KARACHI: The Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia in Karachi on Sunday marked the 80th anniversary of Indonesia’s independence with a solemn flag-hoisting ceremony that highlighted unity and cultural pride.
The event was led by H.E. Mr. Dewanto Priyokusumo, Chargé d’Affaires of the Consulate.
This year’s celebration was anchored in the theme “Bersatu Berdaulat Rakyat Sejahtera Indonesia Maju,” which translates to “United, Sovereign, Prosperous People for a Progressive Indonesia.” The ceremony was attended by Indonesian citizens living in Karachi, including mixed-married families of Indonesian and Pakistani descents, as well as Indonesian students, all participating in a solemn and respectful manner.
In his address, Dewanto Priyokusumo conveyed key messages from President Prabowo’s national address, which underscored the critical importance of freedom from poverty and hunger, as well as the necessity for economic sovereignty to meet the needs of the populace.
He called upon all segments of society to unite in the pursuit of independence ideals by upholding the rule of law and combating corruption. President Prabowo also highlighted the government’s achievements in enhancing welfare through initiatives such as the Free Nutritious Meals program and infrastructure development, emphasizing the vital role of education in fostering a healthy and productive generation.
After the ceremony, Indonesian Diaspora in Karachi is entertained with various fun engaging games and Indonesian traditional dishes. The celebration was a sensory feast, bringing the exquisite flavours of Indonesia to Karachi.
These activities created atmosphere of joy and camaraderie, thereby strengthening the bonds of friendship among Indonesian families residing in Sindh Province. This celebration not only marked Indonesia’s significant journey toward independence but also reinforced the spirit of unity and collaboration among its citizens, both domestically and abroad.
LAHORE: Chinese Consulate Acting Consul General Lahore Cao Ke has said that China and Pakistan, as all-weather strategic cooperative partners, key members of the Global South and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, are glued together to safeguard the international system with the United Nations at its core, safeguard the international order based on international law, and jointly defend our sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Such heart-warming statement came up when Pakistan had recently celebrated blissful joy of Marka-e-Haq showing its military and diplomatic mettle inflicting defeat to India in the month of May.
Acting Chinese Consul General Cao Ke was addressing a seminar titled 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression, the world anti-fascist war, and the restoration of Taiwan held at local hotel here on Sunday. The seminar was organised by Institute of International Relations and Media Research.
According to the press release issued by IIRMR Cao Ke said that Chinese people fought valiantly against Japanese militarism in World War II, sacrificing more than 35 million civilians and military personnel to fracture the Axis strategy, causing 70 percent of Japan’s total WW II casualties.
“China’s resistance, the first to ignite and last to extinguish, fundamentally reshaped WW II’s trajectory,” he added.
The Chinese people, he mentioned, won the great victory of this devastating war and restored Taiwan from the illegal occupation of Japan, declaring the complete victory of the World Anti-Fascist War.
“The restoration of Taiwan, which is a landmark triumph of World War II and constitutes an integral part of the post-war international order. Taiwan’s status as part of Chinese territory has never changed and will never be allowed to change. The Communist Party of China played a pivotal role in the Victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. President Xi Jinping pointed out that, the CPC fought bravely on the front lines of this War, sustaining the Chinese nation’s hope of survival and becoming the mainstay of the entire nation’s struggle,” he remarked.
While addressing a seminar former foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmed Khan said that contributions and sacrifices of China, one of the world’s major powers, in World War II were far greater than those of countries that exploited the war’s outcomes and used them to serve their own interests, mostly Western allies. “Pakistan-China friendship is not based on transient interests or expediencies rather it is above personalities or any change in domestic or international situation. The CPEC, flagship project of BRI, which on completion will bring overarching socio-economic connectivity.
“At this juncture what we need to understand that we could master our common destiny only if we face it together,” he added.
Speaking at seminar, Air Vice Chief Sajid Habib (retd) said that at the time China under the leadership of its great leader had been fighting against Japanese fascism in word war II, Muslims of subcontinent under the leadership of Quaid-e-Azam had been struggling for the creation of Pakistan.
