New Zealand, Australia, and surrounding Pacific Islands were among the first places to ring in 2018 with fireworks displays, parties, and other festivities. Nearly 1.5 million people gathered to watch a rainbow fireworks display above Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge and opera house.
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Concerns are being voiced in Pakistan about how a few radical groups with proven terror ties have been allowed to re-brand themselves as political parties.

Taj Haider, one of the prominent and founding members of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which has been in power five times since 1970, told VOA the country is again seeing the trend of extremist groups camouflaging themselves to enter into politics.

“Religion and politics cannot go hand in hand, but unfortunately this is our new reality. We have seen the recent by-elections in Lahore and Peshawar where militant-turned-political parties were able to mobilize people and gather votes,” Haider said. “And these so-called new political parties, with proven terror records, look determined to contest the upcoming elections in 2018.”

In a recent high-level party meeting presided by PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of Pakistan’s slain Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the government was sharply criticized on its inability to forcefully implement the National Action Plan and bar proscribed groups from entering the political sphere.

The National Action Plan is a 20-point strategy devised to combat extremism in 2015 that clearly states no banned groups can operate in the country by changing their names or identity.

Analysts say many other political parties are also agitated and wary about the recent political dynamic that has allowed radicalized groups to enter the political arena.

“The government has repeatedly said it will not allow the hardliners to enter into politics, but the reality is different, these parties are going into masses,” Rasul Baksh Raees, a prominent analyst from Pakistan told VOA.

“As long as these proscribed groups stick to their extreme ideologies and violence, they will be a danger to the society and democracy itself.”

PPP’s acute criticism came as Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of 2008 Mumbai terror attacks and leader of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), inaugurated the office of his newly launched political party Milli Muslim League (MML) in the eastern city of Lahore.

Pakistan’s Election Commission rejected MML’s party registration application in October, citing its link to Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a U.S. designated terror-sponsoring organization.

But MML looks determined to contest the upcoming state and provincial elections. The party has several offices, has launched a website, and has a social media team spreading its messages through Facebook and Twitter.

Pakistan’s government has repeatedly emphasized it will not tolerate any political party with a proven record of promoting violence and terrorism to use democracy and political means to spread their extreme ideologies.

But critics still say the government is not doing enough to stop radical groups from entering politics.

“Look what happened in Lahore’s recent by-election and who can forget the power show by extremists on the roads of Islamabad. The government was totally helpless,” Raees said.

During the Lahore election in September, a MML backed independent candidate secured the fourth position in the race. The by-election was also contested by Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TeL), another extremist religious party created to carry-on Mumtaz Qadri’s mission, the bodyguard who killed Punjab’s Governor Salman Taseer in 2011 after he had demanded reforms in the controversial blasphemy law. Mumtaz Qadri was later sentenced to death.

In November, thousands of followers of the Islamist group Tehreek-e-Labaik blocked Islamabad roads for weeks and demanded the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid, after accusing him of blasphemy. The government eventually surrendered to hardliners’ demands after Pakistan’s military played the role of mediator.

The experts say the emerging trend of politicizing militancy is a danger to democracy. They also point out the sectarian and hardline rationale will further complicate the situation in the country that has been trying to combat terrorism for more than a decade.

“Imagine when these hardliners, through political parties, will spread their extreme views on the grassroots level. What will be the future of this country?” Raees said.

But some politicians dismiss the blending of radicalized groups into politics. Haider believes the people of Pakistan can differentiate between politicians and extremists and will not allow militant-turned-politicians to thrive.

“If you look at the past, the religious parties including the Jamaat-i-Islami [an old religious party], despite having a huge following, were never able to clean sweep or get majority in the electoral process of the country,” said Haider.

“Even now, with all these efforts, I believe Milli Muslim League or Tehreek-e-Labaik will not be able to pull large numbers during the general elections. Religious or sectarian votes are scattered in the country and can’t be unified and will not help these newly established political parties to win a prominent number of seats.”

 
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Thousands braved a frigid New York night to celebrate the start of 2018 in Times Square, an annual celebration that dates back to 1904.

Tarana Burke, a social activist who started the #MeToo movement to draw attention to sexual abuse, pushed the button that started the famed ball drop – a hallmark of the New York celebration for 110 years.2017 saw a sea change in attitudes and awareness of sexual assault and sexual harassment, as millions of people used the hashtag to show how pervasive abuse is in the wake of accusations made against dozens of high profile men, including celebrities, members of Congress and business leaders.

