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Jamal Khashoggi Disappears, a Mystery Rattling the Middle

LONDON — Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi dissident, met two friends for lunch last Monday in London to discuss a newspaper column he had drafted lamenting the lack of free speech in the Arab world. “Everyone is fearful,” he wrote.

But Mr. Khashoggi appeared to have little fear about his plans for the next day: to pick up a document from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He brushed aside warnings from his friends that his criticism of the kingdom’s rulers had drawn their enmity, making the consulate dangerous territory.

The consular staff, he assured them, “are just ordinary Saudis, and the ordinary Saudis are good people,” recalled one of his lunch companions, Azzam Tamimi.

On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Khashoggi entered the consulate. He has not been seen since.
Turkish investigators say that a team of 15 Saudi agents killed him inside the consulate, several officials told The New York Times and other news organizations. “He was killed and his body was dismembered,” Turan Kislakci, the head of Turkish Arab Media Association, said officials had told him.

Saudi Arabia has denied it, insisting Mr. Khashoggi left shortly after he arrived.

By Sunday, the dispute over his disappearance threatened to upend relations between two of the region’s most important powers. If his killing is confirmed, it could also unravel the campaign by the 33-year-old Saudi Arabian crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to cultivate an image in the West as a promising reformer and dependable ally.

Turkish officials demanded Sunday that Saudi Arabia explain Mr. Khashoggi’s failure to re-emerge from the consulate.

“There is concrete information,” Yasin Aktay, an adviser to the head of Turkey’s ruling A.K.P. party, said Sunday in a television interview. “It will not remain an unsolved case.”
Turkish officials have not made their accusations publicly nor have they provided any evidence to back up their claim, raising questions about whether Ankara would stand behind the leaks or whether it was seeking to avoid a costly fight with Riyadh.

A Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the government was waiting until the investigation was complete to disclose the evidence because of diplomatic sensitivities. Full disclosure, he said, would eventually come from the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Saudi Arabia stuck by its blanket denials without offering a credible alternative explanation. It dismissed the accusations from unnamed Turkish officials as “baseless” and “expressed doubt that they came from Turkish officials that are informed of the investigation,” according to a statement from the Istanbul consulate.

Instead, Saudi Arabia praised Turkey for accepting a Saudi request to investigate Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance. “The kingdom is concerned with the safety and well-being of its citizens wherever they are,” the statement said.

In Washington, the mystery tested loyalties. Many current and former American officials are friendly with Mr. Khashoggi, a resident of the United States who had worked at Saudi embassies and, until he became a dissident, as a kind of informal spokesman for the Saudi leadership. He had recently become a columnist for The Washington Post, where he cemented his pivot from consummate Saudi insider to critic.

But President Trump and his advisers, including his son-in-law and Middle East envoy Jared Kushner, have embraced the crown prince as a pivotal ally, with the president repeatedly expressing his confidence in the young Saudi royal as he amassed power.
State department officials have said only that the United States cannot confirm Mr. Khashoggi’s fate but is following the case.

Others have expressed alarm. Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said the United States should not conduct business as usual with an ally that would carry out such a killing.

“If this is true — that the Saudis lured a U.S. resident into their consulate and murdered him — it should represent a fundamental break in our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” Senator Murphy wrote on Twitter.

Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, said, “We must get to the bottom of what happened and then impose strong consequences. Targeting journalists must stop.”

Until recently, Mr. Khashoggi, 59, was the quintessential Saudi loyalist. Tall with droopy eyes and an easygoing manner, he graduated from Indiana State University and climbed quickly through the ranks of the distinctive Saudi news business, where the leaders of the royal family are the only readers who matter.

During the Saudi- and American-backed jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Mr. Khashoggi made a name for himself by interviewing the militant leader Osama bin Laden, who later founded Al Qaeda. Mr. Khashoggi also became a trusted aid to Prince Turki al-Faisal, who served as the head of Saudi intelligence as well as ambassador to the United States and Britain, where Mr. Khashoggi worked for him as an adviser.

Mr. Khashoggi’s relative independence sometimes probed Saudi boundaries. The authorities twice removed him as the editor of the Saudi newspaper Al Watan after he published articles critical of the religious establishment. As the head of a new Saudi-owned news channel based in Bahrain, he allowed a Bahraini dissident to appear on its first day of broadcasting, in 2015. The channel was yanked off the air the next day “for technical and administrative reasons.”

