Category World News

Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – Afiya’s* frail fingers pick at the loose threads of her worn dark-brown sweater. She sits at the edge of her bed in the rehabilitation ward of Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital in Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar.

As the faded and stained clothes hang loosely on her thin frame, and with down-cast eyes, she says: “I used to dream of flying high above the mountains, touching the blue sky as a flight attendant. Now, I am stuck in a nightmare, high on drugs, fighting for my life”.

Afiya, 24, is only one among thousands of people addicted to heroin in the disputed region where a growing epidemic of drug addiction is consuming young lives.

A 2022 study by the psychiatry department of the Government Medical College in Srinagar found that Kashmir had overtaken Punjab, the northwestern Indian state battling a drug crisis for decades, in the number of cases of narcotics use per capita.

In August 2023, an Indian Parliament report estimated that nearly 1.35 million of Kashmir’s 12 million people were drug users, suggesting a sharp rise from the nearly 350, 000 such users in the previous year as estimated in a survey by the Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (IMHANS) at the Government Medical College, Srinagar.

The IMHANS survey also found that 90 percent of drug users in Kashmir were aged between 17 and 33.

SMHS, the hospital Afiya is in, attended to more than 41, 000 drug-related patients in 2023 – an average of one person brought in every 12 minutes, a 75 percent increase from the figure in 2021.

The surge in Kashmir’s drug cases was mainly fuelled by its proximity to the so-called “Golden Crescent”, a region covering parts of neighbouring Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, where opium is grown on a large scale. Experts also say chronic unemployment – triggered by the region losing its partial autonomy in 2019, quickly followed by the COVID-19 pandemic – fuelled stress and despair, driving Kashmiri youth towards substance abuse.

As a result, says Dr Yasir Rather, a professor in charge of psychiatry at IMHANS, hospitals and treatment centres in the region are stretched. He said while addiction treatment facilities have been established across Kashmir since 2021, only a handful of hospitals have inpatient facilities for severe addiction patients like Afiya, who often require hospitalisation.

‘ It seemed harmless ‘

“You will get through this”, Afiya’s mother, Rabiya*, whispers to her daughter, brushing aside the damp hair from Aafiya’s face. She has just had a bath. Afiya’s father, Tabish*, sits on a chair in a corner, silently watching them.

Afiya barely listens to her mother’s reassuring words and seems more focused on repeatedly removing the blue blanket provided by the hospital to let some fresh air caress the deep, black wounds on her hands, legs and stomach, caused by the needle pricks in her veins from injecting heroin. The gaping wounds now ooze blood and a thick, yellow pus, as doctors warn she could infect her parents and attendants.

More than six years ago, Afiya was a bright high-school student dreaming of becoming a flight attendant. After passing her 12th grade with impressive 85 percent marks, she responded to a job advertisement posted by a leading private Indian airline.

“This isn’t the real me lying in this bed”, Afiya tells Al Jazeera. “I used to drive my car. I was a stylish woman known for my beautiful handwriting, intellect and strong communication skills. My quick memory made me stand out. I could recall details effortlessly, never missing a thing. I was independent and confident.

” But now, I lie here motionless, like a dead fish, as my siblings put it. Even they can’t ignore the smell that lingers around me. “

She says she was selected for the airline job and sent to New Delhi for training”. I stayed there for two months. It felt like a new beginning, a chance to fly, to escape. “

But her soaring dreams were dashed to the ground in August 2019 when the Indian government scrapped the special status of Kashmir and imposed a months-long security lockdown to discourage street protests against the shock move.

Thousands of people, including top politicians, were arrested and thrown in jail. Internet and other basic rights were also suspended, as New Delhi brought the region under its direct control for the first time in decades.

” The situation back home was grim. There was no communication with my family, no phones, no way to know if they were safe. I couldn’t stay in New Delhi any more, disconnected like that. I took a week’s leave and went home, “Afiya said.

As she left the capital with help from other Kashmiris, little did she know her journey as a flight attendant had ended even before it began.

” By the time the situation]in Kashmir] improved, roads opened up, and I could think of going back to New Delhi, five months had passed. In that period, I lost my dream job, and with it, I lost myself, “she says as her eyes well up.

” I applied for jobs in other airlines but nothing worked out. With every rejection, I started losing hope. Then COVID hit and jobs became even scarcer. Over time, I lost interest in working altogether – my mind just wasn’t in it any more. I didn’t feel like doing anything. “

Afiya says that with each passing month, her frustration turned into despair. She began to spend more time with her friends, seeking solace in their company.

