashmir.”

‘Further escalation could compound instability’

When Pakistan and Afghanistan have fought before, other countries often enter via diplomacy, with “mediation by foreign governments including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar,” said CNN. But while the fighting has typically only lasted several days, many fear that “further escalation could compound instability.” This comes as tensions in nearby Iran are also increasing.

Experts believe the war this time could be worse. Any “retaliation by the Afghans will be in Pakistan’s urban centers,” said Abdul Basit, a senior associate fellow from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, to CNN. “This is a recipe for chaos and chaos is what terrorist networks seek to flourish.” But the Taliban has warfighting methods Pakistan may be unprepared for. “The Afghan Taliban have drones, they have suicide bombers, they are innovative.”

Afghanistan’s retaliation could also “come in the way of raids on border posts and more cross-border guerrilla attacks to target security forces,” said Reuters. But there is also a “wide mismatch between the military capabilities” of the two sides. The Taliban’s reported fighting force of 172,000 is “less than a third of Pakistan's personnel,” and Pakistan is also known to possess nuclear weapons. The United Nations is urging both sides to “continue to seek to resolve any differences through diplomacy,” the organization said.

When the Taliban swept across Afghanistan and retook power in 2021, most countries severed diplomatic ties, but now India is leading a change of heart around the world.

Despite claims that its second iteration – what some termed “Taliban 2.0” – would be more moderate, the group reintroduced its draconian restrictions on women and girls to international condemnation. The UN Security Council imposed strict sanctions and froze large assets, saying the regime was enacting a “gender apartheid”.

This year, Russia became the first country to formally recognise the Taliban government. Over the past few months, said the Financial Times, the regime “has begun to emerge from diplomatic isolation”, as countries see a potential ally in trade, counterterrorism and the deportation of migrants.

What has happened recently?

India used to see the Taliban as a threat, given its extremist ideology and its closeness with arch-enemy Pakistan. But New Delhi has been trying to improve engagement. In October, it hosted foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi: the first diplomatic trip abroad by a senior Taliban official since the group’s return to power. Although he required a visa waiver due to UN sanctions, the “rapturous reception” he received is “one of the most striking signs of how the world is warming up to the Taliban”, said the FT.

After the visit, New Delhi announced that it would be “upgrading its technical mission” in Kabul to “a full-fledged embassy”, said Al Jazeera. “Closer cooperation between us contributes to your national development, as well as regional stability and resilience,” said Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Speaking to reporters, Muttaqi said: “We want good relations; we keep our doors open for talks – for all!”

Why is India normalising relations?

For India, the Taliban “represents a ‘lesser evil’” compared with terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and Isis-K, said Chietigj Bajpaee of Chatham House’s South Asia, Asia-Pacific Programme. India wants to stop Afghanistan from “re-emerging as a hub for militancy and terrorism”.

Unlike during the 1990s, when India, Iran and Russia backed forces that opposed the Taliban, now there is almost no armed opposition in Afghanistan. “The Indians are being very pragmatic, having realised that the Taliban is the only game in Kabul and that they are not going anywhere”, a senior Pakistani diplomat told the FT. They see it as: “the enemy of my enemy could be my friend’ and the Taliban is clearly taking advantage of that”.

What about the rest of the world?

When Russia formally recognised the Taliban government in July, its foreign ministry said it saw potential for “commercial and economic” cooperation, said the BBC. Russia also wants to cooperate with Afghanistan on counterterrorism, after the deadly Islamic State attack on a concert hall in Moscow in 2024, and to increase trade.

China was the first country to accredit an ambassador from the Taliban, and has pursued what analysts describe as “durable de facto recognition”, eyeing Afghanistan’s reserves of critical minerals and resources.

In the West, the US has praised the Taliban for its crackdown on Isis-K. Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism adviser to Donald Trump, revealed in August that Washington and the Taliban were “working together” to fight Islamist militancy. European countries have lauded the Taliban’s destruction of fields of opium poppies, a key ingredient in heroin production, and are also increasingly keen to engage with Afghanistan on the repatriation of migrants. Germany, Switzerland and Austria have all recently sent delegations or welcomed Taliban officials; Germany says it wants to work with the group directly to resume deportations of convicted Afghans.

What’s in it for the Taliban?

Afghanistan is battling endemic poverty and the fallout from natural disasters like the earthquake in August, exacerbated by devastating US aid cuts. Iran and Pakistan have also forcibly returned more than four million Afghans in two years, said the International Organization for Migration, causing chaos at the border and further strain on resources. The Taliban hopes its increased international engagement will “translate into much-needed economic aid and investments”, said the FT. But there is “little sign of this taking place yet”. The oppression of women and girls is the “primary issue facing Afghanistan’s economic future”, said UN Assistant Secretary-General Kanni Wignaraja.

“The Taliban still presides over a pariah state, shunned by most of the world,” said Modern Diplomacy. Its “partial diplomatic thaw” has brought no “real economic relief”; it “remains locked in a dangerous cross-border dispute with Pakistan and trapped by financial isolation”.

Islamabad historically supported the Taliban and saw Afghanistan as a “source of ‘strategic depth’ in its rivalry with India”, said Bajpaee. Now, it is accusing the Afghan Taliban of hosting and sponsoring the militant Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Pakistani Taliban), which aims to “overthrow the Pakistani state” and has “stepped up its attacks inside Pakistan”. Pakistan increasingly sees its neighbour as a “liability”.

Pakistan has just suffered its first “21st century coup”, said Monjorika Bose on Firstpost (Mumbai). There were none of the “tanks and curfews” typical of a standard military takeover. Instead, a “ridiculously weak” parliament rubber-stamped a constitutional amendment giving army chief Asim Munir control over all three armed-forces branches, along with the same “near total” lifetime immunity from arrest and prosecution that the president enjoys.

This has shot him to “a constitutionally protected super post with sweeping powers” and no accountability. His control is now so absolute, he can “stifle dissent” at will; judges “will be forced to look the other way”. Yet from the West there has barely been a “whimper” of objection, thanks largely to Munir’s successful wooing of President Trump. Munir made two visits to the Oval Office this year, one in June, one in September, courting him with flattery, the promise of access to minerals and a shady crypto deal. A delighted Trump has lauded him as his “favourite field marshal”.

Actually, this isn’t the “revolutionary change” alarmists claim it is, said Waqar Malik in the Daily Times (Lahore). The amendment simply modernises the military’s command structure, replacing the joint chiefs with Munir as a single head of the defence forces. The skirmish with India in May – the conflict in which Munir was promoted to become just the second field marshal in Pakistani history – demonstrated the need for streamlined decision-making in wartime. At a time when India is threatening our border, Munir has “restored public confidence”.

That’s wishful thinking, said Shubhangi Sharma on News18 (New Delhi). Already, Munir has torn a page from the “old playbook” of Pervez Musharraf, the last Pakistani general to take power in a coup – ordering drone strikes on Afghanistan, fuelling proxy terror groups inside India, and making reckless nuclear threats, all pushing Pakistan “closer to a Kim Jong Un model than a functioning democracy”.

But Munir’s power grab essentially “formalises what has long been an open secret”, said The Hindu (Chennai). Pakistan’s military has for some time “pulled the strings behind a facade of democracy”; now the facade has crumbled. The only political leader still resisting is former PM Imran Khan – and he’s in jail for corruption. Yet it’s not all going the army chief’s way. Khan’s party is leading mass protests in the streets, and there’s an insurgency flaring in tribal areas. So Munir’s attempt to wield absolute power “could backfire – sooner rather than later”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has told his fellow Indians that "nature has been testing us" after cloudbursts caused flash flooding that killed hundreds of people across the north of the country and in neighbouring Pakistan.

What causes cloudbursts?

Usually defined as more than 10cm (roughly 4 inches) of rainfall within an hour over an area less than 30 sq km (11.6 square miles), cloudbursts are caused by a combination of factors characterised by high humidity and low pressure.

When warm, moist air is forced upwards after, for example, encountering a hill or mountain, it cools and condenses, creating large, dense clouds. Once these become over-saturated they burst, releasing their rainfall all at once.

"Sudden and violent", these intense deluges behave effectively like "a rain bomb", said The Associated Press. They "thrive in moisture, monsoons and mountains", all of which are present in India and Pakistan, "making them vulnerable to these extreme weather events".

Why are they dangerous?

The intense rainfall often triggers deadly flooding and landslides, as happened in northern Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir last week, killing at least 344 people, according to authorities. The death roll includes 24 people from the same family, who were swept away on the eve of a wedding. In Indian-administered Kashmir, at least 60 people have been killed in flash flooding, with 200 more missing.

Flooding resulting from a cloudburst killed more than 6,000 people in 2013 at Kedarnath in the Indian Himalayas.

Cloudbursts are so dangerous in part because there is "no forecasting system anywhere in the world" that can predict exactly where and when they will occur, said Asfandyar Khan Khattak, an official from Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Are they caused by climate change?

Cloudbursts are a natural phenomenon, but extreme rain events and their related flash-flooding has worsened in recent years as a direct result of climate change.

A recent report from World Weather Attribution, an international group of scientists who study global warming's role in extreme weather, estimated that the 30-day maximum rainfall in northern Pakistan is approximately 22% more intense than it would have been without the impact of human-induced global warming.

Because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, "every tenth of a degree of warming will lead to heavier monsoon rainfall", said Mariam Zachariah, lead author of the study and an environmental researcher at Imperial College London.

A 2006 study published in the journal Science found "significant rising trends in the frequency and the magnitude of extreme rain events" in India in the second half of the 20th century as global temperatures have risen. And a study into the 2013 Kedarnath floods, published in Climate Dynamics in 2015, found more than half of the rainfall was likely to be linked to increases in greenhouse gases and aerosol particles in the atmosphere.

Khalid Khan, a former special secretary for climate change in Pakistan and chairman of climate initiative PlanetPulse, said global warming had "supercharged" the water cycle. "In our northern regions, warming accelerates glacier melt, adds excessive moisture to the atmosphere, and destabilises mountain slopes," he said. "In short, climate change is making rare events more frequent, and frequent events more destructive."

Nestling at the point where the borders of India and Pakistan meet in the Himalayas, Jammu and Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority state or territory in Hindu-majority India (excepting the tiny Lakshadweep archipelago). It has been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan since Partition in 1947, partly because of its geo-strategic importance.

The glacial waters flowing through Kashmir provide water and electricity to tens of millions of people in India; Pakistan's biggest river, the Indus, also passes through it. But to both sides it is also a symbol of pride, a land famed for its beauty. "If there is a heaven on Earth," the Mughal emperor Jahangir once remarked, "it's here, it's here, it's here."

Its mountainous landscape appears often in Bollywood films and on restaurant walls across the subcontinent. There are also significant Muslim and Hindu shrines in Kashmir.

How did Kashmir end up largely under Indian control?

In the mid-19th century, Kashmir's Sikh rulers ceded the Valley of Kashmir to the British, who in turn sold it to the Hindu rajah of neighbouring Jammu. Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, became a holiday resort for the British.

Upon independence a century later, the princely states in theory had the right to choose whether to join India or Pakistan, but the decision was largely determined by religious demographics and geographical location. Kashmir's playboy maharaja, Hari Singh, could not decide, as his state adjoined both nations; he pondered turning it into an independent "Switzerland of Asia". But his hand was forced when, after Partition, Muslims in northwest Kashmir, backed by a Pakistani tribal army, rose up against the Hindu population and massacred them.

Independent India's new PM, Jawaharlal Nehru, a Kashmiri Hindu by descent, sent in troops to quash the revolt – in return, Singh ceded Kashmir to India, in October 1947.

How did Pakistan react?

Pakistan has (like India) always claimed the whole of Kashmir, and its regular forces entered the conflict soon after. The resulting First Indo-Pakistani War ended in 1949, with a UN-brokered ceasefire.

Most of the region was left under Indian control, except the northwestern third, including Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad ("Free") Kashmir, which is controlled by Pakistan. In 1948, the UN called for both sides to withdraw troops and let the people of Kashmir vote on their future status. This referendum never took place, essentially because Nehru realised that it would not be decided in India's favour.

Instead, the countries went to war over Kashmir again, first in 1965 and then in 1971. The ceasefire line agreed in the Simla Agreement in 1972 became the de facto border, known as the "Line of Control".

How did the Kashmiris react?

From the 1950s on, popular movements emerged in Kashmir demanding either independence or a merger with Pakistan. India responded with repression, while Pakistan provided support for militant groups. In the late 1980s, growing opposition to Indian rule was fuelled by a rigged election and the killing of peaceful protesters.

The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, a pro-independence group backed by Pakistan, launched an insurgency against the Indian authorities. India responded with a massive counterinsurgency operation, flooding the region with troops, and making Kashmir one of the most highly militarised areas in the world. About 41,000 people were killed over the following 27 years. Extrajudicial military killings were rife; at least 8,000 Kashmiris "disappeared". Nearly all the Hindus in the Valley of Kashmir, known as the Pandits – about 100,000 – left following a series of terrorist killings.

What has happened since?

The insurgency was largely brought under control by the early 2000s, but there have been regular eruptions of violence since. Pakistan's military intelligence service, the ISI, has encouraged the growth of radical Islamist groups that focus on the Kashmir issue, though their members are often not Kashmiris.

The usual pattern is that an atrocity takes place (the killing of 40 paramilitary police by a car bomb in 2019, for example); India then holds Pakistan responsible, and attacks alleged terrorist camps in Pakistan, which denies responsibility and counter-attacks. But the latest atrocity was different, since it hit tourists, not a military target.

What is PM Narendra Modi's policy on Kashmir?

All Indian governments since 1947 have taken a hard line on Kashmir, but Modi's Hindu nationalist BJP has been particularly unyielding. In 2019, it revoked Article 370 of India's Constitution, dating from 1949, which had guaranteed Kashmir a degree of autonomy, and restricted property rights to "permanent residents". Instead, Jammu and Kashmir is now ruled directly from Delhi. His government had also claimed that militancy in the region was in check, and encouraged the resumption of tourism.

What do Kashmiris want?

This is hotly contested, and there is no simple answer. An authoritative poll, conducted by Chatham House and Mori in 2010, found that in India-administered Jammu and Kashmir, 43% said they would vote for independence, while 28% would vote to stay with India, and only 2% to join Pakistan. However, this varied strongly by region: of some 13 million people in the state, eight million live in the Kashmir Valley, which is now over 95% Muslim; upwards of 74% there supported independence.

But in Jammu, where five million people live, 68% of them Hindu, support for independence was only 1%. In Azad (Pakistani) Kashmir, 50% thought Kashmir as a whole should be part of Pakistan, and 45% thought it should be independent. Robert Bradnock, who ran the poll, concluded that the referendum envisaged by the UN would now fail to resolve the conflict.

India and Pakistan's escalating military attacks against one another in recent weeks, which brought the two antagonistic powers closer to major conflict than they had been in years, called attention to another stakeholder in the region: China. The global superpower has a keen interest in what happens in its national backyard.

Following last month's terrorist assault on tourists in the contested Kashmir region, long claimed by both India and Pakistan, the two nuclear-armed nations' escalating violence seemed to resolve with a shaky but stable weekend ceasefire. But China's shadow looms large over the events of this past week, and the hints at the possibility of future violence between South Asia's longtime adversaries.

A 'rich intelligence harvest' for China

Pakistan's claim that its forces used Chinese-made J-10C fighter jets to down Indian aircraft, "including the advanced French-made Rafale," may have provided the world's "first real glimpse" at how "advanced Chinese military technology performs against proven Western hardware," CNN said. While it hasn't fought a major war in nearly half a century, China has "raced to modernize its armed forces." As Pakistan's "primary arms supplier," Beijing is "likely watching intently" to gauge how well its weapons "have and potentially will perform in real combat."

With China supplying the "vast majority" of Pakistan's military purchases, and India turning westward for its own arms, the result has "injected superpower politics into South Asia's longest-running and most intractable conflict," The New York Times said — particularly as China has "deepened its investment in its advocacy and patronage of Pakistan" in the face of warming Indian-American relations. The "most important global aspect" of this latest Indian-Pakistani violence is that for the first time, "Chinese military equipment has been tested against top-notch western equipment," said Sushant Singh, a lecturer at South Asian Studies at Yale University, at the Financial Times.