None of those kerfuffles, though, did real damage to his status around the royal court. Mr. Khashoggi remained a go-to contact for American journalists and diplomats looking for a cogent explanation of the Saudi rulers’ perspective.

After King Salman ascended to the throne three years ago, his favorite son, Prince Mohammed, began to consolidate power. He has painted himself as a reformer — weakening the religious police and allowing women to drive, for instance — while waging a crackdown on even the relatively modest and previously tolerated forms of dissent.

Mr. Khashoggi fled the kingdom for Washington, where he styled himself as the loyal opposition, supportive of the monarchy but critical of policies like its war in Yemen or intolerance of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Post. “To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison,” he added. “We Saudis deserve better.”

The Saudi authorities quietly tried to co-opt him, promising him positions at home while viciously attacking him online as a foreign-backed agent. Some of his relatives were banned from leaving the kingdom. His exile led to divorce.

That ultimately is what led him to the consulate in Istanbul. Mr. Khashoggi, whose family has Turkish roots, planned to marry a woman there, a graduate student focusing on Persian Gulf politics. He had bought an apartment and intended to move. A small wedding was scheduled. But Turkish law required a document from the Saudi consulate to certify his divorce.

He visited the consulate the week before the wedding and found the staff friendly. “They were surprised and said, ‘Yes, we will do it for you, but there is no time,’ and they agreed he will come back on Tuesday,” his friend, Mr. Tamimi, recalled.

His fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, thought it was a mistake to set a meeting in advance.

Mr. Khashoggi told her not to worry.

“He said they would not dare attempt anything within Turkey’s borders,” she said.

Shortly before the Tuesday appointment, Turkish officials now say, 15 Saudi agents, some carrying diplomatic passports, arrived in Istanbul on two planes.
On Tuesday, Mr. Khashoggi and Ms. Cengiz went to the embassy at 1:30 p.m. She waited outside for him.

She was still waiting there after midnight.

She came back the next morning, which was to have been their wedding day.

“We have bought the house and the furniture,” she said then. “The furniture is arriving today.”

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from London, and Ben Hubbard from Beirut. Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Istanbul.

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Pompeo, meeting Pakistan, calls on Taliban to negotiate

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pressed Afghanistan’s Taliban to come to the table to end the long-running war as he called on Pakistan to play a supportive role, the State Department said Wednesday.

Pompeo met in Washington with Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, in the latest US outreach to the government of new Prime Minister Imran Khan, a longtime advocate of a negotiated settlement with Islamist insurgents.

The top US diplomat, who met Khan last month in Islamabad, “emphasized the important role Pakistan could play in bringing about a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

Pompeo “agreed that there was momentum to advance the Afghan peace process, and that the Afghan Taliban should seize the opportunity for dialogue,” Nauert said of the meeting, which took place Tuesday.

President Donald Trump has doubled down on the war effort in Afghanistan despite his past calls to end the longest-ever US war.

But diplomatic efforts have also intensified, with US officials meeting in July in Qatar with representatives of the Taliban, whose hardline regime was overthrown in a US-led operation in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The State Department notably did not say whether Pompeo addressed Pakistan’s position on extremism.

In August, Pompeo congratulated Khan in a telephone call on taking office, with the State Department saying that he asked Islamabad to “take decisive action against all terrorists operating in Pakistan.”

Pakistan denied the account, saying that the issue never came up.

The United States has pressed for years for Pakistan to crack down on the Taliban and Haqqani network as well as virulently anti-Indian groups that operate virtually openly in parts of the country.

Trump has suspended military assistance worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan, accusing the country in which Osama bin Laden was found hiding of duplicity.

© 2018 AFP

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“If They Can, They Will”: The Ford-Kavanaugh Hearing and the Angry Politics of Now There are two Americas, growing more enraged by the minute, and they are not listening to each other

How could we have expected anything from Trump’s Washington other than the circus that unfolded on Capitol Hill on Thursday over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh? In the course of eight agonizing hours in a wood-panelled hearing room, tears were shed, tweets were sent, fists were pounded.

At the end of the day, as at the beginning, the polarized politics of Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court had hardly shifted. The hearing was not an effort to answer the perhaps unanswerable question of what happened between Kavanaugh and the woman who accused him of sexual assault in 1982, when he was a teen-ager, but a searing, infuriating reminder of what we already knew: there are two Americas, getting angrier by the minute, and they are not listening to each other. Truth was not the goal, nor will it be the outcome.

