Category: 2. World

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: In the heart of the ancient walled city of Peshawar, perched on one of its highest elevations, stands a site layered with millennia of history.

Gor Khatri, literally, “Warrior’s Grave,” is a sprawling archaeological complex where 13 successive civilizations have left their mark, from the Indo-Greeks of the second century BC to the British Raj.

Located at a strategic point in what is now northwestern Pakistan, the complex was once a major caravanserai on the trade routes linking Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent. Today, it remains one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban settlements in South Asia — a rare living museum.

Peshawar’s strategic geography has long made it a magnet for conquest, trade and religion.

Nestled at the mouth of the Khyber Pass — the historic invasion route into the subcontinent — the city has served as a crossroads between Central and South Asia for over two millennia. Greek settlers, Buddhist monks, Persian merchants, Mughal princesses and British generals have all passed through this terrain, leaving behind a mosaic of cultural and architectural legacies.

“Peshawar is one of the oldest living cities of South Asia,” said Dr. Numan Anwar, field supervisor at Gor Khatri for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Directorate of Archaeology and Museums.

“The site has the footprints of 13 civilizations.”

The current 160-by-160-foot square structure dates to 1641, when it was commissioned by Mughal princess Jahan Ara, daughter of Emperor Shah Jahan, and named Sarai Jahanabad. Built as a caravan rest stop, the complex included cells, chambers and grand gateways, many of which still survive.

“When Jahan Ara Begum came to that [caravan resting] spot and saw people from many regions gathering here, she had the present building constructed,” said Dr. Zakirullah Jan, associate professor at the University of Peshawar’s Department of Archaeology.

“The cells, rooms, gateways, all were constructed during the Mughal period.”

“BUDDHA’S BOWL”

The site’s significance reaches far deeper than the Mughal era.

Gor Khatri has yielded the earliest archaeological material ever found in Peshawar, dating back to the Indo-Greek period, roughly the second or third century BC.

“The earliest level that has been discovered related to the history and archaeology of Peshawar came from the site of Gor Khatri,” Dr. Jan said.

“When Alexander came, and when the Indo-Greeks came, the Mauryans came, it touches that time.”

Excavations began in earnest in 1992 through a joint initiative by the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums and the University of Peshawar.

Archaeologists have since unearthed layers revealing Roman coins, Kushan pottery, Scythian jewelry and even traces from the White Huns and the Ghaznavid Empire.

Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, the 7th-century Buddhist monk who translated sacred texts from Sanskrit to Chinese, is believed to have visited the site. In his writings, he is known to have described a location where “Buddha’s giant bowl was kept,” which many historians believe refers to Gor Khatri. The bowl, some researchers say, was historically kept in Peshawar and Kandahar before being moved to the Kabul Museum.

Today, a small museum inside Gor Khatri showcases pottery shards, coins, beads, seals and kitchen tools from the many civilizations that passed through.

The complex also houses a mosque and the Goraknath Temple, a Hindu shrine built between 1834 and 1849, which now coexists in the same space — a testament to religious diversity.

“There is not a single break in the cultural history of this region,” said Dr. Jan. “Since the second century BC till now, there is a continuity of culture. That’s why the site is important.”

The British-era governor’s residence still stands at one corner of the site. Paolo Crescenzo Martino Avitabile, an Italian general in the army of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, once ruled Peshawar from this post between 1838 and 1842. Locally remembered as Abu Tabela, his tenure is part of the site’s colonial legacy.

On a typical day, students and families explore the site’s pathways and peek into excavated trenches, standing on layers of millennia-old soil.

“Whenever my friends come from cities like Mardan, Swat, or Lahore, I take them here to show them the positive side of Peshawar,” said Hamza Khan, 21, a student of Peace and Conflict Studies.

“This place represents religious and cultural diversity.”

The excavation work at Gor Khatri concluded in most parts in 2012, but archaeologists say there is still much to study.

What remains today is not just an ancient structure, but a microcosm of Peshawar’s civilizational depth — where Buddhist monks, Mughal princesses, British soldiers and local pilgrims have all, at some point, passed through.