The latest violence between India and Pakistan also offers a "potentially rich intelligence harvest" for China, which has advanced enough capabilities to "deeply scrutinize Indian actions in real time" across border installations, naval fleets, "as well as from space," Reuters said. While both India and China have "taken steps to strengthen their military facilities and capabilities" along their shared border, China's host of orbital satellites in particular "packs an intelligence gathering punch" compared to India's capabilities.

'Peace, stability and development' in the region

While China and Pakistan enjoy close military and diplomatic ties, Beijing has conspicuously — and perhaps surprisingly — pushed for a measure of restraint during this latest spate of Kashmir violence. India and Pakistan are both "important countries in South Asia," said Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun last month. The "harmonious coexistence" between the two rival nations is "vital to the peace, stability and development of the region.

Continued violence between India and Pakistan could threaten China's "very important equities in Pakistan, including sizeable levels of infrastructure investment and other assets," said regional analyst Michael Kugelman to the South China Morning Post. Moreover, Beijing's "recent efforts to improve relations with India may limit its response to diplomatic support for Pakistan," said The Diplomat.

At the same time, Pakistan's alleged use of Chinese-made fighter jets to successfully repel Indian planes is "essentially a powerful advertisement" for China's arms industry, said military observer Antony Wong Dong to CNN. "All countries potentially looking to buy fighter jets, as well as China’s regional rivals, will need to seriously reconsider: how should they face this new reality?"

India launched missiles into Pakistan on Wednesday in an escalation of tensions after militants opened fire on tourists in the disputed Kashmir region last month.

The attack took place in the Indian-administered part of the region and the 26 victims were mostly Indian tourists. Though Pakistan denies responsibility, the Indian defence ministry said its "Operation Sindoor" hit targeted sites within Pakistani territory used by the perpetrators – a group known as Kashmir Resistance.

Who controls Kashmir?

Control over Kashmir is split mainly between India and Pakistan. India controls a little over half of the region, while roughly a third is administered by Pakistan. China controls the remaining 15% – the desolate northeastern region of Aksai Chin, through which it built a strategically valuable road in the late 1950s connecting Xinjiang with the recently annexed Tibet in the south.

Kashmir is hotly disputed and has been since the partition of British India in 1947, with the first armed conflict between Pakistan and India taking place that year. Delhi and Islamabad claim rightful ownership over the entirety of Kashmir to this day, and tensions between the two nuclear states have increased in the last decade.

How did the dispute begin?

In 1947, Britain's former Indian colony was split into two independent states: Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim nation, and India, which is majority Hindu. The then ruler of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, ceded control to India in exchange for security guarantees. But the region was then attacked by militants from Pakistan, sparking the First Kashmir War.

That conflict, also known as the Indo-Pakistani War, lasted two years before the United Nations stepped in to negotiate a ceasefire. This resulted in a de facto division of Kashmir between India and Pakistan, called the Line of Control. The line was meant as a stopgap, "pending a more permanent political settlement", said The New York Times.

Have there been more conflicts since?

With no long-standing political resolution, there have been two further wars over the region. The second Kashmir war took place in 1965, sparked by a covert operation by the Pakistani military into Indian Kashmir. The conflict was brutal but lasted only a few weeks, with the US and Soviet Union helping to broker a ceasefire.

The most recent official conflict took place in 1999, though insurgencies and attacks had been a common feature in Kashmir in the intervening period. The Kargil War again began after Pakistani forces infiltrated Indian Kashmir. Although it was a short war – with India ultimately regaining control of the area – it was fierce, resulting in hundreds of casualties for both nations.

India and Pakistan also went to war in 1971 over the independence of Bangladesh, a conflict that led to talks aimed at improving relations between the two powers. One upshot of those talks was that the Line of Control in Kashmir was made permanent.

What's happened more recently?

Although there have been no further wars in Kashmir since 1999, the area has been blighted by small-scale insurgencies and terror attacks. In 2019, Delhi stripped Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status, as part of a wider security clampdown that attracted criticism from human rights groups. The Pakistan-controlled area, called Azad Kashmir, is officially self-governing but economically and administratively dependent on Pakistan.

The recent strikes by India represent the "most significant military actions in recent years", said India Today. Islamabad has called the attacks a "blatant act of war", leaving the prospect of further conflict in Kashmir on a knife-edge.

What happened

India launched missiles at nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir Tuesday night, killing at least 26 people and drawing retaliatory fire. Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said the strikes targeted "terrorist infrastructure" used to plan the deadly April 22 attack on tourists in India-controlled Kashmir and alleged future terrorist plots. Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called it an "act of war."

Who said what

The two nuclear-armed neighbors "have inched closer to conflict" since last month's terrorist attack, exchanging "small-arms fire across the Kashmir border" despite "diplomatic efforts" to "lessen tensions" now at their "highest point in years," following "years of frosty peace," The Wall Street Journal said. The longtime rivals last came to "the brink" of war over Kashmir in 2019, said The New York Times, but India's overnight strike on Pakistan's Punjab Province represented "an escalation" in the simmering conflict.

World leaders called for restraint and de-escalation. "The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan," said a spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General António Guterres.

India's Defense Ministry said its strikes were "focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature" and "no Pakistan military facilities" were targeted. "Justice is served," the Indian Army said on X. Sharif said Pakistan had "every right to give a robust response to this act of war imposed by India, and a strong response is indeed being given." Pakistan said it shot down five Indian fighter jets and a drone. India said at least 10 civilians were killed by Pakistani shelling.

What next?

India and Pakistan are "two strong militaries that, even with nuclear weapons as a deterrent, are not afraid to deploy sizeable levels of conventional military force against each other," South Asia analyst Michael Kugelman told The Associated Press. "The escalation risks are real. And they could well increase, and quickly."

A grassroots revolution has helped Pakistan pull off one of the fastest solar revolutions in the world. Even as the nation "grapples with poverty and economic instability", it imported 17 gigawatts of solar panels in 2024, more than double the previous year, said CNN.

Solar power is the third-largest source of renewable energy globally, behind hydropower and wind – but it's the fastest growing. And nowhere is that boom more in evidence than in Pakistan.

'Perfect storm'

Pakistan's solar panel boom is the result of a "perfect storm" of factors, Waqas Moosa, chair of the Pakistan Solar Association and CEO of Hadron Solar, told CNN. One significant reason is the rise of electricity costs, which have "shot up" 155% over the last three years. Chinese "overproduction" of solar panels has also "lowered costs", said the World Economic Forum, turning Pakistan into the third-largest destination for Chinese exports.

Although the Pakistani government has tried to claim credit for the uptake of solar, it has been "very bottom up", Mustafa Amjad, from the Renewables First think tank in Islamabad, told CNN. Demand from "the people" has pushed markets to import more solar panels.

For some analysts, Pakistan's embrace of solar power "undermines an increasingly popular narrative that clean energy is unaffordable, unwanted" and only possible with "large-scale government subsidies". And for those living in the country, it offers a respite to expensive and often unreliable energy supplied by the traditional power grid.

Grid obsolescence

But the solar revolution hasn't come without its costs. The "flight of affluent Pakistanis" towards renewable energy has dealt a fresh blow to those relying on "pricey" conventional sources of power, said Reuters. Electricity companies who have "lost their most lucrative clients" have been forced to "additionally hike" costs to their "shrinking pool" of customers.

Most of the nation's solar panels aren't connected to sell excess capacity to the grid, meaning that the "benefits of cheap and reliable power aren't widely shared", and the "struggling urban middle class" have been "left out".

The sheer speed of the boom means it was "probably the most extreme" solar revolution to have happened in "any country in the world" in 2024, energy analyst Dave Jones told DW's "Living Planet" podcast.

But "you need to make sure that it happens in a sustainable way for the whole of the system". Otherwise, there's the risk of a "blanket ban on any more solar coming in", something that has already happened in other countries faced with a disruptive solar boom, like Vietnam. "You just turn off the taps and it stops," he said.

But the story of solar in Pakistan, particularly the way that uptake has been "driven primarily by market forces and with minimal political support", still holds "valuable lessons for other emerging markets", said the World Economic Forum.

Kashmir has experienced its share of violence over the past 70 years, said Daily Excelsior (Jammu), but last week's massacre in the "idyllic" Baisaran valley was a "grim" new low for the Indian-administered territory. As families and honeymooners relaxed in Pahalgam, one of Kashmir's "most tranquil corners", gunmen from a militant group called The Resistance Front slaughtered 26 people in a meadow, all but one of whom was Indian.

Relations between India and Pakistan are now "cratering", pushing the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of outright war, said Rhea Mogul on CNN (New York). India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, accused Pakistan of organising the attack, vowing to pursue the perpetrators "to the ends of the Earth"; New Delhi then downgraded ties with Islamabad and shut a key border crossing. The two sides have exchanged fire over the "line of control" in the Himalayan territory, and India has taken the unprecedented step of suspending a vital treaty that allows both countries to share control of the Indus River System – a move that Islamabad called an "act of war".

Pakistan may deny it "a hundred times", said Aaj Ki Baat on India TV (Noida), "but the entire world" knows it was behind this attack. Just look at the videos of the massacre: they show gunmen kitted out with sophisticated weapons and bodycams killing their Hindu victims at point-blank range. This was "a planned, professional job", most likely organised by Pakistan's army and its powerful intelligence agency, the ISI.

It has been the same with almost every major attack on India, said Vir Sanghvi in The Print (New Delhi). After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, when 166 people were killed by Pakistani Islamists, the Manmohan Singh government ignored the angry cries for retribution, saying a war would not benefit anyone. Hailed as "statesman-like", such restraint now "looks more and more like a terrible miscalculation". Pakistan walked away knowing it could kill Indian civilians without consequences. It's time India showed Pakistan that terrorism has a price, even if that means war.

India wants to drag Pakistan into this "deplorable" episode, said Dawn (Karachi). But perhaps Modi's nationalist government should look a little closer to home and "review its brutal rule" in Kashmir, and the "immense discontent" that has bred in the "occupied" territory. In 2019, Modi revoked Kashmir's already limited constitutional autonomy, bringing it under the direct control of New Delhi. He claims "all is well" in the region, but there will be no end to these "blood-soaked episodes" if India continues to stamp out Kashmiri autonomy "through brute force and intimidation".

Modi's long-term goal is to choke off Pakistan's water supply, said The Nation (Lahore), and he happily seized the opportunity last week by withdrawing from the Indus Waters Treaty, which splits control of the rivers flowing down from the Himalayas between India and Pakistan. The Indian PM is "playing with fire": 80% of Pakistan's irrigated agriculture is supported by that treaty, and if he disrupts that supply and undermines our economic and food security, Pakistan will have no choice but to respond – with possibly "catastrophic" results "for the entire region".

India can't actually disrupt Pakistan's water supply, said Abhishek De in India Today (New Delhi). It would take years to build the reservoirs and dams required to plug the water flow from the Indus. It's more of a "psychological" tactic by Modi, who is under severe domestic pressure to respond to the attacks.

India won't be the last country to "weaponise" rivers, said Matthew Campbell in The Times (London). China controls much of the world's water tower, as the Himalayan glaciers are known, and Beijing is already building dams that could stop their flow to India. The decline in glaciers is only adding to tensions. If any of the other 800 international water treaties unravel, we could be entering "a new age of 'water wars'".

India and Pakistan inched closer to overt conflict last week after an attack in the Indian-administered Kashmir region left dozens dead and set the two nuclear-armed neighboring nations on the latest collision course. India has threatened to withdraw from the treaty that provides water to the bulk of Pakistan, prompting that country to close its airspace to Indian flights. As both countries continue baring their teeth at one another, where might all this hostility lead?

What did the commentators say?

The "fast-rising tensions" between India and Pakistan have led to a "series of escalating tit-for-tat moves" since the terrorist attack, The Guardian said. As a result, the two nations have moved "closer to military confrontation." The hostilities are "rekindling memories of February 2019 when a car suicide bombing in Kashmir brought the two countries to the verge of war." The two nations have "unleashed a raft of measures" against one another in the last week, said Al Jazeera, and there have been "cross-border skirmishes" involving "small arms fire" across the India-Pakistan border. With "diplomatic, trade and travel links" in the region "already at a low ebb" since 2019, The Economist said, the actions taken in the past few days have been "largely symbolic."

In particular, India's threat to withdraw from the Indus Waters Treaty signifies a "rupture" with "huge symbolic and strategic weight," The New York Times said. Within Pakistan, there is "growing concern" as various Indian figures "hint at the possibility of military strikes," with some Pakistani analysts warning that the "current confrontation could intensify beyond the 2019 standoff." While Pakistan has denied allegations that its government may have played a role in the Kashmir attack, the incident fits a "pattern of terrorist attacks occurring on Indian soil," when the Pakistani military "feels excluded from the geopolitical conversation," said Manjari Chatterjee Miller, a senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Given the Trump administration's apparent closeness with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, current events "could have given such an impetus."

In Kashmir, "thousands have flocked to the streets" to protest the violence, while business owners "express concerns" over the commercial impact of the attacks on the "popular tourist destination during peak season," CNN said. At the same time, several anti-Pakistan protests have "erupted" in various Indian cities, raising fears of "fueling anti-Kashmiri and anti-Muslim sentiment."

What next?

For India, "military retaliation, at some point in the coming days, is a real possibility," said South Asia analyst Michael Kugelman at Newsweek. The "scale and targeting" of the Kashmir attack make it "all but assured" that India will respond "with muscle."

At the same time, New Delhi's regional rivalry with Beijing and the proximity of all three nations make the shared border the "world's only three-way nuclear junction," said The Associated Press. With China's support of Pakistan and the United States' ongoing backing of India, any India-Pakistani conflict that starts as a bilateral engagement is "unlikely to stay strictly between them, as their strategic partners are likely to get involved." Pakistan has "reinforced" its military forces ahead of an "imminent" action by India, said Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif to Reuters. But the country will only turn to its nuclear arsenal if "there is a direct threat to our existence."

Despite concerns of a wider regional conflict, China is thus far urging India and Pakistan to "exercise restraint," and "meet each other halfway" with "dialogue and consultation" for the sake of "regional peace and stability," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun at Deutsche Welle.

The U.S., meanwhile, has met with Indian and Pakistani officials at "multiple levels" of government, and "encourages all parties to work together towards a responsible resolution," a state department spokesperson said to Reuters. India and Pakistan "work themselves into a frenzy every few years," said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the U.S., to Reuters. "This time, there is no U.S. interest in calming things down."

What happened

Pakistan's military said Wednesday it had freed hundreds of passengers from a train hijacked by separatist militants in Balochistan province on Tuesday. Security forces killed 33 hijackers during the rescue operation, the army said, and four military personnel and 21 civilians were killed over the 30-hour standoff. About 440 people were on the Jaffar Express when militants with the Baloch Liberation Army blew up the tracks and boarded the train.

Who said what

Pakistan's government is "facing a widening security crisis" in "restive" Balochistan, a large and sparsely populated province bordering Iran and Afghanistan, The Washington Post said. The BLA is the "largest of several ethnic armed groups battling the government" for greater autonomy and a "larger share in the regional wealth of mines and minerals," Reuters said. The BLA recently "stepped up their activities using new tactics to inflict high death and injury tolls and target Pakistan's military."

The BLA said earlier Wednesday it had killed at least 50 passengers and would execute more unless the government agreed within 48 hours to negotiate the release of Baloch political prisoners. Shifting "targets from military to unarmed civilians" may give the BLA "instant public and media attention," security analyst Syed Muhammad Ali told The Associated Press, "but it will weaken their support base within the civilian population, which is their ultimate objective."

What next?

Those who "kill innocent Pakistanis on the roads, in trains, in buses or in markets" will be "hunted down and brought to justice," army spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said on television. Other security officials "have been quoted as saying some of the militants may have left the train, taking an unknown number of passengers with them into the surrounding mountainous area," the BBC said.

A number of development programmes and relief assistance efforts around the world have come to a halt this week after President Trump froze all foreign assistance provided by the United States, calling into question the future of foreign aid around the globe.

Even "the most fervent advocates" of US aid can see that not all programmes work well, Rachel Bonnifield, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, told Al Jazeera. But the sudden halt in funding has put people in a "very compromised position where they might die".