The day before the hearing, I spoke with Ron Klain, who, twenty-seven years ago, served as the chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas hearings. The panel’s handling of Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment by Thomas was widely seen as a debacle, if for nothing other than the embarrassing panel of white men from both parties who alternately berated and belittled Hill. However, Klain reminded me, in the immediate aftermath of those hearings, Thomas was viewed in public polls as more credible than Hill, and several wavering Democratic senators, much to their later regret, voted for him. For all those in recent days who said that American politics have changed fundamentally since 1991, Klain was not so sure.

His reading on Wednesday was that Republicans were determined to proceed with the Kavanaugh nomination, regardless of what was said by his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, at Thursday’s hearing. The only uncertainty was about the small handful of Republican moderates who had already been wavering on the Kavanaugh nomination before Ford’s allegations became public. The Republican strategy going into Thursday’s hearing was clear: attack the charges as a last-minute “smear” perpetuated by Democrats, and push forward. “This is their motto: If they can, they will,” Klain told me.

Midday on Thursday, when the Senate Judiciary panel broke for lunch in the midst of Ford’s powerful and at times wrenching testimony, I immediately thought of Klain’s prediction as the initial flood of reviews rolled in. Republicans were said to be stunned by Ford’s compelling presentation, and fearful that it had just blown up Kavanaugh’s chances. They were sure his nomination was doomed. Would Kavanaugh even last the day? some wondered. How soon, others asked, until Trump drops the nominee? “This is a disaster,” the journalist Chris Wallace said on the Trump-friendly Fox News. “Total disaster,” one senior Republican told Politico. “The writing is on the wall,” the CNBC commentator John Harwood said. On C-SPAN—staid, boring, C-SPAN—women were calling in to the live coverage to share their own stories of being sexually assaulted. A political earthquake was happening, or so it seemed.

Klain, however, was having none of it. At 12:15, he tweeted, “I felt the same way after Anita Hill testified. And yet the GOP persisted. Don’t underestimate their determin[ation] to get Kavanaugh on the court.” He was right, of course, and the next few hours would prove it.

This is such an angry time in Washington, and in our politics. Whatever else it was supposed to be, this was a Senate Judiciary hearing all about that anger. Rage at what politics has become. Rage from women who feel that their voices have been ignored for too long. Rage from Kavanaugh and his defenders. In the hallways of the Senate, there were protesters shouting at senators, and some senators pushing right back at them.

Just about the only person who didn’t sound angry was Ford, a professor and suburban mom who pronounced herself “terrified” at the outset of the hearing. She seemed genuinely so as she recounted, in a wavering voice, what she said was a sexual assault by Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge in the summer of 1982. She added no relevant new facts to what she had already disclosed, and offered no new corroboration, but she answered calmly, at times even clinically, as she discussed the lingering effects of the trauma and her own reluctance to come forward about it. Asked what she recalled best about an experience from which some memories were hazy or nonexistent, she replied, her voice wavering, “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter.” It was an extraordinary juxtaposition between Ford, the scientific researcher she has become, and Chrissy Blasey, the shaky fifteen-year-old she was at the time she says her encounter with Kavanaugh occurred.

Emotion does not win on Capitol Hill, though, where the majority rules. The Democrats supporting Ford and demanding a more thorough investigation of her charges before voting on Kavanaugh do not control the Senate, and they did not get to set the terms of the hearings. In Washington, process determines outcome, and in this case the outcome was very likely determined from the moment Republicans on the Judiciary Committee set up the process. The process was designed to give us the deadlock of he-said-she-said, and, in the end, that is exactly what it did. Ford said she was “a hundred per cent certain” that Kavanaugh had attacked her; Kavanaugh said he was “a hundred per cent” sure he had not. How could it have been any other way? There was no independent F.B.I. investigation; no other witnesses were called. Questions were limited to one five-minute round for each senator. Ford spoke first and Kavanaugh second; he would have the last word.

In the morning, Ford was given her due, and the eleven white, male Republican senators stayed resolutely and, it seemed for some of them, sullenly silent as she testified, each deferring his question time to a female prosecutor from Arizona who had been brought in to query Ford for them, so they did not repeat the mistake of the men who grilled Anita Hill.

But the afternoon was all about anger, and it turned out that it was not women’s anger that this Senate Judiciary hearing will be remembered for but that of men. Kavanaugh, in a long opening statement he wrote himself, was so angry he was practically shouting at times as he proclaimed his innocence and attacked Democrats for a “calculated and orchestrated political hit” that he suggested was somehow the product of “pent-up anger” about President Trump’s victory in the 2016 election and “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.”

