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“There were 1, 319 deaths in the week ending September 18; since August 16, 4, 338 people have been admitted to the city’s hospitals, of which 972 have died. Since August 1st, the police Corpse Disposal Squad and the two non-official agencies have removed corpses of starving people from the streets and hospitals.

– September 23, 1943, The Statesman

A man-made famine that claimed thousands of lives each week in Bengal in September 1943. India entered World War II in 1939 as a military, export, and credit-giving country as a strategic theater in the Allied offensive against Japan, still ruled by British colonial rule. The colonial government imposed a modified “scorched earth” policy in parts of Madras, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Assam in 1942, mandating that the army halt food stocks and halt transportation routes by road, rail, river, and sea. Millions of civilians were left without food as a result of the policy, which was purportedly intended to restrict Japanese access to resources.

Secretary of State for India Leo Amery pleaded with Bengal’s war cabinet, which is located more than 5, 000 miles away in London, to send 500, 000 tons of grain to save the country’s starving people. Less than a quarter of the request was given to the cabinet, which rejected the appeal. Amery later observed that “the Cabinet generally handled the matter on India’s part.” Within a few years, there will be three million more deaths from starvation and famine-related epidemics.

Despite censorship rules prohibiting “casual references to incidents calculated to arouse horror or alarm,” The Statesman, an English-language newspaper in India, published the above-quoted editorial. Instead, the colonial government promoted positive stories that stressed relief efforts and promoted the concept of a long-standing “beggar problem.” While concealing the magnitude of famine and portraying British rule as benevolent, this narrative naturalized hunger as an inevitable feature of poverty. Later, Ian Stephens, the then-editor of The Statesman, recalled that officials had used “starvation” in Bengal fatalities reports to replace it with “sick destitutes.” The distinction was more complicated by the fact that being “sick destitute” implied misfortune and forces beyond human control, whereas being starved implied both a victim and intended recipient.

Although some media outlets, like The Statesman, attempted to accurately report on the famine both in India and Britain, the journalists’ efforts did not have any significant legal repercussions. The authors of post-war international law themselves used food restrictions and poverty as tools for colonial and military dominance, which was not incidental. They were therefore unwilling to make a weapon that they themselves had used illegal. According to academics Nicholas Mulder and Boyd van Dijk, Britain and France were favoring blockades as a “potentially negative material intervention with low public visibility and high pay-off as a war-fighting strategy” in the 20th century. International law has a lot to do with the lack of compassion for starvation as a tool of violence, which affects how it is still treated.

It’s still difficult to bring charges despite international law’s clear prohibition of intentionally starving civilians as a means of combat. The Geneva Conventions’ 1977 Additional Protocols forbid the use of civilian starvation as a means of combat. The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Rome Statute expands its definition of a war crime that can be prosecuted. Why does the crime of starvation continue to be so challenging despite this clarity?

Starvation cases present unique legal challenges. Different from bombing or massacres, starvation operates. It moves slowly, dissipates, and frequently hides behind policies. Instead of ignoring shortages or failing to protect supply chains, the prosecution must establish the intent. The picture is muddy by sieges, sanctions, and blockades, which are defended as “legitimate” military measures. It’s notoriously challenging to hold individuals accountable for such structural violence.

But there is no justification for difficulty. As the recent upheaval in Gaza demonstrates, starvation causes destruction on a scale comparable to conventional weapons. It destroys societies, leaving behind long-lasting scars in both the physical, psychological, and economic systems. Its structural nature, which allows it to operate invisibly, over time, and under the pretext of a policy, is precisely why it needs to be prosecuted, not ignored.

Starvation has been viewed as a side effect of war for too long. It was a deliberate strategy that was banned for decades but hardly ever enforced. Powerful actors will continue to use hunger as a weapon against civilians with impunity as long as courts and prosecutors don’t recognize it as a crime.

The first step is to properly name it, and the second is to prosecute it.

United States President Donald Trump has released his 20-point “peace plan” for the Palestinian territory, which features himself as the head of a “Board of Peace” that will act as a transitional government in the enclave, just as you anticipated the prospects for the future of the Gaza Strip would start to look grim. This from the man who has been actively supporting and assisting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians since he assumed former US President Joe Biden’s office in January.