” At first, we just talked about our struggles, “she says”. Then it started with small temptations, with little puffs of cannabis to deal with the tension. It seemed harmless. Then someone offered me a foil]of heroin]. I didn’t think twice. It felt euphoric. “

” The only thing that gave me peace was drugs – everything else felt like it was burning me from inside. “

‘ Ruthless hunger ‘

But the escape was short-lived, she says, and the cycle of dependence took over.

” The dream quickly turned into a nightmare. The euphoria faded and was replaced by a ruthless hunger, “she says as she describes the desperate measures and risks she began to take to find drugs.

” Once, I travelled 40km (25 miles) from Srinagar to south Kashmir’s Shopian district to meet a drug dealer. My friends were running out of stock and someone gave me his number. I called him directly to arrange the supply. He was a big dealer, and at that time, the only way to get what we needed.

“When I reached there, he introduced me to something called ‘ tichu ‘]local slang for injection]. He was the first person to introduce me to injecting drugs. He injected it into my belly right there in the car”, she says. “The rush was intense – it felt like heaven, but only for a moment”.

That moment of euphoria marked the beginning of her quick descent into deeper addiction.

“Heroin’s grip is merciless. It’s not just a drug, it becomes your life”, says Afiya. “I would stay up all night, coordinating with friends to make sure we had enough for the next day. It was exhausting, but the craving was stronger than all other kinds of pain”.

Heroin is the region’s most commonly used drug, with addicts spending thousands of rupees every month to buy it.

“Heroin has spread far and wide, and we are seeing a disturbingly high number of patients affected by it”, says IMHANS’s Rather.

The professor says he has noted a rise in substance abuse among women, attributing it to mental health struggles and unemployment.

“Before 2016, we rarely saw cases involving heroin. Most people used cannabis or other soft drugs. But heroin spreads like a virus, reaching everyone – men, women, even pregnant women”, he tells Al Jazeera. “Now, we see 300 to 400 patients daily, both new cases and follow-ups, and most involve heroin addiction”.

But why heroin?

“Because of its rapid and intense euphoric effects”, says Rather, “which many found more immediate and pleasurable compared to morphine”.

“It is easy to use, has higher potency, and the misconception that it was safer or more refined than other drugs only added to its appeal, despite its highly addictive nature”.

‘ Wired to seek one last shot ‘

For addicts like Afiya, who has been admitted to rehab five times so far, the fight against heroin is a daily and uphill battle.

“Every time I leave the hospital, my body pulls me back to the streets”, she says. “It’s like my brain is wired to seek one last shot”.

Afiya’s intentions to recover remain uncertain. She has frequently left the hospital during rehab to seek heroin, or asked other patients for it during her daily walk at the hospital.

“Drug addicts have a way of connecting with each other”, Rabiya, her mother, tells Al Jazeera. “I once saw her talking to a male patient in English and I realised she was asking him for drugs”.

Rabiya says she once found drugs hidden behind the flush in a women’s toilet. “I found the stash and flushed it, but she]Afiya] still managed to get it]heroin] again”, she says. “She knows how to manipulate the system to get what she wants”.

A nurse at the SHMS rehab revealed how patients often bribed the security guards. “They give them money or come up with excuses to leave, even while on medication”, says the nurse, requesting anonymity as she is not allowed to talk to the media. The female ward is near the hospital’s entrance – that too makes it easier for patients to slip out unnoticed, she says.

“It’s heartbreaking because we try to help, but some patients just find ways to leave”.

“She]Afiya] escaped one night and came back the next day, having spent hours with male patients who helped her get heroin”, says a security guard, who also did not wish to disclose his identity for fear of losing his job.

But Afiya remains defiant. “These medicines don’t bring the peace I get from a single shot of heroin”, she tells Al Jazeera, her hands trembling and her nails digging into the hospital bed.

The physical toll on her body due to addiction has been severe. Open wounds on her legs, arms and belly ooze blood. When Dr Mukhtar A Thakur, a plastic surgeon at SMHS, first examined her, he says he was shocked.

“She was unable to walk because of a deep wound on her private parts and a large scar on her thigh. She had serious health problems, including damaged veins and infected wounds. Her liver, kidneys and heart were also affected. She struggled with memory loss, anxiety and painful withdrawal symptoms, leaving her in a critical condition”, he says.