What did the commentators say?

For aid agencies, the last two weeks "have been marked by fear, chaos and confusion", said Devex. "I've got people crying. I have people saying: 'but we really need to send these medicines. Are you telling me I can't do that?'” said the leader of one humanitarian organisation.

The order to stop aid work, issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, contained an exception for emergency food aid, along with a further waiver for programmes that provide other "life-saving" assistance. "We don't want to see people die and the like," Rubio told SiriusXM. He said there would be a programme-by-programme review of which projects make "America safer, stronger or more prosperous". But leaders of aid agencies told The New York Times that "some programs will be hard to restart after a temporary shutdown, and many could disappear".

There are obvious geopolitical ramifications too. In Pakistan, the loss of US funding may push the country to seek alternative funding sources, possibly from China or the Gulf nations, said The Times of India. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is already "making moves to fill the gaps, taking advantage of the power vacuum that the US has just created", said Devex.

What next?

However unwelcome the cuts are, for some they serve as a reminder that health and welfare systems in a number of countries are overly dependent on foreign aid.

"I think these pauses may end up changing the relationship other countries have with US assistance," Bonnifield told Al Jazeera. "Our governments now know that help is coming from nowhere," Ayoade Alakija, a global health specialist from Nigeria, told the Financial Times. "They need to start funding things themselves and investing in their own health and education."

The Pakistani Taliban has been growing in power and ambition since its ally across the border retook control of Afghanistan in 2021.

In recent months, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has ramped up its terror attacks and threats towards Pakistan's all-powerful military, taking advantage of the country's political chaos to entrench its influence in the tribal borderlands.

This surge in violence is causing increasing tension between Islamabad and Kabul, with Pakistan accusing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan of providing safe havens for TTP militants, and allowing them to carry out cross-border attacks – which Kabul denies. Last month, Pakistan launched air strikes against alleged TTP hideouts in Afghanistan, prompting Afghanistan to retaliate with strikes of its own. "This is a red line for us," said Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. "If the TTP operates from there, it is not acceptable for us. We will defend Pakistan's sovereignty at every cost."

'Strategic miscalculation'

The TTP was founded in 2007, at the height of the US "war on terror". Although it has ideological links with the Afghan Taliban, it operates independently. The group's aims are to establish an Islamic emirate in Pakistan and impose strict sharia law.

It was responsible for some of Pakistan's "deadliest attacks", said Al Jazeera, including a 2014 massacre at a military-run school, in which "more than 130 children were killed".

About 6,000 to 6,500 of its fighters operate out of Afghanistan, according to a UN monitoring report last July. And it has had a recent "surge in manpower" in Pakistani borderlands, said The Diplomat. Locals suggest there could now be "up to 20,000" affiliated with the TTP. The group is, in effect, creating a "parallel governance system" in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a north-western province on the Afghanistan border.

The TTP also took a share of the US military equipment, worth an estimated $7 billion, that was left in Afghanistan when America withdrew in 2021. This, and the release of hundreds of its fighters from Afghan prisons, "erased much of Pakistan's hard-fought progress to defeat it", analysts told the Financial Times.

Last year in Pakistan, more than 2,500 people were killed in terror attacks – most of them carried out by the TTP, according to the country's Center for Research and Security Studies. This was a 66% increase from 2023, making it the deadliest year in a decade.

TTP attacks have provided "fuel in the political infighting" racking Pakistan, said The New York Times. And they are putting "immense pressure on leaders" in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, causing once-close ties to fray.

Islamabad covertly supported the Taliban in Afghanistan during the decades it was out of power, hoping that, once it regained power, it would help "rein in" the TTP in return. That, experts say, was "a strategic miscalculation".

'Return to widespread violence'

This month, the TTP issued a warning to the Pakistani army, saying it would now attack its commercial interests, as well as its personnel. It named specific companies as targets. and warned civilians to "divest from military-run organisations within three months", said Al Jazeera. This shift in strategy could, say analysts, signal "a return to widespread violence".

For its part, Pakistan's military has warned that it will no longer tolerate "safe havens" for TTP fighters in Afghanistan, said The Diplomat. It has begun referring to the TTP as khawarij ("outside the fold of Islam"), and calling on Afghanistan to crack down on the group.

But the Taliban has "strong domestic incentives not to do so", said The New York Times. It fears pushing TTP fighters into joining Isis-K, an Afghan offshoot of Islamic State, which is increasingly a threat to the regime.

The economic interdependence between Pakistan and Afghanistan means "neither side can afford a breakdown in relations", Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the US and the UN, told the FT. "But this level of cross-border violence can't go on."

Meanwhile, locals are "bearing the brunt" of both jihadi violence and security operations, said The Diplomat. People are "scared to go out of their homes after sunset", said Abdullah Bettani, an activist based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. "Many, including women and children, are dying in the crossfire."

What happened

A police officer was shot dead and dozens of people were injured as clashes between Pakistani authorities and protesters demanding the release of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan intensified Monday. Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad has been placed on lockdown for a second day in a row as thousands took to the streets to demand Khan's release and new elections.

Who said what

Khan has been in prison for more than a year and faces a host of charges ranging from corruption to leaking state secrets that he alleges are politically motivated. He "remains hugely popular despite attempts by the military-backed civilian government to suppress his support," The New York Times said. Police have detained more than 4,000 Khan supporters, and government officials have threatened more arrests if protesters reach Islamabad's "red zone," which has been "sealed off to protect government buildings," Al Jazeera said.

What next?

The ongoing clashes may signal that Pakistan is "nearing a breaking point," the Times said. Khan's wife, Bushra Bibi, told supporters Monday that the marches would continue until her husband was freed.

A cricketing powerhouse for decades, Pakistan's national team have suddenly found themselves on a sticky wicket. This month Pakistan suffered a shocking 2-0 home Test series defeat to Bangladesh, a country they have beaten in every previous Test encounter.

And that outcome is far more than an unlucky fluke. The Pakistani men's side have not won a Test match at home since February 2021: "a winless streak of 10 games", said Al Jazeera.

Following their defeat to Bangladesh, Pakistan fell to number eight in the ICC Test rankings: their worst position in nearly six decades. Their recent performances have "nosedived across all formats" of cricket, with poor management, political instability and the chaotic churn in coaches and captains all blamed for the downfall.

Just not cricket

Among Pakistan's nearly 240 million people, cricket is by far the most popular sport. It "cuts across all divides in society", which gives it "enormous cultural and political cachet", said Eastern Eye. Players are "celebrated as national heroes" – some, like former captain and now jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, even ascend to the top levels of political power off the back of their sporting glory.

But this year, Pakistan failed to qualify for the Super 8 round of the T20 World Cup after losing the group stage matches to rivals India and the non-Test playing USA. They also failed to get out of the group stages at the 50-over World Cup. Perhaps their last notable run was during the T20 World Cup in 2022, when they eventually lost a one-sided final to England.

In the past two years alone, Pakistani cricket has "ploughed through four coaches, three board heads, three captains and numerous formats of the domestic competition", said Agence France-Presse. Regional analysts have said the repeated upheaval is due to a system that "rides on the whims of politicians" rather than the best interests of the game.

Khan recently issued a statement from prison, describing the country's cricketing woes as a result of the same political forces he alleges are behind his conviction. "Favourites have been imposed to run a technical sport like cricket. What are Mohsin Naqvi's qualifications?" he said, referring to the current chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), who has a second full-time job as interior minister.

The "incongruity" of Naqvi's dual roles was highlighted when he hosted a recent press conference, discussing both a deadly militant attack and a cricket game.

The PCB has also been accused of "favouring" certain players, said the Hindustan Times, and Shan Masood's "lacklustre captaincy" has failed to turn things around for the Test team.

Decades in the making

The "Pakistan team's rapid downward spiral has been alarming, to say the least", said the Express Tribune. The recent series of high-profile losses "makes the mind boggle". But for critics of the game, "the pattern has been all too obvious for nearly two decades".

"Ad hocism has taken root" in the PCB – little surprise in a nation "increasingly shorn of democratic values", said the Karachi-based English language newspaper. The ruling regime has "hand-picked" favourites to lead the PCB, to "run the game in their own clueless manner, only to ruin it".

This politically motivated interference in the sport "has a knock-on effect on team performance", said Ahsan Iftikhar Nagi, cricket journalist and former media manager of the PCB, the governing body. "When we have chaos and chronic instability within the management of the board it will reflect in the on-field performances," he said on France 24.

Chaos is "prevalent" both on and off the field, said the Express Tribune, and domestic cricket pitches are in a "poor state", which leaves batsmen and bowlers unprepared for competitive international cricket. More and more leading players choose to head off to international T20 leagues because the money is better. Their "continuous absence" has taken its toll on the PCB's "much-trumpeted flagship project", the Pakistan Super League.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's cricket bosses are "sitting pretty in their cushy jobs, handed to them in a platter by the respective regimes". They have no time nor inclination to "set things right", said the Express Tribune; they are "busy working on their own respective agendas": saving "their own skin and seat, or making good money at the expense of the country's cricket".

The government of Pakistan is "throttling the internet" with a China-style firewall to "crush dissent" – and "gaslighting" citizens about it, activists and business leaders claim. 

Internet connectivity has been up to 40% slower than normal since July, according to one IT expert quoted on the Karachi-based online newspaper Dawn, disrupting businesses and affecting millions. For weeks the government "refused to comment". Pakistan's all-powerful military said it was battling so-called "digital terrorism". 

But a digital rights specialist blames the installation of a national firewall, aimed at "increasing surveillance and at censoring political dissent", which the government denies. Activists say the "target" of the disruption is the party of jailed opposition leader and former prime minister Imran Khan, who is still "wildly popular and boosted by a young, tech-savvy voter base".

Pakistan's digital censorship playbook

Last week the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) described the "hastily" implemented firewall as a "sacrifice" of the nation's IT industry "at the altar of misplaced priorities".

It "triggered a perfect storm of challenges" that threatened a "complete meltdown of business operations", said the group in a press release. It was a "direct and aggressive assault on the industry’s viability". A "mass exodus of IT companies is not just a possibility but an imminent reality if immediate and decisive action is not taken", it warned.

It predicted financial losses of up to $300 million for the economy – about a month's worth of the country's IT exports, said The Register. Whatever Pakistan is doing seems similar to the impact of China's Great Firewall abroad, said the tech website, but different from the domestic impact. Within China, access speeds "remain generally high".

Given Pakistan's "history of censorship", however, it would "hardly be surprising" if it were implementing such a system. Activists have long criticised Pakistan's attempted control of the digital sphere. 

The country blocked internet access last year when protests erupted over the arrest of Khan. X (formerly Twitter) has been banned since February due to "security threats", after it was used to share allegations of poll rigging against Khan's party during the election. 

Pakistan has also blocked access to Wikipedia and TikTok in recent years, to restrict content deemed "inappropriate on religious grounds".

The government's defence

After "weeks of hue and cry from internet users", the Pakistani government claimed that it was upgrading its "web management system" to combat cybersecurity threats, said The Times of India.

On Sunday, Pakistan's minister for IT and telecommunications denied that the government was responsible for the anaemic speeds. She said claims the government was "throttling the internet to suppress dissent" were "completely false". 

The "frequent, unannounced degradations" in connectivity were due to the widespread use of secure connections, or virtual private networks (VPNs), Shaza Fatima Khawaja said.

"I can say under oath that the government neither shut down nor slowed down the internet," she told a press conference in Islamabad. A meeting has been set up with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) this week to "ensure that users in the country do not face similar problems again".

But the Lahore High Court summoned representatives from the government and the PTA to answer for the disruption. Activists have filed a petition before the Islamabad High Court, calling for the internet to be "declared a fundamental right under Pakistan's constitution", said the BBC. The court is due to hear the case on Monday.

After all, if the issue was more people using VPNs, said Dawn, "why was there a need to get the PTA involved?" What are the authorities hoping to achieve? What is the timeline for the rollout of the new system? What can ordinary users expect from it? How can the state expect people to respect restrictions when the state itself uses VPNs to get around them? Even Pakistan's prime minister and other state officials appear to be using VPNs to continue to access and post on X.

There is still "very little" in the way of answers. And it is this "opacity" that keeps people "deeply suspicious". "The people deserve more than clueless representatives gaslighting them for suffering poor internet connectivity."

Mpox has been declared a global public health emergency with scientists claiming the latest outbreak, which has now spread from Africa to Europe and Asia, more closely resembles the early days of HIV than Covid-19.

Known as monkeypox until it was renamed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2022 after complaints it was misleading as well as "racist and stigmatising", mpox is a viral disease related to smallpox. It causes flu-like symptoms and skin blisters across the body.

Most cases are "mild", said Sky News, but it can be "deadly" as it can lead to sepsis. There are currently no approved treatments specifically for mpox infections, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), although two vaccines have been approved for emergency use by WHO.

A new more deadly Clade 1b sub-variant, first identified last September, has already killed more than 500 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with cases also reported in more than a dozen neighbouring countries. Last week, Sweden confirmed the first case of the more contagious strain outside Africa, and another case was then reported in Pakistan. At that point WHO declared a "public health emergency of international concern", the category for Ebola outbreaks, Covid-19 and a 2022 mpox surge in Europe.

What did the commentators say?

Unlike the mpox outbreak that spread globally in 2022, the newer strain is "more dangerous", said Bloomberg. The current variant has a case fatality rate between 3% and 5%, considerably higher than Covid-19.

Evidence also suggests the incubation period – the length of time someone who has contracted mpox can transmit the virus before they develop symptoms – could be as long as four days, "making it harder to contain by identifying and isolating cases". A 2022 study from the UK found that more than half of mpox infections were spread by infected individuals who had not yet developed symptoms.

But while the latest outbreak has understandably sparked concern, said Kiffer George Card, an epidemiologist writing on The Conversation, the WHO's public health warning should, at this point, "raise caution, not cause panic".

Unlike Covid, mpox is not a respiratory disease and is instead transmitted via prolonged skin-to-skin contact, sexual intercourse or passed to children during pregnancy or after birth. This means the reproduction (R) number is significantly lower, making efforts to stop the exponential spread of the virus much easier.

While this is "far and away the biggest outbreak of mpox ever, with quite a high fatality rate", Professor Michael Marks from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine told The Guardian, "it's not likely to lead to a Covid-19 style pandemic.

"There will be concerns about its spread in countries with more resources, but it's chiefly going to be a problem in the region."

What next?

Although mpox has been around for decades, there are still "many unknowns" about how the virus spreads and why it suddenly appeared around the world in 2022, said Vox. "What researchers do know is that the virus has been rapidly mutating in recent years."

In this sense it more closely resembles "the early days of HIV", Trudie Lang, a professor of global health research at Oxford University, told The Guardian. The virus appeared to be spreading via sexual networks, with "vulnerable, young, exploited sex workers" at high risk.

Sweden's Public Health Agency, which confirmed Europe's first case of Clade 1b last week, said it has a "preparedness to diagnose, isolate and treat people with mpox safely". The "fact that a patient with mpox is treated in the country does not affect the risk to the general population, a risk that the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) currently considers very low".

Asian countries have also "beefed up surveillance", said Bloomberg, after Pakistan confirmed an mpox infection last week. China is asking incoming travellers from countries and regions affected, as well as individuals experiencing symptoms, to report to customs officials upon entry, while Economic Times reported health authorities in India, Indonesia and Malaysia have all ordered heightened vigilance at international airports and ports for passengers displaying mpox symptoms, and designated hospitals and labs to handle potential cases.

But while these international cases have "inevitably raised concerns about the further spread of the disease", The Guardian said it remains the case that those in the DRC and neighbouring countries are "most at risk – and are facing a severe challenge in securing urgently needed vaccines".

A six-way coalition will form the next government in Pakistan, ensuring the party of former prime minister Imran Khan will not take power despite getting the most votes in last week's election.

The announcement followed "days of wrangling and political horse-trading", said The Guardian, after Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) won the most votes – but not enough for a majority – "despite military opposition and a state-led crackdown".

The election may have featured "state-of-the-art avatars and TikTok videos, but the question it poses evokes an old theme", said The Economist. That is: "How long can the country's relentless decline continue before it triggers a revolution, outside intervention or – hope against hope – political renewal?"

What did the commentators say?