Columbia University said on Wednesday it will pay $200 million to the US government after President Donald Trump threatened to pull federal funding over what he said was its unwillingness to protect Jewish students.

In a sweeping deal that will restore the prestigious New York institution’s federal monies, Columbia has pledged to obey rules that bar it from taking race into consideration in admissions or hiring, among other concessions.

“Columbia University has reached an agreement with the United States government to resolve multiple federal agency investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws,” a statement said, adding that the $200m would be paid over three years.

The university will also pay $21m to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it said.

“Under today’s agreement, a vast majority of the federal grants which were terminated or paused in March 2025 will be reinstated and Columbia’s access to billions of dollars in current and future grants will be restored,” the statement said.

The promise of the federal funding spigot reopening offers relief for the university, which was under growing financial pressure, despite a comfortable endowment and a reputation it can bank on.

The agreement also represents a victory for Trump, who has repeatedly claimed elite universities brainwash students against his nationalist ideas with left-wing bias.

Thanking Columbia for “agreeing to do what is right,” Trump warned in a social media post that “numerous other Higher Education Institutions that have hurt so many, and been so unfair and unjust… are upcoming.”

The centuries-old Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is also in a fight with the administration over Trump’s threats to rip away federal funding, and Wednesday’s carefully worded agreement — in which Columbia admitted no wrongdoing — could offer a framework for future deals.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” Columbia’s acting president Claire Shipman said.

“The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track.

“Importantly, it safeguards our independence, a critical condition for academic excellence and scholarly exploration, work that is vital to the public interest.”

Disciplinary actions

Under the settlement, Columbia will maintain a security force to prevent demonstrations in academic spaces, such as those that rocked the campus last year when pro-Palestinian protestors clashed with law enforcement and occupied university buildings.

The school also agreed to “promptly provide” federal authorities with any requested information on “disciplinary actions involving student visa-holders resulting in expulsions or suspensions, and arrest records that Columbia is aware of for criminal activity, including trespass or other violation of law.”

Columbia found itself at the centre of a firestorm last year over claims of anti-Semitism triggered by campus protests against Israel’s conflict in Gaza.

Some Jewish students claimed they were intimidated and that authorities did not act to protect them.

The school announced a wave of various student punishments on Tuesday, including expulsions and degree revocations, against nearly 80 students involved in the pro-Palestinian protest movement that has called on the university to divest from Israel.

“Our institution must focus on delivering on its academic mission for our community,” Columbia said in a statement about student protests on its campus.

“Disruptions to academic activities are in violation of University policies and rules, and such violations will necessarily generate consequences.”

While the university appears to be acquiescing to the Trump administration’s demands to quash student protest, one of the most prominent leaders of the US pro-Palestinian campus protests is still raising his voice.

Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate active in campus demonstrations, has sued the Trump administration for $20m over his arrest and detention by immigration agents.

Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States who is married to a US citizen, missed the birth of his son while being held in a federal immigration detention centre in Louisiana.

He called the lawsuit a “first step towards accountability.”

ISTANBUL:

Russia and Ukraine began a fresh round of talks in Istanbul on Wednesday but the Kremlin played down any expectations of a breakthrough after three and a half years of war.

“Our aim is to end this bloody war, which has a very high cost, as soon as possible,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said as he opened a meeting between the two delegations.

“The ultimate goal is a ceasefire that will pave the way for peace,” Fidan said.

The two sides previously met in the Turkish city in May and June, but managed to agree only on exchanges of prisoners and soldiers’ bodies.

US President Donald Trump last week gave Russia 50 days to end the war or face sanctions, but the Kremlin has not indicated it is willing to compromise.

“No one expects an easy road. It will be very difficult,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about his expectations for the talks.

Ukraine said it hoped the two countries would discuss the release of prisoners and lay the ground for a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

“Everything will depend on whether Russia stops speaking in ultimatums and takes a constructive position,” a source in the Ukrainian delegation told AFP.

“This will determine whether results can be achieved at this meeting.”

But Moscow has said a lot of work is needed before even discussions can take place about possible talks between Putin and Zelensky, who last met in 2019.