Afiya’s parents say bringing her to the rehab at SMHS was a desperate move. “To protect her and the family’s reputation, we told our relatives she was being treated for stomach issues and scars from an accident”, says Rabiya.

“No one marries a drug addict here”, she adds. “Our neighbours and relatives already have doubts. They notice her scars, her unstable appearance and the repeated hospital visits”.

Afiya’s father says he often hides his face in public, “unable to bear the shame”.

Health experts say seeking treatment for drug addiction remains a challenge for Kashmiri women as social stigma and cultural taboos keep many women in the shadows.

“Rehabilitation for women is often done secretly because families don’t want anyone to know, and in Kashmir, everybody knows everybody”, Dr Zoya Mir, a clinical psychologist who runs a clinic in Srinagar, tells Al Jazeera.

“Many wealthy families send their daughters to other states for treatment, while others either suffer in silence or delay treatment until it’s too late”, she says. “These women need compassion, not judgement. Only then can they begin to heal”.

Taipei, Taiwan – When Taiwan seized a Chinese-crewed cargo ship suspected of deliberately severing one of its undersea telecom cables last month, authorities pledged to “make every effort to clarify the truth” of what happened.

Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration said it could not rule out the possibility that China had deployed the Togo-flagged Hong Tai 58 as part of a “grey area intrusion”.

Recent cases of damage to submarine cables around the island and in Europe suggest that proving sabotage, much less holding anyone accountable, may be no easy task.

Since 2023, there have been at least 11 cases of undersea cable damage around Taiwan and at least 11 such incidents in the Baltic Sea, according to Taiwanese and European authorities.

Taiwanese and European authorities have identified China or Russia – allies that share increasingly strained relations with the West and its partners – as the likely culprits in a number of incidents, though they have attributed several others to natural causes.

In January, NATO launched Baltic Sentry to step up surveillance of suspicious activities by ships in the Baltic Sea.

But so far, authorities have not announced specific retaliatory measures against Beijing or Moscow, though the European Commission has unveiled a roadmap calling for the enforcement of sanctions and diplomatic measures against unnamed “hostile actors and the ‘ shadow fleet'”.

Authorities have also yet to criminally charge any individuals or companies despite detaining a number of vessels and crew, including the Hong Tai 58, which was seized near Taiwan’s outlying islands on February 25.

Beijing and Moscow have denied any involvement in sabotaging undersea cables.

“This is what the entire grey zone is about. It’s about being deniable”, Ray Powell, the director of Stanford’s Sea Light project, which monitors Chinese maritime activity, told Al Jazeera.

“You just have to be just deniable enough so that even though everybody knows it’s you, they can’t prove it’s you”.

Subsea cables – which crisscross the globe carrying 99 percent of intercontinental digital communications traffic – regularly suffer damage due to age, environmental changes and marine activities like fishing.

Cable faults are so common – numbering between 100 and 200 each year, according to telecommunications data provider TeleGeography – that industry practice is to build subsea networks with built-in redundancies to ensure ongoing connectivity if one cable breaks down.

These characteristics also make subsea cables a prime target for “hybrid warfare” or “grey zone activities” – low-grade coercive acts that are often opaque and conducive to plausible deniability – according to security analysts.

“Most cable breaks are the result of accidents… anchors may be unintentionally dropped in rough seas or left out for longer than intended. Cables may also break when fishing nets are dragged in the wrong location. What’s more, a ship may not realise it has broken a cable”, Kevin Frazier, a Tarbell fellow at the nonprofit Lawfare, told Al Jazeera.

“The simplest way for a bad actor to break a cable is to make it look like one of the accidents that commonly cause such breaks. Anchors being dragged across a cable is one such cause”.

Barbara Keleman, an associate director at London and Singapore-based intelligence firm Dragonfly, said that the spate of recent cable breakdowns featured tell-tale signs of sabotage despite the relatively large number of failures each year in non-suspicious circumstances.

“If you just look at the data, like how often these incidents are now occurring and how many cables are suddenly damaged at the same time, and you include into that the proximity of some of those ships near those cables, you have statistical deviation which suggests that there is something else going on”, Keleman told Al Jazeera.

The incident involving the Hong Tai 58 came just weeks after Taiwanese authorities briefly detained the Cameroon-flagged Shun Xing 39 on suspicion of dragging its anchor over a section of the Trans-Pacific Express cable, which connects Taiwan with the United States West Coast.

Coastguard officials said they were unable to board the vessel due to bad weather and the vessel sailed on to South Korea.