The people of Pakistan "spoke clearly" on 8 February, wrote Mosharraf Zaidi in The News International. PTI loyalists, who were forced to stand as independents after the party lost its electoral symbol days before the vote, won 93 seats out of 266. In the circumstances, said Zaidi, this is "nothing short of a political miracle".

Amid allegations of widespread vote-rigging and manipulation, "there is no escaping the party's arrival as the big, immovable object in Pakistani politics". But despite registering the most votes of any party, and boasting the most popular politician in Pakistan as its figurehead, it finds itself shut out of power.

PTI has described the new ruling alliance – led by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which had been predicted to win the election comfortably – as "mandate thieves". 

In truth, the election had been a "fiasco before any votes were cast", said The Economist. "For decades the generals have ruled nuclear-armed Pakistan directly or via a stage-managed democracy featuring a recurring cast of corrupt dynastic parties," said the newspaper, and they will welcome this "shabby outcome".

It was an election "arranged by the Generals and the Judges", agreed Dr Mahboob A. Khawaja on Counter Currents.

Yet despite the seemingly iron grip of the military, judiciary and historic political clans on the levers of power, last week's result shows that Khan continues to loom large. If the army and opposition thought his sentencing to more than a decade in prison would weaken his influence then they have been sorely mistaken. On Friday, Khan, the former national cricket captain in a country where the sport is wildly popular, used an AI-generated video to deliver a victory speech from his cell.

PTI's success "against the odds" in this "deeply flawed" election sends "an emphatic message from Pakistani citizens: they are tired of being led by self-serving political elites and the military's arbitration", said the Financial Times (FT).

What next?

Pakistan is "mired in an economic crisis" that has seen annual inflation hit 28%, said the FT. The country's debt burden has risen sharply and it narrowly avoided defaulting last year thanks to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.

Incoming prime minister Shehbaz Sharif has pledged "revolutionary steps" to bring the country out of its economic malaise, but the new coalition government will take power "under a cloud of public distrust and questions of legitimacy", said The Guardian.

One scenario forecast by The Economist is that Khan's "young, often urban and now-enraged supporters rise up" as they did after his arrest in May 2023 when they stormed military buildings in Lahore. "Another is that the Pakistani Taliban, a local variant of the militant movement, takes advantage of the political turmoil and stirs up further violence."

The election's outcome ultimately "makes the country even less governable", said the FT. It predicted that the new government may need to pursue unpopular austerity policies in order to secure new IMF loans in the spring, all against the backdrop of mass protests by Khan's supporters.

There are "no easy fixes for Pakistan's long-standing economic and security troubles, regardless of who is in power", the paper said. The first step would be to empower voters to hold leaders to account with fair elections.

"With this stunning election result, a long-term reckoning over how Pakistan ought to be governed has begun."

The old saying "too many cooks spoil the broth" is playing out in a Delhi court room with the culmination of a long-running culinary row over the origins of butter chicken.

The famous dish, made in a thick tomato-yoghurt sauce with butter and mild spices, has "inspired mystery novels, travelogues, and countless restaurant orders", said the BBC. "But the comforting curry that people from around the world turn to as a familiar favourite has now become the subject of a messy court battle."

Its origin story is at the heart of the "saucy real-life drama roiling India", said The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

What is the claim?

The origins of butter chicken date back to before India's independence, and a popular restaurant called Moti Mahal in Peshawar, now in Pakistan, run by Mokha Singh and two of his employees – cousins Kundan Lal Gujral and Kundan Lal Jaggi. Following partition, in 1947, the restaurant reopened in Delhi, where, legend has it, butter chicken was invented.

The dish was long attributed to Gujral and was said to have been born out of frugality, with leftover tikkas mixed together with a thick tomato gravy and dollops of butter. 

Within a year, Moti Mahal had become a favourite of ministers and heads of state. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, dined there, as did Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Richard Nixon. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev used to fly Moti Mahal's chefs and platters of chicken to Moscow for state banquets. 

"Peace treaties were hammered out in the balcony," said The New York Times (NYT) in 1984. "And M. Maulana Azad, the great Muslim leader, reportedly told the Shah of Iran that while in India he must make two visits – to the Taj Mahal and Moti Mahal."

However, the grandson of Gujral's cousin Jaggi "tells a different story" about the dish for which the restaurant is famed, said the same paper. Raghav Jaggi claims "that his own grandfather invented butter chicken by chance". In his version of events, late one day, when the kitchen was nearly out of stock and a large group of diners had arrived, his grandfather made a sauce with "tomatoes, fresh butter and some spices", and then "mixed in pieces of cooked tandoori chicken".

Both families now run rival chains and claim to be the true originators of the dish. Simmering tensions finally boiled over last month when the Gujral family filed a lawsuit against Daryaganj, run by the descendants of Jaggi.

The Gujral family is seeking £188,968 in damages for copyright infringement and unfair competition. The owners of Daryaganj counter that, while Gujral was the face of the Moti Mahal restaurant, it was Jaggi who handled the kitchen and so the dishes, including butter chicken, were all his ideas.

A third Delhi restaurant, the original Moti Mahal, which was sold to another family in the 1990s but still operates under the name, has also staked a claim, with the owners threatening a lawsuit of their own.

Does it matter?

It is "hard to prove that any single person came up with dishes that have become ubiquitous", said the NYT, "but in the case of butter chicken, much is riding on the verdict – money, mostly, but also the legacy of the storied restaurant that the two men began building nearly eight decades ago, a span that covers almost all of India's modern history as an independent nation".

"The case has sparked amusement among foodies", said the Financial Times (FT). Yet "it is the latest twist in a wholly serious battle for commercial control of one of India’s most important exports: its world-famous food". The most contentious of these dates back to the 1990s, when Ricetec, a Texan company, secured a US patent for basmati, "triggering a dispute with New Delhi".

The story of butter chicken can also be "emotive", said the paper, "evoking painful memories of the partition that followed British rule". It is the story of modern India, in a dish.

Pakistan's army was ranked the seventh most powerful in the world last year, but its political power is now under the spotlight amid claims the military has turned the country's upcoming elections "into a farce". 

Former prime minister Imran Khan, once a star cricketer and later known as the "blue-eyed boy" of the country's military, was sentenced yesterday to 14 years in prison on charges of illegally profiting from state gifts. His sentencing comes days  before the (delayed) 8 February general election, in which Khan had been barred from standing as the candidate for his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). 

Khan was already serving a three-year jail term, after being ousted in April 2022 following a no-confidence vote, and hit with more than 180 charges ranging from rioting to terrorism. His supporters claim the charges were politically motivated – and coordinated by the army. 

His arrest last year triggered "unprecedented" anti-military riots, said The Diplomat, but  the government and army have since cracked down on his supporters and PTI workers, with dozens of party leaders going into hiding.

A long-standing foe of Khan, three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, is now "tipped to win" next week's election, after recently returning from a four-year self-imposed exile in the UK, reported BBC News from Islamabad. Sharif was long "a thorn in the side of the powerful military", and was jailed days before Khan claimed victory in the 2018 election. But many now believe Sharif is "preferred" by the Pakistan military, while Khan "has fallen out of favour".  

Sharif's daughter, Maryam Nawaz, the organiser for his party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), said last week that Pakistan's military establishment was responsible for ousting her father – and also for bringing him back.

What did the commentators say?

Although Pakistan has an interim government based in Islamabad, said Arun Anand on Indian news site Firstpost, "in reality it is playing with a lifeless remote as the affairs are effectively managed from Rawalpindi, which houses the General Headquarters (GHQ) of its powerful army".

The governing parties will "pull out all the stops" to prevent the PTI from winning the election, said historian Francis Pike in The Spectator – helped by the Pakistani army, "which laughably claims political impartiality". It is, however, "common knowledge that the army is the ultimate source of power in Pakistan". 

Since the country gained independence in 1947, out of the Partition of India, it has had three periods of martial law: a total of 33 years. Even when not under martial law, politicians "rule under licence" from the army, said Pike. 

Its "supremacy" over Pakistan's institutions was also born out of the war against India in 1948, former federal minister Asad Umar told Al Jazeera, and has since been shored up by multiple wars with its neighbour, and the perceived threat of more. The military has "consistently received more budgetary resources than any other government department", said Abid Hussain, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad. 

Despite Pakistan being "on the verge of an economic meltdown", with an extravagant national debt, the army's assets grew by 78% between 2011 and 2015, Ayesha Jehangir, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Technology Sydney, wrote in an article on The Conversation. Today, the army's commercial assets are worth more than £20.6 billion. 

And an estimated 12% of Pakistan's total land is owned by the army, according to Ayesha Siddiqa, a former researcher with the country’s naval forces.

"It should be noted", said Pike in The Spectator, "that Khan's political downfall coincided with his falling out with army head General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who retired recently with an estimated fortune of $33 million (£26 million)."

In his farewell speech, Bajwa conceded "in a rare admission" that Pakistan's military "had meddled in politics for decades", said Hussain. He promised that, in future, the army would "steer clear of interfering in Pakistan's democratic functioning". Now, "that assurance appears to have evaporated".

What next?

The military's influence goes far beyond politics, said Jehangir in The Conversation. It also controls information dissemination via censorship, and uses "vaguely worded draconian laws" to prosecute its enemies. "As a nuclear state, Pakistan's military is much like Voltaire's description of Frederick II of Prussia: it is a state within itself, benefiting from its sheer size, a great deal of money, and an advantageous geopolitical positioning."

Khan's team have promised to challenge "this ridiculous decision" of his conviction, but his experiences – and that of his rival Sharif – "underline why politicians in Pakistan often feel compelled to comply with the military's wishes", said Hussain for Al Jazeera.

But "one question above all lingers", he added – "can the country of 241 million people rectify the civilian-military imbalance, which has, to many critics, turned the latest vote into a farce?"

In the space of 24 hours this week, Iran launched missile attacks on neighbouring Iraq and Pakistan, as well as Syria.

Iran says its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was targeting various anti-Iranian terrorist groups, including Jaish al-Adl in Pakistan, and Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. It also claimed it destroyed an Israeli Mossad spy agency in Iraq. 

Iran has been "perhaps stung by recent deadly attacks on home soil", said the BBC, and is seemingly "intent on exacting revenge on those it sees as responsible".

Its attack on nuclear-armed Pakistan, however, represents a "dramatic escalation". Islamabad labelled the strikes "illegal" and said there would be "serious consequences", launching retaliatory strikes early on Thursday morning. 

The neighbouring countries have "long regarded each other with suspicion", said Sky News, with Pakistan a majority Sunni Muslim state, and Iran a Shia-dominated country.

The further ratcheting up of tensions in the region comes as Israel and Hamas's brutal conflict in Gaza rages on, and Iran's proxy groups in its "axis of resistance", including the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, carry out attacks that are linked to the conflict.

What the papers said

Despite the Iranian strikes coming at a time when stakes could not be higher in the Middle East, Tehran denies any link to the conflict in Gaza, insisting that it "does not want to get involved in a wider conflict", said the BBC. Yet the proxy groups it supports say their attacks – Hezbollah's on Israel's northern border and the Houthis on ships in the Red Sea – are "to show solidarity with the Palestinians", while Iran also supports Hamas.

What's more, Iran's foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, said on Wednesday that "attacks against Israel and its interests" by the proxy groups would cease "if the Gaza war ends", and warned the Israel-Hamas conflict could "heighten tensions across the Middle East", said Reuters.

Even if the Iranian strikes are not linked to the war in Gaza, it shows "bolder direct action" from Tehran, said CNBC, and it could be expected to make more significant moves against militant groups it is targeting in the future.

Its latest moves stem from this growing escalation across the region, which is "gravy" to Iran and its "aggressively authoritarian regime", wrote Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. Working on its aims of pushing the US "out of the Middle East", retaining its "regional pre-eminence" and strengthening its "key alliances with China and Russia", it is clear Iran has "assembled a remote-controlled coalition of the willing to outlast the US".

The regime in Tehran, however, is "careful to avoid any direct confrontation with the United States", said Jawad Iqbal in The Spectator. But, despite denying any operational control of them, it is "willing to press its proxy forces into action when it suits" to achieve its aims. The "regional instability" this creates enables the regime to "reinforce their hold on power back home", he wrote, and "demands loyalty" from Iranians by constructing the illusion the country is "under growing threat from a range of sinister forces".

For Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei – now 84 and reportedly in poor health – and his regime, regional instability helps "deflect from the growing problems at home". A bomb in early January that killed 94 people in Kerman "shook the regime to the core", added Iqbal, and its response was to "lash out at perceived enemies".

What next?

The most "curious feature" of events so far in the Middle East is the "care taken" by Tehran and Washington to "avoid putting their forces into direct contact", said The New York Times. 

American intelligence, it reports, said "Iran is not interested in a wider war", despite increasing hostilities from its proxy groups, as it aims to "find a way to punch at Israel" without all-out conflict. There are further warnings too that Tehran is "speeding" again towards nuclear armaments, having "ramped up" its production of uranium "drastically", the paper added.

But Iran has proved it has become the "big kid on the block" in the Middle East, added The Guardian's Tisdall, and for the West "sanctioning, ostracising and threatening" it has not worked. With its "global alliance" and its "powerful militias and economic might", it has become a "formidable opponent", he concludes. And the US and Britain must "urgently" find a "fresh diplomatic approach" to resolve the crisis and avoid war.

Eight people, six of them schoolchildren and two teachers, have been trapped after a cable car broke down in northern Pakistan.

The children had been travelling to school in Battagram, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, when “one of the chairlift’s cables snapped”, said CNN, leaving them stranded 900ft above a ravine.

After attempts to repair the broken cable had been unsuccessful, Reuters reported that two army helicopters had been dispatched to the scene as part of the urgent rescue operation.

“The gondola became stranded half way across a ravine and was dangling by a single cable after the other snapped,” rescue official Shariq Riaz Khattak told Reuters.

One of those trapped in the cable car is named Gulfraz, a 20-year-old, according to Geo News. He told the Pakistan TV channel by telephone that the group “have been stuck for more than six hours”. He also said that a 16-year-old passenger “who suffers from a heart condition” had been unconscious for three hours. The group “don’t even have drinking water”, he added.

A statement from the country’s caretaker prime minister, Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar, described the incident as “really alarming” and ordered all “dilapidated and non-compliant chairlifts” to close immediately.

The cable car is in a “remote, mountainous part” of the province, the Times of India said. Zulfiqar Khan, an official with Pakistan’s emergency rescue service, told AFP that it is “almost impossible to help without a helicopter”.

Cable cars are a common form of travel for those living in such isolated areas. However, they can be a “risky form of travel”, CNN added, as some “lack regular maintenance”.

At least 43 people were killed and 200 wounded on Sunday in a blast at a political rally in northwest Pakistan.

The explosion occurred in the Khyber Pakhtunnkhwa province and was set off by a suicide bomber, provincial police chief Akhtar Hayat Khan told local media. The rally was organized by the Islamist Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl party, and one of its local leaders, Maulana Ziaullah, was killed in the blast.

Officials believe Islamic State Khorasan, an ISIS affiliate, could be behind the bombing, as the group previously targeted Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl due to its relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan, The New York Times reported. Islamic State Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, does not think the Taliban is strict enough.

Earlier this year, Pakistani Taliban militants attacked a mosque in Peshawar and launched an assault against the police headquarters in Karachi. Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace, told the Times that Sunday's bombing "is yet another reminder that militancy remains ascendant in Pakistan and insecurity is likely to rise in the coming months." Groups like ISIS-K and the Pakistani Taliban, Mir added, "are trying to carve out space for themselves in the country, and that creates incentives for each of these groups to try to distinguish themselves" through their attacks.

“Kaha tha Imran Khan ko na chhedna.” If there’s a single slogan that captures the “profound crisis” of the Pakistani state, it is this, said Avinash Paliwal in The Indian Express (Delhi): “We told you, don’t touch Imran Khan.”

Last Tuesday, Khan, the former PM and leader of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was attending court in the capital Islamabad when he was unexpectedly arrested on corruption charges, and dragged into custody by paramilitary police.

The arrest escalated a constitutional crisis that has dragged on since Khan was removed from power in a no-confidence vote in April last year, which he has never accepted. His PTI party reacted by calling for protests, which duly erupted across the nation.

