World
Afghanistan’s head hits out at Pakistan for harboring terrorists, breaking promise
By Arul Louis
United Nations: Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah has hit out against Pakistan for harbouring terrorists who crossover to “indiscriminately victimize our citizens” and accused it of going back on its promise to crack down on them.
“The presence of terrorist sanctuaries and support networks in Pakistan continue to cause trouble inside Afghanistan,” Abdullah told the General Assembly Monday. “Another fact is clear to Afghans across the board:
Were it not for external support systems, access to arms and munitions, rest areas and hospitals, and funding and training, as part of strategic collusion with powerful elements in our neighborhood, this guerrilla style low-intensity warfare would have been history by now.”
“The Haqqani network has been identified as a main culprit and needs to be dismantled as has been our demand in the past,” Abdullah said.
In the clearest sign of Kabul’s disillusionment with Islamabad, Abdullah accused it of going back on its word. When the new government headed jointly by Abdullah and President Ashraf Ghani took over in Afghanistan last year, it tried to foster closer ties with Pakistan, reversing the previous president Hamid Karzai’s policy.
“We call on Pakistan to do what its leadership promised to us a few months ago when they agreed to crack down on known terror outfits-meaning the enemies of Afghanistan,” he said.
He called for international help to have the two countries resolve the terrorist problem on a bilateral basis.
Abdullah cited the attacks in Kunduz province and the bomb blast at a sports match in which ten spectators were killed. “Over the past 48 hours, hundreds of militants, some of whom are foreign fighters, organized attacks in Kunduz province, where heavy fighting is raging,” he said.
Striking a defiant note, he added, “These attempts will eventually fail to subdue us, as they have on other occasions over the past few years. ”
Abdullah also expressed disappointment with the way the peace talks with the Taliban have turned out after it was discovered that its leader Mullah Mohammed Omar had died three years ago in Paksitan. Calling the talks “a sham,” he said, ” A loss of trust can have irreparable consequences for all sides.”
He appealed to regional stakeholders and international partners to use their good offices “for a genuine and durable confidence-building process leading to talks with willing Taliban and other armed opposition groups.”
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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