That’s not all, though. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is reportedly playing a significant governing role in the proposed transformation of Gaza, is also on board for the “Board of Peace.” In a region that is already well aware of the phenomenon, importing a Sir Tony Blair from the United Kingdom to oversee a population of Palestinians smacks rather harshly of colonialism.

Despite this, George W. Bush’s buddy and then-chief of the so-called war on terror, George W. Bush, who was in charge of the region’s notorious performance in the 2003 conflict with Iraq, and Blair himself, are already well-known in the region. Blair led the UK to a war that ended with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, earning him a deserved reputation as a war criminal after making up his mind about the false allegations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

In other words, he is not a man who should always appear on a “Board of Peace.”

And while Bush would eventually retire to a quiet life of painting portraits of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, made a name for himself as the one who could never get rid of, and while doing so, earned a pretty penny.

Blair left his position as prime minister in 2007 and was reincarnated as the Middle East envoy for the “Quartet” of international powers, which purport to work on the Israeli-Palestine conflict on an ongoing basis.

However, the appointment of an envoy with close ties to Israel, the unquestionable aggressor of the “conflict,” also effectively eliminated any progress in the “peace” movement.

Additionally, Blair’s diplomatic activities conveniently overlapped with a number of lucrative business ventures in the region, starting with JP Morgan as a part-time senior adviser in 2008 and moving to the US investment bank. Blair was reportedly paid more than $1 million annually for the latter position.

No one knew which Tony Blair they were seeing when Blair stepped down as Quartet envoy, whether it was Tony Blair the patron of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation or Tony Blair the principal of the consulting firm Tony Blair Associates, as Francis Beckett, said in a statement released in 2016 from Al Jazeera.

But they still pay off, after all. The point of conflicts of interest.

Award-winning journalist Jonathan Cook noted in a 2013 article for the Journal of Palestine Studies that Blair had little to show for his “achievements” as Quartet representative, but that “trumpet one in particular: his success in securing radio frequencies from Israel in 2009 to enable the establishment of a second Palestinian cell phone operator, Wataniya Mobile, in the West Bank.”

However, there was a catch. According to Cook, Israel gave the frequencies away in exchange for a resolution from the Palestinian leadership to drop the Israeli-led war crimes at the UN that occurred during the Israeli-led Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, which in December 2008 killed about 1,400 Palestinians in just 22 days.

What are you aware of? In addition to Wataniya, JP Morgan and other companies were all attracted to the West Bank’s potential to make a significant profit from the opening of the airwaves.

There are undoubtedly many opportunities for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change to completely alter the world in order to screw up the Palestinians, which is hardly exaggeration to say that Blair will try to capitalize on his upcoming governorship of Gaza.

The “many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas… crafted by well-meaning international groups,” according to Trump’s 20-point plan, are among his main points, omitted, which magically lead to “hope for future Gaza.” After all, why should Palestinians care about having a state and not having Israel repeatedly massacre them when they can benefit from capitalism and foreign investor tyranny?

And Blair may be the face of that oppression, whose association with the Middle East’s massacre of civilians has not prevented him from being once more tapped as a regional peacemaker.

Apart from Trump and the Israelis, Blair has plenty of fans. For instance, Thomas Friedman, a fellow Orientalist and Iraq war cheerleader and former New York Times foreign affairs columnist, once praised Blair as “one of the most significant British prime ministers ever” for choosing to “throw in Britain’s lot with President Bush on the Iraq war,” defying “the overwhelming antiwar sentiment of his own party, as well as public opinion in Britain in general.”

Friedman’s admiration for Blair’s anti-democratic stoicism seemed to be dying: “He had no real support group to turn to.” Even his wife’s involvement in the Iraq War is unknown. (I am aware of the emotion!) “

Perhaps his wife should advise him to pursue painting in place of waiting for Blair and other international war criminals as Gaza’s fate continues to hang in the balance.

Islamabad, Pakistan, on September 13, when Shehbaz Sharif arrived at the military hospital in Bannu, in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, his stoic expression replaced unmistakable rage.

At least 19 soldiers had died fighting attackers from the armed group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – commonly known as the Pakistan Taliban – in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province that shares a long and contentious border with Afghanistan.