The night before the hearing, President Trump had made clear this was exactly the kind of angry fight he wanted from his nominee. Trump said at a news conference that he would stick with Kavanaugh “if we win,” and for Trump winning invariably means attacking and never admitting wrongdoing. At least twenty women have accused the President himself of sexual misconduct, and he was quoted in Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear,” as advising that the way to survive such allegations is to “deny, deny, deny.”

Kavanaugh and his Republican defenders got the message, and they amped it up to a level I have rarely seen on Capitol Hill in nearly three decades in Washington. On the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, it was Trump’s Republican Party that showed up; once Kavanaugh showed his fight, the Republican senators joined him in a parade of alpha-male outrage.

The first to get them going was Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has perhaps become Trump’s closest confidant and adviser in the Senate, despite running against him in 2016 and calling him a “kook” unfit for office. Graham, in full dudgeon, thundered that this was “the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics,” and practically shook with rage toward the Democrats he blamed for inflicting the Ford story on the committee at the eleventh hour. Graham’s conspiracy theory was riddled with exaggerations and half-truths, but it did not matter—an angry narrative had been found.

After that, it was all over but the shouting, and relieved Republicans who just hours earlier had been wondering if and when Trump would pull the nomination now praised Graham for saving the day. “A HERO,” a conservative Christian TV journalist, Dave Brody, who has interviewed Trump more than just about anyone else, tweeted. Around 4:50 P.M., a barrage of apparently coördinated tweets emerged from the White House: Trump’s counsellor Kellyanne Conway and the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, praised Graham’s fiery speech. “@LindseyGrahamSC has more decency and courage than every Democrat member of the committee combined,” Sanders tweeted. “God bless him.”

Immediately after the hearing adjourned, at 6:45 P.M., Trump tweeted a demand for a vote, and soon. “Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him,” the President said in his message. In a way, it was one of the least arguable things Trump had said all week. Senator John Cornyn, a Judiciary Committee member who is also the Republican Whip, followed right up. “The plan is still to have a markup tomorrow morning,” he told reporters in the hallway outside the hearing room. “This has gone long enough.” Meanwhile, Senators Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Joe Manchin—three key Republican swing votes, and a Democrat from the heavily pro-Trump state of West Virginia—huddled after the hearing. Manchin emerged to tell reporters that they were all still undecided.

The day looked to be ending exactly as it had started. The Republicans on Capitol Hill will push Kavanaugh through, or at least they will try. Soon after 8 P.M., the Judiciary Committee announced that its vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination will happen as scheduled, at nine-thirty on Friday morning. The Republican motto remains: If they can, they will.

Susan B. Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on life in Trump’s Washington.

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At the UN, World Laughs at America

At the United Nations, Trump proves the world is indeed laughing at America.

On Tuesday, the president addressed the UN and made a familiar boast that his administration “has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” Trump has self-praised in this way on many occasions, at rallies, when speaking to fellow Republicans, and even in talks with world leaders. But in all those circumstances, the auditors were either inclined to agree with Trump or had a motive to flatter him by pretending agreement. At the UN, Trump got a very different reaction: a low murmur of laughter.

Taken aback by the chuckling, Trump did a double take and said, “didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s okay.” This amused the audience even more.

Although Trump took the unexpected mockery calmly and moved on, the incident hits the president at a vulnerable spot. As Paul Waldman noted in The Week in May of 2017, Trump has an almost pathological horror at being laughed at:

If you’ve been paying any attention at all over the last couple of years, you know this is a topic he returns to again and again. Search Trump’s Twitter feed and you’ll find that who’s laughing at whom is an obsession for him, with the United States usually the target of the laughter. “The world is laughing at us.” China is “laughing at USA!” Iran is “laughing at Kerry & Obama!” “ISIS & all others laughing!” “Mexican leadership has been laughing at us for many years.” “Everybody is laughing at Jeb Bush.” “Putin is laughing at Obama.” “OPEC is laughing at how stupid we are.” “Dopey, nobody is laughing at me!”
On August 9, 2014 Trump tweeted:

These words now ring with truth.

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Pakistan won’t abandon peace efforts despite India’s reluctance: Shah Mehmood Qureshi

WASHINGTON: India’s reluctance to hold talks with Pakistan will not stop Islamabad from closing doors on its efforts to promote peace in the region, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said, days after New Delhi cancelled the foreign minister-level meeting in New York.