The two sides have radically different positions for ending the conflict.

Russia has called on Ukraine to effectively retreat from the four Ukrainian regions Moscow claims to have annexed in September 2022, a demand Kyiv has called unacceptable.

Ukraine has ruled out any negotiations on territory until after a ceasefire and says it will never recognise Russia’s claims over occupied territory — including Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, has ravaged swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, killing tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians.

Ukraine said former defence minister Rustem Umerov, who currently serves as security council secretary, would head its delegation.

The Kremlin said it would send political scientist Vladimir Medinsky to lead its negotiating team.

Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation in the two previous rounds of negotiation, is not seen as a powerful decision maker. Ukraine has labelled him a puppet.

At the last talks on May 16 and June 2, the two sides agreed to large-scale prisoner exchanges.

They also exchanged their draft terms for ending the conflict, which the Kremlin said were “diametrically opposed”.

• Calls Gaza crisis ‘genocide in full view of international community’, criticises UN’s inaction
• Proposes six-point plan, including immediate ceasefire, aid access, reconstruction, and two-state solution
• Palestinian envoy highlights starvation deaths of children, mass destruction across occupied territory
• US envoy urges Hamas to accept ceasefire deal; Israeli envoy says no more visas for UN officials

WASHINGTON: Presi­d­ing over a charged debate at the UN Security Council on the worsening situation in Gaza, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar warned that the world is witnessing “a genocide in Gaza, in full view of the international community — one that the UN seems unable or unwilling to stop.”

The Security Council session on the Middle East saw urgent calls from many representatives to end the violence and protect civilians trapped in Gaza. The crisis is deepening with growing displacement, food shortages, and widespread destruction.

Senator Dar told the Council that the systematic targeting of hospitals, schools, UN facilities, aid convoys, and refugee camps in Gaza were not accidents but “deliberate acts of collective punishment.”

“The Palestinian question is a litmus test for the credibility of the United Nations, the Security Council and the integrity of the international law,” he said. “Failure to uphold the rights of the Palestinian people will embolden impunity and undermine the legitimacy of the very international order we all claim to uphold.”

Six-point plan

The foreign minister proposed a six-point plan to end the crisis, including: (1) an immediate and unconditional ceasefire; (2) sustained and secure humanitarian access and protection for aid workers; (3) renewed international support for UNRWA; (4) an end to forced displacement and illegal settlements; (5) implementation of an Arab-Islamic-led plan for Gaza’s reconstruction; and (6) a revived political process for a two-state solution based on pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

He welcomed the International Conference on the two-state solution, scheduled for July 28 in Paris and to be co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France, as a crucial step toward peace.

“Gaza has become graveyards for innocent lives,” he warned, adding: “The Palestinian question is a litmus test for the credibility of the United Nations, the Security Council and the integrity of the international law.”

He emphasised that “failure to uphold the rights of the Palestinian people will embolden impunity and undermine the legitimacy of the very international order we all claim to defend and uphold”.

‘Unimaginable suffering’

Palestinian Permanent Observer Riyad Mansour delivered a searing statement, describing the unimaginable suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. He began by saying: “I speak with a broken heart and a wounded soul.”

He recounted the recent deaths of a four-year-old girl, Razan, and a six-week-old baby, Yousef, who died from starvation, alongside fifteen others, within the past 24 hours. “Children in Gaza are not starving, they are being starved,” he said.

Mr Mansour accused Israel of destroying everything: homes, schools, mosques, churches, hospitals, water networks, roads, infrastructure, cemeteries, and even aid convoys. He said 80 per cent of Gaza’s population has been forcibly displaced and warned that Israel’s end goal was “the destruction of the two million Palestinians remaining in Gaza.” He urged the Security Council to act, warning that “every day you delay action, you sign more death warrants.” He concluded by asking the world: “What would you do if this was your child dying of hunger?”

Israel to turn away UN workers

Israel’s Permanent Representative, Ambassador Danny Danon, defended his government’s actions, anno­uncing that Israel will no longer renew the visas of certain UN humanitarian staff in Gaza. He claimed that hundreds of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) employees are being vetted for alleged links to Hamas, and that “key personnel” will be denied visa renewals.