Industry publication Lloyd’s List said the Chinese freighter turned its automatic identification system (AIS) on and off and broadcast as many as three separate identities.

Enforcing the law at sea is notoriously difficult for not only practical reasons but legal ones as well, including conflicting claims of jurisdiction.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, ships sailing in international waters are generally subject to the legal jurisdiction of the country under whose flag they are registered.

Within a state’s territorial waters, defined as 12 nautical miles (22km) from shore, vessels are subject to the jurisdiction of that country.

Authorities can, however, exercise “universal jurisdiction” over a ship outside of their territorial waters in a limited number of circumstances, including cases of piracy, “terrorism” and slavery.

Some countries also assert jurisdiction in international waters in cases where a citizen is a victim or perpetrator of a crime.

Even in cases where authorities may have jurisdiction and evidence, it can be hard to make a legal case for deliberate sabotage, said Dragonfly’s Keleman.

“If the investigators or the country’s intelligence services can get a hold of a communication that clearly shows a command for the ship captain to do this, they might have an argument and can try to prosecute”, she said.

“I suspect that’s going to be quite difficult”.

The European authorities ‘ investigation of the Chinese-flagged Yi Peng 3 following the severing of two subsea telecom cables in November underscored the challenges of responding to acts of suspected sabotage.

AIS data showed the Yi Peng 3 slowing near the two cables – which connected Finland with Germany, and Sweden with Lithuania – around the time of their severing.

Sonar images of the nearby seafloor showed evidence that the vessel had dragged its anchor for as far as 160km (99 miles).

Despite the evidence, European investigators soon hit a diplomatic wall because the ship was flying under the flag of China and was anchored in international waters.

Beijing announced it would investigate the incident itself, though it allowed representatives from Germany, Sweden, Finland and Denmark to board the vessel as “observers”.

In late December, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Yi Peng 3’s owner had decided to resume its voyage in consideration of the crew’s physical and mental health and following a “comprehensive assessment and consultation” with European authorities.

China’s Maritime Safety Administration and its embassy in Stockholm did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard at the time criticised Beijing for not allowing investigators on board to carry out a preliminary investigation.

“Our request that Swedish prosecutors, together with the police and others, be allowed to take certain investigative measures within the framework of the investigation on board remains. We have been clear with China on this”, Stenergard said.

But even if European investigators were dissatisfied, there was not much else that could be done short of causing an international incident, said Jens Wenzel, a Danish defence analyst at Nordic Defence Analysis.

“In international waters, it is quite difficult without the consent of the master, owner/operator or flag state. Within territorial waters the jurisdiction of the coastal state kicks in, which allows for inspection if there is any suspicion of illegal activity”, Wenzel told Al Jazeera.

“In the case of Yi Peng 3, she anchored exactly outside Danish]territorial waters], giving both coastal states Denmark and Sweden difficulties using force to go onboard and without the adequate legislation in place”.

In the months since the&nbsp, Yi Peng 3 left Europe, incidents of cable damage in the Baltic Sea have continued even as NATO has pledged to step up its defence of the region.

They include a December 25 incident involving the&nbsp, Eagle S, a suspected Russian oil tanker flying the flag of the Cook Islands.

The ship dragged its anchor 100km (62 miles), damaging subsea cables in the Gulf of Finland, according to Finnish authorities.

Unlike other cases, Finnish authorities steered the ship into their territorial waters and impounded it.

Three crew members are currently under a travel ban and a criminal investigation is ongoing, although the Eagle S itself was allowed to depart Finland last month.

Herman Ljungberg, a Finnish lawyer representing the owners of the Eagle S, told Al Jazeera that the accusations are “nonsense”, and said that Finnish police had “searched the vessel in and out for nine weeks and found nothing”.

With US President Donald Trump pushing to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, Finland’s intelligence service warned last week that the end of the conflict would free up resources for Russia and its proxies to carry out acts of sabotage.

“The use of proxy operators by various states has recently become a more prominent aspect of both the intelligence and broader influencing scenario. Sabotage operations in Europe linked to the Russian military intelligence service GRU are one example of this”, the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service said in a statement.

“By using intermediaries, Russia seeks to cover its tracks. Russian sabotage operations aim to influence public opinion and the sense of public safety, and to overwhelm the authorities in target countries”.

Russia’s embassy in Stockholm did not respond to a request for comment.

Sea Light’s Powell said acts of sabotage against subsea cables are likely to continue.