“We need to go into the new year as a new beginning, with a new set of commitments to a better world,” Burke told the New York Daily News.

As they do each year, the crowd counted down as the crystal ball slid down a pole, arriving at the bottom as 2018 began, accompanied by confetti and fireworks. 

Hundreds of thousands of people – watched over by thousands of police and other security personnel – crowded the square, despite temperatures around -12 C (10 degrees Fahrenheit). 

“Our toes are frozen, so we’re just dealing with it by dancing,” Remle Scott told the Associated Press. She traveled to New York with her boyfriend from San Diego to ring in the new year. 

The frosty festivities in Times Square included performances by Mariah Carey, Sugarland and Nick Jonas.

Fireworks around the world

In London, fireworks and the sound of Big Ben – the massive bell in the Elizabeth Tower clock – welcomed the start of 2018 for about 100,000 revelers near the River Thames.Big Ben has been silent since August, when a renovation project on the clock began.It’s not scheduled to return to regular service for about four years.

Fireworks were also part of the celebrations in Paris and Moscow.In the Russian capitol, fireworks lit up the sky over the Kremlin, while in Paris the display was held at the Arc de Triomphe.

Thousands gathered around Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor to watch a 10-minute musical firework display, which included “shooting stars” fired from rooftops and revelers dancing to “Auld Lang Syne.”

In the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, over 400 couples participated in a New Year’s mass wedding provided for free by authorities.

Nearly 1.5 million people gathered to watch a rainbow fireworks display above Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge and the opera house, as the country celebrated legalizing gay marriage.

Security tight

In preparation for celebrations in cities around the world, hundreds of thousands of law enforcement, military and security officials are being deployed to keep New Year’s Eve revelers safe.

In Australia, officials were out in full force on the ground, air and sea as part of the largest security operation in the country. Police in Melbourne last month arrested a man for planning to shoot revelers on New Year’s Eve.

In the United States, New York City officials used two-step screening, snipers, street closures and specially trained dogs to secure Times Square.
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 U.N. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres warns the world is likely to face many complex and new dangers in 2018. In a year-end message, Guterres appeals for greater unity to overcome these threats and create a more peaceful world.

When Guterres assumed office one year ago, the world was in the midst of a hopeful moment. Negotiations to end more than four decades of division on the island of Cyprus appeared to be moving toward a successful resolution.

Guterres jumped into the fray and worked tirelessly to produce that outcome. Unfortunately, the Greek and Turkish Cypriots were unable to bury their differences and live as one nation together.

The UN chief acknowledges his hopes for a peaceful 2017 have not materialized. Unfortunately, he says the world in many ways has gone in reverse. Reflecting this darkened mood on the eve of the New Year, Guterres says he is issuing what he calls a red alert for our world.

“Conflicts have deepened and new dangers have emerged. Global anxieties about nuclear weapons are the highest since the Cold War and climate change is moving faster than we are. Inequalities are growing and we see horrific violations of human rights. Nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise and as we begin 2018, I call for unity,” he said.

During this past year, Guterres has had many catastrophic events landing on his desk begging for resolution. These include:

Yemen — the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with some eight million people on the brink of famine, and one million infected with cholera.
Persecution and violence in Myanmar that forced more than 650,000 Rohingya refugees to flee for their lives to neighboring Bangladesh.
Syria, approaching its seventh year of civil war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million.
Conflicts in South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq and many others that continue to take a heavy toll in lives and property.

As the world’s leading diplomat, Guterres must retain his sense of optimism that things can get better. He says the world can be made safer and more secure; conflicts and hatred can be overcome. But, only, he adds if world leaders unite to bridge divides and bring people together around common goals.

 
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A suicide bomber targeted the funeral of former district chief in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, where Afghan forces have had frequent clashes with Islamic State militants in recent weeks.

Provincial government spokesman Attaullah Khogyani told VOA at least 15 people were killed and another 13 were wounded — most of them civilians.

Earlier reports said six people had been killed and 11 wounded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The attack comes just days after an assault on a Shiite cultural center in Kabul that left at least 41 people dead and more than 80 wounded.
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A seaplane crashed into a river in Sydney on Sunday, killing six people ahead of the city’s New Year’s Eve celebrations at the harbor.