Addressing a news conference at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington on Sunday, Qureshi said India used incidents that happened in July to cancel peace talks that it agreed to in September.

India on Friday cited the “brutal” killing of three policemen in Jammu and Kashmir as well as the release of the postal stamps “glorifying” Kashmiri terrorist Burhan Wani for calling off the meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pakistani counterpart Qureshi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York this month.

“India is reluctant, we will not close our doors,” Qureshi said.

“Hiding away from issues will not make them disappear. It will not improve the situation in Kashmir,” he was quoted as saying by the ‘Dawn’ newspaper.

The foreign minister said he was unable to understand India’s refusal to participate in peace talks with Pakistan.

“Engagement, no-engagement. Coming, not coming. We desired talks as we believe the sensible way is to meet and talk. They agreed, and then disagreed,” he said.

Qureshi said India’s response to Pakistan’s peace offer was harsh and non-diplomatic.

“We did not use a non-diplomatic language in our rejoinder. Our response was matured and measured. They adopted a new approach, and moved back,” he said.

The foreign minister also alleged that Swaraj’s “language and tone was unbecoming of a foreign minister”, the report said.

Asked if tensions between India and Pakistan could lead to a war between the two countries, Qureshi said “Who is talking of war? Not us. We want peace, stability, employment and improving lives. You identify where is the reluctance”.

Qureshi said Pakistan’s desire for peace should not be mistaken for a sign of weakness.

“We want peace. It does not mean, we cannot defend ourselves against aggression. We can, but we do not have an aggressive mindset,” he said.

Qureshi also rejected India’s concerns over the release of a postal stamps “glorifying” slain Kashmiri terrorist, saying “hundreds of thousands of people are fighting in Kashmir, not all of them are terrorists”.

The foreign minister also reiterated Pakistan’s offer to open the Kartarpur Sahib gurdwara corridor for allowing Sikh pilgrims from India to visit the historic gurdwara on the 550th birth anniversary of Sri Guru Nanak Dev.

India initially agreed to a meeting between Swaraj and Qureshi, but later said it would would be “meaningless” to hold talks after the “two deeply disturbing” developments.

Ties between India and Pakistan nosedived following a spate of terror attacks on Indian military bases by Pakistan-based terror groups since January 2016.

Following the strikes, India announced it will not engage in talks with Pakistan, saying terror and talks cannot go hand-in-hand.

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Saudi Arabia likely to invest in mega oil city in Gwadar under CPEC: sources

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has invited Saudi Arabia to become a strategic third partner in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the decision is expected to bring huge investments in the country.

Pakistan is expected to receive an economic package worth $8 billion from Saudi Arabia which includes investment in the port city of Gwadar under CPEC. The deal was reported agreed during Prime Minister Imran Khan’s recent visit to the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is also expected to invest the mega oil city project in Gwadar. The project was abandoned by the UAE earlier this year after the cost ballooned exponentially.

The 80,000-acres mega oil city at Gwadar will be used to transport oil from the Gulf region to China through the Gwadar Port. This will reduce the distance to just seven days from Gwadar to the Chinese border instead of the current forty days.

The incumbent government has prioritised projects under CPEC and has also formed a committee headed by Minister for Planning and Development Khusro Bahtiar to focus on the development of Gwadar.

The cabinet committee in a meeting on Saturday decided to prioritise four special economic zones (SEZs) in Gwadar and the inclusion of social sector development and third country participation in CPEC.

Petroleum Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan has recently stated that Pakistan wants to to develop Gwadar not only as economic hub but also an oil city under CPEC.

The minister in meeting with the Chinese ambassador last week discussed future projects related to oil and gas exploration, petroleum transportation and processing. He took keen interest in the Chinese offer to establish of oil refinery in Pakistan.

Saudi Arabia has shown keen interest in CPEC primarily to relate its economy with China and take steps in achieving its Vision 2030, which aims to diversify the economy with energy mega projects to reduce oil dependency.

This would also utilise the unique location of Gwadar and become a global hub for vast economic activities. CPEC would provide the Saudis an opportunity to participate even better in world trade traffic.

Saudi Arabia will also be able to help China have a better crude oil supply. China is one of the largest oil consumers and highly dependent due to its trade and business activities. Therefore, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia both can benefit from the exclusive trade routes under CPEC.