“City of Lahore has a pride that it played a role in the independence of China as Walton airport used to be place to train Chinese pilots that served in Chinese War of resistance against Japan,” he added.
“The relation with China established its roots even before the liberation and later such bond went cemented in all sphere of life including on the level of defence cooperation. We (Pakistan and China) need to deepen their time-tested collaboration and ties to shine together on global landscape,” he prayed.
Vice Admiral N A Rizvi (retd) said that China enjoys a rich history like other few civilizations.
“Chinese nation has amply proved their resilience and perseverance at different juncture of history. The Sino-Japan has witnessed massive Japanese atrocity against China. In Particular the Japanese atrocity in Nanjing are unspeakable. But China showed its ability to bear with patience and then responded perfectly. He praised Pak-China relations based on mutual trust moving in high gear and said China always support Kashmir issue,” he added.
• Israel signals plans to push civilians from Gaza City, supplying tents ahead of major assault • Hamas calls relocation plans ‘a brutal assault’ and ‘blatant deception to cover up massacre’ • Israelis rally seeking end to war, prisoner swap deal
GAZA STRIP: Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli attacks killed at least 40 people on Saturday, as the Israeli military hinted at an approaching call to push civilians from Gaza City ahead of a new offensive.
The latest toll comes more than a week after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to capture the Palestinian territory’s largest city, following 22 months of war that have created dire humanitarian conditions.
According to the civil defence agency, at least 13 of the Palestinians killed on Saturday were shot by troops as they were waiting to collect food aid near distribution sites in the north and in the south.
Ahead of the offensive, COGAT said that starting from Sunday, the military would supply more tents and shelter equipment.
“As part of the preparations to move the population from combat zones to the southern Gaza Strip for their protection, the supply of tents and shelter equipment to Gaza will resume,” it said in a statement.
Hamas later slammed the move, saying the announcement was part of a “brutal assault to occupy Gaza City”.
Earlier, Gaza’s civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said conditions in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood were rapidly deteriorating with residents having little to no access to food and water amid heavy Israeli bombardment.
The spokesman added that about 50,000 people were estimated to be in that area of Gaza City, “the majority of whom are without food or water” and lacking “the basic necessities of life”.
Bassal told AFP the number of people killed in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday had risen to 40.
On Friday, the Israeli military said its troops were operating in Zeitun.
Hamas said in a statement that Israeli forces had been carrying out a “sustained offensive in the eastern and southern neighbourhoods of Gaza City, particularly in Zeitun”.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army’s chief of staff said Sunday the military was pressing ahead with plans for the next phase of its Gaza offensive, with a focus on Gaza City.
“Today we are approving the plan for the next phase of the war,” Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said during a field visit to the Palestinian territory, according to an army statement.
In response, Hamas said the plans would result in “a new wave of extermination and mass displacement”.
The Palestinian group also condemned the proposals “a major war crime” which it said reflected Israel’s “disregard for international and humanitarian law”.
Hamas said Israel’s statements on this, including its plans for the installation of tents in southern Gaza, were “a blatant deception to cover up the imminent massacre and forced displacement”.
Israelis rally
Demonstrators across Israel called on Sunday for an end to the Gaza war and a deal to release prisoners still held by Hamas, a push lambasted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies.
The protests come more than a week after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to capture Gaza City.
A huge Israeli flag covered with portraits of the remaining captives was unfurled in Tel Aviv’s so-called Hostage Square – which has long been a focal point for protests throughout the war.
Demonstrators also blocked roads, including the highway connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where they set tires on fire, according to local media footage.
Some Israeli government members who oppose any deal with Hamas slammed Sunday’s demonstrations.
Famine warnings
The Israeli plans to expand the war into Gaza City and nearby refugee camps have sparked an international outcry as well as domestic opposition.
UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in the territory, where Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in.
TEHRAN: The streets of Tehran have become a confusing maze for driver Farshad Fooladi amid widespread GPS disruption, still ongoing nearly two months after the end of Iran and Israel’s unprecedented 12-day war.
