Category: readies

  • The party of jailed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, which according to still incomplete results has won most mandates in the February 8 elections, said it was ready to form a government amid warnings by the nuclear-armed country’s powerful military that politicians should put the people’s interests above their own.

    The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has so far announced the winners of 253 of the 265 contested parliamentary seats amid a slow counting process hampered by the interruption of mobile service.

    According to those results, independents backed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf (PTI) won 92 seats, while former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) garnered 71, and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) obtained 54 mandates. The remainder are spread among other small parties and candidates.

    Both Khan and Sharif declared victory.

    As results appeared to point to a hung parliament, PTI’s acting Chairman Gohar Ali Khan on February 10 told a news conference in Islamabad that the party aimed at forming a government as candidates backed by it had won the most seats.

    Khan also announced that if complete results were not released by February 10 in the evening, the PTI intended to stage a peaceful protest on February 11.

    Third-placed PPP, led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a former foreign minister who is the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, could play kingmaker in case of talks to form a coalition government.

    Sharif said on February 9 that he was sending his younger brother and former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as an envoy to approach the PPP and other political parties for coalition talks.

    The elections were held in a highly polarized environment as Khan, a former cricket superstar, and his party were kept out of the election. Khan is currently in prison after he was convicted of graft and leaking state secrets. He also saw his marriage annulled by a court.

    Earlier on February 10, the chief of Pakistan’s powerful military urged the country’s political class to set aside rivalries and work for the good of the people.

    “The nation needs stable hands and a healing touch to move on from the politics of anarchy and polarization, which does not suit a progressive country of 250 million people,” General Syed Asim Munir said in a statement.

    “Political leadership and their workers should rise above self-interests and synergize efforts in governing and serving the people, which is perhaps the only way to make democracy functional and purposeful,” Munir said.

    The military has run Pakistan for nearly half its history since partition from India in 1947 and it still wields huge power and influence.

    The February 8 vote took place amid rising political tensions and an upsurge of violence that prompted authorities to deploy more than 650,000 army, paramilitary, and police personnel across the country.

    Despite the beefed-up security presence, violence continued even after the election. On February 10, Pashtun candidate Mohsen Dawar
    was shot and wounded in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal district.

    Crisis-hit Pakistan has been struggling with runaway inflation while Islamabad scrambles to repay more than $130 billion in foreign debt.

    Reported irregularities during the February 8 poll prompted the United States, Britain, and the European Union to voice concerns about the way the vote was conducted and to urge an investigation.

    Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on February 10 rejected the criticism.

    PTI was banned from participating in the vote because the ECP said it had failed to properly register as a party. Its candidates then decided to run as independents after the Supreme Court and the ECP said they couldn’t use the party symbol — a cricket bat. Parties in the country use symbols to help illiterate voters find them on the ballots.

    Yet the PTI-backed independents have emerged as the largest block in the new parliament. Under Pakistani law, they must join a political party within 72 hours after their election victory is officially confirmed. They can join the PTI if it takes the required administrative steps to be cleared and approved as a party by the ECP.

    Khan, 71, was prime minister from 2018 to 2022. He still enjoys huge popularity, but his political future and return to the political limelight is unclear.

    With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • On the morning of July 22 last year, a Ukrainian woman living in the town of Izium, then occupied by invading Russian troops, was killed in shelling launched by the Ukrainian military. The bomb that killed her was no ordinary weapon.

    According to investigators from Human Rights Watch, who visited the scene of the attack, her death was caused by a cluster munition, a weapon much of the world has moved to ban due to the indiscriminate harm that they cause to civilians. The salvo was allegedly fired from the Ukrainian side, according to witnesses, and detonated near the woman’s home, killing her and her dog.

    “The attack was very scary. Very loud. I was outside and there were a lot of explosions. The wife of my ex-husband came and told me to hurry to get inside,” one witness told Human Rights Watch, according to a report released late Wednesday night. Another witness, who viewed the victim’s body in the aftermath and helped bury her in a local cemetery, said that her “face and body were severely mutilated by the explosion.”