‘Reservoir of rage’

“It was as if a reservoir of rage had burst open,” said Zarrar Khuhro on Al Jazeera (Doha). Public buildings, buses and schools were set ablaze. Protesters attacked the residence of the current PM, Shehbaz Sharif. Even the “strongholds of the powerful military establishment”, usually off-limits to even the angriest of mobs, were targeted. PTI supporters ransacked the official residence of the Lahore army commander, looting everything – furniture, paintings, strawberries, even a peacock – before setting it on fire. In total, more than ten protesters were killed. On Friday, the supreme court ordered Khan’s release, on the grounds that his arrest had been unlawful. He arrived at his home in Lahore in the early hours of Saturday morning and was greeted by thousands of supporters, who danced, set off fireworks and showered his car with rose petals in celebration.

“There should be no doubt that Khan’s arrest had little to do with upholding the constitution and everything to do with fear and intimidation,” said Sarah Eleazar in Dawn (Karachi). Since his removal, Khan has been charged in more than 100 cases – including corruption, terrorism and blasphemy.

It’s “a well-established tradition”, said Farzana Shaikh in The Guardian: “the incarceration of political leaders who fall foul of the country’s all-powerful military”. During his rise to power, Khan had the full support of the military. But that “cosy relationship” fell apart in 2021, because Khan tried to foist his leader of choice on the ISI, Pakistan’s influential military spy agency. The military then turned against him and allowed him to be ousted; Khan became a trenchant critic of the army. On 6 May, he claimed at a rally that the current head of the ISI, Major-General Faisal Naseer, whom he nicknames “Dirty Harry”, was plotting to murder him. He also blames Shehbaz Sharif for an assassination attempt in November, when he was shot in the leg. The problem for Khan’s opponents is that, since last April, his popularity has “soared”. “Few doubt that he would return to power, when or if elections were held.”

‘Irresponsibile and incendiary populist rhetoric’

The way that Khan’s arrest was carried out was “extremely concerning”, said The Nation (Lahore). But he does have a case to answer: he is alleged to have obtained billions of rupees from a real estate firm that laundered the proceeds of crime. And with his “irresponsible and incendiary” populist rhetoric, Khan is only increasing “polarisation across the country and bringing disrepute to the country’s institutions” at a time when it desperately needs stability.

Pakistan’s insitutions were already deep in disrepute, said Shaheer M. Ashraf in The Express Tribune (Lahore). Indeed Khan’s popularity derives directly from the public’s “hatred” for them, exacerbated by a profound economic crisis. Once again, Pakistan’s unstable political system has failed. Its political leaders “have never been strong enough to exert their authority over the military”. But the military is also not powerful enough to rule on its own, and has “required political leaders to provide itself with legitimacy”. Never before, though, has the establishment been challenged as it is now. Many believe that Pakistan is on the brink of revolution. It is certainly “stepping into uncharted territory”.

Violent clashes and protests have erupted across Pakistan after Imran Khan, the country’s legendary cricketer turned populist politician, was arrested on his way to court to face charges of corruption.

The former prime minister, who was ousted last year after falling out with Pakistan’s powerful military, was bundled into a van by dozens of paramilitary troops outside a court hearing in the capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday.

On the streets of Islamabad, “hundreds of protesters blocked one of the main highways in and out of the capital”, said the BBC. Speaking to the broadcaster, Khan’s spokesman, Raoof Hasan, said he expected “the worst” and that the arrest could plunge the country “into chaos and anarchy”.

Khan was released on bail three days later after the country’s Supreme Court ruled his detention unlawful. “He has emerged as the country’s most popular leader,” said Al Jazeera and Khan has called on his supporters to hold “freedom” protests to continue across Pakistan.

“The transformation of Khan from a dashing cricketer, whose private life provided the British tabloids with endless fodder, to a philanthropist who built one of Pakistan’s best-equipped cancer hospitals, to a politician who became the prime minister and is now the most popular man in the country is a dramatic tale,” said Outlook India.

Who is Imran Khan?

Born into a wealthy Pashtun family in Lahore in 1952, Khan attended the exclusive Aitchison College and Cathedral School in Lahore, followed by the Royal Grammar School Worcester in England.

He made his cricket debut for Pakistan in 1971 aged just 18, before studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Keble College, Oxford, graduating in 1975.

It was while pursuing his education abroad that Khan “developed a reputation as something of an aristocratic playboy who chased supermodels around the London nightclub circuit and posed lounging on a bed in nothing but a pair of satin shorts”, said The Times of India. He was romantically linked to a number of Bollywood stars as well as the Hollywood actress Goldie Hawn, and later said of his youth: “The playboy image is exaggerated, but I’m not a saint either”.

The high point of his cricketing career came in 1992 when, while nursing a shoulder injury, he cemented his status as a national icon by captaining Pakistan to a win at the Cricket World Cup.

In 1995, three years after retiring, the 42-year-old Khan married the 21-year-old British socialite Jemima Goldsmith, who converted to Islam. The marriage lasted nine years. His second marriage, to a British TV presenter, Reham Ramzan, ended in 2015 after just nine months. He later married his spiritual mentor, Bushra Bibi.

As well as his two acknowledged children with his first wife, he is believed to have fathered at least five other children out of wedlock, although the exact number is not known.

Political wilderness to prime minister

Long recognised as one of Pakistan’s best-known faces internationally, “Khan struggled for years to turn popular support into electoral gains”, said BBC News’s Simon Fraser.

He launched his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in 1996 but it did not emerge as a serious player nationally until the 2013 general election. Five years later, making huge gains in the Punjab province which holds more than half of the 272 directly elected National Assembly seats, a massive swing propelled him to power.

“Khan was seen as a ‘change’ candidate, whose promise to raise a whole new class of clean politicians chimed with voters disillusioned with the old political order,” said Fraser.

Hopes were initially high. The International Centre for Investigative Reporting said in 2018 after he came to power that his government hoped to build “an egalitarian, non-exploitative state based on the principles of the first Islamic state of Medina”. Khan “promises a new society in which all will be equal before the law, political opponents will not be victimised, the judiciary will be independent, the police and military will be re-oriented based on democratic values”, the website added. Additionally, his government promised ten million new jobs and the construction of five million low-cost housing units within five years.

However, many of those pledges went unmet and Khan was charged with tanking the country’s financial system. “To be fair, Khan has tried everything in his playbook to revive Pakistan’s economy,” said the Times of India, in 2020, but his “obsession with media optics has become more important than delivery in office”.

What next?

Khan’s arrest on Tuesday “underscored how far relations have deteriorated with the powerful military, which backed his rise to power in 2018 but withdrew its support ahead of a parliamentary vote of no confidence that ousted him last year”, reported The Economic Times.

In the 12 months since he was ousted the political crisis gripping Pakistan has only worsened, coming to a head in November when Khan was wounded during a political rally after an unidentified man opened fire on his convoy in what many believed was an assassination attempt.

The New York Times described his arrest as a “major escalation” that has “intensified a showdown between the current government and Khan” and “raises the prospect of mass unrest by his supporters”.

“The drama surrounding Khan seems only to have buoyed his popularity,” the paper said, “underscoring his unique ability to outmanoeuvre Pakistan’s typical playbook for sidelining political leaders who have fallen out of favour with the country’s powerful military”.

With his support growing amid ever-intensifying calls for fresh elections few would bet against the former playboy defying the odds to make a dramatic return.

Located at the western end of the Himalayas and the northern tip of Pakistan, the region of Gilgit-Baltistan is one of the world’s most impenetrable natural citadels. It also has “an extraordinarily rich cultural landscape”, says Sam Dalrymple in Condé Nast Traveller, having often resisted conquest by neighbouring empires, while absorbing their influence over the millennia along with the other benefits of Silk Road trade. Known to ancient Chinese geographers as the Tibet of the Apricots, it is a spectacular land of snow leopards and brown bears, of “crumbling palaces” and ancient mosques. It has often been closed to outsiders in recent decades owing to the conflict over Kashmir – into which it had been loosely integrated in the 19th century – but it is now open to visitors once more.

Many locals claim that the liberal Muslim society of this region inspired the lost city of Shangri-La in James Hilton’s popular 1933 novel Lost Horizon. The district of Hunza, for instance, is the most literate in Pakistan, with a relatively high level of women’s empowerment. Indeed, an all-female team of carpenters and designers helped restore the Serena Altit Fort Residence, a 1,000-year-old building that is one of three beautiful palace hotels that belong to the Serena group in Gilgit-Baltistan. It overlooks the medieval walled city of Karimabad, Hunza’s capital, in a bucolic valley “where the crisp air is scented with jasmine blossom”, and most new houses are still built in the traditional, timber-framed style.

Driving southwards past the city of Gilgit, you descend into the Indus Gorge, and the verdant valleys give way to an “arid moonscape”. To the east lies Baltistan, a rugged region where an archaic dialect of Tibetan is spoken and yak meat is widely served. It is here that Serena’s other two palace hotels are to be found, in Khaplu and Shigar, not far from K2, the world’s second-highest peak.

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Pakistan appears to be on the brink of a full-blown crisis with the country struggling to get on top of mounting security threats, political uncertainty and economic instability.

Although the nuclear power is no stranger to turmoil, “a storm of global troubles” – particularly Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan – is only deepening the country’s woes, said NPR.

What’s gone wrong?

“There are three crises intersecting at the moment in Pakistan,” said The Intercept: “an economic crisis, a political crisis and a security crisis.”

The economic outlook is particularly dire. “This is the worst economic crisis that Pakistan has faced in decades,” Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the US, told NPR. Foreign exchange reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan plummeted to $2.9bn in February, with the country’s public debt standing at $270bn.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts slow growth and high inflation for Pakistan this year, reported Al Jazeera, with unemployment also on course to increase. Almost 200,000 Pakistanis left the country in the first three months of 2023, according to Deutsche Welle.

The country is currently negotiating another bailout package from the IMF, but there could be painful concessions attached. Pakistan’s economy is on a “suicidal path”, Zubair Khan, an economist and former IMF official, told The Guardian. “Our government is pursuing the wrong policies and the IMF programme is aggravating the situation.” Khan added that the increase in taxes requested by the IMF will worsen Pakistan’s balance of payments crisis.

Meanwhile, political infighting and frequent changes in leadership have left the country in a precarious position, according to NPR. Following his removal from power last year, the charismatic former prime minister and cricketer Imran Khan has been staging huge rallies hoping to regain his position in general elections expected this October. Targeted in an assassination attempt last November, critics fear that had Khan been killed, widespread national conflict could have broken out, such is the febrile state of the country’s politics.

The latest threat, most Pakistanis would agree, is “dealing with militant Islam”, said Foreign Policy. Ever since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has become emboldened, “armed with weapons left behind by the retreating US forces”, added the magazine. A TTP attack in Peshawar on 30 January, “killed and injured scores of police officers as they prayed”, said Foreign Policy, in the biggest of the recent attacks on army and police positions “that have sent the people of the northwestern mountains out onto the streets to call for peace and protection”.

Why has it got so bad?

Pakistan is still struggling to recover from the extensive damage caused by floods last year, reported Atmos. Historic monsoon rains left a third of the country under water last August, ruining much of the upcoming harvest, homes, livestock and health facilities.

A report assessing crop loss in Sindh province conducted by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, a Nepal-based research organisation, showed that flooding was particularly severe in rice-growing areas. This has resulted in the estimated loss of 80% of the province’s forecast rice production. Six months later, more than 10 million people were still without safe drinking water, according to Unicef.

Meanwhile, the crisis in Ukraine has “triggered a steep rise in the price of commodities like natural gas, cooking oil and wheat”, said NPR, which is a disaster for a country so dependent on its imports. Since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and the withdrawal of US forces, Islamabad has become less strategically important on the world stage, making it harder to seek help from global institutions, while relations with India show no signs of improvement.

What does this mean for the rest of the world?

Experts fear that the scale of the crisis in a nuclear country the size of Pakistan – the fifth most populous in the world – could have troubling global consequences. “The world didn’t like the outflows of refugees and weapons that came from countries like Syria and Libya,” Uzair Younus, director of the Pakistan Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, told The Intercept. “In comparison, Pakistan is magnitudes larger and more consequential.”

If Pakistan doesn’t get a grip on its economy, growing discontent could lead to mass protests. People are struggling to get hold of basic goods, and already this year there have been major blackouts across the country. Analysts fear many more people could be pushed below the poverty line. “If you’re unable to meet the economic needs of the people and just respond with force, it will only catalyse greater anger,” Arif Rafiq, from the Middle East Institute, told The Intercept.

Of all Pakistan’s leaders since independence, none has “so divided opinion” as General Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, said The Guardian. To some, he was just another “ruthless military dictator” who allowed radical religious parties to flourish, “to clip the ambitions” of secular ones opposed to his military rule; to others, he was a “man of vision”, a whisky-drinking liberal seeking to turn nuclear-armed Pakistan into a beacon of what he called “enlightened moderation”.

It was abroad, however, that he enjoyed most acclaim. Under his leadership, the country evolved from “rogue state” to valued ally in the “war on terror” that followed the 9/11 attacks; and during Musharraf’s decade in office, the US provided Pakistan with $1bn a year in mostly military aid. But at home, where anti-US sentiment ran deep, and ties to Afghanistan, and the Taliban, were strong, he was denounced as Washington’s lackey, said The New York Times. At the same time, US officials were frustrated by his perceived reluctance to crush jihadist groups with bases in Pakistan, and the suspicion (later confirmed) that Osama bin Laden was actually hiding out there. Musharraf liked to describe himself as a skilled tightrope walker; but ultimately, he fell off the line.

Taking power in Pakistan

Pervez Musharraf was born into a middle-class Muslim family in Delhi in 1943. During partition in 1947, his parents fled to Karachi, the capital of the newly created Pakistan. His father joined the diplomatic service, and they spent several years in the Republic of Turkey. Aged 18, Musharraf enrolled in a military academy. He then joined, and later led, an elite commando unit.

In 1998, the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif appointed him head of the army; he is said to have thought that as a Muhajir, an émigré from India, Musharraf would not be able to rally enough support in the military to pose a threat to him. But a year or so later, Musharraf got wind of the fact that the PM was trying to fire him, for his role in a disastrous incursion into Indian-controlled Kashmir. As he flew back from Sri Lanka, his plane was denied permission to land in Pakistan; but instead of diverting to India, as instructed, he urged his generals to seize the airport, and on landing, he took power.

A dangerous game-player

At home, his takeover was broadly accepted as a welcome alternative to Sharif’s corrupt and inept administration, said The Times. He said his focus would be on repairing the economy, and he won plaudits among liberals for boosting women’s rights. But he reneged on a promise to restore civilian rule, and in 2001 he made himself president. Following the 9/11 attacks, Washington made it plain that it expected Pakistan to turn on the Taliban, and support the Nato mission in neighbouring Afghanistan. Musharraf complied – but it was widely suspected that he was playing a double game, fighting extremism while also supporting the Taliban, which, his critics said, led to a violent insurgency in the country.

In 2007, with opposition to his rule mounting, he suspended the chief justice, and imposed martial law. Soon after, former PM Benazir Bhutto, who had returned from exile to fight a national election, was assassinated, sparking violent protests across the country. Widely blamed for failing to give Bhutto enough security, Musharraf resigned and fled to London. When he went back to Pakistan in 2013, he was charged with high treason. Three years later, he left the country to seek medical help, never to return.

Pervez Musharraf, the former president of Pakistan who ruled the country during a time of turmoil in the Middle East, has died at the age of 79, the Pakistani military said Sunday.

In a statement sent to CNN, military officials expressed their "heartfelt condolences" on the "sad demise of General Pervez Musharraf," adding that he had passed away in Dubai after battling an ongoing illness.

Pakistan President Arif Alvi also sent his condolences to Musharraf's family, along with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Musharraf first came to power as a military leader following a bloodless coup in 1999. He would become Pakistan's president in 2001 and serve until 2008. While president, he would preside over a period of transitional changes in Pakistan, with BBC News noting that the socially liberal Musharraf "was credited by some with turning around the economic fortunes of the country while leader."

Fawad Chaudhury, a former aide of Musharraf, said that "[Musharraf] is called a military dictator, but there has never been a stronger democratic system than that under him" in a statement obtained by Reuters.