“For weeks I have been unable to work,” said Fooladi, who uses Iran’s homegrown ride-hailing app Snapp to find customers. “Most of the time was wasted wandering around aimlessly,” the 35-year-old Iranian driver added.
Unprecedented disruption has plagued users of GPS, which stands for Global Positioning System, in Iran since Israel’s surprise attack in mid-June which triggered a deadly 12-day war.
Iran’s communications ministry has said the disruptions were necessary for “security and military purposes”, without giving further explanation.
Navigation activity on Neshan falls by 20pc
Missiles, drones and rockets often use GPS or other similar technologies, which involve triangulating signals from multiple satellites, to find their targets.
Iran has long employed GPS jamming and spoofing around sensitive military sites but the recent disruptions have been the most sustained and widespread.
It remains unclear how long the measures will last or how much damage they have caused to Iranian businesses.
Ride-hailing apps, delivery platforms, and even basic mapping services like Google Maps and its Iranian equivalent, Neshan, have buckled under the interference.
In many areas, especially around Tehran, users often spot themselves on the maps hundreds of kilometres away from their actual locations.
“To get around, you either need a sharp memory for routes or already know the city well,” Fooladi said.
But the driver, originally from the western Lorestan province and less familiar with the capital’s winding backstreets, also finds himself running into dead ends. “I only pick up passengers who know the directions,” he said, adding the strategy had severely cut his income.
‘Collateral damage’
In early August, Neshan mapping app chief executive Javad Amel said in a video interview that daily disruptions through GPS spoofing had been ongoing for years, especially in Tehran.
But he explained in recent weeks that Neshan’s daily active users “had dropped by 15pc, while navigation activity on the app fell by 20pc”.
The continued disruption has also heightened fears of a deepening economic crisis among Iranians amid international sanctions, compounded by the revival of US President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign earlier this year.
Nuclear talks with Washington, which began in April, have also stalled since the United States joined its ally Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites in June.
“This war has upended our lives and frozen our future plans,” said Fooladi.
In a report last week, the Khabar Online news agency warned against the disruption of GPS, saying it caused “collateral damage” to the digital economy and public safety, including delays to emergency services.
Former communications minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi argued the disruption was costly and would likely have limited defensive results. “Drone manufacturers and operators are not stupid either. If the GPS is disrupted and another positioning system replaces it, they will also use the new system,” Jahromi said according to his Telegram channel.
‘Unclear future’
With the significant impact on civilian lives, deputy communications minister Ehsan Chitsaz suggested that Iran could consider alternatives to GPS.
“Disruptions are created by domestic systems on GPS, and this has pushed us toward alternative options such as BeiDou,” he told Iranian daily Ham Mihan in July.
The Chinese satellite system BeiDou, fully operational since 2020, is emerging as a global rival to GPS.
Chitsaz said Iran was “drafting a program” so some of the country’s location-based services for transport, agriculture could “gradually migrate from GPS to BeiDou”. He acknowledged disruptions in Iran, coupled with years-long internet restrictions, have damaged businesses and created “social distrust and despair”.
But experts say that replacing GPS would be complex.
“Doing so would require extensive and costly infrastructure changes,” said Amir Rashidi of the US-based Miaan group, adding that Iran is currently “highly vulnerable in cyberspace”.
Many in Iran believe that another confrontation with Israel is on the horizon as Israel and the United States continue to threaten attacks if Iran restarts its nuclear programme, which has been on hold.
“Everything is uncertain, and we can’t plan. The future is unclear,” said Mohammad Hossein Ghanbari, a 32-year-old Snapp driver. “We don’t know whether the war will break out again or what will happen next.”
If you’re confused about the aims, conduct and outcome of the summit meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin held in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025, you’re probably not alone.
As summits go, the meeting broke with many conventions of diplomacy: It was last-minute, it appeared to ignore longstanding protocol and accounts of what happened were conflicting in the days after the early termination of the event.