Flanked by army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir to his left, Sharif delivered a blunt message to the Afghan Taliban, which returned to power in Kabul after the withdrawal of US forces in August 2021, and which he accuses of providing a haven to armed fighters on Afghan soil.

He addressed the media outside the hospital, “Today I want to send a clear message to Afghanistan.” Choose one of two options. If they wish to establish relations with Pakistan with genuine goodwill, sincerity and honesty, we are ready for that. However, we won’t have any influence over the Afghan interim government if they choose to support terrorists.

However, the violence continued. Five more soldiers were killed when an improvised explosive device struck their vehicle on September 16 in the southwestern province of Balochistan, which also borders Afghanistan. The provincial capital of Balochistan, Quetta, was the victim of a suicide bombing that blew up on September 30 and injured 32 people.

According to Islamabad-based think tank, the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), the death count in August was particularly high. The institute reported a 74 percent increase in violence in the country since&nbsp, July.

According to the PICSS Militancy Database, August became the deadliest month in over a decade, surpassing all monthly figures since February 2014, according to the think tank’s report.

An already depressing picture has been made worse by the surge. The year 2024 was one of the deadliest for Pakistan in nearly a decade, with more than 2, 500 casualties of violence in the country recorded. Civilians and security personnel are among the groups at risk, and most attacks have taken place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

Sharif was categorically blaming the rise in murders and violent acts. “Terrorists come from Afghanistan and, together with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), these khawarij join forces to martyr our soldiers, our brothers and sisters, and ordinary citizens”, he said at the hospital.

The TTP has been conducting armed campaigns against Islamabad since it first emerged in 2007 amid the US-led, so-called “war on terror.”

The organization calls for the reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s tribal regions with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, demands the release of its imprisoned members, and enacts strict Islamic law.

The Pakistani government insists the TTP – which is distinct from the Afghan Taliban but ideologically aligned in many respects – operates from Afghan territory. It attributes the organization’s use of the Arabic-derived term “khwarij,” a historical epithet for an extremist sect that labeled other Muslims as “apostates,” to being blamed on Kabul for allowing sanctuary and to using it repeatedly.

However, these accusations have been repeatedly refuted in Kabul. Last month, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the Taliban government, warned against “provocative” statements and urged cooperation.

He said in a Kabul interview days after Sharif’s statements that Pakistan should take steps to stop these attacks. Islamabad should also share information with Kabul so that we can also work to thwart these threats, he continued.

Border tensions deepen

As a result of a lull earlier this year, high-level delegations from Pakistan visited Kabul and other meetings with Chinese leaders, suggesting that things might be moving forward.

Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, made his first major visit to Kabul since February 2023.

Then, in May, Dar joined his Chinese and Afghan counterparts, Wang Yi and Amir Khan Mutaqqi, for an informal trilateral meeting in Beijing that aimed to renew diplomatic engagement. China offered to expand its presence in the region and act as a mediator between Islamabad and Kabul at the third meeting held in Kabul in August.

The Afghan Taliban have, despite those diplomatic gestures, not taken any serious action against the TTP.

Iftikhar Firdous, cofounder of The Khorasan Diary, a portal that tracks regional security developments, was scathing in his comments. He told Al Jazeera, “In reality, there hasn’t been an Afghan Taliban’s overarching commitment to combat the TTP in Afghanistan, and this is probably never going to happen.”

He called the Afghan Taliban a “grey entity in a world where black and white are no longer distinguishable.”

“I don’t see any end to the TTP while the idea of the Taliban exists. The Pakistani government’s failure to establish a controlled Taliban government in Afghanistan has had negative effects, according to the Peshawar-based analyst. The next big mistake would be to assume that the Taliban’s internal security issues will be resolved by negotiation.

Diplomatic outreach falters

During its initial rule in the 1990s, Pakistan was viewed as a protector of the Afghan Taliban. As a defense against India, the Pakistani army sought “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. But the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 altered the dynamic.

While the TTP’s campaign has continued inside Pakistan, Kabul has occasionally cautiously courted ties with New Delhi.

Despite the obvious challenges, Afghani analyst Tameem Bahiss asserts that Pakistan’s long-term security depends on effective cooperation with Afghanistan both bilateral and multilateral.