Danon said Israel had informed the UN that the head of OCHA’s office in the occupied Palestinian territory must leave by July 29. “Enough with the hypocrisy, enough with the bias, enough with the endless defamation campaign against the State of Israel,” he said.

He dismissed UN casualty figures and statistics on aid delivery as distortions. “Israel is making the Middle East safer for everyone who values peace and calm,” he claimed, adding that “we are doing the work of the United Nations” by dismantling terror networks.

Khaled Khiari, Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, updated the Council on the scale of destruction, reporting nearly 1,900 Palestinians killed since June 30, including nearly 300 while collecting aid. He said Israeli bombardments have damaged or destroyed UN facilities and displaced tens of thousands of civilians. He called Gaza “a nightmare of historic proportions.”

Denmark’s Permanent Representative, Christina Markus Lassen, condemned the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, noting that the population has been squeezed into “less than 14 per cent of the territory.” She warned that for many civilians, “their reality is one of imminent death by hostilities, starvation or disease.”

Russia’s delegate accused the United States of “cowboy diplomacy” and warned that unconditional US support for Israel was blocking peace. He said lasting stability would never be achieved unless Israel accepted the two-state solution and learned to live peacefully with its neighbors.

‘Accept deal on the table’

Meanwhile, Acting US Ambassador to the United Nations Dorothy Shea appealed to the UN Security Council today, insisting that “Hamas must accept the deal on the table”—a ceasefire proposal already agreed upon by Israel. She asserted that any delay risks further suffering for hostages, their families, and civilians in Gaza living under Hamas’s control.

During the session, Shea urged global leaders to apply pressure on Hamas to release the 50 prisoners still held after more than 650 days and to withdraw and disarm from Gaza. “Shielding Hamas from accountability undermines Israel’s security, rewards terrorism, and does nothing to improve the lives of Palestinians,” she declared.

Shea also firmly rejected accusations that Israel’s military actions constitute genocide. “The loss of civilian life in Gaza is tragic, but the responsibility for this rests with Hamas,” she stated. On the subject of Palestinian displacement, she clarified that the US does not support any forced removal of Gazans from their land.

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2025

LONDON: Relatives of a British victim killed in last month’s Air India crash received a casket that contained mixed remains, a lawyer representing several families and UK media said on Wednesday.

The family of a separate victim received the remains of another person, according to James Healy-Pratt, who is representing 20 British families who lost loved ones in the disaster.

A total of 241 people on board the London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner died when the plane crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad in western India on June 12.

Some 169 Indian passengers and 52 British nationals were killed, making it one of the deadliest plane crashes in terms of the number of British fatalities. Several people on the ground also died while only one passenger, British citizen Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, survived the crash.

Healy-Pratt told the Press Association news agency that the return of victims’ remains had been marred by serious errors, which had been identified following a probe by a British coroner.

“In the first two caskets that were repatriated, in one of the caskets, there was co-mingling of DNA which did not relate to the deceased in that casket or the casket that accompanied it,” he said.

The lawyer added the coroner was then “able to determine that one particular loved one was not at all who the family thought they were”. Miten Patel, whose mother Shobhana Patel died along with her husband in the disaster, told the BBC that “other remains” were found in her casket after her body was returned to Britain.

“People were tired and there was a lot of pressure. But there has to be a level of responsibility that you’re sending the right bodies to the UK,” he told the broadcaster.

The Daily Mail first reported two cases in which the wrong remains were apparently returned to families in Britain. India’s foreign ministry said all remains “were handled with utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased”.

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2025

ISTANBUL: The Krem­lin played down expectations of any breakthrough after talks with Kyiv in Istanbul on Wednesday, while Ukrainian Pres­ident Volodymyr Zelensky said the meeting should focus on preparing a summit between himself and Russian President Vlad­imir Putin.

Their first peace talks in more than seven weeks come as Moscow is under pressure from US President Donald Trump to strike a deal or face tough new sanctions.