In the West, however, Musharraf is most widely known for his strategic alliance with the United States following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Musharraf pledged to support the U.S. during the war on terror, providing material assistance and a pathway for NATO supplies during the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The alliance forged between the U.S. and Pakistan would eventually pay off when an American raid in 2011 killed the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, who had gone into hiding in Pakistan.

Musharraf would eventually be ousted from power and exiled from Pakistan, and was eventually put on trial for treason and even sentenced to death in an overturned sentence.

Pakistan's national power grid suffered its second major failure in three months on Monday, stranding millions without electricity and, in some instances, drinking water, multiple outlets have reported.

The outage was caused by a "large voltage surge in the south of the grid, which affected the entire network," Reuters reports, per Energy Minister Khurrum Dastagir. It is unclear at the moment how long the outage will last, though restoration efforts are already underway, CNN adds. Dastagir said the government is hoping things are back to normal by tonight, per The Associated Press.

A separate senior official blamed this blackout and others on the country's aging infrastructure. "There's an underlying weakness in the system," the official told Reuters. "Generators are too far from the load centers and transmission lines are too long and insufficient." And separately, some of the country's roughly 220 million residents suffer from almost daily blackouts, Reuters adds.

The Monday outage comes as Pakistan otherwise struggles with a larger economic and energy crisis, due to which Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif earlier this month ordered both federal departments and public citizens to cut back on energy usage and consumption.

The incident also calls to mind a similar widespread blackout in 2021, which was "attributed at the time to a technical fault in Pakistan's power generation and distribution system," AP writes.

India is weeks away from overtaking China as the country with the largest population, according to latest UN projections.

The landmark event, predicted for mid-April, is a “timely reminder of the growing influence that India and its activities exert on the rest of the world”, wrote Viraj Mehta of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

After celebrating the 75th anniversary of Indian independence, the emerging Asian superpower assumed the G20 presidency in December – fuelling speculation about New Delhi’s geopolitical goals and ambitions.

Climate targets

India has been “at the forefront of driving global action on climate change”, said WEF’s Mehta. India has co-founded the International Solar Alliance with France, “and in doing so, is leading the global movement towards solar power”.

Prime minister Narendra Modi last year also vowed to establish a National Hydrogen Mission, “with an aim of making India a hub for the production and export of green hydrogen”.

And in a “major step” in achieving India’s long-term goal of reaching net zero by 2070, said Mehta, the nation’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), adopted under the Paris Agreement, “translates” Cop26 pledges into enhanced climate targets.

Despite these ambition goals, India has a mixed record on climate. The country is the world’s third-largest emitter of CO2, although its per capita emissions are lower than the world average, according to the UN’s latest Emissions Gap Report.

Russia and Ukraine

Since the invasion of Ukraine, India has been buying more and more discounted Russian oil, despite global criticism. According to data from energy cargo tracker Vortexa, India imported around a million barrels per day in December.

The oil deals have left India in an “odd position over the past year”, said Jyoti Malhotra of New Delhi-based news site ThePrint. Modi’s government may be “holding its nose” at what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine but is “unable to say much about it because it needs Russia”.

“Leaving aside the thorny issue of ethics in foreign policy”, said Foreign Policy’s Ravi Agrawal, India’s leaders have “exhibited a growing confidence in asserting their own strategic interests instead of the West’s”.

“I am entitled to weigh my own interest,” said External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar last summer, amid criticism of India’s oil purchases. Western critics should “grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems”, he added.

The tensions over Ukraine could be offset, however, by Washington’s “increasingly fractious economic relationship” with China, said France 24.

“Countries like the US, some in Europe, others in the Indo-Pacific, see India as a geopolitical counterbalance to China and an economic alternative or a democratic contrast,” Tanvi Madan, a Washington-based senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, told the news site..

The “big question”, she added, was whether India could “take advantage of this window before it closes”.

Nuclear hotspot

The Indian military was believed to have approximately 160 warheads as of last summer, and “continues to modernise its nuclear arsenal”, according to experts from the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). In an article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, FAS researchers warned that tensions between India and Pakistan “constitute one of the most concerning nuclear hotspots on the planet”.

The two nuclear-armed nations engaged in “open hostilities” as recently as 2020, when Indian and Pakistani soldiers exchanged artillery and gunfire over the Line of Control, leading to at least 22 deaths.

More recently, in March 2022, India accidentally launched what appeared to be ground-launched cruise missile 77 miles into Pakistani territory, damaging civilian property.

A ‘credible challenger’ to Modi

The country’s main opposition leader is on the final leg of a 3,500km (2,175 miles) march with a “simple message – religious harmony and prosperity for all”, said Shruti Kapila, professor of Indian history and politics at Cambridge University, on Al Jazeera earlier this month.

Rahul Gandhi, the face of the Indian National Congress, is “offering the world’s largest democracy a new political vision and script pitched against the shrill political Hinduism” of Prime Minister Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, Kapila wrote, and has “emerged as a leader with mass appeal”.

With a “simple message of interreligious harmony and prosperity for all”, the epic walk has “focused on common human interactions” based on conversations with “farmers and workers, young and old, men and women and children too about their shattered dreams under the Modi government”.

The march – scheduled to end on 30 January in the northern city of Srinagar – has “resonated with ordinary Indians, who’ve turned out in their thousands to join him”, said the South China Morning Post. Gandhi has positioned himself as a “credible challenger”, raising hopes among those who feared India was turning into a dictatorship.

Demographic ‘time bomb’

With India on track to leapfrog China to become the world’s most populous country, this “demographic dividend” could boost economic growth, said CNN. India’s working-age population is expected to rise from 900m to more than a billion over the next decade.

But “there are fears the country might miss out”, the broadcaster reported, because “India is simply not creating employment opportunities for the millions of young job seekers already entering the workforce every year”.

India is “sitting on a time bomb,” said Chandrasekhar Sripada, professor of organisational behaviour at the Indian School of Business. “There will be social unrest if it cannot create enough employment in a relatively short period of time.”

Elections in 2022 swept the far-right to power in Sweden, Italy, Hungary (and most recently Israel), while leftist leaders in South America won in Columbia and Brazil.

Elsewhere, Emmanuel Macron managed to hold off a challenge from populist Marine Le Pen in France, while the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos won a landslide victory in the Philippines.

“This year’s elections are less clear-cut – and instead overlap in surprising ways,” said Foreign Policy. “This may be in part because they are overwhelmingly parliamentary as opposed to presidential, which makes term limits much less of a factor.”

Fears of a global populist wave have receded somewhat, but “democracy is on the ballot in a number of nations” this year, said The Conversation, “while common themes – such as the handling of inflation and corruption – may determine how incumbent governments and presidents fare at the ballot box”.

Here are five elections around the world to look out for in the year ahead.

Thailand (7 May)

In Thailand “the military’s quotidian role in political life is due to face a reckoning” as the country’s autocratic leaders hope to consolidate power, said Foreign Policy.

The 7 May vote will be only the second since the military rewrote the constitution in 2017 to give it greater influence in selecting the legislature. With incumbent former army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha, from the pro-military Palang Pracharat Party, deeply unpopular, Pheu Thai, Thailand’s main opposition party with links to former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, is seen to have the best chance of forming the next government, according to the latest polls from Bloomberg.

Yet despite this, Foreign Policy said that “observers are not optimistic that they will prevail. Instead, they surmise that the most likely election scenario will involve the military-monarchy complex once again finding a way to further dilute the will of the people – and wrest power from those parties the majority of Thais support.”

Turkey (18 June)

“People in Turkey tend to call every presidential election historic – but the June 2023 election will truly be historic,” said Ahmet Kuru, professor of political science at San Diego State University, for The Conversation.

The lengthy rule of the increasingly autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has governed Turkey since 2003 first as prime minister then since 2014 as president, “could be put to its toughest test” on 18 June, said Time magazine.

Erdoğan has lost support in recent years as his economic reforms have failed to turn the country around, leading to massive inflation and a collapse in the currency. This in turn has prompted a further crackdown on the opposition and press.

“The 2023 presidential election will be fought over politics, economics and religion,” said Kuru. “If Erdoğan wins, he will frame himself as the second founder of Turkey, after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. If he loses, his political, business, and religious allies will face the risk of being expunged.” The stakes could not be higher.

Poland (expected October or November)

“Probably the most pivotal and important election of 2023 in emerging Europe” is Poland’s parliamentary vote, expected in October or November, said Craig Turp-Balazs in Emerging Europe.

The ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) is expected to face its biggest opposition since retaking power in 2015 in the face of mounting public anger to its increasingly illiberal policies and economic stagnation. However, the government’s strong response to the war in neighbouring Ukraine, including accepting millions of refugees, has won it support both internationally and at home.

“As usual, the extent to which the country’s opposition is able to unite and galvanise the anti-PiS vote behind a clear, coherent alternative will be crucial,” said Turp-Balazs. He noted that “in the previous two elections, in 2015 and 2019, the opposition appeared divided and weak, handing PiS easy victories”.

Pakistan (12 October at the latest)

Last year was a tumultuous one for Pakistan, which faced a perfect storm of political, economic and environmental crises.

In April 2022, the former cricketer turned populist prime minister Imran Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote and replaced by Shehbaz Sharif of the centre-right Pakistan Muslim League (PML) until this year’s elections, which have to be held by 12 October.

Opinion polls are hard to gauge “but it appears that Khan continues to be the darling of public opinion – and a thorn in the side of Pakistan’s security establishment”, said Foreign Policy. It cites his “unique” willingness to challenge the Pakistani military, which effectively rules the country.

Time magazine said “the big question-mark is when elections will take place – especially since Khan is pressuring the government to hold them earlier”.

“Khan has been gaining a lot of popularity, so politically speaking, the sooner the elections happen, the better for him,” said Michael Kugelman in the Time article.

Argentina (29 October)

The country may still be basking in World Cup glory, but 2023 promises to be a gruelling year for Argentina in the run-up to elections in the autumn.

With sky-high inflation, low growth and one of the highest debt-per-capita ratios in Latin America, the economy looks set to dominate the campaign. President Alberto Fernández and his powerful vice-president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have both been plagued by corruption scandals, with the later sentenced to six years in jail last month over bribery charges.

“Some are even predicting that the combination of mishandling the economy and the corruption scandal could bring an end to Peronism, the political philosophy that has governed Argentina for much of last 70 years,” said Eduardo Gamarra, professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University, for The Conversation.

The opposition party of former president Mauricio Macri is similarly divided and struggling to agree on a candidate. “These political and economic circumstances may favour a third contender,” suggested Gamarra, specifically Javier Milei, “a populist libertarian who has been rising in the polls and whose brusque style has drawn comparisons with Donald Trump”.

Pakistan recently ousted former Prime Minister Imran Khan, a vocal critic of the military who holds onto the hope of staging a political comeback in 2023. The nation's new army chief claims the military won't meddle in the upcoming elections, but experts have their doubts. Here's everything you need to know:

What's going on with Imran Khan?

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted in April 2022 after unsuccessfully attempting to block a no-confidence vote in his leadership. Khan's increasingly fractured relationship with the military is considered to have been a major contributing factor to his political downfall, the BBC reports.

Following his removal from office, Khan took to hosting political rallies across the country, baselessly claiming that opposition parties were in cahoots with foreign governments, including the U.S., in an effort to remove him from power. At a rally in early November, a gunman shot Khan in the leg in what authorities say was an assassination attempt, reports CNN. The attack sparked a number of protests across the country in support of Khan.

Khan blamed the assassination attempt on the military and further denounced the army's substantial role in Pakistani politics. Former Army Chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa has claimed that the "army decided not to meddle in any political affairs" going forward, despite experts saying the opposite appears to be true. Khan has also accused Bajwa of being the reason he was ousted from government, an allegation the general has denied.

Bajwa retired at the end of November, allowing for a new army chief to ascend.

Who is the new army chief?

Pakistan named Lt. Gen. Asim Munir, one of six candidates who were in the running, to be Bajwa's successor. The Pakistani army has historically wielded substantial political influence and many consider the army chief to be the most powerful position in the country, The Wall Street Journal reports. In the past, the military has admitted to interfering in the country's politics unlawfully but has vowed to stop doing so. It is widely acknowledged that the military helped Khan rise to power initially, as well.

Munir previously served as head of the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency in 2018, but only lasted eight months before Khan removed him without giving an explanation. Some officials have said that Munir's removal was due to differences in opinions on foreign policy, as well as personal conflicts. Khan has claimed that the current Pakistani leadership, headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, should not have been allowed to appoint Munir due to their alleged corruption.

Munir assumes his position during a time of great tensions for Pakistan, both domestic and foreign. Pakistan is situated between two rival nations, India and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The country also faces internal conflict with the Pakistani Taliban, who are allied with the Afghanistan Taliban and were against Islamabad siding with the U.S. in the War on Terror, reports The Associated Press. Pakistan also continues to experience record-high inflation and is still recovering from devastating floods that took place in August.

What's next for Pakistan?

Pakistan's elections are set to take place in 2023, though Khan has advocated for them to happen sooner in hopes of staging a political comeback. He also at one point planned to march on the capital in protest to call for a snap election, claiming he was wrongly ousted.

Khan reversed his decision in his first rally since the assassination attempt, saying, "I don't want there to be anarchy in the country. I don't want to cause any harm to this country." He has agreed to let the election play out as normal while still holding strong in his allegations against the military and the current government. Over the past few months, Khan's party has won a surprising number of government seats including in opposition strongholds, per The Washington Post. He hopes to move up in the polls ahead of next year's election.

The more pressing question is whether the Pakistani military leadership will hold to Bajwa's claim that it will remain neutral in the election. Despite his words, analysts found that the military actually became more involved in politics under Bajwa's leadership. "[The army] will need time to restore the public trust, but it will also be under immediate pressure to ease political instability and reduce tensions between the government and Khan," explains Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Wilson Center in Washington.

Many nevertheless see the new leadership in Pakistan as a glimmer of hope. "It's a great opportunity for the next chief to really transform the very character of the military," said Pakistani journalist Zahid Hussain, "But that may be wishful thinking."

The UK has suggested it is open to paying climate change reparations to developing countries by backing talks on the subject at the Cop27 summit that kicks off in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt today.

The idea of “loss and damage” compensation – otherwise known as climate reparations – has been under debate since UN-backed climate talks first began in the early 1990s.

Axios said the issue “is rooted in the disparate impacts of climate change around the world, with a relatively small group of countries – roughly the G20 nations – responsible for most of the warming-related impacts we’re experiencing today”.

By contrast it is predominantly countries in the developing world, particularly in Africa, South Asia and small island nations in the Pacific, that are most vulnerable to climate disasters, despite having played little part in causing them.

What have the papers said?

The last-minute agreement to include talks on “loss and damage” payments at Cop27 “might sound like the most dry processology you might ever have to read but actually history has been made today, before the event has even started”, wrote Allegra Stratton for Bloomberg.

With the cost of loss and damage for developing countries estimated to reach a possible $1trn by 2040, “who foots the bill is a question the rich economies responsible for the bulk of past emissions, and for current global warming, have been resolutely avoiding for years”, said Al Jazeera.

But opinion in those rich economies “has softened in recent years as catastrophic events such as the floods in Pakistan have focused global attention, and tension over the issue threatens to derail coordinated climate action”, said The Telegraph.

Unprecedented flooding last month left vast swathes of Pakistan submerged, causing more than 1,700 deaths and driving some 33 million people from their homes.

“The disaster puts Pakistan at the forefront of evolving thinking in the international community about how to pay for countries’ adaptation to the ravages of global warming – and who should pick up the bill,” said the Financial Times.

Bangladesh, another of the countries leading calls for loss and damage payments, could see a third of its agriculture lost and its GDP fall 9% by 2050 due to climate change impacts, a new World Bank report has found.

This is why loss and damage financing was a “top priority” in the run-up to the Cop summit, said Sohanur Rahman, executive co-ordinator for YouthNet for Climate Justice in The Business Standard.

“We are not asking for charity or debt from developed countries, but rather reparations for their historical legacy in the climate crisis,” he argued.

What next?

Progress on climate reparations is likely to dominate this year’s summit and ultimately be the barometer by which it will be judged a success or a failure.

