KP government to deploy 40,000 security personnel to maintain law and order during Muharram
KP government to deploy 40,000 security personnel to maintain law and order during Muharram/node/2543571/pakistan
KP government to deploy 40,000 security personnel to maintain law and order during Muharram
Security personnel patrol a street during a procession on the ninth day of Ashura in the Islamic month of Muharram in Peshawar on July 28, 2023, commemorating the seventh century killing of Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) grandson Imam Hussein. (AFP/File)
ISLAMABAD: The government in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province will deploy around 40,000 security personnel to maintain law and order during the Islamic month of Muharram, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported on Thursday.
Muharram is the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar which marks the anniversary of the Battle of Karbala, where the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), a revered figure in Shia Islam, was martyred.
Muharram also witnesses religious processions across Pakistan to the prophet’s grandson, prompting relevant authorities to devise elaborate security measures each year to prevent any disturbances.
“About 40,000 security personnel would be deployed for security purposes during the month of Muharram, whereas special contingents of the Frontier Constabulary (FC) and Pak Army would also be deployed for the security of the processions and gatherings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” APP said in a report.
This decision was taken during a high-level meeting of the provincial government chaired by KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur to review security arrangements ahead of the holy month. Participants of the meeting were informed Muharram processions and gatherings would be held in 14 districts of the province.
Of these, eight districts have been reported as “most sensitive” while the rest have been declared as “sensitive” in terms of law and order and security arrangements, APP said.
“A central control room comprising representatives from all relevant departments and law enforcing agencies is also being set up at the Home Department for the purpose,” the state media said. “Processions and public gatherings would be monitored directly through CCTV cameras whereas display of arms, pillion riding and hateful wall chalking have also been banned.”
Authorities will suspend mobile phone services in sensitive districts of the province, while special measures to monitor social media pages to curb the spread of hateful content were also proposed in the meeting, the state media said. It added that the staff of health and rescue departments of the province would be assigned special duties to effectively deal with any untoward situation during Muharram.
“Maintaining law and order during the month of Muharram should be the top-most priority of all the stakeholders,” Gandapur was quoted as saying by APP. He said all relevant authorities, departments and agencies would have to fulfill their respective responsibilities in a timely manner.
“Moreover, he directed that religious leaders of different sects and elected public representatives should be approached as an effort to promote religious harmony and tolerance during Muharram,” APP said.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will visit the southwestern city of Quetta today, Monday, to meet the provincial leadership there and announce a relief package for farmers, his office confirmed.
Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, which shares porous borders with Afghanistan and Iran, has been wracked by an insurgency launched by ethnic Baloch militants since decades. These Baloch nationalists have long accused the Pakistani government of monopolizing profits from Balochistan’s abundant natural resources, saying it has led to political marginalization and economic exploitation. The state denies these allegations.
The province, Pakistan’s largest in terms of size yet its most backward by almost all economic indicators, was battered by flash floods when torrential rains wreaked havoc in March this year. Torrential floods inundated roads in Kharan and Kech districts and inflicted misery on farmers, who had to suffer economic hardship when a large number of their crops were washed away.
“PM Shehbaz Sharif will visit Quetta today where he will meet the provincial government and also will make a relief package announcement for Balochistan farmers,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) told Arab News.
The PMO said it would share further details regarding the prime minister’s visit to the provincial capital when he departs for the trip.
On Sunday, Sharif undertook a day-long trip to Pakistan’s commercial and industrial hub Karachi, where he met members of the business community and inspected port operations. Sharif directed authorities to improve transportation of goods at the Karachi port, noting that Pakistan held a key geographical position in the region and provided the most convenient sea trade route for the Central Asian states.
The prime minister’s visit to the militancy-hit province also takes place as the government seeks to drum up support for a new military operation it announced last month titled “Operation Azm-e-Istehkam” or Resolve for Stability.
The government announced the operation last month after a meeting of the Central Apex Committee on the National Action Plan (NAP) attended by senior military leaders and top government officials from all provinces, including the PTI-backed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur.
Pakistan’s opposition parties criticized the government’s move, accusing it of not taking lawmakers into confidence over the matter. PM Sharif subsequently clarified the operation would not be launched before it is debated in parliament, adding that Azm-e-Istehkam would only mobilize military operations that have already been launched against militants and aim to eliminate them from the country for good.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s national airline has launched special flights to Iraq’s Najaf city to provide a seamless travel experience to pilgrims during the Islamic month of Muharram, state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported on Sunday.
Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala hold tremendous significance for Shia Muslims around the world, many of whom travel to these cities during the first two months of Islamic lunar calendar to recall the sacrifices made by Imam Hussain, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
“Pakistan International Airlines has launched special flights for Najaf to facilitate pilgrims during Muharram,” Radio Pakistan said in a report. “The flights operation called ‘Operation Ashura’ is designed to provide a seamless travel experience for pilgrims during this significant period of religious observance.”
The state broadcaster said return flights from Najaf will begin on July 20.
Pakistan’s central moon-sighting committee met on Saturday in the southwestern city of Quetta to spot the Muharram crescent. The Ruet-e-Hilal Committee (RHC) announced that Pakistan would observe the first of Muharram on July 8 while Ashura, which marks the martyrdom of Hussian, would be observed on July 17.
Ashura, which falls on Muharram 10 every year, sees hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims take part in religious gatherings and processions in Pakistan to mourn Hussain’s passing. These processions and gatherings take place amid tight security, as militant groups in Pakistan have often targeted them in the past and killed of hundreds of people.
Pakistan’s largest Punjab province has proposed a ban on all social media platforms from Muharram 6-11 to ensure proper security measures, provincial information minister Azma Bukhari said on Friday.
The measure was aimed at protecting Shia Muslims from sectarian violence and control the spread of hate speech and misinformation, the provincial government wrote in a letter to Pakistan’s interior ministry last week.
Thousands in Pakistan treated for heat stroke last month as June breaks global record
Last month was hottest June on record, exacerbating fears 2024 could be warmest year on record
Most of the heat is from long-term warming from greenhouse gases, say scientists and meteorologists
Updated 08 July 2024
AP
Earth’s more than year-long streak of record-shattering hot months kept on simmering through June, according to the European climate service Copernicus.
There’s hope that the planet will soon see an end to the record-setting part of the heat streak, but not the climate chaos that has come with it, scientists said.
The global temperature in June was record warm for the 13th straight month and it marked the 12th straight month that the world was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times, Copernicus said in an early Monday announcement.
“It’s a stark warning that we are getting closer to this very important limit set by the Paris Agreement,” Copernicus senior climate scientist Nicolas Julien said in an interview. “The global temperature continues to increase. It has at a rapid pace.”
That 1.5 degree temperature mark is important because that’s the warming limit nearly all the countries in the world agreed upon in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, though Julien and other meteorologists have said the threshold won’t be crossed until there’s long-term duration of the extended heat — as much as 20 or 30 years.
“This is more than a statistical oddity and it highlights a continuing shift in our climate,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement.
The globe for June 2024 averaged 62 degrees Fahrenheit (16.66 degrees Celsius), which is 1.2 degrees (0.67 Celsius) above the 30-year average for the month, according to Copernicus. It broke the record for hottest June, set a year earlier, by a quarter of a degree (0.14 degrees Celsius) and is the third-hottest of any month recorded in Copernicus records, which goes back to 1940, behind only last July and last August.
It’s not that records are being broken monthly but they are being “shattered by very substantial margins over the past 13 months,” Julien said.
“How bad is this?” asked Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who wasn’t part of the report. “For the rich and for right now, it’s an expensive inconvenience. For the poor it’s suffering. In the future the amount of wealth you have to have to merely be inconvenienced will increase until most people are suffering.”
Even without hitting the long-term 1.5-degree threshold, “we have seen the consequences of climate change, these extreme climate events,” Julien said — meaning worsening floods, storms, droughts and heat waves.
June’s heat hit extra hard in southeast Europe, Turkiye, eastern Canada, the western United States and Mexico, Brazil, northern Siberia, the Middle East, northern Africa and western Antarctica, according to Copernicus. Doctors had to treat thousands of heatstroke victims in Pakistan last month as temperatures hit 117 (47 degrees Celsius).
Jorge Moreno, a worker, drinks flavored water to cope with the heat wave during his workday at a construction site in Veracruz, Mexico on June 17, 2024. (AP/File)
June was also the 15th straight month that the world’s oceans, more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface, have broken heat records, according to Copernicus data.
Most of this heat is from long-term warming from greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Julien and other meteorologists said. An overwhelming amount of the heat energy trapped by human-caused climate change goes directly into the ocean and those oceans take longer to warm and cool.
The natural cycle of El Ninos and La Ninas, which are warming and cooling of the central Pacific that change weather worldwide, also plays a role. El Ninos tend to spike global temperature records and the strong El Nino that formed last year ended in June.