The Conversation U.S.’s politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed Donald Heflin, a veteran diplomat now teaching at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, to help untangle what happened and what could happen next.
It was a hastily planned summit. Trump said they’d accomplish things that they didn’t seem to accomplish. Where do things stand now?
It didn’t surprise me or any experienced diplomat that there wasn’t a concrete result from the summit.
First, the two parties, Russia and Ukraine, weren’t asking to come to the peace table. Neither one of them is ready yet, apparently. Second, the process was flawed. It wasn’t prepared well enough in advance, at the secretary of state and foreign minister level. It wasn’t prepared at the staff level.
What was a bit of a surprise was the last couple days before the summit, the White House started sending out what I thought were kind of realistic signals. They said, “Hopefully we’ll get a ceasefire and then a second set of talks a few weeks in the future, and that’ll be the real set of talks.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, here embracing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in London on Aug. 14, 2025, is one of many European leaders voicing strong support for Ukraine and Zelenskyy. Jordan Pettitt/PA Images via Getty Images
Now, that’s kind of reasonable. That could have happened. That was not a terrible plan. The problem was it didn’t happen. And we don’t know exactly why it didn’t happen.
Reading between the lines, there were a couple problems. The first is the Russians, again, just weren’t ready to do this, and they said, “No ceasefire. We want to go straight to permanent peace talks.”
Ukraine doesn’t want that, and neither do its European allies. Why?
When you do a ceasefire, what normally happens is you leave the warring parties in possession of whatever land their military holds right now. That’s just part of the deal. You don’t go into a 60- or 90-day ceasefire and say everybody’s got to pull back to where they were four years ago.
But if you go to a permanent peace plan, which Putin wants, you’ve got to decide that people are going to pull back, right? So that’s problem number one.
Problem number two is it’s clear that Putin is insisting on keeping some of the territory that his troops seized in 2014 and 2022. That’s just a non-starter for the Ukrainians.
Is Putin doing that because that really is his bottom line demand, or did he want to blow up these peace talks, and that was a good way to blow them up? It could be either or both.
Russia has made it clear that it wants to keep parts of Ukraine, based on history and ethnic makeup.
The problem is, the world community has made it clear for decades and decades and decades, you don’t get what you want by invading the country next door.
Remember in Gulf War I, when Saddam Hussein invaded and swallowed Kuwait and made it the 19th province of Iraq? The U.S. and Europe went in there and kicked him out. Then there are also examples where the U.S. and Europe have told countries, “Don’t do this. You do this, it’s going to be bad for you.”
So if Russia learns that it can invade Ukraine and seize territory and be allowed to keep it, what’s to keep them from doing it to some other country? What’s to keep some other country from doing it?
You mean the whole world is watching.
Yes. And the other thing the world is watching is the U.S. gave security guarantees to Ukraine in 1994 when they gave up the nuclear weapons they held, as did Europe. The U.S. has, both diplomatically and in terms of arms, supported Ukraine during this war. If the U.S. lets them down, what kind of message does that send about how reliable a partner the U.S. is?
The U.S. has this whole other thing going on the other side of the world where the country is confronting China on various levels. What if the U.S. sends a signal to the Taiwanese, “Hey, you better make the best deal you can with China, because we’re not going to back your play.”
Ukrainian police officers evacuate a resident from a residential building in Bilozerske following an airstrike by Russian invading forces on Aug. 17, 2025. Pierre Crom/Getty Images
At least six European leaders are coming to Washington along with Zelenskyy. What does that tell you?
They’re presenting a united front to Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to say, “Look, we can’t have this. Europe’s composed of a bunch of countries. If we get in the situation where one country invades the other and gets to keep the land they took, we can’t have it.”
President Trump had talked to all of them before the summit, and they probably came away with a strong impression that the U.S. was going for a ceasefire. And then, that didn’t happen.
Instead, Trump took Putin’s position of going straight to peace talks, no ceasefire.