Industrialised nations remain “skittish about committing to a specific way of paying for it”, said Axios, a stance that “will come under pressure in Sharm el-Sheikh, as developing countries seek specific funding arrangements given how quickly climate disasters are ratcheting up in scope, severity and frequency”.

For their part, developed countries, including the UK, “have long pushed back on agreeing to the principle that they should pay for the impacts of climate change, fearing a cascade of reparation demands that will play out badly in domestic politics”, said The Telegraph.

The paper set out the dilemma facing many leaders amid a cost-of-living crisis by arguing that Rishi Sunak, who was due to address the summit later today, will “come under pressure in Egypt to agree to a costly deal on reparations at the same time as he draws up plans for sweeping domestic tax rises and spending cuts”.

Appearing on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the shadow climate and net zero secretary Ed Miliband insisted it was “morally right” to hand money to poorer nations that are “on the frontline of the climate crisis” and that it would also be in Britain’s “self-interest” to boost aid to developing countries.

Yet using taxpayers’ money to compensate poorer countries affected by climate change at a time when domestic spending is being cut will be a hard sell. As MailOnline noted, Pakistan’s receipt of foreign aid from Britain has “often been criticised due to the Asian country’s development of a space programme and nuclear weapons”.

A spate of attacks on leading political figures around the world has prompted lawmakers to issue stark warnings about increasing violence and rallying cries for the preservation of democracy.

Following the assault on the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week, President Joe Biden used a prime-time address on Wednesday to highlight growing threats of violence, often from those espousing extremist ideologies, as the country barrels towards its midterm elections next week.

The string of attacks have occurred in disparate parts of the world over the past year, prompting some analysts to question whether a trend is emerging.

What has happened?

Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan survived a shooting at a political rally this week that his party called an assassination attempt.

The Ministry of Information in Islamabad released a video of a confession from an unnamed man who said he “wanted to kill Imran Khan” because he “was misleading people”, adding that he had no accomplices.

It followed an assault last week in San Francisco on Paul Pelosi, the husband of leading Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

Paul Pelosi was attacked on 28 October by a man who broke into the couple’s house in the middle of the night and attacked him with a hammer. David DePape, 42, was charged with assault and attempted murder, and also the attempted kidnapping of Nancy Pelosi, who wasn’t home at the time.

DePape told police that he was intending to “interview” Pelosi. If she told the “truth” he would let her go, but if she “lied” he planned to “break her kneecaps”, forcing her to be wheeled into Congress as a lesson to other Democrats.

Earlier this year, Shinzo Abe, prime minister of Japan until 2020, was assassinated while he was speaking at a political event in Nara City. The suspect, 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, was arrested at the scene. Yamagami confessed to investigators that he had shot Abe because of a grudge he held against the Unification Church, to which Abe and his family had political ties.

On 15 October last year, British MP David Amess was fatally stabbed at his Essex constituency surgery by Ali Harbi Ali. The 26-year-old had travelled from London to Leigh-On-Sea armed with a large kitchen knife and used a false address to deceive the MP’s staff that he lived in the local area.

Nick Price, head of the CPS counter-terrorism division, said: “Sir David’s murder was a terrible attack on an MP as he went about his work. But it was also an attack on our democracy, it was an attack on all of us, an attack on our way of life.”

What did the papers say?

Violence in Pakistan is nothing new, said Jason Burke in The Guardian. Rather the attack on Khan merely “underlines once again how politics in Pakistan is inseparable from violence”.

Yet while political violence may be the norm in Pakistan, some other recent attacks – including that on Abe in Japan and MPs Amess and Jo Cox in the UK – betray an emerging trend, said the Australian National University’s Dr William Stoltz in the Australian newspaper the Herald Sun. Japan’s experience, for example, offers a “stark warning” to democracies that value “peaceful traditions of open and accessible relationships between public officials and their constituents”.

According to experts who study extremism, the rise in political violence in the US, at least, is largely being driven by the right. A 2020 paper from the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that two-thirds of domestic terrorism from January to August that year was the work of far-right extremists while just one-fifth came from groups on the far left.

“Although incidents from the left are on the rise, political violence still comes overwhelmingly from the right,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Rachel Kleinfeld wrote in a research paper on emerging trends in political violence last year.

What next?

What we are witnessing is “all very unpleasant”, said The Spectator in the wake of an attack on the British MP Iain Duncan Smith at the Tory Party conference last year.

And yet “a sense of historical perspective is needed”. Attacks on politicians in Britain, at least, are particularly shocking because the “political scene today is generally so peaceable”.

During the Gordon Riots of 1780, the prime minister Lord North had to be rescued by the military from an angry mob outside Downing Street, the magazine noted. And in 1859, meanwhile, 30,000 Tory supporters swarmed Nottingham and ransacked the Liberal Party’s local office.

It may be true that “violence goes in cycles”, Lilliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Vox. However, “just because patterns of progress and violence exist, that doesn’t mean that they occur naturally”.

Ending such patterns depends on how we “decide to participate in democratic institutions”, Mason said, “or if we can even come to an understanding about what democracy is”.

Calm has returned to Leicester, however temporarily, after a massive police operation was launched to quell unrest that has gripped the east of the city for three weeks.

Tensions between “mainly young men from sections of the Muslim and Hindu communities” erupted into what the BBC called “large-scale disorder” at the weekend, as hundreds of people in Covid masks and balaclavas took to the streets as part of an “unplanned protest”.

The Independent reported that police officers deployed to London for the Queen’s funeral on Monday were “diverted” to Leicester to deal with the “widespread disorder” that resulted in 16 officers and a police dog being injured, 47 people arrested and one jailed.

What did the papers say?

On Twitter the former Independent and Guardian journalist Sunny Hundal set out a timeline of events that culminated in the weekend’s arrests.

He said that tensions kicked off on 28 August after an Asia Cup cricket match between India and Pakistan in Dubai, when Indian fans converged on Leicester to shout “Pakistan Murdabad” (Death to Pakistan). What followed was a series of increasingly tense and violent confrontations between Hindu and Muslim gangs and individual extremists on both sides that played out on the streets and on social media.

Hundal said that tensions reached boiling point at the weekend after rumours began to circulate among Hindus and Muslims that their temples and mosques were being attacked. This led people from outside Leicester to travel to the city, further inflaming the situation.

“For the past few weeks Leicester has become a kind of mini-Kashmir in the middle of England,” said John Connolly in The Spectator, “a remarkable turn of events for a city which has long prided itself on being a functioning multicultural society, a place where Hindus and Muslims live alongside one another in relative harmony.”

The Mayor of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he was “baffled” by the events over the weekend but “even though the violence following the cricket match brought the tensions into the consciousness of the wider public”, said the Daily Mail, those working to calm the situation “say there are several complex factors at play which have given rise to the current unrest, which has involved a small minority of each community rather than the silent majority”.

“Some of the issues which give rise to the events at the weekend are undoubtedly international,” said the Leicester Mercury, citing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist rhetoric and increasingly harsh treatment of Muslim minorities. At the same time “there are also a number of more local factors to take into account, including the fact that migration is never static”. Leicester, “famed for its multicultural tolerance, still attracts new people from other countries”, the paper added.

Two other factors are the rise in disinformation and the after-effects of Covid, which hit Leicester particularly hard and “has seen cultural communities become more separated and widespread as a result”, said the paper.

What next?

The heavy police presence appears to have worked in suppressing the unrest for now, while community leaders in the city have joined police and politicians in calling for calm.

The mayor said it was important community leaders continued to try to de-escalate the situation but he acknowledged it was a challenge to get through to young people, with Leicester Mercury reporting: “Younger members of both communities tend not to have the same level of affinity with their respective religious leaders as those from older generations.”

Claudia Webbe, MP for Leicester East, joined the call for calm, writing on Twitter it was vital to “strengthen our dialogue to repair community relations”.

Yet these efforts have been further complicated as the story has taken an international dimension, with Indian news channels claiming that Muslims have been attacking Hindus en masse.

India Today reported one eyewitness to the “attack” on a Hindu temple, who warned of further escalation to other cities around the UK.

“At the moment it is happening predominantly in Leicester,” said Dishita Solanki, but “there are other cities that are being targeted, like Nottingham and Birmingham. I have relatives staying in a lot of cities. I have had messages from all of them that there are spots within other cities as well. So, scared is a bit of an understatement.”

It has led the Indian High Commission in London to issue a statement strongly condemning the violence against the Indian community in the city and demanding “immediate action against those involved in the attacks”.

The death toll from unprecedented floods across more than a third of Pakistan has risen to at least 1,343, the country’s National Disaster Management Agency reported today.

UN Secretary General António Guterres has blamed climate change for the “monsoon on steroids”, which has affected more than 33m Pakistanis – one in seven people in the South Asian nation’s total population. Millions are homeless as a result of “raging flood waters” that have also “swept away 700,000 head of livestock and damaged more than 3.6m acres of crops”, the BBC reported.

Did climate change trigger the flooding?

Unprecedented heatwaves and lengthy droughts earlier this year in Pakistan have been followed by more than two months of record-breaking levels of rainfall.

According to ABC News, “research shows the annual monsoons are getting wetter and more dangerous because of climate change”.

“Global warming means that water evaporates much faster out at sea,” wrote climate reporter Manuela Andreoni in The New York Times. “And a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. So monsoons risk bringing way too much rain.”

Not everyone agrees that climate change is to blame for the Pakistan floods. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has linked “more frequent and intense” rainfall in many parts of the world to greenhouse gas emissions. But the intergovernmental body’s most recent report stated that it had only “low confidence” in how much climate change was to blame for increased heavy rains in South Asia.

In Pakistan, there is less doubt. “Rich countries” caused the “catastrophic” flooding, said Pakistani senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokar in an article for The Guardian. The floods “are one of the early signs” of the “climate catastrophe”, he wrote.

What much flood aid are Pakistanis getting?

Pakistan’s leaders have established a National Flood Response and Coordination Centre to distribute aid.

The army has established 147 relief camps sheltering and feeding more than 50,000 displaced people, and 250 medical camps have been set up.

But a charity boss told The Guardian that the Pakistani government and NGOs had collectively managed to reach just 10% or less of affected people. “People who survived the floods may die of starvation,” warned Faisal Edhi, head of the Edhi Foundation, the nation’s largest charity.

Ministers have insisted that the government is doing everything possible to help flooded communities, but have warned that the country cannot recover without international support.

Planes loaded with relief goods have arrived from countries including Turkey, the UAE, China, Qatar, Uzbekistan, Jordan and Turkmenistan.

The UK government has pledged £15m to “help provide shelter and essential supplies” to people across Pakistan.

The US announced $30m worth of aid for the flood victims last week, while the World Health Organization is providing $10m to treat the injured, deliver supplies to health facilities and curb the spread of infectious diseases.

And the UN has announced a $160m emergency plan intended to help “5.2m of the most vulnerable people in the country”. The key aims are to provide lifesaving services such as health services, food, clean water and shelter; prevent outbreaks of communicable diseases; and ensure that people can access aid and protection, such as family tracing.

How can Pakistan recover?

To aid long-term recovery, other countries could “cancel Pakistan’s public foreign debt” so “that money could be used for relief efforts and go directly towards those affected”, said the Organization for World Peace.

“Countries that have large carbon footprints and release a lot of emissions should be inclined to forgive these debts, considering how little Pakistan contributes to climate change,” the body argued, adding that “the money could be required to go towards projects that will reduce the impact of future floods”.

Whatever international support is offered, Pakistan’s recovery is expected to take quite some time. The country’s economic managers “have the most challenging task ahead as floods ravaged the country’s road and communication network” and “damaged an incalculable number of houses”, as well as destroying “millions of hectares of crops”, said Al Jazeera.

Pakistan will “struggle to recover”, agreed Bloomberg’s David Fickling. Although a promised $1.16bn loan from the International Monetary Fund “might help unlock enough cash to get the country through the next couple of years”, the “floods themselves have caused more than $10bn of damage, much of which will end up boosting the country’s $255bn in debt”.

And rich nations are “unlikely to donate the grant funds necessary to insulate one of the world’s poorest countries against the impact of rising global temperatures”, Fickling predicted.

When it comes to extreme weather, it seems Pakistan just can't catch a break. Here's everything you need to know about the devastating downpours wreaking havoc on the world's fifth most-populous nation:

What's happening?

A third of Pakistan is now underwater thanks to a violent eight weeks of flooding, Pakistan Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said Monday. The onslaught of rainfall — which has "ripped away mountainsides, swept buildings off their foundations, and roared through the countryside, turning whole districts into inland seas" — has also killed over 1,100 people while damaging or destroying more than 1 million homes, The New York Times reports. "This is a huge humanitarian disaster, and I would call it quite apocalyptic," Rehman told Sky News, per The Washington Post.

The ongoing catastrophe is just the latest in a country ranked eighth most vulnerable to extreme weather, according to a global climate risk index cited by Vox. It also notably follows a devastating spring heatwave, wherein warmer, moisture-dense air collected and eventually came down "in torrents," writes The Associated Press. Though monsoons and storms are typical in Pakistan, "we do expect them spread out," Reham told AP. There are also usually reprieves from any downpours, which typically run smaller than those drowning the nation now.

"If that rainfall was distributed over the season, maybe it wouldn't be that bad," climate scientist Deepti Singh told the Times. But "our systems are just not designed to manage that," especially in vulnerable societies like Pakistan's. The already-strained nation is now also preparing for a resulting jolt in food prices, considering most of its farmland is drowning in floodwater. Finance Minister Miftah Ismail has said Pakistan will allow duty-free vegetable imports to try and avoid a domestic market price hike, and will consider temporarily permitting trade with neighboring India to do so, Bloomberg reports.

Overall, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal estimates it will take Pakistan "the better part of a decade" to recover from the estimated over $10 billion worth of damage caused by the floods, the Times summarizes.

Does climate change have anything to do with this?

Yes, it does … though researchers are working to figure out just how much. Pakistan is extremely vulnerable to the effects of global warming, and has all the necessary prerequisites for a climate change-induced extreme weather event. But scientists have not finished tabulating what might have happened here in a world without global warming. "That study, expected in a few weeks, will formally determine how much climate change is a factor, if at all," AP writes.

And it's not just straightforward rain and heat causing all this destruction — melting glaciers and snow have contributed to the mess, as well, "adding water to rivers and streams that are already swollen by rainfall," reports Vox. "We have the largest number of glaciers outside the polar region, and this affects us," climate minister Rehman told AP. "Instead of keeping their majesty and preserving them for posterity and nature. We are seeing them melt," she said.

Further, though monsoon season is, of course, an expected part of the South Asian summer, "the challenge of preparing for more intense rains is complicated" by the "persistent political instability" and economic turmoil in Pakistan, the Times adds. So for example, though the nation "saw similar flooding and devastation in 2010," a resource-strapped and politically shaky government failed to implement a plan to prevent future disasters, AP reports. People just "weren't focusing on that," Brookings Institution Analyst Madiha Afzal told the Times.

How has the international community responded?

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday issued a "flash $160 million appeal" for the "flood-ravaged" nation, CNN reports. "The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids — the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding," Guterres said. "Let's stop sleepwalking towards the destruction of our planet by climate change." It's Pakistan today, but "tomorrow, it could be your country."

Other international aid — such as military aircraft from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates — has otherwise begun to arrive in Pakistan, the country's military announced Tuesday. China and Japan also plan to send supplies, while "the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Azerbaijan have announced financial assistance," CNN writes. Earlier in August, the U.S. Agency for International Development pledged $100,000 in immediate humanitarian aid, as well as an additional $1 million to "build resilience against natural disasters."

Further, the International Monetary Fund on Monday released $1.1 billion in funding to help Pakistan avoid defaulting on its debt.

Why should Americans care about the flooding?

Aside from the resulting death and destruction, the likely climate change-induced flooding has reignited an ongoing debate as to "whether developed, wealthier countries such as the United States — the largest historical emitter of carbon dioxide — should help cover the costs of climate change for poorer countries," the Post writes.

For instance, Pakistan and other developing nations are responsible for but a fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions at the heart of global warming, yet "they suffer outsized damage and are also expected to pay for costly modernization to limit their current pollution," the Times writes. Therefore "any flood relief that is given should not be seen as 'aid,' but rather as reparations for injustices accumulated over the past few centuries," sociology professor Nida Kirmani told the Times.