“It appears that this is something of a recent trend, and China and Russia and others will do this because they will essentially calculate that the response will not be bad enough”, he said.

United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) have arrested a Palestinian graduate student who played a prominent role in last year’s pro-Palestinian protests at New York’s Columbia University, the student workers ‘ union said on Sunday.

The student, Mahmoud Khalil at the university’s School of International and Public Affairs, was arrested at his university residence on Saturday, the Student Workers of Columbia union said in a statement.

Khalil’s wife is a US citizen and he has a permanent residency green card, the union said. He remained in detention on Sunday. Khalil’s wife declined to comment through one of Khalil’s fellow students.

Khalil’s lawyer, Amy Greer, told the Associated Press news agency that she spoke by phone with one of the ICE agents during the arrest, who said they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the lawyer that Khalil was in the country as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that too, according to the lawyer.

Greer said the authorities declined to tell Khalil’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, whether he was accused of committing a crime. Khalil has since been transferred to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

“We have not been able to get any more details about why he is being detained”, Greer told the AP. “This is a clear escalation. The administration is following through on its threats”.

The arrest appeared to be among the first known actions under President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport international students who joined the protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept college campuses last year. His administration has claimed participants forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting Hamas, which is designated as a ‘ terror ‘ organisation by the US.

The move has been described as an attack on First Amendment freedoms.

Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin, has been one of the school administrators ‘ lead negotiators of the pro-Palestinian student protesters, some of whom set up a tent encampment on a Columbia lawn last year and seized control of an academic building for several hours in April before police entered the campus to arrest them. Khalil was not in the group that occupied the building but was a mediator between Columbia provosts and the protesters.

The protesting students called for Columbia’s divestment from companies with ties to Israel, a ceasefire and an end to the war that killed nearly 50, 000 Palestinians and turned the enclave into rubble after nonstop bombardment. The US provided the bulk of the ammunition for the war.

Columbia said last year that it would consider expediting some of the students ‘ demands through its investments committee.

Rights groups have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza – home to 2.3 million people. Despite a ceasefire in place since January 19, Israel has blocked the entry of any aid into Gaza since March 1, drawing condemnation from rights groups and aid agencies.

The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent Israeli military offensive on Gaza led to months of pro-Palestinian protests that roiled US college campuses.

At least 1, 100 people were killed in the Hamas attack and some 240 people were taken captive. Most of the captives have been released as part of truce deals. A new round of truce talks will resume in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Monday.

Targeted by the government

A spokesperson for Columbia said the school was barred by law from sharing information about individual students.

The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department, which oversees the country’s visa system, did not respond to questions from the news agencies. It was not immediately clear on what grounds ICE agents arrested Khalil. The ICE comes under the US Department of Homeland Security.

In an interview with the Reuters news agency a few hours before his arrest on Saturday about the Trump administration’s criticism of Columbia, Khalil said he was concerned that he was being targeted by the government for speaking to the media.

The Trump administration on Friday said it had cancelled government contracts and grants worth about $400m to Columbia University. The government said the cuts and the student deportation efforts are due to “anti-Semitic” harassment at and near Columbia’s Manhattan campus.

“What more can Columbia do to appease Congress or the government now”? Khalil said before his arrest, noting that Columbia had twice called in police to arrest protesters and had disciplined many pro-Palestinian students and staff, suspending some.

“They basically silenced anyone supporting Palestine on campus and this was not enough. Clearly, Trump is using the protesters as a scapegoat for his wider agenda]of] fighting and attacking higher education and the Ivy League education system”.

In response to the announced grant cuts on Friday, Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said the school was committed to combating anti-Semitism and was “working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns”.

Protesting students have denied the charges of anti-Semitism.

‘ This is only the beginning ‘

Maryam Alwan, a Palestinian American senior at Columbia who has protested alongside Khalil, said the Trump administration was dehumanising Palestinians.

“I am horrified for my dear friend Mahmoud, who is a legal resident, and I am horrified that this is only the beginning”, she said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that international students who support Hamas, which the US has designated a “terrorist” organisation, face visa revocation and deportation.

On Thursday, Columbia issued a revised protocol for how students and school staff should handle ICE agents seeking to enter private school property.

The school said ICE agents without a judicial arrest warrant may be allowed to enter its private property in “exigent circumstances”, which it did not specify.

“By allowing ICE on campus, Columbia is surrendering to the Trump administration’s assault on universities across the country and sacrificing international students to protect its finances”, the Student Workers of Columbia said in its statement.