I don’t think they liked it. I think they’re coming in to say to him, “No, we have to go to ceasefire first. Then talks and, PS, taking territory and keeping it is terrible precedent. What’s to keep Russia from just storming into the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – next? The maps of Europe that were drawn 100 years ago have held. If we’re going to let Russia erase a bunch of the borders on the map and incorporate parts, it could really be chaotic.”
Where do you see things going?
Until and unless you hear there’s a ceasefire, nothing’s really happened and the parties are continuing to fight and kill.
What I would look for after the Monday meetings is, does Trump stick to his guns post-Alaska and say, “No, we’re gonna have a big, comprehensive peace agreement, and land for peace is on the table.”
Or does he kind of swing back towards the European point of view and say, “I really think the first thing we got to have is a ceasefire”?
Even critics of Trump need to acknowledge that he’s never been a warmonger. He doesn’t like war. He thinks it’s too chaotic. He can’t control it. No telling what will happen at the other end of war. I think he sincerely wants for the shooting and the killing to stop above all else.
The way you do that is a ceasefire. You have two parties say, “Look, we still hate each other. We still have this really important issue of who controls these territories, but we both agree it’s in our best interest to stop the fighting for 60, 90 days while we work on this.”
If you don’t hear that coming out of the White House into the Monday meetings, this isn’t going anywhere.
There are thousands of Ukrainian children who have been taken by Russia – essentially kidnapped. Does that enter into any of these negotiations?
It should. It was a terror tactic.
This could be a place where you can make progress. If Putin said, well, “We still don’t want to give you any land, but, yeah, these kids here, you can have them back,” it’s the kind of thing you throw on the table to show that you’re not a bad guy and you are kind of serious about these talks.
Whether they’ll do that or not, I don’t know. It’s really a tragic story.
If you’re confused about the aims, conduct and outcome of the summit meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin held in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025, you’re probably not alone.
As summits go, the meeting broke with many conventions of diplomacy: It was last-minute, it appeared to ignore longstanding protocol and accounts of what happened were conflicting in the days after the early termination of the event.
The Conversation U.S.’s politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed Donald Heflin, a veteran diplomat now teaching at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, to help untangle what happened and what could happen next.
It was a hastily planned summit. Trump said they’d accomplish things that they didn’t seem to accomplish. Where do things stand now?
It didn’t surprise me or any experienced diplomat that there wasn’t a concrete result from the summit.
First, the two parties, Russia and Ukraine, weren’t asking to come to the peace table. Neither one of them is ready yet, apparently. Second, the process was flawed. It wasn’t prepared well enough in advance, at the secretary of state and foreign minister level. It wasn’t prepared at the staff level.
What was a bit of a surprise was the last couple days before the summit, the White House started sending out what I thought were kind of realistic signals. They said, “Hopefully we’ll get a ceasefire and then a second set of talks a few weeks in the future, and that’ll be the real set of talks.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, here embracing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in London on Aug. 14, 2025, is one of many European leaders voicing strong support for Ukraine and Zelenskyy. Jordan Pettitt/PA Images via Getty Images
Now, that’s kind of reasonable. That could have happened. That was not a terrible plan. The problem was it didn’t happen. And we don’t know exactly why it didn’t happen.
Reading between the lines, there were a couple problems. The first is the Russians, again, just weren’t ready to do this, and they said, “No ceasefire. We want to go straight to permanent peace talks.”
Ukraine doesn’t want that, and neither do its European allies. Why?
When you do a ceasefire, what normally happens is you leave the warring parties in possession of whatever land their military holds right now. That’s just part of the deal. You don’t go into a 60- or 90-day ceasefire and say everybody’s got to pull back to where they were four years ago.
But if you go to a permanent peace plan, which Putin wants, you’ve got to decide that people are going to pull back, right? So that’s problem number one.
Problem number two is it’s clear that Putin is insisting on keeping some of the territory that his troops seized in 2014 and 2022. That’s just a non-starter for the Ukrainians.
Is Putin doing that because that really is his bottom line demand, or did he want to blow up these peace talks, and that was a good way to blow them up? It could be either or both.