Police said they did not know the cause of the crash, nor the identities of the five passengers, but were speaking with several witnesses. The pilot was the sixth victim.

Several Australian media reported that four of the victims were British nationals, although that was not immediately confirmed by police. In London, the Foreign Office said its officials were in contact with local authorities in Sydney.

The plane, which belonged to Sydney Seaplanes, was on a “wine and dine” sightseeing flight when it crashed into the Hawkesbury River on Sunday afternoon. New South Wales police say divers recovered the bodies of all six victims a few hours later.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said it would investigate the incident.
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The Palestinians have withdrawn their envoy to Pakistan after he appeared at a rally with a radical cleric linked to the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Palestinian envoy Walid Abu Ali shared the stage with Hafiz Saeed, the head of the hard-line Jamaat-ud-Dawa movement, at Friday’s rally, which was held to protest U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The rally in Rawalpindi, attended by thousands, was organized by the Defense of Pakistan Council, an alliance of religious parties dominated by Saeed’s group. Jamaat-ud-Dawa is believed to be a front for Lashker-e-Taiba, a militant group that fights Indian troops in the disputed region of Kashmir, and which was blamed for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, which killed 166 people.

Saeed, the founder of Lashker-e-Taiba, is wanted by the United States, which has offered a $10 million reward for his arrest, but Pakistan has refused extradition requests and allows him to operate relatively freely. He was recently placed under house arrest for 11 months but was released after a court ruled in his favor.

Saeed denies involvement in the 2008 attacks, and Pakistan says India has not provided enough evidence to charge him. U.S. officials have long accused Pakistan of harboring extremists, allegations denied by Islamabad.

In a statement Saturday addressed to India, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the envoy’s participation “in the presence of individuals accused of supporting terrorism” was “an unintended mistake, but not justified.” It said the envoy has been recalled.

India had lodged a protest with the Palestinians earlier Saturday, calling the envoy’s association with Saeed “unacceptable.”

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry defended the envoy, saying it welcomed his “active participation in events organized to express solidarity with the people of Palestine.”

Near-daily rallies have been held in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world since President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital earlier this month, a move seen as siding with the Jewish state against the Palestinians, who claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
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A group of Polish mountaineers set off for northern Pakistan on Sunday to attempt to be the first to scale K2, the world’s second highest peak, in wintertime.

K2, in the Karakorum mountains along the border between China and Pakistan, is notorious for high winds, steep and icy slopes — and high fatality rates for climbers. In winter months, scant snowfall means the summit approach can turn into bare ice.

More than 70 people have died climbing the peak, many of them at the Bottleneck, where a wrong step can send a climber hurtling off the South Face, where bodies are unlikely to be recovered.

Team member Adam Bielecki, 34, told Reuters that the chance to make history is a “strong motivation” for the Polish group.

Polish climbers have written a “beautiful chapter” of exploring peaks of more than 8,000 meters (26,247 feet), and scaling K2 in winter would “the last chapter of this book.”

The Polish team includes 13 mountaineers led by Krzysztof Wielicki, 67, who in 2003 headed a winter expedition of K2 that was unable to clear the 8,000 meter threshold.

K2, slightly shorter than Mount Everest, is 8,611 meters (28,251 feet) high.

Wielicki told Reuters that his team would begin their ascent on Jan. 8 or 9 and, if successful, expect to return to base camp by mid-March.

Pakistan is a hot destination for climbers. It rivals Nepal for the number of peaks higher 7,000 meters (22,966 feet) and it has five of the world’s 14 summits higher than 8,000 meters.

Bielecki said the group expects to be away from home for around three months.

“If you ask me what’s the hardest part of the expedition or what I fear the most, it’s actually the separation from my family,” he said.
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At least 81 reporters were killed doing their jobs this year, while violence and harassment against media staff has skyrocketed, the world’s biggest journalists’ organization says.

In its annual “Kill Report,” seen by The Associated Press, the International Federation of Journalists said the reporters lost their lives in targeted killings, car bomb attacks and crossfire incidents around the world.

More than 250 journalists were in prison in 2017.

The number of deaths as of December 29 was the lowest in a decade, down from 93 in 2016. The largest number were killed in Mexico, but many also died in conflict zones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

The IFJ suspected but could not officially confirm that at least one other journalist was killed Thursday in an attack by an Islamic State suicide bomber on a Shiite cultural center in Kabul, in which at least 41 people died.