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Nargis, the Pakistani Hazara making strides in karate (By Saba Aziz) – Al Jazeera Sept 18, 2018

Nargis Hameedullah has had to fight for her dreams all her life – both on and off the field.
The 19-year-old is a Pakistani karateka based in Quetta, capital of the western province of Balochistan.

Nargis belongs to the Hazara community, one of Pakistan’s most persecuted ethnic and religious minorities. But that has not stopped her from beating the odds.

At the 18th Asian Games in Indonesia last month, Nargis became Pakistan’s first female athlete to win an individual medal at the multi-sport competition when she won bronze in the plus-68 kilogramme event.

“I always wanted to be the one to bring about a change,” Nargis told Al Jazeera. “I’m very happy to be able to write my name in history.”

Nargis’ success lit up a marginalised community that has been a target of ethnic and sectarian violence for decades.

At least 509 Hazaras, who are mainly Shia Muslims, have been killed in Quetta since 2013, according to the government’s National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR).

The killings have mostly been part of a sustained campaign of shootings and bombings by armed sectarian groups such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), an affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

But as Nargis returned to her hometown of Hazara Town, a low-income ethnic neighbourhood in the western outskirts of Quetta, she was showered with rose petals by school children who lined up on the streets.

The beat of the “dhol”, a drum, accompanied by the flute, was complemented by a beaming Nargis who was surrounded by dancing residents who gave her a hero’s welcome.

Nargis relished her time in the spotlight, but she said her rise to stardom in Pakistan has not come without bumps.

Hameedullah was given a hero’s welcome on her return home from the Asian Games [Nargis Hameedullah]
February 16, 2013 is a day still etched in Nargis’ mind.

A bomb attack by the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group at a busy vegetable market in Hazara Town killed at least 84 people. Nargis’ maternal grandmother’s brother was among those who died.

“It [his death] really shook me and it affected the entire family,” she said. “I will never forget that day.”

At least nine members of the Hazara Shia community have been killed in a series of attacks since March this year.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Hazaras are particularly vulnerable, because of their distinctive East Asian ethnic features as well as Shia religious affiliation.

Nargis’ train journeys to Lahore and Islamabad for tournaments and training camps are always full of anxiety, with thoughts of the next target killing weighing on her mind.

“As a player, I train physically, my strength has increased, but emotionally and mentally, I have really been affected [by these bomb blasts].”

For the roughly 600,000 Hazaras living in Quetta, security is a major concern. With multiple checkpoints, blocked areas and only one road to enter and exit the community enclave, navigating around the city is not easy, said Nargis.

“A lot of the girls say that any day we could become victims of target killing, so what’s the use of playing? Mentally, I get really disturbed by the security situation.”

She grew up amid violence and security threats, picking up mixed martial arts aged five before making the transition to karate in 2010.

Nargis now juggles almost four hours of training each day with her studies and English tuition at an academy.
“I have got a lot of support from my family. Whenever I go [for tournaments], they make a lot of sacrifices, taking care of my travel expenses.”

Her father works at a local flower shop and mother is doing overnight shifts as a nurse to make ends meet. While there is a lot of opposition from outside the Hazara group, Nargis is all too familiar with the negative remarks from within the conservative community.

But her parents have continued to support their daughter’s athletic career.

“People tell us to focus on her education, and they criticise us and talk a lot,” her mother, Qamargul Hameedullah, said.

Even if I win the world title, and my hijab is a bit off, the Hazara community will not appreciate that
Nargis Hameedullah, Pakistani karate player

“My relatives always say ‘why does Nargis need to play sports, she should select some other career or job and then support the family’,” Nargis said. “They say, ‘she just kicks and punches, what will she get out of it?'”

The hijab, a headscarf worn by many Muslim women who feel it is part of their religion, is also a “major issue for the Hazara people”, her mother added. Nargis wears one and is “very fearful” of it coming off during her fights.

“Even if I win the world title, and my hijab is a bit off, the Hazara community will not appreciate that.”

Despite the challenges, Nargis is striving to make her name in a country that has traditionally had success in sports like cricket, squash and hockey.

Nargis was not the first Hazara to make the country proud in karate. Her senior, 30-year-old Kulsoom Hazara, who also hails from Quetta, has won gold at the South Asian karate championships for the past three years.

“A few years ago, people had the mindset that what do girls have to do with sports or karate,” said Nargis. “Even now, some families say that, but there have been a lot of changes. Families are sending girls to different sports clubs for karate, taekwondo, wushu.