Russia has made it clear that it wants to keep parts of Ukraine, based on history and ethnic makeup.
The problem is, the world community has made it clear for decades and decades and decades, you don’t get what you want by invading the country next door.
Remember in Gulf War I, when Saddam Hussein invaded and swallowed Kuwait and made it the 19th province of Iraq? The U.S. and Europe went in there and kicked him out. Then there are also examples where the U.S. and Europe have told countries, “Don’t do this. You do this, it’s going to be bad for you.”
So if Russia learns that it can invade Ukraine and seize territory and be allowed to keep it, what’s to keep them from doing it to some other country? What’s to keep some other country from doing it?
You mean the whole world is watching.
Yes. And the other thing the world is watching is the U.S. gave security guarantees to Ukraine in 1994 when they gave up the nuclear weapons they held, as did Europe. The U.S. has, both diplomatically and in terms of arms, supported Ukraine during this war. If the U.S. lets them down, what kind of message does that send about how reliable a partner the U.S. is?
The U.S. has this whole other thing going on the other side of the world where the country is confronting China on various levels. What if the U.S. sends a signal to the Taiwanese, “Hey, you better make the best deal you can with China, because we’re not going to back your play.”
Ukrainian police officers evacuate a resident from a residential building in Bilozerske following an airstrike by Russian invading forces on Aug. 17, 2025. Pierre Crom/Getty Images
At least six European leaders are coming to Washington along with Zelenskyy. What does that tell you?
They’re presenting a united front to Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to say, “Look, we can’t have this. Europe’s composed of a bunch of countries. If we get in the situation where one country invades the other and gets to keep the land they took, we can’t have it.”
President Trump had talked to all of them before the summit, and they probably came away with a strong impression that the U.S. was going for a ceasefire. And then, that didn’t happen.
Instead, Trump took Putin’s position of going straight to peace talks, no ceasefire.
I don’t think they liked it. I think they’re coming in to say to him, “No, we have to go to ceasefire first. Then talks and, PS, taking territory and keeping it is terrible precedent. What’s to keep Russia from just storming into the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – next? The maps of Europe that were drawn 100 years ago have held. If we’re going to let Russia erase a bunch of the borders on the map and incorporate parts, it could really be chaotic.”
Where do you see things going?
Until and unless you hear there’s a ceasefire, nothing’s really happened and the parties are continuing to fight and kill.
What I would look for after the Monday meetings is, does Trump stick to his guns post-Alaska and say, “No, we’re gonna have a big, comprehensive peace agreement, and land for peace is on the table.”
Or does he kind of swing back towards the European point of view and say, “I really think the first thing we got to have is a ceasefire”?
Even critics of Trump need to acknowledge that he’s never been a warmonger. He doesn’t like war. He thinks it’s too chaotic. He can’t control it. No telling what will happen at the other end of war. I think he sincerely wants for the shooting and the killing to stop above all else.
The way you do that is a ceasefire. You have two parties say, “Look, we still hate each other. We still have this really important issue of who controls these territories, but we both agree it’s in our best interest to stop the fighting for 60, 90 days while we work on this.”
If you don’t hear that coming out of the White House into the Monday meetings, this isn’t going anywhere.
There are thousands of Ukrainian children who have been taken by Russia – essentially kidnapped. Does that enter into any of these negotiations?
It should. It was a terror tactic.
This could be a place where you can make progress. If Putin said, well, “We still don’t want to give you any land, but, yeah, these kids here, you can have them back,” it’s the kind of thing you throw on the table to show that you’re not a bad guy and you are kind of serious about these talks.
Whether they’ll do that or not, I don’t know. It’s really a tragic story.
Large demonstration in Elk Grove against Gaza massacres – Daily Times
Published on: August 18, 2025 4:01 AM
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Rescue workers are searching for more than 40 people after a boat accident in Nigeria’s northwestern Sokoto state, the country’s emergency agency said on Sunday.