“Naturally, no one expects an easy road. Naturally, this will be a very difficult conversation. The projects (of the two sides) are diametrically opposed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

A Ukrainian diplomatic source said Kyiv saw a Putin-Zelensky meeting as the key requirement for a breakthrough.

“The Ukrainian delegation has come to Turkiye prepared to take significant steps towards peace and a full ceasefire, but everything will depend on whether the Russian side is willing to take a constructive approach,” the source said.

Previous talks on May 16 and June 2 led to the exchange of thousands of prisoners of war and the remains of dead soldiers. But those meetings lasted less than three hours in total and made no breakthrough towards ending the war. President Donald Trump has patched up relations with Zelensky after a public row with him at the White House in February, and has lately expressed growing frustration with Putin.

Last week he threatened new sanctions on Russia and countries that buy its exports unless a peace deal was reached within 50 days.

Three sources close to the Kremlin said last week that Putin, unfazed by Trump’s ultimatum, would keep on fighting in Ukraine until the West engaged on his terms for peace, and that his territorial demands may widen as Russian forces advance.

On Wednesday, Russia said its forces had captured the settlement of Varachyne in Ukraine’s Sumy region, where Putin has ordered his troops to create a buffer zone after Ukraine mounted a shock incursion into Russia last year and held onto a chunk of its territory for months.

President Zelensky said earlier this week that the agenda for talks was clear: the return of prisoners of war and of “children abdu­cted by Russia”, and the preparation of a meeting between himself and Putin.

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2025

More than 100 aid organisations warned on July 24, 2025, that “mass starvation” was spreading in Gaza. Representational file image.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Columbia University announced a much-anticipated deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220m, an agreement meant to bring a resolution to the threat of massive funding cuts to the school, but certain to rankle critics given the extraordinary concessions made by the Ivy League university.

Under the agreement, the school will pay a $200m settlement over three years to the federal government, the university said. It will also pay $21m to settle investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” acting university president Claire Shipman said.

The administration pulled the funding because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Gaza war that began in October 2023.

Columbia first agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process and adopting a new definition of antisemitism.

Wednesday’s agreement codifies those reforms, Shipman said.

On Tuesday, the university announced that it had disciplined more than 70 students for participating in a May protest against the war in Gaza.

The deal is the first between a university and a presidential administration that has described higher education institutions as “the enemy” and launched an unprecedented campaign to reshape them. The government has withheld billions in grants and contracts from schools in an effort to force university administrators to abide by a sweeping list of demands.

The news comes the same week that Harvard University appeared in federal court to argue that the Trump administration illegally cut $2.6bn in funding over what it described as similar, politically motivated attempts to reshape higher education.

Harvard is the first – and so far only – university to sue.

In April, the administration also threatened to freeze $510m in grants to Brown University, citing similar motives, and has raised the prospect of cutting funding to Cornell, Northwestern, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.

In exchange for Columbia’s concessions, the White House will reinstate $400m in federal funding it had stripped from the university earlier this year over allegations that it allowed antisemitism to fester on campus.

Researchers estimate that Columbia was likely facing another $1.2bn in frozen funding from the National Institutes of Health. After the Trump administration cut the original $400m from the top research university, the lead funder of scientific research also terminated or froze unspent dollars previously awarded to Columbia.

In a June statement to alumni, Shipman said the university was in “danger of reaching a tipping point in terms of preserving our research excellence and the work we do for humanity”.

While the Trump administration is likely to hail the agreement as a victory in its battle against universities, the deal fell short of some of the most restrictive measures the administration had sought, like a legally binding consent decree and an overhaul of Columbia’s governance structure.

Earlier this month, the university announced a host of new measures to further combat antisemitism on campus, including the adoption of the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition and additional antisemitism training. The measures add to several similar ones introduced as the university has come under mounting criticism over the last two years by students, alumni and lawmakers who accused it of failing to stop pro-Palestinian protests on campus that they deemed antisemitic.

The deal, which settles a bevy of open civil rights investigations into the university, will be overseen by an independent monitor agreed to by both sides and who will report to the government on its progress every six months.