And Pakistani Climate Minister Sherry Rehman agrees with Kirmani: "We hardly contribute any emissions to the broader emission blanket that makes for greenhouse gasses to turn our climate into a living hell," she told Sky News, per the Post.

More than 33 million people, or one in seven Pakistanis, are estimated to have been affected by deadly flooding, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif describing the disaster as the “toughest moment” in Pakistan’s history.

The summer rain is the “heaviest recorded in a decade”, reported the BBC, and government ministers are claiming that Pakistan is paying the price for global climate change. “We are suffering from it but it is not our fault at all,” Sharif told a press conference on Tuesday.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the South Asian nation had been devastated by a “monsoon on steroids” and the “climate catastrophe” had killed “more than 1,000 people, with many more injured”.

“South Asia is one of the world’s global climate crisis hotspots,” he told a news conference, adding that people living in the “hotspots” are 15 times more likely to die from the impact of changing climates.

The UN chief launched an urgent humanitarian appeal to member countries for $160m, which would be used to support the government’s response to the disaster and provide 5.2 million people with food, water, sanitation, emergency education, protection and support.

A third of Pakistan is believed to be underwater, with the floods estimated to have caused over $10bn in damages, reported ITV News. The National Disaster Management Authority said the death toll from the monsoon rains and floods had reached 1,136.

Around half a million of those displaced are living in organised camps, said The Guardian, while others have had to find their own shelter.

Pakistan is responsible for “less than 1% of the world’s planet-warming gases”, said CNN, but is the eighth most vulnerable nation to the climate crisis, according to the Global Climate Risk Index.

“Let’s stop sleepwalking toward the destruction of our planet by climate change,” said Guterres. “Today, it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.”

Some 180,000 people fled their homes in Pakistan on Saturday after ongoing floods destroyed a major bridge in the country's northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Many of the displaced people spent "the night on highways with their livestock," Reuters reports.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif warned Friday of "unprecedented damage and devastation" after declaring a national emergency the previous day. Pakistan's military has also deployed to assist in disaster relief, with army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa promising on Saturday not to "spare any effort to assist them in this difficult time."

The flooding, which began in mid-June due to heavy rainfall, has killed over 900 people in Pakistan and nearly 200 in neighboring Afghanistan. Videos published by The Washington Post show cars floating away and people wading through shoulder-deep water with children on their backs.

Pakistani authorities say some 30 million people have been affected by the floods, which the country's climate change minister described as a "climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions."

Imran Khan’s “tumultuous term” as Pakistan’s prime minister came to an end last week, “following weeks of high political drama”, said Cyril Almeida on Al Jazeera (Doha). He was elected in July 2018 promising to fight corruption and fix the economy. Instead, he led Pakistan into “a deepening economic crisis”: double-digit inflation dogged much of his term.

In February, as opposition momentum mounted against him, Khan announced cuts to domestic fuel and electricity prices, despite global price rises. As a result, the Pakistani rupee fell to historic lows and economic collapse threatened. At the same time, Khan had fallen out with Pakistan’s powerful military, not least because he alienated Western nations by meeting Vladimir Putin in Russia hours after he had invaded Ukraine on 24 February.

By late March, a series of defections had lost him his majority and the opposition pounced, tabling a motion of no confidence. Khan sought to circumvent this by dissolving parliament and calling a snap election, but the supreme court ruled that his move was in breach of the constitution. He was voted out on 10 April.

Khan abandoned the “playboy” lifestyle that he enjoyed as one of Pakistan’s greatest cricketers to become a politician, said Zaigham Khan in Dawn (Karachi). He became a “born-again Muslim”, fired up with the zeal of the convert. Khan railed against the social elite (“to which he himself belonged”) and promised to create a better, stronger, less corrupt Pakistan with the political party he created, Tehreek-e-Insaf.

But he has failed dismally on all fronts, and leaves a legacy of no reform at all. Corruption is worse than ever. The Pakistani people are much poorer thanks to his “economic mismanagement”; even middle-class people are struggling to afford basic necessities. For this, we can blame his “hubris”, his “narcissism”, his “flaws of intellect”.

In many ways, Khan resembles Donald Trump, said Kamila Hyat in The News (Karachi). He has become a populist “cult leader” who, though inept, is “hero-worshipped” by many. And, like Trump, he has been unable to accept his own defeat, so he has cooked up a conspiracy theory to explain it.

According to Khan, the US toppled him because he refused to cancel his visit to Russia. He has provided no evidence to back his claims, said Yasser Latif Hamdani in The Print (New Delhi), but his loyal followers believe him. He leaves a poisonous legacy: his brand of “religious populism” will plague Pakistan “for decades”.

Members of Pakistan's opposition called for the arrest of Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday after the embattled leader's allies in parliament continued to block a no-confidence vote that the country's Supreme Court had ordered to proceed, NDTV reports.

Government sources told Al Jazeera just after 10:00 p.m. local time that the vote would not take place on Saturday. Per NDTV, local news reported that a "prisoner van has reached the assembly amid speculations that the Speaker and Deputy Speaker could be arrested if the vote is not held by midnight."

Khan said Friday that he will not step down if he loses the no-confidence vote. The vote, which Khan is expected to lose after several defections within his governing coalition, was originally set for April 3 but was blocked by the deputy speaker of Pakistan's parliament, after which Khan attempted to call for new elections.

The country's Supreme Court subsequently ruled that blocking the vote was unconstitutional and ordered parliament to reconvene.

The vote was scheduled for Saturday but was delayed again by Speaker Asad Qaiser, an ally of Khan. Khan claims that he is the victim of a regime change conspiracy orchestrated by the United States to install an "imported government," a charge the U.S. denies.

According to Al Jazeera and the English-language Indian newspaper The Tribune, the chair of the Pakistan People's Party has accused Khan of seeking military intervention to keep himself in power, while PPP Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar has called on Pakistan's army chief to "play his role" — presumably by deposing Khan — if the prime minister continues to defy the Supreme Court.

Pakistan has fallen repeatedly under military rule since gaining independence in 1947. No prime minister has ever completed a full five-year term.

Imran Khan is fighting for his political survival as he attempts to rally supporters while facing a no-confidence vote triggered by mass demonstrations.

Pakistan’s “political temperature” has reached “boiling point” in the wake of the move by opposition parties, said The Times of India. A string of defections has also stripped Khan of his parliamentary majority amid corruption and mismanagement allegations.

The no-confidence vote will be tabled within seven days, setting up the prime minister for the “toughest challenge” of his political life, Al Jazeera reported.

Hit for six

Khan was a sporting hero in Pakistan after captaining the country’s cricket team to victory in the 1992 World Cup. He subsequently gained political power “on a promise to sweep away the entrenched corruption and cronyism of two-party dynastic politics that had dogged the country since independence” in 1947, The Times said.

But “he has struggled to turn around the stagnant, debt-laden economy” since becoming PM in 2018. During his time in office, “inflation has soared to record highs, with the cost of basic items such as food and fuel climbing by up to 16%.

“Unemployment is rising, the country’s foreign reserves are depleted and the national deficit has spiralled,” the paper added, leaving the “handsome, charismatic hero on the field” facing increasing criticism.

Opposition figures have suggested that Khan has “fallen out with the powerful military, which mostly determines who will rule, a charge Khan and the military deny”, Al Jazeera reported. Khan has publicly blamed the threat to his leadership on “foreign powers”.

Appearing at a rally of his ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party on Monday, he told the crowd that “funding was being channelled into Pakistan from abroad” in an effort to dislodge his government, adding: “We will not compromise on national interests.”

Khan has provided “​​no details of the conspiracy”, said The Telegraph, and analysts claim his problems stem from “mismanaging the economy and failing to curb soaring inflation, which is causing deep economic pain to many of his supporters”.

His situation has been worsened by a number of defections that have left him without a majority in the nation’s parliament.

The opposition is now “confident that they can get the support of 172 members in the house of 342 to dislodge the government”, The Times of India said. Khan claims he has “support in the house to foil the attempt”.

Khan stumped?

With days to go until the no-confidence vote, the embattled PM still has “plenty of time for frantic horse-trading” in an effort to win enough support, The Telegraph said.

Sumedha Dasgupta, senior Asia analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told the paper that he believes Khan will survive, but warned that “there are significant risks surrounding the outcome, including the possible involvement of the military”.

“The ousting of Mr Khan would be likely to lead to some form of caretaker government, ahead of the national elections in 2023, and potential military involvement,” Dasgupta added.

Should the vote succeed, Khan will “become the first Pakistani prime minister to be ousted by a vote of confidence”, The Times reported. But true to his flamboyant style on the cricket field, he “is not going down without a fight”.

He has “turned his fire on old enemies”, accusing opposition figures of “bribing his MPs to ward off corruption investigations against themselves”. Once known for appearing alongside “models and actresses” in “London’s best nightclubs”, his “politics and religion have grown increasingly conservative” in an effort to secure his base.

In recent months he has “denounced political opponents as devils”, the paper added. Khan also prompted “outrage last year for comments blaming declining standards of modesty among women for a surge of rape cases in Pakistan”.

Khan has also criticised Western nations. At the rally earlier this week, he accused his opponents of being “slaves of America”, telling his supporters that “we won’t accept being slaves of anyone. Pakistani people have to decide whether they will allow conspirators to succeed with foreign money.”

In an effort to save his government, he has pledged to hand “the post of chief minister of the country’s largest province, Punjab, to one of its coalition partners”, Al Jazeera said. But the effort seems to have failed, with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party, stating that he has the numbers to “oust” Khan.

“Imran Khan is on a ventilator, fighting for his government’s survival,” Najam Sethi, a political commentator and former chief minister of Punjab, told The Times.

Despite his bullishness about the no-confidence vote, it appears that the PM “has lost the confidence of a majority of the members of parliament”, Sethi added.

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August, the group called on the international community to recognise its government’s legitimacy.

No country has yet done so and though Russia, Pakistan and China had “all signalled a readiness to transition smoothly into engaging with Taliban authorities” in August, said The Guardian, this has not yet transpired.

A month before the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, met Taliban representatives in Tianjin. At the time, the extremist group was seeking international recognition, and the meeting was “widely seen as a gift from Beijing towards that legitimacy”, said Al Jazeera.

Hu Shisheng, a South Asian expert at the official think-tank of China’s national security apparatus, told Reuters at a forum in Beijing that “things will be different when the four countries of China, Pakistan, Russia and Iran arrive at a consensus on this. We will not be the first.”

During the Taliban’s reign in the 1990s, only three nations recognised its government: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And though no country has formally recognised the group’s leadership in Afghanistan since they again took power this year, some have expressed their vocal support for its rule.

In mid-August, as US and UK troops began evacuating civilians from Kabul, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said that the “Taliban has freed their country from superpowers”, and “broken the chains of mental slavery in Afghanistan”.

Pakistan, which neighbours Afghanistan and is a key trading partner, has “long been accused by many in the United States and elsewhere of providing support for the Taliban”, said the BBC. The Pakistani government has continually denied this.

Iran and Russia have also been accused by some Afghan and US officials of providing the Taliban with financial aid, a practice “they frequently deny”, said the BBC.

And while Iran was “careful” in welcoming the Taliban’s ascent to power in August, “Russian authorities were initially much more positive”, said conflict and security expert Professor Dr Antonio Giustozzi.

Writing for the defence and security think-tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), he said: “Both the Russians and Iranians helped the Taliban advance at a breakneck pace in May-August 2021.”

The two countries supplied funding and equipment, “but perhaps even more importantly they helped them by brokering deals with parties, groups and personalities close to either country, or even both”.

These “allies and clients” of Iran and Russia were “promised that they would be incorporated into a future coalition government”, he added, which was what both countries and “most actors on the Afghan scene believed” would be the outcome of the Taliban’s advances on Kabul.

However, Iran “began to seriously worry” when the Haqqani network, a sub-group of the Taliban with a “record of hostility towards Shi’a Muslims”, began taking control of Afghanistan’s capital city, Giustozzi continued. Like the coalition government many envisaged, the Taliban’s promises of government roles have not materialised.

During the Taliban’s reign in the 1990s, “Iran was among the group’s key adversaries”, and Tehran “actively supported” the group’s “ousting by the US in 2001”, said London School of Economics’ Global Risk Insights (GRI).

But more recently, “Iran has been cosying up to the group, with a significantly different orientation”. Iran remains a key trading partner of Afghanistan, and has continued its fuel exports since the Taliban took power.

The country’s leadership welcomed the departure of US forces “in its own geopolitical backyard” and its ideological conflict with the group has been “partially lifted thanks to an apparent shift of the Taliban’s treatment towards Hazara people”, the GRI continued.

The Taliban “will welcome Tehran’s change of heart”, in part because it needs new backers “as a remedy for its over reliance on Pakistan”, though “Iran will have to maintain a careful rhetoric towards the new Afghan leadership” given public feeling towards the Taliban remains negative among Iranians.

Russia wasn’t “racing to recognise the Taliban as Afghanistan’s new rulers” in August, said the BBC, but that stance is softening and in October, Moscow held “the most high-profile international talks on Afghanistan since the Taliban took power”, said The Guardian. Members of the interim government in Kabul were in attendance, as well as representatives from China, Iran, Pakistan and central Asian republics.

Vladimir Putin’s representative on Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, told reporters that “a big political bargaining is going on”.

“Not everyone likes the new government in Afghanistan, but by punishing the government, we punish the whole people,” he said. Though Russia has long recognised the Taliban as a terrorist group, its embassy is still open in Kabul and “is in regular contact with Afghanistan’s new rulers”.

The Taliban also receives some financial support from individuals in several countries.

“Private citizens from Pakistan and several Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are considered to be the largest individual contributors”, said the BBC.

“Although impossible to measure exactly”, it’s thought that these funding streams could provide as much as $500m (£376m) a year.

An eight-year-old Hindu boy is being held in protective custody after becoming the youngest person ever to be charged with blasphemy in Pakistan.

The child’s “family is in hiding” and many other members of the Hindu community in the deeply conservative Rahim Yar Khan district of Punjab “have fled their homes” amid an outbreak of violence following the boy’s release on bail last week, The Guardian reports.

Troops have been deployed and 20 people arrested after a Muslim mob attacked a local Hindu temple. Ahmed Nawaz, a police spokesperson for the district, said that “some 70 to 80 protesters” stormed the temple last Wednesday and “smashed the windows”.

The mob also “burned down the temple’s main door and damaged statues”, euronews reports, and police are “searching for another 100 suspects” thought to have been involved in the violence.

The unnamed child is “​​accused of intentionally urinating on a carpet in the library of a madrassa, where religious books were kept”, The Guardian reports. The penalty for blasphemy in Pakistan can be death.

Speaking from an undisclosed location, a member of the boy’s family told the paper that “he is not even aware of such blasphemy issues”, adding: “He still doesn’t understand what his crime was and why he was kept in jail for a week.”

The family member continued: “We have left our shops and work, the entire community is scared and we fear backlash. We don’t want to return to this area. We don’t see any concrete and meaningful action will be taken against the culprits or to safeguard the minorities living here.”

Eastern Eye says the storming of the temple is “the latest in a string of assaults on Hindu places of worship in recent years, including an attack late last year that saw around 1,500 people overrun and set fire to a temple in northwestern Pakistan”.

The stark “uptick in violence comes as leaders in Pakistan and India have been locked in an increasingly harsh war of words”, the London-based news site adds, “with both sides accusing the other of inflaming religious sentiments to target minorities in their respective countries”.

Blasphemy legislation in Pakistan has historically been “disproportionately used” to target religious minority groups, according to The Guardian. Muslims represent 97% of the country’s population, while Hindus make up around 2%.

No executions have taken place since the death penalty was introduced for the crime of blasphemy in 1986, but “suspects are often attacked and sometimes killed by mobs”, the paper adds.

Ramesh Kumar, head of the Pakistan Hindu Council, said: “The attack on the temple and blasphemy allegations against the eight-year-old minor boy has really shocked me. More than a hundred homes of the Hindu community have been emptied due to fear of attack.”

Kapil Dev, a human rights activist campaigning for equal citizenship for religious minorities, added: “I demand charges against the boy are immediately dropped, and urge the government to provide security for the family and those forced to flee.”