“About 10 persons have been rescued, while more than 40 passengers remain missing,” the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said in a statement.
NEMA said it has deployed its response team to support ongoing rescue operations following a tragic boat mishap in Sokoto State today.
The Director General of NEMA, Zubaida Umar, activated the agency’s response immediately after receiving reports that a boat conveying over 50 passengers to Goronyo Market had capsized.
Umar said, NEMA, in collaboration with local authorities and emergency responders, is intensifying search and rescue operations to locate the missing persons.
Kabul residents have told RFE/RL that they are begging for rice and “ready to accept death,” as the World Food Program (WFP) said it was “turning hundreds of thousands of people away” from nutrition centers.
WFP Country Director John Aylieff said drought, dramatic aid cuts, and the forced return of 1.5 million Afghans from Iran and Pakistan had combined to create “rising acute malnutrition” in the poverty-stricken country.
“We need to do everything we can to avoid famine,” he told RFE/RL. “It could be unprecedented because during the winter, there could be 10 to 15 million people needing food assistance. And at the moment, we have no funding and there will be no response.”
For the coming six months, the WFP in Afghanistan said it requires nearly $539 million for all programs to reach the most vulnerable families across the country.
But multiple donors have slashed contributions. For 2025, the WFP in Afghanistan said it received some $155 million. This compares with nearly $560 million the year before, and nearly $1.6 billion in 2022.
“The US has been a phenomenally generous donor in Afghanistan for decades, providing the lion’s share of humanitarian assistance, along with other generous donors from around the world,” Aylieff said.
“Now is not the moment for anyone to reduce or walk away.”
RFE/RL has asked the White House for comment. In his first few months in office, President Donald Trump cut more than 7,400 foreign aid programs globally worth $80 billion, according to a report published last month by Senate Democrats.
A State Department spokesman told RFE/RL on August 4 that “over the last approximately four years, foreign assistance intended for the people of Afghanistan was systematically diverted and expropriated by the Taliban — a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.”
Nearly four years since their takeover of Afghanistan, “it is due time that the Taliban provide for the welfare of the Afghan people,” the spokesman added.
‘Ready To Accept Death’
The situation has devastating results for people like 42-year-old Kabul resident Gul Dasta. She used to work as a cleaner at the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry. When the Taliban seized power in August 2021, they announced a ban on women working in government offices, and she was fired.
Dasta’s husband has severe diabetes and cannot work. The couple have a 9-year-old son and two daughters, aged 14 and 16. They have not received an international food aid package for five months.
“There have been days that we had nothing to eat. I have boiled some rice that I begged from the neighbors and fed my children with. Every day in life is so difficult. There have been days that I cried all day,” she told RFE/RL in a phone interview.
Another Kabul resident we spoke to broke down in tears during the call.
Abeda, 54, is a widow who lives with her 15-year-old son, 26-year-old widowed daughter, and two grandchildren. She was a cleaner at a girls’ high school until the Taliban closed it as part of a campaign against education for females.
“Last Thursday I had nothing at home. Not even potatoes or tomatoes. I hated my life. Life is full of pain and trouble. Last Thursday I was even ready to accept death,” she said, during an interview on August 11.
Turning People Away
Aylieff said the situation was even worse in rural areas, where some 400 clinics providing nutrition had closed down due to lack of funds.
“The result of that is that we’re turning hundreds of thousands of people away,” he said.
“Sometimes they would have to walk for five hours to a clinic, the nearest one. Imagine the anguish of showing up and finding the clinic is closed.”
Aylieff added that the WFP was currently able to provide food to around 1 million people, compared to 5 million a year ago. But it will soon run out of money, he said, meaning food assistance will stop “almost completely” by October.
Taliban officials have largely avoided public comment on the hunger crisis, instead making vague remarks blaming foreign actors for the country’s general economic hardships.
For example, a statement by the Economy Ministry back in February said, “In addition to the financial and economic sanctions imposed by the United States, the freezing of assets has affected Afghanistan’s national economy.”
RFE/RL has been unable to operate freely in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power.