“Kabul’s reluctance to act decisively against the TTP is rooted in both cultural and ideological considerations. He told Al Jazeera, “The Afghan Taliban are unlikely to use force against a group with whom they have ties not just culturally but also ideologically and historically,” he said.

TTP’s access to more advanced military equipment makes this a problem even more. The group has made use of night-vision devices, quadcopters and heavier weaponry reportedly left behind after international forces withdrew from Afghanistan.

“Deep scars”

The TTP has continued to recruit in Pakistan’s tribal districts, where decades of conflict have eroded support for the state, are more troubling, according to analysts.

Fahad Nabeel, who leads the Islamabad-based research consultancy Geopolitical Insights, said counterinsurgency is only successful in any region with local support.

Between the mid-1900s and the mid-1900s, the Pakistani military’s previous operations against armed groups caused displacement and economic damage, creating a culture of mistrust in the authorities.

Nabeel noted that there is a particular issue with the lack of coordination between the army and federal and provincial authorities.

“Political ownership of military operations is very important, which has been an issue encountered during the early military operations as well. He cited Sharif’s operation, which was announced in June 2024, but it never actually launched, and the recently announced Operation Azm-e-Istehkam, which quickly became contentious due to the lack of clarity surrounding the operation.

According to Bahiss, the tribal belt along the border has endured decades of trauma, with violence from armed groups and repeated Pakistani military operations leaving “deep scars and fostering resentment toward both the Pakistani state and, particularly, the security establishment.”

“These grievances have provided fertile ground for the TTP’s revival, as the group has increasingly framed its narrative around Pashtun disenfranchisement”, the analyst said.

Local grievances, a threat to the nation

Pakistan and Afghanistan have been at odds with one another for many years, but recent actions by other nations, including the US, have complicated the regional dynamics even more.

On September 18, during a visit to the United Kingdom, US President Donald Trump suggested Washington wishes to regain control of Bagram airbase, a strategic facility outside Kabul that was long a linchpin for foreign military operations in Afghanistan.

The foreign ministers of China, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia urged Afghanistan to take “effective, concrete, and verifiable actions” to end armed groups operating on its soil at a UN General Assembly (UNGA) side event in New York six days later.

They warned that the region was in danger of being exposed to ISIL, al-Qaeda, the TTP, and other organizations.

Crucially, the resulting four-country statement – part of a quadripartite process that began in 2017 – also opposed “the reestablishment of military bases” such as Bagram in and around Afghanistan by “the countries responsible for the current situation”, language understood as aimed at the US. The Taliban in Afghanistan, on the other hand, applauded this statement.

The Afghan Taliban’s top priority, according to Abdul Sayed, a researcher in Sweden’s security sector, is establishing a stable government.

“But a further expansion of Pakistan’s policy of cross-border strikes&nbsp, or the adoption of more punitive measures against the Taliban and the Afghan population are likely to generate increased support for hostile actors, which could risk intensifying the threat of militancy within Pakistan”, he told Al Jazeera.

In recent years, Pakistan has carried out numerous airstrikes against armed groups on Afghan soil, with the most recent instance being in December 2024, when at least 46 people died, mostly civilians.

Islamabad has also implemented an expulsions policy. Since November 2023, Pakistan has been pushing a three-phase campaign to deport millions of Afghans, citing security concerns. The tensions between Kabul and Kabul have grown, and the already fragile humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, which has been worsened by the most recent, devastating earthquake in its eastern region, has grown even more so.

Nabeel argued that Islamabad must work hard to win over regular Afghans while making it clear that anti-Pakistani armed groups cannot operate freely if they want to end the violence.

“Such an approach can allow Pakistan to conduct covert actions against anti-Pakistan militant groups in Afghanistan. However, such actions can only be successful if Pakistani authorities take actions on their own, not by staging cross-border strikes, to combat the structural causes of violence, he claimed.

However, according to Firdous, a security analyst based in Peshawar, there are likely to continue simmering tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan beyond a TTP-related crisis.

“There are perennial problems between the two neighbours which have more to do with existential issues for both countries, and cross-border terrorism happens to be an unresolved variable from the baggage of history”, he said.