    “Ukrainian cluster munition rocket attacks in the city of Izium in 2022 killed at least 8 civilians and wounded 15 more.”

    As the Ukraine war drags on, the Biden administration is now reportedly in the final stages of deciding whether to send more of the bombs to the Ukrainian military. The decision to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine would likely be seen as a setback to nonproliferation efforts aimed at stopping use of the weapon.

    The report by Human Rights Watch analyzing the impact of previous cluster munition attacks carried out last summer by the Ukrainian military found numerous dead and wounded civilians in Izium who were hit by exploding cluster bomblets.

    “Ukrainian cluster munition rocket attacks in the city of Izium in 2022 killed at least 8 civilians and wounded 15 more,” the report said, adding that the true number of casualties was likely greater, as many wounded people had been taken to Russia for medical care and not returned.

    Although investigators found forensic evidence pointing to Ukrainian culpability, the Ukrainian defense ministry said in a written letter to Human Rights Watch that “cluster munitions were not used within or around the city of Izium in 2022 when it was under Russian occupation.” The town was liberated by Ukrainian forces in the fall of that year.

    The Ukrainian military is currently engaged in a much larger counteroffensive aimed at reclaiming other territories captured by Russia following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the country in early 2022.

    According to the Washington Post, the administration has recently been taking the temperature of members of Congress on the forthcoming decision. House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith, D-Wash., said he was open to giving Ukraine the weapons. When asked by The Intercept, a number of House Democrats declined to say whether they were for or against the move.

    The move to transfer cluster munitions to the Ukrainian military comes on the heels of other U.S. initiatives to train Ukrainians on advanced fighter aircraft, and possibly provide them long-range missiles capable of striking deep into Russian-held territory. The transfer of cluster bombs to the Ukrainians would be much more ethically fraught.

    A Ukrainian civilian Gennadiy removes a Russian cluster munition rocket from a field near the villages of Smolyanka and Olyshivka after shelling in the previous nights, in the Chernihiv Oblast on April 3rd, 2022. Olyshivka, Ukraine. Russian military forces entered Ukraine territory on Feb. 24, 2022. (Photo by Justin Yau/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

    A Ukrainian civilian removes a Russian cluster munition rocket from a field near the villages of Smolyanka and Olyshivka on April 3, 2022.

    Photo: Justin Yau/Sipa via AP Images

    Banned Cluster Munitions

    Cluster munitions are controversial due to the manner in which “bomblets” are scattered around a targeted area, creating secondary explosions that can cause death and injury even long after a conflict has ceased.

    The use of cluster attacks during the 2006 Israeli war in Lebanon killed and wounded hundreds of civilians. A decade later, swaths of southern Lebanon are still dangerous for civilians who are periodically killed or maimed by stray bomblets.

    The bombs are currently at the center of an international campaign to ban their use in armed conflict. More than 100 states have signed an international convention on cluster munitions vowing not to employ them in war, produce them domestically, or encourage their use in foreign conflicts. Despite public pressure to join, the U.S. has not become a signatory to the convention.

    The Russian military has also extensively used cluster munitions during its invasion of Ukraine, including in attacks on populated areas that were said to have killed and wounded hundreds of civilians in the early months of the war.

    The Ukrainian military was reported to have requested significant transfers of the munitions late last year, though the Biden administration did not render a decision on the request at the time.

    If the decision is taken to approve the transfer of cluster bombs to Ukraine now, it may reflect frustration with the pace of the Ukrainian offensive, which has so far failed to make significant gains against Russian forces in the country.

    In their report analyzing the impact of Ukrainian cluster bomb attacks on civilians in the occupied town of Izium, investigators from Human Rights Watch noted the potential long-term impacts of untargeted, explosive bomblets left around the region and called on both sides to refrain from their use — lest they kill and injure many more in the years to come. As the conflict grinds on, a legacy of unexploded cluster munitions could keep the suffering of the war going long after the guns go silent.

    “Cluster munitions used by Russia and Ukraine are killing civilians now and will continue to do so for many years,” said Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, in the report. “Both sides should immediately stop using them, and not try to get more of these indiscriminate weapons.”



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    This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.