Another factor is that the air over Atlantic shipping channels is cleaner because of marine shipping regulations that reduce traditional air pollution particles, such as sulfur, that cause a bit of cooling, scientists said. That slightly masks the much larger warming effect of greenhouse gases. That “masking effect got smaller and it would temporarily increase the rate of warming” that is already caused by greenhouse gases, said Tianle Yuan, a climate scientist for NASA and the University of Maryland Baltimore Campus who led a study on the effects of shipping regulations.
Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, of the tech company Stripes and the Berkeley Earth climate-monitoring group, said in a post on X that with all six months this year seeing record heat, “that there is an approximately 95 percent chance that 2024 beats 2023 to be the warmest year since global surface temperature records began in the mid-1800s.”
Copernicus hasn’t computed the odds of that yet, Julien said. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last month gave it a 50 percent chance.
Global daily average temperatures in late June and early July, while still hot, were not as warm as last year, Julien said.
“It is likely, I would say, that July 2024 will be colder than July 2023 and this streak will end,” Julien said. “It’s still not certain. Things can change.”
Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria, said the data show Earth is on track for 3 degrees Celsius of warming if emissions aren’t urgently curtailed. And he feared that an end to the streak of record hot months and the arrival of winter’s snows will mean “people will soon forget” about the danger.
“Our world is in crisis,” said University of Wisconsin climate scientist Andrea Dutton. “Perhaps you are feeling that crisis today — those who live in the path of Beryl are experiencing a hurricane that is fueled by an extremely warm ocean that has given rise to a new era of tropical storms that can intensify rapidly into deadly and costly major hurricanes. Even if you are not in crisis today, each temperature record we set means that it is more likely that climate change will bring crisis to your doorstep or to your loved ones.”
Copernicus uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world and then reanalyzes it with computer simulations. Several other countries’ science agencies — including NOAA and NASA — also come up with monthly climate calculations, but they take longer, go back further in time and don’t use computer simulations.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani squash player Ashab Irfan defeated India’s Veer Chotrani in the final of the Kanso Open Squash Championship in Houston recently to claim the title, months after he clinched the Rochester Proam tournament in the US.
Irfan, 20, has had an impressive run in the tournament, beating Mexico’s Jorge Luis Gomez Dominguez 8-11, 10-12, 11-4, 11-2 and 11-9 to qualify for the semifinal of the tournament on Friday. He then defeated Canadian Liam Morrison 11-8, 11-6 and 13-11 to qualify for the final.
Meanwhile, Chotrani qualified for the final after beating Mexico’s Alfredo Avila Vergara in the semifinal 11-3, 9-11, 11-7 and 11-7 to qualify for the final of the tournament.
The final between Irfan and Chotrani on Sunday was a close call, with the Pakistani star player prevailing over his Indian opponent after a hard-fought win. Irfan beat Chotrani 11-7, 8-11, 12-10, 8-11 and 11-8 to clinch the trophy.
Irfan could be seen screaming in jubilation after winning the match point, putting his squash racket on the floor as he prostrated on the court amid cheers and claps from the audience.
This is Ashab’s second international squash title this year. The emerging Pakistani talent clinched the Rochester Proam Squash Tournament in April this year after beating Dominguez in the final by a score of 12-10, 11-4, 9-11, and 11-9.
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday congratulated a Christian army officer, Julian Moazzam James, on his promotion to the rank of major-general, Sharif’s office said.
Twenty-two brigadiers were promoted to the rank of major-general in Pakistan Army this week, according to local media reports. The promotions were approved by the Pakistan Army Promotion Board.
In a statement issued by his office, the prime minister expressed his best wishes for Maj. Gen. James in the future.
“The services of the Christian community for the development and defense of Pakistan are unforgettable,” Sharif said. “Maj. Gen. Julian Moazzam James’ professional skills and hard work are a beacon for the young generation.”
Earlier this year, Helen Mary Roberts became the first Christian woman brigadier in the 76-year history of Pakistan. Brig. Roberts belonged to the Army Medical Corps.
Several other members of minority religious communities have also been serving in the Pakistan military on different ranks.
Muslim-majority Pakistan has strived for religious inclusivity in recent years amid continuing social challenges for minority communities.
Last year, Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir commended the role played by the country’s Christian community in its development during a Christmas celebration at Christ Church in Rawalpindi.
He praised their contributions to promoting quality education, health care and philanthropy, as well as their notable contributions to national defense.