“We have a lot of martial arts clubs [in our community] and mostly, the participants are women.”

One of those clubs is the Hazara Shotokan Karate Academy on Kirani Road run by Nargis’ long-time coach and former national player Ghulam Ali.

The 2004 South Asian Games (SAF) gold-medallist, Ali, said he has noticed women from his community, making strides not only in sports, but other fields as well.

“Presently, in Hazara Town and Mari Abad [another predominantly Hazara suburb], there are more girls than boys participating in everything,” said Ali, who trains more than 80 girls at the club.

“After a long period of restrictions, they [Hazara women] are getting more freedom. In the past, we faced a lot of oppression, but now we are getting some chance. And we’re trying to get involved in every field – in universities, shops, businesses, sports. It’s really great.”

Ali is confident that more women will draw inspiration from Nargis.

The teenager, meanwhile, is now dreaming to qualify for the Olympics.

“I want to raise my country’s flag and would also like to hear the national anthem being played and everyone standing up in respect.”

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Storm Florence: Heavy flooding cuts off Wilmington

The coastal city of Wilmington, North Carolina, has been cut off from the rest of the state because of heavy floods following Hurricane Florence.

Officials say all roads in and out are now impassable and have warned evacuated residents to stay away.

About 400 people have been rescued from flood waters in the city, described as an island within the state.

Two of the first known fatalities – a mother and her seven-month son – were reported in the city on Friday morning.

At least 15 other people are reported to have died in storm-related incidents across North and South Carolina since Florence made landfall on Thursday.

In Wilmington, with its population of about 120,000, some 400 people have had to be rescued from flood waters, and most of the city remains without power.

The National Weather Service has warned of at least two further days of possible flash flooding in the area before conditions are forecast to improve.

“Do not come here,” New Hanover County Commission Chairman Woody White said.

“Our roads are flooded, there is no access into Wilmington…We want you home, but you can’t come yet.”
House is open is one of the indicators FEMA uses to determine the scale of a disaster.

The area is usually best known as a filming location for US dramas One Tree Hill and Dawson’s Creek.
US basketball legend Michael Jordan – who is fundraising to help residents affected by the storm – also grew up in the city.

Many roads inside Wilmington are still passable for residents who defied evacuation orders to ride the storm out.

But a city-wide curfew has been extended after five people were arrested on suspicion of looting from a store in the city on Saturday.

What is the latest on the storm?

Florence has now weakened into a tropical depression with winds of 30mph (45km/h), according to the National Hurricane Centre.

Some parts of the Carolinas have seen up to 40in (100cm) of rain since Thursday – and officials have warned river levels are yet to peak in places.

On Monday, the National Weather Service announced that the Cape Fear River near Fayetteville, North Carolina, is expected to reach the major flood stage – levels over 60ft (18m) – by this evening.

“At this stage, numerous structures and roadways are flooded and lives are put at risk,” the agency said.

Gusts & floods: the impact of the storm
“The storm has never been more dangerous than it is right now,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said on Sunday.

“Wherever you live in North Carolina, be alert for sudden flooding.”

As of Monday morning, there have been several tornado warnings across North Carolina.
One tornado touched down in Elm City, causing some damage to buildings and power lines, according to local media reports.

The governor also warned of the potential danger of landslides once the weather system reached more mountainous areas.

In South Carolina, the state’s emergency management division reminded residents: “It’s not over yet. Not by a long shot.”

The US coast guard and volunteer boats have been helping people left stricken by rising flood waters across the states.

Officials in North Carolina have said about 900 people have been rescued from floodwaters there, and about 15,000 people are still in emergency shelters.

Authorities are encouraging residents to stay where they are until conditions improve, as many roads across the Carolinas are impassable in some cases due to flooding and debris.

US President Donald Trump has declared a disaster in several North Carolina counties – a move that frees up federal funding for recovery efforts.

Power companies are working to restore power to the almost 502,000 homes and businesses in both states that are still without electricity.

The storm has begun to move into Virginia and West Virginia, and is expected to turn toward New England on Tuesday.

What do we know of the victims?

Eleven deaths were reported in North Carolina, and at least six have been reported in South Carolina.

A mother and her seven-month child who died when a tree fell on their house in Wilmington were the first known deaths reported.

Among the other fatalities were two men in their 70s who died in Lenoir County – one had been connecting extension cords and another was blown by high winds when checking on his dogs.

Four road deaths in South Carolina have been blamed on the storm, and two people died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a generator inside their home.