IFJ President Philippe Leruth said that while the drop in deaths “represents a downward trend, the levels of violence in journalism remain unacceptably high.”

He said the IFJ finds it “most disturbing that this decrease cannot be linked to any measure by governments to tackle the impunity for these crimes.”

Eight women journalists were killed, two in European democracies – Kim Wall in Denmark, who died on the submarine of an inventor she was writing about, and Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was blown up by a bomb placed in her car.

Beyond the deaths, the IFJ warned that “unprecedented numbers of journalists were jailed, forced to flee, that self-censorship was widespread and that impunity for the killings, harassment, attacks and threats against independent journalism was running at epidemic levels.”

Turkey, where official pressure on the media has been ramped up since a failed coup attempt in July 2016, is becoming notorious for putting reporters behind bars. Some 160 journalists are jailed in Turkey –  two-thirds of the global total – the report said.

The organization also expressed concern about India, the world’s largest democracy, where it said that attacks on journalists are being motivated by violent populism.

Countries with the highest numbers of media killings:

Mexico: 13

Afghanistan: 11

Iraq: 11

Syria: 10

India: 6

Philippines: 4

Pakistan: 4

Nigeria: 3

Somalia: 3

Honduras: 3

 
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Pakistan says that almost 92 percent of its 2,611-kilometer largely porous frontier with Afghanistan will be fenced by end of 2018, hoping the massive unilateral undertaking will effectively address mutual complaints of militant incursions.  

The military-led construction effort went into action earlier this year. It has already fenced off about a 150-kilometer portion of the border identified as “highly prone” to terrorist infiltration.

The pair of nine-foot wire fences, with a six-foot gap, and topped with barbed wire, runs along rugged terrain and snow-capped mountains as high as 12,000 feet. Officials estimate the project will cost about $550 million.

“Our target is to complete it [the fence] by end of 2018,” Major-General Asif Ghafoor tells VOA. He explained the plan intends to cover up to 2,400 kilometers of the entire Afghan border because the rest cannot possibly be fenced.   

Additional outposts and small forts are also being built and being equipped with high-tech surveillance systems to enable soldiers to monitor and detect intrusions around the clock.

“And on the average, every 1.5 to 2 kilometers will have physical presence [of our soldiers],” Ghafoor said, adding the army has also recruited tens of thousands of new troops for the deployment.

Afghanistan takes issue

Afghanistan opposes the fencing project because it historically disputed the colonial-era demarcation drawn up by the British in 1893. Kabul insists the barrier would add to problems of divided families on both sides.

Islamabad rejects Afghan objections and is pressing ahead with the border fencing, insisting the project is critical for national security and for promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Afghans have long accused Pakistani security institutions for sheltering Taliban insurgents and the Haqqani Network of terrorists staging deadly attacks in Afghanistan to allegedly prevent rival India from increasing its influence in the war-torn country.

For their part, Pakistani officials say anti-state militants after fleeing security operations, have taken refuge in Afghan border areas and plot terrorist attacks against the country from those sanctuaries.

Steps toward mending ties

Relations have deteriorated between Afghanistan and Pakistan over terrorism allegations against each other. Ghafoor said that military-to-military coordination has improved since the Pakistani army chief visited Kabul in October and held detailed talks with President Ashraf Ghani.

“We have shared through [our] Foreign Office a comprehensive action plan document with Afghanistan and subsequent action on this plan will lead to further improvement,” Ghafoor added.

Islamabad shared with Kabul last month what it called an “Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Solidarity” (APAPS) for a “constructive and meaningful” engagement between the two countries. The proposed plan would create working groups in politics, economics, the military, intelligence sharing, and issues related to Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Ghafoor said no anti-Afghanistan sanctuaries are present in Pakistan following major counterterrorism operations in the past three years. But he complained that a large number of Afghan refugees in the country are blocking efforts to completely eliminate the threat.

“I can assure you the day these 2.7-million Afghan refugees go back to their country, our liberty of action will expand to trace the left-over facilitators and abettors,” Ghafoor said while responding to U.S. criticism of Islamabad’s “inaction” against insurgents using Pakistani soil for attacks inside Afghanistan.

The army spokesman said investigations in connection with recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan have led officials to conclude that planners were located on the Afghan side of the border. Many of the would-be suicide bombers authorities have recently arrested in Pakistan are Afghans, he added, without giving any figures.

 
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