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K-P authorities issue arrest warrants for Manzoor Pashteen, Ali Wazir

PESHAWAR: Authorities in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ordered the arrest of Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) chief Manzoor Pashteen, MNA Ali Wazir and six others.

A letter issued by a senior police official in Swabi declared Pashteen, Wazir, Dr Said Alam Masood, Fazal Advocate, Khan Zaman, Mohsin Dawood, Samad Khan and Noorul Salam as proclaimed offenders.

Police in Swabi confirmed to The Express Tribune that SP Investigation wrote to the political agents of North and South Waziristan seeking arrest of the PTM leaders.

According to the FIR, PTM workers held a gathering at cricket stadium in Swabi’s Shah Mansoor Town without required NOC from authorities. In the jalsa, the PTM chief and others made contemptuous statements against state institutions.

The PTM, formerly Mehsud Tahaffuz Movement, gained momentum following the extra-judicial murder of Naqeebullah Mehsud in Karachi. It sought capital punishment for the prime suspect in Naqeebullah murder case, former SSP Malir Rao Anwar, recovery of missing persons and removal of landmines in tribal areas.

A Jirga, formed by the K-P apex committee and comprising tribal elders, is holding negotiations with the group to resolve their issues.

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Sharif, Maryam and Safdar released on parole

ISLAMABAD, Sept 11: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Captain (retd) Muhammad Safdar were released on parole in the wee hours of Wednesday, after the death of Begum Kulosoom Nawaz.

A notification issued by the Punjab Home Department said the three were released for 12 hours to attend the funeral of Kulsoom Nawaz.

Television footages show that Sharif, Maryam and Safdar were being taken out of the Adiala Jail in a motorcade. They were expected to travel to Lahore sometime in the night.

The decision to release the Sharifs came on an application moved by Sharif’s younger brother Shehbaz Sharif.
“The duration of permission granted shall not exceed twelve hours, which shall not include the time consumed for journey to and from the prison,” the notification said.

Begum Kulsoom Nawaz passes away in London

Earlier, the PM Office released a short statement, saying the government would extend all-out support to the family and relatives of Begum Kulsoom, in accordance with the law. The statement further reads that the Pakistani High Commission in the UK has been directed to extend assistance to the bereaved family.

Talking to The Express Tribune PM’s Special Assistant on Political Affairs Naeemul Haq had said the government would positively respond to the Sharif family’s request for release of its imprisoned family members to attend the funeral.

However, Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry clarified that under the amended rules in Punjab, parole of a convict could not exceed 12 hours. He said the government had no objection to the approval of a parole application.

“Earlier, there was a provision to release convicts on parole for a maximum of three days but later, relevant law was amended and now temporary release is granted for not more than 12 hours. While living within the ambit of laws, Sharif family will be extended all-out cooperation,” he said.

Aitzaz apologises for remarks on Begum Kulsoom’s illness following her demise.

Parole is a method under which the punishment of a convict is temporarily suspended for a specific time and he/she is set free for a defined purpose under the supervision of police officials.

Rules provide that prisoner’s family submits an application with provincial parole committee that considers it and with its comments forwards it to the home secretary who has the authority to accept or reject it.

In 2004, Sharif and his family members, including Punjab former chief minister Shehbaz Sharif, had not attended the funeral of their father, Mian Sharif. At that time, the Sharif family was in exile. In 2002, former president Asif Ali Zardari was released on parole from Adiala jail to attend funeral of his mother.

Shehbaz’s departure for London

According to sources in the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif was likely to leave for London at 3am on Wednesday to receive Kulsoom Nawaz’s dead body, which, reports suggested, was shifted to a mortuary in London temporarily.

Earlier, the PML-N chief flew to Rawalpindi to meet his elder brother Nawaz at Adiala Jail. Sources in the PML-N said both the Sharifs, after discussing the funeral arrangements in detail, agreed that Hassan Nawaz and Hussain Nawaz, the ex-PM’s two sons, should not arrive in Pakistan.

Hassan and Hussain have been declared absconders by the Accountability Court in the Avenfield Apartments reference and would be arrested in case they land in Pakistan.

Kulsoom’s body would be brought to Allama Iqbal International Airport Lahore from Heathrow Airport London on Thursday, PML-N sources said. Her funeral prayers would be held the following day, after Friday prayers. She would be buried at Sharif family’s graveyard in Jati Umra, Raiwand the same day.